othellovonryan | (no subject)

[The herbicide is doing wonders to damage the tentacles, that she's able to cross the distance.]

[Cat will get to learn just how vital that tip was because when the figure grabs the Breaker, its by the blade and it while it does dig into the skin somewhat-]

[Its not a lot. Whatever the Kraang are made of, probably a plant thing, it is disturbingly strong.]

The Warden, you said? Such a fancy title for an individual. I think you misunderstand, Catherine Foundling. Who you seek is no longer here. Donatello shall be the new host for the Technodrone and We. Shall. Be. Magnificent.

[Which is when they lash forward and and bites hard into her shoulder and]

[The memory plays.]

[The memory has leaked out at times. A few have seen it, but under it all, there is an undercurrent. A thing actively fought. Repressed. Because when Donnie realized he was the only one who could do this job, it was not an understatement. The undercurrent is the kind of the thing risks burning out the minds of people trying to process it if they're not particular good at processing information.]

[Or have a particularly strong will.]

[Donnie's natural mental self defense shoves it down and it was in lowering those defenses for information that has lead to the state Donnie is in now.]

[The Technodrone, however, does not hold back.]

[From the moment of connection, there is the active information. Everything that is happening inside and out, the movement of forces and his family, but the Technodrone is a ship, and Donnie is acting as the computer, and he has to sync the data to have the control he needs.]

[There are advancements, an intimate understanding of Kraang biology and how it interacts with technology.]

[The power of Empyrean. A substance that can touch the very life essence of all creation and steal it away.]

[How sound and force interferes with so called mystic energy.]

[And history.]

[Thousands of years.]

[Near countless worlds (worlds you can count because you are brilliant, because you are magnificent, because you are the pinnacle of Kraang technology, but the number sure is high)]

[How the Triceratons were such a devastating threat near the beginning, but how the Kraang adapted, survived, became powerful, and how they expanded.]

[You are destruction. You are creation.]

[You remake every world you touch, make it part of you, make it better.]

[You are power.]

[You are might.]

[You are strength.]

[And you will take and take and take until all are you, as all should be.]

[You are a gift]

[And when anything dares to spite you-]

[Well, the annihilation shall be beautiful as well. As it has been so many times before.]

Edited 2023-02-14 09:18 (UTC)

[Catherine Foundling, to Donnie's credit, almost buckles under the weight of it, too. shorn down to just herself, none of the extremities of her name to bear it -

it almost cripples her beyond all recovery. there's a moment where her grip on the Breaker slackens, her footing slips, and she stumbles, struck insensate from the force of it.]

[but before she had a Name, Catherine Foundling had her name, and all the things she'd learned she could do with it.]

[and at nigh-obliteration of all-that-is-her by the weight of thousands of thousands of years of all-that-is-not, the scabrous pink disease veining its way through Creation that is Kraang reaches the very heart of her, and its eyes will see what everyone who reaches so deep sees:

corpses, first, awash in brackish swampy water, slack with ebb tide. some of the corpses even still have skin - and the skin comes in all colors, pale, to brown, to dark, to many shades of green, even purplish-grey. the sheer countless number of them is crushing, and so crushed beneath each other many of them have become, but they pile on, and on, and on, till it becomes clear they are not just a mass grave but a foundation, and on that foundation a black throne lies, spare and unchallenged under a sea of stars blinking in the blackness of the Night above. and on that throne sits the thing that is Catherine Foundling.

and the thing that is Catherine Foundling sees the thing that is Kraang, and its lip pulls back from its ugly jaws as it rises from its throne and the Beast that ate empires and usurped the power of gods lands on its forelimbs, taking in all the Kraang have done, all that they are with a single wet sneering scent of the air.

and it says: "No. I think not."]

[Catherine coughs, briefly, aware she's losing blood, growing fatigued. she spits some of the bloody saliva in her mouth at not!Donnie, though, and forces herself to replant her footing, square up her shoulders, and keep going.]

I, [says Catherine Foundling, first of her name,] am no gift, Kraang. I am a curse.

