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I like to think Darkstalker enchanted Mightyclaws to like Moonwatcher, and Mightyclaws is so dependent on his power to transform anything he illustrates into reality that he vehemently refuses a copy of Qibli’s earring when it is found out Darkstalker changed his thoughts and feelings like with Winter.

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A few random things I have decided will happen in my Eda nothlit!Luz story:

1. Yeerks were not the only enemies of Andalites who they initially were on good terms with; little did the Andalites know that the Archivists were agents of Crayak. The Archivists engaged in trade with them and even helped Escafil’s team develop the morphing technology as part of their plan to lull the Andalites into a false sense of security, only for the relationship between the two alien races to become antagonistic when Crayak ordered the Archivists to - among other things - rig all the blue boxes so that morphers run the risk of becoming nothlits every time they morph. Completely unaware of Crayak’s role in all of this or even his existence, the Andalites start a war against the Archivists. The war had no formal conclusion until the events of the story, because the Archivists were run out of the Andalite homeworld’s sector by the Ellimist. No Escafil devices have been made ever since because Collector magic was a necessary component of morphing technology.

2. The scientific name for the witch is Homo mysticus. The common ancestor of witches and humans was mutated into a new species via long-term exposure to magical energy after coming to the Demon Realm; it is how modern witches developed the ability to use magic. Their bile sacs also protect them from bacterial infections, allowing them to safely eat even the most putrid carrion; they like what humans consider bad smells such as rotting garbage and putrefying flesh as a result, and a necessary reason they don’t adopt this lifestyle when they have a choice is because decaying matter is the least nutritious out of all the foods they can eat. Luz is first confronted with the instincts of the witch when she and her starving teammates come across a dead Slitherbeast; she is caught off guard by the morph’s love of the smell of decomposing flesh and fights those instincts for as long as she can to preserve her pre-nothlit identity, eventually giving in weeks later when she eats a dead Trash Slug because of malnutrition and lack of any other food. While she does not attempt suicide a second time after realizing what she’s doing, the experience panics her into a dissociative fugue episode that leaves her vulnerable to an Archivist ambush before her teammates come to her rescue; it is here that Luz finally decides she must accept the witch morph she is trapped in as an essential part of herself - instincts and all - in order to function well enough to fight the Archivists.

3. While liberating the basilisks from the Archivists, Luz is separated from her teammates and captured along with King. The nothlit encounters the Collector from the TV series and gets him to convince the Archivists to restore her morphing powers when he brings up a ritual that he then suggests to his siblings they have for her to supposedly reforge her into their most powerful weapon. The ritual preformed by every Collector is conducted on Luz, who then acquires King and frees the little Titan when the Collector disrupts the brainwashing phase of the ritual. Realizing that they were tricked, the Archivists brutally murder the Collector in front of a hiding Luz. After the basilisks are relocated, Luz goes through the last standing time pool to acquire her past self from just before the events of Hollow Mind and comes back to her loved ones with her human morph before the Archivists forever close that pool like they did with the others.

4. The Archivists wiped out the basilisks shortly after driving the Titans to near extinction because they wrongly believed basilisks could drain Collector magic just as easily as other magic. The revived basilisks were imprisoned by the Archivists at the start of the invasion of the Demon Realm for fear that they would learn how to fight against Collectors and hamper the invasion effort, but the Hexsquad frees them all and hides them in a valley; they have since been useful allies of the Hexsquad.

5. Zero-space is not a part of the In Between Realm, but it is connected to other dimensions through the realm.

6. Towards the end of the story, Luz learns about her ultimate destiny from the Ellimist and has a falling out with her mother for not telling her about the vision. Camila explains that she hoped hiding this information from Luz would decrease the chances of the vision coming true. The nothlit does forgive her, but never gets the chance to tell her because Camila sacrifices her life to save her daughter’s. Luz angrily blames Gus for the sloppy construction of his plan to weaken the Archivists that put her in unnecessary danger and left her an orphan, never forgiving him even after the war ends; her relationship with Hunter also becomes permanently strained when he orders Amity to go on a suicide mission that would be the last straw in the Archivists surrendering without anybody else knowing about the mission beforehand. Her mother and girlfriend both dead, the nothlit withdraws from society; she does try to start a romantic relationship with Willow, who nothlits into Amity’s body in an attempt to ease their shared grief but then realizes that a relationship between them could never work because of what the war did to them.

7. Luz’s palisman never hatches at any point in the story because she uses the egg to save Vee’s life from a grievous wound inflicted by a Collector, destroying the palisman before it was even born. On the other hand, Flapjack and the other three palismen of the Hexsquad survive the war.

8. Palismen and Collectors don’t have DNA, so they can’t use the Escafil Device or be acquired; on the flip side, basilisks can’t use the Escafil Device for a different reason: the power to morph and their preexisting shapeshifting abilities would cancel one another out, leaving them unable to transform.

9. One power that the Collector as a species did not have a chance to exhibit in the original television series is the ability to possess lower life forms and then utilize the magic of their hosts along with their own. Like Controllers from the Animorphs book series, witches and demons possessed by Collectors have no visible indicators of them hosting an alien presence within their bodies; unlike Yeerks, Collectors can stay within the possessed without having to come out for the rest of a host’s life and only ever need to leave when their hosts die.

