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#THE FIRST 3 THAT SPAWN ARE ALL SHINY

vanillabat99 · 1 year

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I'm playing Pokémon Scarlet and I was running around outside Medali, on the hill to Dalizapa Passage, with a Psychic Encounter lvl.1, Espeons are everywhere! The clock rolls over and it's a new day, the hill I was on spawns an Espeon outbreak, even more Espeon all over the hill!! I run around for a few minutes, I have been hunting for my beloved green menace, but Espeon just stopped spawning entirely. I have tried reloading the area by walking away and back, flying to the other side of the map and back, making another sandwich even though the previous one was still running, and still no luck. Can anyone help me figure out what happened?? I have been trying for so long to get a shiny Espeon :(

#i didnt see anything about the outbreak ending and it still has the icon on the map so idk what happened :(#new sandwiches arent making a difference either. hes just not spawning at all.#also before anyone offers: i wanna catch shiny espeon on my own please and thank you!! i wanna achieve my first shiny hunt by myself :3 #i just want to know why espeon stopped spawning. was it something i did? is there an outbreak timer?? please help me understand ._.#batty blogging #text #pokémon scarlet #pokémon sv #pokemon scarlet #pokemon sv

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threezzyo · 4 months

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꒰ ˒ take you to the basics∘︴toji z.

↬ you and toji zenin have a fun time at the aquarium. ⇢ sfw, no cw!

∾ zenin toji x gn!reader. modern au. no curse au. toji lives with his big family and you're already close with them. established relationship. height difference mentioned kinda. tiptoe kisses. fluff. young teenage love. aquarium date. comfort. healthy relationship. (my dream date actually)

a/n: i tried making this with little gendered pronouns, so everyone can read! i'd appreciate any feedback! title is a reference from 'basics' by twice <3

dividers are made by cafekitsune (tumblr)

your favorite part of the aquarium was definitely the moon jellyfish. you admire how the jellies drift carelessly through the ocean, their delicate tentacles glimmering in the soft aquarium light, the chatter of the vivacious crowd around you, and your first love, toji zenin.

you had easily won over his family. it wasn't hard, you just acted like yourself. always polite, eagerly listening to the elder's stories. toji would be annoyed because it seemed that you would only come over to play with his cousins, mai and maki, or make tea for his grandfather.

the water feels like cold glass on your skin. the tank was huge, lots of people crowded around it as people excitedly touched the fish. using two fingers to softly pat the little translucent jellies.

"won't they sting ya?" a gruff voice rumbles in your ear. toji zenin, your boyfriend of three years, told you a week ago he'd never been to an aquarium. like the overly excited partner you are, you bought tickets to the local aquarium and dragged him here.

its just fish, he said. but he's here yelping as one of the tiny invertebrates brush his fingers ever so slightly.

"baby, its just a little jellyfish. why are you so scared?" you tease him, as you two wander around the building.

"...they could sting me." he mumbled, flushed from your teasing. he'd never admit it, but he loves likes it.

you laugh in response, tiptoeing to kiss his cheek. "its okay, i'll protect you from the moon jellies. poor baby toji." you squish his cheeks, overly sticking out your bottom lip.

"oi. stop." he grumbles.

"okay, okayy." you laugh, letting go of his face and holding his hand instead.

the sound of gently bubbling water, the sight of colorful fish and aquatic plants, and the calming effect of underwater lights create a serene atmosphere. toji can't take his eyes off of you, keeping you close at all times as you excitedly point out at the clownfish.

"i caught that fish in animal crossing. and that one. ooh... i've always wanted to get one of those, but they never spawn on my island." you ramble off excitedly.

"you're so cute, darling. could watch ya like this the whole day."

normally, he'd be bored, but it seems so relaxing looking at the shiny scales, or the underwater forests, with the kelp, coral, and anemones.

"are you having fun?" you murmur, holding his hand and leaning onto his shoulder. "i hope you are."

"of course i am." he replies smoothly, pressing a chaste kiss on your forehead. "i'd always have fun with you."

you beam up at him, watching the surgeonfish swim without a care in the world. "i love you."

he chuckles, wrapping you up in a big hug, his arms tight around your waist. "oh, i love you too. so fucking much."

a/n: i hope it's decent i literally don't know how to add more ig😭 next i have a satoru fluff and i have an idea in the making for yuuji! i feel like i'm writing too much fluff and no like angst or smut but we'll see😜

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kafus · 6 months

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how to transfer your old pokemon to pokemon home before it's too late!!!

the wi-fi services for the nintendo 3DS and WiiU are shutting down in early april 2024, and while it specifically lists pokemon bank and poke transporter as being available post-shutdown, there is no guarantee of how long that may be for. there will likely come a time when these services shut down, and it could be in the relatively near future.

it is also pretty much impossible now to transfer pokemon to the switch's Home service with alternative methods such as PKHeX (popular pokemon save editor for the uninformed) due to the implementation of server-side Home IDs tracking pokemon at all times - the details of that aren't super important for this post, but point is, whenever bank shuts down, unless nintendo makes an offline way to transfer to home, it will be impossible to move pokemon from the old gens to the new, even with alternative/hack-y methods.

i write this guide with the intention of making this process easier for people since transferring pokemon has changed so much over the past two decades that it's a bit of a mess, and in a timely manner to give people time to finish the process. i'll be organizing by generation so feel free to skip to any part of the guide you need. (keep in mind that transferring is permanent, your pokemon cannot go back afterwards!!)

(by the way it would mean a lot to me if you weren't overwhelmingly negative of pokemon in the tags/reblogs. i get that pokemon transferring being an online service sucks but reading that stuff in my notifications constantly is really tiring </3 make ur own post to talk about that)

to walk you through, i'll be transferring this random shiny spinda i hatched in emerald version all the way up to pokemon home. her name is Moss :]

below the cut since this is long as fuck sorry LOL

GEN 1/2 -> 3 (aka RBY/GSC -> RSE/FRLG)

this is impossible! as for the Virtual Console releases of the gen 1/2 games on 3DS, more on that later in the gen 5 -> 6/7 section.

GEN 3 -> 4 (aka RSE/FRLG -> DPPT/HGSS)

what you need:

a copy of RSE or FRLG

a copy of DPPT or HGSS in the same language as the RSE/FRLG copy that has beaten the champion and has access to post-game areas, preferably HGSS because it lets you transfer unlimited times as opposed to DPPT's once-per-24-hours limit (unless you happen to have korean DPPT/HGSS, which is not language locked in terms of transferring)

either an original DS or a DS lite, the old ones with the GBA slot at the bottom

the steps:

#1. you can only transfer 6 pokemon at a time, so get whatever 6 pokemon you want to transfer up together in gen 3. if you're intending to transfer less than 6 pokemon, you'll need to catch some extras since you have to transfer the full 6 every time (i usually just catch a bunch of extra mons on the first route, which is what i've done here with the poochyenas/wurmples)

#2. put the gen 3 game into the GBA slot of the DS, and the gen 4 game into the DS slot. both games should appear on the home menu after turning on the DS.

#3. load the DS game and spam A past the title screen. before loading your save, scroll down. you should see a "MIGRATE FROM (GAME NAME HERE)" option. if you don't, either the GBA game isn't reading properly, or you have not visited Pal Park in your gen 4 game of choice. in HGSS, the Pal Park is located in Fuchsia City, and in DPPT, the Pal Park is located at the end of Route 221 below Sandgem Town.

#4. select the aforementioned migration option and pick the pokemon you want to transfer.

#5. navigate to the Pal Park and complete the Catching Show, where you re-catch your transferred pokemon in the wild. this does not overwrite what pokeballs they were originally caught in! you will need to bring a pokemon with Surf if you have any Pokemon that spawn in the water areas. you can check what location the pokemon you transferred will be in on bulbapedia.

#6. say yes to storing the caught pokemon in your PC boxes and they'll be there!

important things to note:

pokemon with HM moves will be blocked from transfer, so make sure to use the Move Deleter to remove HM moves from any pokemon you're transferring in gen 3 before trying to transfer. in RSE, the Move Deleter is in Lilycove City, and in FRLG they are in Fuchsia City.

gen 3 -> 4 is the only step in the transfer process where held items transfer up as well, meaning that if you attach a valuable item such as a rare candy, master ball, or TM to a transferred pokemon, you can take it off that pokemon and put it in your bag in the gen 4 game.

an aside about colosseum/XD gale of darkness on gamecube:

you can transfer pokemon from colo/XD as well! unfortunately you'll need to have beaten colo/XD, and then you will also need to beat the gen 3 game... in FRLG, you even have to complete the postgame ruby/sapphire quest on the sevii islands to unlock trading with the gamecube games. once you do all that though, you can navigate to the pokemon center basement in Phenac City to trade with your gen 3 GBA title. to do this, you'll need a gamecube or wii with gamecube compatibility, a GBA (or GBA SP), and a GCN -> GBA link cable to connect the two consoles.

GEN 4 -> 5 (aka DPPT/HGSS -> BW/BW2)

what you need:

a copy of DPPT/HGSS

a copy of BW or BW2 in the same language as DPPT/HGSS copy that has beaten the champion (or N in the original BW) and has access to post-game areas.

two DS consoles of any kind (3DS is also fine!)

the steps:

#1. get the pokemon you want to transfer together in your gen 4 game's PC boxes. you can only transfer 6 pokemon at a time. if you have less than 6, catch some extra pokemon, since you need to transfer the full 6 every time. save it and turn off the DS with the gen 4 game.

#2. turn on your gen 5 game and navigate to the Poke Transfer Lab. personally i just fly to Black City/White Forest and head west.

#3. talk to the NPC in the lab to start the transfer process. you will be prompted to turn on your other DS again and open DS Download Play with your gen 4 game inserted. do that and download the Poke Transfer app that comes up.

#4. select the 6 Pokemon you want to transfer when prompted.

#5. play the transfer minigame! just drag the... bow? (lol) on the bottom screen to aim your pokeballs. there's technically a time limit, but it's very generous, and your final score doesn't matter.

#6. say yes to transferring the pokemon once you're done and they'll be placed in your PC boxes!

important things to note:

pokemon with HM moves will be blocked from transfer, so make sure to use the Move Deleter to remove HM moves from any pokemon you're transferring in gen 4 before trying to transfer. in DPPT they're in Canalave City, and in HGSS they're in Blackthorn City.

the level the pokemon was obtained at and the date it was obtained is changed upon transfer to gen 5 - it will have the met date of your DS clock and the met level of the level it was at the time of transfer. if you'd like to preserve a pokemon's met date, make sure to change the DS clock to the proper date.

GEN 5 -> 6/7 (aka BW/BW2 -> 3DS TITLES/BANK)

what you need:

a copy of BW/BW2

a copy of any 3DS pokemon game (XY/ORAS/SUMO/USUM)

a 3DS (or 2DS, i'll just be referring to them all as 3DSes here) with the poke transporter and pokemon bank apps installed. these were free apps that were once downloadable from the 3DS eShop, but the 3DS eShop is no longer available, so if you don't already have them installed you will need to explore alternate methods, AKA hacking your 3DS and injecting them in. that's outside the scope of this guide but you can find more information here on 3ds.hacks.guide. (do not attempt to follow any 3DS hacking guide not on this website, they could be outdated and harm your 3DS!)

a nintendo network ID that your 3DS is logged into (also outside the scope of this guide but if you don't already have one, it will prompt you during the process to make one)

internet connection

the steps:

#1. poke transporter defaults to trying to transfer every pokemon located in Box 1 of your PC, so go into your gen 5 game and put every pokemon you want to transfer into Box 1, and take anything you don't want to transfer out. if you want to transfer more pokemon than you can fit in one box, you'll have to transfer multiple times.

#2. open poke transporter with your gen 5 game inserted into the 3DS' cartridge slot. after pressing A through some menus and selecting the gen 5 game when prompted, it should ask if you want to transfer the pokemon in Box 1, with a preview of the pokemon inside. confirm and let it do its thing. after poke transporter is finished, the pokemon you transferred will be in the special Transport Box in bank.

#3. make sure you either have a 3DS pokemon title downloaded onto your 3DS, or swap out your gen 5 cart for one, it doesn't matter which.

#4. close out of poke transporter and navigate to pokemon bank. at the time of writing this guide, bank is still online and is free for everyone without a subscription - the main menu has an infinite "free trial" period number.

#5. select "use pokemon bank" and pick a 3DS game to connect with when prompted. it doesn't matter which one, but if you're looking to see your pokemon in a gen 6/7 game right now, pick the one you want to move it into. viewing a pokemon in a gen 6/7 game isn't required to move to home later, though!

#6. the Transport Box is located one box to the left of Box 1 - navigate to it and drag your pokemon out into a normal bank box. now you can move them to any gen 6/7 pokemon game you want, or home later!

important things to note:

even though bank connects with both gen 6 and gen 7 games, once you place a pokemon into a gen 7 game (SUMO/USUM), you cannot transfer that pokemon back to a gen 6 game (XY/ORAS), so be careful!

an aside about the VC releases of RBY/GSC:

poke transporter can also be used to transfer pokemon out of the VC releases of RBY/GSC. these pokemon are changed pretty heavily, converting all their old gen data into pokemon's modern data structure. you can find more information about all the changes/conversions made on bulbapedia. these pokemon are considered gen 7 pokemon afterwards, and cannot be moved into XY/ORAS. pokemon with held items also cannot be transferred from VC titles and will fail to transfer.

if you want to transfer pokemon from cartridge RBY/GSC and have a save dumping device, it is possible to inject the cartridge's save file into the VC versions with Checkpoint on a hacked 3DS and then transfer that way. for GSC specifically, you'll need to edit your save slightly to make it compatible with VC GSC's save format. i personally made a converter for that here that you're free to use in-browser.

GEN 6/7 -> GEN 8+ (aka BANK -> HOME)

what you need:

a 3DS (or 2DS, i'll just be referring to them all as 3DSes here) with the pokemon bank app installed. this was a free app that was once downloadable from the 3DS eShop, but the 3DS eShop is no longer available, so if you don't already have it installed you will need to explore alternate methods, AKA hacking your 3DS and injecting it in. that's outside the scope of this guide but you can find more information here on 3ds.hacks.guide. (do not attempt to follow any 3DS hacking guide not on this website, they could be outdated and harm your 3DS!)

a nintendo network ID that your 3DS is logged into (also outside the scope of this guide but if you don't already have one, it will prompt you during the process to make one)

a switch with Pokemon Home installed, which can be downloaded for free from the switch's eShop. a nintendo switch online subscription is not required.

unfortunately, you WILL need a subscription to home's premium plan to do bank -> home transfers.

internet connection

the steps:

#1. open pokemon bank and make sure all the pokemon you want to transfer are in their own boxes, and any you don't want to transfer are not in the same boxes as the to-be-transferred pokemon.

#2. go back to the bank home menu and select the "move pokemon to pokemon home" option. when you get the notice about the transfer being one-way, you'll need to scroll down to hit "Begin".

#3. you will be prompted to select what boxes of pokemon you'd like to transfer, so pick all the applicable ones.

#4. you will then be prompted to put in the moving key from home, so turn on your switch, open pokemon home, and select the icon that looks like a 3DS on the main menu. when prompted, choose "Ready!" to get the moving key.

#5. input the moving key on the 3DS, submit it, and wait for both apps to do their thing. once bank goes back to its title screen, you can turn off the 3DS.

#6. home will go back to its title screen as well, and depending on how many pokemon you moved, you may have to wait a few minutes to get back into the app. once it's done, the next time you open home, it'll prompt you to choose how to organize your transferred pokemon into home. pick whatever you see fit.

#7. congratulations, your pokemon are safe in home!!

important things to note:

unlike all pokemon games before the switch, pokemon can actually go backwards in generation on switch, so don't worry about transferring a pokemon into scarlet/violet locking you out of moving it to sword/shield, for example. (the exception to this is LGPE - nothing can be moved into LGPE and once a pokemon is moved out of LGPE, it can't go back.)

pokemon home actually has decent hack checks, so be careful when transferring hacked/glitched/otherwise illegitimate pokemon around.

pokemon from a gen 3/4 game will have their met location set to "Poke Shifter" - this is an alternative translation of the japanese name for the Poke Transporter.

pokemon on switch can only transfer into games that contain that pokemon in its dex, so not everything transferred can go into scarlet/violet, for example.

and that's it!!

there's a lot of other quirks to the pokemon transferring process at pretty much all steps, so if you run into an unusual issue or have specific questions about how pokemon data is changed in minute ways across the franchise, i would encourage you to do your own research, all of this stuff is pretty heavily documented by the fanbase. this is just meant to be a guide for casual users, and a quick reference.

this guide of course does not cover options for transferring in alternative ways, but it's worth mentioning that if you have a hacked 3DS and the ability to back up save files at any point from gens 3 -> 5, you can use PKHeX to transfer pokemon into the 3DS titles, then move them to bank and transfer to home normally from there. that's outside the scope of this guide and i'd also encourage you to do your own research for that.

happy transferring!