[she grins, then - and - kicks the crafting table against not!Donnie's foot -]

[and - tries to combine the Bits-Breaker and the "herbicide" into one horrible thing, or at least spray the sawblade with the aerosol, while she still can.]

[The kick with the crafting table is enough to force the Technodrone back, and the crafting starts and-

[Time slows down.]

[Catherine cannot take any other physical action other than to utter a single word, but she is afforded time to think.]

[There is a flare of purple digital fire at the corner of her eyes, with a mix of two different shades of red.]

[Will you trust Raphael Hamato and "Ruler" Shirou?]

Edited 2023-02-15 07:19 (UTC)

[the realization that there's another one of Donnie's brothers here hits her like a punch in the gut. in a good way, perhaps, but it takes the wind out of her to process it all the same. she'll have to remember to meet him, later.]

[but that's more of a philosophical consideration than an immediate one.]

[and she thinks about Ruler - whose name she just learned, now, like this, is "Shirou" - thinks about his actions, and all the frustration they've heaped on her shoulders, the way his enabling of a bunch of overeager teenagers got her actually killed once -]

[and she smiles, without actually smiling because she can't, in this moment between moments, actually make the gesture, only the feeling.]

[there isn't any hesitation in her response; the only delay is one of sincere consideration - serious calculation. it's a pivot. the pivot. no turning back now. (and the Beast's jaw closes in a toothy grin.)]

[in a word:] Yes.

You are sitting on a board on top of a tree with your brothers and April. You are watching Raph and April talk with concern. He's put so much pressure on himself, and what's worse is you don't know how to help the problem.

"Its not all on you Raph. We're here for each other. Trust that," April said, voice that kind way you know is meant to be encouraging and reassuring.

"I do trust my family," Raph said with confusion. Which is fair. Raph does trust them? What does she mean?

"No. Trust us the way we trust you. Remember the first time you unlocked your power?" April continues.

"I caught Leo when he fell," Raph said.

April nods and uses that tone that means she knows she's about to be understood and she's usually a good judge of that. "Trust us."

"Raph, its gonna be okay. You'll figure this out," Mikey said encouragingly as all of you stand up. Still on the boards balanced on top of trees. There is a smile on your face because you trust that. April got through to him. Raph can do this.

"I know. Because I'm not alone. None of us are. We're here for each other," Raph said and there is something in his smile because this isn't take charge Raph, which is not expected. "Always." He's smiling, but dread fills you, what conclusion did he come to, what is he about to do?

"Raph?" You ask, uncertain you like where this is going.

Then Raph steps off the board, to fall off the tree and off the cliff-!

The three of you are already moving after Raph with thinking, shouting his name as you jump off the cliff after him.

There is fear, but determination. You are not losing your brother, you'll figure out the landing strategy when you get to him, you're going to save him like he's always saved you-

There's a spark.

A guttering.

Its like you're just on the edge of a signal, a few steps forward, and as your arms reach out for your eldest brother, the signal is there and its-

Warm.

Safe.

Powerful.

And-

The mystic has always eluded you. No matter what you did, you could not understand it. Your brothers did, to varying degrees, but they understood it enough to make it work. It didn't matter how much you studied it. No matter what scanning or testing or observation, it never made sense. The best you could do is recognize where it was and maybe determine a vague power level.

You still don't understand it as much as you would like.

But its in that moment that you finally have the first step. A force of the heart, is it?

Connection.

The fear is gone, replaced by certainty, as power radiates from the three of you, hands reaching out and out and out, far beyond your own physical hands.

"Saving like a boss!"

Because really, its how Raph deserves to be saved and he is more than happy to take your hands, the energy surrounding you as you land at the bottom of the waterfall, safe and sound. Celebrating as you realize you unlocked your family Ninpo.

[The crafting is complete. The bits break saw is running with a spray along the teeth, allowing for cutting and spraying the herbicide into the wound.]

[The Technodrone has stumbled back, but caught their feet.]

...a shame. You would have been a good back up pilot for when he will have other duties once our civilization is underway. But he is quite good at prioritizing, he will let go of a friend.

