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text; un: brickfuckingmaster

sorry to interrupt the celebrating the snow or whatever you do but if this place can bring creatures from our homes here you guys should probably know to look out for infected

long story short, infected are like zombies except the cordyceps fungus is a mushroom growing in your brain and they're technically still alive. don't think about it too hard.

its spread through spores, bites, and scratches if there's blood or saliva or something in it. when infected die naturally, they attach to stuff and release spores. do not breathe in the fucking spores. you WILL get infected and you WILL turn within 2 days. wear a mask.

there's 4 stages.

[ just to be helpful, each stage comes with a little drawing done by Ellie herself. she's not half bad but i am, so please refer to the wiki page, cw for body horror. ]

stage 1 -> runner, newly infected. fast, aggressive, strong. get the jump on them when they are quiet. can be killed like any non-infected, strangled, shot, etc. you might hear them crying or mumbling when they're not trying to murder you. it's creepy as fuck but you can't help them.

stage 2 -> stalker. the fungus starts growing out of them but they can still see, they'll hide and ambush when your guard is down. they can attach to walls and pretend to be dead just to fuck your shit up when you turn your back. they work with the other infected too.

stage 3 -> clicker. you can't miss them, the mushrooms are bursting out of their skull. clickers suck ass. they're blind, but that just means they're hearing if stupidly good. distract with bricks, bottles, any other object that will make noise, then sneak past. the best chance to kill one is a gunshot to the head twice, or a shiv to the neck.

stage 4 -> bloater. covered in plates of cordyceps. infected a long time, huge, deadly, throw acidic spore-filled sacks. AVOID AT ALL COSTS. seriously. they take like 5 molotov and a million nail bombs and bullets to kill. just fucking run. these fuckers WILL pull your head right off your body by the time you get a single plate off of them. i don't give a shit how strong or magic you are, they WILL fuck you up and it'll be your own fault.

i haven't seen any so far, but just one can bring down everything. if you see one, tell me.

as FEDRA likes to say, inaction costs lives.

[ the more you know

]

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Manslaughter. [As she listens, a silence falls over her. She goes very still — it's odd. One moment she had seemed real, alive. The next she was a doll, propped up against a window sill. A statue, unbreathing.

At last, there's a quick intake of air. It escapes her in one shuddering, incredulous gasp. Alive again. A2's eyes are overbright when she looks back to Ellie — incandescent with rage.] Bullshit. You were protecting yourself!

[Her outburst is explosive and vicious. As if realizing it, she pulls away again. Relaxes a little.

More softly, she mutters, almost to herself:] You were protecting yourself. You were protecting your friend.

Fucking right?!

[ it's cool, Ellie is always ready to gripe about this stupid crime. ]

Like a million percent of the time, we defend ourselves from people ambushing us! They hit us with a fucking bus, dude! Just 'cause we came into the city and they wanted our shit. But it's my fault for not letting some asshole hunter drown Joel.

Tch. What a joke - they're just like YoRHa!

[It's an outburst she intends to make, but it happens anyway.] That's not a crime. This place is so stupid...

What's YoRHa?

[A slight grimace — she hadn't intended to speak on this.] YoRHa's the organization that created me. Military.

Assholes giving the orders. Got it. So, do we hate 'em?

I...

[She frowns to herself. It should be easy to say yes. YoRHa sent her and her friends to die. YoRHa created her successors to destroy her. YoRHa trapped 2B in wretched, traitorous servitude, and destroyed 9S over and over again. All for nothing.

But what hand guided the Commander's hand? It's hard to say.]

I don't know.

They were all I knew.

I can get that. FEDRA sucked, but they were giving me food and a place to sleep.

... Yeah.

FEDRA - what's that?

Also the military. When the outbreak hit and a bunch of people died, the world started falling apart. FEDRA took over to try to bring order in what used to be America. You know, set up quarantined cities and take people there. Help the ones who were hurt and just keep everything together until...y'know. It's over and there's a cure or something. They were supposed to do a lot of things.

[ she thinks of a field of skeletons, the corner of a faded baby blanket tucked below the blue of its mother's dress. the bones of the unlucky, executed for no reason but a lack of space in the QZ. ]

They're mostly gone now. Overthrown, overrun, some of them just got abandoned. If you're an orphan, FEDRA will take care of you until you're 15. Then you become a FEDRA soldier or you're on your own within the zone.

[Humans sending their orphaned children to battle is an unsettling thing she had not considered before. All of their stories spoke of families as solid and unbreakable things. A bond built on love and affection. But those without families were treated like androids, she sees. Expendable. Cannon fodder.]

...

I see. So the original purpose was to help people. Restore order. But then it fell apart. [Softly:] Seems to be a trend.

[Waiting for a cure sounded a lot like waiting for the Earth to be reclaimed for humanity to return. A pipe dream to keep groups complacent and mostly docile. A system to cull those that were not. But like YoRHa, it had been destroyed eventually. She doesn't know if that's a good thing or not. Even though it had been awful, it had been something.]

What did you do when they were gone?

Boston QZ was still standing when I left, at least? The others...it depends, I guess. Most get abandoned and then people find somewhere else to survive. Hiding out in the building, or maybe somewhere in the woods. Sometimes settlements pop up for a bit. Outside the zones, people are pretty scattered. Hard to have one place survive for long, I guess.

[ she doesn't mention Jackson, yet, not to anyone. no one here seems like a threat, but still. it only took one person hearing something they shouldn't to bring a smaller settlement down. ]

Others booby trap the city, hunt down anyone who comes in, and hit you with a bus.

That's awful. [A whole world of fugitives, running from place to place. Never comfortable, never truly safe.

This world sounds as dismal as her own did.] ... It's not ideal. But it must be nice. Being able to relax here a little.

[Kids shouldn't have to run for their lives like that. She can't help but think of Pascal's children. No wonder they'd been so afraid.]

It is and it isn't. You can't ever... really let your guard down. It just takes one bite or some spores. Everywhere falls eventually. There's always going to be someone trying to take what you have, cause they want to live just as much as you do.

[ so Joel has said, kneeling down to start a fire for them one night. no matter how safe you felt, you never truly were. and knowing that was how you survived. she'd made fun of him at the time for being so doom and gloom, but the further she got from him here, the more she worried she'd forget. she'd get comfortable. ]

If I enjoy it too much, I might forget that.

[A2 doesn't have much experience with children. Human children were even further away from her realm of experience, and she's not the sort of person to tell someone not to keep their guard down. All the same... hearing this sort of thing from a kid makes her uneasy. Reminds her too much of the machine children, who had feared the spectre of death so much that they'd chosen to end their own lives.

Who was she to protest this, however? For every child she'd attempted to save, she'd killed countless numbers of others.

A2's expression shifts slowly to one of distant sadness.] It's too bad that you have to worry about that here too.

[...

She sighs. She shouldn't make promises.

But.]

If anything shows up that you can't handle, then... you can call me. [A delay. Then:] There's not much around that's a threat to me.

I'll be fine. But if a Bloater shows up and I need help, I'll call you. You can show me those moves in person.

[ she says it with the confidence of youth and the power of her gun. ]

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