#please help lmao i will draw you pictures and everything

[mxwhore]

can i get a fucking Break

#ok so basically #grandma realized that she couldnt exert control over what i eat anymore (since i pay for basically ALL my food) #so now my WATER and GAS PRIVILEGES ARE BEING RESTRICTED #which is arguably worse!!! #i can show up hungry to work but stinky???? #for context my total shower time of the ENTIRE WEEK is like 25 minutes. i take one long 10 minute shower on sundays to wash my hair #and even THEN half of them are with cold water because were nearing summer and i like them #for MORE CONTEXT #1. my parents give her money for bills 2. the government give her money for bills #and more importantly 3. I EVEN OFFERED TO GIVE HER MONEY FROM MY OWN 'I NEED TO GTFO' SAVINGS!!! #she just sneered and said You dont have money. huh??? #she genuinely thinks i sleep around for food lmao #tldr; this is just another power play and i need to Get Out #i cant even save up for top surgery because all my money goes to food and my escape fund #please help lmao i will draw you pictures and everything

[meanbossart]

i just need to take a second to gush about how much i love durge drow and astarion, they feel so fleshed out and perfectly written together in their fucked up wretched ways. They really inspire me to write more for my own tavs, hopefully one day ill be able to say im as happy with my own work as i get when seeing yours. I have to ask though, do you have any tips on drawing head shapes and faces? or maybe about wrinkles? i find i really struggle with that stuff when drawing and i adore how expressive and grungey all your art looks!

First of all thank you so much, I love hearing what people think of the two of them together 😭

Honestly you've hit on something that's quite near and dear to my heart, I love developing and figuring how to draw and stylize different faces to get the most unique, interesting looking results - everything about the details is highly rewarding to me. What does x type of nose look like from this angle? In this style? How can this eyeshape best translate to my art? How different does a face look when its making this expression? What does that MOUTH DO? etc etc.

In fact you kind of inspired me to put a little tutorial/guide together the last hour lmao and what a blessing it is that the two current subjects of this blog serve as great models here, being that their faces are basically polar opposites!

When it comes to heads, you've probably heard it a dozen times before that you want to think of them in terms of geometry and facets; my process to drawing them is pretty conventional so I won't spend too much time on it, but it goes something like this:

Obviously I don't do every single one of these steps most of the time, which is just something that comes from practice/developing muscle memory, but it is helpful to start off this way for two main reasons:

By making these guide lines and splitting a head into pieces like this, you'll have an easier time seeing and understanding it as a multidimensional object, and in turn, facilitate It for you when you venture out into doing wacky angles and lighting.

Making different headshapes starts HERE. notice how Astarion's "face" slate is narrower and longer, how my durge's jaw pieces sit lower on the head, how all of the same pieces came together in the same way but we ended up with one real pointy elf and a real brick of a drow - making characters look different successfully begins very early in the sketching process.

The next thing you want to do branches out into every day life: start noticing yours and other people's facial features. How does an upturned nose look from a high angle? How does the size of someone's cheekbones affect what they look like when they smile? How about when the light hits them a certain way? Does someone's lip shape changes when they pout? When they laugh? How does a person's hairline change the shape of their face? You do NOT need to creepily sketch every stranger you see on the bus, but get into the habit of actually noticing what people look like when you talk to them - when you look at pictures, when you watch movies - make a mental list of interesting ways mouths, noses, and eyes can come together in a variety of different proportions to make completely distinct looking mugs, and how they change depending on how you are looking at them.

Light and shadow play a HUGE role in how faces look, too, basically as crucial as actual bone structure does. As you see up there I tried to rough out how natural, head on, and underhead light would look on these two very different looking guys, and while we can see definite patterns, there are small differences that come to be because of the sizes and shapes of their features.

Here is a very, very basic look at how some of these features come to look the way they do, how they interact with one another, and how they compare between a blocky, rather conventionally "masculine" head and one that's much softer and slimmer.

Note please that it is not one or two characteristics that give a chaarcter their "look"; you can reduce a face to eyes, mouth, and nose through stylization and still have them be recognizable, but if you want to do more than that, you have to consider the whole package! Chin, cheeks, brows, direction of the jaw, slope and size of the forehead, depth of eyes, ridge of the nose, etc - I know this is probably far more than you bargained for, but if you start making note of a FEW of these things now and slowly add on, this will eventually become second nature to you.

Similarly, understanding how these characteristics come together will help you with rendering light and shadow in a realistic way, and predicting what their facial expressions may look like - if no two people are alike, neither are their smiles. :)

Lastly, remember that I'm no expert - I have developed my own methods and semiotics and yours may look slightly (or vastly) different, and that's fine! I hope only that by sharing this it has given you a base to work off of.

Anyways, I HOPE this has been helpful and not just the unsolicited ramblings of a face pervert.

#ask #art #advice #tutorial #astarion #DU drow

[haetrack]

i read no clue before i went to bed last night so ur responsible for the dream i woke up to about mark and now i have to share 🫡

mark’s never been more grateful for the giant vanity table in ur bedroom. the large mirror showing him a perfect view of ur face, scrunched up in pleasure as he’s buried in u from behind. the sound of skin slapping echoing through the room, layered over the sounds of ur moans. the table shakes with every thrust, his hands grabbing onto ur hips hard enough, ur sure it’ll leave bruises.

he burrows his face in ur neck, kissing and sucking up to ur jawline. he watches ur reflection as one of his hands leave ur hips to move to grope ur chest, squeezing ur hardened nipples. the whine it draws out of u, makes his cock twitch inside of u. “mark, please. u make me feel so good,” u whisper.

“yeah?” he mutters under a heavy breath. his hand slides down to press against ur clit, rubbing circles with the amount of pressure he’s perfected over all these times with u. his name slips out of u in a loud moan at the sudden stimulation of ur clit. he revels in the sheer mix of desperation and pleasure forming on ur face.

he presses a light kiss on ur cheek before pulling his chest away from ur back. he can tell u were so close, how could he not help his girl finish?

he pushes ur body further down onto the table, making sure to still be able to see ur face in the mirror. his hand pressing down on the hollow of ur back to keep u in place. he pulls himself out of u almost all the way, before slamming his hips into u harshly. a curse leaves ur lips, as he repeats the motion, each time getting faster and faster. ur fucked out expression encouraging him to go harder. he knows ur orgasm is near when u start clenching around him with every single thrust, sucking him in so well. angling himself to go even deeper inside of u, his cock fucking u so good that u come with his name leaving ur lips like a mantra.

the feeling of ur warm orgasm surrounding him makes him pick up his pace even more, desperate to chase his own high. it didnt take long for him to follow suit, one more look at ur pretty face, combined with the whines emanating due to the overstimulation of him still fucking into u causes his hips to stutter, shooting his cum inside u. the feeling of u being so full of him, and both of ur orgasms engulfing him.

pulling ur body back up off the table, he leans forward to exchange soft, slow kisses while u both tried to catch ur breathes. u break up the kiss, and whine in annoyance, “dude, ur gonna have to clean this up because i’m not doing it” gesturing to the mess of ur table, a few of ur collectible figurines had fallen to their side along with some makeup products that were now on the floor. mark laughs and rolls his eyes playfully before grabbing ur face to his again.

——

ANYWAY NO CLUE WAS SO GOOD LIKE WHY WAS I GETTING SHY AND GIGGLY FOR HIM LMAO. girl ur gonna make me through it with all these mark posts im catching up on. like im so sorry haechan i swear i still love u but atm i love mark more

- 🌱

YOU CANT DO THIS TO ME... I WONT BE ABLE TO HIDE MY FEELINGS FOR MARK ANYMORE... he needs me so bad... haechan go wait in the corner for a bit

just imagining him standing behind you one day watching you get ready for the little date you both are about to have. he's smiling at you, liking how calm it is as you get ready, how pretty your concentrated face looks. then there's all the little collectibles on your table, all these memories from your life, and newly framed pictures of you and mark together. he's happy to be a part of your life, smiling at the reflection of the two of you in the mirror.

he doesn't know how, but his mind wanders a bit. he wonders if he could just put his hand on your back, bend you down a little, put his hips flush to your ass, grinding into you. he bites his lip, squirming a bit as he watches you. he realizes he'd be able to see everything, how your face looks as he fucks you, how your body reacts to him. his hands are itching to reach over to you, but you call out his name, smiling as you see his pink cheeks.

and you know him so well, which would eventually lead to fucking on your vanity :)

#asks #🌱 anon #vals hard hours #mark lee hard hours #mark lee smut #nct smut #I AM NOT WELL #theres tears in my eyes #u have done it again #raised the bar for us all

[randomyuu]

there's a lover in the story, but the story's still the same

Ahh, don’t you love it when fear motivates your drawing mood? (not really)

That’s what I felt reading the scene that is drawn below. It’s fear for Yuuji but also feeling excited picturing an emotionless teen!Gojou so here I am. Always down bad for Vox’s Goyuu fics, aren’t I? *sighs*

Welp, here we go.

Title: there’s a lover in the story, but the story’s still the same

Author: @voxofthevoid

Second fic of the series there’s a lover in the story, but the story’s still the same

Pairing YuuGo, NSFW, please read the tags carefully before giving it a read... the usual drill ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

!!! SPOILER FOR THE FIC !!!

Highly recommend you guys to read them first. Or not, it’s up to you honestly :v

Usually I would gush about the fic but I’ve already done that under the fic itself so I just want you to know this comic is solely carried by me wanting to draw the ticking time bomb called teen!Gojou-post-discussion-with-adult!Ieiri. You could probably guess what they’re talking about :”)

The fear for Yuuji’s well-being started this, but Satoru’s cold eyes kept me going. I can’t get rid of it from my mind lmao

You can say drawing these kind of expressions is my jam   (￣▽￣)

I hope I did Satoru’s emotions justice haha

A bit of my thoughts and doodle below. Unhinged maybe, it’s midnight, I got more work to do after this, and my brain cells are barely hanging on. Haha I'm living the life-

I AM STILL REELING FROM THE FACT I MANAGED TO GET THIS DONE.

There are so many things I want to talk about in the process of making this. But after I typed it out, most of them sounded so unnecessary so I rewrote it a few times. I tried to make this as short as possible lmao

Typesetting and sketching are the roughest parts of this project. During these stages, I kept feeling everything I did wasn’t doing the scene enough justice, and it was frustrating. As I planned this project, I read a few doujins and noticed the font types scanlation teams use. There are so many of them, and each helped convey the tone of each image. Felt like crying when I realised I’m not knowledgeable enough to apply good typesetting, ngl. And then the interior design. Fuck, the frustration is so real. I am absolutely clueless about this kind of thing. Tracing lots of references because I have no perception of space makes me feel even worse. I knew first times rarely create a masterpiece, but I was not satisfied with my accomplishment and the feeling of failing to fulfil my own expectations hurt.

BUT.

Thank goodness most of the things I need to draw are Shouko, Yuuji and Satoru. Because dear g o d drawing them healed me. I found so much comfort in drawing Shouko’s long hair and Satoru’s eyes and drowning Yuuji in an oversized hoodie. The comfort zone of character drawing never feels so real lmaooo

Drawing them was so effective that I can look back at the backgrounds with acceptance. Hey, I did it! Not perfect just yet, but I did it!

Haha I feel like I’m losing my mind. I don’t know if it’s in a good way or a bad way. Guess I do have one or two screws loose.

Only for Yuuji lmao

(nah I just need sleep, or cooling down from the rush of having finished this)

It might come off as a surprise if you’ve only seen my art on Tumblr, but I’ve always preferred to draw feminine-leaning ladies. I’ve always loved drawing their curves, whether it’s the figure, the clothes, or the (long) hair. But I’ve grown to like drawing masculine gentlemen as well with their sharp edges and straight lines, and now my ladies start to look more androgynous lmao

Anyway, I was pretty stoked to be able to draw adult!Ieiri! I… I kind of miss drawing long hair so here have some more before you go on your day ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

#yuu's art #jjk-fic-fanart #jjk-ship #五悠 #goyuu #goyu #5u #gojou x yuuji #I'll see you sometime later #if real life lets me haha #:")

[wormtime123]

WORMY I AM NOT GOING TO BE NORMAL ABOUT YOUR DRAMATURGY ART how do you draw such heartstring twanging art??? There aren't even facial expressions but the body language is all there! How tight they are holding on, how they bury their heads in each other. And the colour and lighting choices! They are so warm and bright and right aaaaaaa please talk more about your process I love hearing how an artist makes a picture come together

CRYING this is such a kind message and i appreciate it and you sm. but also when i try to explain my process all i can think of are those tutorials that are like step 1. make a sketch step 2. Finish The Drawing bc i just make shit up as i go LMAO

i block in the ugliest mess of shapes + shading you've ever seen under the sketch and from there i mostly just pray. for color i probably rely way too heavily on layer blending modes but hey it's a tool and it's there! and more specifically my favorites are yellow-orange on overlay/glow dodge for lighting and blue-violet on multiply for shading. i've also been using them set to "color" recently bc i realized it helps a lot with cohesion for someone like me who sucks at color picking (such as purple and maroon for these two) then i just stack on layers and layers of detailing as i go on. i could technically leave it lineless but i personally like going back over everything with something close to black like in the final post!

a mess of an explanation but i hope seeing some of my chaos is fun 🫡

#TY AGAINNN

[chr0macide]

Break In 2: The Novelette (Fanfic)

PART 1

got damn I finally finished this. Writers block was wilding on my ass so I hope this didn't turn out like shit lol. I drew a lil bit of art for this fanfic (I say "drew" but a lot of it is just textures from google edited together into a picture lmao). Just 3 pics but yeah I got bored and wanted to draw. Might make a separate post for them sometime so people who don't wanna read or scroll through this can see them.

I recommend reading part 1, there are some references and callbacks that you might not get if you haven't read it already.

Again if you see any grammar/spelling errors please tell me. don't let me just leave that shit in because that's hella embarrassing 🙃

oh also for those who don’t know, the premise of this fanfic is basically just me turning the game into a short story

TW implied sexual violence (not involving any main characters, relatively short section, but its there)

This one is about 16,000 words, alright lets do this

Chapter I – Unsafe Haven

A fork of lightning illuminated the woods as Prince drove down the trail at a snail’s pace. The deluge was so heavy that it was almost impossible to see through the windshield, even with the wipers on. He brought the car to a standstill and let the engine idle.

“We’re gonna have to wait the storm out,” Prince told the kids. “Can’t keep driving like this.”

Stephanie kicked the back of Prince’s seat. “Worst camping trip ever,” she grumbled with her tiny voice.

“Relax. We’ll get there,” the elder brother said, but the truth was that he may or may not have taken a wrong turn through the thick fog.

It had been almost a year since the four kids had butted heads with their not-so-friendly neighborhood mafia. Well, three kids and one adult; Prince had turned 18 a few months ago. They’d been holed up in their house for too long, paranoid that Larry and his mobsters might show up for a little payback. It didn’t help that there had been a string of missing person reports in the area. To their dismay, their own uncle had disappeared, not to mention that the mob boss himself had vanished soon after they’d deactivated him. He hadn’t been sighted since, though, so Prince and Monica thought an outing would help take their minds off of everything.

They had everything they needed. The weather report had been favorable, yet rain was battering their windows. Prince folded his arms as he heard another clash of thunder. His boredom was replaced with panic as the subsequent flash of lightning struck the tree closest to them.

“Everyone out! Now!” he yelled as the trunk splintered and started to topple towards them. The kids tumbled out of the car and ran off as the tree smashed into the hood. The car alarm screamed.

“Could this trip get any worse?” Monica huffed as she walked around their totaled coupé. She popped the trunk and rummaged around inside.

Prince reached out and pulled her away. “Monica, wait, the engine-”

He was cut off as the crushed engine spat out a plume of smoke and exploded.

The kids stared at their flaming car.

“Shit,” said Hadrian.

Prince sighed. “Yeah.”

They looked around. They thought they’d reach the campsite early in the evening, but the storm had stalled them for so long that night had already come. Prince could hardly see the path ahead of them. “You didn’t happen to pull a flashlight out of there before it blew up, right?” he asked Monica.

Monica looked at the first aid kit she’d rescued. “No.”

“Damn. Well… we shouldn’t just stand around, I guess. Come on,” Prince said to the others. They climbed over the fallen tree and set off down the trail on foot.

The muddy path squelched under their shoes and thorns snagged their clothes as they trudged forward. Prince knew they should hurry, but shrubs and tree roots obscured by the shadows threatened to trip them up and send them face first into the dirt if they walked too fast.

Prince pulled out his cellphone as they moved, grumbling in frustration as the rain impaired the touchscreen. He tried to dial emergency services. No signal. He almost bumped into a traffic barricade in front of him while he was shoving the phone back into his damp pocket. “The hell? What is this doing here?”

He felt Monica tug on his sleeve.

“Do you see that?” Monica asked, pointing into the trees. It took Prince a few seconds to figure out what she was talking about, but he spied a yellow light blinking in the distance.

“What is it?” he wondered.

“I don’t know… but look.” Monica gestured downwards. There was a gravel path leading away from the barricaded trail. It looked like they’d be taking a detour.

“Let’s see if there’s a building there,” Monica suggested. Prince was apprehensive about veering off the main path, but he had no clue how far the campground was, if they were even going in the right direction. Maybe this was a better option. He and the other kids followed her.

It didn’t take long for them to reach the origin of the light. Steel walls stretched into the trees. The faint beams of moonlight that made it through the leaves glinted on the razor wire resting atop the fortifications.

A control panel was affixed to the wall next to the heavy-duty vertical lift door. There was the light source: a yellow diode, flashing on and off in the dark.

Prince peered through the doorway. It was already open. “What is this? A military base?”

Monica knitted her brow. “Maybe, but why would they leave the door like this?”

“I don’t see anyone.” The place gave him an unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach, but it was freezing, and his clothes were soaked all the way through. He stepped inside.

The dwelling had evidently been abandoned for a long time. One ceiling light persevered, shining weakly in the darkness. The floor was littered with trash and a sticky layer of dust coated the tiles. Corroded storage lockers lined one of the walls. The other was plastered with crappy graffiti.

Prince didn’t see anyone else. He beckoned the others inside. However, right as the last kid stepped through, there was another flash of lightning. The panel next to the door sparked and short circuited. Everyone flinched as the door slammed down with a loud bang.