#pokemon #pokemon bank #pokemon home #long post #nintendo #of course it really sucks that we have to do this at all #ive been opposed to bank/home being online services since p much day one #but that's just how the cookie crumbles i guess #Sighhhh i have so much stuff to transfer myself lol #kiki was here #kiki.txt

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astarionslittlejuicebox · 5 months

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The Promise of Eternity (Part 2)

Author: @astarionslittlejuicebox

Imagine: The reader helped Astarion ascend and became his spawn. After saving the world from the Elder brain and it’s destruction, the reader and Astarion set out to take on the world together. While he promised to never forget the gifts the reader has given him, Astarion has seemed to have changed his attitude towards the reader in the last century…. After someone breaks one of Astarion’s rules, how will this affect the reader’s fate?

Pairing: Astarion x F!Reader

Trigger warnings: potential for minor spoilers, suggestive themes, language, mentions of death, mentions of blood, abusive relationship, mention of slavery

Word Count: 1246

Imagine Series List

Side Notes:

This imagine series takes place 200 years after the events of Baldur’s Gate 3. Everything you read in here is a story from my mind outside of the original BG3 character Astarion.

In this imagine series, Astarion is a bit more unemotionally unavailable, and this series will follow the decisions and consequences of that change. This is not canonically accepted and it is just an idea I’ve had in my head! (I do believe Astarion might truly care for the reader after Ascension, but that is open to individual interpretation.)

In this series, TAV is mildly based on my first character I played in BG3; she is a drow and I will make references to her in her background and knowledge as well. I do apologize that it is not 100% your own imagine, but the name for TAV is up to you as well as anything else that I can think of leaving to you, the reader, to decide.

I appreciate everyone who reads the imagines and this series, and I hope you enjoy the story!

TAV POV

Breakfast time was a busy time for everyone in the castle. The chefs were busy preparing a large feast for the Lord of the castle and his exquisite taste buds. For the last two hundred years, Astarion has indulged and refined his taste for mortal foods, and the ever-rotating kitchen staff struggles to keep up with his desires. This morning, the chefs had prepared a feast of danish hens, caviar, fish, eggs in various styles, and other luxuries that only the nobility could afford in Toril. As I walked around the long dark wooden table that stood proudly in the center of an exquisitely decorated dining hall, I observed those who were hustling and bustling about the dining hall. Humans, elves, tieflings, and other people of all sorts of races rushed about to ensure that the breakfast buffet on the table would match the vampire lord’s meticulous standards. The silverware was polished and then examined before it was repolished several times until the silverware was finally deemed satisfactory.

I took note of the facial expressions of the servants as they all appeared to be frantic in their preparations. I was searching for any signs of deception or discontent with their tasks as servants placed two sets of plates on the table, one at each end of the table where an intricately designed chair sat proudly. One of the chairs belonged to the vampire lord himself, and the other belonged to his most beloved. I fondly glanced over at the chair I had sat in so many times over the last two centuries. Before I could reminisce on fonder days, a familiar voice agitated my drow ears.

“This fork is not shiny enough for the Master!” The voice sounded like the person only spoke from their nose—an impressive talent—but the voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard to the ears of those who heard it. The tiefling made her way hastily to the seat I had been staring at, with two puncture marks still lazily bleeding on her neck. Upon noticing me looking at her, she narrowed her eyes and gave me a snide look. “Look away, spawn, or I’ll tell your master that you’re bothering me.” She let out a laugh that reminded me of a pack of gnolls, but I turned my attention elsewhere as I left the room. On my way out, I almost collided into the pale elf himself, Astarion. He didn’t even spare a glance at me before I was shoved out the way and into the wall. I caught myself before smoothing out my dress and continuing my path towards my bedchambers. I could hear the ridiculous hyena laugh echo through the hallways until I had gotten several more feet away. Several of the spawn had given me sorrowful expressions as I passed, but I merely smiled at them as I took longer strides. Pity was etched onto every one of their faces, and I could not bear the weight of it on my shoulders. Besides, someone in this castle had broken a rule, and I was tasked to find whomever had done so.

Arriving at my bedchambers, I hastily opened and shut the door behind me before my handmaiden, Kristiana, greeted me. Kristiana was a spawn without a vampire master who Astarion and I had taken in under our wings one hundred fifty years ago. She was a short human female with big brown eyes, golden brown hair, and a soft smile. She was totally devoted to serving me hand and foot.

“Good morning, Mistress, was the sunrise beautiful this morning?” She asked as she walked into the large dressing room attached to the bedroom. “What are we thinking of wearing today? A nice autumn themed dress or shall we wear something more comfortable today?” I slipped off my gown and handed it to her through the door. Before I walked towards the warm bath she had drawn me. I sunk into the heated water and my muscles relaxed into the hot water. Kristiana walked over and poured water on my hair and brushed the knots out before she proceeded to wash my hair.

“We are going to put on something more comfortable for today. After I am dressed, please take the day to rest and relax. You’ve been working so hard lately, and you deserve a break.” Kristiana’s hands paused in my hair.

“Are you sure, Mistress? You know there are still plenty of duties for me—“ I waved my hand to stop her.

“I am absolutely sure. I can handle myself. Besides, I have business in town, and I am perfectly capable of handling myself.” I gave her a smile, which she graciously returned.

“If you are sure, I shall take you up on that offer.” She then continued delicately washing my hair while I washed my body. The sweet aroma of peaches filled the air in my room as dirt and grime was washed away from my body. Once I was rinsed, I stood up and wrapped a soft towel around my body as Kristiana laid out a plain black shirt and black trousers for me, I put on a pair of black leather boots to finish my outfit then smiled at Kristiana. I sat in front of the mirror, even though I couldn’t see my reflection, as Kristiana stood behind me and ran a brush through my hair.

“Just throw my hair into my usual bun and we shall call it a day.” I saw her nod her head in the mirror before her skillful hands went to work twisting my hair into a beautiful bun. She placed small black pins into my hair to hold it in place before she pulled out two strands to frame my face. She took a step back to admire her work before she smiled at me.

“All done, Mistress, and you look as beautiful as you always do.” I gave her a small smile.

“Thank you Kristiana. You always do such a wonderful job. You are dismissed until tomorrow.” Kristiana gave a timid bow before she walked out of my bedchambers. I took a moment to sit in the complete silence of the empty room and thought about how my morning had started. My eyes watered with the familiar sting of tears as I recalled the small glimmer of how things used to be with Astarion, but the moment quickly dissipated the moment she walked into the room.

I sighed heavily as I looked out the window, reminiscing on the days when Astarion and I were on the same page, wanting the same things, and speaking the same language. You will be my most beloved spawn, my right hand, my dark consort. I felt a single tear escape from my eye as his honeyed words rang through my head once again. Together you and I will be the most powerful people in the world. A few more tears slid down my face and collected onto my trousers. I had foolishly thought my little star had meant those words he had spoken, and I believe he truly did at one point in time. I wiped the tears that escaped my eyes before I straightened my posture. Regardless of how I thought he felt, he did entrust me with the task of finding whoever had stolen his blood. I grabbed my cloak and left my bedchambers as I set out to head towards my next destination: the library of Baldur’s Gate.

#astarion imagine #astarion x reader #baldursgate3 #baldursgate3imagine #ascended astarion #imagine #the promise of eternity

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isa-ghost · 1 month

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*grabby hands desire more qphilza headcanons*

WEHEHEHE

qPhil headcanons masterlist

He hates it bc he hates the quiet and feeling vulnerable n bored but sometimes this idiot really needs alone time. Whether it's to think or to do something Just for him or to self-care or something else, he needs some Him Time. And between being a dad of two, several people's confidant, a Horrors(tm) magnet, and just generally a self-negligent dumbass, he rarely gets any.

Another hypocritical thing he does: Complains he needs xyz (a break, rest, some kinda need met, etc) but whenever someone else tells him he needs xyz he's like What No I Don't I'm Fine And Functional Wdym. It's like the second someone is caring for him rather than him finally caring for himself, he's suddenly allergic to care at all

"Thanks I hate it" <- loves it very much or thinks it's hilarious unless it's a legitimately bad thing. Says this to Fit A Lot

He's the epitome of "Fine I'll do it. But I'm gonna complain the whole time." And depending on what it is, he ends up genuinely enjoying himself

Boating unironically de-stresses him. Though nowadays he can't help but think back to the Purgatory insanity he heard while at sea Day 1. 50/50 if he laughs about it or gets a pit in his stomach thinking about the trauma

From all his sleeping in that stupid fucking chair in the bunker, motherfucker's back sounds like bubblewrap sometimes

He has to sleep on his stomach bc sleeping on his wings BIG OUCH uncomfortable. At best, they just fall asleep. At worst they're in unbearable pain.

He's extremely paranoid after Chayanne's 3 day fight with EK that EK will possess Chayanne next or go after him first whenever he returns

At this point he barely thinks Cucurucho is a threat. More so a semi-annoying pathetic little weirdo with an obscene amount of power

He misses the old spawn bakery. The new one's kinda whatever. Too boujee. The old spawn one was not only a short walk from home, but also cozy and had character. Also he misses being able to prank it.

He also has beef with the use of gold for decor in new spawn bc shiny surface sometimes blanks/distracts his crow brain.

He (used to, been kinda difficult to post-Purgatory for misc reasons) go to Cellbit to give him pics & info on happenings/enigmas on the island. Now his go-to is Bagi (he sees her more), but like. He never Goes To Bagi. She just so happens to bump into him when he has something he needs to talk to her about or give to her

Missa occasionally gives him really good back massages that melt him into a puddle. They're rare bc a) Missa's away a lot and b) his back is very sensitive and in pain more often than not

Every once in a while he gets tea cravings and he hates it

Good god this man is not a morning person. His body just simply won't let him sleep last like 10am and he hates it.

#qsmp #qsmp philza #philza #q!philza #qphil headcanons

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synthaphone · 8 months

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my shiny fails:

shiny Bibarel in Diamond, 2007: first shiny ever, i was like 11 and SUPER excited. unfortunately in was in the safari zone and ended up running away

shiny Charmeleon in Emerald, 2008: i'm counting this as a fail even though it was uncatchable- i was at a Quiznos playing the Battle Factory and one of my opponents rolled a shiny charmeleon as a rental. i did end up swapping for it after beating them and using it for the rest of my factory run, but like. nothing you can do there, RIP

shiny Sunkern in GO, 2018 or something idk: it busted out and ran away. rip

shiny Spheal in Legends Arceus, 2022 probably: rolled away... so sad.........

shiny Dragonite in Lets Go Pikachu, 2023: another 'couldn't catch it before it ran away'

shiny Houndstone in Scarlet, yesterday: I saved in front of it so i thought I was safe- it burst out of 3 moon balls and I decided I didn't want to lose that many of such a rare resource on one pokemon. so i reset and all of the spawns refreshed 🙃

#i was like 'why is this one upsetting me so bad' but making this list i understand now. this one was MY fuckup #and also was because the mechanics of this game are inconsistent so it felt unfair #some people are able to recover shinies that have seemingly not respawned; by resetting their games again or changing the time/date #but for ME this did not work. i think its because i hadn't restarted my game in a while so resetting was more impactful???#idk. stupid ass game #pokemon #i need a text post tag

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shima-draws · 7 months

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Let me recount yesterday's experience shiny hunting bc it was fuckign BONKERS

I go for Carbink first in the little cave below the Crystal Pool. I do the neat little picnic respawn trick to get all the spawns to be Carbink. I strap myself in for a long hunting session. On my second picnic respawn, shiny Carbink manifests into existence. ON MY SECOND TRY,

(But look at it this shiny is so pretty and not talked about enough. It's very similar to Diancie's which I think is super cool, I love how they tied them in together like that)

2. I find a Grubbin outbreak! Yeah! In the middle of auto battling, a random shiny Luxio charges straight at me. This was without any sandwich buffs either this was just a full odds wild shiny. OKAY. SURE. WHY NOT.

3. There's a Volbeat outbreak and I'm like YELL HEAH bc Volbeat has such an underrated shiny. It's SO pretty look at him

PEAK color scheme. Anyway. In the middle of this Volbeat outbreak, one (1) Illumise spawns. And guess what. YEAH. IT'S FUCKING SHINY. OF COURSE.

4. I catch the Illumise. I am salty but also happy bc Illumise has a p good shiny anyway. But I still wanted a Volbeat. Before I can seethe for too long, not even 5 minutes pass before a shiny Volbeat spawns. NEVER PUNISHED

5. I go back to try the Grubbin outbreak. I do have a sandwich on this time so there's Grubbin and Charjabug everywhere, even outside of the outbreak spawn point. I wonder around for 10 minutes and LO AND BEHOLD. Shiny Grubbin. Not even part of the outbreak!!

So not only did I get two random shinies that were grouped in with outbreaks, I also got all the other Pokemon I was hunting for?? It was INSANE. Watch me shiny hunt tonight and get absolutely nothing bc I used up all my luck yesterday lmao

#Shima speaks #I'VE CAUGHT A GOOD CHUNK of the shiny Pokemon I wanted from the DLC #Sidenote but Chandelure's shiny looks SO fucking good in this game. Goddd. It's gorgeous #Pokemon #Shiny Pokemon #Pokemon SV #Pokemon Scarlet and Violet

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i--antimony · 5 months

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tuesday yet we persevere

what a week lads

listening up to partizan 18. the exchange of jack: "is inertia when you're stopping or going?" austin, very confidently: "it's when you're going" had me shouting NO at my phone, thank god art chimed in to clarify and actually define inertia. i love you art. been listening to a lot of breaking benjamin while i marathon-focus on trying to finish my poster by. tonight. yeouch.

reading fallow

playing pokego! it's become my fun little morning activity while i lay in bed waking up. like. ok i need to be awake. i will drowsily catch the 3 pokemon that spawn around me and spin the pokestop across the street. ok time to get out of bed i guess.

watching hbomberguy new four hour video reigns supreme. i've had it on periodically while i do chores, cook, etc.

making pottery! basically everything came out of the kiln at once! some finished objects:

the mugs (more like teacups, really, shrinkage strikes again) came out cute, despite the orange one getting a crack in the handle. i really love the way the white bowl came out with the koi, i'd put lillypads inside but they really didn't show up at all so i didn't bother photographing. that little black vase was done with a dark blue glaze that came out. black. so i probably did too many layers, plus it was on red clay, so oops. the little ramekins came out cute, i tried one of the stoneware glazes on the left one and it came out really matte which surprised me, but otherwise some standard lil bowls! and finally i hate the striped object behind the ramekins. i forgot to cover it up after making it and didn't get to trim it before it was bone dry so i just had to let it be was it was so it's really bottom-heavy. and i hate the way the glazed stripes came out. such is life. my roommate likes it so i might give it to her LOL.

dragon mug underglaze came out interesting!!! i used two different brands of underglaze and one of them came out. shiny?? so putting clear normal glaze over that texture proved a real challenge, especially for the handle. i used another underglaze (a chocolate brown, same as the one on the handle on the right) to fill in the background/inside/some linework details, then covered the whole thing in clear, so we'll see how that turns out! the little tree teacup i just covered in clear and put back on the kiln rack, i didn't want to add anything else to it, it came out sooo cute :)

did more underglaze stuff on two bowls, eye motif!!! one as a scratched out and one as painted on. excited to see how they go for the first firing. i had some Big bowls to trim and they were still a little wet but i was like eh i bet i can. i could not. look how i've massacred my boy (bottom left). it totally spun off the wheel but thankfully it's still soft enough that i was able to just sorta nudge it back into a circular shape. i did ragequit trimming for that day because of it though and did the eye underglaze work instead hahahah. hopefully will be able to trim them on wednesday! it's just so dang cold in the area where the pottery is stored to dry out so it takes forever in the winter.

finally, i finished the winter headband for my roommate's mom last night! image is not the finished one, i forgot to take a picture yesterday but i'll just do that after i block it later this week. i took the photo a few days ago because i actually made a mistake in the pattern and was trying to judge how obvious it was and whether or not to go back 10 rows and redo it. i don't think it's that obvious so i decided to keep going. can you spot the mistake :b

misc oughhh aughgghghgh academic poster. my advisor was really difficult to communicate with yesterday but made up for it this morning. her husband stressed me out for no reason but it's fine. i think i can finish it before the poster session tomorrow but odds are in the air as to whether i can get it Printed before the poster session tomorrow. woof. and then i need to figure out what i'm wearing at this conference and pack by friday.

#tuesdayposting

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shinyacademy · 10 months

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Spooky Shining Flutter Mane!

Hi friends! Look at all of those shiny Flutter Mane! Would you like to be the hero of your friend group with a gift of shiny Flutter Mane? Or perhaps you just want a lot of them? Today we’re embarking on a trip to the mysterious Area Zero with the goal of catching a bunch of shiny Flutter Mane!

Before we embark, a few notes of importance. First, you need to attend Naranja Academy for this trick to work. Uva students will need to bribe a friend who goes to Naranja Academy for a shiny Flutter Mane or pick up some classes at Naranja Academy.

