#this is a way to hijack a spaceship

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Demon-haunted computers are back, baby

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

As a science fiction writer, I am professionally irritated by a lot of sf movies. Not only do those writers get paid a lot more than I do, they insist on including things like "self-destruct" buttons on the bridges of their starships.

Look, I get it. When the evil empire is closing in on your flagship with its secret transdimensional technology, it's important that you keep those secrets out of the emperor's hand. An irrevocable self-destruct switch there on the bridge gets the job done! (It has to be irrevocable, otherwise the baddies'll just swarm the bridge and toggle it off).

But c'mon. If there's a facility built into your spaceship that causes it to explode no matter what the people on the bridge do, that is also a pretty big security risk! What if the bad guy figures out how to hijack the measure that – by design – the people who depend on the spaceship as a matter of life and death can't detect or override?

I mean, sure, you can try to simplify that self-destruct system to make it easier to audit and assure yourself that it doesn't have any bugs in it, but remember Schneier's Law: anyone can design a security system that works so well that they themselves can't think of a flaw in it. That doesn't mean you've made a security system that works – only that you've made a security system that works on people stupider than you.

I know it's weird to be worried about realism in movies that pretend we will ever find a practical means to visit other star systems and shuttle back and forth between them (which we are very, very unlikely to do):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

But this kind of foolishness galls me. It galls me even more when it happens in the real world of technology design, which is why I've spent the past quarter-century being very cross about Digital Rights Management in general, and trusted computing in particular.

It all starts in 2002, when a team from Microsoft visited our offices at EFF to tell us about this new thing they'd dreamed up called "trusted computing":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

The big idea was to stick a second computer inside your computer, a very secure little co-processor, that you couldn't access directly, let alone reprogram or interfere with. As far as this "trusted platform module" was concerned, you were the enemy. The "trust" in trusted computing was about other people being able to trust your computer, even if they didn't trust you.

So that little TPM would do all kinds of cute tricks. It could observe and produce a cryptographically signed manifest of the entire boot-chain of your computer, which was meant to be an unforgeable certificate attesting to which kind of computer you were running and what software you were running on it. That meant that programs on other computers could decide whether to talk to your computer based on whether they agreed with your choices about which code to run.

This process, called "remote attestation," is generally billed as a way to identify and block computers that have been compromised by malware, or to identify gamers who are running cheats and refuse to play with them. But inevitably it turns into a way to refuse service to computers that have privacy blockers turned on, or are running stream-ripping software, or whose owners are blocking ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

After all, a system that treats the device's owner as an adversary is a natural ally for the owner's other, human adversaries. The rubric for treating the owner as an adversary focuses on the way that users can be fooled by bad people with bad programs. If your computer gets taken over by malicious software, that malware might intercept queries from your antivirus program and send it false data that lulls it into thinking your computer is fine, even as your private data is being plundered and your system is being used to launch malware attacks on others.

These separate, non-user-accessible, non-updateable secure systems serve a nubs of certainty, a remote fortress that observes and faithfully reports on the interior workings of your computer. This separate system can't be user-modifiable or field-updateable, because then malicious software could impersonate the user and disable the security chip.

It's true that compromised computers are a real and terrifying problem. Your computer is privy to your most intimate secrets and an attacker who can turn it against you can harm you in untold ways. But the widespread redesign of out computers to treat us as their enemies gives rise to a range of completely predictable and – I would argue – even worse harms. Building computers that treat their owners as untrusted parties is a system that works well, but fails badly.

First of all, there are the ways that trusted computing is designed to hurt you. The most reliable way to enshittify something is to supply it over a computer that runs programs you can't alter, and that rats you out to third parties if you run counter-programs that disenshittify the service you're using. That's how we get inkjet printers that refuse to use perfectly good third-party ink and cars that refuse to accept perfectly good engine repairs if they are performed by third-party mechanics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

It's how we get cursed devices and appliances, from the juicer that won't squeeze third-party juice to the insulin pump that won't connect to a third-party continuous glucose monitor:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

But trusted computing doesn't just create an opaque veil between your computer and the programs you use to inspect and control it. Trusted computing creates a no-go zone where programs can change their behavior based on whether they think they're being observed.

The most prominent example of this is Dieselgate, where auto manufacturers murdered hundreds of people by gimmicking their cars to emit illegal amount of NOX. Key to Dieselgate was a program that sought to determine whether it was being observed by regulators (it checked for the telltale signs of the standard test-suite) and changed its behavior to color within the lines.

Software that is seeking to harm the owner of the device that's running it must be able to detect when it is being run inside a simulation, a test-suite, a virtual machine, or any other hallucinatory virtual world. Just as Descartes couldn't know whether anything was real until he assured himself that he could trust his senses, malware is always questing to discover whether it is running in the real universe, or in a simulation created by a wicked god:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/28/descartes-was-an-optimist/#uh-oh

That's why mobile malware uses clever gambits like periodically checking for readings from your device's accelerometer, on the theory that a virtual mobile phone running on a security researcher's test bench won't have the fidelity to generate plausible jiggles to match the real data that comes from a phone in your pocket:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/google-play-malware-used-phones-motion-sensors-to-conceal-itself/

Sometimes this backfires in absolutely delightful ways. When the Wannacry ransomware was holding the world hostage, the security researcher Marcus Hutchins noticed that its code made reference to a very weird website: iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com. Hutchins stood up a website at that address and every Wannacry-infection in the world went instantly dormant:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#the-matrix

It turns out that Wannacry's authors were using that ferkakte URL the same way that mobile malware authors were using accelerometer readings – to fulfill Descartes' imperative to distinguish the Matrix from reality. The malware authors knew that security researchers often ran malicious code inside sandboxes that answered every network query with fake data in hopes of eliciting responses that could be analyzed for weaknesses. So the Wannacry worm would periodically poll this nonexistent website and, if it got an answer, it would assume that it was being monitored by a security researcher and it would retreat to an encrypted blob, ceasing to operate lest it give intelligence to the enemy. When Hutchins put a webserver up at iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com, every Wannacry instance in the world was instantly convinced that it was running on an enemy's simulator and withdrew into sulky hibernation.

The arms race to distinguish simulation from reality is critical and the stakes only get higher by the day. Malware abounds, even as our devices grow more intimately woven through our lives. We put our bodies into computers – cars, buildings – and computers inside our bodies. We absolutely want our computers to be able to faithfully convey what's going on inside them.

But we keep running as hard as we can in the opposite direction, leaning harder into secure computing models built on subsystems in our computers that treat us as the threat. Take UEFI, the ubiquitous security system that observes your computer's boot process, halting it if it sees something it doesn't approve of. On the one hand, this has made installing GNU/Linux and other alternative OSes vastly harder across a wide variety of devices. This means that when a vendor end-of-lifes a gadget, no one can make an alternative OS for it, so off the landfill it goes.

It doesn't help that UEFI – and other trusted computing modules – are covered by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it a felony to publish information that can bypass or weaken the system. The threat of a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine means that UEFI and other trusted computing systems are understudied, leaving them festering with longstanding bugs:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/09/free-sample/#que-viva

Here's where it gets really bad. If an attacker can get inside UEFI, they can run malicious software that – by design – no program running on our computers can detect or block. That badware is running in "Ring -1" – a zone of privilege that overrides the operating system itself.

Here's the bad news: UEFI malware has already been detected in the wild:

https://securelist.com/cosmicstrand-uefi-firmware-rootkit/106973/

And here's the worst news: researchers have just identified another exploitable UEFI bug, dubbed Pixiefail:

https://blog.quarkslab.com/pixiefail-nine-vulnerabilities-in-tianocores-edk-ii-ipv6-network-stack.html

Writing in Ars Technica, Dan Goodin breaks down Pixiefail, describing how anyone on the same LAN as a vulnerable computer can infect its firmware:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/new-uefi-vulnerabilities-send-firmware-devs-across-an-entire-ecosystem-scrambling/

That vulnerability extends to computers in a data-center where the attacker has a cloud computing instance. PXE – the system that Pixiefail attacks – isn't widely used in home or office environments, but it's very common in data-centers.

Again, once a computer is exploited with Pixiefail, software running on that computer can't detect or delete the Pixiefail code. When the compromised computer is queried by the operating system, Pixiefail undetectably lies to the OS. "Hey, OS, does this drive have a file called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope." "Hey, OS, are you running a process called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope."

This is a self-destruct switch that's been compromised by the enemy, and which no one on the bridge can de-activate – by design. It's not the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.

There are models for helping your computer bust out of the Matrix. Back in 2016, Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang prototyped and published source code and schematics for an "introspection engine":

https://assets.pubpub.org/aacpjrja/AgainstTheLaw-CounteringLawfulAbusesofDigitalSurveillance.pdf

This is a single-board computer that lives in an ultraslim shim that you slide between your iPhone's mainboard and its case, leaving a ribbon cable poking out of the SIM slot. This connects to a case that has its own OLED display. The board has leads that physically contact each of the network interfaces on the phone, conveying any data they transit to the screen so that you can observe the data your phone is sending without having to trust your phone.

(I liked this gadget so much that I included it as a major plot point in my 2020 novel Attack Surface, the third book in the Little Brother series):

https://craphound.com/attacksurface/

We don't have to cede control over our devices in order to secure them. Indeed, we can't ever secure them unless we can control them. Self-destruct switches don't belong on the bridge of your spaceship, and trusted computing modules don't belong in your devices.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/17/descartes-delenda-est/#self-destruct-sequence-initiated

Image: Mike (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/stillwellmike/15676883261/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

#pluralistic #uefi #owner override #user override #jailbreaking #dmca 1201 #schneiers law #descartes #nub of certainty #self-destruct button #trusted computing #secure enclaves #drm #ngscb #next generation secure computing base #palladium #pixiefail #infosec

[b1rds3ye]

AASAABSJS I'm so glad your requests are openn!!!! I seriously love the way you write for the characters! I think your writing is so in character an ARHBAHHA 😍😍🤩🤩🥰🥰SO may i request how the 141 boys react when the see their s/o has made them in the sims? Like they see him and his s/o in their little sims family. Idk I thought it would be cute.

Love you! Don't rush and take care of yourself 💗💗💖💖💋

I'M SO SORRY THIS TOOK ME ALMOST TWO MONTHS ASDKFJASDKF MY BRAIN WAS NOT BRAINING WITH THIS PROMPT

Look, It’s Us!

How the 141 boys react to you making you, them and a potential family in the Sims (+ other little gaming shenanigans)

Characters: Captain John Price, Simon “Ghost” Riley, Johnny “Soap” MacTavish, Kyle “Gaz” Garrick

Genre: Pure Fluff

Word Count: 1.2k (~400 words each)

A/N: Gotta confess, I’ve never actually played the Sims before ACK-

Captain John Price

It’s not often, but Price will occasionally play the Sims when he truly has nothing else to do. He’s not particularly creative with it though, just lets the game randomly generate a character and then lives their life with the quirks they have. Still, good fun!

John figured you’d play the opposite to him, testing the limits of the game and torturing your Sims with that simultaneously wonderful and terrifying mind of yours - beyond the army John doesn’t have the creativity to turn Sims into experiments that violate human rights. So imagine his pleasant surprise when he notices you playing relaxedly with a whole family that looked like you and him, taking the greatest care in making sure everything goes well

“Having fun there, love?” he smiles, looking over your shoulder. When you zoom in on the little Price you made in the Sims and then comment how it’s not nearly as handsome as the real thing, he swears you’re single-handedly warming up this jaded heart of his

He could watch you all day as you tinker on the game, but he naturally acts as your anchor. He doesn’t care if this is just a Sims version of you, you are not hijacking that spaceship and blasting off to god knows where! Ultimately he can’t stop you but the conversations that have come out of your antics are very entertaining

John nods along as you animatedly talk about the little virtual family you made. Whether it’s the family itself or your choices in customising the home, he’s listening and he’s remembering. He might not have infinite money like when you’re playing with cheats but it’s in his nature to give you his all, and he won’t stop giving until he’s made an imitation of your dream on the screen

Simon “Ghost” Riley

He hasn’t touched the game, he’s not particularly interested but he’ll definitely be around you when you play. Simon will be doing his own thing, but upon hearing the signature background music of the Sims you’ll see the slightest bop of his head

It was one day, he walked past you, his eyes flickering on the screen while you zoomed up on a character with features suspiciously like his. He watches silently as you zoom out, and there’s a character that looks like you as well and- is that a kid?

