#slasher!141

[frudoo]

I need the 141 as a group of slashers. Their shared wife gets harassed at the store and tells them when she gets home?

Might send more asks for slasher 141 if that's okay

You can ALWAYS send me slasher!141 ideas are you joking?!

Warnings: Mentions of sexual harassment (NOT by the 141), typical mentions of weapons and violence. Fem!Reader.

It’s pouring down freezing rain, the cold seemingly nudging past your skin and settling itself into your bones. Your hands shake as you fumble with your keys, letting out a defeated wail when you miss the lock for the fifth fucking time. Throwing your keys in your purse, you settle for knocking, then calling out that it’s just you. You’d rather not have one of your lovers answering the door with a machete to your throat. They always have had a flair for the dramatic. 

     It’s John who answers the door. Immediately he takes in your shivering figure and his bushy eyebrows furrow with concern. Scanning the vast land of the farm and finding nothing that could be perceived as a threat, he gently takes the purse from your hands. Strong arms hustle you inside and he kicks the door shut, working quickly to get you out of your sopping wet clothes. 

     “Darlin’, what happened? Why’re you cryin’?” John asks softly, hanging your coat on the rack—he can tell it’s bad by the way you flinch just from the question. 

     Simon, Johnny, and Kyle trail into the living room to greet you, but when they see your state, it’s like you can feel the tension in the air, ready to snap like a weathered rubber band. Simon comes to scoop you up, uncaring of the drenched clothes you still have on, and carries you up the stairs. He jerks his head to signal that everyone else should follow him. 

     While Kyle runs you a bath, John finishes undressing you, tossing your clothing into the hamper with a wet plop. You’re still shivering, tears streaming down your chilly cheeks, and it breaks their hearts. John cups your face in his big, warm hands, crystal blue eyes scanning for injuries or any reason you might be so spooked. 

     “You gonna answer my question, sweetheart? What’s happened?” 

     His voice is soothing, and you lean into the comfort of his touch. He always has been the best at calming you down, rich gravel filling your ears until you remember how cherished you are in his eyes. In all of their eyes. 

     “T-there was a man,” you stutter, head whipping around violently with your fist raised when Johnny wraps an arm around your waist to help you into the bath. “No!”

     “Hey, hey, jus’ me, hen,” Johnny’s eyes widen as he throws his hands up in surrender, backing away to avoid getting hit. 

     “I’m sorry,” you weep, covering your face with your trembling hands as Johnny tries again, this time successful in getting you settled into the warm water. 

     “Wha’ did he do?” Simon’s raspy voice sounds from the corner of the room, eerily calm. “Wha’ did tha’ fucker do?” 

     “The man… I-I was at the store to get groceries, but there was- he… he grabbed my ass and my tits and f-followed me out to the car. I drove away really fast so he couldn’t come after me, but… I’m sorry, I didn’t get the groceries.”

     “Oh, sweetheart,” Kyle frowns, gently reaching out to grab a hold of one of your hands. “The fuckin’ groceries are the least of our concerns.”

     You nod noncommittally, sniffling and just barely squeezing Kyle’s hand to let him know you appreciate the gesture. John’s jaw is clenched tight, and you can practically hear the rage brewing in his brain. Such a sweet thing traumatized by some stupid fuck who wanted his hands full of their soft, perfect girl. He wants—needs—to make him pay. John turns on his heel and just about rushes through the door, but your gentle voice stops him in his tracks.

     “John? Please stay,” you beg so, so prettily, pouty lips still swollen from how hard you’d been crying, and John’s far too weak a man to deny you. 

     Hesitantly, the captain trails back inside the bathroom, giving the other three a curt nod. They understand instantly, and Simon is cracking his knuckles so loud you’re almost sure the city can hear it. 

     “Bring the bastard back alive,” John commands, and faster than you can blink, Kyle, Simon, and Johnny are out the door.

     “I’m sorry,” you whisper, eyes focused on the ripple of the bathwater when you submerge your hands.

     John shakes his head, tilting your chin up so that you look him in the eye. He leans forward and nuzzles the tip of his nose against yours, a silent question. When you nod he leans in to kiss you long and slow, pressing his forehead against yours as the two of you stop to catch a breath.

     “No need to be sorry, sweet girl. You’ll get a turn on him soon enough.”

[ethereal-night-fairy]

Slasher!141

AGELESS BLOGS AND MINORS WILL BE BLOCKED.

Price: The captain is a well respected man yet when people go against his orders or blatantly disrespect him, there is this blinding rage that threatens to overtake him. His victims consist of rebellious idiots who think they're above the law. For example theives, drug dealers, tax evaders, people who don't pay their workers right, rapists ect. It irks him that they think the law wouldn't come for them. But in actuality it's because he hates the thought of someone thinking they're above him in any regard. Hell this man threatened a general and a colonel while being a captain. He. does. not. give. a. shit. This man just wants control and that's it. He thinks he's helping the masses and he might be but he's doing it for his own selfish reasons. And it was such a shame you had decided to break into his country home. Out of all of the houses you could have chosen you choose his. He's convinced fate had led you to him. (That's the story he's telling the boys) And who is he to deny fate (only when it suits him). He'll just have to teach you a lesson or two in discipline though. You can't be biting him like that. In his mind there was no point killing such a pretty face. He could reform you into the perfect partner. Don't worry pet, you're lucky he found you when he did. He'll fix you and then you'll live happily ever after with him. (Turns out you were a spy but you kept that to yourself) (He already knew though)

Gaz: Not many people know this but Gaz wasn't always this drop dead gorgeous. The poor boy was relentlessly bullied growing up for being a little chubby and maybe not the best looking person. It's not a surprise that he held on to that resentmen even now when people were practically throwing themselves at him. His victims consist of bullies, tormentors and trolls. People who like to bring other people down. Again this is done for selfish reasons as much as Gaz claims he's doing everyone else a favour. It's an outlet to quell his resentment. Gaz found his partner while paying an online shooting game. It was a high stake tournament where you could win some money. To Gaz it wasn't much since he already made good money at his job but maybe to you it was very important. You were relentlessly trying to get under his skin. You kept trolling him in an effort to distract him, not that it worked. The final straw was when you goaded him into trying to find you. "You can't do shit you ugly fuck, come find me if your all that. Oh! but you can't! Because you a fucking moron and a virgin that can't get laid!" Gaz chuckled at the childish insults. Seems like you needed an attitude adjustment. Finding you was easy, convincing you to go on a date was even easier. It seemed you didn't recognize him. All the better for Gaz then. A chase around an abandoned building should set you straight. It would be shame to kill someone so adorable. So he was just going to scare some manners into you.

Ghost: Simon has had a rough life. Growing up in the household he did wasn't easy. No surprise that it led to some psychological side effects. He has so much built up rage and anger sometimes he didn't know what to do with it. It manifests in uglier ways if he doesn't deal with it. His scars being a testament to that. His victims consist of violent alcoholics and violent drug addicts or any violent person in general. Other times it's just loud mouthy douchebags at pubs that harass young woman. He isn't doing this for some nobel reason. He just need to get the rage out before he hurts himself. And the scum of society are usually targets people wouldn't miss. Doing it this way made his life easier. Ghost met his partner in an alleyway as he was finishing up his kill for the night. You had drunkenly stumbled onto the wrong street when you had spoted him. You looked absolutely terrified and ready to run but Simon couldn't let that happen. He wasn't going to jeopardize everything he built because a bird caught him doing something unsavory. You made his job easier by fainting when he came near you. Hauling you in his truck was even easier. He wasn't expecting to find his life partner while out on one of his kills. But it seemed like god was looking out for him. It took a while to make you behave but he got you there in the end. And now you welcome him home with loving arms creating the family he should have had all along.

Soap: Growing up Soap was considered the class clown. And just because he was a little peculiar. Yes he was extroverted and loud but that didn't mean he was stupid. Though that stigma never really left him. Not in school, not even in the military. Despite excelling physically and academically in both institutions he was always treated as if he was stupid. Which infuriated him considering he became a demolition's expert. He knew what he was doing but people stilled viewed him like something less than and it made his blood boil. Soaps victims consist of snobs and pretentious idiots, especially ones that pretend to know what they're doing. He goes after people who specifically try to use big words to make others feel dumb. Or people who ridicule and judge others for not knowing niche topics. A good place to find these kinds of people are in prestigious universities where mommy and daddy's money bought their entitled children a space to study. That's how Soap found his partner. It was at a university where people complained about your snobby attitude. It was a running joke that majority of people in uni knew. Turns out you were just introverted and too shy to talk normally so you'd just go on tangents about your niche topics to dispel the awkwardness. People took that as you trying to make them feel dumb. Don't worry though Dove. You'll never have to deal with people like that again. You can just live in the forest with him and he'll listen to all your little tangents while fucking you senseless. You don't need people in your life that don't appreciate your intelligence especially since you have him now.

Dividers by @cafekitsune

Slasher!Soap Masterlist

Copyright © by ethereal-night-fairy. 2024. All Rights Reserved. Writing not permitted for reposting, transcription, translation or to use with AI technologies.

[lunarw0rks]

slasher!graves 🩸 in honor of spooky season !!! w/c; 2.7k

warning(s): implied violence/gore, drugging, fem!reader

endless crop fields surrounded the dirt path, crunching under the tires audibly, overbearing the hum of the pickup's old speakers. as soon as you crossed county lines, only the two local stations played: gospel or vintage country. any tuning of the knob, and it was buzzing static.

mellow country music it is. preferable to a pastor lecturing you about the ins and outs of hell. don't worry father, i'm already there. or i've made it halfway to purgatory — east Texas backroads.

though, you don't need the faceless pastor; the decaying signs along the way are enough. hell is real, God bless, repent — every single one rusted, scratched, peeled in some way.

limitless, barren farmland; half-murky swamp the further east you go.

who's feeding the lumps of livestock you see grazing? what about the herding dogs that lay by rickety fences and intently watch your car pass? if it weren't for the occasional passing truck, you'd assume no one inhabited this county at all.

your pupils retract, blinded by the sun glaring off the hood. vibrant hues of orange and yellow, that would otherwise be soothing if you hadn't been in the driver's seat so long. for once, the lack of traffic and straight and narrow is a blessing, otherwise, you surely would've caused a collision.

the blinding sunset fades over time, indicating that you drove through golden hour instead of lying back and enjoying it. though, the thought of pulling over in this area sounded like a painful ordeal.

from straight, unpaved roads to skinny windy ones with taller grass on the border. as the sky darkens, the foliage is surely full of critters, snakes, and spiders that would crawl and tickle your flesh the second you stepped foot. the thought alone makes you shiver against the leather seats.

as the tires climb a particularly steep hill, the engine sputters, as if hacking and choking from the exertion. please don't let it happen here, is all you can think. the vintage pickup creaks and moans the further along you go — but thankfully doesn't let you down. it's any wonder you've made it this far in your trip.

your fingers reach across the seat, peeling back the page of your guide. the map you snagged at the first — and only — rest stop in the area. a few pages, tainted with coffee and grime, aside from hints of its original eggshell stain. the booklet is rough in texture but still partially legible, so you decided to take what you can get.

besides, once you finished up in the bathroom, bought water, and felt the judgment of the locals, you weren't in a position to ask for a clean map. and the geriatric clerk, brandishing a crucifix and eyes so blue they could pass for pearl, staring at you with grief.

for what, you couldn't wager. your unsaved soul?

your unwise decision to stop there? at least you can agree with the latter.

at last, your finger skimmed the section of road you were supposed to be cruising on. a straight one, like you had been on before. not the thin, windy dirt you're nearly stuck in — which doesn't exist on the map. either you're trespassing in some form, or you really have gotten lost in purgatory.

muttering a curse, you twist and turn your heads in hopes of finding an opening. somewhere, anywhere to turn the truck around and get back on your intended route.

once you spot the first opening, you turn into it. the truck travels down the short path, mud squishing underneath the overworked tires.

up ahead, the first residence you've seen that wasn't moldy or collapsed. three floors, milky paneling, original windows older than two of your lifetimes, and steps sure to give you splinters and creaks under the slightest movement.

from the outside, it's... average.

only slightly unsettling at best, which was a major improvement from the rest of town. frankly, it was shocking there wasn't a higher fence around the perimeter. you imagine this property being prime pickings for bandits and adventurous country teens.

after taking in its appearance for a few moments, you begin to reverse, now feeling the most resistance in the entire trip. the harder you push your foot down on the gas pedal, the deeper the back tires go into the thick mud.

the engine sputtered louder, beginning to spit out smoke from under the hood. considering your efforts, all you'd successfully done was splatter mud on the windows and kill the engine, hopefully not permanently.

you slumped forward and lightly smacked your head against the rim of the steering wheel, cursing yourself for literally ending up deeper in the mud.

through the cracked window of the truck, the windchimes sounded, reminding you of your only way out. raising your head, you laid eyes on the white farmhouse again, taking in its mystifying essence. the decor rustled in the gentle breeze, as did the fuzzy white clusters blowing off the cottonwood trees.

against the unforgiving summer elements, the outmoded residence stood still — as if the stoic constant stuck in the middle of a brewing summer storm.

motionless and deathlike; if a tornado dipped down through the dusky clouds, you were mildly convinced the residence would be the only structure left standing.

as it stands, your options are either to sit in the truck and sulk or take a gamble and knock on the old farmer's door. deciding on the latter, you step out, not bothering to shut the car door behind you, in case you're met with a cliché shotgun barrel for trespassing.

the rickety porch creaked under your weight when you stepped up, occupied with examining its every detail. there were the chimes you heard. some were standard, high-pitched jingles — others made from small animal bones were dull clicks — all suspended with twine.

aside from the roadkill and rocking chair, there were few signs of life in terms of decor. through the windowpanes, you were only met with pearly, lace curtains blocking any view inside.

caving, you raise your fist to the door. it's slathered in the same blanched paint as the rest of the exterior, only riddled with indents and scratches from age. three small knocks against the wood, and you're hoping whoever's behind it won't lead with hostility.

the house settles and croaks from inside, its joints as noisy as the deck you’re standing on. eventually, the door opens. behind it, the owner reveals himself; and it’s not the stereotypical image of an old man with overalls and a noisy coonhound at his side.

your prediction couldn’t have been more inaccurate.