Additionally, this trick is what we call an “exploit”. An exploit is a mechanism in a game that does not break any rules of the game or involve cheating but uses tactics that are probably unintentionally possible by the developers. While these Pokémon are legal and legitimate some people may consider the tactic to be “cheating”. As a professor, I would never condone actual cheating but I want my students to understand what they are getting into.

To start, we need to make sure that we go to Area Zero during the day. This trick won’t work at night. I find it best to wait for sunrise. That will give you the most time to hunt. Now we need to make our sandwich before entering area zero. The sandwich recipe I used is:

Any two herba mystica 🌿 except 2 sour and 1 sweet with 1 sour

1 serving of hamburger

1 serving of onion

1 serving of green pepper

2 servings of red onions

This sandwich can be a bit difficult to build but remember to put down your flattest ingredients first and you should be fine. Make sure that you save before prepping your sandwich so that you can just make your sandwich again if you accidentally lose ingredients. I made my sandwich right in front of area zero so that I could get inside really quickly afterward!

Next we need to get to Area 3. To find Flutter Mane we’re going to cycle between areas 3 and 4. To make it easier I port right to Area 3. As soon as you get out you should be seeing the effects of the sandwich.

What are the effects exactly? Well we’re calling Flutter Manes by using the sandwich recipe but Flutter Mane is a ghost type so it can’t spawn during the day. What you get is a very empty cavern! Friends, Area Zero is always weird, but let me tell you it was super weird darting around with no Pokémon showing up!

If you start to feel like you’re questioning your sanity (and I did many, many times) you can push ZL and you should be able to see the Flutter Mane phasing in and out. Don’t hold it down for too long though, it’s distracting you from your main objective of finding a shiny Flutter Mane!

At this point you may be wondering what the point of all of this is if all the Flutter Mane are disappearing. The answer is simple: shiny Flutter Mane are immune to the daylight rule and will just pop up for you to catch!

By my estimates, trainers without a shiny charm should be able to catch at least two shiny Flutter Mane in a span of 30 minutes. Those with a shiny charm should encounter at least 4 in the same amount of time. Personally, I was able to catch 6.

This trick makes it both easier to see the shiny Flutter Mane and also makes them appear with more frequency. You do have to remain diligent and make sure you’re paying attention for the shiny Flutter Mane when they pop in. While they won’t disappear, they can pop up in weird places, like behind crystals.

To optimize your time it’s good to cycle back and forth between the 3rd and 4th station. This should force more Flutter Mane into the area. Travel slowly and be alert!

If you do this at night or run out of daylight, you’ll see a whole bunch of normal Flutter Mane in the cavern and they will not disappear. While you can still hunt like this, you will naturally encounter less shiny Flutter Mane this way.

I love this method because it’s super easy to do and you really don’t need the shiny charm to be effective. Flutter Mane is such a top tier shiny too - everyone should have one!

Much thanks to my wife for allowing me to hunt with her alma mater (Naranja Academy). This tutorial would not have been possible without her. How many shiny Flutter Mane did you catch? Let me know in the comments! Until next time, stay shiny! ✨

#pokémon #shiny pokemon #shiny hunting #shiny pokémon #shinyhunters #pokémon scarlet #flutter mane #shiny flutter mane

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findyourrp · 7 months

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Hi there, my Baldur's Gate 3 and especially my Astarion brainrot is still going strong and I'm itching to write with someone (21+ only) who shares the same enthusiasm. 🦇 🗡

I'm a literate roleplayer (25+), who usually writes 5-7 short to medium-length paragraphs (500-1000 words) and who prefers to roleplay on Discord. What I have in mind is pretty smut-heavy but it also has has a healthy amount of plot.

Astarion x OC vampire lord with me playing the OC. One of Cazador's rivals is setting his eyes on the white-haired vampire spawn who has somehow managed to escape the clutches of his pretentious master. All he has to do now is to convince Astarion to come with him. While dub-con can be discussed I'm not looking for non-con scenarios for this plot idea. It will definitely not be fluffy and sweet, but I prefer consent and passion.

Astarion x Halsin with me playing Astarion. Compared to the Astarion x vamp lord request this one can be fluffy and sweet but it doesn't have to. What I'm looking for is something simple and not too dark like Halsin and the pale elf going hunting together and sharing a meal. Or Astarion needing Halsin to have a chat with one of the local animals because there is something expensive and shiny in their nest. Or the two of them doing a bit of goblin-bashing and licking their wounds afterwards.

Astarion x male Tav/OC/CC with me playing either of them. A prison break, the two of them trying to shake off their pursuers or a Gur being in a situation where he has to team up with the vampire spawn are the scenarios I would like to try out. Be it one of the other party members, a Gur-OC or just Tav who is a tough SOB, I want some friction between Astarion and him that turns into friction of a different kind. What I'm not looking for is a demure, yes-saying character who just goes with the flow. When Astarion orders Tav/OC/CC to get to his knees I want him to tell Astarion to say pretty please first.

Leave a like and I will get in touch with you!

#rp finder #18+ rp #fandom rp #fandom roleplay #bd3 rp #baldur's gate 3 rp #cc x oc rp #cc x cc rp #roleplay

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findroleplay · 7 months

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Hi there, my Baldur's Gate 3 and especially my Astarion brainrot is still going strong and I'm itching to write with someone (21+ only) who shares the same enthusiasm.

Leave a like and I will get in touch with you!

#roleplay #rp #oc rp #Baldur's Gate 3 rp

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kafus · 7 months

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i did some ridiculous technical BS in pokemon again

NOTE: not only is this post a very very long infodump from yours truly, it is also specifically an infodump involving a lot of pokemon glitches and exploits. even though i don't tamper with my games and everything achieved here can be done on original hardware with no hacking or what-have-you, some people still may consider this Cheating based on their own personal standards of legitimate gameplay. i ask that you please don't try to start arguments with me about pokemon legality and just take it all as an interesting technical infodump about gen 3 pokemon okay thank you <3

SO. i decided that before pokemon bank eventually shuts down one day in the probably-not-so-distant future and makes old gen transfer impossible, i need more ribbon master pokemon (AKA a pokemon with all the ribbons it can possibly receive from its gen of origin to the most recent gen it can transfer to) from gens 3 and 4. i've been meaning to ribbon master a pokemon from gen 3 based on my favorite singer, KAF (you don't need to know anything about kaf for this story whatsoever but you should check her out LMAO) and while musing over what pokemon would suit her best, it came to me.

FARIGIRAF IS JUST KAF'S FURSONA!! the monster teeth hoodie with the eyes. even has the dangly bits. like come on it's perfect. AND girafarig is obviously available in gen 3 so i could RM a kaf girafarig and then evolve her once i got to SV. Cool! Awesome! but here's the problem. I CAN'T SETTLE FOR JUST A NORMAL GIRAFARIG. I HAVE TO GO ALL OUT!!

i started brainstorming my ideal gen 3 kaf girafarig, and came to the following conclusions:

i obviously want the girafarig to be shiny. i mean come on

i want her to be a girl for obvious reasons, and gentle nature to match her personality. just because Armor Tail is better on Farigiraf i also want it to have girafarig's second ability, Early Bird. i'm not concerned with IVs because i think random IVs add flavor and that would add more tedium than i was already dealing with

i want her to be japanese language origin since kaf is a japanese singer (i can nickname her かふ that way too!)

i want the original trainer (OT) name to be PPさん (PP-san) in reference to the person who scouted out kaf's talent in the first place - he goes by Piedpiper online and my friends and i call him PP as a joke sometimes

i want the trainer ID to be 02018 because 2018 is kaf's debut year

since girafarig only spawns in gen 3 in the ruby/sapphire/emerald safari zone, i wanted to hatch a girafarig egg in firered/leafgreen for the kanto origin, which is impossible otherwise. FRLG are also really important games to me, leafgreen being the first pokemon game i ever owned or played, so that's a bonus

now you may be looking at this entire list and being like. What the fuck. how do you intend to shiny hunt girafarig with all of these hyperspecific parameters, especially in FRLG where the everstone passing nature doesn't exist and flame body doesn't even exist to hatch eggs faster. you will be doing that long after bank shuts down. and you're intending on doing this on original hardware too??? WELL. that's where ACE and RNG manipulation comes in babey. i am GOING to attempt to make this comprehensible even if you've never touched ACE or RNG manip in your life, even tangentially, but sorry if this is a bit of a mess it's pretty technical LOL. the rest of this post is going below a cut cause it Goes Places!!

ACE and RNG manipulation explained (kinda)

first off a quick overview of ACE, ACE stands for arbitrary code execution, which is the ability to run your own (arbitrary!) code within the game. this can be set up with a series of elaborate glitches, that break open the gen 3 pokemon games into letting you run your PC box names as code, enabling you to do pretty much anything you want. to be upfront, i'm not an expert on ACE - i understand it in an overarching conceptual sense and am able to follow ACE guides just fine, but i cannot write my own ACE code, which essentially requires you to know some GBA assembly. doesn't really matter for the purpose of this story though.

you can see an example of a tiny snippet of a larger ACE code with the PC box name below. it looks like gibberish but that's because every character used in the name corresponds to a specific internal value, which when all run together, is code!

i need ACE in FRLG because resetting for, or RNG manipulating (more on that in a moment), trainer ID (and secret ID, also more on that later) is pretty much impossible. ACE will allow me to change my TID to 02018 by essentially just telling the game to do so with my PC boxes. this requires me to set up ACE in emerald first since that's the only game with a viable entrypoint, and then use emerald ACE to make glitch pokemon that can activate ACE in FRLG when traded over.

as for RNG manipulation, that's a bit more straightforward, especially if you've ever watched a speedrun of... pretty much anything with random chance in it. games with random chance are not actually fully random because computers can't really be fully random, and in the older pokemon games with unencrypted and less advanced RNG (random number generator) algorithms, this is pretty easy to exploit.

this is a heavy simplification, but whenever you encounter a wild pokemon in RSE or FRLG, the amount of frames that have passed since the game was turned on are compared to a number that was generated upon boot, called the RNG seed. if you've ever played minecraft you can compare this to world seeds - the pokemon RNG seed determines all possible wild encounters in that play session in a similar fashion as minecraft determining the infinite terrain layout. this comparison determines every aspect of an encountered pokemon; its species, nature, IVs, and so on. so, if you were able to time your wild encounter (or any other type of pokemon encounter) down to the 1/60th of a second frame, you can get the game to spit out whatever pokemon you want at you! you just need a bit of typically invisible information first - the RNG seed, and if you're RNGing a shiny, your secret ID aka SID, which is like an invisible second trainer ID generated alongside your TID that is paired up with the TID and compared against any pokemon you encounter to determine if it should be shiny or not. both of these things can be figured out without hacking or tampering with games/save files.

the most common program used for all things RNG manipulation is called pokefinder and you can see an example of it spitting out what shinies are available on hoenn's first route in the first 100000 frames of the game being on with an RNG seed of 0 and my old TID/SID combo below. it's pretty damn cool to me tbh, i love RNG manipulation and i'm way more versed on it/experienced than i am with ACE

TLDR; rng manipulation is essentially a frame perfect, speedrunning-adjacent trick to get the game to roll the RNG in your favor, including for perfect IVs or shininess. for reasons that will become clear later, this is much easier to do in emerald than any other gen 3 game, so i will be using emerald for the RNG manipulation of the girafarig egg

with ALL of that context out of the way, this was the gameplan:

play through a fresh file of japanese firered (i don't own japanese leafgreen, RIP) all the way through the postgame to unlock trading with hoenn with the name PPさん, not worrying about TID for now. the guide i was following did not have a code for changing name with ACE in japanese FRLG specifically, so i figured playing the game again real quick would be a better alternative to trying to teach myself assembly in an afternoon LOL

set up ACE in my new emerald file i completed recently

use ACE in emerald to generate the glitch pokemon needed to run ACE in FRLG and trade them over. finalize the setup process over in FRLG too

look up possible gentle, ability 2, female, and shiny egg frames, and pick one that looks good to RNG manipulate in emerald, noting its PID (an encounter-specific ID number, pretty much)

figure out what SID, when combined with a TID of 02018, will cause that egg frame to be shiny - that way when the egg is traded over and hatched in firered, it will be shiny

do the RNG in emerald, trade over the to-be-shiny egg to firered, and hatch it after changing the TID/SID with ACE appropriately!! bam female, gentle, early bird, shiny, JP origin girafarig with an OT of PPさん and a visible TID of 02018. Pog!!

to execute that gameplan would take me an entire day, though...

step 1: play through firered

ok gonna be honest this is the ONE part of this entire process that i did not play on original hardware. i wanted to get to the Cool Parts of this process so i decided to play through firered on emulator. absolutely terrible picture sorry but i do actually own japanese firered, so i could dump the game legally to my computer to use speedup in mGBA with a little device called the Joey JR which connects the cart to my computer by USB like so

after that it was pretty much a relatively normal playthrough but obviously with emulator speedup. i used solely my starter blastoise to, well, blast through the rest of the game LMAO. after just a couple of hours or so i was right before the elite four, which i completed while in the car after moving the save file back to my cartridge with the same device, since i had to leave the house to go to a doctor appointment. i tried to take pictures of me beating the game but the sun was not doing the photos any favors lol. blastoise ended up being level 76 by the end. was easy with surf and an ice beam TM from the game corner (i just bought the coins)

unfortunately beating the game isn't the only requirement for trading with the hoenn games, so i also had to complete the whole sevii islands postgame quest... which required me to have 60 registered owned entries in the pokedex, which i wasn't really doing while speeding through the game initially, so i had a lot of mons to catch. i was still out of the house at this point (and playing at normal speed lol) so i wasn't really taking pictures, but i did make a stop at the power plant to look for an electabuzz despite it being an inefficient 5% since i needed a spare anyways for my leafgreen file unrelated to this story lmao. took a pic of it since it took a while to show up. anyway soon enough the dex had 60+ entries! i've played FRLG so many times that the encounter locations are memorized in my mind... i did all of this with no googling asdfkasfd

at this point i got home and was able to do the ruby/sapphire postgame quest on emulator with speedup again, so it was pretty easy. moved the save back to cart and i was done with step 1! obviously this didn't actually take me 21 hours of playtime, that was the emulator speedup's fault loool. from here on out i didn't touch any emulators again!

step 2: set up ACE in emerald

ACE time! i've actually set up ACE in an old emerald file before but i wanted to do it again fresh. i was following a guide pretty much to a T so i'm actually going to skip over the details of some of the steps since you can read about those more in depth over at the guide i was using if you want

TLDR; you have to trade for the NPC trade pokemon, DOTS the seedot and PLUSES the plusle, then EV train DOTS a specific way. these EV values cause DOTS to turn into a glitch pokemon egg 0x0611 when corrupted with the pomeg glitch (more on that in a bit), which, when hatched, runs the PC box names as code, aka ACE! why does it work? if you really want to know, there's plenty of stuff online about it, i'm not the best person to ask haha

it's worth noting that volbeat is really annoying to capture in emerald as it's literally only available as a 1% in one patch of grass, so i caught an illumise instead and bred them until a volbeat hatched lol. was much more efficient

also lol "Take good care of DOTS!" sorry i will be corrupting your son into demonspawn that lets me wield godlike control over your universe

after getting the necessary NPC trade pokemon all ready and moving them into a specific pattern in box 2 (i cloned them with the emerald tower cloning glitch) i had to perform the pomeg glitch. this involves using a pomeg berry to decrease a pokemon's health to 0 without causing a whiteout. this is achieved by getting a pokemon with at least 8 HP EVs to 1 HP and then using the pomeg berry on it, decreasing the EVs and taking off a point of health in the process (it's slightly more steps than this but whatever). i decided to use the camerupt i had during my playthrough of the game for this purpose. just took him to fiery path to get poisoned and walked until he was on 1 HP and healed him with an antidote lol

by doing the pomeg glitch and entering a wild battle, the game gets a bit confused since all the pokemon in your party are fainted and just sends out some sort of glitch decamark pokemon. in this situation, after viewing my camerupt's summary in battle and exiting back out of the summary screen, i was able to corrupt the DOTS and PLUSES sitting in my PC by scrolling up above the usual limit of the party menu, which reaches into data used by the first two PC boxes and fucks them up, ending up with, assuming that i EV trained correctly, a glitched egg that is about to hatch in a nest ball named DOTS with pokerus. this will run ACE when hatched! (if you want more info on this corruption pomeg stuff, check out the bulbapedia article for glitzer popping. yes that's what they named it)

step 3: use emerald ACE to set up firered ACE

so once again you can find a lot more detail on this process over at the guide i was using, but the TLDR of the matter was, i needed to put a bunch of codes into my PC box names to generate a few different glitch mons. specifically, i needed a egg that would hatch into a crobat (yes, fully evolved lol) with a singular glitched out move, that when used in battle in firered, would cause ACE to happen similar to how hatching the corrupted DOTS egg causes ACE to happen in emerald. i also needed a specific buggy shiny umbreon and a very strange glitchy egg.

