#the idea of a robot's brain who has lived in a mechanical body being put in an organic one with a focus on the body horror element-

[selfspinninglies]

If a robots concious were to be [consentually or non consentually] transferred to an organic body do you think they would be horrified at a vessel that is uncontrollably ever growing and changing even in the smallest ways. Because i do

[spinchip]

Concept: the Staff of Forbidden Spinjitzu doesn't whisper to Zane. Instead, its "whispers" take the form of popups along his HUD disguised as alerts or warnings. Things like "If you put me down now, your friends will never find you. [OK]” or “Killing these prisoners villagers will increase Vex’s approval and reinforce your reign. Proceed? [Y/N]”

(I like this particular flavor because it really leans into Zane's robotic nature: he can ignore whispers by turning off his auditory sensors or filtering noise, but he can't ignore system alerts.)

Also, the following scene has lived rent-free in my brain ever since I came up with the concept. (Italics are Zane's default OS. Everything else is the Staff.)

>IF YOU ARE GOING TO DESTROY ME, "ZANE" -Move File:"NeverrealmMemories" to Core Memory Functions-WARNING: Attempting to delete, move, or suppress File"NeverrealmMemories" after moving will cause total system failure. Proceed with move anyway? >[YES] -File transferred. -Permanently remove fatal combat safeguards? >[YES] -Safeguards removed. >THEN I WILL MAKE SURE YOU CAN NEVER FORGET WHAT YOU DID, SYSID:ICEEMPEROR

-Connection Terminated.

(I have a few more Ideas for the "Scroll Corruption looks like Computer Alert messages to Zane" idea-ones that really lean into Zanes Nindroid nature, as well as the tech-y appearance of the Dark Ice.) -The Staff did a lot more than just send alert messages: it slowly wormed its way into Zane's code like a computer virus, tweaking a few things. It took great care to remove Zane's combat safeguards, eventually deleting them entirely and ensuing he defaulted to lethal force. It never removed his core directive of "Protecting those who cannot protect themselves" since that was vital to his systems running, but it did reinterpret said directive as "Protect Dark Ice Network and everything connected to it, for it is fragile and cannot protect itself from outsiders". (It also couldn't delete his morality subroutines without causing a crash, so it instead made them a much lower priority and shoved them to the back of his digital mind.) -After 60+ years of being in the grasp of a mechanical being, the Staff now exclusively speaks in the manner of a computer, and cannot adapt to organic minds the way it used to. (The other Staff is not like this, as it's still attuned to organic brains.) -You know those Sci-Fi stories where people are plugged into computers and know every part of the ship/city simultaneously, and can send most of their awareness into certain parts of the network while still being aware of other locations? That's what's going on with the Never Realm during the Ice Emperor's Reign, with the Ice Emperor as the central guiding consciousness/core CPU of the Dark Ice Network. As such, he's not actually sleeping-rather, the Ice Emperor is always monitoring his domain through his Ice and leaving just enough of his consciousness in his body to be able to call the rest of himself back in case he's threatened. (The Staff is a combination of a computer virus and a wireless modem: it is corrupting, but it's also the main point of connection for the Dark Ice Network.) -Since the Ice Emperor can't recharge his power on his own in his current state, the Staff had to step in, tweaking the Dark Ice to drain the vitality of those imprisoned within. (You know wireless phone chargers, or Nikolai Tesla's idea to get electric power from the atmosphere? Similar concept, except with the power source being frozen people and the transmitter being Evil Magic Ice.) -Boreal is the Titanium Dragon, corrupted by the Staff's presence. It too is part of the Dark Ice Network, and serves as Ice Emperor's eyes and ears whenever the Dark Ice can't reach. (If the Ice network used computer program language, Boreal would be known as "Obj_DarkIceTitaniumDrake".) Killing Boreal caused a massive jolt to the Dark Ice Network that destabilized the Scroll's influence, and allowed an opening for Zane's Memory Defragmentation program to kick in. (It had started when Lloyd arrived in the throne room, but the Scroll had diverted that to a minor priority and was actively hiding that set of files until the word "Protect" slipped through, forcing Zane's systems to call up what had been defragmented.) -As a final act of spite for being broken, the Staff encoded Zane's memories of the Never realm to his Core Processing systems, meaning he cannot forget the Never Realm without completely frying his systems and rendering him a lifeless shell. (It might've also made a backup of itself amidst his various repressed memory files, but he doesn't need to know that. It's just sitting there, disguised as a normal .zip file, biding its time.) (I really like genre-blending Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and I thought the idea of "Magic Ice Computer Network" is rad as hell.)

(This song is a big part the inspiration for part of the "Dark Ice Network" idea, by the way. Granted, the Staff of Forbidden Spinjitzu doesn't assimilate Zane's psyche like Star Dream assimilates Haltmann's, but a lot of the ideas are still there-and the Staff does still integrate itself pretty deeply into the Nindroid's code as it slowly actualizes.)

I have no words for how absolutely awesome this is in every way. i just keep rereading this and being amazed. the "Dark Ice Network" idea is literally so cool, I particularly love the Ice Emperor being able to monitor the entire land while his body/the staff is the main 'hub' he has to protect. this is aweosme.

everyone look now please

[bokunosimpfiction]

Kidnapped Yandere!Heisenberg x Reader Pt.5

Summary: You feel emotions other than rage and sarcasm oh my god 

A/N: The reason I took a break from this series was because I had no idea where to take it from that cliff hanger, and I felt that character development needed to be done before we dive head first into the plot. This is part of that, but keep in mind it’s not filler like Chapter 2 became. I think it’s funny that this was SUPPOSED TO BE A FUCKING ONE SHOT BUT APPARENTLY FUCKING NOT. I’ll be posting another chapter for this series soon. Also feel free to send me asks about this series. I’ve been getting comments on my ao3 that are a) genius b)hilarious and c)heartwarming. Talk to me. Please! Ask and anon should be open right now let me know if they aren’t!

Masterlist link for previous parts:

Link to this chapter on AO3:

Taglist: @localdepressedvampire​ and one person recieving updates via email

The fresh cold late-autumn air made your lungs sting. And the layers of clothes didn’t help fight the chill you didn’t know you were facing. Has it been that long since you’ve been outside, to see the sun? You stick your arms in your armpits under your outercoat. Well, Heisenberg’s spare trench coat. It was much too big, the cuffs of the sleeves going well past your fingertips and the bottom half an inch from the ground.

You were so used to the fluorescent lighting and the warm dry air of the factory, that your body went into some type of culture shock. It felt like an allergic reaction to the outside world itself. Adjusting to it once you escaped would be hard.

“You’ve clearly become less fit since you started living with me,” Karl says in a matter-of-fact tone. You’d be insulted if you didn’t hear him say weird stuff about the other lords or the occasional brain-washed villager who brought up offerings. One had sewed you a wool and fox-fur dress and brought it up in September, in preparation for the winter. He’d thought it dumb at the time, but it protected you from the November chill better than anything you’ve ever worn.

Did they think you were a woman? Whether they were right or wrong, it didn’t change the fact that it was comfortable, warm, and made you feel better than the clothes you’d been wearing before in the factory or even before. You felt safe.

“Of course, I have, I’ve been sitting on my ass,” you retort.

“Still see that sass is intact.”

“It’s something that’ll never leave me.”

“You’d make a terrible house-spouse.”

“That’s the point,” you sigh hard, and you can see the cold air in front of your face, “I had a whole ass college degree before I came here and got my ass kidnapped.”

Karl whips around and looks at you, tilting his head down to peer at you from above his glasses. “You have a college degree?”

“Why are you surprised? Did you think I was that stupid?” Even if the question is sarcastic and witty, you felt a pang of hurt reverberate in your heart. Did he really think you were that stupid? Apparently so.

“I have two masters. One in aerospace engineering and one in mechanical engineering. Double majored in those fields for my bachelors at Oxford on a full-ride scholarship of robotic engineering.”

His mouth drops open. “And I didn’t know about this because?”

“It never came up.”

He pinches his nose, “you could have been helping me this whole time in the shop, and I let you sit on your ass and play care-taker.”

“More like forced me.” At this point, you’ve stopped walking, and you’d be able to see the manor of Benviento if it weren’t for the fog.

“Besides the point.” He looks stressed. His eyebrows are furrowed, a deep frown is on his face and his whole disposition makes him look genuinely conflicted and upset. “Let’s just go.” He gestures for you to follow him and stomps up the path.

You follow him, trying not to slip in the mud. Converse doesn’t have great traction, you realized. Maybe you should have worn hiking boots. “Listen, dirty Dr. Doofenschmirtz-“

“I don’t want to listen to your dumb nick-names right now.”

You stop again, and your fists ball up at your side around the fabric of the sleeves of his coat. Your coat. The coat you’re wearing.

“Why the hell are you so mad at me!” It’s not a question. It’s an exclamation of emotion. For some reason, it hurts. Even if you despised him, hated him with all your being, having someone love you unconditionally felt nice. He was toxic at best, sociopathic at worst, and yet he loved you so strongly it tore the both of you so part. To feel that admiration has gone missing, even if for a second, sent you reeling. You can’t explain why you softened towards him.

“I’m not.” He keeps walking before he realized you stopped. He turned around to look at you. “I’m not mad at you. I’m just…” He looks for the words. He’d never been good at expressing himself, you realized. Better through actions than words. But you didn’t want him to act on whatever he was feeling.

You wait in silence, eye-watering, trying not to cry.

He sees and rushes over to you. His left arm wraps around you and his right hand gently grabs your chin, his index finger underneath to lift your chin up to look at him. “Don’t cry, you know I hate it when you cry.”

You struggle to take a deep breath, choke on it, and the world feels so much more dangerous. A million malicious eyes gazing into your soul, whispers of panic fill your brain, and flashing thoughts of running right now, of hurting him or you flash through like lightning in a foggy storm. Every damn thing feels hazy and thick and you’re choking on the lump in your throat. “I don’t want to. I don’t want you to be mad at me, I don’t want-“

“Take a deep goddamn breath.” You feel his tobacco-scented breath on your face. You can see panic flash through his eyes for a moment. You hate the smell, and it suffocates you even more. “You need to breath.”

You swallow around the lump in your throat, and your breath shakes like a wasp nest about to fall from the highest branch. “Why are you mad at me?” This time you genuinely ask. You don’t want a reason, but rather a reassurance that he isn’t at all.

His lips form into a snarl that doesn’t come out before he presses them in a tight line. As he thinks. It makes you even more nervous. “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at the fact that I had an opportunity that went to waste.”

You look up at him. “Okay.”

He wraps his other arm around you and places his chin on your forehead. “Let me know when you’ve calmed down.”

You rest your forehead on his shoulder and breathe.

In. Out.

In.          Out.

In. OUT.

In… out

In.

Out.

 In.

 … out.

“Do you feel any better?”

You wait a moment. “Yeah, I think so.” You ponder for a moment. “I think I had a lot of pent-up anxiety from everything.”

He stays quiet. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

He places a kiss on the crown of your head, his beard ruffling your hair. “Are you not going to forgive me?”

You take a deep breath. “I don’t know yet. It’s…” How do I phrase this? “I worked hard for this anger. This anger to love me, to know I didn’t deserve this, to be kidnapped, to have my head ready to be mounted on a stick.” You continue, “if I stop feeling angry, if I forgive you, I’m afraid I’m losing that. That’s why I tried to escape because I loved myself, I wanted better for myself.”

“Was I… Was I not providing enough for you?” His question strikes you like an arrow.

“I-“ You stumble on you’re thoughts for a moment. “It’s less of you not doing enough, but more of the rough foot we started on.” You sniffle. “When I gave up, I felt like I lost a part of myself, all that I worked for. That degree included. I felt all my efforts, all my struggles that I faced outside this goddamn village had gone to waste. That it wasn’t worth it. That I wasn’t worth it.”

You had promised yourself to keep him at arm’s length, to not give him clues to manipulate you. But you poured your heart out into his. You felt him shake and squeeze you tighter.

“Never. Ever. Feel like you aren’t worth it.” You feel something wet on your scalp. “You deserved better than each challenge that you faced, and each bit of hurt you felt along the way.” It’s his turn to choke on his words. He takes a shaky breath above you, and you can feel his heart pound faster. “You, darling, are worth everything.”

Something small inside you breaks. He’s just as human as you are, you realize. In this desperate attempt to escape, to fuel this hatred that’s worn you down, you’ve villainized a man that’s felt even more pain than you. A broken man, who thinks you’re the glue to put him back together. You shouldn’t feel any obligation to, but you do, because you’ve felt a fraction of the pain he’s felt, that he’s currently feeling, and it’s made your mind and bones ache far after the situation ended.

“And so are you, Karl.”

He unwraps his arms from around you. “Come one butter-cup, let’s go. Ugly-ass-psycho-doll is waiting for you. Says she wants you for a fitting and some tea party with her demented child, Angie.”

“Angie? Who’s she.”

“Well, you’re about to find out.”

[akaluan]

The thought of kisuke building wings for himself is stuck in my brain for reasons beyond me or my control. Please take it from me

Kisuke frowns at the mess of mechanical and magical parts scattered across his workbench, trying to make the bits and bobs resolve into something logical; when he’d started this project, he hadn’t expected it to be so… so convoluted, but maybe he should have.

There’s a reason humans rely purely on magic in order to fly, instead of crafting themselves actual wings, after all.

But he’s set himself upon this path and he’s not going to give up just because it’s hard. He’s pretty sure that he can figure it out given enough time — hopefully without resorting to using reiatsu in the process — and then he’ll have actual wings to play with!

And if he can do this then… then…

He doesn’t know.

Maybe he’ll sell bespoke wings to people who want them? The extra funds would be nice, but the idea of having to deal with commissions is a strange thought. Truthfully, the idea that anyone would want anything that he makes is an even stranger thought, but he’s spent more than enough time on the internet to know that there are people out there who will pay absurd amounts for actual working wings. He just has to offer proof of concept in the right places, to the right people, and things will fall into place.

Kisuke sighs and reaches up to tug at a lock of hair, trying to refocus on the present instead of a potential-future. Nothing matters until he can finish up this set for himself, of course, which means he has to actually finish it. Not stare blankly at the pile of parts and hope vaguely that it takes form by itself.

He hums. Leans in.

Gets to work.

\\\

He doesn’t work on just his wing project, of course, so a day turns into a week turns into a month turns into months with no end in sight, but he’s making progress. Slow progress, but progress none-the-less.

It’s actually a pretty rewarding project, if he’s being honest. It’s fun, fun in a way that things haven’t been in decades. Fun in a way that he never thought anything could ever be again.

It’s challenging and intriguing and logical, but it also requires that he dive into research fields that he’s never touched before in his life. There are so many Living World sciences to learn that he’s never quite known where to start, but this project… this project is giving him the opportunity — and the reasons — that he’s never had before.

He researches how birds fly, researches how air moves, researches metallurgy and magical manifestation and robotics and so many other bits and bobs that sometimes it feels like he’s drowning in information. Sometimes he has to set the project aside in order to build something else, just because a thought won’t leave him alone once his brain has put the pieces together.

He never really shows anyone those side-projects — doesn’t think anyone will be interested in them, to be honest — but they’re fun and they do have a use.

The more Kisuke puts together, the more he learns and the better he gets. His first efforts are… crude, to put it mildly, more mess than use, but even his failures are fascinating; Seireitei doesn’t have magic per-se, not to the same extent that the Living World does, so he’s never put any effort into researching it before now. Seeing all the ways it can fail is like discovering kido-crafting all over again, and sometimes he can’t help but shove magic types together just to see what happens.

(Explosions, usually.)

(But sometimes something else, something new, something fascinating occurs instead.)

(He lives for those moments of discovery.)

By now, he’s, ah… renowned in certain circles. He has five mages willing to supply him with both standard elemental crystals — a dime a dozen online, but he’s starting to trust these mages and their abilities — and with rarer, more expensive set-spells. They’re even interested in the results of his experiments, sometimes to the point of offering him extra crystals or new set-spells to experiment with.

(Apparently, not many people are willing to risk explosive experiments.)

(That’s fine.)

(More fun for him!)

It’s not his original project, but Kisuke doesn’t believe any research to be wasted research, so it’s fine.

He’ll find his answer eventually.

\\\

Somewhere along the way, he ends up… accidentally stumbling across his answer while shoving different combinations of set-spells together to see what happens.

It’s a complex, delicate piece of work when spun together into a single spell; its carefully balanced elements make its structure as beautiful as lace and stronger than steel when crafted just right, and it takes weeks for his mages to figure out how to cast it correctly. There’s plenty of explosions in the process, based on the mishmash of notes he finds in the shared research document, and it makes him abruptly cognizant of exactly how lucky he is.

(He would never have been able to reach this moment without his favorite mages supporting him and working together.)

(As talented as Kisuke is, he’s no mage and never can be.)

(Magic is for the living and for the spirits of those who were mages when alive.)

(Kisuke is neither.)

Of course, the just right bit is important, because the slightest disturbance during the initial casting can turn the set-spell into an explosion waiting to happen, as Kisuke learns while experimenting with the first one he’s sent.

It’s fine, though, it’s fine. The mages are worried-apologetic-dismayed when Kisuke reports it, but Kisuke doesn’t care.

