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Xander and Spike engage in low stakes, music based, psychological warfare while Spike is tied to a chair in the Harris Basement.

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Culmination of a running gag from a hypothetical season 4 where Oz doesn't get written out. People keep accidentally leaving Willow's ex Boyfriend and her Current Girlfriend in a room alone together, the camera cuts to the next scene after a couple seconds of silence. After three episodes of this, the rest of the Scoobies are shocked to discover that they are, actually, friends and we see them hang out together for real.

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Yo, you know Rise of Red, the Time Travel Descendants film about time travel? What if it didn't have time travel, and also the character arcs were complete and made sense as a single work.

Welcome to the Urban Resistance AU. It's a game of cat and mouse through Auradon. The Queen of Hearts does her Coup and Chloe and Red escape, but instead of using the Pocketwatch, they have to learn to trust each other and get along while escaping the card soldiers and attempting to thwart the sweeping changes of the new Regime.

Chloe, Our Knight in Shining Armor and face of the resistance, skilled in close quarters combat and community organization, has to stop being precious about how to accomplish her goals and accept help from unlikely places. Her glass slipper shatters when she stops holding back and lands a roundhouse kick on a guard to protect Red.

Red, Our Shadow behind the scenes, familiar with how her mother thinks and plans, good at stealth and parkour, and the only person in Auradon with practical, structured, magic training that's not in prison, has to learn how to work with other people and gain their trust. It's revealed at the climax that her supposed betrayal in the second act was a planned ruse.

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Oz, you were so fun and I know what the writers did in season 4 when Seth Green wanted to leave wasn't you.

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You ever think about the fact that Dru was probably with Spike when he killed his second Slayer in 1977 New York?

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NEW Chapter of Cheating on Truth out now.

Scotty goes Vulturing. He meets some new people. Features the Townies, a decomposing raccoon, and a daring escape. Hey also, I am not joking around about the Animal Death and Gore this chapter.

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NEW Chapter of Cheating on Truth out now.

Scotty goes Vulturing. He meets some new people. Features the Townies, a decomposing raccoon, and a daring escape. Hey also, I am not joking around about the Animal Death and Gore this chapter.

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Uh oh, I talked too much shit during family movie night and now I have a new work posted.

What if Jack was more Jack in Chronicles? He tilts his head a little, looking, and they mirror it exactly. Too exactly. Pride and a nauseating sort of anger fight for space inside his chest. He nods his head at Jack and dispatches the circling small fry. She’s gone by the time he’s finished. Whisper silent and unobtrusive.

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That Spectra fan blog has catapulted me back into my love for Tom Comet, here’s the lad.

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What if Mattel made 3 whole people happy and rebooted failed 80s doll line Spectra and the Shimmerons?

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Dropping 4 short fics and a new chapter for a completed oneshot on Ao3, all in different fandoms, at ten pm on a random Tuesday. I love to make choices.

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This is Just Daring Charming and Cerise Hood kissing.

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Exploiting my Zombies hyperfixation to get better at drawing likenesses.

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Remember when I posted art on here?

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Robot Meat

He tips his head back, makes a noise when the cords attach to the ports on his forehead. Half a groan with a clicking stutter as his brain rushes to feel the rest of his body, his buddy, his Power. His blood pumps through his veins in sync with the coolant and fuel and hydraulic fluid. His second heart revs to life. He opens all eight of his eyes, feeling the usual creeping sensation as he sees the back of his own head from a few too many angles. Speedmaster is not strictly his body, admitting that the meat that lets him connect his nerves to the metal and muscle of a machine that, by design, isn’t supposed to think feels like a conversation could get a person thrown out of the army. He’s done that already, without needing to say anything stupid. He rolls his shoulders and Speedmaster mirrors the motion across the flaps of its carapace. Disengaging from its harness and closing with a click that rattles appreciably through his whole body.

Trava’s read the history books. He’s fought thinking weapons. He knows why that’s scary, it’s just, there’s a tingling itch in his brain, his fingertips, down his spine, where Speedmaster is supposed to be. They belong to each other. That’s why they all had to go. Because after what they’d become, after Speedmaster started to reach out and catch him, they couldn’t be anything else. They don’t want to be anything else. Trava keeps his body still and steady as the launching jut extends even if inside he’s vibrating at being able to see the jet dark around him, filling his vision until it’s just him and the stars dotting space around him and Trava’s body from behind, the back of his head and all. He was discharged for being too good. That’s how he tells it, that’s how Shinkai tells it. It makes them sound cocky in a way that neatly covers the truth of the matter. Which is that being as good as he was, as they were, him and Shinkai and Speedmaster, together, is a symptom. It is supposed to be impossible what they do, the three of them. He thinks it happens more often than they’re willing to admit. He knows pilots who never adjust right to a new power after a promotion or an old power jittering brokenly through startup after its last pilot died. Shinkai can tell stories about mechanics who follow their pet projects around and how they never behave just right without them. They’re just, the most. And they were obvious. His numbers got too good. People pay attention to things like that in the military. They have to notice Speedmaster making adjustments too fast for even Trava’s species’ reflexes eventually. And they see Shinkai mumble to himself as ports in and cleans and calibrates and repairs so precisely, never even checking systems that don’t need it.