“how can i help you, ma'am?” the voice speaks, oozing a subtle regional twang. casually, he leans against one side of the doorway, blue eyes sweeping you up and down.

younger than expected, and clean despite the gritty environment he lives in. his blond locks are carefully groomed and swept, and an aroma of musk and cedarwood permeates from him.

"i don't mean to be a bother," you stammer a bit, then motion behind you. the man's demeanor remains unbothered by the intrusion. "my truck is stuck in the mud, and i was wondering if you could get it... unstuck?"

he hollows his cheeks as if taking a few moments to consider your request.

but Graves already decided the moment he saw you. with a click of his tongue, a rumble rises through his chest, "no bother in askin' for help, is there? why didn't you just say so?" a faction of a smile spreads on his lips, easing the tension in your shoulders.

you return the break in tension with a small chuckle, biting back the urge to start twiddling your thumbs. he glances at the truck, "i'll pull her out for you. keys in the ignition for me?"

you nod, and he steps out of his relaxed pose. "i would really appreciate that. thank you, sir."

but instead of stepping out toward the vehicle, he moves to the side and flicks his head. "don't mind waiting inside, do you? 'sides, young lady like you shouldn't be shivering."

you really were helpless, or at least, that's how it felt.

the desire to reject is futile and forgotten. before you knew it, you stepped inside and followed him. the entryway was quaint with only a coat rack and mat, and open to the kitchen. the gray and white tiles were patterned like a checkerboard, blended with natural wood cabinets that matched the original wood everywhere else.

in the middle, a circular dining table with two chairs, brandishing hack marks — some fresh, some old. with a scrape, he pulled out a chair for you, and you settled on it.

rather than asking first, he went straight to the vintage refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher. he reached into the ice bucket and dropped a handful of cubes into two glasses, then tipped the pitcher and filled them with lemonade.

you stopped watching when he turned, instead setting your attention on the decor. it was as average as the exterior; a country kitchen that was slightly rough around the edges. Graves slid the glass in front of you, then set his own on the opposite side, sitting instead of heading straight outside to deal with the truck.

he sighed when he sat down again, holding onto the glass but not sipping from it. for a few moments, there was silence between you; a studying stare making you feel like you were in a fishbowl. swallowing dryly, you raised the glass and took a sip from it.

lemonade, a partial punch of citrus, coaxed by tons of added sugar. you let out a polite mhm and smiled, hoping to let your courtesy break the silence again.

"gets awful lonesome out here, don't it?" the man finally spoke, and you took another gulp to pass the time. "can't say i mind the company. not a lot of tourists in these parts, i guess."

you nodded in agreement, eyes darting toward the ticking clock behind his head, "i'm sure it does." you really should be back on the road by now.

he must've noticed your eagerness, because he gave his knee a slap and sat up, "here i am, talkin' your ear off again. should only take a few minutes if you don't mind waiting here."

his footsteps retreated back down the hall, leaving you in silence except for the ticking, which now sounded louder. you glanced down at the glass and swirled it around, deciding it best to finish your drink off before you left the man's seemingly good graces.

once the front door opened and closed, you took a better look around at the kitchen. the knickknacks along the wall, and the dusty china in one of the cabinets.

further along, you skimmed past the doors leading to the rest of the home. the l-shaped staircase came down to the kitchen, steep and rickety. adjacent, was a door similar to the one in the foyer.

when curiosity got the better of you, you stood up and crept over. pressing your ear against it, you heard no one behind it; not even the drone of a television.

you wrapped a hand around the knob and twisted it, pushing the door open. it led to a sitting room of sorts, or perhaps the only living room in the farmhouse. an old-fashioned wood fireplace in the corner, a brown couch against the wall facing the back windows, and the box TV posed on an end table.

the windows had the same sheer, white curtains as the kitchen, blowing gently from the breeze outside. custom shelves covered the other wall, filled to the brim with outlandish decor.

you first stepped closer to the window, seeing his figure outside. there was your truck, still in the same position you'd left it; the door still cracked, and its tires were embedded in mud. and the man, a distance away and moving toward the red barn in the distance — a more powerful, agile stride than he'd shown with you.

thinking nothing of it, you occupied your boredom with snooping. the shelves were what caught your attention, so that's where you ended up.

standing in front of them, you scanned through every item, growing more unsettled the longer you ogled. first, it was ancestral photos old enough to be in black and white, eerie but not abnormal. then, on the second shelf, the appeared uncanny.

quaint, mason jars and teeth.

fangs from coyotes and bobcats alike, mixed with bloodied molars that only could be pried from human mouths. the sight was akin to a gnarly car wreck, causing your morbid curiosity to overtake your sense of danger.

you glanced out the window again, seeing the barn door cracked open, indicating he was still occupied. crouching down, you examined the lowest shelf. the only clutter visible was VHS tapes, thick books, and small chests and boxes.

you took the first one that caught your eye, undoing the clasps and opening the velvety chest. newspaper clippings and passages alike, and a mini-Bible lay in the mess of words.

shaking your head, you set it aside and grabbed one of the tiny boxes, taking off the lid. your blood flow went icy, and your fingers trembled as you set the lid aside and continued processing.

possessions; watches, necklaces, wedding bands, and choppy strands of all hair types. when you noticed the hair, you gasped and ejected the box from your grip.

they weren't belongings; they were trophies.

the front door creaks from across the house, then slams shut again. you scramble to put the lids back on and pinch your finger in one of the latches, reflexively dropping it. all its contents clatter against the wood floor, compromising your cover.

"find somethin' you like?"

his voice appears behind you, effectively sending you into a startle. graves glances at the mess below you, still maintaining an eerie stillness about him.

frantically shaking your head, you begin to feel sweat cake your hairline. you ball your fists and go clammy, taking steps back, "this is my fault— i shouldn't have let my curiosity get the better of me." he remains untouched by your apprehensive shift, only worsening your instinct to run.

but he doesn't lunge or creep closer; all he does is linger by the shelves.

despite how dry your throat is, you gather saliva and gulp tensely, "i should get going. long trip ahead." that's hopeless; you know he didn't move the truck. you would've heard an engine. how far could you make it on foot?

your words come out sluggishly as if your brain is working at half speed. you peer down, stepping around every morbid souvenir — though all you do is stumble, rather than make any distance.

"won't be necessary, sweetheart." his voice echoes, stance unchanging while he observes your struggle.

you grasp at one of the walls, lids drooping as your feet drag. the lemonade he never once put his mouth on, laced with some sort of sedative. it all hit you too late; too late to retch it up or bolt down the hall ahead of him.

eventually, he steps closer, watching as you make an 'attempt' to swat him away. all you do is whack your hand at the air, thoroughly wasting more of your dwindling energy. instead of words, all that comes out are slurs or whimpers of intense turmoil.

your view of the doorway tilts and twists, turning blurred and doubled the further you stagger. a swirl of nausea erupts in your stomach, causing your knees to buckle. your head collides with the edge of the coffee table, leaving you stunned.

as the tranquilizer pumps through you, the drowsiness is indomitable. you roll onto your back and cough, lying at his feet. with the last of your remaining lucidity, you tug on his jean leg, as if in one last ditch effort to get to your feet again.

despite his opportunity to kick away your pleas, Graves stands idle, his neck craned down to watch every moment of it, a sick rendition of his favorite hobby. the most noticeable sensation — the tender skin of your temple throbs from the impact, until any and all discomfort fades away.

eyelids weighed with bricks flutter shut, squirming limbs cease, and the heave of your chest slows into gentle waves of slumber.

"atta' girl."

‧˚₊ divider cred. - cafekitsune ‧₊˚⊹

[pupcor3]

So Slasher!Price is hot, but polySlashers!141 × reader is even hotter.

Y/n gets captured in a small group of victims they hunt down, but is the only potential victim to give them a run for their money in their boss run of a blood bath. Obvs, they become obsessed with them and want to convince y/n to join them!🔪🖤

Omg looks like we all know what the next thing I'm writing...

[rodolfoparras]

We seen slasher or killer Ghost and yada yada but I got something new. Killer Price who's nothing but a needy bottom that wants to get out muscled by his newest victim and just get fucking pounded into oblivion or until he feels his prostate literally beating like a second heart.

Hope you have a great day/night!🖤

-🦆

Wait I did not know there was a slashes or killer ghost au but I’ll gladly hear more about killer price? Bc now I’m thinking about old man price running a practically abandoned hotel where he lures in tourists and kills them and maybe he sets his eyes on you thinking there’s not a thought up there in your pretty little head but maybe he stumbles into your room as you’re walking out the shower and you got a towel around your waist water dripping down your body and you got this bashful smile on your face like “did you need anything sir?” And fuck if he doesn’t use that opportunity to be throughly fucked , riding your dick with a knife pressed to your throat and you’re like kinky aren’t you? And he almost barks out how stupid you are but it feels so good being fucked by your cock he doesn’t even get a word out

[the-faceless-bride]

So, I do all my writing on my phone. But I plan to get a laptop soon. And I honestly think writing on a laptop would not only work better, but would make me want to write more, does anyone else get this?

Gonna be me ^^^

[dragonnarrative-writes]

Data Breach

Read on AO3

Word count: 12.8k

Alternatively titled "Lockdown."

CW: Public partial-nudity, references to sex work, Kidnapping, implied trafficking, threats of violence, anxiety/panic, body horror, brief mentions of medical trauma, character being hunted, brief mention of cannibalism, guns, knives

Notes: Naya "Bambi" Walker and Veronica "Bricks" Mason are my characters. Morgan "Sparrow" Voss belongs to @sentientcave.

I'm very excited because this is my first "complete" fic. And I wrote it within my first year of posting fanfiction! Thanks to everyone who has been here with me through it all!

The genetic and cybernetic enhancements that the public took for granted were a drop in the bucket. No one protested the same-day medical procedures for aesthetics and practicality and security. What harm is a microchip to automate one’s home, modified musculature that needed less exercise to maintain? Who was ever going to protest genetically coded locking mechanisms?

Soldier modifications are a violation of human rights. The deployment of those soldiers isn’t, unless they use their enhanced abilities to commit a war crime. But the process of modification, experimental and unregulated, driven by greed, desperation, a cold war that bled and screamed…

In the early days of accelerated genetics, on the heels of the prosthetic revolution, things had been hellish. Rejected limb grafts.    Explosively contagious viral infections previously rare in humans. Incompatible bones and organs and structures drowning experimental groups in their own fluids. Hunting and prey drives that only became apparent on the battlefield.

The deployment of modified soldiers isn’t a violation of human rights. But if even a single civilian is caught in the crossfire, it’s a war crime.

What the governments of the world did to the men and women who served them - and the populations they were supposed to serve - was a flood of destruction that led to international court-martial and proposed executions.

Only proposed though.

Naya, green around the gills from her latest information dive, wonders if maybe those proposals had more merit than she’d initially thought.

The files she found about the modified joint task forces, the Ghost Team JTFs, are more horrifying than anything she’s ever seen. Bone and dental removal, replacement, and additions. Brain implants, deeper and more invasive than most civilian interface units, which go just under the skin. Increased metabolism, shortening of the digestive tract, automatic injectors with stim packs that keep soldiers awake and lucid through unimaginable horrors.

