Prologue: A Connoisseur of Dangerous Game
unsanity
Made of Pieces
Foreword:
The main thrust of this story is the unmitigated PR disaster that is a Hunter Taylor in the Wards. Why the Wards? Because Taylor is her own supplier and was high on Tinkermeth at the time.
Yes, it's that kind of fic. Expect OOC for the sake of situational comedy. Do not expect canon compliance.
I make no claims or assurances of quality. I'm pretty much just writing this because I'm a terrible person who giggles at terrible things.
(That said, I'm willing to listen to advice if it helps improve my writing.)
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If one were to observe a species as a whole, certain patterns would emerge.
For instance, it was a general rule that Entities worked in pairs. Not an absolute rule, mind you; there are always outliers to the average. Exceptions to the rule.
Even among outliers, [PHILOSOPHER] was an abberation. In much the same way a cannibalistic serial killer was also an abberation.
Charismatic, maybe. Intelligent, perhaps, in that peculiarly artificial way Entities tended to be.
Two Entities can divide responsibilities between them, allowing each to specialize further and allocate more resources to stronger powers they couldn't afford otherwise.
An Entity that works alone gets none of those advantages. Mind you, there were still perfectly legitimate reasons for doing so.
Perhaps it simply prefers a highly unusual, non-standard type of Cycle, and just doesn't work well with others.
Perhaps it used to have a partner, but another Entity killed and ate it.
Perhaps it doesn't trust other Entities to not kill and eat it the second it drops its guard.
Or, perhaps it killed and ate its own partner.
[PHILOSOPHER] is a cannibalistic serial killer, is what I'm getting at.
Entities tended to work in pairs to protect themselves from other Entities - like [PHILOSOPHER] - who thought their Shards were quite lovely and would feel just terrible if some awful Entity were to come along and harvest them for spare parts.
Some might say this was rather contrary to the whole Cycle idea, which most Entities were almost religiously devoted to. It being that thing Entities did in the hopes they'd miraculously find some way to break physics just right.
Just barely enough, to where they could all go back to eating and reproducing indefinitely without ever running out of food.
Because when you ran out of food, the only thing left to eat was each other.
Unfortunately for [WARRIOR] and [THINKER], [PHILOSOPHER] was very, very good at eating Entities.
Even among Entities, [PHILOSOPHER] was unusually brilliant, if a tad non-sapient.
Charismatic, even.
Like most sociopaths, [PHILOSOPHER] held the opinion that its goals were much more important than your life.
That was a pretty normal thing for an Entity to think, actually.
What was abnormal about [PHILOSOPHER]'s opinion was that it liked to think its goals were also more important than other Entities' lives.
You see, whereas most Entities tried to achieve their goal of literally infinite greed by beating physics over the head until it complied, [PHILOSOPHER] went about it a different way.
A rather abberant way, you could say.
At some point in the past, [PHILOSOPHER] came to the conclusion that the Entity species as a whole was inherently flawed. An evolutionary dead end.
[PHILOSOPHER]'s answer to the Cycle was to design a better version of Entity. A kind of Entity that didn't consume all life faster than that life could replenish itself.
Now, normally, one would think the sensible solution would be to invest in something called "birth control."
Alas, Entities were not known for being sensible.
It probably didn't help that their methods for hunting, feeding, fighting, mating, reproducing, and literally all other functions of life were largely indistinguishable from each other.
Two Entities fighting had the same end result as two Entities fucking, or two Entities feeding, or two Entities casually discussing the weather over a spot of tea, if the tea was made of violence and the weather was bloodshed.
You could say Entities were a lot like out-of-control nanobots, if those nanobots were armed with lasers and thought the Paperclip Maximizer was a viable life philosophy.
Amongst Entities, [PHILOSOPHER] was notably intelligent, in the sense that it was slightly less stupid.
[PHILOSOPHER] was fully aware that the Entity lifestyle was not viable. That is to say, it had observed its species as a whole, recorded the data, and identified the patterns.
(The fact that most of that data was generated by [PHILOSOPHER] itself, and that it was insane by Entity standards, was a point it had never thought to consider.)
But, like most species that never managed to evolve sapience, [PHILOSOPHER] had no idea how to actually solve this problem.
This is where we come in.
Unfortunately for us, [PHILOSOPHER] was of the opinion that its goals were much more important than we were.
-----
A/N: [PHILOSOPHER] is Abaddon. [WARRIOR] and [THINKER] are, naturally, Scion/Zion and Eden.
