hideouspancake
For Luck, yeah
25K posts
For The Sheer Joy Of It
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
hideouspancake · 1 month ago
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
mp100 season 2 looks great  (original) meanwhile:
Tumblr media
38K notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 1 month ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Liu Qingge has HAD IT with these two! Tiny Qijiu are ruining his life and he can’t even complain to his own boss about it!! 😡
Sequel to this
Bonus exhausted babysitter SQH:
Tumblr media
1K notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 1 month ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Any SVSSS fic trope that creates the possibility of a feral baby qijiu running around Cang Qiong butt naked is a good SVSSS fic trope
Sequel
1K notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 1 month ago
Text
Tumblr media
SecUnit
825 notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 1 month ago
Text
Tumblr media
I really wanted to draw at least something for Swordtember hehe, ladies with swords are always fun to draw c:.
35K notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 1 month ago
Text
The Fool Dies
Summary: You are a villain known for telling the future. When a Hero kills your right hand, you’ll let the future burn to get her back.
Hero Cowboy kills your henchman after you’ve already surrendered.
Gunshot silence, the scent of iron heavy in your nose, the crippling cold that floods your chest. All familiar sensations, companions you’ve carried with you since you even became a villain, but this time—
This time it’s…different.
You’re on your knees, the rock salt on the road digging into your kneecaps, with your hands above your head, the ghost of your signature smirk fading fast. The street isn’t empty. There are witnesses. The Hero pulls his punches when there are cameras and citizens and teammates. That’s what your plan says. He pulls his punches.
She asked if you were willing to bet her life on that and you said yes.
Your henchman’s body is stuck in the crumpled side of a car. You see her out of your peripheral, the pale oval of her face unencumbered by the mask you’d lovingly bestowed upon her six years ago. Cowboy backhanded it off of her as she was falling to her knees beside you. There is wet and red and twisted metal dancing foggily around her. The air is harsh and cold to breathe. The world is wavering as tears flood your eyes. You can’t blink them away. If you do, you won’t be able to see her just at the corner of your vision, you won’t be able to watch for a breath you already know won’t come, you’re afraid she’ll disappear—
“Clever to pretend to surrender,” the Hero says. He’s like a swan, spreading his arms out so the leather tassels lining the underside of his sleeves look like wings. He tips his head back so that the news cameras rushing in can catch the strength of his jaw under his wide-brimmed hat. She’d managed to singe it in the fight and the light catches in his blue eyes through the resulting hole. “Was it worth it, Prophetess? Was your attempt on my life worth the life of your sidekick?”
Snow falls, a few flakes here and there. The street is lit like the middle of the day thanks to the news cameras swarming out of the side streets now that the fight is over. The fire is being put out and thick curls of smoke rise from just beyond the gathering crowd of onlookers.
Your spellbook is lying a hundred feet away at the bottom of the lake. That’s why the Hero is flaunting himself in front of the cameras, trying to minimize her death at his hand. He did what he had to do. They were wrong, not him. Unfortunate but expected. The Hero always wins.
She’s gone.
The Fool. She always wanted a different name. But you were adamant she wouldn’t receive one until she earned one outside of her service to you. Until then, her name was a reflection of your journey. Your first step, foolish and unknowing, young and ignorant of the consequences. The name felt right when you called it and you never thought to question why. Only now can you taste your own cruel power in the decision. The power of prophecy spelled her fate out in front of you and, like always, you didn’t listen.
Your tattered cloak ripples in the breeze coming off the water. The vibrant purple is stained with soot and worse, the once smooth velvet charred and eaten away at by the Fire Cowboy’s flames.
They don’t remember that you surrendered before he struck. He’s dismissed your uncharacteristic action as an act, and so the world will too. The Prophetess always lies. Isn’t that the first line in your Hero Force file? The Prophetess has no powers of divination; she lies.
The world is magic. You believe it like the sun, like the earth, like the ocean—
--like her—
--and there is magic even here. The spell of your grief rises over your head like a shroud and, for a moment, you are drowning in the dark as the world heaves. You can taste the last cup of coffee she ever gave you going sour at the back of your mouth, the small daily comfort washing away under the metallic scent of her blood. There is a purple current around your thoughts, painful and biting. You will always be in this moment with her jester’s mask – cruel, you are so cruel – leering up at you, closer to your hands than her. How did you let her get so far out of reach?
Why didn’t you hold her close?
“I asked,” Cowboy says from directly in front of you, “if it was worth it?”
The world pulses back into purple focus. Cowboy is looming over you and the smoke of your battle rises into the night behind him. The media jockeys closer the longer you are silent and they’re inching around the car she’s lying against.
“Tell them to get away from her,” you say. Normal, your voice is so normal. Your arms are burning from holding your hands over your head and your neck aches from forcing yourself not to look. You are afraid your tears will fall if you blink so you stare at the gaudy belt buckle in front of your face. Your eyes are purple in the reflection and your face is as pale as hers. “P-please.”
Cowboy must kill all the time. He has no problem glancing towards the slowly gathering swarm and you can feel his eyes on her body as if they were on your own. “They’re trying to help her.”
“She’s beyond helping,” you say. Why would they even try? You can’t even look at her and you can tell that. “I don’t want anyone touching her.”
“They’re not monsters,” Cowboy says. There’s a scoff and then he’s crouching in front of you. He smells like singed leather. “Not like you.”
You’ve never seen the Hero this close. He’s older than you thought, only a few years shy of your age. His stubble is darkened with soot and his nose bears scars of past battles. His eyes—they’re not blue. You can see the edge of brown behind his contacts, the same deep brown as his mask.
“You killed her,” you say.
“No, you did.” He answers you so quickly it’s like he was waiting for those exact words. He tilts his head so the brim of his hat hides his lips in shadow. “She wouldn’t have died if it weren’t for you.”
He’s so confident that you nearly believe him. Your hands ache with phantom bruises from the blows and the weight of your sin falls onto your shoulders like the sky itself coming to rest there.
--------------.
 You see the trajectory of her life lined in gold. Her first day at your firm, her finding out your identity, her wavering in front of the window overlooking the Charlotte skyline as she admitted to knowing exactly who you are and how you’d been hiding more than your fair share of power all along.
That moment shines. She wasn’t the Fool then. She ripped her pencil skirt up the side as you debated her fate. When you asked her why, she said in case she needed to run.
“You would run from me?” you asked, eyebrow raised, conveying with expression alone how ridiculous you found the idea of her getting away was.
“I would,” she said. She grinned unhappily. “You can kill me, but you’ll break a sweat doing it.”
You laughed and held out your hand. When she took it, the outline of her life changed. No longer edged in gold. All black. A night sky all around her.
“You’re a fool for this,” you told her.
“The biggest one around,” she said, chagrined. Then she laughed with you.
You’ll never hear her laugh again.
----------.
There is a protocol for arresting a villain. Cowboy is already so outside of Hero Force code that it takes a while for things to be ready. He stands over you for the better part of an hour, smiling at the cameras, glaring you into submission, waving to the officers that eventually come to secure the scene.
An ambulance comes to take her body away. Only when they load her into it do you move. You watch the side of the vehicle like you can see through it. Cowboy tenses when it starts to drive away, but you don’t twitch. Her body isn’t her. If you start clinging to it now, you will never let her go.
“I know they call you Cowboy,” a woman drawls, “but you aren’t supposed to act like one.”
The reporters leap out of Strongwoman’s way. Barely five feet, Strongwoman is a super hero. Nobody is willing to get too close, regardless of how good and moral she is. The dark-haired woman is one of the few heroes who don’t wear a mask. No villain is stupid enough to think that makes her weak. Her dark eyes catalogue the scene quickly and efficiently. The ground rumbles as she approaches.
“Heat of battle,” Cowboy dismisses. His shoulders relax with another hero to support him and he shakes out his leather vest. Soot and snow falls from him. “Literally.”
