#patience zero

To get a little bit more in depth, this AU relies heavily on my own personal headcanons of how gods function both physically and mentally, and how that can be manipulated and explored. It's also in part a foray into the relationship between Huzzle Mug and Click Clack, two gods I don't see interacting much, but I have a lot of thoughts on their relationship.

Essentially, a god is not just their body.

While their 'body' is their tool to interact with things (and is easier for them to control because they used to be humans), their entire realm within the rift is them. When Inspekta pries open the rift at the end of the game, you can see things from their realms flying out, forming the debris around the spire. This physically 'damages' the gods, and though the rift is closed, a lot of them are left very tired, drained, and sickly until they can recuperate.

But some gods lost more than others. Huzzle Mug and Click Clack both have something in common they don't share with the other gods- dual consciousnesses.

I've touched on this a bit for Click Clack in my fic Act Zero, but essentially...

When a god ascends, their mind is also changed to help them better process their new role, depending on their domain.

The human mind cannot properly multitask. Thus, gods who needed to constantly multitask had their consciousnesses split in two, which now work together as one being.

Huzzle Mug is the god off innovation, yes, but also the future. To be so good at inventing and innovating, it has to be able to see future possibilities. But seeing every possible future is too much for one mind to handle, so it has one mind that is constantly perusing futures, and one that's focused on making decisions in the present. The 'future sight' consciousness will supply any information of what will happen when the active/present consciousness decides something.

Click Clack does something similar. He has one mind that processes the script of the world- the narrator- and one that is the 'character' or the editor. One cannot be both!

But having two means they sit 'looser' within their realms, more prone to dislodging... and that's exactly what happens.

When parts of the God realm are sucked out of the rift, Huzzle Mug's future sight consciousness and Click Clack's character/editor conscious are sucked into the mortal realm.

This changes how they portray themselves, pictured above.

Click loses his 'face' as he's lost his character, and Huzzle Mug loses it's floating eyes and limbs. It also gets more splotchy and drippy when it gets emotional, and it's feet posses thumbs.

On the left is how they look at the 'beginning' of the AU, and on the right is how they look near the 'end' once they begin to function better together... and thus influence each other.

Meanwhile...

Disconnected from their realms and cut off from the rest of their bodies and minds, the parts of their consciousness they lost have to go dormant to survive (as opposed to fading into nothing), and take the form of objects. Click Clack's consciousness takes the form of a fountain pen, and Huzzle Mug's takes the form of a bag of marbles.

These items are found by Patience Zero and Dr. Cara respectively.

Though they're inert, they still possess some of their powers. The pen still has the power to make minor edits to the world, and the marbles still have the ability to tell possible futures. Patience uses the pens to actually edit her stories to make people enjoy them and listen to her, and Cara uses the marbles to evade getting in trouble... until one day, he gets a vision of Huzzle Mug finding him and Patience and being utterly pissed.

He assumes the worst, and goes out to find Patience, and convinces her to go 'on the run' or else the gods are going to hurt them. Not true, but fueled by paranoia, they go on the run... not realizing that what they possess aren't just objects that belong to the gods, but part of the gods themselves.

Huzzle Mug and Click Clack, on their own, struggle to function- but together, Click Clack's narration acts as Huzzle's future sight, and Huzzle acts as Click's 'character' and direction.

Equally, Patience and Cara have to work together to avoid capture from the gods and their followers.