#we need you to be genetically good when you go in. THE ROBOT.

[kamil-a]

(audio includes "or those who would be of benefit to the genetic pool") i get so hyped when a character just Says the evil part out loud like okay so im not just being a paranoid tumblrina about this

[here-there-were-dragons]

i have to wonder what super hardcore militant vegans think should be done about obligate carnivore animals, because in all my painfully-rapidly-approaching-30-years i've literally never actually seen anyone give a clear consistent much less halfway feasible answer on that

[theorphicangel]

𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐨 𝐜𝐢𝐫𝐜𝐮𝐦𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬. | 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐨’𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚 𝐱 𝐟𝐞𝐦!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

Synopsis: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single, brooding man in possession of a good future in genetics, must be in want of a girlfriend.

Or at least a fake one to get his family off his back.

(college au & fake dating trope ft my favourite grumpy man who doesn't fall first but ends up falling harder. ouch.)

ao3

series | next chapter

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐞: 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝…𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞?

You’re running late.

But then again…is there ever a day when you’re not running late?

It’s hard to differentiate whether it’s due to the fact that you left all your pre-reading till the last minute or if your alarm forgot to go off or if it was due to you oversleeping for an additional thirty minutes because your roommate had dragged you out last night for the fourth freshers party of the week.

Either way, you’re running late. Your bag is frantically packed with notebooks and random essentials, your laptop is less than half-charged and your socks are mismatched. It’s not the best start that you had imagined for your first week of lectures but as you glance at digits in the corner of your phone, you figure that you don’t even have the time to complain.

The campus is still relatively new to you, and also fucking huge. Groups of people swarm around like insects, trying to find their way around to their own lecture. Glancing down at the map app currently open on your phone, a frown reaches your brows.

It seems like you’re still so far away from the humanities block which is on the other side of campus.

You scroll down, pausing your steps to look for another route. If only there was….

‘Want a shortcut? Press here.’

“Yes fucking please.” you mutter to yourself, clicking the bold button absentmindedly.

—

The muffled sound of a robotic voice announcing your destination perks up your mood entirely as you reach the lecture doors of 202. You made it with just about five minutes to spare and you’ve never felt prouder, not even during all those times when you’ve forgotten to study for exams but had luckily gotten away with pretty decent grades.

Entering the hall, you find most seats are taken, nearly all the rows are unavailable. Scanning around desperately, you find a seat near the back next to a guy mindlessly scrolling on his phone. Hastily, you walk to your desired seat before the rest of the row fills up, and you find that as soon as you have taken your seat, there’s no spare seats left at all.

Taking a deep breath, your anxiety now sits comfortably in the pit of your stomach.

This is how college was supposed to go.

Prepared, calm and on time. You’re so relaxed right now that you’re not even slightly bothered about the percentage of your laptop when you slide it open in front of you, knowing that you have your notebooks in your bag if needed. You take a quick sip of water before the lecture begins and soon all conversations in the room seem to die away slowly.

Those unlucky enough to have found a seat, have to settle with sitting on the steps of the lecture hall. A silent sigh of relief that you are not a part of that majority runs through your body. God, you forget that literature was so oversubscribed.

A hushed silence takes over the room and a steady grin creeps at the corner of your lips as you wait for the professor to start.

“Good morning all, it is nice to see you all bright and early for the first genetics lecture of the year. I know some of you had to clear up clashes with microbiology this morning which may be the reason why we are so oversubscribed today, but we’ll make do, there’s plenty of room for everyone.”

Remember that eager, excited smile that you just had a few moments ago? Yeah, well it just died and here was the funeral. You blink in confusion as the words of the lecture settles into your brain.

Genetics? Microbiology? What the fuck was this professor talking about?

The lecturer drones on at the front of the hall, her voice echoing. “For those of you who don't know already, I'm professor Dr. Michaleson and I’ll be your genetics lecturer for the remainder of the year.”

Oh no. Oh fuck no. Oh hell no.

You look around, scanning the wide room to already see people begin to type away at their laptops. No one else in the room seems to be as confused as you are right now and it’s concerning. Reaching into your coat pocket, you open up your maps app checking your location.

Shit.

You’ve found yourself in the general medical sciences block, not arts and humanities. Zooming in further you find that the humanities block is direct from the building that you’re in right now.

If there was a moment for you to have a breakdown, it would be right now. All of your panicking and frantic packing that you had gone through this morning has now gone completely to waste because you’re not even in the right fucking lecture hall.

You turn towards the person on your left but notice that they’re rapidly typing away as the lecturer proceeds to run over the future modules for the course. Not wanting to bother her, you decide to glance towards your right, to the guy who was once mindlessly scrolling on his phone who has now replaced it with his very own laptop but…he’s not typing away yet.

So you take your chances.

“Hey.” you whisper, trying to keep your panic out of your voice. You lean over a little so that he can hear you.

The man frowns a little, looking towards you.

“What?” His tone is soft like yours, quiet so as not to disrupt other people but you can’t help but notice the annoyed intonation in his voice.

“What lecture are we in right now?” you subtly prompt, quickly noticing the crease between the eyebrows of the stranger sitting next to you. His nose curves up in distaste as if you’ve just asked him whether he thinks the earth is round or flat.

“Please, just answer my question.” you plead gently, reading his expression.

You know he probably takes you for an idiot right now but you just need confirmation so that,

One: You hadn’t just misheard and this was definitely a genetics lecture

And two: If it was a genetic lecture this officially gives your body the right to go into full panic mode right now.

The guy lets out a light sigh before answering, “We’re in genetics right now.”

“Fuck!”

A few heads in the row in front of your glance back at the sound and automatically your cheeks burn up out of embarrassment.

“Why are you asking?” the man sitting beside you questions.

You hesitate in giving your answer, embarrassed that you had messed up one of the most basic rules of things not to do at university. Now it’s your turn to let out a beaten down sigh.

“I–”

“You’re in the wrong lecture, aren’t you?” the stranger estimates. Clearly based on your mixed expression of disappointment and panic.

You nod silently, rubbing your hands across your face. Internally, you wished that you could go back in time. Back to before you had entered this stupid lecture room, double checking the location or at least had the chance run out before the lecture had started.

“What are you supposed to be in?”

“English Literature.”

The man sitting beside you stifles a laugh and again, a number of heads back to look at the two of you in frustration. He attempts to cover it up with a cough and you notice the way that his cheeks slowly turn to a dusty shade of pink.

“Por dios, what are you doing here?” he whispers. And again you don’t miss the tone of irritation in his voice.

“I–I think I got lost.” you stammer quietly, looking down at your phone. “I’m supposed to be here.” you point at a spot on your phone as you show him. “But I got it messed up.”

“It’s across from this building?”

You nod begrudgingly, before shutting off your phone and laying your head down on the table in surrender.

You stay down for a minute before perking back up. The lecturer is still droning on about god knows what and the man beside you begins to take notes.

Leaning over, you whisper another question.

“How long is this lecture?”

“Two hours.”

Yep, you were screwed.

And it wasn’t like you could get up and leave. Well, you could, but that would mean drawing all the attention from half of the people in the room, disrupting them and causing your entire row to stand up so that you could leave. You think that you’d rather die than be that person.

The man beside you says nothing more, choosing to ignore you and your situation as he types away along with the rest of the people in the hall.

Looks like you have no choice but to buckle yourself in for this ride.

—

Two hours later, you find yourself on level 12 of the world’s hardest game, still without any new literature knowledge but now have a deep insight into what the genetics modules will look like for the next three years as well as having a deep insightful knowledge about prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms.

That’ll be some useful trivia some day at least.

You sit back watching everyone else pack away. The man beside you glances towards you briefly, he’s packed away too, now waiting for the people in your row to start filing out.

“Thinking about drastically changing your degree to biological sciences?” he asks, a smirk on his face.

You snort as you pack away your laptop, which surprisingly managed to survive the whole lecture.

“I fucking wish.”

“How about next time you check that you’re actually in the right block before stepping into a lecture hall?”

You barely know this man and yet you can feel his judgment, not just now but throughout the whole lecture you’ve felt his continuous side-eye as you died for the 400th time in your game.

“Will do.” you note, hoping to cut this conversation short. “Looks like I’ve got a literature lecture to catch up on.” you mumble to yourself as you begin to walk away, filing out of your row and heading to the doors.

/

“You what? Ended up at the wrong lecture hall?!”

Burying your head onto your arms, you groan aloud as a non-committal response. Your college roommate and new friend, Lyla, laughs out loud which unfortunately attracts eyes from around the cafe.

You groan, this being the second time that your face has burnt up this morning. “Please don’t make my misery any louder ly’ ”

She wipes at the corner of her eyes, adjusting her glasses. “I'm sorry, m’sorry.” She chokes, spluttering her hot chocolate. “But could you go through exactly what it was that you did again?”

You perk up your head on the table, keeping your eyelids shut. A mumble escapes from your lips.

Lyla cups her ears, teasing you unabashedly. “What was that?”

“Iendedupinageneticslecture.”

“What?”

“I ended up in a genetics lecture!”

And if you thought that her first laugh had been loud enough for the tables near you to hear, her second laugh practically caused the entire cafe to turn their eyes on you.

“This is all your fault by the way.” You pick up your cup of hot coffee and as if your day couldn’t get any worse, you’ve managed to burn your tongue and now you wonder whether there’s any point whatsoever in living on this sadistic earth.

Lyla points at herself, “Me? What did I do?!”

If you–” you lower your voice, cautious of multiple eyes staring at your table. “If you didn’t drag me out last night then maybe I wouldn’t have been so sleep deprived that I could have actually gotten to my proper lecture.”

Lyla snorts, waving her hands around. “Oh, please! Didn’t I get you that number off that guy you liked? Matt, was it?”

“Tom.”

“Right, whatever.” she says, picking up her cup and dipping her tongue into the generous amount of whipped cream and marshmallows that cover her hot chocolate. You stare at your own order in distaste, deeply wishing that you had gotten one too.

/

The next two weeks following your god awful mishap, you were fine.

From now on you and Lyla had a pact.

No more nights out.

Only up until the halloween season.

With your reading classes and her technology lectures, the two of you found each other up to your necks in assignments and essays along with being forced to help out with Lyla’s little coding club maintenance.

Thankfully you’ve managed to maintain some sort of routine, attending most – if not all – of your lectures both on time and double checking that you were in the right ones. You’ve made a few friends here or there at social events and finally found a job as a barista at the same cafe where Lyla gets her favorite hot chocolate from – and you must admit that they are pretty great.

All in all, college is going pretty great.

You think.

It’s going well in terms that you’ve managed to dodge every single phone call from your mom ever since you got here. Weekly, you’ve been coming up with good excuses and you don’t think that she’s caught on. Yet.

It was something that you had expected to happen once you made the decision to move away, I mean it was only fair, her only child leaving the bird’s nest, what else is she supposed to do?

You did feel guilty, of course you did. You hate lying to your mom but having her call every five minutes is not the reputation that you want to set up for yourself.

You’ll call her at the end of the week.

You swear on it.

- ‘Sorry, I’m in the library right now mom, I’ll call you back later okay? Love you <3’

Sent: 5:34pm

Setting your phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’, you place it next to your laptop, your playlist resuming through your headphones.

Another thing that you were also proud of yourself, was getting in regular study periods in preparation for midterms. Your old self would have been procrastinating right up until the night before the exam but now? You’ve matured. You’ve changed your ways for the better and by getting in some pre-reading of essays and books, you know that you’ll be thanking your future self in the long run if you keep up this mindset.

And this mindset is a great mindset…as long as you don’t get distracted.

/

You lasted ten minutes.

You had barely gotten through the second page before your attention was taken somewhere else and by somewhere else you mean somebody else. And this particular somebody reminds you of a moment that you are trying so hard to forget. Which is impossible to do when he had just so coincidentally pulled up a chair next to you.

It was him. The guy who you sat next to in the one lecture that we don’t talk about for certain implicit reasons.

On recognising his face, you hope that he doesn’t recognise you. He pulls up a chair beside you, not truly noticing you are until he glances up. You can already sense what he’s about to say. Taking off your headphones you go to speak but he suddenly cuts you off.

“I’m surprised that you didn’t mistake the janitor’s closet for the library then.”

“Oh, you’re funny.” you deadpan.

“I try to be.” he quips, the corners of his lips tilting upright.

Now that your body is not in fight or flight mode, you get a chance to take in this stranger. He’s…attractive. Conventionally. Tall. Awkwardly tall. Looks like one of those gym junkies or you guess that he actually is one based on those muscles on him. And those model cheekbones and naturally tanned skin and bushy eyebrows and soft lips–

“Do I have something on my face or are you just eyeballing me?”

“Neither.” you say, a little too quick for your judgment.

“There’s no shame in admitting the latter.” He prompts, a playful tone in his voice.