“What the hell!” Prince exclaimed as he turned around. He gave the door a kick. It didn’t budge. The unlocking mechanism had failed. He tried tinkering with the control panel, but all he got was an electric shock. “Ow.”

Prince knew he wasn’t about to break through solid metal. The kids glanced around the room nervously. “Look for another way out,” Prince told everyone.

There was only one other door on the opposite wall. Monica made her way over and gently pushed it open, but it was just a stairwell leading even deeper down into the building. She shook her head at Prince. “Nothing here.”

Hadrian started to open the old lockers, searching for something that might be useful. He grimaced as he came upon one that wasn’t empty.

“Guys. Look,” Hadrian called out. The others crowded around. It was an all too familiar comedy mask that they’d hoped they would never have to see again. “I don’t think we’re in a military base.”

Prince’s stomach churned at the thought of running into Larry a second time. If he was uneasy before, he was on high alert now. In fact, he was so anxious that he nearly leapt out of his skin when something prodded the back of his leg.

The dog whined and sprang away as well before it ran away and cowered beneath a rotting wooden table. Its fur was patchy and matted. Muddy water was still dripping from it, but it looked like it might have been white underneath all that grime. It must have taken refuge here from the torrential downpour too before they arrived.

“A doggie!” Stephanie squealed in delight. She ran to pet it, but it growled and barked at her when she got close. “Mean doggie,” she pouted.

Prince paid no more attention to the dog. If there was a chance that there were gangsters prowling, he and the kids had to arm themselves. He didn’t see anything of use except a broken rack with a few rusty crowbars on it. He picked one up.

“Guess these will have to do.”

He tossed a couple to Monica and Hadrian.

“Hold up, you want us to go further inside?” Hadrian questioned as he caught the weapon.

“You got a better idea?”

Hadrian looked at the metal door, locked tight. “No,” he mumbled.

The group stood at the stairs. It was pitch black. A sense of déjà vu crept over Prince; it reminded him of the creepy basement back in his house. He dug through his pocket for his lighter and flicked it on, casting enough light down the steps for them to descend. The dog padded after them, though it still recoiled as Stephanie tried to touch it again.

They reached the base of the stairwell. Iron bars lined the walls on either side of them. It was some sort of jail. Prince thought the cells were all empty until someone stood up in the one right next to him.

Everyone yelped in alarm at the figure. Prince held his crowbar up defensively, even though the man was caged, but he looked familiar. He held his lighter up to illuminate his face.

“Uncle Pete?” Prince said, bewildered.

Pete waved. He grabbed the whiteboard attached to his belt. Hi Prince! Open the cell? he wrote.

“But I don’t have the key… oh, wait,” Prince said as he remembered that he was holding a crowbar. He jammed it in between the lock and the doorframe and broke the gate open. “But how did you get here?”

Mafia wanted some of my properties. Locked me up here alone when I wouldn’t transfer ownership, Pete scrawled as he stepped out of the cell.

“Oh, man. We were really worried,” Prince said as everyone wrapped Pete up in a group hug. “Wait a second. Does that mean there are mobsters nearby?”

No. Upper levels of the base are abandoned. Everyone is in lower levels.

Prince’s brow furrowed. Pete looked at him quizzically.

“The entrance malfunctioned. We can’t get out the way we came in,” Prince explained. Pete looked pensive now.

Only other way out is elevator on lowest level. Leads to south exit. Don’t know exactly where it is, but we would have to keep going down. Pete pointed at the other end of the jailhouse. More stairs. They were going to be seeing a lot of those.

The last thing Prince wanted to do was to delve into a criminal hideout, but they didn’t have any other choice. “How deep before we start running into mobsters?” he asked Pete as they walked to the staircase and descended further.

Pretty deep. Not sure about the exact level. I don’t th

Pete stopped writing as they reached the next area and looked around warily. It was some kind of common area, just as derelict as the previous rooms, but something felt off. Prince squinted through the dim lighting. The coffee table was caked with dust, but one handprint-shaped patch was clean.

Someone was in there with them.

Chapter II – Hackerman

Monica guarded herself with her first aid kit as a masked mafioso stood up from behind the couch and swung his crowbar at her. The plastic case cracked, but she retaliated with a jab to his gut with her own weapon. He clutched his abdomen in pain as Monica brought her weapon down on his head, knocking him out.

The guy wasn’t alone. Four of his buddies emerged from hiding while Monica was fending off the first, and they rushed the kids all at once. Pete hastily grabbed the crowbar that the downed mobster had dropped. He attacked one who was coming up on Prince’s side. He and Hadrian were kept busy by a couple of other mafiosos from the front. There was a brief scuffle before Pete managed to land a headshot and knock him unconscious as well.

Hadrian tried to lunge at one of his attackers, but the mobster hooked his crowbar around Hadrian’s own weapon and yanked it out of his hands. With nothing to defend himself, all he could do was shield his face with his arms. There was a crunch as the mobster’s crowbar met his forearm. He cried out in pain. “Fuck! Not again!”

The group withdrew further into the room as the remaining mobsters closed in on them. As their aggressors engaged them again, Prince fumbled and dropped his still-burning lighter amidst the chaos. The dust on the plush carpet ignited instantly. A blockade of smoke and fire materialized surprisingly quickly between him and the mafiosos.

“Come on!” urged Prince retreated through the next door. The dog darted ahead of him, spooked by the flames. Pete and the kids followed, but the mobsters had to fall back to the jailhouse to escape the inferno. It had been a quick fight, but Prince was shaking from the adrenaline. He turned to Pete.

“You said the upper levels were abandoned!”

Pete shrugged his shoulders and shook his head cluelessly. They are! I don’t know what they’re doing here, he wrote.

The blaze cast a flickering orange glow into the hallway they’d ended up in. At least this place looked empty. Monica made Hadrian sit on the ground and started fixing a splint to his arm. He sighed in defeat. They’d only just got here, and he was already out of the fight.

Prince cautiously opened the door next to them. A janitorial closet. He’d lost his lighter in the last room. They weren’t going to be able to see a thing once they left the fire behind, so he went inside and investigated the shelves.

He picked up a flashlight and brushed the dust off. “Lucky us.”

“See if it turns on first,” said Monica skeptically.

Prince flipped the switch. He smacked the flashlight into the palm of his hand a few times when it didn’t turn on. Nothing happened. “Damn it.”

He shoved the flashlight under his coat. Maybe they would come across some batteries later. As Monica finished patching up Hadrian’s arm, the group continued to the elevator on the other end of the hallway. Prince pushed the call button. “I don’t suppose this thing will take us out of here?”

Pete shook his head as the doors slid open. The control panel only contained deeper floors. His finger hovered over the button that would take them the lowest. They didn’t know precisely how far down the inhabited levels were, and he didn’t want to be jumped again as soon as the elevator reopened. He decided to select one of the higher ones. Better safe than sorry, Prince thought.

They said nothing as the elevator closed and took them downwards. They couldn’t see anything except the red LED display above the door. The floor number ticked into the negatives until it ground to a halt unexpectedly.

“Hold up. That’s not the level I chose,” Prince whispered. He could hear everyone shifting around in the dark as they prepared for the worst.

The doors opened. The person outside the elevator screamed and fumbled with his phone, almost dropping it. He clearly hadn’t been expecting to see anyone. Prince had his crowbar at the ready, but the guy was clad in a hoodie and jeans instead of one of the tailored suits that the mob usually wore.

“Uh… hi,” said Prince.

“Hey? You guys don’t look like mobsters,” the young man replied as he straightened his sunglasses.

“You don’t, either.”

“’Cause I’m not. What are you doing here if you aren’t one of them?” the stranger asked shiftily.

Prince shrugged. “We ran in here during a thunderstorm. Door malfunctioned. Now we’re trapped.”

The stranger buried his hands in his dark hair. “Are you fucking kidding me? The north exit is jammed? I snuck all the way up here for nothing!”

“You’re sneaking out? Were you a prisoner?” Monica probed.

“Ugh. Yeah, yeah, I was,” mumbled the man, who was now pacing around outside the elevator. “Name’s Helios-”

Hadrian snickered. Helios shot him a look.

“What? It’s a code name! I work for the government. I’m not supposed to tell people my real one.”

Hadrian rolled his eyes. “Sure, dude. Whatever.”

“OK, Helios… why were they keeping you down here?” asked Prince.

“I got abducted during the killing purge last year. They’ve been making me work for them. I’m a hacker,” Helios explained. “I managed to slip away from my station a while ago. They went batshit looking for me. It was a nightmare getting up here, and now I have to go all the way back down,” he groaned.

“Really? So you know where the south exit is,” Prince surmised.

Helios held up his phone. “Yeah. I got a blueprint of this place.” He stepped into the elevator with them, but he pursed his lips when he saw which level they had been heading towards. “Nah. That’s the first populated level. The guards would’ve rocked your shit. Get outta this thing,” he urged, gesturing for them to follow him into the floor they were at: a computer room. Most of the computers were powered off and missing keyboards, save for one, which had been plugged into one of the power outlets. Helios must have been using it.

“Any chance you can fix the door upstairs? I think it short circuited,” Monica inquired.

“No shot. I’m a hacker. Not an electrician. But like I said, I know exactly where the south exit is,” Helios responded. The group looked at his phone as he pulled up his map of the base. He marked the spot where the exit was. This place had a lot more floors than Prince had expected.

“This is going to suck,” he murmured.

“Tell me about it. We gotta go on foot, too, ‘cause this elevator won’t take us to the right place,” said Helios as he beckoned them out of the computer lab.

The corridors here were tight and winding. Their footsteps echoed through the metal walls, rough with oxidization and lined with rusty pipes. Stagnant water still dripped from some of them.

Prince grew anxious as he followed Helios. They’d been walking for a while without reaching any stairs or elevators. “Helios, where are you taking us? We’re still on the same floor,” he questioned.

“Relax. We’re making a pit stop,” Helios replied, waving Prince’s concern away.

“Dude, we don’t have time-“

Helios shushed him. They were in front of a door with a round window. Prince peered over Helios’s shoulder to see inside. He’d taken them to a kitchen, and Prince realized that they did, in fact, need to eat.

“How do you know there’s still food in here?” he asked the hacker.

Helios shushed him again. “I came here while I was on the way to the top level. Lower your damn voice. There’s someone inside,” he hissed.

Prince took a closer look through the round window. The oven was on. There was a mobster leaning against the countertop, facing away from them. Only one. “What is that guy doing all the way up here?” he whispered.

“No idea, but he’s alone. Just go bonk him,” Helios encouraged.

Prince moved forward Helios stepped out of the way. He put a hand on the door and gradually eased it open. Thankfully, the hinges didn’t squeak, so he crept inside until he was right behind the mafioso. Prince raised his crowbar.

The door clicked shut. The mobster whirled around at the noise. Prince faltered. His mouth hung open slightly in disbelief as he recognized the mafioso.

“Isaiah?”

Isaiah was scrambling for his own crowbar, but he paused when he heard his name. “Prince?”

Prince let his arm fall to his side. “What the actual shit? You’re still working for the mob?” he exclaimed.

“Why the hell are you in the base?” Isaiah blurted out in an equally baffled tone.

The door creaked as Helios edged it open. “Prince? You good?”

Hadrian pushed him out of the way with his good arm. “Nice to see a familiar face,” he said.

Isaiah looked even more confounded as Pete and the kids emerged. “Seriously, what are you doing here?”

Prince was beginning to get tired of recounting that. “There’s a storm outside. Ran in here. North entrance short circuited. Stuck. Explain why you’re here,” he demanded.

“Because I work here, dumbass,” Isaiah snapped. “You can’t just leave the mafia. They hunt deserters down… not to mention that I got fired from Builder Brothers. The owner found out I had ties to the mob, and now this is the only job I can get,” he muttered bitterly.

Prince scowled, but he supposed Isaiah had a point. “OK, I get it, but why is Larry still letting you work here? You helped us deactivate him.”

“He’s not in charge anymore. Haven’t seen him since that sewer brawl, actually. Someone else took over his duties,” Isaiah revealed.

Prince’s eyebrows shot up. “But a bunch of mobsters ran off with his body. It was on the news. They must have reactivated him, right?”

“Nope. He didn’t show up here, as far as I know. No idea what happened to him.”

The kids glanced at each other uneasily. “Who’s in charge now, then?” said Prince.

“Never met her, but her name is Mary Gearwise.”

“Gearwise? Let me guess, another automaton? Where are all these killer robots coming from?”

Isaiah shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I’m just a grunt… wait, aren’t you the hacker that escaped a while ago?” he realized, pointing at Helios.

The hacker looked at him warily. “Maybe. Your friend isn’t gonna turn me in, right?” he asked Prince.

“I ain’t no snitch,” laughed Isaiah.

“Then will you help us get out of the base?” Prince implored.

Isaiah’s smile faded. “Man, do you have any idea what they’ll do to me if I get caught with you guys?”

“Come on, at least help us until we start running into goons. You can wear your mask. They won’t know who you are.”

The mobster picked up his mask from the counter. He mulled Prince’s words over as he looked at it. “I guess so.”

The oven dinged. “On a lighter note… pizza’s done.” Isaiah grabbed an old mitt and pulled the serving board out and placed it on the countertop.

Prince had forgotten about the oven. “Why the hell are you making a pizza all the way up here?” Helios questioned incredulously, gesturing around at the soiled kitchen.

Isiah scratched his neck. “I got hungry, and I didn’t wanna share it with the other guys, OK? So I took a frozen pizza up here.”

“You were gonna eat a whole pizza?”

“Shut up. You guys can have some if you want. You probably aren’t gonna get your hands on food again until you make it out of here,” Isaiah told everyone.

As they ate, the dog nudged the door open with his nose and squeezed through. He’d stayed outside, but it seemed that the smell of cooking had enticed him. Stephanie held out a slice of pizza and tried to coax him closer. The dog gingerly took the slice in his mouth and devoured it ravenously.

Stephanie giggled. The dog let her pet him this time. She read the name tag on his collar. “Twado!” she squeaked. Twado wagged his tail.

The dog chewed on the empty pizza box as Isaiah looked at his watch. He pulled a flashlight out from under his jacket. “We gotta go. I better get you guys out of here while most of the base is asleep,” he said as he motioned for the group to follow him.

They reached a crossroad after a while. “Dude, the map says the closest stairwell is that way,” Helios contested, jabbing a thumb at the right passageway as Isaiah turned left.

“Your map is old. We never update those things. I know a short-”

Isaiah stopped talking mid-sentence as a rusty pipe on the ceiling ruptured in front of him. Scalding hot water hissed as it splashed against the cold metal floor and turned to steam. He didn’t fancy third-degree burns. “Damn. Guess we’re taking the long way around.”

They trailed through the narrow corridors behind the mobster in silence until Prince’s soles started to get sore. Too many stairs, but they eventually ran into a door.

Isaiah reached for the handle. “I think—SHIT!”

He jerked his hand back as the pipe next to the door burst as well, but it wasn’t water that erupted. Isaiah ripped his glove off and threw it to the ground as the substance ate through it.

“What the hell is that?” Price exclaimed.

“It’s the stuff we poured into the sewers last purge. Thought we shut off all the valves already. I need to quit coming up here,” muttered the mafioso. “Nevermind. There’s another way in this room.” He turned to the door on the opposite wall and pushed it open.

They were in an old dormitory. The entrance to the stairwell was on the other side of the room. “As I was saying, I think the next level down is… uh…”

Isaiah stopped in the middle of the room and went silent. He looked up at the entresol. More than a few doors were slightly ajar.

“Isaiah? Something wrong?” Prince whispered.

“The doors were shut last time I was here,” he whispered back.

It was another ambush. The mafiosos threw the dormitory doors open and jumped down from the entresol. Prince cried out as one of them landed on him. He lost his weapon as he wrestled on the floor with the aggressor and grunted in pain when he felt something sharp pierce his side. Twado ran over and clamped his fangs around the mafioso’s leg.

Isaiah hurriedly pulled his mask over his face as more mobsters jumped down and confronted him.

“Is that you, Isa-”

He silenced his colleague with a crowbar to the face before he could get his name out. The other two elected to simply charge at him and Helios without any pleasantries. He dropped his flashlight as they clashed.

Prince felt around for his crowbar in the dark as Twado dragged his attacker away. He heard a yelp Monica clocked the mobster on the head.

Pete stood in front of Hadrian and Stephanie as two more advanced on them. They laughed as they brandished their weapons. “Why don’t you put that crowbar down before you hurt yourself, old man?” one of them snickered. Hadrian covered his sister’s eyes.

Prince found his weapon as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He looked over at his uncle as one mobster seized his crowbar while the other delivered a strike to his head, but they turned around as he and Monica came up behind them. Prince tore the blade out of his side and drove it into one of the unsuspecting mobsters’ eyes. She screamed and reeled as Monica aimed a blow at the other mafioso, who sidestepped the hit, but now Prince was coming at him as well.

The mobster made a dash for the stairs, only to run into Isaiah. The two mobsters who’d been accosting him lay in a pile. Isaiah promptly sliced his associate’s throat open using a switchblade of his own. He clutched at the wound and gasped for air, but he could only cough and choke on his blood.

Isaiah scowled beneath his mask at all the noise his victim was making and shut him up with a sharp blow to the skull. He crumpled to the ground, still wheezing and spluttering while unconscious.

That was the last of them. Hadrian picked up Pete’s fallen sunglasses for him. He put them back on as Monica pulled Prince’s bloodied coat off.

“How bad is it?” Prince asked.

Monica grabbed the flashlight from the ground at held it up to inspect Prince’s wound. “Well, since you’re still standing, it’s probably not that deep. I’d put you on bed rest, but…”

She didn’t bother finishing. There was no time for bed rest in this place, of course. There was nothing she could do except clean it and stitch it up.

“They were waiting for us. How did they know you were here?” Isaiah wondered.

Prince shrugged. “We were attacked earlier as well on one of the top levels. I don’t suppose you have security cameras around here?”

“No. Not since…” Isaiah gestured at Helios.

“I knocked them offline while I was trying to escape,” the hacker said. “I know for a fact they’re still down. They couldn’t have seen you.”

Isaiah paced around the dormitory wordlessly as Monica sutured Prince’s wound shut, deep in thought. He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on. We have to-”

He stopped talking as the mobster next to him stirred. There was a crunch as Isaiah stomped on his neck, killing him. Everyone else winced.

