#[gathers my dream machines and weird dream scientists]

[captorcorp]

i love when there's an agency/clinic/etc that studies dreams but in a weird way. and then they also have The Machine.

[kafkaoftherubbles]

俺倒是有个假设后来被剧情毙了...想来它其实也蛮暗黑系下的，哈哈！

There was a hypothesis I had during the very beginning of the Wish Era, especially since for weeks the manga refused to show us where Fushi was (until that first fight to rescue Eko and Uncle Kai). Honestly, it shouldn't even be called a hypothesis because it was just a weird what-if at most! By a brain that hallucinates and daydreams a lot!

Plus, it was actually kinda dark and not even the right tone for this manga... except maybe the Previous Era where "Fushi Suffering" looked to be that eternal theme, hahaha!

I wondered if Fushi themself had been captured by Kaibara, and the immortal warriors were carrying out some sort of guerilla warfare or terrorism to take them back. That's why they were at the top of Kaibara's Most Wanted!

But there was more. Fushi could realistically escape easily—they possess a power comparable to teleportation, after all. But in this weird what-if that I had, Kaibara and the Nokkers had found ways to prevent them from escaping. They kept them in a tube or something, a large one.

And then... well, they used Fushi as a creation machine. Ya know, like a hybrid of the cornucopia and the philosopher stone, but suspended in a tube. Everything in this utopia was extracted from them because the Earth out there was a trash dump wasteland. While Fushi started out thinking it was a useful means to utilize their power to help humanity and the world he was taking care of, the demands became so burdening that it started becoming torment, but they could not be let out, and so it's up to the immortal warriors to rescue them... or something.

It's so completely divorced from where the story went, innit?! Haha. That's how cracked I can actually be!

It was inspired by a (very, very long) vivid dream I had when I was a child. Briefly put, I was a manipulative scientist-daughter who tricked an ancient forest monster/being (who was repentant from consuming countless human lives before, which allowed it to absorb their emotions and some memories, and gain humanity. And now it wanted to atone. Like I said, it was a long ass fucking dream) into being captured by my vainglorious father. It was then used for both painful, invasive experiments and as a creation machine. It was easy to connect this dream with To Your Eternity simply because the forest monster took the form of a white-haired boy when interacting with scientist-daughter-me.

I was recently reminded of both the dream and this debunked what-if by Trigun Stampede, which I finished last week... and am rewatching this week, because YO THAT ANIMATION GODDAMN. In that story, there are these living-but-man-made organisms called Plants, which produce all sorts of stuff, for the human communities to survive ina barren wasteland. Both Vash and the antagonist, however, are Independents—Plants who can live outside a tube and are virtually humanlike despite being able to produce things, too.

Since I made a post gathering all of my crackest crack-ass hypotheses, I decided to put this down as an addendum/record too. It's totally not because I'm bored or anything!

Thank you for reading my ramble, in which I did not expect to ramble, but I gave up fighting my nature.

[undertalethingems]

Bark at the Moon Chapter 19: Darker Yet Darker

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Or read on my Ao3>

Rating, Setting: Gen, Pre-canon

Chapter Warnings: None?

Chapter Summary: If Alphys is going to help the brothers overcome their inability to shift forms, she needs more information. Information that lies in the grim, long-abandoned sections of the lab she never knew about. The lab where the brothers were made.

Alphys breathed. In, and out. She meshed her fingers together, then snapped them outwards with a crackle. She picked up a hammer, a blowtorch, and lowered the welding visor over her eyes.

It was time to 'hack' into the abandoned labs.

Of all the floors listed on the elevator, all but two seemed to be operational--the entry floor, and the lowest, where she'd conducted her experiments. She'd wondered about the others, of course, but had never been able to verify that they existed. As far as she could tell, they'd been dummied out, so to speak--placeholders in the elevator's control panel that weren't actually connected to anything.

Thanks to a couple of skeletons, she knew that wasn't true. There were whole sections of her facility that had been sealed off, and who was she, as a scientist, if she didn't investigate? This was supposed to be her lab, what if there was important equipment to salvage? Not to mention the implications it might have for her friends. So she'd gathered her tools and her courage, turned off most of the elevator's safeties to keep its doors open, and began lowering it manually so there'd be no bypassing whatever floors lay between. Slowly sinking downwards, her heart leapt when a door finally rose into view in the dim light--but she quickly got to work.

The blowtorch hissed and sparked, and a clang announced it had done its work. Alphys shut it off and switched to the hammer, using it to knock the doors loose and slowly pry her way through. She could really use Undyne's muscles right now... Her strong, broad shoulders... those powerful biceps covered in glimmering scales... No! She could dream later. There were people counting on her. She wedged herself in the half-open door, braced herself against the other, and pushed with her leg. It grated open, and finally, she set foot on a floor it seemed no one had used for decades.

The landing was nondescript, lit by the weak emergency lighting she was familiar with. Even so, she exchanged the welding mask for a headlamp and flicked it on, illuminating the rest of the hall down to a doorway. She took a deep breath--and tried not to choke on the stale air. Even the ventilation system seemed to have been cut off here... She'd have to be careful. Gripping her hammer, she shuffled forward into the gloom.

A greyish-white mass erupted from the wall. Alphys shrieked, backpedaling so fast she tripped over her own tail. She landed on her back and rolled, scrambling on all fours for the elevator--and then she stopped. She recognized that electronic buzzing...

She turned, looking over her shoulder. "M-m... Memoryheads?"

The mass screeched, coalescing into a more familiar appearance, and Alphys turned over and sat as she tried to catch her breath. What were they doing here...?

"U-um, hi... you know you can leave the lab now, i-if you wanted," she said, slowly recovering from her nerves. "S-sorry I yelled, by the way, you just startled me. It's... k-kind of spooky down here, huh?"

The memoryheads buzzed like an old computer's disk drive.

"W-well, maybe not to you, ha ha... U-um... I sure hope you're the only thing lurking down here! I-I... I'm going to keep going now, okay?"

She got to her feet, brushed off her coat, and picked up her scattered tools before proceeding back down the hallway. She passed the memoryheads, and looked back to see they'd begun following her a few feet behind. What Undyne had shared about them popped into her head, and she had to wonder... Maybe they could help her.

"H-hey! So, I... I didn't make you, did I? You weren't part of my experiment."

A harsh grating sound emanated from the amalgamate. Oh, that's right--Alphys dug into her pocket for her phone. The speaker crackled with static, and she listened.

"NEGATIVE RESULT."

"O-Oh, that means, no, right?"

"That is correct."

"O-oh... Oh man... so my hypothesis... C... Can you... show me where you were made?"

"One moment, please."

The memoryheads phased through the floor.

"H-hey! I can't do that!" Alphys spluttered, then sighed. She should have known... the memoryheads were the more enigmatic of her charges... and they weren't even hers! What had she gotten into...?

"You may join us now," the phone suddenly crackled, and she jumped.

"Wh-where? What floor? What number?"

"666666666666666666666666666666666666--"

She shut the phone off, ending the harsh screech. Was there even a sixth floor? She turned back for the elevator once more--though she definitely wanted to check out all the abandoned labs had to offer, she had a priority. Back inside, she checked the panel--and there was indeed a sixth level. She'd head there, and could only hope the memoryheads actually had something for her.

A bang, clang, and scrape, and Alphys forced another set of doors open. The air here was even stuffier--a lingering chemical trace intermingled with decaying tile and carpet. She coughed, and hoped the air coming down the elevator shaft would be enough until she got the ventilation working. She'd take it slow until then.

"O-okay, I'm on the sixth floor, Memoryheads," she spoke into the phone, and static rose on the line.

"Come join the fun." "Come join the fun." "Come join the fun."

She sighed. They were helping, in their limited way. There was nothing for it but to venture into the dark, and see what she'd find. She shuffled forward, feet padding along warped linoleum--the first monster to tread these halls in years.

No.

Alphys' breath caught in her throat. There, in the dust--there were footprints. She swallowed hard, and followed them. The hall opened into a room, and she passed by rows of deteriorating machines. She could only guess at their purpose--all rotten rubber tubing, peeling paint, and oxidizing metal. Generators, perhaps. The footprints passed them by, and so did she. Another hall lead to another room, this one lined with all kinds of monitoring equipment, their paneling and readouts coated with years of dust and stained by a burst pipe. But nothing here seemed to have a means of storing information--there wasn't much to be gleaned here. So she continued on.

She finally came to a room that looked like a laboratory, with workbenches and cabinets on one side--and a pair of operating tables on the other. There was also some kind of device on the floor--it had been shattered by an incredible force. The footprints seemed to stop by it before moving on.

The next room made Alphys gasp--and not because the air was thin. It was U-shaped, and tall cisterns lined the walls, nearly reaching the vaulted ceiling. The memoryheads waited here.

"Th... This is...?"

"It's a real get together," the memoryheads stated, apparently confirming her unfinished thought.

Alphys hurried over to examine the nearest tank, pouring over its construction. The craftsmanship, the expert tooling! What she wouldn't give for a set of blueprints or schematics or--a chill suddenly ran down her spine. No. This wasn't anything to get excited about.

She looked back up at the cracked glass walls of the tank before her. This was where the brothers had been... made. They'd both come from one of these--not sparked from a parent's soul like any other monster. If Gaster had stopped there, he might have been alright, but then he'd...

She turned back to the memoryheads. "C-can you show me... Do you know where the brothers lived down here? Sans and Papyrus?"

"Invalid statement. Please try again."

"Oh, you don't know... O-okay, I can figure it out. Thank you for leading me here."

"Our pleasure."

She nodded to them, and headed back the way she'd come. It seemed the owner of the footprints had done the same--but then had seemed to stagger... and then the trail vanished...? Weird...

Wait. Alphys squinted, and found a clear print. She placed her own foot beside it to compare. It was just a little smaller, left by rounded footwear... These were Sans' footprints. She should have known...! She sighed. What had Sans been looking for down here...? In any case, his trail went cold. Alphys only had her own guidance to go on now.

There was another doorway opposite of the tank room, so she headed for it--and thanked her luck as rows of ancient computers greeted her. Finally! This was what she'd been hoping for. She headed for the nearest one, and booted it up--or, tried to. It briefly wheezed to life, only to die, and she swore under her breath as she dove under the desk to open it up. These were built into the floor?! Oh come on... Maybe she could remove the hard drives and take them back to her lab for analysis. She pried the side panel open and took a look--well, that was unusual.

And bad.

The main drives had melted together somehow, the plastic and metal a bubbled mess. She swore under her breath again, and reached in to see what her magic could tell her. The spark of magical electricity raced out, laying the computer's wiring bare in her mind's eye. It was the skill that had made her such a mechanical genius, and as she sensed the magic's ebb and flow, she sighed. She'd salvaged many a broken machine others had written off, but the chances of getting anything more than parts out of this were slim. She squeezed back out from under the desk, and surveyed the room. There were at least a dozen more... She had to hope she could get something out of those. She dusted herself off, moved to the next station, and got to work.

Three hours later, and Alphys had pulled as many drives from the remaining computers. She didn't have high hopes for these either, but they'd seemingly suffered the least damage from whatever event had fried an entire room of computers. She suspected the events leading to Gaster's disappearance might have been it... but that didn't help her now. She put the drives in her tool satchel, took one last look around the room, then headed back for the elevator.

The memoryheads burst from the floor again, and Alphys shrieked.

"G-guys! I know I sh-should be used to that by now, but please--"

The amalgamates buzzed, and she pulled out her phone to listen.

"Right this way."

"O-oh, you know of... more stuff?"

"CORRECT."

"Okay. Um, lead the way then."

Alphys shuffled after the memoryheads as they flit down the hall and into the elevator. She gave them a quizzical look--and jumped as the elevator started without any input--any visible input, at least. It rose to the next floor up, and Alphys dug for her tools, expecting another round of cutting her way in. But the doors dinged and opened smoothly onto a wide landing, and she watched the amalgamate glide out. But she shook her head and followed.

The hallway opened into a larger room, with windows along one side and a door to another hallway that continued on straight. Of chief interest to her was the large computer terminal set into the wall, but there was also a monitor near the windows, and she could just make out another placed in the hallway. If nothing else, this looked promising.

She padded over to the terminal, then blinked and turned back to the memoryheads. "Hey, u-um... thank you."

"DON'T MENTION IT." "You're welcome" "be seeing you."

They phased out, leaving Alphys alone in the abandoned lab once more. She took a deep breath, and turned back to the main terminal. This looked more advanced than the computers she'd already raided, and she hoped it had been better shielded from damage. She gathered her nerves, and turned it on. It flickered--and command-line text spurted across the screen. Alphys grinned, cracked her knuckles, and got to work. Alphys dug into the files, many of which, though corrupted, still held tantalizing fragments of data.

"O-okay, this said something about behavioral sources, and that other file mentioned cross-referencing a natural history encyclopedia with the behaviors observed in a study group... A study group of what though...?" Alphys muttered to herself as she wrote her own notes on what she'd pieced together. She'd copied down a few tables of measurements, and found parameters for the tubes she'd seen in the other rooms. But there was still more to comb through, and amid the gibberish of corrupted text more complete phrases stood out, forming a log of observations.

"...UBJECT REQUIRES FOOD. UNFORTUNATE. I WAS HOPING IT WOU..."

"...BEAM OUTPUT UNDER EXPECTED PERFORMANCE. SUBJECT CONTINUES TO EXHIB... URTHER TESTING REQUIRED..."

"...SUBJECT EXHIBITS UNUSUAL BEHAVIO... NGE OUTSIDE PREDICTED... NOT FOLLOWING MY INTENDED..."

"Y-yeah, of course they didn't, you jerk," Alphys muttered to herself as she continued to scroll through the files and copy whatever had survived. She already didn't like Gaster very much, but these files were doing nothing for his reputation. She found a proposed recipe for whatever he'd used to feed the brothers and grimaced. "Just plain food-grade magic and a few basic vitamins...? Really? That would have no flavor... No wonder Sans loves fast food and Papyrus can't cook... Oh, this log looks pretty complete! Let's see what it says..."

"I HAVE NOW CONFIRMED IT... BOTH SUBJECTS EXHIBIT TROUBLING ABILITY. PHENOTYPE EXPRESSION IS VARIABLE... SEEMINGLY AT WILL. MORE TESTING WILL BE NEEDED TO DETERMINE IF THIS COULD BE... PREVENTED IN SOME WAY. FOR NOW, UNDESIRABLE ATTRIBUTES WILL BE MITIGATED."

Alphys shuddered. "M-mitigated... I guess that's a nice way of saying he made them be what he wanted... ugh. Well... there's another entry, so..."

"PHENOTYPE ISSUES PERSIST. NO PROGRESS MADE ON SUPPRESSING THE ABILITY. IT APPEARS TO BE A FUNCTION OF THEIR... DESIGN FLAW."

Alphys stared at the words before her. "Design flaw... what does he... wait.... Does he mean their souls?!"

Disgusted, she pushed away from the terminal and paced. Suggesting a soul was a flaw... she couldn't understand it, couldn't comprehend the callousness this log boasted. She bristled, and static crackled across her scales--oh, the last time she'd been this angry it had been watching Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2! But as angry as she was, she needed to keep looking. She needed whatever information this place still held. She took a few more deep breaths, ran her hands over her face, and returned to the computer to keep digging.

As it so often did, the time flew as she worked. She only realized how long she'd spent browsing and recovering files when her stomach growled, signaling it was well into the night and she'd forgotten to eat. She sighed, and rubbed at weary eyes... She'd collected so much, but there was still more, dozens of files she hadn't gotten to. She'd have to come back and keep looking at this--at least she knew where it was now. And all she'd read was enough to start formulating a hypothesis.

She shut the computer down and gathered her things, then shuffled over to the windows to have a look before she headed up. She couldn't make out much in the dim light, but the room beyond seemed... huge. She looked around and... oh! There was a light switch here. She pressed it, and overhead lighting clicked on, revealing the room beyond. It was huge--perhaps twice the size of the main floor upstairs, if not bigger. The walls were stained--but had clearly once been a stark, sterile white. Was this where the brothers had been... tested?

Alphys pursed her lips, and backed away. The lights had also been turned on in the hallway, showing more rooms. She wasn't sure she wanted to, but... she was curious. She shuffled on, and came to the first door. It was reinforced, and she could only just see through the window if she stood on her toes. More stark walls, though the room was much smaller--then she realized it was subdivided, with a thick window and another reinforced door splitting the room...

A pit grew in her stomach. This... had to be...

She wouldn't have believed anyone could keep a fellow monster like this. But, considering what she'd just read she wasn't surprised Gaster had only provided the bare essential to the brothers. She glanced up at the monitor set into the wall nearby. If it was anything like the ones she'd used herself... She waved her hand in front of it.

"HOLDING ROOM 1. CONTENTS: UNOCCUPIED."

"A-ah..." she uttered, and shuffled to the next. It was identical to the first.

"HOLDING ROOM 2. CONTENTS: UNOCCUPIED."

She supposed it was better they were empty... but she wanted to see them all. The third room was slightly different--it was a bit larger, and had a raised shelf on one side. If she squinted, she could just make out what seemed to be a ragged scrap of fabric laid on top of it. Was that... supposed to be a bed? Maybe this was where the brothers really lived... At least it had more space than the holding rooms, but there was nothing to make it any more comfortable. It was just bare, featureless metal walls. She grimaced, and activated the nearby monitor.

"ENCLOSURE 1: SUBJECT 1. WARNING: DO NOT APPROACH. SUBJECT IS KNOWN TO BE DANGEROUS. DO NOT PERMIT INTERACTION WITH SUBJECT 2. EXPERIMENT CONCLUSION: FAILURE."

Alphys shuddered, then turned to the next room. It was similarly barren.

"ENCLOSURE 2: SUBJECT 2. WARNING: DO NOT APPROACH. SUBJECT IS KNOWN TO ESCAPE, MAY BE DANGEROUS. DO NOT PERMIT INTERACTION WITH SUBJECT 1. EXPERIMENT CONCLUSION: FAILURE."

Alphys clenched her fists. Her friends weren't failures... they were incredible for holding together for so long, getting through so much, and then doing nice things for her and trusting her to help them. They had survived all of--this. Her goal was clearer than ever--but she was too tired to work on it now. She turned her back on the abandoned lab and headed for the elevator.

Reaching the fresh air of the main floor was a relief. As tempted as she was to immediately plug the hard drives she'd collected into her computer and start recovering them, she opted to fix some instant noodles and catch up on the Undernet instead. It had been a long day... she'd get back to work tomorrow, after she'd had some time to recharge.

The drives she'd recovered from the lab were plugged into her main computer as she heated up breakfast, and she sipped at a mug of coffee as she poked at them virtually. If she could coax more information out of them, it'd bolster her suspicions. To say the code structure was archaic was... an understatement. But, it meant the password protection was easily bypassed with a few tricks--she was better at actual hacking than the 'hacking' she'd done to get into the abandoned lab floors, and in moments she'd begun browsing whatever files remained. There were plenty to choose from, many of which seemed to relate to details of the Core and other technological projects. But none seemed to relate to the brothers' origins, and after thoroughly checking the rest of the available files, she moved to the next drive.

It seemed these computers hadn't been used for anything relating to the brothers, however. Barring any damage or corruption, each drive contained essentially the same files. Alphys' best guess was that that room of computers had been used by everyone in the lab... and perhaps not everyone was allowed access to the files detailing Gaster's little project. She sighed, setting the old disks aside. She'd have to go back to that main computer after all, see what else she could get, and collect her own data to compare. And that would mean calling the brothers in for some tests.

"O-okay, just, hold still please!" Alphys said, trying to steady her own hands as Papyrus fidgeted.

"Are all of these really necessary?" he griped. "They're making me, itchy, I think."

"I n-need them so I can properly read your magic! Th-these sensors are the only way to tell what's going on with it, and they won't work if I don't get them placed just right," Alphys explained.

"think of it like one of your puzzles bro," Sans suggested helpfully from where he half-dozed nearby. "do it in the wrong order and ya gotta start over, right?"

Papyrus sighed. "I suppose. Very well!"

He finally sat perfectly still, allowing Alphys to place the rest of the sensors.

"Okay! There! That's it for that--now I need to make sure they work, and then we can get, um, some data. You guys ready?"