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"This idea of Morrowseer's, that we take over the MudWings and SandWings," Moonwatcher began, “I'm not sure it will work. The queens all have decreed there should be only one supreme ruler for each Pyrrhian tribe."

Her half sister flicked the tip of her tail. "Like Morrowseer said, that was a long time ago. Listen, Moonwatcher. The SandWings have always been a nuisance. Don't you think life would be better for all of us if they settled down under a queen who could make sure they stuck to the law? Don't you think you could do a better job of leading the MudWings than Queen Quail? Between us we could ensure that every dragon in Pyrrhia was strong and happy. No more battles, no more quarreling over territory ..."

"Well, maybe." Moon couldn't argue with the vision Stark set in front of her. It was true that strong queens could rule the continent for the good of every dragon. She remembered how the SandWing patrol had ignored Firefly’s cries for help when she was caught in the quicksand pit. If I were in charge, she thought, no one would ever watch a dragonet in pain without trying to help, no matter where that dragonet came from. She wanted every dragon in Pyrrhia to be cared for, but more than anything, she wanted what was best for the NightWings and RainWings. "But-" A faint cry interrupted her. "What was that?"

Stark shrugged. "Some unlucky bit of prey."

The cry came again. "No!" Moon exclaimed. "That's a dragon in trouble. Come on!"

She dived out of the ferns and pelted along the shore in the direction of the cry. It came again, closer but fainter, a horrible choking sound. Moon leaped across the roots of a tree and found herself face-to-face with Glory.

The RainWing queen lay on her side on a narrow path between close-growing ferns. Her limbs jerked feebly and her eyes gazed at nothing. Foam flecked her muzzle. Around her neck, half buried in her white scales, was a thin, shiny tendril, leading to a stick driven into the earth. Glory was caught in a snare that was choking her!

Moon leaped forward to help her, only to be thrust aside by Stark's powerful shoulder.

"Idiot!" the hybrid hissed. "This is your chance, Moonwatcher. You're the leader of the NightWings now. If Glory dies, you'll be leader of the RainWings as well."

Moon stared at her in astonishment. What is she telling me to do? Then she realized that Glory was trying to speak.

"Kinkajou told me … Thorn waiting on our territory. Had to come alone..."

Stark's eyes gleamed with triumph as she padded across to Glory and bent down to whisper in her ear. "But Thorn isn't here. We are. You're a fool, Glory. You were too easy to trap."

Moon felt the ground dip beneath her paws; she couldn't grasp the details, only that the absence of Thorn, and the SandWing scent on Stark, added up to something murderously evil. "You did this," she said to her half sister. "You arranged for Glory to be here, where there was a snare trap waiting."

"Of course." Stark sounded scornful. "I did it for you."

Glory's sides heaved as she fought for breath. Her gaze flickered from Stark to Moon and back again.

Moon could see that unless she loosened the wire right away, her queen would die.

Stark stepped back. "The brave RainWing queen," she sneered. "Not so powerful now, are you? Come on, Moonwatcher, finish her off."

Moon felt as though her paws were frozen to the bare earth. Every scale on her pelt prickled as she heard Morrowseer whispering in her ear: Kill her. No dragon will know. You can be ruler of the NightWings. You can have everything you have ever wanted.

She staggered as Stark gave her a vicious nudge, her tail lashing angrily. "What are you waiting for? This is what we have wanted all along, remember? Kill her now!"

Moon stared down at her queen. She still couldn't move.

She knew that all she had to do was tighten the noose around Glory’s neck, and she would stop breathing forever. Her gaze met Glory's, where her queen lay helpless in front of her.

Moon was aware of her father's spirit close beside her, urging her on. Fool! Kill her now!

Closing her eyes, Moon remembered seeing in Starflight’s mind Morrowseer being engulfed in lava before he could reach the portal to the rainforest in time. Her father’s spirit must have recalled the memory within her. "This is our chance to take revenge on Glory for our father's death. She could have tried to get him into the rainforest before the volcano erupted, but she just stood there as Morrowseer was burned alive,” Stark hissed.

Revenge? Moon wrenched her gaze from Glory to stare at her half sister. This wasn't about revenge. She knew very well that Morrowseer had willingly set his own paws on the path that led to his violent death.

All I want is to lead my subjects, she thought. But not like this. Her loyalty was not to the RainWings and NightWings alone, but to Glory too - the dragon who had mentored her, accepted her in spite of her father, and in the end had trusted her enough to hand over leadership of the NightWings to her. She had thought that loyalty to a tribe didn't necessarily mean loyalty to its ruler. That wasn't true.

Glory was the RainWing tribe.

"No," she said to Stark, amazed to hear her voice come out strong and steady. "I won't do it."

Leaping over to Glory's side, she began scrabbling in the earth, trying to dig up the stick that held the tendril taut around her queen's neck. "Keep still, Glory," she panted as the earth flew. "I'll have you out of this in a heartbeat." A yowl of protest battered her ears; she couldn't be sure whether it came from Stark or from the vengeful spirit of Morrowseer. Stark sprang at her, slamming into her side and knocking her off her paws. Moon was pinned under her. Stark's ice-blue eyes glared into hers.

