NOTE: This is a continuation. Find the starter piece for better context







Of all things, it was the flickering of lamplight that brought Raz back to consciousness, the smell of boiling water more soothing than jittering of that hard yellow light. The bed of strewn papers he had been laid on shuffled as he sat up, alerting Lili, who was standing with two hands on a large bucket while the other two were sweeping up a pile of cabinet shards.

“About time, Sleeping Beauty.” Lili remarked, “I thought I’d have to kiss you twice to wake you up.”

“Not so loud, please…” Raz moaned as she struggled to stand up, “My head feels like a Censor was playing ‘Whack-y Enabler,’ got the high score too…oh man…” His jaw dropped as he beheld the ruined state of the archive room. “Lili…what happened?”

Lili shrugged as she pulled an air freshener from her apron and sprayed her boyfriend’s ‘bed’ down before adding that to her dustpan. “What always happens Raz, ya got too much dirt in that big dumb head of yours and it made you go nuts. The girls always say cleaning the vents is a group job. But noooo, ya always gotta push yourself too far.”

“I…I did this? Oh man!” Two brooms and dustpans each were pulled from Raz’s own apron as he rushed to the closest pile and started sweeping, interrupted only by his pulling out a face mask to hide the violet blush on his blue cheeks. “If the other OCDs find out, I’m never gonna hear the end of it!”

“Oh relax, Raz.” Lili swaped one of her dustpans for a pair of sterilized tongs and dipped them into the boiling water.

“Yeah, well I’m pretty sure they like you more though.”

“Got me there.”

Raz turned to Lili, ready to wash her mouth out for such a comment, but instead raised his brow as she pulled out a leather helmet and red goggles. “What are doing anyways?”

“Your uniform mutated with all that dust on it, though thankfully your body rejected these and formed new ones after I knocked some sense into ya. I’m giving them a scalding before we take them to the incinerator.”

Even if they been put through Lili’s heated treatment, Raz couldn’t stop himself from retching as he looked at the ugly things and imagined them on his head. In a moment of panic, Raz screwed a spray bottle from his pockets and dumped the contents to the floor. As the debris dissolved and he began to mop, his reflection shined clear on the tile and he relieved at what he saw; he had already seen his yellow rubber work gloves in action, but the sight of his work apron bulging with his tools and sprays (painted with an orange stripe around the end to fit with Lili’s own diamond pattern) along with his orange safety goggles snug against his own red head rag was comforting.

The OCD winked at his reflection. “Oh yeah, clean and cool.”

Lili couldn’t stop from rolling her eyes at Raz’s ego, though she did so with a giggle.

Neither of them had noticed the massive chunk of filing cabinet flushed against the doorframe, so both were startled at the booming thuds coming from the other side. Cracked as it was, it didn’t take long for the cabinet to break and the thrown were thrown open amid a wave of suds and a flood of OCDs. One of them, both Raz and Lili recognized her as their team lead, was quick to brush-skate towards them.

“Raz! Lili! What in steel wool happened here?!”

All of Raz’s bravado drained away as he prepared himself for the reprimand to follow his confession.

“You should have seen it!” Lili said, leaping to her feet. “Raz and I were scrubbing the archives when this massive clod of dust and stray thoughts burst from the piping! I would have been contaminated forever if Raz here hadn’t blasted the mess outta sight.”

Knowing better than to argue with Lili, Raz allowed his chest to puff out again. “Yeah, there’s no bug small enough to hide from this OCD.”

“Well, sounds like you two could use a break. Why don’t you go dust the lounge? The girls and I can pick things up from here.”

“Sure thing mam. Just gonna take this junk to the incinerator first.” His simulated pride evolved back to genuine, Raz heaved the bucket of filthy clothes out of the room, Lili at his side and a smile on his face.

But somehow, and she wasn’t quite sure how, Lili knew it wasn’t a smile that would last.

Sure enough, the moment the duo finished their chores and began the relaxing pastime of dusting the lounge, Raz reverted back to a sullen state, going so far as to exclusively work under the tables.

“Come on Raz, it’s not like it’s the first time that’s happened. I just knock some sense into you and boom; you’d do the same for me.”

“That’s the trouble, it keeps happening. Lili, you and I are probably the best OCDs around, scratch that, we ARE the best. But no matter what we or any of the others do, there’s always gonna be dirt, always something to clean, always some creep causing trouble and riling up all the Doubts and Regrets and everything that makes our jobs harder.”

Lili kept her eyes on scrubbing the sink, using the reflective shine on the spigot to watch as Raz mopped the dust from his apron. “I thought that was why you loved the job; ‘an OCD’s work is never done’ or something like that.”

“Not if it means being forced to hurt my girlfriend. Or any of the other OCDs either.” Raz plopped himself into a chair after giving it a tight seal of plastic. “You know what the problem is Lili?”

Wanting to play along, Lili guessed incorrectly. “We’re not trying hard enough.”

“No. The problem isn’t us, it’s not any of the other OCDs, hell, it’s not even the Censors or any of the other mental creeps. It’s the outside world. Out there where all the dirt and filth and stray thoughts are, just jumbled out there, waiting for some new idea to form so they can sneak in with it and track mud all over the floor.”

