#ean-sovukau asks

YES. It freaks the taurs out to know end. Except for Cor and the kids, who immediately try to copy them to no avail because four legs is too different from two legs to pull of those kinds of parkour.

It’s just- it’s this aggressive race through the Citadel, some kind of demented hybrid of tag and parkour with Cloud being “It” and Zack and Titus going to increasingly unbelievable lengths and stunts to avoid getting tagged. Then Zack is tagged and it gets even crazier because Cloud has no self-preservation instincts.

Then Titus is tagged and Cloud and Zack are a Fear™. Titus laughs maniacally the entire time as they pull of things that the taurs are pretty sure should NOT BE POSSIBLE (but is because they aren’t taurs) to escape. Then it probably devolves into a fight since Cloud will absolutely Throw Hands with Seph for any reason, including being tagged “unfairly” (read: his hair got touched and he thinks only skin contact should count but Seph calls him a coward and so Cloud goes for the throat while Zack makes his escape).

Ooooohhhh ANGST. Angst and panic. I mean- I assume NK is Night King, which means poor Ardyn just- finds himself in a city of DAEMONS one day and FREAKS. Then the daemons freak because the ORIGINAL ACCURSED IS BACK OH NO EVERYONE RUN AWAY BEFORE HE ENSLAVES US. And someone goes running for the Night King.

Then Noctis gets there and finds a shaking, terrified, painfully HUMAN and SANE Ardyn and just goes “ah.”

“You’re not from around here.”

And Del!Ardyn whirls, and spots Noctis, and his face twists in a mix of hope and confusion, “Deleantur? Brother where are we?”

And Noctis pauses. He doesn’t know that name. And in the pause, Del!Ardyn registers all the differences between Deleantur and this stranger, spots Noctis’s Retinue hovering at his shoulders and ... he pales. “Noctis,” he whispers, because it has to be. The Retinue look just as Deleantur described them, and this man looks like Deleantur.

NK!Noctis smiles thinly, “Come with me,” he says gently, “I think I know what has happened, but this isn’t something to discuss in the open.”

And Ardyn trusts his brother, even this strange version, so he follows, shy and flinching at the looks from the Retinue, and the Kingsglaive, and the few daemons who poke their heads out of their houses and then flinch away (they act like people, not monsters, and Noctis does not fear them, and Ardyn wonders what world he has fallen into that these things are true).

and NK!Noctis and Del!Ardyn talk, and things are explained, and Ignis’s heart thaws in sympathy as he serves tea to the shaking, stubbornly-not-crying man who has just learned that he became the Accursed in not just his future-that-isn’t but also at least two more worlds. The one Noctis is from, and the one he now rules (because Noctis told him the truth after learning about Deleantur’s time travel)

And Ardyn is given a guest room, and the daemons are soothed with an explanation that this man is from another world and is NOT the old Accursed, isn’t any Accursed at all (and if the daemons whisper rumors of a world where the Accursed never fell, and is but a simple mage, well, Noctis doesn’t stop them).

Ardyn only stays for a day or two, but he and NK!Noctis talk much.

It’s ... nice.

*laughs* Okay so- SOMEONE from Blurry has to be there with B!Besithia otherwise Cloud will just straight up murder him.

Let’s assume it’s Glaucus. So they trip into another world and wander for a bit, then they spot a teenage Prompto with a motorcycle and go to say hi and Cloud takes one (1) look at B!Besithia and just- GOES FOR HIM.

Glaucus is astonished and impressed and also alarmed at the ferocity and skill and GIANT SPLITTING SWORD this Prompto wields.

He finally gets Prompto to chill out when he breaks out the armiger and Cloud stops in surprise, then explains that Glaucus is from another dimension and that’s his pet scientist, no touch. Cloud proceeds to take them to Insomnia, spitting mad and avoiding the heck out of B!Besithia the entire way.

