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tired-college-student-writing · 4 years

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Red Hood and John Wick team up to take out a common enemy

I took this slightly different then I think you intended… Hope you don’t mind.

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It had been a while since Jason stepped foot in a Continental, even longer since he came alone but he refused to drag Cass or Damian with him and he didn’t really feel like explaining the Underworld to anyone else.

Like Bruce and Dick wouldn’t freak out that he was still willing to kill.

Tim probably already guessed the little psychic, but he didn’t need the fact that Red Hood was back in the business of killing if he could help it. Perhaps it was a good thing that he always went by his real name in these circles after all. Well, that and the name the Al Ghul’s had given him as a cruel joke.

“Ah Mr. Todd,” Julius greeted from where he stood next to Mors, “It had been a while since I have seen you, usually you stay further east.”

“Here on a favor,” He shrugged, “Plus I’m doing freelance now.”

“Indeed?” He questioned humming, “Well we always have a room open for one of our most loyal customers.”

“Thanks,” He pulled out a coin and slid it across the concierge desk, “Just for one night, I don’t think I’m staying for long.”

Taking only a second hesitation he headed up to his room with a key, noting the number with a smirk.

319 huh?

Right next to 321, the room his contact sent him yesterday.

He was right, he was there for less than a day before he received a cryptic message from his neighbor through the vent in the wall.

It wasn’t hard to keep an eye on the Italian prick, if the League of Assassins had taught Jason anything it was how to blend into a crowd flawlessly, they were known for being invisible to even the best assassins. He had only ever been made twice, once by Ra Al Ghul himself and once by John Wick.

He didn’t enter the continental, knowing it would be too easy to tell that the blonde tourist was anything, but a trained assassin but once the man excited and began heading to the art gallery he was planning on attending a gala at tonight, he could see the bloodstain on his cuff.

The deal had been sealed.

The young assassin relaxed, John could rest easy now that Santino had finished his end of the deal. He was about to leave to return to the room he had gotten for the night but he felt a buzz in his pocket, from his work phone. A new bounty had come in, a high one.

For murdering his beloved sister, Santino D’Antonio was offering 7 million for John Wick’s head.

“Son of a Bitch,” He swore turning on his heel.

Jason was pissed, far worse than he ever had been before. Of course, Santino would pull something like this, murdering the man that did his dirty work so that he could take the thrown.

The Italian prick needed a reminder of his own mortality, proof that he wasn’t all-powerful and all-knowing like he made himself out to be. Not a single soul would know that Jason Todd had been anywhere near the sight of the murder, that he was back in action. Not with the method he was going to take.

He was in line at a Starbucks ordering an iced mocha for himself and a hot caramel macchiato when the explosion rang out from several blocks over causing the other customers to look around in confusion at the muffled sound.

He just smirked and took his drinks.

No one outside of Gotham would recognize an exploding Batarang. He didn’t even need to check the explosion sight to see who survived, he already knew.

Bruce had taught them the nonlethal zones to place a Batarang given who was in the car.

Only Damian, Cass and Jason had made notes of how this gave them the best places to attach a Batarang to kill someone. A small flick of his wrist had placed the maximum blast at the passenger side back seat, where he had seen the prick get in, a bodyguard getting in on the other side.

Santino was dead, murdered but no one was going to find the culprit.

He pulled out his phone.

Got Coffee, meet at the Rockefeller Fountain?

With the BK, have to take care of some business.

Handled it for you, but could go to the hotel instead if you want

10 minutes, hotel.

Gotcha. I’ll be in my room, got to grab a shower, got something weird in my hair.

A quick trip into the bathroom allowed him to change into his usual jeans and leather jacket, and he was back to the hotel, a knock sounding on his door exactly 10 minutes after the text had arrived.

“Come on in John, your coffee is on the side table.”

The door opened as he toweled off his once more black hair “Black?”

“No, you can hide your sweet tooth from everyone else if you want but I know you, old man. It’s caramel.”

He pulled on his clothes, to find the ghost sitting on his bed, turning the cup between his hands.

“He’s gone,”

“He destroyed my home.”

“I know,” Jason agreed.

