#shovel loves you;;
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you have to understand.. sally dropped a match in a discarded, eaten ice cream sundae. you're supposed to give the best part of your meal to the gods, the thing you'll miss the most, and she took a sundae that wasn't even hers and dropped a match in it and didn't even pray out loud but poseidon showed up IMMEDIATELY. LIKE HE'D BEEN WAITING FOR HER TO SUMMON HIM. and they didn't even look at each other but you could tell how much they love each other and he said he'll listen!!!!!!!! she doesn't have kind things to say about his family BUT HE'LL LISTEN TO HER!!!! and he'll laugh with her! just a little! it's all he can allow himself to do!!! and he'll give in just a little and look at her, but she won't look at him, but she'll ask him anyway, "do you want to talk to him?" AND HE'LL WANT TO SAY YES BUT HE CAN'T HE HOLDS HIMSELF BACK BUT HE SAYS THAT WHEN THEIR SON NEEDS HIM THE MOST HE'LL BE BY HIS SIDE!!! and when their son is a little older poseidon gives him pearls that bring him to MONTAUK, the place where he MET SALLY. TO A PLACE THAT FEELS LIKE HOME. AND PERCY HAS ALL THE POWER OF THE SEA BEHIND HIM WHEN HE FIGHTS ARES. andthenandthenandTHEN! poseidon has his back AGAIN when he stops THEE LORD ZEUS FROM STRIKING PERCY DOWN WITH HIS MASTER BOLT. AND HE SURRENDERS!!!!! HE.SUR RENDERDC. TO ZEUS. FOR PERCY. AND THEN PERCY USED HIS VERY LIMITED FACE TO FACE TIME WITH HIS FATHER TO ASK HIM "DO YOU DREAM?" AND WHEN POSEIDON SAYS HE DOES, PERCY ASKS "DO YOU EVER DREAM ABOUT MOM?" DO. YOU. EVER. DREAM. ABOUT. MOM???????? THE UNSPOKEN, "DO YOU DREAM ABOUT ME TOO?" AND POSEIDON CANNOT SPEAK THE WORD OUT LOUD BUT HIS FACE IS SAYING, YES. YES OF COURSE I DREAM ABOUT YOUR MOTHER, ABOUT YOU, I HAVE DREAMT ABOUT YOU SINCE THE DAY I HAD TO LET YOU GO. AND HE'S HOLDING PERCY'S FACE, HOLDING HIS SON FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE HE WAS A BABY AND NOT SAYING ANYTHING BUT ALSO SAYING EVERYTHING AND THEY ARE ONE IN THE SAME, THEY ARE BOTH OF THE SEA, AND THE SEA DOESN'T LIKE TO BE RESTRAINED BUT RIGHT NOW, IT HAS TO BE. AND AT THE END PERCY GOES BACK TO MONTAUK, BACK TO WHERE POSEIDON MET SALLY, BACK TO HIS MOM, BACK TO HIS HOME BESIDE THE SEA AND I'M LOSING IT!! DO YOU SEE?? DO YOU UNDERSTAND???
#i am SHOVELING drywall into my mouth I CANT DO THIS#IM GOING INSANE#LIKE HOW DOES IT FEEL TO HAVE A GOD LOVE YOU WITH ALL THE FORCE OF THE SEA#percy jackson#sally jackson#poseidon#posally#pjo#pjotv#pjotv spoilers
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So, you're Shovel's master now? Fine.
#baldur's gate#baldur's gate 3#bg3#shovel#bg3 shovel#shovel bg3#shovel the quasit#bg3edit#gamingedit#*#i love you shovel!!!!!!!!!
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Anthony: huh it’s gonna be pride month during release of Peachyville maybe I, a bi man, should help give some representation through my character.
*boss music starts playing, emerging from the shadows backlit with white glowing eyes*
Matt, Beth, And Freddie Wong: stand back mortal you know not our power.
#dungeons and daddies#dndaddies#dndads#dungeons and daddies spoilers#the peachyville horror#anthony burch#matt arnold#beth may#meth bay#freddie wong#freddy wong#no bc why is the representation strong this season guys#like past seasons have been gay and not like expressly so just kinda passively#(ignoring the travesty of Darryl never realizing he’s definitely some kinda fruity)#((mr ‘Darryl feels love for the first time in a long time’ after kissing Henry))#but this seasons like someone has walked up to be and started shoveling the best food down my throat.#thank you sir pls sir can I have some more
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Ok, I recently wrote an essay [here] talking about the definition and duties of civil engineering as well as the ethics because of the brain rot @swordfright gave me with calling Dream Sam’s ultimate engineering project. So, because I actually am a civil engineer I took it upon myself to design the title and summary of quantities sheets just like I do at work for roads but with Dream as the project instead. And in honor of angst day sponsored by @sixteenth-day-event, I figured I’d share it because I feel like it kinda works for the prison of the mind prompt.
“Sam’s “ultimate engineering project” he deemed too damaged like a bumpy road or crumbling building that wasn’t worthy of patching and filling in the cracks or reinforcing, that’s too eroded to be fixed and preserved. So, Sam strived to tear him down to the bedrock so he could remake, remold, and reengineer Dream according to his design for the common safety, public health and well-fair.”
{These are very similar to the actual sheets I make day to day, which I shall not share for the sake of doxing my location, but yea pretty much everything has a significance. Some of it doesn’t necessarily make sense but that was because I was more so taking inventory of what we see in lore (so you know I counted ;) lol)}
#sixteenthdayevent#AAANNNNNGGST#Ah and now you see why I’ve been digging up all the prison lore and inventories ;D…. my brain rot is too powerful#still never got wardens torment enchants though :( did for the shovel and how which I’ll now have to write torture scenes for…#so ummm stay tuned for that in Misery Loves An Idiot… Dream going to have lots of fun I’m sure >:)#c!dream#dsmp#dreblr#dream smp#dsmp dream#dsmp analysis#dsmpblr#prison arc#dsmp art#pandora’s vault has a singular purpose#flora favs#pandora’s vault#c!dream fanart#flora does art apparently#ah Sam… such a good engineer… if only he realized Dream was a person not a condemned structure oof#if y’all are curious enough I might share a irl work example with different numbers and stuff but didn’t want to bore you XD#happy angst day :)… wait isn’t that everyday? lol#can we talk about how I’ve done all of these prompts as descriptions of metaphors and stuff kinda funny#civil engineering
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Au where eating the demons desire makes Laios immortal
Demons Curse
—
WHYYYYY WHY WOULD YOU SAY THIS TO MEEEEEEE WHYYYY SNIFF SNIFF IM SO SAD. IMS O SAD. I DREW THIS WHILE FALLING APART AT THE SEAMS. uaogh okay let me get my thoughts out about this
i originally was sorta happy in a bittersweet way cause i thought, well at least marcille has company, they have eachother to lean on now!