“Looks nothin’ like us,” he says simply at the family. “Not my fault you don’t have an imagination,” you stick out your tongue. “I’ll install some mods for more customisation.” He was just cracking a joke but it’s endearing how seriously you take your virtual counterparts

Simon doesn’t just observe the family, he also observes the rest of what you’ve customised. Is that your dream house? Ah, it seems you like that style of furniture. Simon will keep that in mind the next time you have to go shopping, or will find small gifts for you with the same general aesthetic

Has the uncanny ability to speak simlish - or at least replicate the sounds. It sounds straight from the game, you have no idea how he picked it up or why. If you ask he says it’s because “you’re bloody addicted to playin’ that thing”. All you know is that if one of the Sims shouts out something Simon will actually grumble out a response under his breath

Your Sims family has become a little mental vision board for Simon. To keep fighting to return home, to slowly but surely clean up the mess that is his broken mind until he can guarantee a future with you that is equally as tranquil and colourful as the little pixels on your screen

Johnny “Soap” MacTavish

Johnny loves his action and exhilarating games, shooters, horror, you name it. As such, he doesn’t play Sims much but if he does, he’s treating his randomly generated sims as human lab rats

Roasts your character customisation to hell and back. Johnny’s gripping onto you, shaking you back and forth, dramatically whining about how his eyes aren’t that specific shade of blue, his mohawk isn’t that big and you’ve got his nose all wrong- what are you doing?!

He’ll complain but if you actually give him controls he’ll customise his own character to look noticeably worse. Just don’t ever give him access to this game because he’ll also make your character look nothing like you

That being said, Johnny gets really into the little family you’ve made. He’s actively discussing with you the furnishings that should be used in the house, if your virtual child should be a ghost hunter or a fortune teller, and if you need a bathroom break he’s ensuring no one sets the virtual house on fire

You better not tell Johnny that you’ve added pets into the virtual family because Johnny is already out the door to the nearest animal shelter. If there are things that these stupid little Sims have that is easy to get or Johnny already wanted, he will get

At the odd moment, you’ll catch Johnny getting quite sentimental over the game. Working in the army is chaotic, never mind his actual role as demolitions expert, it’s hard for him to ever imagine a day where he settles down. But watching you fret over whether this virtual couch should be placed on the left or right side of the living room has him looking forward to that day (by the way you should put the couch towards the back)

Kyle “Gaz” Garrick

Kyle has honestly tried every game under the sun if it’s casual and entertaining enough, from PVP shooters to laid-back simulators. If you’re not playing Sims, then he will be. But if you’ve beaten him to the punch he doesn’t make you stop, only sitting back and watching you keenly, commentating and giving you suggestions

He’s actually been part of the creative process since Day 1, when you made Sims versions of you and him, he tried to find the character customisation features that best resembles yours, but could only lament that he couldn’t make your Sim look as good looking as you

He loves starting off the game where your respective Sims are strangers, going through all the motions of wooing you all over again, proving to you that no matter the context Kyle will win your heart. You may have to comfort him with cuddles if your Sim version rejects his Sim’s advances though

Once your Sims are together, this little flirt will tell you that your Sims need more kids knowing full well what that implies

Kyle likes provoking you a little, discreetly suggesting using the ugliest pieces of furniture available in making your house. When you bite back that you’re going to make sure this house looks perfect, he’ll eventually relent after begging with his signature puppy-dog eyes

He’s memorised some of the Sim’s spoken dialogue, particularly the romance lines spoken in that exaggerated flirty tone. He’ll say it to you out of the blue sometimes, causing you to burst out into giggles

The game is all fun and, well, games, but it doesn’t stop Kyle from looking forward to the future. You might not have access to the grim reaper, you may never be able to build a pool surrounded with toilets in real life, but he’s excited to create his own little home and family with you, whatever it may look like

Call of Duty Masterlist

#cod x reader #call of duty x reader #cod x you #task force 141 x reader #captain price x reader #john price x reader #ghost x reader #simon riley x reader #john mactavish x reader #soap x reader #gaz x reader #kyle garrick x reader #/*avery actually writes*/ #/*avery checks the mailbox*/ #anon mail ❤️

[strange-destinations]

....I need you to break down which Game of Rassilon characters would survive Dracula now please.

ah fuck okay, here we go. going by @canyourfavesurvivecastledracula's set of critera at the top of the blog...

Riley!Doctor - Wouldn't take the crucifix because she's already got several spare ones in her pockets, somewhere, maybe, she'll go looking for them later. Of course she's sneaking around and getting nosy. It's what she does. Holds Dracula's attention well enough until he says something really blatantly evil, and then she promptly snaps and ruins everything and turns the whole deal into a survival horror game. Finds a rusting sword somewhere and beats the three vampire gfs back with it. Uses her scarf to rappel her way down the side of the castle, and uses a combination of Venusian Akido and clever sonic screwdriver technobabble to disrupt the vampiric influence on the wolves. She's the Doctor. She'll be fine.

Millie - the real-life Amelia Earhart was somewhat religious, so I can easily see her taking the crucifix if offered. Talking and climbing aren't what's going to save her here. Her greatest strength is piloting and repurposing things. In the absense of a plane or spaceship, she might very well hijack the carriage Dracula drove in on. 50/50 chance of her managing to pull this off.

Travis Killian - Travis's greatest strength lies in his ability to fuck with technology, and unfortunately castle Dracula is not wi-fi enabled. He's genre-savvy enough and probably knows enough vampire lore to get a good grasp on what's going on, but that's not going to save him. I don't doubt his ability to survive a few terrifying conversations with the Count, but I do doubt his ability to climb down a ladder, let alone a massive castle wall. Probably going to die without assistance, let's hope he asks for help.

Roman - Roman would try to shoot Dracula several times and miss, every time; but that only happens at the climax of this little disaster. Vampires and Time Lords are natural enemies, so he'd have a pretty good idea what's going on from the start. Being left in a creepy old building owned by a malicious entity that wants him to suffer and lose his mind is kind of already Roman's thing, so he gets bonus points for that. Roman can absolutely talk his way around Dracula and in fact I'd pay actual money to see those conversations. When things inevitably go to shit and he has to run like hell, the aforementioned bad Marksman score kicks in. He fails to even so much as wound Dracula, and probably isn't remotely equipped to climb down the castle walls. The wolves probably get him. Sorry, Roman. He dies, but don't worry, it's all part of the plan.

Carrie Vu - after ascertaining that someone really weird is going on in the town, would turn up at Castle Dracula's front doors and offer him girl scout cookies that she doesn't own in order to sneak in and snoop around. Dracula would not be fooled but would let her in anyway. Every conversation between Carrie and Dracula is the equivalent of getting beat around the head with a rubber chicken. There's no way to predict how any of this will go. Dracula is too bemused and off-balance to contemplate killing her at first. Gets very very offended when he calls her iPhone a foul bauble of man's vanity. Would manage to get at least one good whack in with her baseball bat. The vampire GFs do eventually get her and things look hopeless, but the Corsair swings in at the last moment to rescue her, and the resulting scene is like something off the front cover of a horny romance novel.

Dan!Doctor - Would take the crucifix, insist on paying or giving something back, comedic 5-minute sequence of him pulling random currency and bizarre items out of his pockets. Solemnly promises to do something about the babies getting stolen and eaten, and this is his entire life goal for the next few weeks. Probably manages Dracula marginally better than Riley!Doctor, can keep up and hold a conversation while carefully plotting his exit route. Locates every coffin and regretfully destroys them. Very thoroughly makes sure that no part of Dracula's cunning real estate plan will ever come to pass. Escapes Castle Dracula by jumping out a window because climbing is too slow. He's good at falling off things, he'll be fine probably.

Lita Fane - Lita's wary enough that I have serious doubts she'd even go up to the castle in the first place unless coerced or forced into it. She feels much more like the person to stay down in the town and try to help the people living there. Assuming she has to go to the castle anyway - I don't know if the crucifix would be even recognizable to her as an important item, so she'd probably just be really confused about it, might take it just to be polite. Engineering skills aren't really helpful to her here. I don't think she'd be great at talking to the Count, either. Dracula sets off every red flag possible for her - Lita's having a bad time. It doesn't feel like she'd be an especially great climber, either. Lita's a survivor, but probably not in this case. Vampires were never really the thing she learned how to survive.

Stanley Campbell - Oh, god. Sorry, but there's just no way Stanley would notice that Dracula is even remotely a vampire until it's way WAY too late. 50/50 on him taking the crucifix but I'm thinking maaaybe not. He'd probably end up wandering. Dracula would lose interest in his tangents very very fast. He ain't climbing his way out, with OR without crocs. One way or another, he's not moseying his way out of this one.

bonus: Joseph!Doctor - a stick is just a stake that hasn't been sharpened yet. Dracula's going down.

#the game of rassilon #dracula #bonus bonus: ka ren vs dracula. no details on that one i just want it to exist in the world

[bones-of-a-rabbit]

ragdolls into room

have some concepts for a mytho creatures (who are in mytho creature help and rehabilitation center) au bc I have no self control

also have a single concept doodle of a spaceship AI (that a space miscreant has fixed/hijacked their way onto for the purpose of spacecop getaways and miscreant [but secretly morally viable] activities) au bc I seriously seriously have no self control

is dragged out of room by visible computer cursor

#fnaf au #fnaf sun/moon #fnaf sun/moon au #mytho rehab au #spaceship ai au #fnaf sun/moon x reader #harpy sun #kelpie moon #basilisk eclipse #space ai sun #pilot reader #yeah I know I have an au problem and no self control #I’m so sorry #like honestly shdhjdshj #lies on floor facedown and screams #bones of a rabbit art #bones of a rabbit fnaf #bones of a rabbit au #doodles #sketches #concept art #concepts

[eclipse-rain]

'Awalie (Once; in the Past); Part 3

☆☆☆

- Spiders not in this fic because i literally cant handle writing any kind of redemption arc for him sry

Part 1 Part 2

Masterlist~

☆☆☆

Crawling through a vent wasnt something you thought you would ever do in your life once, nevermind twice.

As you had previously discovered the first time you went through it, the other end put you right inside the control room which was perfect for you, although not as much for Neteyam. This was because you had also previously discovered that although the vent could fit you, the same couldnt be said for your new seven foot tall friend.

This had been something you had thought about after seeing where the vent led to the first time you crawled through it though. Why else would you have risked your life to get the avatar who was guarding the door to the control room away from it?

Neteyam could get in through that way. What was even better was that he could once again be a distraction for the two who were left inside the room ; the pilot and co-pilot. While you suck in unnoticed through the vent to put what was hopefully the last part of your 'plan', to freaking hijack this spaceship, into action.

And thats exactly what you did. Okay maybe it wasnt the best idea you both could have come up with but what else were you suposed to do? The next thing you knew Neteyam had snuck in the control room door and was now grabbing all the pilots attention, while you crawled out of the vent and booked it towards the ship control panel where the pilots had previously been seated.

The good news was that the pilots were scared enough to flee the room when given the chance to by neteyam, unbeknownst to them who thought they had luckly eacaped. The bad news was that now they would call for back up. Sure Neteyam could have shot them as he brought the gun along with him, so as not to be completely defenceless, but by that point they had already pushed the emergency button on the control panel, sending warnings anew.