even though this step was mostly a lot of tedious typing on the gen 3 keyboard (+ i had to redo things once because i made a typo at one point in the process LOL) it was so much fun! the game breaks in so many ways that you would just... never see during normal gameplay and it makes for some really good pictures and whatnot

first of all, when you hatch the 0x0611 egg, it hatches into a decamark of varying colors, in the case of the picture below it's almost imperceptible because the whole sprite is just a black circle, blending in with the background (sorry for the quality on this one, it's a screencap of a video clip i took).

additionally, trying to scroll over the hatched decamark in the PC or viewing its summary screen will crash the game, so to get rid of it, it has to be moved to the front of your party in the party menu, and then you go to the PC to release it through the deposit menu. since the cursor just defaults to the first position of the party and you don't have to scroll over to it, it's possible to release it from here.

oh yes and the umbreon/other glitch egg? similarly screwy - actually after generating them, their sprites are glitched out until you reset the game, so they look like this. behold their nonsense summaries:

after i had all i needed to trade to FRLG, i cloned an extra set of them with the emerald tower glitch again just in case i messed something up and got to trading! here's me receiving them on the firered side:

and last but not least, i'm a little obsessed with the way the glitch move looks in FRLG on the hatched crobat, absolute nonsense:

i finalized setting up the FRLG ACE (check out the guide i linked earlier for more info) and put everything into their proper positions, but before i could actually execute any code... i needed to know what SID i was going for!

step 4 + 5: look up potential egg frames in emerald and find an SID

soo now for looking at potential girafarig eggs. instead of using the program pokefinder which i mentioned earlier, i used a program called pokenav egg rng tool, which is exactly what it sounds like, a tool specialized for rng manipulating eggs with the pokenav in emerald. using it, i was quickly able to generate a whole list of gentle, female, ability 2 (early bird) eggs, and i picked one that was around 1300 frames in since that made for quick resetting attempts, but not so quick that i could barely make my inputs in time. the one i picked was frame 1381. with a TID of 02018, the PID D2C5EF55 would be shiny with an SID of 14962, so i noted that for later in firered. (i figured this out using an old program called RNG Reporter which is what i'm familiar with but i don't recommend using lmao. it's the "Pandora's Box" feature of that software though if you happen to look it up)

i won't make an entire guide on how to do emerald egg RNG here because it's a lot of steps, but i might at some point because the most up to date method isn't super well documented. anyways, here's a very paraphrased version of the process (this is also assuming that you aren't dealing with "redraws", which i wasn't... like i said very paraphrased):

get a pokemon with the ability lightningrod in the front of your party (i used electrike) to make pokenav calls happen more frequently, and a pokemon with flame body or magma armor (i used slugma) to make eggs hatch faster

get a male and a female of the pokemon you want to hatch, in my case girafarig. if you were RNGing IVs, the parent's IVs would be relevant, but i am not RNGing IVs so i didn't care and just caught the first girafarig i could in the safari zone

an egg is attempted to be generated every 255 steps after the parents are deposited in the daycare together, so by timing the usage of a max repel in such a way, it's easy to save the game exactly 10 steps before an egg is generated. do this

using a timer such as eontimer, soft reset and try to take that last 10th step on your target frame. this will also trigger a pokenav call (or lack thereof) and by looking for the phone call you got in the call column of the egg rng tool and whether or not an egg generated at the daycare, you can tell what frame you hit. didn't hit your target? just soft reset and try again, calibrating the timer for your own human error. this can take a while since the timing is precise to 1/60th of a second

once you hit your target frame, woohoo you did it just take the egg and hatch it! if you're RNGing IVs you would actually save before taking the egg and then RNG the IVs separately but that's a whole different thing i'm not explaining here since i wasn't RNGing IVs

i've avoided mentioning it this entire time till now, but emerald is particularly easy to do rng manipulation in because due to a programming error, the rng seed is always 0 - all encounters are predictable and you don't have to dedicate a frame perfect input to getting the right seed, making emerald rng a matter of one frame perfect input instead of two (there ARE ways to get emerald to generate a proper rng seed but that's unrelated here). additionally, its pokenav system means you can see if you got the right egg BEFORE taking it and hatching it... doing egg RNG in any other gen 3 game is basically a death sentence due to multiple untelegraphed frame perfect inputs that have to be executed in a row, plus really long wait times due to hatching eggs on a slower bike without flame body. there's a reason i was not doing this on four island in frlg.

but yeah now i knew what egg frame i was going for and was all prepared to do the RNG, so now it was onto actually executing it all:

step 6: getting kaf girafarig babey!!

before doing the RNG manipulation in emerald, i needed to change my SID and TID in firered finally! this required me to run two different codes, one for SID and one for TID. it was actually pretty painless since the code is nearly identical for both, you just swap out the values of each ID and one character changes in one box name to decide whether you're changing TID or SID. you can find the list of codes i was referencing here.

i was saving my one allotted video clip in this post for changing the TID with the glitched crobat move though because LMAO

^ shoutout to my qpp @/spikyearr for this one i fucking chokedSKFDDSFK

anyway, after doing that i went through the process of the egg rng in emerald (unfortunately no pictures because it's kind of hard to take pics mid-rng) and actually saved before taking the egg so that i'd be able to soft reset after hatching it - i just needed to check to make sure it was gentle and everything, and then i could soft reset, take the egg again, bike around to decrease the egg cycles in emerald since hatching in firered is super slow, and then trade it off before hatching it to go be hatched in firered. i knew it wouldn't be shiny in emerald, so i wasn't concerned with that. it only took 40 or so minutes of attempts before i got her!

and then AT LAST after spending my ENTIRE DAY ON THIS SHIT (like 10x the amount of time on the ACE stuff for the TID instead of the actual RNG itself LOOOL) i just had to trade the egg to firered and hatch it and i was golden!!!!! AAAGH here she is next to my kaf plushies!!!

also a picture of her summary screen after being traded to my english leafgreen!! i am assuming this will be easier to read for most of the people reading this post LOL

THAT'S IT. POST OVER THIS WAS SO LONG. IF YOU MADE IT THROUGH MY RAMBLING GOOD JOB. I HIT THE PHOTO LIMIT HELP ME

anyways yeah i'm gonna be ribbon mastering her and idk i might post about the process as i go. not immediately though i have a platinum playthrough to finish teehee. also if any of this was interesting to you i highly recommend trying out RNG manipulation, it's a really fun way to play pokemon games! gen 5, BW specifically and not their sequels, is REALLY beginner friendly for RNG manipulation as the timing is a lot less precise. check it out, there's plenty of guides online!!

#pokemon #pokemon rse #rse #pokemon frlg #frlg #rng manipulation #arbitrary code execution #girafarig #ribbon mastering #kiki was here #kiki.txt #long post #kiki plays games

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jadeazora · 11 months

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Here's the trailer for Hidden Gems! The new season runs from Jun1 until Sept1!

We also have our first event of this new Season, Beach Week!

Jun6 at 10am to Jun12 at 8pm, local time

Adds Sandygast and Shiny Clauncher to the game

A Global Challenge will take place throughout the event! Work with Trainers around the world to throw 300 million Nice Throws to unlock bonuses for all Trainers to enjoy for the remainder of the event! (The bonuses being Increased Candy and Candy XL for players Lv31+ when they make Nice, Great, and Excellent Throws.)

Wild encounters are Tentacool, Shellder, Krabby, Alolan Exeggutor, Horsea, Staryu, Marill, Wingull, Wailmer, Spheal, Finneon, Dwebble, Frillish, and Clauncher. Rarer encounters are Mantine and Popplio.

Lapras (scarf), Frillish, Binnacle, Clauncher, and Sandygast are Field Research encounters. Yea, that tracks. Of course they'd choose one of the more pain in the butt ways of acquiring the featured Pokemon. Of course. You can get Mega Energy for Swampert and Blastoise too.

Spotlight hour on Jun6 (6-7pm) featuring Krabby, Kabuto, Corphish, Clauncher, Crabrawler. There's an event bonus for 3x EXP.

General event bonus of 4x Rainy Lure duration.

For US$5.00 (or the equivalent pricing tier in your local currency), you’ll be able to access event-exclusive Timed Research. Complete the research tasks to earn a surfer pose for your avatar and encounters with event-themed Pokémon. Please note that Timed Research expires. The Timed Research tasks and their rewards will disappear on Jun12 at 8pm, local time.

Raids are: 1⭐ Sandygast (a bit better but still have to get lucky with spawns), Feebas, Carvanha, Hisuian Qwilfish, and Alolan Diglett. 3⭐ are Blastoise, Lapras in a Scarf, Alomomola, and Gyarados. 5⭐ Raids are Uxie (Asia-Pacific), Mesprit (Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India), and Azelf (Americas and Greenland), and Mega Raids being Mega Swampert.

New Avatar items: Sandygast Hat, Diver Outfit, and Diver Goggles

Edit, the June infographic:

#sandygast #pokemon trainer #niantic #pokemon go #pokego

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mandalhoerian · 1 year

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NO TIME TO DIE | leon kennedy x oc | 3

pairing: leon s. kennedy x oc word count: 15K~ (I AM SORRY) warnings: past child abuse, gore, descriptions of vomit, suicide attempt, vera being blasphemous to god , again with cringy humor inspired by my real life experiences of awkwardness, they're getting to know each other ur honor 😭 summary: For the sake of getting out of the station and to save Marvin, Leon and Vera end up establishing field agent and mission support unit of two without knowing what it is through trials of trust and vulnerability. READ ON AO3 ! CH. 4 ☆ NO TIME TO DIE MASTERPOST

Lt. Branagh was lying sideways on the couch, one glance at the him would suggest he was sleeping but the man was visibly shivering and his lips were pressed into a thin line, face shiny with the pearly droplets of sweat, a white sheet taken from the curtains surrounding them draped over his body that Vera had taken extra care to tuck underneath — so his back wouldn't be exposed should he toss around, according to her crestfallen explanation.

This must be how her father put her to bed when she was a child, Leon thought, cocooning her into warmth and safety. He had to look away from her lovingly caressing her father's head like he was the child and she was the parent, the lump stuck on his stomach got twice the heavier with the sight.

A hollowness curled its way home within his ribs at not being able to imagine that kind of love between him and his late parents, hell, he couldn't even remember receiving that kind of agonizing affection from them, feather soft and sitting-before-the-stove-on-a-winter-night cozy. The closest he got to it was when he successfully completed deliveries or brought money home as a child beggar, his father spared him then from the usual beatings that he told was necessary for people to pity him — people loved broken pretty things, always wanted to fix 'em . Leon was no different from an injured pup in their eyes, he had said, so he had to act like it, too.

Mornings were filled with twenty wink sleeps and nights hardwired him to stay alert like a hawk, gang members coming and going like it was an inn, his mother's cheap sugary perfume hanging in the rotten, molded air as she left home and didn't return for weeks, Leon surviving on salt on bread or bouillon cubes and his father's anger the whole time, the brown-stained refrigerator mostly filled with liquor, strangers randomly spawning in his home with guns in their belts looking at him funny, his father laughing, and then empty film strips and blanks in his memory — and Leon hurting all over, running, sleeping on the streets for a couple of days and managing his hunger until his existence was forgotten and going back home then, body used to the punishment he was sure to receive. It was chaotic and it was routine.

Leon survived. Leon survived because he was simply made that way. He was born into survival.

For him, home was the most dangerous place on earth, a jungle filled with predators — the meaning of the word safe didn't come to him until after the day he lost his family. Then, home was just a box with all the hazardous contents removed, it never meant more than what the definition entailed, never really bothered him unless he was faced with what he wasn't allowed to have, the adolescent Leon avoided parks, hurried straight back after school, anywhere children would flock to, followed by parents who loved them to bits. Those were the places where tears decided to surface after long periods of feeling absolutely nothing. Leon couldn't control his body's response, and he resented the vulnerability and the feeling that he was made of glass — he would never be ready for the danger ambushing him around the corner, salvation had turned him weak.

If only he wasn't introduced to affection by that cop who had shown the first act of kindness in his life that he could remember, changing his life forever. It was when he had gained consciousness, the first time he realized he had autonomy, the first time he had felt unbridled happiness and joy and gratitude in his life that he wanted to share it in abundance: the relaxation of a full night's sleep and a body that could just let go, the warmth of a homemade meal, everyday life not as a fist that came down on him but a hand that was an encouraging push into a kinder world — Leon wanted everyone to feel this way in their life just once. It had healed him. He wanted to change someone's life the way his was changed. He wanted to do that for someone, be that cop for other many Leon S. Kennedy's.

He found his calling in helping people, and he had two people right now who needed him to step up the most.

He tried his hardest not to picture Vera and Marvin in a child's bedroom at night, illuminated by the soft yellow light coming from the bedside lamp, Lt. Branagh younger and healthier and happier, telling a night time story to his little daughter basically made into a blanket burrito. Leon closed his ears to the giggles of a young Vera, of course questioning the story at every turn and nitpicking at every detail ("How's that a twig, dad? It must be a branch if it has leaves!"), enjoying squabbling with her father over the tiny details. Warm, warm, warm.

Leon couldn't swallow the fist-sized rock stuck in his throat. and swore to himself: he would save them, he would take them to safety, no matter what , he would not fail Lt. Branagh.

He had been wavering before, utterly confused and split into two pieces over doing what he thought was right and what he was ordered to do — Lt. Branagh was his boss, but also a man with a family he wanted desperately to be saved before him. It gave massive jitters of anxiety to Leon to be thinking about disobeying orders despite the world ending around them when all he wanted was approval, but at the same time, could he be a good cop if he didn't have the gall to do the right thing?

He was wearing the uniform, he'd better live up to it.

"Let's leave him to rest," Leon whispered, lingering behind the crouched Vera.

The fingers on the lieutenant's sweat-covered forehead stopped and she straightened her spine, looking back at him over her shoulder, a faraway look in her half-droopy eyes. His heart ached for her.

She sniffled without tears, and got up, signaling Leon to follow her to the front desk, and took the Toughbook with her. On the way, she said, "He needs herbs, that could put him to sleep a bit. Help the pain."

Those definitions sounded a bit... Leon stretched out the word, uncertain. "Herbs? You're not talking about cannabis, are you?"

He got laughed at. Again . "I wish. Getting high in the middle of all this would be a dream come true, but no. Herbs I'm talking about are medicinal." She set the Toughbook down on the desk, pulling a rolling chair and sitting down on it, working to open the station's maps. "Native to the Arklay mountains. You know the pharmaceutical corporation, Umbrella? They farm them for medicine. These herbs have healing properties, relax John Law."

His lips twitched upwards from their corners at John Law . Weirdly enough, this felt like they've been acquainted for a long while instead of having met like an hour ago. Leon reckoned it could be because of her personality, Vera seemed like the kind of social, center-of-the-room girl who would get close and chummy with a person who she was just introduced to on the spot. She just gave off the energy of the type who immediately started drunk-defending a girl she met in the bathroom line as if they had been blood sisters since birth.

She had immediately warmed up to Leon and was treating him with the normalcy of a friend, which in turn, he had to admit comforted him greatly. The zombie apocalypse was easier to bear with someone to share the experience together. He only wished Claire could get here soon, safe and sound, they would be stronger together.

He leaned over to see what she was doing on the computer. "That's good to hear, I guess."

One square was slowly blinking red on the map, it had 'Lounge' written on it. He couldn't figure out what he was looking at when she snickered. "The red ones can be used for enhancing the effects of weed though."

He whirled his head around at that toward her so fast that she cackled, holding her stomach and hitting one foot on the ground, not trying in the slightest to hold back the ugliness of that sound. Leon was surprised to say the least, eyebrows shooting up at that. "We are not feeding weed to my dad, oh my god, don't worry I'm just messing with you."

His neck warmed up instantly, but it thankfully didn't reach his face. He was aware his skin was prone to get flushed very easily, it was something he didn't like about himself, it gave away his feelings on a silver platter when he didn't want to. On top of that, Leon really felt bad that he was taking hits left and right in the eyes of this girl, he couldn't be that easy to sway back and forth, could he? "What exactly are these things, then?"

"Alright," she said, sniffling again. "So we have three types of herbs. Green, blue and red. They have official, scientific names of course but I couldn't care less." She stopped, mirth in her eyes. "I only care what flavor they add to my weed."

He made his eyes go wide slightly, a warning in his voice. "You want me to cuff and stuff you or something?"

That earned him fully raised eyebrows up to Vera's hairline underneath her short bangs, and her gaping at him like a fish out of water. Her eyes trailed to the handcuffs hanging from his hip, and back to his face, something suggestive in her face that he couldn't decipher. "Okay, didn't expect to make such a discovery..."

A giant question mark hung above his head as he stared in confusion. Leon didn't get it. "Discover what, that cannabis is illegal?"

She stared for a second, unblinking.

Leon hadn't paid attention before, but they were colorless. Pale monochrome gray eyes. How was that possible? It was striking against the deep tan of her skin and the soot black of her thick and long eyelashes.