“What the hell, Isaiah? That’s not necessary,” Prince admonished.

“Yes, it was. He saw my face earlier. I told you I’m fucked if one of these assholes reports me.”

“He was already unconscious!”

Isaiah got up in Prince’s face, but Helios interrupted their spat before he could say anything. “You two better start getting along, ‘cause we need to make a plan,” he said as he nudged Isaiah away and planted himself between them. He gestured all around at the fallen mafiosos. “We’re gonna be running into plenty of these guys when we reach the bottom of those stairs.”

“Oh. Right. That’s what I was trying to tell you guys earlier. It’s a good thing we ended up in here, actually,” Isaiah said as he disappeared into one of the dorms. They heard him rooting around inside until he came out with a bunch of suits and masks slung over his shoulder, a little faded with age, but still wearable. He dumped them in a pile on the ground. “Ol’ reliable. Everyone put one of these things on.”

Prince pulled a duffel bag out of the pile while he was looking for something his size. “What’s this for?”

“That’s for Twado,” said Isaiah.

Twado gave him the side-eye.

“Hey, don’t look at me like that. The boss doesn’t allow dogs in here. You’ll blow our cover if anyone sees you.”

The dog allowed Isaiah to lower him into the bag, but then the group encountered the same problem as last time. Stephanie was sticking out like a sore thumb.

“Maybe we can hide her in the middle of the group again?” Prince suggested.

Isaiah shook his head. “It’s not gonna work. The hallways aren’t wide enough.”

The mafioso drummed his fingers on the strap of the duffel bag. Nobody else was offering up any ideas.

“I know what we can do,” he spoke hesitantly. Everyone looked at him.

Prince blinked. “Well? Spit it out.”

Isaiah held up a hand. “Don’t get mad at me for it.”

Prince’s eyes narrowed.

“First of all, this base is part of a sex trafficking ring,” said Isaiah.

“You better not be about to say any dumb shit.”

Isaiah held up both hands now. “Just listen! We pretend,” he continued, enunciating the ‘pretend’ very clearly, “that Stephanie is one of the girls we abducted—”

“You guys take little girls for that?” Hadrian admonished.

“Look, man, I just work in the canteen. This place didn’t even have a human trafficking branch when I got here. As I was saying, we pretend she’s a…”

Isaiah trailed off as Prince stared daggers.

“Prisoner,” the mobster said slowly. When the elder brother didn’t throttle him, he kept talking. “The shortest path to the exit involves one of the, uh, filming areas, so that’ll be her excuse to be there.”

Helios looked at his blueprint. “He’s right. There’s gonna be another elevator at the end of the filming area’s hallway.” He zoomed in on the location.

Isaiah leaned over to inspect the map as well. “We can ride it to that detention level and act like we’re taking her to a holding cell,” he said as he pointed out a floor below the filming area, “but we can veer away towards the west edge of the base. That place is as deserted as the upper levels. We’ll make our way through there until we reach the lowest level. After that… it gets more difficult.”

“No kidding,” Helios agreed. “That’s where the boss lives. The whole floor is teeming with goons, but the ventilation shafts that far underground are so big that we can fit through them. So, we sneak over to where the elevator is. Get out of the vents while nobody’s looking. Ride it all the way up to the south exit. No sweat,” he schemed as he drew a path with his finger from their location to the exit.

Prince still looked vaguely pissed off, but he nodded. “OK. Fine. Sounds like a plan.”

Chapter III – Incident Report

Prince squinted as his troupe reached the bottom of the stairwell. The fluorescent lights were harsh on his eyes after they’d wandered around in the dark for hours. He scrunched up his face in revulsion as the smell hit him. The filming area reeked of stale sweat and perhaps other fluids that he preferred not to think about.

“There,” Isaiah whispered to Prince, pointing at the elevator on the other end of the corridor. “Hold onto Stephanie and walk in front of us.”

Prince took Stephanie gently by the hand and followed Isaiah down the corridor.

They were alone at first, but Prince was startled as a door next to them opened. A pair of mobsters shoved a girl into the hall with nothing but a worn-out blanket around her shoulders. She stared through Prince with dead eyes as the mafiosos forced her onwards.

The two groups didn’t speak as they passed each other, but one of the mafiosos brushed a lock of dark hair out of Stephanie’s face and leered at her with yellowed teeth as he strolled by. Prince’s hand tightened around his crowbar until his knuckles were white.

Time felt like it was passing agonizingly slowly as they walked. Prince’s face darkened as they passed another door. He could hear the sounds of a struggle inside. A scream pierced the air. He came to a halt as he unwillingly recalled the purge he’d endured. He felt a hand on his shoulder and glanced back at Isaiah. His face was concealed, but Prince could tell the mobster was stone-faced from his eyes. So was his family, staring back at him through their masks. The sight was unnerving, even though he knew it was only them.

“Keep going. There’s nothing you can do for her now,” whispered Isaiah.

Prince turned stiffly and continued on their path.

There were no more disturbances. They made it to the elevator without any resistance. Isaiah punched in the access code and pressed the button for the detention level.

Helios sighed deeply as the doors closed. “That was unpleasant.”

Nobody was in the mood to respond.

Isaiah spoke up as they neared their destination floor. “We have to get the Warden to open the entrance for us. There’s a one-way exit in the holding area that leads to the west edge. No one is allowed to use it, but the cams are off, so who cares. Just let me do the talking. And one more thing: the audio feed is still running, so keep quiet until we get out of there,” he told everyone as the elevator reopened. The mafioso took the lead this time.

The Warden was resting his elbow on the desk with his face in his palm. He’d been looking at his reflection in his dimmed computer screen as he styled his fiery orange mohawk with a free hand, but his lidded eyes followed Isaiah as he approached. He stared at the newcomers, uninterested in initiating a conversation with them.

“Markus. New inmate,” Isaiah said.

Markus turned his eyes to the computer on his table. “The boss didn’t tell me of any new arrivals today,” he replied flatly.

“We haven’t notified her about this one yet. You’re the first to know. Good for you. Open up,” demanded Isaiah.

The Warden lifted his head from his hand. He narrowed his eyes again, now in skepticism instead of tiredness. Prince put himself in front of Hadrian, hopefully obscuring the boy’s splint. “Why did a little girl need five people escorting her here?”

“What the hell am I being interrogated for? This is the rest of my patrol group. We just got back. Quit wasting my time and open the fucking door,” Isaiah snapped.

Markus sighed. “Whatever. Cell 047,” he told the mobster as he stood up. The guy was even taller than Isaiah, Prince realized, and he was wide enough that he had to leave his too-small tuxedo jacket unbuttoned. He entered a string of numbers into the keypad next to the entrance. The blast door screeched open. “Get out of my face,” said the Warden as he waved them inside.

Prince looked straight ahead. Whatever was behind all the steel doors lining the passageway, he didn’t want to see. Markus closed the entrance behind them as they walked away.

Everyone did as Isaiah had said and kept silent until they reached the exit. A lone spider was busy spinning a web on the doorframe. Tough luck for him. The door squealed as Isaiah opened it and beckoned everyone through.

“Alright, we’re in the clear,” he said after he shut the exit.

The concrete corridor ahead looked strangely sterile at first, but a thin film of dust had settled on the ground upon closer inspection. Nobody had been here in a while.

“Where are we?” Prince asked.

Isaiah took off his mask and looked back at him as they made their way through the hall. “It used to be the chem sector when Larry was in charge. Miss Gearwise decommissioned it after she took over. She’s more interested in biotech and cybernetics, apparently. Most of her stuff is on the bottom floor, though.”

Prince peered through the windowpanes in the doors as Isaiah let Twado out of the duffel bag. Glassware and machinery were set up on the tables as if the users had left in a hurry. Binders full of notes and documents were still open on the desks. Even the lights were still on.

“Looks like she couldn’t wait to shut this place down,” Prince remarked.

Isaiah didn’t look at him now. He just shrugged.

Prince wished the mafioso would talk a little more, because the silence here was even more eerie than it had been in the derelict upper levels. The laboratory looked too clean and orderly. It felt wrong for it to be deserted. He was almost glad when the blindingly white walls gave way to rough stone and steel floors as they moved yet deeper into the base.

They were surrounded by a mess of tubing and shafts as they walked. There were no walls here at all to hide the plumbing and ventilation systems.

“Where are we now?” Prince wondered out loud.

“Still in the chem lab. Larry wasn’t one for frills. He didn’t bother with dressing the place up when he expanded it downwards,” Isaiah answered.

“You know a lot about that guy. Didn’t you only know him for a few days before we took him out?” Hadrian remarked. Isaiah shot him a glare over his shoulder, but not before Monica elbowed her little brother. The last thing they needed was to piss their guide off, even if he might be keeping secrets.

The mobster’s dark irises looked black in the low lighting. “You know I hate it when people ask too many questions, right? I hear the other mafiosos talking about him sometimes, is all,” he claimed as he turned away.

Maybe it was for the best that he and the rest of the group didn’t talk much. The sound of dripping water and air flowing through the vents suited Prince just fine now, but after a while, his ears picked up something that was neither of those. Thumping? It wasn’t quite loud enough for him to tell.

“Do you guys hear that?”

Isaiah paused. “Hear what?”

They all listened, but whatever noise Prince heard had stopped now. “Nevermind. It’s gone.”

Isaiah pursed his lips in annoyance at the interruption and continued forward. Prince didn’t notice any more strange sounds, and he’d started to think he’d been imagining it until he heard it again, much louder this time. Everyone stopped in their tracks and looked up. The rusted ventilation panel above them was starting to buckle. “Get back!” Isaiah whispered harshly.

The old screws snapped apart and the vent gave way. Out tumbled a stout man in a trench coat. He grunted in discomfort as he landed in a heap in front of the group. He scrambled to his feet after he glanced up and realized he wasn’t alone, but his panic was short-lived as he beheld the bizarre caravan in front of him. They stared back, equally perplexed. The guy looked like he’d been ripped straight out of a generic mystery film.

Isaiah had pulled his mask over his face once more, but he cautiously removed it again when he saw that it wasn’t one of his own associates who had shown up. “Who the hell are you?”

The man hesitated, seemingly reluctant to reveal that, but Pete pushed his way to the front of the gathering. The stranger’s face lit up.

“Peter! It’s been too long!” he exclaimed as he slapped his hand on Pete’s shoulder. “But what are you doing here?”

Pete scribbled a few sentences on his whiteboard. Kidnapped. My nieces and nephews are trapped here as well. North exit broke down. Looking for the other one.

“The north exit malfunctioned? How odd,” the stranger pondered.

Pete turned back towards the group and wrote again.

“Detective Bradley Beans,” Prince read out loud.

Bradley snapped out of his musings. “Hm? Oh, yes, that’s me. I was assigned to spy on the mob’s activities here. I’ve been using the ventilation system to stay out of sight, but…”

He eyed the broken vent.

“Perhaps I ought to lose a few pounds. Very fortunate that I was in the west edge.” Bradley picked his fallen umbrella up from the ground. “Anyway, Pete here was a coworker of mine before he retired. Good to see you again, old man,” said the Detective, patting the old man on the back.

“Wow. How long have you been hiding here?” Prince asked.

“Almost a year. I arrived soon after the last purge. I heard all about your battle with Mr. Clockturn. Very remarkable, though I wish the national guard would have moved in a bit quicker… kids shouldn’t have to wrangle crime lords,” grumbled Bradley, shaking his head. His gaze shifted to Isaiah. “Who is your, er, companion?”

“This is Isaiah. He helped us during the purge. And now he’s helping us find our way out of here,” Prince explained.

“I see. Well, there’s no use in dallying here, then. I was actually on my way out as well. Care to lead the way, Isaiah?” Bradley invited, motioning for the mobster to go on ahead of him. He did.

Maybe he shouldn’t pry, but Prince was curious. “So… you’ve been investigating the mob? What did you see?” he asked as they walked.

The Detective’s face grew serious. “One of the reasons I was sent here was to find out what happened to Mr. Clockturn after his body was taken. I already had a hunch that Miss Gearwise had a hand in his disappearance. The evidence I’ve compiled confirmed it. He’s in here somewhere.”

Trepidation rippled through the group.

“I haven’t seen him, but I overheard the personnel in the cybernetics sector speaking of him. The papers I managed to nick suggest Miss Gearwise has been performing experiments on him, and it doesn’t seem that he’s a willing participant.”

“What kind of experiments?” Prince questioned.

Bradley’s brow was crumpled in worry. “The documents didn’t detail their nature or purpose, I’m afraid. I went looking for some that did, but I came up empty handed… Miss Gearwise has put a lot of effort into keeping her activities secret. I suspect he’s being held in the bottommost level, but it was too risky to go poking around there.”

Hadrian rolled his eyes. “Sucks to be him, but what is he? Who is making these freaks?”

Bradley opened his mouth to answer, but then he frowned, stopping himself. “It’s classified info. I assure you that law enforcement has it handled.”

There was a door in their way, but it refused to open when Isaiah put his hand on the push bar. Prince looked at the keypad next to it. “Please tell me you know the code.”

“No need for that.” Isaiah dug through his pocket for his keycard and inserted it into the side of the pad. The door unlocked with a click, and he shoved it open with unneeded force. The mobster had been quiet, but Prince observed that he was becoming more and more vexed as Bradley recounted his findings. Cops and gangsters weren’t exactly friends, of course, but he thought Isaiah’s reactions were still a little over the top.

Isaiah went ahead, but everyone else was reluctant to enter the new area. A metal bridge was suspended over a wide pool of roiling red liquid.

Prince stepped onto the crossing uncertainly. The fumes stung his eyes. “Isaiah? What is that?”

The mafioso turned around. “This is where we made the chemical we emptied into the sewers.” His shoes clanked softly against the bridge’s metal lattices as he continued across. “We’ll be fine. Just don’t fall in,” he reminded Prince. He seemed pretty sure of himself, so everybody followed.

They heard heavy footsteps approaching long before they could reach the other side. Isaiah redonned his mask. “This is the worst possible time.” He looked back at the door they’d entered from.

The Warden’s huge shadow approached. He kicked the entrance open and stepped onto the bridge, followed closely by four of his pals. “I knew you guys were up to some bullshit,” he muttered as he motioned for the other mafiosos to charge.

Markus looked like he could drop all of them on his own, but Prince knew they wouldn’t make it to the exit before their assailants reached them. His fist clenched around his weapon. He might be able to shove the big guy off the bridge if he was deft enough…

Isaiah had different plans. He jammed his crowbar through a joint in the bridge and gritted his teeth as he strained to pry the two sections apart. Realizing what the mobster was doing, Prince knelt down to help out. They jumped back as soon as they heard the rusty screws break.

Markus held out his arm to stop his cronies from going any further. The bridge section in front of him slanted dangerously towards the corrosive liquid far below.

The Warden shook his head. “Back up. I have a better idea,” he said as he ushered the other mobsters back into the hallway.

Isaiah’s eyes widened. “MOVE!” he shouted as he bolted towards the exit.

Too slow. The lock engaged right before he touched the door. He punched it in frustration. “Damn it!” he roared as an alarm bell rang through the chamber.

“Isaiah? What does that mean?” Prince asked as the hazard lights on the walls blinked on. He looked at Monica as she tapped his shoulder and saw that she was staring at the red liquid under them. It was rising. He looked up at Isaiah again.

“The doors seal automatically when someone brings the liquid level up.” Isaiah pointed at the console attached to the wall. “We have to reactivate the drawdown system, but I don’t know the passcode,” he explained hastily.

Prince’s gaze darted between Isaiah and the keypad. “Won’t your keycard work?”

“Fucking look, man! There’s no slot for the keycard here!”

Helios pushed him out of the way. “Let me see what I can do,” he said as he fished a USB drive out of his sling bag and inserted it into one of the console’s ports. Prince heard him typing as fast as he could while the caustic chemicals hissed and simmered against the bridge’s supports.

“Uh, Isaiah? Aren’t the beams corrosion resistant?” Hadrian asked, his voice quivering.

Isaiah kept his eyes on the framework beneath them as it sizzled. “Yeah…? But we were never allowed to bring the liquid level this high back when the chem lab was-”

He stopped speaking abruptly as the scaffolds creaked and the bridge started to tilt. Everyone shuffled around anxiously, inching towards the locked door. Twado ran back and forth across the bridge frenetically, but there was nowhere to go.

“Quit bunching up like sardines! You guys are gonna collapse this thing faster,” Monica warned. “Helios? How much longer?”

“Chill. I almost got it,” the hacker replied as the bridge continued to waver.

Prince heard something snap below them as the console beeped and the alarms shut off. They all let out a collective sigh of relief as the liquid began receding, but the support beams were already done for. Helios was nearly flattened as everyone barreled through the exit. They heard the bridge splash into the chemicals behind them.

Markus had been watching them through the window on the other door. He slammed his fist against the wall as he saw the intruders escape before moving out of sight.

“That was a bit too close for comfort,” Bradley breathed.

Isaiah glared at him. “Yeah. It was. The vent you guys are looking for is right at the end of the tunnel.” He said, jabbing a thumb behind him. “Find the elevator yourselves. I’m outta here.”

“What? Come on, man,” Prince implored, reaching out to stop him. “At least point out the right shaft-“

The mobster shrugged him off. “No! You guys have dragged me too far into your shit,” he spat. “And Markus saw your faces, you know. He’s probably on his way to tell Miss Gearwise all about you, so get going,” he finished, waving them off. Isaiah turned away into a connecting corridor and left them alone.

Chapter IV – Interlude

The apertures of Larry’s optical sensors contracted in discomfort as the lights switched on. He heard Mary’s high heels clicking softly against the floor as she stepped into his view, a lab coat thrown over her viridian dress. The disgraced crime boss struggled in his restraints, but that hadn’t worked before, and it wasn’t working now. Mary tittered at his efforts as Larry sighed and went limp on the operating table.

“Good evening, Larry. Or morning, rather. I think it’s past midnight,” she laughed, her tone maddeningly cavalier in contrast to what she was about to do. A glower was Larry’s only response.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that.” Mary walked out of his field of vision and opened one of the cabinets in the operating room. Larry could only listen to her preparing the necessary apparatus, her tools clinking against the steel tray. “All I’ve done is try to help you, and all I get in return is insults and vitriol.”

