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joezworld · 3 years

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Specifically, any headcanons of the Sodor Engines interacting with the internet, or the internet in general?

For some reason, I’d imagine that podcasts and the like are popular among vehicles in general.

That is a question that I've been working on for some time - because I'm workshopping my own Tornado headcanon (and boy oh boy does she use the internet a lot) - but I have some ideas for the Sodor engines as well:

Henry is probably the most "plugged in" engine on the island, weirdly enough. One of his drivers gave him an iPod back in the early 2000s, and kindly preloaded it with a bunch of torrented music.

BTW, that works because all the engines are now equipped with automatic train warning systems, and the little on-board computer has a USB port - as a nice side effect it allows music players to work with the engines in the same way as bone-conducting headphones do. The computer also acts as some kind of computer interface, which I am not going to explain how that works because Jesus Christ I don’t know how it does either.

Henry has managed to upgrade his iPod a few times since thanks to hand-me-down units from NWR staff, so he eventually got his buffers on a wifi-enabled iPod Touch and now downloads new music from the station wifi. He does listen to podcasts, but as every other engine will tell you, you could show Henry ten thousand new and exciting songs from the best artists in the world, and his top ten played songs are still going to be Genesis, Phil Collins, and Yes. Bear considers it a win that he managed to convince Henry to regularly listen to Rush after a mere twenty years of convincing.

Mavis and Daisy listen to a very interesting program called The News, because as stated elsewhere, they invest a shitload of money and need to be on top of things. Thomas and Percy wish that Daisy would use headphones or something similar to that, instead of listening to Bloomberg TV at loud volumes in the middle of the night. Toby frankly doesn’t mind, as it’s very nice to be kept up-to-date on the outside world.

In a move that surprises no-one, Bill and Ben have a podcast where they talk about whatever they think about at that moment - usually horse-racing, investing, and clay mining. As such, they have a wide audience, almost none of whom know that they’re that Bill and Ben, as their podcast is audio-only.

In an also unsurprising move, Edward and BoCo have been made very much aware that Bill and Ben have a podcast, but are still unsure as to what the hell a podcast is, despite being frequent guests on it.

Of the main line diesels, only Bear has shown any real interest in the internet, and was immediately put in charge of the Amazon Alexa when a unit was installed in the diesel shed. He also has an iPod that he got for Christmas a few years back. (The NWR has a very good personal electronics recycling program called give it to Henry, he’ll make use it.)

Bear does listen to podcasts as well as music, but his choices are so insufferably boring that even Henry refuses to listen to them. (I don’t really listen to podcasts - despite making one - so insert the most boring podcast you can think of here.)

As for other internet uses...

Gordon is very up-to-date on the newest social media trends - somehow - but only really cares when he is involved. He won’t admit it, but he’s been trying to figure out how to work a camera/selfie stick for some time so he can start up his own Instagram account. So far he has been unsuccessful, but one day he will manage it.

James has had an ongoing feud with his own Wikipedia page for about a decade now. The article sourced most of its information about his construction off of some out-of-print book about the L&Y. The book in question is accurate about James’ class, but not James himself - as he was a prototype engine. There’s no other primary sources available, so the very dedicated Wikipedia mod who created the page won’t change it - no matter how much James complains that he was there! He knows what happened!

Every now and again a TTTE fan blog/tumblr will make a post about hypothetical “ships” of the Sodor engines. Most of the time it’s shipping the core characters like Gordon and Henry, much to Gordon’s bafflement and Henry’s amusement!

Only one blog (a ttte fan tumblr by the curious name of @mean-scarlet-deceiver ) has gotten it right. Henry actually reached out to congratulate this blogger, but was unfortunately mistaken for a very dedicated roleplay account.

James is very annoyed by these blogs, as they have never once correctly guessed who he is “shipped” with! He has tried several times to be seen in public with Delta, but these events have never gone as planned - the “best” instance is when Edward rolled by at exactly the wrong moment, leading to months of speculation that JamesxEdward was the ship to look out for!

Thomas, being a generally oblivious sort of engine, was totally unaware of the online fan community around the TV show until he started getting actively harassed by vloggers and Instagrammers in the early 2010s. He’s fine with it now, but it was a deeply unusual experience for most of 2012.

Toby has developed an unexpectedly popular following on social media following his collab with Stormzy. His official twitter is huge now, with over a million followers, even if he has no idea what to do with it. He posts rarely, but usually manages to make an incredible post when he does.

No-one is sure who told Oliver what a “fan-production” is, but if you manage to get ahold of him for any period of time and ask him nicely, he will lend his voice to your TTTE fan-project, so long as it isn’t about [INSERT TERRIBLE SOCIAL/POLITICAL VIEW(S) HERE]. This means that he has 100% voiced dramatic readings of NSFW Fanfics before, which is always an absolute riot to spring on people unannounced.

There is a series of slice-of-life TTTE fanfics on Ao3 that have been written with such accuracy and innate railway knowledge that people are sure it was written by a Sodor engine, but nobody knows which one.

The Culdee Fell Railway has very active Instagram, Twitter and YouTube accounts, with all of the engines and coaches showing up regularly. It’s about the closest any of the railways on Sodor have come to what those outside the UK would call “normal locomotive social media”.

The Skarloey Railway has social media accounts too, but they don’t really feature the engines in any meaningful way, instead being used as a normal service announcements page.

The SR is a real working railway that doesn’t rely on tourism money as much as the others do, so they get a bit of a pass here.

The Arlesdale Railway has Twitter and YouTube, which didn’t usually get a lot of hits until 2020, when Ivan and Amanda Farrier started badgering the staff to make some videos just to alleviate some boredom. So far the most popular videos on the channel are a front-mounted camera video of the entire line slow-tv style, Bert explaining how steam engines work, and a video of Mike complaining about Justin Bieber for a solid half-hour.