Vera hit her fist on the table. "Oh my god, you don't realize," she said, her voice suddenly big, shocking him out of his recent focus on the color of her irises, and panicked for a moment thinking she reacted to him staring into her eyes that intently. "Oh you're the sweet type, oh." Her hand went to her heart.

What was happening? Where had that come from? "I'm not following, but thank you?" That was a compliment, right? This was the second one he got from her that read like an insult but didn't prick like one. Strange.

"Never change," she said, jokingly emotional for some reason and it perplexed him. He knew he wasn't going to get it out of her.

Yep, you guessed it, another insult-compliment.

"Okay?" He half-laughed, disconcerted. "We're getting distracted. Tell me more about the herbs. Outside of their usage in cannabis this time, please."

"I'm tempted to refuse. Oh to be cuffed and stuffed."

Leon tilted his head to the side, not saying anything. He was missing something here, damnit.

"You're sucking the fun out of everything." Vera huffed. "Here I am trying to forget about my sick dad and you just have to pop my balloon." She spun left and right with the rolling chair. The poor girl wasn't serious in her jab, he knew as much, but her admitting she was actively trying to soothe herself bothered him just the same.

Leon wished he could do something already, impatience rising in his stomach to go out there and start working on getting the way out open. He frowned, but she didn't see it, continuing her explanation. "Back to the point, as you wish. Green herbs have the ability to heal basic injuries, chew on 'em and you'll be immediately relieved. It's a huge upgrade from aloe-vera. If you've applied it to any burn or injury you know it's freaky how fast that shit helps, imagine how wild this green herb is. I jumped from the first floor once and the recovery by just eating this was magical."

"Jumped from the first floor, not fell?"

"Hell yeah," she gave him the rock hand sign with both hands. "I’m metal like that."

Leon thought back to her saying twink with her whole chest, amused.

She was searching his reaction for something, eyes squinted a bit, the sheer thickness of her eyelashes made it seem like she was shutting her eyes funny. "Not gonna ask? Not curious in the slightest?"

"Nope," he said. "I respect your privacy."

"Man, we are so different. You don't argue, you're not nosy, you're nice and respectful. How is this gonna work?" Complimenting him once more, making it come out like complaining. That had to be a trait of hers. "We need spice in this relationship."

Easily distractible, got it.

"Let's put herbs in it," Leon reminded her, gently, without making it obvious he was telling her to get back on track. "You were saying blue?"

She came back to the moment, stopping her spins with the chair. "Yeah, uh, blue herbs are to treat poisoning. As for red herbs, they're very pretty but they don't do anything. Or so people thought. I was talking about weed for a reason, they discovered red herbs are amplifiers of some sort when someone in this city accidentally mixed it with pot and thought they were god for like a week and had to be taken to the ER. They said they tried it because they read it in an Asian medicine book or something and now it's being researched and an entire industry is changing. Crazy, right?"

He could indulge her for just a second.

"Were you that person, Vera?" Leon asked flatly.

"No," Vera said immediately, a shocked, deer-in-the-headlights look in her face, she clearly hadn't expected to be hit with that and Leon was satisfied deep down, he had avenged himself. "Why? Thought you weren't curious."

"So you're accepting this is about you."

"I'm— I'm not? I'm not. The fuck." She blinked rapidly, unable to comprehend how fast the conversation had escalated. He had to accept this was kind of satisfying. "Not the point at all."

"Okay," he shrugged, also noting that word irritated her a bit. He did manage to distract her, though, so it was fine. Back to the point. "So how do I get these? They can't be in the station, but according to what you're saying they should be sold in herbal stores. Do we come back once we get out and take what we need from there?"

"You know what happens in a disaster? People stock up on necessities. This is what happened with the herbs. A lot of citizens had the same idea and when they took refuge here, they also flooded the station with all the herbs they brought." She leaned back on the chair and it squeaked. "They are all around the place now. You can imagine why."

"So you're saying I just have to pick them up on the way?"

"Ding-dong!"

"This is the single greatest thing I heard tonight, I can get moving right now," Leon said, knocking on the desk excitedly, an energetic spring to his feet while moving away and inspecting the fenced west wing door and the panel next to it that was covered entirely by yellow duct tape from a distance. The knife Lt. Branagh gave him could slice through. He returned his attention to Vera. "What's the location of the next medallion?"

"Okay, so good news and bad news." Vera raised her hands and then put them down, slapping them on the desk on either side of the Toughbook. "Both medallions are on the east side," her left hand moved to the hellish place Leon had barely made it out of. "One on the second floor," likewise, her right hand moved towards the right. "One on the third floor. I saw you investigating the precinct earlier so you must have seen that the only available way is by the shutter door because the other entrances are locked —- both the east and west side are like that, actually. Doors with a blue spade symbol on it."

"I saw two more spade doors to the left. One on the right."

"There is a spade key to unlock these."

"I'm assuming you don't have it?"

"No. David does. And I have no idea where the hell he is."

From the lack of gunshots, Leon had an inkling of what had happened to the guy, but he didn't voice it out loud, transparent sadness put lines of stress on his brow.

"There are three other doors with different symbols like this one," Vera added. "The interior designer clearly wanted to stick to a theme. This museum is one giant escape room."

Great , Leon thought. Why did he think it would be easy? "So heart, diamond and club keys? How can I get them?"

"Don't worry about the heart key, it belongs to Chief Irons." She almost hissed the man's name, her nose scrunching at it, a faint disgust flashing in her face and then dissipating. Leon’s attention perked up. "It unlocks his private chambers and the places he keeps his art collection in, nothing useful to us."

How did she know that?

Maybe it's common knowledge around here between the officers.

But Vera wasn't a police officer, that much was obvious.

Others could have explained it to her.

It makes sense, Leon concluded, closing that discussion in his head.

“Is the Chief gone as well?”

“Hopefully,” she murmured flatly.

Did he hear that right? “What?”

“I said, doubtfully,” she cleared up, shrugging. “Don’t worry about him. He must have saved himself somehow, getting away is his defining characteristic.”

His eyebrows lowered in discontent, the sarcastic jab was making the hair at the back of his neck stand up.

That was his boss. Leon was unsure if he should try to pry, there was something private there, the hatred burned and he smelled the smoke. He wanted to find Chief Irons as well if he could, but his instincts told him if he tried to talk about that right now, Vera would start pulling away and distancing, that was something he couldn’t afford, he needed her in the moment. He would cross the Irons bridge when he got there.

He pressed forward. "What do I do about the other keys?"

"I guess we just have to look out for them?" Vera shook her head, shoulders pulled to herself, she was clearly lost as well. "Marvin had them together at one point but after everyone split up around the station, the keys got scattered too."

Leon could put together the thought process that led to that decision. Lesson learned. He had to attach himself to Vera and Lt. Branagh by the hip. "Not a good idea to separate, we should stick together moving forward."

"Yeah, I agree as well. They thought they'd be able to cover more ground but they spread out way too thin. The undead overwhelmed them quick. You don't want to be by yourself when that happens."

Leon moved around the desk to stand next to Vera and leaned down, looking at the screen again. He inspected the 'Lounge' area and what surrounded it. Second floor. This had to be the room with one of the medallions. "Lucky to have you look out for me, then."

Vera pushed away from him by making the chair roll away a bit, and cleared her throat, looking unpleasant to be content. How she managed to pull such an expression, Leon didn’t know. "Damn right you are."

Leon gave her a genuine nod to which she slightly scowled that he took as a joke, and then asked, "This where the medallion is?" His pointer finger was on the area flashing red.

"Yeah. It would take five minutes tops to go in and out if we had the spade key since the way is through the library, but we are stuck taking the long road." She groaned, throwing her head backwards, inky strands of semi-long straight hair flying all around with the movement. "Fuck this, ugh."

He had to bring Officer Kennedy out for that, but man, was it hard. This was his first goddamn day, he wasn't used to being authoritative. "For the record, you're not coming with me."

The chair rolled away when she stood up in a hurry. "Listen—"

"I have listened." Leon interrupted. "And I have an idea, but you need to cooperate with me instead of going against everything I say." He recalled Lt. Branagh's words. "We need to trust each other."

" Fine , go on."

Leon sighed in relief. "You need to stay here for the lieutenant, he needs you." He raised one hand when she was about to talk. "And not just as his caretaker. When I get that fence up, there'll be an opening for all the zombies to come through. I'll make sure to be thorough and finish all that I come across but you need to be here just in case."

Finish all that I come across flowed out of him easy as melted butter, but in reality, it was a horrible thing to say and Leon barely held his ground without swaying — like those things didn't use to be living breathing human beings turned into abominations. It was all instinct to see nothing but monsters when looking at them, there was not a shred of humanity about any of those things anymore, but when the adrenaline ebbed away and his conscience flowed in, all he thought was: Oh god, I killed people today, Jesus fucking Christ, what if they were in there? What's gonna happen now? Has the whole world gone to shit? Is there a point to this?

Focus, Leon.

"I can't just let you go out there all by yourself, that's not fair." Vera sucked a breath in, underneath everything, her stiff body language told Leon that she did not really want to come with him, her steel gaze was uncertain at best and begging for him to refuse her at worst. "I wanna have fun too."

Vera needed to sound more condescending, and had to put more vigor instead of discomfort behind having fun if she really wanted Leon to fall for that devil may cry attitude. He knew she was scared, as any human being thrust into sickening survival would, the girl had lost so many people — she was locked in with monsters carrying the faces of once familiar friendly faces and she was all that was left along with her father; nobody could ever be ready for shit like this.

His heart soared at the sight of her trying to sound mean and making it into something personal and isolating it from him so that she could toughen up. She was trying for Leon. That alone was enough to give him strength.

"I know you're feeling guilty because you think you're doing nothing but It's my duty to keep you and the lieutenant safe, and I will." He needed her to trust him for this, just let herself depend on him. Leon knew he didn't look the part, but he was more capable than people would give him credit for. This was the time to prove it. "Just be my backup like before, if you want to? That was a great arrangement and it worked out, didn't it?"

Vera didn't joke, scowling deeply. "I don't feel good about this. You're doing all the work."

"Literally why I'm here for," Leon responded, sure of himself.

She looked down, weary, the light of the chandelier created a big shadow of her eyelashes on her cheeks, her hip leaning on the edge of the mahogany countertop. Then she did a double take at something behind him. "This is Marvin's," Vera said, reaching around a hand and gingerly touching the handle of the knife strapped to Leon's Sam Browne peeking out from his waist. And she pulled her arm back fast when it brushed the fabric of the vest covering his side, obviously not meaning to reach for Leon in the first place.

"Yeah," he confirmed, low and soft. "He gave it to me."

She fell quiet.

Then, a spark. "I know what I can do for you!" She jumped a bit and Leon stepped away, eyes huge, for her to run past him, watching her with interest. "Wait here, I'll be back in a flash!"

Minutes later, he was dumbfoundedly watching as the main desk of the hall literally transformed into a workbench. The Toughbook had returned to its original place to make space. One side had a collection of different sharpening whetstones and the other full of tools used in gun repair — gun lube, cleaning picks, wrenches, hammer, electric screwdriver, a whole hex key collection, torx bits, and all the other stuff Leon just couldn't decipher — he only knew the basics to take care of Matilda.

"You're a gunsmith," he stated, now the part about crafting clicking into place. He did not see that coming.

"Among many other things, yes," Vera said, her head shake was akin to a bobblehead, spreading her arms to span the whole length of the desk. "Velkam to mai şop, diır kastımır!"

Welcome to my shop, dear customer. What accent was that? Middle Eastern of origin like her, but not quite Arabic — the sounds didn’t roll like that.

She played imaginary drums, the energy causing Leon to feel this was just him walking into a gun shop after settling better in Raccoon City and getting his first paycheck. "Brrink mi eni parts end ai şal enhens yor fayırarms! If samtink gets brrokın, kam to mi end ayll fiks it! If yor nayf gets damacd, ayll restor it bak to its formır glori!"

Bring me any parts and I shall enhance your firearms. If something gets broken, come to me and I’ll fix it. If your knife gets damaged, I’ll restore it back to its former glory. Hard r’s, emphasized k’s, vowels flat. Seriously, what accent was it?

Her playing into a stereotype he couldn’t figure out yet aside, Leon could not be any far off in figuring someone out. What in the world was she? He couldn't keep the fascination off his face, trailing one finger from the far right end of the desk to the left, just looking at all the equipment as if they had materialized out of thin air in front of him, which they kind of basically did. "Wow."

He caught her, cheeky in her pride, confidence looked good on her. "I get that a lot," Vera said, arms loosely crossed, a sleazy smile pulling on her mouth that only the upper lip colored with black lipstick.

Leon really had to get going, as much as he wanted to stay there and continue chatting, the clock was ticking for Lt. Branagh. He knocked on the wood two times with two fingers before starting to walk away. "Alright, I'm moving out."

Vera called behind him, whisper-yelling. "Don't worry partner, I got your back..." A pause as Leon pulled out the combat knife and started to tear the taped box. "From right here."

He pushed the button to get the fence door open. Partner . He liked that. Ephemeral warmth tickled his chest. "I feel safer already."

Leon braced himself for the worst, his body locking up and kicking the survivalist animal inside him into the driver's seat, quite anticlimactic when all he found was a waiting room with lined brown leather couches directly in front of the booth and already something he thought was a green herb in a pot next to the reception counter. He pulled on the spiky leaves, inspecting the plant. Then with hurried steps, he brought it back to Vera.

"That was fast," she said. But when she noticed what he was carrying like a baby, she abruptly stood up from her chair. "You found it!"

"To be honest, it was right in the next room. Will this help?"

Circling around the desk-turned-workbench, she snatched it from Leon's arms. "Of course it will! I'll feed it to Marvin right now." Vera stopped in the middle of her jog towards her dad. She couldn't directly look at Leon, her eyes were darting around, coy all of a sudden. Her voice was barely audible. "... Thank you."

He hadn’t even done anything to be thanked for quite gratefully like that, her watery silver eyes shone with the kind of appreciation that closed a fist around his heart. That’s how desperate these people were for a drop of salvation in this hell.

He had to get a move on.

"Anytime," Leon smiled slowly, and turned back to continue his journey into the bowels of this place.

Marvin weakly tried to shove Vera's hand off, scowling at the green herb in distaste and inhaling sharply, air hissing and whistling between his teeth. "Get that thing away from me, girl."

He used to be grumpy and unaccepting of help every time he got hit by a sickness and had to be taken care of, and was reflecting the same behavior right now as well, thinking he was throwing fists with the wound itself by fighting Vera. He thought he was being strong by refusing help and asserting he didn't need it.

Overtime, she had learned this was a Marvin thing rather than a man thing. He got angry (at himself) for getting sick and Vera got to deal with the wrong end of the stick. It was so hard to look after him when all he did was snap at her over the littlest things.

Vera kept an eye on the screen, Leon was still investigating the reception, standing perfectly still in front of the famous bronze statue. "Eat this or I swear to Satan’s left nut I'll shove it down your throat, I'm not joking. You are weak right now and I will take advantage of it."

Ignoring her, he tried to turn away. "Save it for yourself."

Vera put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him, wincing when he hissed. "For my sake. You will feel better instantly, I promise." She whined when he grunted. "C'mon I gotta help John Law over here, he's waiting, don't fight me right now."

"No, no, " he wheezed, voice fluctuating, trying to sit up all of a sudden, but she put a hand on his shoulder and laid him down. He grabbed that hand tightly with unexpected strength that made Vera flinch. "No, you can't. Stay right here. Let him do his job."

The ugly coward in her celebrated, happy to receive the green light that she could sit on her ass and expect having everything done for her. It was disgusting. Vera thought she could suddenly have a bravery awakening with Leon, but that wasn't the case, people just didn't change like that with a snap of the fingers.

"Okay, okay ," she said, urgent. "I'm not going anywhere, it's fine, I'm here. Just please take this and get some rest, yeah?"

"You're going to stop yapping if I do?"

She extended the green herb she'd picked into bite sized pieces. "Normally I'd say no promises but I'll make an exception this time."

"Give it here," Marvin said, taking it all at once like he was downing pills, and started chewing, his entire forearm was shaking. "Leave me alone now."

She itched to argue with him on why he was pushing her away like this and not let go like a dog hanging from a criminal's arm until he admitted something, but her priorities had to be reassessed. At least his breathing had gotten smoother and the harsh lines on his forehead had disappeared with the instant effect of the green herb. The anxiety ball in her torso dissipated instantly, they could do this. If she kept feeding him herbs, grind them into powder when she got more to apply it into the gash, he would be able to hold on until they could get him help. This was great progress.

So she stalked back to the desk with the Toughbook in her arm and one hand holding the walkie talkie. Leon still hadn’t moved an inch. "Found something interesting?"

His low quality head on the screen jerked up at that. "Sorry, I must have spaced out. Shit, I have to get it together." His voice was so on the softer side that it wasn't audible from the next room despite there being little distance between them.

Vera sat down and started setting her layout. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, it's..." He paused. "Just a weird feeling is all, reading this."

