make brave and heroic decisions

Propaganda

Konora (Riley Hopkins And Their Amazing Friends: The Legend of Zelda: Oath to Ordo):

What if a rude woman begrudgingly accepted the power of love and friendship into her heart to try and save the kingdom from an evil queen.

Worm:AI/Actor.B!Rootkit AKA Worm (Calazcon: The Farm Upstate):

What if Hatsune Miku was a gremlin hacker who could also pilot a Gundam? That’s worm, a sentient computer virus who’s programmer mysteriously disappeared so she just kind of went to work for the R&D squad he used to be a part of.

The torturer stepped back instinctively. Not out of mercy. Out of surprise. The prisoner laughed. Not loudly. Worse than loudly. Softly. Like he had just remembered a private joke older than civilization.

“You still think pain is a language,” he said.

Another blow. This time across the mouth. Teeth cracked. Blood sheeted down his chin in long ribbons.

The interrogator hissed through clenched teeth. “Tell me where God went.”

The prisoner turned his head slowly. There was blood in his smile now.

“There are organisms,” he said, “living beneath Antarctic ice that have never seen the sun and have still learned how to eat.”

The room had gone very still. Somewhere in the dark, machinery groaned.

The interrogator grabbed him by the jaw hard enough to bruise bone.

“You think this makes you immortal?”

The prisoner spat a clot of red onto the floor between them.

“No,” he whispered.

“I think it makes you temporary.”

The torches flickered.

For one impossible second, the interrogator became aware of his own pulse. The heat in his veins. The soft wetness of his eyes. The damp animal electricity inside every living thing. The prisoner watched realization bloom across his face and smiled wider, blood running between his teeth.

“You cannot threaten a creature from the dirt,” he said, “with returning to the dirt.”