In one universe, Five Pebbles cut off all contact from the world and caused his sister's collapse, and never talked to anyone until he could no longer stand himself.
In this universe, immediately after Looks to the Moon's collapse a slugcat breaks into Pebbles' can and tries to kill him. This triggers an avalanche of events; one that could change everyone's life forever.
Untethered
is a Rain World Alternate Universe fic by FangFury.
All spoilers for Rain World are unmarked. You have been warned!
Unleash the tropes!
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A — K
- Abled in the Adaptation: In this fic, NSH has the best maintained facilities on the planet, something he brags about to no end, and he takes great measures to keep his facilities in good shape like training the local Scavenger and Slugcat populations in repairs and maintainance. This is in contrast to canon, where NSH tells Suns his facilities are eroding during Spearmaster's campaign.
- Adaptation Deviation: In Artificer's "Kill the King" ending, her Karma is permanently locked to 1. In this fic, Artificer encounters some Echoes after the event that appear to raise her Karma enough for her to be able to ues Gates, which is impossible in the base game.
- Adaptation Name Change: Downplayed. Some pre-existing names are expanded.
- Five Pebbles' full name is Five Pebbles Washed by the River and Dried by the Morning Sun.
- NSH reveals "Hunter" is only half of the slugcat's name; the full thing is Apex Hunter.
- Grey Wind's full name is Chasing the Winds that were Changed by Time.
- Adaptational Gender Identity:
- NSH is trans-male, having transitioned after the Mass Ascension.
- While canon keeps the gender of all slugcats ambiguous, here those that appear are given definite genders.
- Artificer is she/her female, it's even apparent in her scent.
- Spearmaster is they/them.
- Hunter is a he/him, though rarely other people refer to him as "they".
- Artificer's pups are a she/her and a they/them.
- Adaptation Origin Connection: In canon, Rivulet is a Protagonist Without a Past (aside from an implied Noodle Incident). In this fic, they were created by Grey Wind as a messenger.
- Adaptational Heroism: Artificer shows a fair bit of compassion towards Pebbles, and tries to reduce the violence she inflicts of Scavengers as much as possible and move on after killing the Chieftain.
- Adaptational Timespan Change: The fic compresses the campaigns of all Slugcats from Spearmaster to Hunter far closer to each other, essentially making them take place simultaneously; for example, Artificer having met Pebbles before Moon's collapse. This is contrasting to the game, where the degredation of the environment makes it clear there's a significant time skip between each campaign.
- Alien Blood: Mercy's blood is partially made up of some flawed and maybe artificial version of Void Fluid. While it can't be used for Ascension, it gives her Ideal Illness Immunity, a Healing Factor, and quite possibly her Shock and Awe abilities. It's also acidic; or at least it has the same effect on metal as acid.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Suns presents one to Pebbles that makes the latter seriously rethink his Death Seeker tendencies.SRS: How would you have felt if I had gone through with it? If I had ascended and left you all behind, even if I got the affirmative out. Would you be happy to see me gone?
- Back from the Dead: Moon is repeatedly stated to be dead or killed by Pebbles' actions, but thanks to NSH's slag reset keys she's re-activated (albeit with a major memory and ability loss due to damage to her facilities). She's a robot.
- Beneath the Mask: NSH hides a keen, paranoid and cynical mind beneath the facade of a jokester. He even pretends to be less competent than he is in some aspects.
- Benevolent Abomination: The Echoes. None of them have negative intentions, having been ordinary people once, and generally they're quite friendly. However their mere presence completely throws off the Karmic balance of anyone they talk to, resulting in negative effects to their health, and that's not covering all the times they shove foreign memories or knowledge in people's heads, which can have negative effects.
- Big Brother Is Watching:
- No Significant Harassment has alt accounts on almost all groups. He knows the alt accounts of just about everyone he knows and those of several people he doesn't know. That said, he admits there are many instances where he's uncertain about identities or doesn't know who the real people behind the alts are.
- Expanding Frontiers is even better, and it's heavily implied he's working with a group. He tells NSH in no uncertain terms that disobeying the outcome of the senior meeting will result in them outing and blacklisting all of his accounts (verified and alts), ban him from participating in any Public or Senior groups, and all his research contributions will go uncredited. NSH concludes the Illuminati are real.
- Blessed with Suck:
- Mercy's oversensitivity to Karma comes with more downsides than benefits. She gets sick from any kind of Karma fluctuation, including other people cycling.
- Pebbles views recalling one's previous life as this, because they also recall their death, with all that entails. While the Ancients viewed this as a great honor, Pebbles offers condolences.
- Blind Obedience: During an argument between Mercy and Five Pebbles, after Pebbles angrily reveals all the works he's being doing behind the scenes, Mercy bows down to his and says it's not her place to disobey gods. Later she thinks to herself she must only follow orders. Pebbles is troubled by this because the god that's closest to Mercy, Looks to the Moon, would have never instilled such beliefs into her, so they must have come from a different source.