B!Besithia has a Really Bad Feeling about this. About why his beloved little lab son is ... so different here. So quiet, so introverted, so VIOLENT. The way he looks at B!Besithia with restrained hate in his eyes, the way he flings around his giant sword like it’s a toy even though his son’s frame is tiny...

B!Besithia knows by this point that most of his counterparts Are Not Good People but this?

This implies things that make B!Besithia feel sick.

So yeah, they get to Insomnia, introductions are made, Seph walks into the room and Regis as to help Glaucus push Seph back with their armiger before the man can maul B!Besithia. Explainations are made and Seph!Titus slides into a cold, professional mask.

It’s Seph!Titus who answers B!Besithia’s questions on why They Hate Him So Much.

Glaucus is genuinely startled when B!Besithia proceeds to flip a table in rage.

Child experiments. DISSECTIONS on a LIVE SUBJECT. A CHILD. Implanting the man who is his BEST FRIEND. His LITTLE BROTHER, with a painful, experimental combat armor.

Then Cloud comes in in the middle of B!Besithia’s tantrum and there’s something in his eyes and B!Besithia might not be the best at reading PEOPLE but he knows his SON. He knows how to translate that look. This Prompto remembers. He remembers  E V E R Y T H I N G.

B!Besithia has to be escorted by Glaucus and some Crownsguard to a training room to work off his sheer, blind rage at his other self.

Cloud and Seph are a Confusion. Especially when, after his rage filled target practice, B!Besithia proceeds to aggressively (but carefully) dad them both.

THis ... is a nice scientist? Who cares? Who has morals?

THOSE KINDS OF SCIENTISTS EXIST??????

Anyway yes, much angst, many feels, ends with Cloud grudgingly coming to like this quirky, Smol, angry mad scientist dad and maybe even carefully giving the man a hug before they go back to their home dimension.

*squints* Not to be obtuse but which one? Do you mean the Verstael of that verse or my good guy Besithia of Future’s Blurry?

Gonna assume you mean Cloud’s Besithia and like- ohhhh boy.

So first the only way they meet is if Besithia tried to have his goons capture Cloud after FINALLY poking his head out of his lab long enough to hear about Cor Leonis’s scrawny kid who can bench press a car and outrun a coeurl and goes “AH-HA” because he still remembers that missing lab baby that got stolen that had been showing the most fascinating reactions to the Scourge. So Besithia sends forth his goons and I ... don’t entirely see Cloud getting CAPTURED so much as surrounded while Besithia himself shows up to inspect the capture and to brag.

Prompto looks and hears Besithia going on a mad rant about finding his “wayward creation”. Hears Besithia talk about tests and diagnostics and further experiments in order to replicate his “wayward subject”. He hears and knows that this man is talking about him, is going to drag him back to the labs again and break-him-mold-him-carve-him-open-stitch-him-up-wrong-.

And

Prompto

F A L L S.

Aranea and Tifa might be the ones to find him if he was in Niflheim when this happened, or if Besithia deigned to fly all the way to Lucis, then its the Glaives who find him.

Lets go with the glaives.

The glaives find the aftermath and at first aren’t sure WHAT they’re seeing. The area is ... shredded. Toxic almost in the levels of destruction. There isn’t a single living plant or animal in the area, just husks of MT units torn apart and downed gunships and mecha suits. It’s a war zone, but not one of their making. They are alarmed.

Captain is FRANTIC. He is the only one to look around the field and figure it out first, to spot what is ... left of Besithia’s personal division and put the pieces together and he RUNS through the ruined field, frantically searching.

They find Cloud lying on the ground not far from ... what is left of Besithia. Cloud’s fusion sword is buried point first in the ground not far away, still slick with engine oil and blood and MT sludge. He’s not moving, and Captain gives a strangled cry as he skids to a stop on his knees next to Cloud.