...but then i realized marcille isnt immortal. shes gonna live LONG, but shes not immortal. AND I GOT SO EXTREMELY SAD
can you imagine, trying to convince your friend not to extend everyones lifespans to a scarily long degree. and then having to help her deal with that fear and grief of losing her loved ones. AND THEN REALIZING YOURE IMMORTAL AND OUTLIVING ALL OF YOUR LOVED ONES INCLUDING HER. imagine being marcille as she gets older watching laios experience the same exact fear and grief she knows so well and knowing she cant do anything other than reassure him itll be alright. imagine being so scared to die and now suddenly you know someone who CANT die and realizing thats SO MUCH WORSE paces in circles. AAAAAAUGH
additional thought of this au, what if this was part of the demons curse to never allow laios' greatest desire to be granted? i mean laios is a very simple guy with simple wants, he wants to be loved, to eat good food, to study monsters, to be around his friends, and generally just live a normal life. being immortal would definitely complicate things... he'll be able to see and experience so many things but he wont be able to do it with his loved ones, not for long.
and also, being king, he'd probably be in that position for a long long time - maybe he'd willingly retire at some point but even after that where would he go then? what would he do? he cant go and find monsters to study, they all avoid him. i guess, explore the rest of the world? watch everything move on without him?
speaking of, imagine if he lived up until a time like modern day. so many years so many friends (gained and lost) and so many changes... that would be insane. THIS IS SPIRALLING INTO ME JUST GOING "WOULDNT IT BE FUCKED UP TO BE IMMORTAL" AJDNSJXBAH
anyways, final note, im reminded too of this "hand my my shovel, im going in!" animatic that haunts my mind forever AUGH its so good, and captures my immortality thoughts perfectly
#ARE YOU HAPPY... IM SO SAD. THIS FUCKED ME UP#I HOPE THIS MAKES SENSE#i was originally gonna do chilaios/whole party angst but then i was like “wait. marcille.” and got so fucked up about it that i had to do i#AJ. GRIPS YOUR SHOULDERS. WHAT PROMPTED YOU TO SAY SOMETHING SO CRUEL TO ME.... (<- silly)#but no yeah frankly i was really (pleasantly!) surprised to see this ask#anyways as someone who is both scared of death and scared of immortality i had many thoughts about this#thank you! i will be haunted by this forever#marcille#marcille donato#laios#laios touden#dungeon meshi#<- tagging just cause i need to hit people with psychic damage#im proud of this one! it looks pretty even though i struggled with the anatomy#big shout outs to that hand me my shovel im going in animatic by the way. crazy. i love it so much#dungeon meshi spoilers#I FORGOT TO ADD THAT
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BROTHERS
The river Weser ran between the Roman and Cheruscan forces. Arminius came to the bank and halted with his fellow chieftains:— "Had the Caesar come?" he inquired. On receiving the reply that he was in presence, he asked to be allowed to speak with his brother. That brother, Flavus by name, was serving in the army, a conspicuous figure both from his loyalty and from the loss of an eye through a wound received some few years before during Tiberius' term of command. Leave was granted, and Stertinius took him down to the river. Walking forward, he was greeted by Arminius; who, dismissing his own escort, demanded that the archers posted along our side of the stream should be also withdrawn. When these had retired, he asked his brother, whence the disfigurement of his face? On being told the place and battle, he inquired what reward he had received. Flavus mentioned his increased pay, the chain, the crown, and other military decorations; Arminius scoffed at the cheap rewards of servitude.
They now began to argue from their opposite points of view. Flavus insisted on "Roman greatness, the power of the Caesar; the heavy penalties for the vanquished; the mercy always waiting for him who submitted himself. Even Arminius' wife and child were not treated as enemies." His brother urged "the sacred call of their country; their ancestral liberty; the gods of their German hearths; and their mother, who prayed, with himself, that he would not choose the title of renegade and traitor to his kindred, to the kindred of his wife, to the whole of his race in fact, before that of their liberator." From this point they drifted, little by little, into recriminations; and not even the intervening river would have prevented a duel, had not Stertinius run up and laid a restraining hand on Flavus, who in the fullness of his anger was calling for his weapons and his horse. On the other side Arminius was visible, shouting threats and challenging to battle: for he kept interjecting much in Latin, as he had seen service in the Roman camp as a captain of native auxiliaries.
Tacitus Annals 2.10-11
there's a lot going on in there! Arminius switching to Latin is a detail that always makes me feel a deep kind of sadness, especially with how it's preceded by mention of their mother. I wonder what she thought of what became of her sons, on opposite sides of everything but still, inescapably, brothers. even when they want to kill each other. there sure are a lot of fucked up and unhappy brothers around. and Arminius asking about Flavus' injury............I also had a whole thing typed out about the horror of imperialism and colonization and the trauma of assimilation but I think this sets the tone better
Rome's Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest, Adrian Murdoch
and also this, just for fun
(ibid)
this post is already a mile long, so lets add another mile to it: a little scene at the start of their conversation! tfw you go in for a hug and your younger brother who also ended up being taller starts roasting your hair style
bsky ⭐��pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost ⭐ cara.app⭐ko-fi
#long post#SO LONG#roman empire tag#tbh im not jazzed about using that tag when rome is not actually the setting here but i do not have a good era tag for this yet#i'll figure it out later eurhghghesuerhgh#komiks tag#arminius & flavus#idk. maybe also#eye trauma cw#anyway it's all very 'he's my brother and i need a shovel to love him' kind of deal#this (wheezing) this is an idea i had LAST YEAR but it was a solo illustration#i had it posted for about ten minutes before i decided it sucked ass and needed to be revisited as a comic#FINALLY. the idea is complete. im free. it's been bothering me to have it unfinished while the original idea was haunting my drafts#as a reminder to get it done. and now i can delete it. au revoir illustration you will not be missed
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I’m thinking about Gwen and Elyan tonight folks….. they were siblings, finally reunited after years, reconciled, and obviously cared for one another very much and there were hardly any on-screen interactions between them save for episodes where either one of them was in danger of some kind. Sigh.
I also know for a fact their exchanges would’ve been hilarious because it seemed that Elyan was the one person that knew how to annoy Gwen at light-speed LOL
yeselyanprincearthurofcamelot
#bbc merlin#merlin#I just really love siblings in media#and wish we got more of these two#in the ‘inbetween’ moments#I mean little moments like nudges and eye rolls#someone that brings out Gwen’s childish side the way only an annoying brother can#someone that brings out the goofier side behind elyan’s deadpan sarcasm#to know which one is the older one!!! (imo it’s Gwen)#to even see them standing together more often (and not just at their father’s grave 😭)#especially would’ve loved it while she was queen#Gwen’s trying to be professional and her idiot stoic brother is crossing his eyes at her across the room#to just tease her!!! and her tease him!!!!#I need elyan!! to give arthur!!!!!! a shovel talk!!!!!!!#and for Gwen to be like uh excuse me I haven’t seen you in years why do you think you can do this on my behalf#and Arthur is just like ‘you have my word no harm shall come to her’#Gwen is sooo unimpressed with both of them she just leaves and they’re both like…#her displeasure is literally a fourth presence in the room … bro do u think we fucked up#idk bro…#let’s ask merlin. yeah let’s#merlin just laughs at them and tells them good luck#ok this ran away from me anyway#bbc Gwen#bbc elyan#guinevere pendragon#sir elyan#merlin meta#I guess?#ren rambles
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The Untamed (2019) // Dan Bellm, Deep Well
#do you ever. do you ever just. god. Wei wuxian telling him to forget every promise from his first life#thinking it will be a relief to jiang cheng. and it being maybe the cruelest thing he could have said in Jiang cheng’s mind#he just. he’s always wanted him to come back. to come home. to lotus pier. to him and yanli and the twin heroes promise#like. GOD. THATS MY BROTHER. AND I NEED A SHOVEL TO LOVE HIM#the untamed#jiang cheng#jiang wanyin#wei wuxian#wei ying#mdzs#parallels#Dan Bellm
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thinking about crowley and "my lover's got humor, she's the giggle at a funeral" and "knows everybody's disapproval, i should have worshipped her sooner" and "if the heavens ever did speak then she's the last true mouth piece" and "the only heaven i'll be sent to is when i'm alone with you" and "my lover's the sunlight" and "i was born sick but i love it" and "there is no sweeter innocence then our gentle sin"
#he was born sick#shoveling dirt into my mouth are you kidding#holy fucking shit crowley looking at aziraphale and thinking if the heaven's ever did speak then she's the last true mouth piece#hozier said this song is about “reclaiming your humanity through the act of love” he literally said “it's essentially about sex” and how th#church teaches people to feel shame about sex and love#jesus fucking christ crowley finds absolution through his love and desire for aziraphale not through god or heaven but through this sin#i will not survive i am weak i am mmmmmmm#good omens#aziracrow#inneffable husbands are being inneffable again#crowley tag
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All this talk about shovel talks and nothing about Claudia Henderson. Like where’s her giving steddie shovel talks?