"Finally! We're doing real science!"

"instead of being the science done," Sans joked--was it a joke? Alphys hoped so as she flicked the electro-magical field reader on.

"Okay, just like we did for S-Sans, I'm going to need you to hold still and wait for a minute so we can get a baseline," she explained.

"Of course! I was paying attention!" Papyrus huffed. "I'm just excited! To think, after all this time, we might find out why... I'm tall, and Sans isn't!"

"well, that's one possibility," Sans said, and Alphys couldn't help but laugh.

"I sure hope we find out more than that. O-okay, just a little bit longer, and...!" She watched the timer count up to one minute, then cut the data collection off. "Okay, now, I'm going to start it again, but I'd like for you to cast a few attacks. I-it can be any pattern or bullet type, you just have to keep it up for thirty seconds!"

"A simple task for someone as great as me! I'm ready!"

"Target's over there--aaand go!"

Papyrus obliged, sending a flurry of bones at the dummy Undyne had loaned them for the day. He started with a basic array, then quickly built up to a complex pattern before finishing with a blast from his own jaws. Alphys gave him a smile as she cut the reading off.

"Okay, that was great! Sans, are you sure you can't give me at least a couple attacks to compare...?"

"Yeah, come on, Sans! Your patterns may not be as good as mine, but you don't want to mess up Alphys' data, do you? I know you can do it!" Papyrus encouraged, and his brother gave a drawn-out sigh as he got up and trudged over.

"alright, alright. i'll throw you a bone."

"Sans! You better throw more than one! You have to fill thirty seconds of data!"

"geez, don't remind me."

Alphys finished disconnecting the wires that had linked Papyrus to her machine, and reconnected the lines that were still attached to Sans from his first round of tests. "Okay, everything should be hooked back up. Are you ready?"

"as i'll ever be."

"And... go!"

Sans immediately opened with a pair of blasters before tearing into the dummy with a bone maze, then sent alternating blue and white bones at it before summoning another round of blasters. As she watched, Alphys wondered if they would have a training dummy to return to Undyne by the time this was through. She gave the signal for him to stop, and he flopped to the tile floor panting.

"Sans, you showoff! Alphys, I want to do mine again, I can do better than my troll of a brother," Papyrus said, indignant. Despite his breathlessness, Sans chuckled from the floor.

"U-uh, well, maybe later--I only needed to see you guys using your attacks, it didn't really matter how, um, flashy they were," she replied, holding up her hands. "That should be good enough for now. Th... There's one other thing I wish I could test, b-but, I think I can just use the old... the old data I was able to recover for that."

"I thought the point of this was to collect brand new, un-possibly-corrupted data?" Papyrus said, fiddling with one of the wires trailing from his skull.

"W-well, yeah, but... I can't ask you guys to do it, not when you guys have worked so hard to..." Alphys fidgeted. "I don't want you to feel like you have to do anything you don't want to, and I can't imagine you'd want to do, um, this potential round of testing... so, f-forget it! It's fine."

"you wanna know what our magic's doing when we slip," Sans surmised, pushing up into a sitting position. "isolating those patterns might tell us how to turn 'em off... that's what you're thinking, right?"

Alphys sighed. "Y-yeah... but... I know how hard it is for you guys to break out of it. And... I don't want to make you do anything you don't want to. I... I saw where he kept you. I... I read at least... some of what he did to you... And I don't want this to be anything like what you went through down there."

The brothers exchanged looks. After a moment, Sans sighed. "we want to get this figured out as much as anyone. if that means... letting go... well, with any luck it'll be worth the trouble, right? plus, i'll have you guys to pull me out of it."

"Oh no you don't Sans, you are not sacrificing yourself! I mean, it's very selfless of you, but! You also have the worst time with it. So I volunteer!"

"no way papyrus, i'm not letting you do that to yourself. i'll feel better knowing you're looking out for me."

"And! You'll be looking out for me! It's fair either way!"

"no, you're not doing it. end of story bro."

"Guys," Alphys interrupted, "we don't have to do it! I shouldn't have even mentioned it, ugh."

Papyrus turned to her. "Doctor Alphys, if this is going to help us figure out how to never do this again, then I think we should. I... I want to know what he did to us."

Alphys looked at his earnest expression, and turned to Sans. "Is... Is that how you feel too?"

Sans closed his eyes and rubbed his face with a claw. "... yeah. everything we've tried... it hasn't worked. i have no idea how we figured it out as kids. so... anything that might help us get this over with... we gotta try all our options, right?"

"O-okay... If you guys are sure... then, I'll take care of my side of things. If you need a few days to decide who's going t-to... do the tests, or if we're doing them at all, that's fine. I can analyze what we collected today in the meantime."

"I think that may be best!" Papyrus replied, and Sans nodded. "You'll hear from us soon enough! You can count on it!"

"J-just, take care, okay?" Alphys said as she hurried to help remove the sensors from the brothers' skulls. "I d-don't want you guys to get hurt because of me..."

Papyrus turned to pat her head. "Don't worry about us, Doctor Alphys! We've gotten through far worse! And! This time! It's on our terms!"

She bid them farewell, hoping they hadn't all just made a terrible mistake... but she had to trust the brothers. They had gotten through worse, and come out on top every time. They were counting on her to do her job--so she ought to do it. She gathered up the lines from the EM reader, and wheeled it closer to the computer so she could input the data and begin her analysis. She'd compare the brothers' readouts to samples she'd taken of herself, some of the engineers from the Core, and her friends--all to see if anything differed between them. It was bound to be interesting.

The days passed, and even as she continued trawling through the data collected by a cruel man, she realized she was having fun doing science again. Watching the numbers come together, formulating a hypothesis, tweaking variables to monitor the effects... This was so much more up her alley, finding how all the pieces fit together. And as she collected more pieces, she was getting a clearer picture of just what state the brothers' souls were in, and what Gaster's experiment had been meant to achieve.

She just needed was one last piece to confirm her idea and start working on a solution. She could only hope she'd hear from the brothers soon...

Finally, Sans called her one afternoon, sounding especially weary. "heya alph."

"Oh! H-hi, Sans! What's up?"

"i, uh think we're ready."

"... I guess Papyrus won the argument, huh?"

Sans managed a laugh. "yeah. i couldn't stand up to his flawless logic... which was 'go into the woods for a few days to loosen up' before i could get around to it myself."

"Uh. Wow."

"yeah. he's always really on top of things."

"He's... okay, right?"

"oh yeah, my bro's fine. it's just... rough, seeing him like this, y'know?"

"I bet. A-anyway, I'm ready whenever you guys are."

"ok. we'll be right up."

"Okay! I'l be ready!"

Sans hung up, and she scrambled to actually be ready, because whenever Sans said he was about to be somewhere, he was almost always already there. She pulled the EM reader away from the wall, and gathered a bundle of sensors and draped them over the top just as there was a knock at the door. She squinted, because that was an automatic door...

"Come in!" she called, and the door slid open.

"you're supposed to say 'who's there'," Sans replied as he ambled in, Papyrus in tow. "alright, good luck getting him to hold still this time. don't think he's, uh, as far as he could be, but, should be enough for your tests."

Alphys looked from him to Papyrus, who was warily sniffing the floor. She could already tell in how he carried himself and studied the room that he really had fallen back on instincts. Which was what they needed for the test, but... like Sans had said. It was rough seeing him like this.

"O-okay. Papyrus?"

He perked up, and swung his head around, tilting it to one side.

"Um, hi. Can you come over here, please?"

He looked to Sans, who nodded before walking slowly over to the machine. Papyrus followed, and scrutinized the device thoroughly before sitting down and studying her patiently.

"Okay, now, I need you to hold still while I stick these on," she explained, feeling like she was repeating herself--but she wasn't sure Papyrus remembered the last time he'd been here. "Th-they might get a little itchy, but, I need you to let them stay on, okay?"

Papyrus made an uncertain warble as she approached, but Sans gave him a reassuring hoot and laid down. Alphys gave him a look.

"U-um... you're not... slipping too, are you?"

He gave her a weary shrug. "doing my best not to, but... we stick close, y'know?"

Alphys pursed her lips, but continued with her task. Papyrus was surprisingly patient despite his former concern, only fidgeting a little as she pasted the sensors onto his skull and sternum. He tried to scratch at them once--but Sans batted his hand down with a gruff rasp, and though Papyrus shot him an annoyed look, he settled down.

"Okay, they're all hooked up! I'm starting the test now--just, hang in there okay?"

Well before the minute was up, Papyrus got too fidgety again, and risked pulling away from the machine--but before Alphys could scold him, Sans started a game with him. He summoned a small bone just within the reach of Papyrus' neck, and Papyrus snapped at it--missing as Sans pulled it away at the last moment. Papyrus uttered a playful growl, his tail flicking before he lunged at the bone's new spot--and missed again. Sans evaded him a few more times before Papyrus caught the bone in his jaws and it fizzled out of existence. Sans summoned another bone, and the game began anew.

"Alright, that should be enough!" Alphys announced, and the two looked up--though Papyrus took the opportunity to catch the latest bone Sans had been taunting him with. "I think I can work with this--thank you so, so much you guys. I should have more info in a week or two... Are you really going to be okay?"

Sans shrugged. "we're going to undyne's after this, she'll get him to shape up. we'll see ya later, alph."

"O-oh, okay! Tell her I said hi," Alphys said, hoping she wasn't blushing as she peeled the last of the sensors off Papyrus. "With any luck, I'll be able to help you with a different kind of shape."

"heh, good one. ok bro, ready to see undyne?"

Papyrus warbled an affirmative, and with a click, and a blink, they were gone.

Alphys shook her head, and turned to begin analyzing her results. She still didn't get how Sans did that. Maybe there'd be something in the data.

There certainly was a lot of data to go through. Alphys had been building her hypothesis, but as she got deeper into the numbers, she realized there was more to it. She dug back into the abandoned lab's computers, hacked and reconfigured her way in, and scraped every last bit from the broken registries and hidden backups. She cheered when she found a nearly complete log charting the brothers' growth, only to feel sickened by Gaster's actions yet again as she read the suggestions on how to alter their physiology and diet to get better results--whatever that meant.

"Subject had human-derived willpower substance drawn today..." Alphys read, squinting. "Human derived... willpower substance? What does he mean by..."

A chill seized her. Surely it wasn't the same...? She scrambled back through the readouts she'd taken from the brothers, and cross referenced them. Oh. That would explain... why that part of the wavelengths had looked so odd. She sank back in her chair--it really was the same. Determination... Really, knowing the memoryheads hadn't been her doing, and the blueprints she'd found, she shouldn't be so surprised. Somehow, the brothers were stable--thank god. But, why...? Why add that to... a living weapon? Or a monster? She kept digging, trying to understand the man who'd created life just to use it as a tool.

But before she could make much progress or come to any conclusions, Undyne called her.

"Alphys, are you busy?" she said ugently, and Alphys dropped the stack of papers she'd collected.

"N-no, why?"

"It's Papyrus. We can't get him back."

Alphys froze, heart racing instantly. "...Wh-what? It wasn't too b-bad when he was here--what's going on?"

"It's," she started, frustration clear, "it's like he just keeps sliding, no matter what we do. Sans won't say anything but I can tell he's worried. We thought you might be able to tell us something..."

Alphys gave a shuddering breath. "I... It's too early, I haven't had a chance to analyze everything yet. I-I only have a guess as to why the brothers can change at all, not--not how to help them yet..."

Undyne grunted. "Okay, well, we'll help him as much as we can. Let us know as soon as you find something, okay? Please."

"I-I'm working as fast as I can. Just.. just tell them to hang in there, I should have something soon."

"Okay. Thank you, Alph."

She hung up, and Alphys was left staring ahead at her desk. It... was... probably okay? The brothers had been stuck in their feral states before, and both had snapped out of it eventually. It was the pattern--even if they stayed in the blaster form for a while, they'd get back to their true selves...

A pattern.

The idea seized her. Scrambling through the papers before her, she began compiling all the notes, charts, anything that was relevant. She hoped her hunch was wrong, dread coiled tight in her chest as she began running the numbers.

A week of nearly constant work later, and she had her results in hand.

Alphys stared at it, threw it aside to pace, then came back to it. This couldn't be right. But it explained... too much about the problems they'd had. She couldn't bear the thought of telling them... but she had to, didn't she? They deserved to know. But if she told them, wouldn't they hate her...? No, they might hate her more if she didn't say something, tell them that they...

She had to tell them.

"Th-thanks for coming," she uttered, trying not to let her voice shake as Undyne and the brothers entered her lab again. Papyrus balked at the doorway, and only scuttled in once Sans had plodded into the center of the room, proving it was safe. His gaze darted around his surroundings, and he chittered nervously. Alphys frowned. They really hadn't gotten him back, and today... she'd be telling them why.

"Uh, so, how's it going?" Undyne said, trying to lighten the mood with small talk as they gathered around a fold-out table. "You said you had something for us, right? Not gonna lie, I've been super excited for the results."

Alphys sighed, and Undyne's smile fell.

"Alph... what did you find?"

"I-I," she stammered, "I found... well... I found a lot. Not everything, but, enough to figure some things out. I was able to piece together what Gaster did to make the brothers the way they are, b-but... I also found something... that's... bad. And it has to do with why Papyrus isn't back to being himself... but I didn't find out any way to help you... I'm sorry."

"s'ok. you did your best," Sans said, his head laid on the table and eyes dim. What was happening now had clearly taken its toll.

Undyne grimaced. "Well, it's only been a little bit since you started working, right? Maybe you just haven't found the answer yet. But, I think you should tell us what you did find."

"Maybe," Alphys said, trying not to sound defeated. It was true she'd only had all the data for a little while, but... she wasn't sure it would matter. "I... I want to be more honest about my work, s-so... I'll tell you what I found, even though it's bad news... If... if you don't want to hear it, I don't blame you..."

Sans closed his eyes. "Papyrus... isn't going to understand it. So... you can say whatever."

"We're not gonna be mad or anything just because you did your job," Undyne reassured her. "Tell us what you found out."

Alphys grit her teeth, and turned to Sans. "S-so... I guess I'll start with why you guys are like this to begin with. The beginning's usually a good place to start, right? Ha ha... Anyway... I'll, um, try not to ramble but... I think the gist of it... is that, Gaster tried to make a living... bullet. You know how some monsters can cast attacks that, um, seem like their own entity, right? That sort of construct is uncommon, but not unheard of--but, they're not truly living things, they're attacks the same as any other. It seems like... Gaster wanted to take this idea further, and make attacks that could potentially think for themselves and last outside of battle a long time. All to hunt humans...

"He constructed some extremely advanced attacks--based on what I could find, he figured out their most intricate workings, even how to 'program' them with certain traits or behaviors--ones he learned hunting animals on the surface have. It looks like he spent years refining this technique. But... he still couldn't get them to last outside of battle like he wanted. The way he saw it... the next step was to add a little bit of soul energy. H-he, um, apparently didn't expect... that even a small amount would become a full soul. S-so... the soul formed inside this... programmed attack format.

"It was easiest for the magic to flow along these pre-constructed paths... but the soul... still contained the genetic format for a skeleton monster--a bipedal form with intelligence and skills beyond what Gaster had intended. So... without realizing it... he ended up with a sort of... hybrid, of his specialized attack, and a monster that, um... technically... was his... child."

"Gaster should count himself lucky he's erased, because if I got my hands on him..." Undyne growled, her fists clenched tightly, "he'd WISH he was."

"Y-yeah, seeing all this, I was furious too," Alphys breathed. "He... in what little I read, he just... talked like he was working with animals. M-maybe... he'd convinced himself that's all you were. B-but... so... that's... where your instincts, and ability to transform, come from. It was all him--he, unwittingly, gave your souls this ability by trying to fit them into another form."

"...huh," Sans uttered. "guess that does explain it... why we can do it, and why the instincts only come up when we're like this."

"So is there any way to like... turn it off?" Undyne said. "It's not really a part of them, so maybe--"

"I-it is, though" Alphys said, downcast. "It's as much a part of their soul as, I dunno, bone magic. A-and, turning it off, w-well... Gaster wanted to do the opposite, and take away their other form... He never actually succeeded, obviously, but... that... brings me to the bad news."

"Wh... What do you mean?"

Alphys heaved another sigh. "I didn't think anything of it at first. It just seemed like... like a coincidence, or maybe Gaster just wore you guys down over time, but... You've said it was easier to change back and forth when you were younger, right? And you just... did it less as time went on... B-but... well... with Papyrus being unable to get back from even a relatively mild slip with your guys' help... I got to thinking...

"Maybe... maybe there was actually a pattern to it. Th-that... as time has gone on... it really.... It really is getting harder for you guys to switch back and forth. Like... like the forms get more entrenched as time goes on, a-and, the longer you stay in them. S-so... I plotted all the times it mentioned you guys switching forms on a graph... a-and..."

She slid a pair of papers across the table for Sans and Undyne to study. Each was labeled with their names, and the points on the graphs plotted lines--but they looked more like waves, the crests and troughs of which increased in amplitude as time went on as their frequency decreased. A fainter line projected the waves' path into the future--and it went off the page.

"I-I... I think... W-well, the data suggests, that, if... if we can't get you guys changed back soon... you... you might... slip, and... not... not be able t-to break out of it... e-ever... ever again."

Sans' eyes blinked out. "... papyrus is going to be stuck like this forever?"

Alphys had never heard his voice break like that before. She could barely speak herself, but she couldn't leave things there. "I-I don't know, there's--there's still a chance we can bring him out of this. We just--we can't let it get too far, o-or... A-and I mean, I could be wrong! God, I hope I'm wrong... My d-data is probably pretty incomplete, I don't have much f-from, when you were younger or before all this... B-but, it's... It's a possibility, and, when you called and said you hadn't gotten him out of it, that's when I realized what might be going on, why you might not be able to change back like you did a long time ago... and, I... I'm so sorry..."

Undyne clenched her fists. "I... I really hate Gaster. ALL of this, ALL of your guys' suffering, is because of HIM, and hearing it might not be something you can escape? I WON'T accept that. Alphys, if I can help you, just tell me what to do--I'm NOT letting this guy take my friends away after he's already DEAD."

"we'll still be around," Sans uttered, voice subdued. "just won't be like we used to. i... i dunno what we'll do to live, but... h... hey, just... keep being nice to my bro, ok?"

"Sans, we're not giving up! I can't give up! I WON'T give up! I--" Undyne was interrupted as Papyrus, seeing her upset, had put his head against her arm and nuzzled it. She grimaced, and patted him with a hand as she continued. "I said it before, I'll say it as long as I need to. I won't rest until you guys are back the way you want to be. Alphys hasn't finished her research, so there might still be something we can do. For your brother's sake, don't you DARE slip, or give up, or let go. Okay?"

Sans looked up at her, beleaguered. "dunno... i was never good at fighting the inevitable..."

"Well it's not inevitable yet," Undyne stated firmly. "Alphys, if we get the bros changed back soon, what will happen?"

She thought. "I-it... it should mean it's their other forms--the regular skeleton monster form--that becomes dominant. A-at least, at least on this scale. I didn't plot ahead like... decades, s-so it's possible this doesn't show every outcome... B-but... the sooner we avert the current trend, the better..."

"so... how much time... before we're too far gone?" Sans murmured, and Alphys winced. Despite Undyne's words of encouragement, he was obviously doing pretty badly.

"I can't be sure--it, I think it depends on how much you keep exercising your mind, since that seems to be what's helped you break out of it. I'd... I'd keep trying with Papyrus too. I... I'm with Undyne on this one, I... I don't want to give up, even though it looks really bad... S-so, please... you can't give up, Sans. I know that's really hard for you, b-but... one of the other things I discovered, that I'm still researching is... that... You both have artificially elevated levels of Determination. I... I think that's something else he figured out--how to give Determination to monsters in a safe way. It might be another factor in why you haven't been able to change back, but... It might help keep you going, too."

Sans studied her for a while, then closed his eyes. "i dunno. all this... sounds like there was never anything we could do about it. the moment either of us changed this last time... our fate was sealed. i'm... i'm just so tired. all the work we've done to keep ourselves together... it didn't get us anywhere. i... i'll try to keep it together, for papyrus... i don't want to leave him hanging. but... it's been real hard. and if it's only going to get harder... i don't think i can keep it up for much longer."