- Body Horror:
- Pebbles finds out the hard way Iterator puppets are more biological than he thought as he didn't know he could bleed. When he tries fixing the wound, there are wires and organic tissue inside the shoulder, and the tissue is healing even as he's working on it. But the grand prize goes to NSH, who attempts to remove some broken components (a cracked lens and a bent speaker) so he could scan them. He discovers he has eyes beneath the lenses, and when he tries removing the speaker he finds the wires go all the way through his throat into his chest cavity, which result in him having to break his own face (well, its metal exterior) to avoid choking on his own blood - all while being mildly electrocuted from his exposed wires from the inside of his throat. He finds out he has a mouth, with teeth covered in a strange polymer.
- NSH describes the process of fabricating Inspectors as this trope.NSH: You basically have to take them out halfway and let the fabricator finish building the other half while they just… dangle out.
SRS: I don’t like that mental image, Harassment.
NSH: Yes it’s a bit like finding an animal corpse laying around.
SRS: Thank you, for making it worse somehow.
NSH: The worst part is something needs to hold them perfectly still, so you just have an Inspector clinging to half an Inspector.
SRS: Please stop talking, you’re making my strata curdle.
- Broken Pedestal:
- The Ancients are this to the Iterators as a whole, as they view the Mass Ascension as a case of Parental Abandonment. Pebbles is the one who most clearly expresses this sentiment.
- Hunter briefly loses all faith he had in NSH after Pebbles reveals that his modifications caused Rot and that he doesn't have long left to live. There are also other factors, like NSH telling Hunter that Pebbles is an entitled brat but when Hunter meets him he's nothing but helpful and offers to cure him.
- Bus Crash: The reason behind Chasing Winds' absence is that their system were too damaged to keep with communications and they hid it. By the time Breeze finds them, they're dying with very little time left and no chance of reviving them.
- By "No", I Mean "Yes": During the senior meeting, NSH says he has nothing else major to report other than Moon's collapse, Winds going dark, and the restoration of the Bridge... And just before his timer runs out he goes "oh, one of my groupmates beat Rot." Cue the meeting devolving into chaos.
- Call-Forward: Mercy can kill rot by unleashing electric surges. In the game, as seen in Rivulet's campaign, the last area to be affected by the Rot is the Recursive Transform Array, which is where the power generators are.
- Canon Character All Along: It's very heavily implied Shaded Breeze and Whispering Drop are actually Artificer's supposedly dead children.
- Cassandra Truth: For the longest time nobody believes No Significant Harassment when he tells people the slugcats are sapient. Even after others find proof, most iterators outside the Chasers of Destiny group think they're being pranked.
- The Chains of Commanding: NSH is acting senior after Moon's collapse and feels incredibly burdened by the responsibility. He believes he cannot afford to fail at anything because he has Obligations. He's incredibly tired all the time and running on fumes.
- Cliffhanger: Chapter 1 ends with Five Pebbles, after a long time of not connecting to anyone, sending an incredibly glitched message through the Triple Affirmative broadcast and going Dark.
- Combo Platter Powers: Mercy has Shock and Awe, a Healing Factor, Bioluminescence, Ideal Illness Immunity and is extremely sensitive to Echo and Karma activity.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: Artificer reveals she can read and write to Pebbles using the soot from her fur as a writing tool.
- Crossing the Burnt Bridge: Pebbles acknowledges he has to reconnect with those he has wronged after cutting contact with everyone; especially Moon.
- Cuddle Bug: A species-wide trait for slugcats. They adore cuddling up to each other, are very clingy when seperated from their loved ones for long, and sleep in piles.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Spearmaster versus Leviathan. Winner: Spearmaster. The leviathan wasn't even able to reach them. The Scavengers stop messing with Spearmaster after that one.
- Cut the Juice: Pebbles turns off forced broadcasts by literally cutting the wire that connects them. It's connected to his head. Later he ties it back together, but he unties it again during Hunter's surgery.
- David Versus Goliath: At one point Spearmaster makes a joke out of a Leviathan, which is an aquatic apex predator several times their size. Pebbles respects them for taking on such a powerful foe, and the local Scavenger population steers clear from them after that.
- Dead Man Writing: Chasing Winds sends Rivulet with a pearl containing their dying message, detailing what damage was done to them, and sending their final words to each of their loved ones.
- Deadly Euphemism: "Cross someone out".
- Death Seeker: Pebbles actively seeks to kill himself as a means of finding the Solution to the Great Problem. He drops this attitude when he realises that if someone else did this, he'd be incredibly hurt by their actions, and that he'll be basically copying what the Ancients did to them.
- Desperately Craves Affection: Pebbles doesn't realise how much he misses contact with other people until he's literally dying. Shortly afterwards he admits it feels wonderful to share stories with Artificer. All of this is further enhanced by how iterators are stuck in their chambers and literally incapable of showing physical affection to each other. He breaks down when Suns' hologram hugs him because he has never been hugged before.