Claudia is eternally grateful to Eddie for saving her Dusty’s life, but she sees the pain her boys were both in after his sacrifice. She hears the screams at night from Dustin’s room. She watches as he either radios whoever was sitting with Eddie—usually Steve—or calls if the person doesn’t have a radio. Always asking for updates in the morning. Making sure the other boy is still there. Still alive.
Steve on the other hand is hiding his pain as he always does. She still sees Steve sitting vigil at the young man’s bed when she comes to bring real food and good coffee to Steve, Wanye and occasionally Dustin’s middle school science teacher Mr. Clarke. She sees the way Steve took extra care washing the other’s vest. All under a guise of being a good friend and not wanting Eddie to wake up alone.
When Eddie starts tagging along with Steve to their dinners occasionally she slowly watches as the two go from friends to pining to something else entirely. It’s when she’s certain that Eddie and Steve have become EddieandSteve that she starts doing it.
She would never give a shovel talk to Eddie. Steve’s a grown man, and can protect his own heart, but she’s already seen the pain Eddie had unwilling caused him. She’s seen the way Steve held the metalhead’s vest as it was his anchor to this world. She knew Eddie would never cause him pain like that again, but that doesn’t mean she can’t have a little fun scaring Eddie.
It starts innocently enough, she’s just sharing fun facts.
“Did you know,” she says to Eddie while Steve and Dustin are clearing the table, “that pigs can eat a human body. It can take some time, but sixteen pigs can do it in about eight minutes actually.”
She hides her smile as the younger squirms uncomfortably and replies “um, no I didn’t know that.”
She didn’t think anyone else but Eddie heard her, but she was wrong. Dustin says something about remembering going to Claudia’s cousin’s farm shortly after his dad left them, and thinking it had pigs. She had an even harder hiding her smile after Eddie went as white as a ghost with that information.
She continues to give Eddie little fun facts like that, and one time confirming that Eddie is in fact allergic to cinnamon, because she’d hate to forget that when baking him something.
She’d never ever be the cause of Dustin and Steve’s pain, or give her new found friends Wayne and Scott the panic she had in spring break not knowing where her Dusty was, but she does like seeing Eddie squirm on occasion.
#Claudia henderson absolutely adopted Steve and is far more observant than the kids#she’d never give an actual shovel talk to Eddie but she’d have fun scaring him#eddie thinks she hates him#Steve who’s partially deaf and somehow is never in the room when she drops tidbits is very confused#He’s like ‘what? Ma loves you’#claudia henderson#steddie#steve harrington#eddie munson#dustin henderson#I’m totally not pushing my Claudia killed her husband hc into this#my writing#blurb#steddie blurb#steddie fanfic#clarkson if you squint
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oh my brother, my brother, who have you became in the wake of all that’s happened here?
xaviero falcone - avet @tankgotstuckinthecircusgate, brother by the interstate - k.c cramm, winter of artifice - anaïs nin, ghost of - diana nguyen, hevel - nathaniel orion g.k, brother by the interstate - k.c cramm, carlo falcone - avet, icarus - the crane wives
buy me a ko-fi? ☕️
#important & painful note: if you read this like xaviero saying the first three and carlo saying the last three and them meeting#in the middle with ‘you cannot keep your brother alive’ then you will feel so much pain and agony#FIRST TWO* sorry !!!#😁😁😁#also i feel bad cutting out anna but she does not have the same doomed sibling vibe as these two#like this is my brother. i need a shovel to love him. you know#on brothers#on brotherhood#doomed siblings#web weave#web weaving#post: poetry#mafia 2#carlo falcone#xaviero falcone#k.c cramm#diana nguyen#anaïs nin#the crane wives#nathaniel orion g.k
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While rereading mdzs I am once again shocked by how talked about the "you were the only mistake he ever made" line from Lan Xichen to Wei Wuxian is and how heated it gets some people because honestly... I don't think he actually even believes that.
Stay with me. Look at the actual line. (I Included 2 translations for comparison's sake)
Firstly, yes he is mad at Wei Wuxian in this scene. But his biggest moment of anger was actually before this. By this point he's realized that Wei Wuxian forgot what happened after nightless city (and therefore ISN'T stringing along his baby brother on purpose) so he has in fact calmed down a bit.
Secondly, notice that he starts by talking about how his uncle felt. This is not Lan Xichen making a value statement about what he thinks. When he says Lan Wangji was proper and righteous he is talking about him being a model lan, he's talking about their family and clan's perspective of Wangji. Indeed, in their eyes, Wei Wuxian is the only time Lan Wangji was ever not the textbook perfect Lan.
Thirdly, what is Lan Xichen trying to say here? What is he mad at Wei Wuxian for? It's that he doesn't know Lan Wangji is in love with him. His anger is eased by realizing Wei Wuxian doesn't remember the very blatant confessions lwj made in the cave after nightless city, or Lan Wangji fighting his own clan elders for Wei Wuxian, and so had no way of knowing the whipmarks on Lan Wangji's back were related to him. But he is still mad, he still thinks Wei Wuxian should have been able to figure it out. So what does he highlight?
The fact that the only thing Lan Wangji, perfect model-Lan righteous Lan Wangji, ever defies his clan for is Wei Wuxian.
And Wei Wuxian has seen him do this! Even if he doesn't remember this one instance. Because Lan Wangji has been doing that the whole story through. Wei Wuxian has watched Lan Wangji blatantly stand against the entire cultivation world for him, and here Lan Xichen is highlighting just how unusual that is, how much Wei Wuxian must mean to Lan Wangji that he's willing to do that. The important part of the sentence here is not "mistake" it's "only."
Lan Xichen here isn't trying to say that he disapproves of Wei Wuxian, or telling him to stay away from his brother. Remember, the thing that made him mad in the first place was Wei Wuxian saying that he and Lan Wangji slept in seperate rooms. He thought they were together! He's mad because they're not!
At no point does Lan Xichen say he individually considers Lan Wangji's feelings for Wei Wuxian a mistake. If he ever did, it's clear he accepted them regardless long ago. Mistake or not, what he wants is for his little brother to be happy.
#mdzs#mdzs meta#lan xichen#For the record even IF he really did think of wwx as a mistake I think he's owed a moment of pettiness!#he's wrong but when i see people cite it as a major reason they dislike him i'm like... everyone in this novel is a war criminal#but frankly that's not so relevant because looking at the text... he doesn't think that!#he's consistently pro wangxian the whole story through. this speech is literally the catalyst to wwx confessing his feelings to lwj!!#frankly for a shovel talk – which it basically is– this whole thing is MILD. there weren't even any death threats!#also!! it drive me up the all when people mistake the intentional xiyao wangxian parralels in this scene as a personal dig on lxc#Yes! Xiyao and wangxian are foils! everyone seeing wwx as a stain on hanguang-jun's reputation but the venerated triad as an honorable bond#only for wangxian to end up happy and lan xichen with both his sworn brothers dead... that's the themes baby!!! can't trust reputations!!#but then people get mad like 'wow how DARE he say that when HE liked jgy!' that's the point!! miss mxtx did that on purpose!#Also lan xichen is VERY aware at this point just how much jgy lied to him! It's not like he's still in his a-yao is innocent era#He is LITERALLY a hostage! He is processing all of this as we speak!#he's less 'YOU are a mistake and i wish wangji didn't love you! unlike me who has never trusted anyone i shouldn't'#and more 'my entire life is falling apart right now and my little brother is the only one in my family who might still get a happy ending-#WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DIDN'T KNOW HE WAS IN LOVE WITH YOU???'