“Everything from Helen…”

“I’m so sorry, John,”

The man was clearly lost as he sipped his drink as Jason flopped down next to him. Being under the Al Ghul’s had been hard, but that didn’t mean Jason had made friends while working as an assassin, or as much of friends as any of them could in this world, but John was different. Sure Baba Yaga was a legend in the Underworld, but John, the man, was an oddity at best in this world. He had a mask crafted to perfectly disguise what he’s thinking and Jason had only seen it drop once but he knew, knew damn well that the man broke one of the biggest rules in the Underworld constantly.

Nothing is personal.

“Did I ever tell you about where I was before the Al Ghuls?”

Eyes flashed to him, not that he could blame him. Asking about the before, the pre assassin life was a huge middle finger, only if an assassin who wanted to share his past.

“You don’t-”

“Shuuut up,” Jason drawled, “Let me tell you about Gotham. Plus I think Cas and Damian would like to see you if you ever visited us there.”

“Al Ghul and Kane?”

“The demon spawn goes by his father’s name now, since we all got away from the League we’ve been staying with him.”

Jason took a long drink, watching the gears turn in the other man’s head, before letting out a humorless laugh.

“What? You thought you were the only one who ever got out?”

“Never expected you three…”

Jason gave a shrug, “Yeah, well… a lot has happened since we last talked, Baba Yaga.”

John stares at him hard before nodding, “What’s Gotham like Blue Jay?”

#John Wick #Jason Todd #batman #santino d'antonio #Damian Wayne #cassandra cain #al ghul

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timeclonemike · 5 years

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Delta Rune Speculation

So it’s been two weeks, and there’s already 200 plus fics on AO3 and dozens of remixes and arrangements of the soundtrack on YouTube. That’s not even touching on the theories that are coming together. I recently saw one theory that double downed on the whole discarded classroom with toys thing, with the Darkners basically being a “Toy Story” scenario and the Spade King trying to pull a “Small Soldiers” scenario.

And while the parallels between the Darkners and assorted toys, and the layout of the Dark World and the Classroom, are all too much of an overlap to ignore, I suspect that there’s something more to the whole game than simply toys coming to life and wanting revenge for not being played with. I had some thoughts that I contributed in my reblog of that person’s theory, but this post is a little bit more meta, and concerns itself primarily with the tone of the final game, if and when it gets completed. But first, we need to talk a little bit about Undertale. I’ll make it quick, I promise.

Simply put, the big thing that made Undertale stand out was how your choices distinctly affected the world you were in, and the way people responded to you based on those choices. The sheer difference in tone and content between True Pacifist and Genocide is about as different and distinct as you can get in any game that features multiple endings, especially when many games opted to make the multiple endings contingent on last second choices (Deus Ex instantly comes to mind) rather than being something that you had to commit to. Not only that, but even the small choices in the sense of dialog, the order in which characters were spoken to, and even the use and contents of your inventory meant that the game had more “immersion” in the sense of responding dynamically to player choice than a lot of Triple A games with hyper-realistic graphics engines.

The way Undertale responded to different choices was a twist, then attraction, and finally a statement about how people saw the world and interacted with it. Especially those who thought that actions taken in this isolated digital environment had no consequences beyond that environment. It was a game about how people acted when they had tremendous power to influence the world.

Therefore, I think that the meaning of Delta Rune’s “your choices don’t matter” and “nobody can choose who they are in this world” is that the game will be about how people respond when confronted by circumstances they can’t control.

For more of my rambling, click the link below.

I’ll be addressing three main points: The nature of the Dark World and the Fountains of Darkness, the Dichotomy between how choice is handled in the Light and Dark Worlds, and the few clues that we have about W D Gaster and his influence.

1. The Nature of the Dark World.

The playing card themed enemies, the puzzle pieces, the chess board and the crowned checker piece, plus some of the hints about Ralsei’s nature and origin, all indicate that the Darkners have some connection with the toys in the unused classroom and probably the materials and objects in the supply closet as well. (I still do not know what those things were in the opening area of the Dark World that shot bullets at Kris, or the significance of all that black gooey dark stuff apparently coming out of the eye shaped structures.) Susie is not the type of person to let her guard down and just skip class with Kris while playing make believe all day... at least not at the start of the game... so the events of Chapter One had some foundation in reality.

