#program: disc

[forthedancingandthethriving]

Wait I just realized we could've had

Damien/Disc: *monologuing about his stupid, stupid plan to conquer death*

Tama, not really getting it: I am 8 or 9 years old, maximum.

Oh that would've been hilarious

[forthedancingandthethriving]

Had an idea for what happened to Disc after his fight with Vitality (feel free to ignore if you've already got plans for him), though for context I need to talk about what Leto and her minions have been up to.

See, in order for Stockman to actually be useful he needs a lab to do his mad scientist stuff, preferably somewhere the group can lay low, so they looked around and found an abandoned server styled as a laboratory that may or may not have been one of Worm's old hideouts, not that any of them have any idea about that of course. They've also managed to cobble together a technically functional body for him that mostly just consists of a big jar and some spindly metal limbs. Crude, but it'll work well enough for now.

Disc comes into the picture when a burning, mangled, vaguely humanoid mass of code stumbles through a portal into one of the server's common areas. Initially they see it as a security threat, but when he utterly fails to do anything but sit there and look like an on-fire corpse they calm down, and Leto notices the unusual mix of different codes and the fact that his soul is barely clinging to it (dude finally got his wish and Cheated Death, unfortunately for him), decides he's Interesting, and asks Stockman to see if he can make anything out of the mess.

And so Disc slowly comes to on a hard metal table in a strange room, still in pain but in a very...different way from before he passed out, "Wh...where?" his voice sounds foreign to him, though he can't put his finger on why.

"Ah, so there is still a mind in there. My condolences."

As you might expect, Disc is pretty damn shocked and confused about waking up in what looks like some kind of nightmare hospital staffed by a disembodied brain, and Stockman's explanation alleviates some of the confusion but not really any of the shock, especially when he finds out what Stockman had to do to him to make the death-cheating actually stick. Basically, he had to stitch together whatever was left of his original code and his Damien disguise's code into a functional vessel, somehow using the code of Vitality's firefox flames to thread the conflicting codes together and fill in the many, many gaps. The result is a hulking werecoyote/zombie/lava monster thing with Disc's mind and a terrible hollow feeling where his source code used to be.

"Not a pretty sight, I'm afraid."

Disc-or whoever he is now-simply shrugs, "Hey, anything's better than dying."

Stockman lets out a cross between a huff and a chuckle, "Oh, to still be so naive."

Disc eyes the brain in confusion.

"Take it from someone with experience; getting ripped from the jaws of death may seem like a blessing the first few times, but after a dozen or so the pieces left behind start to wear on you." he stares forlornly at lone of his jar's claws where a human hand should be, though it's a bit hard to tell given the single lidless eyeball.

Disc isn't sure how to take that, and so just looks over himself some more, doing his best to get used to his new body, "what am I supposed to be, anyway?"

"Well, where I'm from you'd likely be considered a mutant, though it somewhat depends on the continuity."

"Wait, you're that Stockman? Aren't you supposed to be a fly?"

"Again, depends on the continuity. I personally am one hundred percent human...well, genetically at least."

"Huh."

"...You know, there's... well, I'm not sure if it qualifies as a tradition or just a pattern, but mutated sapients in my franchise often take up pseudonyms when they turn. Not as much a thing in my version since our mutegen worked differently, but still. I've got some ideas if you're interested."

"...Sure, why not. It'll probably keep the Admins off my back at least."

----

And so Leto and Lumi are introduced to the newest member of their little team; Rahzar.

(yes I know TMNT '03 technically had a Rahzar in Turtles Forever but he only showed up in like two scenes as a random Foot Mook and I can't remember if he was even namedropped.)

(and yes, Disc is still too much of his usual dumbass self to realize that being bound to an unrecognizable lifeless shell of himself and owing his survival to a madman and the worst Program on the 'net is probably going to be a fate worse than death. Even when warned by said madman who's been dealing with nearly that exact fate for most of the show he's from.)

Yoo!! Love this. I really didn't have a good idea what I was going to do for him, so this is great!

