I just had the most deranged and out of pocket thought and I need to tell someone so hear me out.
So imagine yan!Gepard right he fell in love bla bla bla ok now what if when we got kidnapped we were studying something similar to mara (oe js Mara itself) how to make someone immortal so we start to study gepard. (Yk his constellation thing that makes him be able to live again) And eventually we tell him “oh yeah I just wanted to try some stuff out on you if it’s ok” and gepard being his ol reliable self says yes and it’s basically us killing him over and over and then injecting him with like the marastrucks blood or smth to keep him alive basically using him as a test subject and by the time he realizes the truth and that we don’t actually love him we were just manipulating him into letting us use him for tests and research it’s already too late. RAAAAAAHHhHH
LOL
i actually love this idea lol but i’m not creative enough to come up with something that’s mara-like so mara it is :3
you swear to the preservation, you will get nous to gaze upon you.
haha, look. you’re speaking like them now.
truthfully, you’re not even remotely interested in the preservation. a researcher from the xianzhou-luofu, you’d run into the astral express at the same time as the mara disaster went down, and asked if they could drop you off somewhere.
you’d ended up finding about gepard landau and his special abilities, and so now you’re here, on belobog, researching. you know about mara. now you can learn about whatever gepard has going on too- it can’t just be iron will. there’s something else going on there.
you WILL find out the secrets to immortality, and nous will cast THEIR gaze upon you, and then you can join the genius society and do other genius things. you’re already accomplished in many other fields- this should be your breakthrough!
gepard is such an interesting case. you can’t help but adore him. you’ve never met a more willing test subject. as long as you keep him happy with a couple of platitudes (for example, “i love you”) and a few kisses, he’ll pretty much do whatever you want. he’s definitely not normal, but someone else will have to research that. that’s below someone who would be in the genius society.
off he goes to the killing fields! goodbye geppie! you’ll miss him! come back soon! mwah! and when he comes back, you’ll kill him then, too. he will die and die again and again, and you’ll inject him with some complicated serum mix of abundance and preservation, and wow! up he gets!
huh? no, no, it’s fine. he loves it. the ethics might be a bit questionable, but he’ll do anything if it keeps you happy, because you make him happy too.
the guards say he seems more resilient. even when he goes down, he comes back up, repeatedly, more times than he used to. oh? so is it working? you decide to give him a bit of extra love as a reward.
one day, many years after you’ve arrived on belobog, you realise he hasn’t sprouted any grey hairs. not a one. you rifle through his hair (he takes it as a sign of affection- aeons, he makes this so easy), to find that it’s all blond.
all…?
you haven’t felt nous’ gaze on you yet. perhaps you need to take the final step and inject it into yourself.
the day you plan to do it, though, goes a little haywire. you go out shopping and come back to discover gepard holding your notepad full of research notes. he looks very upset.
“what’s this, darling?”
“my notepad,” you say carefully, well aware of the strength difference between the two of you.
“yes, but what’s all these notes…?” he seems lost. you decide to help him along a little.
“i think you already know, gepard.” you drop the nickname. you’ve done what you came here to do- but the heartbroken look on his face makes you a little sad yourself.
“did it- did any of it mean anything to you?”
he goes back to the book, flipping through pages. carefully avoiding him, you slide over to a little wooden box, and take out its contents. the probably-immortality serum.
“no,” you answer calmly, sticking the needle into your arm and injecting the liquid into your body. for a moment, there’s nothing. and then, like a ray of sun-
nous has set THEIR gaze upon you.
alas, THEY’RE not they only one. gepard has also set his eyes on you, but no longer the warm ones that you’re used to. he sets his jaw, a serious frown on his face.
