Unfamiliar

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"I've been called a killer, a terrorist, a monster. I am all these things."

There are many Familiar of Zero fics where Louise summons a different person at the beginning of the story, providing dynamics parallel to or wildly disparate from those in canon. In very few of those stories, though, is the summoned being an unstoppable, betentacled monstrosity fresh from (literally) chewing his way through most of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Started in the wake of The Hill of Swords on the SpaceBattles Fanfiction Forum, Unfamiliar, by Cpl_Facehugger, is a crossover between The Familiar of Zero and Prototype, where Louise summons Alex. It's actually less unfair than the premise sounds (no Mercer Attacks Everyone Dies, for example).

Yes, seriously.

See Prototype and The Familiar of Zero for the tropes of those respective universes.

Tropes used in Unfamiliar include:
  • Abusive Parents: Initial impressions of Louise's mother Karin were like this. It turns out that things are more complex than that.
  • All Just a Dream: The night she summoned Alex, Louise woke in the middle of the night to see Alex in Blob Monster form, who tells her she's having a nightmare. Some time later, he admits the truth of it.
  • Anti-Villain: Discussed in Alex's internal monologue. "Why was it that everyone always had to have sympathetic reasons for being his enemies? Why couldn't he ever have to kill someone who was just a raving murderer, driven by hate and evil and an urge to kick puppies?"
  • Anti-Hero: Alex, obviously. He's a less a good guy and more an independent, sapient killing machine that happens to hang out with the good guys, and lacks a firm grasp of that whole 'ethics' thing.
  • Arm Cannon: A wrist-mounted crossbow.
  • Asexuality: Alex doesn't care for human notions of romantic love; viruses, even humanoid ones (presumably), don't reproduce that way, after all.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: King Albrecht Wales, who takes positively ridiculous amounts of punishment. Hinted that he's not fully human.
    • Henrietta, showing that one can be the most Badass person in the realm without being a One-Man Army

"Allow me to promise you this, Karin: If you cross me, I will break you. I will use your family as an example of those who oppose me. There are but two options. You can join the tsunami or you can be crushed underneath it. I'll drag Tristain into the future whether you like it or not."

Alex: "I tear your arms off and use them as clubs to beat down the man next to you. By then the arms are getting pretty bruised and tender, so I simply tear the next man's spine out. Now, a spine is a useless weapon, no matter what literature would tell you. So from there, I start gutting your men like fish and feasting upon their delicious flesh. Perhaps I could even skip the gutting and start when you're alive." Mercer replied. "Either way, I proceed on to the rest of your gang and kill them too."

    • Another one:

Alex: "I survived the heat of a newborn sun! I survived a building collapsing on me! I've survived things you can't even imagine! If that's your best shot, you better start running!"

    • A third:

Alex: "Individuals can't win wars where I'm from. The wars are too big for that," Mercer leaned in, giving her a cold grin. "Unless that individual is me."

    • Henrietta, of all people, to Karin.

Karin: "Nobles have always policed themselves. Some abuses are the price we pay for the freedoms we cherish."
Henrietta: "That must change. Justice is the word of law, not the perverse whimsy of men like Lord Mott. And change it will. My mother will not be queen forever.
Henrietta: "Then, I will no longer have to hide in the shadows and sign minor reforms in her name. When that day comes, you will have two options. You can support me and secure the Vallière family's future... Or you can obstruct me, and I will grind you to dust underneath my heel."

Hadn't she begged for exactly what she got? Some powerful monster to be her familiar? Clearly God had a perverse sense of irony.