[forthedancingandthethriving]

(Context/Inspo)

Vitality didn't know what the hell was going on anymore. The past several hours had been a complete and utter whirlwind. She couldn't bring herself to go back to the Adminspace, purely because of what that prophet had said.

That damned coyote..

Vitality barley hears the doors as they open and the ensuing conversation.

Idly, she rubs her neck as she looks out the window. Her eyebrows furrow, seeing the sky darken a bit. Thunder distantly rumbled.

Her peacock feathers shuddered as she felt a jolt in the air. What-?

"You have to be kidding." Valiant's horrified voice brings Vitality out of her thoughts. She looks over, and her eyes widen, seeing the Pokémon, Ash, and his friends, but no Tama.

Oh no.

"Tama can't be- That can't be what happened-" Nimbus sounded panicked as she shook her head.

A pit grows in Vitality's stomach as she makes her way over. She half listens to the conversation at hand before nothing Hoopa - and how ill he looks.

"Oh goodness," she murmurs as she takes the Pokémon from Ash. "What's happened to him?"

"Absol said that it looked like all the teleporting that was going on was messing with him," Ash explains with a worried frown.

Vitality nods and, like a clock, she begins to work-

Only to freeze.

"No." She whispers as she feels that familiar code.

"Vitality?"

Ash's questioning tone barely registers as her own code gently pricks and prods at what's afflicting Hoopa. Clearing it all away, with more haste than is necessary.

It can't be his, it can't be!

He was meant to be gone, dead and gone!

The ground beings to rumble, and everyone stumbles, trying to keep their balance.

Vitality's gaze snapped to the window.

And her heart sinks, seeing the sky turn a sickly green.

○●○

Above the seal of Unus, kneels Tiresias and the frozen Tama.

"Monster," the prophet hisses to Damien. "Monster."

Damien can only smile as he draws a dagger.

..

Blood splatters, and the seal shatters.

And then another.

Another.

Another.

Another.

Another.

Anotheranotheranother.

And across the world,

SHRIEKING

and

SCREAMING

comes as the sky turns a sickly green.

Damien's model glitches.

And Disc grins.

[forthedancingandthethriving]

It just occurred to me that during their confrontation in the Usurper Arc Disc was probably really fucking confused about Dapple not having her terrible fake accent anymore. He was legitimately convinced that was her actual accent even though nobody talks like that.

OH I LOVE THAT. Disc would be so confused, and he'd, of course, never get to know why she wasn't talking with the fake accent anymore.

And he's so dumb,, someone's gotta check that he's got braincells, how has he lived this long,,

[forthedancingandthethriving]

So! To wrap up Song of a Usurper;

TCS goes back to (relative) normalcy. Tama gets used to her new model. Queen Fluerette is put on a bit of a trial by the other rulers. They agree that she did mess up, but she was sheltered all her life and manipulated like the rest of them, so she's given a harsh warning.

The fate of Devos is.. shakey. The kingdom obviously won't be allowed to fall, but they do need to find a new ruler..

Tiresias takes the time to properly apologize to Dapple, mostly because she knows that while she had no choice, the prophet could have gone about informing the other better.

Caspian also apologizes to Tama, who is very happy for the apology. The Muses also handle the whole Underworld thing.

Aud and Dirigo also help out with wrangling the ghosts, but in the background.

I think the Pokémon would stay with Tama. They got attached <3

Disc's current situation is unknown.

Vitality will be down and out for a while. The code equivalent of a coma.

Aaaaaand.. scene!

[forthedancingandthethriving]

(TW: Blood and injury)

○●○

There's hardly time for him to react.

Vitality lunges at Disc, one eye obscured by shadow as she slams into him, full forced. Her claws wrap around his throat, and they both fall.

The portal opens, they fall through, and they're gone.

The portal spits them out somewhere unknown, but Vitality could care less. She and Disc tumble through the air, bodies soon scraping against the rocky ground as they skid down a mountain side.

