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Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2026-02-14
Words:
100
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
4
Hits:
36

Time's Irreversible Act

Summary:

Time has replaced N. Gin with a stranger. Tropy's not pleased.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Nowadays, N. Gin’s organic eye sparkled with life.

Tropy loathed it. Gin was supposed to be dead-eyed, easy to rile up and quick to throw hands.

What stood before him was a high-spirited stranger bouncing on his heels, wrong in every aspect.

Brio and Cortex regarded this interloper with relief, welcoming back their old friend. Theirs, not Tropy’s.

A product of brain damage. That’s what Brio called Tropy’s Gin. T...t-time heals all wounds. Well, mostly. Rehabilitative work has done wonders for Gin.

Time had taken his Gin, and Tropy had been powerless to stop it.

Notes:

I've never written a drabble before, and I wanted to give it a try. Charles Zembillas had once mentioned how N. Gin was inspired by Phineas Gage, who'd taken an iron bar through the head and gone through a change in personality. Gage later on took up a job as a stagecoach driver, and it's been speculated to have helped with his mental rehabilitation.

I like to imagine Gin's bubbly personality in the post-Naughty Dog games was how he used to be before the missile accident, and with each game he gets closer and closer to his old self. In continuities where Gin, Brio and Cortex went to the Academy of Evil together, the cantankerous shift in Gin's personality post-accident must've been unsettling to Brio and Cortex. But to Tropy, this short-tempered li'l guy speaking in monotone is the only Gin he knows, so Gin's mental recovery must be difficult for Tropy to adjust to.