[The Technodrone straightens up and more tentacles grow out of the floors, the walls, the ceilings, a clear barrage of the dangerous limbs ready to just play overkill with Catherine-]

[Mystic Powers: Online]

[it's like the inverted sensation of a spark lighting a fire - because the Night can be nothing else, but the chill of wintry darkness against the back of one's neck, the gentle ache of breath turning to frozen mist on the crisp evening air, the precipitous drop in temperature as the sky burns in red and pink and purple and, finally, boils away in a sea of star-pricked twilight.]

[and it's something else. a weight in the narrative in play, here. a certainty. there is narrative power in trusting your friends, your family - power Catherine Foundling knows well. for she is the Warden, who watches over all those stories, and more besides.]

[she grins at him again, but this time the smile is like mercury - liquid, cold, and bright.]

... mmm. "Greater good", right. [close enough to it. she can make it work for the story pivot; time to finish the swing.] Too bad I don't care about greater goods, in the end, and I've always hated the idea of taking some bullshit miracle's sloppy seconds.

[she heaves herself to her feet, on a rush of pure adrenaline (and a fair bit more than that, as she feels the weight of the story shift in her favor - hers, and Raphael and Ruler's alike).]

I am a villain, you pathetic slimebucket. I live by one rule. I fight for what I want and I take what I get. I am given to cruelty and promised only misery. And you have something that belongs to me. You have my friend.

So now I'm going to take him back. Fuck you--

[she hefts the spitting and spraying Bits-Breaker in one hand, and raises - nothing - in the other. nothing except thumb and forefinger. Night comes at her call, an inverted flame. snap.]

--Burn. Be ash and be dead, like your toothless empire.

[blackflame undying bursts to burning life all across the pink flesh of Kraang's presence here, spidering outwards from wherever it comes close to touching her directly.]

[Catherine hadn't been able to See Donnie as of yet. Her judge of his character was very accurate, he admitted as much, but that's what it had been. A judge of his character. Not his narrative, not his story, not the things that have tied him to a greater fate beyond just a boy too smart for his own good sometimes. Whether that was the affect of the place, or the confusion of a boy whose soul is actively tethered to an entire family of ghosts, who can say, but in the Heart, it finally makes sense.]

[Give it to the Technodrone, they don't seem to be too intimidated by the words, but considering the age and knowledge, its probably also not the first its born witness to such things.]

[But as the fire lashes out, connects to the tentacles, something becomes clear.]

[The room is Donnie.]

[The Connection that happened came from Donnie.]

[There is another presence in the room that is Donnie.]

[The Technodrone Is Not Donnie.]

[Its not a memory. Not a manifestation of all that knowledge.]

[Its not even the snake.]

[But a spark of a soul for a new entity.]

[Donnie's influence is, however, tied into the Technodrone. There is a restraint in this being that kept them from immediately go for the kill option, and that can only be in Donnie because the creature itself does not know mercy nor patience for benefitless inconvenience.]

[And that is where something slots in about Donnie's narrative role.]

[He is a creator. He makes things no one else has yet, that no one else yet can in his world. It finds the edges of what is possible and he pushes those boundaries.]

[But less expected is the connection he has to the natural world. He is a wonder with plants. He has a way with animals that the others simply don't.]

[And despite how cold he can be, the pragmatist, the introvert, the one who can listen to a sob story and not care if the person had ever once hurt him and his-]

[He adores people. He wants for connection despite how difficult people are.]

[It is perhaps the combination of all these facts that lead to one surprising fact.]

[Donnie can create life.]

[There is a robot bear, terrorizing children in a pizzeria, bemoaning the injustice of his existence, and Donnie realizes all he wanted was his OWN birthday-]

[There is a voice over the computer telling him that he was to go to sleep an hour ago and he says snooze another hour, only to have his computer shut off as the voice insists and he realizes with a start that SHELLDON has gone against his orders when he knows he's not malfunctioning-]

[There is a bed, with missiles and blades bearing down on him, he's ready to fight...only to be called father, and well at this point, he just accepts it-]

[Donnie's mystic powers could make anything that Donnie himself can make. If he has an intimate understanding of something, he can make it, and the Technodrone had given him the knowledge to make aspects of the Kraang. And with it, the more he made, the more he poured into this work...]