The Program that was once her brother kicks her off with such ferocity that it makes her fumble. She goes skidding away, pointed stones digging into her shoulders.

She's up on her feet in no time, and her peacock feathers shake. They turn into fox tails, and then into a singular large one. Twenty-six eyes on it glaring with hate at him.

She summons her kyoketsu-shoge, just in time for Disc's naginata to clash against it. Sparks fly as the two former siblings-in-arms glare daggers at one another.

No words are said. They know that one of them will not be leaving alive.

Vitality swings the chain of her weapon. Even if she's the one not leaving alive, she's sure as hell not dying without a fight.

It wraps around Disc, and she sends him flying to the ground. The familiar feeling of flames aches at her.

Disc glares at her, cold as ice.

Vitality glares back, as hot as flames.

○●○

Blood, orange and white, paints the jagged stones and cliffside of whatever dimension the two are in.

A large fox tosses a tailless and earless coyote to the wayside. His limp body skids across rocks.

The vixen stands there, panting, chest heaving as white blood slowly falls from her wounds. It drips from her maw as she begins to stagger forward, hearing ringing and vision swimming.

It's too blurry for her to see what's happened to Disc. He's there one moment and gone the next.

Deactivated, Vitality hopes.

She collapses onto the ground, switching back to her regular form. Blood slowly dripping.

A chat box pops up.

Abyssal: Vitality, where are you?!

Another.

Crash: Vitality?? Why are 8&9's Admins telling us you just vanished from TCS?? Where are you?

More and more. Multiple messages. Chats.

But Vitality doesn't have the energy to respond. She can't respond, she's too weak to.

But she has to. There's that determination. That pride.

If she's going to die here, then at least her final words are going to be known, damn it!

She pushes herself up to her knees –

Before she collapses right back down.

“Shit,” she mutters weakly, eyelids fluttering.

Vitality doesn't know how long she laid there for, slowly bleeding out. Hours, probably. Chat boxes and messages appeared frequently, but her vision was far too blurry to properly read the times.

It wasn't long until she heard the crack of a portal, and a familiar voice.

“Oh my- Vitality!”

Sparks.

Green and red fills her vision as her friend's model shifts to one from when times were good.

“Gods, you have everyone losing their minds, even ClearAll is worried. Imagine my confusion when he rushed in and was asking if you were at the bar,” Sparks spoke quietly as he carefully picked up his friend.

Vitality hums quietly to let Sparks know she's awake and listening.

Sparks is grateful for that. He feels her body heating up on account of the blessing from FireFox. She heats and heats up, and he can hear the sizzling, the crackle and popping as her wounds heal.

“Do you need to go to him?” Sparks asks, voice a soft murmur.

“I'm okay,” Vitality answers, weak and quiet. “Code can handle it.. gonna need.. a lot of rest..”

Sparks takes notice that her braid has come undone, and he gently weaves it back together. “Adminspace?”

A hum is his answer.

“Should I answer any questions they have honestly?” Sparks asks softly. He knows how she feels about her past.

A pause and then a nod. “They.. deserve to know.. but.. not every.. detail..”

Vitality exhales. The cracking and popping of her code is a comfort. She can feel the heat healing her.

“You had us all so worried,” Sparks murmurs as he walks, probably just to give him time to talk with Vitality. “Me and ClearAll especially. I swear, for a bit, I was convinced you were going to, well.. deactivate..”

“Not.. for a while..” Vitality mumbles, voice fading as she slowly falls into rest.

Sparks lets out an amused but exasperated sigh. “Some things never change..”

[forthedancingandthethriving]

"It's getting worse.." Aud whimpers next to Dirigo, who grunts in response.

The two stand under the seal of darkness, seeing splintering cracks inside of it. Like spider webs, they branch out, and Aud has been here long enough to know that the seals breaking shouldn't be even possible.

"The Muses have grown silent." Dirigo narrows his eyes. "There hasn't been a single word from them for ages now."

Aud crosses his arms and rubs them with shaking paws. "This can't be good..! Can't we do anything..?!"

