I decided to join in and make my OC as a sporeling. Prior to being infected, she was a journalist and loved writing (I had to connect her to me in some way). After being infected, she spends her free time documenting all species of mushrooms out there. She has an extensive collection of observations she’s made on the mushrooms in their territory, and of how the people are infected by those mushrooms.
Her fungi is a violet webcap. She will occasionally emit a cloud of spores unintentionally. She can do it intentionally, but doesn’t see a reason to. She prefers hanging around with other sporelings (mostly studying the mushrooms) then going near “normal” humans, so there’s not much reason to. She is also a dragon hybrid.
I decided to also write a thing about how she got infected as well. This takes place in my Father Spore Spy AU, really early on. It would feel wrong to write my sporelingsona outside of this AU, really. So she is talking to Scar here. This is before he became well known as Father Spore, hence why she didn’t know what to call him.
I twirl my pen, staring out into the forest. Technically I shouldn’t be this close to the… whatever this is. But I really need a good story to keep my job, so investigating the weird mushroom place it is.
I duck under the police tape they put up, walking down the road to the forest. I look around as I officially enter the ‘corrupted’ area. It’s boring, for a lack of a better word, not anything story worthy. Not this close to town.
“This is such a horror movie cliche,” I murmur, heading into the forest. “But it’s not like there’s some beast here that’s actually eating people,” I continue, studying the trees. They’re completely covered in mycelium, it spreading like spiderwebs. Mushrooms grow out of them.
“Well, I certainly don’t eat people.”
I shout, jumping as I drop my pen and notepad. A man? is suddenly in front of me… staring. “Hi…?” I try, carefully taking in his appearance. He definitely fits in here, considering he’s completely covered in mushrooms himself, his eyes are also glowing an eerie green color.
“What brings you out here?” He asks, eyes never wavering from mine.
“I… wanted to write about what’s happening here. For, uh, the newspaper.”
“So you came out here, all alone?”
“I can’t have anyone taking my story, I kinda need it to keep my job,” I explain, for some reason feeling like I should be honest to it. To him? “Wanna answer some questions?” It hasn’t tried to attack me either way, so it can’t hurt to ask.
“You came all the way out here to keep your job?” His interest seems to have perked up a lot at that. A worrying level, really.
He grins, “well I have an offer for you!”
“You do?” I ask, dropping down to grab my pen and notebook again.
“You can continue fighting for your job, or you can join us and never have to worry about it again.”
“Us?” I repeat, more intrigued than I probably should be.
“Yes, us,” he gestures a hand around them, “the mycelium would love you to join us.”
“Sounds like some kind of creepy cult thing…”
He seems almost offended at the notion, “we are not a cult. We have just been enlightened to something much better.”
“Yeah… sounds like a cult.” He stares at me silently, as if deciding what to do, definitely making me realize I probably messed up. “If you’re not a cult then what are you?” I ask, hoping to be spared from… whatever he might do to me.
“Joining us, joining the mycelium, is a gift better than life,” he says instead. “It gives you a connectedness no normal person can ever feel.”
I stare at him, trying to figure out a good way to respond to… whatever that is. For some reason, it feels compelling to agree. “So, say I agree to join this… mycelium. If I wanted to leave later, can I?”
His grin almost looks sharp when he replies, “I can assure you that if you want to leave, you can.”
“Alright, sure,” I eventually reply. Whatever happens with this, at least it will make a damn good story.
In this world, people infected by the mycelium are unable to want to leave it. It doesn’t matter what would happen if someone wants to leave, because they can’t even fathom the idea of leaving. If someone is resilient to joining and thus more likely to want to leave, the mycelium forces their mind to not consider it by making them mostly mindless. Aka those who are the mindless drones. Also my gal has totally unknowingly inhaled a lot of spores, her clear thinking is definitely starting to fade.
This story is technically canon to the Father Spore Spy AU, but it doesn’t hold a major impact thus it isn’t really important to the story. I guess this is just some more insight onto some things.
Additional character notes: This is my standard self insert OC, she’s basically a template for anything I want to do that I can’t use other characters for. She’s technically not fully self insert since she doesn’t look like me, but she basically is outside of that. I also never named her, so she’s kinda nameless. She is also my Minecraft skin, lol. Just with some tweaks here.