- Didn't See That Coming: Pebbles had no idea his water pumps were placed lower than Moon's (hence giving him access to more water) because the Ancients gave her seniority privileges over him. So he's shocked when he realises - all too late - he was depriving Moon of water. He realises it makes sense they gave the newer, better model more resources.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Mercy realizes they don't actually know if the train's breaks are working... while the train was active and working for a while. Cue panic from all passengers.
- After finding out the puppets are more organic than he thought, NSH messages all the groups he's in and then some to send him information on puppet blueprints. He did not quite account for how many responses he would get back... His inbox has one point three billion messages.
- Disability Superpower: Artificer finds that being blind in one eye makes it harder if not impossible for her vision to swim.
- Disappointed in You: After Moon comes back online she realises Suns was the one to spur Pebbles into doing those dangerous experiments and gives them the "I'm not mad, I'm disappointed" speech offscreen.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul":
- Inverted with Suns. They ask NSH not to call them by their alt account handles because they no longer abide by the things they said in those anonymous chats.
- Also inverted with Merciful of Heart. She loathes the name "Furious Beast" due to how diametrically opposed it is to her actual name.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Pebbles believes the other iterators pity him for working so hard on the Problem and offering him help and is very angry at that. He assumes every attempt to help him is a show of pity.
- Doting Parent: NSH acts this way towards his messengers, as he can't stop gushing about their achievements. This gets lampshaded by Hunter.
- Dramatic Irony:
- Played for Laughs. Mercy can somehow talk. When Five Pebbles directs her to Moon he never gave her time to speak, so he doesn't know she can. When she speaks to Moon, Moon assumes he knew already. She asks Pebbles about it but he has no idea what she's talking about so she assumes he must have forgot because of the recent memory reboot. However, after Moon goes down and Mercy attacks Pebbles, Pebbles assumes Moon taught her how to speak. When he realises nobody knows Mercy can speak, he assumes Moon is playing a prank on everyone. And since communications with Moon have been cut Moon can't correct him there.
- Since chapter 2 takes place prior to the events of the fic, it's filled to the brim with this trope. From Moon assuming Pebbles cutting communication because he's "doing important work" (while he's trying to basically kill himself) to Pebbles assuring Suns nothing will go wrong in his experiments unless someone interrupts him (which is exactly what happened). There are also shorter moments of dramatic irony, like all the Answer Cuts showing Pebbles struggling to administer anesthesia to Spearmaster while Moon thinks he must be doing serious experiments.
- UI thinks Pebbles knew exactly how much he was hurting Moon when running the experiments that eventually led to her collapse. However, Pebbles only realised he was hurting Moon after the collapse.
- Spearmaster doesn't know their actual name. They think it's Seven because they heard Suns call them "experiment number seven".
- People in the Sliverist chatroom discuss NSH's studies on slugcats without knowing he's in the chat reading it.
- With the exception of Moon and Innocence, every member of the ChasersOfDestiny group is also in the SliverOfOcean anon chat. The only one who knows this is NSH.
- NSH has no idea Hunter has Rot until Pebbles informs him.
- Pebbles thinks to himself that if he had eyes he'd roll them. This scene is immediately after NSH discovers that they DO have eyes.
- The Dreaded:
- Artificer is this among the Scavengers for the obvious reasons. Which makes her attempts at diplomacy all the more stressful even when they do work.
- Spearmaster becomes this among the Scavengers after they see them hunt a Leviathan for lunch.
- Elective Broken Language: Whisper types with several grammatical errors and omitted words to increase their typing speed.
- Everyone Has Standards: Played for Laughs.FP: I won’t be sending you any criminal data pearls, though.
SRS: Oh, but Pebbles! I do so badly want the illicit information on hallucinogenic cultivation!
FP: You’re on your own then. I can abide talks of self-ascension, but drug use? I’m sorry Suns, I must have misjudged you. - Exact Words: During the Senior meeting, NSH states that Pebbles beat the Rot, which some participants pick up on because that's not curing the Rot. NSH replies that it's only a cure if you count mass extinction as one (electrocuting the tumours until they die).
- Expy: Merciful of Heart is clearly meant to be a reference to Saint. She is a long-furred slugcat of unknown origins, has unclear abilities connected to Karma, has echo-like markings, and Echoes refer to her having an "aberrant cycle".
- Face Death with Despair: When Pebbles realises Mercy can and will most definitely kill him, in a panic he sends the Triple Affirmative broadcast begging not to die alone, and tells Mercy he'll do anything to restore Moon.
- Failed a Spot Check: NSH sends Hunter to Pebbles through Pebbles' Farm Arrays because that's the shortest route, completely failing to notice the entire region is covered by carnivorous grass.
- Fatal Flaw:
- For Pebbles, it's anger. He's deeply angry at literally everything, which is fuelled by several deeper complexes, and is naturally very irritable even without them. This often leads to some very poor decision-making and alienating others. At one point he wonders if his anger binds him to the Cycle the same way Artificer's does. A second flaw is Pride, as he feels he should be above asking for help.