Undyne reached over to pat his shoulder. "Look, we'll get through this. You just keep holding on to yourself, I'll help with Papyrus--done that before--and Alphys will keep looking for a solution. Monsters didn't get to where we are today by giving up, so you can't either."

"Yeah Sans, I promise I'll keep looking," Alphys stated--Undyne's will was bolstering her own. "Now that I have an idea of what's going on... maybe I can figure out how to undo it--not, not all the way. Like I said, this... this is a part of your soul. But... if we can figure out how you can change back, then, it should stay dormant for a long, long time. And, that's worth going after."

Sans opened his eyes, their lights returned as he studied them both, then looked to his brother, who had gotten bored and wandered off to bat a piece of crumpled paper across the floor. "i... to be honest? i dunno if i care how we end up. all i want is for papyrus to be happy. but... i guess... if i slip too, i dunno who's gonna take care of him. if i can't hold a job, we can't pay for a house, or good food, or... he couldn't do any of the stuff he really loves. i, uh, remember how it was when we lived in the forest, and... i don't want him living like that ever again. so... i guess i do have to keep it together, huh?"

Alphys smiled with relief. "Y-yeah, you do. I still have a lot of data to go through, s-so, nothing's decided yet, b-but... I figured you should know what might be happening, and... hopefully... do something about it. I know I'm going to try."

"Yeah, don't worry! We've got your backs, okay?" Undyne said, grinning widely. She wound up to slap him on the back, but he dodged out of the way.

"ok, don't make that literal," he said, sounding a little better as he squinted at her. "i, uh... won't make any promises. but... hey, maybe i should help with the research too. if there's anything good i inherited from gaster, it was his smarts. science stuff is still cool, despite him."

"I'm glad he didn't totally ruin it for you," Alphys replied, heart soaring as her own hopes returned. "I certainly could use the help, and it would help keep your mind sharp, s-so, if it's not too much for you... that might be good for both of us."

"heh... using gaster's own specialty against him? can't say i don't like the sound of that," Sans replied, something like spiteful glee shining in his eyes now. "yeah. count me in."

"Aw man, all of us working together!" Undyne cheered. "It'll be great!"

"Yeah... yeah, I think that'll be nice. I'm... I'm sorry I couldn't give you guys good news today, but... That's hardly the end of it," Alphys said. "We'll see where the data leads us, and go from there, and not give up until we're sure we've thought of everything. Until then... I'm not through with Gaster's work. He... he's dead... But I won't let him win!"

[collegeburnoutsuperstar]

Social Distancing Book Recs

I’ve been getting tons of book recommendations from friends and family to help get through social distancing/self-quarantine, so I thought I should share some of my favorite books with everybody!

Horror/Apocalyptic: *all books are ADULT*

- The Stand by Stephen King “This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides -- or are chosen” (Goodreads Summary).

- Inferno by Dan Brown “Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon awakens in an Italian hospital, disorientated and with no recollection of the past thirty-six hours, including the origin of the macabre object hidden in his belongings. With a relentless female assassin tailing them through Florence, he and his resourceful doctor, Sienna Brooks, are forced to flee. Embarking on a harrowing journey, they must unravel a series of codes, which are the work of a brilliant scientist whose obsession with the end of the world is matched only by his passion for one of the most influential masterpieces ever written, Dante Alighieri’s The Inferno” (Goodreads Summary).

- World War Z by Max Brooks “The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, form decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years” (Goodreads summary).

- It by Stephen King “It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real... They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them back to Derry to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name” (Goodreads summary).

- The Shining by Stephen King “Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic locations feels ever more remote... and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old” (Goodreads summary).

- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski “[House of Leaves] focuses on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of the impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of the unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams” (Goodreads summary).

Comedy:

- Good Omens by Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchett “People have been predicting the end of the world almost from its very beginning, so it’s only natural to be skeptical when a new date is set for Judgement Day. But what if, for once, the predictions are right, and the apocalypse really is due to arrive next Saturday, just after tea? You could spend the time left drowning your sorrows, giving away all your possessions in preparation for the rapture, or laughing it off as (hopefully) just another hoax. Or you could just try to do something about it. It’s a predicament that Aziraphale, a somewhat fussy angel, and Crowley, a fast-living demon now finds themselves in. They’ve been living amongst Earth’s mortals since The Beginning and, truth be told, have grown rather fond of the lifestyle and, in all honesty, are not actually looking forward to the coming Apocalypse. And then there’s the small matter that someone appears to have misplaced the Antichrist... “ (Goodreads summary).

- Dad Is Fat by Jim Gaffigan *PG-13* Dad is Fat is a comedic memoir that details Jim Gaffigan’s life growing up in a large Catholic family to his experiences as a husband and father (specifically parenting his five young children while living in a tiny walk-up apartment in New York). I highly recommend the audiobook (which is narrated by Jim Gaffigan), my family and I always listen to it during road trips. It never stops being funny. 

- Bored of the Rings: A Parody of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings by The Harvard Lampoon *ADULT* “A quest, a war, a ring that would be grounds for calling any wedding off, a king without a kingdom, and a little, furry ‘hero’ named Frito, ready -- or maybe just forced by the wizard of Goodgulf-- to undertake the one mission which can save Lower Middle Earth from enslavement by the evil Sorhed… Luscious Elfmaidens, a roller-skating dragon, ugly plants that can soul-kiss the unwary to death-- these are just some of the ingredients in the wildest, wackiest, most irreverent excursion into fantasy realms that anyone has ever dared to undertake” (Goodreads summary).

Middle-Grade:

- Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan (book 1: The Lightning Thief) “Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he can’t seem to focus on his schoolwork or control his temper. And lately, being away at boarding school is only getting worse - Percy could have sworn his pre-algebra teacher turned into a monster and tried to kill him. When Percy’s mom finds out, she knows it’s time that he knew the truth about where he came from, and that he go to the one place he’ll be safe. She sends Percy to Camp Half Blood, a summer camp for demigods. Soon a mystery unfolds and together with his friends-- one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena-- Percy sets out on a quest across the United States to reach the gates of the Underworld and prevent a catastrophic war between the gods” (Goodreads summary).

- The Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan (book 1: The Lost Hero) “Jason has a problem. He doesn’t remember anything before waking up in a bus full of kids on a field trip. Apparently he has a girlfriend named Piper, and a best friend named Leo. They’re all students at a boarding school for ‘bad kids.’ What id Jason do to end up here? And where is here, exactly? Piper has a secret. Her father has been missing for three days, ever since she had that terrifying nightmare about his being in trouble. Piper doesn’t understand her dream, or why her boyfriend suddenly doesn’t recognize her. When a freak storm hits during the school trip, unleashing strange creatures and whisking her, Jason, and Leo away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood, she has a feeling she’s going to find out. Leo has a way with tools. When he sees his cabin at Camp Half-Blood, filled with power tools and machine parts, he feels right at home. But there’s weird stuff, too-- like the curse everyone keeps talking about, and some camper who’s gone missing. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist that each of them--including Leo-- is related to a god. Does this have anything to do with Jason’s amnesia, or the fact that Leo keeps seeing ghosts?” (Goodreads summary)

- The Children of the Red King series by Jenny Nimmo (book 1: Midnight for Charlie Bone) “Charlie Bone has a special gift-- he can hear people in photographs talking! The fabulous powers of the Red King were passed down through his descendants, after turning up quite unexpectedly, in someone who had no idea where they came from. This is what happened to Charlie Bone, and to some of the children he met behind the grim, gray walls of Bloor’s Academy. His scheming aunts decide to send him to Bloor’s Academy, a school for geniuses where he uses his grifts to discover the truth despite all the dangers that lie ahead” (Goodreads summary).

- Things Not Seen by Andrew Clements “Bobby Phillips is an average fifteen-year-old boy. Until the morning he wakes up and can’t see himself in the mirror. Not blind, not dreaming. Bobby is just plain invisible... There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to Bobby’s new conditions; even his dad the physicist can’t figure it out. For Bobby that means no school, no friends, no life. He’s a missing person” (Goodreads summary).

Science Fiction:

- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick *Adult*  “It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill. Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there, lurked several rogue androids. Deckard’s assignment-- find them and then... ‘retire’ them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn’t want to be found!” (Goodreads summary).

- Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton * Suitable for Young Adults* “An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them-- for a price. Until something goes wrong...” (Goodreads summary). 

Fantasy:

- The Magicians trilogy by Lev Grossman *ADULT* (book 1: The Magicians) “Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery. He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin’s fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart” (Goodreads summary).

- The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater *YA* (book 1: The Raven Boys) “What do you know about Welsh kings?” This incredibly atmospheric story centers on a seemingly random group of teens as they uncover the mysterious and magical secrets of their small Virginia town.

- A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab *Suitable for Young Adults* “Kell is one of the last Antari-- magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black. Kell was raised in Arnes-- Red London-- and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III  in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see. Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they’ll never see. After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure. Now perilous magic is afoot, and treacher lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they’ll first need to stay alive” (Goodreads summary).

- The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien *Suitable for middle-grade through adult* “In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord. forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken form him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins. When Bilbo reached his eleventy-first birthday he disappeared, bequeathing to his young cousin Frodo the Ruling Ring and a perilous quest: to journey across Middle-earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord, and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom” (Goodreads summary).

- The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss *Adult* “Told in Kvothe’s own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen. The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bit to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story” (Goodreads summary).

- The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch *Adult* “An orphan’s life is harsh-- and often short-- in the mysterious island city of Camorr. But youge Locke Lamora dodges death and slavery, becoming a thief under the tutelage of a gifted con artist. As leader of the band of light-fingered brothers known as the Gentleman Bastards, Loke is soon infamous, fooling even the underworld’s most feared ruler. But in the shadows lurks someone still more ambitious and deadly. Faced with a bloody coup that threatens to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the enemy at his own brutal game-- or die trying” (Goodreads summary).

Fiction:

- The Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich *ADULT mystery-thrillers/romance* (book 1: One for the Money) “You’ve lost your job as a department store lingerie buyer, your car’s been repossessed, and most of your furniture and small appliances have been sold off to pay last month’s rent. Now the rent is due again. And you live in New Jersey. What do you do? If you’re Stephanie Plum, you become a bounty hunter. But not just a nickel-and-dime bounty hunter; you go after the big money. That means a cop gone bad. And not just any cop. She goes after Joe Morelli, a disgraced former vice cop who is also the man who took Stephanie’s virginity at age 16 and the wrote details on a bathroom wall. With pride and rent money on the line, Plum plunges headlong into her first case, one that pits her against ruthless adversaries - people who’d rather kill than lose” (Goodreads summary).

- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown *Adult* “While in Paris, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is awakened by a phone call in the dead of the night. The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, his body covered in baffling symbols. As Langdon and gifted French cryptologist Sophie Neveu sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci-- clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter. Even more startling, the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion-- a secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Victory Hugo, and Da Vici-- and he guarded a breathtaking historical secret. Unless Landon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle-- while avoiding the faceless adversary who shadows their every move-- the explosive, ancient truth will be lost forever” (Goodreads summary).

- Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle *Adult* Sherlock Holmes stories are always fun when stuck at home.

- 11/22/63 by Stephen King *Adult* “Life can turn on a dime-- or stumble into the extraordinary, as it does for Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine. While grading essays by his GED students, Jake reads a gruesome, enthralling piece penned by janitor Harry Dunning: fifty years ago, Harry somehow survived his father’s sledgehammer slaughter of his entire family, Jake is blown away... but an even more bizarre secret comes to light when Jake’s friend Al, owner of the local diner, enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession-- to prevent the Kennedy assassination. How? By stepping through a portal in the diner’s storeroom, and into the ear of Ike and Elvis, or big American cars, sock hops, and cigarette smoke... Finding himself in warmhearted Jodie, Texas, Jake begins a new life. But all turns in the road lead to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald. The course of history is about to be rewritten... and become heart-stoppingly suspenseful” (Goodreads summary).

Non-Fiction:

- The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson *Adult* “In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the U.S. Army. Defying all known accepted military practice-- and indeed, the laws of physics-- they believed that a soldier could adopt a cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls, and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them. Entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren’t joking. What’s more, they’re back and fighting the War on Terror. With firsthand access to the leading players in the story, Ronson traces the evolution of these bizarre activities over the past three decades and shows how they are alive today within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and in postwar Iraq. Why are they blasting Iraqi prisoners of war with the theme tune to Barney the Purple Dinosaur? Why have 100 debleated goats been secretly placed inside the Special Forces Command Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina? How was the U.S. military associated with the mysterious mass suicide of a strange cult form San Diego? The Men Who Stare at Goats answers these and many more questions” (Goodreads summary).

- Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert *Adult* (I recommend listening to the audiobook, which is narrated by Elizabeth Gilbert) “To recover from [an early midlife crisis, divorce, and depression], Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world-- all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life. India was for the art of devotion, and with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise cowboy from Texas, she embarked on four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. She became the pupil of an elderly medicine man and also fell in love the best way-- unexpectedly” (Goodreads summary).

[lesdreams-author]

Pregnant Lisa mini fic part 13 (here we go again, cryland. Someone is going to suggest a title?)

The path to the Dragon Spine is a dangerous one.

It's cold on the incline, the wind bringing snow flocks, making her snuggle even more inside her heavy coat.

The men and women beside her, highly trained soldiers trek the path silently, all they anxious for what could be in store.

She takes a deep, cold breath and thinks of Klee, her brown eyes so pure and naive, so confident her ma is a hero. She thinks of Lisa in their home, making dinner and chatting away with Klee. She thinks of Barbara and her never end renewed hope, she thinks of her mother with her disapproving eyes and reminder.

She knows it's a dangerous mission but she is fairly certain nothing bad will happen. She isn't alone in this, she is surrounded good fighters, she doesn't have why worry.

She sighs, watches her breath form a white cloud in the air and continues her journey.

(*・～・*)(*・～・*)

She finds Eula after hours of trek the mountain. It's so cold now she wears a heavy scarf around her face, only her eyes showing.

Eula has all planned out already and is only waiting for her command. The lab is up on the mountain's peak, a place where it's even colder than here at the base, just few meters away from the target.

She nods, addressed her troops and gather ropes to start the dangerous path.

(´⊙ω⊙`)！(´⊙ω⊙`)！

They break into the lab after knock out some guards outside.

The inside is warm and there isn't a lot of guards, only scientist wearing white lab coats.

They are easy to disarm, to subdue and Eula and her men take care of handcuff them.

She looks around the lab, it's a weird place with huge machines and tubes. There's a screen thing with word written there. She furrows her brown. She never saw such technology and will have to question those men.

$: "Grandmaster."

One her soldier calls. She seems haunted, out of breath.

J: " what is this?"

She wonders for a second if there's reinforcement coming, if they will be ambushed I side this strange lab.

But the woman looks to a corridor and says, voice shaking.

$:" you need to see it."

With furrowed browns she follows the woman to a corridor, through hallways that rivals the cold outside.

(´ . .̫ . `)(´ . .̫ . `)(´ . .̫ . `)

"Father, father, let me love you, Saw you wandering in my dream last night singing, Wonder, wonder what you might do, You can't simply hide our dream in the blue"

The room she emerges is a size moderate one, the walls are blue and there's huge tubes with green bubbling water.

There's three cots in the far side of the room with IVs attached to weird machines, beeping a constant sound.

She walks to one the beds and peers inside. There's someone here, her chest moving with a deep breathing.

She is shocked, appealed, horrified.

J: " what is the meaning of this?"

She whispers, eyes locked in the toddler, curled as a little ball. She can't see the child face but she can see she has a tail and fluffy ears.

$: " I don't know grandmaster. I was looking around and found this room."

She takes a shakily breath and looks around again. Near the toddler's coat is another one. It's a little far and with the shock she didn't even paid attention to it.

She walks there, dread in her stomach in find another person.

What is the Fatui doing exactly with children?

In this bed a little girl sleeps, an IV attached to her thin arm. She is pale, too pale and too thin. Her hair is a light purple, almost white. She doesn't have a tail or fluffy ears like the other, she mostly looks "normal".

The girl is sleeping in her back, she shouldn't be more than 7 years old. She wears a white robe, a frail little thing and there's a name in the left side of her chest.

Jean approaches a little more to wear the small letters.

She takes a step back, like she was burned, like she was threatened.

Her heart pound on her chest, her vision is blurring at the edges and her legs trembles like leaf.

It can't be

She thinks, hands shaking and sweating. She shakes her head and approaches again, not really believing in her own eyes.

However there, in small black letters is what shocked her to her core.

QiQi Pristine Nola

"Don't try to fight; don't let me go

You've gone too far from what I know

I lost my heart in the dark with you

Father, father, why you let me go

Father, please don't let me go"

༼;´༎ຶ ۝ ༎ຶ༽༼;´༎ຶ ۝ ༎ຶ༽

"Hey there you, shattered in a thousand pieces

Weeping in the darkest nights

Hey there you, try to stand up on your own two feet

And stumble into the sky"

It can't be. It's not real, it's a dream, a nightmare.

She buried her little girl, she saw her still, she saw how the air didn't fill her little lungs.

She has a bedroom ready and locked, she has a white coffin under ground.

It can't be.

Tears prick her eyes, burn her vision, burn her heart, her very soul.

Her daughter is dead. Is dead for seven years.

A sob slips free from her mouth and she brings a shaking hand to her mouth, knees finally falling her and taking her to kneel on the floor.

Her left hand lifts, touches the bars on the cot and she can't tear her blurred vision from the view on her front.

$: " grandmaster?"

She barks a sob, a broken down command. It's raw, deep and bleed trough her throat like a shout.

J: " live me alone, go away!"

She doesn't know if the soldier understood her but a second later she hears her running steps.

Alone in this cold and strange room she breaks down into a thousand pieces.

"Hey there you, looking for a brighter season

Need to lay your burden down

Hey there you, drowning in a helpless feeling

Buried under deeper ground"

J: " you can't be her..."

She whispers to the void room.

J: " you can't..."

But nobody besides her wife and her knows her little girl first name. Nobody besides them knew what shattered them to come together to put a name to their little baby, their little angel, gone to the world.

QiQi seems like a good name, to someone who never saw the light of the day, for someone they would forever remember and grief.

J: " you can't-"

She sobs again, heart so tight it's seems to compress into itself, fold into a small ball, battered, bruised, broken.

Except, her mind whispers, except this little girl has her daughter name, her daughter age. Except this little girl is somehow alive and coincidences like this doesn't happen in the real world.

J: " but dead people don't come back to life "

She whispers, sould cracking and tears rolling down her cold face.

How twisted life can be. They gave her happiness so big it hurt sometimes. Happiness so complete that sometimes it seemed a dream. They gave her happiness and snatched it away, gave her despair and angst, then gave her a glimmer of hope with a little lost girl and now, when she is trying brokenly fix herself they throw at her the darkest angst.

She hear without stop a ringing in her head, a thin noise in her ears. It's making her sick, the dizzy feeling, the room blurred and the noise in her head.

She thinks she is having a heart attack. And weirdly enough she thinks women at her age die for less.

And then there's the hand of someone on her shoulder, jerking her around.

$: " what you going!?"

Her blurred vision doesn't seem to comprehend who is this, who dared to interrupt her grief. The voice comes from under water, muffled but sharp.

She blinks some times and then sees Eula looking a her, face red with anger. The thin noise still is rigging on her head and she looks around until she sees the caption is holding a crying toddler, the toddler from the other cot.

E: " what you doing, grandmaster!?"

Eula asked again, trying without success calm down a crying toddler.

She inspires deeply and chokes, sobs embarrassingly in front of her friend and captain.

Eula seems shocked, maybe taking stock from her apparency for the first time. She looks at her with wife eyes but the screaming baby on her arms makes her press on.

E: " pull yourself together! We need to get out of here, we need to bring those kids to the hospital. We don't know when reinforcement will come."

Jean, dazzled nods. She isn't in her right mind to lead anyone, so she will let Eula do it.

She lifts herself from the floor, legs shaking horrible. She thinks she will stumble again but hangs in the cot's bar.

J: " okay..." She whispered, voice hoarse.