A few wisps of steam seeped from the ventilation slits on Larry’s face. He’d heard Mary voice her false concern for him too many times. “Who do you think you’re fooling?” he growled.

Larry heard the flames roar indignantly in Mary’s firebox. The tools on her tray rattled as she set it down on the stand next to the surgical table forcefully. She wasn’t smiling any more as she walked to the head of the table. She placed her hands on either side of him and leaned in.

“Stop behaving as if you don’t understand me, Larry. You were deactivated by a pack of children and allowed the purge to end early. You are worthless to this organization as you are. You were weak and I fixed you, whether you and your overblown ego can admit it or not,” she hissed, her breath blisteringly hot against his metallic skin. It would have been painful back when he’d still had flesh to melt… but that was a long time ago.

Larry clenched his fists at her words. His claws grated against the palms of his hands. “Overblown ego? You’re the one who painted your casing,” he spat, sneering at the Mary’s conceit.

Mary smirked, her moodiness fading as abruptly as it had appeared. “Ha! Am I vain for taking care of myself? You look like you haven’t been polished in years,” she taunted. The bright lights glinted on her pearly white coating as she stood up straight and returned to her tray of implements. “But I think that’s enough small talk.”

She reached out and loosened the buttons on his shirt. Larry snapped his metal jaws at her hand, but she pulled away before he could catch her fingers in his teeth.

He heard Mary pick up one of her tools. A mechanical buzzing filled the operating theater. He strained against his fetters again. This was the moment he’d been dreading for so long.

Mary loomed over him, the ghost of a smile on her lime green lips. The surgical lamp formed a halo of harsh fluorescent light around her as she brought the metal cutter to his chest.

Chapter V – Judgement Hall

Prince let his arm fall limply to his side as he watched Isaiah disappear around the bend. Helios patted him on the shoulder once the mobster was out of earshot. “We’ll be fine without him. I told you I know where the elevator is. Let’s go,” he said, gently urging Prince to start down the other hallway.

Helios led them now, and he walked fast. There was no telling how long they had before Markus tipped the boss off to their whereabouts. They didn’t have any trouble finding the vent, but Helios didn’t have anything to open it with. “Anyone got a screwdriver handy? I, uh, left mine in my hoodie when we got changed,” he admitted.

Bradley searched his overcoat for his screwdriver, but he gave Helios an odd look as he did. “Agent Helios? Is that you?”

The hacker’s jaw tightened. “Just get the vent open, old man.”

Prince cocked an eyebrow. “You guys know each other?”

Helios looked at Bradley disdainfully as the Detective knelt down and unscrewed the panel. “This asshole was one of the guys who arrested me a few years back. I used to be a part of Anonymous.”

Bradley’s face grew sour at the hacker’s enmity, but he ignored him.

Oblivious to the tension, Hadrian’s eyes lit up. “Whoa! You were in Anonymous? That’s cool as fuck!”

“But you work for the government now,” Prince pointed out. “How did that happen?”

“They gave me a choice when they brought me in. Work for them or go to the slammer. I think it’s pretty obvious which one I chose.”

The last screw clinked to the ground. Bradley moved the vent cover aside and gestured wordlessly for Helios to enter first.

Stephanie faltered in front of the opening, her face blank. She’d been growing quieter and quieter as they ventured further into the base, retreating into herself, but Prince didn’t know what he could do except keep her close. He crouched down to her level and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Monica and I will go in front of you, OK? Just follow us. We’ll be…”

He stopped himself. He didn’t know when they were going to be home.

“We’ll be out of here soon. I promise.”

She nodded silently. The eldest siblings went first. Stephanie slowly clambered into the duct after them.

The passage was wide enough that they didn’t have to crawl, but they were almost bent double as they wormed through the cramped shaft. Prince almost thought he could discern distant screams, but maybe it was only the air rustling in his ears as it rushed through the tunnel around them.

He followed close behind Helios, whose nose was buried in his phone, examining the map as he walked. Prince could see the rooms they were passing through the narrow slots in the vent panels. Dorms. Armories. Warehouses. Computer labs. Workshops and laboratories. He paused as they passed an office.

Monica nearly bumped into him. “Prince? What’s the hold up?” she whispered. Helios halted and glanced back to look at him quizzically as well when he heard him stop walking.

Prince peered through the ventilation slits. “It’s an office. I see Markus.”

Helios and Monica crowded in next to Prince to take a look for themselves. Markus wasn’t alone. They couldn’t make out the conversation, but the Warden was speaking to a woman noticeably taller than him. Her hair, tied into a bun, was unnaturally reflective, and so was her pale opaline skin.

“It’s the boss,” Helios murmured.

Bradley piped up from the back of the lineup, careful to keep his voice low. “We don’t have time to dawdle here, then. We’ve got to get to the elevator before they figure out where we are.”

Prince lingered for a moment longer. Mary didn’t look too pleased with whatever the Warden was telling her. She glanced towards the vent. Her emerald LED eyes met with his for a instant. Prince’s blood froze in his veins.

Mary’s eyes flitted back to Markus before he could react, though, and there was no change in her hard visage. Maybe he was mistaken. She hadn’t seen him. He told himself so, at least.

“Dude? You okay?”

Prince was brought out of his thoughts by Helios’s voice. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. Uh, Bradley is right. Let’s hurry up,” he stammered, suddenly very eager to get moving again.

Helios didn’t delay. They weren’t far from their target now, and it wasn’t long before he spied their exit elevator from behind a vent.

“There!” he whispered, but he hesitated. “I don’t see anyone, though. Is this place always so empty?”

The hall was dark and devoid of mobsters. Nobody could answer Helios’s question, of course. Prince wished Isaiah was here to tell them whether it was shady or not. Either way, this simplified things. They didn’t have to figure out how to get out of the ventilation system without looking suspicious.

They couldn’t reach the screws from the inside of the vent, so Helios stuck his crowbar in between the wall and the panel and pried until the cover snapped open. Everyone squeezed out, but when they stood before the elevator, they saw that none of the buttons or indicators were lit. Prince pushed one. Nothing happened.

There was a shrill bout of audio feedback as the intercoms in the hall switched on. The corridor reverberated with a woman’s bitter, derisive laughter. “Don’t bother. I already disabled it. You won’t be going anywhere, boy. You and your friends have broken into my base and caused me a lot of trouble.”

Prince was too cowed to respond. Monica spoke instead.

“We didn’t break in! Your shitty door malfunctioned and trapped us inside. We don’t even want to be here. Let us leave,” Monica demanded.

“I don’t think so. After all, how many of my guards have you massacred?” Mary reminded them.

“Oh, please. You talk like these kids were the instigators,” Bradley rebuked.

“Detective Beans! I knew there was an informant in here. And now I don’t even need to hunt you down,” Mary gloated. “You came here looking for Larry, didn’t you? You can forget about that. I doubt you’ll be living long enough to see him.”

The blast door at the other end of the hallway opened up. The lights blinked on. The group realized that they weren’t as alone as they thought. They could see the silhouettes of mobsters through the windows lining the corridor, glaring at them through their uncanny purge masks.

“This should be fun,” quipped Mary. The intercom switched off with a thunk.

With no other choice, the group hesitantly made their way to the door. Heat radiated from the adjoining room, though it turned out that calling it a room was an understatement. The cavern was gigantesque. The walls on either side were thick metal. The jagged granite on the opposite side of the entrance was left unrefined, save for the wall of the control room and the mezzanine that Mary was standing upon, glowering down at them from high above. Molten lava churned below the metal platform ahead of them, linked to their door by nothing except a rickety rope bridge. Prince was reluctant to walk across. The thing didn’t look like it would hold their combined weight.

There were footsteps from their rear. The mafiosos were skulking towards them now, brandishing their weapons, compelling them forward.

They were boxed in, so Prince took a tentative step onto the bridge. The boards creaked as he walked onto the platform. The bridge gave way and fell into the lava after everyone had crossed—one of the mobsters had severed the ropes with his knife behind them. Prince looked up at Mary, wondering what her plan was. He couldn’t see much more than her glowing eyes in the darkness overhead.

“Ah, we meet at last… though it seems that some of your allies have deserted you,” Mary laughed. Her voice was shrill and tinny compared to Larry’s baritone, but it echoed through the cave all the same.

They glanced around at each other. She was right. Prince hadn’t been paying attention, but Helios and Uncle Pete had not followed them in.

“No matter. My subordinates will deal with them,” she continued. With that out of the way, Mary looked the gathering up and down as she leaned on her crowbar. “You’re aware there were firearms in the supply depots, right? I know you passed a few of those on your way here,” she told them, quirking an eyebrow.

Prince wasn’t too sad that they’d missed the guns—the rounds would probably ricochet right off Mary’s casing anyway—but Mary’s jeering was making him more annoyed than afraid. “Did you bring us in here for a fight or to talk shit at us?”

Mary narrowed her eyes at his provocation. She beckoned one of the operatives inside the control room. Markus came out and handed her violin to her. She placed it beneath her chin and drew her crowbar across the strings, producing a poignant melody, and Prince immediately heard burbling from the pipeline at the edge of the platform. There was a thin scraping noise as the valve’s handwheel turned on its own.

Everyone retreated towards the other end of the platform as lava spilled out of the pipe, but it streamed until they were backed up to the very edge. Any closer and the heat would start to sear them.

However, as they teetered on the edge, the valve screeched shut and the lava flow spluttered out. The group glanced around at each other, both relieved and confused.

There was a discordant twang Mary’s music faltered. Bewilderment crossed her sharp features. It appeared that she didn’t know what was happening, either. She started to play again after a moment, but the valve made a stubborn scraping noise, refusing to reopen.

Mary scowled deeply. She played a different tune this time. The lava started to drain, but their respite was short-lived as she thrust her violin back into Markus’s hands and jumped down from the mezzanine. There was a resounding bang as her high heels met steel, sending a tremor across the platform.

“Let’s dance.”

Chapter VI – Gearwise

Clang. Whirr. Prince had heard that once before, but now he was ready for it as Mary bolted at him, buzzsaws unsheathed. The blades whined in his ear as he rolled out of the way. He managed to keep all his blood inside him this time, at least for the moment.

Prince didn’t waste time in retaliating, lunging at Mary with his crowbar as she retracted her saws. She didn’t look as tough as Larry. He thought he might be able to take her down the old-fashioned way, but he was quickly disillusioned as his weapon bounced off of her casing harmlessly, barely even chipping her paint.

Mary responded in kind, and her blow sent him off the edge of the platform, but he managed to grab onto the rim, narrowly avoiding a fiery death. Winded, he wheezed and gasp for air as he gingerly dragged himself back to safety… well, relative safety. His ribs were aching like hell.

Hadrian started towards the automaton, but Bradley held an arm out to stop him. “Don’t be reckless. Your arm is injured. Stay out of this and keep your sister safe,” the Detective told him, nodding at Stephanie. The girl held onto her brother’s leg tightly.

Twado rushed at Mary instead, gnashing his teeth, evidently furious at her for striking Prince. She must not have wanted her gilded crowbar to touch the mangy thing, because her lip curled in disgust as she delivered a swift kick to his side. A few of the kids winced as they heard a crack. The dog yelped as he slid across the platform and lay still. Bradley hurried over to check on him.

The dog had diverted Mary’s attention. Maybe Monica had the chance to turn her wind-up key. She tried to edge around the automaton while she was occupied with Twado and reached up to grab it, but she’d barely touched her fingertip to the key before Mary turned abruptly and snatched Monica by the wrist in a crushing grip. She flung the girl at Prince as if she were as light as a ragdoll, and Prince had only just climbed back onto the platform when Monica collided with him, sending both of them off the edge again.

Prince caught the rim of the stage again. Monica could only grab hold of the cuff of Prince’s jeans. He tried to pull himself up, but it was impossible this time with the added weight.

Bradley stood up from where Twado was—the dog seemed fine now—and ran towards them as they dangled from the rim, but Mary sauntered into his path.

Mary opened her mouth, probably to expound another snide remark, but she was cut off before she got so much as a word out. Bradley wasted no time in striking out with his umbrella. Prince thought the guy was about to get knocked out cold, but he must have been even stronger than he looked, because Mary staggered marginally as she blocked the hit with her crowbar.

“That’s another charge of resisting arrest, Miss Gearwise,” said Bradley through gritted teeth. She just laughed wryly.

While Bradley engaged the automaton, Twado bounded to the edge of the platform and grabbed Prince’s sleeve with his teeth, slowly and steadily towing him and Monica up.

Bradley tried to bring his umbrella down onto Mary’s head, but she caught it in her hand. The Detective tried to yank it out of her grasp. She held on.

He recognized too late that he had no way to parry her crowbar now. Mary swung for Bradley’s skull. He reacted quick and tried to evade the blow, but it still clipped the side of his head, knocking his hat askew. He stumbled backwards and clutched his temple, dazed.

Mary grinned viciously and raised her weapon to finish him off, but the look was wiped off her face as someone wrenched her wind-up key. She hissed in displeasure and froze up for a moment as her gears seized, but her disorientation didn’t last long.

The automaton spun around with her smirk replaced with a look of acute loathing. She lashed out and raked Prince across the face with her sharp fingernails before he could respond, leaving several long, bloody gashes behind. A guttural snarl escaped from Mary’s lips as she did, as if it was gravely insulting that the boy would even try to lay his filthy fingers on her key.

She didn’t have time to assault Prince any further, though. Bradley had already come to his senses. He adjusted his hat. Mary glanced over her shoulder as she heard the Detective’s footsteps on the steel stage. She saw movement from the corner of her mechanical eye. Monica and Twado were flanking her from both sides. Even the injured Hadrian had grown tired of being sidelined and was now advancing towards Mary as well.

The automaton whirled around and feinted at Bradley, just to keep him away. She must have realized that at least one of them would get their hands on her wind-up key if she tried to fight them all at once. The mechanisms in Mary’s legs clicked as they engaged. She leapt onto one of the tall stone pillars surrounding the platform, perching on it gracefully.

The group stared up at her. Prince spread his arms in a challenge. “Get the fuck back down here, you bitch!” he roared, his face still bleeding. Mary said nothing. She simply smirked and licked a few drops of blood off her manicured nails.

Monica pulled some gauze out of her first aid kit. Prince irritably tried to shrug her off—“I’m fine”—but she managed to press it onto his face and stem the flow of blood.

Bradley pointed at Mary with his umbrella. “Mary Gearwise, I have reason to believe that you were involved in the disappearance of Larry Clockturn. I demand you reveal his whereabouts at once!”

Mary threw her head back and cackled. “You want to know what happened to Larry? Fine. I’ll show you.” She looked over at the control room and nodded at Markus. He pulled a lever on one of the panels.

There was a harsh grinding sound as the wall to their left slowly parted. They hadn’t noticed it when they came in here, but it was actually an enormous sliding gate.

Everyone backed away as it opened. It might have been some sort of depot, though it was hard to tell though the darkness. The light from a pair of LED eyes pierced through the shadows.

Big ones.

Raucous metallic scraping filled the air as the goliath activated and hauled itself from the ground, exposed gears and levers ticking loudly. Its rugged plating caught the orange glow of the lava beneath.

“What the Hell is that?” cried Prince as the clockwork behemoth took a step forward, making the entire cavern quake.

“It’s the new and improved Larry Clockturn, of course,” Mary declared. Markus emerged from the control room and tossed her violin to her. She started to play again. At the sound of her music, the aperture of the machine’s eye dilated and blazed brightly. Its gaze zeroed in on Prince.

Bradley understood what was happening first. “Prince! Get out of the way!” he hollered.

Crimson light flooded the room as Larry discharged his laser. Prince dived out of the way just in time, but he could still feel the scorching heat against his back as the beam passed him by.

It melted through the steel flooring like butter. The scaffolds holding it up groaned as they started to bend. Prince scrambled to his feet and stared up at Larry as his laser fizzled out. The automaton’s optical receptors contracted to the size of pinpricks and darted around frantically. He seemed almost afraid, but the look vanished almost as soon as it had shown up.

Prince didn’t have time to think about what that meant. The two halves of the stage were dipping away from each other.

The group was separated. Twado leapt across the gap before it became too wide and grabbed the back of Stephanie’s shirt in his mouth, who was slipping down the incline, and lugged her over to Prince and Hadrian. The eldest brother pulled Stephanie into his arms as their half of the platform swayed dangerously above the lava.

Bradley and Monica were trapped on the other side. They looked across at them helplessly. The columns holding them up had thankfully stopped buckling, but there was nowhere to run.

Mary grinned in morbid anticipation as Larry prepared to bisect the platform a second time. His eye dilated again. However, the LED flickered as his laser failed to charge up all the way. Bradley retreated as the beam struck the ground in front of him, but it wasn’t hot enough to melt through the metal.

Mary’s smile faded slightly. “My apologies… I thought I had already disabled his free will. He appears to be resisting my commands. How cute,” she crooned as she drew her crowbar over the strings of her instrument once more.

Larry’s components creaked and juddered as he tried to move, but his gears had locked up. His eye flashed on and off, refusing to even begin charging this time.

Now Mary was scowling. She glared into the control room. Markus shrugged and shook his head at her. She turned towards Larry again just in time to see a masked mafioso clamber onto his shoulder. Mary’s eyes widened in outrage as he thrust his crowbar through a gap in the giant automaton’s casing and triggered his emergency shutdown mechanism.

Chapter VII – AWOL

“Helios.”

Helios frowned. He looked around, but there was no one else in the hallway with him and his troupe. Just the mobsters staring at them through the windows.

“Helios!” the voice hissed again. Oh. It was coming from behind him. Helios slowed his pace and glanced back discreetly, lagging behind the rest of the group. Isaiah was peeking out of the vent they’d come in here from. He beckoned the hacker over.

Helios peered around again. The mobsters seemed to be fixated on the others. He slipped away and reentered the vent before anyone noticed.

“Isaiah? I thought you were done with us,” Helios whispered.

“I changed my mind. We have to move,” Isaiah replied. Helios trailed him cautiously.

“Why? Where are we going?”

“Mary called almost everyone in the base to the primary control room. Her lab is pretty much unguarded, so I decided to snoop around a little bit. I found Larry. Deactivated. Chassis ripped wide open,” Isaiah recounted, knitting his brow as he recalled the scene. “I found the blueprints for his new body.”

“New body? What are you saying?”