The main thrust of this story is the unmitigated PR disaster that is a Hunter Taylor in the Wards. Why the Wards? Because Taylor is her own supplier and was high on Tinkermeth at the time.
Yes, it's that kind of fic. Expect OOC for the sake of situational comedy. Do not expect canon compliance.
I make no claims or assurances of quality. I'm pretty much just writing this because I'm a terrible person who giggles at terrible things.
(That said, I'm willing to listen to advice if it helps improve my writing.)
-----
Bloody Tinkers
Prologue
A Connoisseur of Dangerous Game
Prologue
A Connoisseur of Dangerous Game
If one were to observe a species as a whole, certain patterns would emerge.
For instance, it was a general rule that Entities worked in pairs. Not an absolute rule, mind you; there are always outliers to the average. Exceptions to the rule.
Even among outliers, [PHILOSOPHER] was an abberation. In much the same way a cannibalistic serial killer was also an abberation.
Charismatic, maybe. Intelligent, perhaps, in that peculiarly artificial way Entities tended to be.
Two Entities can divide responsibilities between them, allowing each to specialize further and allocate more resources to stronger powers they couldn't afford otherwise.
An Entity that works alone gets none of those advantages. Mind you, there were still perfectly legitimate reasons for doing so.
Perhaps it simply prefers a highly unusual, non-standard type of Cycle, and just doesn't work well with others.
Perhaps it used to have a partner, but another Entity killed and ate it.
Perhaps it doesn't trust other Entities to not kill and eat it the second it drops its guard.
Or, perhaps it killed and ate its own partner.
[PHILOSOPHER] is a cannibalistic serial killer, is what I'm getting at.
Entities tended to work in pairs to protect themselves from other Entities - like [PHILOSOPHER] - who thought their Shards were quite lovely and would feel just terrible if some awful Entity were to come along and harvest them for spare parts.
Some might say this was rather contrary to the whole Cycle idea, which most Entities were almost religiously devoted to. It being that thing Entities did in the hopes they'd miraculously find some way to break physics just right.
Just barely enough, to where they could all go back to eating and reproducing indefinitely without ever running out of food.
Because when you ran out of food, the only thing left to eat was each other.
Unfortunately for [WARRIOR] and [THINKER], [PHILOSOPHER] was very, very good at eating Entities.
Even among Entities, [PHILOSOPHER] was unusually brilliant, if a tad non-sapient.
Charismatic, even.
Like most sociopaths, [PHILOSOPHER] held the opinion that its goals were much more important than your life.
That was a pretty normal thing for an Entity to think, actually.
What was abnormal about [PHILOSOPHER]'s opinion was that it liked to think its goals were also more important than other Entities' lives.
You see, whereas most Entities tried to achieve their goal of literally infinite greed by beating physics over the head until it complied, [PHILOSOPHER] went about it a different way.
A rather abberant way, you could say.
At some point in the past, [PHILOSOPHER] came to the conclusion that the Entity species as a whole was inherently flawed. An evolutionary dead end.
[PHILOSOPHER]'s answer to the Cycle was to design a better version of Entity. A kind of Entity that didn't consume all life faster than that life could replenish itself.
Now, normally, one would think the sensible solution would be to invest in something called "birth control."
Alas, Entities were not known for being sensible.
It probably didn't help that their methods for hunting, feeding, fighting, mating, reproducing, and literally all other functions of life were largely indistinguishable from each other.
Two Entities fighting had the same end result as two Entities fucking, or two Entities feeding, or two Entities casually discussing the weather over a spot of tea, if the tea was made of violence and the weather was bloodshed.
You could say Entities were a lot like out-of-control nanobots, if those nanobots were armed with lasers and thought the Paperclip Maximizer was a viable life philosophy.
Amongst Entities, [PHILOSOPHER] was notably intelligent, in the sense that it was slightly less stupid.
[PHILOSOPHER] was fully aware that the Entity lifestyle was not viable. That is to say, it had observed its species as a whole, recorded the data, and identified the patterns.
(The fact that most of that data was generated by [PHILOSOPHER] itself, and that it was insane by Entity standards, was a point it had never thought to consider.)
But, like most species that never managed to evolve sapience, [PHILOSOPHER] had no idea how to actually solve this problem.
This is where we come in.
Unfortunately for us, [PHILOSOPHER] was of the opinion that its goals were much more important than we were.
-----
A/N: [PHILOSOPHER] is Abaddon. [WARRIOR] and [THINKER] are, naturally, Scion/Zion and Eden.
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