  • Berserk Button: Okay, Alex, as in canon, has more of a Berserk Switchboard, but of importance to the story is his insistence that you never treat people like things. You can insult them, hate them, kill them, whatever, but you acknowledge them as people who can think, just like you, not tools to be used or toys to be played with or animals to be caged, even if they're peasants and you're a noble. It doesn't just apply to him, either, though he reacts violently to Mott calling him Louise's "pet".
    • He also really hates Blackwatch. His joy at finding the armory full of modern weapons is sullied when he realizes it's a Blackwatch armory.
  • Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: "No soreness? No nausea? No urge to infect everything with an unstoppable zombie plague?"
  • Broken Pedestal: Alluded to by Karin, who thinks that putting Louise on the throne as a puppet would be a bad idea because of this.
  • Call Back: Several regarding the events of Prototype.
  • Cargo Cult: In a way. They are a bunch of descendants of the Blackwatch group that got stranded that are continuing the mission and protecting the base. Also they lampshaded it a bit.

"What do you think we are, superstitious barbarians who worship anything that's shiny?" The cult leader replied. “We may venerate our ancestors and respect them, but we know they were human just as we are today. And we know their weapons are mortal weapons, made by man to slay his enemies."

  • Cargo Ship: In-universe, Alex shows a bit too much affection for the Javelin.
    • And just like the Doomguy, he ditches the Javelin when he stumbles upon a stocked Blackwatch base, complete with helicopter gunship.
  • The Chessmaster: Henrietta is playing a long game. Time will tell if she becomes a full Magnificent Bastard; she's too ambiguous to be a Guile Hero by chapter 9.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The big reason behind why Alex can't use magic, despite having consumed several mages.

Just a simple gust of wind, just like his memories showed him.
Nothing.
Probably because he'd not expected anything to happen. He had dozens of scientific degrees telling him that it was impossible after all.

    • Also counter-used by Alex twice.

"You don't believe you can do it. That's why it's not working. Magic won't work if you don't believe you can do what you want."
--
"This base is powered on electricity, and that won't change just because you deny it."

"It'll be fun! In fact, let's go down there right now and introduce ourselves with a great big surprise stab! Like surprise sex, except even more fun!"

  • Cool Airship: Alex gets a helicopter in the Blackwatch station.
  • Cruel Mercy: Foquet/Matilda is spared, but will be watched closely by Alex from then on. One slip and Alex will go after her.
    • “I wanted to punish the Flame Snake. ... But seeing him here... Any punishment I dole out is just going to be weak next to what he's already doing to himself. The cruel thing will be to let him live."
  • Curb Stomp Battle: Guiche, Montmorency, Kirche, and Tabitha all gang up on Mercer. Mercer takes them out in less than a minute.
    • Alex still has a hard time with Kirche's flame spell, though. It became a war of endurance.
      • If by a hard time, you mean walking it off in a few seconds and replying that he "survived the heat of a newborn sun", sure.
    • The duel between Mott and Mercer ends the same way. But this time with Mercer killing him slowly.
    • According to Word of God, this will be averted in the Hold the Line scene in the original story, when Saito holds off the army of 70,000 men.
  • Dangerous Deserter: There are some who have turned to piracy and taken a warship with them. Except they aren't.
  • Darker and Edgier: A lot. Where do we start? How about... Alex only being summoned in a second, half-crazed attempt? Henrietta being a firm practitioner of Good Is Not Nice?
  • Dating Catwoman: Jean Colbert and Longueville/Foquet. Mainly because Colbert is such an unbeliavable nice, cuddling considerate guy... who is very well packed that Foquet had become very possesive of him and him of her .
  • Dead Little Sister: In this continuity, Dana never came out of her coma and eventually passed away; Alex is therefore left with no emotional ties to his old world and a vacancy for a young adopted sibling to alternately protect with his life and unintentionally horrify.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Both Alex and Louise show the traits.
  • Dead Fic: While there have been hints to the contrary, the last story update was July 2011.
  • Desperately Looking for a Purpose In Life: Alex, now that he has nothing connecting him to his old life, which is why he chose to follow Louise.
  • Dirty Old Man: Old Osmond knows he is, though in his own words:

Osmond: What you failed to realize is that I'm an intelligent, wise, and experienced dirty old man who can tell when a woman is trying to exploit him for her own ends.