She looks at the little girl unconscious on the bed and with a deep breath takes away the IV on her arm. Whatever is this IV, it can't be good.

Her arms, her hands shakes when she reached to touch the girl and Eula asks, hesitant.

E: " do you want me to fetch someone to carry her?"

Jean snaps, eyes red and wide.

J: " no!"

Eula seems shocked for her outburst but Jean can't imagine someone taking away this little girl, her little girl...

She takes her on her arms, noting how small and light she seems, her little head resting against her chest.

She shakes all over, it's the first time she carries her daughter. When she was dead, when she was born she couldn't make herself hold, touch her. Too afraid to feel her cold skin, too afraid of die together with her.

She takes a second to look at her pale face, to drink of her features and try to see if she resembles one of them. Her vision blurs again with tears and they drip on the little girl forehead.

E: " let's go."

Eula days lowly, hesitant but firm.

Jean nods, eyes on her baby girl.

A little voice whispers that maybe it's not her little girl, that perhaps she is losing herself but she shuts it down.

She will not let her go again.

"You′ve been lost in a dark place a long time,

A long time.

Now I'll find you, I'll stay here and hold you,

I′ll stay, I′ll hold you till morning,

I'll hold you tight."

To be continued

[harrylee94]

Log Entry XXXXXX - Chapter 2

Summary: A new space station, complete with the most high spec and up to date technology there is to offer, has been set up at the edge of the known universe, a new way point for explorers to keep in contact with the rest of the human race. It has been carefully designed by the best scientists and engineers Earth could offer, and now 7 brave souls are being sent out to ensure everything works perfectly.

However, when Logan wakes from cryosleep from the journey, he is informed that several things are now in need of repair, though everything had been in perfect working condition when the station had been reconstructed before he and his crew had arrived. They will have to solve the problems they’ve been left with before the station is up and running, and yet Logan can’t help but feel he’s done this before…

Relationships: Intrulogical (Remus/Logan)

Warnings: Blood, Gore, Parasites, Remus having an overactive imagination, It’s an Among Us crossover so there will be bad stuff afoot.

A/N: Writing chapter 2 was fun, but definitely a challenge. I hope you guys enjoy! Also, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

For those of you who don’t know, this story is based off of a comic by @fangirltothefullest which I HIGHLY recommend you check them out on the link above! Their art is AMAZING.

Note to everyone before we begin; there will be graphic descriptions of gore, dismemberment, possibly torture, and any other awful things that come with the territory of writing a story in an Among Us universe.

Link to; Part 1

To read it on AO3 please click here.

Chapter 2: Log Entry #2

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 6:23 AM

Logan sipped the imi-coffee as he watched Remus hum and move to some song or another as he made them breakfast. He'd insisted on it, even though all he was really doing was filling in an order on a screen in the wall and waiting while the machine created it from various proteins and other such things that the ship had stored that wouldn't have decomposed on their journey. Remus had complained about not being able to see what mould that had several years to grow and mutate would look like when he first discovered this, but he had eventually been distracted by all the things you could order on the replacement.

"Breakfast is served!" Remus said with a flourish, setting what looked like a bowl of spaghetti with green pesto in front of him.

Logan was not as surprised as he should have been. Everything that had happened so far today had felt rehearsed, like it had happened before, and he found himself thinking more and more on his dream. It had felt so real -- it still felt real -- but it wasn't. He had just studied the Sanders Station so much that his subconscious had created a landscape that was affected by the movies that Remus revelled in. That was all. Everything else was a coincidence. His subconscious had just known that Remus was going to serve him spaghetti and pesto for breakfast.

"Ground control to Major Tom," Remus said, brining Logan's attention back to the moment and his partner's confused gaze. "You back with me?"

"Yes. Sorry," Logan said and he picked up his fork. "Why spaghetti?"

"It was the first meal we had together, remember?" Remus said, his eyes going soft as he took Logan's hand.

Logan gave his fingers a squeeze, giving him a soft look of his own as he tried to sake the feeling of deja vu. "If I remember correctly, we had it in pre-used instant ramen pots that hadn't been washed out properly."

"I know," Remus sighed, shoulders falling in disappointment. "The stupid machine wouldn't let me choose the bowl."

Logan chuckled and pulled Remus's hand up to kiss his fingers. As chaotic as his partner was, when it came to details like this he was rather fastidious. "Maybe next time."

Remus hummed. "So long as you're here with me, I don't care." He gave Logan a narrowed look, and the scientist suddenly felt like he was being dissected by his gaze. "Where were you anyway? It's not like you to get lost like that, especially since we're so far away from home with no chance of rescue or contact if anything goes wrong."

"I wasn't anywhere except here at the table, waiting for you to 'make' breakfast," Logan replied, pointedly gathering some pesto pasta onto his fork and taking a bite of it. Remus was clearly not convinced.

"You're lying," he said, taking the fork from Logan's hand and pushing it and the bowl away so he could take both of Logan's hands. "You're doing that thing where you recount what had been happening and not what you were doing."

Logan winced. Was he really that obvious? "It's nothing."

"Nothing you ever think in that big brain of yours is nothing."

"It's nothing! Just a... weird dream."

"Oh?" Remus shifted in his seat. eyes gleaming with interest. "Was it a bad dream? It must have been to have affected you so bad. Why didn't you say anything sooner? We could have talked about it when you woke up!"

"It's illogical," Logan tried to dismiss, but Remus would have none of it.

"If it's affecting you then, illogical or not, you need to talk about it," he said, rubbing his thumbs over the back of Logan's hands. "Don't ant you getting distracted and getting your hand sliced off by a pneumatic door."

"The doors have a safety feature that prevents that from happening."

Remus shrugged, not caring about the details, and gave him an expectant look. It took less than a minute for Logan to cave.

"It was just a dream about today," he admitted.

"Oh?" Remus said, shifting closer on his chair. "What happened?"

"... Everyone died."

Remus blinked. "Died?"

He hummed the affirmative.

"Was it cool?"

"Remus!"

"Sorry! Sorry." Remus moved from his chair to sit on Logan's lap and brought the scientist's hands to rest over his heart and against his cheek, the steady thumping calming and reassuring. "It was just a dream, Logie-Bogie."

Logan took a deep breath and slowly nodded. A coincidence. That's all this was. There was nothing in that dream other than the predictions of his mind. "I know. It just..."

"I'm right here," Remus told him. "You're stuck with me. Like an invasive virus in your blood stream."

Logan chuckled and leaned in to kiss him. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

_______________________________

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 7:09 AM

The weight of the helmet under his arm felt oddly familiar but still incredibly cumbersome as he headed towards the depressurisation chamber, especially as he was still trying to read through the message that had been sent to him and everyone else in the team from the construction workers on the tablet with his other hand and that Remus wanted to continue holding his hand. Since he couldn't do all three without compromising one of the tasks, Remus had compromised by walking as close to him as possible and reading the message over his shoulder.

"Wasn't it supposed to be brand, spanking new?" Remus asked as Logan realised just how much work there was for them to do once they finally stepped into the Station. "Just spanking new?"

"That is supposed to be the case, yes," Logan said with a sigh, putting the tablet away in its pouch as they reached the chamber, the doors still open and waiting for them.

They were the last to arrive, as he had expected, and he ignored the smug look that Janus was sending their way from where he was lounging in one of the seats near to a crate of supplies opposite Orange who was scrolling through his tablet, or possibly playing a game that he might have installed on it. Virgil was sitting between Roman and Patton as he rubbed at his legs and listened to Roman as he told some story about magic or some other sort of nonsense, but they all seemed to be doing quite well. He felt Remus shift next to him and, before he could even think about it, he'd reached out with his now free hand to grasp at his arm. The man in green looked back at him in surprise, as did Janus and Patton, who had both noticed the emotional action, but he fell back to Logan's side as the doors slid closed behind them with a hiss. Janus looked genuinely surprised by the restraint his friend was showing, but all Logan could feel was relief, non-sensical though it might have been, to have his partner with him.

"Apologies for the delay," he said, coughing to clear his throat. He had everyone's attention now at least. "It seems that the Station has been damaged in transit, so it will be our main focus in the upcoming days to repair the systems. It shouldn't take more than a day I expect." He rubbed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying not to think about how those words felt recycled.

"It's ridiculous," Roman huffed, and Logan relaxed a fraction at the change. "They were supposed to have made sure that everything was ready."

"Pretty sure they were just supposed to put it together, not make sure it was all working," Orange said, not looking up from his tablet. "They've already gone above and beyond."

Roman huffed but didn't respond, he just picked stood up and picked up his helmet from the floor. "What took you so long? We've been waiting for ages!"

"Ten minutes," Janus said, voice level and yet somehow conveying a tone of amusement.

"Whatever."

"We were having sex!" Remus proclaimed proudly. Logan rolled his eyes.

Only Orange didn't react to that statement, continuing to look at his screen. Meanwhile;

"Oh my god!"

"TMI, dude!"

"I didn't need to know that!"

"Why?"

"I had his dick up my butthole!" Remus declared with enthusiasm and vigour, bringing all the more noises of disgust. "We did it over the table. We got pasta everywhere!"

"Remus," Logan sighed, looking up at the ceiling in exasperation before giving his partner a straight, unimpressed look. "Please stop telling them falsehoods."

Remus pouted at him but fell silent, moving around him to take the helmet from his grasp and stick his tongue out at him.

With a put upon sigh Logan shook his head and continued on. "As I had been saying before we were... distracted; as the Station has been damaged we will have to work on some repairs. If everyone has read the list that has been sent to our tablets then we know that there is not area that has not been affected. I would suggest that we decide on a meeting point and, from there, proceed to work on our area of expertise. I would like to suggest the cafeteria as this check-point."

"Is there any particular reason for that?" Janus asked. "Or were you planning on ruining even more flat surfaces?"

"Janus!" Patton complained with a squawk and Remus laughed, exchanging a please smirk with his friend.

"So we all know where to congregate in case of an emergency -- which is highly unlikely -- or simply a place to meet should we need any assistance with our tasks," Logan replied, ignoring the pointless query and held out his hand to Remus. "I need my helmet back."

"Why?"

"Don't be an asshole, Rem," Roman told his brother, rising to his feet and bringing Virgil with him.

Remus grinned. "Why?"

"I don't particularly want to be starved of oxygen," Logan explained as Roman glared, waiting a few more moments before the helmet was placed in his hand. "Thank you." He twisted it onto his head and everyone followed suit, even Orange who had finally put his tablet away. "Now, once we get to the cafeteria we can decide on what to do, alright?"

He received noises of confirmation from just about everyone and he nodded to himself, opening the doors to the brand new Station and leading the way inside.

_______________________________ 

 Stardate: October 17th XX20. 11:03 AM

Logan sat back as he pushed the last of the boards in the oxygen unit back into place with a sigh. It had been a challenge, but not as much of one as it should have been, not if this had been the first time he'd seen it. He'd studied the designs and blueprints of course, and it was very similar to previous oxygen systems he'd worked with, but he'd only really taken so long as he had because he had decided to triple check everything. Logically he knew that everything was fine, that he knew and understood what he was looking at, he knew how the system worked, and yet that consistent sensation of having done this all before made him second guess everything.

He'd already known what the Station was going to look like, the weapons and navigations rooms were familiar, and even the instructions he had given to everyone had tasted strange, like the words he had spoken when he had just awoken not five hours before. Remus's laughter and Patton's muttering had been like listening to a song that he had heard before from a distance, and it was unnerving him. At least now he knew that the oxygen was -- and always had been -- capable of supporting human life. Or had he already known? Shaking his head he pulled out his tablet and opened the notes section.

Log Entry #1

I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this, but I've had this strange feeling all day. I do not usually allow emotions to cloud my judgement in such a way, and I expect it is perhaps a result of my time in stasis, but everything feels, for the lack of a better word, rehearsed. I know that what I am feeling is simply the imbalance of chemicals in my brain, not in small part due to the dream I had, but I still can't seem to part with this feeling. I hope it will pass, but for now I will have to endure it.

Checking the entry over he nodded to himself before closing the application and putting the tablet away. That would have to do for now. That done he rose to his feet and headed out into the corridor, checking briefly in on Patton before moving towards the weapons room.

As expected, Remus was sitting in the control seat in the centre of an array of screens, each showing various vistas of the space outside of the Station with the help of special sensors that would pick up movement from detritus and space waste. Remus was tapping at one of the screens that had a fair number of concerning looking rocks in it and used the joy stick in the arm of the chair to start shooting at them with a crooked grin. Logan watched him for a time, listening to him chuckle when he destroyed whatever he could, but when he leaned back in his chair with a 'whoop!' he finally stepped forwards.

"It looks like you're having fun," he said with a fond smile, grinning when Remus spun the chair around and pulled him into his lap. "Nerdy Wolverine!" he declared, setting Logan's knees at either side of his hips before sliding his arms around Logan's back. "Here to give me a saucy lap dance?"

"I've..." Logan started, only to pause as that feeling washed over him again. He didn't understand why it continued to return, time and again. No dream could have been that accurate. Could it?

"Logie?"

He blinked, refocusing on Remus who was looking up at him in concern. "Apologies. I'm not sure what's come over me."

"Do you need a break?" Remus asked, rubbing his back. "Why don't we head to the cafeteria, relax for a bit?"

Logan sighed and nodded. "That would be nice."

"Alright then," Remus said, looking solemnly up at him for a few more moments before curling his arms under Logan's legs and pushing himself to his feet. Logan had to wrap his arms around Remus's neck to keep himself stable, and he glared at the moustached man as he grinned, carrying him into the cafeteria.

"I can walk perfectly well on my own."

"Yeah, but where's the fun in that?" Remus asked and he made his way over to the nearest table, setting Logan to sit on the table as he moved to sit between his legs on the seat in front of him, hands still there on Logan's hips, stabilising and comforting. "Now, what's the problem?"

For a moment Logan didn't want to talk about it, but eventually, after some surprising patience on Remus's part, he spoke. "It's going to sound crazy."

"So say it anyway," Remus encouraged. "I say crazy stuff all the time, and you still love me."

Logan smiled. "That I do," he muttered, and carefully gathered his thoughts. "It's that dream I had."

"The one where everyone died?" Remus asked and Logan nodded.

"I didn't really explain it before, but it was here. We all died here." Logan took a deep, shaking breath, letting the pressure of Remus's hands on him calm him down. "Everything we've done today, save a few details, has been exactly the same."

"The same?"

"As my dream," Logan clarified. "It's like... I lived it before. I can remember waking up to you falling out of the cryotube, I can remember you making spaghetti pesto for breakfast, I can remember checking the oxygen system before, and yet I know it can't be real, or..."

"Or we'd be dead," Remus finished softly, a furrow between his brows. They studied each other in silence for a few moments, Logan wondering if Remus thought he was crazy, wondering if he really was crazy, but then Remus caught his hand and entwined their fingers. "Did we all die together?"

A tension in Logan's shoulders eased as he exhaled in a shaky relief. "No. Orange died first."

"Okay," Remus said with a slow nod. "Where was he?"

"In Storage."

Remus nodded again and rose to his feet, pulling Logan away from the table. "Then let's go check."

"Remus-"

"When did it happen?" the man in green asked, ignoring Logan's protest as he led the way towards the corridor.

"It... I don't know. Janus found him... in about five minutes actually."

Remus hummed and continued on. The further along the clean, blank hallway they walked the more nervous Logan felt. He knew it was ridiculous to feel that way, that this was all nonsense, but there was still a part of him, a part that he could never truly rid himself of, that wondered. What if he was going mad? What if the cryotube had malfunctioned somehow and his brain had been affected? What if he was suffering an unknown effect of being put in status for such a long time? What if-?

Remus had drawn them to a stop. They had reached storage, more specifically the pile of crates and boxes in the centre. Orange was lying face down on the floor next to it.

"... How did Janus find him?" Remus asked, his voice quiet.

"Like... Like this."

Remus hummed and released Logan's hand, stepping closer and crouching down to shake Orange's shoulder. "Orange. You... You okay?"

No answer.

"You're freaking us out. Say something."

The silence continued.

Remus looked back to Logan for a moment before rolling Orange over. The majority of the front of his suit had been stained red with his blood, creeping into the stuffing from an uneven tear, revealing a mess of flesh, internal organs and bodily fluids. The helmet had been cracked, and Orange stared blankly from within.

"... Fuck."

"No." Logan grasped at the fabric of his suit's arms, shaking his head. "This... this can't be real. It can't be happening. It was a dream. A dream!"

"Logan!"

Remus was stood before him, blocking his view as he crowded his space, holding Logan's arms.

"It... it was a dream," Logan said, but he couldn't bring himself to believe it anymore. "How is this possible?"

"I don't know," Remus replied. "Whatever it is, we have to stop the next one."

"Right," Logan said with a nod. "It was Janus. We... we'd split up into two groups to fix the Oxygen. Roman and Virgil went with Janus, and when they didn't show up in the cafeteria after we went looking. Janus was... in Admin."

"What about Roman and Virgil?"

Logan shook his head. "We didn't have the chance to find them."

Remus narrowed his eyes at that, but before he could say anything further they heard a crash. Turning towards the noise they found Janus leaning against the wall, an empty gas container now half way across the room as they stared at Orange's body. A moment later, his eyes met theirs.

_______________________________ 

 Stardate: October 17th XX20. 11:48 AM

"It has to be them!" Janus exclaimed to the table, pointing at both Remus and Logan. He had carefully kept his distance from them ever since he'd called the alarm, The table was between them now, and they were all stood a number of feet from each other, save for the two accused parties. "They were right there and they'd done nothing!"

"I was making sure Logan didn't go into shock!" Remus shouted back. "We'd only just gotten there a minute before!"

"Please, stop fighting," Patton said weakly, looking between them nervously. Logan was equally fearful, unsure what would happen should someone be accused of murdering their friend. This hadn't happened last time, if the last time had even been real. They had been half convinced that it had been a stow-away. How did they get here?

"Why were you even in Storage?" Virgil asked.

"We were going to visit Janus in Communications!" Remus defended, almost immediately, telling Logan that he'd already thought of an excuse some time before this madness had descended upon them. He couldn't help but feel relieved at it.

"I'd just finished my work on the oxygen and thought it would be a good time to take a break," Logan confirmed, glancing at Janus's still unconvinced face.

"You don't take breaks," Roman said with a frown.

"He does," Patton defended, looking between everyone. "You know he does. Janus, did you see them kill Orange?"

Janus gritted his teeth. "No."

"Then how do you know it was them?"

"Because they were just standing there!"

"It wasn't-" Logan started, but Remus pushed him behind him with a snarl.

"We just experienced a traumatic event you giant shit for brains! Everyone experiences it differently! I would have thought you'd have known better."

Janus flinched, his left hand rising towards his helmet briefly before it curled into a fist. "Then who killed him?"

"I don't know!" Remus's words echoed for a moment before he slumped in place. "I don't know, Jay. He was already..." He held his arm towards the Storage room before he dropped it limply to his side.

"Do we know if we're the only ones on the Station?" Roman asked into the void that Remus had left in his wake.

Patton shook his head. "I've been focusing on stabilising things in Navigation."

"I haven't seen anyone," Janus said.

"The only other people I've seen is all of you," Logan said, and the others agreed. "The only way we can know if there are others here would be to check in Admin, but that only records the presence of living entities in these suits."

"In other words, it's useless," Virgil said, curling his arms around himself. "There could be someone here, trying to kill us all, and we'd have no idea."

"... Yes."

"Perfect!"

Roman scoffed. "Look, whether it was someone else on this Station or not, we should all stick together from now on, right?"

"I don't want to let any of you out of my sight!" Patton said, bringing his hands up in a way that resembled how he would hold them to his face in moments of extreme emotion.

"Right," Roman said with a nod. "In which case we need to figure out what we need to do."

Logan sighed. "I've completed the most vital of tasks in the oxygen room, and it sounds like the reactor has been started."

"I got most of the trash that's outside," Remus added.

"We started working on the Upper Engine," Virgil said. "The stuff in the Medbay didn't take too long."

"I was going to head over to the Lower Engines to see if Orange needed any help," Janus said, sending a look to Remus and Logan to show he still didn't believe them, which made Logan feel horrid.

"The Station's in the correct orbit now," Patton said. "So... maybe the shields need looking at?"