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Everyone in the Fire Nation thinks I'm a traitor. I couldn't drag her into it. / I left without him because I couldn't bear to put him in danger.
+ Bonus: "All I get is a letter? You could've at least looked me in the eye when you ripped out my heart."
#rayllum x maiko#5x04#aka the letter goodbye parallel stood out to me ofc for ages but#the uncle-niece aunt-nephew shovel talk parallel + dialogue is WILD#atla#maiko#tdp#rayllum#parallels#mine#4x09 'i know' + 5x01 throne room scene is like callum's version of mai's boiling rock tbh#but also 'i love her more than i fear you' with aaravos HELLO
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lately i've been boarding pre-fight exchanges from shovel of hope as exercises! they're short and concise so they're perfect for practicing shot composition and character acting in short bursts
i've been having fun so far; hoping to do these with every member of the Order of No Quarter eventually but we'll see! the VA is my own mediocre scratch as usual lmao, and the music is this harpsichord cover of in the hall of the usurper! if you haven't checked out the harpsichord guy definitely do so, it's awesome stuff
this guy is also on my youtube! check it out there too if you so please
#shovel knight#king knight#storyboards#standard apologies once again for making you guys listen to my shitty VA lmao#my production values are on the floor for small exercises like these#still love em tho
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"Ah! You're one of those," a voice came to his ears.
Nuparu turned to find a tall Gaquri standing at the entrance, looking at him curiously.
"I am a Toa," he corrected.
The other nodded: "Yes, I do know that. Forgot the name is all. You're a, uh... Ko?"
"Onu."
"Hm! My mistake. Which element is that, again?"
"Earth. Do you need something?" the inventor cut their small talk short, lightly tapping a tool similar to a wrench against the skeletal frame of what appeared to be a heavily modded chariot: "I'm working on a project."
"You know where Berix is?" the Gaquri asked. He raised an arm: an interesting weapon, with a jagged light blue blade at one end and some kind of projectile mechanism attached to the handle, dangled from it casually. "Wanted to drop this off to him. The thornax launcher's been jamming up more often and I know that boy can make it work like a charm again."
"He's getting parts," Nuparu answered. His eyes rested once more on the blade and he added, tilting his head intrigued: "You can leave it here if you want."
"So you can study some original Bara Magna manufacturing?" the other joked.
"It's not really my field, but it looks remarkable."
He watched the organic being laugh heartily as he approached - with a fairly heavy limp, he noticed: "Remarkable! Now that's a bit of an exaggeration, kid. I made these from some bones, whatever viable scraps I could find from wrecks of the Core War, and a few patches across the years when I could afford it. It's held together by spit and whatever Ackar's friend did to make it spurt water."
"From what I understand, spit doesn't seem like a good adhesive."
"That's what we say here to mean something's parts are real shoddily connected together."
"Hm! Like dried mud. Or aluminum sheet."
"That's the idea. Ah, where should I put this, anyhow?"
"There is fine. What's with your leg?"
The Gaquri gave a grimace: "Nothing much - just my knee acting up," he replied, patting the guilty joint. "Something must have gotten rusted. It happens."
Even through the lack of expression of his mask Nuparu treated him to a baffled look.
"What?"
"Organic parts don't rust," the Toa sputtered. "At least, ours don't."
The other eyed the tendons and muscles peeking through black armor, and his lips perked up in a little smile.
Without a word he placed his weapon on the least cluttered corner of Berix's work desk before redirecting his now free hands to the side of the faulty knee, messing with what appeared to be the graceless stitching of a large wound: his fingers sank deftly into it and pried through the gaps enough to loosen the whole thing, and before the less organic being's flabbergasted eyes pulled down the fake skin and meat to reveal a fully mechanical joint, complete with pistons and springs and even what seemed like wires.
"Don't worry," he chuckled with a wave, "Ours don't either. But most crusty old Glatorian like me haven't been completely flesh and bone in a long time."
If the inventor's attention had been piqued before, he was completely captivated now. He was leaning on his seat towards him, vehicle project all but forgotten, intently studying as many details of the prosthesis as he could see from that distance.
His eager interest made the other laugh again: "Why all that surprise! Don't you see something like this on you every day?"
"Yes, but I'm not you!"
"And what's that mean?"
"You're all flesh! And meat! And skin! How does that work?"
The Gaquri considered something for a moment. "If you can get me a seat and figure out what's wrong with it, I'll be glad to let you have a closer look," he offered at last.
Nuparu pulled the stool from right under himself so fast that he fell on his ass.
He then placed it down with extreme care and patted it insistently.
The other barely held back a snort.
His implant hadn't caused this much of a scene since the first day it had been up and functional.
"The name's Tarix, anyhow," he introduced himself as he sat down a little heavily. "Since you'll be rummaging knuckle-deep through the insides of my leg for the next thirty minutes."
"Hm," Nuparu replied as he kneeled until his mask was all but grazing the joint.
Tarix waited a dozen seconds, and added: "You got one too, Toa?"
"One what?"
"Name."
"Nuparu."
"I see. Ah - nope, nope, don't-" his fingers quickly pinched the mechanical being's and lifted them away from the scarified tissue binding the meat to the metal: "That's real flesh, don't peel that - the nerves still work, you'd put me through the pains of Plude."
"What's that?"
"You folks have a place in your lore built just to torture you forever?"
"Yes, Karzhani. I've been there."
"Huh. Well, I've been to Plude too back when it still existed, and I'll just say that the only good thing the Lord of Sand might've done was collapsing it on itself. So, you get what I mean about the pain."
"Hm. Yes, I can imagine. But how do I - see, to check the individual parts, I'd need to pull them off..."
"Oh - hold it, let me just..."
Angling his leg in an uncomfortable position and hunching down with a hiss, the Glatorian set to work carefully pulling screws loose with the help of an empty pipe he'd fetched from his pocket. The small parts dangled from their sockets without falling, just distant enough from the point the metal touched to allow the top and bottom pieces to be pulled apart without needing to pull the much more easy to lose components out of the whole.
"Hold the calf a moment, will you?" he muttered with the pipe now stuck between his teeth. Nuparu complied, holding the lower half of the leg still as Tarix worked his magic on the inner wires. At last, satisfied, he unfurled his back up once more and puffed satisfied: "There, pull."
When the Toa did so, the prosthesis came apart as easily as a house of cards. Suddenly, in the mechanical palm was a whole calf, still warm with life and undoubtedly organic.
Tarix watched genuinely amused as Nuparu tested the ankle in his hands and on the ground, miming an attempt at a walk as though playing with a very concerning doll with nothing short of pure unadultered fascination.
He posed it as if stuck in a sprint: "Can you feel this?"
"Not a single thing," the Glatorian replied. He patted the metallic femur's exposed head: "And neither can I here. The connections are all in the wires, they go right into the nerves, see? So long as they're apart I can't feel crap anywhere from over here," and he pointed to the flesh that stopped around the middle of his thigh "To the rest of the leg underneath. Not that I should be able to, frankly, if we wanted to abide by nature's whims, but luckily for me us Spherus Magna natives never cared much for that."
Nuparu hummed: "How'd you get it like this, anyways?"