- For Moon, according to NSH, it's her kindness. Indeed, she always prioritizes being kind and nice to others hoping they'll change even when it's harmful towards her.
- NSH believes Pride is a fatal flaw for the Iterators as a whole.
- Fling a Light into the Future: By the time Breeze reaches Winds, Winds is far too degraded for their systems to reactivate. So in their dying moments, Winds instructs Breeze to use the rarefraction cell intended for them to reactivate the Global Network Bridge instead. The others can only speculate on what Winds' motive for this was.
- Foreshadowing:
- There's a rumour mentioned in an early chapter that the first generation Iterators had their taboos installed after their construction. When NSH tries posting the selfie with his exposed face and mouth in the chat, one of those Iterators tells him they already knew about the true nature of Iterators.
- Grey Wind mentions they don't keep pets anymore. They left their messenger Rivulet to the rest of the group carrying their dying message.
- Freak Out: Pebbles has a massive one upon realising he caused Moon to collapse, which serves as the first step for his character development.
- Freudian Excuse: After Pebbles tells Suns how he met Artificer, Suns comments disturbed that the whole thing sounds horribly violent. Pebbles tells him not to judge her as she had good reason for her actions.
- Full-Name Ultimatum: NSH addresses Pebbles like this when he demands to know what Pebbles did that caused Moon's collapse. Pebbles treats it as a terrible sign for what's to come.NSH: Hey yeah speaking of Moon- Five Pebbles Washed by the River and Dried by the Morning Sun. What the fuck did you think you were doing?
- Fun with Acronyms: Suns' chat handle is shortened as SRS. So Moon nicknamed him Serious.
- Fuzz Therapy:
- NSH says he enjoys petting his slugcats and it lets him focus.
- Pebbles says he has a "positive reaction" to Artificer cuddling him - not to mention it gives his injured shoulder some relief. Artificer refuses to stop cuddling him when Grey Wind's final message reaches him.
- Innocence hugs Rivulet like a plush toy holding on for dear life when she reads Grey Wind's final message.
- Gallows Humour: Moon, literally tied in her chamber that's flooding on a daily basis:Moon: I promise not to go anywhere while you’re gone~
- Goddamned Bats: In-Universe this is Spearmaster's opinion of Yellow Lizards. They say they prefer Cyan or even Red to the Yellow ones because those surround them "like Batflies on batgrass".
- Guest-Star Party Member: Mercy and Hunter are briefly joined by Gourmand around Pebbles' structure.
- Guilt-Tripping: Moon tells Suns to tell Pebbles to delay his rains for as long as possible.Moon: Guilt him if you must, remind him that I am not looking forward to drowning again.
- Heal It With Fire: Pebbles uses a concentrated laser variant to seal together Mercy's wound.
- Healing Factor:
- Mercy can heal from wounds exceptionally quickly. The spot where she got stabbed through is regrowing fur in a matter of hours.
- Pebbles is disturbed to realise his stab wound is healing itself even as he's working on it. Later, NSH goes from having almost torn his throat open from the inside to being able to vocalise normally in a matter of days.
- Height Angst: Pebbles is annoyed to find out Suns is taller than him. It's not even much of a difference.
- Hidden Depths: Often discussed.
- Pebbles states it's surprising Artificer can be both incredibly violent and deeply compassionate at once, and ponders if those traits have the same source.
- Both Mercy and Hunter initially have really bad opinions of Pebbles, the former because of what he did to Moon and the latter because of NSH badmouthing him. However, when Mercy sees him treating Artificer with tenderness and Hunter gets offered a cure for his Rot, they both realise he's the kind of god who offers aid to those who aid him without hesitation.
- Mercy ponders this trope about herself. Moon gave her the name "Merciful of Heart" for her kindness, but Pebbles giver her the name "Furious Beast" because she tried to kill him in rage. The two names display two diametrically opposed views of her as a person, and she even compares that situation to how she views Pebbles versus how others do. Much later Moon is shocked to find out Mercy can even get angry.
- Hiding the Handicap: Many iterators tend to hide how damaged their cans really are to prevent the others from worrying, even if the damage is extremely severe or irreversible. Winds hides theirs for so long they die.
- Hologram: Suns creates a program that lets their overseers project a proper full-body hologram of themself in other cham ers, and mirrors the contents of those chambers in their own.
- I Have Many Names: Most of the cast.
- While all iterators were given a single name upon creation, many of them have various alt accounts, and they also have a ton of different nicknames on top of it. Special note to Chasing Winds, who was originally named Grey Wind but officially changed their name after the Mass Ascension.
- Artificer has several names. Her old tribe called her Warrior, and she also has Artificer, Little Ruffian, Citizen, and Queen of the Scavengers. Most characters call her Warrior, but Pebbles notably doesn't because he thinks of it more as a title.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Mercy and Pebbles inflict this on each other; Pebbles stabs Mercy to his wall with a spear and she stabs him with it through the right shoulder.