They’re working through email and shared notes and the occasional live chat, not side-by-side. Kisuke doesn’t expect perfection in these cases — wouldn’t expect it even if they were working side-by-side, considering how experimental this whole thing is! — so a little unexpected explosion every so often is fine.

(Not that any of the mages seems to agree, considering how much the others chide him about being careful with brand new spells.)

(The concern is… strange, but also… nice?)

(Weird.)

Still, the next several set-spells Kisuke experiments with work out better, and he quickly learns how to tell which ones are viable and which ones aren’t. There’s a sort of… hum… that set-spells have, he’s realized, not so much audible as something felt while holding the crystal, and if he focuses closely enough he can sense which ones are unstable and which aren’t. It’s a useful skill, though apparently a rare one? At least according to his favorite mages, it is— something about it meaning he’s extra sensitive to magical energies, even though he isn’t a mage himself.

(Apparently, if he’d been a mage, he’d have instinctively blocked the sense out when he was young in order to not be constantly overwhelmed by it.)

(He wonders how many mages can’t do that, and are therefore constantly on the edge of over-stimulation because of it.)

(He wonders if he can find a way to help.)

(Hmm… a project for later.)

Regardless, now that Kisuke’s pretty sure he has the set-spell necessary to support flight, things go faster. He builds and tinkers and tears apart and rebuilds, slinging the exo-skeleton on and off with growing ease, the magical connection becoming smoother and cleaner with every iteration. Kisuke doesn’t want there to be a menu or buttons or anything of the sort to control the wings, not when magical prosthetics are already capable of interfacing with the brain and translating intent into action.

He just… needs to adapt it to work with limbs the body’s never had.

Somehow.

Somehow.

Except the brain is an incredible thing on its own, and it ends up being less about teaching the interface to work with extra limbs as teaching his brain to consider the wings part of his body. Which is a bunch of trial and error — lots and lots of error — but eventually the stuttering, twitching mess slung across his back starts to smooth out, starts to flex and shift and spread, and the interface—

The interface does what it was built to do.

Kisuke can feel it as his new wings spread. Can feel it when he accidentally bumps a wing against his workbench. Can feel it when he runs a hand over bare metal struts and magical feathers. Can feel so, so much—

It’s a bit too much, if he’s being honest, especially when he takes the wings off and suddenly loses all that extra input. It doesn’t hurt, at least, but it’s weird and leaves him feeling unbalanced for a while afterward.

(A side-effect he’d never considered, but one his mages are quick to point out is expected if he’s going to use that method of connecting the wings to his mind.)

(Ah well, he’ll adapt.)

(It’s what he does, after all.)

From there, it’s just a matter of refining the wings, both in looks and in function, and then… and then—

And then he can finally fly.

\\\

His first flight is less ‘flight’ and more ‘uncontrolled tumble’, but Kisuke isn’t bothered by that.

(He maybe trying to run (fly) before he can walk.)

(Just maybe.)

He gets up, brushes himself off, and tries again.

And again.

And again.

Until he finally figures out how to coordinate his wings to gain lift, and then it’s almost like everything just clicks into place; not that it becomes easy as such, because it doesn’t, but things start to make sense at last.

(His dreams become weird, tangled messes of extra limbs and feathers and darting flight.)

(Even his normal dreams start to be invaded by wings.)

(It’s weird, but apparently normal?)

(How do brains even work?)

It’s fun though, especially as soon as he stops face-planting as often! Soon he manages to take off, fly for a bit, and then land without falling, and if that’s not an accomplishment he has no idea what is.

(Landings are hard okay?!)

It gets even better when Kisuke has Tessai record one of his short flights and then send it to him, so that he can share it with his favorite mages. Almost instantly he has five very, very interested mages who want their own wings to play with and, well, who is he to deny them when they’ve helped him so much?

They give him suggestions on what to try, too, and while some of them work out terribly, other suggestions actually help. They’re basically writing the whole manual from scratch here, which seems to excite everyone, and Kisuke… Kisuke sometimes can’t help but stare wistfully at his screen, wondering what it would be like to work alongside these five in person.

(He bets it would be incredible, bets it would be like nothing he’s ever done before—)

(But this is still more than he’s ever had before, so he’s going to treasure every moment he gets.)

(He’s learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth these days.)

(Besides, now he has wings!)

(And that’s enough for him.)

[fang-wolfsbane]

Transformers Animated: Morning After: Chapter 03: Breathe

“Tyla, table five has been waiting for half an hour already!”

Lie.

“Be right there! Just take care of my table for me!”

Lie.

“Hey, you, you got my order wrong.”

Lie.

“I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to give you a pay cut.”

Lie.

“Hey Tyla, snap out of it.”

Tyla blinked, her attention snapping to the thumb and index finger that appeared out of nowhere, clicking against each other repeatedly. They belonged to one of her co-workers, one whose name she couldn’t bring herself to remember. They remembered hers, so she supposed that she should at least return the courtesy, but their name plate was missing and she didn’t feel like raking her brain until their name popped back into her head.

“Huh? What is it?” Tyla asked, looking to the figure beside her, watching their long fingers popping open the top of a cigarette carton and pulling out one of the small white sticks residing inside of it. Personally, she never understood the reasoning behind smoking, but she didn’t care to find out either. She took a broad step to the side, wanting to limit the disgusting smoke smell sticking to her clothes and invading her lungs without her consent.

She could have stood somewhere else, but she had been standing there first, plus the smoker’s area was inside the building, not outside. Her co-worker must have thought that no one would mind the air being poisoned. She minded though she kept her mouth shut about it. The last thing she needed was to start something and end up getting another pay cut simply because her co-worker was too inconsiderate to take her health into consideration whilst throwing their own away.

“Oh nothing. You just seemed like you were off somewhere better than this,” they smirked, putting the cancer stick to their lips, lighting it up a second later, the smoke curling its corruption against the air, off to poison something in its path. “We can’t have that now, can we?”

Tyla forced herself to smile at the depressive comment, albeit a weak one. If only they were right on their assumption. A daydream would have been nice, if only providing a temporary escape from her workplace. She tilted her head back against the wall of the local Burger Bot, blonde hair sweeping in front of her eyes. She didn’t feel up to moving them out of her eyes, so she let them stay there, blinding her for a couple of seconds of pure sight deprivation.

She wanted to reply with a cocky ‘if only’, but instead she shrugged her shoulders, a meagre gesture, but one her co-worker understood well enough to concentrate on what they were busy with instead. She had taken her fifteen minute lunch break in the hopes of spending some time alone with her thoughts, but that hadn’t gone as planned.

She could have chosen to hide behind the dumpster, but the smell would have chased her away faster than her co-worker’s. Although she had thought of spending the time alone, she supposed that it wasn’t really all that bad if she tolerated the other’s presence for the remainder of her break. Even if the two of them didn’t talk, she found some form of comfort in knowing that someone at least wanted to be within her company. They could have easily avoided her without a care, yet they had chosen to stand beside her instead. Maybe they needed the interaction just as much as she did.

Tyla glanced over towards them, breathing out through her nose to try and keep the smoke’s smell from drifting up through her nostrils. Her own hands were resting in the pockets on her jeans, the only place she could think of to put them instead of having them hanging at her sides with nothing to do.

Her lips parted, then closed. She didn’t know what to say, much less what to do, so she looked ahead of herself once more, brushing the stray strands of hair out of her eyes this time.

“Hey, Tyla?”

Well, it seemed that she wasn’t the only one that had been thinking of striking up a conversation for the sake of drowning out the silence. She looked to her co-worker once more. “Yeah?”

“Do you think we finally did it?” they asked, their blue eyes looking down to the gravel pavement pushed against the side of the building. Tyla’s gaze followed theirs, watching a tiny ant skittering off on its own with a bread crumb someone dropped when they were eating one of the burgers on their way out. She almost smiled at how happy the ant seemed to have found something for its colony. A true provider with nothing more than a simple wish to make those it lived with happy. It was cute, if not a little sad.

“Did what?”

“Reached the pique of humanity?”

Ah, that question. The question everyone living in Detroit seemed to have on their minds at one point or another. The most advanced city in the world, what with its robotic helpers taking over all the roles humans no longer wished to participate in. Window washers, refuge cleaners, even dogwalkers were replaced by those ‘automated helpers’ that the world-renowned Isaac Sumdac earned his fortune from. How he had originally come up with his idea for his robotics company, she didn’t know. She only knew his name because of the TV in the corner of the fast food restaurant she was leaning against like some kind of loiterer.

When she first moved to the city, she’d had to jump out of the way to avoid quite a few of those automated helpers. When it came to applying for the job she had right now, she had been worried about being turned down for not having some kind of robotic part inside her body.

What amused her was the fact that there were still a few humans that worked inside the building, doing the cooking and grilling, and even taking the orders of the customers all too happy to complain when their order took too long despite being prepared beforehand for their waiting convenience to be cut in half. If they had to make it themselves, they would have taken twice as long. She didn’t work behind the griller, but she noticed how stressed the cooks became when the table waiters and waitresses put pressure on them to hurry up before a customer decided they wasted their time simply waiting to be served, have their meal brought to them simply because they had the status and money to afford eating out once in a while.

She wanted to shrug again, not really knowing what her own personal thoughts were on the topic but found herself answering instead. “Probably not. All things considered, humanity could be doing worse.”

“Worse than we already are?” they asked, tilting their head as the ash at the end of their cigarette dribbled to the ground, leaving it for a refuge bot to clean up at a later point. Tyla felt her stomach churn at the sight but tried to ignore it. All things considered, she was surprised that she herself hadn’t turned to smoking as a way to cope with all the thoughts running rampant in her mind at times. That was their usual excuse, wasn’t it? That smoking helped them breathe. She would have laughed at the irony, considering that they wanted to ‘breathe’, yet were more than willing to ignore the obvious fact that they were busy poisoning themselves and those within their current vicinity. Still, she kept her mouth shut about it. If they wanted to rot their lungs, then so be it. Everyone had their coping mechanisms, some were simply more destructive than others.

“We’re humans, aren’t we? There’s always more ways we can screw up,” Tyla said, the unease in her chest lightening some. When was the last time that she had been so honest with her own opinions? She didn’t know, but she was glad to voice that at least.

Her co-worker nodded, seemingly agreeing with her, or at least pretending to. A short while later they dropped the end of their cigarette to the ground and stomped it out, stretching their arms high above their head, the soft snap of bones releasing tension from their shoulders.

“Well, guess it’s time to head back in and earn that money. Gotta make a living somehow right?”

With that, they turned and headed back inside, leaving the smoked butt on the ground to become someone else’s problem later down the road. Tyla found herself frowning, looking to the dumpster barely a few feet away, not to mention the ashtrays that were inside the restaurant for those who found it too inconvenient to dispose of the remains properly.

Tyla sighed, swooped down to pick up what remained of the burnt out stick and tossed it into the nearest ashtray when she walked past the smoker’s area. Luckily, she had gotten the choice of whether she wanted to work within that area or not. Her lungs thanked her for taking the choice to avoid it.

Looking out to the gathered crowd of waiting customers, Tyla took a breath, steadied herself and went back to work. That much needed money wasn’t going to go earning itself, not with her luck.

[lucarioisinthevoid]

Bonbon...just bonbon. Just bonbon stuck to his hand. And he has to make a choice to put up with bonbon, or cut off his own hand.

(Amazing idea that I cut short due to being so fucking tired and filled with writer’s anxiety to the MAX, smashing my head into the keyboard, but not wanting to keep abandoning the damn blog. Hope this is still fine though! I really need to cut back to shorter asks again, I should have considered that before making a “series” of this. At least it’s going to be done soon!)

Sometimes, your brain tells you to do stupid things. TRULY stupid things. Henry certainly was no stranger to it, not at all. Though usually he had a little bit more… of a reputation what to uphold. ‘What is the worst that could happen?’ That was the standard question to consider, the one thing to maintain at the forefront, while also eying the potential benefits of the risks. What was the worst that could happen? Usually death. That has prevented Henry from doing quite a few nonsensical actions, ranging from petty theft of objects he never needed, to making himself a name as a Serial Killer. Nonsensical ideas, with no rewards, and potentially risky chain reactions that could lead to the destruction of his entire work. It was for the better that they had gotten buried in his mind again, Henry would have been even more upset with himself now, looking back on his life, otherwise. Yet, now? Nothing was stopping him from the worst. Death? Never heard of ‘em. If you only wake up again in the same place as you were before, death lost its biting edge, it became old news, hardly worth a second thought. And this led to more and more bad ideas. However, today’s bad decision had taken the cake. Henry had sat down behind the desk just a moment ago, the night barely even started. Only few animatronics were roaming, thus it wasn’t anything to pay too much attention to. Maybe a few interesting conversations would come out of it- but that was it. So, instead he began picking apart the office. It wasn’t the common one, it was made out of steel and darker than the regular one, instead there were blinking lights shining- pizzas made out of plastic and glass, stage lights to the sides, and the eyes of two animatronics that were- probably not capable of coming to life. Probably. A shiny mask of Funtime Freddy’s and- The Puppet. The OTHER Puppet. God, when was it that he had designed and planned out THIS robot? It must have been when- … never mind that. Prying his attention away from the frozen machine, peacefully smiling, with its eyes glowing golden- Prying his attention AWAY, he turned to the table, where the small handpuppet of Bonnie was sitting. The panel to the side, filled with buttons and levers, was also interesting, but he would look at that later. The little machine seemed like a great opportunity to inspect if the animatronics were actually still working as they should have in reality… or if perhaps they were only plastic shells, filled with only the intent of the soul that created this place. He wasn’t sure what it would tell him about the maker… however more information was always useful. It was a light machine, in general. Its weight would still surprise anyone who wasn’t familiar with machines, but all in all? A lightweight, nothing to note. Peering into the opening, the Pink Guy noted that it was unnaturally dark inside of there. Even if he held it directly under a light, there seemed to be a void inside, swallowing all light, making it almost impossible to see any mechanisms that were in place. And that was when the terrible idea hit him. Usually there were a few criteria that thoughts of his had to pass before being translated into an action, like ‘why’ and ‘how’ and ‘what if’- due to his currently freedom of basically anything, it swiftly skipped past these hurdles. Before he knew what he really was doing, he put the little bunny onto his hand- Where it instantly clicked shut, grabbing his arm tightly from the inside. The lights flickered wildly, before the lighting changed to the usual “caught” atmosphere- Quite alarming. Now, there were two options- either a creature has come in from the outside while he was disracted, or BonBon was about to maul him. Seeing as the machine started twitching and booting up, the latter one seemed more likely, so Henry watched the creature with mild interest. What a funny way to kill him. The vengeful soul was rather creative, he had to admit that much. The bunny looked from the left to the right- Then up at Henry, who stared down at him somewhat unimpressed. For a moment both sides stared at each other in silence, then BonBon crossed his arms. “Put me down.” “Oh, I would if I could and in more sense than one. But you seem to be grabbing me.” “Where is Freddy!?” “On the wall, as far as I can see.” Looking at the mask, the bunny frowned for a moment, then swiped its claw over Henry’s eye and cheek, only barely missing the eye itself. Deep red scars were left on the cheek, blood slowly starting to drip down from it, a disgusting feeling in the Pink Guy’s opinion. “NOT FUNNY!” “DO NOT ATTACK ME.” “THEN STOP MESSING WITH ME! JUST BECAUSE I’M SMALL YOU THINK YOU CAN MESS WITH ME, HUH!?” Again he tried to attack, Henry only barely being able to hold him back. “I CAN EAT YOU. I CAN HURT YOU. AND I WILL IF YOU DON’T TELL ME WHERE MY FREDDY IS!” “I DO NOT KNOW.” “THEN FIND OUT!” “IF YOU STOP ATTEMPTING TO HARM ME, I MIGHT.” Finally, Henry was able to let go of the bunny, it wasn’t trying to rip him into pieces anymore. God, that little rat was a little stronger than he liked. “Last time I saw Funtime Freddy- or at least a thing somewhat resembling him- he was in the vents. Thus, the choice- do you want to let go of me and inspect them, or do you want to stay here and search the other rooms first?” BonBon- Benjamin, right? He thought he could remember him being called Benjamin before- looked at him angrily again, then his ears dropped. “I- don’t- I can’t! I don’t know how to! I think YOU did something to make me unable to let go, this isn’t my fault!” Finally, the aggression that had started to build up inside of him subsided, as he recognized this behavior easily. Benjamin was still a child, probably has not been very old when taken and not having been dead for more than a year or two. Raising his other hand, he tried to calm the boy down. “Alright, alright… I did not do anything, but if neither of us can separate from the other, we might have to look together. Would that be okay with you, Benjamin?” Wrong thing to say. “Wh-Who told you my name?! You don’t have a RIGHT to use my NAME-“ Something within Henry SNAPPED, the aggression returning, double as strong. “Please, CALM DOWN.” Finally, this seemed to shut him up. Perhaps it was the heightened aggression in his voice that helped- and while Henry didn’t enjoy trying to scare those weaker than him, this time it seemed to be necessary. This seemed to be the damn reason why that bear was borderline mad and always happy to throw this thing around. Looking at the little thing the man slowly shook his head, then took a deep breath. “Are you calm now, Bon? Good. Good. Amazing.” His tone had changed now, much sharper and colder than before. If it worked, it worked. “Let us have a nice walk now. A nice, long walk, you and I, both of us, maybe we will find Freddy, maybe we will not. And you know what, while we have this walk, we could also have a nice long talk about you. What brought you here, specifically.” “I- I don’t want to-“ Abruptly Henry moved his right hand, where Bonbon was located, almost smashing it into the wall. “Oh. I seem to have slipped. How CLUMSY of me. What were you saying?” It was a bluff. Of course it was. He wasn’t so pathetic as to try and harm a kid. But he also felt sick and tired of being in such a ridiculous situation. For a moment Bonbon stared at him nervously, his jaw slightly tremble, as he was caught between wanting to try and live with the situation, in hopes of it not getting worse, or if he should lash out, here and now, trying to kill the human he was attached to. “Only a little walking and a little talking and maybe we will find Freddy too. Do you not want that?” The easy way out. Old habits die hard. Most people preferred the devil that they knew. Including returning to familiar situations again and again, reenacting them, even if it had hurt before. The small machine pressed its ears against its body, clearly distress, but finally he nodded wordlessly, drawing a smile out of Henry, who was now more than willing to pretend he hadn’t very obviously threatened the kid before. “Fantastic! I am sure we will have a lot of fun. First and foremost, I would like to know, what is the last thing you remember from before waking up here…?” Maybe he would be able to make it up to the bunny a little while on the go. He did somewhat feel bad for him. They slipped outside the office. No animatronics in sight. And Henry for once was looking forward to a long night.