"Oh," the Glatorian shrugged as though it were the most normal thing in the world, "Blew up."
"It just exploded?"
"Not by itself, of course, someone shot the whole thing out of me."
The Toa treated him to an appalled look.
Tarix waved a hand harshly, chewing on his unlit pipe: "The Core War was absolutely barbaric, kid! I've witnessed stuff I wouldn't wish on a Skrall. When I saw that half you've got there in your hand fly over my head as gracefully as the ugliest bird known to any being with eyes, I thought I was going to die of shock like a Mountain Striker with a broken wing. I still have no clue how I managed to keep awake through the bloodloss and pain long enough for the fixers to figure out I was still alive enough to be taken down to the medic."
Nuparu regarded the half of a limb in his grasp with newfound horror and fascination. A whole portion of leg, shot right out... He wasn't sure if even the Vortixx could have had something capable of doing that. Oh, sure, they had plenty of possibly worse things, but even the most blunt tended to have slightly more complex effects than just 'blows a chunk off of you'.
And the fact that they had managed to rebuild the broken joint and connected it to the rest of the nervous system was nothing short of miraculous, compared to the same thing done on a mechanical being - whose organic components regenerate, too.
"And all Glatorian have something like this?"
"Us older ones, yes," the other nodded. He watched with a sort of lazy interest as the Toa turned his attention to the mechanism of his prosthesis, checking for damage as he had promised. "The rookies tend to have the usual stuff, thank goodness - scars, plaques, maybe a limb, some fingers..."
"Fingers?"
"Yes, some of them. They tend to nip 'em a lot during training, you know, when they start to get the hang of it and stop holding their weapons like they're gonna grow a mouth and bite them - they cut tendons often those first few times. Or just the whole thing."
"Really?"
He chuckled, playfully waving his fingers: "Gresh keeps losing them. If you look closely you can tell which phalanxes are still his."
"I thought he was good at fighting."
"He is. He's just young. And a little too brash at times."
Nuparu hummed, moving onto the piece of implant attached to his thigh: "You mentioned limbs, too," he noted absentmindedly: "Is that also common, during training?"
"Losing them? Oh no, that happens out in the desert. Or, used to happen... Well, the desert's still out there, just smaller, so I guess - point is, you'll sooner get one cut off by a Bone Hunter or chewed up by a Vorox than find a fellow Glatorian who'll do that to you, on purpose or not. We made sure to try and avoid that sort of thing when we made the rules for the job."
"And plaques?"
"Oh, these," and he tapped some strange metallic protrusions on the top of his legs, on the side of his arms, and on his shoulders. "Nothing special, they keep armor in place. Easier than having to strap it on. We install them when we come of age."
Their shape was somewhat familiar: "Berix has them too, I think."
"I think everybody gets them - Agori, Glatorian, Skrall..."
"They are pretty useful," the Toa nodded.
He couldn't really imagine how they could have managed to stick armor to themselves otherwise. Maybe through some cloth? But then it might chafe their joints, and they'd have to find a way to insert it in the metal anyways...
He hummed thoughtfully, wracking his brain as he tried at once to figure out both the logistics of putting armor on fully organic beings and whatever was wrong with the implant.
So concentrated he was that he actually jumped a little when the pipe gently smacked his shoulder.
Tarix had a strange look on his face as he pointed down at a spot on his prosthesis: "Don't - it's nothing to be worried about yet, just, watch it," he warned, "That coil there you've got near your index, she's real frisky. Won't be a problem now that it's taken apart, but when you stick it back together you'd better avoid even just so much as grazing it - it'll pull my calf back at top speeds to kick my ass. Been like that since the start."
"Oh! Sounds painful."
"It is!"
With a hand already rummaging through a box of springs, Nuparu offered: "Since I'm here already, I could replace that..."
"Ah, there's no need really," the Glatorian quickly stopped him.
"But it's a liability."
"If it's out in the open like this, yeah, but - well, when it's covered it's a lot more manageable, and the wires-"
"It's still a malfunction. I can fix that without any trouble."
"I get it, but it's - I - hm! Let me explain. See, when - if I cover it up, see, with my-"
"The fake flesh?"
"Yes, that - it still jerks back if touched, but not as hard, you get me?"
"But it still does."
"Yes, and here's the - the thing is, I also have my nerves connected, right? Right, and when the coil gets touched and makes my leg jerk, it... Er... See - have you ever - hm! Hmm-hm. Hold on. Do you... Is there something that you know is not good for your body, but when you do it it just feels nice?"
"No."
"Alright, this complicates things."
"Oh! Oh, no, wait - when I cut metal with a saw, I like to keep myself as close to the sparks as possible so they can hit me because they tingle. It's fun. Do you mean like that?"
"Eeeh, close enough! That's what's going on with that coil."
"It tingles?"
"It... Uh... Sure, let's. Call it that."
The change in tone was weird, and he seemed to be somewhat embarrassed about having brought the subject up.
Now, in regards to asking personal questions, Nuparu tended to be as uninterested in other beings' private matter as much as a Kofo-Jaga is in lightstones.
However, this was directly related to the machinations of an impressive, if a little primitive, handmade mechanical joint.
So yes, he would have loved to pry.
The mental manifestation of Turaga Whenua repeatedly smacking him over the head with his drilling staff was currently the only thing keeping him from inquiring on any activities Tarix might have enjoyed dabbling in outside of his work hours, but luckily for the Glatorian that singular imaginary scenario was also an extremely effective deterrent for any Matoran or Toa that had ever at some point of their lives resided in Onu-Koro.
As such, the Toa just shrugged and diverted his attention onto the object the Gaquri was now nervously twisting in his hand: "What's that, by the way?"
The total swerve in subject matter destabilized the Glatorian briefly. He looked down at his fingers, then back at the Toa.
"A pipe?" he replied.
Nuparu squinted at it a little better: "That does not look like a pipe." he decreted.
Tarix lifted an eyebrow, curiously: "It's just an Agori pipe."
"That's not a pipe," the inventor insisted.
"And how should a proper Toa pipe look like, then?"
"Matoran pipe, maybe-" the Toa scoffed, rolling his eyes and making the other chuckle a bit while the mechanical hands went right back to checking on his implant in the midst of his correction: "First of all, it's far too small to be of any proper use; second, that seems to be made of wood, which is the worst material for this kind of thing - even if you could fit that tiny piece in a proper hydraulic system, long time usage will lend it to rot and come apart much faster, which is why we used to trade iron with Le-Koro to avoid the whole village from caving in on--"
"Oh!" Tarix interrupted him all of a sudden, smacking the object on his palm with a hollow sound: "Oh, you meant - no no no, it's not that type of pipe! It's a, uh -- pipa! Nagele! Sghitt!"
"Don't curse at me, please."
"I'm not cursing at you, it's just different names for this! You really don't have a word for-?" then he cut himself off as he seemed to remind himself of something evidently obvious: "Ah - well, I mean, you don't have a mouth, of course you can't smoke..."
"Yes we do."
"You do?"
"Yes? How else would we hold our masks?"
Tarix blinked, briefly wondered if he should have asked, and decided it didn't matter: "But you don't smoke? At all?"
"No? Unless we get catastrophically overheated or are set on fire," Nuparu replied as he attached the disjointed calf into the thigh again. "Both of which in all fairness have happened before. Not very often, but they have happened."
"No, I meant... Ah, hold it, hold it..."
He stuck the unlit pipe back in his mouth, puffing out nothing a few times with a thoughtful expression on his face.
"See - it's a bit like the coil and the sparks again, the matter with smoking," he decided to start explaining: "There's certain plants, if you dry them and burn them well, that make really pleasant smoke."