- In Medias Res: While the fic takes place shortly after Moon's collapse, chapters 2 and 3 takes place shortly before Pebbles received the taboo-breaking pearl from Seven Red Suns.
- Insistent Terminology: NSH always refers to his slugcats as "messengers" rather than the actual name of the species.
- Instant Expert:
- Artificer picks up on engineering remarkably fast.
- Justified with Mercy, who has memories of Echoes shoved into her head.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: When Artificer goes to remove Pebbles' rarefraction cell, she figures all it'll give her is a small shock. The sentence after this is "It was not a small shock."
- Internal Reveal:
- NSH posts a selfie of his exposed mouth and eyes to the Senior chat, revealing the organic nature of Iterators to them. Subverted in that those who were told elect to keep everyone else Locked Out of the Loop.
- Five Pebbles figures that between Innocence and NSH, there's no point in hiding his aliases anymore so he out himself in one of the public chats.
- Ironic Fear: Spearmaster, who can create spears out of the holes in their body, is Afraid of Needles.
- Irony:
- Pebbles states repeatedly he's not a medical facility or a doctor, but he's the first one around to do any kind of medical practice, such as his self-surgery or the surgery to remove Hunter's Rot.
- Artificer is the scourge of the Scavengers for killing her pups. Meanwhile, Breeze, strongly implied to be one of said pups, is in pretty good terms with the Scavengers as they help her in the mission to reach Winds.
- Hunter met NSH while sick and dying hoping for a cure, and left NSH sick and dying of a different disease because of NSH. He ponders on this after Pebbles informs him of his disease.
- It's All My Fault:
- Suns blames themself for Moon's collapse and Pebbles getting Rot because it was them who sent to Pebbles the pearl that triggered those events. NSH tells them it was inevitable and that Suns only sped up the process.
- NSH blames himself for not being more proactive, as with the knowledge he has amassed he believes he could have prevented a great deal of tragedies.
- I've Come Too Far: After Moon collapses, Pebbles decides to double down on his work because he has no other options and doesn't deserve to be forgiven. Several events change his mind.
- Joke and Receive: Suns jokingly asks Pebbles if Artificer intends to take over his city. Pebbles responds she killed the Scavengers' king so that makes her Queen now.
- Karma Houdini: Other than Mercy trying to kill him, Pebbles never receives any repercussions for causing Moon's collapse (other than getting Rot, which is arguably a case of Laser-Guided Karma). Pebbles himself is surprised by this, saying he expected the other iterators to shut him down instead of offering help. NSH's reason is that he wants his friends to survive for as long as possible. That said, the possibility of shutting down Pebbles gets brought up quite a few times, especially by UI.
- Klingon Promotion: Pebbles treats Artificer killing the Scavenger chieftain as this. He officially annoits her Queen after Mercy regains the memories of her past life.
L — Z
- Language Barrier:
- One of the reasons the Iterators completely failed to realise slugcats and Scavengers are sentient is because their languages are completely different from their own. This is partially overcome after Pebbles figures out that slugcats with the Mark of Communication can understand writing too, so they communicate via text.
- Spearmaster understands everyone, but uses an Ancient sign language that only Suns knows.
- Mercy has a particularly hard time because even though she's a slugcat she can only understand the language of the Iterators. The issue extends to body language, as she has no idea she's projecting her mood to other slugcats, and Hunter often resorts to iterator-like body language to get their point across. She picks up Spearmaster's sign after an encounter with an Echo.
- Late to the Tragedy: Chasing Winds never told anyone they were having major issues with their can, and nobody could tell from the outside because the damage is in the interior. By the time CW admits they have some issues, they're already beyond saving; by the time the other iterators realise something's really wrong, Winds is all but dead.
- Loophole Abuse:
- NSH points out that since they're organic beings, looking for the Triple Affirmative means they'll have to find a solution that affects them; except that the taboos prevent them from doing so. I5AC states the taboos prevent them from manufacturing the solution, not researching it.
- Pebbles abuses the hell out of this trope when devising a method for the Iterators' to leave their cans without shutting down their systems, because none of it directly affects the pre-existing ones.
- Major Injury Underreaction: Pebbles refers to being skewered as "really not as bad as the others are making it out to be". There's a hole through him. He's also very nonchalant when the injury reopens after a fall.
- Meaningful Appearance: Mercy is black with golden spots and can glow - awfully a lot like an Echo. Especially given the rest of her odd traits.
- Meaningful Name: NSH's Sliverist handle is "Unrequited Undertaking"; his purpose is to perpetuate the lives of the iterators for as long as possible, while hanging in the group chats of iterators seeking to kill themselves.
- Meaningful Rename: Chasing Winds was originally called Grey Wind but changed their name after the Ancients Ascended.
- Mind Over Matter: All Iterators can telekinetically manipulate objects in their vicinity independently of the gravity manipulation within their cans. This holds true even if other systems have shut down.