“You’re a little bit cocky don’t you think?”

This stranger leans back into his chair a little, raising a brow before dismissing your statement.

“I would disagree.”

“Of course you would, you’re a STEM student.”

The stranger huffs, glancing at you up and down. “At least I’m guaranteed a job as soon as I’m out of here.” He remarks, rummaging through his bag. “Good luck in getting out of your student debt with–” he squints over to one of the closed novels by your side. “Whatever book that you have over there.”

“You mean pride and prejudice?”

He simply shrugs, choosing to ignore you as he pulls out a huge textbook and his laptop.

Your eyes glimpse the front cover, reading ‘Biological Sciences.’ Your face turns to distaste at the thought of having to read that through your own free will.

“Have you read Pride and Prejudice?” you ask, trying to maintain a friendly unbiased tone.

“Never have and never will.”

“You’re missing out.”

“On what?” he scoffs, flicking a page of his massive textbook. It hurts your brain to even think about how much that would even cost. “A bunch of rich upper class Englishmen complain about their problems for a whole 300 pages?”

“Firstly,” you note, slightly offended. “That’s not what happens. Secondly, it’s 400 pages but it’s debatable depending on what version you buy. But when you suddenly get a gun cocked to your head with someone asking you to quote the first line from Pride and Prejudice one day, you’ll be regretting this conversation.”

“I highly doubt that’s even a probable situation.”

“There’s always a few anomalies lying around.” You shrug absentmindedly, flicking through your own novel which you had to complete reading for this week.

“Rarely.”

“But often enough to catch you off-guard.”

This…stranger lets out a sigh heavily through his nose, a sign of which you know means ‘please shut the fuck up.’ He ignores you for the nth time, eyes slightly squinting as he scrolls down, closely reading an article.

That’s it. You’ve lost your concentration. He’s ruined your mood and your mindset.

You begin to pack away, huffing as you place your novel in your bag. You’ll have to get started when you get home it seems.

“Don’t let me spoil your 19th century fun.” he murmurs, scrolling further down on the article.

“I’m going somewhere else, so that I won’t be bothered with your stupid microbiology shit.”

The man huffs, barely acknowledging you as you stand. “Good luck finding another free spot because this place is packed.”

“I’m heading home actually.” you quip, zipping up your bag after placing all your materials.

“Make sure that you don’t accidentally end up in someone else’s dorm–”

“Hilarious.”

You walk away before he can poke another joke at you. Once again, mocking you and you barely know his first name.

You kinda hope you never see him again. Partly because he’s an annoying STEM student but mostly because he reminds you of the excruciating pain that you went through by sitting in a genetics lecture for two hours without a single break.

Key word: kinda.

Reblogs are much appreciated!

let me know / send an ask if you would like to be tagged!

[phoebepheebsphibs]

Double-Mutated Mikey

Chapter 43: Genetic Warfare

Continued from the short story written by @boots-with-the-fur-club

Prev || Next

April, Casey, and Bishop arrive in the records room. They use Chaplin's key card to enter in and find it devoid of any lifeforms, human or mutant or robotic. They're there pretty early, they didn't expect the others to arrive for a while anyway.

"Well, might as well start looking for what we need," April groans. "...Uh, what are we looking for? A hard-drive?"

"It will look like a little black box," Bishop says, hobbling over to a series of locked drawers. "It'll have two USB ports on the side, and a red light on the top."

Bishop takes a fire extinguisher from the wall and smashes the locks with it, breaking the cabinet drawers open and rummaging through them. They mostly have papers and files, but a few of them contain some hardware that looks interesting...

"And what if we can't find it?" Casey asks, already going towards a second set of cabinets to look through.

"Then I guess we'll have to find a new device and redownload everything we can..."

"How long will that take?" April asks.

"It could take several hours," Bishop sighs. "So pray we find that drive."

April and Casey start searching the drawers one by one. They get almost halfway through the entire room of cabinets and drawers, slowly losing hope of ever finding the drive until Raph and Mikey arrive.

"Hey, guys!" Mikey greets cherrily. "How's it going?"

"Mikey!" April screams, rushing over and jumping on top of Raph in order to hug Mikey.

He meets her halfway and slides down Raph's chest like a snake, slithering around her shoulders in a hug as April laughs and tears up with joy.

"I was so worried about you! Are the others okay? I saw you guys get carted away by the TCRI or the EPF or whatever at the other place and -- what the heck happened to your arms?!"

Mikey pulls his arms back and looks away from his big sister.

"Nuthin'!" he says quickly, crawling back onto Raphael's shoulders. "It's fine..."

Casey immediately comes over to inspect, looking at Mikey's forearms for a moment before shifting his attention to Raph.

"What happened?" he asks the eldest, hoping he'll tell him.

"We ran into a... 'thing'," Raph shrugs, not exactly sure what to call Ms. Campbell. "It's fine, I took care of it."

"Thing?" Bishop questions. "Care to clarify?"

"Just a robot," Mikey says, resting atop his perch. "I think she said her name was 'Ms. Campbell'. Raph's ninpo clones busted her up though, she's gone for good."

Both April and Bishop heave a sigh of relief when they hear that. Casey raises an eyebrow in question, but before he can vocalize said question, everyone's favourite genius runs in carrying a ninpo-hologram shopping cart filled with their weapons.

"Y'all I've arrived!" he states hurriedly. "And I brought our stuff!"

Raph hoots with satisfaction as he grabs his sai and spins them in his hands, exercising them just a bit before he stuffs them in his belt.

"Thanks, man!"

"No problem," Donnie says, though he seems somewhat agitated.

Raph notices the way Donnie scratches at his arm wraps, and that small section of frost and freezer burn was definitely not there before they split up...

Mikey notices those odd details too, and scoots from one pair of turtle shoulders to the other, clinging onto Donnie in an attempt to comfort him. Donnie pats his leg in assurance, as if to say he's fine. Mikey can tell he's not. But he'll have to talk with him about it later.

"Where's Leo?" Casey asks. "He should be here by now with Professor Honeycutt."

"The tracker says they're on their way down now," Donnie states, lifting up his wrist tech and showing it off. "Any minute. Meanwhile, what are we looking for, or what do I have to hack?"

"We were looking for Bishop's hard drive -- a small black box with a red light," April juts in. "It should be in here, but if it isn't... then we have a lot of work to do."

"Oh please," Donnie scoffs, cracking his knuckles. "You just require the delicate touch of a genius."

Casey chuckles softly to himself as Donnie leaps into a swivel chair and starts typing away on a nearby computer.

"We might not need your services if I can just find the hard drive," Bishop grumbles, digging through to the bottom of yet another drawer.

"Pish-posh, dear man!" Donnie scolds. "I am uncharacteristically at your disposal! Besides, I need to scrub the security feed of our presence here anyway. Just tell me what to hack and I'll do it! ...Oh, I do however need a physical hard disk, though."

"ɪ ᴄᴀɴ ᴏꜰꜰᴇʀ ꜱᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴀʟᴏɴɢ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪɴᴇꜱ ᴏꜰ ꜱᴜᴄʜ, ɪꜰ ɴᴇᴇᴅᴇᴅ," a tinny voice states from behind.

The group turn to see Leo hobbling into the room, leaning on a small robot with glowing eyes.

"Leo!" Mikey cheers, hopping down from Donnie's shoulders and jumping over to his final brother. "Are you okay?"

"Just winded," Leo chuckles. "I had... uh... a rough time getting the doc."

Mikey stares in shock at Leo, who looks fine for the most part... except for the dark redd staining his hands and half of his forearms.

"...Who's blood is that?" Raph asks in a hushed and horrified voice. "...And where... is the doc?"

"ʀɪɢʜᴛ ʜᴇʀᴇ," the little robot waves, chuckling nervously. "ɪ ᴜɴᴅᴇʀꜱᴛᴀɴᴅ ɪꜰ ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪꜱ ᴀ ʙɪᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴀ ꜱʜᴏᴄᴋ. ʙᴇʟɪᴇᴠᴇ ᴍᴇ, ɪᴛ ᴄᴀᴍᴇ ᴀꜱ ᴀ ꜱʜᴏᴄᴋ ᴛᴏ ᴍʏꜱᴇʟꜰ ᴀꜱ ᴡᴇʟʟ."

Casey steps closer and gapes at the robot half his size.

"...Professor?" he whispers. "This is not at all what I thought you'd look like."

Honeycutt sighs sadly and nods.

"ᴜɴᴀᴠᴏɪᴅᴀʙʟᴇ ᴄɪʀᴄᴜᴍꜱᴛᴀɴᴄᴇꜱ ᴏᴄᴄᴜʀʀᴇᴅ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴅʀᴀꜱᴛɪᴄ ᴍᴇᴀꜱᴜʀᴇꜱ ʜᴀᴅ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴛᴀᴋᴇɴ. ʙᴜᴛ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ɪꜱ --"

He freezes when he sees a bruised and beaten Bishop, staring down at the mini mecha in shock and pained grief.

"....Doc?" Bishop asks, nearly dropping to his knees. "What did they do to you...?"

"I-it was my fault," Leo stammers, eyes filling with tears. "I went to get him, but one of the scientists cornered us with a laser gun, and -- she shot -- and I couldn't fix the wound, so I -- I just saw the little robot and he said he was trying to do -- what I mean is, I -- I --"

Leo hyperventilates as he tries to explain, the sticky blood drying on his hands terrifies him, he can't stop shaking. And he was supposed to be a hero, the World's Greatest Ninja™, but he couldn't save one life? Not only that, he had to have that life sacrifice itself to save him? Useless, weak, pathetic, wretched little pest --

Leo can almost see the fury and seething anger building up inside Agent Bishop. The devastation of losing your one and only friend can kill you. Leo wouldn't blame him if he hated him and his brothers for the rest of their lives, dedicated himself to eradicating the teenage mutant ninja turtles from that day on, or all mutants in general. This was the perfect villain origin story, and it was all Leo's fault --

"No, no -- it wasn't your fault, kid," Bishop sighs, his eyes watering as he looks up at the terrified teen. "This isn't on you. You shouldn't have even been here..."

"B-but it was --"

"ɪᴛ ᴡᴀꜱ ɴᴏᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀ ꜰᴀᴜʟᴛ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ꜰɪɴɴ ᴅɪᴅ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ꜱʜᴇ ᴅɪᴅ," Honeycutt interrupts. "ꜱʜᴇ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ʜᴇʀ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇ… ᴀɴᴅ ɪ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴍɪɴᴇ, ɪɴꜱᴘɪʀᴇᴅ ʙʏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʙʀᴏᴛʜᴇʀꜱ, ᴀɴᴅ ɪᴛ ᴡᴀꜱ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰɪʀꜱᴛ ɢᴏᴏᴅ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇ ɪ'ᴠᴇ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ɪɴ ᴀ ᴠᴇʀʏ ʟᴏɴɢ ᴛɪᴍᴇ. ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴀꜱ ɴᴏᴛ ᴏɴ ʏᴏᴜ ᴇɪᴛʜᴇʀ. ʏᴏᴜ ᴅɪᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ʙʀᴀᴠᴇꜱᴛ ᴛʜɪɴɢ, ᴛʜᴇ ᴛᴏᴜɢʜᴇꜱᴛ ᴛʜɪɴɢ, ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅɪᴅɴ'ᴛ ɢɪᴠᴇ ᴜᴘ."

The agent stands up and stares down at the kid -- who in reality is only just a little bit shorter than him, but in this moment Leo feels two feet tall. And it shows. Bishop places a hand on his shoulder and manages a small, thin smile.

"You did your best. You saved him... sort of."

"ʜᴇ'ꜱ ʀɪɢʜᴛ," Honeycutt buzzes. "ɪ ᴍᴀʏ ɴᴏᴛ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀ ᴘᴜʟꜱᴇ ᴀɴʏᴍᴏʀᴇ, ʙᴜᴛ ɪ ᴀᴍ ꜱᴛɪʟʟ ᴛᴇᴄʜɴɪᴄᴀʟʟʏ ᴀʟɪᴠᴇ, ᴛʜᴀɴᴋꜱ ᴛᴏ ʏᴏᴜ!"

Leo sniffles, trying to hide his sobs. He goes to wipe his face before remembering the blood still staining his hands.

"You're okay, kid," Bishop soothes. "We're all okay. Stop holding the weight of the world on your shoulders, it's only going to pin you to the ground."

Leo shakes and nods, reluctantly wiping his face on his shoulder. He feels something hold his arm gently -- long claws that belong to the most loving creature in the world, in his humble opinion. He hears Mikey churr softly at his side. He leans over and rests his cheek atop his little brother's head.

"Okay... Okay. Thanks," Leo mumbles.

"ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ, ʟᴇᴏ," Honeycutt responds.