  • Drama-Preserving Handicap: Alex's semi-functional conscience. Both ways.
  • The Dreaded: The viral monsters created by Redlight and Blacklight are scary in their own right, but after six thousand years they have become apocalyptic monsters of legend. Siesta's reaction when she realizes that Alex is ZEUS says it all.
  • Driven to Suicide: Some of the Blackwatch soldiers.
  • Epic Fail: Alex trying a fireball.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: "But, see, even psychotic soldiers and amoral scientists have families and people they care about. So I get it from both ends. Seeing them kill or experiment on innocent people, but also seeing that they're a husband, father, or son."
  • Even Heroic Sociopaths Have Standards: Louise notes that Alex's kills, while incredibly brutal and bloody, are also very quick. Mott prefers to draw out the suffering of his victims and break their wills along with their bodies.
    • Kirche also mentions that Germania, which likes to think of itself as sexually liberal, banned the book A Thousand and One Albion Nights, which Mott drew from, as being too depraved.

"And if they ban it in Germania of all places, it must be really sick."

    • In terms of actual villains, Wardes prefers to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties - he's insistent on any deaths he causes being meaningful. Note, however, that he has an extremely broad definition of 'meaningful'.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: The leader of the cultists maintaining the Blackwatch base has a "low and sinister" voice.
  • Feel No Pain: When Louise first tries whipping Alex. She's extremely sore at the end of the session, and he is far from fazed.
  • Finagle's Law: Mercer grumbling to himself as he glides towards an enemy airship.

"Should've brought the chopper," Mercer muttered, barely able to hear his own voice over the wind rushing all around him as he glided towards the enemy. "No, it's too obvious I said. I won't run into anything I can't kill myself I said. I should've known Murphy would screw with me."

  • First-Name Basis: Louise eventually changes to this for Alex.
    • Kirche deigns to use Louise's first name when trying to calm her after Mott's death, but reverts shortly afterwards.
  • Fluffy the Terrible: Mr. Fluffles, Karin's manticore.
  • Foreshadowing: "Come to think of it maybe I should try flying. I've never tried before. With the right adaptions, I bet I could. Hmm, maybe later."
    • 'Someone named "W" provided the group with funding and intelligence, possibly in hopes that it would weaken confidence in the Tristainian government through their activities.'
    • 'Unfortunately, he hasn't collected enough EP to unlock Skyjack: Dragon yet.'
    • "Listen, Alex Mercer can't be a plaguebearer for one simple and little known reason. Plaguebearers, also called Maidens of Pestilence in some apocryphal sources, are female."
    • "I might have just found two members of your team."
    • "A ring was stolen from me. ... It was stolen by a human, Cromwell."
    • 'Tabitha's dragon always seemed to fidget whenever the topic of rhyme dragon scales came up in conversation.'
    • "[The D-Code Super Soldier] gave of his own blood, which Brimir used to anoint the Knights Carnifex and render them immune to the infection." And now Henrietta and Agnes have samples.
    • Blackwatch put up satellites recently.
    • Sheffield's missionaries look a lot like Runners. And they're about to spread their gospel.
  • Future Imperfect: The many tales about Brimir and the "angels of God", Blackwatch.
  • Genius Bruiser: Remember, Alex has eaten doctors.
  • Glasgow Grin: When Kirche meets Alex she assumes he's human and in the same breath insults Louise. There are some tearing noises and…

Alex (wearing Louise's face): Whoever said anything about me being a human familiar?

Alex: ... I'm gonna need a bigger tentacle.