“Hm.” Strongwoman finally turns the weight of her attention towards you. “Where’s her spellbook?”
“Bottom of the lake.”
“She hasn’t tried to summon it?”
“Her minion was in charge of that.”
Strongwoman’s voice whips. “We don’t call them minions.”
“Sorry.”
“You should be,” Strongwoman says. She folds her arms across her chest. She always gives the impression of being wrapped in armor and it takes you a moment to realize she’s wearing a tank top despite the cold. The muscles in her arms twitch. “That’s your third body this year.”
Cowboy hisses, eyes flying over her head towards the reporters. “Don’t—” A coalition of people in dark suits are already herding the media away. Cowboy’s lips thin. “Not in public.”
Strongwoman raises an eyebrow. She reaches down with one hand and hauls you up by the collar of your robes. “Fine. The car then.” She frowns at the way your hands hang by your sides. “You didn’t cuff her?”
“She doesn’t have her spellbook.”
“Protocol, Cow.”
“It’s Cowboy.”
“…”
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Strongwoman cuffs your hands behind your back. The familiar sting of power suppressors races up your arms. The last time someone managed to get them on you, the Fool had to break them off once you escaped. You feel her breath against the shell of your ear and her voice whispers, Now who will do it for you?
Her memory is another spell on you. The edges of your life – dark and violently violet – cover your eyes so that you’re blind and deaf to the world around you. Once this new incantation runs its course, you’re sitting in the back of a Hero Force car. The grate between you and the front seat is closed. Beyond it, you can see Strongwoman at the wheel, shoulders vibrating with tension. Cowboy is sitting in the passenger seat like a petulant child.
You read their lips in the rearview mirror.
--review, Strongwoman says. Three. Three deaths on your hands.
This one was just a villain—
Tell that to Foresight. I beg you. See how he likes that excuse.
Cowboy changes tactics. You know the Prophetess is basically an S-Class—
Without her spellbook?
She had it for most of the fight.
Did she?
You lean your head back and close your eyes. Cowboy’s been operating alone for too long. They’ll likely stick him in probation and then transfer him to a hero team with an established leader. Maybe Atlas’ team in San Francisco or Light’s team in LA. Hell, if they really want to punish him, they’ll assign him to Omit’s team in Chicago. The guy’s the most righteous and the most powerless leader out there. Cowboy might actually become a villain if he’s forced to follow that guy’s lead.
“He’ll suffer,” you say in your prophecy voice.
A speaker crackles to life overhead. “No divination,” Cowboy snaps.
“I wasn’t talking about you,” you say.
“Prophetess lies,” Strongwoman says to Cowboy. “Remember, she always lies.”
“It’s still a threat—”
“Prophetess,” Strongwoman says. “Let’s go over next steps. When we get to Charlotte HQ, you’ll be taken to a secure floor where you’ll be asked to remove your mask. It’s important that you understand your identity will remain confidential until your loved ones can be secured—”
“He killed her,” you interrupt. You watch the ceiling of the car. “I can tell you my identity now if you’d like.”
There’s a pause. “That won’t be necessary,” Strongwoman says. Is it just you, or is her voice a little softer? “There is a proper course to this investigation.”
The way she says it makes it sound like she’s promising you something.
It’s like your mind is scrambling for connection to her. There is nothing in what Strongwoman says that reminds you of the Fool. And yet, as the car falls back into weighted silence, one word rings. Proper.
There is a proper way, the Fool whispers. You could fight this spell, but don’t. You sink into the car seat the best you can with your hands behind your back. Hear me out.
Please, you think. By all means.
------.
The first time you ask her to dinner, you’re too hasty. There’s blood on the hem of your robes (possibly a tooth) and the city is still screaming the sirens of your escape. The Fool isn’t shivering like the rest of your henchman; she is standing next to you. Her Jester’s mask is carefully secured with three exact ties despite the haste with which she put it on.
“I can never wear this skirt again,” she says. She is standing on the very edge of the building, the toes of her sensible work shoes a bare inch away from nothing. “This was my best work skirt.”
The city sparks with the purple of your magic, violet vines climbing the buildings and blocking your view of the street below. Your magic is mostly illusion, but all power leaves behind a mark. Where your spell has started to fade remains a charred outline of leaves and flowers against the concrete and stone of the buildings.
While the rest of your minions look a bit like chimney sweeps, the Fool remains untouched. It’s an obvious sign of favoritism; you had room for one other person underneath your cloak and you chose her.
Somehow the memory of her pressed against your side as she used her power to lift you both up to the rooftop makes you blush.
“You don’t have any residue on you,” you say. “You can stitch it up.”
She scoffs. At you. “It’s recognizable, Prophetess.”
It’s really not. The black pencil skirt is the same kind she wore when you first met. How many does she go through? You find yourself smiling at her bare thigh.  Since she first told you she knew who you were, you’ve seen her rip at least three.
“Something amuse you?” she asks. Her voice is short and snappish, the tone she uses when one of the other paralegals aren’t as thorough as they need to be with the briefs. She turns to face you so that the setting sun lights her outline in orange and pink and gold.
“Have dinner with me,” you say.
And for a moment, the hope of her saying yes is as blinding as the sun behind her. Her lips part and you imagine that her eyes widen behind her jester’s mask. A wind picks at the long strands of her hair, sending them fluttering around her like a halo, and you’re standing so close that one brushes your cheek.
“There is a proper way,” she says and then stops. Her right hand twitches at her side. “There is—” is she stuttering? “This isn’t—Prophetess.”
You’re fascinated. She’s always so precise with her words. Even when you threatened her all those months ago she never once floundered like she’s doing now. “Hmm?”
“Hear me out,” she says.
You nod. “Of course.” You lean forward so that you’re only inches away from her. “I’m listening.”
“This…is not the time,” she says. You feel her attention slide to the others and then back to you. She hisses when she finds you even closer. “Prophetess.”
You don’t want to push too hard.
You lean back onto your good leg. “You let me know when it is time,” you say. Your lips quirk. “My little Fool.”
“Oh my god,” she mutters. She turns sharply on her heel. “Get yourself off the roof. I’m going home.”
You watch as she steps off the roof without hesitation. Her telekinetic powers are unique in that they can work on people too. You usually rely on her to get you home.
Maybe you should have asked her afterwards…
You turn to your other minions. Low-level villains without the drive or power to execute their own heists who all owe you the same favor. You raise your brow. “So how are you lot getting me off this roof?”
“You’ve got legs,” the Ace of Swords says.
“I broke my left one,” you say. And, to prove you aren’t lying, you draw away your cape to show that your pant leg is soaked in red.
The Ace of Swords stares. “This is why she said no.”
“Was that what it sounded like to you?” you ask. His surety makes you frown. “For that, you get to carry me down.”
The Ace of Swords groans as the other Swords flee.
-----------.
Your Swords are not always Swords. Sometimes they are Pentacles or Wands or Cups. There’s meaning to the costuming you put your people through, a meaning that escapes Hero Force.
“Where are the others?” Cowboy growls at you over the interrogation table. He keeps aggressively tapping the photos he flung in front of you. Grainy shots of your Wands storming through the Christmas Parade you used as a cover to kidnap the Mayor, blurry screen grabs from security footage of them as Pentacles in the art museum, a delightful brochure featuring them as Cups in a reproduction of Macbeth you used to do some light money laundering. “If you tell us, we might cut you a deal. Six of your people are being prepared for interrogation right now. Want to bet who breaks first?”
The ghost of you smiles behind your dead eyes, leans forward, and sneers in Cowboy’s face. That version of you is delighted by Cowboy mistaking six people for twenty-four and wants to play the interrogation game he’s offering. But the real you feels as heavy as lead and it takes all your strength to watch as Cowboy slowly works his way into a frenzy.
