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kiaxet · 2 years ago

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Sooooo y’all see the latest @somerandomdudelmao comic update? Because once again it is living in my head, which means once again my brain has generated fic. This one’s ~1200 words and slightly less tragic, depending on whether or not you take dramatic irony into account.

~~~~~~~

It starts fairly innocuously.

One of the surviving technicians monitors a computer as it finally, finally boots up successfully, whooping when the Genius Tech loading screen pops up. He grins and pats the power cable. "Thanks, Raph!"

It catches on.

A water purifier, disconnected to save a struggling power supply, gets plugged back in. It chugs back to life, and the kids responsible for its upkeep cheer and high five. One of them waves at the ceiling, where a power conduit runs overhead. "Thanks, Mister Raph!"

And it spreads like wildfire.

Every time something works the way it's supposed to - every time a much-needed device pops back to life, or the emergency doors close correctly, or a dying lightbulb flickers on one more time - they thank Raph. In gleeful shouts and careful whispers, they show gratitude for the person who gave up his life - and his second chance at life, at that - to keep them safe. It makes the emergency base, ramshackle and barely held together as it is, feel a little more like a home. A little more alive.

It doesn't take long for a few unspoken rules to develop.

They never say it in front of the metal shell. It's one thing to say it to the walls, the cables, the electricity; it's something else to say it to a figure with a face, seated against the wall like a sentinel that will awaken and protect them when danger arises.

(Nevermind that they've been in danger, constant and unending, for decades, and that this sentinel is already protecting them in smaller, everyday ways.)

They learn very quickly never to say it in front of Raph's surviving family, either. Master Leonardo gets angry when he hears it. It's an anger born of grief and loss, painful but not dangerous to allies, but given how terrifying Master Leonardo can be on the battlefield or a bad day, nobody really wants that anger directed at them. Master Michaelangelo just stops when he hears it, lips curling up in an expression too devoid of life to truly be called a smile. It's almost worse to witness than Master Leonardo's anger. No, they learn to watch themselves in front of the family, carefully taking their gratitude towards a dead man elsewhere.

Until the day someone forgets and says it in front of Casey Junior.

The kid looks up at Roger with wide, almost hopeful eyes. "Why did you- is he here? Can you feel him?"

Roger stares back at him with equally wide eyes. He'd just been grateful the computer had booted correctly for his monitor shift, and he hadn't been looking, and now he has to try to explain this to a kid who's never known a life outside the apocalypse. Oh boy. "No, uh- I mean- I don't have magic like your dads do, Casey, I couldn't-" He sighs. "It's just...a thing people do, when things work. Before the Krang, we had all sorts of machines that made life easier, and...we'd talk to 'em. Thank 'em when they worked, yell or beg when they didn't...I remember threatening a fax machine once, not that that made any difference. I think that just...kinda carried over here." Wait. "Not that your uncle was a machine or anything-"

"His body was a machine," Casey says simply, with a pragmatism that Roger hadn't been expecting. Apocalypse-raised kid. Right. "That wasn't what made him Uncle Raph. He was- it's-" Casey falters, expression starting to crumble. Pragmatism be damned, the kid is still grieving-

Rem, just coming off her shift, steps in smoothly. It's not the first time she's saved Roger's ass, both on and off the battlefield, and it won't be the last. "We know," she says gently, putting an arm around Casey's shoulders. "What Roger means is that we're grateful he's keeping us going, and that people like to bond with machines even when they're too simple to bond back. We all used to name our cars - can you believe it?"

"I named mine Red Rider," Roger says wistfully. He still misses that car.

"And I used to sneak out of the Hidden City with my cloaking brooch and go joyriding outside of human cities," Rem says, a grin splitting her feline muzzle. "I named every car I stole Phantom, like I thought I was cool."

Casey smiles - small and watery, but there nonetheless - and Roger breathes a sigh of relief. "What else did you name?"

"I mean, it was mostly cars, but some people named their computers."

"I had a friend who named her phone and just kept adding numbers when she had to replace it. It was Duchess O'Brien the eighth last I'd heard."

"I know some Yokai named their weapons, but I never really kept track of those. It was more of a Battle Nexus fandom thing."