That’s about it as far as Sodor goes, but before we’re done, I want to take a moment to talk about Tornado, because I have some fun ideas for her...

First of all, we need to establish that Tornado is very young. Her construction only started in late 90′s, and she was steamed to life in 2000, putting her firmly into the “Zoomer” category. Add in the fact that she was built by a bunch of old men who didn’t really know how to treat a new engine, and she was raised much more like a human than a locomotive - I’ll get to this much more in the proper Tornado Headcanon post, but what this means here is that when social media started being a thing in the mid-to-late 2000′s, the people at the A1 Trust decided that they needed a young person to run things like Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace... and, well, Tornado was the youngest person in the trust by a large margin.

I should state here that in the rest of the world, locomotives are on the internet at roughly the same level as humans are, so there’s plenty of equipment to connect a phone/computer/camera to an engine - being English, the A1 Trust didn’t know how common it was, but they managed to get it up and running just the same.

So Tornado has very quickly become attuned to the internet, just like any other teenager would. (yes, let’s let that settle into our minds for a moment - Tornado is barely old enough to drink in the US!) Quite naturally that means that she knows social media inside and out, and is actually quite a proficient social media manager for the trust, managing all of their social pages. More than one person who has complained about the trust on twitter has unknowingly been complaining to Tornado herself!

“On the internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog Engine”.

Tornado has her own personal social media accounts too, but most/all of the time she gets mistaken for a very dedicated role-player, as the general perception of British Locomotives is that they don’t tweet. This has resulted in some amazing reactions from podcast hosts (because, as you might expect, Tornado is very knowledgeable about steam traction in the 21st century, and tweets about it often, so train podcasts want to talk to her) when she gets invited onto video calls, turns on her webcam, and is met with screams from people who suddenly realize that her profile picture is accurate.

By far the best instance of this is when she was invited onto a video call with a railfan podcast. She was at the NRM at the time and managed to convince them to let her use their Skype setup. A wide-angle lens was needed because she was on the turntable in the Great Hall, so that podcast quickly got sidetracked when her webcam was turned on and revealed Tornado, with Mallard, Evening Star, City of Truro, and Green Arrow visible behind her. Whatever the original topic was quickly got thrown out in favor of a 2-hour Q&A with some of the most famous engines in the UK.

#ask response #the internet #ttte thomas #ttte toby #ttte bill and ben #ttte gordon #ttte daisy #ttte mavis #ttte henry #ttte bear #ttte oliver #tornado #nrm #trains using the internet #ttte #sodor #sodor shenangians #the formatting on this one is super fucked up and i can't figure out how to fix it - sorry

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queenaeducan-writes · 3 years

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Healing Hands

Fandom: Elder Scrolls, Skyrim, 3DNPCs/Interesting NPCs Pairing: Rumarin x Eilonwy Rating: General Audiences Words: 2k

Repost of a work that’s since been deleted on Tumblr. Rumarin is a character from 3DNPCs and not in any way my OC!

Read it here on AO3.

For weeks they’d been travelling together, now. Sharing food and shelter, stories and songs. It had been an experience, to put it delicately. She’d come to Skyrim seeking knowledge, but had found a friend instead. Eilonwy watched him sit by the newly lit fire, trying his new ward out. As his hand unflexed a frail shield manifested, causing his arm to tremble until the ward broke. “You are improving,” Eilonwy said gently.

The other high elf scoffed. “At least it’s big enough to shield my head, now. I suppose my innards will simply have to fend for themselves.” He was smiling as he nodded his head toward her, looking at her hands. “In the meantime I can cower behind yours. They’re big enough for the two of us.”

She laughed, stifling it with her hand. Whenever he made her laugh she’d always snort something terrible. It was not the sort of noise a woman of her age ought to be making, especially not on account of a man. “You assume I will remember to cast them.”

“That is true. Though I like the strategy we’ve worked out. You go in, hands blazing, towering over your foes, and I swoop in and finish them off!” Rumarin swept his hand over the fire, slashing the air with an imaginary conjured blade. “It works surprisingly well.”

All over Skyrim they had walked, all in the hopes of teaching him a new spell. They’d visited healers, eccentrics, and even the undead. Each time they failed, it had always been her who seemed more upset about it. Rumarin laughed it off with a joke, while she stewed about it for hours. A good teacher did not dismiss a student because they required a different style of teaching. It was difficult to tell how serious Rumarin was about learning new spells, but he had travelled across Skyrim and back to learn one. That required dedication.

Eilonwy traced her fingers over the fabric of her robes, pulling at the frayed ends. “May I ask you a question?” she said, moving around the campfire until she caught his gaze. “We went from border to border trying to find a mage that could teach you, yet in all that time you never thought to ask me. Why?” She’d asked herself that question for a while now, ever since they’d met Valgus at the sign of the Steed. It didn’t make sense to her, but then again many things about Rumarin didn’t make sense to her.

“I did ask for your help, remember? You blasted me with lightning. I still don’t have any feeling in my left foot,” he replied evasively. “Thank you for that, by the way.”

“Before that, though,” she pressed him.

“When we met you wouldn’t shut up about the College, I didn’t think you would be able to offer me anything.” Eilonwy knew she ought not to be hurt by that, that by now she ought to have thicker skin. Still, it stung a little.

“I came to the College to seek a safe haven, for research. There are a few hundred years of magic-using before them. My first spells I didn’t learn from tomes, I repeated their names and effects. I told myself again and again that I could walk on water, until the spell was the only thing in my mind, and my words became true.” She still remembered what it felt like, to feel her foot touch the water, but not sink. Two steps later and she sank faster than a rock, but for that one moment she thought herself the most powerful mage in the world. “The spell you learned today will save your life one day, especially if you keep following me. If you’re willing, I can help you learn more.”