He meant the commemorative statue, she'd never stopped to read whatever was written on it, and interestingly, it had piqued Leon's interest immediately. "What's it say?"

"This bronze statue is dedicated to all the brave men and women who have given their lives so that others may have freedom and safety. It is a tribute to all our everyday heroes who valiantly protect us and are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice." He took a pause. "We do it."

The first thing that came to mind was all the police officers who got turned into monsters trying to do just that.

She cupped her forehead and rested all the weight, droopy gray eyes tracing the monochrome blood trails reflected in the reception’s camera feed, a faint ache seeping into her temples. All those sacrifices were for nothing in the end, everything was lost.

It spread a bitter taste in her mouth, so she took out a clove from her pocket and started chewing on it, relishing in the stinging freshness. "Sounds like Nike's motto, just do it."

He sounded somehow down before, but it melted off like caramel. "I think it's as in we do it so you don't have to."

That was a heroic line, had the potential of a dangerous edge to it, but heroic nonetheless. "Just like you, huh? You're out there right now so I don't have to be."

"I think you're giving me too much credit right now," Leon said, and Vera let out a sound back at that. "This is my first day. I did not imagine it'd be like this."

He made way around to the back door leading to the south west hallway. She switched to the cameras overlooking the whole whole loop consisting of the north west hallway and west central passage all linked to each other, surrounding the record's room, supply room and the operations room. The only active threat she saw was one undead officer banging on a vending machine in the passage, with a couple others lying, or rather, playing dead on the floor.

"The coast is clear in the south east hallway partner," Vera said, flipping through the tabs one more time. "So is the north west. I see the undead in the linked west passage though."

"Got it," was Leon's response before he completely sunk into silence and walked forward. Corners were blind spots, and when he didn't immediately turn right, her gut twisted.

She was debating to reach out and question his status, but the walkie-talkie buzzed before she could. “Is there something else here other than zombies?” He was queasy. “I’d rather not describe what I’m looking at, but I can’t imagine zombies have the intelligence to hang someone from a pipe.”

She heard a hammer fall in the landscape of her head.

Fuck , lickers. She had forgotten about those goddamn fuckers. Shit, shit shit shit . “Fuck, I’m so fucking sorry Leon, don’t move an inch from where you are and lower the volume on this and listen to me and listen to me good .”

“Oh Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispered.

“Keep those peepers peeled for a whole demon that looks like a skinless mutated human. That’s what probably did what you’re looking at right now. They’re all exposed muscles, and those motherfuckers’ brains are hanging out from their skulls and it’s their weak point, but they’re lethal and have insanely sharp, long claws that can take a whole elephant out in one strike. They’re blind as bats but their hearing more than makes up for that. Whatever you do, stay quiet and move like a shadow, don’t run around like a dog out of leash — make like a snail, and you’ll avoid them altogether.”

“Great, awesome, I should be just fine,” he said, horrifyingly upbeat and casual. Vera ran a hand over her forehead when she heard him say it like that. He wasn’t wrong to be exhausted already, she should have been more attentive and not have fucked around as much as she did back there. Goddamnit. He could have been caught redhanded by those bitches and it would have been on her to not have warned him when she should have.

He said nothing about that and didn’t seem sarcastic or angry at her, but damn, he had every right to be. Vera would have his head if the roles were reversed and he was the one who idiotically forgot crucial information that could have cost her life. Leon was too nice for his own good. Was he a fucking saint or something?

Leon was willingly setting forth on a pilgrimage into the belly of the hell itself for the sake of saving two people he didn’t even know all that well, so that was a stupid fucking question to ponder on. Leon S. Kennedy was whole a guardian angel if such beings existed at all — Vera would be fucked having Marvin wounded on her hands all by herself, and somehow, a rock to lean on had found his way to her. All cloud mellow gazes, and enough boyish softness to go with pronounced cheekbones with a jawline like it was sharpened on a whetstone, Leon had the saying that inner beauty reflected to the outer going on for him. A legitimately great guy. She couldn’t be more grateful, had anybody else been in his place, Vera could only imagine how this would go.

No words would come out of her shame-obstructed mouth after that, she only watched Leon progress and look around—-

—-Until an undead from a broken window fell through and muffled gunshots echoed. He dealt with that smoothly, way too smooth, to be exact. Leon was methodical, shots taken controlled, aiming for the knee first to knock them down, putting distance between him and the target, and popping the heads the last, no panicking whatsoever, nothing that he showed her, at least. She just couldn’t believe he was supposed to be a rookie. All the experienced ones were gone and a rookie was making it.

And all Leon had to comment on was, “I gotta cover these windows with something or they’ll keep thinking this is an open house.”

The line went dark all the way to the operation’s room and the silence only broke when he discovered the record of events by David. Despite collaborating with them and taking jobs from them, Vera was not a part of the force, and was kept outside of documents such as official reports, therefore didn’t know the contents of them. She instructed Leon to read it to her, maybe there was something of use written in there they could work with.

“ September 25th, ” he started. “ We're turning the station into a temporary shelter due to the massive sudden outbreak. All police personnel have been instructed to make the safety of the citizens their top priority as we try to accommodate as many of them as possible. So this is how it started. Did you come here on the 25th as well?”

Vera flashed back to Marvin with all her necessities packed into a duffel bag in his hand basically snatching her out of her apartment basement right after she came back from a crucial meeting with Ben Bertolucci. It came to her in dazed blurbs of hazy, foggy snippets, she was watching it from above; Marvin and she stumbling into a small horde of undead together, seeing the state of a bent Sarah Lakin in with her tattered, bloody long-sleeved linen maxi white dress, insides ripped apart like she was some plush toy, Vera vomiting in her mouth at the sight and pushing the disgusting thick, textured liquid back, and then booking it straight to the station in Marvin’s police car. When she came to her senses, the station had turned into a giant bunker crawling with survivors the officers were having a hard time keeping under control.

That Vera of a couple days ago was dumb and hopeful enough to not know only one infected within the many was all it took to chain-start a massacre.

“There is an addendum here,” Leon continued. “ One of the refugees attacked us in the middle of the night, resulting in the death of 1 officer and injuring 3 others. The person in question was quickly restrained. We believe this was simply a case of someone snapping under intense stress. ” He sighed. “It wasn’t stress was it?”

“No,” Vera said. “It was an undead. Those three others turned eventually as well, and the person proclaimed dead also came back like two days later.”

From the grave she had put him into.

“Shit, no quarantine system?”

“Simply too many people and not enough officers to hold the law above their heads. Cliques formed, leaders were made. And they did not like anybody being accused of being infected, barely any action could be taken without a scuffle and it threatened the safety of others who didn’t want to be involved. It was a mess, no need to go more into it.”

“God what the hell, I should have been there.”

Sweet as always, it squeezed Vera’s heart, bless this guy, fucking seriously. “Again, no need to go more into it. Don’t beat yourself up over hypothetical what-if scenarios, dude.”

“Okay, dude ,” he repeated, and her face soured like she’d eaten a lemon slice. Oh, she did not like that. It was alien coming from him, a suburban middle class cream khaki pants wearing white dad trying to be hip with their children was what it sounded like.

“Don’t ever say that to me again.”

“I also like partner better,” he said, making it obvious he was smiling slightly.

Oh.

Leon gave no time for her to recover from that. “ September 26th, a mob attacked the station today, resulting in a number of casualties. A few survivors were able to make it safely behind the emergency shutters, but surrounded as we are, it'll be hard for any of us to escape this place. We're not sure we can fix any of our comm equipment, so we remain cut off from the outside world.” He contemplated something. “A mob? From the outside? Citizens were able to run around?”

“A horde of undead. To be honest, the news and radio stations were treating this like any other virus, just more deadly. Nowhere did they say it led to coming back from the dead with hunger for human flesh. So we caught on very late and as blasphemous and uncanny as they looked, we still thought of the undead as infected people, just very very sick. Not walking corpses.”

“You said you were trying to fix the comms, so that happened after the 26th. If the news had changed after that, all of you would have known, damn.”

When did she say that? He remembered but she didn’t?

“And September 27th, there was another clash on the west side of the station around 1pm. Twelve people died, and there is only a handful of survivors left. Everything is falling into disarray in here.” The slow exhale he let out continued for about two seconds. “Signed, David Ford.”

The swallow came as a reflex even when all saliva had magically evaporated from the roof of her mouth, the sensation was prickly. This would be the last fucking thing she would hear from David? “Nothing in here, this was a waste of time,” she said thickly, biting back the rolling waves of nausea in her stomach. She didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to think anymore.

Leon didn’t say anything back.

The way to the passage was blocked, the door to the supply room was locked, and Leon had no choice but to jump from the clerestory window in the operations room leading to the other side. Vera wasn’t sure about this, tossing the clove inside her mouth around while she weighed the possibilities. “How about you come back and we think this through?”

“I can climb just fine, Vera.”

Well, he was a rather bulked up guy for his age… Not the point though. “I don’t doubt your physical capabilities, it’s the scenario in which you’re running away and have to back up, and before you’re able to climb that they get you. You have no way of circling back here if you get in trouble.”

The girl was more bothered by the fact that she would be too late to run to his rescue if it came down to that, putting her fear aside. This police station had a lot of shortcuts, but all of them were off the table at the moment, and Leon compromised beyond the operations room would mean Vera taking ages to get to him when his story would be over within seconds, blink and he’d be bitten.

Maybe it was time to work on some lockpicking. Oh how Vera wished Jill revealed some of her tricks in the time they spent together.

“That’s… a great point actually.” Leon acknowledged, though not defeated. He did see her point. Vera knew then he would follow it up with an objection. “But I have to push through. No use in overthinking, I’ll be alright.”

Vera sunk her nails into her palms out of frustration, slumping back on her chair, the clove crushed between her molars. The walkie-talkie made clicky and popping sounds under her tight grip. “Leon—”

“I have you watching my back after all, right?”

Oh you sweet talking son of a bitch.

Fuck, praise was her weak point. If she was on a telephone and it had a cord, she’d be twisting it with her finger right now. “You’re playing into my ego to get what you want, that’s not fair.”

“All’s fair in love and war… and the zombie apocalypse, I guess.” He moved to climb the crate right under the window he wanted to jump out of. “You with me?”

She croaked, “Yeah, I’m with you,” like a cranky old grandma who was dragged out of bed for dinner.

“That’s good,” Leon chuckled, a bit held-back by the strength he put into hopping over to the other side, and Vera promptly changed cameras to follow him.

The vending machine undead was still beating the shit out of the same machine, he’d been at it for a while. She had to commend him for the persistence, the guy maybe was expecting the meat to fall through and had no cash, which was admirable compared to his peers thinking they were entitled to eat other people.

She grimaced, hell below, she was fucked in the head coming up with shit like this. That used to be a human being.

“Leon, up ahead—-”

“Yeah, I see it.” He braced his gun. “Leave it to me.”

“Who else can I leave it to? God?” She scoffed. “The old man has been of no help thus far.”

“That is so offensive.” For a guy who was uncomfortably saying that, Leon sure sounded a tad bit entertained.

Gunshots. Undead down. Leon making sure it’s going to stay down.

Even though he couldn’t see it, Vera threw her hands in the air and audibly smacked them on her thighs, picking at the threads of the fishnets. “Oh, my apologies . For compensation, those offended can kindly suck my dick.” Vera was sure they’d understand true abandonment when they saw what terrible fate the most undeserving, sweet souls were condemned to. No better awakening than shock therapy.

“An atheist,” Leon remarked, picking up something off the ground, possibly bullets. He was big on stocking up, it was good foresight on his part, with the speed he was going through shots, Leon needed all the cartridges he could find. Upon seeing it out with its whole polymer-framed glory the first time, Vera had immediately noted down his Heckler & Koch as a 12-shot capacity 9mm handgun, maybe she could teach him how to make handgun ammo with gunpowder so he could manage better in the future without worrying about running out. “Goes with the punk aesthetic, I guess.”

“You’ve been profiling me, John Law?”

“I—” he began to stutter, panicking, going up a couple pitches. Police profiling had incredibly bad connotations, she was a person of color, and he clearly was aware of how wrong this could end. “You’re not a criminal, of course not, I just— um, I’ve just been observing , it’s not as bad as it sounds, really I just—-” He stopped to breathe. “I thought it’d be inappropriate to rapid fire questions right now, so I… Uh…”

“Now we’re going into the stalker category.”

“And now you’re teasing me,” Leon groaned.

“I’ll cut you some slack. You are at a literal crossroads after all.” It was so fun to poke fun at this guy. “You can either go into the safety deposit room, the west office, or follow the corridor all the way to the stairs leading up to the second floor, there is also a darkroom just in the corner.”

The smile on her face died down like a candle unexpectedly being put out. The west office. Ah, no . The welcoming sign was still up. A series of shivers went down her spine picturing Leon standing in the bloodied room with the only unblemished thing being his coworkers’ celebratory welcome surprise, he never got to meet any of them other than Marvin —- this was the only memento left behind for him. Welcome Leon. Welcome to the bloodbath, none of us are here anymore and you are forced to take down each one of us when you were supposed to shake our hands to greet us.

Vera thought not even in her most empathetic moments could she come close to understanding what he would feel upon seeing that. Her new friend had lost a promised life the moment he had got it and the reminder of it was going to be right in his face as the cruelest mockeries from a trickster. The physical want to be there for him overwhelmed all her senses in that moment, she should be able to do at least that when he was risking his life for her and Marvin, but was stuck in front of a Toughbook monitoring his activities. She threw another clove in her mouth and relished the sharp sting. How useless.

She supposed it was a good thing that he went to check out the safety deposit room first, and the movement outside distracted her from the silent mourning and what’d happen with the inevitable discovery. “Leon, two undeads outside. I know honey is the most tempting to a bear, but it also has a whole coven protecting it. Look through the lockers after you deal with them, don’t risk it.”

“On it,” Leon said, baiting the unwanted guests in and looping them around the room to gain some safe distance. The deeper he went into the building, the fainter the gunshots became.

When he was done, Leon became completely invested in getting all the items in this room, but the keypad to the lockers terminal was missing a few keys. “I don’t suppose you have the missing keys on this thing? Or the keycard… I could really use a shotgun…”

Vera raised her eyebrows at that. “Just use a pen or a hairpin to push them down, you don’t necessarily need—-”

“And the keycard to the shotgun?”

Damn. Oh he really wanted that shotgun, didn’t he? One would think he was talking about a girl he had a crush on he was dying to get to. “You’re really en armor ed with that shotgun, eh?” Vera repeated, “Got shot through the heart at first sight. Eh? ” again when Leon fell quiet.

“I don’t know,” Leon began, tentatively. “That’s a loaded question.”

“Oh my god,” Vera could clap like a little kid, voice squeaky. “Keep this up and that’s dinner on me right there.”

“Oh shoot.”

Dad jokes were a language of love between her and Marvin, it felt great to have caught a common frequency they could at least bond over a bit with Leon.

So much for joking back and forth, though, it sure became awkward right after she eventually went into the west office and stumbled upon the welcome sign. After that, Vera didn’t get much response from him apart from humming and agreeing when she tried to engage in distracting talk. Leon focused on solving the little puzzle Marvin and the others had set up for him so that introductions and mingling would make it easier to remember the names —- he would surely not be able to forget it now, with it being radically burned into his mind.

Vera had pumped herself up in her mind to pep talk Leon through this and be the emotional support he would need, to know just what to say to him so that he could bear the weight a bit better, but it all went down the drain when Leon withdrew into his own. Words were suddenly intangible. She was never the type to give inspirational speeches or make someone feel better, always the solution-focused problem solver —- she strongly disliked only listening only, especially whenever someone just needed a person to be there emotionally. It drained her. She wanted to get things done for them and it was irritating as fuck to see the situation not get better.

Vera was terrible at this. She couldn’t do anything for Leon, hell, she couldn’t even give him a helpful couple of words.

“He in the west office?” Vera damn-near jumped out of her skin when she heard Marvin sneak up on her. “I’ll be damned, that thing’s still hanging.”

“Why are you up?” She turned in the chair to see him force himself to sit on the item box, a hand pressed onto his side. Vera immediately reached for him as if he was about to fall. “Go get some rest.”

“No rest for me with this right here.” She helped him give his back to the wooden wall behind, breath shivering. He vaguely pointed at the pink walkie-talkie with his head. “You two established a modus operandi in my absence.” He had that there’s hope for you yet, tone.

“That’s one way to put it.” Vera glanced briefly to Leon when she heard gunshots, he was dealing with two other undeads that had risen from their sleeping state. A self-deprecating ghost of a smile came upon her. “I’m not that much of a help, though.” A beat, her showing the Welcome Leon s ign to Marvin.. “I don’t know how to.”

“Give him time,” Marvin grunted out, swallowing back breaths, it pained her. She really wanted him to go back and lay down, but pain was pain wherever the location, according to a wise man. “He’ll go through it on his own terms. Keep him out of his head in the meanwhile.”

“Don’t think. Thinking slows you down. Slow gets you killed. I know. I’ve been trying” Leaning her head back, she followed Leon’s figure explore the west office, puzzle forgotten for now. “I just wish I could comfort him, you know? I’m not good at shit like this.”