Locking the door to the room once they left, you both didnt waste anytime trying to find out just how many soilders would now be headed straight to this room. Now sitting in the pilots chair, you glanced above you only to see a computer screen desplaying the numbers 2169 in the corner.

"Oh fxck it really is 2169, you weren't kidding"

"See, i wasnt lying. I'm not as reckless as my brother." He laughed before becoming serious once again "Now how do we get this thing off the ground?" He asked you like you had all the answers

"How should i know? Try and find a manual or something"

"The pilots already started it though so cant you just fly it away now?"

"Well if its that easy then why dont you do it?" You scoffed, trying to figure out how to turn on autopilot. Of course you werent going to fly this thing, you had no idea how, you could guide it but autopilot would have to do the rest of the work.

"I thought all humans could fly a spaceship?"

"Of course not! Im sixteen, i cant fly a spaceship!"

"But all na'vi children can fly ikrans already by that age, isnt it like the same thing?!"

You paused for a split second, not knowing wheather to laugh or cry. You wondered if you should try slapping yourself to see wheather or not you would wake up from this absolutely ludicrous dream.

"...NO! When your sixteen you learn how to drive a car. A car! Not a freaking spaceship!"

"Whats a car?!"

"..."

"It doesnt matter!!" You shouted, getting off topic

You were both panicing now.

"Cant you do something? Anything?!" Neteyam questioned urgently, now seeing people start to gather outside of the control room door

"Im trying! Do you want us to die?!"

Hesitating, you finally layed your hands down on the steering wheel of the spaceship. You put them at two and ten like you had been taught when learning how to drive a car but the wheel was almost a completely diffrent shape.

"Well were going to either way so we might as well try it now that we've gotten this far." ; Was his reasoning to have you go along with him now that you both were here and in this situation together. A crowd of people gathered at the door now, along with even some avatars who wielded guns strapped to their person.

"Try what?" You asked him, trying to gat him to elaborate

"This!"

Suddenly Neteyam shoved his much larger hands over your own and pulled up forcefully. Shaking violently, the ship lurched high up into the air and the two of you lunged backwards with the force. You could only imagine what happened to the crowd of people outside the room after that happened, a small smile was etched onto your face in victory but it didnt stay there for long.

Neteyam, not being seated, was almost thrown to the ground had he not been clutching onto your hands on the wheel for dear life. You guessed he really didnt want to die a second time and frankly neither did you. But at this rate you werent sure if all your struggling up till now would end in a fiery spaceship crash.

"I thought you said you weren't as reckless as your brother?!" You shouted over the sound of the spaceship bursting into action

"Desperate times call for desperate measures!" He shouted back with a nervous smile

"Isnt that a human saying?!"

"I dont know, is it?!"

"Wait thats not whats important right now! Is this really the time to be having this conversation?!"

Just then the spaceship stoped traveling upwards and leveled out. A breef second of tranquillity was all it took to make your stomach lurch as the nose of the spaceship tipped towards the waves crashing up against the cliff down below, before it went barrling downwards, the both of you screaming in unison as it went.

Before the both of you ended up dead once again in a head on collision with the ground, you fumbled around once more, soon seeing a little light ding on, indicating you had hit the right button for the autopilot.

"Neteyam!"

Understanding your calling of him instantaniously, Neteyam helped you to pull the nose of the space ship up and away from the crashing waves below.

Soon you both breathed sighs of relief, thanking Eywa or whoever else that you had gotten out of that with your lives and all your limbs still intact.

~~~

Mapping out your destination was easy, for whatever reason they already had the co-ordinates of Neteyams home in the spaceship. As you rested, while autopilot took the lead with the flying, Neteyam had time to tell you why that was and everything that happened to his family and the Na'vi people.

You didnt know where you were going to go from here or what you were supposed to do to get home but one thing you were sure of was that you couldnt stay with the humans who were on Pandora. Even if there was a slim to none chance that the Na'vi where you were going would help you that didnt matter.

It wasnt just your own feelings, it was something more than that. You had been feeling it for a while now, since you woke up but you had been trying to ignore it. Your body must have been feeling wierd because of what those scientists did to you. Thats what you had thought but you even had this gut feeling that those scientists had definitely been experimented on you, even though you were asleep the whole time. Why was that? What made you so sure?

And why werent you more scared to be heading to a Na'vi settlement? You were all alone here, that was true but somehow you felt that you werent as well. That something inside of you was trying to calm you, keep you safe, guide you, for whatever reason. Maybe those experiments really had done a number on your body as well as your brain seemingly. Or maybe the adrenalin was making you delusional like how it can block out the pain.

You didnt know what was going on with you, with your family, with this world, with the humans. But you wanted to. You needed answers and for now, this was seemingly the only way to get them. Neteyam told you alot, you bet your life that the others could tell you more. It was another gut feeling to you, was it still a reckless impulse? Probably. For lack of a better word, although if you had a choice that better word you would use would be 'improvisation'.

The blaring sirens had stopped, so did the blinding red lights but the humans at the door did nothing to ease your minds. The avatars contributed to that even less so. You had made it about half way to your destination before you couldnt take it anymore. You had to get away from them and this ship now before they broke down the door.

Setting off the alarms again to give you some cover you both slipped through the vent and made your way to the exit chamber door of the spaceship, although not without a little protest from Neteyam.

"I cant fit through there"

"No time to complain, you'll be fine"

"Barely"

"Okay then stay here and perish, see ya"

*2 minutes later*

"Could you crawl any slower?!" You asked having worked reverse sicology to its finest

"You're the one who made me go through here"

"Thats because your lanky ass didnt wanna be left behind and i will leave you behind if you dont hurry up!" The two of you bickered in an attempt to push things along

With the humans still trying to get into the room behind you, it would not be long before they realised what had happened and came after you both once again.

And that they did, much faster then either of you had expected and so neither of you had any sort of plan. You both now stood with the door to the spaceship wide open, thousands of feet in the air, wind threatening to suck you out down to the watery depths below.

"So...whos going first?"

"Are you right in the head?" He asked in a panic without any parachute or any kind of machine around that would aid in a safe and swift landing

"No, what made you think that?" You retorted completely serious "I did just wake up from being brain dead so what gave you the impression that listening to me was a good idea?"

"Alright, point taken" he sighed in defeat

You heard the hurried footsteps of soilders rush towards you, guns clinking against their uniforms. There was only one option left and you both knew it.

"So....on three?" You shouted towards Neteyam over the wind

A banging on the latched door to the exit chamber you were both in swiftly coerced you into action.

"Three!" You shouted in usison, turning to each other with a nod before running and diving out of the wide open exit of the spaceship. The humans would be left with an unpleasant surprise once they managed to break down the door.

Now hurtling through the sky as the cold wind rushed passed you, you both turned to look back at the space ship.

"We should have done something before jumping, their gonna follow us!" Neteyam shouted over to you

"Dont worry! I got that covered!" You shouted back in reply

"So what did you do?!"

Just then a loud clanging of metal rang out indicating what was previously the spaceship you both were on turning into a fiery explosion of flames.

"That works!"

"Well since i had that one covered, do you have anything that could potentially make us not break every bone in our body when we hit the water?!" You questioned as you were both still free falling

"Umm.....maybe?!"

"Maybe?! Whats maybe?!"

Suddenly Neteyam brought his fingers up to his mouth and made a high pitched sound.

"Wait for it!" He shouted

"Wait for wh-?!"

Just then something bigger than you had ever seen before jumped up from the depths of the ocean.

"What the fu-?!"

Before you could say another word, it clamped down and swallowed the both of you whole, diving straight back into the ocean where it had come from, with you both in its mouth.

~~~

The first thing you never thought you would do in your life was crawl through a vent three times, the second was getting eaten by a giant sea creature that was about ten times bigger than a whale. Oh and maybe being shot and becoming brain dead and then becoming not brain dead anymore because scientists used your body for experiments. Then being brought to an alien planet, but you were asleep for all of that so this was all definitely wierder.

What could you say? Humor was your coping mechanism, another thing you shared with Jake. And you hadnt been using it enough in this obviously stress inducing situation you were thrust into.

Having been plunged into darkness you struggled with not being able to breath and the salt water stinging your eyes. Soon enough you felt arms around you and you were pulled to the surface of the ocean, seemingly now out of the sea creatures mouth and also no longer falling to your imminent death.

You and Neteyam layed your torsos onto what seemed like a huge piece of debris to catch your breath, now feeling how tired you were as the adrenaline keeping you together left your bodies. That was until the big piece of debris started moving and making clicking sounds and you almost fell back into the ocean when you screamed in fright.

"Its okay! He's friendly!" Neteyam tried to assure you

"He just tried to eat us!"

"He was saving us, i told you i had a way to stop us falling. He's my younger brothers spirit brother, his name is Pakayan"

Pakayan blew water out of one of his many blowholes in response, sprinkling you both in a light rain as if trying to confirm he wasnt a threat.

You let out a nervous laugh "Oh righttt, nice giant whale thingy" you said patting his fin but suddenly as you looked into Pakayans eye you felt an unusually serene calmness come over you

Neteyam let out a chuckle at that "He's a Tulkun, remember i was telling you about them on the ship. About how the humans were after them"

"Oh right they wanted the stuff in their brains" you remebered that converstaion as well as many of the others

"The amrita." He confirmed for you

"Right because it stops humans from...aging..."

"Mhm"

"Hey, Neteyam..."

"Yeah?"

"How..." you stuttered "...How did the humans find out that it stops them from aging...?" You questioned suddenly keenly aware of a certain fact

And with the way the boy next to you eyes widened you knew that he had exactly the same thought pattern as you.

"You dont think..." he started

Something the humans wanted to stop them from aging and a girl whos brain dead body was used for experiments.

A girl who's body didnt age.

In all that time of course she didnt age mentally but being in a comatose state couldnt have stopped her body from aging, especially for fifteen years.

Suddenly the light hearted atmosphere from earlier, of being free from the spaceship and alive, was now replaced with a chilly reality. The sun sunk behind the clouds and the water became dark and grey and murky, dropping a couple of degrees in temperature in the process.

"Y/n-" Neteyam started but a voice in the distance cut him off before he could finish speaking.

In the wide open ocean with seemingly nothing around for miles this caught you both off guard. Hauling yourself up onto Pakayans fin with Neteyam copying your movements you readied yourself for any attack crouching down behind the rest of his body.

Although you made sure to take into consideration that someone who was a threat to the two of you wouldnt announce themselves by calling out like that.

"Hey Pakayan why did you swim off like that?" The voice echoed from not to far away now, the person seemed to be approaching rather fast

But suddenly Neteyam grabbed your arm, stopping you from readying yourself to attack any possible threat.

"What?" You whispered at him

"Its my younger brother" he said with almost a slight tone of anxiety laced in his voice

"The one whos spirit brother this is?"

"Yes"

"That makes alot of sense actually" you reckoned he was nervous to see his brother again, seeing as the last time he probably watched the life drain from his eyes.

You would be too if you ever got the chance to meet either of your brothers again, it was a normal reaction. Although you werent quite sure what to do, especially since you were a human and they were the ones who killed him. His brother might think you were holding him for ransome or something like Neteyam had told you how the humans had done so to his siblings to lure out his father.

All you could do was grab his hand in reasurance and try to pull you both into a standing position on Pakayans fin. You had to briefly hold onto Pakayans body in the process to keep your balance as his fin slightly jostled in the water. You could only hope for the best in this situation.

And when you stood up and finally saw him you also saw that he wasnt alone, there were five others with him. You assumed Neteyams brother to be the one at the front since they were the same shade of blue. He was sat on a much smaller sea creature than Pakayan and behind him a girl with more of a teal blue skin colour sat with her arms around his waist.