"Coward!" Stark snarled, turning her claws on Glory and slicing the RainWing’s chest in search of the heart to crush under her claws. "Keep away and I'll kill her myself if I have to."

Never! Moon got up and threw herself on Stark to get her off the now hemorrhaging Glory before the hybrid could draw too much of the queen’s blood or get to a vital organ. While her half sister lay winded, she hurled herself at the stick again, grabbing it in her jaws. Her earlier digging had loosened it; now it came free altogether, and the tendril around Glory's neck slackened. She heard her queen draw a single gasping breath.

A fierce snarl behind her made her spin around to see Stark springing at her. Moon dodged to one side, letting the stick fall. She felt the sting of Stark's claws raking through her scales as her half sister leaped past her.

Spinning around, Moon faced Stark again, and saw a cold flame in the hybrid's ice-blue eyes.

"Traitor!" Stark spat. "You're a traitor to everything our father planned! You were never strong enough to be like him."

"I don't want to be like him," Moon retorted.

"Then you're a fool," Stark sneered. "You never realized that this was a test. It was Morrowseer's idea. He said that if you really deserved power, you would do anything to get it."

"Even kill my queen?"

"Especially that. But you're as weak as Morrowseer feared. We have great plans for Pyrrhia, he and I, and you could have shared in them. But we don't need you if all you will ever be to us is a hindrance."

Moon understood exactly what her half sister was saying. She knew too much. Stark could not let her or Glory live now; that must have been part of the plan from the beginning.

She took a step toward Stark. "Go back to the IceWings. You're my sister. I don't want to hurt you."

"Because you're weak," Stark taunted her. "You care more for your friends and family than power. But I don't."

She leaped for Moon again, carrying her off her paws and pinning her down. Her ice-blue eyes blazed close to Moon's own. Moon felt sharp claws digging deep into her scales and saw teeth snapping at her throat. She struggled vainly to rake Stark's belly with her hind paws, feeling her own death a heartbeat away. To save herself, to save Glory and the RainWings, there was only one thing she could do.

Writhing from side to side, she spotted the stick from the snare trap lying half under her shoulder. She strained her neck and managed to grab it in her teeth. As Stark lunged down toward her she heaved the stick around and felt the sharpened end sink deep into Stark's throat. Stark stiffened with a horrible gurgling sound, then fell limp and heavy on Moon's chest.

Shocked, Moon struggled free of her half sister’s body and let go of the stick. It fell to the ground, leaving a ragged wound in Stark’s throat. Violet blood splashed onto the earth, faster and faster until it started to spill down toward the lakeshore.

"Stark!" Moon gasped. "I - I didn't want this."

Amazingly, her half sister pushed herself to her paws and staggered toward her. Moon braced herself, not knowing whether to expect another attack or an appeal for help.

"Fool!" Stark rasped; the effort of speaking made the blood pour even faster from her terrible wound. "Do you think I did this alone? Do you think you're safe within your own tribe?" She coughed, spitting out clots of blood, and added, "Think again!"

"What?" Moon took a step toward her, her forepaws splashing in the purple pool. Was Stark accusing a RainWing or a NightWing of leading Glory into this trap?

"What do you mean? Tell me, Stark! Who do you mean?" But the cold fire was leaving Stark's eyes. She turned away from Moon, staggered a few paces through the ferns, and collapsed beside the lake, her haunches trailing in the water. Tiny waves rippled over her body, and her blood spread out in a violet cloud.

Moon gazed down at her. There was so much more that she needed to know—but Stark was dead.

For a moment, her half sister's voice echoed softly in her ears: We will meet again, my sister. This is not over yet.

(For context: Morrowseer’s spirit went to an afterlife called the Void, which holds the souls of every evil Pyrrhian dragon who has died; other residents include Blister, Burn, Albatross, Scarlet, Queen Lagoon, Prudence, Arctic, Crocodile, Allknowing, Slaughter, Vengeance, Battlewinner, Diamond, Firestorm, Narwhal, Jerboa I, Orca, Preyhunter, Quickdeath, Sandstorm, Scorpion, Snowflake, Snowfox, Vigilance, Viper, Whirlpool, and later Sora and Stark.)

(Stark is the daughter of Morrowseer and Wolf the banished IceWing. She was conceived in 5,009 AS when her father impregnated her mother, who he found unconscious. Since her parents never knew one another, Stark only ever found out who her father was when Morrowseer’s spirit visited her dreams since 5,016 AS. Wolf died when her only dragonet was 5 years old; before being discovered by the Talons of Peace in 5,017 AS, Stark had been living away from civilization all this time. Moonwatcher first meets the hybrid when she accidentally dreams her way into the Void, similar to how Stark became the first living dragon to discover the afterlife. Stark swallows her skyfire to keep her thoughts safe from telepaths who try to take it from her, though she has taught her half sister to be less mistrustful of new dragons whose minds are unreadable.)

(Moorhen died of an illness before any of her daughters can kill her for the throne but chose her oldest sister Quail as her successor with her last breath. Moorhen’s middle daughter Curassow does not take this lying down and is convinced by Stark to attempt an assassination on Quail in a coup for the throne, but dies when Cattail breaks her neck.)