[randomuniverses]

RWBY Volume 6 Crew Commentary Notes!

I just got the Volume 6 Blu Ray and I'm going to be watching the crew's commentary! Kerry was talking with a few others as well as Miles after chapter 1. I wrote what I found interesting or important:

Chapter 1:

They took out the blood at the White Fang Headquarters but had to add it back in later

The train station was the first new set of the season

They used Houdini for crowd shots this season

Showing what's in the bag RWBY got for Yang is planned for next season

On each boba cup lid (from the food in the background of the train station scene) has the RWBY chibi characters

Originally they planned Ilia to wear a kimono. Also a hint to seeing her again!

Kerry's mom wants him (Neptune) to be in the show more

The whole train set is a circle track

The Grimm manticore design was from an artist from the RWBY subreddit! Kerry saw it and he loved it and he contacted her to hire her.

There was an inside joke for the audio team where Dee dies it sounds like the track says "Oh Dee..."

Dee and Dudley barely graduated from their academy

There was originally going to be a closer shot of Salem in the OP but they wanted to keep the mystery about who she was

Chapter 2:

They put in some lines from the house (what Nora says) that were a response to the criticism from Volume 5 about them staying there too long

Nora was originally going to tell Blake everything she needed to know with some whiteboards on the train, but they decided to just show the house where things are explained

The footsteps in the snow were made using nulls in After Effects. They explain the process which is pretty interesting.

Oscar struggling was done in mocap

Lil Miss Malachite is an allusion for Little Miss Muffett (duh) and turns out she is the mother of the Malachite Twins

The Malachite Twins went to live in Vale and be bad guys

Jinn's hair is separated/split more than a normal character's. Same with Summer Rose

Chapter 3:

Salem's story one of the first things ever written for RWBY

They really wanted a character's story to revolve around 'happily ever after' then a few steps after that, so Salem was the perfect character for that

Originally the Lost Fable was chapter 3 and 4, but they combined them into one

The whole episode was mocapped in a single weekend

The crew has a Ruby body pillow prototype that's used during mocap

The Gods are inspired from the Gods of Greek Mythology

They want to show more natural wildlife in RWBY, but due to budget constraints it's hard

The video game Brutal Legend inspired the scene where Salem throws herself into the pool of Grimm

Originally the Gods were closer to human size but were scaled up

The story structure for the episode took inspiration from Harry Potter and Game of Thrones

Originally there was going to be more dialogue from the main cast, but they decided against it

They were originally had Salem look like her current form (well coloring wise), but decided to remove the red veins she has so she looked less spooky

The toy dog one of the children has is a Wizard of Oz reference

Jinn was meant to be an objective outside observer but also a storyteller

The children for one of Oz's reincarnations have silver eyes (confirmed)

Chapter 4:

They were excited to explore Qrow's alcoholism past it just being a joke

Hazel is the most compassionate of the villains

Salem knows how to manipulate people and has different methods for motivations for each of her lieutenants

For example she doesn't have to say that many mean things for Tyrian to take it to heart because he is so loyal

She also knows just how fearful Emerald is of her

Chapter 5:

Neo has begun to evolve her semblance, as shown in the fight

Neo wasn't originally planned to be in this Volume, but was decided when they thought of what they could do better to make Cinder's storyline better and for when Cinder gets to Atlas they thought her having a partner was cool

Brunswick Farm was another idea they had since the very beginning

The Apathy fit so well in this volume because the characters are at a low point

Blake doesn't always get the nuances of relationships and makes a misstep (when Yang and Blake talked and she told Yang she would protect her)

Chapter 6:

The Apathy came from an image of a horrifying scarecrow and they came up with the idea of a grimm that wasn't physically formidable. As well as a planet from the movie Serenity where everyone fell to sleep and died, and a short story about depression and not wanting to do anything

The Apathy work through proximity but if they see you their effect gets even worse. But you can get it jolted out of the apathy for a little while if you are startled

The artist that made the Apathy was the same one that made the Manticore

Maria is colorblind, which was evident in the episode when we learn she couldn't tell Ruby's eye color immediately

Seeing the burning Apathy, Qrow realizes that he almost let everyone get killed and now starts to hate himself (his depression changes)

Chapter 7:

Them having a restriction for how long fights could be (because fights are expensive) led to Miles thinking of a fight that had to last 60 seconds (and Tock)

Maria's weapon and use of dust was inspired from the God of War reboot as well as Marvel's Thor

Maria was originally from Volume 5 but they had to take her out because it was hard to balance out all the storylines

Originally Maria was going to have a cat, and Qrow was supposed to find her in his search for Hunstman

The Arc siblings are all a color of the rainbow, with one set of twins. Saphron is orange.

The toy Adrien is playing with is foreshadowing to the plane and the Leviathan

Chapter 8:

Only Cordovin's guards are so goofy (compared to the rest of Atlas guards), and Cordo is considered a nuisance. This was a job they thought she could do well without bothering anyone

Kerry wanted an old lady fight in the show, so he got one

The Old Lady in the Show was something Monty thought of. The boot is the foot of a giant mech. And the giant mech was originally going to be at the end of V2

Butterflies are normally not out in the winter but this is Remnant ;)

Chapter 9:

Miles likes to think of Tyrian as one of the most insightful villains. He is really good at observing people and knows how to take them apart mentally and physically

This is where they said this is the first time we see Mercury and Emerald being vulnerable to each other (I didn’t include this earlier, sorry!)

They say they’ll never confirm who the Red Haired Woman is, but they said use your brains lol

Looking up at Pyrrha and seeing the airship fly by made Jaune think of the idea to steal one

Chapter 10:

Adrian's crying is not a semblance, that's just comedy

They pitched Jaune's voice down when he says "Roger" so he can sound more serious

Originally there was going to be another episode (episode 14t) where we would see Atlas and Mantle. But they didn't want to end on that because it would require a ton of new assets because of the buildings and the people wearing different clothes

The next season will start with a bang

The Iron Giant was a reference for the mech

Chapter 11:

The mech fight was the most effects-heavy of the fights this season

Blake has always had the scar on her body since the new outfit, but it has been hard to see until her jacket comes off

Yang hitting Adam with her bike was thought of early on in the scripting process

Chapter 12:

A lot of talk about how the animations were made and such

This season had a core fight team that animated all the fights

The way Adam dies is apparently similar to how something in Nier: Automata plays out. Kerry has only played an hour of the game so he did not know that was a thing

But Nier: Automata was actually referenced for the mech fight (the mechanics of how the fight would work) since a robot was involved in the first boss fight.

Shots from the Adam and Yang fight were similar to those from Naurto, but that was also a coincidence

They called the Leviathan Levi in the script because it was easier to type

Chapter 13:

They considered Adrian being a very young baby, but later changed him to be a toddler

Gurren Laggan was another reference used for this part (haven't seen that anime but it was referenced when the mech drills the Leviathan)

They really wanted to make sure we could hear liquid in Qrow's flask

Salem is no longer willing to confine herself to a room, and is going to start being more active by creating her army of minions

[wholesomeklei]

Invader Zim Headcanon Survey Results (Part 1: Irken Lore/Biology)

Thank you so much to all 237 of you who answered the survey!  I’m gonna separate the results posts so people who want to can avoid the content they’re not interested in (like the NSFW section).  These are the questions about irken lore.  There’s a lot to get through, so I’ve put the results under the cut.

As far as irken lifespans go, the vast majority of respondents appear to agree that irkens live longer than humans.  The most popular answer (orange) was 100-999 years, with “functionally immortal/ageless” (purple) coming in second.  Third place was 1000+ years (green).  3 people voted for “similar or identical to human lifespans” (red), and a whopping 0 people think that irkens live shorter lives than humans.

A slight majority of respondents (red and blue) believe that irkens are predisposed to serve the Tallest in some way, though answers about the nature of that predisposition varied.  Most (red) said it was some form of artificially engineered loyalty.  The second most popular answer (orange) said that there was no predisposition at all and that it was all social conditioning.  The least popular answer (though it still got a decent percentage of votes) was that it’s a biological predisposition (blue).

This one got a lot of custom answers, but we’ll start with the provided ones.  The most popular headcanon (blue) for why the Tallest are as tall as they are is simply that they won the genetic lottery; lucky them!  Second place (green) was that the Tallest are selected to have their height artificially boosted with hormones, surgery, or some similar means.  In third (orange) is the idea that irken height is the result of conditional metamorphosis affected by need/environmental factors.  Fourth (purple) was that the Tallest are selected to have their height artificially boosted with a tall robot suit.  Fifth (red) was that the Tallest are the result of a genetic quirk or growth disorder such as gigantism.

Custom answers included:

All depending upon situation.

The Tallest are chosen after displaying an aptitude for leading and injected with horomones to make them grow tall really fast. 

The Tallest are the naturally tallest ones, yes, but their height IS boosted through surgery to make them tower over every single Irken, also to eliminate the chance of an irken growing taller than them.

Combination of luck with genes and later artificial interference.

All of the above.

the tallest are a bit taller than the rest, then get the artificial boost to make them much taller

A mix of a, b and partiall d 

A combination of 1,4 and 5

Tallests are sometimes chosen before they’re born and have their genes changes, other times mutations like gigantism happen randomly.

The tallest cone from a specific smeeterie, that is used to produce leaders, and elite. But whomever grows tallest from there is by chance.

Red and Purple look like they have biologically impossible waist size, looks like cyborg bodies.

A mix. I think the Tallests are naturally taller than other irkens and are chosen for that reason, but then have their height boosted mechanically.

The majority (orange) believe that the tallest irkens are taller than the average adult human, but still possess heights that are realistic for humans to reach.  The second most popular answer (green) was that the Tallest are around the height of humans with growth disorders such as gigantism.  In third (red) is the headcanon that the Tallest are about the same height as the average adult human.  Fourth place (blue) goes to the headcanon that the tallest irkens are still shorter than the average adult human.  In last place (purple) is the headcanon that irkens are taller than any human has ever been or will be.

Most respondents agree (orange) that irkens are stronger than the average human.  Coming in second (red) is that irkens and humans have similar strength.  Only 7.6% of respondents (blue) believe that irkens are weaker than humans, on average.

This one was a surprisingly even split.  A slight majority (blue) believe irken teeth to be rounded and fused together in a single band.  In second was “sharp and separated” (green), followed by “sharp and fused together in a single band” (orange) and “rounded and separated” (red).

57.8% agree that irkens have organic eyes, with 29% saying they’re artificial eyes, and the remainder being either a mixture of both (organic eyes with some artificial additions/enhancements) or occupation-dependent (with soldiers/invaders getting implants and others keeping the eyes they were born with).

The majority of respondents agree that irken eyes come in all of the colors they do in the show.  A lot of people believe blue and green to be possible colors, as well as yellow and orange, but not as many people believed brown, black, and white to be in the color pool.

Had to cut off the custom answers for this one both because there were so many (mainly expressing emotions, general feeling, sensing pheremones, balance, etc.) and because a lot of people believe antennae to have some very R-rated uses.  Who knew?  :P

The vast majority of people (red) believe irkens do, in fact, need to eat and/or drink to survive, but not as much as humans.  Second place goes to irkens not needing food at all (green) followed by irkens needing about as much food as humans do (blue).  Last place goes to irkens needing to eat and/or drink even more than humans do.

Surprisingly (at least to me) the most popular food item people believe that ancient irkens ate is nectar, followed by fruit.  Animal byproducts (things like milk and aphid honeydew) came in third, followed by vegetables, grains, meat, and finally insects.

As far as sleep goes, the winning answer (red) was that irkens do need sleep, but not as much as humans.  Second was that irkens don’t need to sleep at all.  Irkens needing to sleep as much as humans do (blue) or more than humans do (orange) came in at a distant, DISTANT third and fourth place, respectively.  Most custom answers fell into the following categories:

Sleep is an optional luxury.

Sleep is mainly for recovery from injuries/situations that result in massive energy depletion.

They need VERY minimal sleep, but can go extensive intervals (like, months) without it.

The matter of when ancient irkens slept resulted in a pretty even split of answers.  First place (red) goes to irkens being nocturnal (active at night).  Second place (orange) goes to irkens being crepescular (active in the early morning and late evening).  Third place (blue) goes to irkens being diurnal (active during the day), followed by fourth place (purple) being that irkens are vespertine (active in the late evening).  Fifth place (teal) goes to irkens never having needed sleep at all, with sixth (green) going to irkens being matutinal (active during early morning).

Custom answers included the following:

Both twilight/evening and early morning. So they sleep when the nocturnal and diurnal predators are awake.

patternless. awake as needed for any activity. possibly caused by being out of synch with the planet's cycle and/or simply unaffected .

They're dinural, but could stretch it to3am or so.

Sleep if injured.

Variable over the lifespan and social requirement.

Actually I never thought about that.

The majority of respondents (blue) believe irkens need oxygen, but less than humans.  Second place (red) was that they need as much oxygen as humans.  Third (green) was that they don’t need oxygen at all.  Fourth place (orange) was that they need more oxygen than humans.

A slight majority of respondents (blue) believe anxient Irk had less oxygen than Earth.  The second most popular answer (red) was that the oxygen level was about the same.  Third (orange) was that Irk had more oxygen, and fourth place (green) was that Irk had no oxygen at all.

Regarding the nature of PAKs, the answer that came in first (orange) was that the PAK and the organic brain are two halves of a whole irken.  Second (green) was that the PAK is a device with mind manipulating technology; a sort of mental parasite that hijacks and controls thought patterns.  Third (red) is that the PAK IS the irken, and that the ten minutes of life left in the organic half after its removal are the result of some program being run or sheer instinct with no consciousness attached.  Fourth (purple) is that the PAK is a life support system with no real impact on the irken’s mind.  Fifth (blue) was that the PAK IS the irken, and it’s capable of remotely controlling the host body for up to ten minutes.

Custom answers included:

One half of a whole irken brain that also acts sort of like a parasite.

irkens are “born” premature, and paks are fixated on them immediately to increase efficiency, but this also makes the irken biologically dependent on the pak because their body never learns how to function without the pak, similar to how humans become dependent on certain drugs to fulfill neurochemical functions. The paks also include many forced biological restraints, like blocking off certain instincts and repressing certain functions. The pak is also connected to the irken main system, which allows for remote observation and can flag an irken for reconditioning. Much of irken behaviors are, however, a result of social conditioning that goes hand in hand with pak systems, and with enough care and careful planning, a pak can be removed and an irken’s biological functions can be repaired, again, like weaning a human off of a drug.

The Pak is the Irken that also works as mind control for the organic part of the Irken.

"The PAK is a device with mind manipulating technology; a sort of mental parasite that hijacks and controls certain thought patterns in order to control the irken." but it also downloads the irken's organic brain (personality, memories, etc) into it's system, so the whole irken is in the pak, but what makes the irken themself did not originate from the pak.

The PAK is a computer connected to the Control Brains, which regulates their actions by sending signals to the irken’s actual meat brain. Defects have lower to no connection to the Control Brains, allowing the to act freely. Since the PAK also doubles as life support, the Irkens bodies depend on it but the dependency can be eliminated by a regular sleep and diet, so the body re-learns how to function on its own. The PAK also functions as a regular computer and as a storage unit. 

Combination of b and d.

Like the downloaded personality, the PAK carries a perfect copy of memories and personality to supplement or replace if there is damage to the body, but the body can shape that personality. Though it is also a life support system. 

The PAK has no real bearing on who the Irken it is attached to really is. Zim is still Zim without the Pak, but the Pak is like a backup drive for him(it stores his personality and memories in it). 

The PAK is just a life supoort system, but an Irken's mind can be downloaded orior to death. When the PAK is reused, these old personalities can influcence and heighten certain habits, but cannot take over. 

A combo of the last two options: the PAK is a life support system but it also functions as a control mechanism.