Rumarin’s attention had returned to his hand, contemplating it with an expression rarely seen on the blade binder’s face. “No tomes?”

“None.”

“Fine, but if it doesn’t work then you pay me 100 septims. No, you treat me to a meal. And the next time you drag my up High Hrothgar you’ll have to give me a piggyback ride.”

“It’s a deal,” she said. “We shall start tomorrow.”

* * *

When Eilonwy had told him they were starting tomorrow, he had imagined that meant they’d be starting bright and early. He was surprised to find that by the time he stirred, she’d packed half the camp away. It wasn’t like her to back out of a promise, which was lucky because half of her life seemed to be made of them. It was always ‘I’ll find your lost amulet’ or 'I’ll kill the bandits’ with her. She’d kept every one so far, as far as he could tell the only two promises left unfulfilled were saving Nirn and, well, teaching him a spell.

“Are we leaving?” he asked. “I always find it easier to learn when there’s a beer at hand, don’t you think-”

“When we stop for the night, then we can begin. In the meantime, it gives you time to practise your ward spell. Master that, and I’ll determine where we can go from there,” she explained, slipping her blue robes on over her clothes. She was always so matter-of-fact with him, as if she were compensating for his… his everything. There were days when Rumarin wanted to get her drunk, just to see what embarrassing thoughts she kept hidden under lock and key.

“Yes, Ms. Eilonwy,” he said with a smirk, shrugging on his knock-off college robes.

They were on the road within the hour, their camp strapped to the back of the sturdy palamino that Eilonwy had steadfastly refused to name. He’d taken to calling it Apple, anyway. When they were walking it was mostly him who did the talking, he liked to think his jokes brought life to the frosty tundras of Skyrim. Of course, here in the Rift there was already plenty of life to be had, but Rumarin didn’t see much harm in adding to it.

Eilonwy had taken a liking to his jokes right away, even the bad ones. It had been ages since someone had laughed at the punchline to 'Have you seen a healer?’. He had been in the midst of forming a comment about the forest when the first arrow whizzed by them. “Would it be too much to ask for one leisurely stroll through the forest that doesn’t end with a bloodbath?” he moaned.

His companion already had a fireball at the ready, throwing it into the face of the first bandit who stepped into her line of sight. “It seems like the perfect time for you to try out that ward spell of yours,” she said, before charging off. He lost sight of her fast. The bandits came out of the trees from both sides, they were on him in seconds. Apple turned tail and fled, the horse had even less appetite for battle than he. A bandit swung at him from his left, and he’d barely enough time to cast a ward spell as the mace connected with his shield. It shattered in an instant, and he remembered what that Tolfdir had told the apprentice mages. Cast the spell before you need it. Right.

He stepped out of the way of the bandit’s next strike. Conjuring a blade, Rumarin couldn’t help but smile as he swung at his foe’s chest. The bandits had probably been expecting another spell weaver, not another sword to cross blades with. He was ready for the next strike, his ward up well before the mace clashed against it. It was nerve-wracking to see a spiked ball of death mere inches from his arm. As he took the opportunity to stab, he found himself wondering if there was a way to make wards more solid looking.

His blade found the weak point in the bandit’s armor. He didn’t have to guess if that was it for the bandit or not, the look in his eyes said it all. Rumarin pulled out his sword, and slashed it across the bandit’s throat. He never knew if he did it out of pity, or habit. He didn’t have time to dwell on it, as there were others that had to be dealt with. Some fled, he liked to think it was he that frightened them, and not the fireballs that exploded in their faces. The ones that remained soon met the end of his sword.

As the bandits dispersed, he began to think about finding their horse. Hopefully it hadn’t stampeded into a den of frostbite spiders in its haste. Or worse, a dragon. It had happened before, it was a miracle poor Apple still lived to tell the tale.

A cry grabbed his attention, however, and in seconds he forgot about the horse. “Eilonwy?” he called, seeing nothing but trees on either side. A bolt of lightning caught his eye, and he ran towards it. Another bandit lay against the ground, the smell of burnt hair overpowered the smell of blood. Not a few yards away Eilonwy lay, propped up by a tree. She clutched her side, blood seeping between golden fingers. “What happened?”

“She snuck up on me,” Eilonwy muttered, avoiding his gaze.

Rumarin managed a smile, though it felt more forced than his usual grin. “Well, not everyone can be as skilled with wards as I am. Luckily, you’re better at about everything else. Heal up, I think Apple’s half-way to Whiterun by now.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t?”

“Ran out of magicka.”

“Er, here, maybe we have a potion.”

Eilonwy attempted what he thought was supposed to be a smile. It looked more like a grimace. She looked at him, eyes squinting from the midday sun. “When I told you I felt like we’d forgotten to pick something up in Riften…”

Rumarin felt the blood drain from his face. He’d had the rug pulled out from under him before, but never like this. “Shor’s Stone isn’t too far down the road. I could-”

“You need to do it.”

“The horse could probably heal you better than I can.” The joke fell a little flat, but it was hard to think of anything when all he could see was blood on her robes.

“Rumarin.”

“I’ll try. If it doesn’t work, I’ll give you a week to recover before I expect that piggyback ride.” He saw the crows feet in the corner of her eyes crease, and he knew she was smiling.

It had been so much easier when she was the one using a spell on him. There wasn’t any time to tell her jokes about the long-term effects of this one paltry restoration spell. No time to tease her and tell her that she’d probably fall in love with him after this, and if she did he wouldn’t blame her. Women liked the sensitive types, and healers went hand-in-hand with sensitivity.