“For too long you’ve been tormenting this city,” he says. He shakes a finger in your face. “I told Headquarters, I said you were a problem when you first showed up in Raleigh. I said, ‘This one is going to come to Charlotte and she’s going to show up with an army.’ I did. I said that and now you’ve got the largest crew in America.”
“Quite the fortune teller, aren’t you?” you murmur. The Fool is at the front of the brochure, all done up as Macbeth. You’d tried to get her to be Lady Macbeth, but she’d insisted she be the main character for once.
You don’t understand Macbeth, you’d said.
His name is the play, she argued.
Lady Macbeth is the mastermind.
Did you read the play?
Did you?
Neither of you had.
Cowboy slams his hand on the table. “Look, Prophetess, I’m the only chance you’ve got at a deal. As soon as those DC heroes get in here, it’s off the table.”
Ha.
“It would be convenient for you if there were no witnesses,” you observe. “More convenient if you get to them before the DC crowd.”
“Witnesses to what?” Cowboy blusters. But he draws back and his gaze is colder than the Hero Force air conditioning that’s already making this room glacial. “To justice?”
How dare he lie to you? Her pale face haunts your peripheral vision. You can see her in the window of the interrogation room.
“To murder,” you say. Your glares clash when you finally look up at him. The soot is still in his stubble and you imagine you can smell her blood coming from his singed leather vest. “She surrendered. We all saw it.”
“She was an A-rank villain with telekinetic powers strong enough to crush my skull,” Cowboy bites back. “I acted in self-defense.”
“With us both on our knees—”
Cowboy whips his arm across the table, scattering the photos of your people into the air. He slams his hand again. “Last chance. Tell me where the rest of your minions are!”
In your holding cells, you stupid—
“You’re a pathetic worm of a man,” you say. You clear your throat. “Sorry. Let me say it in a way you’ll understand.” You adopt your prophecy voice. “The dust Cowboy leaves behind is red, red as the blood on his hands. His golden star is stained—”
You see the blow coming. Not a prophecy, of course.
You just know what heroes do when their buttons are pushed.
-----.
The second time you ask her to dinner, you’re too stupid for her to say yes. It’s not your fault though. How could you have known the Mayor had superpowers? He didn’t do anything besides embezzle taxpayer money!
“Maybe,” she says tightly, dragging your leaden and paralyzed body through the grand halls of the mayoral house, “you could have done a single iota of research instead of sewing all those costumes.”
Feeling is coming back into your hands. They still ache from finishing the elf-themed Wand costumes you’d made for your employees. You think the group costume of Five of Wands came out particularly well. All those little elves holding giant candy cane wands…a perfect symbol for the tumultuous election Season. You flex your fingers and then wince when the Fool’s nails dig into the soft undersides of your arms. “Ouch. Could you—”
“I am not slowing down,” she says. She grunts as she slings you around another corner. “We need to get to the backyard. Ace is meeting us there with the chopper.”
“Such a waste of money,” you bemoan. The chopper had been Two’s idea and all she does is maintain it. She won’t let you fly it until you get your license. “We should’ve got a boat.”
“Great idea,” the Fool snarls. She adjusts her grip so her nails are now digging into your shoulders rather than your arms. “A giant vehicle we have to keep in the harbor. The heroes would never find that.”
“Okay, you have me there,” you say. Your words are crisper now and you can even push a little with your legs as she pulls you into the empty kitchen. “But consider this. I could take you to dinner on a yacht. I can’t take you to dinner on a helicopter.” She stops in her tracks, head whipping down to look at you. Your noses nearly touch. You grin dopily. “Hi.”
“Are you asking me to dinner right now,” she asks in a tone that tells you you’d better be careful with your answer.
She’s so pretty. That’s why you aren’t careful when you slur, “Yes.”
She drags you through the doorway into the backyard. “I sure hope it’s the drugs making you this stupid.”
“Hey—”
“Hey!”
Both of you look back towards the house to where the Mayor has just appeared. He’s wearing the smoking jacket he’d monologued in and the handkerchief he’d used to drug you is hanging limply in his grip.
He points at you. “You. You should be unconscious! Nobody escapes my venom!”
“Oh gross,” the Fool says. “Does he make the sedatives from his body?”
“From his sweat,” you affirm. Then, raising your voice over the growing sound of the chopper and her gagging, “Maybe you should sweat better drugs, huh?”
The Fool coughs and wheezes. You recognize a laugh in the sound. “Don’t antagonize—”
The Mayor bellows and sweat begins to drip from his forehead. He mops at it with his handkerchief and then advances across the grass. “Get back here!”
“Hahaha,” you say, “He was definitely a hero. I know how to push their buttons.”
It becomes a race to who gets to you first; the chopper or the Mayor.
As usual, the Fool wins.
-----.
Cowboy isn’t allowed in your room after hitting you in the face. You can feel him lurking in the hall outside when Strongwoman takes the seat across from you.
“That…wasn’t supposed to happen,” she says and pinches the bridge of her nose. She’s sitting on a special crate they brought in for her. It creaks when she leans forward. “Are you sure you don’t need medical attention?”
The Fool is the only one you let tend to your wounds. Blood stings your eye. Cowboy was wearing his rings when he hit you. “I’m fine.”
Strongwoman sighs through her nose. She’s short and stocky, dark hair and wide nose. There’s a beauty to her when she’s still and quiet. When she moves? She moves like a threat. “We need to know where your base is,” she says.
“Home is where the heart is,” you say. And you killed mine.
Strongwoman’s lips thin. “Look, if you want the guys who speak riddles, we can wait for them. Or you can answer my questions and maybe we can come to some sort of understanding.”
“Interesting offer.” You lean back and contemplate her. “You have my spell book.”
“Except that,” Strongwoman says immediately. She winces. “Sorry. You’re in custody. The spell book isn’t even on-site anymore.”
“Then you can take these off,” you say, nodding to your cuffs. Their faint glow is making you sick. “As a sign of good faith.”
“Tell me everything about your operation,” Strongwoman retorts. She shakes her head. “Nobody believes you’re harmless without your spellbook.”
“Cowboy does.”
“Cowboy is operating under a lot of false assumptions,” Strongwoman says. She leans forward to match you. “Like the one where you have over 30 lower-level villains working for you.”
“Oh?”
“We have six,” Strongwoman says. “Tell me where the rest are and we can negotiate.”
Ha. She doesn’t know either. You are so good at costuming. It’s not like your henchmen can multiply. There are always just six with you and it’s through your costumes that they transform. You’ll have to tell the Fool—
Your mood sours. Tell the Fool. Who’s the Fool now? You’re not in the mood to play games. “I tell you everything, you let me talk to those you have.”
“No—”
“I don’t know everything about them,” you snap. “You’re asking me to betray my people. Fine, I’ll do that. You lot will pry and pull and claw until you find out anyway. But allow me to give them the chance to tell you about whatever family or loved one they haven’t told me about. If I must take them down with me, at least let them beg Hero Force for leniency for their loved ones.”
Strongwoman considers you. “And what do you want in exchange?”
“Let,” you clear your throat. Your eyes are hot and itchy. “Let me have a moment with them. To mourn one of our own passing. To—” you clear your throat “-to lay the Fool to rest.”
The silence sticks to the walls and builds. It presses into you on all sides until you feel like you’re in a coffin. You once told her you would die with her.
Not allowed, ma’am. I don’t think we’d go to the same place.
You swallow hard and stare at your hands.
“Deal,” Strongwoman says finally.
“Thank you,” you say. Your head bows until your forehead presses against your shaking hands. “Thank you.”
“Cuffs will stay on,” Strongwoman says gruffly. She pulls out a pen and pad. The pen looks like it’s made of metal. “Start talking.”
You do.
-----------------.
The third time you ask her to dinner, she stares at you for a long time. It makes you nervous in a way you haven’t been before, her unrelenting stare. Is it because she’s usually so quick? Or could it be because you can feel her eyes on your bare face for the first time since she stood in your office and called you a villain?