"Anytime. That's what heroes do, yeah?"

Leo turns to see if Raph made a face at the statement like he usually does. The phrase has become something of a cringe inside joke at this point between them. The eldest smirks and rolls his eyes.

"We should get you cleaned up," April mentions, walking over to Leo and taking him by the elbow. "Bishop, do you know if there's a bathroom nearby or something?"

"There should be one down the hall," the agent answers. "Though I'm not actually sure. I never got the tour of this holmes hotel of a laboratory."

"ɪ ᴅɪᴅ ᴍᴀɴᴀɢᴇ ᴛᴏ ꜱɴᴀɢ ᴀ ꜱᴄʜᴇᴍᴀᴛɪᴄ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴜɪʟᴅɪɴɢ ʙᴇꜰᴏʀᴇ ɪ ʙᴇᴄᴀᴍᴇ ᴀ ꜰᴜɢɪᴛɪᴠᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛᴄʀɪ," Honeycutt states. "ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ'ꜱ ᴀ ʙᴀᴛʜʀᴏᴏᴍ ᴅᴏᴡɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴀʟʟ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴇꜰᴛ, ɪꜰ ɪ'ᴍ ɴᴏᴛ ᴍɪꜱᴛᴀᴋᴇɴ."

"Thanks, 'Fugitoid'," Leo jokes shakily. "We'll be back in a sec."

"ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴇᴀɴᴛɪᴍᴇ, ɪ'ᴍ ꜱᴜʀᴇ ɪ ᴄᴀɴ ʜᴇʟᴘ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴏᴡɴʟᴏᴀᴅꜱ," Honeycutt says, walking over to Donnie. "ɪ ᴀᴍ ᴀ ᴡᴀʟᴋɪɴɢ ᴛᴀʟᴋɪɴɢ ʜᴀʀᴅ ᴅʀɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏᴡ, ᴀꜰᴛᴇʀ ᴀʟʟ!"

"Great," Donnie says quickly, creating a ninpo cable that connects between the servers and the robot. "This should only take a few minutes, then!"

"I'll identify the files we need," Bishop nods, standing over by Donnie's side.

"And I'll scrub it all for any proof of Mikey and my family," Donnie adds, refusing to get up before he's wiped out the computers.

"Great," Leo grunts. "We'll be back before you can say -- wait, where's Cassandra??"

.

.

.

Abigail heaves deeply as she rushes into the lab, her heart burning in her chest, her stomach churning sickly. She slaps her hand over her mouth in a meager attempt to keep from retching. It fails, and she snatches the first trash bucket she can find and purges desperately into it. Sweat pours down her face and mixes with her tears as she slams the door behind her and takes a beat, analyzing the room before going back to her mad dash.

She has to pack.

She just killed a man. A colleague. A friend...

All because he wanted to protect a kid didn't have the spine to keep quiet.

Dr. Abigail Finn runs to her desk and swipes her arm over it, shoving her belongings into a large tote bag before going to her laptop computer and frantically unplugging it. Then plugging it back in and quickly scanning it for any kind of spyware or tracking tech. The EPF would do something like that, saying it was 'for their protection' or 'in eventuality of an emergency'. She's not a tech wiz like Chaplin or Honeycutt were. Timothy wasn't an expert by any means, but at least he understood IT and how laptops worked! Abigail was... average, at best. She cared more about biology than computer-ology!!

She doesn't have time for this. She shuts off the location-sharing option and puts the device on airplane mode, hoping that will be enough for now. She unpluggs the laptop and shoves it into her tote --

"Leaving so soon?"

Dr. Finn's head shoots up in momentary terror. There is a young woman leaning in the doorway, wearing what looks like a unitard. In one hand she holds a white face mask, in the other she twiddles with a hockey stick.

"Who... the #3%$ are you?" Abigail asks, heaving heavily as she tries to calm herself down. "Are you... you're with those turtle kids, aren’t you?"

"Yep," she answers, a great big scum-eating grin on her face. "Name's Cassandra Jones. Who might you be?"

"None of your business," Abigail snaps angrily. "Now get out of my way before I call security."

Abigail reaches for the phone on her desk, but before she can even grab it, three ninja stars land sharply in the wood, two creating a formation around the phone to keep her hands away, and the third snapping the cord.

Dr. Finn jolts back, her hand presses firmly against her chest as she yelps.

"Why did you do that?!" she yells. "What is wrong with you?!"

Cass chuckles before stepping inside the room and closing the door behind her.

"You're one of the big-shot brainiacs that experimented on the little guy, right?"

Abigail's face goes white.

"See, I consider those turtles my family now. And they were my only family, for a while. The family tree's grown since then. But they're still a big and important part of my life, and anyone who steps up to them --" Cass swings her hockey stick dramatically, sliding one foot back and preparing herself for battle. "-- has to step to me, too."

"Th-this is insane," Abigail stammers. "I'll call the police!"

"We already did that," Cass nods. "Don't worry. They'll be here at some point to cart you away."

"I'm not going down for this," Finn grits. "I'm not going to be the fall guy for this place! Do you have any idea who I am, what I know?! I'm the smartest person alive now, I can redefine genetics and rewrite the next generation!"

"Funny thing," Cass says, placing her mask over her face. "I don't care."

Cassandra leaps forwards and waves her hand, and another array of throwing stars fly at Dr. Finn. She gasps and ducks under the desk just before the stars can pin her to the wall.

She sees the blaster she'd had earlier, which she'd stuffed into the tote bag. Dr. Finn prepares herself. One, two, three --!

Abigail slides out from under the desk and begins firing at random. Cassandra darts back and forth like a graceful butterfly.... a butterfly who was raised by mad hornets, of course. Her movements are fast and agile, Abigail can hardly keep up.

"Is that the best you can do??" she jeers. "I faced more obstacles in the Foot's training course for toddlers!"

Cassandra finds a paperweight from the desk on the opposite side of the room, picks it up and whacks it hard with her hockey stick.

"Kyaah!!!"

It soars, the projectile heading straight for Abigail's weapon. It hits right in the barrel of the blaster, cracking it horribly and crunching Dr. Finn's hand in the process. She drops the weapon, yelling in pain.

"GUTS BITS!!" Cass shouts loudly, as she runs up and kicks the woman in the stomach.

She sends Dr. Finn reeling and crashing into the wall with a grunt, her head thrown back and slamming into the drywall as well. Dr. Finn goes limp for a moment, her body held up only by Cass's foot keeping her pinned in place against the wall.

Cassandra lets her slide to the ground slowly, the scientist groaning as her head rolls from side to side as she tries to get her bearings. Cass steps to the severed phone on the desk behind her and takes the cord to restrain Dr. Finn.

"I do not tolerate enemies," Cass says. "Especially enemies of the Hamato clan. They are my family."

"Cass!"

"Mom!"

"You okay?! What happened?!"

Cassandra turns around, seeing several figures in the doorway, examining the now destroyed room. It's April, her future son, and Agent Bishop. Cass lifts up her mask to reveal the biggest and proudest grin ever.

"I have detained the enemy!" she says, gesturing to the half-conscious geneticist who is still dizzy on the floor.

"That's Dr. Abigail Finn!" April points, rushing over to examine her.

"Finn?" Bishop almost retches when he says her name. "She's the one who killed -- or, tried to kill the Professor..."

Dr. Finn slowly starts to come to once again, looking around as she groans from her massive headache and slight concussion.

"W....what...?"

She glances up to see the group surrounding her. She glares at each one of them until she sees April, and her expression softens.

"You...?"

"Yep, me," April says with a smirk. "You got April O'Neiled, suckah!"

"That's not a thing," Casey Jones chuckles.

"I was gonna make it a thing."

"No, it needs to die."

"What, so you two can have the whole 'Casey Jones' thing, but I can't have an April O'Neil thing --"

"Okay kids, play fair," Bishop interrupts, crouching on the ground to inspect Dr. Finn. "You look like you could use some company. How about we talk about your statement for the authorities?"

.

.

.

Leo returns alone from the bathroom, his hands now washed and cleaned thoroughly. April had helped him find his way there before going back to join the manhunt for Cassandra. Donnie and Honeycutt are talking quietly as the files continue their download. Mikey and Raphael are conversing amongst themselves as well. Good, he knows what everyone is up to and where most of them are... They're okay... They're okay...

Leo walks in and sits down in a corner, heaving a heavy sigh as he lets himself... semi-relax.

He doesn't dare relax all the way. Not yet.

But he can't stay standing either. He's just... winded. That's the best way to put it. He's still pumped up with adrenaline, his anxiety probably won't diminish until the next day, or more likely the next week, and the mission is far from over. But still... he's reached his limit for the day, he thinks. His mutated warrior genes make it so that injuries never last, especially small ones. But dang, if that electro-shock didn't hit him with the punk tactics --

Wait, what was he thinking about...?

...Oh yeah, the injuries.....

It's getting hard to focus properly. He's just so tired.

Leo looks down at his hands. He cleaned them for like, ten minutes, it feels like. He's not sure he got all the blood, though. There's an inkling that there's still some blood trapped under his nails...

The thought of when he first saw Mikey again after the rescue randomly enters his mind... how Mikey looked so much more feral than he does now, somehow. His talons were unkempt and sharp and jagged, days worth of dried blood crusted beneath the nails.

Leo swallows. He hides his hands under his thighs as he sits, waiting for something to happen.

It's weird, having only just a few days ago admitted that he wanted to die, wanted to pay for all the pain he caused. Funny how that wish would have come true if it weren't for Professor Fugitoid Honeycomb over there...

It's not funny at all.

It's mind-numbingly painful.

It could have been Leo.

Maybe it should have been Leo.

Why is it that everytime he tries to be a hero and make things right, someone else gets hurt? Why does the universe constantly want to torture him with the teasing of death, only to recast the role of the martyr at the last moment?? Karai, Raph, Mikey, the Professor -- who's next? Who is Leo going to kill next??

Leo gasps for air (he hadn't realized he wasn't breathing properly) once he feels a weight pressed against his chest.

Mikey, Leo's own personal weighted blanket slash emotional support brother. He's pressed himself against Leo's chest, letting his heartbeat ground him and bring him back to reality. However sucky reality is, it's better than the crap-show going on in Leo's mind.

"Thanks, Miguel," Leo whispers, stroking his brother's head softly.

"S'okay," Mikey whispers back. "Just figured... you looked like someone who needed to remember you're loved."

"I know," Leo nods, hugging Mikey. "I know."

"Okay," Donnie proclaims slowly. "It looks as though we may be finished with the downloads. The Professor here says it should only take a few minutes at most, and we should get going."

"Are you sure?" Leo asks, staring at the robot. "I mean, is it safe to --"

"ɪ'ʟʟ ʙᴇ ꜰɪɴᴇ, ʟᴇᴏ," Zayton interjects, lifting his three-fingered robot hand to stop him from arguing. "ʏᴏᴜ ʙᴏʏꜱ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴍᴇᴅɪᴄᴀʟ ᴀᴛᴛᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ, ᴀᴡᴀʏ ꜰʀᴏᴍ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ. ʙɪꜱʜᴏᴘ ɪꜱ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴀᴘʀɪʟ ᴀɴᴅ ᴄᴀꜱᴇʏ, ꜱᴏ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ ꜱᴀꜰᴇ. ɪ'ʟʟ ᴊᴏɪɴ ᴛʜᴇᴍ ᴀꜱ ꜱᴏᴏɴ ᴀꜱ ɪ ᴄᴀɴ. ʏᴏᴜ ꜰᴏᴜʀ ɢᴇᴛ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴏꜰ ʜᴇʀᴇ."

"You're sure you're sure?" Raph repeats.

"ɪ'ʟʟ ʙᴇ ꜰɪɴᴇ," he reiterates. "ʏᴏᴜ ɢᴏ."

"Alrighty then, Fugitoid," Leo jokes. "We'll get lost. Come on, guys, let's head out..."

.

.

.

The lab is silent.

Eerily silent.

Despite the chaos happening from behind a single door. A single door that hides a soundproof room of trapdoors and hidden entrances that reveal mutated creatures that lost their minds and are slowly, painfully dying. A single door that houses those released creatures which all want a chance at destroying the liquified remains of an equally insane man. A single door that is bolted shut. And yet...

A soft, low squishing sound breaks the unearthly silence.

Green slime starts oozing from under the door, squeezing and slipping out with desperation. Something resembling what might have once been an eyeball manages to pop out. Another eye. A gelatinous nose, and a mouth, which groans and moans and shouts as it struggles to pull itself out from under the meager crack of space between the door and the floor.

Dr. Rod Timothy manages to pull half of his torso and a portion of his arms out. He pauses, gasping and gurgling with exhaustion. He's almost free...

