#shroud dispatch

thinking of a shroud redemption au......

like the whole point of the phoenix program is to redeem villains and turn their lives around

it would be fun to challenge the question "can even the worst people change?"

Oh hey a very apt question regarding my most recent reblog of "turned into hybrid Robert"!

For those wondering what a Black Footed Cat is; it looks like someone drew a chibi version of a Serval.

This photo is of an adult Black Footed Cat held by zookeeper btw;

Yes, adult. Not a kitten. They don't get much bigger.

Their average weight is 2-6 pounds (or 1-2.5kg) - aka they weigh about the same as a small bag of sugar.

Here's a good graph of the size comparisons of small wild felids; the Balck Footed is all the way at the bottom.

They are also the cat with the highest success rate for hunts.

Elliot/Shroud picked out the smallest wild felid, thinking Robert's resulting instincts would make him meek and less likely to fight.

He thought wrong.

Robert quickly decimates the rat, mouse, pigeon, and cicada population in the Torrance area within months. His new instincts call for him to hunt and eat often.

The Red Ring should be wary if he decides to bite off more than a finger or two...

To those unaware, he seems just to be an especially small-framed feral cat hybrid. Despite having the face of a grown man, Robert has experienced unwanted physical attention and infantilisation from others in his new day-to-day life. It pisses him off to no end.

That does track as a thing Dad Shroud would do to "protect" his son.

I headcanon that in Elliot's mind; Mecha Man and Robert are separate entities. By destroying one, the other can be freed.

So he needs to stop Mecha Man Blue from ever flying that mech again.

(Getting the Astral Pulse in the process would also be nice.)

Elliot had no delusions about Robert's human fragility though. He knew that there was a good chance that when Mecha Man exploded over the Southland, Robert wouldn't make it out.

So he set up a little "insurance" in case the bomb proved a little too spicy.

Whether through magic, meta abilties, or genetic tampering; Robert awakens from his coma a little less human than before.

The homies on discord have me in two major camps of thought.

Wolf/Dog Hybrid Robert

Cat Hybrid Robert

Both species are exercises in thoughts on loyalty, domesticity, hybrid discrimination, instincts over logic, etc... Also, grown man getting shown affection like a touch-starved feral pet.

And I starting thinking about how that trope would interact with Shroud's powers. Something that wasn't a person, merely speaking and acting purely around input and probability and then said

Most recent wip—Elliot

Trying to make decent sketches for the Until Dawn au; Where the sun, it never shines au

Once i get him done, as well as my lovely (terrible) wips that i really should finish—hopefully I'll get around getting them done soon-ish

It always felt like BS to me, and the only narrative points that kind of corroborate it are 1 - armstrong attacking her at the bar saying “someone wants to talk to you” (it becomes obvious that someone is shroud), and 2 - at the final fight one of the red ring minions handing her the mask (wich seems to be the missing piece for her augments to work???)

and the general consensus on people who don’t buy the claim is that the minion fell for the bluff too.

HOWEVER

think about it from the red ring / shroud-the-gang-leader prespective. One prominent member of his gang, someone who he took a fair amount of effort to recruit, and who was the indispensible linch pin for his mecha man goes boom plan to work, up and left and joined the fenix program. If she succeeds in leaving, how does that look? The other members start getting ideas about an easy exist from the ring. That’s not how crime rings work, either you’re in or you’re dead.

Now i was already under the assumption, because of the bar fight scene, that after she joined SDN shroud tried to recruit/forcer her back in and become the spy he claims she was.