Happy Thanksgiving! :D | October 11, 2021

I see… so thats what got into her now… with how things are going, she’s unlikely to find Bernie, but instead the Machines. Hopefuly her fate is better than her brother’s.

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Loophole Count: 2

Loophole #1: Scott was previously under house arrest and even had a chance to go out for dinner with Jake and the others. Next scene we see him behind bars in a cell instead of the limited freedom he had previous.

Loophole #2: how did Harry end up inside Arbiter’s system with Rusty? Bernie made a whole deal about Joe’s Powerfist suit being the first time he tried to integrate Harry into a suit. Previously it was used by Aaron and had a generic AI rather than Harry himself. Then it was damaged and plant-i-paired by Rosa. Exactly when was Harry installed in it?

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Theory:

I wanna bet that the people at the machine city are now just brains hooked into the system. Their minds implanted into machine bodies similar to Bernie and made to think they are their own bodies. The *glitches* are pauses that the machines make to their cognition while they clean up Bob’s messes and reset everything to normal before hitting play and force Bob to play things out differently. The main problem with this theory is that everyone he has *killed* so far has left blood behind… As for WHY the machines would do something like this… they have previously stated that they are nearing the point in which they will not be able to enhance themselves any further, both in potential and due to resources. They likely believe they need human “ingenuity” to make new discoveries they themselves cannot make. Like say, a machine can do anything, but will not attempt to do anything unless asked to. Like a bird that has never had to fly and therefore doesn’t know his wings will allow it to fly. Though that’s a bad analogy as a machine would know what to do with its current body, just not what to ADD to its current body. A second point against this theory is that the machines had previously failed such operations with the exception of Victor, Samuel and Bernie (the last with Victor’s help), however this can be explained away if the Machines kept record of the procedure (which we know they did) and had Samuel repeat it (which he’d love to do).

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October, huh…?

Let me do something interesting then. Each update I’ll post one or more Undead creatures beyond the usual Zombie, Skeleton, Mummy, Ghost and Lich tropes. Just to see the reactions to these out of the ordinary undead. Let’s start some simple ones:

From D&D we have the Skin Kite, comparative to a large bat in movement, but its bosy is composed of stitched up animal and human flesh. It flies around the ceiling in camouflage, then divebombs on its victim before wrapping itself around it and sticking to it. The Skin Kite then proceeds to rip off chunks of skin and flesh from the victim and integrating into itself. While the Skin Kite wont go for killing blows, it certainly wont do anything to stop the bleeding and the victim is likely to fie of bloodloss if he doesnt run out of air while wrapped. The Skin Kite takes this behavious because it’s body is constantly rotting and falling off, requiring it to replenish it to keep existing. Skin Kites are usually around the size of bedsheets, but on rare occasions its possible for one to hunt down a town and reach a collossal size. As those huge Skin Kites rot and break down, each piece becomes its own independent Skin Kite.

Straight from ancient Japan, we have the yökai Jian-shi or Hopping Zombie. This is similar to classic zombies, though its undergoing rigor mortis, which will eventually cause the limbs of the Jian-shi to be unable to move, forcing him to hop in order to move. The jian-shi is capable of slowing or even reversing this process by absorbing the life essence of living beings, leaving behind bodies with no noticeable causes for death.

Finally for this week, we have Hollowed or Hollows (whose origin I have lost). These are similar to the first undead discussed in that they are formed of human skin. Only instead of taking a mutated form, the remain and act as humans… for the most part. Just as Skin Kites need skin and Jian-shi need life essence, the Hollows also need something… to feel full. To this end, they will pull humans of approximate body shape and size within themselves and treat them as “filler”. The victim will remain alive, but will likely wish they could die. The Hollow will proceed to walk and act using the victim as his skeleton, though it has forgotten the limits of limbs and bones, causing him to accidentally snap and break the victim’s bones as it bends its limbs in inhuman positions. The best the victim can hope for is for the Hollow to look behind and snap his neck. The Hollow will keep the victim (alive or not) until all bones rupture and fall to the bottom of the Hollow, at which point the Hollow will hunt for another victim once again. While a Hollow is “filled” it will be harmless and even proceed to take helpful actions such as farming, building and hunting, which has caused some… unsavory people to use sacrifices to obtain their services. This sometimes leads to a much greater threat, as vermin such as rats decide to live within the Hollow and consume the victim within, making the time needed between sacrifices much shorter.

@Joe

I expected as much in regards to Scott and am not surprised in the slightest, hehe. I didnt expect you to need to acknowledge these in any way in the story, and I doubt anyone would care for them while reading (as aparent by me being the first to notice them and only on repeated, intense reading to pick up anything I mightve missed.

I will however say that Sentinel also didnt have Harry within it, as it had been broken since the fight against Dominic (during which Harry had his body) and was only later seen when Jess asked Rosa if she could fix her suit so she could fight. It might however be possible for Harry’s body to have been used for that… if we hadnt seen Bernie used that bosy’s head as basis when building the Powerfist suit. It couldve been another suit, if Bernie hadnt stated it was the last body that wasnt broken and the others hadnt self-destructed in chapter 1. Let’s just chalk it up to a wizard!!! Hahaha

“Why do think I’m trying to get Bernie back?!”

other than that thanks for sharing this marvelous work of creativity with us as always!