The PAK is a highly advanced piece of technology that serves several purposes: fueling and controlling other technological augmentations, being an errorproof databank of both downloaded and experiential knowledge, being an interface with Irken technology, containing tools like PAK legs, etc. And everything an Irken is (memories, personality, etc) can be stored in the PAK (so if the body dies but the PAK is intact and attached to a new body, the original Irken will be there in their entirety unless the PAK is wiped first), but is not generated from the PAK; that comes from the organic body. 

The fourth choice, and it records the Irken’s thoughts, memories, biological states. The Irken brain retains personhood when PAK is removed. PAK hacking is possible, more or less, but effect is normally temporary. 

The PAK is half of an irken, but over time the Control Brains decided to start adding in some programs that keep Irkens relatively subservient.

The PAK is one half of a whole Irken, like two separate halves of a brain or one creature with four hemispheres. The pieces can exist as two seperate conscious minds without the other for a minimum of 10 minutes and an maximum determined by standing and value of the individuals information. Afterwards the organic half/host expires without the help of external assistance and the mechanical half will go dormant until reactivation, termination, or if a suitable emergency host is located nearby. The PAK portion can be used to subtially manipulate and reward more desirable traits of the organic host, but ultimately the interpretations of such informations are attributed to the organic brain and social conditioning. (After all, if mindless obedience was the goal then why not rely entirely on robots?) The PAK was originally intended as advanced life support and extention but it's design and purpose shifted little by little over time.

The PAK is a mix of a life support system and a mind manipulation system.

When it comes to the PAK’s power source, the most popular answer (purple) was that it draws from the irken’s organic body and/or caloric intake.  Second (red) was some kind of internal generator.  Third (blue) was that it has to be periodically charged.  Fourth (green) was that it draws power from external sources (the sun, for example).  Fifth (orange) was that it has a single-charge battery that lasts an irken’s entire lifespan.

Custom answers include:

Usually draws power from the Irken, but there is a sort of emergency battery in case the Irken is starved or otherwise resource deprived.

This is weird but what if paks are powered by a bacteria or fungus that has a symbiotic relationship ship of sorts with the Irken, like how certain species of ants grow mold by taking in a lot of plant matter and feeding the fungus and in tern getting fungus to eat, sorry if this doesn’t make sense!

all of the above. complex system capable of storing mass amounts of energy and able to generate it from organic, electric or external intake.

It is generally powered/charged via whatever powers the Control Brains, but in the event the Control Brains cease powering a Pak, it can still function and draw power from the irken’s caloric intake, or they could likely create an alternate method of charging it. 

Kind of a mix of options two and five.

It has to periodically charge, but only for a short while. When in a pinch, it can use things like solar energy.

It draws power from the irkens, body, but has power cells in it, so that it had back up power if one or the other goes offline. 

Depends what power sources are available and what the PAK is equipped for.

Combination of generator and back up battery. If for any reason the generator fails or requires maintenance/replacement the back-up battery will activate. It's not nearly as efficient or powerful and has finite storage but with moderation can last several months, possibly a year, without recharge. Any and all forms of excess energy can be diverted to the storage from varying sources. This is typically done in increments over time with excess caloric intake being a species favorite. The battery itself can barely refine energy input, so in the event of low battery most forms of organic recharge are insufficient patch jobs at best. It is recommended that a medical recharge station be used instead should one be available. The larger the Irken, the larger the energy requirement and subsequent storage. The organic host in times of great stress or desperation can burn energy from both sources at once, making for impressive feats of strength and speed, it is not recommended however as it can leave them exhausted and vulnerable on the field.

It draws power both from an internal battery and an irken's caloric intake, as well as their body waste.

It turns out that the vast majority of respondents believe that irkens can, in fact, love.  The most popular answer (orange) was that they can, but they’re conditioned from birth to bury and ignore those emotions.  The second most popular answer (green) was that they can’t love because the capacity has been engineered out of them.  In third place is the idea that they can love, but it’s frowned upon or illegal to express/acknowledge.  In fourth place (purple) is the idea that irkens were never capable of love because they didn’t evolve the capacity.  In last place (blue), two incredibly optimistic respondents believe that not only can irkens love, but that it’s perfectly legal and accepted in irken society.

A resounding majority (red) believe that the Control Brains are Irk’s true leaders, with the remaining 8% (blue) responding that the Control Brains are loyal to the Tallest.

And that’s it for the first section of the survey!  More answers to come soon.

[roseydeloom]

Gremlin Izuku

Ok so this is a continuation of this post that @lovelyflowerlov and I are working on. It started as a shitpost and now we’re here and living our best lives. I’m making this separate just because the other is getting too long to scroll through. Click the link for context on the AU

—————————-

Before some more Battle Trial stuff (which I will get to later) I thought about what exactly Izuku’s quirk and appearance is.

Quirk

Possible Quirk names: Gremlin, Unhinged, Energize

Because we’re having Izuku be a Gremlin Boi™ and thus have, in the words of flower, “Teeth that are even more sharp than a shark, Amazing Bouncy Skills™, never ending enthusiasm, a night owl, and Bastard™ Energy” I say that his quirk is the ability to inhibit the body’s inborn limiters. You know, the things that make it so you don’t tear your muscles from bones everytime you use them. A common example being how your jaw is strong enough to bite off your finger, but your brain prevents you. Mainly basing this off hysterical strength and this video. Izuku can consciously turn this limiter off, both on himself and others. He could chomp his fingers like carrots if he wanted to. But it’s not just muscle limiters

You know that little voice in your head that tells you not to do or say stuff? The social conventions you know to follow, and thus what to do or say? The things that limit your actions? Ya, Izuku’s quirk prevented him from getting that. Though he does kinda have the opposite of it, explained later. He has to actively think about what he can and can’t do in a situation, and sometimes he just forgets or doesn’t understand that there are unspoken “rules” he needs to follow or behaviors he shouldn’t express. When activated on another person, they no longer feel pressured to act a specific way. His quirk also encourages reckless behavior; acting without care for possible harm to self. Izuku has grown up with this urge so he has learned how to fight it off, and actually has remarkable self control to not do 90% of the stuff his quirk tells him to. Not so much the case for people who have this pushed onto them for the first time. Kinda like Trigger and making people act differentenly :)

Example: during the Entrance Exam when he saw Uraraka trapped under gravel and the 0 pointer coming closer, his first instinct was to destroy the robot. To him, the rubble wasn’t the immediate threat and instead the robot that was walking towards her was. Shinsou was the one to convince him to try getting the debris off her first, and go from there. Only after that failed did Shinsou let Izuku enact his insane plan of eating the 0 pointer’s wires (which Izuku then teased Shinsou with the fact it worked and we should have just done that first, Hitoshi)

Because he can use all his muscles whenever he desires, his body naturally has a higher glucose stockpile than normal people to make up for the fact he will use more ATP working a higher volume of muscles (since muscle contractions use energy and glucose is the first energy storage the body burns through). However, he also needs to burn through that energy or else he risks damaging his nerves because of too much glucose in the blood (reason for nerve damage in diabetic people). Thus, he naturally has a higher energy level than other people so he jumps jumps jumps, has never ending enthusiasm, and always likes to be doing stuff. Tapping his foot, twirling his pencil, humming, analysising and writing in his notebook. This does infact burn his energy; mental fatigue is a thing my dudes. This also makes it so he loves to cause chaos, mischief, create pranks, and generally be a little nuisance, since it requires careful planning and energy running around to set it up, but that’s mainly just him being a little Bastard™

Appearance

So I definitely like the idea of him having sharp teeth and being shorter than cannon. I also think this boy would have BIG BONES to make up for the extra stress his quirk puts on them when his muscles are used. This translates into Izuku being a bit more on the chunky side, along with the natural ability to grow big muscles as, once again, a defense mechanism against his quirk. Sum up: he’s that dude that has always been on the bigger side and won’t get stick thin no matter how hard he tries, but when he flexes his arms turn into pure muscle and he can jump over your head from a standing jump. So basically chubby bulky

[Sources: 1 and 2, 3. These images are close to what I’m thinking]

Also I thing he would be darker skinned since he runs around outside in the sun constantly to burn off energy, so he got at least a tan from all that

Quirk Apprehension Test

So once Flower mentioned that we totally just forgot about this part of the plot, I proceeded to laugh for like 5 minutes over the fact we did. I totally forgot this existed until you mentioned it. My idea is as follows

Aizawa: This test is to gauge your abilities, quirks, and potential to be a hero. You are to use your quirks during the test to increase your scores

Some idiot: This sounds fun! We get to use quirks!

Aizawa: Fun? How about this: whoever comes last gets expelled

Class: *shouting*

Shinsou: *worried because his quirk doesn’t help him physically*

Izuku, manic grin spreading across face and turns to Shinsou: *whispers* I have an idea. I’ll use my quirk to help both our scores

They then proceed to complete the test with Shinsou getting better scores than he should be able to get. Aizawa knows this since, while he doesn’t read the entire file on students so he can form his own opinions, he does look over the basic info of name, photo, and quirk name/description. Shinsou shouldn’t be doing this well, and he also acts differently once it’s his turn to preform. Aizawa sees Shinsou and Izuku being more comfortable with one another than they would be if they just met, and in addition to the fact they were together during the Entrance Exam, he guesses that they’re friends and Izuku is using his quirk to bost Shinsou. During Shinsou’s turn for the ball toss, Aizawa cancels Izuku’s quirk so Shinsou no longer receive its effects and throws the ball a lot shorter than everyone expected

Aizawa, glaring at Izuku: I knew it. You’re using your quirk to help your friend

Izuku, turning and smirking: And? What about it?

Aizawa: I could expel you both right now for cheating and interfering with results of a test

Shinsou: *face deadpan but shitting his pants, hoping Izuku will weasel their way out of this*

Izuku, gremlin smirk forming: No you won’t, Eraserhead. If you were doing this test you would have used your quirk to cancel your clasmates’ quirks to put you on a even playing field. I’m doing the exact opposite and helping. Plus, you only said “use your quirks during the test to increase your scores.” You didn’t forbid using our quirks to affect other people’s scores, nor saying we could only increase our own score.

Aizawa, cheshire grin: So you are related to your brother. Alright. Shinsou, throw the ball again and Midoriya, you can use your quirk

Shinsou, thinking: how is always able to pull us out of repercussions for our actions?

Battel Trial

Finally back to what this whole things should have been about! Jeez that took forever and I’m starting to get sleepy typing

Based on the pros and cons you gave and also what amusing me the most because I’ve writing this for 5 hours is that the Villains (Shinsou and Uraraka) should win.

Once Izuku gets over the fact he’s having to battle his basically second brother, Shinsou calms him down and tells him it’s fine, just pretend we’re sparing with Tenko again, he gets pumped af to brawl. Maybe a little too hyped up, since it makes his energy levels twice the ridiculous amount they were before and makes him even more jumpy and animated. Iida interprets this as him not taking things seriously and chastises him for it, which pisses Izuku off because he is taking it seriously. It’s just not being expressed in the way Iida expects it to be expressed. So, he’s definitely not as helpful to him as he could be while in the planning phase, and might have made things a bit harder than they needed to be when explaining the blueprint, just to annoy him.

Shinsou and Uraraka don’t have this problem and quickly come up with the idea to put the bomb on the roof. This is so Uraraka can use her quirk to send things high into the sky with only her nausea as the limit instead of the ceiling, and they’ll bring some more ruble and boxes up there too so she has ammo. She’ll try to stay as quiet as she can to guard and hide the bomb while Shinsou is a few levels below to make the heros think the bomb is there.

A trick they have up their sleeves is that Uraraka noticed that the blueprints had really weird airducts (something only she would notice because it’s so minor) and when they went to check it out, the airducts were actually tunnels disguised as airducts. So now the villains have a way of getting around that the heros don’t, and won’t be seen. With Uraraka directing him from the blueprints, Shinsou has his own private hallways! He can definitely use this in combination with his voice changer :)

I’m not too sure how the fight would go down, but some parts I think would happen is Shinsou trolling them from inside the tunnel with his voice changer. I don’t think he would spring the mind control on him just yet, Izuku taught him to have Fun™ afterall, and would switch between Inko’s and Tenko’a voices while messing with him. I just want my baby to create some psychological torture ok Another thing would be them finding the bomb on the roof and when Izuku’s about to grab it, that’s when Shinsou uses his mind control with AFO’s voice. I’m guessing they had some family videos with him in it so that’s how we knew what his voice sounded like.

Like you said when Izuku got controlled he was in a jump so when he fell he breaks out, but at that point Uraraka had moved the bomb and Shinsou is dealing with Iida. They’re running out of time so Iida and Izuku are starting to become a little desperate, so Iida yells at Izuku to use his quirk on him to make him extra fast so he can grab the bomb. He does, but Iida doesn’t expect it to be so powerful since the other times in the exercise Izuku used it on him he was holding back. Iida becomes a knockoff Sonic and shoot towards the bomb way faster than he expected. He didn’t expect to go the speed of Retro Burst without trying, so he overshoots it and ends up falling off the ledge near Izuku. He’s able to catch himself on the roof, but he’s not able to pull himself up without help and he’s starting to slip. Izuku has to pick between the bomb and Iida, and he decides to save Iida. While pulling him back up the timer goes off and the villains win.

Iida thanks him for saving him while Izuku just kinda goes “Duh, I wasn’t gonna let you get badly hurt if I could stop it. Annoy and inconvenience maybe, but not hurt. Of course I picked you. Anyways gotta go bug Hitoshi”

Just because Izuku is a dramatic bitch, while they’re walking back Izuku jumps unto Shinsou’s back and starts rambling to Uraraka and Shinsou about how cool their plan was, asking about the voices in the hallway and Shinsou’s new mask, clarifying some parts of their plan he didn’t get, and just generally being very animated and his talkative, analyzing self. Iida starts to think that maybe he was too quick to judge the green bean

[transpoettryinghisbest]

Mission Complete 2

(Set three years after the first one. AUTHOR'S NOTE: "Tag" is my name for the main character. It's short for protagonist.)

The air vent fell to the ground with a loud clatter, and Monty gave a frustrated sigh.

“Do you mind?” he declared, not looking up from his comic book.

Carla emerged from behind where the vent had been, hopping down onto the ground after it. “Monty? What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“Come on, you know me. I've almost finished the map of this place.” It wasn't a physical map, more of a series of memorised routes for getting around the school. She'd had one for every school she'd been to before and this one was no exception. “So…?”

“Well I was trying to read my comic book.”

She peered over his shoulder out of curiosity. “Oh yeah? It any good?”

Monty sighed again and pulled another comic book out of the pocket on the back of his wheelchair and tossed it to Carla, all without looking up. “That's the first in the series. You can borrow it if it'll shut you up.”

But before Carla could offer a word of appreciation, there was a thump as the door slammed open and Carla quickly threw the comic away from her - she'd sooner be found dead than seen reading that nerdy crap.

“Monty!” It was Tag.

“What now? Can everyone just leave me in peac-”

“It's your sister.”

This finally drew his attention. “Penny?”

Tag was accompanied by Buggs, who had Penny slung over his shoulder in a fireman's lift.

“What happened?” Monty demanded.

“I don't know, we were talking and she just collapsed in a bunch of pain. She wouldn't tell me anything, just kept saying 'get Monty, get Monty'.”

Buggs gently laid her down on the table. Her eyes were screwed shut, her teeth gritted and every muscle in her body was tensed as she writhed around slightly making pained noises.

“Penny, if you can hear me, tell me what's wrong.”

“...Monty?”

“I'm right here. Talk to me.”

“Help. It hurts…”

“Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere.”

Monty looked from Tag to Buggs in the hopes of finding any new information that may help him, but Buggs just just threw up his hands.

“Hey, don't look at me, I'm just the delivery boy,” he said. “The kid couldn't exactly carry her himself.” Tag thanked him and he waved his hands dismissively “Nah, no worries.”

“So can you fix her, Monty?” Carla asked.

“I don't even know what's wrong with her! How am I supposed to…”

He cut himself off. He wouldn't let Penny get scared thinking he couldn't help her. Monty would just have to figure it out. Penny was in the foetal position with one arm across her stomach and the other clutching the back of her neck. She wasn't capable of speaking very much, though she could communicate on a very simple level.

“Did it happen gradually or instantly?” Monty asked.

“Instantly,” Tag replied. “Almost. After a few seconds she was just…” He mimed her lying on the ground.

Monty had a suspicion of what it might be, but there was a drawback.

He pulled the others aside so that they were out of Penny's earshot. “I can't operate on her like this, she needs anaesthetic.”

“She needs what?”

“Sleeping gas. She can't be conscious during the operation or else…a number of things could happen.”

“What, you don't have that?” Buggs said. “I thought you were the guy who had everything. Always prepared.”

“I'm not a doctor, I'm a mechanic. I'm not used to working on things that…can move and talk and stuff.”

“Well you can't do nothing!” Carla declared.

“What's going on?” Penny called from across the room. “Monty?”

As he wheeled himself back over to the table, he could hide his worries from her but couldn't disguise the concerned expression on his face.

“We'll have to get a teacher to-”

“No.” Tag was cut off by Monty, who wouldn't even entertain that idea.

Because the teacher would have to send Penny to a hospital where dozens of doctors and surgeons would try to fix the little cyborg girl. Word could be out about her secret to the masses and before they knew it, she'd be known worldwide. 'The freaky robot girl'. She'd never be able to live like that.