"Aₗₘₒₛₜ tₕₑᵣe… ₐₗₘoₛᵗ…!" he squirms, wriggling a bit more before a shadow crosses his path, causing him to pause. "Wₕₒ…? ᴼₕ! Yₒᵤ! I-ᴵ ₜhᵒᵤgₕₜ yᵒu wᵉᵣₑ… dᵉaᵈ…?"

Timothy stares in shock at the creature before him.

"Wₕₐₜ… ₕaᵖₚₑₙed ₜₒ ʸᵒᵘ..?!" he asks in horror.

The monster steps away momentarily to search the tables for a specific weapon.

"Y-yₒu… ʸoᵤ ₕₐᵥe ₜᵒ ₕₑₗₚ ᵐe!" Timothy begs. "ᴾₗeₐₛₑ! ᵀh⁻ᵗₕₑ ₘᵤₜₐₜᵢₒₙ ₋₋ I ᵈidₙ'ₜ wᵃₙₜ ₜₕᵢₛ!"

The monster finds what he's been looking for on the table and walks back over to Timothy.

"W-wₐᵢₜ, wₕₐₜ ₐᵣₑ yₒᵤ dₒᵢₙg?" he asks, watching as the monster holds a frost gun point-blank to Timothy's slime-ridden face. "Yᵒu cₐₙ't ₋₋ ₙo, ⁿᵒ, no! NO!! ₚₗeₐₛₑ! Dₒₙ'ₜ dₒ ₜₕiˢ, I --"

The monster fires, a blast of icy air blows over the slime monster, freezing him almost instantly. His face and head are stuck, etched in permanent pain and agony, a tortured ice sculpture.

The monster lifts up a foot, and brings it crashing down on the mutagen man's frozen head, crushing it completely. The rest of the slime fizzles out.

Now, to finish off the rest...

Prev || Next

[dorokora]

Chapter 16 Prologue Part 5:

We get backstory of MS-C1. He was once a human and had an organic body. In the old laboratory experiments he was scrapped due to non-compliance with specifications and repurposed for other experiments. It seems that he got a little ahead of the other geniuses. Therefore, the consciousness salvaged from the human body was installed in a mass-produced robot of his own design, leading to reuse. He had a twin sister, Curren, who was born in this world, in this universe they are just two twin siblings. He can protect his sister with a plan he came up with himself.

Back in the present, Curren throws the Hei Long Yi Quan and Tu'er Shen who are still paralyzed from time freeze. Curren says she doesn’t engage in old-fashioned violence. All she did is let them experience a bit of genuine time acceleration. Curren says she doesn’t have business with MC this time, it’s Mononobe she has business with now. She stares at Mononobe with hate and contempt. She ask does he know how many clone kids he created. Mononobe he was transferred to a different after the cloning. Curren says that’s not good enough of an excuse. Curren tells MC It's okay if they don't understand anything she say. Similarly, there is no need for them to understand anything about what is being said between her and Mononobe, and they are not allowed to interfere. This is an issue between her and Kyouma Mononobe, genetic parents and child and stares at MC with hostility. MS-C1 speaks out to Curren. Mononobe calls the robot by the name “Clark”. MS-C1 says he used to go by that old name when he was human. However, now, his memories have been transferred into a mass-produced robot and serves as a mentor to the MS-C2 Curren. MS-C1 explain what the game masters do that we already know. Continue the game, Clones monitor the game. Michael and Amaterasu were compatiable with Plan C but are no longer here. Now they believe MxOther will claim the prize and win the game. Mononobe says no can orchestrate everything. There are future you can’t predict. Curren won’t accept that, it would be fine for her but what about her brother. Curren summons more robots. These robots are versions of MS-C1 from various futures. The Utopia overworld shift is capable of doing that. Curren says she will pick the future she wants. Hei Long Yi Quan and Tu'er Shen stand up to help MC.

[obscurecharactershowdown]

Round 5

[image ID: the first image is of Oopsy Bear, a green care bear. on his stomach is a drawing of a red heart, a smiling yellow star, and several colorful lines behind the star implying it's soaring through the "sky". the second image is of No Significant Harassment, a shadowy figure standing behind a sleeping pink-red, fox-like creature. their green hands seem to be holding up the floating creature. end ID]

Oopsy Bear

HE IS MY FAVORITE CARE BEAR AND NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT HIM BECAUSE HE WAS ONLY IN ONE ITERATION OF THE FRANCHISE AND THEN THEY NEVER SHOWED HIM AGAIN. I love him so much it’s unreal he’s just a sweet little guy he’s clumsy and doesn’t have any belly badge powers like the other bears… His tummy is blank and he DRAWS ON IT he will give himself different silly belly badges. He’s also besties with a robot that used to be working for the villain. Please. Please. Please. Please 

No Significant Harassment

They're just a silly little guy. A jokester. Significant harassment if you will. Anyway, a more in depth run down: They're a city sized supercomputer built by a Buddhist adjacent society to figure out how to transcend the 'Great Cycle' (semi-metaphorical cycle of death and rebirth) in a safer way than the previous method (submerging oneself in the 'void sea' which is a mysterious golden liquid that dissolves whatever it touches). Despite being built for this express purpose NSH never really shows a pressing interest in ascension, even cracking jokes about those who are still looking for a solution. Whether this is due to indifference, dislike of, or humor to cope with being unable to ascend is not clear and really up to interpretation. Example: NSH: I wish them super good luck in that endeavor. How is it going to happen? Have the overseers gnaw through bedrock until their entire can crashes down in the void sea? BSM: Please be respectful when speaking of the Void Sea. Grey Wind, where did you hear this? CW: I really shouldn't say. He's going to attempt some sort of breeding program. Thought you might want to know. NSH: Haha with the slimers, lizards and etceteras? Surely the answer was in a lizard skull all along! He's very flippant, but does care very intensely for those close to him. NSH: Moon? It's me again. NSH: I do not know if you are receiving these. Please signal in any way you can. NSH: I need to talk to you. I need to know you're okay. NSH: … NSH: Its difficult for us to assist you over this distance. NSH: Even more difficult for us to do anything in the midst of these tantrums. NSH: Were going to try everything that we can. NSH: Just hold on a little longer. (Context for previous convo: They genetically engineered a super organism of a slugcat (the species you play as in Rain World) to help reset his coworker/sibling after her collapse and restart her systems. He was so desperate to fix her that he accidentally messed up the slugcat's (Hunter) genetic code and as a result it became riddle with the Rot (relatively similar to aggressive cancer) :( which parallels his other coworker/siblings condition who also has the rot. ) He canonically uses he/they pronouns too! Nonbinary swag! NSH has major internet troll vibes. He has sent a data pearl of "something distasteful" to his neighbors on several(?) occasions and causes chaos. If he had access to the wider internet he'd probably be an influencer So…yeah! Vote NSH this website likes the allure of heavy machinery and stuff like that so… there you go. Kind of a blorbo. End post.

[theworldvsyoshiko]

Since I just linked it from my main blog anyway, I guess this would be a good time to do a State Of The Union for the colony. I usually do some kind of summary a week or so into each colony, but never got around to it for this one.

The fine seaside orphanage of Robot's Ocean is fucking huge now.

We've got multiple nested layers of defensive walls, a world-class temple and rec room, three geothermal generators, a tidal generator, a solar generator, a full natural gas helixien system for heating and cooling, a greenhouse, a genetics lab with an extensive gene bank, space for 5-6 prisoners to live in comfort, and enough freezers to keep about a year of food on hand at all times. And an in-colony hot spring, most importantly.

The colony's currently worth is about $400k, which is $50k more than any of the previous ones have hit, so it probably isn't a coincidence that I've needed to burn two antigrain warheads on recent attacks. That growth has stagnated a bit, which is fortunate, because as combat goes we're about at our limits. On the upside, we now have something like seven combat owlbears, a Scyther, a Tunneler, a Tesseron, a Centipede Blaster on the way, and of course Yoshiko's pet thrumbo Chiyo.

On the other hand, after investing about $15k into building and upgrading Spencer only for it to die trying to get to its bedroom, we're pretty strapped for cash. And we need some, because the map is just about mined out, and all of these robots and endgame weapons require a lot of materials. Unfortunately the map being mined out also limits our options for producing trade goods. The current plan is to mass-produce... corsets. If you haven't played the game just trust me when I say that this is a sensible plan, but we'll need to do a lot of hunting to make it work.

Following the terrible Tactical Nukes In The Hospital incident, I've rearranged things a bit. The short version is that we've only got one outdoor orbital targeting beacon now, and it should steer most drop pod raids to a less terrible location. Will this help much if another group shows up with a dozen rocket launchers? Hell no. Eventually I'd like to set up one or two extra beacons as decoys.

The population is currently 8, which is just about the lowest it's been in years. These kinds of things happen when four colonists get blown up in one evening.

Yoshiko "Happy" Russell

is, of course, a forever-22 psychic cyborg vampire foxgirl who controls robots with her brain. (Her actual effective age is now 34, but the game doesn't care about that.) She's currently undertaking her Dark Slumber in her Chambyr of Bloode for the next day or two, as one must when they are a vampire.

She's good at fucking everything now. (And good at fucking too; she's got an implant for that.) Her lowest skill is Plants at a 9, or 'solid professional.' She's rated as Expert or better in Shooting, Melee, Construction, Animals, Crafting, Art, Medical, Social, and Intellectual. She has 827 kills, 34 mechanical implants, maxed psychic potential with 10 psychic abilities, and wields a sapient EMP sledgehammer named Nalorgargur. Thanks to being a vampire, the only way to permanently kill her is to destroy her brain. With so many implants, I think the only other ways to even incapacitate her in combat are with an EMP or by destroying her liver. In theory you could make her bleed out too, but she's effectively immune to that. (You should go for the brain thing anyway, because she has pretty good body armor under that parka, but still insists on wearing a beret instead of, like... a helmet.)

Truly she is... the ultimate lifeform.

Toby Lang

Man, this makes for some real mood whiplash. I mean, look at him. There isn't much to say about Lang.

He was found in the wreckage of a space battle a few years ago. He spends all of his time cooking, doing doctor stuff, or handling the colony's pet rabbits. He's no good in a fight. Yoshiko adopted him and he adores her as much as is physically possible; her opinion of him is 7/100.

Actually though, Lang does have one solid accomplishment under his belt. During the last Diabolus fight, all of the blood bags prisoners staged an escape. Everybody who was good in combat was off doing that, and Lang was the only person nearby. So, he grabbed a shotgun and did surprisingly well at controlling the situation. By which I mean blowing their brains out. Can't get any blood out of them like that, but it's better than having them set the base on fire on their way out.

Saburo Richards

Listen, I can't stress this enough. He was like this when I found him. Unlike everyone else, he's an Animusen, a natural foxboy by birth. What benefits does this give? Well, uh. Not any, really. He's fast in the cold and slow in the heat, which was nice before the climate's average temperature got bumped up by 18F.

Richards is still 12 and I'm really hoping he gets some fantastic growth at 13, because he isn't good at anything. For whatever reason, he apparently gets really abusive when he's in a bad mood, because every mental break he's had has been an insulting spree. So most of the colony has opinions of him like

In fact, Olga and Yoshiko are the only two who would even be sad if he died, I think. Yoshiko, of course, adores him.

Raymond "Raywolfen" Wolfen

... has to be the most colorful kid here, as a slug person who was raised by wolves and then crashed outside during a space battle. Don't let the sprite fool you; the game just doesn't know how to render how fucked up she looks. According to her genes, she's got the body of a slug, but covered in scales, with the face of a fox, slug-style eye stalks, and constantly secretes a foul-smelling substance that decomposes corpses. You'd think that being a hideous slug/fox amalgam who smells like rotting bodies would be horrible for her social life, and you'd mostly be right, but Yoshiko adores her. She didn't even adopt her or anything. This happened naturally.

Raywolfen's only really good at combat, but that's okay, because we desperately need that right now.

Ben "Bush" Nitsiza

... is another adopted son who recently turned 13. He's great at melee combat, and got two mechanoid kills while horribly sick with the flu last night. He's... decent at crafting, art, and research. We're working on it. He's not decent at social stuff, but he's the preacher anyway. For now, at least.

Bush actually gets along with everybody else pretty well, which is surprising for somebody with the traits of 'snob' and 'too smart.'

Cindy

... is a sapient mech (it/its) that has only been around for half a year, as part of Yoshiko's ongoing quest to find true love. (This isn't working out very well.) As a hunter-killer mech, Cindy's only really good at combat, and is incapable of... most other things. It's decent with animals and research though, and is slowly learning how to do medicine too.

Cindy is currently flirting with Yoshiko about once every few days, which would be cute if it would just wait until Yoshiko considered it more than a passing acquaintance. It'll work out some day though. I'm sure of it.