"How is smoke pleasant?" the Toa muttered.
"The smell can be," the Gaquri shrugged, "And the taste too. Wait-" and he gently knocked the foot of the pipe on the top of the Volitak before the inventor could interrupt him again "-Wait a second, I can't very well clear this up if you keep cutting in. Alright, so the bigger part here, the bowl we call it - you need to press the dried plants in here and light them up, only a little before the whole thing burns up; once they're charred nicely, you inhale through the shank, and then you puff it back out. That's how the smoke gets in your mouth and you can taste it."
"And how does it taste, then?"
"Ah, depends on what you smoke," was the whistful answer. "Same goes for the smell. The Lebori have a certain bark that gets real flexible when wet - they make whole pipes with it, they burn up real well, but it's a bit too sour for me. Before the Shattering there used to be a type of kelp I liked, and Kiina said they had River Eyes up near the Dormus that made some terribly sweet smoke."
"River Eyes?"
"It's a flower! Small, round, blue, and it grows on river banks. Never got to try them, though, and it's better I don't go around asking for some with the lungs I've got. Like I said, smoking's the same as the coil and the sparks: feels good to do, but it's bad for the body."
Nuparu hummed deeply, rummaging inside the knee as he handled the hanging wires carefully.
"I think I figured out the problem," he announced.
At that Tarix perked up: "Rust?"
"One piston has developed a limestone growth that makes it much harder to move properly, and as a result one of the springs is bent out of shape and chafes right against the nerve."
"Ah! Well, damn. You can get limestone in there?"
"If it's humid enough, it can build up over time."
"Hm... Alright, I guess all those years sweating in arenas and whatnot were bound to do the trick eventually."
"Also there was rust."
"Hm. Where?"
"Three screws. I changed them already."
"Wait, really? When?"
"While you were talking about the Core War."
"Huh! You're quick. And quiet."
The Toa shrugged: "I like working."
He pulled the prosthesis apart for a second time, laying the calf down on the floor. He then leaned back to search through a tool box brimming with bits and pieces - bolts, nuts, coils, springs, and all sorts of other things - with what his mask's stillness still managed to convey as a focused furrowed brow, evidently still thinking about what course of action to take now that he had pinpointed the anomaly to fix.
Changing his mind, he stood up and made his way to one of the various piles of junk and assorted more or less useful knicknacks to start looking for something in there instead.
"Speaking of the Core War," he said, implying he wanted to start a conversation but without really adding to that sentence.
Tarix waited a few minutes, puffing out in silence while watching him shift towels or bottles until he found what he was looking for (a clean enough rag and flask containing a murky liquid), before figuring that he was waiting for some kind of permission to continue on the admittedly not particularly pleasant topic: "Yes?"
"You said other older Glatorians also got implants like this from it."
"I implied it, but yes, that's the case."
The Toa hummed as he settled back before him: "And they're all knees, like yours?"
"You want to ask what their own prosthesis are?"
At that, he got no response.
"You can, by the way," Tarix reassured him, "It's been a damn long time by now, it doesn't hurt as much as say, eighty hundred years ago. We've been living like this long enough to joke about the whole thing and whatnot."
Nuparu mumbled something indistict as he soaked up the rag and began scraping the limestone off of the metal with it.
"Don't act all shy now, kid! As I said, it's no trouble." the Glatorian repeated. A sly smile curled the corners of his lip: "You can't get embarrassed like this every time you have to ask about new possible clients, you know," he jokingly reprimanded him, "Otherwise you'll have a hard time getting any."
"I don't want to be paid!" the Toa replied. "I'm just curious, is all! This is... Well, I didn't expect it to be something you'd have."
"Oh, don't worry, not everybody's missing a whole chunk of leg like me," Tarix chuckled. "We Glatorian like to keep ourselves distinct from one another."
"In implant too?"
"Of course! Let me think, now..."
He inhaled a long breath through his pipe, leaning back a little as the kid continued on with his work, and exhaled with a whistle.
"So, let's see - Vastus, he's got a good chunk of his lower spine replaced and, oh, 'bout three quarters of his intestines," he began: "Kiina had her hip crushed and put back together, and that should be... Ah, nope, nope, half of her left hand and the whole ulna too. Telluris I haven't see in a long while now, but unless he's figured out how to place his brain in a tin can I'd bet his head's all that's left. Certavus, bless his memory, I don't think he had a single original organ left by the end, and Gelu's got bionic feet - one foot, one leg, right, a whole leg, so then Strakk was the one who got his eye shot out and his nose crushed. And the jaw, of course. I don't remember if it was him or Malum who cracked his head but I do think it was him, because Malum had the femur that got split in half and it worsened with that problem with his ribcage where the metal was corroding and messing with his blood... Which is why he had to get his marrow replaced in his leg later on. Oh, and Ackar also had to... Ah, wait, which one was it? Right, right. Ackar, poor guy, his back itself is worse than a Plude street but his real problem's his right shoulder blade, which got essentially pulverized - I was there, ghastly sight - so they had to replace the whole thing, and that was bad enough; but then, and this is the fucked thing, the implant actively degraded the rest of the arm, so he had to keep replacing bits and pieces of it until it was just completely gone."
Nuparu lifted his head, eyes wide and flabbergasted: "The fixing made it worse?"
"It did! He kept having trouble moving it."
"How?"
Tarix raised his shoulders: "Beats me," he replied just as baffled. "It's a common thing for Tapyri, honestly. It's hard to tell if the material's bad quality or has trouble with the heat. Perditus too - after he got half his leg replaced, the damn thing somehow managed to melt halfways and left him limping almost worse than he would if he just didn't have it."
"And he can't replace it?"
"It's grafted onto the bone and the muscle has grown over it. They'd have to carve the whole thing out with it, it's just not worth it."
The Toa stared at him positively appalled.
"That is horrid," he spat, punctuating the adjective with a harsh yank of his hand over the faulty piston, thus launching a loosened piece of limestone to skid across the floor.
"You're tellin' me, kid."
"That's - it's inadmissible. It's insane."
"And I haven't told you about the Agori."
"What about the Agori? Were they fighting too? Do they-?"
"No, not fighting, usually - it's something we got in common with your lot: we're basically the same species, but we are much bigger and they're much nimbler. So you had us larger folk tearing one another to bits properly, while they tended to work as scouts if they weren't busy trying to put us back in one piece."
The Gaquri interrupted himself to stretch his arms up, pulling one towards his head.
The movement produced a loud 'crock!' roughly around the height of his shoulder, followed by much softer pops crackling all the way up towards his wrist as it twisted.
Satisfied with the sound (which instead made the inventor a little uneasy considering their conversation), he moved to massage the sides of his spine with his knuckles, rolling his neck: it seemed to make a curious ticking noise in place of a meatier sound, filling in the quick pauses of Nuparu's rag scrubbing the limestone away.
At last he puffed into his unlit pipe: "If you look at the older ones - the Agori, I mean - you'll see they've got less lower half than upper."
"That makes no sense."
"It does if you don't count implants. We've got them a bit everywhere, I told you, but an Agori with an arm prosthesis is a real rarity. They've got them mostly between their soles and the top of their hipbones."
"And why's that?"
"It's 'cause the lucky ones stepped on mines."
The Toa hummed thoughtfully.
He did not raise his eyes from the almost clean piston: "And the unlucky ones?"
"Well, we were trained to aim for either the neck or the head."
Ah.
Those certainly had been unlucky.
For every thing Toa and Glatorians seemed to have in common, a complete opposite came around. To imagine a Toa willingly kill was already hard, though not impossible - the Mahri themselves had been met with the chance to do so once or twice, and it had been tantalizing to say the least; but to envision a group of his brothers and sisters being not only instructed but even trained to kill, and especially to kill Matoran...