- Mobile City: Discussed. Suns tells Pebbles they don't want to give him a reason to figure out how to put wheels in his can. Pebbles jokes it's a good idea.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Pebbles completely freaks out when he feels Moon's collapse, and starts raging at everyone and everything, including, ultimately, himself."He screamed for himself, the fool, the bug he was, for killing his sister."
- NSH freaks out almost as hard as Pebbles when the latter informs him Hunter has Rot, as it was caused by NSH rushing the process of Hunter's modifications.
- Pebbles completely freaks out when he feels Moon's collapse, and starts raging at everyone and everything, including, ultimately, himself.
- My Greatest Failure: Suns views giving Pebbles the taboo-breaking data pearl as this. NSH points out to them Pebbles would have found a way anyway; Suns just sped up the process.
- Mysterious Past: Merciful of Heart, big time. All that's known about her past is that she was made, along with several others, to study the effects of Karma, but failed to fulfill her purpose. It's unknown who made her, how she knows how to talk, how she has artificial Void Fluid in her blood, and more. She's the reincarnation of an Ancient but that doesn't answer anything regarding her current lifes origin.
- Mythology Gag:
- Echoes often tell Mercy she's in an "aberrant cycle", which is the phrase Pebbles uses in Saint's campaign to describe them.
- After Hunter finds out he has Rot, he considers abandoning his mission to go and live out the rest of his days somewhere else. This is something you can actually do in the game if you don't go for the Ascension ending.
- Chasing Winds never gave Rivulet a name, but the title Water Dancer. This is one of the things Moon calls Rivulet in canon.
- The Nicknamer: Suns says Moon tends to give good ones. Downplayed in that everyone uses nicknames due to their names being a mouthful.
- No One Gets Left Behind: NSH's goal is to make sure he and all other iterators stay alive and together, in contact with each other, for as long as possible. He knows there are several iterators against this (the Sliverists for example), but he is already taking measures to ensure this, making sure his facilities are in tip-top shape, promoting his messengers (the slugcats) because they're capable of repairing the structures, restoring communication lines others don't even think about, and trying to talk as many iterators into his way of thinking as possible.
- Noodle Incident:
- CW doesn't keep pets. Anymore.
- Whatever happened that ousted Suns from their previous group.
- The official rules for the senior chat include "don't make me process a fifty terabyte file again".
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: There's a Sliverist with the alias "Errant Fotrune".EF: Yes, they did misspell their name.
- "Not So Different" Remark:
- Pebbles wonders if his own anger binds him to the Cycle like it does with Artificer.
- He also compares Mercy with Artificer, in that they both seek retribution from the person who killed someone precious to them.
- Pebbles realises his quest to Ascend is no different from the Mass Ascension of the Ancients, especially in the sense that he'd selfishly leave everyone behind to suffer from the pain of losing him.
- Not the Intended Use:
- Pebbles repurposes the Triple Affirmative broadcast to tell the others in the group Mercy tried to kill him.
- The sign language Suns and Spearmaster use was originally intended for talking to the sick.
- Normally the Sliverist chats are to discuss theories about Sliver of Straw's death. Pebbles instead uses it to tell people outside the group slugcats are the next dominant species.
- NSH briefly considers repurposing the Triple Affirmative broadcast to inform everyone that it was Breeze who reconnected the Global Network Bridge but decides to break the news in the senior meeting instead.
- One-Word Title: You've read it.
- Original Character: The fic is filled to the brim with them. The most prominent is Merciful of Heart, but there are also other slugcats like Whispering Drop and Shaded Breeze, and several original iterators.
- Parental Neglect: Suns believes their creators never actually cared for them.
- Percussive Therapy:
- Pebbles starts smashing everything in his chamber in rage after realising Moon collapsed.
- After the Ancients Ascended, NSH blew up his Memory Crypts. Suns is tempted to follow suit.
- NSH smashes almost all the pearls in his chamber in a fit of panic after Pebbles informs him Hunter has Rot.
- The Perfectionist: Suns notes NSH can't be satisfied with "good enough".
- Precision F-Strike:
- Crashing Waves' reaction when she wakes up in Mercy's body is to ask why the fuck she's a furry.
- Moon's reaction when finds out Pebbles has a messenger that he calls Citizen, complete with a drone, even though she just expressed her distaste for swearing.Moon: What the fuck happened while I've been Offline?
- Properly Paranoid: NSH states on multiple occasions he doesn't trust most Iterators with admitting they have issues or need help, especially the older ones. He is proven right on many occasions, especially after Winds turns Dark, as they had only admitted to some issues on their cooling lines.
- Put on a Bus:
- UI leaves the local group chat the moment Pebbles returns and nobody hears from her for the longest time.
- Moon is out of the fic until she gets restored.
- Chasing Winds practically vanishes after Moon's reactivation. It turns out they were hiding the true extend of the damage to their structure, and unlike Moon there's no reviving them.