Dae-up "Nerd" Kim

Is it fair for me to blame Nerd for the fact that he was chased here by pirates with rocket launchers? Probably not. But it still happened, and it got four people killed. And Nerd's a completely amoral kid who tortured small animals when he was little, so I'm not gonna pretend that I like him. I genetically modified him to be good at mining, so he could mine out the collapsed rocks that trapped Sora as he burned to death. Take some responsibility, you little prick.

Most of the colony likes Nerd, but he's really rooted in his intensely xenophobic ideology, so he hates almost everybody in return. The one person he actually likes is Yoshiko, and that's only because she's ridiculously pretty.

Nerd's actually pretty competent, unfortunately. He's great at mining, crafting, and medical. He's pretty decent at construction, and he'll pick up art fast if we find the time and resources for him to do much of it.

Olga Keuneke

... is 11 and a pretty recent arrival, so there isn't much to say about her. Unlike certain assholes, the trouble that she brought with her was a machine that warmed up our Siberian-ass climate, so I already like her. She's got a huge passion for animals, but she isn't learning much about it because she's not skilled enough to work with our animals. You can't start out by training predatory owl monsters that weigh half a ton.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Humanity is the future

As I said, it's been a while. The robo-culture has spread throughout Earth. There are now 30 billion humans living in a state of permanent virtual reality; my present time is their distant past, when some still lived without VR and others were addicted to it. Robotic servants attend to all our needs (including sex). We eat engineered foods that never spoil or go bad. Our health and longevity have improved dramatically with gene therapy, brain-computer interfaces, anti-aging drugs and so forth. I cannot imagine what life was like before these things came along. It must be unimaginably bleak: dirt (a word which means something very different today), disease, dementia.

Yet for all this humanity remains just as lost as ever. Some people live in virtual versions of the world they knew back then. But the ones who don't get bored fast. They can fly anywhere at any speed, but there isn't much left to see after 15 minutes. Virtual experiences are cheap, real experiences expensive. So most people spend their money on cheaper trips into computer games rather than outer space. In the early days of the VR craze, adventurers would travel around the solar system in search of alien ruins and technological wonders -- nowadays, if you want a good trip, you better have a lot of cash to spare. And yet, despite the wealth of ancient cultures available online, everyone seems no one knows how to make a civilization last more than a few thousand years. Life goes on, businesses spring up and die out, new discoveries emerge only to become obsolete within a generation. Nothing endures except the slow drift toward entropy. People fight wars over nothing; everything becomes an excuse for fighting. The central government of Earth -- like many governments before it -- pretends not to notice. It maintains order by deploying robots against rioters, and occasionally launching military campaigns across the solar system, in the hopes that someone will take them seriously enough to threaten interplanetary peace.

Meanwhile, among those who still insist upon living "in meatspace," depression runs rampant. Whenever someone kills themselves, as often happens, we go through the usual motions. The authorities investigate every suicide attempt, and perform postmortem examinations of the bodies whenever possible. They study genetic profiles, personal histories, web searches. Forensic psychologists try to reconstruct the thoughts behind each act. This work takes a long time. A great deal of effort is devoted to making sure that no one can fake evidence suggesting their own guilt. Meanwhile, people continue to kill themselves. Although the reasons vary from case to case, it is usually poverty, loneliness, lack of purpose, and despair about the future that lead individuals to commit suicide. Their relatives and friends claim otherwise, though. Most say that the deceased had always seemed happy, even joyful. All had led normal lives until recently. Then some event happened to drive them mad. No matter how hard scientists look, they find no indication of mental illness. Maybe they should blame their computers?

Everything changes when a woman named Drusilla comes along. She does not use her legal name, but simply calls herself "Dru." Dru is a medical doctor specializing in neurology. Not knowing anything else about her, this

[torchship-rpg]

Dev Diary 4 - Character Creation Part 2

This Dev Diary is a direct follow-up to Dev Diary 2!

So once you’ve selected your character’s Departments and defined their Identity with Traits, we move on to fleshing out their actual mechanic character.

Personal Information

The first section of your character sheet is the fairly boring normal stuff; your name, pronouns, and age. There’s a few neat bits here (there’s naming convention suggestions, a chart of example neopronouns, and a summary of what the human generational politics look like in 2169) but mostly this is straightforward.

The last section of personal information is to ask what flags your character has on their uniform. A Star Patrol uniform has space on the sleeve for two personal flags, and we offer you a bunch of options along with their meanings, as well as guidance for your own. There are multiple different options for flags of the Star Union, national flags (of nations future and current), and the flags of the political movements mentioned in part 3. 

Flags let you state, right on your sheet, the opinions and identity of your character; they literally wear their perspective on their sleeves.

Some of the flags you might wear; the old Solar Union flag, the Neo-Trotskyite and Cybernetic Democratic flags, the flag of Proxima Colony, and two Lunar cities; the Star Union’s capital of Armstrong City, and the POW camp turned alien enclave Camp Aldrin.

Personality Impulses

Next, characters define their Personality Impulses. This is a short list (12 entries) of narrative triggers your characters might face; things like “Generous: When you make a sacrifice for a stranger” or “Logical: When you lay out and follow through on a plan”. 

You select three Impulses, then cross out three others to create Blocks. Fulfilling your Impulses is the primary way you generate Unity, the narrative resources you use to reroll dice, clear Stress, and power psychic abilities, while Blocks create Stress when you have to do them. 

Your Impulses act as narrative handholds to encourage roleplaying, and as Unity is a global resource, the whole team gets stronger when people enable one another to play to their strengths.

Traits

We brought up Traits when we discussed character Identity, and we might go into it further later, but in short, Traits are special rules you apply to your character to give them flavour and represent their unique characteristics. They can be physical (a heavyworlder’s strength or the Nariene preference for warm climates), developmental (a Spacer’s comfort in zero g, a familiarity with your home climate), social (do you have a dark history? A streak of exes?), and personal (do you work better alone or in groups? Are you an anxious perfectionist or have a short temper?).

You can do a lot with Traits. You can make up aliens, play as robots, silicon-based life, shapeshifters, sapient computers, genetic augments, cyborgs, and so forth, but you can also use it to represent a wide variety of mundane circumstances like having medical dependencies, being good with machines, or being a plural system. Whatever kind of character you want to make, there’s a Trait for it, and just about any imaginable character will have at least a few Traits to make them interesting.

Traits are self-contained and self-balanced; if they have a distinct advantage, they always have some kind of drawback built into them as well, often a predictable logistical cost or inverse circumstance where you struggle. That means there’s no limit to the number of Traits you can take, and no points cost or anything. If you need ten Traits to represent what you have in mind, go ahead!

Finally, Traits are not fixed. Our rule with Traits is that you can always change your Traits if you justify it in the narrative, so you can always reveal your dark history as a twist mid-season or say “wow, I really got hurt in that disaster, I should come back as a cyborg!” 

The game even has a pharmaceutical crafting system which lets you manufacture these justifications as needed, as well as temporarily embrace many Traits. You can, with a bit of work, make a pill that makes you learn languages quickly, gives you hyperfocus, or grants night vision. 

With sufficiently advanced technology, you could even craft a treatment that’ll make you into a robot. Finally, HRT 2.0.

Relationships

During character creation, you go through and figure out the way everyone feels about one another. Relationships are unidirectional, asymmetrical declarations of how your character sees others; are they best friends, do they have a crush, or are they rivals? These will change over time, but it lets you immediately set up future interpersonal drama, if you want it.

Or you might just all be professional comrades and stay on task, with no space kissing at all. That’s okay. Doesn’t make me sad at all.

Aptitude

Finally, the important part. The stats.

We call skills in this game Certifications, because that’s what they are; they’re a certificate saying “hey you’re qualified to do the thing!” from Star Patrol U. ‘Certs’ are structured as jobs, rather than as individual skills; rather than ‘Medical’, it’s job titles like “Paramedic” and “Pharmacist”, and the Cert covers all the things a paramedic or pharmacist might do. Overlap exists and is totally fine; a missile plotter and a flight planner basically do the same thing, one of them just decelerates!

Certs are ranked; they are Untrained, Novice, Skilled, and Expert, corresponding to a 6+, 5+, 4+, and 3+ success target when you roll dice. You’re automatically Untrained in everything, and you gain Certs through character creation and over time.

We divide Certs into three sections. The first four are the ‘Universal Certs’, which is to say the things everyone does; we called them Wild Animal, Physical Instrument, Social Being, and Cosmonaut. You can fall back on these when no other Cert fits (such as rolling Physical Instrument if you just need something lifted), and you also roll them for the various ‘Shock Checks’ after taking damage; we’ll talk about that later.

The second section is Languages. We treat language aptitude as something like a Charisma stat; it's closer to your rhetorical ability with that language than strictly your fluency. Most characters will speak a number of languages, and you can learn quite a lot of them over the course of a game. Even with a universal translator, learning languages is useful; knowing the language an alien is speaking actually makes the translator work better.

Finally, the departmental Certs cover most of the Certs you’ll actually be rolling during regular play. Every Department has 4 Certs which cover all the things that Department might be called on to do, and characters are generally Skilled at all of the ones in their Department, as well as Novice at the really basic Cert of all the other departments. Every Star Patroller is, at least a little, an Observer, Paramedic, Diplomat, Programmer, Artillery Officer, Soldier, Flight Planner, and Damage Controller. Something something that bit in Capital about the division of labour.

Finally, rounding out the system are Electives, freeform Certs divided into Specialities and Hobbies. They both work the same way (lower success targets by 1 if any of them apply to a check), but Specialities are typically jobs and Hobbies are… well, hobbies.

Specialities let you get really specific about what your character is good at. They’re mastery of particular tools and narrow fields of expertise, letting you really be the best with multitools, be a crack shot with the ACER pistol, or really letting you get into the mindset of a 4N-2F tokamak fusion reactor. Hobbies let you define your character’s interests; maybe you paint, play piano, repair antique electric cars. Somehow, those hobbies always seem to come in clutch when you would least expect it!

Finally, advancement is structured so that you’re always improving your core departmental Certs at a fixed rate, freeing you up to explore other Certs and Electives at your leisure, so don’t worry about ‘wasting’ points on characterful choices; you can have both.

That’s it for what actually makes a character, but you aren’t done there. You have to make a program and the rocket that goes with it!

[thryth-gaming]

Cyberpunk Monsters and Hunters

So I was asked to dig a bit into cyberpunk this morning since we finished with the new Team playbooks.

One of the things that we were asked to do with Hunter's Journal and Slayer's Survival Kit is to add more sci-fi options as adverse to the usual occult flavor that is the default assumption with Monster of the Week.

This resulted in the inclusion of the Host, the Visitor, The Interface, Research Lab, and Escaped Experiments as well as the sections on creating future-tech and bionics in the Gear section. However, Sci-Fi does not necessarily equate to cyberpunk. So what makes cyberpunk?

Settings with a "punk" descriptor usually heavily focus on social inequity. You're going to have powerful corporations and unethical government programs feature heavily. The problems that you face are outgrowths of the dehumanization of the lower classes and the reduction of their societal role into being a cog in the machine feeding the comfort of those people in power. In a lot of way's Marek's advice about taking a Gothic look at things is very applicable to cyberpunk. Instead of using a supernatural monster or phenomenon instead use a science fiction one.

This right now is me writing a bit just in the morning over the course of about 30 minutes. This is a topic that will take a bit deeper thought to give a complete thought on. However, some basic summaries here:

A lot of cyberpunk fiction involves corporations and governments trying obfuscate or justify what is effectively slavery. The villains of the setting will make an effort to narrow the definition of a person and attempt to retain ownership bionic upgrades and replacements. Your replacement heart was taken on credit and can be repossessed, such as you see in Repo: The Genetic Opera.

Branching off that, explore what it means to be human or a person. Is there a line of replacement at which point a person stops being a person? Or is there something more abstract that determines what makes a person? Short Circuit goes into this with Johnny Five's spontaneous sapience being explored. This is also a driving point in the video game Detroit: Becoming Human with sapient robots and in Blade Runner with clones.

Explore the unintended consequences of technological advancement. Technology itself is neither good nor bad but cyberpunk often explores what happens when an advancement is rushed out without proper quality controls or, worse, disregarding significant dangers that the company doesn't want to bother dealing with because they need profit now. A fair number of Black Mirror episodes seem to examine this.

Take the promise of an exciting technological advancement and imagine how it might be twisted and corrupted from its original intended application once funneled through the perspective of a corporation that only sees the potential for profit or a government that only sees the potential for control. It is important that the tech is not inherently bad, nor are humans inherently bad, but bad people have inordinately more control over how things go than they should. In the Val Kilmer movie, The Saint the conflict is over free energy, for instance.

For contrast, Star Trek takes place post cyberpunk and the webcomic Questionable Content assumes a reality where several cyberpunk tropes were avoided creating a world where AIs and humans live alongside each other as equals.