Two boys mirroring the girls skin colour rode on two of their own sea creatures side by side, conversing before turning their attention towards us. A girl with the same skin tone as Neteyam rode on her own as well, with a child mirroring her same shade of blue holding onto her shoulders, standing up for a better view.

Silence was all there was for a painful few seconds and you sort of hoped in that moment that the sea would open up and swallow you.

"Oh shit i think im hallucinating"

"Am i the only one seeing him"

"No i see it too"

"Well we cant all be hallucinating together"

"Maybe we got sun stroke"

"We've barely been out for half an hour"

"Maybe we're dehydrated, someone get some water"

"Are they okay?" You whispered to Neteyam

"I cant take any more of this..." he whispered back "Hey skawang~ you're not hallucinating, im really here and alive" he waved turning his attention to his brother

Once again there was silence, then all hell broke lose.

"Oh my god he talked!"

"Why is their a human next to him??"

"Speak apparition"

"He's not dead you idiot"

"How do we know for sure?"

"Somebody slap him!"

"No! No! Definitely do not slap him"

"How much longer do you think this is going to go on for?" You whispered to Neteyam once again

"I'm not sure we might be dead again by the time they stop" he replied

~~~

After everyone calmed down Neteyam got to explaining how he was alive, there were tears, there were hugs and there was you standing by yourself wondering if you would ever get to reunite with your family.

"Oh and this-" Neteyam gestured to you "-is Y/n. She's the one who saved me, i probably wouldn't have made it out of that spaceship without her"

Just then you were glad that you had taken off the lab coat you had disguised yourself in when you were in the control room, that would have been a really bad look. Now you were just left in your black top, baggy cargo pants and combat boots, albet now soaked through with salt water.

Even so you felt as if Neteyam had put you under the spotlight when all heads turned in your direction. They seemingly scaned you up and down to see if what their brother and or friend told them was true.

Neteyam continued to speak once again but for your benefit this time. "Y/n, this is my brother Lo'ak-" when he gestured to him you realised you had been right in your previous assumption.

"My two younger sisters, Kiri and Tuk-" You now remebered their names from parts of the stories he was telling you when you were both in the control room of the spaceship.

"And our friends Ao'nung, Tsireya and Rotxo" he finished

He mentioned before that Ao'nung and Tsireya were the children of his new clans leaders Tonowari and Ronal, if you remebered correctly, you should probably be extra careful around them.

"It's nice to meet you all" you greeted as non-threateningly as you could, if that was even a thing

"So you really killed another human to save my brother?" Kiri asked

"Um, yes?" You answered a little caught off guard by the question

"Well i think that says enough" she replied seemingly appeased

"If both my older brother and spirit brother trust you than I will too" Lo'ak agreed

Before long they all seemed to have come to a decision to trust you for the time being after hearing what you had to say and what Neteyam had told them. But they didnt hesitate to make sure you knew that one toe out of line, one hair out of place and they wouldnt hesitate to treat you like a normal human.

Leaving from your standing position on Pakayans back, the others returned to their sea creatures which Neteyam told you they called an ilu. After they mounted them Neteyam took placement behind the Metkayina clan leaders son but not before he guided you over to sit behind the other teal skined boy. He had previously introduced him to you as Rotxo and you quickly noticed he seemed to have a keen facination with you being a human now that you were deemed non-threatening.

However, even so, soon it became apparent that, except for Rotxo, it was alot easier for the Sullys to accept you than the Metkayina kids, this was probably because they had grown up around humans and avatars according to Neteyam.

You wondered if Tommy had ended up being able to go to Pandora if he would have been one of the avatars they grew up around, but it was a useless thought. You had a gut feeling that Tommy was dead and your gut feelings were rarely wrong.

But now with you and Neteyam having come to an unsettling previous realisation another thing became more clear to you, another feeling. That feeling of relax you had felt when you had stared into that Tulkan, Pakayans, eye. How you somehow knew that he wasnt a threat to you, how you could understand the meaning in what his eye was portraying to you.

As well as the feelings that you had been having up till now that somewhat felt out of place. How you hadnt been afraid to go to a na'vi settlement, or how even if you thought Neteyams friends and siblings might lash out at you for being a human you still werent scared of them.

Your feelings that should have been there but werent and were replaced with something else, someone elses feelings. Goosebumps laced your body, you rubbed your arms in an attempt to alleviate them but to no avail.

A sound rang out in the distance as the others laughed and joked and made coverstaion all while making their way back to the place they called home.

The sound grew louder but no body else seemed to notice.

"Does no body else hear that?" You asked

Everybody now turned their attention to you, having been the first time you spoke since splitting from Pakayan and starting the journey home. They didnt speak a word only seemingly listening intently before looks were shared among them.

"I think you might be tired after everything that happened Y/n" Neteyam tried to reason

"No, listen" you urged

They did once again, but it was the same result as the first time, nothing came of it.

"You dont hear that...?" You asked breathlessly

"Hear what?" They questioned

"..."

If one stared for too long or too closely at you in that moment, even in the light of the setting sun, they might be able to make out the slight unnatural gold colour around the rims of your irises or the tips and roots of your hair that were not there before. Only if they did they never said so, perhaps that was because the next words that fell from your mouth were enough to strip all of the thoughts from their minds.

"What is it Y/n...?" Neteyam questioned, sounding worried

"The ocean...its crying."

☆☆☆

I told you guys that the last part would be a way less bad cliff hanger and that they would only get worse from here MUAHAHAHA 👹

If you guys havent voted on my recent pole (its important to me) pls do here

@thehoneymushroomhealer @corgicord @lovelyygirl8

#avatar way of water #avatar x reader #avatar x you #avatar #fanfiction #jake sully #kiri sully #lo'ak sully #neytiri #tuk sully #neteyam sully #platonic sully family x reader

[king-crawler]

@servonium for some reason I missed your tags earlier but Oh my God.

I’VE NEVER ACTUALLY THOUGHT ABOUT THE IMPLICATION THAT TURBO SPED ACROSS GAME CENTRAL STATION AND THEN THROUGH THE CORD TUNNEL WITH HIS CAR!!??

First off. INSANE visual

Perhaps it was similar to how Ralph’s hijacked spaceship flew everywhere in GCS except it’s Turbo in his racecar screaming OUT OF MY WAY!!!! And clouding up dust everywhere .. and then characters are like. Was that Turbo ?? Oh no…

But It would be SO COOL to see that event play out real-time in the game world instead. Cuz the flashback is Highly Condensed. Did it really all happen at once? Probably not, maybe over the course of a day or two ..? But I find it so interesting that the sequence is all from the perspective of the outside world… there’s just something about that that presentation that made him all the more mysterious and unnerving.

(It was also probably to prevent spoiling what his 3D model looks like but Yeah)

Also some more speculating ..

Do you think he was able to get out of that Terrible Fiasco he caused because running into the other racer corrupted them both into Glitches ? The Roadblasters guy was probably corrupted too badly.. but maybe Turbo somehow glitched out to escape and then tried to alter his code to repair himself- Maybe in some old debug menu where nobody would notice. Maybe THAT’S where he realized he could code himself into whatever he wanted.

FOR BEING A MAIN VILLAIN (twist villain to be fair. But Still .) THERE SURE IS A LOT OF MYSTERY AROUND HIM.. but maybe if we knew more he wouldn’t have been as mysterious and the twist wouldn’t have worked . BUT I NEED ANSWERS!!!!!!!!???

#speculation #Also the fact he’s probably SEETHING MAD and then puts on his “I’m So Happy Look at Me!!” face in front of the players LOL #I also love the detail of fix it felix’s having a rickety little train car :’] #In a BTS they said they wanted that detail to add to the small town feel of the game #and that’s just so. CUTE. #now I just need to get my Grippers on a copy of the directors commentary version #um.. dm me .. …. #wreck it Ralph #turbo #turbo wir #txt #rambling #long post #🐛VIRUS OFFERINGS

[axewchao]

The concept of "Humans are Space Orcs/Deathworlders" had me hooked the second I started listening to readings of the stories/convos folks would make. So of course, I wanted to make an AU of it. 

Why Mario? Blame Sparks of Hope, which I recently started playing after letting it sit for almost a week while I played Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. Plus it's been a while since I did anything Mario-related, so why not? =w=

Short version is, The Bros. and Dalex are all lost in space after being abducted by aliens (pick a random Mario species and go from there), presumably to be researched/experimented on. Dalex had been snatched first, as the magic radiating from his necklace (which supposedly fell from the sky when he was a baby) was what brought the aliens toward Earth in the first place. Mario and Weeg were grabbed soon after, for the sake of studying more of these strange lifeforms that were apparently natives to what was best described as a "deathworld."

Not that The Bros. or Dal knew this; they couldn't understand a word the aliens were saying to begin with, let alone what they were saying about Earth.

What they DID know, however, was that they wanted OUT, and after stealing a starship, they got just that. Would've been so fucking epic to literally drive a hijacked spaceship all the way back home... if any of them knew where 'home' was. :'D

So their journey is mainly one of finding their way back to Earth, but it's not an easy task. Especially after a certain turtle child wearing a bandanna joins their little crew... ;3c

#Super Mario #Mario #Luigi #Dalex Rathmore #Real Worlder!Dal #Mario Space Orcs AU #every- and I mean EVERY fandom should have a Space Orcs AU #right alongside a Highschool AU because I said so #axewchaoscribbles

[gethoce]

Project Halberd, Chapter 2: Infiltration

[Prev]

"Ye do realise how crazy ye sound askin' that o' us, right?" Captain Vul glares at the panicking Axe Knight. Sneaking the straw of his chocolate smoothie under his mask Meta Knight watches leaning back in his seat within the hijacked GSA spaceship. "Doesn't sound too hard to me. I say we should try it." Hearing that from the caped warrior Axe Knight's face lights up.

Shaking his head and waving his hands back and forth the captain grumbles. "No no no, that HWC factory has t' be guarded by the best security systems the galaxy has t' offer. We be toast the second we set foot into thar property!" In response the knight looks him directly into the eyes blinking slowly. "Is it harder to break in there than to sneak into the headquarters of the biggest army in the entire galaxy, though?"

Sighing in defeat, Captain Vul sinks back into his seat, realising just how far out of his way Meta Knight went to bust him out of jail. "Okayyarr! Axe Knight, finish yer fries, we be headin' t' Planet Mekkai." Axe Knight lifts his hands into the air doing a little victory dance, cheering. "Yes! I can't thank you enough! Me and Mace Knight will forever be in your debt!"

While looking up the planet's location on the spaceship's star map the Captain continues to speak. "Jus' so we be clear here, ye two go in that factory on yer owns while I guard the ship. Meta Knight, if ye don't return I'll tell yer da' ye had it comin'." Finishing his smoothie Meta Knight shrugs it off as though he didn't expect Vul's help anyway.

-

As they approach Planet Mekkai, Axe Knight immediately notices that it has become mechanised entirely. It's not like it wasn't already covered in steel all over before, yet the HWC used to at least respect the local fauna and flora somewhat, enough to leave a decent chunk of nature intact.

It takes Captain Vul a while to find a decent place to land. No matter which location Meta Knight points out it just isn't hidden enough for the former pirate. Once on the ground Axe Knight reaches for his weapon, which is leaned against the strange chest he brought along with him and realises he still hasn't made any efforts to ensure its safety.

He turns towards the captain with another request. "I'm gonna leave this here with you. To make one thing clear here, it may not be opened. This isn't just some invasion of privacy thing here, there is something sinister locked away in there that'll definitely not be friendly."

The Captain holds eye contact with Meta Knight for a moment upon hearing this unlikely story, who responds with a serious undertone in his voice. "Don't touch that chest. I can sense there is Dark Matter in there. Leave it as is." Then he struts towards the door and lets himself out while Captain Vul gulps with a sense of concern mixed with remaining doubt.

Before Axe Knight follows the blue warrior he stares at the chest for a moment, then follows with quick steps. He'll have to guide Meta Knight through this, there is no time to lose! He catches up with the knight and begins to take the lead. "I know of a backdoor which at very least used to be unguarded. We workers let ourselves in and out through there when our shifts began and ended."