This brings us to the fountains and the legend Ralsei shares. Everything hinges on a classic balance between opposing forces, in this case Light and Dark. Too much of one or the other will break the world in some way, and in this instance, there is an excess of Darkness. Under the direction of the mysterious Knight, and the Queen that only Jevil mentions if you kick his ass, the Spade King is seeking to upset the balance by increasing the Darkness. Assuming that Kris, Susie, and Ralsei don’t stop these fountains, then the same force at work in the Dark World that drew Susie and Kris into it will spread beyond the school, and into the rest of the town.

It is my position that Darkness in this case, represents Imagination, and its ability to create worlds symbolically. Keeping a balance between the physically real and the mentally real is important; too much of the physical and you end up in an All Work And No Play Makes Jack A Dull Boy scenario. The other way around, you spend too much time daydreaming - or consumed by anxiety - to deal with the actual problems in front of you. And just by talking to the people in Hometown after school, we can find all sorts of stuff that bothers people. Toriel and Asgore’s estrangement, Noelle’s father and her worries about him, Alphys being lonely, and so on. In a Dark World where people’s thoughts and ideas take on physical forms, these everyday worries become living nightmares. It is THAT scenario that the Fun Gang will have to prevent or reverse from Chapter Two onward.

2. In Which World Do Choices Not Matter?

No matter which way you play Delta Rune, you leave the Dark World at the end. In that sense, none of the choices you made matter. Only if you did a pacifist run, you have the chance to go back and say goodbye to a number of characters you encountered before. Sort of an Undertale Epilogue Lite. If you went to town on everybody, you get chased back to the Light World instead. So in a way, your choices DID matter.

On the other hand, no matter what you do in the Light World, you’re still Kris, the token human in a monster town, with estranged parents and an older brother that probably outshines the heck out of you if all those trophies and award certificates mean anything. You can’t help smooth things over between Toriel and Asgore, you can’t even hint at Undyne and Alphys getting together, and no matter what you tell Noelle, she’s still got a one track mind regarding Susie and is concerned that you are pranking her again. About all you can do is choose to be mean or nice to Onionsan; everyone else still thinks you’re some weird creepy human kid with a history of pranking, whose main redeeming feature as a person is apparently some skill at the piano. Nothing you do can change that, even if being more talkative than normal is out of character enough for folks to notice.

But then again, in the Light World, nobody can choose who they are. Choices don’t matter because so much of Kris’s life is defined by everyone else. And even those lives are more defined by primal fears like Toriel’s loneliness and deep seated resentment, Asgore’s pushover-ness, Mr. Holiday’s health, Alphys’ anxiety, and so on and so forth.

As the Dark World starts to influence the rest of town, and imagination and thought starts to overwrite physical reality, the Fun Gang’s choices will suddenly carry more weight. Maybe not enough to change everything once the Fountains are sealed, but enough to make a difference. Such as the difference between Noelle being totally inconsolable over the loss of her father, and Noelle having the opportunity for closure. Or Toriel at least agreeing to be civil towards Asgore, even if they still never get back together. Or Burgie being able to find a much better job. :P

Or Kris being seen not as “the human” or “Asriel’s brother” but as Kris, a person in town with more depth than just a history of pranks and a creepy disposition.

3. Oh Gaster, Where Art Thou?

The announcement for the Demo, the “character / vessel creation” process at the beginning, the music playing during the vessel creation sequence, the Man who gives Kris an Egg if he is found, the Entry 17 Sound FX from the cell phone in the Dark World, and the slowed down version of the same sound playing around that Mysterious Bunker south of town all point towards Gaster’s involvement in the events of Delta Rune, one way or another. Given the limited information available so far, it’s not entirely clear if he’s working towards increasing the amount of Darkness, towards stabilizing the imbalance, if he’s simply observing events with no regard for the outcome, or if for some reason he requires US as observers for the events of Delta Rune, whatever they are.

But using what little we know, we can make a few educated guesses.