“You got a crush on the rookie or something? To think…” He closed his mouth, giving a stuttering breath from his nose with eyes closed to keep the pain at bay. “You were criticizing the Disney princesses for marrying a guy they just met.”

That green herb had worked too well in restoring his health.

“Marvin! It’s not like that!” The fucking clove flew out of her mouth with the power she put into quietly screeching like she had heard the most blasphemous thing that day, and she immediately closed her her mouth with a hand and wiped her lips. Marvin clutched her wound as he laughed weakly. “You’re seriously that eager to get rid of me?”

Marvin held her gaze, misery and love both nestled on each shoulder, a forlorn smile pulling his lips up. “Yeah,” he quavered, fragile as a broken bird. “You’ve been a pain in my ass for too long.”

Spirit wilting, she picked at the scabs on her lower lip, heart thrumming against her ribcage painfully. “You don’t mean that.”

“Listen honey,” he began, and Vera already wanted to hightail it out of here. Whenever he started being sweet, it only meant something hurtful would be following. “I’m not sure when else I’llbe conscious enough to tell you, so I need you to hear me out while I can get these out coherently, okay? I don’t have the energy to argue with you, please give your father at least this.”

Vera looked away, tear glands being pricked with needles already, thumbs beginning to pick at the ruined black nail polish on her nails. “You’re speaking like— like…” She couldn’t dare to get the word out. “Why are you—”

“Please,” he insisted, taking a few seconds to steady the sounds of protest his body made for using too much effort. “Don’t make me beg more than this, don’t make me…”

Vera slapped her hands on her face, dragging them down to settle on her cheeks and pressing her eyes with her fingers, rocking back and forth for a bit before just frantically nodding her head yes.

“I worry about you,” Marvin began, shuddering with a sudden spike of pain. “There is nothing more important to a parent than their child’s safety. You will only understand when you become one yourself. It’s always going to be you before me. I don’t have much care about anything else.”

Vera could taste iron, the soft tissue breaking under her canines.

“I also have to make sure you’ll be okay… after me.”

“I don’t want to do this,” she said, deliriously.

“After getting out of here…” Marvin ignored her, choking on his words. “Don’t go running around sticking your nose in dangerous places. Not again. Stay out of the shithole Umbrella has dug themselves in… Leave that to Redfield and the others… Stay safe. Forget about all this. Start a new life.”

Like he wasn’t going to be by her side, like he would be dead already by then.

“You did all you could,” he said, compassion enveloping her, yet the meaning itself was a thousand cuts against her heart she couldn't push away. The air became stifling, her vision blurred, everything a soft golden haze. “You did your best, Vera.”

You did your best.

But did she? Did Vera truly do her best?

That was when the dam finally broke and her body began to shake with ugly, treacherous sobs. Marvin’s cold fingers found her nape and pulled her into an embrace, as tender as handling a sand castle, it was perhaps the last time she was taking refuge in his arms. She couldn't take that, the thought alone broke her down to a million pieces.

Vera would never be enough to save her dad, she wasn’t enough to put a stop to this outbreak in the first place. She hadn’t done all she could, hadn’t even done anything. A fucking coward paying for her inaction is what Vera was.

She deserved it, but her dad didn't. Why did it have to be him who got hurt? Why?

“Vera. I’m right by the west office door, can you slip me a hairpin from the gap in the threshold if you have any? I’ll try to push the missing keypad buttons with it.”

Leon.

She gasped for air. Vera didn’t know how long she’d been crying for when he paged in with that. She rose from Marvin’s chest and pushed her wrist to her nostrils, sniffing the tears back in, trying to ignore the coldness of his body. “Go lay down, Marvin,” she said, avoiding eye contact. “You need to conserve your energy.”

More tears swelled up against her will at him leaving at that with the pace of a heavy stock animal, she wanted nothing more than to rush to his side and take his arm to her shoulder, supporting his weight and laying him to sleep like he used to do back in the day when Vera would feign sleep just to be carried to bed in his arms, just to feel that warmth and be a small baby despite her big age of ten to thirteen. Marvin would coddle her every single time, knowing she was starved for that kind of love.

Vera couldn't even give the fraction of that comfort back to him, she had chased him away the moment agitation took over. Why was she like this?

Like a little kid wiping her face with her hands, she palmed at her face trying to erase the evidence for the weakness she'd just exhibited, gloves getting wet with her tears and making for an uncomfortable sensation.

"Vera?" Leon repeated, with more urgency. His voice was audible, layered twice, both from the walkie-talkie and right behind the door he was behind —- that’s how close he was to where Vera was. "You there?"

"Yeah, I'm here," she said, walkie-talkie wobbling. "I'll bring a hairpin to you in a moment."

"You sound..."

She shut him down. "Don't worry about it."

Moments later, she was in front of the spade door leading to the west office with the desired object in hand taken from her purse. They didn't need the walkie-talkie to hear each other anymore as she said, "I'm sending it through right now. It's dark in there, will you be able to see?"

"I have a flashlight, it’s fine." Leon's natural voice, not accompanied with the static, was so soothing.

"Here goes nothing," Vera huffed, getting on to her knees and positioning the hairpin right where she could flick it through the slot underneath the door. Hopefully it wouldn't be too strong to go flying that he would lose it in the midst of all disarray in the office.

Rhinorrhea from her nose had to overflow at that moment. "Shit, hold on," she cursed, wiping it with the back of her sleeve, the pink material darkening with the fluid. Sue her. She didn't have tissues. Sniffling, Vera said, "Okay here you go," and flicked the hairpin right towards Leon with a faint 'ping' sound. It was a success.

"Got it!"

"Nice," she echoed back, dusting off her hands and moving to stand up.

"Hey, uh," Leon mused, uncertain, sweet . "Are you okay?"

She couldn't handle kindness at present, couldn't allow it , didn't deserve it. There was no time for this. "Are any of us?"

"That's fair..." He raised his voice when he heard her footsteps. "Just know I'm here for you! We're in this together." Vera could choke in the benevolence, it was a rope tightening around her throat. "Partner."

She had gotten comforted again. When it was him who needed to be consoled.

"Yeah," she cleared her throat, feeling like absolute horseshit, not having any idea what she could say to him. "Together."

"Hey, I got some wooden boards. Gonna backtrack a bit and cover any open windows, you guys are wide open for any zombies that might fall in through those. I don't want to risk it."

"Yeah, okay," Vera acknowledged, no contradiction whatsoever. She'd been quiet the whole time Leon finally solved the puzzle to his desk and acquired all kinds of goodies from the security deposit room; marinating in her own puddle of self-deprecation about not being able to match his energy every time he was enthusiastic about each step and tried his best to draw some sort of response from her. "I don't see any undeads around, you should be okay."

"You got a hammer I can gun these bad boys in with?"

That put a smile on her face scarily fast. "I can meet you halfway if you want, no need to run all the way back."

"No."

"Leon."

"No, seriously, it's dangerous."

"Hey dangerous, I'm Vera."

Unbearable whooshing began to claw at Vera's ears from the walkie-talkie, like wind was blowing directly into a microphone. "Jesus fucking Christ—-"

Vera was closer to the hallway, she had lazily picked up the hammer lying on the counter, closing the distance between the main hall and the reception. She had been so scared before, the fight or flight survival instinct never let her get any close to danger, but this time, she crossed the threshold with no resistance, like she was walking into a room in her own house. Her mind was calm, serene, uncaring if she crossed paths with any undead on the way. She wasn't thinking anything, she just did it. Her mind was blank.

Fuck it, really.

The echo of muted, pounding footsteps was all she was greeted with as she closed the door to the dark, shadowy hallway seemingly reaching into infinity. In the distance, some light with the source being far away, was dancing wobbly on the walls, erratic. Whatever was coming, it was fast as hell.

It could be a licker. All the blood in her body retrieved back to her heart at the thought, a chill taking over her limbs.

Survival instinct didn't kick in, what settled instead, liquid warmth spreading under her skin, was acceptance. Weird as it was, Vera didn't really feel anything, not even fear. Her heart didn't pick up. If Marvin wants to go, then I'll follow, was the faintest childlike whisper of her unconscious, barely picked up by her.

She squinted her eyes to discern just what she was looking at, but soon enough the light got stronger and clearer, the frantic footsteps got closer, the source of it turned the corner and almost splatted on the wall, the momentum was too strong to make a sharp curve such as that.

Holy shit, Leon?

It hadn't even been minutes. What the fuck? He could run like a fucking cheetah?

Eyes wide as plates, hammer clenched in her hand, standing there like a kid who'd gotten caught staying up at night, Vera watched in shock as he came up to her in seconds with the same speed, his chest rising and falling in rapid breaths.

A strong, prolonged clap of thunder blended into the labored, shaky sounds. "Don't... don't ever." He doubled over, putting his hands on his knees, panting choppy. "Do this again. Ever."

Her blood decided it was the perfect time to restart the flow in her veins, pulse pumping in her ears at the tone of his constrained yet petrified tone.

The lightning that followed afterwards illuminated his tight and tense brow enough for Vera to see she'd scared him to death, despite Leon's torso being basically parallel to the ground due to him leaning forward, his sandy blond hair was damp at the roots. Then it dawned on her that she had basically wandered into a possible death trap willingly and forced his hand to race against time.

What was she doing?

Not thinking.

What was she expecting to happen?

Nothing.

Nothing?

"I know you're going through a rough patch," Leon rose back, breathing still shallow, but able to get sentences out. "Being reckless isn't the solution, please just." His hands reached forward, hovering between the two, like he wasn't quite sure what to do with them. "Don't scare me like that, fuck. I can't have you die on me, you can't throw yourself out this way."

No, she wasn't.... She wasn't suicidal. She just... she just.

"I don't," she stammered, as if she was being impeached, her shoulders pulled into her bosom. "I didn't. I'm sorry..."

"Can I?" He was asking her for something, but it didn't register until she was able to tear her eyes away from his genuinely worried baby blue gaze, drowning in the earnest compassion for another human being, burning in the darkness despite the absoluteness of the defeat, candidly and undeterred like a humble candlelight, the unbending desire to safeguard a soul.

Vera wasn't aware she had pulled her hands into herself right over her heart, knuckles white as they could get, nails about to draw blood from her palm. Leon's own gloved hands were just above hers as if he was about to try petting a feral, hissing kitten. He wanted permission to hold her hands. Her singular nod accompanied by frantic blinking almost went unnoticed by him.

She made a small noise behind her throat the moment his fingers brushed over the back of her hands and slipped into her palm, the hammer clattered on the ground and Leon paid no mind to it, gently gripping the ends of her fingers as if he was a gentleman helping a lady get off her carriage, awfully respectful to not cross any boundaries with her. His fingertips were burning up, the heat sent little zaps up her arms. "I know you can't be open as a book with me, that's fine. You don't have to say anything. Just know you can lean on me and that I am with you. I am here." He gave her hands a firm squeeze. "We can do this. Don't give up, don't let yourself go like this."

Vera didn't know where, "There's no point if Marvin is gone," came from, she was watching someone else speak for her, awfully numb inside, yet her voice still shook. "There is no point in anything."

"We will help the lieutenant," Leon asserted, determination radiating from him. "But until then, you have to stay vigilant. He is scared too, Vera."

That got her lower lip trembling. Her mountain of a father, small and weak, all on his own, brought tears to her eyes. "He is?"

"Terrified, even. When you're hurt to that point, all you can think about is death. He fears what will happen to you if he dies. That's why he's frantic. He can't be strong for you, so you have to be strong for him ."

There was not one strong bone in her body, Vera was pitiful in front of Leon picking up all her pieces for her, but upon hearing that, something within Vera shifted, all that protectiveness and despair for her father started rebuilding itself from the ground up. "What do I do?" The question came out as if she was 12 years old instead of 21.

"We do this together ," Leon's fingers caressed hers encouragingly, one wayward strand of hair that had probably gotten misplaced while he was running like death itself was chasing him, fell over, curtaining one eye. "We work together to get those medallions. No more running off into oblivion. Okay?"

"Okay..."

"Whenever you feel hopeless, talk to me. Trust in me. We are a team now." Leon leaned in a bit, staring deep into her eyes in determination. "You have me, alright? You're not alone."

Vera could cry. Fuck. She wasn't a crybaby, she really wasn't. Something about the unfiltered gentleness in this guy made her feel so safe that her emotions took it as a green light to flow forward. "You have me too," she said, taking her hands away from him and wiping the sweat on her shorts. "I'm not much, though. Unfortunately you have to make do with me for now."

"That's not true. You're perfectly fine," When you're not attempting suicide, Vera completed in her head. "I couldn't ask for anyone better."

She did smile tiredly at that though, and he drank that in like it was water.

“A good partner wouldn’t have forgotten to inform you about lickers,” she pointed out.

“We’re both rookies, go easy on us.” He bent down and picked up the hammer, throwing it in the air and catching it right at the handle after it spinned in the air a couple times. “Now, I better get those windows boarded up or we’ll really become midnight snacks for zombies.”

Since the only option left for Leon to gain access to the upper levels was the west stairway, the second floor had become entirely inaccessible due to a ruptured steam tank in the men's locker room (courtesy of a Mr. Carlos) with no valve to turn it off with. Leon had to cut his exploration short and return downstairs, focusing on covering another broken window just on the way to the stairs.

Vera was back at her usual station in the main hall as well. She had gotten another set of green herb gifts from Leon, which were fed to Marvin promptly, much to his complaints and chagrin. He was doing a bit better, those really had helped after all. And with understanding what his mindset was better thanks to Leon, she had calmed down considerably, her spirit stood strong with newfound determination to keep her chin high so she could actually be someone to be depended on.

Leon had taught her in such a short amount of time. For a guy as naïve as him, the sincerity in his soul inspired great wisdom.

While he was hammering the nails, she said, "Your name fits you, by the way. Leo-n. L aw E nforcement O fficer." Vera stopped to think about the joke, seriously pondering. " N early."

She thought he would counter with something along the lines of, "Great. Rookie joke. It's not like I haven't heard a dozen of them already."

The real Leon was in awe for some reason. "How did you manage to come up with that? How is the acrostics that fitting? How does this even happen?"

She couldn't differentiate if it was a real reaction or if he said that on purpose after picking up she liked to be complimented. To be honest, Vera had been sitting on that one for a while, wondering what she could put for the last letter 'n'. If he was a detective trainee, she would have said noir .

Rookie joke bested that one, but damn, was noir a good alternative.

In the camera, he rotated towards the darkroom. She mused, "It would have been perfect if your name was just Leo. The n is ruining things."

"Law Enforcement Officer. Not."

Vera snickered. "Good one."

"Another thing about you," he started pacing around the darkroom, checking out the lockers. The quiet clacking of the metal translated as rough static in the walkie-talkie. "Dad jokes. Got it from Lieutenant Branagh?"

Leon profiling him had been a passing joke, but the sheer attention to patterns in her behavior? No joke. " Duh . Though I wonder what else you have noted down in that golden noggin of yours about me? Real detective work right there."

"I wouldn't say it was difficult," Leon blurted, shyness seeping through.

He was trying to be humble and dodging praise, just for that she would be evil to him for a minute. "So I'm that much of a basic bitch, huh."

His breath hitched. "I didn't say that."

"But you thought it."

"I honestly didn't. I'm still thinking about you," Leon said, and had it not been said in that context, the whole thing would sound romantic as hell. But no, it was about a dude analyzing her. "And I still have questions. What else can you do?"

"This sounds derogatory."

"No," Leon corrected. "What else can't you do?"

"That also sounds derogatory."

"It's all compliments. I know you like those."

That was the most derogatory one out of the three, but coming from Leon, it was most probably said in harmless, affectionate commentary. Vera too had picked up a couple things about him, annoyingly, the first thing being the guileless, unusual sweetness. He was cute, she would give him that.

After gathering items and putting some things in his newly acquired hip pouch, he left the darkroom, heading towards the third floor. "I thought you were linked here as a computer technician or something along the lines, but turns out you're a gunsmith?"

"Assuming now, aren't we?" She leaned back on the chair, kicking her feet up on the surface of the desk. Security cameras on the stairs only saw certain areas, and all the cameras in the third floor had gone out after a series of explosions which they had discussed before, so she had to rely mostly on her ears to follow Leon along. "What else do you have?"

"You play the guitar, your fingertips and short nails make it obvious." Vera turned her hands inside, palms up, and curled her fingers inwards to take a look, she'd never really thought about it like that before. "You build electronics because you clearly said that you customized the walkie-talkies. A lot going on here."

Man. She almost blushed there at the notion of having been looked at as intently like that. "Gee, you know how to make a girl feel special, huh, partner?"

"Not exactly the time to play 20 questions, so," Leon explained, modest and apprehensive, not as panic-struck in his answer as before. "Sorry if I made you uncomfortable."

Survival depended on observational skills, what could Vera say to that? There was no time for getting to know each other, he was right. "Nah, not even in your wildest dreams. Making people uncomfortable is my job."