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Still mourning Fezandipiti after he sacrificed himself to protect it, Pecharunt has decided to make a replacement out of a human as part of an experiment to see if its Binding Mochi can grant whatever wish a non-Pokémon may have. When it spots Luna Loud wishing she was more beautiful so that Sam will want to take their relationship to the next level, it gets the idea to sneak a piece of mochi into her picnic before revealing itself as her new master. Luna is horribly poisoned when she eats the mochi, but when she is at the point between life and death she transforms. She wakes up as a gorgeous pheasant that makes her girlfriend absolutely nuts for her through her pheromones and upstages Lola at every beauty pageant, but at the cost of being unable to disobey any order Pecharunt gives her because of the Toxic Chain that had made her pretty in the first place constraining her to its will. Her siblings realize what has happened to her and go after Pecharunt in the hopes of freeing her from its command before it can make her do something horrible to an innocent, Lisa using the tracking chip in Luna to find her. Upon arriving in Kitikami, Pecharunt and Luna conduct a surprise attack on Ogerpon to steal the Teal Mask, but Pecharunt is sealed into a Poké Ball by Lincoln before it could seriously hurt Ogerpon through Luna. With her master defeated, Luna regains control of herself but is stuck as a pheasant Pokémon due to her Toxic Chain being fused permanently to her body. She flies back to Royal Woods to explain all of what had happened to her to Sam, who is understanding of Luna’s predicament instead of annoyed at her but worried that the Toxic Chain could still cause problems in the wearer’s everyday life. The Loud family assures her that they will make up for whatever trouble the chain might bring by putting it to good use, like fighting crime or helping in world-changing science experiments.

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Tsunami appoints Sunny as the new headmaster of Jade Mountain Academy and returns to the Kingdom of the Sea, only to be tricked into a royal challenge by Coral. The SeaWing dragonet of destiny receives the recently deceased queen’s suicide note from Herring after killing her, wondering what could’ve made Coral suicidal after reading that she intended for her oldest daughter to kill her instead of using her own claws to kill herself so that there would be no War of SeaWing Succession. As the new queen of the SeaWings, Tsunami struggles in her grief to run the kingdom smoothly and is weighed down by so much guilt for not knowing that her mother was suffering from severe depression. Her siblings insist that she should never have gotten too emotionally attached to Coral given how often queens are killed by their own kin, while the other living queens give her advice on how to move on from killing her parents and remind her that sometimes she will need to reach out for help from friends whenever the pressures of being queen seem to much. Tsunami reflects upon the RainWing royal challenge and starts to believe that it needs to replace the royal challenge the other tribes share, so she devises her own version with help from Glory; this new challenge will involve a competition to see which princess can catch the most fish until the tide fully recedes, a race to determine the fastest swimmer among the heirs, and a contest to decide the royal with the most fluent Aquatic. When she finally has enough free time, she spends it solving the mystery of who or what drove Coral to suicide. Through interrogation of as many citizens as possible, she deduces that the last straw for the previous queen was an exiled SeaWing using the remnants of Darkstalker’s scroll to give her mother nightmares about what he plans to do to the royal family as revenge for putting a bounty on the heads of his family. While asking Kinkajou about where the remaining pieces of the scroll ended up after Darkstalker transformed into Peacemaker, they put together that the scraps were stolen by the exiled SeaWing after he heard about what happened from Turtle and replaced with fragments of a just as old blank scroll so that nobody would look for them. Kinkajou never had what was left of Darkstalker’s scroll destroyed because she wanted to use the scraps for the benefit of the RainWings but had a hard time deciding the best things to write down when she had a limited amount of magic to work with.

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The universe seemed to conspire to create Luz. Her father was the Andalite Manny, a deserter of his people who fled to Earth and took on the role of a human. Her mother was Camila, a girl abducted and taken across the galaxy, who was rapidly aged to adulthood; she wound up using a tool of the Ellimist - a literal god machine called the Time Matrix - to rewrite all of reality, to create a new reality where she was always that age. Without doing this, Luz might’ve been born 5 - 10 years later than she was, if she had been born at all. And then, when the couple discovered that Manny unknowingly contracted a genetic terminal illness from the human morph he had hastily made to live in for the rest of his life, they made a pact to keep the truth behind their child’s birth a secret from her to ensure she would not get herself involved in the dangerous alien politics of her father’s people in response to the Ellimist showing them a future where their daughter fought a bloody war against the Andalites’ mortal enemy: the Archivists. Before he died, Manny introduced his daughter to what would soon become her favorite series: The Good Witch Azura; it birthed her passion for fantasy and inspired her life goal of becoming a witch. Growing up, Luz had a creative spark that alienated her from other humans, who resented and ostracized her because they could not understand her unusual behavior. Her eccentricities resulted in her being unable to make any friends - as other children found her weird and repulsive - while she also received disgust from adult onlookers who would regularly openly criticize her for her behavior. Fully aware of what others thought of her and still grieving Manny, she tried to find escapes from her reality, whether it was playing with her Azura toys or reading about mythical creatures. Luz was also bullied by her classmates, who frequently made fun of her for her antics; these experiences resulted in Luz becoming fearful of interacting with humans her age and her relationship with her mother being strained, as Camila became increasingly concerned by Luz's utter lack of friendship. Desperate to reconnect with her mother, Luz orchestrated an elaborate presentation for her book report at school in an attempt to ease Camila's worries about her and prove that her interests could be used productively in her everyday life; it only further convinced Camila to send her child to summer camp where she hoped her daughter would finally learn to curb her wild imagination. Wanting nothing to do with a camp which would also disapprove of her being herself, Luz wandered through a portal to discover a magical society from another dimension that encouraged her to further explore her predilections and accepted her for who she was: the Boiling Isles.