First, the Egg Kris can get from the Man behind the tree, who cannot be seen and will vanish if the Egg is not accepted, is the ONLY item from the Dark World that stays the same back in the Light World. The swords become pencils, and all the other stuff accumulated in the Dark World becomes the Ball of Junk that Kris does not want to throw away, but the Egg is still an Egg. Sort of. It can be put into Asgore’s Fridge, but if this is done, somehow it turns the pickle jar into another Egg. Which raises a number of questions. Unless you hold onto it for later in the full game, or throw it away, this is the only thing you can do with the Egg as far as I know. Almost as if the only reason it exists in the world is so that Asgore can have something to eat besides pickles.

Second, Jevil’s misanthropy follows his interaction with a visitor to the kingdom, and I do not remember if this visitor was specifically stated to be the Knight mentioned by Jevil or the Spade King. The way he treats the entire world like a game fits the same meta as Flowey’s attitude after being stuck in a Determination fueled time loop for ages in Undertale, but it also aligns with the Darkner world’s toy theme. And of course Seam drops the “darker yet darker” line on us regarding his view of the world after dealing with Jevil... but at the same time, this is a literal Dark World. Kris and Susie noticed that the light was getting low in the school hallway before they even stepped inside the supply closet, so it’s not out of the question that Gaster’s experiment, whatever it was, involved discovering the Dark World.

And, while this is purely me stacking conjecture on top of conjecture here, keep in mind what I said earlier about the Dark World being a world where the power of Imagination can literally create a world. Then consider one of the lines of the Gaster Followers from Undertale: Gaster fell into his own creation. As Gaster was the Royal Scientist, it seemed logical to infer that his creation was some sort of machine or technology, such as the CORE or whatever is under the sheet in Sans’ workshop in Snowdin Town. But maybe what he fell into was a completely different reality... possibly one of his own design.

(Note to self: Undertale / Secret Of Evermore Crossover Fic. Add it to the list.)

Third, the vessel we are asked to create at the start of Delta Rune has the word Goner as part of the filenames of the assets. Its appearance also matches that of the other Gaster Followers in Undertale; greyscale, uncanny valley, and just different enough from the character we end up seeing in the game (Kris) to make the similarities stand out. Keeping in mind we still don’t know what the significance is of the Gaster Followers or Goners is in Undertale, or how exactly they relate to Gaster himself. In the completed game, though, we may have the opportunity to find out... behind the bunker doors south of town, where the slowed down Entry 17 sound is playing. (It’s also location 17, so there’s a definite number element going on here.) The thing about bunkers if that they are almost always made to protect something inside them. So unless this is a fallout or storm shelter for the folks in town (and we can’t read Gerson’s book in game so we have no idea what the political climate is between humans and monsters is in this world, though if they were really bad then somebody would probably mention it in dialog) then it’s probably intended to keep the people of the town from finding something. Like an experiment that went wrong. Or went right, for that matter.

Or, maybe the bunker is one of those less common cases where it protects everything outside it by locking something inside, for any of the reasons already stated. Either way, there might be a real True Lab situation down there.

Finally... has anyone else besides me noticed that the graphics in the background during the Vessel Creation Sequence look almost exactly the same as the background of the Fountain of Darkness that Kris and Susie use to go home, just without the playing card suites? Where exactly is that taking place?

One last thing that brings my whole post full circle; regarding the ending cutscene before the credits and Don’t Forget song, I wonder if the entire thing isn’t just Kris’s nightmare; the body rips out the Soul that used to be inside and locks it up, and is free to do who knows what after that. If Kris is aware that the player is influencing them in any way, that whole sequence could be brought on by their fears about losing autonomy, either partially or entirely.

Which brings us back to the whole “your choices don’t matter” thing.

#Delta Rune #Undertale #Theory #Long Post is Looooong

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nightmaresindreamland · 5 years

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Hey, I’m really far behind on this blog’s plot. Is there any way that you could give me a quick summary? Thank you.

sure bro here’s a quick summary of both of the blog’s major events (and their afters):

intro to pre-e: blackout:

nightmare gets killed two times, mirrormare gets killed once.

