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[cupnoodles]

blood pact. Some would call her a story, others a deity; to the Institute, she's an Unauthorized Passenger. Raíz is what she calls herself, and she's a multidimensional entity that pops over to our reality every now and then to see how she can mess with its fabric. It's a bit like checking on an ant farm, except she can talk like the ants, look like them, and then tell them to go poke holes and/or survive against another multidimensional being's magnifying glass in the sun. It's simple — she finds someone with big dreams and makes it possible for them at the end of a hundred year blood pact. Work for her in that time, and once it's up, that great impossible thing you wished for will be all yours! We could give you examples, but the people who get into these blood pacts proceed to forget what they asked for, and won't remember until time's up. You're just going to have to trust her — and your past self. Whatever age you're at when you agree to make the pact, that's where you're staying for the duration of the contract. Temporary agelessness can be prolonged through 'infractions', which range from breaking rules or just doing something that makes Raíz (semi-affectionately and semi-sarcastically called 'Mom') sad, or immediately revoked if she thinks you really fucked up. If revoked, your body instantly matches your chronological age, and chances are it'll be extremely painful or extremely deadly. The people she signs into her little group get new names and neat super powers so facilitate fulfilling their 'missions'. What are these missions? Whatever she feels like sending you off to do, which can be mundane or battling monsters, if not something grander, possibly world-ending. There's something for everyone, but there's also a lot of downtime. That's why there's a nice boarding school by and for the obscenely rich style house where they can live, train and bicker together. You don't have to, but if Mom is in town from reality-hopping and wants to gather all her kids for dinner, you better show up and have fun. It's another infraction if you don't, and she'll just show up wherever you are and bring you over, be it from down the street or on the other side of the world. Raíz likes to think of herself as a cool benefactor, that she's nice and fun, but the power dynamic is demonstrably horrendous and condescending, not least of all because she assigns her subjects new names and thought it'd be appropriate if they were always based on animals. (Using your real name makes her sad, by the way. You know what that means by now.) The Institute, which specializes in capturing, researching and controlling all kinds of anomalies they consider a threat to humanity, though they'd prefer to use them as weapons instead. They've been trying to catch Raíz and her subjects for a while; sometimes they succeed with the latter, but she eventually shows up and yoinks her pets from their cells to sit them down at the dinner table again, so it all works out.

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[cupnoodles]