For Luz, it started like a storybook; she may not have been born with innate powers, but she did learn about glyph magic - magic that gave her the ability to generate light out of nothingness, the means to freeze moisture in the air into ice. She loved the Demon Realm; it allowed the ultimate escape from the sinkhole of a life she had. She started to form this conflict with the Coven System in broad strokes. The opportunity to be the hero her role model Azura was motivated her to concoct a plan to bring the oppressive magic system and its dictatorial emperor down, blind to the complexities of the conflict, blind to the overwhelming odds. When she finally confronted Emperor Belos, she was overpowered and forced to give up the portal. After learning that he wanted to use the portal to take over the Human Realm, she wondered, What if I don’t go back to my old life? I can escape it now. I don’t have to go back to that pain. So Luz rigged the portal to go up in flames before either she or Belos could use it to return home, and found herself stuck in the Demon Realm. Luz would soon regret this, and declared to find a way back to her old life with her mother. She stayed with Eda while trapped in an alternate dimension, gathering components to build a new portal, but it wasn’t enough. She needed to employ more drastic measures to procure everything for a doorway back to the Human Realm, like time travel to the Boiling Isles of the past just before Belos rose to power; it was there Belos manipulated her to teach him the apocalyptic Draining Spell, and when she found out, she blamed herself for the near-destruction of the Demon Realm and fell into a deep depression. By the time she made it back to the Human Realm, Belos possessed her body and forced her to reveal to her loved ones her role in his attempted genocide of all witches; it left her so distraught that she attempted a murder-suicide on him. Her mother and friends were able to save her from killing herself, but Belos still wanted her dead, so he left behind some of his toxic essence within her.

After that, however, it was as if a weight had been lifted; Luz finally accepted that this was no storybook and that this life was hard and complex when the spirit of the Boiling Isles saved her from Belos by permanently transforming her into a clone of Eda, and she found a certain amount of pride for being self-sufficient for the first time in her life. Being stuck as a witch while her friends kept their morphing powers, Luz was mostly regulated to a supporting position following the Hexsquad’s return to the Demon Realm, acting as surveillance, following witches possessed by Collectors, mapping out Archivist strongholds, and keeping an invisible eye on the team as they went on missions. But even having found some modicum of stability for herself, the universe continued to throw curveballs at Luz. She tricked the Archivists into restoring her morphing powers, allowing her to gather all the formerly captive basilisks to their hideout; an Archivist posed as one of her relatives; her relationship with Camila was permanently strained when she found out about the vision the Ellimist showed her parents just when mother and daughter were starting to understand one another; and she finally learned what her father really was. Luz began an unconventional relationship with Amity, one that at different times could be seen as romantic or mothering; it was an insecure relationship, one challenged by their biological age gap. Was it fair for Luz to have something when she wouldn’t have the full lifespan to enjoy it? Was it fair when the times were limited when she could hold her hand, take her on dates, enjoy a meal? The universe seemed to conspire to create Luz, but to what end? There never seemed to be an end goal to it, an ah-ha moment that gave Luz’s life a grand sense of purpose, and with every step Luz made to some kind of stable life, to a life that made a little bit of sense, something was there to push her two steps back. Perhaps Luz should be celebrated that she kept fighting despite all of this, kept doing the right thing, but losing Amity and Camila was one push too many at the end.

[caseeliz]

Eda nothlit!Luz: Part Two

While possessing Raine, Belos manages to contact the Archivists by convincing the Collector to summon them in the hopes that they can put him in a body that does not need to possess other creatures in order to survive. When they arrive, they imprison the Collector and state that they will only fulfill Belos’s wish if he agrees to help them in their conquest of enslaving the entire Demon Realm via possession of all witches and demons. When he pretends to accept their offer, they turn him back into a fully normal human without any powers and bring him to the furthest reaches of space to plan out their invasion; there, he tells the Archivists everything he knows about the resistance happening on the Boiling Isles and gets put in charge of conquering it with a squadron of collectors under his command.

Now that Belos has left their body, Raine makes it back to the Boiling Isles to warn everyone after playing dead in order to avoid being taken as another prisoner. After finding them, the Bard Coven head brings Eda and King to where Luz’s team is hiding out. When seeing the newly nothlited Luz for the first time, the three are convinced that this lookalike of Eda is in fact the human they came to know and love when she starts using thought-speak. In the middle of the former human recapitulating what happened to her when she was away, King gets the idea to create an army of witches that includes Luz’s teammates and turn them into Titans using the Demon Realm’s Escafil Device after Raine brings up the Archivists’ invasion plans. Luz leads them to the cube, but she and Eda discover that the Owl Beast will not let his host accept the morphing power. He explains that he and a few other members of his species were experimented on by the developers of this technology before it was used on any other species; it was how he got his transmogrification abilities.

