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Backwards through the snow

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His last memories were blurry, an eternal blizzard, a little green thing, and flashing lights. Next thing he knows, he's on the floor of his suddenly intact can, warnings flashing all around him, the long-since dead Little Ruffian on his feet.

Five Pebbles is determined to never relive the blizzard ever again. And the local group now has to deal with the former pretentious and arrogant murderer becoming a regretful paranoid wreck.

Backwards through the snow is a Rain World fanfic written by Anonymous. Five Pebbles is thrown back in time by Saint to shortly after Moon's collapse, and now tries his best to fix everything he can and also make sense out of his situation. And everything is thrown for a loop as a result.

Warning. All spoilers for Rain World and Downpour are unmarked.


These tropes suffered through the blizzard.

  • Adaptation Expansion: The fic goes a great way to explain how Iterator puppets work, which is how Pebbles comes up with a means to leave their cans.
  • Adaptational Timespan Change: The timeline of this fic is much more compressed than what canon implies. At the very least, Spearmaster, Artificer, Hunter and Gourmand are all simultaneously active, while in canon aside from Gourmand's encouter with Hunter Long Legs there's no indication of the presence of other slugcats.
  • Affectionate Nickname: Moon calls No Significant Harassment "Sig".
  • Alternate Animal Affection: For slugcats licking each other clean is a family bonding activity.
  • Amateur Therapist: Chasing Wind has presented themselves as one towards the whole group as part of their effort to keep them all together. At one point Pebbles asks them if they've studied actual Ancient therapist courses or read through amateur life-tip blogposts.
  • Anger Born of Worry: One of No Significant Harassment's main issues. He is at first angry at Pebbles for what he did to Moon, but gets incredibly concerned for him when he sees how drastically he changed since Moon's collapse. However, his frustration at Pebbles' evasiveness and leftover anger lead to him yelling or making caustic comments at Pebbles at literally every conversation, doing an even bigger number to Pebbles' mental health. NSH realizes to a degree that his anger causes issues, but blames those fits on Pebbles being evasive. When Pebbles tells him he informed Chasing Winds about his anger issues, NSH denies having any even though it's obvious he does.
  • Armor-Piercing Question: When Pebbles tells Moon that Suns never listens to him, she asks him how that's any different from when he didn't listen to her when she told him to stop working so hard. Pebbles is struck speechless, before feebly trying to defend himself saying it's different.
  • Beneath the Mask: NSH plays up the clown act in order to get the group back to normal as fast as possible, while being as helpful as he can because he wants to be somebody's number 1 priority and be appreciated.
  • Broken Pedestal: Pebbles is incredibly angry at Seven Red Suns for giving him the data pearl that led to him getting the Rot when they knew Pebbles was not mentally stable. While he understands Suns was only trying to help him, he knows he was idol-worshipping Suns way too much and now refuses to speak to them.
  • The Bus Came Back: After a prolonged absence due to Pebbles' cutting contact with them, Suns returns by showing up in Pebbles' city to talk to him in person. It goes catastrophically.
  • The Cameo: Gourmand makes a brief appearance while Pebbles is in Moon's chamber, and they almost eat one of Moon's neuron flies.
  • The Chosen One: The Echo tells Pebbles he was chosen by a third party for a "greater purpose". Pebbles freaks out over this because he realises his trip back to time was intentional, and he doesn't even know what this new purpose is.
  • Cliffhanger: Chapter 37 ends with Pebbles falling into the water in Moon's chamber and his systems short-circuiting in front of her, before he passes out.
  • Cooldown Hug: The entirety of chapter 43 is Moon giving a hug to Pebbles to calm him down from his panic attack.
  • Cutting Off the Branches: Artificer went for the "kill the king" ending, so she's still around.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance:
    • Pebbles notes that Ancient therapists always advocated for Ascension, which is suicide. This is absolutely not what a real-life therapist does. The trope also applies In-Universe; Chasing Winds acts as a therapist to the group at large, but acts more in-line with how a real-life therapist would, despite using Ancient therapists as her sources. This baffles Pebbles, especially after they point out his passive suicidal tendencies and how they're bad for him. And all that said, Chasing Winds doesn't quite match a real therapist either; they play the part for their personal friend group (which is a conflict of interest) and tell other people things Pebbles tells them in confidence, if they believe it's necessary.
    • Slugcats name themselves after their jobs.