Another Yokai leans in - a four eyed lizard whose name Roger could never remember no matter how hard he tried - and Roger shuts up. She's in charge of security now, and honestly she intimidates him. She looks around - at him, at Rem, at Casey - and then intones seriously, "I once named a kitchen appliance Toasty McToastFace."

There's a beat of silence. Casey has a lopsided grin growing on his face, like he doesn't get the joke but he knows it is one, and that's enough to lift his mood.

And then Rem doubles over, cracking up, and Bob smiles carefully. "Really loved that toaster, huh?"

"It was my closest friend," the lizard Yokai replies, deadpan as hell, before leaving the conversation.

Casey turns that confused grin on Roger. "Was she serious?"

"Kid, I have no idea. Some people are just really into this kinda thing."

Rem finally straightens up, wiping a tear from her eye with a paw. "Ohhhh boy. Oh, I needed that." She turns her smile back on Casey. "Point being, naming something makes it a little more real, and makes you a little more likely to take care of it. The system here...already has a name. We're just saying thank you, you know?"

The grin on Casey's face settles down into consideration. "Yeah, I think I do. I- Thanks. I'm gonna-" He waves at the door to finish his sentence.

"Go for it, kid." Roger waves him off as he departs, then sighs once he's gone. "God, that kid is just hemmhorraging family, isn't he."

"We all are, Roger, it's the fucking apocalypse." Rem flicks an ear.

"Yeah, but still. It's rough." There's a second or two of silence. "Also, if he says it in front of Master Leonardo, I'm denying all knowledge of this conversation."

"Spirits, same."

Roger learns a few days later - from Rem, of course - that Casey has named his chainsaw hockey stick Killer, because it's what his mom used to call him. Well damn, if kids like him are gonna be the future, then maybe they have some hope after all. He raps on a wall lightly, just below where the power conduit is mounted. "I know you didn't have a lot of time with the kid, but you did a good job." He can't help but smile. "Thanks, Raph."

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt casey jr #rottmnt raphael #if you squint #cass apocalyptic series #somerandomdudelmao #writing #fic #no gods no betas we die like RAPH APPARENTLY GOOD GODDAMN #I've been in IT for a decade #and there's something to be said for the human propensity to name machines #and other objects of personal value and use #and talk to them like they're capable of listening and responding #no way that died in the apocalypse #I have never named my phone #all of my computers have been named after musical terms #and my cars have been Chupathingy and Puma respectively #because some fandoms never fucking die #there's another story here I didn't write #about how some places seem to develop a personality and a presence all on their own #and how this makeshift base is literally powered by someone else's life #and in a world of magic and monsters #how does that affect things if it does at all?#is it a haunting or a mystic residue or simply something that has power in the minds and hearts of its occupants?#I love this shit #by the way #Duchess O'Brien is not a reference #Red Rider definitely is though it's not referencing what you think #Toasty McToastFace is the obvious one

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mumms-the-word · 7 months ago

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In Fathoms Below - Ch. 4

Ch. 4 - The Stowaway

Characters: Gale, Karlach, Wyll, Lae'zel, Shadowheart, Astarion, Halsin, Minthara, Gortash + other OCs; pairing is Gale x fem!Tav Plot: The island city of Nautera disappeared over 4500 years ago, if it ever existed at all. Now not a single, legitimate record of Nautera exists, save for one. The Nauterran Account. Long thought lost, it has recently been retrieved from the depths of Candlekeep’s archives and placed into the capable hands of one Gale Dekarios. With the Nauterran Account in hand and an eclectic team of Baldurians and other allies mounting an official expedition, Gale journeys to find the ruins of Nautera…but hopes to find so much more. A/N: I promised we'd get a pale vampire didn't I? Well, we might have also bitten off more than we can chew in this chapter...but you'll have to read on to see. You might also notice I'm making a few changes to the canon for a few characters. You'll see why...eventually.

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“A stowaway?” Minthara said, her lips curling into a playful smirk. Playful in the way that a tressym who’s cornered a pigeon feels playful. “How convenient. I was just thinking we might need to gather a sacrifice or two to appease any gods on our journey.”

“H-hang on,” the elf said. “Let’s not get too hasty. I can explain—”

“Save your words, darthiir. Lest I decide to kill you where you kneel.”