  • Good Is Not Nice: A more positive view of the current portrayal of Henrietta.
  • Hidden Depths: Kirche showing a suspicious amount of knowledge about violence.
    • Also what appears to be Karin's heavy hand towards parenting is something else entirely.
  • High-Class Glass: Wales' majordomo has one, complete with it dropping out when surprised.
  • Horrible Judge of Character: Alex about Wardes, not helped by the latter being a smooth operator.
    • Also, Louise about Henrietta some degree. Entrusting her with all your secrets is not a great move, especially when her first thought is how to use those secrets to remove a potential threat to the throne and the Valiere family. It did have the upside of guilt-tripping her, though.
  • Horror Hunger: Not that horrific to him, but Alex has to actively rein in his urge to feed. Word of God states that this Alex did not have a civilian all-you-can-eat buffet during the game's events.
    • As said to Cattleya, "For instance, right now, I'm having to restrain myself from killing you. Not because I have anything against you, but because there's a big part of me that looks at you and sees fresh food. There's another part of me who wants to infect you and make you like me, but that's just the same as killing you. We'd end up with something that looks like you and has all your memories but isn't you."
    • It's implied that it was less than a standard player's run of the game but more than the "minimal civilian consumption" achievement.
    • He eventually deals with it by feeding on orcs which he claims aren't truly self-aware.
  • Humans Are Cthulhu: '[Alex] seemed to be tapping the letters set into its form, and moving around a strange rounded thing that reminded her of a field mouse, if some unthinkably alien mind were to take it and reimagine it according to their sensibilities.'
  • Humans Through Alien Eyes: Alex is a sapient virus, after all. He knows the rationale and underlying science of stuff, but still doesn't actually understand why people think and act the way they do, lacking proper human intuition. He knows when Louise is upset, but has no idea what to do about it or what to say to make her feel better.
  • I Am a Monster: Louise's opinion of herself after the killing of Mott.
  • If I Wanted You Dead...: Alex says this when Siesta connects Alex to Manhattan and Kirche points her wand at him.
    • Then Henrietta says it of Louise to her mother.
    • Foquet says the same about Wales, not to the man directly though.
  • If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him: Mott tries to use this against Alex. As it's Alex fucking Mercer, it doesn't take. Louise, on the other hand, takes it badly.
  • Iron Lady: Henrietta. Karin of the "Heavy Wind" is one of the strongest and most feared warriors in the land, her name told in awed whispers and her mere presence making even Colbert sweat in fright. When she confronts Henrietta thinking she was using her daughter as blackmail material, she not only was unamused, but completely derailed her opinion and called out her nonsense while drinking tea.
  • Irony: Kirche saying "Tabitha! I need your brain!"
    • Look at the first Mythology Gag below. Louise tells Alex that she would have stopped before causing permanent damage.
    • Alex notes the irony when Foquet's mountain-sized golem grabs him with a huge tentacle.
    • The D-Code Super Soldier being called a Hunter of God.
  • It Gets Easier: Louise's desensitisation to violence.
  • "Just Following Orders doesn't cut it." Admitted by the guy who did the following, no less.
  • Kid with the Leash: Although Louise doesn't have anything like complete control over Alex, he'll defer to her if she asks nicely. And he makes it clear that he must be treated as a partner, not a servant or a pet, if Louise wants him following any of her orders. Then again, if she does ask nicely, there's pretty much nothing he won't actually do for her.
  • Knight Templar Big Brother: In a spiritual sense, Alex. Justified considering what happened to Dana.
  • Lack of Empathy: Probably the strongest thematic in the story. Just like in the original work, the Lack of Empathy is what can and did create some of the greatest brutalities in the world. And this goes not only for obvious monsters like Mott and the King of Albion, it goes for even the main and secondary characters: Louise and Karin's view of commoners, Siesta's view of nobles, and Mercer's view on humans in general. As stated by Mercer;

You can insult them, hate them, kill them, whatever, but you acknowledge them as "people who can think and feel.".

    • Mercer in particular has instinctive Lack of Empathy due to his viral nature, and tries even harder to fight it. He also encourages Louise to avert it.
  • Land Mine Goes Click: Under Louise's foot.
  • Lolicon: Derflinger keeps accusing Wardes of this. When the latter sees her for the first time in years, and delights that She's All Grown Up:

"I thought you'd be scowling! Why, she looks mature now! I just know how you despise boobies!"
"For the last time, sword, I do not like children!"

"Poor kid. I didn't have the heart to tell her what you have to give up to get to the top."