"Good idea, padre," Roman agreed with a nod. "Don't want anything else happening."

Patton perked up a little at the praise and nodded. "Let's go then."

_______________________________ 

 Stardate: October 17th XX20. 12:46 AM

Logan had checked the time for what had felt like the hundredth time in five minutes. They were all still together, they were all still working, and they were all still alive. Roman and Remus had been working on priming the shields together since they arrived while Patton and Janus had focused on the power that had been diverted there, leaving him and Virgil with nothing to do. No one spoke outside of their tasks, and the quiet was oppressive. He checked the time again.

"Why do you keep doing that?" Virgil asked, having been doing something on his tablet for most of the time.

"Doing what?"

"Checking the time," the purple clad man replied. "Are you... waiting for something?"

Logan tensed, feeling Janus's eyes on him. "I'm nervous," he tried to explain. "There's still so much to do, and Orange... None of this makes any sense."

Virgil snorted. "Understatement of the century."

"Yes, well-"

An alarm went off, blaring overhead. So things had only been delayed.

"What is that?" Roman asked, standing up from the screen his brother was still leaning over.

"That's... the reactor," Logan said. Saying it out loud suddenly made it real and he started to run towards it, knowing that if it hit critical mass then it would cause a meltdown and the Station would be destroyed. They had to fix it, now.

He could hear footsteps following behind him, but he didn't turn to see who it was, he only ran on, jumping over the boxes in Storage and past the lower engine to get into the reactor room. There were two flashing panels on opposite sides of the room and he quickly made his way over to the one on the right, pressing his gloved hand over the correct space and waiting with bated breath as the countdown continued, until at last the flashing lights and the constant drone of the alarm ceased. He all but collapsed in relief and turned to everyone else.

"We did it," Patton cheered, but Logan's eyes continued to flicker through the group, the numbers not matching up.

"Where's Remus?" he asked, finding that he was the only one that wasn't there.

Everyone shuffled on the spot and looked around.

"Where's Remus?" Logan asked again, moving towards the corridor. "Remus?"

"Logan!" Janus called, but he ignored him, the panic that had only just begun to flush from his system returning full force.

"Remus!" he called again, going back the way he'd come.

"Logan, be careful!" Patton called, but it was all fading into background noise.

"Remus, don't be dead," Logan muttered to himself as he turned a corner. "Please, don't be dead. You can't be dead. I need you. I need-"

There was blood splattered across the floor, he could hear it dripping over the edge of the platform and onto the pipes below. There were pieces of bone in the pool, but Logan didn't care. He stepped through it to fall to his knees before the body of the love of is life, pulling him into his lap and cradling his mutilated body. It had happened again. Remus had died, again, but this time he hadn't been there. He hadn't been with him.

He twisted Remus's helmet off and set it to the side, then removed his own, bowing his head to rest their brows together.

"I'm sorry," he choked. "I'm so sorry. We were supposed to be together, and I left you."

"Logan..." Janus said from somewhere behind him, but Logan ignored him in favour of kissing Remus and closing his eyes.

"I love you," he whispered before gently setting him down.

The reactor had been a distraction. It, like the oxygen and the lights from before, had been set off remotely, and it could only be done through one of their tablets. He turned around. There had only been one person he had seen on their tablet today.

His eyes blew wide in fear as he watched Virgil's body split and unravel, rope-like tentacles stretching out, and before he could say a word they had wound around Patton's throat and upper body, choking him until Logan heard the snap of bone, and his body was dropped to the floor like a disposable rag. Janus, who had watched the display with horror, had backed into Roman. Roman, who had looked on the body of his twin brother in silence, who had watched the murder of one of his best friends with a blank face, who was holding Janus's arms as he screamed and tried to flee.

Logan couldn't stand to watch anymore and he fled, but not before he saw a part of Roman split from the rest of him to reveal too many teeth in impossible places. He ran through Navigation, through the weapons area, through cafeteria, but he all but ran into the thing that used to be Virgil in the Upper Engine room, and when he turned to head back the way he'd come, not-Roman was there, still dripping with blood. He swallowed back a sob and glared at the creatures with seething hatred. They might have taken everything from him, but he would not give them his fear any longer.

The monsters hissed a laugh and approached.

_______________________________ 

 Stardate: October 17th XX20. 6:00 AM

Logan blinked his eyes open as the dim light of the cryodeck slowly brightened, emulating the rising of the sun back on Earth and offering a gentle escape from his induced hibernation. A moment later he shot up with a gasp. He was suddenly hit with light-headedness and he grasped the edge of his tube. He looked around, blinking at his surroundings. He was back. Had they not killed him? Were they keeping him for some nefarious reason? His grip on the tube tightened as he gritted his teeth, but his thoughts were disturbed when he saw a figure push itself from the tube beside his and tumble to the floor. It only took a glance to determine who it was.

"Remus?"

The man on the floor groaned before flipping onto his back, the shock of white hair in his fringe covering his beautiful, bright, alive eyes as he looked dazedly up at him and grinned. "Hey there, hot stuff. Fancy seeing you here."

[curiouswritinggarden]

The Excuse

I am late for work! Late! Late! Late! Of all the nights to eat cheap fried rice, why did it have to be last night, I think to myself as I start the car. Eating Lee’s authentic Chinese special fried burger rice always knocked me out with fever dreams. I cringe while remembering the crazy dream about claymation Komodo dragons. Oof, I took two red lights. Hopefully I can get to the time clock before my boss notices. I finally arrive at the office building. I slam my car door shut and run through the crowded parking lot. There is only enough time to shout a frantic, “Good morning!” to the lobby’s receptionist before skidding into a closing elevator.

I take a second to catch my breath. The memory of the clay lizards whispering, “mould our faces,” creeps back into my mind. I shake my head to get rid of the weird thoughts and notice my hair is sticking out at weird angles. Great, just great, nothing says late like lopsided bedhead, I think as a try to smooth down my frizzy hair.

The elevator dings at my floor. I poke my head out of the sliding doors. The reception area is empty. The time clock gently ticks on the wall behind the welcome desk. A smug smile spreads across my face. No witnesses, perfect! I can’t believe the welcome room is empty. I speed tiptoe toward the time clock.

“You’re late.”

I jump and muffle a shriek. Slowly, I turn to face my boss, Mr. Borgman, with the most professional smile I can muster. Mr. Borgman is a tall, stern man infamously known for firing tardy employees in the office. He walks up behind me and adjusts his dark blue neck tie with the patience of a priest.

“Twenty-five minutes and thirty seconds late, Ms. Rubin,” he says as his eyes flicker to the clock and back to me. “I hope the extra sleep prepared you to welcome the clients scheduled this afternoon. You’re lucky none of them had the decency to come in early.” He regards me with a disapproving look as he passes judgement on my wicked bedhead. “Even though you are the, I assume, proud receptionist of Sleepy Time Pillows Inc., the company does not endorse sleeping in on work days.”

“There’s no reason why you deserve more sleep than the rest of our employees. Many of our workers perform outstandingly with the standard seven to eight hours of sleep every night.”

He leans down toward me, “Why should I make an exception for you?”

I crane my neck upwards as he looms over me. My smile dissolves into a sheepish smirk.

Why did my boss eat a mountain of calcium as a kid?

Taking a deep breath in, I squeeze out my words in a whisper, “I can explain sir, if you just give me a few minutes of your time.”

“You have taken more than enough time from me and the company already,” he says curtly. Then, with the grace of a confessor, his gaze shifts from judging to challenging. “But I would love to hear you try and talk your way out of this rather, sticky situation.”

He nods, in a merciful way, and eyes the time clock again, “I’ll even give you one minute to gather your thoughts.”

“Thank you sir,” I say meekly. A minute, huh? How am I going to come up with an excuse in a minute? Mr. Borgman is notorious for following the paper trails of his employees. If any employee was truly sick, he wanted them to show symptoms, have paperwork, and even a call from the doctor that treated them. He showed the same ruthless efficiency when family emergencies came up too.

How Jerry wasn’t fired after he faked his father’s own funeral is beyond me. Wait..That’s it! Jerry wasn’t fired, even after impersonating his allegedly dead father in an open casket funeral! It was proof there was a funny bone in my bosses’ thin skeleton figure. I just need to come up with a story wild enough to make him laugh, or at least crack a less sinister smile. I glance at him. His smile is relaxed yet all his teeth are showing. “Thirty more seconds, Ms. Rubin,” he says.

I rack my brain for any idea. Mould our faces, a slithery voice whispers. The dream, of course! I straighten my stance and channel all of my customer service calmness into my voice.

“There is a perfectly logical explanation of why I am late today Mr. Borgman. You see, yesterday I visited the Wynken, Blynken, and Nod Sleep Center in the hopes of convincing them to test if our Sleepy Time Pillows could improve sleep. They told me the lab would be interested, but first I would need to register with the center. As a requirement I had to volunteer in a sleep study.”

He raises an eyebrow in curiosity.

“They told me the study would monitor sleep patterns of the average adult. Not wanting to waste any time, I volunteered for the sleep study last night. Unfortunately, my volunteer papers got mixed up and I was mistaken for a participant in a different study. At least, that’s what they told me, afterward.”

Pausing, I sigh and shake my head slowly, “What I’m about to say is going to sound crazy, but it’s all true. So please, do not interrupt me.”

He nods, “Alright, you may continue.”

“Last night during the, supposed, sleep study I was taken to a monitoring room. They gave me a glass of water and told me I had to drink it as part of the study. So I drank it and fell asleep mid-yawn. The next thing I knew I woke up in a room designed to look like a flower meadow.”

My boss scowls in confusion. He tries to interrupt me, but I cut in.

“Yes, I know it sounds insane, but that is what happened. I woke up in a room made to look like a flower meadow. The walls were painted sky blue and there was green shag carpeting with silk daisies stapled in place. I should know, I yanked a bunch of the fake flowers out of the carpet and cut my foot on the staple. I was confused and stumbled back into a painted wall. Then the wall spun around and I was in a night club. There were loads of people wearing glow-in-the-dark shirts in that crowded room. All of them were dancing to rave music with a heavy base. I was disoriented and kept bumping into dancers. I felt like I was in a human pinball machine and I was the pinball. Suddenly, someone pushed me out the door of the night club and into a different room. The new room looked like a kindergarten classroom…”

As I continue on my long tale, I describe myself walking in and out of dozens of strange rooms. Some with balloons in them, others filled with hedgehogs, but all of the rooms were wacky and left me feeling more befuddled than ever. I glance at my boss and see that my story has the same bewildering effect on him. His eyes are scrunched up in confusion, his mouth is open in a lopsided scowl, and his head is cocked to the side. I decide to wrap it up when it looks like his face is going to flip to a 180 degree angle.

“…And it was just when I was running out of the trampoline bug room that I was face to face with a pair of giant claymation Komodo dragons. They were hissing at me, ‘Mould our faces,’ when I lost the last shred of my sanity and ripped the lizard’s head off. I was screaming, ‘Ok, I’ll shape your faces!!’ when a buzzer sounded and over-head lights came on. People in lab coats walked into the room. They told me to calm down, which is hard to do when you are confused beyond belief and clutching a dislocated clay lizard head. They explained that all the rooms were part of an experiment. The scientists were testing to see how people would react to dreamscapes when they were fully awake. They placed me and other test subjects in a maze filled with bizarre things to simulate a dream landscape. I was shocked and yelled at them. I had only volunteered to do a regular sleep study, not be a guinea pig for a bunch of quacks. I collected my personal effects, went back home to change, and then raced over here to start my work day.”

Mr. Borgman stands very still in the waiting room. It takes him half a minute for him to blink. He reaches slowly into his pocket; perhaps to hand me a pink slip. Instead of termination papers, he takes out a moleskin notebook and writes for over 5 minutes. Then he closes the notebook and says, “Well, your excuse is going right at the top, along with Jerry Barton faking his father’s death, as the craziest late excuse I’ve ever heard.”

I gulp, “Does this mean I’m not fired, sir?”

He gives me a satisfied smile. “I should hope not Ms. Rubin, we need you on our ad campaign team. Someone with your creativity is needed to help us sell our pillows. I believe your excuse would make an excellent advertisement for our company.”

My sigh of relief is cut off as he talks to me again.

“However Ms. Rubin, do not come in late again or I will truly fire you.”

“Yes, sir.”

As he walks into the office, he laughs softly to himself. “Mould our faces, indeed,” he chuckles.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hey there! So this short story is based off a writing prompt from Writer’s Digest’s Year of Writing Prompts.   Specifically, March 4th’s prompt: You’re late for work because you overslept, but your boss hates over-sleepers. He does love entertaining stories, though, so create the most outlandish excuse as to why you were late.  Writing this was a lot of fun! The most difficult part was creating the actual excuse. I needed a scenario that sounded crazy, but real enough so that it would sound believable. The idea finally came to me when I thought of the company my main character worked for, Sleepy Time Pillows. After figuring out the name, everything else in the story fell into place.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the story! :D

[dulcidyne]

Experiments in Diplomacy: Compiling [8/?]

There’s nothing in the Interspecies Diplomacy subsection of the Initiative handbook that covers sharing a tech lab with an angara who can kill her in her sleep. She knows, she’s read every page. Twice. (A collection of in-between vignettes from the Tempest tech lab) 

//Jaal x Ryder // Humor. Romance. SFW // Previous chapters: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] or read on Ao3

Somewhere along the way to age seven, in Citadel docking bay 223, Se-ah Ryder decides crying, hugs, tantrums, and other public displays of emotion are things she has outgrown. Perfunctory, precise, she shuts them away as if embarrassing emotional habits can be sealed into donation boxes for young needy children in the Lower Wards like her half-melted asari dolls.

Donated or lost, the box she puts them in stays shut. She doesn’t cry when they pay their respects to her grandmother’s urn at the columbarium. Or, much later, in another docking bay, when Scott waves goodbye as he ships off for Arcturus. She doesn’t cry the first time Iraenya plays down their relationship to her colleagues, embarrassed and ashamed.  And when her mother dies, she takes a page out of her father’s book and finds a hospital supply closet and stifles her tears into her shirt collar.

It stays shut, that is, until now. Until twenty-eight uninterrupted minutes of sobbing into Jaal’s chest, followed by forty-one additional minutes of sporadic weeping interspersed with flailing grasps at composure. So, obviously, there is only one logical conclusion to make.

“Just run them again,” Se-ah hisses.

“Once again, Ryder, my scans do not detect any pathologic neurological patterns outside of baseline variation.”

She woke up to the dim ambient glow of the powered-down machine displays running through their background system scans, half-reclining in Jaal’s arms, in his cot, having cried herself to sleep in his embrace  like an infant--that alone is an abnormality. She doesn’t understand why SAM is having difficulty with the concept.

“Outside of baseline,” she pauses, the gnarled tangle that is her hair fluttering as Jaal’s snores gust over her head. It tickles her temples but she doesn’t want to dislodge the warm arm banding around her shoulders to brush it back. “Wait, SAM, does that mean you normally detect pathologic patterns?” “It exceeds my functional parameters to parse this data into a clinical diagnosis. It would be unethical to make an attempt. Dr. T’Perro would undoubtedly provide better insight.”

Maggie’s lights pulse unhurried staccato patterns from the corner. Se-ah stiffens in Jaal’s loose embrace, indignant. “ Unethical. You’re an AI integrated into my entire body. Little late to be worried about ethics isn’t it?”

“A relevant point. I additionally lack subjective expertise. My data collection is limited to two genetically similar individuals. It is therefore relatively impossible for me to extrapolate what is normal and abnormal outside of overt structural dysfunction.”

“Further,” SAM says, “I am not an inert observer. It cannot definitively quantify what impact my integration and ongoing observation and interaction has had on your baseline neurological state.”

Disquieting. Se-ah stills and attempts to parse this new revelation while Jaal’s chest rumbles against her ear like the purr of a massive but very contented kitten. It’s nice. She wishes she were still half asleep and allowed to enjoy it and not awake and mortified over her predicament. Mortified and now, thanks to SAM, horrified.

“So not only can you not tell me if my brain is broken, you’re also saying that just by being in my head, you’re changing how it works and doing so in a way that you lack the ability to detect? Like some kind of quantum observer effect?”

SAM doles out a calculated pause for her benefit. All his pauses are for her benefit as he processes information in nanoseconds, but this one feels especially so. A pity pause. Bad news pause.

“Correct.”

“Great,” she mutters, “I’m Schroedinger’s basketcase.”

“My scans do detect significant decreases to harmful neurological metabolites and reduced cortisol levels...likely the product of sufficient rest.”

So that’s what it is. No creaking limbs, phantom aches or raw fatigue scraping the inside of her eyelids raw. A loose, shivery sensation clings like mist in her chest. It feels like a lungful of the air on Mr. Orleal, saturated in starlight and the ozone tingle of the eezo deposits under the lake.

Melatonin has nothing on Jaal. Lexi would be thrilled. Happiness flutters against her ribs. She hides her smile against the vast sloping ridge of Jaal’s alien chest even though there’s no one else there to see how foolish it looks. A familiar scent tickles her nose and she sniffles back a sneeze. He smells warm and herbal, like grapefruit orchards and Earth sunsets--carnelian, blush,and gold-- if Earth sunsets prickled in her sinuses like wasabi.

As far as smiles go, this one caught on the precipice of a sneeze, feels the stupidest.

“Pathfinder, if you have a moment, I would like to discuss some of the data I obtained earlier…”

The tentative flutter of joy in her chest curls inwards on itself, recoiling. She screws up her face, tipping her head back over Jaal’s arm, his r ofjinn bunching up against the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck.

“SAM, I don’t want to waste all this beautiful mental clarity on parsing out my emotional breakdown.”

It’s not fair and she regrets saying it. He provides more than his share of explanations for her and this is supposed to be a reciprocal relationship after all.

“That classification is interesting, Pathfinder. Noradrenaline phasic signalling was decreased, indicating the absence of a stress response. You rate the subjective experience, however, as a negative one?”

Half the words don’t even sound familiar. Despite being the daughter of a neuroscientist, she picked up precious little on the subject. Latching on to what she understands, she attempts an answer.

“No. Not negative. The opposite, I guess?”

“I see.”

She absurdly pictures SAM fitting the L of his imaginary thumb and pointer finger to his imaginary chin in a gesture of academic interest. Her father used to do that, unwittingly providing Scott with ample ammo for his ‘Alec Ryder, mad scientist’ impressions.

“This supports my observations of the intense activity within the mesolimbic circuit--”

Se-ah winces. “You know, it’s pretty weird to hear all the gory details.”

“I do not comprehend the discomfort.” SAM states, an echo of her father’s scientific fascination faint in the synthetic voice modulation. Her own imagination, she’s sure. “Your emotions are best described as the limited interpretation of this signalling process.”

For some indefinable reason, she bristles.

“Maybe technically, but...it was this amazing, overwhelming experience and it didn’t feel limited . It felt...immense. Bigger than anything. Like I couldn’t possibly keep it in without bursting and then I did burst and apparently that looks like a lot of crying.”

Ugly crying. There was a not-small-amount of snot involved.

“It’s more than mesolimbic circuits,” she persists, words coming faster and her voice tightening,  “Sometimes things are more than their physical, observable state. When I’m on a summit, what I experience isn’t just snow and stars and rocks...it's…well I wouldn’t bother with it if that was all I got out of it. Look, I don’t think I could ever explain it in a way you’d be able to understand.”

The channel goes silent, longer than the normal exaggerated pauses SAM inserts into his responses. The silence is deafening on the heels of her tirade. As if he’s...affronted.

“Thank you Ryder.” SAM says at last. Clipped and professional. Is it her imagination or is it too professional? If there were such a thing? “I will attempt an analysis with this feedback in mind.”

Se-ah nods, unnecessarily given that it is SAM, her heart sinking. Who knows what havoc a peeved AI could wreck in her brain, apparently without either of them any the wiser? And if she can’t explain it to SAM she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to explain what happened to Jaal. Not that she didn’t try before, during all the sobbing, but it was impossible to get anything out that wasn’t ‘I’m fine, I just...’ before dissolving into tears again. He didn’t press her for more.

But maybe now that she isn’t an emotional wreck, he might. Whether she has answers is less certain.