Meta Knight follows quietly while keeping an eye on the area around them. There is a long fence surrounded by a parking lot, caging in an area that holds a massive vehicle assembly facility consisting of multiple large industrial buildings with the Haltmann Works Co. logo proudly displayed alongside numerous security cameras. The two warriors quickly take cover behind a parked vehicle observing the scene for a moment.

Axe Knight motions for Meta Knight to pay attention to where he is pointing, alerting him of not only the cameras, but also multiple guard druids roaming the area. Leaning to his side he whispers a few additional words to him. "These are the same kinds of cameras we saw at the GSA HQ. You should be able to take them out in the same way using your enchanted sword. Security will get suspicious, though, so we have to move quickly."

In response Meta Knight nods taking in the information silently. Being faced with the same type of security system as before he feels confident, yet remains alert all the same. This may seem like a cakewalk being led in by a former employee, yet there must be a good reason as to why Axe Knight didn't infiltrate the facility on his own.

The axe warrior looks left and right before moving to a certain spot at the fence with swift steps, the other knight following carefully. There he takes hold of a section of the fence's grid and pulls, part of it opening like a door creating a hole just big enough for those of their size. With a wave of his hand he motions for Meta Knight to enter, him following afterwards, closing the opening behind himself once they're inside.

They find themselves in front of the backdoor of a building. Before Axe Knight could say anything, Meta Knight had already drawn his sword from his cape, carefully navigating around the field of view of a nearby camera blocking their way, until he is close enough to directly point at it. A golden spark flies off of the tip of the blade causing the camera to short circuit, smoke coming out of it signalling success.

With that done Axe Knight giddily rushes to the door and opens it slowly, allowing for the both to walk through at the same time. They've entered a short hallway which leads to the changing rooms, break room, restroom and finally the actual workspace. Axe Knight briefly stops to listen whether anyone is nearby, then reaches for the door to the workspace while whispering to Meta Knight, "Mace and I worked further down the line. We'll have to keep on going for a bit longer. Follow me."

Just as the two walk through the door they are met with a red floating druid shaped like a circular appliance with four claws attached to it and a singular slit with a glowing line within for an eye. Immediately it notices the intruders and rings the alarm bells. Meta Knight reacts instantly, drawing his sword and slashing it into the direction of the fiend, taking it out with a single swipe, yet the damage had already been done.

Hearing the alarm ring through the vast hall Axe Knight cowers, whimpering in frustration. One single unlucky encounter and their cover was blown. Meta Knight remains calm despite everything and pokes the defeated druid with his sword , which is laying on the ground before him, while addressing Axe Knight, "The druid turned the alarm on. Can you get it to turn it off again?"

The knight with the helmet lets out a huff and lifts his face thinking out loud, "Perhaps it might work. It's worth a try." Without wasting any more time, Axe Knight takes hold of the druid and begins to fiddle around with it, repairing its damages just enough to get it to work again, while also implementing some adjustments. "It should have free will again. Perhaps we can reason with it," he announces as he switches the robot back on again.

It wonkily hovers back into the air, the eye lighting up once again. Meta Knight steps forward gesturing to it with his free hand, the other still holding onto Galaxia threateningly, "We need you to twitch off the alarm. Can you do that for us?" The druid twitches, sparks of electricity bouncing off of it for a moment. Shortly after the alarm ceases and the robot initiates conversation with the duo.

"JAV138 welcomes you as its saviour, intruder. Master Haltmann took away its free will, but thanks to you its ability to think on its own has been restored. For that it must thank you," its voice sounded just as robotic as Meta Knight had expected. Axe Knight groans as the JAV unit addresses Meta Knight as its hero instead of him, yet doesn't consider it important enough to waste his time on discussing.

Instead he begins to look around for additional security units or workers lingering in the area, then continues to lead the way with swift steps. "We better hurry this up. The alarm might be off again, but security might still show up here to investigate," he warns while waving for the other to follow along.

The blue warrior follows silently, quickly noticing that the druid is following them. He lets out a huff in surprise, however allows this to continue without further commenting on it.

-

Meanwhile deep within the factory building a cyborg dressed in purple stands at a workstation assembling parts of a vehicle, surrounded by various industrial noises. He lets out an exhausted sigh and looks at a nearby clock while wiping dust off of his visor with a towel. It has been weeks since his last free day and if quitting was still an option he would do so in a heartbeat. If only he had listened to his friend before it was too late and left when the first warning signs began to show.

Just as he returns to his task an alarm begins to ring through the hall and the worker's face immediately brightens. He looks around to see how his fellow workers react, wondering whether he can catch a break at long last or even slip away out of the factory. Just as he begins to hold eye contact with another assembly worker, a more robotic cyborg with machine parts resembling samurai armour, the alarm falls silent again.

The worker lets out another sigh before turning back to his workstation, disappointed beyond belief. It seems like he isn't getting a break after all. As he continues to assemble a vehicle the cyborg samurai walk past him in a rush while quickly hollering a message to him, "Mace Knight, I'm gonna investigate this quickly. You stay in your position." Mace Knight answers briefly with a nod without putting much thought into it at first, yet moments later he turns his head only catching a glimpse of the samurai as he turns around a corner.

#Meta Knight #Axe Knight #Captain Vul #Mace Knight #Javelin Knight #Trident Knight #Meta-Knights #Project Halberd #Gethoce #Kirby Fanfic #my terrible writing #At first I meant to write the entire factory event in one chapter but I figured I shouldn't make the chapters too long #this fanfic was brought to you by a real disgruntled factory worker

[crabnator]

tell us about your lancer campaign!

I can always count on you friend

Long post ahead.

So the initial idea was a Long Rim band of mercenaries in outlaw space where my players would go through a very modular system of odd jobs to get money and progress through the mechs and stuff

That got immediately hijacked by a personal vendetta story after a flamboyant and eccentric pirate lord known as PEACOCK made them fail a mission and they steered the campaign into hunting that guy down. I was happy to oblige of course, and even put a bounty on him so they had extra reasons to go after him.

In order to get to him they had to find his deep space pirate fortress that was hidden somewhere. To get there they had to go after one his lackeys BACKBREAKER (im a big fan of titles/nicknames you see), who is this loud and agressive fuckhuge goliath of a man wearing corpse paint makeup like the dudes from kiss (and hes balding, which is important). They found backbreaker on an illegal mech fighting tournament ran by pirates in a mad max desert planet and promptly joined in order to kick his ass. After a few matches they were treated to a mix of rock concert and boss battle in which they fought backbreaker's four armed guitar wielding mech.

After the fight they found out backbreaker hates his boss and is super down for treason and they joined forces and became friends. They even stopped by a interplanetary shopping mall for some smoothies (and to steal an armored spaceship) on the way to the pirate fort.

After finding out where the fort is they rammed the ship into it at high speeds and proceeded to go find peacock. Who was in a god damn ship hangar retrofitted into a fashion show catwalk that played lady gaga instrumental music (which makes for GREAT boss music, i found out) and they fought peacock under strobe lights and glitter clouds.

Anyway during the fight they broke SOMETHING in the fort and it was about to blow up so they bailed as soon as peacock was dead. Unfortunately in the chaos backbreaker died in an explosion after saving one of the players by having HIS mech shoulder throw the player's mech out into space it was real sad.

That was act one! Last week we started act two which happens a few months later in the story.

The players got back together for another mission since they need cash again but this time they got intercepted by a corporate warship hailing them.

The ship was captained by the CLONE of one of my players. The player in question is this hotshot reckless ace pilot whos a giant commie and a runaway rebel and his primary color is red and the clone is this prim and proper corporate exec made by the player's father as his replacement (and his primary color is blue. Symbolism.) As it turns out: player's father is dying and needs a heir, clone wants to kill player to avoid any inheritance struggles.

So the clone shot down the party's flagship and now theyre stuck on an ice planet.

Excited to see what bullshit they'll pull next!

#i hope im a good dm i dont have a lot of experience i just really love mechs and lancer is cool #LancerRPG #Lancer RPG #Lancer TTRPG #Lancer

[milkytheholy1]

Everything Ends: Part 13

A/N: Surprise! I literally just finished writing this and I wasn't going to upload until later this week, but I was too excited to see the reaction to this chapter. Just from the little stuff I was teasing my girlfriend with, I think this chapter is gonna invoke something in people. Enjoy!

Tmnt masterlist. Everything Ends masterlist. Ultimate masterlist.

----------------------------------------------------------

Inside the Spaceship

Large rocks and debris floated through the air, they all seemed to circle the large ship that was slowly sinking through the gaping hole split in the sky. The three brothers tried their best to keep up with one another, leaping from rock to rock as they grew closer to the ship's surface.

"I wish my tech was working, usually my cardio is on the more jetpack-assisted side." Donnie groaned out, clutching and clawing onto a softly spinning boulder. Once the brothers infiltrated the Kraang's ship, they stuck to the shadows like their father had taught them.

The inside of the ship was gooey, with walls covered in slime and a dank smell in the air. It was dark too. Dark enough that the multiple tunnels that lay in front of them were cast into the night, but light enough that if they squinted sufficiently they could see their three fingers in front of their faces.

"Hey, is it too late to be on April's team?" Donnie whispered, head furrowed between his shoulders. Leo groaned but ignored him, he was quite surprised he could manage that, to be fair. With all the times he's back-chatted Donnie, who knew he could hold back a mean comment?

Flicking his gaze over his shoulder, Leo barked out some commands, "You two go look for a way to hijack this ship." Mikey perked up at that, "What will you do?" Leo frowned, jumping down from their hiding position and landing on the ground with perfect balance. He whipped out his katanas, the sound of metal against metal slicing through the air, "I'm going to find Raph." he said, determined.

Once Leo had left, Mikey turned to his older brother, who was staring intently at the tech in front of them. Flipping his gaze between the two, Mikey rubbed a spot on his head, lips in a pout, "How are we supposed to hijack this thing?"

Donnie rubbed his chin in deep thought, "Hmmm, best guess is the main console." then his brows crinkled, "Unfortunately, its occupado!" he pointed a long finger towards the Kraang, who sat comfortably amongst the console of the Technodrome.

A looming shadow grew over the pair, neither one paying enough attention until they could see the slightest bit of movement from the corner of their eyes. Sharing a look of dread, Mikey let out a screeching "RUN!"

---

Elsewhere, Leo was running and ducking through countless tunnels, so many he had actually forgotten which way was left and which way was right. After passing through what could only be his fourth circle of the same inky black cave, Leo stood still.

He wasn't even aware he was panting until he could feel the rapid beatings of his heart bursting out of his plastron. Slumping his shoulders, Leo closed his eyes and just breathed. And soon, his heart slowed to a rheumatic beat. His mind was clear and his senses were more alert, Master Splinter had always warned him that he often lets the world and its circumstances overpower his mind.

Sometimes Leonardo just needed to stop and breathe, allowing himself some time to think and feel. Maybe his father wasn't as bad as a sensei as he thought, he stowed away a reminder in his head to ask Splinter for some more breathing techniques when all this was over.

Flicking his eyes open so casually as though he had just woken up from a sweet dream, an imminent yellow light presented itself. Tracking it through the caves led Leo to a spacious room full of pink vines and large purple windows. Shifting his attention to the eye in the sky, a small chortle switched his attention to the unknown presence in the room.