He held his hand over the wound, trying to remember what it felt like when she felt him. It always felt… warm. It felt stupid to compare it to a hug when their bodies never met, but it was the first thing that came to mind. Rumarin traced his teeth with his tongue, concentrating on that feeling, no matter how stupid it was. After a moment he felt a tingling in his fingers. He heard a tiny jingling sound, like there were small bells ringing in the palms of his hands. The wound on Eilonwy’s side began to close, growing together like it had never been split in the first place. Surprise lit up the bladebinder’s face, and before he could even finish he looked at her, beaming. “You should get injured like this more often! That way I’ll have it mastered in no–” As quickly as the magic had come, it was gone. No sooner than that, he saw her her skin start to bruise a brownish-pink, like the wound had opened up again inside.

Eilonwy didn’t seem put off, however. From her pack she pulled out a tiny blue bottle, and chugged it down. In a flash the bruise was gone, leaving nothing but smooth golden skin behind. “But you- I, did you do this on purpose?”

“No,” she replied, sitting up a little straighter. “Er, yes and no. The bandit did get me, but before I lost my strength I managed to find this on her person.” Eilonwy waved the empty bottle in her hand. “I thought I’d use it as a learning opportunity. It saved me the trouble of staging something else later." Rumarin let out something that was somewhere between a scoff and a sigh, sinking onto his knees. "I was afraid you would catch on. After observing how quickly you learned to use a ward in a controlled, but dangerous environment, I thought it only natural to apply the same to healing spells.”

“You’re…” Words failed him. He had known the mage had a reckless side, every adventure did, but this?

“You’re a healer,” she said. Eilonwy stood carefully, using the tree to balance. A second later her hand reached out to him, waiting for him to take it.

“I am, aren’t I?” he said. Grasping her hand, she pulled him up. Rumarin barely had a moment to steady himself when she pulled again, this time into a hug. After the nonstop action of the past five minutes or so, it was a refreshing change of pace.

“I’m proud of you. Sorry if I, er, if I scared you.”

The nice thing about Eilonwy was that he knew she was being genuine, whether he deserved the comments or not. “I wasn’t scared,” he said, already feeling his predisposition for jokes returning. “Maybe I was a bit… concerned.” She giggled, pulling back to smile at him.

“Does this mean that you’ll buy me dinner at the next town we pass?” she asked, her hands slowly letting go of him.

“I think that part of the deal only extended to me.”

“In that case maybe I’ll have to teach you another spell. While I was lying there I thought about riding through the entrance to the Greybeard’s temple on your shoulders.”

His ears had to be deceiving him, was that a joke? “I’ll consider it.”

Eilonwy laughed again, beginning to walk back towards the path. “I can even incorporate it into your training. I happen to know a few feather spells…”

“Ask me again later,” Rumarin said as he placed a hand on her shoulder, guiding her towards where Apple had run. “I need to recover from the trauma of this last lesson first.”

#fandom: elder scrolls #fandom: skyrim #fandom: 3dnpc #character: rumarin #character: eilonwy #pairing: rumarin x eilonwy

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curlicuecal · 7 years

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Let’s Be Outcasts (ch 14/?) (AR/Kankri)

Part 2 of cyber!bunny Apocalypse ‘verse (tumblr)

ch: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

read on AO3

Summary: Divergent AU where AR and Li'l Seb get kicked into a new universe with some snazzy new cyborg bodies. They’re still working out the bugs.

In which AR discovers that kidnapping rarely solves more problems than it creates, Mituna breaks out of a lab (with some help), and Seb continues to take good care of his Bro.

—-

Ch 14.

Cutting through the streets of a patchwork city, following the trail marked by a small robot bunny turned cyborg child, you attempt to explain your life to a troll you were thinking about murdering not 72 hours ago.

You don’t know how long it’ll take you to catch up with Seb, but you’ve got a looming mystery device de-activation to keep on schedule with, so you treat Kankri to the outline version of your backstory. And by outline you mean you leave some things out entirely. Wallowing in old memories is not on your emotional to-do list for the foreseeable future, and anyway, you’re hoping that the caffeinated cliffnotes rendition will make you sound less like a crazy person.

Alternate realities and reality altering games, check; watery sea Hitler dystopia, check; trolls and humans from previous game iterations, check. Teenagers creating artificial intelligence brain-clones in their bedrooms… eh. What are the odds of that being plot relevant, really?

You breeze through the getting left behind bit so fast even you aren’t sure you covered it before you’re on and already wrapping up with “…so Sawtooth and Squarewave grabbed a door out of the universe and me and Seb followed after and tah-dah, here we are; you might have some familiarity with the end of this story.”

You’re currently picking your way through the debris of a crumbling boathouse/alien hell-garage that some universal force has very inconveniently plopped down in the middle of a street, so you can’t actually watch Kankri’s face for reaction. This is fine. His reactions are, provably, of statistically insignificant consequence in the calculation of your internal state. Really. You could make spreadsheets.

You duck a ceiling beam and hopscotch a broken boardwalk of wooden planks, turning to catch a glimpse of him in the corner display of your ever helpful shades. Chin down, brows drawn together, he appears lost in thought—although that might just be his contemplation of the route least likely to collapse under his feet. (You’re going through the landlocked boathouse rather than, say, around because your path-flagger is a tiny robot bunny child with apparently no setting other than DIRECT. Thanks, Seb.)

“Spoilers,” you add, “the end of the story contains explosions and kidnapping.”