‘Sorry, SAM says you overloaded my mesolimbic circuit and that it’s all very scientific and reasonable and I’m not crazy. Or I might be. Have you heard the human folk tale about the cat?”

Awful. The shivering sensation in her chest unfurls again and spreads out into her fingers. She furrows them into the crease of Jaal’s side and the cot, letting his warmth soothe the trembling overtaking her frame. His arm wraps tighter reflexively. This is the sort of moment she wants to soak in, slow, like sunlight filtering through leaves stippling ancient Morse-code patterns over her face. Eyes closed, she inhales and vague memories sift warm impressions on the backs of her eyelids.

Hands, scarred and calloused and massive sweeping soft, reassuring circles against her back. His chin on the top of her head, her face tucked into the graceful sweep of his neck where a crook would be on hers. A low thrum: his voice, unintelligable, but soothing. A musical hum buzzes through the air.

Se-ah sighs and blinks her eyes open to glance up. He’s still deep asleep, snoring away. A hazy, contented smile gathers at the corners of his mouth and makes him look, for all the universe, like someone having a pleasant dream.

Despite spending the vast majority of her waking moments on the ship in his makeshift bedroom, she’s never seen him this way. The quiet of the ship is unsettling, he claims. Unlike his naps on the NOMAD, the only sleep she sees him take on the ship is fitful, almost violent--covers twisting, his hands clutching, face grimacing, the names of the lost wrenching out of him as he jolts awake. But even the sleep he snatches on the NOMAD doesn’t look this peaceful. It takes him quick and fast, like something joyless and inevitable. She grimaces. Like death.  

Studying his lidded eyes, she shifts on the cot to lean her weight more on his chest and tip her head back, peering up at the sweeping planes of his cheekbones, the point of his chin, and the fine ridge of his brow. He’s beautiful. All angara are, to her eye-- all grace and noble carved profiles like ancient Athame sculptures given color, life, and a Romanesque bone structure. But Jaal’s beauty is sharper, more defined than anything out of asari or human antiquity. War and grief etch his face in a landscape of visible and invisible scars, throwing the softness that remains, obstinate and miraculous, in high relief. The softness is all she sees now.  It is the face of a man who dreams, hopes, composes poems and perfumes, and is always seeking, searching, finding bits of wonder. If it weren’t for the kett, this might always be his face and Andromeda would be a place where it would fit. The dreamer. The tinkerer. The explorer.

But the kett stole that place away from him. War is spare. Merciless. There is little room for anything else but soldiers. Se-ah bites the inside of her lip, hard. Jaal is the first to insist he isn’t much of a soldier.

She doesn’t realize the snoring stops until he, without bothering to open his eyes, asks, “Yes, Ryder?”

Chagrined and surprised over how close she’s gotten, she immediately jolts away. “You’ve been awake? How long?” The slant of his smile changes but his eyes stay closed, “Long enough. Were you under the impression that you were being discreet?”

Fair point.

“So why didn’t you say something?” “I was trying to sleep. Speaking seemed counterproductive.”

“Uh huh. To your eavesdropping, maybe.”

Jaal doesn’t look at her, on account of the fact that he’d yet to bother opening his eyes, but the resigned set of his shoulders conveys a beleaguered expression that comes with an air of ‘No, I don’t think I’ll even bother ’. It’s one he wears around Liam with regularity. “Please do not attempt to explain that one. If I cannot sleep I’d much rather occupy my mind elsewhere.”

He makes a point of settling further into the cot, the large divot his body forms in the fabric deepening. Maybe he’s trying to free up the arm underneath her she realizes, belatedly. Renewed mortification crowds up her neck and she coughs to clear her throat. “Oh, then I should...leave you to that then,” she says, cheeks burning as she draws back against the gravitational pull of his weight on the cot, narrowly avoiding toppling on top of him.

“Stay.” At last Jaal blinks open his eyelids, a slow reveal of vivid blue. He looks at her, uncharacteristically uncertain, before saying, simply, “If...you’d like. You could join me.”

She hesitates. “Join you--elsewhere?”

“No, just here.”

Somehow he feels...closer. Not physically. It’s as if the gap in the universe between them has vanished overnight. She’s no longer on the precipice, her thoughts and feelings a faint, distorted comm. She’s there , a few bare centimeters in front of him and he’s looking at her as if he can see every detail of her with absolute clarity. It’s dreamer’s look with a tinkerer’s focus and his eyes are luminous, twin helium nebulae lit from within with something like wonder. She mistook it for morbid fascination once. This time she knows better. He smiles as if he might laugh. Fond. Unbearably so. Her chest hurts to look at it.

“No idioms, nothing else. Just this. Right now.” The words linger, rippling against her skin in gentle, rumbling waves. Jaal crooks his pinned arm and brushes back the fluttering snarl of her hair.

A quiet bubble settles around the tiny cot, enclosing them within the warm, sunset smell of him. It feels safe. Like home. She doesn’t know the last time she felt those things. Not since-- It should be strange to find them here, an entire galaxy away, with an alien who openly spoke about killing her after they’d just met.

Jaal’s huff of a laugh skips across the quiet like a smooth stone on a lake surface. Something about it tells her he’s picked up on the precise turn of her thoughts--too perceptive by half. “You know, you are remarkably expressive. Almost angaran.”

She tucks her face into the slope of his neck and pulls a scowl, even though it isn’t an insult. The memory of her tragic poker loss to Gil is still all too fresh and she feels a little too raw, a little too exposed with nowhere to hide her vulnerabilities. Instead of answering, she buries a noncommittal sound into his bare skin.

He laughs again, rueful and soft. “It was a clumsy effort, but it was intended as a compliment. We are a vocal people. More than words and expressions. In addition to combative and deliberate communication uses, our bioelectrics have subtle subconscious patterns and pulses. I believe your hanar are similar, in the visible electromagnetic spectrum. It is difficult to suppress. Few have scrupulous reasons to try.”

His fused fingers twine into her hair. It seems a point of endless fascination for him. Even in the Milky Way, hair is something of a novelty.

“The emotions of those around us pervade all our senses. It saturates our lives. My first days on this ship were so...disorienting. I felt the absence keenly, like a limb lost in battle.”

Her scowl vanishes and she looks up to meet his eyes again. Of course, she’d suspected his trouble adjusting, but never knew the full extent. He kept so much hidden then. “It must have made it that much more difficult, deciding if you could trust us.”

Jaal laughs. It sounds pained. “Very. I learned to look harder, with time. There is a beauty in subtlety. Underappreciated among my people, but I’ve grown quite fond of it. Humans were easier. And then, there was you.”

“About as subtle as a flaming ship crashing on your planet?”

Genuine mirth threads into his laughter, his eyes tracing over her upturned face. “Yes. An apt comparison. Vivid, exciting… deeply alarming to some.”

She brightens and his smile deepens. The hand at her temple curls against her skin to brush a soft line over her cheek with the backs of his knuckles.

“It made trusting you more easy than wise, considering the risk.”

“I’m sure Evfra disapproved,” she says.

“Of course. Evfra is a cautious strategist. He despaired of me.”

Jaal leans his cheek against her head, looking off towards the dim ambient glow of the machines running through their downtime routines.

“My caution was always a feeble force and your face...says such beautiful things. I didn’t understand why you struggled  so desperately to hide them away.” He adds, blunt as ever, “Not... well, of course . But with an extraordinary amount of effort. I imagine it was exhausting. Inexpressibly painful. My heart ached just to see it.”

The corners of her eyes begin to prickle. Machine lights catch on the dust motes, adrift on the flickering electrostatic currents weaving around and between them, setting each pinpoint aglow like rippling eddies of distant stars.

“I thought the same about you, you know. Before we rescued the Moshae.”

Caution shackling his expressions and the strategic withdrawals into clipped one-word answers calculated to give as little away as possible. She’s more glad than she can say to have earned his trust and the chance to see his genuine self without the fetters of fear and uncertainty. He said getting to know her would be a gift and that is how knowing him better feels--like the best gift she didn’t even know to ask for.

He nods. “Yes. I wept for joy that she was safe and for the wrenching horror of what we learned that day but also I wept for my freedom from my own fears. Escaping them was...liberating despite my grief. Cathartic. I think perhaps you felt something of that same freedom. Earlier, when you cried.”

Catharsis. Freedom-- but from what? She wasn’t on a diplomatic mission with alien intruders. She was just-- her . A touch-starved awkward hugger with a trigger-happy mesolimbic circuit. But, that feels insufficient as far as explanations go. Instead, she remembers Scott crying, wailing, hands fisting over his eyes. It’s gone. I have to find it. People are looking. Mom ignores them and kneels despite the crowd, attempting to soothe him. Alec Ryder’s stonefaced expression fractures into a grimace. Pained. He turns away. His hand presses down on her own small shoulder and squeezes. It feels like pride. She forces her chin to stop quivering. She won’t cry. Nothing will ever be okay and everything is wrong but she is Alec Ryder’s daughter and she is old enough to do that much.

A tear slips into her hairline and Jaal’s thumb rubs it away. Breath held, she reaches up between them to capture his hand in her own. His eyes are full of reflected stars, twin galaxies pulling her into their inexorable spin. At the point of her outstretched fingernail is a pinprick of light, fanning off, faintly luminous, refracting off her tears.Se-ah pauses, taken aback, blinking away the moisture collecting on her lashes. It’s not a trick of the light. Her fingertips are actually glowing. And, she realizes, the air is...humming.

“SAM, are we about to fry anything with this corona discharge?” she asks. All at once the air changes, the charged dust motes around them still and the lights on her fingertips flicker out. It smells and feels like a storm just swept out of the tech lab.

“Appropriate precautions have already been taken to accommodate non-combat angaran electromagnetic field manipulation, Pathfinder. Ozone levels are also within acceptable limits.”

Jaal coughs and looks away, suddenly awkward.  “Ahh...as I was saying, it requires some concentration to suppress.”

“Can you stop? Concentrating that is? It’s not as if--well, SAM said it wouldn’t hurt anything.”

Now that she’s paying better attention, she can feel the tingling pressure building and shifting around them. The hairs stand up on her arms. The air smells bright and clean. Light collects on her fingertips again. Faint, but visible. Se-ah laughs, delighted, and slowly bends her fingers, watching the blue flicker and reappear. Ionized plasma balancing on the edge of an electromagnetic field pierced by the short point of her nail. Hardly seemed subtle in her book. Little about him was.

“We call this St. Elmo’s Fire,” she tells him. “It was considered a good omen by ancient human voyagers.”

“Ah. I’m your good omen then?”

“Well, we haven’t crashed once since you got here.”

He brings his free palm to hers, one fused, two separate for her five. She adds, sincerely, “It’s beautiful. Does this happen to you a lot? I’ve never noticed before.”

“No. This is...it’s more. It is special. Explaining would be difficult. Clumsy. I cannot do it justice.”

Hands pressed together, his palm dwarfing hers, a swell of emotion courses through her and a stubborn tear traces down her cheek. She laughs and a sniffle turns it into a tremulous, hiccuping burst of happiness.

“Is there a word for it in Shelesh?”

“No,” he says simply. “There is just this.”

Churning waves of electrons are crashing against her fingertips, caught in the lunar pull of him. Everything dissolves in the watery film of tears and she’s floating, falling, swept by tidal forces into an endless depth of variegated blue. There can be no words, in Shelesh or any other language. But she knows anyway. Floating in an electron sea of his design, palms pressed, wrapped in his embrace--she knows exactly what he is saying.

[embidoesdreaming]

[ May 30, 2020 --- I ended up sleeping the second half of the day away ]

Series Involved: Boku no Hero Academia Theme(s): aliens; post-apocalyptic; sci-fi

I had an alien invasion-esque AU of an dream where there were these aliens that I want to say looked a little like Xenomorphs but also more anthropod-like in general, and they acted like a hivemind. The aliens were shapeshifters---any person that they saw, they could change their appearance into---and they all came from another planet from probably some other galaxy through this portal they made in order to claim Earth as their new home.

I was Deku, trying to find everyone amidst all the chaos happening when the invasion had begun and was at its worst, though mainly looking for Inko. The details are hazy/blurred together as to how exactly the chaos looked while I was going around the city, but I eventually stumbled upon some machine at some person's house --- my guts tell me that this person was a scientist, part of an organization that dabbled in this kind of sci-fi stuff, so I'm pretty sure the machine held some kind of importance that now evades me. That aside, I must've entered this house either under some kind of belief that Inko was there or for just some other significant purpose/reason that I can no longer tell, but soon after I found thks machine, something happened that cause the whole earth to shake.

The building collapsed, burying me underneath it, which brings us to a timeskip of 3 years later. How I managed to remain preserved alive is beyond me -- perhaps it was some unforeseen force; maybe the machine had something to do with it; it could just also be dream logic, but that's beside the point.

Waking up, I found that my legs were crushed. It took some work to pull myself out from all the debris, but what laid before me when I did was a post-apocalyptic setting where the aliens now roamed the Earth, desolate of the human race, along with some new alien wildlife settling into the remains of urban settlement. The hazy sky was a foreboding greenish hue, I remember seeing a couple of War of the World-esque tripod-looking aliens going around looking for gods know what in the distance --- it was real jarring to say in the least. I spent a solid minute or two at a complete loss and all confused, trying to get a grip of what's happened, when suddenly a portal like the aliens' opened up near me. I saw people coming out of it armed with guns and other protective/military(?) gear. They were survivors either looking for supplies/other survivors, or going on an expedition to investigate more on the alien invaders.

Ochako was one of them. She freaked out when she saw me, Deku. Everyone immediately went on guard -- for all they knew, I was another one of the aliens shapeshifting to look like Deku. It wasn't until they soon started to shoot and I used OFA to dodge did Ochako immediately realize I was the real thing and made everyone stop. Apparently, from what I was told later on, the aliens don't actually copy one's Quirk unless it's displayed. Basically, if they can see it, they can implement it into their system and replicate it, so everyone was eventually advised not to use their Quirks in front of an alien under any circumstances. I'm not sure how Ochako knew it was me -- I can only assume that it's because the aliens never did anything that showed they could replicate OFA for the past 3 years since I was MiA, so it was impossible for them to suddenly use OFA now.

It took some convincing before the others finally listened. It was decided that they'd taoe me back to home base, which was beyond the portal, under the condition that I was placed inside this weird container thingy so I couldn't suddenly attack. Going through the portal brought us to the aliens' home planet (which sort of looked like a jungle, at least where we came out of), except they no longer lived there because they've all migrated to Earth. Survivors have made a home base there, and have been working on reclaiming Earth back from the aliens using their technology and making it their own. The details on how they dealt with me are hazy around here, but they eventually let me out to meet all the survivors and also be brought to the infirmary.

All of Class 1-A had survived, including several important adult figures like Aizawa, All Might and so on. I also learned that not many others made it out, and that included a lot of the students' parents. Inko was.. not among the survivors, either, but in any case, all the classmates were quite shook to see that I was actually alive, stuck between relieved and on edge (which is honestly quite understandable) before eventually just being generally glad.

I saw Kacchan. He had this.. very weird look on his face. Definitely in shocm, definitely in disbelief, but also conflicted, and.. torn over something? I can't quite explain it, but he was definitely in distraught. Rather than letting Kaminari and the others convince him to go greet me, he just.. swiftly turned away and left with a bit of haste. It was confusing, but I had to go back to the infirmary, so after I did and got my legs in casts, I went looking for Kacchan.

I found him in this huge training room, doing that training exercise with those battle ropes thingies. I know I was in a wheelchair and all, but, I guess being the Deku that I was, I threw myself off of it and dragged myself towards Kacchan. At first, it's like he didn't want to notice me no matter how many times I called out to him, but soon enough he stopped and.. well, I wouldn't say ensued a fist fight, but he sure did acted very rash. He pushed me aside, or grabbed me by the shirt and threw me back, etc. We argued for some reason, and I was saying how I was already set on joining the expedition crew as soon as I could so that I could find Mom and also basically be the protagonist that I was with the big idea of solving this mess for humanity. Kacchan wasn't having none of it, belittling me and saying not to even try, especially since my legs were crushed, that I couldn't possibly recover from that. I think he might've even said that I would've been better off dead, but I'm not too sure, but the arguments continued to escalate until eventually he just.. broke down where he stood.

Turns out, his parents also didn't survive, and it was assumed that I was dead was well, so he was convinced that he had lost everyone who were really, really important to him and supported him from the beginning regardless of how he was. The pain hurt so much that he ended up detaching himself from his emotions, distancing himself from everyone and repelling them with his rude behavior, and overall closing himself completely off just so that he couldn't hurt anymore, so that he could just focus solely on killing off the aliens and exacting revenge like a cold machine.

And yet, after 3 years of detaching himself from reality, I suddenly come out of nowhere, brought back hurt but alive. It left him in a whirlwind of conflicted emotions, like: Deku was alive? How is that possible? What about his parents? Is it only Deku? Why couldn't it also be my parents? Why only Deku? Why is this happening? What kind of sick joke was this? Why now? Kacchan didn't want to care anymore, so he ‘turned himself off’, but now...

I let him vent everything out and just listened, let him recollect himself and gather his emotions, fragile as they were now, and eventually had a moment of silence together, with him sitting there eventually picking up the battle ropes if just to busy his hands with the exercise. Eventually, people from the infirmary arrived to bring me back to the infirmary and keep me there for proper treatment, because this whole time I was too scattered and stubborn and wanted to get a grip of everything first and also too hasty to find Kacchan to sit still. Kacchan had them give us 5 more minutes since I wanted to keep him company a little longer. We talked a little, about what I can't remember, but eventually he dismissed me saying to go get treated already.

Kacchan gave me the most genuine, soft, thankful smile then. I'd never seen him with such a relieved face without any sign of him holding back or attempting to cover it up with an irritated behavior or whathaveyou. A genuinely blessed smile. He was just so, so glad that he hadn't actually lost everything.

He still insisted that I don't join the expeditions back to Earth later on as I adjusted to the new life. I wasn't in any condition for it, probably might not ever be. Of course, being the Deku that I am, I was too stubborn to agree, and wanted to prove that I could. A montage/timeskip full of recovery and physical therapy later, and I reached a point where I was finally able to stand without help (save for the bars for me to hold onto just in case), then stand and slowly shuffle forward just a little without help.

There are probably bits here and there that I glossed over in this timeframe, which were just snippets of me adjusting to the new life at the base; talking to Class 1-A, to Ochako, to other survivors; learning what happened during the time I'd gone unconscious for 3 years, how people managed to get a hold of the aliens' technology and use their portal to make a base on their home planet, and what they've all been doing with this current situation. Basically one big open world-esque lore drop.

It was around the time when Deku was working on walking on his own when I separated myself from his character, now seeing him continue his physical therapy in the background while I learn more about this dream world. Apparently, this part of the dream from then on wasn't significant enough for me to remember much of it, I guess, and soon enough, I woke up.

[sleepyfan-blog]

Sleepy Dream [part three]

fandom: understale au

part three of this and this. Continued here

Characters: Dream, WD Gaster, Science!Sans

warnings: cursing

word count: 2,337

Summary: Sci and Dream figure out what’s wrong. Dream is less than thrilled.

Dream has gone through every physical test that both of the scientists can come up with - and he’s used his magic in every way he knows how - from telekinesis and using his bow - to affecting one of theirs’ emotions while other notes down what’s going on and how much magic he’s using. The positive spirit is trying to stave off of the feelings of being used as a lab rat, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to do so. “So… Now what?”

Sci and Gaster glanced at one another, before the former says “We’ve ran you through a bunch of physical tests. And you’re right when you say that you’re not falling down or anywhere close to it. But something is causing your magical exhaustion and from the data we’ve gathered… It has something to do with your Soul.”

“If you like, I can leave the room. I know that you are uncomfortable in my presence.” Doctor Gaster offered, standing up and heading slowly for the door.

“I… Please do. I’m sorry it’s just-” Dream answered apologetically, shuffling his feet a little. He felt guilty but… Also relieved that only Sci would be directly observing his soul. This was going to be a weird conversation as it was.

“I’ve had nightmares  about alternative versions of myself. I am well aware of how awful I can be in other timelines.” Doc G responded, a small, sorrowful smile on his face, and a mixture of distress, disgust and unhappiness in his emotive aura.