The same office you’re currently standing in now as the sun sets behind her?
“I have concerns,” she says at last.
Oh thank god. You’re smiling too widely. “I can work with concerns.”
“Can you?” Her eyes flash gold with the sun. “You keep asking me out while we’re working,” she says.
You blink. “Do I?”
“You do.”
You consider her words, leaning back against your desk. You’re wearing your pinstriped suit today and it’s getting a little tight. She feeds you before and after every meeting you have and you have a lot of meetings. “I’m always working.”
“That’s true,” she says. She turns on her heel. “And that’s the concern.”
You stand up. “Wait, how is that—”
She stops at the door and turns to look at you in a way that steals your breath. “I am not work,” she says. Her lip twitches. “Nor am I a fool.”
“I know, you’re—”
“Ace says they’re already at the meeting place. According to your schedule, we’re running late.”
“We haven’t finished talking.” You try to sound firm, like you used to. Instead, the words come out as almost a plea. “We can be late.”
“You’re never late. Besides, I hear it’s going to be a regular rodeo.”
“Cowboy? Ha! When did he blow back into town?”
“His probation period is up.”
“Lucky us.”
-----.
Lucky us.
You Fool.
--------.
You look over the bowed heads of your employees. Ace, Two, Five, Eight, Ten, and Page. The room Strongwoman led you to looks like the cockpit of a spaceship. Noxious blue light undulates up the concave walls. There are no chairs in here, no pulpit for you to stand behind.
So your employees kneel when you walk between them all to stand in the very center.
“Prophetess,” Ace says. Her voice is thin and high. “We—I’m so sorry.”
Two looks up. Her face is drawn and there’s a deep bruise along the side of it. “We know how it is to lose.”
“You do,” you murmur. You’re aware of the eyes on you here. You saw Cowboy sneering in the observation room on the other side of this one. There are cameras scattered like black stars across the ceiling. “I know you do. But there is a renewal in Death. If—” you swallow hard “-if you allow it.”
You expect fear. What you’re asking of them has happened exactly six times. The favor they owe is not only to you, but to each other. Death is the complete annihilation of everything you know. It can be the end. Or it can be the beginning.
But it takes people to begin.
And you have asked them too many times before.
“Anything,” they say as one.
Your head shoots up. “What?”
Six of your employees – your friends – return your gaze unflinching.
“If I have to redo everything again, I will,” Ace says. She presses a hand over her heart. You know a picture of her son lies there. “Time doesn’t matter. We won’t lose anything but time.”
“We know we can rebuild,” Two says. Her eyes are fierce. “We can do it better.”
“You taught us how to do it better,” Five says.
“I thought you would’ve already done it,” Page says. He scratches the back of his head. “I didn’t eat lunch thinking you woulda done it by now.”
“You didn’t miss much,” Eight tells him. Then, to you, “You did it for us. Again and again and again—”
“—and again and again and again—”
Eight punches Page. “Shut up.” She breathes in through her nose. “Prophetess. It’s okay. We’re okay.”
“The memories you have made will only remain with you,” you remind them. Your hands are shaking. This—you have asked this favor for the sake of others. Did they feel this vulnerable asking? So hopeful and so full of dread. “It will be different. Time changes all and you who have experienced it—”
“—will be like fortune tellers in a strange new land,” Ace says. “We know.”
“We’re okay with it.”
“Are you?”
The time is approaching. You can hear voices outside the room. Ten minutes. She’d promised you thirty, but you figured they’d interrupt sooner. Especially considering what you’re saying.
You breathe in deeply through your nose. You think of her pencil skirt and her flashing eyes and her warm smile. The ghost of her pale face is fading into blackness as this curtain closes.
Your resolve firms. It was a bad ending. As a villain, you’re allowed to rewrite those.
“Tonight,” you say in your whispering voice, “we rebalance the deck.”
The blue in the room flickers. The voices in the corridor gain urgency. The cuffs around your wrist flare and then go dormant.
“I see my son a babe again,” Ace sings. Her eyes burn with your purple power as she brings her hands up towards you. The memory of the favor you granted her rises with her words. “I hold his hand.”
The blue flickers purple and electricity arcs. The Hero Force suppressors are to stop superpowers.
There is very little they can do against fate.
“I see the bus that takes them away,” Page says. He doesn’t sing. His voice is as dry as the desert and he salutes you. His hand glows against his temple. “They get on it.”
“I see my friend at the crossroads,” Two says. She holds her hands palm up and tilts her head to the sky. Tears of neon violet fall down her face. “I follow them.”
“The power I have falls into my hands like rain,” Eight says. She cups her hands in front of her and they fill with your power until it spills over onto the ground. “I drink from it.”
“The harm I caused erased,” Five says. He crosses his arms over his chest and bows his head. A halo the color of lilac blooms over his head. “I atone.”
“I do better,” Ten says simply.  They stand with their hands by their sides. Their eyes burn with your power and they do not flinch. “I don’t bury them.”
Your power crawls along the walls. There are no more blue arcs of power. There are purple flowers and thorns that leave shadows in their wake. They seal the door shut and you are distantly aware that Strongwoman is trying to smash her way inside and can’t.
Fate takes a different type of strength to overpower.
“I see her again,” you say. The tides of the world pull at your long hair. You are drowning in light. The ground shakes under your feet. You think of her life outlined in gold, yourself outlined in gold. Is it possible you can see it glittering there in the unrelenting ocean flooding into you? “I see her again.”
Thunder crashes and everything becomes nothing.
-----------.
You are at your desk. You blink at the pages lying before you. A brief. A case. From four years ago.
You release a trembling breath. You never doubted it would work but it’s a relief to see not so much time has passed. Ace will still share some memories with her son. Page will not have to sit by his brothers’ bedsides again. Ten won’t be trapped in her father’s house.
The rest…the rest will not expect your help. You didn’t help them the last three times. Cruel, maybe. Fate often is.
You think Two is in Charlotte at this point. She mentioned something about a halfway house…
You freeze grabbing your coat as familiar footsteps echo from the hall outside your door. The skyline is twinkling with city lights, but it’s nearly midnight. Nobody should be here, you don’t remember anyone being here at this time—
The door opens without a knock. Her hair is chopped beneath her ears and she has a lip piercing and there isn’t a pencil skirt to be found. But it’s her. It’s her.
“Anika,” you breathe.
Her gold eyes flick to you, to your desk, to your coat in your hand. “You working?”
“N-no,” you say. Your words pile up behind your teeth. Do you remember? Of course you do, otherwise how would you be here. But how? Did I infect you? Did the outline of my life really drag you into my power enough--
Anika waits. When you continue to stare at her, she prods, “I’m not your paralegal.”
“You don’t look like you’ve even finished your degree,” you blurt out. You point. “A lip piercing?”
Anika rubs her piercing. “I’m not the Fool,” Anika says patiently.
A light bulb goes off. “Oh,” you say. “Oh!” You get down on one knee. “Anika, will you marry me—” Anika throws her purse at you. It misses by about three feet. You stand and try again. “I mean, will you go to dinner with me?”
“Yes, I’ll go to dinner with you.” Anika rubs a hand over her face. “Everytime I give you an inch, you take a mile—"
“For the rest of our lives,” you promise.
Anika shakes a finger at you. “Dinner.”
“It’s a beginning,” you say cheerfully.
The best one you’ve ever had.
-------.
Thanks for reading! I do love my supervillain stories and appreciate you for making it through this one! Sometimes I wonder if I can even write flash fiction anymore haha
Next week's story is already up on my Patreon (X)! I'm super excited to share it as it made me laugh writing it. It's an AITA style post from a woman who used to be a Cryptid professionally and feels like she's made a misstep with her Slasher boyfriend.
See y'all next time!