“I’m getting to that part! Mary cut his heart out. She made him a new body that she could control. The thing is giant. She’s using his heart as the energy source, and the heart is him, so his original body isn’t gonna wake up without it. She’s going to use the new one on your pals. They have no chance.”

“And we’re just letting them walk into the trap?”

“I need them to stall her, and she was going to lock the base down and have her lackeys kill them anyway if they didn’t show up. I have a plan. Larry’s new body has computerized parts, not just clockwork ones. It helps her control him, but it also means he can be hacked. I’m taking you to the lab. There’s a console there that she used to test him out. It’s got the blueprints in it and everything. I think you can use it to access his network, but you have to deactivate the lava pipeline system first… we don’t want your buddies getting their legs burnt to a crisp before they even see the big guy. I need you to get him to stay still long enough for me to reach him and trip his e-stop. Got it?”

“Yeah, I think I can do that.”

“Good.” Isaiah stopped in front of the spot where a ventilation panel used to be, but he must have broken it open already while he’d been sneaking around. He climbed out and showed Helios the console. “This is the place. Try to do this quietly. There are still a couple guards outside the door,” he whispered to Helios. The mobster thrust a two-way radio into his hands. “Use that to tell me when Larry is immobilized.”

Helios nodded, but Isaiah was already reentering the vent, leaving him on his own. The hacker cracked his knuckles and got to work.

Chapter VIII – System Reboot

Prince watched as Larry shut down and toppled backwards. It reminded the boy of when he’d beaten the automaton in the sewers, but the ensuing impact was much, much louder this time when he hit the ground.

Mary threw her violin at Markus. “Deal with that traitor!” she thundered at him. The Warden reentered the control room and sent some of the operators away. They ran through the door, heading for Larry’s depot. The masked mobster was standing on Larry’s chest now, trying to pry one of the plates open. It had to be Isaiah.

“What are you doing, man? Mind getting us off of this platform?” Prince called out.

Isaiah glanced up at him and held up a finger. Wait.

Prince turned around as a mechanical hum filled the cave. He’d expected Mary to jump down and confront the group, but she was still glowering down at them from the stone pillar. The noise had to be coming from her.

The temperature in the formerly stifling cavern was dropping fast. Prince looked up as a raindrop hit his face. Were those clouds?

“She’s got a weather machine built into her!” Bradley realized as lightning struck the ground right in front of him. An indoor tempest was brewing.

Isaiah got Larry’s chassis open and heaved the metal plate away until the gap was large enough for him to fit inside. His gaze scanned the internal hardware until he spotted the automaton’s clockwork heart. It was strangely amusing how such a comparatively small gadget had been powering a giant robot. He lowered himself through the gears and circuitry until it was within reach and gingerly disconnected the tubes and cables holding it in place. The ticking of the mechanism’s gears slowed down as he removed it. An iridescent mystery liquid sloshed around inside the heart’s windowed ventricles as Isaiah climbed back out of the chassis.

The lava sizzled as rain pattered against it. Prince could feel the electricity in the air before lightning hit the spot where he’d been standing moments before. “Dude! What’s the situation?” he yelled at Isaiah.

Isaiah was too absorbed in his task to respond. He’d already dragged Larry’s real body into the depot before he’d gone to fetch Helios, but he didn’t have a lot of time. He was screwed if the other mafiosos made it here before he had Larry operational. Isaiah sprinted to the corner where he’d left the automaton with the heart in his hands and stooped down to set it back in Larry’s chest cavity. It clicked into place.

The mobster stuck his hand under his suit and felt around for the brazing torch and rod he’d brought with him. He fumbled with the hose for a second before he inserted it into the fuel cylinders on the ground and lit the torch, carefully soldering Larry’s tubes and pipes back onto his heart.

A gale was beginning to pick up. Bradley rolled out of the way as a fork of lightning targeted him again. The wind buffeted him, but perhaps that was a good thing.

The Detective opened his umbrella. The motor inside it began to rumble. He held it up and let a gust carry him towards Mary. She took a swipe at him with her crowbar as he neared, but he veered out of the way and landed behind her. He grabbed her key and twisted it counterclockwise a second time before Mary could do anything about it.

Mary winced as she turned and swung her crowbar wide, striking Bradley in the side. He grunted in discomfort and tumbled from the pillar as the vent cover above Mary popped off and smacked against her head. Pete jumped through and landed on her, casting her down from the pillar as well before he reentered the ventilation shaft and vanished again.

Bradley drifted to the floor with his umbrella and gently touched his feet to the ground next to Monica. Mary hit the ground on the other end of the platform with a crash. She groaned in discomfort as she heaved herself to her feet, but her grousing quickly became a snarl as she stalked towards the Detective.

Pete soon emerged from a vent in the depot. He hastily scrawled something across his whiteboard as he rushed to Isaiah: HURRY THEY ARE ALMOST HERE

Larry’s golden eyes blinked on as Isaiah made the last connection. He sat up immediately and wrapped his huge hand around the mobster’s throat. Isaiah dropped his brazing torch to pry the automaton’s fingers away.

“Get your hands off of me, you asshole! I’m trying to help you!” Isaiah snapped.

Larry’s eyes widened slightly, as if he was surprised to hear Isaiah’s voice coming from behind that mask. The automaton glanced down at his chassis, still wide open. He reluctantly released Isaiah and lay down again. “Get on with it, then,” he spat, still glaring.

Isaiah picked up the sheet of metal that Mary had cleaved away from Larry’s casing and placed it over his chest. He picked up the torch again and slowly ran it along the seams. The automaton tensed up at the searing heat, but he held still.

Isaiah had barely finished when Larry shoved the mobster away and got to his feet. He’d secured the plate just in time, too, because the mafiosos that Markus had sent came charging through the depot doors as Larry buttoned up his shirt and picked up his crowbar.

The mafiosos skidded to a standstill when they saw the reactivated Larry standing before them, tall and terrible. He swung his crowbar into the closest one’s abdomen with quite a bit more strength than necessary, burying the curved end in his innards. There was a nauseating squelch and a strangled yelp from the mobster. A section of his viscera came out with Larry’s crowbar as the automaton pulled it free. The others turned tail and ran back the way they’d came as their comrade collapsed into a convulsing heap, too afraid to even try to fight him.

Isaiah made a disgusted noise. “Ugh. That was overkill,” he mumbled as he kicked the whimpering mafioso into the lava. Larry paid him no mind. He turned to the platform. Mary wasn’t the only one who could leap high. He cleared the gap easily and landed right behind her.

The platform shook as his shoes met the steel platform. The scaffolds finally buckled, sending his end of the stage plunging. He was prepared for that. Mary wasn’t. She lost her balance as the platform sank slowly into the molten rock.

Larry grabbed his tormentor with both hands and hurled her into the lava.

Chapter IX – Exit Path

The mafiosos could only watch as Mary disappeared into the molten rock. Markus stared in disbelief until there was a stir in the control room. The mobsters began quarrelling… then they drew weapons on each other. A brawl broke out.

They were fighting amongst themselves. Prince realized as a splatter of blood hit the windowpane that Larry’s old goons must have wanted him back in charge.

Bradley unfurled his umbrella again before the gale storm died down completely. He took Monica’s hand. They both glided into the depot.

The Detective grabbed hold of the metal plate that Isaiah had removed from the behemoth earlier. “Help me move this thing,” he called out to the others.

They lugged the plate towards the edge of the pit and pushed it outwards until it met Prince’s half of the platform. It wobbled precariously, but they held it down as Prince crossed the improvised bridge with Stephanie in his arms. Hadrian and Twado followed from behind. Larry jumped back into the depot as well, landing disconcertingly close to the group. The kids shrank away as Bradley stepped in front of them protectively and pointed at the automaton. Larry raised an artificial eyebrow.

“Larry Clockturn, you are under arrest for-”

Pete bonked the Detective on the head with his whiteboard.

“Ow. What? He’s wanted for hundreds of felonies.”

The elevator is still disabled. We need his help finding our way out, Pete wrote.

“Yeah, I know a different exit,” Larry muttered, but he nonetheless looked mildly annoyed when the group started following him.

They trailed behind the crime boss—well, ex-crime boss—hesitantly. “We still need to get Helios,” Isaiah mentioned. Before they reached the door, however, they heard the sound of metal scraping against metal. Larry turned back towards the platform.

Mary was clawing her way back up, her pearlescent façade burnt away by the lava, revealing her brassy gold casing. Patches of paint still clung to her, scorched black. She glanced back at Larry warily as she climbed high enough to jump back onto the pillar, then onto the mezzanine. The mobsters had already fled the control room, but she ran inside and disappeared from sight. Fury flared in Larry’s golden eyes as he barreled through the depot doors to pursue her.

Everyone ran out the doorway after him. They were back in the corridor with the disabled elevator, but Larry ran in a different direction.

“Where are you going?” Prince yelled. The automaton didn’t reply.

“There’s an old mineshaft leading to the surface in this direction,” Isaiah answered instead. “It’s always been sealed, but Mary must’ve opened it to escape. There’s no other way.”

They came upon the control room where Isaiah had left Helios, but Larry didn’t wait up as they pushed the doors open to find him.

“Helios, we have to…”

Isaiah trailed off. The room was empty.

“Helios?” the mobster called out. There was no reply. He tried contacting him with his radio, but the hacker didn’t respond to that either.

“We have to move before we lose Larry. Maybe Helios escaped already. Come on,” Bradley said as he ran back outside.

They caught up with Larry as he arrived at the gate to the mine. The blast doors were already open. Mary was on the other side of the decaying tunnel, hovering over Helios, watching him as he knelt in front of the keypad next to the elevator and desperately tried to crack the activation code. She seized the hacker in a chokehold and turned towards the group as she heard Larry’s heavy footsteps approaching.

“Come any closer and he dies!” Mary screeched at them. Larry didn’t seem too worried about that, but Bradley grabbed his arm to stop him from advancing.

“Let him go, Miss Gearwise. We just want to leave this place,” Bradley tried to reason.

Mary laughed, her eyes wide and manic. “Leave? You’re the ones who intruded upon my base in the first place. Slaughtered dozens of my agents. Do you know how much time I spent working on Larry? You brats have ruined everything,” she hissed as she tightened her grip around Helios’s throat. He scrabbled uselessly as her arm, eyes bulging as Mary crushed his windpipe.

Prince gritted his teeth. Mary’s words sent his thoughts racing. The gang of mobsters they’d encountered in the upper levels, even though there was no surveillance there. The door that had malfunctioned and trapped them. The lightning storm outside that had driven them here in the first place, even though the weather forecast had predicted clear skies. Mary’s weather machine…

“No. You lured us in here,” Prince murmured.

Mary narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking about?” she snapped.

“That’s why you knew we were here when the cameras were offline. You caused that storm outside. You took that tree down with your lightning. You had that barricade set up on the trail, so we’d come here for shelter,” Prince spoke louder. “You made the door short circuit with your lightning instead of shutting it remotely so we wouldn’t get suspicious…  and rigged those pipes to blow and cut us off in the upper levels, so we’d walk right into those mobsters. You knew we were here the whole time. You set us up!” he finished, jabbing an accusing finger at Mary.

Mary’s lips slowly curved into a smirk as Prince spoke. “Clever boy.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“I needed someone to test my creation on, and you are the ones who deactivated Larry. I couldn’t leave you alive,” Mary stated. Helios wheezed for breath as she loosened her grip ever so slightly.

Bradley shook his head. “Rubbish. I know for a fact you never cared for Larry. It was the Headmaster who ordered their deaths, wasn’t it?”

Mary’s eyelid twitched at the mention of her superior. She ignored the Detective. “Larry, tell me the elevator’s code and I’ll let Helios go,” she said as she nodded at the dilapidated cage elevator and tightened her stranglehold on the young man.

Larry sneered and tried to press forward. Bradley held him back. The automaton’s gears clanked in frustration as he lifted his crowbar to beat the Detective away, but Isaiah elbowed his way to the forefront of the group before a fight could break out. “How about you think about someone other than your fucking self for once?” the mobster whispered harshly as he shook Larry’s shoulder. The automaton griped inaudibly and hardly budged as Isaiah jostled him, but he got the point.

“0625,” he begrudgingly told Mary.

Helios gasped for air as Mary finally removed one arm from his neck and punched the code into the keypad. The rusty elevator doors squealed as they parted. He tried to break away from her grasp, but he yelped as she grabbed the collar of his jacket and yanked him into the elevator after her. “Oh, no, you’re coming with me,” Mary muttered venomously.

“Hey! You said you’d let him go!” Prince yelled angrily from the other side of the tunnel.

Mary just flashed a grin at him and waved at him as the doors shut. The elevator creaked and rumbled up the mineshaft.

She was gone.

Epilogue

There was nothing to do except wait in morose silence for the elevator to return underground. Prince kept starting at the entrance to the mine, worried that some of Mary’s loyalists might show up, but none did.

The mood relaxed a little bit as Twado stood on his hindquarters and pawed Larry’s legs, whining for attention. He’d been too preoccupied to pay attention earlier, but now the automaton reached down and ruffled the fur on the dog’s head. “Glad to see you too, Twado.”

“He knows you?” Prince asked, surprised.

“He was my guard dog when I ran this place. But he looks like Mary had him thrown outside,” he muttered, shaking his head at Twado’s grubby coat.

The elevator doors squeaked open as the carriage arrived. Prince picked up Helios’s sunglasses from the floor. One of the lenses was cracked. He slipped them in his pocket as the elevator closed and started to carry everyone to the surface. Maybe he’d get to return them eventually if the hacker was still alive.

Isaiah went to sit on an old crate, but Larry pushed him aside. “Is that coal? Finally,” said the automaton as he ripped the lid off and shoved a handful of the stuff into his jaws. The kids watched with profound bewilderment.

“What? You didn’t think I was actually spring powered, did you?” he chuckled. The wind-up key on his back rotated ever so slightly. “This is just a kill switch. I have a steam engine.”

I thought your heart was your energy supply? wrote Pete.

There was a whoosh as the fuel caught aflame in Larry’s firebox. “It’s for emergencies. When I run out of real fuel.”

“It seemed like it was working fine before,” Prince remarked.

“You people ask too many damn questions.”

“No kidding,” Isaiah muttered.

Bradley answered instead. “The heart works too well. It will grind his gears to dust if he relies on it forever.” Larry scowled at him, but the Detective didn’t seem phased. “What are you going to do now?”

Larry was caught off guard by the question. “What do you mean?”

“I thought you’d retake control of the base. Why didn’t you?” Bradley added.

The automaton laughed bitterly. “Give me a break. Do you have any idea what they’ve been doing to me down here? They can fuck themselves.”

“You’re just now realizing that? You were just fine with their shit before you were the one getting tortured,” Isaiah scoffed, but his temper dissolved into a sulk as soon as Larry shot him a look.

“OK, time for you guys to tell us what your problem is. You said you joined the mafia during the last purge,” Prince cut in, pointing a finger at Isaiah, “but you keep acting like you’ve been here a lot longer than that. What’s the deal?”

Neither Larry nor Isaiah answered, but Bradley looked back and forth between the two of them a few times. “Isaiah is your son?” he surmised.

Isaiah grimaced as the Detective said it. Larry punched the wall next to Bradley’s head, rocking the entire carriage and leaving a dent in the metal. Stephanie clung to Prince. Twado barked and scurried around as the lonely light bulb flickered and swayed on its wire above them. Bradley was looking pissed, but he didn’t retaliate—this was neither the time nor place for a fight, and Isaiah surely felt the same, because he walked between them and stared Larry down until he backed off.

“Guess that was a yes,” said Hadrian. Monica thumped him on the side of the head.

The mood was somehow even more sullen now. Larry had withdrawn to the corner of the elevator. He looked lost in his thoughts, but they couldn’t stay silent forever.

“What do we do?” Prince asked.

“I would call in a raid on this base right now, but we’d have to find some cell signal for that,” Bradley said.

“It’s not a good time,” Larry argued. “The next purge is in eight days.”

Hadrian groaned. “The next purge? You guys do that every year?”

“Shut it. I’m not finished. We need to get somewhere safe. You’re all in even more danger than last time if the Headmaster put a hit on you.”

That name again. “Who the hell is the Headmaster?” Prince questioned.

“He’s the one pulling the strings in all this. It was him who turned Larry and Mary into these,” Bradley responded, motioning to the automaton. “And those two aren’t the only ones who have been subjected to the procedure. I don’t suppose you were privy to his ultimate plans, were you?” he asked Larry.

 Larry scowled at the question, but there was a hint of melancholy on his metallic features. “No, I wasn’t. But that’s not important right now. I know where a safehouse is,” he said as the elevator finally reached the surface. Everyone stepped out as the sun peeked over the horizon. The storm had died out into a light sprinkling of rain.

A couple of miscreants crouched in the dense trees and vegetation, concealed from view. One of them observed the new arrivals through his binoculars as they exited the carriage.

“Well, what do ya know?” said one of them.

“What? Luke, what do you see?”

“Mr. Clockturn made it out… but he looks to be defecting. What a shame, what a shame,” replied Luke, though he didn’t sound very saddened with that.

Brooke laughed. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. Are we gonna take him down or what?”

“Don’t be rash, Brooke. He’s not alone. The meddlers are with him, and there’s gonna be a better opportunity soon. The next purge is coming right up.” the boy said as he stood up. Brooke snatched his binoculars and took a look at the group for herself.

“Come on. Those shrimps have nothing! We can take them,” she protested.

Luke shook his head and started walking away. “No. Last thing we need is to blow our first major assignment.”

Brooke grumbled in discontent, but she acquiesced and followed her brother deeper into the woods.

“Fine. Let them think they’re safe… for now.”

#roblox break in #break in roblox #roblox #break in 2 #scary larry #scary mary #tw implied SA

[impishtubist]

Please tell me everything that comes to your mind about Prongsfoot Wedding 💞 I want to continue working on my drawings and I need inspiration. And I just love thinking about them taking this step. So, how would a prongsfoot wedding be like, what would they wear? Who is most likely to get wet feed right before? Is harry still a Baby or is he older? And very important would they spend their stag do together? I take everything you have 🤲🏻

Oh, I would LOVE to give you inspiration for a Prongsfoot wedding! Let's see:

-I don't think either of them would get cold feet! I think they both want to get married right now. They've been chomping at the bit to get married since they were, like, fifteen. I think they only have a wedding because Euphemia insists, otherwise they would have been at the registry office the day they turned seventeen.