"Belong to?" Montmorency asked, looking at the servant nearest her as if for the first time. "B-but slavery isn't legal in Tristain."
"Of course it isn't! Keeping human beings as chattel? Horrible. Absolutely horrible," Mott replied. "I'd never condone such a thing."
"So what do you call this," Louise gestured towards the three servants. Her voice came out as a low growl. "If not slavery?"
"These aren't people. They're trained dogs." Mott replied. "You can't enslave an animal. You can only tame it."

    • Note: This is him actually believing it. The man went off the deep end a long time ago.
  • Mad Bomber: Alex. For him, the bigger the explosion, the better. He even provides the quote for When All You Have Is a Hammer below. It's justified by him having consumed several pyromaniac soldiers.

Alex: After class, I want you to show me your spells; (...) I know they're explosions, but I like explosions. I like them a lot.

Though Wardes'd have to make sure that damn sword never met Karin. Because he just knew it would start teasing him about having a teacher complex, and how Louise was clearly just a stand in for his mentor, despite that being just as foolish as the idea that he somehow liked undeveloped girls.

Derflinger: "Then we kill it? Because I'm behind that. I'm so behind that I've warped around to being in front of that. And by in front of that I mean I'll stab the hell out of it. Stabbity stab stab-"

Kirche: "Or find it on animals that have absolutely no business carrying money!"

  • Moral Myopia: Siesta accuses Louise of this. Henrietta poses a similar question to Karin, though the readers have noted that Henrietta herself is guilty too.
    • The difference with Henrietta is that her ruthlessness is with people in the game, while Karin was content enough to let Mott act scot free as long it suited her goals. She was not amused by this.
  • Morality Pet: Louise takes Dana's place in this regard. Alex's memories of Dana sometimes keep him honest...ish.
  • Mugging the Monster: A bunch of bandits see Louise and her "servant" walking alone at night down a blind alley, and think they'll be easy prey. They are disabused of this notion thoroughly when Louise' "servant" makes easy prey of them.
  • Mundane Utility: When Alex tries to explain electricity by likening it to lightning magic, Montmorency is outraged by the thought of using it for light and likens that to using a fireball for toe-warming.
  • My Country, Right or Wrong: Karin holds this attitude.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Louise after Alex kills Mott.
    • She's still recoiling from that one.
  • My Friends and Zoidberg:

"Excellent. A full quad of experienced mages," Osmond had an unsettling twinkle in his eye, "as well as Miss Valièrre and her familiar."

  • Mythology Gag: "Imagine you came upon a scene where a woman was beating a man with a bullwhip. Imagine you saw her cackling like an insane harpy, imagine you saw the whip tearing long bloody strips from the man's back... Imagine you saw him begging for mercy."
    • "Louise thought she felt a slight tug in the back of her mind as she passed a particular shop, one with a bronze sign in the shape of a sword."
    • "Louise recognized its make, it was a form of training harness, used for training hunting dogs. Enchanted with wind magic, it was able to give a powerful shock on command.
      But seeing a human being in it made Louise feel ill. She couldn't imagine anyone who would put a person in something like that. She didn't want to imagine anyone who would put a person in something like that."
  • Name's the Same:

"Just following orders? That excuse went out of style at Nuremberg," Mercer muttered.
"What does a Germanian township famous for its crab apples have to do with such things?" Cattleya asked, now thoroughly confused.

  • Necessarily Evil: How Louise and Alex interpret Blackwatch's motives. The fact that the group recognizes their evil and does it for a tenuously good purpose is perceived as what keeps them from Mott's level of depravity.
    • Brutally mocked by Henrietta to Karin, stating simply that there is no excuse for knowing what Lord Mott did and still protect him to advance her schedule.

Your daughter seems to have the compassion for my people that you yourself lack. She, at least, had the proper horrified reaction to meeting a man like Mott, as opposed to accepting him as a... What did you call it, a “necessary evil?“

The words "kill them" were on the tip of his tongue. But Cattleya's words about how Louise felt responsible for his actions bubbled up from the back of his mind. "-Knock them out so we can interrogate them."