The water in the plugged sink was now at a steaming boil, giving Lili free space to walk to her boyfriend. After wrapping her own chair in plastic, she sat down on the other side of the table, arms crossed but mind open. “Yeah, but it’s not like we can stop them from coming in. Even the Censors can’t, and that’s their whole job.”

“No…” Raz’s lower set of digits tapped along the table as he sighed, giving Lili her first real moment of annoyance that day. She always hated Raz being so down, whether it was for himself or something else.

“Raz, don’t tell me you’re trying to hide something.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Raz pulled two foreign objects from his apron pocket. The first was a comic book wrapped in mylar plastic, ‘True Psychic Tales’ Issue 42B to be precise, and a small seed-shaped container that, even across the table, made Lili reach for a face mask.

“I snagged these doing a final lint roll of those rags you freed me from. This book talks about a team going into other minds, tracking their filthy dirt prints on everything and messing up heads just the way they want it. How do you think they’d like it we did that in reverse?”

The strands on Lili’s face mask snapped with how low her jaw dropped. “You mean...leave the mind out into...that?!”

It was as if Raz hadn’t heard her. Instead, he leapt from his chair onto the table, kicking his brush shoes about and dispensing suds that absorbed the light about them, shining spotlight onto the bright-eyed OCD on the verge of squeeing. “Just imagine it Lili: You and me, cleaning up every inch of the world, facing down every dust bunny, mudslinger and muckraker in our way, recruiting the OCDs of other minds and maybe even finding more OCDs needing to be freed from their shells of drab uncleanliness, not stopping until all the world is sparkling clean and minty fresh!”

“No more stupid dirt specks thinking they can ruin our work. Or even make us fight each other.” Lili still couldn’t understand how she knew everything Raz was going to say before he did, but she too found herself imagining such a polished future. “Just one problem: How do we get out here?”

As Lili expected, Raz picked up the golden seed in a handkerchief-clad glove. “According to the book, this is Smelling Salts. Those Psycho-specks use them to escape minds when things get too hairy. But...boy do they smell bad.”

“If it leads to the outside world, I wouldn’t expect anything less.” Lili held her face as close as she could to apparatus, giving Raz her silent permission to open it.

The scent was indeed vile, with hints of vinegar, garlic, and a million other deterrents for good taste, but Lili could feel the world being tugged apart around her, the cleaning lounge and the mind that (far as her new self was aware), was the only world she ever knew.

I don’t know what kind of dangers await us out there.

Raz’s voice echoed in Lili’s head, but when she looked over, she saw his mouth wasn’t moving. She had a thought and tried something.

But I know my boyfriend and I will face them together, cleaning their clocks until the gears reflect every bolt and grain.

The two psychic OCDs floated through the swirling void, gloved hand in gloved hand, ready to begin their conquest of cleanliness.

My name is Razputin...

And I’m Lili...

And we are OCDs.



Congratulations. Really.

Not only did you lose the fight against OCD Lili, but you bungled it all so bad that now you’ve both been assimilated into the ranks of the neat freak mental constructs and are about jump right into the proverbial lion’s den. Rest assured, when The Motherlobe catches wind of this, panic and wargames are sure to follow.

At this point, you’ve got two options: You can press (square) and timewarp to before OCD Lili pulls you into her chase sequence, thereby giving you a chance to stock up on supplies and more moves/abilities, or you can press (X) to go back to the main menu and start a new file. Maybe next time, you’ll learn stop and smell the roses.

However...I suppose you could also press (Circle). This would have you continue down this plotline, playing as the OCD Raz and Lili in thier attempts to sanitize the world. We promise you’ll have time to get acquainted with the nuances of thier movesets before Hollis decides to indulge in a little catharsis. (Oops! Spoilers!)

Do whatever. I ain’t your Mom.

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Be honest, how many of you folks wish more games had situations like this?

I mean, I suppose I understand why more games don't go through with it. Firstly, you have to have a set limit of what transformations and corruptions can be possible so as to not overwhelm yourself out the gate. Then, you need to put in all the different mechanics that lead to brainwashing and transformation and maybe figure out how this fits into the enemy's culture if you really want to push the boat out. Then, you have to think about if the MC can be saved or corrupted by other forces or if it's a 'one time' deal. After that comes altering the UI as necessary to fit the new character data and setting an entirely different story up, complete with new cutscenes with all they entail, new character work and animations, maybe new characters to breathe life into the corrupted existence and setting friendly and non-friendly NPCs. On top of that, you have to make sure there is an engaging story on the regular path as well so that the player has a legit path that the corruption shoves them off of and therefore give weight to what you are now doing and how the MC percieves themself in thier new life, though it would be best to save the PermaCorruption as a suprise, again so as to add weight to when it happens rather than having the player just be bored waiting for the 'real game' to begin, which again should be mitiagted by the actual main story under the hood.

In short, yeah, it would be difficult to make meaningful. But I know it can be done and I also know I do not know how to code or model to save my life, so I'm not sure if I'm the guy to make it happen.