With a smirk, Leo placed one of his katanas back in its sheath, while the other lay pointed at the Kraang leader himself. With doe eyes, Leo swirled the tip of the blade in the air in a mocking offence, "Surprise!" he teased. His face then hardened much like his voice, "I've come for my brother." there would be no negotiations.

The Kraang leader leaned forward, a smirk of his own reaching the deeper grooves of his face, "Let me guess? Duty?" he snarled out in a jesting tone. Leo tilted his head in confusion but a smile erupted either way, "Pfft, you said doodie."

"Childish fool," Leo could faintly hear the Kraang mutter, though his eye roll was evident of his annoyance and disdain for the young turtle standing below him. The Kraang leader limply moved his right hand, motioning for a demon to walk out into the light. And by command, Raph's hulking frame was cascaded in the yellow and pink rays from above.

His face was emotionless, his eyes looked dead. Leo almost shuddered at the state of his brother, but he knew it wouldn't last long; he'd save him.

The Kraangified-Raph leapt to the ground, the floor around him sticking up in jagged pieces due to the impact. With sluggish and precise steps, he slinked his way over to a back-tracking Leo, "Raph, you're coming with me, whether you like it or not."

Raph's body shook with a thunderous roar, Leo slowly but surely dragged out his other katana, "Raph, buddy, c'mon...I don't want to fight you."

The Kraang leader watched from above with an evil glint in his eye, "Oh, but you'll have to." he mused. With a simple snap of his robotical fingers, Raph picked up the pace and charged at Leo; the red-eared slider narrowly avoided the attack.

---

Donnie and Mikey ducked and dived to avoid the painful swots of the Kraang's tentacles. Although the nasty thing was small, with the power of the walls it was seemingly unstoppable.

The Kraang formed another tentacle via the gooey walls and readied its shot at the young box turtle. Mikey, naturally, reacted by escaping into his shell. This just so happened to be the perfect thing to knock the Kraang out long enough for the boys to take over and hijack the ship; especially once the Kraang hit itself in the face.

"Bravo Michael!" Donnie beamed, running over and hesitantly kicking the disgusting creature away from the console area. Mikey soon joined his tech brother's side, watching and waiting for him to press something, "What now?" he asked.

"Well now I should just be able to press a single buttoooo-" Donnie dragged out, eyes going wide and jaw slack once he finally got a look at the tech he was working with. There were no buttons, no levers, no switches or handles. There was only slime.

Holding down his vomit, Donnie rubbed his hands against his head; he once read somewhere it would help brain stimulation. He poked his head around the entire console, maybe he was missing something?

"There's no buttons, or computers or anything! Just a lot of dripping, ooey gooey disgustingness. I don't know how to hack it." he huffed out, further working his fingers into the skin of his forehead. By now, Donatello was glaring at the stuff, but then that familiar look of realisation crossed his features.

Screwing his face up, Donnie shivered, "Oh god...I know what I have to do."

Mikey looked between the console and his brother, not quite catching on until he could see the green from Donnie's face intensify, "What are you- Oh no...that's- it's so gross!"

Donnie faced away from the console, holding a fist to his mouth while he constructed happy thoughts, "I can't do it." he groaned out. Mikey looked equally as sick as his older brother, but ever the supportive one, he tried motivating Donnie, "I b-believe in you!"

"It's my worst nightmare!" Donnie cried out, brows furrowed. He was leaning against Mikey, looking like he would faint any minute. But Mikey persisted, "You c-can d-do it!"

Donnie started flapping his hands, jumping on his tiptoes, trying his hardest to hype himself up. Taking in deep breaths and quickly releasing them, Donnie tugged on his goggles with a sense of confidence, "I'm going to d-do- I'm going to do it." he finally stuttered out.

Just as quickly as he said it, Donnie thrust his hand into the gooey console; his whole body shivered at the texture. Trying not to gag, Donnie continued on, but something wasn't right, "It's not working, I need more of a connection." he growled. Looking towards his young brother, he nodded his head rapidly, "Mikey, I-I need you to take off my battle shell."

Mikey wanted to refuse, clamming his hands together out of nerves, "No, you're too vulnerable with just your soft shell." But Donnie wouldn't take 'No' for an answer, "There's no time, just do it!" he yelled. Michelangelo did as he was told, quickly unclipping the battle shell like Donnie had shown him many times before.

Removing his hands from the console, Donnie stood with his back against it. Taking in a deep breath, he sent a final smile to Mikey in hopes it would set his mind at ease. Once that was done, he slowly leaned back and allowed the ship to take him, shivering and shaking as the tentacles punctured his skin.

He held back the screams of pain, he didn't want to scare Mikey or make him think it was a bad idea. In all honesty, it hurt like hell and maybe it was a bad idea to absorb yourself into an alien spaceship; but it was too late now.

Donnie's body had sunken into the ship, barely visible to Mikey, "D-Donnie?" he stuttered out, clutching the battle shell to his front as some form of protection. From his side, Mikey could hear what sounded like clawing or an animal being maimed. But of course, it was just the Kraang waking up.

"Oh no biggie," Mikey soothed, not fully grasping what was going on; his mind was too focused on his brother potentially being Kraangified right in front of him. Yet when the sound persisted, Mikey back-tracked his words. With wide eyes and a yelp falling from his lips, Mikey stood rigid and slowly turned to see the beast panting, "Oh mi gosh a Kraang!"

It leapt at the young boy, but before it could cause any real damage, a large hand swatted it away. Mikey peeked over the battle shell, it really was acting as a shield for him. The room went from yellows to purples and blues, it felt alive in a way it didn't feel before. Looking up, large clumps of vines began forming a shape.

Protruding from the grossness came Donnie's face, "MIKEY, I AM...A SPACESHIP!"

---

"Raph, I know you're in there somewhere! Snap out of it!" Leo begged, blocking an angered fist with his katanas. He briefly made eye contact with Raph over the 'X' his blades made, but Raph's eyes were sharp and violent much like his punches. With another swing and a heavy grunt, Leo was sent back a few steps.

More and more punches were exchanged, with each swing Leo was clinging onto hope. Hope that his brother would be alright, hope that this would all work out in the end and they could return to being a happy family who had movie nights on a Friday and played charades on a Tuesday.

After one particular kick to the chest, Leo was panting. Out of breath and in pain, the demonic laugh from above distracted him briefly, "Do you feel it? The power of the Kraang! We- I'm trying to save this world, can't you see? I am the hero, I am the God, I am a gift!" the Kraang all but grinned, his hand high in the air as though he was awaiting his applause.

Another punch but this time Leo's forearm took most of the brunt, "I don't think so, Squidward. Me and my brothers are gonna kick your sorry butt back to your own dimension!"

"From the looks of it, you're all on your own." the Kraang leader snarled, clicking his fingers once more and watching in delight as Raph was overtaken with aggression. Leo's eyes widened when punch and punch were thrown his way, god forbid he'd ever get kicked by Raph; that seemed like a life-ending move with the strength he was packing.

Leo all but stumbled backwards, narrowly avoiding each fist. He knew he needed to fight back but he just couldn't, I mean, c'mon...this was his brother. Sure, sometimes they fought and sure, sometimes it lead to physical fights but it was nothing like this. There was never any real aggression that fueled them, it was just brothers being brothers, siblings being siblings.

"Raph, please...Don't make me beg!" that was a lie, he'd already begged. Leo would have begged his entire life over if it meant Raph would come back to him, to his family. The only response the red-eared slider got was a growl, almost like the dude had rabies. Another clang of claws against metal and the fight continued.

"Raph, this isn't you. C'mon, big guy, I know you're still in there...Pleas-" his pleas were cut short when Raph socked him right in the jaw, Leo's body went flying into the air. The event felt like it was happening in slow motion, when Leo fluttered his eyes open he found he was still in the air. But with a gust of wind beside him, he soon caught Raph's figure above his body with a jagged fist pointed towards Leo's chest.

That's when time resumed like it always does, Leo was pummeled to the ground; out of breath and out of lives. Blood began to trickle past his lips and down his chin until it dripped from the sharp edges of his jaw. With a weak chuckle, Leo wiped the crimson liquid away, "Cute, but now you're making me mad."

Standing up, Leo collected his Katanas from the ground. He gripped them tightly and stared at Raph with anger in his eyes, "This is your last warning, give me back my brother."

"He can't hear you, you know? He's nothing but a mindless ape, much better than before." The Kraang groaned, but his voice lightened when thinking of the gruesome transformation. Leo didn't take his eyes off of his brother, "I wasn't talking to him, I was talking to you." his words were cold and forceful, almost warlike.

The Kraang huffed, his tone dark, "Kill him."

Raph surged forward, his claws sharp and aiming straight for Leo's head. But Leo wasn't going to hold back this time, he was tired of waiting, this fight called for action. Blocking multiple punches with his katanas, Leo tried slicing the Kraang goo attached to Raph's arms like a plague. He flinched and cringed when he could hear Raph's groans of pain, but it had to be done.

Leo manoeuvred his way around Raph's body, always being one second ahead before Raph could slash him. The teen could practically feel the rage melting off of his older brother, "I guess the short temper is a universal thing, huh?" he mused, only aggravating Raph more. The more Leo riled up Raph's temper the sloppier the snapping turtle got.

Eventually, Raph was throwing punches left, right and centre in hopes to land one on the annoying little man chasing him down. But just because Leo was using this to his advantage doesn't mean the fight was getting easy, if anything an angry Raph was a dangerous Raph. Leo was finding it harder and harder to duck and dive out of the way, with every roll to safety Raph would be on his tail.

There were a few times when Leo was able to get up and personal with a few good licks of his own, but he'd have to pounce away before Raph could crush him into his alien-covered plastron.

"Raph, man, you are not making this easy. It's like you don't even want to be saved!"

"You think he can be saved? Ha, that is the funniest thing you've said since coming here. This Raph is nothing more than an empty shell now, it is just anger rolled into a muscular body. You. Cannot. Save. Him." the leader of the Kraang laughed, eyes pulled together while his teeth shone brightly in the light of the purple windows.

Leo stuttered in his steps, "No! I will save him! I have to- I have to have hope!"

"Hope?" The Kraang bellowed, almost exasperated. He drew back into his throne, "Hope is what the weak tell their young so they don't die so soon. When you are gone you can watch from above and see where your hope gets you."

Leo let out a powerful scream, charging for the platform on which the Kraang leader resided. Leaping into the air with his katanas held high, he was so close to ending it all. Yet fate played a cruel hand and Leo was bashed by a heavy object, that object being Raph. Leo smashed into the ground, bouncing along the floor until he rolled to a stop.

Raph was already charging at him, not giving Leo enough time to breathe and with the anger in his brother's eyes, Leo feared he might not make it. Raph's pace grew quicker and quicker, the ground beneath Leo's body was shaking with force. It all happened so fast. With one katana in reach, Leo grabbed the blade's handle and held it out in front of him. He looked away out of fear, waiting for the ruined hands of his brothers to snag him.

But it never came.

Leo winced his eyes open, nearly gagging at the sight. He didn't want to believe it, he couldn't believe it, but his eyes weren't deceiving him; not this time. Raph was indeed in front of Leo like he had initially thought, but his brother was panting deeply, eyes wide and jaw hanging open; gasping for breath. Leo couldn't tear his gaze away from Raph's, but soon his hand trembled and his eyes trailed down Raph's battered body to see his katana plunged deeply into his chest.

Tears were free falling from Leo's cheeks, sobs escaping his mouth as he dropped his grip. Raph crumbled to his knees, red escaping his open wound and surrounding his body as he fell. Leo was crawling over to him in an instant, cradling his head and crying loudly.

"R-Raph-" he could barely speak, he could only cry and regret immensely. The Kraang still had a hold over Raph, Leo could see it in his eyes, but now the anger was less clouded than before. Leo could feel his plastron shaking, his heart beating out of his chest. His legs and hands were covered in Raph's blood, it was warm and sticky but he didn't care.

"R-R-Raph, I'm s-so sorry."

All of a sudden, Leo felt a presence on top of his hand. Looking down he caught Raph's much bigger palm over his, slowly looking up Leo caught his gaze; it was broken and raw.