“How’d he even get on the sub?” Karlach mumbled nearby. Beside her, Shadowheart simply shrugged. Gale stayed quiet, but he suspected he knew exactly how the elf managed to steal aboard. Perhaps it wasn't Tara in that large supply crate after all...

“He looks like a vampire,” Wyll said, crossing his arms. “Red eyes, sharp fangs, pale skin. All the signs are there.”

The elf opened his mouth as if to argue, and then visibly seemed to change course. He looked up at Minthara instead. “I don’t suppose that rules me out for sacrifice? After all, I am undead. Not much left to sacrifice.”

She merely continued to smirk. “It makes no difference to me whether you are undead or not. If anything, it makes you even more disposable.”

“But I could be useful! Not as a sacrifice. I—er, I could—” His eyes cast around the room as if desperately searching for inspiration.

Another gnome pilot spoke up while he struggled to come up with something useful. “Saer, we’re approaching the first area marked on the maps.”

“Enough, Minthara. We will deal with this later,” Gortash said, leveling a significant, almost warning look at her. "We have more pressing matters to attend to."

He turned to his pilots. “Activate the searchlights and begin a slow sweep of the area. Everyone else, eyes on our surroundings. You know what to look for.”

“Aye, saer. All engines reduce to ten percent,” Redhammer said.

A chorus of pilots responded with confirmations and other reports, and the great rumbling of engines that had filled the air and thrummed through the floor decreased to a faint purr in the background. Through the view of the glass ceiling and windows, towering cliffsides and rock formations materialized into view as the submersible slowed to a crawl, drifting slowly through the deep sea valleys and trenches.

“You two, keep an eye on the vampire, will you?” Gortash said, gesturing dismissively toward the drow.

The two dark-clad soldiers glanced briefly at Gortash before focusing on Minthara again, clearly awaiting further orders. She stared down at Astarion with obvious disdain before turning away and moving to gaze out of the glass on the port side of the submersible.

“Bind him and keep him secure here in the helm. I don’t want him underfoot. If he makes any attempts to flee…stake him in the heart.” She flashed a crimson-laced warning look over her shoulder at the vampire before facing the windows again.

Gale watched, uneasy, as the drow soldiers bound the vampire’s arms behind his back and tied his legs together at the ankles. The vampire, to his credit, only murmured a few dark words under his breath, but more or less consented to the treatment. He settled down to kneel in a corner of the helm, watching them all with wary curiosity. Gale doubted he even knew what kind of situation he had gotten himself into.

“Poor guy,” Karlach said softly, joining Gale at the desk. “Feels kinda gross to claim a prisoner on our first day…but that’s Gortash and Minthara for you.”

“Have you worked for them long?” he asked, looking up at the fiery tiefling.

“Long enough,” she said. “Gortash more than Minthara, though. I signed on to work for him over ten years ago. Then I got dragged into the hells. Literally."

"Literally?" Surely she wasn't being serious.

"Yup. Hear that?” She banged on her chest. Beneath the sound of fist on flesh, there was a dull metal thunk. He leaned in closer despite himself. In the quiet wake of the reduced engines, he could hear the faint sounds of machinery clicking and whirring and the soft, rhythmic release of steam.

“Is that…metal?” he asked, a little awed and a little queasy. How in the world...?

“Infernal engine for a heart,” she said, stating the grim fact with about as much weight as if she were admitting her hair was naturally black. “Courtesy of a certain archdevil in Avernus. I spent years down there, a soldier in the Blood War, before Gortash made a few deals to bring me back. Never did find out the details, but…it doesn’t matter. I owe him my life.”

Gale could scarcely believe what he was hearing, and yet, it was far from the most ludicrous or tragic true story he’d ever heard, even in his short life. “How did you end up there in the first place?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. One minute, it’s any old day. The next, I’m waking up in the hells with this thing in my chest.”

She fell silent for a second and then quietly, almost a whisper, said, “Zariel said Gortash sold me to her for a bargain, but…that can’t be true. He sacrificed so much to bring me back, he can't have been the one to sell me out. He even fixed up the engine so I wouldn’t be on fire all the time. She must have been lying.”