Her hands shake, spilling tea leaves on the counter as she disconnects from her VPN network. She’d stumbled upon the initial files surrounding what had been Task Force 141 days ago, had quickly skimmed and duplicated their contents to read and review on her own time. Those had been bad enough. Reading about a Scottish soldier, shot in the head and brought back only to have his body altered. Another sergeant suspended in a tank as his genetically altered body attempted and failed to process all of the poisons they wanted him resistant to. A lieutenant who’s frontal lobe was hacked through to make room for a larger processor. The Captain captured and tortured and changed for investigating what was happening to his unit…

And that was before the videos.

Finding more information on Ghost Teams is virtually impossible. Official reports, even the ones she breaks into, list the 141 as defunct. Her fellow archivists don’t have any other information, and aren’t willing to help her dive again.

>>>Flower: even if the GTs are still alive >>>Flower: it’s too dangerous >>>Flower: too many powers want them to stay buried >>>Flower: we’ll lose everything if we go digging >>>Bambi: you don’t have any contacts i could ask? >>>Flower: i‘m sorry bambi

There’s more security, when she returns to the original server, too much for her to feel comfortable to try to force her way in. Her bots identify a couple of devices on the network that might be exploitable - a printer, two coffee machines - but she leaves them alone, for now.

Instead, she trawls conspiracy theory forums for any mention of experimental modifications, missing soldiers, and questionable medical equipment shipments. Experience means her bots filter through everything, which saves her more than a few headaches, but also means that she waits hours before a possible hit. And that hit is a dead end.

The hours turn to days before she’s able to find an abandoned, locked forum with deleted answers to heavily coded questions. The last post is seven years old, ostensibly informing community members of upcoming changes to the forum. The veil over the warning of government surveillance is thinner than tissue paper.

It’s the closest thing she has to a lead, so she makes a new post and sets her bots to monitor it.

>>18|\/|48(Guest): GTJTFs producing new 141 units? Leaked production reports, new specs?

She doesn’t expect a response, but maybe an auto-responder will give her a clue of where to look next. So it’s jarring when she gets an encrypted email with a reply from “dimentionspoker@noreply.co,” an hour later.

new units? have info on old units if you need references. let me know.

—

The middle city isn’t the safest, for all that the well-to-dos topside like to pretend that the truly unsavory elements aren’t that close to their picturesque lawns. Naya’s lived here her whole life, though she’s worked above a time or two. Even so, she’s never ventured this close to the freight shafts down to the docks.

The bar she steps into is loud and smells like liquor and motor fluid. It’s dim, and smoky, and she feels eyes on her as she makes her way to the bar. Her interface lights up with pings and an attempted ID and bank chip skim. All they get for their trouble is her least informative ID tag - Bambi.

The bartender, a large bodied person with the simple tag of Engine, operates behind the bar with four cybernetic arms. There’s no digital queue for her to log in to, or even a service request button on the seemingly organic wood bar. So she stands, hands folded on top of the bar for them to finish pouring drinks and notice her standing there.

Just as the barkeep’s attention slides her way, a warm body presses up behind hers. She stiffens as a the person jostles her to lean heavily on the bar. “Eng! Another for me. And whatever my cute new friend wants.”

A refusal is on the tip of her tongue, but when she looks up into slitted yellow eyes haloed by curled black and purple freeform locs, she gets an encrypted message.

>>>Bricks: Hello Bambi. >>>Bricks: Order a drink and come with me.

—

"They shouldn't be locked up. They're people, not mindless killing machines."

Across the table, under the dim lights, the woman called Bricks cocks her head. She’s a true cyborg, someone who’s modifications are probably keeping them alive. The cybernetics of her left arm extending well into her ribcage. She doesn’t hide it. Under dark overclothes, a slouching shirt exposes the metal of her collarbones, the servos that whir as she breathes. She swirls her glass of Jack and Coke with an amused look on her face as a barely muffled moan pierces through loud music.

Naya takes a deep breath to keep from fidgeting. It took three months to arrange even this meeting with the elusive American arms dealer, in the back of this dingy bar on a busy Friday. She wasn't about to lose the lead just because she could hear lewd comments and barely muffled squeals of pleasure from the nearby hall to the washrooms. The more concerning noise was coming from behind her, anyhow, the thump of knives into a dart board, distressed beeping from the unlucky mini-droid bound to the target.

"You want me to set up a meeting with the Watcher," Bricks drawls, sitting back in her chair. Her pointed cybernetic nails drum against the table. She doesn’t bother to whisper, but both of them have been disrupting any listening devices in range. "So you can make sure that Price's monsters are being treated humanely?"

"They're not monsters," Naya hisses.

"You've never seen them." It's not a question.

"I don't need to see them to know they shouldn't be kept locked in cages."

Bricks freezes with her glass halfway to her lips. Her eyes narrow. “Cages?”

“That’s what I saw.” Gritting her teeth, Naya hisses. “Look. You know what it means to be augmented, what extensive modifications are like. But without anesthesia? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even my worst enemy.”

“You’d be surprised what I would wish on my worst enemy, sweetheart.” Bricks chuckles and throws back the last dregs of her drink. "But you know what? Fine."

"Fine?"

"Fine. You want in so bad? I'll set up a meeting with the Watcher, and Price."

Well. That was easier than expected. "What'll it cost me?"

"Oh, your whole life, probably. Your whole world view, certainly," Bricks chuckles. She gives Naya an obvious once over, gaze lingering on her breasts. "But you don't owe me any more than a quick flash of your tits."

That does make Naya’s confidence falter. "W-what?"

"You heard me. C'mon, give me a little peek, and I'll send a message right now. You can have Price's monsters off their leashes by the end of the week." Bricks grins, slit pupils pulsing wide with interest. "We don't even have to go anywhere, just pull down your shirt a little bit."

"I'm not..." Naya looks around, furtively. "This isn't exactly priv-" She flinches as she's interrupted by a loud moan, followed by a cheer from the rest of the bar.

"You're asking me to let your hands get real dirty, sweetheart." Bricks stands and circles the table to crowd Naya against the wall. She dips down to breathe into her ear. "And unless you want word to spread of a cute, clean cut, little topsider digging into illegal soldier mods, you're gonna pull your tits out and take the money I give you, after, Bambi."

There’s something behind the predatory look in the taller woman’s eyes. A challenge. She’s called Naya’s bluff, hasn’t she? When she refuses, Bricks will send her off with a laugh and a pat on her ass. And she’ll be back at square one, unable to face the danger of diving deeper again.

But Naya’s never been accused of knowing when to back down.

It’s the work of a moment to have the various video feeds in the room start a ten second loop. Her bots use movement patterns to make the video seem natural to anyone not looking closely. Bricks makes an interested noise when the video feed from her cybernetic eye continues showing Naya’s darting eyes and regular breaths. Her organic eye takes in the way Naya’s hands come up to unclasp the front of her shirt.

She takes a deep breath before hooking her fingers into the neck of her undershirt. She looks down as she inches it down to reveal the scalloped edge of her bra, instead of looking to see if Bricks is aroused or amused or some other, worse thing.

Before she can truly expose herself, a warm hand touches her wrist. “So eager. Not even gonna give me a little tease?”

>>>Bricks: Nice trick with the cameras, but you’re going to call attention.

Naya tips her chin up and immediately regrets it when Bricks leans down to meet her. Her breath shivers between their lips. When a metal arm comes up to block her view of the rest of the room, she turns her face away.

>>>Bambi: It’d be more suspicious if I let everyone have a clip for distribution.

“Smart girl,” Bricks whispers against her temple. “Take the credits.”

The fund transfer Bricks initiates has a public comment attached. ‘Classy. Could almost be the real thing.’ Naya glares up at Brick’s smirking face as she accepts the transaction. Two hundred. It feels like too little and too much money at the same time. Almost immediately, she gets inquiry pings from six other patrons the bar.

“And that’s your alibi,” Bricks chuckles, stepping back so quickly that she barely has time to put herself to rights. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”

—

Naya tries not to fidget in the freight elevator, down, down, down, into The Throat. Bricks's arm is a possessive weight on her shoulder. On the other side of the lift, a startlingly tall man stares at them through the holes in a cloth sack. When she meets his eyes, something writhes where his mouth should be.

"Eyes to yourself," Bricks growls when he takes a half step in their direction. Her cybernetic arm crackles warningly.

The man visibly considers his options before making a guttural sound. A thick appendage, tongue or tentacle, Naya can’t really tell, pokes out from under the hood. He mutters something she doesn’t understand in under-tongue. Bricks hisses something back, pushing Naya behind her as she takes a threatening step forward. The man flinches, then crowds himself into his corner. He doesn’t even look in their direction for the rest of the descent.

When the doors open, Bricks holds her back until the man leaves, then steers her out into the street. Naya's been under-city before, but not in this bloc. The air is just as stale and hazy as she remembers, but this shaft doesn't see as much vertical commuter traffic as some of the others, so the street is dark instead of lit with neon. The faintest bit of light filters down from straight above.

Groping for something to say, she asks, "Did you know that guy?"

Bricks snorts, keeping an arm around her's waist as she steers her along. "Yeah."

“What did he want?”

She gets an uninterested shrug. “The same thing any bottom dwelling opportunist wants.”

It’s not hard to imagine what she means. When she doesn't say anything else, Naya searches for another topic. She swallows her pride and forces herself to say, "Thank you for setting up this meeting."

"Don't thank me yet, sweetheart. You're gonna hate me soon enough."

"I know it's dangerous for you," she insists as Bricks draws her down a side street. Dangerous is an understatement, if the Ghost Teams are so far gone that they’re experimenting on human beings. "Even if things are hard, moving forward, I appreciate your help."

Bricks doesn't answer. Instead, she knocks on a barred door. It opens a crack, and she and the other person hiss low words at each other. A shining green eye looks Naya up and down, the door shuts, and Bricks draws her away.

They stride, briskly, back to the main street. Bricks asks, "Do you have a respirator?"

"Yes."

"Put it on, don't speak."

Wordlessly, Naya unfolds the mask from her pocket and covers her mouth and nose. Bricks pulls a dark scarf from her shoulders and wraps it around Naya’s head and neck, and then drops a poncho over her head. Somehow, the mercinary looks bigger in just her thin shirt, the muscles and metal in her shoulders more pronounced.

Ten minutes into their silent walk, a man melts from the shadows and starts walking on Naya's other side. Though she can’t see much under his baggy clothes, his gait speaks to digitigrade modifications. When she glances up, he has a faceplate under his own hood. His voice, when he speaks, is robotic. "Bricks."

"Roach."

“You’re looking smug and determined.”

“I’m on a very… interesting job.” An encrypted message gets passed between the two of them, and Naya frowns behind her mask. She shouldn’t be able to tell that a message was sent, though, so she bites her tongue. Bricks smirks down at her, then turns her eyes forward. “What’s on your mind?”

"Shadows are hunting you. Seven thousand credits."

"That's insulting," Bricks dismisses. "Mace take the job?"

"That's insulting," Roach parrots back. Somehow, his metered and inflectionless voice sounds amused. A flurry of encrypted messages flows between them. Once those have finished, he says, "Come see us when your business with the Watcher is done." And then he fades away into the shadows again.

"Good job," Bricks whispers. "Stay silent. Keep taking deep breaths. Walk straight ahead. Don't run." And then she ducks down a side street, leaving Naya alone in the dark.

Fuck.

She keeps putting one foot in front of the other. Measured. Brisk, but unhurried. A couple of people pass on the other side of the street, then a man passes on her side. Under her poncho, she palms her pocket knife, but no one spares her a second glance.

After a full minute, Bricks slides out of the next alley and falls into step with her, a cigarette that smells like real tobacco between her lips. In her cybernetic hand, she has a twitching, bleeding length of what looks like an octopus tentacle the size of Naya’s forearm.

"You can talk now,” she says. “But you don't want to ask about this."

—

The respirator makes a lot more sense when Naya is led to a shaft to the Belly.

She’s never been to the middle level of the true undercity. Technically, no one should live in this industrial level, so there’s very little in the way of individual commerce and amenities. There is an abundance of dead “topsider tourists” every year, mangled and hacked to drain all of their resources before anyone can realize that they haven’t come home.

This lift is much smaller, just big enough for her to stand behind Bricks as the woman primes her arm. The edge of a plasma knife glows blue from within the mechanics of her bicep. When Naya activates the plasma in her own knife, Bricks looks over her shoulder at the near silent hum.

“You ever use that before?”

“Once.”

That earns an interested noise as the other woman faces forward again. “On a person?”

“…No.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” is all she says about that as the elevator shudders to a stop. “Stay behind my right arm. If I tell you to drop, you fall to the ground and don’t move until I tell you.”

When the door opens, it’s into a pitch black alley. The only light is the obscured gleam from with Brick’s left shoulder. Something in the darkness hisses. Bricks strides forward, and Naya has no choice but to follow after.

They walk for a few minutes without incident before Bricks knocks on a nondescript door. Next to it, a biometric scanner creaks open and scans one of her eyes, then one of her metal fingers. Naya flinches at the noise of a series of locks grinding open.