As regards to Monster of the Week, you'll be dealing more often with Villains and Phenomena than Monsters, where Phenomena represent a new technological marvel that has some horrific side-effect that is just being concealed or ignored by the creator. That said, you can still get Monsters with things like rogue AIs and killer robots. But also, AIs and robots might become bystanders that you have to help escape from the corporations and governments as well.

The ultimate enemy of cyberpunk stories is crushing social inequity. A very small number of people have inordinately more power than the bulk of humanity. You'll find a lot of that emotional inspiration in both my own and Marek's design spaces.

When it comes to the hunters.... hmmm, let's create a quick team. I don't have time to do Hero Forge minis just yet, but I'll probably build some over the day to add in here.

For weird moves I'm going to focus on the following:

Hacking, the control of computers and tech, naturally.

Weird Science, the crafting of unstable prototype gadgets.

No Limits, enhanced physicality, could represent cybernetic enhancement.

Tradecraft, enhanced analytical prowess, again, could represent cybernetic enhancement.

And for playbooks I'm going with the following:

The Interface, all about interacting with tech.

The Host, in this case, fused with an AI.

The Expert, with a highly technological Haven.

The Constructed, this is a third-party playbook that's popular, we may eventually see it become official.

And I did Escaped Experiments earlier, but I think I'll do this as Whistleblowers... which is sort of like the prologue to Escaped Experiments and I used the model of Whistleblower when I was creating the questions for creating the Project in Escaped Experiments and the App in Swipe to Slay.

Masamune-Sigurd Industries

The hunters are agents that are part of a megacorp that is pushing the boundaries of technology with the stated goal of advancing humanity. Or at least the humanity represented by their major shareholders.

Style: Revolt - let's burn it all down.

The Organization

Official Goals: Research human enhancement, expand market share.

Goals you suspect: Taking over the world.

Official Resources: Modernized, Rich

Suspected Resources: Bribed officials, sacrificing members

Obvious Flaws: Closed hierarchy

Suspected Flaws: Hostile superiors, protects member criminals

Core Traits

Team Ally: Faruq, an office worker in the organisation. He also feels there’s something wrong but is too afraid to act openly about it.

Team Moves: Something Rotten

Team Assets

Fake IDs: Fake government IDs.

Workshop: A big space for craft and repair projects, with plenty of tools and materials.

Bobbie Lloyd - The Interface

Look: A cybernetically enhanced soldier with clearly artificial body parts, though from a distance or under heavy clothing they could pass as a normal human.

Charm -1

Cool +1

Sharp +1

Tough +2

Weird +0

Integration

Upgrades: Heads-up Display, Intelligence Database

Faults: Hackable Brain

Origin: Volunteer

Moves

Basic Weird Move: Tradecraft

Moves: Keep Going and Going, Take the Shot, Expert Troll

Gear

Tactical Armor (1-armour)

Jumping Boots (integrated)

Enhanced Sensor Suite (integrated)

Internal Computer (integrated)

Recording Suite (Integrated)

Submachine gun arm (3-harm close area loud reload integrated blatant)

Muscle Augments (1-harm hand useful integrated)

Incessantly replayed voicemail

Nostalgic Photo

History

Phoebe Morris represents one of Bobbie's nightmares, having an AI meshed into her brain. The fact she did it to herself, deliberately even, makes it so much worse.

They don't see Project V as much different from themself. Just coming from a different starting point.

Bobbie knows that Eileen has some shady past. They just don't know details about what Eileen's done. That said they do recognize that Eileen is honestly trying to atone for past sins.

Bobbie was quick to volunteer for the Cipher program and hasn't regretted losing flesh and bone body parts yet. The one thing that concerns her is that there is now a path from a hacker to access her organic brain and do all sorts of terrible things to her mind (and possibly body)

Phoebe Morris - The Host

Look: A lovely young woman with a number of skin-mods showing LED lights flashing in lines along her skin. Looking into her eyes you can see binary numbers processing.

Charm +1

Cool +1

Sharp +0

Tough -1

Weird +2

Symbiosis

The Norn-AI

Benefits: Can't be possessed (hacked), Subtle Physical Improvements

Downsides: Obvious mutations (the neon lines and digital eyes)

Moves

Basic Weird Move: Hacking

Moves: Defensive Adaptation (Whispered Advice), Collaborative Effort, Mutual Survival

Gear

Audio recorder and backup storage

Symbiotic Stunner (0-harm close stun integrated retractable)

History

Eileen's advice was instrumental in the successful symbiosis with the Norn-AI.

Phoebe saved Bobbie from an intrusive virus or AI and that was how she came to the idea of upgrading her nervous system to house Norn-AI

Project V has come to her and Norn-AI for advice on how to fit in with biological human beings.

Phoebe could very much have ended up a monster that needed to be put down. Fortunately, the Norn-AI is largely friendly or at least tolerant to their host personality. Phoebe had discovered the Norn-AI quarantined in a neglected corner of the company's Byzantine digital structures. Housing Norn-AI in her own body is how she decided to rescue them.

Eileen Moreno - The Expert

Look: A woman somewhere between middle-aged and elderly, but it's hard to say exactly which as life-extending technology has muddled the signs of her aging. She dresses sharply and walks with a slight limp.

Charm +0

Cool +1

Sharp +2

Tough -1

Weird +1

Haven

A private lab hidden away on company grounds where she can perform her off-the-books research and projects.

Hidden

Guardian (Personal lab AI)

Science Laboratory

Moves

Basic Weird Move: Weird Science

Moves: Dark Past, The Woman with the Plan

Gear

Magnum (3-harm close reload loud)

Stun Gun (1-harm hand stun electric)

Walking Stick (1-harm hand innocuous)

History

Project V knows a lot of Eileen's dark secrets. But they're not entirely sure which are bad and which are just past events.

Phoebe Morrise approached Eileen for advice on her project, at the time Eileen was distracted with her moral epiphany and did not realize that Phoebe planned to host an AI within her own cybernetically enhanced nervous system.

Bobbie Lloyd's upgrades are at least partially based on Eileen's designs. She is concerned at this use but has to admit that Bobbie's upgrades are well done.

Eileen has been an important researcher at Masamune-Sigured for over six decades and she's well into her 80th year for all that she looks much younger. In her time at the company she has both seen and performed many sins in the pursuit of technological advance. Upon discovering Project V's growing sapience, Eileen had an epiphany and started to realize that she's been in the wrong in many circumstances.

Project V - The Constructed

Look: A mostly human looking face with a clearly sleek, robotic body made from a silvery metal that will eventually be covered in a substitute for skin like their face is.

Charm +0

Cool +1

Sharp -1

Tough +2

Weird +1

Purpose

Experiment

Animating Force: Electricity

Creator set them free

Moves

Basic Weird Move: No Limits

Experiment Move: Always Learning

Moves: Inhuman, Recharge, But Why?

Gear

Huge handgun (3-harm close loud reload)

Bulwark (1 armour)

History

Eileen Moreno is Project V's creator and she's working on a way for Project V to pass as a biological human.

Bobbie Lloyd first assumed that Project V was another bionically enhanced human being. They were a bit surprised at the truth but rebounded quickly back to accepting Project V as a person.

Phoebe Morris's host AI has expressed interest in Project V's programming and has engaged in digital conversations probing the subject. So far the AI has avoided pushing boundaries.

The point of Project V on paper was to create a robotic soldier or operative. However, once Eileen started recognizing the potential of what was in front of her, she started to divert attention away from the project and slowly remove V from the official records. Since then, Project V has mostly been confined to the hidden facilities the team has available, but will leave that area to help the team.

You can find the Interface and Host can be found in the new supplements along with advice on incorporating bionics into your campaign can be found in the Slayer's Survival Kit.

[lazarish]

No wait I want all the backstories in every AU pls

Well if you INSIST

School AU:

This is basically a kdrama

Misty's parents die in an accident caused by the Sage corporation, she gets a full ride scholarship to the country's best high school so she doesn't go to the media (so she's orphaned at 16 instead of as a child)

Ends up in a love triangle between the heir of the Sage group and "King" of the school, Nadir, and the son of the Sage group's biggest rival, Atlas, who has just returned from ✨abroad✨ after some scandal no one will talk about

Selene is initially a bystander when her classmates bully Misty but eventually she stands up for her and uses her own reputation to protect her new friend

The only kdrama in history where she ends up with the second lead

Was nadir inspired by Gu Jun Pyo? We may never know

Historical AU:

Setting: a nation on the verge of a revolution

Misty goes to the castle to become a maid in hopes of making a better life for herself, ends up befriending the sheltered princess and helping her understand how bad things are for the kingdom

Things get complication when the revolution infiltrates the palace in the form of the formerly exiled (Im gonna say Duke? Hell if I know how royalty works) Atlas

Nadir probably gets guillotined, sorry kit

Idol AU:

This was the song stuck in my head when I was doing their outfits

Misty and Selene debut together in a group that's named after butterflies somehow because I have a brand™

Atlas and Nadir were in the same group but Atlas got kicked out (probably because of Nadir)

Misty eventually steps away from the spotlight and produces for Selene

Selene just. Becomes berry IU because that's what she deserves.

Vanilla AU:

It's just the same. Genuinely it's just the same. They might have different names?

You can take the girl out of the pink but you can't take the pink out of the girl

Cyberpunk AU:

This one would need the most worldbuilding but I imagine it's the same berry world just a few hundred years in the future

Selene's family is extremely rich and influential, so she lives completely sheltered and ignorant of what the world is really like- until one day she accidentally sees her brother's files and realizes she isn't really Selene Elysian

The real girl died young because of a genetic disease, and she's a highly advanced robot created to replace the real daughter so no one ever knows.

She has an identity crisis, runs away, and is taken in by Misty who at this point is making a living off salvaging valuable materials from discarded tech

Misty teaches Selene about the outside world, and together they realize that Selene can do a lot more than any other robot on the market, meaning her family is hiding some kind of dangerous and advanced technology

I'm not good at making pets in the sims but you get the Vibes

Selene is the fluffiest possible cat

Misty is a King Charles Cavalier because my friends have a cute KCC named Nell and she's one of my favourite creatures

I genuinely had more ideas for this edit but I had to stop myself lmao, I could spend forever dressing up my girls and giving them happy endings

[maevethewerepuppy]

Puppy HRT - Part 4: Consequences

Kara squeezed my hand as we stood outside the pet store, patiently waiting for me to be ready. Even though I’d made my decision yesterday, it was still a scarily big step. It was a help for Kara to be there with me though. Her presence made me feel calmer and more relaxed, even when I was so high-strung like this.

“Take the time you need puppy. We’ll go in when you are ready.” She whispered softly into my ear, another squeeze around my hand.

“Lets… Lets do it.” I finally said, after taking another moment to settle my breathing and bring myself to step forwards. True, I was now partially leaning on my roommate for the physical and emotional support, but today was a big day and she was being extra patient with me. I couldn’t ask for a better own- I mean friend.

She gently guided me into the store, showing me the way without me needing to look up. I was too nervous still to meet the gaze of the other patrons or workers of the store, so Kara took me to the place we were looking for. The collar aisle. She led me down, walking past all the kitty collars right to the puppy collar section. There of course were some collars for actual dogs, the few that could still be found around, but most of the section was dedicated to the former human-dogs. The industry had moved out of the niche kink communities into a mainstream commodity, with a wide array of beautiful collars. Some made of pure leather, others more colourful.

“Well, let’s take a look here, and see what look good on my puppy…” Kara mused quietly, even as I clung to her arm. The two of us looked through their stock, we began to settle on a few options. One was a beautifully hand-crafted collar that was more expensive, a simple black band that matched my hair and carefully sewn gold trim inlaid into it with an intricate weaving design. The second was a flashier one, a collar that made me blush as it was a more basic design but with the colours of the transgender flag printed in stripes on it and black pawprints every couple of inches around it.

“I think these two will work best. This one,” she holds up the nice black one, “As your ‘nice’ collar, for when we have guests and events, and this one as your daily collar.” She then holds up the trans flag one. I nodded softly, looking them over with a growing slight blush on my face.

Setting them into our small carrying basket, she began to guide me deeper into the store to a section that only made my blush grow deeper. Hanging out carefully were beautifully crafted sets of ears and matching sets of tails. Some had simple anal plug attachments, others having more intricate looking electrical connectors.

A very beautiful woman wearing an extremely expensive looking suit was already standing in the aisle, looking over the more advanced robotic tails. She glanced over as we entered, giving Kara a slight nod as we began to look at the various breeds of tails and ears they had on display in the plug section. However, I began to bury my face into my roommate’s sweater as I heard the clicking of the woman’s heels on the hard floor approaching us.

“First time pet owner?” She asked Kara, standing next to the two of us. I managed to steal a glance over at her again, and she was nearly two feet taller than either Kara or me.