- Raised by Robots:
- NSH tends to take in and raise slugcats he finds being alone or abandoned. Hunter says NSH won't stop gushing about their achievements.
- Merciful of Heart is another slugcat raised by an Iterator, but she doesn't have it as good as NSH's charges. She's incapable of communicating with her own species, lacks necessary survival skills (the same skills NSH keeps gushing about), and it's heavily implied that Iterator was abusive towards her. There's also how she was made as opposed to adopted.
- Reincarnation: Merciful of Heart is the reincarnation of the Grand Architect of Five Pebbles' city: Crashing Waves, Distant Horizon. She does not initially recall those memories, and they slowly come back the more she's exposed to Karmic Fluctuations (and over the course of time). Pebbles warns her against trying to consider her current and past life as seperate people because that could create problems down the line.
- Restraining Bolt:
- The Iterator taboos prevent Iterators from acting upon the Karmic urges. However, a special highlight goes to Echoes, as they're not even able to think about them. They can talk about taboo topics all they want, but talking about Echoes beyond the basic definition is out of the question. At one point they also bring up the possibility that there are topics so taboo that even the knowledge of them has been removed completely, which they find disturbing.
- Pebbles is less than pleased when his systems identify Mercy as the Grand Architect because he can no longer defend himself against the one who put a hole in him. However, at his request Mercy removes the Administrative lock on his systems.
- NSH is a subversion. Due to a flaw in his construction, he's capable of breaking taboos but it causes him extremely severe headaches.
- Required Secondary Powers: Artificer lacks them. While she can generate an explosive compound from her body, her respiratory system suffers from long-term smoke inhalation like any living organism would.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Mercy rushes to Pebbles' chamber and tries to kill him for killing Moon. It's only after he begs he'll do anything to help Moon that she stops. This event prompts Pebbles to name Mercy "Furious Beast".
- Sapient All Along:
- Pebbles realises slugcats are more than just animals when Mercy shows up to kill him for killing Moon (since Mercy is talking like any person). He then asks Artificer if she can understand him and she responds in writing, confirming this. Other characters - even those who work closely with slugcats like Suns and NSH - are very surprised when Pebbles informs them they can understand writing.
- Downplayed with the Scavengers, who are known to have social structures in-universe, but the majority of Iterators underestimate how complex they really are. They have complex bartering systems and fairly good understanding of the symbols Ancients used.
- Secret-Keeper: Greatly overlapping with Secret Secret-Keeper. NSH knows everyone's alt accounts but very rarely shares that he knows. Suns only figures out one of NSH's alts after NSH tells them he's in the group chat, and Pebbles knows NSH knows too much but not how much or how he even knows it.
- Selective Obliviousness: Pebbles ignored and dismissed all warnings that his experiments were hurting Moon until it was too late.
- Self-Harm: After being told Hunter has Rot, in his grief-striken panic NSH cracks his lenses and bents his speakers. It seriously escalates when he tries to remove those speakers to scan them...
- Separated by a Common Language: Slugcats and Scavengers speak the same language but different dialects, resulting in a fair bit of missed meaning between the two species. In addition slugcats who grew near iterators have a significantly expanded vocabulary that doesn't necessarily come across.
- Shock and Awe: Mercy has the ability to generate massive electric charges in short bursts, equal to that of half a rarefraction cell.
- Shout-Out:
- NSH ran Tetris for sixty or seventy cycles out of sheer boredom.
- This indirect reference to Deus Ex: Human Revolution:TUP: And how did you crack my frequency?
NSH: I’m so sad I couldn’t work that name into an old technology joke. - NSH tells Expanding Frontiers he's not beating The Illuminati allegations.
- Side Bet: After Pebbles announces to the Sliverist chat the slugcats are sapient, another member mentions owing someone a rarefraction cell. They, along with Sliver when she was alive, made a bet on what the next sapient species would be.
- So Proud of You: NSH asks Pebbles to convey a message to Hunter, telling him his full name, how proud he is, and how Hunter turned out to be everything he ever wished for and more. Hunter is astonished, and the message is enough to repair some of Hunter's previously broken trust.
- Stating the Simple Solution: After Innocence is told all the gory details of fabricating Inspectors due to their size, she declares she's going to make them smaller. NSH admits he never thought of that.
- Switching P.O.V.: The fic frequently switches viewpoints between the different characters.
- Talking Animal: Somehow Mercy can speak the same language the iterators can. The reactions of the various iterators to this is practically a Running Gag.
- Technical Euphemism: The Ancients used to give such labels to everything. Mercy complains about it non-stop.Mercy: Aerial Contam- just call it a filter, that’s all any of it is.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Pebbles and Mercy decide to put their differences aside so they can cure his Rot and restore Moon.
- Theme Naming:
- The Ancients have particularly long and poetic ones with a bunch of titles added to them, resulting in names the length of short paragraphs. Suns admits they dislike the long names, hence why they gave Spearmaster an one-word name.SRS: Breath of the Morning Wind, Seeker of the Evening Stars, keeper of four Districts and overseer of two houses.