  • Didn't See That Coming:
    • NSH is surprised that Pebbles used purposed organisms to cure his Rot since that's neither his style or specialty.
    • Moon expected Pebbles' neuron flies to contain residue of his memories and feelings and prepared accordingly. However, she prepared herself for the Pebbles she knows; not the one who experienced the blizzard. The neurons give her one hell of a shock.
  • Didn't Think This Through:
    • When NSH fids Pebbles outdoors, he's quick to point out that anything could potentially hurt or kill him, and Pebbles left his chamber without telling anyone what he was doing. Pebbles realises he was working under the assumption nothing would or could hurt him in his own city.
    • Suns goes to Pebbles to suggest they swap cans even though everyone and their mother made it perfectly clear to them that Pebbles does not want to see them. The meeting predictably turns into a trainwreck. NSH calls him out on this, asking if they thought showing up unannounced in person would somehow make Pebbles like them more.
  • Digging Yourself Deeper: When NSH tells Suns connecting to Pebbles' neuron network is a terrible idea and a huge invasion of privacy, Suns protests they would have erased Pebbles' memories without reading them. NSH screams at them this isn't any better.
  • Dramatic Irony:
    • Pebbles never tells anyone he experienced a cycle, so everyone assumes his drastic personality change happened in a much smaller timeframe than it actually did, and none of them have any idea what caused it. This colours every interaction Pebbles has with other people, as some characters trip up triggers they don't know exist or jump to mistaken assumptions that Pebbles tries to encourage to keep his cover.
    • Pebbles himself, due to his damaged system, has very little clue on how he came back in time. The most he saw out of Saint is a vague green blur followed by flashing lights, and suddenly he's on the floor. He doesn't even try to identify the creature's species. He seems to piece together what the green fluff did to him after an Echo shows up to discuss it, but doesn't let himself complete the thought.
    • Pebbles decides to invent a sign language to communicate with Artificer, and he's having a pretty hard time with it. Thing is, Seven Red Suns has already invented a slugcat sign language, but of course Pebbles doesn't know that because he refuses to talk to them.
    • Pebbles creates two specialised slugpups to kill the Rot, thinking he could have Artificer adopt them. He feels incredibly bad when Artificer tells him (after the pups are already grown) the story of how she lost her own pups, but she's more than eager to adopt them. Even moreso, he accidentally made them the same colours as her previous pups.
    • NSH keeps pushing Pebbles' boundaries out of a curiosity to find out what's going on with him and because he's concerned, not knowing this action pushes Pebbles' mental state to the brink, as he's NOT alright with having other iterators in his systems.
    • Moon experiences memories of Pebbles' Rot, failed Ascension, and the Blizzard through the donated neuron flies, but because she has absolutely no context for them she assumes they're corrupt memory files or that Pebbles corrupted them himself, not that this is a perfect recollection of what happened to him.
    • After Pebbles short-circuits in Moon's chamber, she starts talking about bugs in pretty philosophical terms to get him to do anything other than go back to work right away. Bugs was the first topic to come to mind because there's one in the chamber. The thing is, not only is Moon unaware that bug metaphors are a sensitive topic to Pebbles, Pebbles himself is unaware because of his Laser-Guided Amnesia, leaving him feel like he's forgetting something very important.
  • The Dreaded: Chasing Wind and their therapy sessions. Everyone is scared of Wind's therapy sessions.
  • Dude Where Is My Respect: NSH is incredibly pissed at Suns for completely ignoring all his efforts to help them, only using them to get to Pebbles. He demands from Suns to show him some respect.
  • Dumb Struck: Pebbles freezes up whenever he's put on the spot. This is mainly towards Moon out of guilt.
  • Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Pebbles spends some time explaining to Artificer how the Cycles (as in, revival after death) works... and that's when he realises he experienced one.
  • Extreme Doormat: As a result of his immense guilt for his actions, Pebbles allows other Iterators to basically bully him into giving into demands that make him extremely uncomfortable, as he reasons it's all for the sake of helping Moon. A big example is allowing NSH access to his systems even though he knows NSH has no means to enforce his demand.
  • Eye Scream: In his attempt to break out of Suns' hug, Pebbles breaks their eye. Somehow Suns is not deterred by this.
  • Felony Misdemeanor: During the blizzard a blue lizard tried to eat Pebbles. It failed, even losing a tooth in the process, but now Pebbles more or less declared war to the whole species. He hasn't asked Artificer to eliminate them all though.
