#banyanas

Hakdfbvahskvksfkvsfs hi, Bany!!! It is!!! You're invited to the party regardless. Look, there's even some cake for you!

Mammalian, too hot, too air-choked without the freedom of gills or skin-permeable breath, too oddly-balanced, with no tail to speak of.

Invigorating. The Core felt more alive than it had in fifteen thousand years, like it truly had conquered death rather than simply survived under its siege.

... It was increasingly obvious how young the host was, even beyond her terrified clamor within the Collective after they’d completed the download, however. Because it turned out that Wit was... short.

It had never felt this... small, before.

“Must you loom so close?” it grumbled without looking back at the presence that shadowed it like a heron swooping over a village. “We are working.”

There was only one amphibian that was granted access to the Core’s sanctuary, where it put the host’s surprisingly nimble fingers to use by building a weapon that would actually fit in them.

“Of course.” King Andrias’s voice rumbled quietly through the cable-tangled cavern, like a storm rolling in; and like a storm, it made all the hairs on the back of the Core’s neck stand on end. “I just think... why not leave it up to the royal engineers? Surely there are matters more deserving of your attention.”

“We have a body, and we intend to use it, Andrias,” the Core snapped back, whipping their head around to face him with moon-red pupils blown wide.

Already on edge, the Core jerked back around and swore when it seared their fingers on the spark-catcher lying exposed on their work table. The scent of scorched flesh slithered beneath their nose like a memory.

“My lord?” A four-fingered hand reaching below the Core’s line of vision, large enough to crush a mortal frog like the insects they were.

Pain, and the memory of pain. Instinct remembering the threat of death, and heat shrieking at it to run away from something before its biological operating system could even begin to shut off the scrolling thought-code.

Involuntarily the Core reached back to grab the half-finished blowtorch-dagger, searing scar-lines tracing across their chest and back burning as it moved.

Burning, searing, the scent of charred skin- this body insisted, with tremendous violence, that it belonged to Marcy Wu, and that it remembered.

And with that tremendous violence, they slashed the dagger across the king’s encroaching palm.

He howled, lurching back in shock.

“Do not touch me!” the Core snarled, dull teeth bared in a blunt imitation of a giant salamander’s threat. The back of their legs banged into the work table as they backed up.

What did this... this human creature do to us!?

Drew my mutuals’ sonas in an animal crossing-ish style! :)

sonas (in order of top left to bottom right):

Kleo ( @lemonykleonella)

Vito ( @mak-to-the-future)

Harper ( @ahatintimepieces)

Swampy Sam ( @kaileedraws swamp friends!)

Lavender (me!)

Snowl ( @banyanas not really a sona but shhhhh)

Oc picnic at the crossover park

In order:

Jammy @jam-blue

Sage @rindomness

Arata @lindendragon

Lee @banyanas

Nell @doodleimprovement

Hunter upon seeing Lil Rascal for the first time...