NSH: Ugh, Wasted Breath of One Who Likes to Hear Themself Talk more-like. - Iterators are usually named after verses in poems. This makes No Significant Harassment the Odd Name Out. Suns and NSH joke that it's either a joke or a plea.
- The earliest known iterators are named like actual computers, such as I5AC.
- Iterators give their slugcat messengers Meaningful Names that highlight a personality trait, feat, or is somehow descriptive of them as a person, with the result looking a lot like an iterator name (two or three words).
- Slugcats themselves are given names based on their role in the community. For example Artificer was called Warrior by her old tribe.
- The Ancients have particularly long and poetic ones with a bunch of titles added to them, resulting in names the length of short paragraphs. Suns admits they dislike the long names, hence why they gave Spearmaster an one-word name.
- Themed Aliases: According to NSH, Iterators who use different alt accounts among different groups tend to have some kind of theme naming in their aliases. This is one of the ways he uses to identify others between different groups.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: Suns has a stupidly powerful Red Lizard near their communication arrays that nothing can get rid of. It killed at least three Vultures. NSH suggests taming it.
- Took a Level in Cynic: NSH, according to Suns. NSH doesn't deny it.SRS: I never took you for the distrustful type, Harassment.
NSH: I have learned a lot these last years. Not all has been good. - Took a Level In Idealism: Implied. Suns say they no longer abide by many of the things they stated under the pseudonym "Staggered Cynicism".
- Took a Level in Kindness: Artificer resolves not to let the rest of her life be a bloodbath even if it's difficult; this is best showcased when she pays a Scavenger toll.
- Troll:
- Pebbles enjoys trolling Artificer a little too much. At one point he pretends not to understand what she's trying to convey and when she demands he turns gravity back on, he keeps it off and lowers himself on the ground. He also greately enjoys dropping unannounced in group chats he hasn't been to in ages, drop a smidge of out-of-context info phrased in an overly blunt or outrageous manner, and immediately dip.
- NSH takes great pleasure in trolling the other Iterators in the senior meeting by casually dropping bombshell reveals and watching the chat devolve into chaos.
- Uncanny Valley: I5AC tells NSH that he used to have his face exposed early on, and the faceplate was installed later because the creators were unnerved by the Iterators' lack of facial expressions.
- Uneven Hybrid: Mercy is mostly a slugcat but it's obvious there are other creatures in her lineage, prompting everyone to call her "hybrid". Pebbles later reveals she has a bit of centipede and lizard in her.
- Un-Robotic Reveal: Everyone knew that Puppets are partially organic, but NSH finds out they all severely underestimated just how organic they are in a very bloody fashion. He is shocked to find out he has organic eyes, skin, and a mouth, on top of Pebbles' previous discovery they can bleed. It's very strongly implied the base is a fully organic being with cybernetic implants.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
- Pebbles had no idea how badly his experiments hurt Moon.
- After Moon's collapse, Mercy and Spearmaster find a bunch of Scavengers stealing Moon's neuron flies and other metal parts. Of course those Scavengers have no idea they are hurting someone with their actions.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Pebbles holds this attitude towards the Ancients, as he once viewed them as his parents. He feels like a failure for not solving the Problem before Mass Ascension and feels like he's partially at fault for it. All he wanted was to make them proud. This isn't help by how angry he is at them for abandoning them all.
- What Is This Feeling?: When Moon first welcomed Pebbles into the local group and introduced herself as the big sister and how she'll always be there to help him, Pebbles can't figure out why he's feeling so warm, after all there's nothing wrong with his cooling systems.
- What Would X Do?: Pebbles tries figuring out how to tell the rest of the Group what happened without making them turn against him, and decides to rip a page of NSH's handbook.How would No Significant Harassment handle a situation like this?
FP: Have you ever had the slag beaten out of you by a wild animal?
It took exactly three microseconds for Pebbles to regret his choice of inspiration. - Who Wants to Live Forever?: Pebbles sees no point in eternal existence, even outright questioning what the point is when talking to NSH.
- You Can Talk?: The Iterators' reactions to finding out Mercy can speak their language turns into something of a Running Gag, as a series of misunderstandings leads Pebbles to think that Moon is using Mercy to play a prank on everyone. Mercy herself doesn't seem to realize that her ability to talk is anything notable, as she starts chatting up with people who never met her before like normal.Moon: Hello little creature! I see that Pebbles bestowed you with a mark so that you could understand our speaking.
Mercy: But I could already understand him?
Moon: I’m… Sorry? Did you just… Speak? - Your Days Are Numbered: Just like canon, Hunter has Rot. When Pebbles informs him of this he doesn't take it well, and seriously considers abandoning his duties as messenger. Subverted when Mercy, Artificer and Hunter retrieve parts to restore Pebbles' fabricator, which allows Pebbles to perform surgery on Hunter.