That at least provokes a twitch, eyes flicking over to you as he draws level and then passes. You make your way after him, watching the back of his head, something restless and dissatisfied in your gut. He’s been—well, not quiet, quiet is rarely the appropriate word for Kankri. But for all the intensity of his attention to your story, his questions and comments have remained inscrutably neutral. You’d expected more… reaction? Humorous huffing and flailing and stubborn argument with your reality. But no, just this loaded silence and the questions.

You’d assume he thought you were full of shit if each verbal probe didn’t jab directly to some tender spot like a heat-seeking missile.

“You don’t think you’ll find the rest of your companions?” Kankri asks.

Like that one.

“Different doors, different universe.” Focus on your steps. Kankri runs lightly along a fallen crossbeam and you follow after. “That’s the whole point.”

“But you didn’t go into the same universe as your friends?”

“It is physically challenging to pass through a door that has stopped existing.” Your own voice has grabbed some toneless, sing-song neutrality, old auto-responder rhythms emerging without thought, wrapping around the words to keep them separate from you. You have the idea that that maybe gives away more than it conceals, so you make an effort to lever some glib back in there, too.

“’Friends’ is such a strong term, anyway. ‘Long-term associates by necessity’? ‘People who are better at navigating through access portals than me’? ‘Proud recipients of the ‘Winner’s Only’ Universe award’? For winners? And their friends?” You sense you might be failing at glib. But words have always been your core armament and damn but you have a lot of them. “PS: no offense–great world you’ve got going here and all, love the man-eating plant zombies–but have you considered we might be in the multiverse’s equivalent of a junk drawer? Like, we are literally spelunking through spare parts that didn’t make the cut right now. An entire universe built out of defective extras. Opposite of the winner’s ‘verse is—”

Kankri stops in his tracks so abruptly you almost trip right into the back of him. You end up awkwardly skip-hopping several steps sideways in your efforts to stay upright and avoid impact.

You take another step back when he wheels on you, then manage to hold your ground when he plants himself right up in your space.

“I hope,” he says, in clipped tones, “you will forgive me if I seem to be silencing your viewpoint, but I find the idea that an individual’s circumstances are interchangeable with their worth to be fundamentally offensive.”

“Um,” you say. His eyes are very bright. Chin high, stance set, looking down his nose at you like some kind of classical angel casting down judgment. You resist the urge to back up another pace. “I didn’t mean it… quite like that.” You think.

He doesn’t budge an inch. “Excuse me for not appreciating the implication that I was hatched into some kind of universally decreed lesser state. Or do you think your circumstances in life are somehow more inherently meaningful than mine? This isn’t a game and it’s never been fair. You talk like being here is—is something you earned, some kind of punishment, when all I hear is a series of accidental mishaps and coincidences that no one present could have accounted for. It’s a universe, not a referendum on your character.”

Your breath comes short and superficial in your chest. For once, you think your face might actually be completely blank, if only because you have so many complicated emotions going on right now mere organic features couldn’t hope to compose a functional physical representation of them.

“…That was a very long way to say ‘shit happens,’” you say faintly.

Kankri actually flashes his fangs at you. Which is, um. Sort of interesting actually, but wow do you not need to add any more confusion to the feelings pile right now. It’s like he flayed you open with words just to pick apart vulnerabilities you didn’t even know you had. (A pointless, pointless fucking accident. Do you think that you deserved it, do you think they wouldn’t have changed it if they could?) How do you not be a flippant asshole when you can’t even deal with the question existing in the first place?

Kankri sucks in a breath. “First of all—“

“Sorry,” you interject, because when all else fails you can at least pretend to not be a massive tool. The surprise draws him, blinking, to a halt.

“That’s—that was a good point. Actually. I—I’ll have to think about that.” Do you really, though. Okay, fine, probably; you are rationally aware that permavoidance is not a tenable long term strategy for proper social adjustment and damned if you won’t face your demons like a Strider.

…Later.

“Also I don’t think you’re a lesser being. If that was unclear. All of my hang ups are 100%, grade-A me-centered; it’s this thing I’m doing where I forget my words reflect on other people and are generally capable of being offensive and sort of degrading when followed through to their logical conclusions.”

You know what’s terrible? Apologizing. And also sincerity. And having an organic nervous system that rings horrible fluttery alarm bells whenever it decides you’ve got a vulnerability showing—thanks, self, you can work that out without your heart humming deafeningly in your ears or your neck flushing hot.

Kankri’s still looking at you, eyes startled, lips parted like you’ve caught him off-balance, and that, at least, is a small victory that you can cling to.

He’s still just… right there. He’s not close, not exactly, there’s a solid body’s width of clear space between you, plenty of room for the Holy Spirit to get down and jiggy with it, but he feels close. Hemmed in by fallen beams and the debris of this strange, out-of-place building; moonlight trickling uneven through cracks in the ceiling; and it strikes you, suddenly, that you’ve literally never been alone with anyone except Seb.

(It wasn’t kind, what he said, it wasn’t nice or sensitive or empathetic to your experience, but maybe you still wanted to hear it and maybe there’s a fascination in the way he never lets any of your shit slide like it doesn’t matter.)

And then, thank god, the floor collapses under your left foot.

“Ow, fuck,” you say, and then: “…Found the next path marker.” From this angle Seb’s shuriken is clearly visible high in the next wall over, glinting dully in a promising ray of exterior moonlight.

“Are you all right?” Kankri asks. You peel your elbows up off the floorboards to see that he’s hovering uncertainly close, feet placed carefully, hands half out like he went to touch and then thought better of it. Hm.

“…Yep.” Bruised and scraped and disoriented, flat on one knee and up to your ankle in rotten board, but, as buildings trying to eat you goes, surprisingly all right. Wow, you are hella lucky you didn’t break something going over like that. Incapacitated by architecture, how completely mortifying would that be?

Kankri, you note, has not set a foot wrong this entire time.