A stern faced blonde woman is on the other side of the door when Bricks gestures Naya inside. She’s not wearing a respirator, but then, neither is Bricks. The woman doesn’t say anything, so Naya doesn’t either. She just waits for Bricks to finish securing the door, then returns to her spot just behind her.

“Watcher,” Bricks greets with clear good humor. “I brought you a little something.”

Naya huffs a surprised breath from her nose, but stays silent. The Watcher. The overseer of at least one of five active Modified Task Forces. She looks so… normal. A woman in her mid forties, maybe, face lined with stress but open. Naya feels a little thrown off. When the lights flicker, however, she catches the red shine of a cybernetic eye. Whatever mods she has, they’re hidden so well that Naya can’t even sense them.

The Watcher’s eyes scan her for a moment before she’s looking back to Bricks. Naya only has a moment to wonder why she hasn’t been pinged before she asks, “Alive?”

“You always pay more when they’re alive.”

What? Naya stumbles backwards until she hits the door. “What?”

Bricks throws a grin over her shoulder. “I told you not to thank me.” Turning back to the Watcher, she says, “Thirty thousand credits. Had a run in with the King on the way here.”

“No one told you to bring her alive. Fifteen, and we void the Shadows bounty on you.”

“Twenty five. You want her alive, trust me. And I can handle the Shadows on my own.”

Naya gapes at the two of them. A quick glance over her shoulder and query to the door confirms that the locks won’t open again without a lot more force than she could manage, even if she wouldn’t have to fight Bricks to get out. And the Watcher… isn’t motivated to let her live. Fuck. The little knife in her hands feels less than useless.

“She wanted to meet you,” Bricks continues, crossing her arms. “And Price.”

That makes the Watcher pause and look over Naya again. “Oh?”

“She used his name,” Bricks confirms. “Real skilled code-breaker.”

“Hm.” The Watcher frowns, then says. “Thirty thousand is a low ball offer, then.”

“She thinks you’re keeping the task force in cages,” Bricks chuckles. “I want to watch when she sees them for the first time.”

That gets a huff of amusement. “Thirty thousand and a show… Deal. Bring her.”

When the Watcher turns away, Bricks looks back at Naya with a surprisingly gentle smile. “Good job. Now comes the hard part. Let’s go.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” she doesn’t want to walk forward, but there’s not much else to do. She tries to stand away from Bricks, but it’s hard in the narrow hallway.

“Nothing, now,” Bricks laughs. “Got you through the door alive, and Watcher can always use a code breaker.”

It’s hard not to feel stupid. Naya struggles to keep her voice even. “So this was just… a bounty for you?”

“Better me than König.” Bricks wiggles the tentacle that she’s still holding in metal fingers. “And better now than when an actual bounty was on your head. Diving into secure government information brings out the worst kind of trouble. The Shadows would have killed you in your bed. Kortac would have chipped you, if they decided keeping you was worth it. This way, everyone gets what they want.”

“Except me,” Naya points out.

“You’re still alive, for now,” the Watcher points out from a few steps ahead, without looking back. “Considering the problems you’ve caused me, it’s tempting to kill you myself. But Bricks is right. I can always use a Breaker.”

“I don’t do that professionally,” Naya protests weakly.

The Watcher doesn’t break stride. “You do, now.”

They get into another elevator, big enough for eight people. There aren’t any floor indicators, but as soon as the doors close, it starts to descend. Wrapping her arms around herself, Naya shivers. At this rate, she realizes, she may never see the sky again. She’ll be locked in a cage next to the 141, underground, let out to circumvent code for… what? To support more killing? More human experimentation? If she doesn’t cooperate, will they experiment on her? Put a processor in her brain to erase everything about her except for her skill?

Tears gather in the corners of her eyes, and she can’t help a sniffle.

“None of that,” comes the surprisingly gentle voice of the Watcher. When she approaches, she puts a gentle hand on Naya’s shoulder. “You’re here now. There’s no going back. But we take care of our own.”

Bricks snorts. “For given values of taking care of. You are keeping the boys in cages after all.”

“That’s not helpful,” the Watcher says, producing a tissue from her pocket and dabbing at Naya’s eyes. She pushes the makeshift hood back and gently removes her respirator, scanning her face with hard blue eyes. Eventually, she asks, “Why did you come here, Bambi?”

Shoulders coming up around her ears, Naya gets the feeling that because I’m an idiot isn’t the answer she’s looking for. She looks down at her sensible shoes, bracketed by the Watcher’s own worn work boots, and confesses, “Bricks said I could meet with you, and Price. And… I thought I could… encourage you to treat the modified soldiers more like people than animals.”

“And I suppose this encouragement was going to come with a threat to leak records to the public?” The Watcher’s mouth twitches into a sardonic smile when Naya looks up at her again. “Bold.”

Bricks chuckles. “Naive.”

“Hopeful. And some of the best plans are the simplest,” the Watcher dismisses.

Naya wouldn’t call her plan to connect to the building’s intranet and threatening to disrupt all of the life support systems “naive.” Now that she’s locked in, it feels like a distinctly hopeless course of action. She’ll have to think of something else, fast.

The Watcher steps away as the elevator comes to a stop. The doors open into a large control room, huge observation windows giving a 360 degree view out into dimly lit halls. Bricks ushers Naya out, heavy hands on her shoulders, until she pushes her into a chair facing a window to the left side of the room.

“Did we miss feeding time?” Bricks grins and pulls a puzzle ball from her bag. Her cybernetic hand twitches and whirs as it clicks through combinations.

“Luckily for Bambi, yes.”

Before Naya can ask what feeding time entails, something drops from the ceiling on the other side of the glass, startling a yelp from her. It’s a man, tall and lean, slitted eyes shining a red orange as he stares at her face through the glass. He’s half dressed, only in loose pants. Thick, dark streaks of something wet cover his chest and splatter down his legs. The grin that splits his pretty face puts three pairs of sharp canines on display, stained red.

The Watcher pushes a button, an intercom. “Gaz.”

“Who’s this cute little thing, Laswell?” Naya shivers as Kyle “Gaz” Garrick looks her up and down. He looks just like his personnel file, except for a wildness around his eyes that changes his face from welcoming to something dangerous. “Could practically smell her from the street.”

“Back away from the glass, you’re filthy. What the hell did you roll in?”

The man ignores the Watcher, face going soft as he leans down to get on a level with Naya. “Hello, honey. Such a pretty girl, what are you doing down here? You a friend of Bricks?”

Something about his crooning voice makes Naya’s hair stand on end. At the same time, she finds that she can’t look away from the man’s eyes as he tilts his head. They’re such an interesting color, and he keeps shifting ever so slightly in ways that draw her eyes to follow. He jerks quickly to one side when her eyes dip down to the red and brown splashed down his chest, then smiles when she looks back at his face. His teeth - even the extra ones - are perfect and red. Naya’s heart beats a little faster.

A loud pop and sudden flash makes Naya jump as Gaz reels back with a snarl.

“I told you not to touch the glass,” the Watcher grumbles. “Clean up. Make yourself presentable. And remind the others to put their masks on.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” he hisses. With one last, sweet smile to Naya, he turns and strides away before leaping up to grab an exposed beam and hoist himself into the shadows above the observation room. He disappears in the space of a moment. No matter how Naya squints, she can’t tell where he’s gone.

“Don’t look any of them in the eye,” Bricks whispers from close behind, chuckling at the way Naya jumps. “They’re predators, sweetheart, and you’re the sweetest bite of prey they’ve had in a long while.”

“Bricks,” the Watcher (Laswell?) chides. “Get her keyed in. Bambi, you’re not to be alone in here. We’ll get you interfaced with security so you know how to do a lockdown sequence before you’re introduced to the Task Force.”

When she’s handed an interface chip, Naya blanches. “I can’t, I don’t have a hard disk reader. Why do I need to know the facility’s lockdown sequences?”

“There’s no where in this facility that they can’t get,” Bricks replies, distracted as she opens a floor panel to extract a series of wires, and what looks like a very robust integration cable. “And if you’re going to work here, you’re going to need to be able to keep them from dragging you off and eating you.”

“Bricks.” Laswell snaps. To Naya she explains,    “Everyone who works here needs to know how to lock down in case of emergency.”

Naya gapes. “Emergencies? They can - They’re not -! They have full access to the facility?”

“Of course. They can get out of the facility, too,” Bricks snickers. “Who’s going to stop them?”

“Bricks!”

“All of the records say that they’re severely restricted.” The tight squeak in Naya’s voice is undeniable. “What do you mean they could eat me?”

“Old records,” Laswell answers without looking. A terminal lights up under her fingertips. “The only way the SAS would let us keep the facilities without bomb chips. Let me know when you’re ready for input.”

“The part about eating me?” Naya flinches as Bricks circles behind and pushes her hair up to expose the port beneath her left ear.

“If you’re as good as I think you are, you don’t have to worry about that,” Bricks says, shoving the cable into place. “Go.”

“What-”

Laswell launches the integration before she can get the question out. Naya’s whole body jolts, brain flooded with sudden input. She doesn’t dive into the data so much as she’s dragged under the tidal wave of the facility.

The whole structure unfolds around her, five floors, twelve stories down, three shafts up, two elevators, one stair. She’s in the observation tower, which descends three more floors. Heat, cooling, air filtration, power, food storage, office of Watcher One Kate Laswell, office of Bravo One John Price, research labs east and south, conference rooms, break rooms, sleeping quarters, inventory, directory of personnel.

Access Denied.

It’s nothing to shuffle the alert away. Asset Records. Veronica “Bricks” Mason, Gary “Roach” Sanderson, Mason “Mace” Ward, [Redacted] Nikto, Morgan “Sparrow” Voss. The list goes on. Task Force 141. Kyle “Gaz” Garrick, John “Soap” MacTavish, John “Bravo One” Price, Simon “Ghost” Riley. Vital statistics steady, duplicate identification signals, three dead copies, one living set. Security, kill switch overrides. These doors won’t close, but they’ll tell the observation tower that they have. Interesting.

Diving a layer deeper, she observes three separate security records. One is distressingly familiar, the records she’d found before, that spurred her to find Bricks, full of echoes of old code, now that she can see it. Then the one with logs going to Watcher One Kate Laswell, current and accurate. Except that the third log indicates security discrepancies and pings to KGKLJMJPSR. She logs the discrepancy on her own, internal system, a reminder to see if she can piggyback on someone else’s clearance.

Now that she’s thinking about it, she scans for what her clearance is supposed to have access to. It’s the second level, the one that doesn’t actually close the security doors surrounding the servers, sleeping quarters, and the observation tower. Well, that won’t do. She makes a digital copy of KL’s access and patches it into her own.

Just as she finishes, four ID tags simply labeled “Ghost” enter the lowest observation tower floor. That’s a glaring red security alert, and it only doubles in urgency as he accesses the hatch to the system port cable.

“Oh, that’s bad,” she hears herself say aloud as she gropes, blindly for the cable in her neck. “Ghost is accessing, I need to disconnect before he-“

Three more security alerts come up as the ID tags for Bravo One, Gaz, and Soap appear around the top floor of the observation tower, their floor. Naya quickly circumvents the overrides on the blast doors, and half observes rolling shutters covering the windows as Laswell makes a startled noise. Unfortunately, Ghost finds her while she’s distracted.

And he is a ghost, sliding between the layers of Naya’s own security code like a cold breeze. He rifles through her ID cards before she can even try to lock down. When she tries to lock him out of her interface, he slams through so fast it sends her reeling. Unfortunately for him, and for her, he trips over her Brain Blast in the process. The packet of musical theater data explodes to override everything she’s connected to, knocking her out of her connection to the facility and blaring Ohmigod You Guys through the speaker systems of the facility.

“What the fuck,” Veronica Bricks Mason shouts, covering her ears.

“Sorry, sorry,” Naya yelps. She manually reopens her access to the facility and cuts the sound. Her head spins with new information that she doesn’t have time to let her organic brain process. Ghost is nowhere to be found, but she doesn’t wait around to see where he pops up again before locking herself down and physically removing the cable from her neck. “Ghost tripped my security protocol.”

“You shouldn’t be able to influence any part of the facility,” Watcher One Kate Laswell observes. “Which means you’re every bit as good as Bricks says you are. Why did you lock down the tower?”

“Just this floor,” she answers absently, looking around as her interface flashes and labels new data points about her surroundings. It takes a moment for her to filter through everything enough to focus. “Bravo One, Gaz, and Soap were approaching as Ghost tapped in on the bottom floor.”

“I should have charged more,” Asset:Mason chuckles.

“Maybe you should have, Veronica,” Naya replies without thinking.

The woman just laughs. “Oh ho ho, you’re even better than I thought.

Watcher One Laswell drums her fingers on the table. “You don’t have a hard disk reader. Can you still access the facility without a hard line?”

Naya has to shake her head before she runs a quick system check. A ping to the 141 Facility gets a happy little ping back. “Yeah. My, um… my interface is a bit more robust than standard.”