“Thank you, Doctor Gaster.” The positive spirit murmured gratefully. The other nodded as he left, closing the door quietly behind him. As soon as Gaster was gone, Dream shut off his eye lights and took a couple of steadying breaths in and out before summoning his soul, not quite looking at Sci as it took shape. “So… For as long as I’ve been able to summon my soul, it’s been this shape and color. I’d also like to… Admit that… I’m not exactly a monster… I am… I was created from all of the positive feelings in the multiverse, and condensed into the form similar to an elemental. A skeletal shell was created for me to inhabit. After… Something happened, I fused with the skeleton body I inhabited and this is the shape and color my soul has taken. But that happened centuries ago, and I became much stronger, so that incident is not related to the reason why I’m suddenly losing strength. I’m not and have never been a Sans.”

“I… Uh… Okay. That’s… Kind of surprising, but okay. I’m going to grab the Soul analyzer. It’s going to either tickle, tingle or both. It shouldn’t feel painful - but if you feel even the slightest twinge, tell me and I’ll stop and recalibrate it.” Sci informed Dream, going over to one of the built in wall panels and touching a couple of buttons as he spoke.

A thin, spindly metal arm descended from a hole in the ceiling. Thin and flexible fibers of magically enforced something attached themselves to Dream’s soul, the fibers wrapping all the way around before glowing a faint green color. Dream held very still, trying not to laugh a little or squirm as the fibers tickled his soul. It was one of the strangest sensations that he’d ever felt. He watched Sci occasionally poke buttons and write stuff down for what felt like an eternity before the other switched off the machine, and it let go of his soul, the fibers vanishing before the arm did into the hole in the ceiling, a little metal plate snapping shut.

Sci stared at the data for a long time before murmuring quietly, his aura filled with curiosity and fascinated confusion “Huh. You’re half of a binary entity. That’s… Really strange.”

“I-I don’t… What do you mean by that?” Dream asked, confused by what the other meant, startling a little.

“You have an other half. Literally. So who is it? You have to know them. You and they were created by the same magic. Their powers either complement or oppose yours.” Sci prodded “You have a soul bond with another being. The likes of which I’ve never seen before. I’ve studied the bonds between family members, between long term mates. Hell, even between platonic and romantic soulmates, from AUs where monsters have such things. But I have never seen a bond like that.”

“...” Dream stayed quiet, averting his eyes. The metal floor had a very fascinating pattern, and he was entirely focused on it all of a sudden.

“Dream? Dream you know who I’m talking about. Please just tell me?” Sci pleaded, moving so that he was directly in the other’s line of sight. “I won’t tell anyone else. But if I know who it is, then I might be able to figure out why your magic is draining.”

Dream realized that he was shaking again, tears blurring his vision as he curled up on the cold examination table “I don’t… Please don’t… I don’t want to talk about this…” He never, ever wanted to talk about Nightmare. He had no idea if the other was confined to their home timeline, or like him, could create portals to different worlds, so long as that world held a certain amount of the kind of feeling that they were created from and were created to protect.

“... Okay, you don’t have to talk about who they are. But how long has it been since you’ve last seen them? I mean face to face - not talking to them on the phone, or using a screen to talk to them long distance. But actual, face to face communication. Or the two of you being within the same timeline at the very least, if not within the distance that a single zone of the underground of one another.” Sci pressed, placing a hand on one of the other’s shoulders, watching him intensely.

“... I would say at least… Four… No five decades. A century at the most? I’m not quite sure. How long’s it been since I started travelling with Ink?” Dream responded, frowning a little bit, trying to figure out how long it had been. "I really don't know. Hopping between timelines and universes really messes with a person's sense of time. And I have noticed that some worlds have a bit of a dilation. A day in one timeline can be a week, or even a month in another.

"I... Don't you feel a pull to be with your soul bonded? I... I've never been bonded myself, but from those whom I've spoken with, such a distance between those who have less intense soul bonds of more than a few weeks can cause a lot of stress, misery and worry about the absent partner. I... I'm not surprised that you're starting to lose your magic. You need to seek this person out, Dream. The bond between the two of you is trying to pull you back to them, which is why you're losing energy." Sci explained, his voice gentle but firm "And please don't try to lie to me and say that they're dead or something like that. I've seen beings with less intense soul bonds die within weeks of their bonded dying. I'm not sure you'd survive an hour if your other half died."

"I know that if he died, I would die too. We're not meant to live without each other." Dream snapped, wrapping his arms around his waist and shifting away from the other, a defensive scowl appearing on his face. "I mean... He's... He's the guardian of negativity. We were created together to help provide balance. If only one of us died, the other's presence would cause an emotional imbalance that would eventually cause havoc across the entire multiverse... Or so the information that we were given said. So our fates were bound together. When one of us dies, the other will too, shortly after. I don't know if that means the other would just crumble to dust or they would be... Driven to ensure their own death. And you ask if I miss him? Of course I do. Every day. Every hour. I can't get him out of my head, and he still has control of my heart." Dream buried his face in his hands, and failed spectacularly not to cry.

"I... Okay..." Sci has never in his life ever heard of a guardian of negativity, but now that Dream mentioned it, he supposed that it did make sense for such a being to exist. The question remains is... Why have none of them heard of them before? Though the more important question is... Why does the very mention of him drive Dream to inconsolable sobbing, if the other is clearly alive, given that his friend is still alive, if miserable. "So... Where is he? Does he need to be rescued - like did Error steal his soul or something?"

Dream laughs, and it is a bitter, hollow sound. His eye lights are fractured circles that reflect the misery that he feels. His magical aura - due to his intense negative feelings - is much weaker than it normally is, startling the hell out of Sci, who tightens his grip on Dream, half-convinced that the other was about to vanish at any moment for a couple of seconds. The positive spirit sighs and shakes his head "If only it was so simple a thing for Error to have captured him." Dream curls into a tighter ball, very much unwilling to elaborate any further.

"Uhhh… You don't have to tell me about whatever happened between the two of you, however this energy draining thing? It's going to get worse, and I'm pretty sure that it's affecting him too. I'm not saying that you don't deserve to be mad at him for whatever the hell you're so pissed off at him about, or that avoiding him for whatever reasons that you have isn't a good thing... Except for the fact that it is affecting your physical and magical health. You have to see him regularly. Even if it's just to yell at him for being an asshole." Sci offered quietly.

"How long?" Dream asks, glaring holes at the floor, no longer crying. "How much time to I have to spend with him, for this to stop?"

"I don't know. I'd have to measure his soul and the rate at which the MP drain decreases when you're together, versus while the two of you apart." The younger skeleton answered  honestly.

Dream stared at Sci, gently patting one of the other's cheeks and murmuring absently "I would never inflict his presence on you. Or anyone else. Not as he currently is, filled with a twisted corruption that has tainted his mind and caused... A great deal of strife and pain in our home timeline." Also death, but Dream's not going to say that. No need to scare Sci. The other had been doing all he could. "I was wondering if my lack of energy was related to him somehow. So it is… Just not in the way I was thinking. Thank you for answering this question for me… I need to tell Ink that I’ll be gone for a while… I don’t think he’s ever been to my timeline before. I definitely would have remembered meeting him. Then again, perhaps he might have visited before we existed? If none of you ever see me again, please know that it’s not by choice, but because I couldn’t escape Nightmare.”

Sci tilts his head a little, and asks quietly “Nightmare?”

“My other half. That’s his name. Fallen guardian of negativity. He is… Magnitudes stronger than I am. He’s quite possibly stronger than Ink and Error together. We were at equal power level once… Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go see the one being I’ve been running from since I figured out how. Thanks for the help, Sci.” Dream murmured, eye lights very dull and shattered as he uncurled from the ball he was and stood up almost robotically. “... Actually, would you mind telling Ink? I have a feeling that if I try to explain only a little bit he’s not going to be satisfied until I explain the whole thing and I really, really don’t want to.”

“I… Wh- hold on! Dream… Dream please try to calm down? I can tell that you’re miserable and distraught - don’t try to use your aura on me to think otherwise. I know the look of a person in abject misery. Promise me you won’t do anything that you’d regret in a better frame of mind?” Sci pressed, grabbing his friend and hugging him tightly, in an attempt to get the other to stop moving.

Dream stopped moving long enough to smile down at him, and it was filled with great sadness “I… I will try. But for now I have to go home. Please give Ink and Blue my fondest regards.” With that, he gently pried Sci off of him, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of the other’s forehead, murmuring quietly “Sleep now, you don’t want to see this.”

The younger skeleton cursed quietly, feeling his body go limp and relaxed as Dream carefully set him on the bed. He was awake, but only just. The positive guardian opened a bright yellow portal, revealing a rust-red sky and an ashy, desolate looking landscape. Sci honestly couldn’t tell if the AU that Dream was going to, he’d opened it to an above or below ground place. There was a giant, dead stump filling one portion of the portal as the other went through it.

Sci couldn’t get up - he barely managed to drag his interdimensional phone out of his pocket and shakily typed out one word [help] before hitting send, unaware that he hadn’t sent it just to Ink, but all of the AU travelling Sanses he had contact with - as he’d sent it in the main text chain before passing out completely.

[journalxxx]

No Rest for the Wicked (3)

"Hey. Higgsbury."

Wilson woke with a gasp, heart racing and chest heaving as something touched his shoulder. His overwhelmed brain took in his surroundings in a frenzy of disconnected bits: the setting sun, the rough table he was napping on, the spilled ink on his half-finished blueprint, the blood rumbling in his own head, the tiny pins and needles tickling his left arm, the gaunt harasser standing beside him.

"Say, pal. You don't look so good."

Wilson blinked at Maxwell, wondering why he was still alive. Oh, right. Not a dream, this one. Not a dream. He wondered if the other man could hear the gears furiously turning in Wilson's brain to sort through real memories and fleeting visions in an effort to make sense of his current situation. He probably could, it felt like they were very rusty and grind-y.

"Can you please. Never say those specific words to me again. Please."

"Have I caught you at a bad time? It didn't seem like there was much inventing going on at the moment."

Wilson drummed his fingers on the table nervously, still dizzy with adrenaline. He focussed very, very hard on eliminating all thoughts of sadism and murder and assorted violence from his brain, but the sight of Maxwell's nonchalant mug made it exceedingly difficult.

"You always catch me at a bad time. When you want to disturb me, just assume it's a bad time. And then don't do it. What do you want?"

Maxwell regarded him with something unpleasantly akin to amusement. He glanced at the ruined sketch on the table.

"Strange dreams, eh? What was this one about?"

"...You don't want to know."

"I beg to differ."

Wilson squinted at him, rubbing his arm to restore the circulation. Well, if he insisted.

"...I wanted to observe the effects of prolonged consumption of raw monster meat on humans. You were the test subject, but you refused to eat it, so I made an incision in your epigastrium-" He poked at the exact spot on Maxwell's abdomen as he explained, "and created a fistula large enough to introduce the minced meat directly in your stomach from the outside. It made you turn into that half-beast thing you used to scare me with when I was travelling to the throne-" He illustrated that passage too, hunching his back and mimicking claws and fangs with his hands and mouth, "and, since you behaved like a rabid dog, I had to put you down. Via decapitation. Then I dismembered you and put your organs in jars with formalin for later study. I think I was doing something with your liver when you woke me, but I can't remember what."

It was rare for Wilson to manage to reduce Maxwell to silence, but those precious few times were always so deeply worth it.

"...I'll say." He eventually commented, scratching his chin pensively. "I never thought there could be any decent material in that hairy nogging of yours, but it looks like you may have turned out not too disappointing a King, after all."

Wilson groaned, rubbing his hands on his face.

"What do you want, Maxwell?"

"Why do you keep asking me? You said you needed my help with some project of yours, remember?"

"Uh... yes, yes, I do. Give me just a moment." Wilson quickly gathered his tools and cleaned up the mess on the table. "You always have such impeccable timing. I've been sitting here all afternoon, but of course you show up the moment I put my head down for five minutes."

"You said I could come when I was free. Well, I'm free now." Maxwell crossed his arms condescendingly. "If your beauty sleep has the priority, I can come back next week or so."

"You've got a busy schedule, haven't you? I suppose that standing around doing nothing and glancing judgementally at people who are actually working does eat up time." Maxwell was about to reply, but Wilson opted for a strategic retreat. "I'll be right back."

"So, what do you need me for?" Maxwell asked when Wilson came back with an armful of equipment. He watched with silent disapproval as Wilson dropped the items messily on the table, save for one vial filled with transparent liquid, which he carefully placed in a roughly-crafted canister. Wilson didn't miss the brief glimpse of concern that crossed Maxwell's eyes when he opened the case containing the syringe. "...I'm just realizing I should have asked this much sooner."

"You know that weird feeling you get after being revived - the feeling that you are indeed very much alive and well, but not quite as healthy as you were before? And no matter how much you eat or rest or heal, you never seem to regain your top shape?"

"Yes."

"Good. I was sure you would, given how vocally you complained about it when you burst out of my meat statue two months ago." Wilson paused to observe the content of the vial against the light: no suspicious discolorations or sediments. "As it turns out, it's a shared affliction. It happened to me too before... before, and others in the camp have confirmed experiencing the same problem. So I decided to see if anything could be done about it."

"I take that you are concocting some sort of serum. Do you need some specific ingredient or magic boost you think I can provide?"

"A fair assumption, but no. I believe I've already hit on a promising formula, and now I only need a suitable subject to test it."

"Ah. You see, that was my second guess, only because I gave you enough credit to reach on your own the obvious conclusion that I would never agree to that."

"Come on, don't be difficult. I promise you it's perfectly safe."

"Says the man who thought that powdercakes were safe for consumption." Maxwell squinted at the vial, hands clasped behind his back. "What's in there?"

"Oh just, you know... some minerals and... organic material. You needn't concern yourself with the technical details-"

"If you had said snake oil, it would have sounded less fishy. Which minerals? What organic material?"

"Well..." Wilson scratched his chin, pointedly avoiding Maxwell's inquisitive gaze. "Some nitre and ground bee stings. And- you know those funny-looking hyphae that were growing on the eggplants we forgot we had? Well, I thought-"

"You must be joking." Maxwell's face contorted into the most comically over-the-top expression of affronted disgust Wilson had ever seen. "Dirt and mold. You mixed dirt and mold into a bottle and you called that a cure? How did you even come up with such a ridiculous idea?"

"Exactly like I come up with every ridiculous idea I've ever had in this wretched place: by using our ridiculous machines, that's how. Or are you going to claim that there's more scientific merit to grinding flower petals to make dream gasoline, or whatever that foul thing is supposed to be?"

"Well, at least that foul thing isn't supposed to go straight into my veins! Your 'cure' is going to give me lockjaw or bubonic plague, if not both at the same time."

Wilson decided to dedicate a single moment of his life to envisioning how risus sardonicus might look on Maxwell's already grotesque set of facial features. He found that his imagination wasn't yet capable of producing such horrors, and he was ultimately grateful for it.

"I told you it's safe. I've already administered samples to some rabbits and pigmen, and they're all perfectly healthy. I've even had a dose of it myself, and as you can see-"

"You took it yourself?" Maxwell gaped at the scientist in utter shock. "Are you out of your mind?"

"Well, rabbits and pigmen aren't humans. Results obtained on them are only partially reliable to predict the effect the serum might have on actual people. And I didn't think it wise to use a potentially flawed drug on an already debilitated patient. I haven't died yet since we met, so I figured I would be the perfect subject to take note of any relevant side effects or issues. There haven't been any, by the way."

"You're a lunatic." Maxwell's bewilderment almost made Wilson laugh. It seemed like such a simple and straightforward process to him. "A complete, raving madman. That thing could have killed you more painfully than I ever did."

"That's extremely debatable, but let's not get sidetracked." Wilson joined the tips of his fingers, flashing his best ingratiating smile at Maxwell. "Care to assist?"

"No, not really. Besides, I've just finished recovering from that accident with the spider queen, so I may still be a tad too 'debilitated' for-"

"You've been 'just finishing recovering' from those two glorified scratches for at least a week. I don't doubt that that is due to the aforementioned post-resurrection weakness, and it is not even remotely just an excuse for you to be even less productive than usual. However, as the resident physician, I am positive you're at least well enough to withstand a harmless drug trial. Does this quell your fears?"

Maxwell pursed his lips, surprisingly giving some serious thought to the matter. "...Wolfgang has died too, once. And he's certainly fitter than me at any given moment. Why didn't you choose him?"

"To be fair, I did ask him first. But..." Wilson considered his fingertips. The memory of that colossal man mewling in horror and backing away from the raised syringe like a cornered animal would haunt him for the rest of his days. "I think he has a phobia of needles. Among the other things."

"Hm. Hard to blame him on that one. The needle of that syringe is barely smaller than an organ pipe."

"It's the best I could put together with the materials I found. Just be thankful I was able to craft one or I would have to resort to scarification."

"I don't like the sound of that."

"You wouldn't like the feel of that either."

Maxwell scrutinized him and his whole apparatus with blatant hostility. He didn't speak, and eventually Wilson sighed in defeat.

"...I can't force you, of course. But I do mean it when I say it's safe. It has given me no side effects whatsoever, I just need to establish if it's actually effective or not." Wilson tapped his fingers on the table, pensively. "I guess I could try again with Wolfgang. Wickerbottom could help me talk him into it, she’s good at that. After keeping him on a light diet for while. If he threw a fit in his best shape, he'd probably break my neck with an accidental flicker of his-"

"Oh, fine! Stop whining!" Maxwell burst out, throwing his hands to the sky. "And don't you dare say that I never do anything helpful. I'm literally throwing my own health to the wolves for your divertissement here."

"Splendid!" Wilson grinned, immediately filling the syringe with the precious liquid. "Uncover your shoulder. You don't have any allergies, do you?"

"If I said yes, would you reconsider my involvement?"

"I guess that's a no. Sit." Wilson stood up, politely leaving the chair free for his unhappy subject. Who didn't sit. Nor uncovered his shoulder. Wilson rolled his eyes. "What is it now? I swear, all this fussing for a single prick. Next time I'll just knock you out beforehands and save myself half an hour of pointless arguments."

"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking that I can simply refuse to sit to foil your brilliant plan altogether. There's little you can do to my shoulder from down there."

"...Wow, a height joke. Haven't heard one of those in a while. You're just desperate to buy time at this point. Sit before I stab this in your rear."

Wilson patiently waited as Maxwell begrudgingly complied and took as long as humanly possible to remove the several layers of clothing hiding his shoulder. Wilson also merrily ignored the constant muttering as he applied some antiseptic on the area.

"Mankind owes me a lot for confining you here and saving any possible future patient of yours from your misguided attempts at- Ow!"

"Yes, I'm sure such a charitable deed completely outweighs the God-knows-how-many unexplained kidnappings you've perpetrated in your whole life."

"Not as many as- Ow! This thing burns!"

"Hardly. I'd like to say you deserve a statue for your past and present heroism, but I think there are already far too many around here."

One last completely unwarranted 'ow' marked the end of the unbearable torture as Wilson pulled out the needle and pressed a patch of silk gauze on Maxwell's shoulder.

"Done. It's going to be just a little sore for-"

"You literally just said no side effects whatsoever!"

"That's not a side effect, it's a completely normal local reaction. It won't last more than a few days anyway."

Wilson put away his tools while Maxwell nursed his achy joint with a scowl. "Fine print and shady semantics are more tools of my trade rather than yours, you know?"

"Maybe, but at least I make a point of rewarding blind faith instead of squashing it. Your contribution towards scientific advancement is highly appreciated." Wilson smiled, producing a life-giving amulet from his pocket and handing it to Maxwell with a flourish and a small bow. "Please accept this for your trouble."

Maxwell froze in the middle of buttoning up his shirt, gaping at the item with sheer horror.

"...Oh God, I am going to die."

"No, no no no, this is just for... extra precaution. Just in case. Just in the remote eventuality that the serum might have some utterly unexpected and yet unobserved contraindication. Which it won't, I'm sure. Do feel free to bring to my attention any malaise that may bother you though."

"I hate you."

"Oh come on, I'm joking. Mostly." Wilson chuckled as Maxwell motioned to take the amulet. He instinctively gripped it harder though, suddenly struck by an unpleasant thought. He met Maxwell's puzzled glance with firm eyes. "By the way, I would dearly appreciate it if you used it as intended, this time."