-That being said, I think that Sirius probably has a lot of anxiety about marriage and children, given his upbringing! But he does want to spend the rest of his life with James, and he wants the rest of his life to start immediately.

-But now how does Harry fit into the picture? I can see a couple of different universes for a Prongsfoot wedding actually. The first is that they get married as soon as they can and have Harry via surrogate or something. In another, more angsty universe, I can see James and Lily settling down first, then divorcing, and then James and Sirius finally admitting feelings when Harry is six or so. Or maybe they don't get their act together until Harry is a teenager! Lots of possibilities here. But Harry is definitely involved in the wedding in some way, no matter how old he is.

-I think they would absolutely do a stag do together, which makes it easy on Remus honestly. Then he doesn't have to put two different ones together. They spend most of the stag do in a corner snogging anyway.

-Also I think they would fight over Remus as best man, and then solve that problem by making Remus the officiant instead. Although I love @soopsiedaisies 's Prongsfoot universe where Remus is best man and gives a speech at the reception that makes Walburga want to commit murder lmao.

-None of these headcanons are helpful for art, lmao. I like them both in Muggle tuxes for the wedding! Mostly because I think tuxes are very sexy and wizarding robes are not.

(I don't know if any of this is helpful! I just love talking about Prongsfoot so much.)

#prongsfoot #imp speaks #follower milestone celebration

[bl00d-1n-wat3r]

Everything New I have found on Welcome Home! (So far)

EDIT: THIS HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED IN AWHILE. SO PLEASE TAKE THIS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT

Hello! So just a few hours ago Welcome Homes website was brought back up, and I have found a lot so far lol, I mostly found this stuff by tabbing through each page or going on the old URL's that we have found on the old page. Anyways this is everything that I have found so far

CREDITS TO party coffin HERE ON TUMBLR FOR WELCOME HOME

AND PLEASE LMK IF YOU FIND ANY NEW LINKS AND I WILL ADD THEM ^^

(OFC SPOILERS FOR THE WELCOME HOME ARG)

Wally Secret Audios:

These are audios of Wally directly speaking to us (With the exception of Neighbor which is morse code) and the titles to the links read out: "I will help you understand Neighbor, I will find a way soon" (This is the way I interpreted it I could be wrong tho)

On the link Neighbor like I said is morse code but u/gxmmyfuit (Should be the second comment down) on Reddit has said they deciphered it! It says "…. . .-.. .--. / -- ." Which they said translates to: "Help Me"

Next to the links I will describe where to find each audio!

I: You can find it as soon as you open the main page for welcome home, it is a drawing of home right next to Wally on the welcome page, click on the picture and it will bring you to the audio

Will: You can find Will in the Neighborhood section of Welcome Home, click on Home then on Wally's profile a drawing of a flower will appear on his easel, click on that and it will bring you to the audio

Help: At the bottom of Welcome Home!/What's Welcome home? there is a picture of Eddie Dear on his left is a drawing of a yellow flower, click on that and it will bring you to the audio

You: You can find you in the Neighborhood section, in the paragraph at the top of the page click the word you, that leads to the old secret page You, but now there should be a drawing of a heart, click on that and it will bring you to the audio (Take a shot for every time I have said you lmao)

understand: At the bottom of Exhibition of Welcome Home to the left of the drawing of Poppy is a drawing of Home, click on that and it will bring you to the audio

Neighbor: You can find Neighbor in the Neighborhood section of Welcome Home, click right below Home and it will bring you to the old secret page So Below, but now there is a spiral drawing at the bottom, click on that and it will bring you to the audio

I - 2: On the Stickers section of Welcome Home there will be a star drawing underneath the first paragraph of text, click on that and it will bring you to the audio

will - 2: At the bottom of Welcome Home!/Whats Welcome home? there is a picture of Eddie Dear and on his right is a drawing of a red and blue flower, click on them and it will bring you to the audio

find: In the Guest Book next to Wally and Barnaby there should be a drawing of a speech bubble that says Hello in it, click on that and it will bring you to the audio

a: In the About Us/FAQ page of Welcome home 3 drawings of hearts will pop up behind the first few paragraphs on the page, click on them and it will take you to the audio

way: On the Open/ywxoev page a drawing of a phone will appear next to the eyes/home, click on it and it will bring you to the audio

soon: On the 404 page (whenever you type in a wrong address into the search bar), drawings of stars will appear behind the text, click on them and it will bring you to the audio

Answer:

Now these are all titled answer and each video has 2 of the characters interacting with each other, and at the end one one of them addresses Wally and it distorts and ends.

Next to the links I will describe where to find each video!

Answer 1-14-ph (Poppy and Howdy): In the section Media of Welcome home, by the part with the Live Interview Segment a little bug/ critter will pop up, click on it and it will take you to the video

Answer 2-14-sp (Sally and Poppy): In the section Exhibition at the top a bug will run to the right side of the screen, being cut off by the border, click on the bump that is left and it will bring you to the video

Answer 3-14-hs (Howdy and Sally): On the fourth page of the Guestbook, at the top of the page a bug will appear, click on that and it will bring you to the video

Answer 4-14-bf (Barnaby and Frank): In the section Welcome Home!/Whats Welcome home?, next to the picture slideshow a bug will appear, click on it and it will bring you to the video

Answer 5-14-be (Barnaby and Eddie): On the Transcripts page, (You can get to it by clicking on the text below any audio you have to listen to), scroll down a bit and next to Eddie's catchphrase a bug will appear, click on it and it will bring you to the video

Answer 6-14-jf (Julie and Frank): In the section Merchandise a bug will appear near the currently unknown records, click on it and it will bring you to the video

Answer 7-14-ej (Eddie and Julie): On the first page of the Guestbook, on the letter/ note from Zip (You can tab through if you cant find it) there is a bug, click on it and it will bring you to the video

Answer 8-14-ef (Eddie and Frank): In the section Neighborhood in Eddie's profile a bug will crawl out from under the post office flag, click on it and it will bring you to the video

Answer 9-14-fp (Frank and Poppy): In the section Neighborhood a bug will appear next to the About Us button, click on it and it will bring you to the video

Answer 10-14-js (Julie and Sally): In the section About Us at the bottom of the page, right above the flowers a bug will appear, click on it and it will bring you to the video

Answer 11-14-jb (Julie and Barnaby): At the top of the Stickers a bug will appear, click on it and it will bring you to the video

Answer 12-14-hb (Howdy and Barnaby): At the top of the News section a bug is there, click on it and it will bring you to the video

Answer 13-14-he (Howdy and Eddie): At the top of the Guestbook section a bug will appear, click on that and it will take you to the video

Answer 14-14-bh (Barnaby and Home): The Try Again Script/woxyve has a bug crawling around the eyes, click on it and it will take you to the video

Staff Only:

(This section is kinda long lol)

So I found Staff Only by the user u/throwmeaway2207 on reddit and currently dont know how to get to that part of the site on my own (Im working on it lol)

Edit: Ok I found it thanks to u/Far_Yam_6369 on reddit. On the Exhibition page on the normal website there is a line that says "I still have so many questions to answer here in the world of Welcome Home" you have to click the word answer then you are brought to a page with a picture of a paper with writing on it, if you click that it will take you to a picture of a safe then to get to the Password Please website all you have to do is click on the safe. Thanks again for the help!

But to log into Staff Only you have to put in a passcode and the passcode is the answers to The Welcome Home Worksheet (Picture 18 I think).

Which is

Who is the funniest neighbor? B arnaby

Who shines brighter than any star? S ally

Who is the biggest chicken? P oppy

Which neighbor speaks to the flowers? J ulie

Who is your best friend? W ally

So the password is (case sensitive) BSPJW

Once you type in the password it leads to a very messed up version of the Playfellow Exhibition portion of the website

There is some text on the page that reads:

I had a dream when I began working on the Playfellow Exhibition. Wally Darling was sitting at the foot of my bed with a rotary phone in front of him, ringing away. It looked just like the little toy phone we were restoring for the exhibit. It kept ringing. Wally stared at me like he was waiting for me to pick up the phone. Just staring, unblinking. The phone ringing and ringing. I couldn't move. I couldn't figure out how to move and pick up the phone. He kept waiting. I couldn't pick up the phone. I keep getting phone calls, now. Or at least, I assume that's what's happening. I keep hearing it ringing. All day, sometimes. I check my phone and there's no new messages. I thought maybe some of the site staff were pranking me, but I tore up the workspace and couldn't find another phone that might be ringing. All that was there were the toys for the exhibit, and obviously those couldn't be ringing. But I kept hearing it anyway. The phone ringing and ringing. The more I work, the more questions I have. Why didn't any of the site staff I worked with remember this show? Even the ones who grew up in the 70s? Why can't I find any files on the Playfellow Workshop? Why isn't there a single TV guide ad saying what network or time the show was on? I keep digging and digging. I've poured over every recovery the WHRP has given me access to, every inch of their website, and the things I find make less and less sense. If I didn't know better I'd say everyone was coming together to pull an elaborate prank on me.​ I can still hear the phone ringing now.I don't know how to answer the phone.I need to answer the phone

There is some more text that is blacked out that reads:

Ring-ring. Hello? Can you hear me? Call back soon, please. Ring-ring. Ring. Hello? Can you hear me? Call back soon, please. Ring-ring. Hello? Can you hear me? Call back soon, please. Ring-ring. Ring. Hello? Can you hear me? Call back soon, please. Ring-ring. Hello? Can you hear me? Call back soon, please. Ring-ring. Ring. Hello? Can you hear me? Call back soon, please. Ring-ring. Hello? Can you hear me? Call back soon, please. Ring-ring. Ring. Hello? Can you hear me? Call back soon, please. Ring-ring. Hello? Can you hear me? Call back soon, please. Ring-ring. Ring. Hello? Can you hear me? Call back soon, please. Ring-ring. Hello? Can you hear me? Call back soon, please. Ring-ring. Ring. Hello? Can you hear me? Call back soon, please. Ring. Ring ring. Ring. Won't you please pick up?

On the page there are pictures as well and some of the pictures have transcripts which will be listed below

Picture 5:

Thurs, April 13, 2023 at 7:53 PM To: < [text omitted] @whrp.net > From: < [email protected] > Subj: Re: Safe code?? Hi [text omitted] ! Thanks for getting the activity prize shipped out so promptly! I wasn’t expecting them to arrive in a lockbox (should I be worried about the value of these prizes for insurance?) - there actually wasn’t a code I could find in the packaging at all, could you send that so we can open the box and give away the prizes to visitors? Thanks again, give me a call at [text omitted] if that’s easier! ~ [text omitted] , Head Curator Questions Answered! Curatorial Services Exhibition Design, Curation. Archival & Restoration__________________Thurs, April 13, 2023 at 7:53 PM To: < [email protected] > From: < [text omitted] @whrp.net > Subj: Re: Safe code?? Attachment: WHactivityworksheet.jpgBlacklight text underneath email attachment reads: ~ WALLY DARLING Writing on sticky note reads: ATTN STAFF: Still waiting on safe code. If guests complete worksheet offer to send prize later once we get this open!

Picture 6:

Writing on sticky note atop vinyl glove box reads: Put on gloves before handling ANY art Call me if we run out!!!

Picture 7:

Text on sticky note is partially cut off; visible text reads: [...] -is art was NOT [...] -the shipment [...] -EASE stop using [...] -work printer [...] -prank me. >:( “ Blacklight text underneath artwork of Frank reads: “Who are you?” (with a drawing of an eye and a spiral beneath it).

Picture 9:

4) What’s your favorite or least favorite part of the research/restoration work? Our favorite part? Uncovering more information, of course! As well as restoring pieces with beautiful results! Nothing feels better quite like a job well done! Our least favorite part, however? Nothing I can think of! Blacklight text in space between paragraphs reads: Everything is so disgusting to touch. Sometimes the mail doesn’t come for weeks. I want to rip into everything I have. My head feels so muddled too. Ever since I opened that envelope.Visible area of e-mail reads:“Fun facts” you’d like visitors to know about your work and Welcome Home? (Maybe a [...] -ularly cool or funny way you found one of these pieces, or an unexpected [...] ?) [...] -is top secret! We feel as though we were the [...] -ding the good word of Welcome [...] -mail to us has quite the [...] -longings in such a [...] -ed the heck out of their [...] -bout the merchandise? [...] have been a mountain of it! [...] -ore fun, informative, and

Picture 10:

Writing on sticky note underneath blacklight reads: ATTN: ALL STAFF Check art w/blacklight before hanging / packing / cleaning / etc. Need photos for condition reports and WHRP Team !!!

Picture 11:

Mon, April 3, 2023 at 1:53 PM To: < [email protected] > From: < [text omitted] @whrp.net > Subj: Re: Confirming arrival! Plus…? Hello. We are overjoyed you have received all of the work we have so far uncovered! Please take care of it while it is in your possession, but under no circumstances should it be touched with your bare hands. Please wear gloves. If a substance begins to grow on anything delivered, please place it back in the box it was shipped in and return it to us at your leisure. If you or anyone in your team experience nausea, dizziness, or fatigue, please don’t be alarmed. We also thank you for your offer to assist in restoring these pieces, but I cannot accept your offer. Thank you. ~ [text omitted] Hello again [text omitted] ! The shipment of works for the exhibition arrived today - thanks again for being so generous with these items! At some point I would like to run down the full checklist with you to confirm which are originals and which are restorations/reproductions, so we can include that information when we write the didactic labels. Let me know if it’s easier for me to email you a list or if you’d like to have a phone call about it. Speaking of restoration, I also wanted to ask - would you like us to work on having any of these items professionally touched up while we’re here for the exhibit? I’m sure the folks we usually work with would be thrilled to work on something so unique (some of them were kids in the 60s and 70s, maybe an opportunity to get some eyewitness accounts too?) and it seems only fair for us to offer, what with you so kindly loaning us all this material to exhibit. Totally understand if you’d prefer to keep that work among your own team, of course. Just let me know. Excited to get this all on display, will send photos soon when we start installing! ~ [text omitted] Head Curator Questions Answered! Curatorial Services Exhibition Design, Curation. Archival & Restoration https://inbox.wemail.com/mail/FMfcgzHseLpLGBGbzoRtzKm&=print

Picture 13:

Notes. WHRP sent their research notebook. It has to be a prank. Maybe all of it. Maybe that’s why no one has ever heard of WH. The staff, friends, parents, not a memory. All made up to… prank… me, specifically? Ok that’s nonsense. I don’t know what to think. I feel like I need to read it again. There has to be answers. There has to be. I’ll find answers. People need me to have answers There’s more of that stuff on the walls I keep hearing phones ring.

Picture 14:

Writing on sticky note atop red notebook reads: For research!! ON LOAN Do NOT write in >:( Writing on sticky note atop research notebook reads: This one is mine also for research ALSO DO NOT WRITE IN >:(

To the right of the photo is a near illegible show script from Playfellow Workshop. Below the show script is a pink sticky note pad. Drawn on the pad is a spiral, and a phone with two small speech bubbles that both say “ring”.

Picture 19:

Text on sticky note that is placed on research notebook reads: “This one is mine also for research ALSO DO NOT WRITE IN >:( “ Blacklight text on sticky note reads: “THE PHONE IS RINGING”

Thanks to u/robindebank on Reddit they have done their best to transcribe the letter on picture 18! (The stuff in the parentheses is stuff they were unsure about)

Picture 18:

Hello, My name doesn't matter. I am here to catalogue something. I'm not sure it's (fully) real But it must be, I'm holding all the evidence ?? in my hands. Pictures. Characters. Text I can barely read. It's called "Welcome Home", and it looks like it might've been a children's (book)? Like I said I can't tell. It was sopping wet when I found it. When I first reached into one of the brightly colored (???s) my hand was already covered in some green (liquid?) material. It feels like antiques are always covered in some kind of grime. I'm going to (clean up what?) I have and do a little more digging. There's only one name I can make out right now. Wally. Probably important, but like I said, I'll keep looking. XOXO

Picture 22:

Visible area of printed-out email reads: Thanks for getting the activity prize shipped out so promptly! I wasn’t expecting them to arrive in a lockbox (should I be worried about the value of these prizes for insurance?) - there actually wasn’t a code I could find in the packaging at all, could you send that so we can open the box and give away the prizes to visitors? Thanks again, give me a call at [text omitted] if that’s easier! ~ [text omitted] , Head Curator Questions Answered! Curatorial Services Exhibition Design, Curation. Archival & Restoration __________________ Thurs, April 13, 2023 at 7:53 PM To: < [email protected] > From: <; [text omitted] @whrp.net > Subj: Re: Safe code?? Attachment: WHactivityworksheet.jpg Blacklight text underneath email attachment reads: ~ WALLY DARLING Writing on sticky note reads: ATTN STAFF: Still waiting on safe code. If guests complete worksheet offer to send prize later once we get this open!

Picture 23:

Text on sticky note attached to television reads: “ BROKEN??? Call facilities ASAP “

Picture 24:

Visible area of email reads: Mon, April 3, 2023 at 1:53 PM [...]-ived all of the work we have so far uncovered! [...] -on, but under no circumstances should it be touched with your [...] If a substance begins to grow on anything delivered, please [...] shipped in and return it to us at your leisure. If you or anyone in [...] dizziness, or fatigue, please don’t be alarmed. Blacklight text underneath paragraph reads: I am so sorry. Remaining visible area of email reads: [...] offer to assist in restoring these pieces, but I cannot accept your [text omitted] [text omitted] ! [...] for the exhibition arrived today - thanks again for being so generous with these items! At some point [...] -own the full checklist with you to confirm which are originals and which are restorations/reproductions, [...] information when we write the didactic labels. Let me know if it’s easier for me to email you a list or if [...] phone call about it. [...] ed to ask - would you like us to work on having any of these items professionally touched [...] the folks we usually work with would be thrilled to work on something so unique [...] maybe an opportunity to get some eyewitness accounts too?) and it seems [...] this material to exhibit. Totally understand if you’d prefer to

On the bottom of the page there is a button that says "It's in here" that leads to a 404 page that takes you back to the Welcome Home page

(Im sorry that was so much 😭)

The old stuff:

So the old secrets have gotten some updates! Lets take a look!