Watcher Laswell nods. “Noted. Reset the security settings.”

Naya almost does it on autopilot, but stops herself. Running a quick check, she shivers. “They’re still out there. Three of them.” When Laswell only nods, she nudges the blast doors and security shutters to open. It takes a moment, but eventually they start to rumble to life.

Worryingly, when she can see through the windows again, Bravo One, Gaz, and Soap are no where to be found. The only active vitals in the facility say they’re right across the glass from where Naya is sitting. It sends a chill down her spine. Diving through the facility systems, she had felt untouchable. But she’s been outmaneuvered again. Unless…

She stands and leans closer to the glass, looking up into the shadows above.

Three pairs of eyes shine down at her from the darkness.

“They’re up there,” Naya whispers. When Laswell simply answers in the affirmative, she activates the intercom with a gulp. “Um. I’m sorry about the noise.”

“That’s quite alright, sweetheart,” a deep voice answers. “Ghost has a way of startling pretty girls. And I quite like a bit of theater.”

Well it’s not Gaz, and there’s no hint of a Scottish accent. “Are you… Bravo One? John Price?”

“You are a clever one.” One of the pairs of eyes squints and tilts. Another shuts, and doesn’t open again. Soap’s tags move a short ways away as Price continues. “Bricks says you asked to meet me.”

“Yes, sir,” Naya says, and then remembers too late that Bricks said not to meet their eyes. She tears her eyes away and jumps at the sight of John “Soap” MacTavish standing a few feet down the hall in front of her.

He looks good, surprisingly so. His hair is long, braided mohawk shining. A gleaming scar is the only indication of the wound that almost killed him. He’s healthy, big and bulky and dressed casually in black joggers and a tight black tshirt. Bright blue eyes with crossed pupils scan her face with interest. When he grins at her, his sharp teeth flash with titanium augments.

“Gaz wisna exaggeratin,’ ye smell quite nice, Bambi,” Soap purrs.

“What part of ‘masks on’ don’t you all understand?” Laswell grumbles.

“They’ve already got her scent,” Bricks snickers. “Did Ghost get your tags Bambi?”

“He did,” Price confirms from above. “Naya Walker, also known as Bambi. Computer scientist, you’ve sold a couple of database systems. Quite impressive.”

A pit opens in her stomach. Ghost had access to her system for less than three seconds. Her throat is tight when she says, “Thank you, sir.”

“So polite,” Gaz chuckles from above. “Come say hello, doll.”

Naya chances a glance back at Kate, then looks back at Soap, then up at the single pair of shining eyes above as Price’s ID winks away from your awareness. “I’m not sure I have clearance for that.”

“You didn’t have clearance to know about this facility,” Gaz points out. “And yet, here you are. Pretty as a picture.”

“Jesus,” Bricks mutters as Laswell makes a startled sound. “We really should put a bell on you.”

And then a huge hand presses against the glass next to Naya’s face. She startles backwards and runs into a huge, solid body, and yelps as a strong arm catches her about the waist.

“Caught ya,” a fourth, deeper voice rumbles above her. His other hand catches both of her wrists and immobilizes her as she stares at dark brown stains up to his wrists. “Been teasin’ us f’ months, dippin’ in an’ out ‘f m’code. So careful, li’l fawn. But not careful enough.”

“Ghost,” Laswell says. The whine of a plasma weapon being primed pierces through the otherwise silent room. Naya squeezes her eyes closed.“Hands off. That’s my Breaker.”

“’S’at so?” Ghost bends down, so far down, it seems, to drag the tip of his nose along Naya’s temple. “Seems she moight be mine, since I invited ‘er.”

“Speaking of,” Bricks interjects. “I’ll take my finder’s fee, now.”

“Bricks.” Laswell hisses.

“Transfer’s cleared, Bricks,” John Price says with a chuckle. “Pleasure doing business, as always.”

Like Gaz and Soap, Captain Price is bigger than his file made him seem. They’d shaved him, when they had replaced some of his bones with metal, but now his facial hair is as full and vital as the rest of him. This close, Naya can see the mechanics whirling within his eyes.

Leaning against his free side, Gaz licks his lips with a tongue that seems too long. But she only sees them for a moment before she’s being turned around, still wrapped in Ghost’s arms.

On the left side of the room Bricks lounges in a chair, tossing and catching and cycling through the combinations on her ball. She’s grinning like she’s gotten away with murder. Maybe she has - she’s been paid three times today for possibly the easiest bounty of her career. Across from her, Laswell holds a glowing knife in a loose grip by her side, shooting an annoyed glare at the other woman.

“What the hell is this?” Laswell hisses.

“You told us to stop hunting your techs,” Price chuckles.

“Bambi is mine,” Kate reiterates, glaring out the glass.

“Just a wee taste, Watcher,” Soap burrs from somewhere. “Ghost is code breaker enough, ye dinnae need another.”

Naya feels her entire body go cold. She takes a deep breath, reconnects with the facility, and runs Flash_Bang.exe.

—

The underground building has a straightforward layout, but that’s dangerous. Naya flicks away the alert when Ghost manages to patch his way back into the facility and silence the music - fuck, it only took him twenty eight seconds? - and ducks under a desk in the office she broke into, one floor down.

It’s hard to stay one step ahead of him, but her spiders and bots repair the five second camera feed loops as soon as he forces the cameras back online. He only wastes time breaking a third of the bot codes before he seems to realize that they’re replicating and switches to tagging, leaving them to run their processes.

It takes two agonizing seconds for her to open the audio relay from the observation tower without revealing her location to Ghost’s sweeping pings.

“-vilian running wild and scared through a secure facility, John.” Kate snaps.

“I thought she was your new breaker,” Gaz snickers. “Not really a civilian.”

“Nae,” Soap interjects. Naya is glad she doesn’t have video to see the nasty smile she can hear in his voice. “Watcher’s right. We cannae let her get too far.”

“She’s fucked the cameras,” Ghost chuckles. “Could get them back online, but it’d take some time.”

Price hums. “Location?”

“West labs’re pingin’,” Ghost answers. He sounds pleased. “Don’t mean much. She’s got bots spoofin’ her IDs.”

“Smells like she’s gone to the east wing,” Gaz purrs. “Lots of classified documents that way, Laswell. Hate to think of what she might come across if she makes it down to the third floor.”

There’s a tense silence before something slams. Eventually, Laswell hisses, “Fine. Bring her back. Alive and unharmed.”

“No promises,” Soap laughs.

Naya scrambles from her hiding spot as she confirms that the cameras in this south wing hall are looped. She needs to get back to the north side of the facility to get to the stairs that might take her up and out. But first she needs to get them off her trail… Somehow.

There’s a janitor closet two doors down, and she spoofs the signal to unlock the door just long enough to slip through it. She looks for bleach and prays it will be enough to mask her scent, then curses to herself when she realizes the bleach will be an obvious mark of her presence. She can’t just erase herself in the physical world the way she can, digitally.

An encrypted message alert calls her attention.

>>>Bricks: Soap will run at you directly. Gaz likes to ambush. Good Luck!

“I c’n see that, Bricks,” Ghost rumbles.

“She’s already at a disadvantage,” the mercenary chuckles. “Poor little thing, you’re going to eat her alive.”

“Oh, she’s not as harmless as all that,” Price laughs. “Took over the whole facility, gave Ghost the slip-“

“I let her go,” Ghost interrupts.

“Set up the meeting so there’d be no one here but us. Got her hands on the codes she thought would let her take control of us, the mindless killing machines.” John continues. He chuckles. “She’s a smart little thing.”

“She got the deadswitches?” Bricks sounds genuinely surprised.

“Command codes. The first ones,” Ghost confirms. “Duds, since we don’t have the chips, but she don’t know that.”

Well, she does now. Naya grabs three bottles of bleach and puts her respirator back on as her mind races. Part of what made soldier modifications so disgusting were the control processors. The irony of finding out that the 141 had somehow removed theirs was not lost on her. They’re already as free as she’d hoped to help them be, and they’re using that freedom to hunt her like animals.

The IDs for Soap and Gaz are still a floor above, moving slowly, following her trail. Ghost and Bravo One are still in the observation tower. She opens one bottle and rolls it back down the hall she came down, then jogs the other way, splashing the bleach as she goes. The observation tower in the center of the floor has mirrored glass, spiking her heart rate every time she catches sight of herself out of the corner of her eye. It’s so jarring that she almost doesn’t realize Gaz and Soap are coming out of the nearest elevator.

She ducks into an office just as the bell dings around the corner.

“Ach, that’s nae very nice, Bambi,” Soap calls. When he speaks next, it’s muffled, likely by his own respirator. “Ghost, she’s scent bombed the whole steamin’ floor. Where is she?”

“Don’t be lazy, Johnny,” Ghost chuckles. “’Ardly a hunt if there’s no challenge.”

“She’ll want the stairwell,” Gaz says. “Lock it down.”

“Already done,” Ghost says. “But locks aren’t exactly a deterrent, if you ‘aven’t noticed.”

“Bottle rolled down this hall,” Gaz says. “So she probably took the other.”

“Aye, that’s what she wants us to think,” Soap chuckles. “I’ll clear this side.”

Naya holds her breath as heavy footsteps start toward her hiding spot, then go so light she almost can’t hear them. She watches the light under the door and resists the urge to flinch at the appearance of a shadow. The man - Soap’s ID sits like a brand so close to her own in her interface - lingers by the door for a long moment then moves on. He’s so quiet that she keeps the map of the floor up to watch his progress. He’s listening for her, she realizes, stopping at each door. She’s lucky that the air circulation vents are above the door, or he might have heard her heart racing.

When Soap and Gaz each turn corners to start investigating the south wing, Naya finally lets herself take more than the shortest breath. She eases the lock open with a flinch at the mechanical click, but neither Soap nor Gaz change their trajectory. When she opens the door and peeks out, the hall is empty. So she eases her way out, crouches low, and shuffles as fast as she can to the stairwell.

She gives the locks three scans before coding them to unlock. The light turns green without incident. She waits for a moment. Soap and Gaz move just a bit farther away. Naya breathes a silent sigh and eases the door open.

“Got her,” Ghost says. “She’s in the stairwell.”

Above her, a door slams open. Naya yelps and starts jogging down the stairs before she can hear what Captain Price yells down at her. She brute forces her way through the lock codes for the third floor and pulls the door open, throwing her bottle of bleach at the wall before slamming it shut. She trips every proximity alarm she can, leading west through the third floor as she throws herself down the next flight. At the fourth floor door, she creates a signal loop, mindful of the door sensor she’d overlooked before. She hears Gaz and Soap slam through the second floor door open just as the door to the fourth closes behind her.

Too late, she realizes that she can’t hear into the tower anymore, and the map of this floor is all static in her interface. The schematics she had before are corrupted - Ghost’s doing, most likely. She can still see the locks on the doors, the terminals connected to the intranet in the various offices. It will have to be enough.

She darts into the eastern wing of the floor and realizes that no, it won’t be enough. The layout is different than the upper floors. The observation tower has no windows in this direction to speak of, for one. And the cameras are few and far between. The doors are also farther apart, and low pile carpet gives way to hard linoleum.

When she turns the corner, she gasps and ducks. Not that it would have helped any. She’s faced with a gymnasium, weight machines and benches and treadmills like a normal gym, except with weights so large it’s almost comical. There’s no one here, but the open space feels like a threat all the same. She turns tail and jogs back toward the observation tower.

As she turns south, she realizes that the tower has no windows on this floor. It’s not a relief, not really. Even if no one can see her, she’s trapped. Gaz and Soap are still looking for her, one floor up. How long will that last? The bleach trick can only work for so long, probably. And Ghost is good, it’s only a matter of time before he breaks into the camera bot code and finds her. How is she going to get up, past the first floor, let alone the next twelve flights of stairs to the streets of the Belly.

God, how is she going to make it home?

Her vision blurs with tears before she can finish taking her next breath.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she whimpers before a hiccup jolts through her. Her breath shudders from her throat as she swipes at her eyes. “No, no, keep it together, it’s gonna be okay. I can figure this out, I can. I can, it’s okay.”

“Bambi? Talk to me,” Brick’s serious voice comes through, suddenly, fuzzy but definitely there. “Those sound like tears, sweetheart.”

Naya sobs, she can’t help it. It’s a few seconds before she can force more words out. “Why did you do this to me?”

“You asked me to bring you,” Bricks reminds her with a soft chuckle. “Didn’t know you were gonna try to take over the whole facility, or I might have set something else up. But if you come out now -“

A hand touches Naya from behind and she screams, throwing a HardReset packet into the space before she can even wonder if that would have any impact on Soap or Gaz. When she whirls around, though, a man she doesn’t recognize is slumped against the wall, barely keeping the weight of a bricked cybernetic leg from dragging him to the floor. Her interface has a moment to tell her this is “Mace,” before she’s darting around him and running again.