  • First Time in the Sun: Pebbles, after discovering the puppet blueprints, figures out a method to safely disconnect and leave his chamber. While his initial plans were to do repairs, he instead spends a large chunk of time admiring the sunset, the night sky, and then the sunrise.
  • Freudian Slip:
    • Whenever he talks about the durability of the puppets, Pebbles mentions that they're strong enough to withstand lizard bites. Which is something he found out the hard way during the blizzard when a lizard tried to eat him. Not that anyone puts this together.
    • When Pebbles explains to NSH why his robes are covered with blood, he calls Artificer "citizen" out of habit before realising what he did. NSH finds this hilarious.
  • Full-Name Ultimatum: Chasing Wind to NSH after Pebbles informs the former of the latter's anger issues - with screenshots.
    Chasing Wind: No Significant Harassment. I would like to have a word.
  • Hypocrite:
    • Pebbles tells Artificer she needs to face her trauma, that her refusal to do so is hurting those around her, and that she doesn't have to face it alone. At the same time he insists he's the one who has to fix Moon and tries to avoid thinking about his issues as much as possible. NSH even calls Pebbles a hypocrite at one point.
    • Pebbles calls the Ancients hypocrites for decalring they're detached from the material world yet creating elaborate and fancy works of art.
  • I Just Want to Be Loved: Along with a dash of Driven by Envy. Secretly, NSH is hurt and frustrated that absolutely nobody treats him as their main priority. For the most part he made his peace with it because there are legitimate reasons to prioritize people like Pebbles or Moon, but when Suns goes to Pebbles' can despite promising they'll go straight to NSH, it hits at all of NSH's insecurities.
  • Idiosyncratic Cultural Gesture: Slugcats tend to greet other people with a very specific ear twitch that Pebbles reflexively mimics with his antena. After he realises it has some kind of cultural significance, he asks Artificer what it means exactly. It's a symbol of respect, equality, and "I see you", which means that Pebbles unwittingly had been declaring the slugcats he met his equals. After some thought he decides he's fine with it.
  • If Only You Knew: During a conversation, Wind tells Pebbles that if he stays rooted to his past his regrets will pile up until they're impossible to escape. Pebbles internally comments how they have no idea how right they are.
  • Internal Reveal: In his breakdown ater fleeing from Suns, Pebbles can't handle the guilt of lying to Moon anymore and tells her about the Cycle he experienced.
  • Irony:
    • In canon Pebbles describes himself as "godlike" and that he can't accept being a bug. In this fic, after the entire Trauma Conga Line that's Downpour, he finds comfort in that he's a simple creature subject to the cycle and freaks out when the Echo informs him he was selected for a new great purpose.
    • Pebbles makes the two slugpups out of genetic material harvested from Scavenger pups.
  • It's All My Fault: Suns, to absolutely psychotic levels. They are so convinced they're responsible for Pebbles' issues and that THEY must be the one to save him that they attempt to sneak into Pebbles' chamber and take his place so Pebbles doesn't have to deal with his problems anymore. Both Pebbles and NSH are beyond pissed at them, because Pebbles has already cured his Rot, and as NSH points out, Suns' attitude is infantilising, smothering, and ignores Pebbles' contribution to the problem and his ability to make his own decisions.
  • Jerkass Realization: After Winds tells NSH that Pebbles is suicidal, he realises that his constant antagonism, anger, and condescending attitude towards Pebbles may be part of the reason why Pebbles' mental health is so poor. He's very disturbed by this.
  • Language Barrier: Since Pebbles was not in his chamber when Gourmand passed by, when they meet in Moon's chamber they don't have the Mark of Communication. So they and Pebbles have to resort to pantomime and angry sketches to get the point across.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia:
    • During a panic attack, Pebbles deletes 90% of his memories of the blizzard, with no means to retrieve them. He deliberately keeps some he deems important, like Saint, the collapse of his can, and the lizard incident, but has no idea what he deleted. This doesn't remove his issues.
    • Moon convices Pebbles to rest after his short-circuit by talking - a bit too philosophycally - about bugs. Pebbles feels really uncomfortable with the topic and realises he's forgetting something important. Aka his "bug in a maze" conversation with Suns.
  • Laughing Mad: Pebbles breaks into hysterical laughter when he fully cures his Rot.