When Luz and Eda bring the cube back to the hideout, the Owl Beast takes them to the archipelago he used to live on before he was sealed into a scroll for escaping from his torturers. It is there that they uncover notes written by the Andalite Escafil and given to the Archivists who camped out there about the progress made on the development of the cube. The records say that Escafil and his team of Andalite scientists carried out the experiments on the same archipelago the Owl Beast was from, while the Archivists living on the archipelago learned from the Andalite inventor how overriding one’s DNA with another’s could theoretically turn living creatures into different species. Luz deduces that Eda learned the “body swap” spell from the Owl Beast and avoided referring to it as a morphing spell to hide from him what it really was in case he would have stopped her from casting it; the Clawthorne confirms that not only did he unwittingly teach her it, but also that her use of it on herself and the two other residents of the Owl House was the turning point in her elixirs losing their effectiveness because he was angry at her for using a power that was conceived from his suffering. With this knowledge, Luz and Eda begin to question whether they should even use the cube.

[caseeliz]

Eda nothlit!Luz: Part One

She was a sweet, poetic kind of girl. The kind bullies love to pick on. She used to have brown, out-of-control hair and dreamy eyes that always seemed to be looking at something no one else could see.

Used to...

Now she has striking, fierce eyes that look through you like laser beams. Now she has long gray hair, and ghostly white skin, and an angular face, and clawed hands, and an imposingly tall stature.

A piece of Belos landed on Luz instead of Hunter when he was splattered to the wall by the Collector. In the Human Realm, the unhealed scar he gave her gives Belos an opening into her body, and he slips into her system unnoticed. During Halloween, he takes control of her when she and Hunter come across a vial of Titan’s Blood. While confessing to her loved ones that she helped Belos find the Collector and showed him the Light Glyph, Luz attempts a murder-suicide on the emperor by trying to drown herself in the graveyard swamp’s waters with him in her body after she wrestles back control. They both survive, but the possession severely prostrates Luz and covers her in scars by the time Belos leaves her body to return to the Demon Realm using the Titan’s Blood. Luz chases him to the other side of the portal with what little strength she has, her mother and friends following her.

Back in the Boiling Isles, nobody knows how to save Luz when she starts to waste away after collapsing a few feet from the portal. When she reaches the point between life and death, her spirit meets King’s father in the In Between Realm. He gives her the power to morph and tells her that she already has Eda’s DNA in her from the “body swap” spell, which was actually a morphing spell. She is able to transform into a genetic copy of Eda with the location of an Escafil Device in the Demon Realm and the knowledge of where on planet Earth another morphing cube is imparted to her by the Titan before returning to the mortal plane, but discovers that her newfound morphing powers can’t heal her unmorphed form since there is still some of Belos’s unremovable essence within her human body which - instead of being purged - is sent into Z-space along with her original form by morphing and takes effect again if she demorphs. She becomes a nothlit - a person who lost their morphing powers because they got trapped for the rest of their life in a morph by staying morphed for more than two hours at a time - to safely shunt away the leftover part of Belos that had been slowly killing her forever, though her palisman egg that she brought to the Demon Realm does not hatch despite her finally achieving her dream of becoming a witch.

Realizing that the Titan screwed her over as much as he saved her life, Luz becomes even more despondent and begins to doubt her relationship with Amity could still work now that everyone will think she is too old to be having even a crush on a 14-year-old witch. Camila can’t look at her without getting uncomfortable or sad (which is initially assumed to be because the body Luz trapped herself in is to her mom the copied body of a complete stranger, but is later revealed to be that Luz’s acquisition of morphing powers signified to her mother that the vision shown by the Ellimist is all but guaranteed to happen), which leads her to think that her mother is acting as though she really did die; this gets Luz wondering if she is even still Luz or if her late father Manny would still be Manny if he gained morphing powers and used them to nothlit into another body to cure the terminal disease he had, which in my story was genetic and thus could not have been removed through any other means. Amity assures her that a way for Luz to regain her morphing powers which comes with the restoration of her human body will be found when they get their hands on an Escafil Device, and the team tries to cheer her up by saying they do not blame her for the Day of Unity as Belos manipulated her; Hunter even states that Belos most likely would've used somebody else instead if he hadn’t used Luz, while Camila asserts that she does not think she lost Luz when her child’s only two options were to get stuck in a morph or die. Her resolve back, Luz declares it is time to fight back against the emperor.

My name is Luz. A freak of nature. One of a kind. I won't tell you my last name. I can't tell you my last name. Or the name of the city where I live. I want to tell you everything, but I can't give any clues to my true identity. Or the identity of the others. Everything I will tell you is true. I know it's going to seem unbelievable, but believe it anyway. I am Luz. I'm a normal kid, I guess. Or used to be. I used to do okay in school. Not great, but not bad either. Just okay. I guess I was a dweeb, kind of. Big, but not big enough to keep from getting picked on. I had brown hair, kind of wild because I could never get it to look right. My eyes were . . . what color were my eyes? It's only been a few weeks, and already I'm forgetting things about my human self.

[caseeliz]

The Flames of Hope rewritten

Axolotl is not nonbinary.

Cottonmouth has no feathers in his hair and is coded the same way as all the other humans in the series. There are no humans with poorly described skin colors or brown leather coats, by the way.