“Fuck!” the man shouts. “Watcher what the fuck- No, I’m on the fucking training floor, why the hell-“

“Bambi,” Bricks shouts, “Do not go into the w-“

She slams the connection shut and tries, unsuccessfully, to wipe her tears away. The distraction is probably why she doesn’t realize she’s heading north, but she knows her mistake as soon as she hears the stairwell door open.

She screams again, right in Gaz’s face, can’t help it now that she’s finally made noise. She dodges his reaching hand and bolts, knowing she can’t outrun him, but what else can she do?

“Shite. Ghost!” Soap calls. “Lock it doon!”

Naya dives through a blast door as it slides shut, ignoring the myriad of voices that shout at her. Through the panic, she terminates all of her bots and slams all of her processing power into separating Ghost from the security access from the floor. He puts up a fight, but another BrainBlast and FlashBang gives her the two seconds she needs to take control.

An alert flashes.

<<Message from: WatcherOneKL. Accept?>>

Sitting on the floor, panting and sniffling, she gulps a deep breath. Someone pounds on the door, but it’s solid, and Ghost can’t get past her bots to regain control. She’s safe.

—

In the observation tower, Price frowns at the data pad in his hands. “Ghost, Bricks. Where did you say you found Ms. Walker?”

“Found us, really,” Ghost mutters, focused on the 3D hologram of the facility. Bambi’s ID markers dance all over the place. He’s running algorithms to try to find a pattern, but she’s three steps ahead, it seems. “Set out a lure and she tore through it like tissue paper. An’ then she made a forum post lookin’ f’r information on soldier mods.”

“Scrubbed everything clean,” Bricks adds. “We couldn’t find her for days after she blew through everything. I got lucky that I found the forum post, it didn’t even trigger Ghost’s spiders.”

Price hums. “And… did either of you confirm which hacker group she’s a part of?”

“Didn’t really have time,” Bricks answers with a shrug. “As soon as I confirmed who I was, she demanded to meet Laswell, and you.”

“Interesting. Any of you ever hear of a group called the Archivist Collective?”

Laswell frowns. “Collective for Anarchy?”

“No.” Price shakes his head. “Archivist Collective. It’s the only thing coming up with her background check. And she’s not a known member of any of the major hacking groups.”

Bricks shrugs. “Obviously, she’d use another alias.”

“No,” Price says again, walking over to show Laswell and Bricks the data pad. “None of her aliases are connected with anything but this Archivist Collective. And their only mission is to ‘Counter censorship through the collection, preservation, and dissemination of contested and classified texts.’”

Ghost makes an interested noise and leaves the hologram to start another terminal whirring. “Let’s see what they’ve got then -… oh.”

Bricks sits up from her sprawl. “Oh?”

“They’ve got an archive. Barely any security at all. Hosted on the GaiaPet: Craft servers.”

“GaiaPet?” Kate frowns. “Isn’t that a… virtual pet game? Where people make things with voxels? Procedurally generated…. They’re definitely robust enough servers for cyberattacks-“

“It’s jus’ a fuckin’ library,” Ghost grunts, navigating through. “Huge text files, embedded images. Some of it’s definitely classified. But tha’s oll… Oh, shite. Jus’ found our records.”

Bricks looks from the terminal in Price’s hand, to Ghost, and back. “Wait. John, you said she sold a couple of database systems. She’s got to be working with some data brokers, at least.”

“This says she developed and sold literal systems,” John says, horror dawning on his face. “A spreadsheet editor and a UI designed to organize complex data sets. As far as I can tell, she doesn’t sell information. Everything she’s got, besides those systems, is open source.”

“Oh, fuck,” Ghost breathes.

Kate strides up to look at his screen. “What?”

“She’s got an active account on GaiaPet. A pet frog named Señor fuckin’ Snuggly. Her last login was today, and her chat with the AI said ‘Wish me luck, if we can’t get those soldiers released, we can at least get the information out there.’”

The silence in the room is palpable. And then Bricks says, “Bambi? Talk to me. Those sound like tears, sweetheart.”

—

Naya keeps her arms wrapped around her knees until she stops shivering. In that time, two more message request alerts pop up, from BravoOneJP and GhostSR. All of them are marked maximum priority, and she has no desire to touch them. She can see the signal burst of Bricks trying to talk to her, but she’s muted the feed so that she can just have… a single second to breathe.

Her interface pushes everything away to prioritize an SOS signal, then automatically begins transcribing the subsequent Morse code message.

SOH. West wing dangerous stop. Battle androids stop. 15 active 20 inactive stop. GSR give code for control stop. Confirm stop. SOH. West wing dangerous stop. Battle androids stop. 15 active 20 inactive stop. GSR give-

She minimizes the message and sucks in the deepest breath she can, holds it, and forces herself to focus on her body. If she thinks about fifteen battle droids on this side of the door while modified soldiers hunt her on the other, she’ll start screaming and never stop. A part of her wants to lay down and just… give up. A big part. The whole part.

She opens the message from Laswell.

Bambi: You’re in a hazardous section of the facility. Ghost is standing down, for your safety. You will have to establish connection with the control tower to gain codes for control of battle -

Naya deletes the message and opens the one from Price. It’s more of the same, a demand that she open communication, a warning that the west wing of the floor is dangerous. She almost doesn’t open the message from Ghost, but… she doesn’t have much to lose.

She jumps when the message contains an audio file.

“Bambi, fuck, we didn’t know you was a literal archivist. Bricks an’ I fucked up. This is a truce, a suspension of hostilities. SOH. The training floor you’re on is fuckin’ dangerous, Bambi. Too dangerous for me to try t’ take it from you. You gotta take control of the droids. I can’t fuck wit’ ‘em while you’re in control of the space. I managed to confirm shut down of 20, but there’s 15 more. I c’n try to send the control codes this way, but the codes expire every 2 seconds. Better if you open comms. If you can’t, Morse confirmation, I’ll send the codes. Once you grab one, the rest will come for you. You’re fuckin’ fast, I know you can do it, but if you have an issue, open the door an’ Soap and Gaz’ll support.”

She’d rather be shot full of holes by military grade turrets than open the door. Her map of the facility is complete again, and she can see four IDs on the other side of the barrier. Soap, Gaz, Mace, and the redacted asset, Nikto, mill around, pacing between the blast doors and the central tower. But no one is pounding on the door or trying to open it, physically or otherwise. When she checks, her bots are idly cycling through access code randomization, but there’s no attempts at a breach.

Maybe Ghost is telling the truth?

She sends a Morse message.

Received stop. Hold for confirmation stop.

The answer is immediate.

Received stop. Holding for confirmation stop.

Does she want to open the comms? What if it’s a trap? Without knowing how long the code chains are, she’s at a disadvantage without a direct link to the tower. But if she opens connection to the tower, how can she guarantee that Ghost won’t command the androids to terminate her? On the other hand, if he is telling the truth, and the codes expire that fast, there’s no way she can locate and override that many machines that are actively trying to keep her out in time. And they are definitely trying to keep her out - her spiders have been able to confirm twenty units on standby, and fifteen empty holding stations, but there’s no sign of the other droids.

With a shaking breath, Naya opens the comms.

Brick's voice is the one she hears first. "Oh, thank fuck, she's back. Bambi? Can you hear me? Sweetheart, I need you to keep the blast doors static. If they cycle, they might start a lockdown sequence, and that will get the droids moving.” It takes two tries to get the words past her tight throat. "I don't want to die." "I'm so sorry, dove," Captain Price croons. "We’re gonna get you out of there.” "I won't tell anyone, I promise," Naya babbles though gasps. "I just want to go home." "You're gonna be okay, Bambi," Ghosts voice is surprisingly gentle. “Cleverest breaker above and below the city, yeah? Gave Soap an’ Gaz a proper chase an’ knocked Mace on ‘is arse. Coupl’a droids don’t stand a chance.”

“I’m not - I don’t know how to fight,” she whimpers.

“Who said anythin’ about fightin’? Pretty girl like you don’ have t’ lift a finger. Laswell?”

“Working on it,” the woman mutters. “Bambi, I need you to try to give us cameras without initiating any other processes. That’ll help- oh. You are fast. Give me a few seconds to find the nearest droids and we can give you the serial numbers.”

“She’s so small,” Price notes, somewhere in the background. “Possible the droids won’t even register her as a target.”

“I think we’ve fucked up enough today that we don’t need to risk it,” is Brick’s bone dry reply. “Sparrow is going to beat all of our asses.”

“Well, we’re about to give Bambi control of thirty-five full combat units,” the Captain points out. “Might not be much left of us to kick.”

Laswell breaks in. “Ghost-”

“Got em,” Ghost answers. “Bambi, ‘ve got a bead on the nearest units. ‘ow do you want to do this?”

Naya takes a couple of deep breaths and tries to hype herself up. It’s just code work. There are other variables, but at the core of it all, it’s just code. Yes, many of the variables have potentially painful and fatal consequences… But in the end, she can either do the code or not. And if there’s one thing she can do, it’s code.

“H-how,” she clears her throat and blinks back tears. “How many bits, per unit? For the key, I mean.”

“Forty ninety-six.”

Oh, just the highest security rating in the world, she thinks to herself, a little hysterical. She nods to herself and talks through the urge to giggle with nerves. “Okay. That’s seven hundredths of a second per unit, with the key. That’s… not so bad. I can probably handle them in batches of 5. Can I have the first hardware address? Morse, please.”

It takes a second, but the information comes through. It only takes a moment for a spider to highlight the machine in the network. Very quickly, her bots are able to identify and tag seven other units on her map. She shoots a summary data packet back to Ghost.

“Are these all droids?”

“Yeah, that’s half of ‘em. Laswell, she was able to identify all of the A-27 units, do you have eyes on any of the E-243s?”

In the background, Price mutters, “Kate hasn’t even laid eyes on all of the 27s.”

Another data packet comes through, and Naya is able to tag seven more dots on her map. Fifteen battle androids, and two of them just down the hall and around the corner on either side.

Naya takes another hiccuping breath. “How fast can they move?”

“A-27s are closest to you, they’re about a meter per second. The 243s move at about 4 per second.”

“Okay,” she says, holding her breath through another hiccup. She has two of her bots run movement simulations, and decides she’ll focus on the closest two A-27s, then the closest four E-243s. She has the processing power to do it, between her own interface and the facility. But… “I’m going to need these six keys first, but I have to let the doors cycle. How long is the lockdown sequence?”

Bricks makes a concerned noise before answering, “Fifteen seconds before you can open the door.”

So, if she messes this up, she’ll be dead for about 11 seconds before they’d be able to retrieve her body. Wonderful. “Ghost, I need all of the codes at once, in two packets, with the keys in this order. And then the next set of keys as soon as you have them. There’s a half second delay, so I need them as soon as they’re generated.”

Laswell sounds genuinely concerned when she asks, “Is that going to give you enough time?”

Naya runs the numbers again, and realizes that she’s fallen into a very peculiar state of calm. “I should have one point three seconds plus a little wiggle room per key. That’s plenty, for the first part. And if the first part doesn’t work… I don’t really have to worry about the rest of it.”

Captain Price’s voice is stern as he gives commands. “Gaz, tell Nikto to power up the cutter, in case we need to get you through the door. Bambi’s going to override the droids.” He’s quiet a moment, then, “Ghost says she can do it, and from what I’m seeing up here, I’m inclined to believe him. But the resets she did mean the door is going to lock down before she can open it again.”

Ghost says, “Ready to send the next round of codes on your mark, Bambi.”

Naya squeezes her eyes shut and sets her bots to be ready to receive and engage the keys. She takes one long, deep breath. Another. Lets all the air out in a huff. “Mark.”

As soon as the packet comes through, her interface is a flurry of executables and intrusion alerts. Her bots are fast, but the activation of the keys isn’t instantaneous. Just as she was warned, as soon as the first set of keys starts running, all of the droids set themselves to Active:Seeking, Objective:Eliminate. But almost as fast, they’re all placed back into Standby:HoldPosition in a wave that flows through the entire wing.

"That's all of em," Ghost sighs, four seconds later. Something creaks, probably the chair he's sunk himself into. "Fuckin' 'ell, she got all of em. Don' think she even needed me to provide the third set of keys. If she don't run screamin', I want her runnin' the damn-" Naya's heart spikes as an alert pings her interface. Her voice squeaks when she calls, "Ghost? There's two units coming online. They’re not listening to me, I can't stop them. What do I do?" Before she can hear his response, the power to the hall cuts out. Naya holds in a scream as everything goes dark and then red with emergency lighting. Captain Price's voice is overtaken by static, and then she loses the tower completely. Somewhere, in the darkness, she can just barely hear the whine of attack units Riley and Merlin priming their weapons.

—

“Goddamn it,” Kate snarls. “It’s the 9s. They’re jamming the signal.”

Bricks jumps up from her chair. “Bambi’s in there without access to the system?”