Well, he was glad he did not live in that kind of world.
"That's just how life is," Tarix sighed in the end. "Nobody wins. They've got their metal hips, and I've got my leg held together by wires and pistons. And an artificial diaphragm."
That snapped Nuparu out of his unpleasant musings: "A what?"
"That one wasn't the war's fault, though - well, it was, but it came in later. See, I had some sharpnel that got stuck in there but nobody noticed, and then one day I got a shove in the wrong spot during a match and just stopped breathing. So I had to get a mechanical one, and when I have to put myself under any sort of strain I need to hook myself up to an oxygen supplier to make sure it doesn't collapse under the effort - you know, that tube thing you might have seen on me, sort of like yours."
"Your gills?"
"I..." the Gaquri briefly did a double take. "You call those gills?"
"Yes?"
They blinked at each other briefly.
"Yeah," Tarix conceded, "Yeah, I guess those would be gills for you folks, huh. Makes sense."
"What was it that you had to replace?"
"My diaphragm."
"What is that?"
"... The muscle?"
"Which muscle?"
"The... The one that makes the... Lungs? Work? I understood you did have lungs?"
"Lungs work on their own."
"No they do not?"
"Yes they do. They are muscles."
"No they are not??"
Before Nuparu could further argue his point by lifting his chest plate and forcing Tarix to behold the disquieting spectacle offered by his very much clearly autonomously moving lungs, the unmistakeable noise of a small variety of hollow brass objects gracelessly crashing on the floor and being hurriedly chased after by stomping feet attracted their attention elsewhere.
Berix did not notice them as immediately as they noticed him, since he was busy making his entrance on all fours as he scrambled to pick up a bunch of scrap metal that had spilled from his arms.
The other two beings made no sound as they watched him curse to himself after stepping on a rogue bolt. They decided to simply observe him in silence much like an equipe of entomologists observes a particularly frenetic spider panicking for some kind of fault in its web, making no motion to lend the young Agori any help as he crawled along the ground to collect the scattered pieces of his scavenged treasure of junk.
It was particularly fascinating when he accidentally shoved several bolts in his mouth to the point of almost stuffing his cheeks with them, realized his mistake, and spat them in what looked like an exhaust pipe.
He almost cried when they fell out of it and rolled away again.
Then he lifted his eyes briefly to the other two silent beings in the room and failed to recognize them.
Meaning he then proceded to jump almost three whole bio straight in the air once he figured there were people looking at him - landing on a screw.
"FUCK!" he whimpered.
Tarix waved: "Hello to you."
"Do you need help?" Nuparu asked with a notable delay.
The Agori kneeled to the ground and skidded across it: "No no no, I'm good! I'm good, I'm - hey, hi, Tarix, hi, when did-? What are you-? Uh," he said nervously as he tried to catch as many nuts and springs as possible, "What is going on there? Is it, did I interrupt or, should- should I leave? Again? Should I leave again?"
"Nuparu's fixing my leg."
At that Berix snapped his head with a deafening gasp to look directly at him, the most betrayed expression to ever grace his face plaster across it.
"But I wanted to do that!" he cried out in anguish like a desert fox cub experiencing the horrors of its mother's tongue bath for the first time: "I told you I could do it, I- I replaced Gresh's ribs and, and I fixed his lungs when the Skrall got him and he hasn't had problems with them since, I told you I could do it, I'm good at fixing-!"
"I know that, and Gresh told me you did real well," the older Gaquri stopped him, "But - don't take it personally, kid, you're good and all, but when it comes to my leg I only trust you as far as I can throw you and believe me, it ain't far."
"But then why does he get to do it!" Berix wailed, pointing at Nuparu still scrubbing off the limestone.
"He's got a whole body like this, I'd imagine he knows what to do."
"But I know what to do too!"
"I told you, I'd rather have a specialist on it."
The Toa briefly wondered if being a descendant of the Water Tribe had something to do with how outstandingly wet Berix could will his eyes to look, or if it was just a specifically Berix thing.
Mabe it was an Agori defense mechanism. After all, it would have been pretty hard to want to hurt something that appeared to be the personification of the verbs 'to whimper', 'to whine', 'to sob', and last but not least 'to wail'.
Whatever the origin of such an expression of anguish, Tarix was not immune to its effects: "Oh, don't be like that," he finally pleaded with a tired but guilty tone, and pointed off to the cluttered desk not too far away: "There, I've got something for you too, alright? I came in 'cause my Thornax launcher's busted and you're the best with 'em. Could you fix that for me? Pretty please?"
That was enough to light the younger being's face up again.
With the sort of excited thin howling laugh that a mischievous ghost might have, he scuttled away to the mess of a table that was the headquarters for most of his projects: onto it he dumped the rest of his scraps, not caring even in the slightest that it only helped to worsen the general situation he already had going on as he was already completely absorbed by the thought of the inner mechanics of the weapon at hand.
The perfectly good chair right beside him thoroughly ignored in favor of sitting on the ground in a curled position that would have made a shrimp suggest booking an osteopathic appointment, he immediately started tinkering around to figure what the problem was with the drive and precision of a blood hound.
That had been perhaps one of the best things their unplanned collaboration had brought Nuparu - aside from all the knick-knacks and thingamajigs and vehicles and tools he'd been able to make or just plan out with the Agori, of course. Watching Berix work on something was such a fun and fascinating experience: his intensity gave his body language a sort of visceral desperation that contrasted his careful fumbling motions, pulling pieces apart with his scarred skeletal fingers and letting them fall all around him as though discarded carelessly - yet he somehow always knew where to search when he needed them again, and if in the middle of his fixer's frenzy you asked him for a specific nut or a gear he could pick it up without even looking, always on the first try. The thunderous act of creation and its rhythmic symphony played on rough instruments whisked the both of them away from the world at large, but when the Toa managed to pull himself back to reality (whether done or stumped or just in need of a break) it was enjoyable if not just all-together mesmerizing to observe the other hard at work on his own project.
A loud bang was not enough to deter him from the launcher either.
The equally loud voice that followed with an exasperated bark did, however: "BERIX! THE DOOR!"
"RIGHT! RIGHT- RIGHT, HOLD ON!" he squeaked hurriedly, abandoning (with a little more care) the weapon to scuttle away as fast as he could to the entrance of their laboratory.
The figure that emerged from the held open door replied to his rambling apologies by grunting every few steps - not without reason, seeing as they were carrying the carcass of an older model of chariot intertwined with some other mean of transport that had clearly gotten lodged sideways in its back, trying to balance the hellish thing on their shoulders in a way not too dissimilar to how a shepherd might carry a too small Mahi tired from a day of running wildly.
The mess of a car accident was dropped rather gracelessly onto the first largest spot of floor available; freed from their herculean weight, the being sighed and pulled back their arms, making the rather dull metal vertebrae poking from their skin creak in a somewhat unsettling fashion.
Nuparu briefly wondered if they were encrusted in limestone too.
They sort of looked like it.
Hm.
Now he had to wonder if it was a common yet not very well-known problem for organic beings with mechanical implants. Maybe it had to do with an excessive production of sweat?
While he was busy pondering that, Tarix grinned at the sight: "Hello, my beautiful wife who sucks at killing me," he crooned lovingly.
Vastus turned to him with a smirk, thin feathers raised and brows slightly furrowed in a manner that was much more fond than annoyed: "Hello, my beautiful husband who can't aim for shit," he replied; upon noticing the Toa kneeled before him, he cheekily added: "Committing adultery, I see?"