But even as she spoke the words, a tone of doubt crept into her voice until at last she looked uncertain. Gale didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

After a few seconds, she shook her head and glanced back at the vampire. “Anyway, as much as I hate to see it, it’s just how things are around here. I hope we can just let him go somewhere in the Underdark, though.”

Gale studied the vampire again. He was expecting feral hunger and wicked glances, but the elf simply watched his surroundings in silence. He looked, if anything, resigned. Even tired.

But perhaps it was all a ruse.

“I’m gonna go talk to him,” Karlach decided all of a sudden. “See what he’s about.”

“Just make sure Minthara doesn’t get too annoyed with you,” Gale advised. “She seems to have plans for him.”

Karlach waved this off with “pfft!” and a smile before jogging over to the two drow soldiers and the vampire. Gale watched her chat a moment, a little smile on his face, before collecting the Nauterran Account, tucking it back into his satchel, and moving toward the windows on the starboard side.

Lae’zel and Wyll were both staring out of the glass next to Gale, watching the underwater scenery drift by. Amid cliffs and crags, there were standalone towers of stone, deep crevices, and far too many caves, some shallow, some deep. Night must have well and truly fallen by now because the water beyond the reach of the enchanted lights had grown pitch black, like a dense cloak of darkness. It didn’t make the search any easier.

The searchlight nearest the three of them swept slowly over the sea floor between cliffs and towers, at first illuminating nothing but stone and sand. There were no signs of any statues or carved structures just yet, but as for caves and crevices? There were more than he’d been expecting. It might take them hours to find anything worthwhile.

After a moment, though, new shapes came into the light. Sometimes sharp and jagged, sometimes rounded and smooth, these shapes were noticeably different than the natural rock formations that surrounded them.

Shipwrecks.

“Uh oh,” Wyll murmured. “That’s not a good sign.”

As more and more came into view, it was undeniable that they were anything other than the shattered remains of ships. Masts, hulls, even rare glimpses of shredded metal lay scattered around the sea floor and the cliff sides. It was as though an entire fleet of ships had been dragged down into the depths, suddenly and all at once.

Beside Gale, Lae’zel made a sharp noise. “Chk. There are enough ships here to build an armada. An old battle between two navies, perhaps?”

Gale frowned. “No, I don’t believe so. Look��there are too many different ship designs.” He pointed out several that he recognized. “Waterdhavian. Calishite. Even Luskan designs. These ships would have come from all over the Sword Coast, and perhaps even from Evermeet and beyond.”

“Some of these are quite old, perhaps even centuries old,” Wyll said. “I recognize a few ships from history books about Baldur’s Gate’s early days, the kind of ship Balduran himself would have sailed in.”

“We must be getting close,” Gale said. “Perhaps some of these people were sailing for Evermeet, but others…they must have also been looking for Nautera.”

The three of them were quiet a moment, watching as more and more shipwrecks came into view, their hulls cracked open, their masts splintered into shrapnel, their sails and flags and ropes little more than threads. At last, Wyll finally voiced the question they were doubtless all thinking.

“What dragged them down here?”

Gale dared not guess. His mind was already swimming with visions of catastrophe—everything from a great tempest or a whirlpool to the colossal figure of Umberlee herself, her blue-scaled face rising up before them with flashing eyes and a smile full of several rows of needle-sharp teeth.

None of this boded well. The sooner they found those statues, the better.

He moved the strap of his satchel from one shoulder to the other, so that it crossed his body, and made his way to the front of the helm to peer out of the windows there. He leaned against one of the metal control units, his nose nearly to the glass, trying to see further ahead despite the darkness of the water.

Gortash joined him after a moment, frowning deeply as he stared out through the glass. “Blast this infernal darkness, I can barely see a thing.”

“Perhaps if you left the searching to those of us with advanced darkvision, your lordship,” came Minthara’s voice from across the helm, a hint of a smirk in her voice.

Gortash ignored her. “What we need is a powerful light spell,” he said instead, turning to smile at Gale. “I don’t suppose you have—”

His next words were ripped from his throat as the entire submersible lurched violently upward with a deafening bang, driving everyone to their knees or knocking them completely off their feet. The submersible tilted abruptly to one side, forcing Gale to grab onto a series of metal pipes to keep himself from sliding completely across the floor. Shouts rang out around the helm as pilots struggled to get back to their places and right the submersible again.