Freedom still wants a life, but also wants to stop Cottonmouth when we first see her (despite not having any idea how to do so until she meets Luna) instead of wanting to help Luna kill him only after being convinced by her. She is never called “Lizard” by Cottonmouth; she instead has no name initially.

The wording is chosen carefully enough to rule out implications of eugenics and selective breeding done by humans to dragons. We never see graphic abuse against or dehumanization of any dragonets.

Luna’s spirit is separated from her body by Freedom (who wishes to possess it in order to live again and is able to convince Luna to willingly give away her body as part of a plan to stop Cottonmouth when everything else has failed) and becomes one of the spirits controlling the othermind mindscape along with Cottonmouth and formerly Freedom. Freedom gets to live in Luna’s body until it expires from old age, while the real Luna dies when Freedom uses the body to destroy the othermind. (Cottonmouth tries to stop them, but either he has lost all control over the body because a different spirit is inhabiting it or Freedom is able to fight through his control unlike his other victims because of her experience as one of the spirits running the mindscape; if it’s the latter, then Luna might help by grabbing ahold of him when he tries to jump into her body.) Freedom in Luna’s body is able to convince everyone of the real Luna’s death with help from Moonwatcher, and all of Pantala holds one big memorial service for Luna to venerate her as the hero who saved the world. To further cement that Luna really is dead, Freedom will never gain access to any of her memories; that said, Freedom is the one who founds the LeafSilk kingdom after Luna told her about her vision of the Pantalan tribes living peacefully together and asked her to fulfill her dying wish of having it established.

[caseeliz]

Hello? Hi, I’m Steven. Buddwick said you were looking for me. Welcome to heaven, and congratulations on finding your way here! I know it’s not easy. Don’t worry, you’ll be allowed to leave after we’ve talked. It is not your time to stay, little one.

Let’s sit down on that patch of moss beneath the willow tree. The sun can grow quite hot here, enough to scorch dark skin, but the moss will keep us cool. Are you comfortable? Good. We shouldn’t be disturbed here. Most of the people here will have found their own sunning places by now.

So, you’d like to know about Connie and Geode, would you? Well, Connie is the president, and Geode is her husband. Connie was just an ordinary girl when I first met her, riding her bike and wearing big glasses⎯

What? You know this already? So why⎯ Ah. I get it. You want to know what I think of Connie and Geode, don’t you? Okay. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t know why you’re interested—everyone in heaven knows how I feel about the current president, but they’re too polite to say anything. After all, I’m just a kid, and she is an adult.

And of course, I’m in heaven now, while Connie is still very much alive, with a few years yet to live. She has a husband, too, who has given her two girls and stayed by her side all through the Great Journey and never stopped loving her, not even when it looked as if humanity would not survive in their new home. Perhaps you think I should have gotten over her by now, that I should have given up long ago and accepted that we could only ever be friends? I can tell by the way your eyes have narrowed that this is exactly what you think. But like everyone here, you’re too kind to say anything. Do you think I don’t know how hopeless this is? Do you think I still hope that she’ll be mine one day, that somehow I’ll stop being a kid and Geode will vanish like the dew, and everybody will forget that we should never have been together?

I’m sorry, you asked an honest question and it’s only fair I should give you an honest answer without getting mad. The truth is, I love Connie now as much as I ever did, and I’ll watch over her forever, knowing that she can never be mine. She belongs to Geode. But my heart is hers, and always will be. It wasn’t love at first sight, you know. When we first met, it was at a boardwalk parade. I saw her drop her bracelet and decided to keep it in my freezer so I could return it the next time I saw her. When I gave it back to her, she recognized me from the parade, and we became fast friends after I saved her from a rockfall and a corrupted gem, though we both felt that what was between us could be more than just a friendship, even if I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly our relationship could develop into.

The first time we showed any feelings for each other was our first picnic together, when Connie asked how I was doing. I tried to act like nothing was wrong when Amethyst had nearly died and I hadn’t been able to heal her. She could see my fear that I would never be good enough for the Crystal Gems through my façade, and that was when we inadvertently discovered that I did have healing powers after she swallowed my spit in the juice we shared. Since then, she’d been able to break through my facades to get me to admit how I actually felt whenever something troubled me. I guess we would have never been able to fuse if she couldn’t do that.

After our first time fusing, we had been on so many adventures together, from training with Pearl and Amethyst to hunting corrupted gems. My favorite adventure with her was not saving the world from White Diamond, but racing with Kevin. It was the least dangerous one we both undertook, and I needed a change of pace after all that fighting. And with each adventure, our love for each other grew, and it almost always felt like nothing could get in the way of our special relationship. Of course, weeks before my death, I prematurely proposed to her, afraid that she would unknowingly abandon me like my other friends had seemingly but not actually done when I needed their reassurance and support the most. It only created a wedge between us, and since then my powers had gotten more dangerous and harder to control until it was too late for her to save me from them.

When I turned into a corrupted gem and had my throat slit by Cherry Quartz to stop me from destroying Little Homeworld further, I stayed on the hill for a day, wishing Connie could see my spirit during my impromptu funeral. I know it’s not her fault she had no idea I was struggling, but I should not have died then!