His partner wheezed a loud gurgling laugh: "Twelve thousand years we've been married! Twelve thousand years and now you mistake me for Gelu!"
"For who?"
"What, you haven't heard about--?"
"NOT IN FRONT OF MY PROJECTS!" Berix shrieked.
The Lebori chuckled - it was a strange sound, some kind of hiccuping hiss - and reached out to rub his hand all over the younger Gaquri's head; the kid swiveled away from him with a soft rattling noise as his annoyed trembling arms shook his scales against one another, face contorting into a piqued grimace, and returned to the launcher to tinker the other two away from his conscious perception.
"And where'd you get that?" the Glatorian inquired, pointing at it with his chin as it was common to do in his tribe and getting no answer.
"It's mine," his husband reassured him, "He's fixing it."
"Jammed again?"
"Seems like it."
"Bet you just didn't clean it properly."
"You don't know that."
"But I'm right," Vastus teased him as he approached to steal the pipe from his mouth. "And over here, what's going on?"
"He's fixin' up my leg. Nuparu, by the way, that's his name - he's a, ah, Ko- nope, Onu-Toa, he said - thought it was rust but I had limestone in it."
"We can get limestone?"
"Might be the sweating," Nuparu interrupted them suddenly. He fixed his unmoving mask onto the Lebori: "Can you turn around, please?"
Tarix snorted at the other's brief baffled blink: "Hey now, kid, I get you've put your hands in me and all, but you shouldn't go around just checking my wife out like that!"
"NOT! IN FRONT! OF THE PROJECTS!"
The Toa looked between the three of them with no clue what any of them was going on about: "I thought there might have been crusts on the vertebrae," he explained. "Since I have the solvent at hand already, I could handle that already if it's the case..."
"That's what they all say," the Gaquri snickered.
His confusion was palpable.
Vastus flicked a playful finger at his husband's head, warning him: "Berix is gonna kick you out at this rate... But I'm sure it's just some dust, kid, nothing to worry about."
"It still would not hurt to do a simple visual check."
"He's right," Tarix interjected while trying to snatch his pipe back and failing: "Maybe you've been building up a limestone deposit this whole time without knowing it."
"I don't have limestone."
"You don't know that."
Vastus smirked at him as he turned around for Nuparu to check: "But I'm right."
"You can't keep answering that and get away with it."
"I can if I'm always right."
The inventor gave a high pitched hum: "False alarm. That's just dust," he confirmed.
A triumphant grin briefly met the Gaquri's eyes as he rolled them.
Nuparu reached into a box to pull out a short variety of springs in order to compare their size with that of the one that had been bent by the affected piston, now cleaned and hopefully ready to work smoothly; careful not to dislodge anything else, he carefully pried the ill piece out and hooked up its replacement.
Satisfied with how the procedure had done, he pulled himself back a little and announced: "I have another question."
"Shoot," Tarix answered instantly.
"What do 'wife' and 'husband' mean, exactly?"
A hot second of silence passed in which the Glatorian regretted opening his mouth.
He glanced at Vastus.
His wife glanced back.
The quiet persisted.
"We're married," he answered lamely at last.
The question he dreaded slapped him in the face with outstanding punctuality: "And what does that mean?"
Having had his fun of seeing his husband's best full-body impression of a yam turning exponentially smaller when fried to a crisp piece of coal, the Lebori finally intervened: "You folks have contracts?"
"We do."
"Marriage is a contract between people where you become part of one other's family. And tribe, if you're from different ones like us."
A vacuous gaze met his explanation.
"Alright, what's confusing you?"
"The 'becoming part of' thing."
Vastus shrugged, his feathers puffing out for a moment before returning flat in a way similar to how certain avian Rahi did before starting a very long song: "It means we become relatives," he tried again. "Here, look - Tarix is a Gaquri and I'm a Lebori, so my family and hers come from different tribes. By marrying me she became a sort of honorary member of the Jungle tribe, and everybody treats her almost as though she was my brother, or my cousin; in the same manner, I became an honorary member of the Water tribe and I'm treated like her sister or cousin."
"So... It's sort of like assembling a team?" Nuparu tilted his head, puzzled: "There's no need for a contract for that. All Toa consider each other siblings already."
The other clicked his tongue as though he'd bitten it by accident: "I shouldn't have used that metaphor," he muttered.
"Why not?"
"First of all marrying your actual blood-siblings is frowned upon."
"Why? What's a blood-sibling?"
"I'll tell you when you're older. Secondly, I can assure you marriage is nothing like siblinghood."
At that, the Toa frowned: "It sounds the same to me."
"Your knee and Tarix's look the same to me, too," Vastus argued: "They're both made of metal, so they're the same thing."
"They really aren't." then he blinked, bright eyes flashing briefly, looked to the ceiling to recollect his thought, gave a loud hum, and met his gaze again: "I see your point."
The Glatorian smiled: "Good kid."
"Back to the point - how do 'wife' and 'husband' fit with all that?"
"That's just how you call someone who's married."
"So they're synonyms?"
"Yes, pretty much."
The answer seemed to satisfy the inventor greatly.
"I'm learning so much about your species today," he commented in a giddy tone. He returned to the discarded robot calf on the floor, dusting off its mechanical parts to make sure not even small amounts of debris would interefere with its functions; just as he plucked it back into the bulk of the implant, he looked again at the two Glatorian and told them with complete and total earnestness: "You know, if you were significantly smaller, quadrupedal, perhaps vaguely insectoid and incapable of speech, Turaga Whenua would have the best day of his life writing down and trying to decypher your absolutely incomprehensible habits."
That was the highest compliment an Onu-Matoran from the island of Mata Nui could bestow upon someone.
It was not categorizable as such by perhaps any other being in the entire universe, considering the source of such an idiom had been cut off from all other known civilizations and it was generally not considered particularly flattering to be told that you would make for a great petri dish for one's paternal figure to microscope if you were any less sentient, but luckily his tone did manage to properly convey the positive nature of his otherwise insane sentence.
So instead of knocking his head off with roundhouse kick, Tarix and Vastus smiled awkwardly in an attempt at not laughing in his face and just replied: "Thanks."
His Volitak did not have a mouth, but Nuparu's grin was blinding.
Berix chose that moment to shriek triumphantly.
"Fixed!" he declared, Thornax launcher hoisted into the air like it was the second making of the Element Lords.
The older Gaquri turned to him with eyes wide: "What, already?"
"It was encrusted with Thornax juice!"
Not even the time to feel bashful about such a silly and easy to fix thing hindering his battling performance so much that his wife was already leaning down into his line of sight with a smirk so wide that he could have just bitten his whole head off with it.
"What did I say?" he teased.
Tarix sighed, a weary smile on his face: "You cannot keep getting away with this."
"Yes I can," Vastus gloated, "If I'm always right."
#bionicle#nuparu#tarix#berix#vastus#random writing#body horror tw#mutilation tw#essentially tarix talks a lot about the core war and how most of the old glatorians have some kind of prosthesis#not very fun!!! but what can you do#this is first and foremost a silly fic again btw. i love writing silly bionicle fics. except when i beat them all with a shovel ofc#also vastus briefly uses she/her pronouns for tarix bc those are another set his husband's cool with. to me theyre t4t#was supposed to be slightly longer but i think thats a good place to end#anyways if you see this consider reblogging the financial aid post made by my pal cantankerouscanuck bc hell need that#but yeah tarix n nuparu talking while fixing up a prosthetic implant fic be upon you
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Errr, thanks? I guess?
#bg3#baldur's gate 3#shovel bg3#It's fistin' time#Just kidding you can pry her from my cold dead hands#Which was probably her fault#I love her
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