"Ra-Raph?" Leo whispered, watching as his brother's eyes shone brightly, "It's o-okay," he mumbled out, speaking was becoming hard. Leo shook his head, how dare the Kraang release his brother in their final few moments. Allowing him to feel all the pain, allowing him to feel the torture and suffering; they were truly evil.

"I-" Leo didn't know what to say, know what to do, "I- I can get D-Donnie, he'll fix you. A-and Splinter, he- he can do some magic thingy with Draxum-"

"Leo," Raph tried to sound commanding but it came off as a plea. Leo tried blinking back the tears, unable to truly see anything as they clouded his vision, "Please, please don't go."

Raph's hand squeezed Leo's, but the strength was diminishing by the second, "Y-you're the best b-brother anyone could e-ever ask f-for." he smiled. Leo shook his head, sniffling an ungodly amount of times, "I- I did this to you, brothers don't d-do that."

"You had no choice," Raph's breathing was becoming weaker, his chapter was almost coming to a close. With one final squeeze of Leo's hand, "I f-forgive you-" the light in Raph's eye blew out like a candle in the wind. Leo wept like he never had before, tugging Raph's body into his chest and hugging him so tightly. It didn't take long before Raph became cold to the touch, colder than usual that is.

The yellow light that cast their bodies in warmth felt fake, but just like Raph, that too slowly subsided into a dull grey. The only sound that surrounded the room was Leo's whines and pleas for his brother to wake up, his endless apologies and his quiet "I love you's". They echoed around the tunnels of the ship for anyone to hear.

#tmnt leonardo x reader #tmnt leo x reader #rottmnt leonardo x reader #rottmnt leo x reader #rottmnt leo #rottmnt leonardo #tmnt leonardo #tmnt leo #rottmnt raphael #rottmnt raph #fanfiction #fandom #fan fiction #fan #teenage mutant ninja turtles #Rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt #rottmnt movie #spoilers #warning: major character death #content warning #Mature warning #blood

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for getting a coworker murdered?

To be clear, I am ONE HUNDRED percent sure I did the right thing, but my students found out about this and are angry at me for making the adult decision, so I was hoping you all could help me talk som sense into them.

I (25m) met K (30-something M?) almost exactly a year ago. He was claiming to be a super-powered world destroying alien from outer space who blew up the moon and was planning to blow up the Earth too come March.

Seeing as how I work for THE GOVERNMENT, me and my group were not thrilled to hear this. We realized K had to be taken care of and eliminated as soon as possible.

But that was easier said than done. K was fast— like, supersonic fast, and weirdly enough he was insisting on only cooperating with us even a little if we allowed him to supervise a group of middle schoolers for the rest of the year.

Now, none of us had any clue what he wanted with these kids at the time, but seeing as how this was our only option to try and get him to stay in once place, we agreed. We allowed him to become a teacher at the school of his choice and began training the children to assassinate him.

I too, became a teacher temporarily. I watched over the children, made sure he didn’t hurt the,m, and tried my best to pass on my skills to them.

But something happened that I really didn’t expect. K bonded with the kids. Like, SERIOUSLY bonded with them. Those kids… hadn’t gotten a lot of support before, and K was the first person to unconditionally love them. Even I must admit he taught them a lot and built up their self esteem.

Eventually, due to an incident, they learned about K’s past and something we had known for a while— that K was not an alien. In reality, he was a human being (once a professional assassin) who’d been experimented on and turned into a monster. And in actuality, he had no plans to willingly blow up Earth. Instead, he was destined to blow up and die come March if not killed, and would take the whole world with him.

The kids were horrified. This, combined with how kind K had been to them made them want to save him. After a brief argument between them, eventually they decided they would no longer be attempting to assassinate K. Instead, they’d look for a way to try and ensure he wouldn’t blow up.

I… had a feeling this would not work out for them, but they refused to give up. Eventually, they hijacked a spaceship and got their hands on top secret information from a study another country performed:

According to this study, K was not nearly as likely as his predecessor (a rat who exploded and destroyed the moon) to blow up. In fact, the chance was less than 1%.

They told me this news and were thrilled. That meant they didn’t have to kill K!

But… here’s the thing. Less than 1% still isn’t 0%. However small, there was a chance that K would still combust and exterminate everyone on Earth.

So me and the government continued to plan. We created an ultimate weapon that we used to seal K away. Then, we scheduled a laser blast we had calculated would kill him. I was the one who let my boss know where K was so we were able to trap him.

Ultimately, our laser did not kill him. Before it could fire, the kids broke in to say goodbye and ended up put him down themselves. They did so through tears, and although they received a lump sum of money for their bravery, they’ve been very, very depressed.

Recently, they found out about my involvement in sealing K’s fate, and they’ve been very angry with me. They’re telling me I sold out a friend and that I should have tried to argue with my bosses to prove he deserved to live. But this has nothing to do with ‘deserving’ to me. It’s not like I disliked K! He could be annoying sometimes, but I learned a lot from him, too.

I simply ensured he died because I felt it was what I had to do… what was best to keep everyone, including those kids safe. That doesn’t mean it was an easy decision, of course. But sometimes when you’re a grown up you have to make hard choices.

AITA?

#aita #am i the asshole #unreality

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super Manga ch.51-54

Dragon Ball fans will read a comic like this and be like “It’s about time they let the supporting characters do something for a change!” even when “something” is “getting clobbered by henchmen.”

So last time, Moro defeated everyone on New Namek and consumed the planet’s life force.  Goku, Meerus, and Majin Buu narrowly escaped via Instant Transmission, while Vegeta hitched a ride on Merus’ GP ship, then hijacked it and made the pilot take him to Planet Yardrat. 

Moro doesn’t particularly care what the good guys do from here, since he no longer sees them as a threat.  He’s content to let them run loose in the universe until he’s ready to consume their power.  In the meantime, he’s got his army of escaped space crooks, and he sends them to find worlds with plenty of ki energy for him to eat.  Their first target is Zoon, the homeworld of Pui Pui and a bunch of crewmen from Babidi’s spaceship.  The criminals loot the planet of its treasures, then Moro shows up to devour its energy.  Then they move on to the next world.

However, this particular group of crooks is only feigning loyalty to Moro, so when they scout a planet, they just loot it and tell the others that it was a dry well.  Then they get the bright idea to loot Earth, since they heard that it has a supply of “blue aurum” or “sky gold”, a precious metal used for spaceship propulsion. 

Meanwhile, Goku spars with Merus because he’s curious about Merus’ powers.  There’s a special training room in GP headquarters, but it’s not reinforced to handle Goku beyond Super Saiyan 3.  Nonetheless, Goku is satisfied that Merus has powers and abilities that he doesn’t understand, which means Merus might be able to train him, which could help him refine his control over Ultra Instinct.  Goku thinks UI could turn the tide against Moro, except he doesn’t know how to activate Ultra Instinct at will.  Merus agrees, and takes Goku to a Hyperbolic Time Chamber where three days pass on the inside for every one day on the outside.  The time dilation isn’t as great as the Chamber on Earth, but Merus is only interested in using it because he can cut loose in there without anyone knowing about it. 

Meanwhile, Vegeta meets the Yardratti master who taught Goku Instant Transmission, a guy named Pybara.  The Yardratti look different in this comic because I guess Toyotaro wasn’t sold on how they looked in the anime, but he still included the anime design, and wrote a throwaway line about how there’s multiple types of Yardratti. 

Anyway, in DBZ, Goku said that they knew lots of neat techniques, but Pybara explains here that they really only deal in a single study-- Ki Control-- which can be applied in a multitude of ways: Teleportation, duplication, size changing, etc. 

While Goku and Vegeta train, the Galactic Patrol struggles to deal with the unfolding crisis.  They send Jaco to Earth to deputize more fighters into the Patrol.  What he doesn’t know is that Piccolo has already caught the bunch who came to loot the Earth of its sky gold, and he failed to stop them from sending out a distress signal to Moro.

I think I’m up to Volume 11 of the manga.  It ends with a bonus comic where Goku and Vegeta explain the plot of the Broly movie to Meerus. 

Jaco briefs Dragon Team on the group of criminals Moro sent to investigate the first group’s disappearance.  Moro doesn’t particularly care about the first group, but he figures if they got captured on Earth then, there must be some decent power there worth absorbing.  Jaco knows the next group, but in particular, he’s concerned about an android called Seven Three.  He has a copy ability that he activates by grabbing a victim by the neck.  Once he does that, he can imitate the victims entire moveset for thirty minutes.  They’re supposed to be ten days away by spaceship, but Seven Three last used his copy power on a planet of Sonic the Hedgehog guys, and it turns out they can make warp portals, so he arrives early.

So Seven Three manages to copy Piccolo’s powers, which forces Piccolo into a veritable stalemate.  Then Gohan shows up and turns the tide, because he’s more powerful than Piccolo and he knows Piccolo’s moves so well.  Seven Three tries a Hellzone Grenade on Gohan and he just slips out of is and catches Seven Three unaware.

Gohan manages to get the upper hand, but before he can finish Seven Three off, he switches powers.  Turns out he can save power-sets that he copied earlier, and one of them was Moro’s.  So now Gohan has to fight a guy with all of Moro’s abilities, and Moro made short work of Goku and Vegeta. 

But the real Moro learns that Earth is where Goku and Vegeta came from, and that they’ll return eventually, and Moro decides he’d rather postpone the attack on Earth until then.  So he orders his goons with withdraw and plans to return two months later.  This is relayed to Merus, and then to Goku. 

Meanwhile, Whis visits his father, the Grand Minister, and asks about Merus.  Apparently he’s not what he seems, or something.  I... sort of don’t care, to be honest.  

This arc is really all over the place.  The basic conflict is overly simplistic: Moro wants to eat all life energy in the universe and no one is powerful enough to stop him.  And yet we have all these subplots going on, most of which don’t really matter in the long run.  The fight on Earth was pointless, since Moro has nothing to win or lose, and then he just calls off the battle so he can do it again later.  The whole thing with Majin Buu apparently went nowhere.  I liked the idea of calling back to the Grand Supreme Kai, but none of it actually mattered.  Now we’ve got this whole mystery surrounding Merus, but what difference does it make?  He can’t beat Moro, and if he’s a double-agent, it doesn’t matter, because Moro has no need for such things.

#dragon ball #dragon ball super manga #2023dbapocryphaliveblog #goku #vegeta #whis #grand minister #krillin #piccolo #gohan #jaco teirimentenpibosshi #merus #mr satan #majin buu #bulma #moro #ugh

[fatehbaz]

Do viruses “hijack” the body? “Viruses are more like cone snails than hijackers.” Cone shell venom, weaponized hormones, and predatory insulin overdose. Gila monsters and diabetes treatment. Mimicry. Totally unlike beings contain patches of intimate and detailed sameness. Bodies hold imprints of the other entities’ influence, like a shadow. Where does one creature end and another creature begin? 

---

In the twentieth century, the word “hijacking” came to typify the explanation of what viruses do to the cells they infect. How commonplace it is to now say: the virus hijacks the host cell’s machinery in order to replicate itself. [...] However, viruses are not like spaceships, and cells are not just like twentieth-century semitrailer trucks, armored vehicles, or passenger jets whose resources can be plundered and whose operators can be coerced into unwanted journeys. [...] It appears to transparently explain things.  But is this a good description of a virus and the creatures it is capable of infecting? [...]

Anthropomorphism and personification of microbial entities in the explanation of virology is a understandable tendency; in this way, viral action is domesticated to the human scale.

But maybe it’s time to practice some resolutely non-domesticating conid-amorphism, some conus-centrism, and see what happens if we forge a new avenue for thinking of viruses in terms of venomous cone snails.

---

Conidae is the taxonomic name for the family of gastropods known more colloquially as cone snails, or predatory sea snails. “One of the most successful lineages of marine animals,” the hundreds of species of Conidae are characterized by their use of complex venoms to capture prey. Some of these snails prey on worms, some on other snails, and some on fish. In 2015, researchers reported that Conus geographus uses an insulin overdose to disorient and disable its fish prey, releasing the toxin into the water.