Just because Speedmaster isn’t a Thinking Weapon doesn’t mean it doesn’t think. It just can’t move unless Trava and Shinkai listen to it. And Trava loves listening. He launches with a whoop and snaps in an erratic dance around the ship. 

Look, Shinkai, look at what we can do, at what we are, at how well you keep us together.

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Thad, Billy, and Doing it by Yourself

Concept: Post-Mercury Falling Thad strikes out to become a solo hero. If he can become a better hero than Impulse, without Impulse's help, that's still replacing Impulse like he planned. Fawcett City has spotty outside reporting and no Flash presence. So no one will even be able to see him. It's perfect. Or, it would be if 30th century records were reliable. Captain Marvel has this Speed of Mercury thing. Billy just wants to make friends with a rare visiting hero.

The first clue should probably be the convenience store robbers that keep having their guns disappear out of their hands. It’s kinda funny? Billy doesn’t know if it’s supposed to be a joke so he tries to keep Captain Marvel professional while the current robber rants about how she was holding it and it was just gone. He says something about necessity and hurting other people and asks her to look at the teenager who’d been manning the register and ask if she really thinks that two hundred eighty bucks is really worth pointing a gun at him. Guns can kill people. The kid grimaces at them, but the robber looks guilty, so he’s going to call it a win. He doesn’t think about it much until later.

Billy is surveying the city when he notices. He doesn’t technically need to, Speed of Mercury and all, but it’s the afternoon and he’s settled into summer routine enough to know he doesn’t have anywhere to be until the evening. It’s not enough time for him to leave to do anything interesting, not if he wants to get back to Fawcett in time. And he needs to be back in Fawcett in time. Homelessness is like that, a lot of hurry up and wait on very rigid schedules. Besides, Captain Marvel doesn’t really get hungry, so he’s patrolling. It keeps him busy.

The point is that he sees the green and black blur enter the bank in main almost the instant after the alarm goes off. The wisdom of Solomon tells him to wait and see what’s happening before going in like he’d planned. Ten seconds pass, moving slower than usual with Billy’s focus on the bank. The alarm turns off, which, it shouldn’t. Billy’s stopped a robbery in that bank before and it takes ages to shut off the alarm, because they need a couple of managers with keys and codes and to make a call to the police station. Billy’s actually apologized and left early once the robbers were dealt with before, because the noise was getting to his enhanced senses. He tilts his head and squints at the shadow moving behind the door. Another five seconds pass.

The black and green blur reappears, more clearly now that Billy’s paying attention. It’s a teen, hero? He’s not carrying anything with him, but he’s also not anyone Billy’s ever heard of. He looks like a Flash, maybe. With the speed and the thingies on the mask. His hair’s short and a reddish brown, but it’s growing back in blonde at the roots. Billy’s kind of excited. There aren’t a lot of outside teen heroes that pass through Fawcett. Well, even if he is a villain, it’s probably for the best for Billy to introduce himself. Well, not himself. Captain Marvel. 

“Hey!” He calls, loud enough to be heard, and also probably fast enough for the fast kid to notice him. His voice sounds strange to his own ears. He’s not used to using speed like this. He smiles and waves his arms a little wildly, in case he was incomprehensible. The teen’s head snaps towards the roof Billy’s sitting on and his eyes catch on him immediately. It wasn’t like he was hiding after all, with the crimson suit and the white cape, and the lightning bolt. Oh, and the waving. Billy remembers to stop waving. What little Billy can see of his expression goes all scrunched up. As they stare at each other for another second that’s probably subjectively longer. Then the teen bolts. Billy wastes just enough time being surprised to lose him entirely when he runs through a wall. Cool.

Billy manages to stop in time to not break the wall the green and black speedster went through and pokes it a little to make sure it’s real. He means, it was last week, but weirder things have happened in Fawcett. Once he’s sure the bricks are all still bricks, he backtracks a couple blocks to try and check out what happened at the bank. Investigate, maybe? Billy’s not Batman. He’s not going to find scuff marks and psychically intuit the whole situation, or whatever Batman does at crime scenes. But he can talk to people, at least. Try and find out if anyone knows what happened with the alarm. Billy puts his hands on his hips. Well, turns out the alarm went off because someone was trying to rob the bank. Probably the guys tied up in the corner. Also, nobody knows more than that, because teller Missy thanked him for stopping the robbery when he showed up and Billy definitely did not do that.