2K notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 2 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
celestial seal. sealestial? celestseal? a harbor starbor seal
30K notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 2 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
a cat-dad who fathered so hard he mothered.
11K notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 2 months ago
Text
I'm thinking sad Jaskier thoughts.
It takes a while for Geralt to realize the music is gone. Oh Jaskier still sings- for their supper, for Ciri when she's sad, to entertain Kaer Morhen on late card playing nights. But the music- the music is gone. No more of the mindless humming as he walks, no more parsing over rhymes by the fire, no more harassing Geralt for his thoughts on such and such melody. Jaskier sings like a wind-up music box, only when requested, cranked for it, and snapping shut into silence like the sharp closing of a lid.
Yennefer snorts at his concern. "It took you this long to notice?"
Geralt grunts. She smiles, sharp and bitter. "You always were slow."
"How do I fix it?" Geralt snaps. He is not here to be mocked or play games.
"Can you fix it?" Yennefer asks. "I don't know."
Geralt doesn't know either. All he can do is try.
One of the mages had left a god's damned harpsichord in their tower room. It takes Geralt weeks- lugging the ornate monstrosity down from the mages tower, finding schematics in the library for the damn thing, undoing by sheer will the rot and moulding of a hundred years on the instrument. He spends his evenings waist deep in the guts of the instrument, swearing over chords and tuning and keys.
Jaskier's silence, now that he notices it, gapes like an open wound, bleeding wherever he goes. It stains memories of years past, of a cheerful smile and conversation given to him so freely, so easily, not a hint of subterfuge or awkwardness or fear. Now Jaskier only says good morrow if Geralt says it first, only speaks when spoken to, only smiles when Ciri is looking his way.
Geralt polishes the harpsichord until his fingers blister and his nose stings from the smell. He paints the elaborate carvings with pure gold leaf. He spends hours tightening strings trying to get the thing in tune. He worries over it like a child, because he doesn't know what else to do.
"What do you think?" He asks Eskel as they carry it carefully down to Jaskier's room.
"It's very nice." Eskel says diplomatically. "I'm sure he'll appreciate it."
"Appreciate it?" Geralt doesn't want appreciation. He wants that soft tone back in Jaskier's voice when he speaks to him. He wants Jaskier to speak to him, to turn to him free and easy with something to say.
"He'll like it," Eskel says, "Just-"
He turns, his soft eyes full of warning. "Just don't put all your hopes on an old harpsichord."
Lambert snorts, "Too little too late!" He laughs. And Lambert has always been hateful, more so since Aiden was lost, but the words feel true.
Jaskier smiles when he presents him with the harpsichord. He exclaims and laughs and claps his hands. He extolls its virtues, coos over its decorations, fusses over it with all the enthusiasm of a performing parrot. He pulls Ciri onto his lap and guides her hands on the keys, composes a little ditty on the fly for Yennefer, plays something sweet and sad that makes Lambert turn his face away. In all the merriment and gratitude and excitement, he looks Geralt in the eyes only once. Once, upon the first shock of the present. Once, with eyes wide and open, like a wound.
Geralt lingers as the others go off to bed, watching as Jaskier slowly fades as his audience wanes.
"Thank you, Geralt." he says. "It is truly a magnificent present. And far more than I deserve."
Do not thank me is what Geralt wants to say. Do not thank me, not when I have done this to you.
"I didn't do much," is what comes out of his mouth. "It was already there."
Jaskier does not look at him. "If this is an apology-" he says, "I do not need it. You were tired and upset. You spoke your mind. And nothing you said was- untrue. From a certain point of view. You do not need to absolve your guilt to me."
"Jaskier," Geralt says. "I'm sorry."
"And I forgive you." Jaskier says "I forgave you even the moment you after spoke. I don't think I would be myself if I could do otherwise."
It is done. The gift given, the apology accepted. And yet the silence still sits heavy in the air. It is not fixed. It is still broken. It is still out of tune and all of Geralt's twisting and tunings have not set the melody to rights.
"Why are you still like this?" He says. Jaskier stiffens. The words are wrong again, he's done it again, and he could scream with frustration, like a child who keeps swinging the sword and cutting himself on the dulled edge.
"Do you know the Countess de Stael bought me a Stradivarius once?" Jaskier said. "You don't know what that is. A fiddle, rarer than rubies. There were only twenty ever made. It sings like nothing else. She presented it to me on a bed of velvet, and told me she loved me. She told me to stay. And I would have."
Jaskier plinks a few idle notes. "She kicked me out a month later. Too mouthy. Too tacky. Too gauche. She had found someone better. She took back the Stradivarius and handed it off to her new minstrel."
"What I am saying, Geralt-" He says. "What I am asking- Is that you not do things you do not mean. That you not give me false hope. That you stop trying to make me love you, because I already do. I already do and it hurts. It hurts so much."
296 notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 2 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
i finally finished the book series! i love these guys sfm they make me feel fings
2K notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 2 months ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
i just think a lot about the few hugs we get to see them have. especially the one in 'daydream hour'. i have so many feelings about toshiro being repressed as hell
3K notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 2 months ago
Text
I ??? woke up at 3am with this scene fully written in my mind palace and quickly jotted it down in the Notes app
*
Clark’s shaking his head before he realizes he’s doing it, and feels a twinge of embarrassment at his own bad manners when Bruce stops mid-word to look at him, brows raised.
“No?” he says.
“No,” Clark says, again without thinking, and again with the reflexive urge to apologize. Somewhere his mother is tutting without knowing why. But he doesn’t apologize, because he’s already saying, “No, it can’t—it can’t be that.”
“Okay,” Bruce says slowly. “Can you elaborate?”
He is, honestly, having trouble taking his eyes off the screen. The mockup design of his new suit is there, dark and sleek, ridged like tactical gear. The blue is like the last shade of evening before you can’t call it evening anymore, the color of nine PM in Kansas in July, so exact there’s a strong chance Bruce color-picked it from a photo. The yellow accents are the cool fluorescent yellow-green of lightning bugs. The red is dark as arterial blood. Every aspect of the suit has been updated—the colors deeper, the angles sharper, the S extending to the corners of its frame—but Bruce has done it without changing the fundamentals. It’s immediately recognizable as the Superman suit, just… well, a little cooler, maybe. A little more of the times. Even the tailoring is modernized. The neckline. The shape of the boots. Where the belt hits at the waist. Clark can tell just by looking that Bruce has not only spent a lot of time on this in general, he’s spent a lot of time designing it specifically with Clark in mind, Clark’s needs and preferences and the small discomforts of his current suit, things he might have mentioned offhand after a mission but never with the assumption that Bruce was listening or filing it away. No doubt the next slides of this presentation will detail all the hidden features of the new suit, and they’ll all be incredibly thoughtful if not slightly overkill, and Bruce will pretend his sole motive here was practicality and risk reduction and respond to any thanks with a curt nod.
And Clark wants to thank him. He will. It’s just.
“It can’t be… cool,” he says, inane. Bruce is watching him with that steady look that used to feel clinical, piercing, and now mostly reads as attentive. “It can’t be—like yours. Tactical, military-grade.”
“Lightyears beyond, actually.”
“It has to—Ma said once, a kid should be able to draw it with crayons. You know? I can’t look like a weapon. I have to—I want to look like a friend.”
He can feel himself flushing. It’s rare that he speaks like this, and rarer still that he does so while being stared at intently. Bruce may think of himself as the darkness, but his gaze is a spotlight: unwavering and revealing and more a little sweat-inducing, for one reason or another.
“Sometimes, when I show up, people laugh,” Clark says. “If it’s somewhere out of the way, where they haven’t seen me before. I show up and I look like a festival performer. It’ll be the worst day of their lives, and they’ve got no reason to trust my face, but when they see what I’m wearing—it goes from ‘Who are you?’ to ‘Who is this guy?’ And that’s a good thing.”