“What did we hit?” Gortash demanded, grabbing onto the control panel to clamber back to his feet. “Give me a damage report! Now!”

Another massive blow was his answer as something struck the back half of the submersible, sending them spinning nearly full circle. Redhammer bellowed commands as those not piloting the submersible fit themselves into nooks or secured themselves by hanging onto anything bolted to the seacraft, be it railings, controls, or pipes. A grating, repetitive alarm began to blare through the room and down the passageways of the submersible.

Suddenly the submersible lurched again with another bang, this time as if something had wrapped around the exterior and yanked it around. The pilots struggled against wheels and levers as they spun or activated on their own, but it was useless as the submersible was pulled upward and tilted sharply down. Gale tumbled over the top of the control panel he was standing near, hitting the glass of the front windows as the seacraft tipped dangerously downward, almost vertical. He caught himself on hands and knees, landing painfully, but it wasn’t the pain that froze him.

It was the sight of a massive, reptilian face and large, glowing yellow eyes that chilled the blood in his veins.

“Oak Father preserve us,” he heard Halsin say, somewhere in the back of the room behind him. “Is that—”

“A dragon turtle!” Wyll finished, his voice a mix of boyish excitement and sharp warning.

The dragon turtle tilted its giant head and then unlatched its jaws in a grin-like fashion. Its mouth was easily large enough to swallow half their submersible in one go. A serrated edge, almost like teeth, lined each jaw, the upper jaw forming a sharp beak that looked all too capable of puncturing even the thick metal exterior of their submersible. They were trapped in its claws, Gale realized, held fast in its strong grip as they tilted again under the dragon turtle’s piercing gaze.

A deep rumbling, like a laugh, issued forth from the depths of its throat, vibrating through the submersible. Then it spoke, its voice so deep and slow Gale could scarcely make sense of the words, even if there weren’t several inches of metal and glass between him and the dragon turtle. The volume and deep timbre of the voice shook the seacraft, rattling everything that wasn’t nailed down—the desk, trinkets around the room, even Gale’s bones. The sound was deafening, dampened only barely by the exterior of the submersible.

“What language is this?” Shadowheart shouted. “What is it saying?”

“I think—it must be draconic!” Gale shouted back, struggling not to collapse under the force of the impossibly deep voice. It finally trailed off, leaving a strange buzzing behind, as if everything were still reverberating from its short speech.

Gale could scarcely form a thought, the ringing in his ears was so loud. He suddenly felt tiny, staring down the maw of the gigantic creature with only a few inches of glass between himself and almost certain death. Something gripped his chest and squeezed it painfully, something that forced his breaths to turn shallow and sharp.

Terror, he realized distantly, as his body seemed to rapidly cool and grow warm in flashes.

He was terrified.

“Wizard, what did it say?” Minthara asked.

“I…” He could feel his hands shaking and the adrenaline singing in his veins. Was this to be his fate? Swallowed by a dragon turtle, or left to drown in the depths of its lair? All he could do was stare at one of the creature's large eyes, fixed beneath its glowing yellow gaze.

A familiar and loathsome ache seized his chest as panic threatened to consume him, constricting his heart and hardening his lungs. The mark on his chest began to glow bright purple in response to the pain. Almost like a reminder. He could do it now—if they couldn’t get out of this alive, would it be so bad to take the dragon turtle with them? If he—

“Wizard!”

He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to focus. He mentally called back to just a moment ago, trying to retrieve the syllables and sounds the dragon turtle had said from his memory and play them again in his head, forming the words silently on his lips as he recalled each word. His eyes snapped open as understanding dawned on him.

“It said, ‘Greetings, strange metal one,’” he translated in a slightly quivering voice. “It...it wants to know what tribute we bring.”

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #gale dekarios #gale #gale of waterdeep #my fic #bg3 fic #bg3 fanfic #bg3 fanfiction #in fathoms below #this chapter was SO MUCH FUN to write #I listened to so much battle music #also if you're curious #the dragon turtle's voice sounds like jormungandr in the god of war games #look up clips and you'll understand immediately

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