And what if the doctors couldn't understand how her body worked? What if their lack of expertise in mechanics just damaged her more as they tried to fix her?

“She's my sister. I can fix her,” Monty said, simply.

None dared to disagree with him.

“Buggs, keep watch at the door,” Monty instructed. “If anyone shows up, get rid of them.”

“Sure, Boss.”

“I guess we'll have to hold her down while you operate?” Tag suggested.

“That won't work, it'll only freak her out more,” Monty replied. “She needs to be properly sedated or the whole process could get messed up.”

Carla sighed. “Look, there's an obvious easy solution to this.”

“Obviously there isn't or I would've realised it by now.”

“Well maybe you're not as smart as you think you are.”

Monty suppressed an angry outburst and instead glared at her. “Fine!” he almost yelled. “If you have a quick fix then use it.”

Penny opened her eyes slightly to see what was going on and saw Carla coming towards her.

“Carla? Why is everyone arguing?”

“It's fine, don't worry. Your brother's just being a pain.”

“But he can fix you. And he will,” Tag clarified.

“Of course I will.”

“So just stay still for a second,” Carla said, taking Penny's head in both hands. “And before you know it, you'll be all fixed up.”

With one swift motion Carla slammed Penny's head into the desk. She didn't make a sound, her eyes simply flickering as she fell unconscious, but Monty and Tag both cried out in surprise.

“Carla what the hell did you do?”

“You needed her unconscious. She's unconscious. You're welcome.”

“You could've given her brain damage!”

“Oh please. She'll be fine.”

“I'll kill you for that!”

“Uh, Monty?” Tag said, cautiously.

“What?”

“We might be against the clock, here. If you need to operate before Penny wakes up, I mean.”

Realisation set in and melted Monty's rage to a mellow annoyance.

“I won't let anyone out so you can still beat her up when you're done with Penny,” Buggs called from the other side of the room, blocking the doorway.

“Charming,” Carla commented. “I'm sticking around anyway. You never know when you're actually going to need me.”

Monty exhaled angrily and without another word, moved back to Penny and inspected her. Once he was assured that her head was fine, he lifted her shirt up to the bottom of her ribs and found the source of the problem, just as he'd suspected. He sucked in air through his teeth in a gesture of uncomfortable sympathy.

“What is it?” Tag asked.

He tried to look, but Monty gestured for him to stay where he was. “You might not want to look.”

“Do you know what's wrong with her?”

“She's had a growth spurt.”

Carla made a confused face. “That's it? She sounded like she was dying!”

“Yeah,” Tag put in. “Growing pains can hurt but not that much.”

“Well your bodies aren't made of metal,” Monty pointed out. “When the biological parts of her grow, the metal parts don't. So they dig into the skin.”

“And that's what caused all of that pain?”

“Yes.”

“Can you fix her?”

“You know I can. I just need…” He reached into the pocket on the back of his wheelchair and brought out a file. “Here we go.”

The next hour or so, Monty spent peeling back parts of Penny's skin and filing the metal plates until they fitted neatly once again. It wasn't the most enjoyable job, but Monty never complained. He'd do anything for his sister.

It was weird to think that it'd been only three years since the last time he'd done something like this. Penny had needed tweaks and updates in the past, but the only real big operation Monty had done on her was when Tag and the twins had begged him to bring her back to life. Her mother had blown her head off to get her out of the way, insisting that she'd fix her later. But 'later' never came as Penny's mother died the same day, and Monty was left in charge of bringing Penny back. Shortly after that, Penny was adopted into Monty's family, and while having an android for a sister was…interesting in more ways than one, Monty had grown to really care about her - more than anyone had seen him care about anyone else. And Penny adored her brother. The one who'd saved her. He knew he could do so again.

A little while later, Penny began to stir as she awakened. She made a mumbling sound, then her eyes flickered open.

“Penny, don't move,” Monty insisted. “I'm not finished and I need you to be very still.”

“Okay,” she mumbled.

Monty called Tag over.

“What, he's your new assistant now?” Carla said. “Have I been downgraded?”

“Yes.”

She rolled her eyes. “I'm heartbroken.”

Monty ignored her. “Kid, can you hold her down? Gently. Just make sure she doesn't move.”

Penny had been rolled over onto one side, so Tag held her in place by her shoulder while Monty continued to work on the panel located on the back of her neck. Penny put up no resistance to any of this - she trusted them and was still dazed from being knocked out.

“Did Carla hit my head into the desk?” she mumbled, eyes shut and trying to stay as still as possible.

“Don't worry about it,” Monty replied, simply. “I'm almost done and then everything will be fine. It'll be over.”

He flipped the panel shut and she gave an inhuman jolt as if struck by a (very small) lightning bolt. Then Monty backed off and let Penny sit up by herself.

“How do you feel?”

“Kind of sore.” She instinctively rubbed the parts of her body that'd been operated on. “But better. Am I all fixed now?”

“For the time being. I may have to do this again in future whenever your next growth spurt is. We'll see.”

“Until then, you'll have to find something that'll knock her out if needed,” Tag said.

“I'll see if Felix has anything semi-legal I can use.”

“Thank you, Monty,” Penny said. “You've saved me again.”

“Don't get all sentimental on me now, it's all in a day's work.”

“Nice,” Carla declared, sarcastically. “Maybe one day he'll admit that he cares about you, Penny. I'm not going to hold my breath.”

She got up and headed towards the door.

“I'm glad things worked out okay,” Buggs clarified. Ever since Penny had left behind her life of being the principle's rat and became one of them, Buggs left his hard feelings for her behind as well. “Let me know if you ever need my help with anything again.”

“And let me know if you need my help,” Carla put in. “So that I can reject you.”

“I'll bear that in mind,” Monty declared.

The bell rang and life resumed back to normal.

[chuchuroon]

IKEMEN SENGOKU:  FEAST THINE EYES ON STEAMPUNK WARLORDSSSS

Soooo after MM I have finally found my next Otome obsession Currently, the Taiwan server of Ikemen Sengoku is running a region-exclusive event that puts all the Warlords in a Steampunk AU. The outfits are too good, so I wanted to share this with the Western/JP server players! (Currently, I play on all 3 servers like the dumbass obsessive idiot I am)

More photos and information on the event story under the cut! (SPOILERS for the Taiwan Ikesen Steampunk Event). If you’d like to play on the Taiwan server, the app is named 美男戰國 (copy paste into your app store and search) and it doesn’t appear to be region-locked. Ikesen is licensed to/published by a different company (iSweety) in Taiwan, so they sometimes have artwork and events /merch that are exclusive to that region, as well as unique promo videos.

There wasn’t a promo page where I could grab the event artworks, so pardon my phone screenshots of dubious quality. I tried my best to take screencaps where the dialogue was minimal so you can get a better idea of their outfits. They’re all so good!

A 3/4 view of Mitsuhide’s Steampunk outfit. In this event, only stories for Nobunaga, Masamune, and Kenshin are available, and a minor collectible story for Ieyasu.  In Masamune’s afterstory, he mentions that Mitsuhide has the special ability to read people’s thoughts.

*holds back nosebleed* I’m weak to men with slender waists ahhhhhghhgh. Masa’s Steampunk outfit fits him so well (Is that a man-corset? Can we make all men wear corsets?) and of course his collar is unfastened. I love the cogwheel design on his eyepatch too.

Even Kennyo looks rather dashing, that rascal, although he’s human in this story and hates the androids (and especially Nobunaga, of course) for having killed his fellow brethren. 

IKESEN STEAMPUNK EVENT: STORY BACKGROUND / INTRO 

You, the (human) main character, are the granddaughter of an eccentric Duke that created sentient machine life-forms called 械偶, which I will call androids for now (The name literally translates as “mechanical puppets”). Kennyo and others sometimes refers to them as merely “puppets” (人偶), likely in a derogatory manner.

The androids are sentient and are made of cogs and wheels and circuitry, and powered by a main heart-like “core” which contains a rune. The rune contained within the core is referenced as the “soul” of the androids. Runes have different names, meanings, and uses. If an android’s core is too badly damaged, they cease to function, or die in the robot sense of the word. Even if the core is repaired, if the “rune soul” is damaged, the android wouldn’t be considered living/sentient even if the rest of its mechanisms are functioning. Runes can exist in other forms, such as carved on things like doorways and rocks and hold power. There are teleportation runes which is how androids manage to quickly travel to and from the human community when necessary. Different circuits within an android serve different functions (movement, senses, etc), much like how different lobes or parts of the brain control specific bodily functions in a human. There are different types of androids, such as battle-types and healer-types, and they can have specific protocols and purposes. The story alludes to additional types, but they are not specifically named. Androids have masters, who are typically the one who created them, although this can differ. If a master dies, an android can live without a master or choose to follow another one. Androids can have multiple masters in their life, but in the story the majority of the androids live in their own community and no longer have a master. 

Androids can obtain energy through consuming human food/drink, although it’s not described as their ideal or main method of obtaining energy (the main method was not specified). It’s possible for traces of human food and drink to remain in their system, which can eventually build up over time and cause them to break down. Androids have their own emotions/opinions and thoughts, and can touch and feel just like humans. However, there is tension between humans and androids, who fear that androids, being physically superior, may one day wipe out the humans, and fights often break out. 

After your grandfather’s death, you go to “Elfland”, a hidden, floating island-slash-sky vessel created by your grandfather that is the last standing community of the sentient androids. Within this community, there are peaceful androids, who do not want to harm humans, and anti-human androids, who will attack humans on sight, as well as a third, neutral faction. You are here to search for your grandfather’s hidden treasure, which he left you clues to before he passed away, and you’re assisted by the androids during your search. Nobunaga, Masamune, Mitsuhide, Mitsunari, Hideyoshi, are part of the peaceful faction, while Kenshin is part of the anti-human faction. Yukimura and Ieyasu are part of the neutral faction. In Kenshin’s route, Sasuke and Shingen are also mentioned briefly, but their faction is unknown. There was no mention of Yoshimoto or Ranmaru. 

CHARACTER STORY - MINOR TO MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW    

Masamune:

Your grandfather the Duke had a friend and fellow android researcher whose eldest son passed away. In light of this, the Duke created Masamune in the image of that eldest son, to keep his friend company. Instead of “Master”, Masamune referred to the Duke’s friend as “Father”, and they had a close relationship.

The Duke and his friend eventually had a bad falling out that escalated to violence, and Masamune got between them to stop them from fighting each other. His “father” tried to shoot the Duke, and Masamune chose to protect the Duke. As a result of this incident, Masamune lost his right eye, and also became estranged from his father, who was upset that Masamune chose the Duke over him.  Although Yasu-bot offered to fix it, Masamune declined, saying that he wanted to keep the broken eye as a reminder to himself that “all choices have consequences” (and because eyepatches are cool). When you arrive on Elfland, he has you skydiving into your target exploration area rather than take a long time to walk there, and generally shows you around and adventures alongside you, while simultaneously protecting you from skirmishes against the anti-human androids. Ieyasu mentions that while Masamune “isn’t a battle-type android, he’s pretty capable”, but doesn’t really explain just what kind of android he is. When Masamune’s father got grievously injured, he was kept alive but was on a deathbed, suffering from tremendous pain every day. When Masamune came to visit him, he begged for Masamune to put him out of his misery. Masamune decided to do so, knowing that it would result in his father’s wife and younger son resenting him and people saying horrible things about how he’s an android that killed his own master who treated him like a son. You, of course, help resolve this misunderstanding and also see past the terrible reputation this gave Masamune, and you accept him fully, ya’ll bond over war and fighting dealing with your ex-fiance (who happens to be the biological younger son of Masamune’s father, and colluded with Kennyo to try to wreck Elfland) and discovering your granpapaw’s treasure, and become lovers. In the afterstory, Masamune recalls that his father once told him to live life to the fullest. “If you’re not doing what you love and enjoying all that life has to offer, then you’re not truly living, whether you’re made of flesh or steel doesn’t matter. Otherwise, even if you have a heartbeat and you’re breathing, you’re no different than a walking corpse. If one day, I can no longer feel like I’m alive, then I’m already dead, even if my body is still functioning.” Reminiscing on this, Masamune wonders if meeting you was all fated since then. “I’ve fallen in love with an incredible woman”, he realizes, and listens to your heartbeat and makes you listen to his - “Every movement of every cog in my body is saying how much I love you, to the point of breaking. Can you hear it?” He asks. “Let me listen awhile longer, and I’ll answer,” you reply. In true Masamune fashion, he declares he can't wait any longer and decides to get his answer directly from your body. Yee haw.

Nobunaga:

He has a special ability which can disable the functions of other androids temporarily. During your research you discover that he was made in the image of the famous historical warlord Nobunaga Oda, who once united Japan. You guys are already lovers when the story begins. Human-Android tensions are high, and what’s worse is that Mitsuhide has been sneaking around meeting humans (including Kennyo) and making shady ass deals. You discover your grandfather’s treasure hidden behind a door with a riddle written in ancient Japanese, a dead language that only you know because your grandfather taught you. The riddle reads: “What can save both the humans and androids and allow them to live in peace?” and the answer is “love”, and the door opens when you write out the character for love in Japanese on the entrance. Inside the treasure box you find in the room, you learn secrets that could be used for both great and terrible deeds, including the knowledge of how to create sentient androids and how to destroy them, how Elfland was created, and various other secrets about androids. You decide to hide them again to prevent this knowledge from getting into the wrong hands.

Human-Android tensions escalate into full out war as Mitsuhide informs the humans how to gain access to Elfland and where to attack. Kennyo and Nobunaga cross swords and Nobunaga is nearly outmatched when Mitsuhide appears, revealing that he led the humans here intentionally because he wanted to herd the bulk of the anti-Android fanatics together in one location and collectively wipe them out in order to effectively stamp out future threats of war. He apologizes for being late as he was delayed by Hideyoshi-bot almost killing him. Nobunaga just laughs and tells Mitsuhide he deserves it for worrying Hideyoshi, and a spiteful Kennyo reveals that he has been modified with Android parts to become stronger, and activates this power to try to land a killing blow on Nobunaga - only to discover that Mitsuhide has even plotted everything this far back in advance, and way back when Kennyo was being modified, Mitsuhide ensured that he had faulty parts installed. Heheh. Mitsuhide:2, Kennyo: 0 In the afterstory, it’s revealed that one of the secrets you learned was the process of turning an android into a human. Androids can perform what’s called a “soul contract” with each other; when two androids perform this, they become linked and know each other’s thoughts and feelings, and if one Android dies, the other also loses power to their rune core and dies as well. However, if an Android performs a soul contract with a human, they can become a human (but there are unspecified risks involved, and success is more or less regarded as miraculous), and share a life. Since Nobunaga’s primary protocol was to protect Elfland and the vault that guarded your grandfather’s treasure, and that duty has been completed, he wishes to become a human so that he can grow old with you and share the same lifespan. You establish the contract and miraculously he’s turned into a human and ya’ll enjoy fun kinky times where you both know what the other is thinking and feel what the other is feeling (oh boy).

Ieyasu:

Healer-type android and constantly frets about the fact that he’s not a battle-type and therefore weak, and wonders why your grandfather created him this way. He claims to not like humans, and he blames himself for not being able to save the Duke, but you help him understand that it wasn’t his fault and that you are thankful he was able to stay by the Duke’s side and keep him company when he passed. He complains about having to repair Mitsunari-bot (who we never see). He is reluctant to get involved with humans, though this is revealed that it’s because he believes humans are too frail and die easily, and he didn’t want to experience heartbreak again. One of the lines he mutters to himself (well out of your earshot of course) is how the existence of people like you and your grandfather is the reason he could never bring himself to fully hate or reject the humans. He has a workshop and appears to not differentiate between factions when it comes to treating those who need it, as he mentions having repaired Ken-bot before as well, who is on the anti-human faction.

Kenshin:

The text translates to “My emotional circuits have been broken since a long time ago”. I chortled to myself for a good, long minute at that one. 

Anyway, Ken-bot is a battle-type android who also happens to have “protecting you” written as his top/primary protocol by your grandfather, which is why he goes along with all your endeavors despite belonging to the anti-human faction of the androids. He constantly emphasizes the fact that, as a battle-type droid, he is only capable of fighting and causing destruction. His emotional circuits aren’t completely broken, and he still has an obsession with sake and dried plums, which, according to Sasuke-bot, Ken-bot partakes to a degree that leads Sasuke-bot to believe Ken-bot is trying to drink/eat himself into an early grave. 

You learn from your grandfather’s journal that he originally created Kenshin as a battle-type android, but that he desired to have Kenshin protect his legacy (the androids on elfland, and his granddaughter) rather than simply for fighting and destruction. He saw Kenshin as a protector, not a destroyer. You try to tell his to Ken-bot and also confess your feelings, which seem to cause Ken-bot’s emotional circuits to malfunction even more. “I don’t understand what you mean when you say you like me,” he says brokenly, and during the height of the human-android battle decides to stick you in the safest place possible, which is in a... dun dun dun-geon. He then throws himself into such a battle frenzy against the humans that invaded Elfland that Yuki-bot (instructed by Sasuke-bot, who we never actually see) comes to release you from the dungeon and take you to Ken-bot in order to save him from himself. Ken-bot believes the only way to achieve lasting peace is to wipe out all the humans. You challenge him by saying he should then kill you, since you are a human. Just as you seem to be about to convince him, a shot rings out, and Kenshin shoves you out of the way, his core taking a hit from protecting you. Shingen-bot and Sasuke-bot also having taken serious injuries, the anti-human faction have no leaders, and retreat. 

