hello scu enjoyers here's a little r!charlie with cg!schlatt yesyes. it is set in a zombie apocalypse so trigger warning for non-graphic mentions of zombies and also a gun! i dont describe any blood or gore or anything dwdw - also maybe slight unreality for the line "was any of that real?" near the end
hope u enjoy <3
//
“Oh, hey Charlie.”
Charlie’s head snaps up, meeting the eyes of a charming man standing behind the pristine counter of a little hole-in-the-wall bar that Charlie has never seen here before. His buttoned shirt is crisp, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he polishes a glass with a red rag. His apron is black and stainless. His hair is curled, his beard is groomed and well kept. His eyes are brown, and he smiles at Charlie as if nothing is wrong with the world.
“H-hey,” Charlie stammers. He looks up at the walls, the iron bars lining the entrance. He doesn’t remember walking inside, but here he is. The floor is strangely even, no plants, no rocks, no cracks. The groans of the infected outside seem so far away. “Hey- how do you know my name?”
The man’s smile does not change. His eyes flicker from brown to gold and back again. Charlie glances around the room. The light of the torches set in the walls is not comforting in the slightest.
“So,” the man sets the glass aside, slings the rag over one shoulder, and braces both arms on the counter. “Milk or juice?”
“What?”
“You look like you could use it,” he answers, simple as that. His fingers tap along the countertop. “Milk or juice?”
“What is going on, dude, how do y-”
“Milk,” he interrupts, eyes flickering again. Charlie shuts his mouth as the man’s expression changes just so, like a mountain challenging a pebble to a battle of might, or a sun backhanding a star out of the sky.
Then the man smiles again, simple as that. “Or juice?”
Charlie grips the straps of his backpack, a pebble, a pebble, a pebble. The groans of the infected feel like a hazy memory. He takes a step towards the counter, strangely uneven on the even ground.
“Juice, please,” he murmurs, taking a seat on one of the stools. It’s plush, comfortable, with a bar at the bottom for his feet. He swings them instead.
“Good choice,” the man praises, "now,” he laughs, “maybe this one’ll getcha. Bottle or cup?”
Charlie blinks. The mountain looms on the other side of the counter, with an amused smile on its face.
“Cup,” he answers, softer than he means to, but he can’t help it when he feels like a pebble, maybe all of four years old. The room gets hazy at the edges of his vision.
“Now, now, Charlie,” the man scolds lightly, almost teasing, almost stern, amused all around, “I think we both know the correct answer here.”
Charlie frowns, eyebrows furrowing. Was that not it?
“Cup, please,” he tries again.
The man tsks. “Charlie…”
He says nothing.
The man sighs.
“Tell you what, kiddo,” he leans over, sliding the glass easily off the counter and stowing it away underneath. He fishes around for something else, his smile still charming, his expression warm but oddly intense. “We’ll compromise.”
He returns with a dark green sippy cup with a light green lid. Two and a half hearts decorate the side, glaring up at Charlie. He looks away as the man retrieves another bottle from somewhere else. This one has a golden apple printed on the side.
“‘fraid apple juice is all we’ve got.”
Charlie shrugs. Apple’s fine.
The man smiles as he pours it, screwing on the cap and sliding it to him when it’s full. “Knew you’d be a good sport about that.”
Charlie wraps his hands around the sippy cup. It’s the perfect size to hold like this. His shoulders sag in relief, oddly comforted by this little bit of plastic.
“You’re doing so well,” the man praises. Charlie can’t help but preen at that a bit, turning the cup in his hands but not yet taking a drink. “I’ll step in as needed, but it’s quite honestly remarkable just how far you’ve come.”
Charlie tries to smile at him, tries to show he’s grateful.
The man chuckles, reaching over the counter to ruffle his hair. Charlie ducks away, swatting at his hand.
“Alright, well. You better scram, kid,” he reaches under the counter again, this time producing a gun. Charlie blinks. The haze in his head fades as he whirls around, spots five infected approaching. How did he not notice them getting so close?
“I’ll hold them off,” the man’s voice raises dangerously as he storms out of the bar with his gun, seizing Charlie’s collar and dragging him out with him, abandoning the bottle on the counter. He shoves him one way and fires the gun in the other, “go, kid. Go!”