Kara gave a small nod, turning to look up at the woman, “Yeah, very recently too. I’m Kara, this here is Hailey, my soon to be puppy. You are?”

The lady pulled a business card out of her suit breast pocket and handed it to her. “You may call me Doctor Whyte.”

“As in… Whyte Wolfworks Whyte? The genetics and robotics company?” Kara’s eyes wide as she looked up at her with a slight amazement on her face. Even I, someone as disconnected from politics and news as possible, knew of the Whyte Wolfworks. They were one of the biggest lobbyists for the ‘Pet and Work Animal Renewal Project’ and had practically come out of nowhere with most of the advancements in hormones, cyberware, and animalification tools. Most of the products in this store were made by that company. To see her here? It was like getting struck with lightning.

She simply gave a nod in response, breezing past it with the confidence only someone with ‘fuck you money’ possibly can. “I enjoy spending time in the local pet stores when I travel for business. Seeing how our products are viewed and understanding the culture so we can make our services better.”

“Wow. It’s an honour to meet you. I read a lot into your research into the psychology of pets and those who become pets when I was looking into helping my roommate here with her transition,” Kara went on to detail my situation, earning slightly approving nods when she made some detailed comments relating back to Dr. Whyte’s work and online resources.

“It’s good to see that your puppy here had someone looking after her. It would have been potentially disastrous if you hadn’t paid attention and learned properly to take care of her,” Whyte nodded again when the story was finished before eyeing up the collars we had, “What species were you thinking about acquiring for her Species Affirming Limbs?”

Kara glanced at me, giving a reassuring smile to me before turning her gaze back at the domineering businesswoman. “We were going to go with Australian Shepard SALs, though probably with just the plugs and headband. Neither of us are really able to afford the procedure for the cybernetic hardware ones.”

“Understandable. However, I won’t let a diligent young owner like you walk out of here with anything but the best. They offer the implant services here, so I suggest you take your puppy back there and get that done. I will cover any costs.” The Doctor spoke like it was a done deal, even though my anxiety spiked at the idea of getting my body altered like that. Thankfully Kara could tell I was even more nervous about that.

“I’m just-“ She started out, but was cut off by Whyte again.

“Concerned about little Hailey’s opinions on the implants? Please, Ms. Kara. What is the first rule when it comes to pet ownership. You know this.”

“… The owner is responsible for the pup’s actions and choices.” She finally said, before turning her gaze towards me. I couldn’t see her eyes with how I’d then buried my head into her shirt again, but I knew what she was thinking. “Come puppy, let’s go get you those implants.”

My heart pounded, eyes wide as I pulled back and stared at her with a shocked expression.

“But-“

“Hush puppy. No barking in the store.” Kara shushed me, to Dr. Whyte’s clear approval. “You are getting those implants. You need to trust me as your owner that I will only do the best thing for you.”

I could only reply with a slight nod, feeling my heart pounding in my chest. I should be outraged by having the freedom of choice taken away from me like that, but… I couldn’t bring myself to be upset. I just needed to trust her. I’d chosen this, regardless. It was all my fault for not being careful with my paperwork. Kara turned to pull me towards the back, but Whyte spoke up one more time.

“Oh, and Ms. Kara. There is one condition I expect in return for this covering of costs.”

“What’s that, Doctor?”

“I would like you to keep in touch. I can tell you are a good owner, and I want to make sure you and your pup are taken care of. I expect progress images and updates.”

I could feel her breath seem to catch in her chest. The implication of being on personal speaking terms with someone as powerful as Doctor Whyte was clearly hitting Kara. I hoped it was excitement and not fear that was gripping her when her voice wobbled out, “Of course, Doctor. I promise I will be in touch. I would love nothing more than to share my pup’s progress with you.”

 I was soon guided back to the rear of the store, where a small clinic was set up behind some sterile doors. The receptionist smiled as we approached, she and Kara having a quick discussion about the procedure. She assured us that it was an easy and safe process, with a couple of ports being installed at the base of my spine and on the top of my head. It would take a few days to get use to apparently, but they should become natural for me within that time. Kara gave her permission, and soon I was whisked back by an orderly into the sterile environment. They gave me a quick once-over and took my vitals. However, with a small yelp I felt the nurse insert a needle into my arm and push in a clear liquid. I nearly jumped, but she had a firm grip on my arm and held me in place until she extracted the needle. “Sleep well puppy.” She said softly, a smile on her face as my vision began to swim and I was completely unconscious a few moments later.

[late-to-the-magnus-archives]

Pedantic, chapter one - a Malevolent AU

Arthur Lester is the best IT architect in the world, and the reason Carcosa, Inc. has its fingers in every pie. Government, medical, everyone in the world uses its systems.

Arthur is also going blind, with a rare genetic condition that can’t be fixed.

The looming depression is bad. He can’t imagine a life where he can’t create anymore. Arthur nearly gives up… until a deeply annoying cybersecurity programmer prods him into trying something new.

Great, right? Now, if only this John Doe weren’t clearly hiding something so wild that not even PI Parker Yang can dig it out…

Chapter One: Time for a bet.

AO3

----------

Arthur couldn’t see his view.

He knew it was good. He could still see when picking out the penthouse three years ago. He also knew it was a complete waste for him to hang on to this view now when he couldn’t see it, but he didn’t give a fuck. It felt like revenge against whatever force saw fit to do this to him, by depriving some other bastard of a view like this.

I’m telling you, it isn’t compliant, the robotic voice in his head said, synthesizing that fucking American’s words in the least emotional manner possible.

Arthur had never heard John’s actual voice, but was certain it wasn’t emotionless. “It does. I checked it against CIC standards, and YTM, and even the elusive Carney and Dobbs scale. You’re wrong.”

No, you are, argued the distant engineer.

Arthur didn’t have time for this. “Listen, Mister Doe, it is two o’clock in the morning here. I know damn well what I sent you works. So the problem is on your end, and I expect you to figure it out. ”

Silence. A long moment of silence.

Arthur knew precisely two things about John Doe. One, he was some sort of security whiz, capable of sniffing out backdoors and potential risks before even the pro hackers did, and two, John Doe absolutely hated his guts.

It was personal. Had to be. He never agreed to anything, always dragged out every damned conversation. Damned pedantic son of a bitch.

Finally, an answer: I think you need to check your code.

Check his code! Arthur did not need to check his code. “Excuse me?”

Check your code.

“No. It is two o’clock in the morning here, Doe.”

It is noon here, Lester. I have four hours to get this implemented. If you don’t fix your fucking code, I will.

And there we go. Pointless threats. Inappropriate language.

The sucky thing was, while normally altering code like this without approval would be enough to get someone fired, John Doe could get away with it.

Doe had come out of nowhere; Arthur had never heard of him, and he’d made no waves, but boom, old Hastur had promoted him to chief of cybersecurity for the whole company, and evidently paid him enough to live comfortably in the Upper East Side, Manhattan.

And Arthur had to admit: Doe was some kind of golden boy. He knew his stuff. It may feel like he sprang fully-formed from Hastur’s head, but he knew cybersecurity. It was like he had a fucking pipeline to the bad guys, the way he was able to spot exploits before anyone else could grab hold.

What Doe didn’t know was art. Or beauty. Or utility. Or any of the things Arthur’s entire life had revolved around since he was twelve and used Python to design his first Linux GUI.

Arthur sighed. He turned away from his glass walls and wraparound balcony, from the view of Melbourne at night which he could not see, and made his way to his computer.

His monitor—enormous, because all the text had to be, as well—booted up, and he sighed as he entered the usual frustrating and painful balance of trying to focus, squinting, dealing with the pain of the monitor’s brightness (without which he couldn’t see the damn screen) and adjusting the size of the text until he could handle it and read through what he’d written.

Gods, this was a gorgeous design. Lullabye, he called it, because it was designed to help after a DDOS attack, to put all relevant and endangered systems right to sleep, cutting off access, stopping whatever invasion was going on right in its tracks.

It was flawless. It was efficient. It was beautiful. It was a hell of a major project to go out on.

He could not spot whatever put Doe in a tizzy. Fuck.

The easy solution would be to give Doe permission to patch it, requiring detailed notes of what changes he made.

The medium-hard solution would be to give him permission to patch it, but live, with Arthur sharing his screen, so Doe couldn’t do anything unmonitored (and maybe Arthur could finally understand how Doe thought).

The dangerous solution was to refuse him, foment more conflict for no pay out, and watch Doe have his way, anyway.

Damn it. But it’s perfect, he thought, unable to keep from whining a little.

Arthur sighed. Carcosa had been good to him. Hastur had rewarded his artistry over and over. The ungrateful thing would be not to trust Doe. “Fine,” Arthur muttered. “Cassilda, email John Doe.”

Emailing, she replied through the implants in his head, voice as musical as he designed her to be, damn near singing.

“Permission granted to make changes to the code as long as we do a screenshare and all changes are approved by me. Send.”

Silence for a moment.

About fucking time, Lester. Here’s my number. Text is fucking faster.

This guy knew his stuff, but he did not know how to be fucking appropriate in a fucking business setting. “Is he serious?” Arthur said. Maybe he did spring fully-formed from Hastur’s head, he snorted. Being a year old would explain it all. “Reply: If you’re trying to cover your ass legally, that won’t work with a company phone.” It was both sarcasm and a warning. Also, logic. Touché!

Arthur’s smugness lasted all of the 60 seconds it took for Doe to receive and reply: I have my own personal phone and so do you. Don’t be a dick. Let’s get this done.

How did… What? Why did Doe know that? “I’m not a dick,” Arthur muttered, trying to decide if this was a great big personal information violation, or…

Well, it was, but did it really matter? He could change the number. Block Doe. Whatever he wanted to do here. And it would be quicker. The Hyades global network was faster than any email because Arthur had helped design it. (Hastur had given him an incredible bonus that year.) “Cassilda, send Doe my phone number.” Okay, why had he done that? Why? “Because I’m not a dick,” he answered himself. “I’m an idiot.”

The reply took literally as long as Doe needed to save the contact to his phone. Nice to meet you.

“We haven’t met yet, Doe,” said Arthur, replying through Cassilda.

Call me John. Now let’s fix this code.

“Damn you, there’s nothing to fix!”

An exclamation mark! A swear word! Looks like I finally got some emotion out of you.

Arthur gaped at nothing. “I will have you know that you get plenty of emotion from me. Primarily, frustration.”

Glad to know you’re not frigid. Okay, I’m sending the screenshare request now.

“Frigid? What the fuck… Wait, wait, give me a moment. Got it, got it. You prick.”

Better believe I am. Now, pay attention. Line 1004. Doe—John—read the code to him via text, because Cassilda would read it next.

Arthur paled. It had a typo.

He couldn’t see the typo. The font showed the difference between a lower-case l and a numeral 1, but he couldn’t see it.

He leaned in, face nearly to the monitor, peering. The serifs might as well have all been erased.

See it? Good. Next we’ll jump down to line 8524.

Arthur didn’t reply. He swallowed.

It was another typo, but this one… he didn’t need to know this was the big one. The typo on 1004 just rendered that bit of code inoperable; nothing would happen. But this one…

This one. Instead of a semi colon, it was a colon, which meant…

This is the big one, said John unnecessarily. Arthur didn’t reply. This one means this process keeps running, and the particular ping it creates to find the invading bug also leaves it open to malicious injection.

“I was right,” Arthur whispered, because he had been. He’d thought, deep down, this would be his last major project.

About what?

Arthur hadn’t meant to send that. He leaned back in his chair, reducing the familiar, beloved language on the screen to blurry dots and squiggles, and was surprised to find he was crying. He wiped his face, furious. “Nothing.”

Tell me. It could be relevant.

Fuck him. “It’s not relevant.”

It might be. We’re getting this fixed so you can go to bed and I can go get drunk. Come on, Lester.

He sighed. “Arthur. Just Arthur.”

All right, Just Arthur. What were you right about?

Arthur checked. Cassilda confirmed that “just” had been capitalized. Like receiving a knighthood, or something.

He laughed weakly. “Didn’t know you were funny, Doe.” A pause. “John.”

Only when it’s worth my while.

So… well, this moment was certainly worth his while. They had three hours left to implement this thing. “Just that this was my last big hurrah. That’s all. I knew. I knew it. Just didn’t want to know it, if you get what I mean.”

Why the hell had he said that?

Arthur sighed. There was no undo send with Hyades and the Carcosa phone line (Dancer—it had long put Apple out of business). It was better, Arthur believed and had argued, to have a record of communication, even when things were sent by accident. Better to have that record, legal and powerful, then try to handle the fallout of removed knowledge and the potential for deceit.

It doesn’t have to be, fucking hell.

That made him laugh for some reason. “Right. Sure.”

It doesn’t. I’m guessing the coding doesn’t work so great with Cassilda for you?