Cloud’s okay. Physically. Nothing that a few elixirs (freely given by the glaive and Captain) won’t fix. But his eyes are open and vacant and his limbs are trembling faintly like he's too cold. Captain bundles up Cor’s son and they rush back to base with him, where they call Cor. It takes an entire day for Cloud to snap out of it, to crawl out of the haze of labs and running and sour mako and Zack-here-Zack-fighting-Zack-gone-gone-gone and register his real surroundings, sitting curled up tight against Seph’s side while Zack paces worriedly back and forth and Cor sits on Cloud’s other side holding his hand with a grim expression.

They notice he’s finally aware again and fuzz like crazy. Cor demands to know what happened, which Cloud manages to choke out ... most of the story.

Seph and Zack flinch in sympathy and understanding the moment he admits he lost track of what happened when he realized Besithia intended to take him back to the labs.

He goes home to Insomnia with them and spends a while there recovering, but there is a moment, quite and private, when it’s just Cor and his son, that Cloud admits- more to the window he’s staring out of then the father in the nearby chair, that he thought he’d feel ... better. For having killed him. He can’t touch him anymore. He doesn’t have to worry about the labs. Doesn’t have to flinch from the phantom lurking in the shadows of the room or the corner of the mirror anymore. 

And yet ... he still dreams of them.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop dreaming of them. The labs are inside him, and he doesn’t know ... how to pull them out.

They get to be pretty weird for sure. Insomnia is in ruins, even if those are fairly refurbished ruins by now, so there is a lot of climbing/perching on things required to navigate the city, and since all the daemons have their own language they use all the time unless addressing their king, the humans start picking up the language too and unthinkingly parroting it back (and boy does Noctis startle the day his older Cor exasperatedly tells young Cor to KNOCK IT OFF via loud, angry CHIRP noise).

The Glaives are whole-heartedly the weirdest. Not ... not to the other humans living there because they’re all basically the same level of weird, but when there are human guests around like the Chocobros 1.0, the other humans at least TRY to Human Properly. The Glaives don’t bother. They continue their platforming ninja skills, creepy lurking in the rafters, and exchanging jokes with the local daemons in daemon tongue.

Also Noctis learns how to purr. He’s ... not sure how that happened, but he kinda figured it out and the first day he purred at a Smol daemon child who bumped into him in the street by accident all the nearby daemons just about cried from the cuteness of their new king.

They all also pick up body language cues from the daemons too. Cor, when relaxed, starts sauntering with his sword propped on one shoulder, and when Lib Fusses at someone his arms are on his hips and his legs are spread apart in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a ticked off mama Arachne scolding her kiddos. No one enlightens Lib to the reason he is now part of the daemon populations unofficial Mom Club where they get to complain about their idiots over wine and weaving.

.....

SURE

I can see that. XD. Just- Besithia clinging to Glaucus with a paranoid look whenever they hop worlds going, “Whatever they got infected with, I’M not going to catch it.” *shakes Glaucus’s arm like it’s a deadly weapon* “I HAVE IMMUNITY.”

Besithia refuses to beg for visitation rights because HE IS AS MUCH THE PARENT AS SHE IS and besides that Prompto is officially Glaucus’s kid and Glaucus already said he could. However- yes I can see him apologizing for the drunk shenanigans and being Evasive on where he got her blood sample (it’s a long story involving the Lucian underworld, a fanboy of the mad scientist, and one too many drunken bets).

Sylva is REALLY prepared to hate this guy for his moral and privacy infringements. She’s picturing this depraved, sleazy man that is only kept around because he’s the inventor of the Starscourge vaccine and is utterly flabbergasted when she meets him and he’s ... nice? He oscillates between being ego confident and shy, he looks like her newest son, and he’s just- such an utter nerd. He offers her a tour of his lab and rambles on a million miles an hour on each new thing and he knows an astonishing amount of history and mythology and somehow, for all it becomes clear his moral compass is basically, “Glaucus told me not too this one time” he’s ... oddly endearing? They get along surprisingly well once Sylva gets over the whole “created a child with my DNA and didn’t tell me” thing.