#this is dark shit

[recklesslycaffeinated]

Oh Recklessly, you that is so great at describing the most heartbreaking angst. Chapter 22 was absolutely worth the wait (again sorry that I didn't tell you about the missing day lol). I now raise this question that has been on my mind in honor of the last chapter: What if the reader DID die? No mob doc, no soulmate, no sweetheart or kitten or kid :(

Oh man... The dark timeline. Let's all get bummed out on a Saturday morning.

As established, Larry the hitman does not move fast. Red would have seen him leaving as he arrived. But being a bit slow on the uptake, he wouldn't have clocked it wasn't one of his guys immediately. He'd be too keen to see his sweatheart. When he gets upstairs he finds the body...

So Red finds the hitman outside and kills him brutally without a thought. He then goes on a bit of a rampage. Without Reader there to give him perspective, Edge is the only one left who can reign in his anger but even he is furious over their death. Unfortunately these two have a habit of egging each other on.

It takes them a while to figure out what happened. With the hirman dead there's no one to interrogate. But the two brothers do find out who sent him and reek their revenge. The event heralds in a new and very bloody era of gang warfare in the city. Red knows it's not what Reader would have wanted, but it's the only way he knows how to honour her memory.

Having spent a lifetime fighting to never let this happen, he's finally lost somebody incredibly important to him. We've seen what happened to Sans and Skull when they lost their Papyrus. Reds throws himself into the violence completely. He'll take up flirting again, but using it once more as a way of distracting himself as he used to. And despite Edge's efforts, it probably doesn't end well for Red.

Skull... Eugh. Despite the progress made, it's not enough for Skull to be even remotely able to handle this scenario. There's two options here. Either Skull goes on a massive rampage through the city, killing indiscriminately. Or Sans kills him before he's able to. There's simply nowhere left for Skull to go at this point. Even if he could retain his sanity through that moment, he'd probably just teleport back to the Underground where he could die alone. Either way, Reader's death is the end for Skull and that's likely the way he'd wanted anyway. No brother, no kitten. Nothing left.

Sans is the odd one. Given the way he reacts to things, he appears to be the most stable out of all of them. In fairness, and in deference to what Reader would have wanted, he would have tried to talk Skull down before killing him. Though at this point in the story, he probably wouldn't have tried that hard. But he'd be a lot more sympathetic towards Red and maintained that relationship to a certain degree.

But from this point on, Sans is alone again. He pushes forward with his plans to get exonerated. And let's hope that Don doesn't get in the way of that, though that's unlikely. Sans could never bring himself to kill Readers cousin, her matching half, but he's also not letting anyone stand in the way of his plans. If Red hasn't managed to do it yet, he does go off to the people who sent the hitman - despite them not being his usual targets.

And then he returns to his life as the Judge. And there is zero chance Sans even considers looking for anyone else. His loyalty to people extends even in death. His known and lost his one great love. As well as his only brother. The extent to which he closes himself off at this point will be complete.

Bonus

I think there's an interesting story to be had after Red is dead. You now have an alone Sans and an alone Edge. There is no way in hell Sans wouldn't be checking in on Edge regularly. Maybe these two very damaged people could form a new type of brother relationship, with respect to the ones they've lost. There's no way Edge wouldn't respect Sans abilities - he is the Judge after all. But he would also have a far better understanding of how dark Sans's feelings can go. And there's no one alive who could better understand Edge's pomposity and the insecurity and pain it hides than Sans does. In the end, I think the two of them would be good for one another.

[be-a-snake-stab-your-brother]

Did Christine eat Kang's last piece of cheesecake or something, because hot damn does the multiverse have it out for her.

[banduckoot]

Okay so the Rustland Grand Prix is RIPE for headcanons about its lore, and I haven’t touched upon any of it ONCE. That is a crime, and so here is my take on it:

The apocalypse was started when N. Gin’s missile was somehow removed from his head, perhaps to be replaced with another, safer life-support sytem. It happened to be a nuclear missile, and it blew up a great deal of Wumpa Island and the surrounding ocean, turning everything into a desert wasteland.

Caught in the brunt of the explosion, in an effort to protect everyone on Cortex Island, was Uka Uka. His mask vessel was so heavily damaged, he became seriously weak. Aku Aku, who felt like a failure at protecting his island home, had Dr. Cortex build a new metal body for Uka Uka to contain his old pieces. But he wasn’t strong enough to move very much, so Aku Aku decided to wear his brother - two masks in one. This union between the two caused them to go through a RADICAL physical change. They became a new mask, Apo Apo.

Realizing that the fight between good and evil was not beneficial to the survival of the island’s inhabitants, Apo Apo’s morals became redefined. His goal was to protect the island’s survivors by any means necessary, moral alignments be damned.

For a while, things went well, if a bit shakily. Adjusting to a survivor’s life was difficult, especially when there were bits of drama like Pura dying from radiation poisoning and being brought back to life as a robot. But Uka Uka’s influence on Aku Aku’s mind as Apo Apo began taking its toll. Some survivors made things difficult for others, like taking more than their fair share of food or water. They needed to be... dealt with.

Silently, Apo Apo began picking off problematic survivors. Eventually, the only ones left were Crash, Coco, Cortex, Nina, Tiny, N. Gin, Dingodile, Polar, and Robot Pura. By that time, Apo Apo had become more animalistic and primal in nature, communicating more in growls and grunts than anything else. He had essentially gone mad.

Cortex had become suspicious of Apo Apo in relation to all the mysterious disappearances and deaths, and so he and N. Gin, Tiny, and Dingodile tried to investigate. It would go very badly, as the four of them would fall into radioactive waste, and come back out as one monster: Megamix.

Nina expressed concern over where the rest of her evil family went, and Apo Apo‘s indifference made her and the Bandicoot crew suspicious. Megamix reappeared in a rage, and tried to attack Apo Apo. It did not take long for the Bandicoots and Nina to realize the truth about Apo Apo, and they tried to put an end to him. Ultimately, Megamix took a great deal of damage from the fight, and needed most of his body replaced with robotic parts, but Apo Apo was defeated...

... leaving Crash, Coco, Polar, Pura, Nina, and Robot Megamix alone on the island to an unknown fate.