"No." Dirigo shakes his head. "We are bound to the Underworld. We can not leave unless-"

Shrieks and screams come from ghosts that fly past, and they begin to crowd around. The Ferrycat and the lost spirit stare in shock before looking at each other and nodding. Slowly, with darkness creating steps for them, they get closer to the seal, doing their best not to agitate the ghosts.

Aud cranes his neck to see, and he swallows thickly, seeing the paw of someone using magic to form more cracks in the seal.

He pales when the body leans down, and his own face stares back at him. Whoever that is above doesn't see him, but around the dopplegangers paws sparks something that looks not like lightning. It's close, but not exact.

"What do you see?" Dirigo finally asks after several tense moments. His eyesight wasn't the best when so close to the light.

"M.. Me.." Aud stutters out. "That's.. That's me up there..!"

The magic below them fizzles out, and they fall back to the island below. Aud continues to stare up at the seal of darkness, even as it cracks more and more.

Dirigo is silent, except for his tail pulling the lost spirit a bit closer to him. Aud could only tremble, wondering why that stranger had his face.

○●○

King Damien flicks his tail as he rises from his knees. He looks down at the seal with a proud look. Only a little be longer now..

He could hear the spirits down below, shrieking and wailing past the veil. It'd taken some time, but he'd managed to communicate with a large quantity of them. He promised them all one thing; a new chance at life, so long as they helped him once they were freed.

Many were happy to oblige.

As he steps out of the water, wringing his tail out, the king flicks an ear. He couldn't help but admit that he was nervous. Tama and Tiresias.. they seemed to be the biggest threats to him at the current moment. One with the blessings of the wind, and one that could see the future.

Damien shudders as he thinks. Those two truly really could ruin absolutely everything for him. But it's not like he could kidnap the kit of a Songbird or somehow locate Tiresias like a god. There were limits to how much he could mess with this games code before everything began unraveling.

Of course..

The king takes a small medallion out of his pocket. He turns it over before chuckling.

That doesn't mean someone else can't do it for me.

[forthedancingandthethriving]

So.. Following Disc losing his battle to Dapple, he finds that his access to Harmonian magic is cut now.

So, now, pride wounded, access to Harmonian magic limited, and his plan not at all going how he wants.. Disc is hoping that, maybe, just maybe, he can use this as a distraction to get out of there. At the very least, he knows he can break the seal to an underworld. It's possible.

Unfornately for him, there's a sharp string of a viola, and now the Muses are involved.

Down in the Underworld, Tama and Tiresias managed to finally break what Disc did to make the Muses unaware of what he was doing (a code wall, pretty much, that just sent back an 'everything is a-okay dw about this lol' thing'). The Muses had been suspicious about the fact that everything was going far too well in the world, and thankfully, with Tama's janky code, she managed to get through to the Muses.

So they're involved! They're pissed! But with their own efforts, they're able to begin to reign the spirits in back to the Underworld. Meanwhile, Dirigo and Aud get Tama and Tiresias out of the Underworld, via the Seal that was between Luminos and Magnamiel. Tiresias does a little teleport spell for them, and, well..

Tama's changed a bit! With the actual Tama from the OG game now gone, our Tama's code has taken that place! As such, her model is now more on parr with everyone else's in TCS. But the hearing thing still remains.

Disc, meanwhile, sees the writing on the wall. Now very aware that the whole continent is going to be hunting for his/Damien's head, he resolves to get the fuck out of there.. and he nearly succeeds..

Until very familiar claws sink into his back, and he and someone else are falling through a code portal.

"I'm going to finish what I should have all that time ago," hisses a familiar vixen's voice, and then they're falling through the sky in a desolate server.

Disc really, really wishes he paid more attention to the code signals in the game. Because as he gets the briefest glimpse of it, he sees what he expected. Her's, the Admins'.. and the one that makes his heart stop. The very damned God he tried to kill so long ago.

And Disc finds himself really, really wishing that there was some higher being out that would save him, but he doubts that.