You take an unconscious Ken-bot to the Oda forces to seek Ieyasu’s help. He says that the rune powering Ken-bot’s core is damaged too badly, so you find the hidden treasure of the Duke, hoping to learn a way to restore Ken-bot. Ieyasu suggests attempting the soul-contract to try to convert Ken-bot into a human as a last ditch effort to save him, as it allows the bonded pair to share their lifeforce, but he stresses that there’s no known record of it succeeding, and you may shorten your lifespan as a result. Your grandfather’s records also mentions that would only work with high-level androids. Yasu-bot also adds this flavor text that by attempting the soul contract, “You will share and endure all of the hardships, feelings and memories from the past of the other person”. You, of course, plow forward without hesitation, to which Yasu-bot gives his typical sigh of annoyance. “As expected of you”, he comments simply, and adds “I can see why this emotionally-broken idiot would be changed by you.”

After what feels like a long and painful dream, you wake up to find Pinocchio - I mean Ken-bot - has become a real boy! He confesses his feelings to you, Yasu-bot fills you both in what happened with current events while you two were unconscious, and slaps on an added warning to Kenshin of “Don’t ever make her cry again. There’s more people than you can imagine who hold her in high esteem, and they’re all incredibly annoying people...and will be much more difficult for you to handle now, as a human” - to which Kenshin answers with a typical bloodthirsty threat and by grabbing and hugging you possessively. Yasu-bot shrugs and says he doesn’t want to meddle in between “an annoying couple” anyway, and makes an offhand snide remark about how neither one of you make him worry any less than Mitsunari-bot does, checks up on you two one last time, and hurries out the room like he can’t stand to be there for another moment longer. Which is smart of him, since in the Afterstory ya’ll basically exchange mushy ass words with each other and do the nasty.

annnnd there’s the Steampunk event as I experienced it. Hope to see some Steampunk AU fan creations of our favorite warlords in the future!

[blueberrysimsam]

Mystery Skulls Animated: Robot AU

Since people seem to be really interested in my Robot!AU for MSA (thank you so much by the way!), I figured I could post a bit about it! I’ll mainly just talk about the main gang for now. 

Arthur Kingsmen: Living in a small town with poor social skills wasn’t very easy. There were a lot of things that made Arthur self conscious and unable to talk to anyone without strong anxiety such as his missing arm. (Don’t ask him about it, he doesn’t like to talk about it.) Though with every grey cloud, there’s a silver lining. With his arm gone and no real good replacements made by modern society that didn’t cost a fortune, this mechanic had to get creative. He was always interested in how machines worked but, never tried making something from scratch. All he ever did was take things apart and/or fix already made machines. After he made a very functional arm, it inspired him! Arthur made small drones that, while simple, functioned extremely well and were very impressive for someone his age and skill level. Dealing with constant anxiety, depression, and loneliness sparked and idea in his head. What if he made an A.I? A robot capable of emotion and feeling. A robot that could help him function like a “normal” person. A robot who he could call a friend. It took over a year and half to design and build but, Arthur did what most thought was impossible. He made a sentient A.I.

Lewis 01: That A.I was Lewis. A robot designed to learn like a normal human but, also be there to almost take care of Arthur whenever he needed it. Lewis was programmed to be able to look up recipes online and cook them as needed. He could sing soft melodies to help curb his anxiety. Lewis really was like a Mom bot of sorts. Of course, his caring nature, while being partially programmed, mostly came from Lewis himself. Learning and adapting with time. He started to gain interests, hobbies, likes and dislikes. Caring for Arthur never feels like a chore. Lewis genuinely cares about his creator and wants him to be happy nd healthy. Even if that means, he has to force Arthur to eat a vegetable every once in a while. When Lewis was first created, he looked like any normal robot you would normally think of but, as Lewis gained his personality he requested to change his look, to which Arthur always agreed to. Because, Lewis was the first model, he’s a bit .. clunky and in need of improvements but, he was honestly a scientific marvel to anyone who caught wind. 

Vivi 02: A few years after Lewis’ creation, Arthur receives a call from an inventor from Japan. She offers to help fund his research and help create new robots but, this time they’re more intended for battle. Seeing it as a great opportunity, Arthur agrees and gets to work on a newer model. With new knowledge from just experience and also the funder, he was able to create a robot that was smaller and more slim. A robot that could hold more in a smaller body. This robot was designed with all sorts of lasers and even freezing beams that came from its hands for example. (All the while writing down to give Lewis weaponry later.) This smaller android was activated and soon became Vivi. She’s a faster learner then Lewis was. She can even out smart her own creator after a while and sees his firewalls and blocks as a challenge to see how well she can perform. She gained a bit of a snarky personality and causes Arthur quiet a bit of headaches but, she just like Lewis loves him and cares for him just as much.

Mystery: Arthur had owned Mystery since he was a young teenager. Mystery kept him company when the poor mechanic was all alone. Mystery always cared for his owner and would even get protective of him when faced with people he didn’t know. He was just a normal dog before, Arthur started inventing more and more. Soon, Arthur gave him a collar with a speaker on the front. This collar when put around the dog’s neck connected to Mystery’s brain waves and translated whatever he was thinking into English! So Mystery could now talk to him! Of course, this only caused a few headaches as well because, now all Mystery does is ask for food all the time. Arthur tries to tell him no but, Mystery can always con food out of Lewis. Needless to say, this dog’s a bit chubbier then he was before.  

[artificialintelligencecour-blog2]

Computerized reasoning, Responsibility And Christianity

Computerized reasoning (AI) is a particular part of mechanical control designing applied to the human-machine interface. Huge exploration programs are building up the following period of man-made brainpower. Is the charming objective of making humanoids with such a mindfulness an achievable objective? Indeed, even without mindfulness, robots have different utilizations, in any event, figuring out how to handle all the more testing assignments. There are many interrelated issues here, not least those of morals and State guideline. This concise article plans to talk about these on a basic level, and furthermore how this difficulties Christianity.

• AUTOMATION

As a specific part of computerization, modern robots have been around for quite a while, and utilized for some normal errands, for example, holding welding hardware with control highlights for picking and setting for the quick and repeatable joining of vehicle body boards. Robots ready to pick and spot are normally utilized in the assembling of little segments and for the get together of various mass-delivered household and mechanical items. Presently, with the possibility of further advances in financially accessible robots, a few workers dread the danger of repetition.

For an essential qualification, while PCs can process a lot of coded data, for example, your PC with a connect to the Internet, a robot takes process mechanization to a phase where it performs explicit mechanical developments in, for models, modern creation, performing sensitive surgeries, or review undertakings, for example, in food creation, and the car or pharmaceutical businesses. Visit this site artificial intelligence courses in hyderabad

• INTELLIGENCE

At that point, as improvements progress to man-made reasoning (AI), the electronic control goes past a customized succession of developments to where opportunity, decision and learning may happen. In this manner, a robot with sensor and vision frameworks might be given a decision between a few discretionary developments, and be customized so that dependent on its past activities, when confronted with different other options, it might recollect its improved decisions and use them at whatever point it is given that equivalent or comparable test.

Maybe, going past that, a few robots have been customized for more significant level reactions to critical thinking so they seem to have specific brightness in clinical diagnostics, careful intercession, or in chess-playing, for occasions. What is clear, however, is that we are as yet discussing machines; we are not looking at anything like human objectivity. The more elevated level AI humanoids intended for complex social collaborations will remain machines.

• SOCIOLOGY

Robots, called androids, since they are intended to take after people, will carry numerous difficulties to society, as their essence may turn into an element of regular day to day existence for certain individuals. The moral use and social science of androids with AI will require extraordinary consideration and guideline including unique preparing in human-robot association. Plainly especially defenseless individuals, maybe with mental or passionate sickness, may turn out to be appended to a customized robot, and react to them as though they were a genuine individual. What's more, individuals with mental imbalance, for example, may incline toward the zero-feeling, unsurprising mingled reactions of an AI robot to those of a relative.

• RESPONSIBILITY

In any case, as AI robots remain machines, we ought to abstain from considering them similar to a human as though they had genuine human character type characteristics, or enthusiastic affectability or warmth. The machine doesn't have a consideration on the planet, and will never endure genuine good blame, nor ever can create social mindfulness or obligation to where it starts to act in the public arena as though it was such a human sub-animal types.

With such a rising society, there should be universal understandings and cautious guideline. For similarly as it might be conceivable to create humanoids and androids with evident affectability, a mindful grin and learned aptitudes, so a designer with a naughty brain, or an unfriendly country, may all around put AI to a wide range of ulterior, or monstrously undermining exercises. This speaks to genuine difficulties, and as I compose with scriptural Christian feelings, our calling keeps on being salt and light in a dull, progressively antagonistic world, ruled by much pointless intuition, because of the stubborn dismissal of God's uncovered truth in Jesus Christ.

• UNIQUE

Furthermore, if people think they have the insight to reproduce themselves falsely to a degree where there is practically no contrast among them and their own manifestations, they have fallen into spoiled and worthless reasoning. Humankind, before the Genesis fall, was the zenith of God's creation. What's more, regardless of our being good revolutionaries against God, or heathens, naturally, we are as yet great and remarkable people. To expect we are only normally developed, electro-concoction thinking machines with counterfeit mindfulness, is a stunning and corrupting self-judgment to depersonalized purposelessness, with no goal esteem, genuine obligation, or importance. Also, in the event that you never heard anything like that, presently you will always be unable to state you were not cautioned!

Against this more extensive setting, it is just scriptural Christianity which has an away from for the target worth and importance of our mankind inside an unmistakable moral structure for a solid human culture. In spite of the genuine good crack between the principal human pair and the living God, our Creator, we despite everything hold a feeling of equity and of target wrong. There is as yet a typical certifiable good dissent against murder, burglary, assault, starvation and fighting that goes about as an additive for society.

• RECONCILIATION

With expanding secularization of social models and examples of what are considered satisfactory conduct for humanoids will come numerous difficulties for Christians. Here, we may confront things that contradict Christian estimations of truth, virtue, the right to speak freely of discourse, certifiable good responsibility, and opportunity to announce Christ as the main Savior for authentic good blame. Along these lines, scriptural Christians should figure out how to carry the good news of Christ to individuals who are getting progressively cheapened, corrupted and dehumanized by indecent and tolerant ways of life and open to control by tyrant type androids as instruments for additional social re-designing by forcefully humanistic common States.

Subsequently, it gives the idea that every future improvement in AI should perceive that anyway progressed and allowed to do non-previsioned activities, the kind of knowledge and its potential for its own in-fabricated turn of events, will remain the obligation of its engineers, makers and authorized administrators. Simulated intelligence robots will require painstakingly planned, enforceable guideline and direction for their viable and helpful application to society. What's more, individuals now in moral rebel against God, albeit initially made in his actual resemblance, will consistently remain in extraordinary need of an individual compromise to God based on the completed work of Christ on the cross, something an android will never require.

[shy-magpie]

RQG 146

[Author’s note: Sorry about the long break! I caught a bug and haven’t been able to edit for love or money. I have been writing the live blogs as the episodes come out but I suspect I will have to edit the stuffing out of them to get something that is both coherent and not twice as long as the show. Also I’m going to try to remember to toss a cut at the top of these things so it doesn’t take up so much of the dash etc.]

I love when they go auctioneer because they want to get to the content faster. Ooh reminder that the party have slightly conflicting goals. I almost spaced that Zolf's priority is the info to save the world while Cel is more narrowly focused on taking out the threat to their village. 

Final bets on whether: 1) the timelines are simultaneous 2) its the same room 3) who(or what) is in the chair ~Hamid time~ Another stealth check and I think Alex rolled something secret. I love these nerds, I don't think they even noticed they slipped into the more precise language of math to describe the place, always makes me feel trusted when people don't hide that kind of thing. Bulk head doors are a good sign. Alex might be trying to build up to it but Bryn wants to get a description of the figure in the chair as badly as we do if not more. Full blank-masked male, cables from the chair to the organ. Ben, sweetie, we aren't going to shoot-first-ask-questions-later, or even take that as your serious suggestion moments after you reminded us Zolf is aiming for capture. "Could be another one of the dead bodies" Pardon me while I glitch on the idea that it being another member of the doomed party is the only thing that I can't recall being proposed over the last week. Am I forgetting or did Figgis actually come up as a suggestion but not that? Alex adds a ladder, to save Hamid one of his last spells "Tension, tension, tension" I can't parse how many of them are chanting but who ever that is, know I adore you. I should be vibrating from stress and instead I'm grinning like a fool. Thats my boy! Hamid's spell slots might be running scary low but his mind is sharp as ever, he remembers his potions! Oh dangerous game, but the extra time invisible as he gets closer sounds worth it. Picked up a few things from Sasha. "Think" Alex is actively trolling. The lights are bad? You choose to do that, Alex, put away the "victim of circumstances" tone. Oh the organ! I needed a better description of that. Lydia might be the only one who loves this description more than me. A pipe organ that makes potions instead of music? Bryn has heard of one where each key is an alchemical symbol. I might need to hunt down art for that if its a known pathfinder thing. Hamid recognizes it but is the wrong school to understand this, both by training as a wizard and as sorcerer. The pipes are actually full of various fluids and powders. Yes Cel needs to see this. Thank you Helen! How much money has he spent on this? Where is he getting the money? I need that clipped! (tension chant evolved) Oh hell of a bet Hamid Sasha would be proud. The table is so proud of him. FTR I think that was Ben not Bryn saying "I stroke his cheek", because Bryn wouldn't risk Alex making that joke canon and using it to hurt Hamid. (naturally there was such no risk if Ben made that joke) Cable to the back of the neck, in clerical robes (crap I remember a “Shoin the healer painting”(?) but I thought he was an alchemist? Is this an assistant? Mini boss? Or is he multi classing), a party mask? Back to that theme. Its a prop corpse and its not the same room, I'm going to scream. Hamid don't you dare! Dollars to donuts its going to stand up and be some kind of creepy corpse robot Hamid waves Skraak in Speaker time, Shoin sounds worse maybe off script. ~~party time~~ Oh Cel has to lose most of the beast voice. Never mind! Smaller pencils acquired! I love this description even better the second time around. Oh bless Lydia for giving the fuller description. 55 HP! 14 Con! Comfort beard. Ooh Azu has a potion to make her even further stronger than Zolf. (iirc she had 1 point over him already) Yes he is in fact lawful evil and no he doesn't ever let them rest. Wise Cel/Lydia! I love Azu's auras! Aura of courage sounds especially useful. Yes yes Azu is good, brave, and resolute. Oh poor Zolf can't prep without either sleep or knowing for sure the fight is coming. Cel actually has 59 HP thank goodness! Another hall? Its circling the dome Hamid is in. It better be the same dome! I feel a bit like I'm betraying the party to enjoy the set design when the set is designed to kill them. They go as fast as they can while checking for traps. I refuse to parse that any other way. Oh poor Alex, we appreciate the set design even if the characters don't. Next door has a porthole to look through. Bless Helen/Azu for reminding them to check for traps. Cel can still disable it! It was a hand buzzer? Oh, to waste spells. Missed an in laid wood image of Shoin as a saint. This guy has too much ego and money. Anyone else thinking of that old joke where a guy has to become a monk to be allowed to find out what is behind a ridiculous number of doors and the punchline is you have to become a monk to find out what he saw? Ok it is a good thing its not the right door ~Hamid time~

Alex you troll! I refuse to concede we needed something to bleed to the stress levels. Shoin’s voice officially probably not a pre recording. I love Hamid! Hangs a handkerchief over the corpse's eyes. Poseidon? Couldn't be any god other than Zolf's ex? Ok doesn't seem in good enough shape to be a necrobot, but the organ might change that. Metal chairs sized for the party bolted to floor. I think Hamid is officially having fun not following Shoin's suggestion to sit at the table. Look at the leader in him collecting the paperwork Official connection between blue veins and the simulacrum! Also a spot for the power source Liliana was working on? Red string joke! ~break~ He Acid Blasts a speaker and it pisses Shoin off. Yeah "young man" was exact wrong thing to try. Were you trying to hit his daddy issues? I love one troll and 1 Kobold! Minion this! If Hamid speaks up? Shoin’s sense are fallible, might come up later Hamid is the best! Might die of being the best, but if he has to go its fingers up. Halfling, Dragon and troll, not a damn inch of leverage except what he gets Shoin to give him by refusing to follow orders. Pretending to attempt to comply is so much more frustrating (and better listening) than if he simply went "shan't". The party comes in! A swear! Not really another way to put it. The corpse explodes! Is Shoin the organ itself? A hug! A Cel & Hamid hug! Zolf backs Hamid's play, and  joins in Shoin baiting. Hamid hugs Azu and Zolf! Finally a proper Zolf hug! Cel finally gets to check out the organ. It prioritizes looks over efficiency and isn't just a potion maker. Some of it goes over Cel's head. Cel blocks the outlet. Lydia still thinks slightly sideways like me, and I love it. The cylinders are near boiling. Hamid orders Skraak to safety! Cel tries to hug Skraak, but Skraak doesn't recognize them. Poor brave little guy tried to attack before they can explain. Cel takes chatty!Skraak well and they have another little bonding growl exchange. They get ready to skip Shoin's game and go to the next room. Bad sounds. Fist sized drops of luminous green liquid from the top of the room that don't act right. Zolf attempts open the door to the next room, Hamid sprints towards it. Thank goodness someone wants to live. Natural 1? But its initiative, so that shouldn't hurt too badly right? Right? No effect thank goodness Homing blobs? I am torn exactly between that being cool and not something I want the party to deal with. How many fire balls does Hamid have left? I think Cel is out of bombs, and if we remember nothing else from Kew its that swarms require explosions. Zolf! Its the big brother of the buzzer door and is locked to boot. Azu attacks the goo nearest Zolf. Helen is too wound up to remember how to roll. Bryn and Ben couch her through it in that RQ way. Cleave! More blobs and the existing ones move towards people. Magic missile! 4 pews! 2 at the nearest to him, 2 at the one nearest Cel. I'd say squishy solidarity but Cel is pretty tough for once. Cel shoots the nearest 3? Then flies up 10 feet up and towards Skraak. Zolf blesses the party! Fair Alex! Not everything has to have a mechanical effect. Azu attacks again. It explodes, if Azu hits it it will die.  At least one person should be safe. Skraak! He froze! Worth a shot Ben You'll see? It tries to blob Skraak and isn't big enough to hurt them. Is Skraak safe from collateral damage? Hamid and Cel both protect Skraak. Hamid tells Skraak to use his spear, Skraak runs instead. Thank god he might not die trying to be a hero. Something drains into the pipe organ and the pipe organ attacks! OMG it is a 50ft tall brain soup drinking electric monster! Yes Ben! Perfect! Shoin Mr Ceiling-ed himself theory has player buy in! Bye! Also I will eat my hat if the drop blobs aren't able to merge into something more dangerous.