It’s kind of fun to be in a bank that’s not being robbed. Well, Billy’s eyes slant over to the pile of robbers in the corner. Not actively being robbed. The alarm isn't going off and nobody is upset, he’ll count it. It’s a novelty. Captain Marvel doesn’t have much reason to be at a bank, and Billy Batson has even less. He smiles at Missy and asks her to tell him what happened before he showed up, and she launches into the story, how they showed up, waited in line, and then they all pulled out guns and started yelling. Normal bank robbery stuff, she says, and Billy has to stifle the urge to giggle. When Missy starts talking about how the robbers just disappeared for a second before they noticed that they were all on the floor, Billy wonders if he should tell her about the kid- no not kid, Billy hates being called a kid, because he’s a Superhero, and he was older than him anyway. The mean green teen machine. Missy says that her manager thinks the robbers sabotaged the alarm. Billy, does not think that, but it’s been almost an hour, and he has places to be. So he smiles and tells her good luck and makes his way toward the soup kitchen.

He doesn’t see the green speedster for a while, but then again, he’s mostly been hanging around the bank until they fix the alarm. It was actually pretty easy, just a few disconnected wires, but they had to wait for someone to come open up all the panels to actually get to them. He’d think that the guy had left the city if it wasn’t for the fact the disappearing gun thing is still happening. 

Almost a week later, Billy’s patrolling again when he catches a glimpse of green out of the corner of his eye. He floats over, and pops up above the lip of the roof the speedster is sitting on. “You cut your hair!” Billy says, barely keeping himself from pointing at the blond buzzcut. He smiles even as the teen startles and throws something at him with a yelp. He decides to let it hit him instead of dodging. Anything going that fast can do a lot of damage, and Billy, at least, is invulnerable. He moves with the impact as a cellophane wrapped turkey club splatters against his chest before he can register what it is and try to catch it instead. He frowns at the mayonnaise and tomato oozing down his suit. He hates wasting food, and this was probably the guy’s lunch. He turns back toward him with an apologetic smile only to see an empty rooftop.

He sees the speedster again that afternoon, while trying to beat the heat by flying in slow circles over the city. “Third time’s the charm.” He says to himself, before dropping a couple stories to hover above the pavement and keep pace with what, based on the effort he seems to be putting in, is to him, a light jog.

“Hey, sorry for startling you, and about your sandwich. Good work with that bank robbery. It was really cool. Are you new? What’s your name?” He gets out all in one breath, before the guy can run away again. The speedster stops on a dime to stare at him with his hands raised for a punch and Billy overshoots for a moment before he can get back in the hero’s orbit. There’s a pause, not really a long one, objectively. But enough for Billy to remember that this guy is fast too. Faster than him. “You don’t have to tell me, I just wanted to say thanks.” He adds with a Captain Marvel smile. 

This jerks the teen out of his frozen state and his hands snap down to fist in his lap. His head turns away even though Billy can tell he’s still being watched out of the corner of his eye. Billy gets it, he’s done that before with strange adults too. He dims his smile to a more casual level.

~

Thad knows that leaving the lab was a bad idea. This whole thing is a bad idea. He once again curses the 30th century’s information uploads and looks up at Captain Marvel. He hadn’t known that Fawcett’s superhero had superspeed when he picked the city. He’d had to go back to the lab and research everything after he’d been seen. He’s not fast enough to actually catch Thad, but he keeps showing up and being friendly. It reminds him of– Thad cuts the thought off with practiced ruthlessness. Marvel is only a minor ripple in his plan. He sneers at the man, and he deflates like a balloon, even losing control of his powers enough to sink a few centimeters in the air. Thad would never show that kind of weakness. He stops and lets his hands drop to his sides, flexing and releasing in rhythm as he tries not to attack the hero ruining his scheme. Captain Marvel stops with him and resettles himself to hover cross legged above the pavement in front of him. The anger builds the more that Captain Marvel smiles at him and he crushes it back down.

“Inertia.” He rasps, without really knowing why he’s bothering to answer.

“Oh,” Captain Marvel snaps his fingers and points at nothing in particular. Thad doesn’t turn his back on Captain Marvel to look. “Like the law of motion? Cuz’ you’re fast? That’s such a cool name. Did you pick it yourself?”

“No.” He says, flat and final. 

“I like it.” He says, like that matters at all, and holds out his hand for a shake even though they’re too far apart to actually touch each other. “I’m Captain Marvel.”

“I know.” Thad says, and doesn’t acknowledge the outstretched hand past evaluating its potential as a threat: Low. After a second Captain Marvel lets it drop into his lap, looking almost dejected. Thad finds himself briefly missing Ivan when the man pouts. He ignores the thought. 

~

“I don’t need your help.” He snarls, and for a moment he’s not talking to Captain Marvel in the stagnant heat of Fawcett City’s streets. He’s looking at the emaciated figure of Max Mercury and being buffeted by the speedstorm.

“I just thought,” Captain Marvel starts and drops his head a little while he fidgets with his hands. It’s a tactical disadvantage for him to take eyes off a target like that. “Fawcett doesn’t get a lot of outside heroes.”