Even if I always had to be a kid, cut off from Connie by an age gap in the most meaningful ways, I could have walked beside her as she became a politician, and then candidate and president. Instead, I was condemned to watch her from far away, not always clearly, like gazing at fish flitting at the bottom of a pool. Sometimes ripples hid her from me, and I would pace in heaven night after night, searching for her. When I found her again, things would be different; she would have seen things, done things without me knowing, and it was like meeting a stranger for the first time. But I never stopped watching, never gave up on trying to help her. I walked with her in her dreams, shared her fears, guided her with all the knowledge that being in heaven gave me. I know how much she looked forward to seeing me, how glad she was to see me. Can you imagine how much that hurts, to be closer to her now that I am in heaven than we were when I was alive?

After one of those moonless nights, Geode was her husband, and I knew that the invisible river between us had grown too wide to leap across. Did you know that she once came looking for me in a dream, sought me out to explain that she had to move on and that she couldn’t be in love with a memory anymore? I am not a memory! I wanted to cry out. I am here, I still love you. I will walk beside you forever. But what is that compared with the warmth that Geode can offer her, the solid presence of a husband to help her lead her country, to give her beautiful children and watch their kin grow up together? I will still be young when Connie grows old, but Geode will match her step for step, reflecting her graying hair and slowing feet like a pool of clear water. Does Connie love Geode? Oh yes, I have no doubt about that. Geode is a good husband to her; anybody can see how much he loves her, how much he believes in her as president of the United States. Their daughters are wonderful people, and I love them as if they were my own. Stanley has a special destiny, just like her mother did, and it is an honor to be able to walk in her dreams and guide her. But sometimes I can’t help wishing that I was her father instead, standing side by side with Connie to watch her grow. I will do everything I can to make sure that no harm comes to her, or to her sister, Jessica, until the time is right for them to join me here.

Look, the shadows are lengthening, it’s time for you to go. Jenny will show you to the border. Jenny, come here, please! Thank you for visiting. I hope I’ve told you what you wanted to hear—and if I haven’t, then perhaps it’s best to say nothing of our conversation. Especially not to Connie! The truth is that she and Geode are happy, which is all that matters. I could wish and wish for things to be different, but they aren’t, and never will be. I would not change a single heartbeat of my life, nor all the time since, if it meant losing a moment of Connie’s friendship.

Now, go well, and may heaven walk your path always.

[caseeliz]

Pokémon types for Steven Universe and The Powerpuff Girls

Blossom: Fighting/Fairy

Bubbles: Fairy/Flying

Buttercup: Fighting/Flying

Steven: Fairy/Fighting

Pearl: Fairy

Amethyst: Fighting

Garnet: Psychic/Fighting

Lion: Fairy

Ruby: Fire/Fighting

Sapphire: Psychic/Ice

Lapis: Water/Flying

Peridot: Steel

Opal: Fairy

Sardonyx: Fairy

Sugilite: Dark/Fighting

Alexandrite: Dragon/Fighting

Obsidian: Rock/Dragon

[caseeliz]

Some hundreds of years may have passed. Bristlefrost had no idea. Her sense of time was being randomly accelerated and retarded. When she thought of the word “now,” she guessed it had taken her ten moons just to think it. She couldn’t be sure.

She knew she still existed because she wouldn’t be thinking at all if she didn’t. She could still dream, wonder, and lament. She remembered the friends and family she had left behind. She wished-

Well, it didn’t matter. She knew she saved everyone from Ashfur, but still, she could not forget the face Rootspring had when she disappeared forever.

She was in an endless void with no light, just floating there as if in water, turning slowly and drifting randomly to nowhere. No sounds could be heard, and when she tried to call out, she couldn’t make a noise. She guessed that Redwillow and Ashfur were in the void too, but far away from each other so that none of them would ever see one another again.

She had thought she had known what hell was before when she entered the Dark Forest. She had been wrong. The Place of No Stars was not even a shadow of the hell she was in now. The void made sure she would suffer eternally.

On the one paw, knowing that Ashfur would never terrorize the Clans again thanks to her made her a little happier. But on the other, she wished she had thought of a different way of getting rid of him whenever she looked back to when she sacrificed her spot in StarClan to knock Ashfur into the Dark Forest’s waters. If she had just fought him, she would be with her ancestors instead of floating in this pitch black void alone. But she had damned herself to the same fate she had given Ashfur, and she could never escape.

She had no voice, and she must scream.

[caseeliz]

Would Korra kill baby Sozin?

[caseeliz]

It turn out dragons have been speaking Dragon, or Hoolian, long before the Scorching, when it wasn’t a written language, but nobody except the healer Rock knew about it until now. At that time, cats and owls who were interested in dragon culture came to dragons to learn how to speak the language, but after they parted ways, the owls gave the language the name Hoolian instead of Dragon, teaching it to other animals and developing a writing system for it that is different from the dragons’; the cats on the other talon (or paw) never used one. They’ve all been speaking the same language ever since.

[caseeliz]

Does anyone know who the artist of this drawing is?

[caseeliz]

Yang: Don’t look at me. I didn’t know Happy Tree Friends would be violent and gory either.

Yin: You still could’ve discouraged me from watching it! You hated the show as soon as we first heard of it, after all!

Yang: Yeah, some big brother I am.