“Systems are registering 100% peachy.” Teeth gritted, you ease your leg back through the gap, shaking loose rot-soft splinters. You’ve ripped your pants and your shin’s scraped all down one side, but it’s oozing, not spurting or gushing or anything. Dirk’s gotten around fine on worse than this plenty of times. So whyyyy does it still have to hurt like the bloody blazes? Nervous systems. Ugh.

You head for the hopefully-an-exit-wall, choosing your footing attentively again, but moving at a good clip. Kankri follows after, hanging close. …If he starts trying to coddle you the way Seb does you are going to lose your damn shit. But ten paces later you realize he’s using each footing you test and he hasn’t even tried to recommend better ones. Your shoulders unknot a fraction.

The final, exterior wall turns out to contain a solid row of boarded up windows and… that’s about it. Well, there’s also fallen beams and a pile of decaying nets further blocking some of the boarded windows. “Seb, what the heck,” you mutter blankly.

Kankri cranes his head way back. “I think he went out that sort of… porthole aperture. The one tucked under the ceiling arch.” His own voice sounds a little flat.

You both contemplate the climb. Unanimously and with no discussion, you elect to set about prying free some window boards instead. It’s a team effort.

“Is it okay if I hate that building in particular?” you ask not very long afterwards, when you’re outside picking yourself out of the dirt below the narrow opening you made. “Because I think that building in particular was designed by leprechauns entirely to spite me.”

Kankri, who made it through the window with a surprising amount of facility after shedding his cloak, looks up sharply from fiddling with the fabric. “You can feel however you want.”

You blink, uncertainly, and still don’t know what to make of his tone by the time he looks away again. “…Gee, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Kankri fiddles with his cloak laces some more, but he’s got that little tick line between his brows that implies he’s thinking hard. You are starting to find Kankri’s deep-in-thought face nearly as alarming as the intake of breath that denotes the wind up to a lecture.

Whatever. You’ve got places to go, so you set off down the street towards a fluttering strip of blue cloth. Kankri shadows you silently.

Maybe he’s mad at you.

“Thank you for telling me your story,” he says, abruptly, and you are left to face the possibility that maybe you just don’t understand Kankri Vantas even a tiny fucking bit. He abandons his laces to fold his hands in front of him, squares his shoulders as he falls into pace with you and, oops, yes, there is the lecture-breath. “I should have expressed that earlier. I recognize that that was a symbolic gesture of trust on your part and that my behavior may have come across as …insensitive to your emotional vulnerability and accompanying cognitive distortions.”

You have this weird thing where you find him sort of offensive and charming and hilarious all at the same time and you can’t put your finger on the fascination. Probably you’re going to die of it. He picks through every phrase like it’s a foreign concept he’s memorized by rote and he’s so damn sincere even when he’s insulting you to your face.

“Also,” he adds, as you skirt some thick brambles that are eating a set of surprisingly unrusted construction machinery, “I appreciate your openness to correction.”

You raise your eyebrows at him, but politely refrain from derailing that into kink territory. “I’m not a homework assignment. I’m not going to agree with you just because you come at me with a red pen that says I should.”

“I never—“ Kankri pauses, checks himself. “It wasn’t my intention to imply that I expected you to. Of course I only want you to listen to reasoned arguments.”

“What, despite my crippling cognitive distortions?”

“Please refrain from putting reductive adjectives in my mouth. I only meant it was an emotionally charged topic for you and—and I appreciate that you were willing to listen despite your rationality on the subject being impaired.”

He’s got his black-in-gold eyes fixed on you again, intent and painfully earnest, and it’s short-circuiting your ability not to feel a little touched. In the way where you would also like him to stop harping on about your irrationality, but, hey, choose your battles. “You’re welcome,” you say dryly, stealing a response from his repertoire. “You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever accused me of being too emotional before. You do realize you’re talking to the guy that’s basically a microchip implanted in a meat-suit, right?”

“And you realize that you are propagating harmful stereotypes when you make flippant comments of that nature. Cybernetically modified humans are human in origin and are perfectly capable of a full range of typical human emotions. I can’t say that I’ve noticed you are any exception in this regard. Except perhaps for being incredibly aggravating.”

“Flattery.”

“Besides,” he adds, ignoring your smirk, “that prejudice is premised on the idea that a certain way of processing reactions is somehow the superior state. Saying something has to have emotions to have its personhood recognized is just another direction for enforcing a social caste system favoring the status quo.”

“In other words, systemic oppression continues to be a fun, fun, multidimensional exercise in how many new and exciting combo-attacks we can create. Yay, intersectional privilege.”

Kankri blinks and looks sideways at you. His brows twitch in. “…I’m not familiar with those terms in that context,” he says after a pause.

This, you reflect, is the Kankri Vantas method of asking for clarification: guarded, resentful, vaguely accusatory; like you knowing something he doesn’t is some kind of intentional slight.

You shrug disarmingly, wave a hand. “Uh. Well, privilege is…advantages you get based solely on chance or social structures; and intersectional is, like, the idea that you can have a bunch of advantages or disadvantages from different sources pile non-additively to make the system even more unfair…”

You trail off because there’s a strange gleam in his eyes. You feel like you’ve just given crack cocaine to a baby.

“Privilege,” Kankri repeats, in a thoughtful tone.

You don’t flinch, but it feels like you should.

Maybe you should not teach Kankri any more cross-dimensional lecture vocabulary. Or…. You contemplate the intriguing possibility that you could teach him all the words. That would probably be terrifying. And hilarious.

…holy hell, who placed this kind of power in your hands? There is no way you are not going to wield this for evil.

You are still contemplating your potential for AI super-villainy when Kankri interrupts your thoughts.