[Just like several other works]

[It had started to live independent of Donnie's say so.]

[But knowledge comes fast and quick and there is definitely still a threat in the room.]

[The tentacles burn.]

[They do resist, the Kraang are no joke, but they are burning and twisting and their level of danger drops like a rock because trying to lash out while dying is far easier said than done.]

[The Technodrone hisses.] The child is overstepping his bounds, I see. Fine.

[And then the Technodrone rushes forward themselves, tentacles sprouting over their other arm, lashing out to wrap around Catherine's arm with the weapon, a deadly spike forming to head for her face.]

[see, the thing is. she understands the impulse. she really does. for all the grief she gave him about it (mainly because he left "the part where this doesn't cause a diplomatic incident with every country that eats pork as part of its diet and doesn't particularly appreciate the idea of a god of pigs walking around telling the animals 'stand up on your hind legs for your dignity'" entirely in her hands), it really does make her happy to see when Hierophant does genuinely insane things like raise a pig to godhood just because It Can Be Done.]

[and because she understands the impulse she understands, likewise - she can't erase the knowledge Donnie has learned from this. no amount of burning, or killing, will completely demolish the lessons Donnie has learned.]

[and she'd really like to avoid cauterizing part of Donnie in the process, but -]

[but this spark of life he's created - this burgeoning second soul. that's not Donnie's soul, but it was made by him, and allowed to grow in him like this, and could become something more - something worse - even if she leaves it at simply burning out the influence, anyway. which she doesn't want to do - think of what Donnie could make, left to his own devices, with all he's seen of this, freed of the risk of recreating the creature that inspired it all. think of it. she doesn't want to take that away from him, not if she can help it. she will if she has to - but she doesn't want to.]

[and it's like that, that she knows what she has to do. something worse - that's a villain's job. this isn't the first time she's eaten someone else's soul, after all. and it's not a complete soul yet, anyway.]

[Catherine lunges forward, ducking the spike, and utters one word.]

Mistake.

[You damned fool, thinks Catherine, with a laugh. On a pivot where I have all the cards because you overplayed your own already, you let yourself get close enough for me to grab you.]

[and she plunges her hand into the Technodrone's chest like through water and squeezes her fingers tight, like fangs of a terrible Beast's jaw closing gently and inexorably shut around the flesh of its prey.]

[And now I've got you.]

[and she rips the piece of soul that is "the Technodrone", and all it could've become, right out of Donnie's heart entire like she's ripping out a page in a notebook.

and she swallows it whole.]

[My problem now. Build something new out of the ashes, Donnie. It's what heroes like you do best.]

[The Technodrone does not expect the hand. Too confidence in its durability, in its strength, even with the influence of Sacrifice, the creature is strong and not so easily damaged. Its facts of the heart.]

[They don't expect the hand to go through.]

[Quick to try and divert the tentacle, to stab into her-]

[But its too late for the Technodrone.]

[As its ripped away form the place its made its home, that its used to grow and taint, to warp Donnie's mind until he would do what they wanted. The potential in the creature to start the Kraang civilization anew between his abilities and mind.]

[The tentacles that had been making their attack, but hadn't burned yet, all freeze in place. The ones that were on fire smolder to ash.]

[The room]

[Gets smaller.]

[Not so vast and ominous. Still the same make up of biotech, but smaller than it was. Dimmer. Quieter.]

[Tired, in a way.]

[All that really stands out anymore is the main console.]

[Catherine - clear of the pivot now, and the extension of herself it grants - sags, relief sucking the force out of her shoulders like an hourglass eating sand.]

[a rough swallow and a hand to her head.]

[then she laughs.]

Yeah. The Hashmallim were surprised when I did that to them, too.