  • No Social Skills: Alex hasn't improved in this regard since the game. He does not, for instance, see any problem with walking up to a pair of arguing sisters, lifting one off the ground, and threatening her with death unless she makes nice with his mage. It says something that this is actually a step up from where he started.
    • When Louise starts to fall apart, thinking she's becoming a monster, he's completely unable to do much more than watch in frustration. He didn't even notice Louise was freaking out until Cattleya pointed it out to him.
    • He also doesn't see anything wrong with reassuring Louise with a hand on the shoulder after she commands him to kill Mott... while the hand was still a claw, covered in gore, and he was feeding on Mott's severed head with his free hand. Granted, he doesn't understand human behavior, but what's commonplace to him is often Nightmare Fuel.
  • Not So Different: Louise realizes this after she learns Alex's true nature and compares his own struggle with himself to her desire to prove she isn't just "zero".

She frowned; hadn't she begged for exactly what she got? Some powerful monster to be her familiar? Clearly God had a perverse sense of irony.[...]
Something struggling against itself, wanting something new for itself...She laughed. A perverse sense of irony indeed.

Louise was struck by how vicious that last line was, at least for Cattleya.

    • Another from Louise:

Louise cut her off. Meek Louise cut her off.
The shock of that was almost enough to give even Karin pause. The very notion was stunning, like having a battalion of mage-knights wiped out by a farmer's militia.

Now [Erina] was quiet. She never spoke once on the way back, and the only sound she made was the soft inhale/exhale of breathing. And she never, ever smiled. Now she seemed hesitant and frightened and fuck Mott.

  • Protectorate: Alex's - along with every other familiar's - purpose is to protect the mage he's bound to, and thus far he's shown very willing to threaten and/or murder anything that looks at Louise funny.
  • Puff of Logic: Invoked by Alex.

"I'm here, aren't I? I didn't just appear for no reason. You summoned me. With magic." Mercer replied. "I think that disproves any delusions that you're not capable of magic. Because otherwise I'd be vanishing in a puff of contradictory logic right now, and you'd be plummeting to your death. Probably trying to grab ahold of nothing and watching as the ground rushed closer and closer with every second..."

The Princess' smile was too predatory to be anything else, and her eyes said she'd not been bluffing.

    • And when Agnes confronts Colbert

It was a smile, yes, but it was different. Malicious, cruel. This was scary. His smile was scary. Matilda realized then that she was seeing the true face of the Flame Snake, perhaps for the first time.

"I should not speak ill of a noble, milady," Siesta replied.
What her handmaiden didn't say was more informative than what she did. Mott clearly wasn't a good ruler.

    • Inverted later when Kirche notes a suspicious lack of denial by Alex about being the plague-spreader.
  • Sympathy for the Devil: Louise notes similarities between Alex and Foquet.
  • Training from Hell: Alluded to.

Cattleya: Almost too easy. Except for the dying. That sounds more like Mother's training regimen than any teacher I've had.

"So who's resetting those traps then?" Louise asked, more to herself.
She almost expected some hideous and reptilian voice to call out "I am," but that only happened in clichéd stories.

  • This Is Unforgivable!: Alex and Louise both say this nearly verbatim when they see what Mott's been up to.
  • Throw'em to the Wolves: Both Inverted and played straight. Louise leaves Mott to the mercy of Alex, intending for her familiar to kill him in a duel... but Alex had been fully intent on killing the guy anyway, and might have done so even without prompt. And Louise definitely didn't avoid getting her hands dirty in the incident, at least how she sees it.
  • Timey-Wimey Ball: Used to explain how Blackwatch was summoned by the Founder six thousand years before Alex was.
    • Moreover, Blackwatch from several years after Prototype happened.
  • 2-D Space:

"One thing to keep in mind," Mother said, even as she dodged once more. "Is that mage battles take place in three dimensions."

Alex: "There is no problem that can't be solved with an explosion of the right size, in the right time, and the right place."

"Wait. Wait. Dispel. That's what that brat and her pet monster were researching. Dispel. But that's a void spell. Oh that is bullshit."

Kirche: "Just how old are you, Mercer?"
Alex: "About six weeks, give or take."

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