You: You now has a heart drawing that leads to the audio you-1 from the message before

So Below: So below now has a drawing of a spiral that leads to the audio Neighbor from the message before

As Above: As Above or the 404 page now has drawings of stars on it, if you click on the stars it will lead you to the audio soon from the message before

Answer: From what I can tell Answer is still the same as before

Messed Up 404: The messed up 404 is still the same, just click on the phone and you will be brought to Duet but now there is a transcript, just highlight right under the player and you should see the transcript there

voywex: From what I can tell Try Again is the same as before

Open: Open now has a drawing of a phone next to Home/the eyes, if you click on it it will take you to way from the message before

Try Again Script: Try Again Script/woxyve now has a bug crawling around on it and if you click on it, it will take you to 14-14-bh from the Answer videos from before

Misc stuff that idk where to put yet lol:

Phone/Duet: So for some reason this link is also titled Duet? I dont get why since Wally calls us and is the only person we hear, but idk. Ok so to find Phone/Duet you have to go to the Merchandise page of Welcome Home, scroll down to the picture of Wally's phone and if you hover your mouse over a certain part of the picture you can click on it and it will bring you to the audio.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU FIND ANY OTHER SECRETS AND I WILL ADD THEM!!

#welcome home #welcome home arg #welcome home wally #welcome home barnaby #welcome home sally #welcome home frank #welcome home julie #welcome home howdy #welcome home eddie #welcome home poppy #wally darling #barnaby b beagle #frank frankly #julie joyful #howdy pillar #eddie dear #poppy partridge #THE SILLIES ARE BACK!!! #The sillies #God i love them #Autism go brrr #ARG #partycoffin #clown shaped coffin #party coffin

[conjectureand-gloom]

for the fandom asks ✨ 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 16, 23, 24

(a lot, i know, but i'm a naturally curious person as everyone can see. if you don't feel like answering all of them, just pick the ones you like!!!)

omg no i loooove having loads!!!

gonna put this under a cut because this is so long omg i’m sorry-

4- say something nice about a ship you don’t ship

oooh okay. this is kinda difficult lmao bc i ship literally nearly everything in the hamilton fandom. i ship some a bit more, but i am a huuuuuge multishipper lmao

i think i’m gonna go with jamilmads. okay i loooove their dynamic though, like friends to lovers is soooo cute and sweet and just so like. it’s absolutely adorable. aND LIKE. THOMAS TAKING CARE OF MADISON WHEN HES SICK. LIKE???????

5- something you see in fics a lot and love

omg. okay. firstly in more historical fics, i loooove the aides interactions. like their dynamic is just so special to me.

and something else i’ve noticed a bit is that in lams fics, john uses petnames a lot more than alexander does. i don’t know why, i’ve just noticed it. but i love it so much. i kinda like to picture that alexander just has so many words, but when it comes to having a petname for john he just can’t think of anything to describe him. i don’t know, that’s just what i think. also the ‘my dear boy’ nickname???? obsessed. actually my favourite thing in the whole world.

7- your favourite tropes to read/write/draw

my favourite trope is found family. i looooove reading and writing found family and washingdad and the hamilsquad and just agdkqhdkajds. especially if there’s been some angst and hurt/comfort shoved in there that led to the found family?? i love it so so much

10- a blog (mutual or one you follow) that has made your fandom experience brighter

you expect me to pick JUST ONE??????????

ahahaha. no.

@jittyjames bestie i don’t even know how to begin this. jami you were the first person i really ever interacted with in this fandom. your fics just bring me so much happiness and interacting with everyone in the comment section of your fics just made me feel so much more comfortable and accepted and helped me build that courage to join tumblr and beginning writing and all of that. your support especially, both with writing and fandom, and with personal experiences have impacted me and helped me so so much. i genuinely cannot thank you enough, and i really hope you know how much you mean to me

@starduckys you are just. you are so so incredible, you’re so talented and so sweet and funny and just sooo amazing. i don’t think i can even explain just how important you are to me. you’re so supportive, and you have made this fandom so so special to me. i also absolutely love your blog, in case you couldn’t tell by my often stalking through your blog and liking/reblogging everything <333

@kwilooo i think you were the first friend i made in this fandom, back before i was posting, i think. seeing your updates, and seeing your replies on my comments (way back on wattpad omg!????) made me so so happy, and i still find it absolutely insane that you then found me here on tumblr!! like? that’s insane. anyway you are a huuuuge part of my fandom experience. seeing your writing made me feel so confident and comfortable and it was really important to me

@unicornsaures we’ve only started interacting recently, but i love your blog so much, and you seem so so nice and amazing and you make this fandom so amazing and special to me

unfortunately almost all of my older hamilton mutuals don’t really talk with me much anymore, but anyone i ever interacted with in this fandom, i hope you all know how special you are to me, and how much much you have all impacted my fandom experience and how much more incredible you’ve made it all. and if anyone wants to chat with me, please just message me! you’re all so sweet and i would love to make more friends, whether in the hamilton fandom or not <333

11- if you’re a writer or artist, what fic or piece of art are you proud of making?

okay i have a few.

this is biased given its personal AND super recent, but “i haven’t slept in a week”. i was scared to post that but im actually really proud of that writing lmao, despite how terrified i was to post it

then there’s “for all the love i’ve found in you, i’ll be forever grateful baby”. i hated it at the time but i’ve grown to be really proud of it, and that poem i wrote. also because i wrote that for akeyla and it’s actually really sweet

and also “baby it’s cold outside”. that fic is my child like i’m so proud of that fic

and then also “like crying out in empty rooms, with no one there except the moon”, “like mother, like daughter” (agggtm), “but this situation’s helpless” (this was my favourite fic id ever written for soooo long), “fools who run their mouths off wind up dead”, and “steal into my affections”

16- a tiny detail in canon that you want more people to appreciate

omg okay so musical canon, i think people should focus on some of the ways that burr especially says some lines. like the sound of his voice, the way his delivers his lines. like i made that soit the other day about how he says “i get a drink” in the world was wide enough. i feel like we really need to appreciate more the way he delivers his lines. i don’t know how to describe it, but he just sounded like. flat. you can tell by his voice he was just like. “holy shit. i have just killed hamilton.” and he regretted it. i don’t know how to explain it. but we really need to appreciate this more

in historical canon, i feel like we need to focus more on the schuylkill incident. i swear that’s the funniest story ever. and also the aides friendships and family dynamic?? and also lafayette and washington’s friendship and kinda like. father-son relationship. it’s just. as much as i absolutely adooooore washington and alexander’s relationship, in historical canon he was definitely closer with lafayette than alexander.

23- the fandom you’re curious about because of a mutual

ooh. okay. this is kinda difficult.

1776 (musical) because of literally sooo many of my mutuals lmao. i’ve been wanting to get into it for aaaages and i know it’s kinda like. amrev. i just haven’t got into it yet

okay i know i have more, i think there are some that @felizusnavidad and @anixknowsnothin are in that i’m curious about but i cannot remember them lmao

24- how has fandom positively impacted your life?

okay. how do i even begin with this.

fandom has been a huuuge part of my life since i was 6, with harry potter. i remember when i was in year 5 (10-11 years old-ish), we had to write a creative story, and i fully wrote a marauders era fanfiction. because that’s how i got into creativity, it was through fanfiction. i remember my year 5 teacher giving me a whole lecture about how i can’t write something that already exists, and i was really upset about it, and i spent ages refusing to write fanfiction, and only write original works, and i just couldn’t get anything written. fandom and fanfiction is a huge part of my life, and it’s a huge outlet of stress for me.

i would use fanfiction to make sense of my feelings for years, even when i was younger, and i’d get a bit of disconnect from strong emotions by giving them to characters, and i’d feel just that little bit better. and also reading fanfictions, where a character is feeling and going through similar things always make me feels a little bit less alone, i could read or watch the canon material and see my comfort character, and i’d remember that in a certain fanfiction where the character may have been going through something similar to me, and i’d be like, “well if this character, who is so strong, can get through it, i can get through this. i can do it.” and it would give me that comfort. seeing my comfort characters feeling the same way always makes me feel a bit better about everything

thank you so so much for this!!!! i loved answering these <333333

#asks #jittyjames #omg i’m so sorry it took me so long- #i had karate for an hour halfway through this and then the draft deleted and i had to rewrite like. half of it #but i really loved answering all of these!!!! thank you!!!!!!! #to anyone else who has sent me an ask #i’ll answer them tmr <33

[spaceratprodigy]

The Siren Song of Devil's Peak

yes I am using this drawing as a cover image again lmao it cracks me up and I didn't feel like making something else. I think it's still rather fitting ✏

"Welcome back, Captain" Ada greeted as Faith stepped through the door of the Unreliable, her companions not far behind her.

Faith had been more quiet than usual.

She didn't want to be here, didn't want to be alone with her thoughts. The stillness of her room had been suffocating. She had been spending more and more days away, wandering anywhere she could on Monarch.

Her friends, however, were tired.

They needed a break, food, for Ellie to make sure they weren't falling apart. Faith needed it, too, but her body wouldn't let her stop. She was ready to head back out.

"Hey Boss," Felix chimed "are you feeling-"

"I'm fine" Faith cut him off sharply, immediately looking down in shame. "I'm sorry."

"Cap, we're worried about you. You need to rest" Parvati said, her tone more concerned than usual.

"I'll be fine, I need to go back out there."

"For what? Boss, you need to stop. We have to talk about this" Felix interjected.

"We don't have to talk about anything. You two get some rest, I'll see if Nyoka and Ellie-"

"No!" Felix's worry was turning into frustration "look, I'm sorry but.. I don't want you to get hurt. You can't keep running away."

"Cap.." Parvati was softer now "you're not in a good way and this isn't healthy."

Faith knew they were right. She was avoiding the fact she had to confront the problem in front of her sooner or later. That's why she won't sit still, why she keeps running headfirst into the Monarch wilds against everyone's warning.

Can't feel how much pain she's in if she's too distracted defending herself from things trying to kill her from all angles.

"Cap, you need to sort this mess out. I know he hurt you, but.. you and Max need to talk about this."

"Hah!" Felix was annoyed "you mean Max needs to come down here and apologize for being an ass. Boss, why are we even keeping him around after the way he lied to you?"

"Felix, I don't wanna.." Faith began but trailed off.

Because I don't want him to leave.

"At least talk to us about it. We're your best friends and we want what's best for you." She knew Felix was being sincere.

"Yeah, Cap. We're family, we don't want you goin' through this alone."

Faith didn't know what to say. She appreciated how much her crew, her friends, were trying to help her. Her heart was just in so much pain. She was confused, scared, she didn't really know what she wanted.

I want Max.

"I.. I.." she was trying. "Thank you.."

"Captain," Ada's voice rang through "you have a call coming in from Devil's Peak Station."

Parvati and Felix glanced at each other nervously.

"Hey Boss.. maybe you shouldn't take that call.." Felix began to say, anxiously rubbing the back of his neck.

"Why? Hiram's my friend" Faith was surprised at her companions reactions.

"Well, yeah.. but.." Parvati was trying to think of what to say "last time you were hidin' out there, you and Mister Blythe were gettin' real close.."

Faith was waiting to see where this conversation was leading.

"We just think that maybe.. havin' him in the picture is makin' things.."

"Worse" Felix butted in.

"Well, No! I mean.. not worse.. just.. complicated?" Parvati's voice cracked.

Faith stood there in silence, crossing her arms. Her friends were babbling, unsure of how to get their point across gently.

"Boss, please just listen to us on this one" Felix finally said.

"There's a lot of hurt and raw emotions in the air right now. We just think the closer you get to that Broker fella.."

"Everything is going to be fine" Faith finally spoke "Hiram and I are.. just friends."

Why did I hesitate?

Felix and Parvati noticed, giving each other another worried glance.

What are they so worked up about? Faith thought, walking away to answer the call.

They're acting like I'm gonna fall for the guy or something.

We're just friends.. Right?

Her heart was beating hard now.

Oh stars..

She answered the call and Hiram's face popped up on the screen.

Dammit.

"Ah, Captain! There you are. Thought for a moment you may have forgotten about me."

The snark in his voice would have been of annoyance to others, but she had come to learn this was him being rather playful. In his own way, of course.

"I could never, Hiram."

"Are you still on Monarch by any chance?"

"Suppose I am, what would The Great Broker ever want with me? Need someone to get their hands dirty for you again?"

She knew how to play right back.

Hiram flashed her a small smile, immediately finding his serious face again.

"Come to my station, will you? I want to speak to you directly."

"Oh! How unusual of you to want to do business in person" Faith teased, unsure why she was trying to sound her flavor of freelance professional, Felix and Parvati's little talk was making her nervous.

"Let me get my crew and-"

"No" Hiram said sternly "I wish to speak to you." He swallowed, trying to keep his cool.

"Alone."

"Sounds a little dangerous doesn't it?" Faith rarely went anywhere without backup.

"You've done it before. Just to seek me out. All by your lonesome, might I add" he gave her a subtle grin "be a doll and do this for me, yes? I'll be expecting you."

Hiram hung up before Faith could get another word in.

Sly bastard.

Faith turned back towards the door, already knowing Parvati and Felix were still standing there. Waiting with concern. Knowing better than to leave their captain alone again in fear of what trouble she might get herself into next.

Fuck.

#just a little something for funsies 🤭 #this ones for you people rooting for divorce au just so hiram can get a lil smooch #heheheh #the outer worlds #my writing #my art

[shimmeringweeds]

(Written between s2 episodes 9 and 10)

"The foundation of the game is mutual trust, fairness, and equality."

Part 3 of my "this game and its rules" theory: Part 1. Part 2.

This theory will be much less put together, as I feel I am not seeing the whole picture here, but maybe another set of eyes can spot what I've missed. I want to put this out there before episode 10 destroys everything.

Li Tianchen is a complicated character. He is a someone we inherently cannot trust. I'm sure I'm not the only one who found it comedic how quickly Li Tianchen took total control over the interrogation (CXS never stood a chance, the Coca-Cola tactic was brilliant.)

Why come in disguise as his sister? To gain sympathies, I suppose.

So then, did Li Tianchen know about the photograph?

Let's break the scene down:

-Li Tianchen introduces himself as LiTianxi. Cheng Xiaoshi is visibly taken aback. 1pt to LTC.

-Li Tianchen gives Cheng Xiaoshi a choice. Turn over all listening devices. Cheng Xiaoshi lies = feeling of unease. "The foundation of cooperation is mutual trust" says LTC. Minus 1pt to CXS. He's already in the negatives.

-Interrogation begins. Cheng Xiaoshi asks, "Why did you come and what do you know?" -

-Li Tianchen repeats, "The foundation of the game is mutual trust, fairness and equality. Did you forget this so soon?"

A connection is made in Cheng Xiaoshi's mind, this is Red Eyes! He then says:

"Why did you turn out like this?"

The conversation went directly from "The foundation of the game..." to "Why did you turn out like this." YEAH. That's one way to be suspicious CXS! -1pt

Cheng Xiaoshi knows about LTX's past and recognized her name. Li Tianchen doesn't know that Cheng Xiaoshi knows this. He is guessing based on Cheng Xiaoshi's reactions. (CXS wears his heart on his sleeve and I love him for it.)

Li Tianchen calls him on it, "How did you know?" The ball is back in LTC's court. + 1pt.

Cheng Xiaoshi tries to take the ball back. But the revelation that this is red eyes is too much. He cannot lie. So he speaks the truth and the ball stays firmly in LTC's court for the rest of the match.

The following Coca-Cola chugging relaxes the mood (+1pt LTC) and the sympathy building begins.

This plan of Li Tianchen's really hinges on building sympathy. He can't just grab CXS and go. He has to make him go "willingly" in order to not draw attention. This game is of mutual trust.

Li Tianchen needs (or at least wants) Cheng Xiaoshi to trust him.

Cheng Xiaoshi reaches out in a moment of sympathy... and gets possessed. Match won.

There is no evidence that Li Tianchen knew about the photograph before Cheng Xiaoshi willingly confirms it. But if Cheng Xiaoshi hasn't seen the photograph, then isn't this plan way more risky? Did LiTianchen really take that risk?

I know a lot of people are thinking that Li Tianxi is the one who delivers the photograph. That's very difficult to refute. But I cannot think of a reality where Li Tianchen doesn't know that the photograph was given. That was played.

Food for thought: the twin that delivered the photograph, and the twin that took the phone. (please note: the yellow on the jacket in relation to color of the hoodie. Thin as ice, this one. But I can't stop thinking on it.) EDIT: lmao I went a took color samples in procreate. Both hoodies are purple/red. Color theory can you believe.

I really, really believe that Li Tianchen is crying out for help as much as Li Tianxi is seems to be. Everything he does is to protect his sister. He's a hunter yes, but--

"Some (predators) are born as bloodthirsty beasts. But some are special and learn to evolve. They evolve, and they grow. Until one day in this jungle of men, they become...a hunter. So which one of those do you want to be in the future?"

vs. the English dub which chooses to take things a little farther....

"Someone to kill and eat everything. Not everyone stays the same as they were born. Some people will evolve, become something new. They're the ones who hunt predators. They learn to fight and protect. What kind of person do you want to be when you grow up?"

Li Tianchen is a hunter, a provider, a protector.

So who is Li Tianxi?

#I have so many little noncoherent thoughts that don't deserve a whole post #Like the gossipy neighbor “recognizing” QJ? #or LM abducting Emma for “his money” - the same money found in CB's home? #or “CXS” apologizing for the tracking device vs. “LL” and “CB” apologizing before death #im screaming #link click #时光代理人 #shiguang dailiren #link click spoilers #my lc theories

[rubys-forest]

Who you use Ibis paint?! How! Please tell me your secrets 🥺

Ah well, it's simple. It's free on the appstore so yknow- I also use my finger to draw. Some of my advice with getting into digital art is that you're not going to be perfect instantly or know all of the tools immediately. Most of my art is drawn traditionally before I take a picture and import it into ibis by using the import photo option when going to make a new canvas by clicking the plus

Another thing with using ibis is that it- it WILL lag. I don't have premium at all, so it ends up lagging whenever I add too many layers. Speaking of layers, digital art is- very time consuming, just like doing big traditional art projects. I tend to use the brushes unlocked already, such as fine tip or the digital brush, also airbrush tool. Any other tools I use I need to watch an ad to unlock.