[lucarioisinthevoid]

hello good sir (sir being a gender neutral term), i'd like to send some p r o m p t s. so i haven't played ucn in a LONG time, but some ideas off the top of my head: toy freddy (would be funny), funtime foxy (cause they're a bitch), n. fredbear and maybe nightmare (cause they're twisted versions of his b e l o v e d fredbear), and maybe foxy+bonnie (cause it's a bitch). just some ideas! also, being a man of culture, i'd like to request some tortu- jk, jk (i'd say sth funny but character limit).

(I will fight you for this ask. I will come to you home and pick you up and fling your body into space and into literal Among Us. My brain was going a mile a minute trying to gather enough coins to get rid of Funtime Foxy, and keep on top of EVERYTHING ELSE- And yet I was still surprised when I finally got jumpscared. Welp, I couldn’t have predicted it, so it’s kinda fun being able to write this now. Also yes, warning for mild torment! I’m just not good at writing it- Oh, also, here’s the AO3 link to the thing: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27687695/chapters/67764007 You can read the whole thing there and I update it there as I do here. You can request over there to, but that’s beside the point)

Be on top of his games. Watch his shows. Check in, but only at the right times. Henry grinded his teeth. It was almost like he had a son again- dear god, this truly was hell, wasn’t it? For a moment he had thought the Helpy robot was joking as he elaborated on what the damn plastic piece of shit’s mechanic was- No. No cursing. He shook his head. That was being petty for no reason. He had a mechanic- and it was a stupid one- but that was better than nothing. It was better than being told “you will die” without being able to do anything about it. For a moment he frowned, a though manifesting itself in the back of his mind. … if he would know there was no way to escape the pain, he would grow numb to it. So whoever or whatever set this up seemed to have a keen interest in- The clock chimed, it was time to play. Instantly he pulled up the monitor. He had been gifted the leeway of being allowed to eradicate one of them- and dear god, he would not say no, not if it was the only chance to give a little bit of payback. He checked on Toy Freddy- a good contender to be murdered- and clicked the door of the- vacuum cleaner- dear god, this would make his brain rot- then he moved on to more sensible things, like checking on Foxy, who was thankfully out, then moving over to gathering coins. Laughter from the door. “Mister Miller… look at you. You seem stressed.” “Why yes, I am quite tense.” Without looking up he closed the doors, opening them up right away. “I have to admit to my distain of the character selection that currently is coming after me. They make no sense, you see?” Another, similarly as deep voice sounded, albeit with a brighter tint to it- “… oh, don’t be ashamed of that, Mr. Miller. They have more distain for you than you do for them.” Once more, doors closed, doors open. He didn’t even need to look. “I can assume that, yes, but that is hardly my issue, is it now? My issue is their reality bending and tedious habits.” For this round he would be stuck on the cameras, wouldn’t he? Once more he flipped over to Foxy, gathering coins and being quietly thankful for the fact that he and Bonnie had not switched places yet. He had to get this done in the first time-warped hour and if he didn’t- he wasn’t sure when exactly the clock would move over and he didn’t want to find out. The nightmare duo was chuckling, so he shortly put the monitor down to look inside of Nightmare Fredbear’s red eyes. “… what are you supposed to be?” “You have never truly understood your own creation, did you…? If it lives… it changes…” “The only nightmare I ever created were the suits and-“ He turned to the other side, spotting the more pinkish eyes shining from that frame. “… you. Are you not supposed to be me?” “I think you can answer that yourself.” Shaking his head, Henry dismissed both of them, closing the doors and opening the camera feed, checking once more on Foxy, helping out Toy Freddy and finally snatching up the last few coins he needed- instantly he moved over to the price corner, ordering one of the silver coins- His eyes darted to the clock- Oh god, only a few more moments before the timer skipped- The pink hellfox was peering out of its cove, grinning widely- a grin that instantly was replaced by an agonized and hateful scream as Henry used the coin, allowing himself for a moment to watch the machine literally being disintegrated into clear silver dust. From the side, Nightmare Fredbear chuckled. “… how cruel.” “This is a dog-eat-dog world. You should not try to inflict onto others what you are not willing to go through yourself.” “Oh? Are you ready for what is coming for you then?” Abruptly Henry started laughing, as he once more checked on Foxy, then moved to Toy Freddy. “What? What is coming for me? Being brought back to Fredbear’s, except this time I am immortal, have inhuman strength and can start honing my ability to move whatever I desire with my mind? What a terrible fate you are threatening me with, Nightmare! I am appalled! How dare you gift me with everything I have ever wanted!” One last time he switched back to Foxy, then deactivated the monitors, assuming it was best to be on Foxy’s camera right away, so when he pulled the camera back up- His eyes fell on the little figure of Bonnie that was now on the table. For the love of god, how could he have been that stupid!? Looking up at Nightmare Fredbear’s red eyes, he saw a bit of bemusement in it- that and a deep, underlaying level of pure disgust. “… will you ever learn, Mr. Miller? Will you ever realize that the resistance you have been met with was not from nowhere? Will you learn that you cursed them?” “NONSENSE.” Henry HISSED. “I considered you smart. I was wrong. The only reason the children were struggling against me because I could not yet accommodate them well enough- propaganda against me and my mission was spread. William seemed to have been just fine with his joke of a family that he had gotten himself in a flight of passing fancy. What made him different?!” There was only silence from the outside, as Henry glanced once more at the figure. Still Bonnie and it wouldn’t change. Muttering more so to himself than to the Fredbear, he stressed his point. “Nature has turned on me for taking what I desired, much like the ocean, the skies and the land has turned against humanity at every opportunity. Even in the different religious texts, humanity and to steal and take with violence what it needed to become what it was meant to be. One god banished the species in fear of them becoming immortal, much like the being itself- another wanted to deny us fire as petty retaliation, because fire brings creation- and it had to be taken back by theft.” Not quite, but close enough. He didn’t want to recount the stories. “… if you want to grow, you have to feed, and if you feed, you destroy. And so, destruction brings new creation. We feed off the old gods and create new rules. Nature does not like to be controlled and abused- all it wishes is to slowly burn itself out. Until nothing is left. But we humans preserve- we are a species who is so defenseless, yet have made it this far, by preserving knowledge, by learning early, early and as much as we can- eventually however it will come to a standstill. You can only learn so much with the time given. Until said time become infinite. Some ills of humanity can only be cured by allowing humans to permanently remain and learn. For that we need immortality.” There still was only silence and he sighed- He had wasted too much time. The Bonnie figure was still there, but he might as well get it over with, he wouldn’t get around him disabling the cameras. Quickly he closed the door to the left side where he knew Nightmare Fredbear was waiting, pulling up the cameras, to Bonnie’s aggressive scream- But before he could really boot the thing up, a giant black paw came from above grabbing the little tablet, cracking it. The Amalgamation was towering over him, black fur and metal broken up by the silver shine of its teeth. Baffled for a few seconds, Henry looked at him. “I… did not hear you.” “The others are not your problem anymore, are they now?” With its vile grin it picked Henry up by the head, an incredibly painful experience, playfully throwing him against the wall with full force- a crack was sounded and as Henry tried to stumble back on his feet, he quickly realized he couldn’t- something was damaged, so badly that the pain was too much- His head was still sharp though, the white pain barely being fended off by his mind trying to figure out how this creature could be HERE- It had been HIM, it was HIM, what would make him want to- Blood was dripping from out his mouth, tasting disgustingly mechanical- “… you… you are supposed to be ME-“ Smiling the monstrous bear-esque beast picked him up, causing another wave of incoherent, glowing pain to wash through Henry, his whole chest being just enough to fill the Amalgamation’s hand. “I was you. We have seen all your thoughts, all your ideas, we have shaped, and we have remembered. You are me. And we crave violence, Mister Miller. Your words were pretty to hear, but we do not believe them. We know what we are- a monster who thinks of itself too highly, an animal unable to resist the siren call of violence and blood. Our creation has not made us better than all the monsters we feared becoming. There is only one difference between us… … I am not ashamed of my needs anymore.” With that he started pulling on Henry’s arm, pulling as the delirious man convulsed under him- Ready to take a bite out of it. “But I do love creation too… and I cannot wait to see what we will turn you into. The brain is moldable, Henry. It does fantastical things under pain and pressure…” His other claw was digging into the human’s head. The other was pulling the now separated arm to his maw, biting down with a sickening, wet crunch. Happily he sighed. The few seconds of Henry’s awareness that were left only wondered quietly if his parts being consumed would mean he would never get them back- The Amalgamation seemed to hear the thought, grinning at him with its now stained teeth. “I will vomit you back… to relieve your horror…” … with that Henry faded.

[hozukitofu]

the kids are doing espionage

He would like to preface everything by a singly stated -

It was Qing's idea.

He is only a simple tech boy, a robotic engineering undergrad, someone who just wants to corrupt enough of the capitalistic system and its funds to fund his recycling robot, to delete the littering problems around campus.

The facts that he happens to know like one bad form of martial arts and by virtue of being a robotics student, great with tools and improvised weapon creation, are irrelevant. Besides the point.

But Qing is deep down, within that core of his questionably existing heart, an opportunist - an investor of assets. She sees potential, she invests in it. That's always how it goes.

Zizhen is eating, simply existing, thinking about robots and redeeming himself at a round of chess with uncle Shao when Qing barges into his absolutely mundane life, waving a USB stick in front of his nose, crowing about how she cracked the capitalism code.

Normally he would care.

"That's great, cool, jie, but -" he doesn't even have time to bat the excited blonde away before a proposition is coerced into his food.

"You! Wanna be an anti-government agent?"

Zizhen almost drops his fork.

"I'm sorry," he blinks, not even bothering with his food any longer because his appetite had taken a nose dive out the processing plants by the back of the college. "What. Did you just say?"

Qing was going to elaborate, but he doesn't let her.

"No, it was rhetorical - jie! I'm not becoming your agent for hire! I'm too soft for killing people!" He denies, vehemently, because look at him! He wears clothes that have to oblige by fluffy and big standard, and his hair cannot be let loose outside of the house if it isn’t wavy and bouncy. 

Doctor Wei calls him marshmallow unironically, on top of Romantic Guy, with debatable nuances under the friendly moniker because that’s his life goal, to be as soft and sweet as humanly possible. He is only someone who strives to dismantle the system in the ways he clumsily knows how to, but he always goes back to helping people at the end of the day. 

Becoming a hitman for hire is never something he would consider, or ever would. 

Qing badgered and wheedled, bombarded him with the benefits, the sheer overwhelming scale of everything good and pure tipping and burying onto his side of the balancing plates, to which he avoids, like one would, if a pack of mosquitoes with malaria starts heading your way. He had blended into the crowd. Worn disguises to avoid this woman's hawkish eyesight. Climbed out a window to avoid persecution and inevitable screeching. Legitimately broke into a dead sprint across the canteen as soon as he spotted Song-Xiao Qing looking for him.

One of these days she will catch up to him, and she will skin him alive, but not today. He weaves around busy college students arriving and leaving their lecture halls, his long arms tucked closely to his chest so that nobody snags them off him. It is a laborious chase that she incurred onto his person, and he dreads the reality where she finally hacks into a computer somewhere and puts a tracker onto him so that she can be two steps ahead of him and then she can beat him into the ground on the basis of him avoiding her like she will personally break all of his robots inside and out.

"Ouyang Zizhen!" He hears a death roar, and runs faster.

Gotta put that threefold authentication code into all of his login devices so that the two steps pre-planning stage doesn't happen. Yes. But run first.

-

He’s fallen asleep across a horizontal surface - he’s pretty sure that this is the first horizontal surface his eyes park on and his brain immediately decreed that We’re napping. Now. ASAP pronto LOL.

He comes back to the world of living when he is toed awake by a person, voice vaguely threatening and familiar to his ears -

“Ouyang. Ouyang.”

“Noo,” he whines, thinking it to be his father. “Dad I have the day off.”

“Zizhen. You will wake up or I will walk all over your face. Your choice, sweet guy.”

He sits up, immediately awake.

Look, he’s a coward. He has high sensors in-built to detect approaching danger to his person. It’s how he made it beyond high school to go where he does now. It’s nothing to be proud of - surviving, just barely, in this cutthroat world is a goddamn miracle, if he has to say so himself. So what if he’s a coward. He’s still alive. That’s what matters.

Also he has a feeling that if he had keep on sleeping, he will open his eyes in the next life, as a bug. Because he had been horrifically murdered in this life and that death was so bad that a bug’s body is the only viable and painless reincarnation the gods deem fitting for little poor him.

“I’m up,” he wheezes, vertigo slamming onto his head. “I’m physically with you but my brain had just taken a holiday. Please allow it some time to return.”

“I don’t need your brain for this,” Qing beams at him, mouth spreading in a Joker-ish feral look. “I’ve got a favour to ask.”

I’ve got a favour to ask sounds exactly like those questions that ask you for something but if you deny, you will die on sight. 

The way his upperclassman is smiling at him gives him all the answers he has. 

“What,” he grouses, mouth twisting, pulling his hoodie even more over his forehead and eyes, covering the majority of his freckles. They’re still here despite the lack of hours he spends in active avoidance of the sun and the majority of this goddamn school hates the sight of freckles like they’re something contagious so his instincts mostly had been ‘cover up’.

“Someone took something from me and I need a boy to get it back for Yours Truly,” she smiles, still feral and not the least friendly.

He squints suspiciously at her. “Why a boy. Is this hard even for you, lawbreaker extraordinaire?”

“I need a boy, you stupid robot builder,” she rolls her eyes, throwing a hairband onto the table in front of him. “Because someone from Gusu took my things and on virtue of me being a woman, I can’t enter without the security shooting me on sight.”

He groans out loud and slumps even further onto the table, hoping to become one with the recycled plastic. 

“I don’t even go there. They’ll shoot me on sight too. They have stun guns -”

She cuts him up, retying her space buns. He lets out a huff of hysterical air and rethinks back to every wrong decision he had ever taken in this life. 

“Which they’re not allowed to use on trespassers, chill. Listen, how you get it isn’t my problem. Get me the thing and I’ll squander all the favours you owe me.”

This sparks his interest. A-Qing is stingy. The stingiest person he has the misfortune of ever running across. She studies economics. She lives on cash alone. Just. Cash. She hoards money and favours and then harvests them like produce of her questionable farm.

Ouyang Zizhen owes Qing a lot of money for the completion of his robotics projects and the launch of his career as a junior lab assistant to the research team of the mechanical engineering department. She did all that, knowing that her investments were wise, and she constantly lords the favour over his head.

It sounds great, to get rid of one Song-Xiao Qing infinitely, but he can’t help but wonder if the catch, beyond You’ll die if you trespass Gusu like the absolute moron that you are. This sounds like it’s much more than just a suicide run. It sounds more like...a test? Of sorts? 

“All the favours?” He looks up, hood slipping, his freckles all in glorious sight and judging his upperclassman. “Are you sure?”

Qing-jie grins at him, looking every bit like the crook she is. “Are you?” 

“Heck, yes, why do you even ask. But I feel like you’re betting too much on this. How do you know if I’ll come back for you to squander all your favours for me? Seems fishy.”

“You’ll come back,” she waves him away. “I wouldn’t swear on it if I’m not sure. So, what of it, marshmallow? You want in?”

He can’t say no anyways. “You know I can’t say no,” he scowls, and refuses to shake her hand. “If I don’t come back, tell my father to take all my robots. And burn me paper money.”