Ghost makes a disagreeing noise. “They’re active because she’s not an authorized user. They’re jamming anything that isn’t local to the wing, I should be able to patch- Johnny!”

“We cuttin, LT?”

“Forward these packets to Bambi, nothing else.”

“Aye - fuck!”

—

A message request from SoapJM flashes on Naya’s screen just as she finds out that these new droids can move at thirteen meters per second. When she opens it, she gets an immediate key packet. Every bot she has gets set to receive, but the keys are expired, so she has to wait an agonizing three-quarters of a second before the next ones come through.

Just as a next packet arrives, a blue beam of light slices across the end of the hall, then a second from the opposite side. She barely has time to match the keys to the hardware addresses before two furry muzzles round the corner, guns glowing from their shoulders. Naya has only a moment to recognize the controversial K-9 battle units before they both take a step in her direction. And freeze.

It’s an harrowing second of silence, two, three. She doesn’t even breathe.

With a whir, mounted turrets power down and withdraw back behind artificial fur. The K-9s change their status to Standby:AcceptNewObjective with identical head tilts. The one tagged Riley wags its tail and trots forward, tongue lolling like the average bio-dog. Merlin approaches with a little more hesitant body language, though Naya can see the way it’s integrating her tags into the authorized user list in its software.

She flinches away from the door at the high pitched whine of a plasma cutter on metal. Hastily, she sends an ‘All Clear’ message back to Soap, just as the lights come back on.

Captain Price’s voice resolves with renewed connection to the control tower. “-both of your necks. What were you thinking?”

“Oh, suddenly we’re all about vetting assets?” Bricks laughs. “You recruited me with a bag over my head.”

“You were an establlished CIA asset,” Laswell grits out.

Bricks scoffs. “And Sparrow and Nikto?”

“We wasn’t wrong,” Ghost interjects. “Bad intel aside-”

“No intel!” Captain Price half-shouts.

“-she took the facility from me twice and disarmed 15 droids in less than 4 seconds without any formal training. She’s good.”

“None of that matters if she’s dead,” Laswell snaps.

Naya clears her throat. “I’m not dead.”

“Bambi!” Bricks sound downright cheerful. “Doors are almost done cycling, you’re almost out. Hold tight.”

Petting a hand over the soft fur of Riley’s head, Naya feels for the lumps of it’s internal machinery. Of course, she can’t find it - K-9s were built for stealth and surveillance, to blend in with any other dog. These ones are modified for combat, but they’re still adorable.

It’s almost hard to believe that they were going to shoot her, less than ten seconds ago.

The blast door’s status changes to ready, an almost cheerful ping in her interface. She barely gives it a thought before initiating another lockdown sequence, then queuing two more behind it.

Ghost notices. “Bambi?”

“I need a minute, please,” she answers, then cuts the camera feeds.

Merlin eventually comes and sits just out of reach, tail thumping once against the ground. Naya pulls up it’s configuration settings and examines the personality controls. Calm, but friendly, alert, reserved, breaks “arbitrary dog rules” at a rate of 6%. Riley: open and playful, eager to please, breaks rules 17% of the time. Both locked to 141 facility 4th floor, west wing training center.

Do Not Remove.

—

When the blast doors open, Naya is standning a few feet back. Riley and Merlin lay on either side of her feet, solidly in a sleep cycle. Her fingers dig into the opposite sleeves of her cardigan as Soap and Gaz come into view, along with a fully functional Mace, and a fully helmeted cyborg she can only assume is Nikto.

“Steamin’ Jesus, bon,” Soap says taking a step forward. “Ye gave us a wee fright!”

“If you get within three feet of me,” Bambi says, pausing for a deep breath. “I’ll shoot you.”

Three set of eyebrows shoot up. Nikto’s faceplate remains unchanged. Gaz looks at the others before answering, “We’re sorry we frightened you, love. We didn’t know Bricks hadn’t-”

Naya interrupts him. “I would like to leave now.”

“Well…” Soap says with a shrug. “We can take ye back t’ Laswell?”

“That’s fine. Riley, Merlin, up.”

When the dogs “wake” and stand, Mace says, “They can’t pass that door.”

She takes a step forward, flanked by the dogs. “I think you’ll find that they can.”

“Nae, Bambi,” Soap says gently. “They’re hard coded-”

Riley’s turret activates as soon as Soap takes a step toward her. Naya takes another deep breath, and repeats, “If you get within three feet of me, I will shoot you.”

“Well you certainly won’t be doing that with the dogs,” Gaz scoffs. “We won’t touch you, but you really should come with… us.”

The dogs cross the threshold of the door with her, and the plasma cannon in Merlin primes with a dangerous, high pitched sound. When the stunned soldiers don’t step back, the dog’s chest panel opens with a blue glow.

“Three feet,” Mace says, taking two big steps back, hands in the air near his head. “You got it.”

“Yes, sir,” Gaz says aloud, taking his own step backwards. “The doors are open and we have eyes on her. She’s got the 9s with her. Well sir, it seems she’s taken a liking to them.” He pauses. “Soap did tell her that, but apparently she doesn’t really care.”

Naya rolls her eyes and enables the cameras in the hall. “So you’re all allergic to just saying things outright?” The muted audio feed is a flurry of activity, but she just gestures down the hall. “After you.”

—

In the end, everyone ends up in a second floor conference room. Naya stands by the far wall, Riley and Merlin a deadly guard panting in front of her feet. The other eight sit and stand at the other end, fidgeting and clearly searching for a way to break the silence.

Bricks tries first, “Sweetheart-”

“Give me a reason not to overload the filtration systems,” Naya interrupts.

That makes everyone flinch. Laswell clears her throat. “What-”

“Because,” Naya nearly shouts, “I could shoot at least two of you, but then you really would kill me this time. But if I backflow and spark the air, that would kill all of you.”

“Kill ye, as well,” Soap points out.

“I thought I was going to die about five times in the last hour,” Naya says, much calmer than she feels. “Mention me dying again and I’ll fry your interface.”

“Ghost just aboot did tha’ already,” Soap mutters.

“Need a hacker for an op. Thought you was a professional,” Ghost finally admits after a moment of tense fidgeting. “Way you ate through the files I laid out, blew through a 256 like tissue paper. Couldn’t find you after… Figured you knew what you was doin’. And y’do.”

Naya’s eye twitches. “And you couldn’t send me an email? Set up an interview?”

“I did try,” Bricks points out. “But you said all the keywords that tend to get a person fast tracked to a very classified meeting.”

“A very classified meeting where you sell me, twice and then hunt me for sport?”

“Everything sounds bad when you say it like that,” the other woman chuckles.

The air circulator over the door falls silent. In the ensuing silence, Naya can hear the servos whir in Bricks’s arm.

“Clearly, we made mistakes,” Laswell admits. “So. What do you want?”

“I want to not have been sold and hunted for sport. Barring that, I would like a time machine. I’d love to know what you consider an equitable offer, Watcher One.”

“What the fuck did you do?” Mace hisses at Captain Price.

“Apparently we made a tactical error,” the man grumbles. “And then a series of compounding tactical errors.”

“You did not ask Nikolai,” Nikto says, matter of fact. It’s the first Naya’s heard his voice, human and heavily accented. “Or Sparrow. She will not be pleased, I think.”

“None of Nik’s contacts c’n do what Bambi c’n do,” Ghost counters.

“Bambi can kill every person in this room,” Naya says, voice flat, emphasized by the glow of two plasma cannons. “Bambi can turn this whole facility into a goddamn crater. Bambi can post videos of the human experimentation to the holonet.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Gaz says. “What human experimentation? No one’s experimenting on anybody.”

“I saw the videos!” Naya yells. “People in cages, people on operating tables, awake, screaming, crying. I saw people eating raw meat, off of leg bones, eating people!”

“Oh fuck,” Ghost says, voice wavering. His face is stricken when she looks at him. “Bambi, that weren’t for you to see, fuck, ‘ow deep did you fuckin’ go? I didn’t even-”

“That’s the job,” Bricks cuts in. “That’s why we needed a hacker, because we’re trying to stop that from happening, and we can’t get through their walls or exploit their vulnerabilities.”

“Oh, that’s just the “bad guys”?” Naya scoffs. “Okay. Why was Gaz covered in blood when I arrived?”

“Blood!” Soap yelps. “That was hydraulic fluid an’ oil! One of the bikes is actin’ up, and our mechanic isnae aroond!”

“It was in his teeth!”

“He’s bonnier than he is graceful!”

“Oh, fuck you, Tav!”

“You said you couldn’t promise to bring me back alive! Ghost called it a hunt!”

“Ah was jokin’!” Soap runs and hand over his mohawk. “We’re a right frightful lot, and sometimes we sneak aboot, but mostly people just cannae always hear us coming! Ye’d think we could catch one wee little civilian withoot incident!”

“You’re the one who was running through a secure facility,” Captain Price points out.

A plasma cannon discharges into the wall above his head. The whole room freezes for a beat before Naya hisses. “If you ever even think of implying-”

“Any information you find about Makarov and his dealings, you can make public,” Bricks interrupts. “Who, what, when, where, how. All of it can go into your archive.”

Laswell scowls. “Now hold on-”

Bricks talks over her. “We don’t have anything you want that you can’t just outright take, Bambi. That’s what you came here for. Information, and to get people out of cages.”

Nikto looks at Bricks and snorts before muttering something under his breath in Russian. Mace crosses his arms, leaning back in his seat and doing a much better job of keeping his thoughts off of his face than Soap and Gaz. The sergeants look horrified. Ghost looks about ready to throw up. Captain Price and Laswell share a sour, resigned look.

“You’ll have our backing,” Laswell sighs. “You’ll need something a bit more secure than the GaiaPet servers, or you’ll be tracked. But yes. You can disseminate the information.”

There’s a long moment of silence. Naya considers her options, arms around herself. The air circulator kicks back on.    Eventually, she says, “I want an advance. Thirty thousand credits, plus however much Price paid.”

“Done,” Bricks answers.

“And… I want seventy five credits an hour.”

“…Fine,” Laswell agrees.

“And I keep the dogs.”

Captain Price makes a disagreeing noise. “Those are government property.”

“Either I keep them, or I set them to self destruct and detonate every android on the fourth floor.”

Nikto says, “You are a bloodthirsty hind.”

“I’m really not,” Naya says. “But I’ve had a very long day. Do we have a deal?”

“Don’t think we have much of a choice,” Captain Price concedes.

Just then, the door to the conference room opens, and a brunette peeks her head in. Morgan Voss, “Sparrow,” as her ID tags her, nods at Laswell. “Just got in, didn’t know there was a meeting scheduled. What did I miss?” Her eyes drift up. “What the hell happened to the wall?”

[n1ght0f-nyx]

big man with big tits.

[typeobby]

Hi Sweet🖤

could I get something Ghostface!Alex Keller x f!reader?

Along the lines of she knows what/who Alex is so she asks to have the experience of being chased by him randomly. You can make it nsfw if you do that.

Feel free to change this according to how you're inspired though, there's no rush either.

××

A CHASE

warnings: muder, gore?, sight nsfw, non cannon

ft: slasher!alex keller x f!reader (even tho i mostly used ‘you)

notes: HIHIHI yesyes ofcc 😭 also thank u sm for being my first request i forgot to put horror characters as who i also write for lmao my writing can b a little iffy at times so lmk if theres anything i needa improve on xx

You were always a fan of alexs work, the way he drove that knife so smoothly into their skin, the way he would always hide from the police, the way he was so sneaky, all of it. You couldn’t help but be amazed.

You were in your tiny shared kitchen scrubbing the shit out of his killing knife, running your fingers across the sharp blade. You couldnt help but feel the heat arise to your cheeks, and your legs.

Alex would come out the bathroom, his hair wet, his normal blue eyes still chased with thrill from his last hunt, his toned muscle and skin mesmerising in this state. You couldnt help the words to come flying out your mouth

“Alex, darling?” you would ask with shaky moist hands “i-i your work, can you” fuck how do i say this “can you chase me tonight, knife and all” you would splutter out not thinking about what you were saying.

Alex would freeze right in his tracks looking at you like you were crazy but also, in awe?

“Dove, do you really want me to?” he would move closer to your, grabbing your waist with his worked out hands, his breath hot against your neck. You would quickly nod your head hoping he would get the message, luckily he did.

“alright sweetheart get ready, and we’ll meet at the park” he would whisper in your ear seductively grabbing his knife as tracing it on the kitchen counter before leaving.

(ONTO THE GOOD SHITTT)

You were hiding behind a tree trying to get best out of view, holy shit this was scary but fucking hell how much this turned you on. You could hear his footsteps coming closer and closer his heavy boots thumbing, you had to cover your mouth with your hands to shush your breathing

“bunny, bunny, bunny where are you?” he would sigh his knife tracing over some trees leaving a mark. In all your might you fought the urge to jump out and let him take you whole, but you didnt. Lost in thought he found you.