“Hard to be afraid of a man dressed in primary colors,” Bruce says, almost to himself.
“Exactly.”
“I see. Thank you,” he says, “for explaining.”
Clark tries not to show how surprised he is to hear that. Judging by the crook of Bruce’s mouth, his success is negligible. “Of course. Sorry I didn’t—I mean, thank you, obviously, for going to such trouble. I didn’t mean to come in here and—I really do appreciate it, I can tell you put a lot of work in—”
Bruce’s eyes cut away. “No. No need. I didn’t ask, before I…. It was only a first draft. If you’re amenable, I’ll incorporate your feedback into the second one.”
“Oh! Yeah. Yes, of course, but you really don’t have to—”
“If you have any further notes, I would like to hear them.”
There’s something determined in the lines of his face. Clark has the sense that this moment is important, that it’s a turning point, even if he’s not sure why. It feels like striking out into a sea of ice, a blank white expanse under which something precious and vital is hidden, has been hidden all along, just waiting for him to find it. To want to.
“Sure,” he says. He looks back at the suit and swallows, and knows Bruce will see the flicker of his throat and take some meaning from it, and wishes he knew what the meaning was. Or maybe Bruce won’t notice or read into it at all. Maybe Clark needs to calm down, in fact. “Um. I don’t want to assume, but does it… do things?”
“It does things,” Bruce confirms, after the barest pause. “Let me show you the next slide.”
4K notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 2 months ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Just a concept I’m playing around with, I feel like Cass would clock Billy’s deal pretty quickly but keep his secret (in an au where the JL doesn’t know he’s a kid). Billy would probably be living by himself and working as whiz kid in this one, very independent but kinda lonely. He’s still got friends ofc but maybe no hero that truly gets him. Just a very good boy
Cass may try to get Batman to go easier on him. If they ever meet Cap would tell Cass that she’s a good person with such absolute certainty that she would be blown away. Incredulous—> denial/doubt —> hope —> belief —> grateful
Lowk want this to connect to the Dad!Billy au where Batman misinterprets Captain Marvel’s wistfulness to wanting a child (instead of parents and a family lol) but not having the means to support one + the responsibility of being a hero. Then Superboy gets discovered, and Superman doesn’t want him? boom perfect opportunity to give Cap a child! And a civilian life! Adopting worked for Batman, what could go wrong
939 notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 2 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
Ciri and Vysogota debate the usefulness of revenge in Andrzej Sapkowski's Tower of Swallows.
73 notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 2 months ago
Text
Ghost Eater
Summary: You don't like exorcists. They don't much like you either.
-----
You’d always thought big restaurants like the Brownie Industry only did well in small, midwestern towns like the one you came from. A year working in LA has taught you that, no matter where you go, people will always love garlic bread and sugar.
It’s your day off which means you’re pulling a double shift. You haven’t had time to wash your hair for the past two weeks so it’s frizzing out of your claw clip and flying wild around your face. The lighting is so dim that you’ve tripped over two black purses already, luckily not while you’re running food. The big dining room sounds like an apiary with the tittering laughter of the later adult crowd that’s filtered in from the theater across the four lane road. The main difference between the Brownie Industry here and the one back home is size. The ceiling soars overhead, supported by a series of concrete pillars separating the dining area into three sections.
Normally it would be three servers per section. Today, it’s just you in yours.
One more hour. That’s what the manager promised you. It might even be true if the host stand quits seating you after the table you’re approaching.
There are three people at the table. A woman whose hair might be light blonde or gray in the light of day, her eyes light and piercing. Her face is soft from age, emphasized by the tight, lace collar of her off-season sweater. She reminds you strongly of your mom’s nemesis on the HOA board. The man couldn’t be more out of place next to her despite their equivalent age. He’s wearing a leather jacket – again, it’s not cold here – and a Norwegian metal shirt underneath. His hair is definitely white, so white it almost glows. He’s frowning at the teenager across the table as if she’s touched his motorcycle without permission.
The teenager might be the first you’ve seen all night who doesn’t have their phone out. She’s decked out in what you consider grandma florals – a t-shirt scattered with daisy chains, a bucket hat made out of nana’s carpet bag, and a hand-crocheted scarf in pastel.  You can’t really see her face under the shadow of her hat and there’s an odd, blurred quality to the way she fiddles with her napkin. You let your eyes skip past her and back to the two adults. Teenagers don’t pay the bill.
“Welcome to Brownie Industry!” you chirp. You’re sweaty and red but the faded yellow light hides that. You’re a service industry pro so none of your exhaustion shows on your face when you ask, “Is this your first-time dining with us?”
If you weren’t so burned out, you’d have noticed before you introduced yourself.
“Are you Grady?” the woman asks. Her voice is more posh than you expected even with her lace collar. “Grady Pace?”
Fuck. There’s a noticeable temperature differential now that you’re close to them. The restaurant is warm from the number of bodies, maybe even warmer than the summer air outside, but stepping up next to their table feels like walking into an ice rink.
“I’m your waitress,” you say. You don’t have time for this conversation. You’ve got five minutes in your cycle to take their order and then you’ve got food to run. “If you need any other services from me, I have a website.”
“We messaged you,” the man says. His lips thin to the point his thick mustache covers them entirely. “You never responded.”
Because you’ve been making more money at the Brownie Industry than your other job. “I’ll take a look at it tonight.”
“Wait,” the teenager says, sitting upright. She looks from you to the adults and back again. When she smiles, there’s no humor in it. “This is why we drove eight hours to have dinner at the Brownie Industry? For her?”
“Katie, be polite—”
“I’m sorry,” Katie says, “It’s just—I found a priest, you know? An actual exorcist priest and you guys want to trust a waitress over him?”
“Ugh exorcists,” you say. The memory of sour cabbage is so heavy on your tongue that you stick your tongue out in disgust. When you see Katie’s look, you backtrack. “Effective! Definitely effective.”
“Your mistakes have cost us too much already,” the man says, shaking a finger at her. “We are not converting just for an exorcism.”
“I normally don’t agree with your father,” the woman tells Katie, “but in this case I would like to leave conversion as a last resort.”
“We wouldn’t actually convert,” Katie says, rolling her eyes.
“Pretty sure exorcists can tell when you lie,” you tell Katie. When her scowl deepens, you clear your throat. “Did you all need another minute to think about the menu?”
“We need you to help us,” the dad says. He scrubs a hand over his face. “Look, I know you’re at work and I’m sorry we’re bothering you.”
“We’re desperate,” the mom says. She reaches for her purse. “We’ll pay you. Triple the rate on your website or even quadruple. We need that thing gone by tonight.”
Katie covers her face. “Mom. You’re embarrassing me. Terry isn’t that bad.”
“Oh, he’s bad, young lady,” the dad says sternly. “A bad influence.”
“We caught her trying to perform another séance yesterday,” the mom confesses to you. She leans forward with a pinched expression. “So Terry’s friend Larry could visit too.”
“Interesting,” you say. The food bell rings, but you think you can ignore it for another minute. You study Katie’s blush. “Why did you do that?”
If she was being compelled, she won’t have an answer to your question. You’ve dealt with a lot of ghosts in your time, but so few are sentient enough – or powerful enough – for compulsion.
“Go on,” the dad says, gesturing at you. “Tell her.”
“Leroy, she’s embarrassed enough,” the mom says.
“No, she’s not, Sarah.” The dad – Leroy – gestures to you again. “Tell her.”
Katie huffs, clearly resistant. But when her dad huffs back, she caves. “So,” she says, “I have this YouTube channel—”
“I’m off in an hour,” you interrupt. You don’t care that you’re being rude. Your patience ran out as soon as she said YouTube. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot.” You turn to go.
“A moment!” Sarah shakes out her menu. “How’s the nicoise salad?”
Of course they’re going to order. They’d better tip too if they want you to help them with their ghost problem.
----.
