usedlightscreen | third tracker; video

[...Eggs.

The living room is full of eggs. There are so many eggs. There are also a bunch of proud mamas, a Sylveon with her tail proudly aloft, a Floette sitting daintily on the back of the couch (upon which are temporarily piled six eggs, three with green flower-like markings and three with blue and red triangles), a Pikachu sitting on the arm of the couch overlooking a veritable MASS of yellow and black and orange and black eggs, and of course, a fussy Chansey lording over the whole affair like a waddling Florence Nightingale.

North himself is not visible, but he's certainly audible as he slowly pans over the overload of egg. So many egg.]

So as you may not know, I'm a designated breeder. I had to wait a while to start because a lot of my Pokemon to start with were babies. Meaning I had a few that were literal, "undiscovered egg group" babies.

Anyway, so if you're in the market for some eggs, maybe a present for that special someone or maybe just to treat yourself, I have a few here to choose from. Let's see, we've got... A veritable swarm of eggs over here, some Dedenne and some, uh, Pikachu? No, that's right, Pichu.

[Pikachu! Dahlia chirps, heart-shaped tail waving cheerfully as she monitors her brood.]

I experimented with my starter and my Floette, which, uh, I don't think ended up so well in the moves department. But there's both Togepi and Flabebe to choose from, so if you've been looking for one or the other I'm happy to oblige.

And then, the beautiful Charlotte over here [Sylvee!] has graciously provided a couple of little future Eevees, and also a Cubchoo courtesy of Addie.

And last but not least, I've got a couple Happiny eggs, from the indomitable Miss Cheerilee. Say hello, Cheeri. [Chansey Chansey!]

That's what I have, let me know if you're interested.

Oh- also, York still has a bunch of eggs. [Pan over to another little clutch of eggs in the corner.] I think a few Meowth, some Shinx, that one looks like a Sneasel... There's still some Elgyem, I know York and D-2 are proud of those, so I'd love to help them find good homes.

And it looks like York still has one Snubbull left for his baseball deal.

[His tone is disgustingly fond. Gag.]

Yeah. There we go. Plenty of eggs, ready to find good homes.

((OOC: North's egg post, and York's egg post! Lots of eggs still up for grabs on both!))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

We didn't get a recruitment manual, just access to what was essentially magic from our perspective and maybe half a minute of instruction on how to use it from a dying alien. A different race from the one invading us. And then we watched him get eaten, and then later it turns out he was my dad, except maybe not biologically because... time travel or something.

[He sighs, and pulls the little bird in a bit closer.]

... At least here there's people who kind of get it. It only went to open war pretty recently. We hid and did strikes where we could for most of it, so it's not like we could talk to anyone about it.

[...Well, guess that answers part of the 'where were your parents' question doesn't it.

What's getting to him is the way that Tobias talks about it, as matter-of-fact as some unfortunate weather. He's not even touching the whole magic aspect for now, the human aspect - the fact that this is a child who feels this way, a boy half his age who talks like a twenty-year veteran.]

There is one thing to be said, about people coming here from all different places and experiences. At least war never changes, right?

[His tone is the dry, humorless kind of joking. There's so many uncomfortable things he doesn't want to think about, the raid on the Insurrectionist base, the assignment with South, the Sarcophagus mission.

But the mention of magic reminds him of something else.]

Did York tell you about our...partners?

Yeah, seems like it.

[It's... not funny, but it kind of is. His whole life is full of 'things that shouldn't be funny but kind of are in the moment'. The careful way North is talking though has him pause and switch to a private channel. Maybe he's just more comfortable like this.]

A little bit. AIs, right? In your... suits. In your heads. Though you were still in control, which is good because I've had enough of things that infest people. But I can understand the idea of something else in your head that you can control. The instincts of whatever animal we morphed kind of ended up in our heads with us.

[He wasn't even thinking about the private channel thing, so good catch, Tobias.

North touches the back of his neck, almost without realizing it, hesitating when the tips of his fingers touch puckered scar tissue.]

Yeah, AIs weren't actually too uncommon. Some other special forces even had them in their armor. But the Project we were in implanted our AI into us, so we had a special connection with ours. What you're talking about sounds similar. When we were out of armor, our AIs were basically little voices in our heads - ...that makes us sound crazier than we actually are.

My AI was named Theta. Smart as a whip, obviously, but he was shy and not very sure of himself. He ran my shield enhancement and could calculate trajectories down to a millisecond. He liked it when I'd walk the halls at night and talk to him. I could have disconnected him to sleep, but he trusted me. He needed me. Sometimes I had to remind myself that he was an AI, not my- ...not a real boy.

Yeah, I... well, hawk instincts can't give you the answers to math problems, but if you need to know which feathers to twitch to go up or down, it can do that just fine. The voices in your head... Yeerks took over everything in the body, and the original host was reduced to just a voice in the head. It could see everything, control everything... but morphing an animal was more natural once you had a little practice. Morphing insects is the worst, really. You wouldn't expect an insect to outwill a creature with more complicated thinking, but you'd be surprised.

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