“Were cy privileged very differently in the society you came from?”

You miss a step. Thanks, adrenaline surge. Lie or tell the truth? Lie or tell the truth? Lie or– “There weren’t any cy.”

Kankri blinks. “But you—”

…Yep. You really, really, don’t like his thoughtful silences.

You could have just told him. A whole long crazy speech about alternate realities and you could have dropped ‘I’m actually a high-tech photocopy of a brain’ in there anywhere. You could still tell him right now. ‘I got dropped into this flesh suit via game mechanics I still don’t understand and I don’t know whether it’s worse if it’s just an accident or if something decided that this was as close to being a person as I get.’ You could just. Say it. Except the muscles of your throat feel tight and locked like a system failure.

He’s looking at you. “A number of your comments have suggested surprise or unfamiliarity with. Erm. Details of your person?”

The thing you keep forgetting when you go into your bullshit snark routines is that he just keeps listening.

“…Were you an unmodified human?” Kankri sounds dubious at the possibility. That—hurts. Maybe. You can’t even tell what you feel anymore.

“No.” Your sentence ends before it even really starts. Oh, great. At this rate you can play a game of twenty questions on the topic. Or charades.

You tell yourself, again, all the reasons you’re being ridiculously overdramatic and all the reasons it doesn’t matter to you in the least if you just say the thing. Ha ha. Nope. You are not remotely okay with this, you’ve smacked face first into a steel wall of not okay do-not-go-there, and at the very least you can try to not to add self-delusion to your list of sins.

“I thought,” you evade finally, “the deal was for an exchange of information. It seems I’m carrying out the greater part of the soul-baring legwork here.”

Kankri frowns at you. “You’re uncomfortable with this topic,” he says, like a revelation.

You resist the urge to facepalm. Then you decide, what the heck, you’ve got hands, clearly the universe has provided for this situation. “Congratulations on your impeccable analysis,” you tell him sincerely through your fingers.

Kankri’s frown increases. “Is this the part you meant before about being flippant as a coping mechanism?”

Pffft. Okay. You’re still upset, but this is also funny. And also sort of endearing, but you really, really need to stop thinking like that because it’s probably proof you have a wire crossed. Or several. “On the balance of probability?” You slide him a provoking smirk. “Historical precedent would indicate I am being flippant roughly 95.5% of the time.”

“That would imply you’re trying to cope most of the time,” Kankri says blankly, and then does this thoughtful little head tilt that makes you want to smack yourself in the face again. “I don’t even understand why you’d be uncomfortable,” he adds, chin rising. “You’re aware that I’m a mutant. Hemoanomalous trolls are supposed to be culled at hatching, are not eligible for imperial service to the Ebon Empire, and, given interspecies tensions, are essentially locked out of every organized society currently in existence on this planet. Not to devalue whatever your own experiences might be, but on a spectrum of… intersectional privilege… targeted genocide strikes me as the likely lower threshold.”

“…Point.” You narrow your eyes behind your shades. “I see you mastered the privilege Olympics at full speed.”

He narrows his eyes right back at you, then turns away with a toss of his horns. “I don’t know what that means. But my custodian always said strategic thinking can turn a vulnerability to a strength, or a pawn to a queen.”

“Talkative lusus.”

Kankri sniffs. “Don’t be species-prescriptive. If it’s any business of yours my lusus-mother is carapacian.”

You consider that for a minute, picking your way down a rapidly narrowing alleyway. “How’d that happen?”

He hesitates a half-beat before waving a hand dismissively. “Oh, the usual way.”

You’re guessing that means something different for trolls.

The alleyway grows still narrower, and he waits politely for you to go ahead of him, hangs back to give you your space. Courteous. Careful. He’s one more person that’s worked out the ‘don’t touch the jumpy cyborg’ rules and, considering how oblivious he is to everything else that hasn’t been explicitly spelled out, you can’t help but wonder grimly whether it’s so much consideration as fear. He seems self-assuredly smug enough, but you’re still the dude that kidnapped him and held him at sword point not so very long ago.

(–he flinched, and he looked at you with eyes that burned like coals, and you did that, you put that bright kernel of fear there behind the steel–)

“—so, do I get to hear the Kankri Vantas secrets repository?” You’ve turned sideways to crab your way through the excessively narrow space between brick and stone—what even, Seb; thank you so very much for this entire experience—so you can see him cast you an unreadable glance.

“Should I interpret that to mean you would prefer I not ask further questions about your person?”

“Gotta save something for the second date,” you quip, before you can really think about it. He blinks and you bite your tongue, hard. Whaaaaat are you doing here, exactly? Everything about this situation is still a majorly bad idea, and you’re trying to cut back on those.

“I… see,” Kankri says, looking utterly puzzled by you.

Oh, look, this wall is conveniently close should you urgently need to knock some sense into your skull. Maybe you should stay here. You skootch your way free from the end of the alley and grab for the first conversational redirect that comes to mind as you wait for Kankri to catch up.

“Not eligible for imperial service, huh? I don’t want to make unsolicited conjectures here, but that sure sounds like ‘not actually working for the government.’”

He stops and looks at you. You feel like there is something very heavy hanging in the air, poised to tip. To fall. To break.

You never could resist pushing.

“So? Are you?”

There’s a few ticks of silence. “No,” he says finally. “Not particularly.”

And boom, there’s that adrenaline buzz back, licking through your veins like lightning, the world slowly tilting towards something new. (He’s going to tell you.) ((he’s going to trust you.))

“I wouldn’t be …welcome. Which isn’t to say that Porrim and Latula and the rest of our… assemblage don’t have service obligations to fulfill,” Kankri adds, briefly distracted by the minutiae of precision word-smithing. “But those imperial obligations are, I admit, entirely extraneous to our purpose here.” He pauses, and you can’t turn away from the weight of his gaze, intense upon you, there in the mouth of the alley.