“You said an hour,” mom Sarah says when you leave out the employee entrance. She’s shivering next to her daughter. Leroy is off smoking behind his motorcycle, parked next to the Tesla Katie is leaning on, but he stubs out his cigarette on the asphalt when you walk up. “It’s been two.”
“I had side work,” you say instead of it would have been one if not for you. You rub your bare arms when the familiar ghost chill washes over you. You want nothing more than to go home and wash the scent of garlic and brownie batter out of your hair. “Was there something wrong with my service?”
“No?”
You try to make your voice light. “I see.”
Sarah frowns at your tone anyway. “Why?”
“You tipped five dollars.”
Katie jolts like a scalded cat. “Mom!”
Leroy scrubs a hand over his face. “Sarah…”
“What?” Sarah throws up her hands. The parking lot lights catch on her Swarovski charm bracelet. “I tipped!”
“Like ten percent,” Katie says. She pulls her bucket hat over her eyes for a beat and then peeks at you from under it. “I’m so sorry. It’s not you, she’s always like this.”
“It was actually a six percent tip,” you say. You’re getting a clearer picture of this little family now. It’s becoming more and more understandable why Katie might have started summoning ghosts. “If you want to be precise.”
Leroy reaches for his back pocket. “Let me.”
Sarah swats at his hand. “We’re about to pay her a lot more than that!”
“For a completely separate job,” Leroy says. He pulls a twenty from his wallet and hands it to you with a grimace. “Sorry, Grady, I should’ve checked.”
“You should’ve paid if you cared so much,” Sarah retorts. She folds her arms over her chest. She taps her cheek and widens her eyes. “Oh wait… you never pay.”
“Sure,” Leroy says. This time it’s his turn to throw his hands in the air. “Sure, Sarah. I don’t pay for anything to do with our daughter’s private school or her dance classes or her health insurance—”
“If the court hadn’t mandated—”
“You make twice as much as me—"
“Guys!” Katie says loudly. Her mouth is a thin line of upset when she says, “Argue about what an expensive burden I am later when we don’t have an audience, okay?”
Her parents speak at the same time.
“You’re twisting my words,” Sarah says. “I never said—"
“Sweetie, you’re not a burden—”
“Can you just get this ghost out of me?” Katie asks you. She goes for nonchalance and falls short. “My parents haven’t been in the same room for the last five years for a reason.” She fakes whispering. “They don’t play nicely with others.”
Sarah bristles. “Katie.”
“God, I know how that is,” you say. The whole interaction is giving you the worst case of sympathy for Katie. Before her parents can say anything else, you change the subject. “How long have you been haunted?”
“Six months,” Katie says. She fiddles with her bucket hat so that you can see her eyes for the first time. They’re brown, like her dad’s, and have heavy bruises underneath. She shrugs. “They only noticed a month ago though.”
“I noticed your behavior had changed,” Sarah defends. Like her daughter, she fidgets. She plays with her bracelet and clears her throat. “I thought it was a teenage thing.”
“What signs did you notice first?” you ask the parents. They glance at each other and then away.
“Let’s just say we noticed different things,” Leroy says dryly. He pulls out his phone.
“Moodiness,” Sarah says. She ticks them off on her fingers. “Laziness. Disrespect. Over-sleeping.”
“Those are just teenager things,” Katie says with an astounding level of self awareness. She shrugs. “I’m a senior now. They’re lucky it didn’t start sooner.”
“I,” Leroy says, “noticed this.” He turns his phone towards you.
“Ah,” Sarah says, “Yes. That.”
You examine the picture. It’s of Katie on a small dirt bike. She’s wearing a helmet in the picture, but you recognize the fashion sense in the floral boots she’s wearing. The scene behind her is of the hills, low scrub brush recognizable to someone who’s lived in LA for the past five years. On the bike behind her is a smudge. It could be a cloud of dirt blown into frame or maybe a camera glitch. It could be if it weren’t for the leering face emerging from the cloud right behind her head.
“I just want to say I did not agree to getting her a motorcycle,” Sarah says.
“Mom, not the point,” Katie says.
“Look how close that creep is to my daughter,” Leroy says. He jabs a finger at Katie’s waist in the photo where you can see a ghostly hand. “I want him gone.”
“Dad, he didn’t mean anything by it!” Katie turns to you earnestly. “Terry never rode a bike before and I thought, like, what if he moved on after he got a chance to? It was a philanthropic effort!”
“Plant a tree if you want to be a philanthropist,” Leroy growls. “I want this guy away from my daughter.”
“He doesn’t mean any harm really,” Katie says. “He would move on if he could! He says he’s stuck to me because of how I summoned him. He’s like, really sorry. He even spelled out Sorry in the bathroom mirror once.”
“What,” Sarah says in a dangerous voice, “was Terry doing in the bathroom with you, Katie?”
Katie splutters. “Mom, don’t be gross!”
The family descends into bickering. You have heard about ghosts being stuck to a person before, but usually that’s when the person has some sort of psychic powers. Katie’s wearing crystal in her ears, but they aren’t charged. She might develop some talent later in life, but right now she’s a normal girl.
The parking lost is nearly empty now. You recognize a few employee cars, but very few customers. The kitchen will be cleaning for another half hour before they’re ready to go home.  The reality is that, if Terry is stuck, you might not be the best way to handle the situation. If he’s not…
Well.
It’s time to talk to Terry.
Opening your ghost sense is hard to describe. Some psychics liken it to a third eye, right in the middle of their forehead. You’ve always thought that sounded really cool like maybe the world gets cast in a blue hue when they do it and the dead appear like they do in movies. You’ve met other psychics who say it’s like a sixth sense. They know where the ghost is and it’s like they download all that information until their minds can just sort of conjure their image.
For you, it’s like letting your body remember it has a second mouth. Cats have an extra sensory organ on the roof of their mouth that lets them detect scents better. Your second mouth is a bit like that. You can still smell brownies and garlic and the city air of LA, but you can also smell/taste something else.
Something like…pepper?
Your eyes water and you sneeze so viciously that your eyes close. When you open them again, four people are staring at you in surprise.
“Gesundheit,” Leroy says.
“You sneeze like Dad does,” Katie says.
“Did no one ever teach you to cover your mouth?” Sarah asks in disgust.
“I wish you would’ve sneezed on her,” Terry says, nodding to Sarah. “She’s such a bitch.”
“Thank you for the commentary, everyone,” you say. You wipe your nose with the collar of your shirt as you consider Terry. It’s dirty anyway. “Terry. Interesting name for a ghost.”
Terry hasn’t noticed that you can see him yet. He’s floating behind Katie, one arm casually flung over her shoulder. It’s hard to place when he died based on his appearance alone. His hair is chin length, emphasizing the width of his jaw. Squire cuts have been popular for several decades and the bowling shirt he’s wearing could either be a modern fashion statement or a dated uniform. He looks to be in his mid-twenties, sun-kissed and with the air of someone who tells a lot of jokes at the expense of others. His arm around Katie strikes you as possessive, the glare he gives her parents venomous.
“I didn’t name him,” Katie says. “He said it’s short of Torrance.”
You blink. “Wouldn’t he be Torri then?”
“That’s a girl’s name,” Katie and Terry say at the same time. Their cadence is so close that it actually sounds like Terry’s baritone comes out of Katie’s mouth. For a moment, his arm flickers, clipping into her shoulder like a bad animation. When it does, Terry’s form grows brighter, more solid. Then Katie shivers and he’s forced out of her.
You and Terry click your tongues at the same time.
You remember how Katie’s hands seemed to blur at the dinner table. Terry’s not just haunting Katie. He’s trying to possess her. You wonder if that’s why Katie looked up an exorcist rather than a simple spiritual cleansing. Did she know how much danger she was in?
“Okay,” you say. You tear your attention away from Katie and Terry for a moment. Business first. “Sarah. Leroy. Who was it that found my site?”
