#yukio: nii-san. stop texting me all your thoughts.

[discordiansamba]

some more assorted thoughts:

shura is a part of the same organization as shiro was, and was pissed as hell when he retired. she's still his disciple! so imagine her surprise when she arrives on mephisto's station tracking an illegal cyborg, and discovers a second illegal cyborg in the process.

it's shiro's foster son. shiro retired to help hide an illegal cyborg. and it's just a fucking kid. shura has no idea who she should be more angry at in this scenario- but it sure as heck isn't the guilty looking teenager clutching his badly damaged arm to his side.

(stupid idiot just jumped in to help without even thinking about it.)

shura decides to *not* report this obviously illegal cyborg kid, but seriously shiro. what the fuck?

the exwires (& paku) are all classmates! mephisto is not only the manager of the station, but also the principal of the local high school. he wears many hats!

rin spends a lot of lunch breaks either hiding on the roof or chilling in mephisto's office- as much as anyone can chill with mephisto around lmao. people uh. tend to notice when you don't eat with them after awhile.

rin will tell anyone who asks that he genuinely doesn't mind his body being the way it is. he's only lying a little bit!

has rin ever forgotten to unplug himself before trying to get up after a charging session? oh absolutely. he's ended up falling unceremoniously on his ass so many times because of it.

rin doesn't quite sleep, but he does have a sleep mode he can enter to preserve power and to at least mimic the act of sleep. except it's slightly busted because his eyes never quite shut all the way. it's the one thing yuri just can't get quite right.

yuri 100% designed rin's tail to be cute. that's why she covered it in artificial fur and hid the actual connection point underneath a bundle of fluffy fur. rin has to brush it out of the way whenever he plugs himself in to recharge, lol.

he can go without recharging for about a week, but if he starts running on low battery he starts acting extremely lethargic.

rin is more lightweight than some other cyborgs (who are generally not trying to pass as normal humans) but uh. he's still pretty heavy. this is extremely funny because he still looks as scrawny as he does in canon. ryuuji tries to pick him up and he's just like a lead weight. what the FUCK okumura.

he's also still super strong!

he desperately just wants his new friends to think he's normal because it's a.) illegal to be a cyborg and b.) he's deeply self-conscious about what they'll think about him if they know the truth.

shiro is their homeroom teacher. retired and got himself a teaching job. at high school. he prefers fighting dangerous robots actually.

rin & shiemi are two deeply abnormal children who just desperately want to be normal and make friends. shiemi knows what rin is, and rin knows what shiemi is- shiemi is organic, but views herself as a fake being since she was artificially created while rin is largely inorganic, but shiemi still views him as being more real than her.

besides- there's seven more copies of her- one for each station, all with identical faces and voices. it's hard to feel like an individual when you're entirely interchangeable.

(except none of the other shiemis are quite like her.)

(rin literally overheating when he gets flustered/has used up too much brainpower, lmao)

(rin's body costs. so much money, lol)

pov: you and your classmates go on a camping trip to another station as part of your class activities. while there, you're assaulted by a berserk robot, but your classmate and friend saves you. he loses an arm in the process, but there's no blood. there's just wiring.

thinking about like. an aoex au but make it sci fi. humanity now resides in a series of eight space stations, after having to leave earth behind. each station is ruled over by one of the Baal (who would not be demons here, obviously). there used to be a ninth station, but it was severely damaged in an accident and rendered largely uninhabitable. all of its surviving residents were moved to other stations.

some key points!

yuri lives! she works as an engineer, helping repair the robots that maintained the ninth station. she's a single mother, living quietly with rin and yukio when the accident occurs- and rin very nearly loses his life and suffers critical damage to most of his body. so yuri does what any reasonable mother with a degree in advanced robotics would do, and makes him into a cyborg.

this is very illegal! by the way!

yuri moves to mephisto's station in the aftermath and changes their last names. she tells rin and yukio that no one can know about rin's secret, and she does her best to help rin blend into normal society. from the outside, he looks perfectly human!

(well, except for the tail that doubles as his connection port- but he can hide that easily enough.)

...this changes slightly when her childhood friend shiro shows up at her door. the last thing he knew, yuri's eldest child was on the verge of death- so imagine his surprise when finds that rin is both a.) alive and b.) wholly intact. yuri confesses what she's done, and pleads with shiro to not tell anyone.

shiro is horrified at first. his literal *job* is dealing with renegade robots and illegal cyborgs... and yuri is telling him that she's turned rin into one? what were you thinking? but eventually he comes to understand that rin is just... a normal kid, and that's all he wants to be.

he retires, and moves in with them to help protect both yuri and rin.

a lot of rin's pre-accident memories are shaky at best.

mephisto's station is just his true cross academy's architecture, but applied on a station-wide level, lmao. there's no true public greenspaces, but all their food is harvested from greenhouses on the station. it's very high tech, but at the same time, very much like living on earth.

(this is not true for all of the stations by a long shot)

yukio learns robotics from yuri! he wants to be able to take care of rin one day, even after their mom passes- seeing as rin himself doesn't have much of a head for robotics, ironically enough.

rin: my body might be like, 80% artificial, but my brain is 100% organic rin! for good and for bad!

around his first year of middle school, rin's family took a convenient trip to another station for a month and a half- but this is all a ruse. yuri was just adjusting rin's body to make it seem like he'd gone through puberty while they were away. this means there's a window of time in which rin gets to be taller than yukio.

(enjoy it while it lasts, buddy! no your mom will not rebuild your legs just to make you taller than yukio. that costs money, rin.)

rin runs on an internal battery with a relatively long lifespan, and uses his tail to recharge himself when needed. he does not and cannot eat, but still loves cooking regardless. it makes everyone else happy, so it makes him happy!

rin loves to wander around the station in his free time and uh. often ends up in places he should not be in. during one such escapade, he discovers a strange natural greenspace- a garden, filled with lots of tiny little robots that all tend to it.

in the center of the garden, there's a mysterious pod- and inside of it, is the most beautiful girl rin has ever laid eyes on. he touches the pod without thinking about it- and accidentally activates it, releasing the girl inside.

her name is shiemi, and she has a mysterious power that makes plants grow. rin decides to take her out of the garden- and discovers that she's an artificially created lifeform, meant to aid with terraforming should a new planet ever be found to house humanity. she was supposed to be in cold sleep until then, but...

(mephisto looking at rin and shiemi standing next to each other like. hmmmm. this could be amusing! very well! i approve!)

(the baal may or may not be aliens masquerading as humans. don't worry about it. i'm sure it's fine.)