[slowly she hauls her limping way over to the console, one hand death-gripped on the Bits-Breaker.]

Let's see what this thing does for Donnie now that it's not doing what you want it to.

[Welcome to the console and its]

[Ooey gooey disgustingness.]

[Horrifying means of connection.]

... I've shoved my hands in worse.

[she says that - but she knows what it did to Donnie, now.]

[and still -]

[well. nothing else for it. she shoves her hands in.]

Not sure what part of Donnie you are, exactly, but I need you to help me fix you.

[Yeah, those tentacles are definitely trying to dig into her arm rather quickly, burning as they dig in-]

[On the other hand, she doesn't have to reach far before she feels a glass lens, metal, clothes on a head-]

[shit shit shit shiiiiit]

[it's not entirely a purposeful move on her part that has her grip clenching viselike around the familiar weight of that person under there and yanking him up back towards her, out of where he's buried in the console - well, having the mental wherewithal to grab him, that was a conscious, careful gesture, but the hasty yank once she found him or the sick relief that she didn't have to let it any deeper into her than that to find him - those are less considered moments in all this, to say the least.]

[but she's going to try and pull him - if not free, at least "loose" from the bowels of alien hell.]

[The Kraang are just the gift that keeps on giving. At least no Technodrone has greatly reduced the infection aspect.]

[Just the trying to connect to your mind in horrifying ways aspect.]

[But he is yankable, and she gets him about halfway before he responds, gasping, eyes snapping open with a shout because now some of the tendrils are getting pulled OUT and that is not a funtime for Anyone involved.]

[WHOOPS. hm. okay. okay. she'll pause for a second, give him a moment to breathe.]

Hey hey hey heyheyheyyy easy there, easy. Hey.

[this would be a great time for a Skyrim joke, if Catherine knew what Skyrim was to make one.]

Under normal circumstances, I'd ask if you're all right first. These aren't normal circumstances. I only just barely understand what this business you're connected to is, though, so first I'm going to ask - clearly, it's going to hurt like a devil's got you if I pull you out any further. Do you want me to, anyway? It'll get that - noise - out of your head, for sure.

[He's breathing harshly and]

[He's not exactly in a great state. He looks hurt, by more than the tendrils. He looks like he's taken a few shots to the arm and a few hits with a bad and blows to the head.]

[There is also teal on his skin, wrapped around him and looking very much like a snake.]

Cat?

Wha-no. No, no, I'm not ready for you yet, I don't know how to keep you safe-

Right.

That answers that.

[sorry, Donnie, this is going to hurt. and she grits her teeth, puts some Night into her muscles atop the Name strength, and heaves.]

[hope you like being yanked bodily out of the console the rest of the way, the hard and fast way,]

[Moving is very difficult when he's all connected, so even as he tries to resist, he just doesn't have the strength or mobility to resist.]

[Getting yanked out really is not a fun time, and there's a scream as the tentacles are all pulled out of his back.]

[There's gonna be a lot of blood.]

[Its really not a good time.]

[right, well. she has Night to call on, so she can in fact start pumping that into him from where she's grabbing him to help like. soothe and also slowly heal those wounds that. she just helped make, yes.]

[can't do much about the blood, but. well. you get used to that.]

Pretty sure I'm not the one that needs - much less needed - saving right now, kid.

[You really kind of do. At least until the sensory issues hit.]

Everyone needs saving. That snake just keeps-keeeps hurting everyone.

[Gasping and there is some relief from the pain as he tries to push himself to his feet. He's not succeeding so well.]

Where....where is the Technodrone? They went quiet.

Everyone gets hurt, Donnie. But the people who try to save everyone rarely save what they're after by trying it.

[The unbridled arrogance of many a hero's downfall, she thinks, irritably - or, sometimes even worse - their victory. some of that irritation is probably what has her putting her next response like this:]

I killed them, Donnie. They weren't going to do you any good.

Oh.

[...]

No, that's good. They were getting too unruly. That gives me more time.

I'm not trying to save everyone, that's ridiculous, its just the people who matter.

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