“I did,” Sarah says. She raises her chin when you can’t hide your surprise. “When Katie was looking up exorcists—”
“She didn’t mean it,” Terry says. He pats Katie’s hat. “Right?”
“—I looked up alternative solutions,” Sarah says, not having heard Terry. Her confidence falters for a moment and she rubs her arm. “I have had some… negative experiences with exorcisms. I don’t want my daughter to go through that.”
Katie’s head whips towards her mother. “What? I didn’t know that.”
“It was a long time ago,” Leroy says. For the first time, he reaches out and hugs Sarah with one arm. You don’t know what surprises you more; Leroy hugging Sarah or Sarah leaning into his side. “When Sarah told me, we decided to put our differences aside. I vetted you through some of my contacts and they all agreed you’d be a safe bet.”
“I am,” you say. You’re not bragging either. You’re probably the safest bet in half the western states besides your older sister. “There are some…peculiarities in my method.”
“Charlatan,” Terry whispers in Katie’s ear. He’s grinning now. “Only charlatans are that confident. Look! She can’t even see me!”
Katie looks doubtful.
Usually, you’d try to talk to Terry at this point. Sometimes spirits can be negotiated with. They can be encouraged to move on or to take on a less aggressive form of haunting. Those that are truly stuck can be helped with the right sort of ritual work. But the way Terry’s affecting Katie’s mood and that fucking arm around her shoulders…
You don’t really want to talk to Terry.
“We can ask Terry to move on,” you tell the family.
“Nooooooo,” Terry says and flips you off. “Pass!”
“Sometimes spirits don’t realize how deeply they’re affecting their hosts,” you say.
“You don’t even know how deep I’m about to be,” Terry jeers at you.
“Many ghosts are confused when they’re called to interact with the living,” you say. “It can blur their understanding of death and, as a result, they cling to life. If they stick around long enough, their presence will affect the living like what’s happening to Katie. It’s not always malicious. It can be a symptom of that confusion.”
“Katie, tell her to piss off,” Terry hisses in the teen’s ear. “I’m not confused, I’m bored.” His voice deepens. “Tell her we don’t need her help. Tell her we’re going home.”
Katie opens her mouth robotically. “That’s…” Her brow creases as she tries to figure out what she was going to say. “It seems like we don’t need help then. Terry will move on when he’s ready, like I thought.”
“We aren’t paying you for a ghost therapy session,” Sarah snaps. It’s only because you’re really focusing that you can see the unease under her anger. She’s noticed something wrong with Katie. “Katie, Terry is going away today.”
“Fuck you,” Terry says.
“Fuck you,” Katie says.
Leroy’s head rears back. “Katie, you don’t use that language with your mother!”
“Fuck you too,” Katie and Terry say. The parking lot lights flicker.
“No, fuck you, Terry,” you say, stepping between Katie and her parents. Leroy starts like he’s going to pull you out of the way, but he doesn’t.
“Terry?” Leroy asks. He looks scared. “Terry said that? Is Terry possessing my daughter?”
“Not yet.” You eye Terry’s arm and the way his fingers are sinking into Katie’s arm.
“Oh fuck,” Terry says. He doesn’t look scared. Not yet. Instead, he grins. “You can see me.”
“Not every ghost is malicious,” you tell the parents without taking your eyes off Terry. “But some are.”
“I’m not malicious.” Terry runs a hand through his hair, still grinning. The parking lot lights flicker overhead again. “I care about Katie a lot.”
“Terry’s never hurt me,” Katie says.
You ignore her. She’s not even shaking Terry off now. Her gaze is dull on your face when you say, “I don’t mean to sound like I’m some sort of ghost therapist. However, it’s important to differentiate between malicious and non-malicious hauntings in my practice. My methods are unconventional and, if used indiscriminately, I can get in a lot of trouble.”
“We won’t tell anyone,” Leroy says. He steps into your periphery. His gaze flicks from you to the spot you’re staring at over Katie’s shoulder. “We want Terry gone.”
“Not a soul,” Sarah promises. She comes up on your other side. “Please help our daughter.”
“Terry,” you say. Your second mouth is yawning wide somewhere in the back of your brain. The taste of pepper isn’t as overwhelming now. “Last chance. Renounce your claim on Katie’s soul and slither back into whatever hole you came out of.”
“We’re soulmates,” Terry says. He bares his teeth at you. “Go on, Charlatan. Call on your God to banish me. I’ve been around for decades and no exorcist has ever been able to put a scratch on me. And when they manage to push me out?” He laughs and the temperature drops another ten degrees. An unholy light flickers in his eyes. “I just come right back.”
“Then I guess I won’t feel guilty,” you say.
“Guilty?” Katie asks.
You walk forward two steps and grab Terry’s face. Terry’s skin is soft and jelly-like. His facial bones undulate like rubber under your grip. “Hi, Terry.”
Now Terry’s afraid. “What the fuck, you can touch—?”
“Bye, Terry.” You drag him towards you. His fingers pop out of Katie’s arm with a wet sucking sound, and he claws at your wrist.
“Wait! Waitwaitwaitwait--”
You eat Terry.
People come from all around to eat at the Brownie Industry. They love the density of the desserts and the heaps of garlic spread over home-baked (shipped frozen) rolls. It’s a treat to know you’re always going to enjoy the meal even if you’re far from home or eating at the same location a hundred times. It’s consistency, sugar and butter. An easy addiction to have.
Eating ghosts is like that for you. They fizz in your second mouth like champagne and melt like fudge. It’s hard to describe and the ephemeral quality of it sends shivers down your spine. Somewhere Terry is screaming in anguish, maybe crying. You think that the family you’re helping is screaming something too, but the sensation of eating is so consuming you can’t hear the words.
Terry is younger than other ghosts you’ve eaten. He doesn’t have the depth of flavor you’d once been addicted to back in Illinois. The best ghost you’ve ever eaten had been like a six-course meal with all the centuries she’d been carrying. In comparison, Terry is like a bag of pepper chips. Interesting, but gone in a moment. Still, he hits the spot.
When you’re done, you burp a purple cloud of ectoplasm into the still night air.
Leroy is the first to speak. His eyes are so wide you can see the whites all around them. “Pay her, Sarah,” he says breathlessly. His hands shake as he reaches for Katie, steadying her on her feet. “Now.”
You smack your lips and graciously accept the wad of cash Sarah hands you. You raise your eyebrows. “This is more than three times my rate.”
“Consider it a tip,” Sarah says. She’s more composed than Leroy, but still pale. She studies you. “That was…revolting.”
“You didn’t have to watch,” you say. You put your money away and then perk up at a sudden thought. “Hey, if you can, can you leave me a review on my site?”
“I thought you didn’t want us to tell anyone?”
You wave your hand. “Secrets are bad for business. Besides, Terry deserved it. I’m sure they’ll understand if you write that in your review.”
“They…?”
You smile and don’t answer.
The family don’t ask many more questions after that. The parents promise to leave a review and Katie just stares at you as if concussed. You assure the parents that she’ll be back to normal as soon as the soul-shock wears off. 
“And if it doesn’t?” Sarah asks.
“Message me,” you say.
“You don’t check your messages,” Leroy says.
“Oh,” you say, patting your stomach, “I’ll be checking them a lot more often now.”
You’re hungry again.
---
(Patreon)
2K notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 2 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
witcher giiirrllll
2K notes · View notes
hideouspancake · 2 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
New zine that's free for anyone to print and distribute! Read the whole thing at newlevant.com/COVIDzine or in the rest of this post.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
UPDATE 4/11/2023:
I swapped out the colloidal silver nasal spray info for xylitol nasal spray info. I originally included colloidal silver spray because of the linked study and recommendation from RTHM, but I don't want to be pointing people toward something with notable health risks. Xylitol spray (Xlear) is also cheaper and more widely available!
33K notes · View notes