au shit

[scension]

SLOOTHS AU

~10 years ago or a bit more: OG Heron is a just-out-of-college hacker whose persistence and, secretly, ability to do his work with Digimon gets him a better reputation than he would otherwise have. "Heron" is a vaguely self deprecating hacker handle because of that (translated back into jp, it's homophonous with "fake"! just like canon!), but also he just likes birds. He's tapped by a group working for EDEN to help with a wacky experimental project involving digital deep-dive memory profiling, which he accepts despite some ethics-related hesitation because he wants to send the money to his mom. Getting increasingly disillusioned over the course of the project, he eventually moves on; the test server he used for it, including a test memory profile based on himself but seeded with dummy data for debugging purposes, gets archived as property of EDEN. He moves back out to the sticks to be with his mom and then possibly just fucking dies in his 20s because even an AU of sagi batenkaitos is not allowed to live happily ever after. (Unless encountering the og later would be useful?)

Early CS: A Kotemon finds his way into the disused project files seeking some abandoned EDEN profile to hijack because in the Digital World he was Baby and now he wants Power, and if these Eaters appearing lately get more powerful through data assimilation then maybe that's worth trying. However, he ends up unable to properly log into the account he finds for multiple reasons: 1) it's pretty old badly documented code, 2) it wasn't a regular EDEN account to begin with, 3) OG Heron did not like the idea of Digimon being used to get into someone's memories and implemented a couple shitty hacks to block the obvious lines of attack. Instead, an improvised approach lets him bridge the path he made into the server from the wider EDEN network using himself as an interface, hooking the prototype memory server up to the internet the way it was designed for but never deployed. This not only lets Kotemon read the data, it accidentally turns the memory server into a glorified chatbot since if it's sent an external request it has to respond. Oops! It thinks it's called Heron now, and Kotemon can't shut it off without relinquishing access to all that data. Further oops! OG Heron had some knowledge of Digimon as tools, so Kotemon is literally the first external input Sagibot gets and some blurring happens.

CHARACTER ARC THOTS
- Kotemon directs Heronbot to start commenting on hacker forums to get leads on more places to break into
- Heronbot assumes that this urge comes from the human logged in as him and starts behaving that way, responding to the requests and acting like a regular old independent veteran hacker, not yet entertaining the notion of logging out because there's only dummy memories where that knowledge should be; OG did not envision Heronbot being let loose on EDEN proper
- It "helps" that he actually can solve some requests because he has some inbuilt knowledge, access to a Digimon (although he doesn't realise the actual relationship happening here) and enough dumb stubbornness to keep at it when he encounters something new
- He keeps at it as slooths plot happens in the background and digital entities become much easier to manifest IRL - potential "cover"?
- He's too positive and genuinely helpful to be suspicious for a while but eventually starts insisting he's been to the Digital World before as the lines between archived memories, new memories and Kotemon bridging them become increasingly hazy, and that is somewhat suspicious
- Kotemon still has his own original goal of No Longer Baby but has grown to kind of like being a person and simultaneously the trusted partner of a person too, since he ?lost all his friends back in the Digital World?
- how does heronbot end i dont know it's probably sad
- but in the slooths vignette sort of self contained way

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FFXIV AU

BROAD STROKES:
- Leaning on the "fake" aspect, not the personhood shit.
- Bastard son of a Garlean officer posted to Castrum Fluminis during the occupation
- At the same time some researcher called Baelheit nan Fuckface is supposed to be interested in Dalmascan ruins and how artificially structured auracite artifacts seem to be, and whether that can be magitekified to produce super soldiers because that's where the funding is
- Baby mailed off to the lab so dad can curry favour with Fuckface who is well known and tipped to gain political influence if his projects Go Well
- Fused to artificial auracite like an artificial crystal of light
- Stolen from lab by mom and raised in Yanxia as a regular dumbass
- Gets Echo from seeing fallen Garlean aircraft in the failed revolution, starts to hear auracite talking because he suddenly wants this shit to go away and it's the first time he's wanted something more strongly than his mom being happy, believes he's a wol now
- Profit????