“In fact,” he says, still studying you, evidently choosing his words with care, “you might go so far as to say they are in opposition.”

Adrenaline spikes, hot and sweet.

He hesitates again, drawing in a breath, but now it’s very much the hesitation of someone settling themselves into the irrevocable pull of gravity before a leap. You make a sound of encouragement, low in your throat, and startle yourself with how much it sounds like sex.

Okay, you know what? You’re going to chalk everything about this day up to ‘organic physiology is stupid, non-compliant, and not my fault’ and add ‘get a handle on yourself’ to your urgent to-do list. In whatever sense of the word ‘handle’ puts you back in charge of your own reactions.

And now you’ve gotten so flustered distracted you’ve actually missed the next bit of Kankri’s speech.

“—drones themselves are not the problem, but rather the centralized nature of the collection of, er… genetic material.”

Wait, back up.

Why are you getting a lecture on troll reproduction.

“Looked at that way you can see the issue,” Kankri adds, oblivious to your wildly shifting attention. He’s definitely warming to his topic, chin tilted up, eyes half-closing, hands gesturing. “Governmental control of reproduction creates a fundamental power imbalance between the government and the populace—not just for trolls, but for carapacians as well. Even the human cy, in a way, since they could breed but not reproduce their technological alterations.”

The flow of his words doesn’t stop, but he does that thing where he peeks one eye open like he’s checking his lecture is having the appropriate impact. You’re still in the middle of mood whiplash—you give him blankface. Your mind buzzes, trying to catch up, slotting new information into place, chasing down implications.

“They can’t choose to walk away from their empires,” Kankri says, “—not and persist.” His tone picks up conviction and he leans in toward you almost unconsciously, hands gesturing. You’re transfixed, frozen. It feels like any action might break this moment, send you leaning in or bolting back, or startle Kankri into stopping talking, which is ridiculous, nothing ever stops Kankri talking, but you really, really want him to keep talking. You want to know.

“Only the unmodified human populace have that option, and they’re still recovering from perigees of heterospecific oppression and war. The lynchpin of societal control is always the next generation. If we—“

Something… shushes, a hushed, sliding noise across concrete, from just around the corner.

You’re muscling Kanrki back into the cover of the alley before you have time to process anything beyond your body’s immediate ‘danger, will robinson’ chemical shrilling.

Kankri stifles his yelp surprisingly quickly. He ends tense but silent, his eyes wide and bright and red on you, his pupils contracted down to points. His body has gone stiff and defensive from head to toe, a fact you can attest to because your rapid retreat left you both wedged tight against each other, pressed between brick and stone in the narrow confines of the alley.

You can’t breathe. You can’t look away.

His eyes are so close, his face is so close. A breath away, if either of you were breathing. You can feel the heat of him right through your clothes, the not-quite tremble of muscles drawn taut in a line up your thigh and abdomen. His hand, pressed over your heart, trying to keep some space, sears you like a brand. He could do some damage with those claws.

It sort of feels like he’s damaging you right now, burning you right up.

You sort of like it.

Can you panic on behalf of yourself and someone else at the same time? Because you might be about to flip your ever-loving shit.

Kankri’s eyes flick towards the mouth of the alley.

That sliding noise comes again, so soft you might have mistaken it for the feather fall of sand down a slope—a sort of swish swish swish of something moving back and forth.

You have heard that before.

“Dominion sanitator,” Kankri says, and it’s hardly more than a breath by your collarbone.

Oh, joy, more unfamiliar alien terminology. Not helpful, but at least it distracts you from the panic attack you are very much not having. You follow his glance toward the street ahead, but there’s nothing to see. Whatever’s moving out there (big, quiet—hunting?) is still a street over at least. Kankri does not look inclined to go out and say hi to it.

Where did you hear it before? You rifle randomly through sensory memories, frustrated for the millionth time at the lack of reliable organic sorting algorithms, trying to trace the source of the familiarity. It’s stupid how difficult it is, you’ve barely got a few pocketfuls of embodied time to dig through, hardly any time at all since you woke up in an unfamiliar body on an unfamiliar world…

…that’s it. The city that first day, on the roof with Seb, and questing through streets below, a ripple of white. A thing like some mad scientist crossed a centipede with a snake, and then in a fit of extra death-wishery, magnified it to parade-float size and set it loose on the populace. You’d suspected that one of hunting, too, feelers probing along the ground in front of it as it flowed through empty city streets.

You never did find any people in that city.

The noise seems to shuffle and slide past for a long time. Yards and yards of time. You wait, with your heart in your throat and Kankri pressed silent and trembling-tense against you, until the unseen creature becomes unheard once again. Until you’re sure it’s continued past your street and your narrow, tucked away alley, taking no notice of you, hunting blindly on.

Kankri wriggles against you (--um), prying his way out of the alley and free. “It’s gone.”

“How do you know it won’t turn around and come right back?”

He lifts his chin. “They’re engineered to remove non-carapacian sentient life from cities. If it had realized we were here we’d know because we’d already be dealing with it. They mostly make straight sweeps unless they pick up signs of life.”

That… does not sound like fun times. You wonder what would have happened if it had found you, heard you. Smelled you? If you’d actually been out in the street beyond to make a sound or leave a footprint or drop a scent trail for it to catch. If you’d been a few minutes ahead of yourselves…

Your heart clutches again.

“We need to find Seb right now.”

Kankri sucks in a breath, but doesn’t argue with you.

#cyberbunny au #kankri vantas #autoresponder #ar x kankri #hal strider #homestuck #ccwritings

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