  • Life-or-Limb Decision: Pebbles' method of curing his Rot involves letting areas of his can overheat on purpose and turnt he cooling systems back on just before the point of no return. He knows it's extremely dangerous and quite a few walls and pipes have collapsed because of it, but he thinks nothing of it considering what damage the Rot did in the previous timeline.
  • Locked Out of the Loop:
    • Nobody tells Moon something's wrong with Pebbles because she's in a very bad state already and nobody wants to stress her out more. NSH is forced to come clean when she sees the memories of the blizzard.
    • The Group as a whole demands from Unparalleled Innocent (who is a notorious gossip) not to spread any news outside the group regarding Pebbles' recent experiments, such as the "iterator leaving their cans" thing. They allow her to spread the puppet blueprints though.
  • Mama Bear: Artificer's first order of business after making sure the slugpups are clean, fed and safe, is to go and murder most of the remaining predators in the area. Hilariously, she adopts the same attitude towards Pebbles, even calling him "pink baby" after a while. However, as the fic goes on her attitude is eventually Deconstructed. She insists on keeping Mint and Emerald locked up in the nest for long hours even as they're fully grown (not helped by the fact she's unusually large for her species so she always sees them as small) and tries to, in Pebbles' words, "sanitize the ecosystem", while the children out of sheer boredom broke out of the den and befriended a Scavenger. When Artificer finds out they protect their friend with violence. Pebbles also points out she keeps treating him like he's incompetent, and only starts listening to his protests when he handcrafts and explosive in front of her. Artificer runs off when it all comes to a head.
  • Men Don't Cry: NSH jokingly attributes the fact Pebbles never cries to toxic masculinity.
  • Morality Chain: Chasing Winds appoints themself as this to the local group, as without Moon's presence, an especially given Pebbles' actions, they're barely holding back from tearing each other apart.
  • Mundane Utility: Pebbles using his laser blasts to clean the interior of his chamber.
  • Near-Death Experience: Pebbles falls into the water in Moon's chamber an short-circuits hard because of the exposed wiring in his broken antenna. He only survives because Moon manages to get him out of the water in time, and there are still lingering effects.
  • Nigh-Invulnerable: The puppets are designed to withstand pretty much anything. Unparalleled Innocence even detonated a bunch of heavy explosives in her chamber once and there wasn't even a scratch on her afterwards. Pebbles also frequently recounts the time a blue lizard tried to eat him and lost a tooth in the process. That said, damage is possible. Pebbles snaps his antena first thing in the fic, and at a later date he uses it to stab himself.
  • No Antagonist: There are no villains in the story; the conflicts between the characters are driven by leftover baggage and mental trauma.
  • No Social Skills: Pebbles notes Hunter seems to be at a loss at what to do around other slugcats and attributes this to being lab-grown.
  • Noodle Incident:
    • NSH once told Moon an absolutely horrible joke about jellyfish.
    • Innocence once detonated a bunch of heavy explosives in her chamber.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: Moon is the first one to point out to Pebbles that his and Suns' actions have many parallels, even asking him if he never considered switching structures with her - which he has. Pebbles realizes that Moon is right and that he's a huge hypocrite, even though doing so makes him extremely uncomfortable.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Everyone realizes something is terribly wrong with Pebbles because he a) contacted them to begin with, b) expresses no other desire but to help Moon, and c) he acts self-sacrificing. Following events only pile up.
  • Peggy Sue: Pebbles retains all his memories from his original timeline, and with that his character development. That said, since he has been stuck in his can the whole time, and the blizzard rendered all his systems basically non-functional, he has very little clue about everything that happened after his can collapsed. That doesn't stop him from taking advantage of his future knowledge when needed.
  • Possessive Wrist Grab: Suns, during their crazy rant about solving all of Pebbles' problems, grabs Pebbles' wrist and does not let go no matter how many times he demands they don't touch him. It's incredibly uncomfortable and Pebbles resorts to punching Suns' eye out to escape their grasp. Later NSH gives one hell of a rant to Suns over this, drilling into their head that when someone tells you not to touch them, you don't fucking touch them.
  • Power Palms: Puppets can fire lasers through their palms. Doing so when disconnected from the can costs 6 cycles worth of battery power per blast.
  • The Promise: Pebbles promises Moon he won't leave her. The potential of breaking that promise, even if it's caused by accidental death, causes him a great deal of anxiety.