“awe how cute, hiding behind a tree, classic” he would move closer to you pointing his butchers knife high, ready to stab, ready to wound.

As it was norma instinct, the adrenaline would rush in causing you to jump out of ur position and run, sprint. The cold brisk air with your heavy panting was eutrophic. Having your loving, dangerous boyfriend chase after you like he did his victims. He was right behind your arse. One small wrong move and you were done. It was muddy and bumpy a easy way to fuck up, it was dark also so thats even worse. You would turn your head to see how far he was, he was life 3ft away. fuckfuckfuckfuck

Suddenly a large chopped down tree stump was in your way while u were distracted causing you to trip over and leaving a deep graze your knee, a trickle off blood running down your knee, you would turn around to find Alex right behind you. His knife right against your neck. The cold metal digging slightly into your skin, his spare hand cupping both your cheeks squeezing tightly. His tounge swiftly licking the blood from your neck.

“We all know what happens to bunnys when they get found”

[frudoo]

How would slasher! 141 react to a reader who isn’t a fan of violence but goes absolutely HAM when one of the victims escapes and injured her boyfriends? (I know the guys are good at what they do but let’s just pretend lol)

maybe she’s dirty from doing chores outside and the victim assumes that she’s an escapee as well, says something about ‘stabbing that fucker with his own knife’ and she just sees red because this piece of shit hurt her boys and she CANNOT let that stand.

Without even thinking, she starts absolutely wailing on this person, punching, kicking, etc. She's got blood on her clothes and shes breathing heavily when the boys finally make their way outside.

how would they react? 😳

This AU has me tweakin I swear

Warnings: Dark!Fic/DDDNE. Explicit gore. Emetophobia.

You gently pick up the little rabbit and giggle, pressing a kiss to its fur before sending it off somewhere else that isn’t your vegetable garden. The pesky things have been terrorizing your poor crops, and while it’s a nuisance, you just can’t stay mad at the little fellas, let alone ask your boys to get rid of the problem. There’s a rustling in the bush next to you and you suspect it’s another bunny looking for a tasty meal, but before you can go investigate, a loud scream coming from the barn startles you.

     Typically, you’re able to drown out the sounds of your husbands’ victims—it freaks you out to hear a person in so much pain, no matter how badly they deserve it. But this is not a victim’s scream. You know that scream. It’s the same one you hear any time he stubs his toe or gets a cramp in bed. That’s Simon’s scream. Immediately you’re on alert, standing from your knees and starting towards the barn.

     Instead of seeing your husband rush out, seeking medical aid or some kind of comfort, a random man covered in dirt and blood comes stumbling outside, looking terrified. You recognize him as the guy Simon, the big, unbreakable brick wall of a man, had even said wasn’t an easy one to catch. When the man sees you also covered in muck, he laughs like he’s just won the lottery, relieved. He rushes up to you, grabbing your hand and trying to pull you towards the fields, no doubt to look for some kind of escape. 

     “C’mon, we- we gotta get outta here. Now! We have time- fuck, lady, come on! I stabbed that fucker with his own knife, so we have time,” he rambles, digging his filthy nails into your skin to get a better grip.

     His words seem to make your heart stop beating in your chest. So that’s why Simon was screaming in pain. Your Simon, your sweet baby, one of your protectors, hurt by an inferior piece of meat. A special brand of scum. You’re scratching at his face before you even realize it. 

     “Wha- bitch! Stop! I’m trying to save you, lady!” Any other time, you’re sure a man like him could have easily overpowered you, but you feel fucking invincible right now, kicking the backs of his knees until he falls.

     You pounce on his back and trap him on the ground, grabbing a handful of his hair and pulling his head back just to smash it into the dirt. He’s screaming in agony and you’re sure his nose is broken, but you can’t stop. He hurt one of your boys, and if you know anything about the pieces of shit your husbands get rid of, you’re positive nobody is going to miss the one struggling beneath your weight. You bash his head into the ground over and over—his nose is completely crushed and his teeth are busted, but you just keep going and going and going until your arms are finally tired and you’re heaving with effort.

     When you climb off of him, you see just how much blood has tainted the grass, and you feel nauseous. The man is no longer screaming, not even grunting or moaning, and you know you’ve killed him. You roll him over just to make sure, and the sight of his mangled face makes you lean forward to vomit. You end up tripping over one of his untied shoelaces and falling right on top of his body. Sobbing, you scramble away, screaming when your back hits something solid.

     “Hey, hey, it’s just me, darlin’. Just me,” John coos, helping you up and pulling you into a tight hug.

     “I-I di- I didn’t mean to,” you weep, blood and bile still sour on your tongue. “H-he… he stabbed Simon, and- and I-”

     “Okay, sweetheart, it’s fine. I’ve got you now, yeah? Deep breaths, baby, breathe with me,” John instructs, cupping your sticky cheeks in his palms and forcing you to look at him.

     Distantly, you see Johnny rushing towards the barn and Kyle dragging the man’s body out of sight, but John makes you focus on him. Only once you’re calm, sniffling instead of hyperventilating, does he explain what’s going on. 

     “Kyle’s cleanin’, and Johnny’s gettin’ Simon all patched up. He’s gonna be okay, baby. You were so brave for us, sweet girl. Do you hear me? I'm so proud of you. We all are.” 

     You nod, but you need to see Simon, make sure that he’s really okay. Make sure your efforts weren’t in vain, that the blood on your hands wasn’t shed pointlessly.

     “I wanna see him,” you hiccup, and John nods, turning you around so you can watch as Johnny helps him walk out of the barn.

     You let out a sob of relief, rushing towards the pair and wrapping your arms around Simon, who grunts in pain. You gasp and move to pull away, but Simon just holds you tighter, letting you take as much comfort as you need from him.

     “I love you,” you murmur, and he smiles.

     “I love you more, perfect girl.”

[ethereal-night-fairy]

Slasher!Soap

Slasher!Soap x Passively Suicidal Female Reader

AGELESS BLOGS AND MINORS WILL BE BLOCKED.

I wonder how Slasher!Soap would deal with a passively suicidal victim. I'm just having fun with this concept. I'm happy to do specific scenarios but please read blog rules before sending in asks. Inspired by @ghouljams drabble.

Where it started

Aftermath

Before the chase

The chase

Slasher Soap Art

Non Canon stuff

Slasher!Ghoul x Dove

Copyright © by ethereal-night-fairy. 2024. All Rights Reserved. Writing not permitted for reposting, transcription, translation or to use with AI technologies.

[skmhlml]

𝑴𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝑳𝒊𝒔𝒕

Request: Open

─────────────

Rules

⚠️ No children x Reader, nor robots that act ‘mature’ but still are kids. If they are cannonly children then they are.

⚠️ No 🍇 or abusive/toxic relationship headcannon (unless it’s yandere) or oneshots, stop being delousnal and get some help, he anit the one.

⚠️Gurl if the post says 🔞 and you anit 18+ then don’t check it out, be hormonal somewhere else.

⚠️ if you have any questions don’t be scared to ask.

🎀✿❀✾♒︎ヾ(￣ー￣)X(^∇^)ゞ

Request

🩷 one shots

🩷 Headcannons

🩷 Drabbles

🩷 Smut

🩷 Fluff

🩷 Scenarios

🩷 Platonic

🦋♡(´ε｀ )♡🫵🇺🇸?🇪🇸?🙂🏃🏳️‍🌈

Fandoms & more

💙 Call of duty modern warfare

💙 Adventure time

💙 Walten Files

💙 Helluva boss

💙 Puppet combo

💙 Slashers

💙 Person/celebrity/character

💙 Type!Boyfriend

💙 Stardew Valley

💙 Mouthwash

[kittenfrostt]

gonna be doing some slasher and cod characters for the spicy nsfw alphabet ,, request a character if you want to see a specific one! my pinned post included the characters i will do from those two genres/fandoms.

or if you want a full fic i’ll take requests as well <3 just got hella brain rot for these boys

[pupcor3]

Oh no...

Slasher!ghost x reader

Warnings: blood, axe , description of blood

You were in the forest looking for bones because you wanted to be one of those girls on Pinterest, like with the bone corset so here you were bones..lord..

Until you heard a scream you stopped walking and waited for the scream again... Another one you runner to where the scream was happening and you saw a lady you turned on your flashlight and..she had a axe on her it was bleeding.. Really bad, you wanted to throw up at the sight of it..

"look behind you.." The lady said in a raspy voice you were so scared but you turned around and saw a big burly man with a skeleton type mask you put that flashlight on him and he had blood all over him..and it was new.

"Okay..." you said and then took off running dropping your flashlight you kept on running and running, you almost tried on a twig you saw your house and ran inside of it and then locked the door you were breathing heavily, you almost felt like passing out but you didn't, you were still here you calmed down... You felt like you have seen that mask before wait.. Was that your neighbor Simon Riley?!

[callsign-songbird]

OK ok ok, my mind is churning with an AU

So, we know Charlie's wonderful slasher Simon AU, right? Well, I just finished the second scream movie and BOY do I have thoughts for my own vaiernt of the Slasher Simon AU.

College.

Sports.

Murder.

Of course, not for any convoluted reason like Micky or Ms. Lumen, no. Just because Simon had a rough upbringing, and it's one of the only ways he knows how to releive stress. Besides, he's always found knives and firearms fascinating, especially his KBAR and his Snake Eye. The first time was an accident, the second time felt good, and after that? After that was just... Ghost.

They can go to an rotc specializing college (idk if those exist, but it's 4 am, I'll finesse the details later) ANYWAY they can be split up by Dorms!! Like, dorm TF141, and K0RT4C.

Laswell could be the headmistress, or Vice President

Price would totally be the golden boy dorm leader. He has to make sure that the boys under his jurisdiction stay safe and abide by dorm rules. He totally acts like the father of the group and always gets mistaken for a teacher (although, he does tutor students who fall behind, even if they aren't in his dorm)

Gaz could be the clumsy right-hand man who always has the scoop around campus (Golden retriever boy) always wears a baseball cap or letterman jacket, sometimes both.) He's the little brother of the group, definitely. Not to the point where he is baby, but definitely to the point where the others help him out a bit more and tend to give him advice (whether it's warranted or not) and he totally looks up to Price.

Soap is a study abroad student from Scotland who takes his studies almost as serious as his Rugby. A total Jock, but not the sleazy kind, the kind that takes a drunk girl home and writes her a note explaining what happened while leaving a bucket by her bed and some pedialite on the bedside (because not everyone can drink like him) going with the brother theme, Soap is TOTALLY the older brother, you can't tell me I'm wrong. I totally headcannon that he grew up in a stable household with three younger sisters, so he's just used to being the big brother.

Simon would (obviously) be the Ghostface. The scream movies are really good at keeping you guessing who the killers are, so it really wouldn't be obvious at all. He's buff from sports and the time he spends either at the gym or training in martial arts for his expected military career, of course he still likes dark humor and really bad jokes, and has a penchant for skull themed clothes, going as far as to wear a skull-print balaclava in winter. (Soap has declared himself as Simon's best friend. Simon won't admit it, but it's true.) Keeping up with the brothers theme, Simon is DEFINITELY a middle child. Quiet, reserved, brooding, tries to keep to himself so people tend to overlook him. Middle child all the way in this dorm dynamic. (Though, being a murder isn't exactly his LIFE, more of a hobby to let off steam, so it isn't really the focal point of the AU so much as college shenanigans)

And Roach (Because in my AU roach is alive and well) if the dorm is a family, then Roach is the pet, or the Wine uncle who occasionally shows up at 3 in the morning to steal snacks. Roach is the dorm party animal, always up to trouble, always has a drink, everyone loves him, and he always seems to know everything about everyone on campus. But he's also a feral gremlin who says and does weird things (like taking naps in the ceiling on lunch) all the time, so half the time no one takes him seriously. Odd and feral as he may be, he's still part of the dorm, and everyone treats him as such.

I still have to think about the K0RT4K dormmates and their dynamic, as well as the Ghosts squad, but oh my gosh, let me know if you want any more, and please send asks if you're interested! Though, I'll probably be drabbling more about it anyway, lol

[the-faceless-bride]

Hello my ghosts, Goblins and Ghouls it is I your undead bride!!!!

And I have been so empty of motivation, I went through my asks. All 233 of them. Answered some but not all, and those are now gone. I'm so sorry to anyone who was hoping for me to write for them, but I was feeling no inspiration to write for them what so ever and seeing them just sit I'm my inbox was very upsetting.

So I've decided to start anew, I will be opening my asks on certain time periods from now on.

I've updated my masterslist, and I will let you know know if you want fics. My current fixations are in pink, but FallOut Cooper Howard/The Goul and COD 141 asks will absolutely be done first.

If not just giving some ideas for blurbs or just talking to me is always welcome!

Goodbye for now, my darlings, till death do is part. 🩷💐