He must have laughed soundlessly at that, because only a puff of air was what the walkie-talkie relayed to Vera. He'd reached the third floor.

Yeah, third floor, she had to remind him. "Quick PSA. Be on the lookout for lickers. I don’t like that it’s been quiet so far. Easy and slow, Leon. I'll be tapping out for you now."

"All sweet, all golden," he chirped, and the phrase was familiar to her from somewhere, but Vera couldn't put a finger on it.

It hadn't even been a couple seconds of silence when Leon paged in with, "Jesus Christ, I found it," causing Vera to get closer to the edge of her seat. "I found the spade key."

"You're shitting me. Just like that? Where was it?"

"I went through a hole on the wall into... a study, I guess? It was right on the desk." He was weirded out. "What the fuck happened here?"

"Long story," Vera admitted, Irons polluting her thoughts. "For another time. Now , follow the north west hallway, it should take you directly to the west storage room. Interestingly, you'll be getting to the maiden medallion first. I don't know what condition it's in, you'll have to see."

"Cameras not working, I remember."

"Good luck."

"Don't need it when I have you."

Vera tutted, embarrassment dusting her cheeks. Leon didn't say shit like that for flirting or joking around, he strangely meant this kind of stuff in a corny, cheesy, genuine way. It was hard to get used to. The innocence was legitimately throwing the girl off every single time she got a one-liner such as this.

Leon interrupted the quiet that had befallen between them, hesitant and solemn. “You said that Officer Ford had the spade key, right?”

“Yeah,” Vera confirmed, afraid of what was coming, mouth set in a hard line. “Why?”

“He was here. I found a note about lickers. I think he may have left the key on the study.” He was apologetic when nothing was his fault. “Do you want to…?”

“No,” Vera refused. “I don’t have it in me to listen to it right now.”

Vera wasn’t strong enough to accept now this as what remained last of David, and the fact that this piece of information was possibly going to be how she would remember him for the rest of however long her life was. She had built the last boulder up only for it to be tumbling down the hill like this? Vera could take only so much in one day, she didn’t even know how to explain it to Marvin that yet another friend of his was lost to the faceless sea of the undead.

“As you wish,” Leon said, and that was it.

A little while later, Vera found herself listening to Leon's explanation about the room filled with filth and debris, and the note he found in the west storage room with bleeding repugnance and a firestorm of an outrage, her entire body burned up with the whirlwind of emotions she couldn't let the slightest gust of it out to not Leon know.

Irons. That motherfucker had fucking tortured his own officers up there while innocents fought for their lives underneath him, they fought to protect him all the while their friends were being violated unbeknownst to everybody, and that's what Brian Irons enjoyed the most —- the art of suffering.

She couldn't tell Leon that this asshole was a serial killer. How could she even prove it? Why would he believe a girl he just met over his supposed boss who he'd only ever heard admirable stories about? If Irons materialized out of thin air at the moment and ordered Leon to arrest Vera, he would. He was still a cop. The world had gone to shit but Leon still clutched to some semblance of purpose and order his duty brought, there was nothing to indicate he would go against the whole Chief of RPD.

And because she was blinded red by all the fury her body was trying to contain and her brain was in maintenance, all she could come up with to tell Leon was, "I don't know."

Which was a big mistake, he was an observant guy. "But you just said it was a long story."

Rubbing her brow like it could ever ward off the incoming headache, Vera huffed, "I said that because I don't know."

It felt as if she had accidentally chosen the wrong dialogue that unlocked the bad ending in a video game.

"That's okay." Leon didn't argue back, though, unable to hide the hesitance. She was grateful he had stepped down to change the subject regardless. "By the way, we have a problem with the statue."

"Of fucking course," Vera spat.

"It's behind bars. From what I see, we have two options. Safe or big ."

"Hit me."

"We can find a tool like a pipe bender to open the bars enough for a person to fit, or," Leon said, dragging out the word with intonation. "There is an electronic gadget here. I'm thinking it was left behind by the sick maniac who wrote the note, it looks legit enough to me. Can become a C4 explosive detonator with a battery." The sigh in-between was exasperated. "Which is missing."

"Did you not hear me talking about lickers, Leon?" Vera gripped the walkie-talkie harder. "All of them would flock there the moment it goes kaboom. It's a death sentence."

The confidence he had in himself to take the lickers out reflected in his demeanor as he queried, "Do you have a better idea?"

"How tight are the bars? Maybe I can squeeze in."

"I'm pretty sure you can't."

The anxiety came out on top with all the possibilities she was trying to come up with for how to solve their little problem. In retrospect, Vera had to see how bad it was herself to reach a conclusion, but all instinct was screaming at her to go with the safe route. An explosion wouldn't only lure lickers in, it was also an invitation for the undead. Let's say Leon tried to Rambo the lickers back to hell, the undead surely would get in the way - and that was the least of what they could do to him in such a predicament.

"Let's be on the lookout for anything that can pry them apart, then. You can't fight the lickers, Leon, if these undead people are zombies, then those are actual demons. You'll understand when you see them, it's like a portal to hell opened to this city. Not worth the risk."

"I understand," Leon said. "We'll keep looking."

“You have the spade key, want to go back to the west office real quick and unlock the door?”

“I’m closer to the unicorn medallion, I’ll go get it first.”

“It also would be easier to unlock it from the main hall, you’ve got a point. Only one though. I’m still the smart one here.” She scanned the library, frowning at the screen. “The undead are having a cookout in the library, it’s crowded in there.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Right after saying he'd be careful, Leon literally fell from the second floor, pummeling through some rotten, faulty wooden flooring that gave out under his running steps —- even Marvin heard the commotion, rising from his resting place and peeking his head out from the sofa to the loud crashing and banging accompanied with Leon yelling as he tumbled down.

"Shit," Vera cursed under her breath, heart immediately dropping to her stomach. Half-risen from her seat, she loudly called for him through the walkie-talkie. "Leon! Leon, can you hear me?"

Only static answered. Fuck, what the fuck do I do?

Should she bolt through the reception entrance to go help him? God, fuck, it would take too long, adrenaline was already making every limb in her body tremble like a leaf caught in a storm, so many possibilities racing in her mind.

What to do? What to do?

"Leon!" she tried again. Still no response. No gunshots, either.

"Every goddamn thing in there heard that noise!" Marvin shouted at Vera, alarmed, struggling. She quickly stepped out of the reception desk and ran out to see him sitting up.

Noise. Yeah, noise!

If Leon was being eaten right now, fuck forbid, he would be screeching at the top of his lungs. There was nothing.

It would take him some time to recover if he was still conscious, she had to do something to divert the undead's attention. Noise!

Grabbing her shovel, she scrambled to the spade door of the library. Hitting the door over and over again with all her might with the metal end as if she was beating a rug, she yelled, "Hey! Assholes! Over here!" as high and loud as her voice cords allowed, to accompany the reverberating echoes and ear-grating clangs the shovel made against the wood. It would be okay, no lickers would be able to enter the main hall, she was free to kick up a storm from where she was.

Vera got the fruits of her efforts as she heard the persistent nail clawing and weak banging on the other side, heard the growling and yowling of the undead. Many of them, in fact.

"Yeah, that's right!" Her arms were burning and stinging. "I'm right here! Don't you want a snack? Come!" She kept crashing the shovel on the door, the metal leaving lighter colored dents on the surface. "Here!"

Vera heard gunshots. Yes! "Oh thank fuck," she whined, a wave of warm exhaustion hitting her. But she couldn't stop. Leon could be disoriented, he just fucking bodied one floor.

Gripping the stick tighter and letting out a growl of determination, she went back to making her own ruckus while the gunshots got more frequent and more controlled.

Vera continued until the last of the undeads thumping behind the door stopped after a shot, and the sound of slumping reached her ears. A couple more gunshots followed that, and then silence followed, the shovel slipped out of her hand and clattered on the floor as she tried to settle her heaving chest and thundering heartbeats, suddenly feeling very shaky.

Oh no, was her blood sugar dropping? Right now?

The usual dead giveaway was lips tingling for Vera. She would wait until that happened, otherwise, this could be just adrenaline wrecking her body.

"Leon?" she cried, with nervous anticipation.

Something heavy was being dragged on the other side, blunt shuffling.

"Leon!"

"I'm here!" A thump. "Give me a second! The door-- they got stacked over it."

"Oh my fuck." Vera's body deflated with a groan of relief, her knees buckling. She crouched back on her heels and rested her elbows on her knees, extending both arms forward like she was offering them for vaccination. Her pounding head rolled down. "I almost died of a heart attack, shit. This guy..."

"Vera," Marvin called, unnerved, interpreting it as something else. "What's wrong?"

"I'm fine," she waved a hand weakly, unable to look back at the moment, her back was to him. "It's the adrenaline."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

She got up eventually as she heard the rattling of the key in the hole and the door was finally opened. And there Leon was, a bit ruffled, uniform dusty and dark blond hair messy, but he looked unharmed, no blood visible anywhere on his exposed skin. She could hug him and choke him simultaneously, fuck, she almost expired because of worry.

Instead, trying to keep her voice steady and her expression angry, she lectured him. "I told you to be careful, goddamn."

"Thanks for the help," he beamed at Vera, like he hadn't taken off ten years off her life. "The vest protected me from damage but I was out of it. I would be dead meat if you started banging on the door two seconds later."

Her eyebrows pinched together.

Marvin cut in on Vera's thoughts of pinching both Leon's cheeks and stretching the skin out of frustration. "You okay, rookie? That was a big fall."

Leon stepped around Vera to see Marvin better. "I'm fine, sir."

"Good."

She wanted to ask about his wellbeing too, but the words didn't come out, her concern remained buried and came out as something entirely different. "Where's my walkie-talkie?"

Leon's shoulder jumped and stiffened. "Ah..." He looked back and stared inside the library littered with dead bodies. "It dropped with me. I didn't have time to look for it."

That last sentence made her feel like absolute garbage, stepping over the bodies and trying so hard to keep the smell of decay out of her mind, she gingerly said, "Come, let's search then."

Leon kept up as Vera pressed a button, making a small dot on the walkie-talkie in her hand start flashing red. The reflection of the other walkie-talkie's own light painted the brown stacks across them, and Leon ended up finding it stuck underneath, easily reaching down to get it.

He held it up like a trophy, smiling bashfully, it squeezed something inside her chest. And as he jogged to her, she said, "I'm glad you're okay by the way, didn't mean to be a bitch about it. I was..."

"Scared, I know. You don't need to explain anything." Leon walked backwards to the lounge door, facing her, the understanding of an angel had to be gifted to him at birth. "Let's get the medallion."

Vera nodded absentmindedly, a fuzzy feeling swirling inside her head, and followed Leon like she was bound to him by strings.

Once in the lounge, standing before the gigantic bronze unicorn statue, Vera brought the notebook closer to her face, trying to discern Elliot's doodles, on the verge of getting a headache over the tiny drawing. "Is this supposed to be Gemini or Pisces?"

"I'm sorry, what?" Leon stepped closer, also wanting to take a look. Vera turned the notebook a bit so he could see.

"Yeah, this. Do you think it's Gemini or Pisces?"

Leon went through the puzzle to find the correct symbol. "It's just fish to me."

"They are supposed to represent zodiac signs, though!"

"Okay," he said, a fond, supporting smile on his face despite the 'I don't really care' undertones of his tone.

Vera, invested, put her pointer finger on the next doodle. "You see this is clearly Scorpio. But Pisces has fish representing it, and Gemini is often associated with twins. There are twin fishes in there, so what? I don't get it."

Leon also put the scorpion in. "I don't know, you're really trying too hard to fish an answer out of me."

Vera snorted, and when Leon looked over, surprised at the sound, she covered her lips with one hand, the other still holding the notebook open. "Didn't know girls could make such a sound."

"Shut up," she said, neck heating up. "The next one's Aquarius."

Leon was utterly lost. "What is an Aquarius?" He scooted closer to which Vera gave him space, and looked down to see the symbol. "Water jug." His gaze switched to Vera. "Could have just said that to me."

"Not my fault you don't know general knowledge."

"It's girl stuff," Leon said, working to find Aquarius on the puzzle.

"It's general knowledge." Vera could smack him on the shoulder with the notebook if they were closer friends. "Let's see you try to ask around when it comes up on a crossword puzzle."

Pulling the medallion out from its socket, Leon smirked at her for the first time, cerulean eyes twinkling, the mischievousness was a first sight for Vera. "How would they even ask the question? There are two fishes, is it Pisces or Gemini?"

Smartass. He was lucky to be this cute. "Listen—-"

"Both of you, come back here now ," Marvin's voice buzzed from Leon's radio hanging on his hip. "I've got something important you might want to see."

tagging: @ocs-supporting-ocs @ocappreciationtag

#leon kennedy x oc #leon s kennedy x oc #leon s. kennedy x oc #resident evil oc #leon kennedy #leon s kennedy #leon s. kennedy #oc: vera kaplan #story: gravedigger #era: no time to die #resident evil fanfiction #ocappreciation #shai's writings #one chapter dedicated to getting the unicorn medallion

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minuy600 · 6 months

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Atari 2600 Chronicles 1980 #1 - Adventure

Let's do a quick switcheroo here. Although Space Invaders seems to have a confirmed release date and Adventure does not, both appear to be from March 1980 and I actually had the chance to play the one earlier in the alphabet on my shiny new Atari 2600+! So do forgive my slight skewing of the chronology here.

Believe me, this system feels like magic in breathing new lives into these old as shit games. Yeah, playing them in a big meaty compilation is still nice and probably controls better in some cases, but nothing beats slamming in a cart, then using the original joystick and levers. You can really feel yourself fit into the mind of someone playing this system in the early 1980s.

As for the game itself? I have conflicting feelings. On one hand, it's a revolution. The ability to reset the game after being 'eaten' by a dragon/duck/abomination and for the progress to be retained after that is incredibly welcomed. I enjoy the puzzle solving aspect of it, very much too. Took me a good half hour to get the route of the full game figured out, and I can't deny and say I wanted more of it.

Then there's also the first BIG easter egg in gaming, the Warren Robinett credit that you get if you poke your head around in the Black Castle and find the tiny gray dot, essentially the final dungeon of the adventure. If you combine that with the randomized mode that comes included with the cart, you could get quite a lot of mileage out of speedrunning this one or challenging yourself via, for example, not using the sword or trying to go deathless.

That is a big *if* however. If you don't make up your own things to do, the randomized mode is all you have. And that one gets old dramatically fast. The bat-stealing-objects-mechanic is the prime example of a headache to me, but the worst part has to be continually going back into the painfully flickering zones this game contains. Whenever you get unlucky with the object spawns, get ready for your eyes to get gauged out!

I liked but didn't love Adventure. For everything it does right, there's another thing that makes it a hard sell. Good thing you can essentially sneeze this game up nowadays.

The Verdict

Graphics (3): Agh, yikes. I will compliment how well the game manages to articulate the extremely simple visuals via it's manual and worth of mouth. What happens on the screen however is crummy to the highest degree. Nothing more primitive than playing as a shape, using an arrow as a sword, while a derpy-looking bath toy hunts you down. The game world is hardly imaginative, the most sucked in I got was the feeling of actually being inside the castles in the first 3 seconds after entering. And i'll insist, the dark zones get so crowded sometimes that the screen flashes heavily and the game slows down! No offense to the legacy of the title, but the level of compensation to fit it on the cart was absolutely too much this time around.

Sound (6): The sounds that are there? Pretty fun. The sounds that aren't? Too plentiful to count. Most of the time, you're walking through silence. Only when there's action on the screen, like say, fighting a dragon, you get graced with some wackiness. Wouldn't have hurt to have a quiet walking noise in there, or even an attempt at music. Unfortunate that it gets bogged down like that, I cherish what was included.

Fun Factor (7): There's some fun left in the tank of this one. I played it largely blind other than knowing that there was that one easter egg of yore and having some bits and pieces of Youtube videos etched in my mind. The way the light exploration clicked in my head was worthwhile as all hell for someone who rarely plays 'complex' titles. Found myself happily surprised whenever I would see a new object or figured out a fast route to one of the castles, refreshing to have that element in there in such an early game.

Comes at a cost though. Once you're near the end game, and the bat has swapped around all your objects, it's exceptionally frustrating to have to go find them over and over again. The dragons start getting increasingly agressive too- the chalice seems to pull in the red one in particular. Pushing the reset button over and then get the enemy stuck in a place where it will kill ya nearly instant is still something I don't like 43 years later in a game like Minecraft. It gets worse in the randomized mode, once got all 3 dragons in the same place (a dark area, no less). Became so unplayable after that I quit then and there.

Yeah, mixed feelings!

Longevity (7): Enjoyment may vary. Either you wanna keep playing this after one finish in the second mode... or ya don't. I see myself popping this one on once or twice in the future. Having a randomized mode, flawed as it is, is very novel. In the 80s, this would've been like a 9/10 for that reason and the discovery of the easter egg some time later. Say it with me now, 'it's good compilation fodder'.

In Conclusion