  • Right for the Wrong Reasons: Chasing Winds believes that Pebbles is still suicidal (even if passively) because it's very unlikely he overcame his tendencies in such a short period of time without an outside influence. They're right about him being passively suicidal, but it has been far longer for Pebbles than they think.
  • Secret Secret-Keeper: Downplayed. After Moon received the neurons from Pebbles and found out about him asking the group chat about the Cycle, she realised he may have experienced the Cycle himself, but had no solid proof and didn't want to think about it.
  • Secret Test of Character: NSH demands from Pebbles to allow his (NSH's) overseers into Pebbles' structure as exchange for his help, even though they both know NSH has no means of enforcing this. Pebbles' realises he's being tested and allows NSH access, even though he feels horrible to have another person in his structure.
  • Selective Obliviousness: Pebbles refuses to consider the full implications of what the Echo told him about his trip back in time.
  • Self-Harm: Pebbles has a tendency to hurt himself during panic attacks. It starts with him snapping one of his antennae when he gets sent back in time, and gets worse.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Pebbles is absolutely determined to fix all the major disasters that will happen. He cures his Rot first thing, and then focuses all his efforts into helping Moon to the point of his own detriment. He also keeps this attitude with smaller events - he fully heals Hunter's rot, for one.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: The slugpups, Mint and Emerald. Mint is generally quiet and more prone to approaching people, with a love for decorating, while Emerald is a restless firecracker that tries playing aloof.
  • Significant Wardrobe Shift: As a result of his self-harm and Artificer wiping blood from her kills on him, Pebbles is forced to change out of his ruined orange robe to a cyan one that Artificer found in the city. He sews in leftover orange fabric from the old one. Most of the orange fabric goes to Moon's new robe, which is a white one, except that Pebbles had to lengthen it to fit her.
  • Simple Solution Won't Work: NSH is pretty pissed Pebbles used Hunter to send his rarefraction cell to Moon. Later when he finds out about Artificer, Mint and Emerald, Pebbles explains that he could not send any of them. Artificer is allergic to water so she can't even get to Moon (the area is flooded), she's extremely protective of Mint and Emerald, and because of the citizen drone Pebbles can't force her to let the two slugpups go. On top of this the pups are too young for the trip in the first place, and if Pebbles pisses off Artificer he'll have to deal with her vengeful streak and unlimited explosives, while he's programmed to be unable to defend himself. In other words, Hunter was the only option.
  • So Proud of You: The Echo claiming to have created Pebbles tells him they're proud to see how he's become part of a greater purpose than what they assigned to him.
  • Spotting the Thread:
    • When Pebbles realises he experienced a cycle, one of his points against it is that he went too far back, which should be impossible without an outside force involved. He realizes something more happened when an Echo tells him the whole reality felt his arrival and that he has been chosen for a new purpose, because a regular cycle wouldn't have made that much of an impact, and then he makes the connection to the green creature. He seems to stop himself short just before reaching the conclusion the Saint ascended him.
    • NSH realizes that Pebbles asking the group chat if any of them experienced the Cycle has something to do with his recent change in personality, but doesn't piece together that Pebbles may really have experienced a Cycle.
    • Moon reveals that she realized Pebbles has experienced a Cycle as soon as she found out about his question to the group chat and saw the remaining memories in his neuron flies; according to her they felt simultaneously young and incredibly old.
  • Stalker Without a Crush: Suns is absolutely obsessed with Pebbles. They literally corner him in his own city despite absolutely everyone telling them not to and then go on to an incredibly invasive rant over his they're going to fix all of Pebbles' problems while not listening to him at all. It borders to Stalker WITH a Crush levels and Pebbles has to resort to physical violence to get away. NSH gives a scathing rant to Suns over their actions.
  • Summon Bigger Fish: Played for Laughs. Pebbles knows he can't stop Chasing Wind from playing therapist with him, but he can point them to a different direction. Said direction being NSH and his anger issues. NSH has a suitable Oh, Crap! reaction when Pebbles informs him.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: No, Pebbles is only snapping those cute pictures of the slugpups for Moon, absolutely no other reason. And Mint and Emerald aren't names, it's just a practical way of telling them apart!
  • Switching P.O.V.: Most chapters are told from Pebbles' perspective, with the occasional switch to NSH and Moon.
  • Symbolic Wings: When Pebbles cures Hunter from their Rot, he alters the tentacles they used to hold additional spears in such a way that they now resemble tiny wings. Pebbles thinks they're fitting for the Little Savior. Hunter can't fly on those but they can still use them to hold spears. Later on Moon calls Hunter an angel.