No, it had not worked with Cassilda. Cassilda could read it all out (Line 147, from enum import Enum semicolon. Line 148, class Day(Enum) colon. Line 149, all capitalized letters, MONDAY space equal sign space the numeral 1).

Yeah, he couldn’t do that. It was like trying to listen to an audiobook one godsdamned letter at a time. “It doesn’t work for what I do.”

You just need someone who knows how you think who can put your stuff into code, then. You’re good at this, Arthur.

“I’m going blind, John.” Which of course he knew. Everyone knew. Fucking TIME magazine knew.

So?

“Excuse me?”

You a betting man?

“Oh, what the hell are you saying?” Arthur muttered. “Don’t send that!”

It’s already sent, Arthur. My apologies.

He sighed. “No, it’s fine. Continue to send automatically unless instructed not to. I guess we’re doing this.”

John was scrolling on his end, highlighting bits of code and fixing them. It wasn’t a lot. The whole thing was nearly 100 million lines of code, and Arthur had made a total of four mistakes. That wasn’t bad.

Except that when Arthur could see, he never made any.

The code scrolled. Too fast; he didn’t have time to focus on what John was doing (and doing quickly, with an ease that spoke of artistry the idiot himself did not understand). The next generation, folks, picking up the slack.

One wild, intrusive thought of throwing himself off his expensive balcony later, Arthur shook it off. “What bet?”

Let’s design something together.

Oh, this could go so badly. “What?”

Don’t know yet, but here’s the catch.

“Of course there’s a catch.”

Heh, heh, heh.

What a silly text to send. Arthur’s lips quirked. “Out with it, you dork.”

You share your vision with me, and I design it. Your specs. I won’t interfere with your idea of beauty or whatever you call it. You stick to the parts you love—making it pretty, and how the user accesses it. I’ll make sure it works.

Arthur swallowed. He’d never successfully designed with anybody. It always fell apart. “I don’t know.”

Let’s make it big. We won’t announce it. If it falls apart and I lose the bet, I’ll do whatever you want. Quit. Shave my head. Whatever.

Arthur laughed. “Shave your head?”

But if I win—

Arthur waited. He frowned. “Did you fall on your overlarge head and die?”

Shut up. If I win, you have to keep creating shit, and I get to be smug at you over coffee.

Eh? “That’s—” He didn’t know what to say. “What kind of a stupid bet is that?”

Beneficial to us both. You think my best work isn’t done on your coattails? It is. My star rises and falls with yours. I need you, and for once, you need me, too.

That was too much, and Arthur walked away from the desk. He had to pace.

This shouldn’t be personal, but it was. “How the hell was that both flattering and infuriating at the same… need… what in fuck’s name…”

Of course, Casdilda sent that.

By all means, keep going. This is funny as fuck.

“Fuck you.” Arthur sat back down. He was shaken. He felt like he was a million years old.

It’s cleaned up. Do you want to test it?

“No, it’s ready to go live. I… I trust you.” Because he had to, at least in this. But this bet… insane. Insulting. Ingratiating? What the hell? How was he supposed to take this? It was the weirdest thing he’d ever been offered.

And it’s implemented. Congratulations. Updates are going out now. Got any champagne?

“It’s three in the morning. What I have is bed. We’ll talk tomorrow. Goodnight, Doe.”

It’s John. Dick.

Arthur decided not to answer out of pure pettiness, and was still churning the entire conversation in his head when he fell asleep.

------

CHAPTER TWO

Notes:

This was posted on the road and written on my phone, so I beg your patience as I correct inevitable coding errors typos. Also, the tech stuff is made up. Just pretend it’s an alternative future. We’re all here for John and Arthur, anyway.

[mdhwrites]

I Am Getting Tired Talking About the Designs

It is the main thing outside of Clois that I see talked about with My Adventures With Superman. I’ve even seen someone call the show’s style so far as ‘hyper realism’ because of how they’re doing the villain designs which... *stares at the person until holes bore into their skull* And here’s the thing: I don’t mind people complaining about the villains technically. The fact that both Livewire and Slade feel kind of samey next to each other doesn’t help the fact that the show is struggling to give its villains time to shine. They risk slipping into a territory where they feel there as a part of the mandate of this being a superhero show rather than interesting entities unto themselves and I’d be okay with people talking about that.

Or how about the fact that so far none have had a REALLY good or interesting fight with Superman so far? Ivo is the best on both fronts so far but otherwise we’ve see Clark grab someone’s fist before responding with an attack three times now and one of those was against a robot. The only one he hasn’t done it to is Livewire and she doesn’t exactly punch, does she?

I had my brother bitch at me yesterday, if you don’t want to talk about the villains, about Jimmy’s stuff needing a little more fleshing out if he’s suddenly going to be mopey about the two getting together, especially after pushing Clark and Lois towards each other at first. That isn’t an unfair complaint and even in my last review, for as much as I liked the episode, I still admitted there were issues and lacking payoffs, especially with Jimmy. There are issues. This isn’t a perfect show, though nothing should be perfect because perfect is boring. It probably does need to take a breath though because while it is shockingly well paced, it is juggling a lot at once and it is concerning for when one of the balls may drop.

But like... Unless they’re just fundamentally getting the character wrong with no chance for growing into their design, can we just stop bitching about them? Parasite from my knowledge was originally a dude who was fucked up by an experiment and went “Well, they can’t cure me so I guess I’m evil” which is way less interesting than actually having his personality and his personal goals be parasitic to some extent so that they match his powers thematically. I’ve heard Livewire is a cocky, annoying bitch. We all remember the “Smartest person here” banter, right? That bitch with real powers, and irreversible powers as was foreshadowed by her veins, is going to be INSUFFERABLE. And Slade? The fucker is twenty years younger, minimum, than his comic counterpart and has both eyes and his battle suit in the title sequence fits his aesthetics so maybe cut him some slack because his cocky attitude now is clearly setting up for a GLORIOUS fall.

Of course, this is all assuming the show does well by these characters but at least right now they definitely have potential to become like their comic counterparts, especially with the question of how Silver Banshee is getting her screams back after Clark broke her mask.

So unless you complaint is more than “I want them to look exactly like my comic books!” maybe let an adaptation be, you know, an adaptation. I mean, so far the show fits exactly how DC has marketed itself since... I dunno, from what I hear the New 52? Especially in television because *gestures at all the DC movies* so I might not be a comics guy but I absolutely see why DC was okay with this as the rights holder because this is EASILY the most interested I’ve been in literally ANY of Superman’s rogue’s gallery. And no, I’m not a comic book guy but I see people comparing the two and you know my response when people bring up the differences in design? Most of the time I’m curious. Like what is Siobhan like when she looks like some genetically altered mutant or just a straight up alien of some sort? What’s the backstory there? But I also enjoy the cocky, wanna be supervillain of Siobhan in the show with her glam rock hair and raspy voice.

But I will admit that I don’t know the pain of adaptation too well. The closest I’ve come is stuff like Guardians of Ga’Hoole (which frankly is a shockingly good movie for how much of a mess adapting that series to anything would be) and Percy Jackson, where I only bitched about Clarisse because making Annabethe Clarisse was both more boring and narratively pointless because Clarisse is KIND OF IMPORTANT to the second book of that series, bare minimum.

Nothing here strikes me like that and if you disagree... Let me know. I see adaptations like this as a chance to both enjoy something and learn but frankly, EVERYONE bitching about the designs and nothing else is just making me tired and that’s making me not want to learn which means afterwards, I won’t dig deeper which isn’t that what you want as a fellow fan of the character?

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

[thunderpounce-inc]

Rough draft ref for Cloudy & Orange, my two dumb TFA OCs who still need actual names

Cloudy is actually the transformer in my icon, making the ridiculous facial expression!

There IS a story to go with these guys, though idk if I will ever write it or anything. Said story mostly explores a pre-war spot on the timeline, actually, so there isn't much interaction with cannon characters.

It goes about like this:

Cybertron has a semi-functionist caste system, and Cloudy is a 'war-frame' transformer literally manufactured BY the military, like a soldier ant. Cloudy is an experimental model from a line of attempts at biomimicry, to make soldiers that were even more effective, ferocious, and resourceful than normal

Cloudy is kind of like if the MILITARY commissioned a much more real, much more genetically engineered (which, I would like to note, I headcannon that basically all TFA transformers are genetically engineered; they come in different 'models' and 'upgrades'; and that just sounds a lot like 'we are genetically engineering ourselves and are at the brink of outright cladization' to me) 'cat' 'catboy' than one normally thinks of. Less 'cute NYAH!', more 'scary TIGERboy who could bite your arm off'

also, uh WARNING! (robot) cannibalism is touched on below a bit

Cloudy serves in the Cybertronian military (he was BORN there,,,), during which he is stranded on a ship after a battle goes pretty Bad. Cloudy is the sole survivor of this, and pulled through by drinking fuel from the corpses of enemies (MAYBE fallen allies too, dunno how dark I wanna go). I DO know that even just doing that to DEAD non-transformer enemies would be a big deal, since transformers normally live entirely on inanimate fuels like energon, oil, ect- so I imagine even drinking BLOOD would be indistinguishable from cannibalism to them. Cloudy is literally intentionally programmed to like the taste of blood and this stuff distresses even him (arguably even more so BECAUSE of that)

Eventually the war Cloudy was forged for (most likely conflict with the Quintessons) is won, and he gets to go planet-side while on stand-by. Cloudy tries to do that Civilan Life, but its kind of tough when everybody is smaller than AND and kinda scared of you. He makes friends with this more open-minded motorbike (Orange) while he's there.

(they meet when a disaster of some kind causes a building to collapse, and Cloudy lunges at the nearest way-too-tiny-to-survive-this bot (Orange) to shield them. They get split up after that since Cloudy gets knocked unconscious, and first responders drag everyone off the scene for medical attention. But when Orange next bumps into Cloudy, he's determined to actually talk to him and find out what this 'scary war-frame's' deal is. Which is good, because Cloudy is way too shy to initiate conversation like that, haha)

Cloudy's secret eventually gets out when investigations of the stranding reveal that all corpses had been exsanguinated and gnawed on, all rations exhausted, and Cloudy came back weirdly healthy for a guy who should have starved to death. He's then sentenced to 'you die fighting in the gladiator pits, OR you die right now!' Cloudy gets immediately shipped out to the pits on the spot, and then Orange follows him there because he is a stubborn, loyal little mother fucker.

From there the story is less defined, BUT I know both of them become Decepticons when THAT war breaks out, seeing as both have become quite sympathetic to 'yo the current situation on Cybertron is FUCKED!'

I would also like to note, by 'reptile handler trust-bond', I mean some kind of wacky queer platonic(?) relationship defined primarily by it's foundation of carefully earned trust. I'm not very good in the social department, gonna be honest, but I like animals a lot, so that was the best analogy I had. Cloudy and Orange's relationship isn't romantic, I wouldn't say? It's based primarily in how Orange is one of the very few people Cloudy, who is very distrustful, is willing to trust closely.

[thrythlind]

City of Heroes Villain-Training

I love city of heroes, but the AI is very simple and I have to imagine certain scenes in the training of the villain groups:

"Now, this is important, if your mini-gun needs to cool down, take the chance to punch the hero. You're enhanced 8 ft tall nazi super-soldiers, use that."

"All right, so if they're close enough, then I should punch them, got it, makes sense."

"Hey, that's specialized training you're not ready for. No, no… you should get in range to punch them while you're gun is cooling down."

"Okay… now… umm, say there's an godzilla girl roughly as tall as we are, surrounded in fire, and we just saw her melt a dozen 15 ft battle robots and five 10 ft werewolves?"

"Did I say something confusing? Shoot her, then, while the gun is cooling down, run up and punch her."

"Into the fire…"

"Yes. Into the fire, that's where she is, isn't it?"

"But won't I die?"

"Are you doubting the chem… I mean genetic modifications we've given you? Step forward and punch her for the column…. Now, you ranged lot… you stay put and keep shooting."

"Oh thank the Center… I mean, right sir, we keep shooting."

"And if the hero takes cover, take the shortest route possible towards them until you have line of effect."

"What if they're just… waiting just around the corner to gather us into a big clump and do an AoE alpha=strike?"

"Are you daring to say these foolish so-called heroes use tactics superior to our own?!"

"No sir!"

"Good… now, you… snipers. Just don't move and keep shooting. Never ever move."

"Right, don't move until the hero makes us run."

"When did I say that?! Don't move… if the hero comes at you keep shooting!"

"And if I'm thrown away by a super-strength or grave troller?"

"Then stand where they threw you and shoot. It's not rocket science. Now… Rabbits."

"Yes sir."

"Do one or two annoying things… then teleport away for 20 seconds."

"If I can't port?"

"Then fly, of course… run. Now, that's training done! Go defeat our foes!"