e: blackout:

mirrormare gets his cape painted black. this causes him to revert back to his older personality, back before he was a nice guy. We call this guy black cape, and he’s destructive. he follows the universe’s will and he destroys planets in order to obtain happiness and praise from the force that created him. but mirrormare, now caped black, is sort of melancholy about the whole thing. but regardless, he tries to please the universe by getting back on track. he will destroy popstar. so, first, he kills kirby, in like, seconds. then he goes and he tries to do his job. nightmare stops him, they fight, mirrormare kicks the shit out of nightmare for 30 minutes until nightmare is too magically famished to do anything. then mirrormare decides he’ll wait around, because nightmare’s extreme fight as amused him. he wants more fights, he wants a challenge, he wants a hero. so, nightmare ends up getting killed by meta knight and then reappears from the fountain. mirrormare punches his glasses in and while nightmare is dazed and high from fountain water, tells him to stay put until a hero eventually comes. which, nightmare does. kirby’s soul pieces (five tiny kirbies) come around and they talk with nightmare, and take the star rod. they go and track down mirrormare, who’s made a little base in the desert. they fight mirrormare. mirrormare turns nightmare into pure juice, which gets absorbed by sand. then the soul pieces kill mirrormare, reform kirby, and leave right as the sand castle is collapsing. nightmare is left alone, blind, and unable to move under the sand for 24 hours. then kirby digs him up, puts him in a jar.

post e: blackout:

nightmare returns from the sand and stays in kirby’s house while he recovers. kirby makes fun of him because when he returns, nightmare is only a foot or so tall. kirby is 1′6. nightmare takes it to heart. eventually, kirby tells nightmare to leave, and he does. nightmare eventually goes back to the dream fountain, where he sits around bored. he sleeps a lot because he needs food, so that’s what he does. he also visits his new ally, gluttony. dedede bothers him a bit, so he tosses dedede. he’s not feeling too good.

e: perfect:

nightmare’s sitting near the fountain of dreams and sleeping when kirby comes by. kirby tells nightmare how much of a piece of shit he is and how he won’t be remembered because he’s an asshole, etc, etc. nightmare’d normally laugh it off, but due to dying 3 times, he’s got his ego cracked. the talk just absolutely shatters it. so, he throws kirby into the distance and broods to himself, feeling insecure and miserable that he (boo hoo) can’t kill anyone as good as his counterpart can. so he hatches a plan; he’ll fuse with the fucker. a few insignifcant things happen then a different kirby comes by to get revenge for whatever the fuck nightmare did to him (because nightmare does shit to everybody) and decides that he can’t just kill nightmare, the dude will come back. so he seals nightmare in the fountain despite nightmare telling him to just kill him. this fountain sealing causes nightmare to lose consciousness, and for mirrormare to do so as well. anyways, they’re stuck dead for like 6 months then popopo plugs the star rod back into the fountain. he helps nightmare out of the fountain. nightmare says his counterpart is good at healing and that he, himself, is sick and needs help. so popopo goes and gets mirrormare, brings him over. then nightmare whips out the sun rod and fuses himself and mirrormare together. they go on a bit of a wrestle with themselves and then fight popopo and stuff. while they’re fighting, they spawn in CS and a USB containing mirror cs, which they store inside of their cosmic goop. they get unfused because popopo hugs them real good. mirrormare freaks out about the fusion and in an act of grief, wipes all of nightmare’s memories. like. all. popopo brings nightmare back to popstar.

post e: perfect:

nightmare wakes up and has no memories. he goes to kirby’s house and eats his peanut butter. kirby realizes he can change nightmare for the better and tries to do so. using nightmare’s naivity, he convinces nightmare that he’s a good guy. this works for the most part, and nightmare’s a very friendly, upbeat, non-sadistic person. then he goes and visits gluttony, who has a kid named eggplant. eggplant is a different nightmare, reincarnated into an orb body. eggplant zaps nightmare’s memories back into him (plus eggplant’s own) and becomes raisin. nightmare returns to being an asshole and wrecking shit. he makes allies with a few people, two notable ones being dr wily and dr robotnik.

meanwhile, mirrormare dropped off cs (and a consort) on popstar then went and isolated himself on the moon, making a place where he and mirror cs could stay. he stays up there. he only comes down when nightmare makes someone into a monster with his blood, which mirrormare undoes then helps out with the recovery process. now mirrormare is stuck on popstar waiting for some weird twink to come pick up a puppy.

#tl;dr #oogelyboogely

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