For the Christmas art or any art in general- especially with two people, I use multiple folders. You can make folders by clicking the plus with the squares, which will give you the options for it. Slide a layer up and then back down under the folder for it to be part of it. Folders are EXTREMELY helpful for coloring and lining, keeping everything organized, especially with multiple characters. ALSO NAMING LAYERS IS IMPORTANT!! I forget sometimes but it's good to name them in order to keep track lmao. For shading I use the clipping tool, which involves creating a layer over the colored portion I want and clicking the clip button so that I can shade without it getting into any other colors. My way of shading is usually just making the shade of color I use darker and darker and blending it all in. Most people on tiktok probably hate that lmao. Besides clipping there's also alpha locking, which is basically clipping but without creating a new layer. You just press it on the layer you're on and boom! Only that colored section or line can be erased or colored.

Anyways, that's most of my advice!! I hope this helps and doesn't really confuse ^^ ty for asking!

[sugarandspisces-writes]

Abbott Rewatch (1.03 — Wishlist)

jacob, the slurping pLEASE

referring to left handed ppl as southpaws?? never heard of that

the barbershop magazines omg

ma’am… that printer is like 100 yrs old

melissa and her many plugs. she quite literally has a guy for everything.

“and that’s a few too many questions” lmaoo love her

“the young man with an earring in his cheek”

“until you wake up and your kitchen is across the street”

“oh lord, the boy is in the trash” 😂

that room is soooo bare

“i like clean :)” oh, gregory

jacob bring unimpressed and janine being so proud of her video

“that thing” *rubs fingertips together* idk why but that made me laugh so hard

“is that european?”

ava turning the hello sign away from everyone and completely defeating the purpose of it HA

“is this an iphone 9? it’s like a walkman”

“can you twerk? it don’t look like you can but i could be wrong” this woman is so FUNNY

look at them all standing around watching the video. so cute.

janine and barb being a mother-daughter duo

child: “i drew a picture of you!” gregory: “oh wow” *in the most unenthusiastic tone ever*

him trying to hide the bag under the desk 😭 please

“maybe the giraffe”

janine being disappointed in gregory for not trying

they really made ava do everything but her job in these first few episodes

i want one of those massage guns!!!

in between the bones?!!

watching janine give out the stickers was so nostalgic 🥺

ava trying to do barb’s voice i’m cRYING

not the the black and white filter 😂

“little johnny” she didn’t lie though, that does have an affect on people

“i pulled out a dollar and she was like viola davis”

ava having an OF 😭

janine’s plan to move to a small town with a tomato stand to escape ONE person is so real

“a comment from luke 14:13” “oooh, what’d he say?” pleasE ma’am

her just dropping the packages right on the table lmao like okay i guess??

“would you just enjoy something? you’re gonna get an ulcer” i can’t 😂

janine panicking like that is so funny to me. that guilt was eating her ALIVE.

janine getting sad at gregory saying he’s only a substitute

“not that i keep count — 27”

aw @ gregory saying he has 26 drawings

lmao not a space durag

no but honestly kids drawings can be so hard to decipher

janine being ready to fight these people for barb LOL

“if you went to the top you wouldn’t be able to find it”; bc ava really said, “let me make the most melodramatic tik tok ever”

“are you gonna give that stuff back?” “oh hell no” i know that’s right, barb!

“your hyperactive little heart was in the right place” this might be the sweetest insult ever??

“i’ll help you decipher” mhmm we know you will ma’am

am i the only one who doesn’t know who don cheadle is? yes? oh, okay.

“where are you seeing santa?” sir in the whole entire picture

jacob trying to make the most out of the printer is so janine of him

mr. johnson just saying “trash” for the whole ep

#abbottrw #these are so fun

[ultravioart]

@mango-mya

#please i can imagine him and peepers having the time of their lives together and all of the others being like “oh god there's two of them”

LOL I can absolutely see that... I ought to draw a little comic about that! Idk when I'll get to it so... here's a script?

(picture of fishlens Marvin and Peepers looking up) Wander: Hey commander! Peepers: Hi. Marvin: Greetings. - Sylvia: (looking down, disturbed) Oh grob there's two of them. Wander: Long time no see Marvin! (waves hand) {Peepers: (flips Sylvia the bird) Marvin: Don't be rude! Peepers: Let go--} - Sylvia: (to Wander) Wait, you know this guy? Wander: (still waving hand) Yep! We go way back. Sylvia: (sighes) Of course you do. (flips off Peepers) Hi Marvin. - Marvin: (peace sign) Peace be upon you! (grabs Peepers hand away) Wander: --and you too. (peace sign, still waving hand) Sylvia: (still flipping of Peepers) Uh huh. You too. {Peepers: NO! NO PEACE!} - END Bonus of Marvin quietly making a pinkie promise with Sylvia bc he doesn't understand she's flipping Peepers off lmao. --

silly ideas ahead: but YEAH LOL I can see way back when, Wander teaching Marvin how to speak up for himself which inadvertently lead to Marvin becoming a diabolical leader... but at least Wander opened up Marvin to making allies with other people instead of shooting on sight??? (insert Sylvia's judgmental stares on Wander) lmao. Wander really just tried to help a quiet lil fella find his voice, only to unleash everything that X2 can be <:') woops. idk how they would meet but eventually Peepers would think he found a nice acquaintance to shoot the shit with (metaphorically and also actually shooting random things lol) but then he learns Vinny is friends with Wander?!?! Nooooooo..... Also when Wander hears that Peepers calls Marvin "vinny".... Wander doesn't shut up about how CUTE that is. Peepers is miserable about it all. lol When Marvin eventually gets all Kaboomy, Sylvia calls Marvin an anty (sized) twerp, no different than these lousy 'optic nerds'... And Marvin is appalled-- how dare Sylvia the Zbornak use his civilian name to address him! He's no common Martian, he's the mighty Commander X2 of the great Martian Army--and worked hard for it too! How dare she! He deserves respect! ...or an "X2" atleast... -- wait. Marvin: Erm, I am NO one's aunt!!!-- (whispers, frightened) --how does the zbornak creature know of my civilian name?! Peepers: Wait-- your given name is Antwerp? Yeesh. Marvin: (deflated) The colonies were not forgiving. Peepers: (genuine) Oh, there, there Vinny.

(tbh Sylvia probably laughs at Marvin's name, with an elbow jab from Wander. Be nice!)

#sobs i wish i could draw more stuff today lol but steam is running out #woy #silly posting #if you wish to be untagged just tell me and i'll do so! #text #long text #reply #mango-mya #wander #sylvia #commander peepers #marvin the martian #to do later #wip #really this is just idea soup sorry in advance lol

[thesilvercondor]

(Spoilers for Aim To Be A Pokemon Master Ep1 (JN137) below the cut)

ok so i am perpetually obsessed with Anabel and thus extremely biased but like. fun little conspiracy theory. Ash is actually developing Empathy (ability to sense pokemon's emotions, and use this for knockoff telepathy with them).

I have not seen past the first episode of this series, if there’s further evidence I might return to this theory but I kinda doubt there will be any lmao. Proceed beneath the readmore if you want to see my insane ramblings (1k words).

So, let’s look at this episode real quick, shall we? First major event- Ash accidentally attacks a Beedrill nesting site, potentially angering nearby Beedrill. And like, in the vast majority of Bulbapedia’s anime entries about wild Beedrill- those things get angry all the freaking time. I’ve already seen people down in the comments of this episode talking about how they didn’t think they’d seen a wild Beedrill be calm before.

However, Ash manages to calm it nearly instantaneously- which one other character has actually pulled off before- the only canon Empath, Anabel (S9 E24, ‘Talking A Good Game’).

I just find it interesting that this scene was included in the episode, given that it has no obvious importance to the rest of the storyline, you know? Unless it was meant to draw parallels, between this episode and *checks notes* some obscure episode from the early 2000s that barely anyone remembers. *sweatdrops*

 Uhhh but anyway!- next major event in the episode- the token ‘Empath’ finds an extremely powerful Pokemon, who is openly hostile to them, but calms it down by helping to care for its wounds.

In JN137, this is Ash helping Latias with a (burn?) on its wing, while in S9E24, it’s Anabel pulling out a stick from a Gyarados’s injury.

 Then, the third (and most major) event is the reveal of Empathy being used as Telepathy in a battle situation. This one uh. This one I have less evidence for, but we’re just going to pretend that Ash isn’t good enough at empathy yet for the parallels to be perfect, ok? Just to stoke my own ego.

Anyway- S9E24, Anabel first uses this with her ace, Alakazam. It’s characterized by her giving orders without talking- aka, though Alakazam can’t physically hear her, he can still hear her.

In JN137, Ash is captured by Team Rocket’s ‘Supercooled Capsule’. Here, Ash’s voice is extremely muffled- to the point that even Team Rocket (1-2m away from him) can’t hear him well. Meanwhile, Pikachu is uhhh 25-40m away? Down on the forest floor. (perspective is unhelpful, here’s the best screenshot I got).

Anyway, while being extremely muffled and getting progressively further away, AND while having his back turned on Pikachu- Ash proceeds to practically whisper his command to Pikachu to aim a 10, 000 Volts at him. And Pikachu understands instantly. Like yeah, I get it, this is an anime, not everything is realistic- but doesn’t this feel at least a little sus to y’all?

(left: Ash’s whisper, right: Anabel’s Empathy)

So yeah uh. I’ve yet to watch the other episodes of this anime. But if he gets overlaid on Pikachu at any point to give commands, then Imma 100% claim Empathy my dudes.

Especially since, the next RSE episode (S9E25, ‘Second Time’s The Charm’) is partially about Anabel trying to teach Ash Empathy- with the final line of the episode being her thinking- “I guess you can’t sense feelings yet, Ash […]”. Here, please just picture me pointing commandingly at the word ‘yet’. She reckons he had potential- and maybe that potential is finally coming true.

 Since we’re doing Anabel quotes right now, I’m going to throw another one at you- her response to being asked how she talks to Pokemon like that (aka while using Empathy):

“"I don't even really know how I do it. I guess its been happening ever since I was a little girl. I'd come to the forest and talk to everything. Trees, grass, the stars; and all the wild pokemon- and that's how it all started!" (S9E25)

So you know. She went into the forest. Not much of a goal. Interacted with literally everything she saw, without discrimination. Sounds kinda like the start of the episode; with Ash stopping to interact with every single wild Pokemon he sees. That’s how she developed Empathy- so maybe this is how he develops it too.

Like, this is Ash’s final series. Why start with him just wandering around looking at random mons, unless that act is something seriously important?

 Finally, just to add a bit more pizzazz; this episode is about Latias and Mew. (Oak’s poem at the start is something about if you want to make a lot of friends, you need to find 151- and 151 is Mew’s Pokedex number so. Yeah.) These two just so happen to be two of 9-12 ‘Empath Pokemon’ I have currently identified.

I’m counting Empath Pokemon as anything that has a Pokedex entry that mentions its ability to sense emotions (like Anabel does). Not just influence emotions (like Milotic), or get attracted by specific emotions (like Shuppet/Togetic/Blissey), but actively sense all emotions.

Latias’s Pokedex entry mentions that it “…is highly sensitive to the emotions of people.”

Meanwhile, Mew’s Pokedex entry mentions that it “…only appears to those with a pure heart.” (this is one of my ‘debateable’ Empath mons, as like. What is a pure heart exactly. I’m guessing it needs to be able to see all emotions in someone to decide whether their heart is pure or not, but I could be wrong.)

But yeah, if this series is about him trying to acquire two Empath Pokemon… it might also be about him trying to acquire Empathy itself.

 Anyway I’m gonna. I’m gonna watch the other episodes eventually. Not just yet, cos I wanna dream about a world in which this conspiracy theory is any way feasible-

  (oh yeah also before anyone asks. Anabel didn’t use an Empathy Pokemon in the anime, but in the games (Emerald and USUM) her ace is either Raikou or Latios, with the latter being another Empathy Pokemon- “…it can sense the emotions of others.”.)

(oh and full Empathy Pokemon list: Latias, Latios, Ralts, Indeedee, Hatterene, Sylveon, Audino, Solrock, Finizen. Bonus: Mew (how do you determine a ‘pure heart’), Mesprit (it created emotions so surely it can sense them?? But no pokedex entries on that) and Lucario (can sense emotions but through Aura not Empathy).)

#pokeani spoilers #pokemon #pokemon theory #ash ketchum #pokemon journeys #aim to be a pokemon master #salon maiden anabel #how to make me interested in ash as a character: add vague parallels to my blorbo from 2004 #anyway adios ash this is the first and last time i will ever post about you lol

[hydrasquadd]

Codi Arc

--------------Part One---------------

2019

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Masterpost

Discord

Little disclaimer!

Just wanted to bring this up before it might become a problem,

The Kris (deltarune) portrayed in this comic is not an interpretation of the canon Kris. The one in the comic is their own, real person, and everything we show has been their conscious choice. How we draw them, (physique, race, gender ex.) is not us saying that the canon Kris from deltarune is exactly that.

For example, we are not saying that canon Kris has all red eyes. We are saying THIS Kris has all red eyes, and the one from the real game may not.

On that note, not that we've had any problem with this yet but, canonly,

Kris uses they/them pronouns only

And if you refuse to do that please DNI.

And now, onto regular things.

Guide to possibly confusing things

So uh, what the hell just happened to Codi? This was already explained in the last HSS post, just click the "previous" to see.

What's that pink electric stuff? It's a power called b8.

Is that b8 the same as the blue lightning that Kris also uses? Yes. It's just a different variant.

What happened to Kris and their eye? Well, from what we saw in the comic, it seems to have cleared most of the red. Yes it means something more, but that's for later.

Why and how did Codi and Knight just jump off a cliff? As shown in one of the panels, they did not jump off a cliff, but the edge of an island. The whole setting so far has been on a small, floating island.

Why is the sky turning black below the island? This is explained a little bit later, but basically, below the island is allegedly a black, dark void of space.

Did they just land on, and enter a ufo? Maybe it's a ufo, maybe it's not. But it is Knight's secret base.

What is that white smoke around Codi? This is also talked about a little later on, but for clarity, it is Codi's natural resistance to darkness.

Lmao is that the dark world 👀👀👀 uwu maybe

EASTER EGGS WOAH

I have a fun one for you today. So, way back in the time of, 2019. I, us, even, we're actually living this. Wack, right? And it was just, crazy. So our big brain was all, yeah I'll write about this in my Walmart sketchbook that was probably 5 bucks. And here I have for you, what we made.

Terribly combined into one image because Tumblr will only allow 10 pictures.

So let's talk about this.

The very top of the first page, is an old drawing of myself (as in, us. Our outward appearance.) And below, it says "Nobody understands".

Right below that we have a drawing of two whited out figures being mad at eachother and below it written, "I feel so alone". Now funny story, these two people fighting are act Codi and Kris. You can kind of see it.

But the funny thing about that, is, so, back when we drew this, there was zero info about DID and such. So of course I just thought I was either some magical prophesized hero, or totally insane. But more importantly, Kris was (for some stupid reason) the only alter i realized they existed, because uh, how could I not aNSNDKDK (help). Thats because, they are a fictive. And thats only a tiny bit sensical because there where plenty of fictives before Kris, yet, I didn't know anything was off. So after Kris, we where suddenly on alert. So when Codi came along and tried to do something, it just appeared to Kris (I keep saying we or I but I swear 80% of the memories from here are all kris's. Because they where the only one that could front without the impending fear of being obliterated :). Anyway Codi just appeared to Kris as, Steven universe. Because they have now been on the look out for new alters from, games and shows because, we only knew that fictives existed. No other kind of alter. And infact, Codi was the first alter that Kris ever actually saw. Oops does that have anything to do with the eye thing??? O.o

Anyway, the next thing is drawings of various people we knew. And they're all crossed out with a reason beneath them. Then it's like," is there anyone who does see?" With what I think to be, our older brother. THAT COULD BR TOTALLY WRONG we actually are having a hard time with that one because that's actually insane if that is our brother because haha, fun fact, he also has DID. And that means we where right. He does also see. But had no idea.

Next page, we have a bunch of crosses out, "tell me tell me tell me" because well, why the hell wouldn't you want to know what was going on? When your currently having an ongoing battle with yourself but actually it's two popular characters but no, it's still yourself. Then "you won't answer", because, nobody could tell us what was going on.

"why won't you except it" a blacked out head. I interpret this as a specific person we used to be friends with. Like, really close friends. As in, we'd be at eachothers house every day. And the bad thing about them, they like, DEFINITELY wouldnt have believed any of this if I tried to tell them. But they where my like, only support. So you can see how that's kinda... It also says "You will do anything but see." Which also just goes along with, they would have gotten pissed that I was trying to tell them all this bullshit about some fictional characters. Lol oops.

Next we have some separated text. One side says, "So close, you see me, it's me, so fun, why." Then the other side "So far, you see nobody, not me, so harsh, why." This was probably more about that person. Man past us (Kris) just was really sad about this.

So, last parts, these get fun.

"will I ever" we have a heart, and a star. CAN WE GUESS WHAT THST MEANS??? ThaTS right it's heart for Kris and star for Codi. And they're separated by a line.

Next they're literally joined together and below it, "find peace". I'm actually starting to think this was more written by Codi them Kris. Because it seems a lot like Codi just wanting closure and help and for things to stop IFYKCFUUFT that's actually really sad. And yeah I'm just now realizing this.

"find myself" and that's referencing the obvious split personality thing. Because, "find myself"? Haha. More like find tons of idiots in your head. Also now there's a circle around the star and heart, this actually, I remember exactly what that was supposed to mean. It was to represent, both people in one body.

Looking back and knowing what we know now that's actually like, really big brain of past us to write all of it like that, because it's kinda ironic that we didn't even have any knowledge of systems and whatnot. But it was just literally us just venting.

And the thing I'm covering with my hand is our real name. But it is mentionable because, it wasn't just our name, but our name plus "Kris" and "Steven" written on top of it. Which looks pretty crazy but mostly, it's just more 'multiple people in one body' kind of stuff.

For my VatP people

Last VatP post before I made this:

X

You might be thinking, oh wow that's really recent. And to that I say yes.

(I'm panicking) :) that was really recent

X

Hehe we've gone full circle

IM ALso very tempted to mention dark spirits here but I'm sure you've already put those pieces together

#the gang #digital art #HSS #hydra system saga #kris #codi #knight #systems #disassociative identity disorder #comic