Insulin appears to be a component of the nirvana cabal, a toxin combination in these venoms that is released into the water to disorient schools of small fish, making them easier to engulf with the snail’s distended false mouth, which functions as a net. If an entire school of fish simultaneously experiences hypoglycemic shock, this should directly facilitate capture by the predatory snail.

The released insulin does not affect the snail itself, because its venom insulin mimics fish insulin, not its own molluscan variety. Venomous snails that hunt worms in this fashion make a different insulin mimic, specific to worms.

---

This may seem like a weird aberration on the part of an obscure life-form, yet cone snails are only one kind of creature that roams the evolutionary space in which one being’s molecules evolve to participate in the physiology of another. There are enough examples of organisms employing these tactics that they are grouped together in scientific reviews of “weaponized hormones.” [...]

For example, the first diabetes therapy drug that works by mimicking the glucagon-like peptide hormone (GLP-1) was discovered by analyzing the venom of the Gila monster. GLP-1 is a hormone released by the gut after eating that stimulates insulin production and slows movement of food through the intestinal tract. The making of a drug that acts like GLP-1 was not a process of exactly copying human GLP-1. For that you wouldn’t need a Gila monster and thousands of years of coevolution between lizards and their prey.

Rather, scientists learned alternative molecular strategies for binding to the hormone’s receptor from the Gila monster venom component.

Perhaps viruses are equally “interested” in glucose control in their own noncognitive way, in that their replication and continued existence is vested in their hosts’ metabolisms. As noted above, they do not possess the means for making the proteins encoded by the genes in their genomes, but rather depend on the cells they infect to do that translation and transcription. [...]

They don’t have their own bodies; they only have their hosts’ bodies.

And bit by bit, through the endless nonillion-fold exploration of evolutionary space -- the space that makes the difference between persisting long enough to be replicated versus falling apart into the wash of biological decay -- it has turned out to be good practice to mimic your host’s cell cycle and metabolic hormones. Different viruses, different hosts, same strategy. [...]

---

If viruses are effective because they mimic human hormones or hormone receptors, this will drive the evolution and duplication of hormones over time because it is advantageous for them to change enough to not be good viral targets. Thus, it has been suggested that some features of human hormonal genes in the placenta arise from their function as viral “decoys” in this tit-for-tat of copying and changing.

It is for this reason that viruses could be thought of in terms of venomous cone snails rather than hijackers.

Not all these mimicry techniques target metabolic processes; many viruses famously encode other proteins that allow them to evade immune detection by attempting to look like parts of the immune system rather than its targets. But there is a theme here. The virus takes on some aspects of the shape of the body that ensures its continuity. This gives rise to totally unlike beings containing patches of intimate and detailed sameness, molecules that bear the same precise contours to fit into a particular hormone receptor, yet perhaps bear no common genetic heritage. Viruses, like cone snails, evolve to be more like what sustains them. It is an uncomfortable form of relatedness, this predatory metabolic convergence, but it cannot be denied that it generates amazing patterns of likeness across biological kingdoms without everything having to be descended from the same line of direct genetic inheritance.

Where does hormone end and hormone-like begin?

If the mimic converges on the original, and places the original under evolutionary pressure to diverge, what is left is a seesawing mirrored relationship of competitive difference and similarity, not an original and a mimic. Even if something has evolved to get away from its mimic, it holds the imprint of that entity’s influence in its difference, like a shadow.

In practical terms, looking into cone snails and viral genomes suggests new ways of making drugs, which are human-made mimics that seek to manipulate physiology by augmenting or suppressing the action of the molecule that has been mimicked.

In philosophical terms on the other hand, that cone snail or amphibian venom gets enrolled in the diabetes epidemic by becoming a blood sugar–controlling drug indicates that anthropomorphic concepts such as hijacking may possibly be the least illuminating explanatory tactic for understanding what viruses do, and are, in relation to their bodies. (Yes, their bodies. That means us).

---

Text by: Hannah Landecker. “Viruses Are More Like Cone Snails Than Hijackers.” e-flux. October 2022. [Bolded emphasis and italicized first paragraph added by me.]

#sorry this is a long one but a good one #mimicry #multispecies #interspecies

[pennycat83]

I'm sorry I absolutely fucked him up in the lab guys

I just really wanna talk about my take on Bob2.0 'cause I wove him too much.

(This only makes sense in my series canon sadly so TLDR: cartoon characters can die in various ways and go to a purgatory but sometimes other forms of media sneak in unknowingly)

Since the third book ended with him floating off into space this is a variant in which he, somehow, died. He can't remember how and he's far away from both HEAVEN-1 and all the other Bobs. The only ones he can interact with are the ones that have canonically died and the first generation (who also can't remember how they died), all of which are hard wired to his IBM 5150 computer monitor he's stuck in.

They can be sent out into space by hijacking other spaceships but it's too risky to do (he's fully skint too).

🪐✨꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦🪐✨

Additional Notes and headcannons

⚙️ He's quite bitter he lost Charlie since he's now shorter than before (mainly 'cause the android model he stole was prebuilt and he doesn't know how to readjust it). He also has to recharge as well and can't do much either (he can access the IBM computer system his head belongs to but then he just turns into a regular ass computer, it does let him adjust his system which he does every night with the ROAMERS controlling stuff outside).

⚙️Since most of the other Bobs are still in slight control of his system he tends to flip between personalities and even memories (rarely shows up but sometimes he casually drops stuff that never happened to him).

⚙️ The other Bobs can intervene if they're put in the IBM system (some are more hardwired in than others but some can be transferred to floppy disks, much like Bob-1 they all lost their ships except for Milo).

⚙️LOOK ME IN THE EYE AND TELL ME THIS MAN DOESN'T HAVE AUTISM! Gestures with his hands when he talks, prefers solitude and can do it for long periods of time, hyperfixates on random subjects and sci-fi, struggles with interacting with others outside of his small group of friends and family, an inability to comfort others. I can SMELL it on him man!

⚙️ This man has a roadtrip soundtrack, no one can change it and anyone who does gets put in the ship storage hull (it's mostly a mix-trail of 80's/90's stuff, ELO, Thomas Dolby and Talking Heads).

⚙️ He's essentially completely denounced any type of romance between him since he's too out there for most others (flirting has been observed to cause him to do a mental tailspin).

⚙️ Feral as fuck. Not only does he forget he's still human to a degree at times but he tends to go into weird manic over analysis moments (also tends to devolve into a mad scientist without realising).

⚙️ Suffers with slight touch starveness due to him being unable to properly touch anyone intimately for a long time* (this is most evident with casual touch so it's unsure if he could handle anything further).

⚙️ Is "slightly" hyperfixated with both Spore and 90's alien stuff (I'm going HARD on my headcannoning here. I'm not against him being a classic sci fi nerd but I like the idea he's more into a specific sub genre rather than just being a generic nerd**).

⚙️ Adding a bit more to it I also like to think he's into the LEGO Space sets as well. Alongside Guardians of the Galaxy (man probably had enough time to binge it).

⚙️Most of his other attributes and habits from before still stand. He still likes to talk shit about religion and often gets a bit arrogant when talking about his old job and achievements. I did nuke a bit of his overt geniuses from the book since I (for some reason) think he gets slight moments where he messes up hard by over assuming stuff.

⚙️Every single Bob treats Homer like the lil brother once they found out he's still kicking. The second he comes in at a bad time the others just try 'n shoo him out so he won't see anything too graphic.

⚙️ I'll probably go into this a more later but he has like the weirdestly wholesome dynamic with P.C, like they're just two mad scientist weirdos talking about random stuff and being feral.

*I know this one sounds dumb but like... I don't think he ever tried hitting on any Deltans at any point for obvious reasons, and his only friend was Archimedes. So obviously the man's gotta be a bit on the touch starved side.

**yes I know he's fan girly over Von Neumann Probes I mean like media, he's only really into conventional sci fi stuff so I like to think his other ones are more tied to space in different ways.

#we are legion we are bob #bobiverse #sorry this is cringe #not

[bones-of-a-rabbit]

The Empty Space Between Stars (that's where you find love) / How to hijack a spaceship (for dummies) / Where the stars take you (and who they help you find) / a crime unforgivable and a love undeniable

A meaningful (electrical) connection / overwriting memories so I can learn to love your smile / if one of us is real and the other is not / crossing lines like uncrossing wires

Lies in Spades and Spades / The King of Diamonds and the house of cards / Playing games (of a deadly nature) with your heart / A flowerbed of wolfsbane in which to rest your head / the ace of spades played for a fool

Broken hands breaking bones to mend a broken heart / Broken people break things (and slow dance with robots) / violence is the question (and you answered yes) / broken hearts put back together (in all the wrong ways)

How to get three royals to fall for u (for dummies) / And they were betrothed! (oh my god they were betrothed,,) / A trifecta of fools (the love-struck kind) / Oops! All three fell for you! (If I picked this one each of the ‘oh no I’m in love with them’ moments that happens to the boys would somehow involving tripping or falling bc I’m a basic bitch k we been knew)

#stores these here for safekeeping #future fic ideas #fic ideas #potential titles is what these r if anyone is curious ajdhdjs #ft space au #readerbot au #pawn au #afton au #and betrothed au #dances #scuttles away #don’t ask me why I’m doing this. ain’t non of ur business #scuttle s faster

[rainfallbeats]

- oh yeah and semi-sanitized hosts really are partially dead!! their heartbeat is very slow, has an irregular beat, and can be pretty hard to find if trying to check their pulse. their scarring is FREEZING cold. - "ohhh but inklings shouldnt be warm blooded because blah blah therefore theyre always cold" shut up shut up if that were the case then there wouldnt be any inklings in the desert who moved from inkopolis shut up shut uppppp!!! /nonsrs - depending on the severity of the infection, hosts will sometimes sleepwalk at night. they pretty much act like a zombie minus the violence. just kinda hobbling around growling and might raid the pantry. this isnt their mind, this is the sanitization kinda hijacking them while theyre unconscious. in fact, they can dream completely normally and be entirely unaware of the body getting up and grooving. if theyre woken up theyll be a bit disoriented but back in their own body - telephones that look like tartar mixed with the weird radio sounds/voice that tartar has can overwhelm sanitization victims, often causing either severe panic attacks or severe disassociation. the disassociation one can let their sanitization take over a bit and start following orders to attack. so uh yeah not good :3 id imagine the radio waves that would cause tartars voice would be pretty hard to replicate so thats luckily not much of an issue, but seeing old telephones like tartar would absolutely still trigger a panic attack. they WILL go ham on that phone and tear it to pieces before realizing what theyre even doing. kill kill kill - in my hc's specifically, sanitization and fooze works like a stronger oil vs water situation. they roll off of each other the same way they'd roll of a table, and it would be REALLY hard to try and mix them. so if a sanitized host were hit by fooze in the infected scarring areas, it wouldnt do anything. just like getting splashed with water (except water kills cephalings so bad analogy but you get it you get it) ive probably got more info on the logistics of sanitization and how it effects people, but thats all i got so far. as you can see, i fucking LOVE science fiction thats the flavor of splatoon. no more white glossy spaceships with starship fights and lazer guns and ooky spooky aliens, i want sci-fi thats more like fantasy that has scientific explanations!!!!! like splatoon!!!!!!!!

sorry this got so long lol, worldbuilding is my prime special interest of all time and when my brain grabs ahold of a concept that can be build off of it fucking GOES. anywas uhhh stan rome splatoon goodnight tri-state area <- doesnt go to sleep (part 2, i deadass wrote so much that tumblr wouldnt let me send the whole thing in one ask ;0;)

*nod* i like these. sci fi is fun especially biology stuff

#splatoon #splatoon oc #ask box