Charlie stumbles, unsteady, but runs. He runs, ducking between infected and swerving around buildings and runs, fast as he can manage as they follow, running, groaning behind him, and he runs, and his foot catches a stone and he falls and he rolls and he-
//
When he comes to, the sun is rising.
He jolts upright in bed. He’s home. He’s safe.
His jacket is pristine. There’s new patches on the elbows. There are no scuffs on his armor. His legs are fine, his heart is beating regularly, nothing is sore.
Cradled in his hand is a green sippy cup, decorated with two and a half hearts on the side that glare up at him.
He swallows.
Was any of that real?
He turns it over. There’s nothing inside, though taped to the bottom is a messy, scrawled note.
Keep it, it reads. Signed with a simple, -J
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smashes my current interest together with my old interest
(aka yet another "what Dungeon Meshi but Gamers?" AU)
Once when I was a child I had a complete crying meltdown over Creatures, because the manual insisted that the complicated AI of the Norns made them truly alive and 10-year-old me was freaked out at the idea of being solely responsible for making sure these real animals wouldn't die. The funny part was that this was the Playstation version of Creatures, which has no biochemistry and very basic AI compared to the PC/Mac games where players actually were debating whether or not it was true artificial life. A PSX manual gave me existential dread and it wasn't even telling the truth.
Anyway, kid!Marcille would also have a meltdown over the Creatures series, especially if she had the computer games and got to see how vastly different some breeds' lifespans are. Like in C2 where you have Norns that live for around 5 hours and Norns that live for 10, both of which are vastly more than Ettins who don't even live for 1.5 hours (and usually less due to radiation or starvation).
Lucky for her, having the computer version means she could download modified genomes made by other players that make creatures live longer or even outright remove certain death triggers. However I think she'd have more fun learning to read and edit the genomes herself, to get a better understanding of how the game works and how to change it to suit her own tastes. And because she could pretend she's one of the mysterious ancient Shee who created the Norns, Grendels, and Ettins and then vanished, leaving behind relics of their old society.
(Speaking of Grendels, she would unfortunately dislike them because they're the Designated Evil Species and she'd hate how they harass and attack her Norns. I think she'd also pity them though, because they get sick a lot and have short lifespans. Likely she'd just end up downloading/creating a genome without the aggression towards Norns. Ettins she'd like except for in C3 when they dismantle her meticulously-placed gadget setups, so she might mod out their hoarding compulsions too. Both of them would of course also live for however long her Norns would live.)
Also. While standard creatures' lifespans are counted in hours, if you modify the half-lives in the genome editor you can increase it to centuries. Or even just over a millennium if you set the half-lives to their max length (assuming you also leave the old age death trigger at its vanilla value).
and I like to think that elven Creatures players would pass around copies of what they consider a template genome that's appropriate to their own lifespans. Something that would make their creatures live for weeks or months of continuous play. I also like to think the Creatures DS Warp is still active in this AU because of the hilarious frustration when these long-lived Norns travel to worlds run by short-lived players whose Norns have vanilla lifespans, and vice versa.
(Most of the time in Creatures, offspring of parents with different lifespans will just have one or the other, but there's a chance the genes cross over right in the middle of the various age triggers and cause unstable aging rates. Like a Norn that goes through the childhood stages in hours but then has a very extended adulthood. Or a days-long childhood followed by suddenly dropping dead of old age once the vanilla adulthood genes kick in. Or, if the child has one parent's half-life decay rate and the other parent's age triggers, all sorts of odd things could happen. I once had hybrid Norns who lived for 20 hours and would die of organ failure before reaching the old age threshold!)
(Now that I think of it, Marcille would absolutely hate fast-agers. The first time she watches a creature hatch, turn old, and die in just one brief minute of life, she would be sobbing for days. One of the first things she'd learn to mod out would be mutations that cause the Ageing/Life chemical to decrease unusually fast.)
On a lighter note, while I don't know what her favorite designs would be I think she'd love choosing cute breeds to use in her world. Once she figured out how to give her creatures the comfortable life she wants them to have I can see her redirecting all her gene-editing efforts into changing color expressions. She might even learn to sprite or model her own custom designs.
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