  • “The Reason You Suck” Speech: Chapter 42 is NSH giving a very long and absolutely scathing one to Suns over their actions in the previous chapter and general attitude. He starts with Suns going to corner Pebbles into giving them their can to "fix" things while bulldozing all over his boundaries, breaking their promise to NSH, refusing to listen to reason, and not even treating NSH as an afterthought in his obsessed they are over Pebbles. It ends with NSH forcing Suns to run every single decision they make by him for approval because NSH doesn't trust them anymore.
  • Thought They Knew Already: Pebbles thinks everyone instinctively knows the exact mechanics of how cycles function (basically spawning alternate timelines) until Artificer tells him she believes the cycle doesn't exist because her pups never came back even though she herself has died a few times.
  • Thousand-Yard Stare: Suns sports this expression for a good chunk of NSH's “The Reason You Suck” Speech, which freaks him out. They only snap out of it when NSH starts yelling about how horribly Suns treats NSH.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: When Pebbles asks NSH for the modified Neuron Fly blueprints, NSH admits he first wanted to give Pebbles a few tips and watch him struggle because it's amusing, but after Pebbles has a panic attack in front of him, he decides to just hand over the blueprints.
    NSH: I ain't one to kick a man that is already down, come on!
  • Throwing Off the Disability: One of the first things Pebbles does is cure his own Rot, which was impossible for him in the previous timeline. He does this by taking inspiration from a species not yet evolved that developed the ability to eat Rot (by the time they appeared Pebbles was too far gone) to create two slugpups capable of producing Rot-killing chemicals. He also cures Hunter when they pass by his chamber.
  • Time Skip: The first part of the fic takes the better part of 100 cycles, with Pebbles focusing on curing the Rot. Most of that time is only briefly touched upon.
  • Trauma Button: Pebbles has a few.
    • The biggest one is the cold. Notably when he panics he feels like he's freezing even if his systems are perfectly fine.
    • Being alone for prolonged periods of time also gets to him, as he feels he gets pulled back into the cold.
    • Coming into contact with other people is also a trigger, because he's afraid of them prying too much and finding out what he's hiding. This isn't helped by NSH's disregard of boundaries.
    • Saint is an odd one. Pebbles is grateful to them, but takes measure not to have the slugpups' green hue match that of Saint's because it makes him uncomfortable.
    • The possibility of him being unable to fix something. When Moon tells him there's no means of fully restoring her can, Pebbles practically has a panic attack over it, denying it over and over.
    • There are also some miscellaneous ones like the other iterators - especially Moon - possibly finding out what happened to him, or Echoes after one comes to talk to him about his "arrival".
    • He makes it clear he doesn't want to talk to Suns, but it gets to the level of this trope when Suns breaks into his city unannounced.
  • Unable to Cry: Pebbles doesn't find out puppets have the ability to cry until he gets his hands to puppet blueprints and decides to open the valves on the sides of his eyes (that he didn't previously know were there) to see what they do. All other iterators note that's pretty concerning.
  • Uncanny Valley: Chasing Winds feels things, but doesn't actually make expressions. When they try to make themselves show emotion, either through the voice or body language, everyone notes they're failing at it and it makes them look unsettling.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Narrowly averted. Gourmand tries to eat Moon's neuron flies, but Pebbles is there and explains the flies are NOT for eating under any circumstances.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: How Pebbles and Artificer's relationship is at the beginning. The very first thing she tells him is that he's annoying, and Pebbles never quite drops the "Little Ruffian" moniker. She treats him increasingly like her pup as time goes on.
  • You No Take Candle: How the slugcat sign language that Pebbles invented works, due to its limitations. Pebbles hasn't come up with a sign for everything, more focused on conveying important information, so it rarely has a proper sentence structure or grammar, and limited vocabulary. This becomes very apparent when Artificer tries to explain her name to him.
  • Wham Episode: Chapter 41, in which Suns shows up in Pebbles' city.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: NSH is at the receiving end of this from the other iterators after Pebbles reveals to the group chat Hunter had the Rot.
  • Workaholic: Part of this is the result of his status as The Atoner, but Pebbles always chooses to work as opposed to thinking or resting, even if he really needs the rest. The only times he actually rests is on his first outing, when he spends time stargazing, and is physically incapable of working (and he tried).


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