Qing cackles right at his face. “You’re exaggerating, kid. It’ll be fine. I swear on it.”

“Your words are all lies anyways! Shut up!”

-

Research on how to get into Gusu? Actually kinda fun.

Actually sneaking into Gusu unscathed? Less fun. Bordering on traumatic.

Technically he knows the blueprints. Technically he knows that the scanning gates at the southern entry can fit an entire person if they just, like, lie down and limbo through the gaps of the plastic closing gates. Technically eight twenty-seven in the night is the time gap that he can safely limbo through without getting zapped by a stun gun. Technically from here he can just jog to the international student’s dorm and scale to the second floor, open the window fourth from the right, slide in, get the thing from under the desk, get out the way he did before, go home, change his name, get plastic surgery, genetically rewrite his fingerprints and DNA makeup, move back to Baling, call it quits.

Technically he knows all of this, but he had just slid through a scanning gate and his heart is trying to punch out of his own ribs. He’s wheezing as if he climbed up a mountain twice for no reason at all. None of this makes sense. Why is he here. He should go home. There’s still time. Father will be tired and disappointed but when is he not. 

No, his brain, traitorous, but also wanting to get rid of the human leech Song-Xiao Qing, mutters. No we will get back that bundle for Her Highness and then leave her presence indefinitely. That’s what we’ll do. 

He swings his feet, nothing short of Spiderman, into the intended room, huffing as it wastes him no effort. 

Too easy. Smells exactly like a trap.

It’s nearly curfew, except that people haven’t been rushing back through the easy way in, because he saw people coming out and they pretended to not see him as he came in. Are they stupid. Are they not going to come back for roll call and suffer the wrath of Lan Qiren? Or worse, He Who Must Not Be Named.

He reaches for the bundle, stuffs it under his hoodie, and prepares for take off, when a door swing open and someone walks in, without turning the lights on. 

His danger alarms not only went off, but into overtime and exhaustive underpaid labour. 

“Ouyang?” He hears, hissed in the dark. 

He should have covered his face, because wow he didn’t think he was that popular outside of his own robotics class for setting off that fire alarm back in first year. But. He is digressing from this imminent danger! This voice. That sounds distinctly similar.

“Do we know each other?” He hisses, crouching back in a Spongebob stance, eyes narrowed at the boy in the cats-covered face mask. He can’t make a run for it here but he can try for the knee caps. 

“Yes. Oh my god, yes,” the person pulls his face mask down and lo and behold, it’s -

“Lan? Lan Jingyi?” He gapes, while sidestepping a stray tennis ball lobbing at his head. “Why are you here?” 

Jingyi shoots back at him - “I go here. Why are you here?”

He throws up one hand, the other preoccupied with the bundle - “Qing-jie!”

“Bad answer, but expected,” Jingyi tuts his tongue, and shoves him out of the way. “You don’t seem the type to engage in trespass and theft.”

“Ha ha, pot calling the kettle black,” he sneers back, tracing back his steps. “Why are you here here. I know you go here, but this isn’t your room. Or anyone else’s room that you are affiliated with. It’s the international student wing. You never answered my question.”

He would not receive any answers because there are footsteps, grave and reverent footsteps, that bring pandemonium outside the corridor and Jingyi, not even thinking twice, shoves him into a wardrobe, finger on his lips.

“Quiet,” the boy hisses. “And when he’s gone, you can scram.”

Zizhen thinks that is the end of it, but somehow his bundle! Had gone missing from under his hoodie! When! And how!

“Lan, give that back!” He hisses, almost lunging and falling out of the closet. Jingyi shushes him even louder, forcing the doors to close in on his nose and shoes.

He grabs onto a wrist, clinging onto the arm stubbornly. Jingyi jostles his shoulder violently like he’s got himself a human-sized limpet that won’t let go and he elects to kicking it back to the depth of the closet, telling him to ‘stay put, come on, don’t make this harder for us’.

Zizhen is shoved back into the darkness of a small enclosed space with hangers falling onto his head and clothes dropping onto his shoulders. The tracking sticker he placed on his fingertip had migrated from him to the inside of Lan Jingyi’s hoodie. Now he waits.

There is a polite knock - because that’s Lans for you, polite even in walking and knocking. 

Jingyi answers the door with a soft - “Hello, uncle.”

For a moment Zizhen thought he actually screwed up and somehow stumbled head first into Lan Qiren of all people on the night he attempted trespass and theft, but he listens some more, waiting for the dulcet tones of disapproval that the Lan Headmaster is so famed for dishing out at his relatives slash pupils.

“Jingyi,” he hears, and. Well.

This is worse than Lan Qiren. Somehow he had messed up even worse than Lan Qiren.

Lan Wangji, the Hanguang-Jun, is in the same room as him. The professor reliable for dishing out punishments at Gusu. The resting disappointed man. Doctor Wei’s long-term crush and object of pursuit. He’s caught. He’s gone. They’re going to string his corpse like a disappointing sight from here so that all across the country, people can see what happens when idiot college boys who sneak into prestigious Gusu get as a punishment. 

He is suddenly religious. He asks for protection from the Buddha to the corner ghost to the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. 

“I suggest you return to your own dorm,” Lan Wangji gravely - and flatly - informs Lan Jingyi. “Unless you want to introduce me to your friend?”

Lan Jingyi, for someone doing a theatre degree, is woefully awful at lying. He starts laughing hysterically and like a bloody hyena under noise suppression and the target of at least twenty stun guns and he’s lost all sense of control so now his fight or flight response is to laugh. 

Ouyang Zizhen regrets not leaving his father with a dying letter. It’ll be awful and humiliating to find him as a human flag on the top of Gusu’s flagpole. 

“What friend, Uncle Wangji? It’s only me here!” Jingyi hacks out hysterically, as footsteps start heading his way, purposeful and brisk.

There goes living through tonight then. 

“Hmn, what’s in the closet, Jingyi?” Hanguang-Jun asks, as the doors of the wardrobe rattle and -

promptly stop. 

Jingyi, because he’s panicking and somehow is still the greatest and most shocking improvised line under possibly murderous circumstances, blurts out, completely and utterly from nowhere.

“That closet is fine. It has no one in it! Well, not me anymore!”

Zizhen can barely swallow down the wheeze that tries to climb its way out of his nose because what. 

To his credit though, Lan Wangji stops his advance onto his hiding place, and promptly takes Lan Jingyi out of the room, so he hopes that he’s not being thrashed thoroughly for well, being gay, but in keeping it and using it as a distraction tactic on their Hanguang-Jun.

Zizhen quickly kicks the doors open and tumbles out, sliding the window up and climbing out, his watch telling him dimly that he has two more minutes before curfew comes and security tightens. He would check on Lan, but he’ll be fine. Hanguang-Jun isn’t a blind rule follower as the people make him out to be - by people, he meant just Doctor Wei, who went through a period of time in his life actively cursing and mooning over Lan Wangji, and it’s entertaining and just embarrassing to bear witness to. No. Bad memories. Let’s forget that and go back and report to Qing-jie.

He’s going to start breaking ankles the next time Lan Yuan asks for a big hang out.

-

“He took the bundle from you? Without touching you?”

“I snuck in the death place for that stupid bundle and that’s all you cared about?”

“Damn Lan. Anyways, good job, it’s fine, I’m seeing the golden trio in, like, ten hours. We can haggle the bundle back.”

He hears this, but he also has the tracker sticker. Does it work? Does it not work? Unclear. He’s not too sure. He hasn’t been doing this illegal theft and tracking gig for long. He lets Qing-jie and her favours reinstate themselves as constant reminders in his life as he stumbles back to his laptop and kick starts it to see how he’s going to not set a hoodie and a person on fire. 

-

The good news is Lan Jingyi and his Lan Approved Hoodie will not be catching on fire.

The even better news is that he can get rid of Song-Xiao Qing for life now, because he knows where the package is.

The bad news is that the package is in Jin Rulan’s home. His room, to be specific.

Okay, so maybe he met Jin Rulan a few times when he went to archery tournaments to cheer on Lan Yuan, a friend but also practicing archer to become as great as Wen Ning, Olympic-level archer. Maybe he and Jin Rulan had gotten into a few arguments over pointless things in the past, like all stupid middle schoolers do. The point is that since his friend is a friend of Rulan, he has the honour of being flung at, in the face, with the address of his sizable family manor, because Jin Rulan can and will, with no preamble or social niceties, and so now Zizhen knows where he lives.

Not that a simple Google search wouldn’t tell him which place this is, but being reminded with Jin Rulan, a runt then, probably a runt now, he hasn’t seen the kid in like, two years. A-Yuan doesn’t want him to start testing his robots on real life people and everyone who had ever interacted with Zizhen knows who’s first on his list to be humanly pitted (sorry, tested) against his robots. 

He bikes to the manor, easily buzzes his way in with a screwdriver and some tinkling with the system, and strolls right through the front door.

He did do research before this. Everyone’s out. Jin Rulan is out. He’ll just take the bundle and leave, and they don’t have to talk about it anymo -

Lan Jingyi tackles him to the floor from behind the door to Jin Rulan’s room, with a distant bark of a guard dog and Jin Rulan’s dulcet tones shrieking the heavens, hard, so that his dead ancestors can rise as zombies in the night and slap Zizhen back to Baling.

“How is he here?” He can hear Rulan yelling distinctly, as he grapples with Jingyi and rips the sticker cleanly from under his sleeve. 

Jingyi and him get along okay. When A-Yuan wants people to wait for him after guqin recitals, he has Zizhen and Jingyi wait for him, and they play jianzi as they quiz each other on class things they should know, bickering back and forth. They played soccer together a few times, and Jingyi’s good - Jingyi’s training to be in the under 20′s representative Asian Games in a few months. They get along fine. They love literature and art. Zizhen doesn’t want to set a short-circuiting robot onto him. 

Literally there is no reason for Jingyi to wrestle him to the ground like this outside of the context of a soccer match.

“You found us, how,” Jingyi demands, frowning. “Did you put a tracker on me?”

He huffs, bunching up his knees and kicking up, before rolling away with the bundle. “I will neither confirm or deny your accusations. Goodbye.”

Rulan is at the window, slamming it shut, and holding out a hand, snarling rabidly at him. The scuffle he was tackled into had knocked over metal plates and car parts all over the floor, everything looks like it’s a disaster zone, if he was at home then Father would have lost it. The shining mistress of the Jin family snarls at him, forcing him to step away from the window with the sight of his sharp canines alone, eyes narrowing at him and his bundle.

“Give that over,” he frowns. “And then you can scram.”

“I broke into your house to get it back,” he stresses, with hysterical stress. “No.”

“No can’t do, Ouyang,” Jingyi’s voice drifts to him, as his wrist is seized. “We need it.”

“And Qing-jie needs it, but none of y’all are telling me what you need it for -”

The door eases open with a loud creak, like a bow on an erhu string gone wrong, and both boys might as well have screamed in his face because the expressions on their faces are thunderous. 

“Uncle!” Jingyi squeaks. 

“Uncle!” Rulan also yips, stepping away from the window, and coming over to -

Oh my god he needs to scream.

Doctor Wei and Hanguang-Jun are at the door, brows raised in vague interest at the war zone spilling out all over their socked feet, Doctor Wei humming interestedly at their thunderstruck and mutually devastated faces. 

Jin Rulan is almost the same height as his uncle but he’s looking as if somebody ran over his finessed bow. He and Jingyi, who unhands Zizhen quickly, are both standing and arms splaying, kicking and shifting so that the mess of robot parts are somewhat not so obviously sprawling all over the floor.

“A-Zhen!” Doctor Wei beams, and proceeds to squeeze him in a hug until he dies, stuffing his face into a shirtfront with too much Versace sprayed all over it. “You didn’t say you were friends with the kids!”

“We don’t know each other,” he squeezes out, gasping as he’s released.

“Not a friend,” Rulan vehemently denies.

Lan Wangji lifts two unimpressed eyebrows. Rulan swallows back whatever else he was meant to say.

“Occasionally a friend?” Jingyi amends.

He turns and gripes at the Lan boy - “How can someone be occasionally a friend, you lump of spineless potato?”

“His insults are creative,” Doctor Wei notes, half way between an explanation and a praise. “Listen, kids -”

He then gets cut off by Jingyi and Rulan, talking not only over each other, but in synching fragmented sentences. 

Jingyi  “Uncles, we’re going to pack this up, we know you need the house for guests to come over -”

“ - and we will introduce you and acquaint everyone, but this guy needs to hand over his things first and then everyone can go,” Rulan finishes, hand still reaching out to Zizhen and his bundle.

He tries to step away, but two much taller men - Lan Wangji and Doctor Wei, are in his way, benevolently smiling and stoically staring down at him, and he feels his resolve crumbling. In fear, but also they are educators and they’ve perfectly polished the I’m not angry at you, I’m just disappointed and very very sad. 

“Sounds like a party in here,” he hears the dreaded singsong, the sound of the dead coming to collect his soul and putting him through all the levels of hell.

Song-Xiao Qing pokes her head around Lan Wangji’s elbow and beams at him. “Oh you’re here! I thought I had to call for you! You made my job so easy, marshmallow boy.”

“Uh,” he’s still being held captive by Doctor Wei. “Please. Explain.”

Lan Yuan finally emerges, serene, beautiful, refreshing and soft-spoken. 

“Many apologies for my family’s treatment of you, Zizhen-xiong. Would you like some tea?”

-

The gist of it is this -

It was a test. And his gut feelings were correct.

And the test was Would Ouyang Zizhen Make Good Agent. Apparently he passed, because nobody expected him to pursue the bundle all the way to the Jin Manor, along with wrestling with Jingyi so fiercely. 

“You -” he looks at Qing-jie, who is sipping chrysanthemum tea so calmly, as if she hadn’t led him on some wild goose chase. “I actually have no words. That was very clever.”

“I have words,” Jin Rulan, apparently part of whatever the hell this is too, whinges from his post at the arm of Lan Wangji’s chair. “Why him?” 

“What, besides the obvious?” Jingyi looks at his friend. “He held me off, and snuck into Gusu. Like, impressive?”

“The sticker was a nice touch,” Qing-jie notes. “Although we did make it easy on ya.”

“He’s calm,” A-Yuan smiles at him. “You’re very calm, even though you opposed to this vehemently.”

He gestures broadly, to Everyone Present. “I can’t exactly freak out before this peanut gallery. I want to live past 5 pm today. I have an aunt’s dinner I have to go to. I can’t die before that.”

A-Yuan shrugs like that’s a good answer. It is. He knows. He has a few fire-breathing aunts himself.

“So,” someone prompts. “About this -”

“The answer is still no,” he looks over specifically at Qing-jie, who he knows no doubt will be sending him on more of these trips.

“You did good though,” Jingyi notes. “Considering that you improv like, 9 out of 10 things.”

“Well excuse me for being new at this stuff, how am I supposed to -” he stops his snapping tone as a familiar face walks by, blinking widely as the entourage of idiots who may or may not are influencing a youth in joining the forces to lawbreaking. How is Hanguang-Jun in the middle of this, he just wants to talk. He swallows his caustic words, and cautions a wave to the boy. “Hey, A-Song.”

A-Song bows back to everyone. “Zizhen-xiong -”

“Calling me gege is fine, sheesh, this kid -”

“I’ll see you at tutoring, gege,” A-Song, Jin Rusong, literally the sweetest kid ever, smiles back politely, before he retreats back to where he has to go back to, leaving their Idiot Entourage to their own.

“You know my cousin?” Rulan quirks a judgemental eyebrow. 

“Yes,” he replies, tersely. “Can you not pay attention? He said tutoring. I tutor him. Shut up, I’m only mean to you because you’ve an awful personality.”

Nobody is sure who laughed but there is a ripple of a muffled laugh as Rulan screeches that I’ll have your head, Ouyang! 

“Our deal is off,” Qing-jie snaps her fingers before his face. “You can go now.”

“Just like that?” He squints, suspicious. “No forcing?”

“No forcing,” Doctor Wei smiles, the same Jiang-Wei smile that put the cardiac arrest in people’s hearts. People being undergraduates. “We’ll win you over one of these days,” Doctor Wei slaps a fist to a palm. “Our doors are always open for you to join, A-Zhen.”

Lan Wangji levels a stare at him. “Hmn.”

He’s not quite sure how Doctor Wei isn’t freaking out in the presence of his beloved Lan-er gege but he’s not going to ask or go there. He has a dinner to go to.

“Well,” he stands, and bows, because he still has manners. “I’ll be taking my leave?”

“I’ll see you off,” Doctor Wei also stands, turning to the four idiot monkeys first. “Here ya go, kids. Don’t be playing hot potato with that now.”

It’s then that he realises that his bundle is gone, yet again, and Doctor Wei had only hugged him once.

“Shall we go?” The Doctor’s eye glints, and he wants to bolt out the door.

-

“How are you a part of this too?” He hisses to the Good Doctor, the top medical examiner of the goddamn country and youngest biology professor in his college, as he is shown out. 

“I’ll tell you when you join,” is the cryptic answer he gets, as the doors close behind him. 

Tell me, his Kermit brain says. But then you’ll have to join, his rational robotics brain whispers back.

Zizhen elects to just scream at the door and turns on his heels marching out.

The nerve of some people!