"...I believe I should be granted the freedom to decide how to employ my payment, shouldn't I?" Maxwell's expression changed as well, subtly but unmistakably. Wilson already regretted breaching the subject, but he had no intention of backing down from his request.

"I'm serious. If this ends up like the last one, I'm not going to trust you with another again. They're far too precious to be wasted."

"Wasted, uh?" Maxwell scoffed, letting go of the amulet and standing fully straight to look down on Wilson. Wilson hated how easy it was for the man to look effectively imposing. "Maybe you should give this to someone else then. God forbid I should ever use it to look after myself in the way I see fit."

"You did nothing of the sort. You broke it. You took a resurrection tool, a literal life-saver, and disassembled it.” Wilson clenched his fists without even noticing, the argument from a few months before still fresh in his mind. Sometimes Maxwell’s behavior was truly unjustifiable. “And for what? To make another goddamn nightmare amulet!”

“That is what I’d call ‘looking after myself’’, yes. All this time you’ve spent around me, and you still don’t get how my powers work. You’re dreadfully unobservant for a scientist.”

“Look, I know what you’re driving at, but how can you possibly not understand that there’s nothing more important than resurrection items here?! They’re our only lifeline! They literally avoid death! We should scavenge for parts to craft them, not the other way around!”

“You’re astoundingly wrong. The smartest thing we can do is to avoid dying in the first place. We don’t build meat effigies during a famine, do we?”

“That’s not the same thing-”

“Maybe not for you, but it is for me!” Maxwell burst out suddenly. “I need nightmare fuel, don’t you get it? Suppose I get slaughtered against some unholy monster with no fuel and a resurrection amulet. I get brought back to life, and then what? If the monster wakes too early, it may very well slaughter me again before I can make a run for it! And even if I manage to get away, do you really think I can gather all the materials I need to survive quickly enough on my own? If I have fuel though, my duelists can lure the enemy away or maybe even kill it, and my gatherers can collect resources for me even if I’m injured. So yes, Higgsbury, having a functional nightmare amulet and therefore decent fuel reserves does qualify as safeguarding my life, as far as I’m concerned.”

“I- wait, wait a minute.” Wilson shook his head, momentarily stunned. For whatever reason, Maxwell hadn’t bothered to explain his reasons in such detail before, and the scientist had to admit there was a logic in them. Still, the remaining flaw was glaring. “You’re talking as if you had to survive completely on your own. There’s no need for you to be so obsessed about the fuel when you have plenty of other people to rely on. Anyone can help you find food or gather materials or get out of a tricky situation, you don’t need to have puppets ready all the time. No one can bring you back if you get killed though.”

“A brilliant reasoning. One, however, that is based on the certainty that you won’t be left behind, if things took a turn for the worse. In case you haven’t noticed, my puppets take care of almost all the heaviest and most time-consuming tasks around here, which is surely a great encouragement for my former captives not to lynch me. But if I run out of fuel, who’s to say they won’t suddenly remember their grudges?”

“Oh come on, that’s ridiculous. We’ve been camping together for months, you can’t possibly still believe the others to be so untrustworthy. We’ve had each other’s backs dozens of times by now, you must see that they’ve let bygones be bygones. No one would hold it against you if couldn’t provide materials for a while. We could easily split the work among ourselves.”

“Do you really trust them that much?”

“Of course I do! They’re all perfectly respectable-”

“Then why haven’t you told anyone about the throne?” Maxwell’s smirk was sharp, contrasting strongly with his eerily soft tone. Wilson was caught off guard.

“...I… It’s not the same-”

“Again, it’s exactly the same thing. You haven’t because you’re not sure how they’d react. And you’re not even the King who brought them here. Consider my position for one moment and you’ll see that I have excellent reasons to be unsure how they’d react to anything I may do or not do. Hence my interest in having my own backup always ready at hand.”

“...You’re looking at this all wrong.” Wilson shook his head again. “You have more backup than ever, or at least you would if you bothered to acknowledge it as such, and yet you still stick to your paranoid schtick. Hell, you’d rather stroll on your own among spider nests instead of honestly asking for help. Anyone would have come with you if you had asked. I would have come with you if you had asked.”

“I did ask you!” Maxwell retorted venomously. “Last month! Or have you conveniently forgotten?”

“What- You didn’t ask me for help! You asked- no, you demanded a red gem! Without even explaining why. A red gem I couldn’t give you because I needed it for an amulet!”

“Oh, right! The amulet you then gave to the robot. The goddamn robot, of all people! It doesn’t even live here! It shows up only when there are giants around, drops gratuitous threats against all things organic, and then vanishes again. Why would you even bother to craft an amulet for it? I’m sure it just wants to see us all dead-”

“You mean like you did?!” Wilson’s voice raised without him really noticing, too caught up in the discussion. “Do you even hear yourself? If there is one person here who shouldn’t ever dare question other people’s honesty, that’s you! At least WX has never actually done anything to hurt us, which automatically makes them more trustworthy than you!”

Maxwell didn’t reply immediately. He waited, hands clasped behind his back and a strange, unreadable scowl on his face, until Wilson properly registered the meaning of his own words.

“...That. That is exactly it. That’s what everyone thinks, that a perfect stranger would be easily more trustworthy than me, no matter the circumstances. That’s what would make anyone hesitate to help, even just for a second. And a second of hesitation can mean a lot when I’m about to be mauled by a hound. That is why I need my own backup.”

There were times, many times, when Wilson genuinely thought that Maxwell was hopeless. That he would ultimately seal his own fate through the sheer stubbornness of his own self-absorbed idiocy, no matter how much effort Wilson put into trying to avoid that. And yet.

“...I have never hesitated.” Maxwell didn’t meet Wilson’s eyes as the scientist spoke, apparently too busy with fixing his tie and waistcoat. “Not once.”

“...You needed backup too. And I was the only one around to provide it. You have a wide choice now, though.”

“Do you really think that?” Wilson asked bitterly, his gaze dropping to the ground. “Do you really think that’s all there was to it?”

Even though Maxwell’s attire had long since been freed from any wrinkles or unsightly folds, he was still messing with it. Nevertheless, Wilson patiently waited for his answer, as one waited for a bully to decide whether he felt like dedicating ten seconds of his life to stomp on the elaborate sand castle one took two hours to build.

“...No.” Maxwell didn’t elaborate any further. It was a fortunate decision, for Wilson was already nearing his limit of tolerance for the day, and the umpteenth gratuitous jab or tirade against his stupidity, his morality, his naivety may have just convinced him to never spare another glance at Maxwell’s mug again. Or so he liked to think.

“...Good.” Wilson nodded thoughtfully. “I guess you can consider me your backup then.”

That finally tore Maxwell’s attention off his goddamn suit. Wilson shrugged in response to his befuddled glance.

“Honestly it’s ridiculous that I even have to say it aloud after I’ve effectively been your backup for God knows how long, but I guess you might benefit from hearing it. I’m not going to leave you behind, or ignore a request for materials or assistance, if only you can find it in yourself to spare two minutes to motivate it. You have my word on it. And if you were to leave the group for any reason that doesn’t involve egregious misbehavings on your part, like trying to murder people in their sleep or something of the kind, I’ll leave as well. How does that sound?”

Wilson may as well have turned into a turnip halfway through his speech, judging by the sheer bewilderment of Maxwell’s expression.

“What the devil is this about, now?”

“This is about making you stop wasting resources on problems that aren’t there. You can go without fuel for a few days or even weeks, if you need to, even if you can’t take care of the foraging. Just ask me, if you don’t feel like asking the others. And for heaven’s sake, take this and wear it!” Wilson outright slipped the amulet around Maxwell’s neck, pressing it firmly against his chest to drive the point more clearly. “Don’t break it. Don’t repurpose it. Just wear it.”

For the second time that day, Maxwell was shocked into silence, his eyes darting between Wilson’s face and his hand. The amulet pulsed under Wilson's palm, instantly warming up as the protective magic activated, and started to beat faintly, like a second heart perfectly in synch with the wearer's. It was a refreshing change to feel its natural, regular beat, without the rush and unsteadiness that blood loss and such distressing circumstances caused. The rhythm was pleasantly familiar, and distracting enough for Wilson to suddenly realize that he had been idly standing before Maxwell for a little too long, a little too close. He let go of the amulet and took a few steps back, until he bumped against the edge of the desk, his mind oddly blank.

“Why are you so obsessed with these things, anyway?” Maxwell asked, his tone somewhat subdued as he took the pendant in his hand and rubbed some invisible dust off the red gem. “We have meat statues and even a couple of touch stones. I could die three times within the next hour and I’d still be able to come back without an amulet.”

“Statues can be destroyed and the closest stone is almost a day away from the camp. Amulets are always the safest option.” In truth, Wilson couldn’t quite explain it. Maxwell was perfectly right, living in a large group had allowed them to secure plenty of materials for more resurrection items than Wilson himself had ever hoped for. But, as irrational as it may be, Wilson only felt truly safe when he and everyone around him were wearing a life-giving amulet around their neck. “I just don’t like taking any chances.”

“Mh. If I didn’t know you to be so scientifically inclined, I’d be tempted to call you superstitious. I guess it’s only anxiety then.”

“You can call it however you like, but it’s the reason I’ve managed to survive this long. Always having a backup plan is what allowed me to best the oh-so-dreadful King of the Shadows.”

“Ah! That’s precious.” Maxwell laughed, without any real bite. Unexpectedly, he leaned against the table too, beside Wilson. He regarded him with a conspiratorial smile, all traces of the previous argument gone from his demeanor. “No need to embellish the truth, pal, I was watching too. Remember the first time you jumped into a wormhole without amulets and the like and without having any idea what would happen? Where was your backup plan then?”

“Ah, but you forget that at the time I was being cornered by a tallbird at the edge of a cliff, without proper armor and at dusk. Jumping in the wormhole was the backup plan, you see.”

“...God, you really are the one who bested me. Why. How.” Maxwell lamented as he covered his face. “Did They really wish to humiliate me so? Why couldn’t it be Wickerbottom? Surrendering the throne to her would have been immensely more dignified. Honourable, even.”

“Maybe you just weren’t as good at your job as you thought. Or I am a genius survivalist. Take your pick.”

“Neither.” Maxwell rubbed his shoulder absently. “Are you planning to study the effects of whatever filth you poisoned me with watching me as I slowly shuffle off this mortal coil, or may I retreat to meet my end privately?”

“You’re free to go. Many thanks for your unwavering trust and enthusiasm.” Wilson simply watched as Maxwell shrugged on his coat. He tried his very best to sound as casual as possible with his next question. “Oh, by the way. Have you been experimenting with your puppets again?”

“Hm? No, not lately. Why?”

“Oh, never mind. I was just wondering.”

“...You were just wondering.” A single glance from Maxwell was enough for Wilson to know that he was simply hopeless at sounding casual. “And why were you wondering, may I ask?”

“I was just wondering! You do that sometimes! They used to work differently when I met you, and now they’re more specialized or something-”

“I only ever revised them that one time, because they were giving me troubles. You wouldn’t be asking if you didn’t think there was something wrong with them. Why?”

“I, uh… well… to be honest, they did a strange thing yesterday. And I was wondering if it may be because you were, I don’t know, trying out a new spell or-”

“Did they try to attack you? Because that would be your fault. I told you you’d eventually get on their nerves if you kept getting in their way while they’re working.”

“No, no no. In fact, it’s… it’s the exact opposite.” Wilson stopped for a moment. “You know how they always pretend I don’t exist, right? They don’t communicate, they don’t listen, they walk through me, they don’t even look at me, and all that-”

“Yes. I am aware of how my own puppets work. Get to the point.”

“Yes, right- by the way, why do they do that? I remember you said they behave exactly like you, but you don’t-”

“They behave like I would behave if I were an entity of pure shadow with no need or obligation to interact with other people in order to survive. Thus, they ignore you. The point, Higgsbury.”

“Right, right. So, the other day I was following a koalefant track up north, between the forest and the swamp. Your puppets were there too, chopping and mining and the like. They didn’t acknowledge me, as usual, and I ignored them too.” Maxwell crossed his arms and threw his head backwards with deliberate slowness, staring stolidly at the sky with a groan. “I guess, uh… I guess I must have been a bit distracted. The next track was very close to the edge of the swamp, but I thought I was far enough from- are you listening?”

“Regrettably.”

“...Right. Anyway, I must have gotten too close to the swamp and I didn’t notice the tentacle springing from the ground until too late. I was- it was about to hit me, but… one of your puppets pushed me out of the way.” Maxwell didn’t move, nor he replied. Wilson continued. “The tentacle actually struck it. It vanished. The other two had stopped working too, they were watching the whole thing, but then they resumed their job as if nothing happened as soon as I got far enough from the tentacle.”

“...Mh.” Maxwell eloquently commented.

“...I thought it was odd. Even in battle your duelists tend to let me get slaughtered if I don’t stick close enough to you. And your harvesters are even more passive. So I was wondering if you had changed them.”

“I haven’t.”

“...Doesn’t your neck hurt?”

“No.” Maxwell finally directed his scowl at Wilson instead of at the murky sky of the Constant. “Is this the conundrum? The puppet probably just tripped. You can add this to the long list of strokes of luck that have spared you yet another painful death. Rejoice.”

“It didn’t look like it just tripped. I don’t think it was even near me when I knelt down to examine the track. And the other two were staring too-”

“Look, I’d understand your perplexity if they had tried to skewer you, but they actually helped you for once. All the better, yes? Why does this concern you so much?”

“Why doesn’t it concern you?” Wilson insisted. “Your puppets are behaving abnormally without your direct input. What if something or someone else was influencing them?”

“Where the hell did you get that idea?” Maxwell scoffed. “There are no other shadow magic users around here. And They certainly wouldn’t hijack my puppets to save your neck.”

“Well, maybe there’s another possibility.” Wilson hesitated. Discussing the matter with Maxwell had seemed like a good move the previous night, while disturbing thoughts were keeping him awake long past the sunset. In that moment, not quite as much. “What if there was someone else with the same powers you have?”

“Bollocks. I’m sure there are only two human beings who ever became acquainted with shadow magic, and the other one is the current Queen. Not to mention I would have already noticed. I keep a keen eye on the invisible forces at work in the area, you know?”

“Maybe it’s someone you haven’t noticed because… they haven’t used their powers yet. Maybe because they don’t know they have them…”

“...I’m not sure I’m quite following you, although you seem to be heading in a very specific direction.” Maxwell frowned. Wilson felt like he was melting under that stern scrutiny. All right, there was no point in beating around the bush.

“...Listen. I sat on the throne, right? I’ve been King. Maybe while I was there, I did absorb a bit of shadow magic. Maybe the puppet responded to that, and therefore defended me. Or maybe- maybe I made it defend me without noticing-”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Maxwell raised a hand to stop him as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is this what it’s all about? Are you still being paranoid about the throne? I told you you’re fine, stop overanalyzing every trifling thing that happens to you.”

“But how can you be so sure?” Wilson insisted. “What if I did take control of your puppet for a moment, without noticing? I was about to be killed, I asked for help! Maybe not vocally, but surely subconsciously. And help I did get, from shadow slaves that barely even bothered to acknowledge my presence before! Don’t you find it weird?”

“...Oh my God, you’re-” Maxwell muttered through his teeth, and then stopped abruptly. For a moment, he seemed on the verge of literally biting Wilson’s head off, flushed and irate as he looked. However, he reined himself in with uncharacteristic grace. He rubbed a hand on his face, then he sighed and drew the Codex from the inner pocket of his coat. He held it before Wilson’s eyes. “Listen, and listen well. Shadow magic isn’t something you just ‘absorb’ because you sat somewhere for a while. Even if They allowed you to tap into its power freely, without proper study and willing sacrifice, you couldn’t use it for anything more than cheap parlor tricks. I’ve been honing my own skills for decades, at great personal costs, and I’ve barely scraped the surface of what this book has to offer. Now, ingrain this simple concept into your brain: the mere thought that someone like you, without an ounce of talent or knowledge or training about magic, could overturn my own spells, even for a second, even by accident, is utterly ludicrous.”

Wilson wrung his hands nervously. “...Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” Maxwell did sound as sure as one could possible get, but his stern demeanour deflated into a discouraged sigh before Wilson’s unresponsiveness. “But you won’t be convinced that easily, I guess.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust your expertise on the matter, mind you.” Wilson offered. “It’s just that… I keep thinking about it, and I can’t help but feel that I can’t just have left the throne room unscathed. And all these weird things that have been happening-”

“Are definitely not weird at all. I thought we’d been over this. Why have you been fixating on this so much?” Wilson shrugged, not knowing how to reply. Maxwell considered him for a moment, scratching his chin. “Have you tried doing it again?”

“Doing what?”

“Controlling a puppet.”

“No, of course not! I-”

“Well, shame on you then. What good can your harebrained hypotheses be without repeatable evidence?” Maxwell suddenly grabbed Wilson by his arm and dragged him in a seemingly random direction. “Come. Maybe some good old scientific method will convince you.”

“Wha- wait, where are you going?” Wilson stammered, stumbling along.

“To test your theory. Or rather, to make you fail at it as many times as you need to be convinced that it’s impossible.”

“Why are you suddenly so invested in this? I thought you were busy.”

“I’m always invested in watching you make a fool of yourself. Ah, there’s one.”

Maxwell pointed at the farm just outside the camp, where one of his puppets was filling his third- no, fourth basket of berries, freshly picked from the neat rows of bushes. They stopped to the side of the field, and Wilson watched the puppet accomplish its task with methodic precision for a few moments.

“Well, have at it.” Maxwell plopped heavily on the ground and popped a few berries into his mouth from the closest basket as he opened his book and idly started flipping through it. Wilson gaped at him.

“I have no idea how to do it!”

“Do whatever you think you did before. See what happens.”

“You aren’t being very helpful, you know?”

“Because there’s nothing to help you with. It’s impossible. We’re only here to establish that.”

Wilson muttered unrepeatable words under his breath. He tried his best to forget about Maxwell and focussed on the puppet. He stared at it, took in its featureless silhouette, a seemingly two-dimensional Maxwell-shaped smudge of inky blackness. He tried to take in its very essence, its unthinking, unfeeling existence, created for the sole purpose of going through a limited and established set of motions. If there was really any power in him, it couldn’t be too difficult to steer such an empty vessel towards his own desires. He decided he wanted to make it drop the basket. Easy enough. He focussed on that thought. He visualized it. He imagined the exact gesture, he imagined the puppet’s grasp on the basket loosening, his hand opening, the item dropping on the ground, spilling its contents all over. He ordered it. He willed it into reality. He put every ounce of his mental faculties into that specific wish. He wanted it.

Nothing happened.

“Your face is redder than your waistcoat. Try not to get yourself a stroke, I’d certainly be blamed for that.”

Wilson found himself slightly short on breath. Had he been holding it without noticing? “How am I supposed to command these things? How do you command them?”

“I don’t. They don’t need orders, they’re autonomous and smart enough to know what they have to do.”

“Do you really think there’s no chance I did that?”

“Let’s put it this way. The day you’ll manage to take control of any of my puppets for half a second will be the day I’ll entrust the Codex to you as the legitimate owner and superior user of its dark arts, and I’ll also humbly prostrate myself at your feet begging for your teachings. How likely does that sound to you?”

“Not much, but it’s certainly an excellent motivation to keep trying.” Wilson grumbled. He tried again. He stared at the puppet hard enough to bore a hole in it, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists with the sheer effort. He absolutely, positively, unmistakingly bid it to drop the basket. He even outstretched his hand towards it, as if to transmit his order through his very own body, and- and then Maxwell snorted loudly and he got completely distracted.

“What? What?” Wilson burst out, his cheeks burning. “You gesticulate all the time when you’re channeling your magic!”

“Yes, because I have magic to channel. What are you channeling?” Maxwell cackled. Unhelpful bastard. Wilson groaned in defeat.

“I can’t do it. Not like this, at least. Maybe it happens only in very specific circumstances, like if I’m very stressed or in mortal danger.”

“A brilliant hypothesis. Let’s test that too.” Maxwell sprang to his feet, radiating the most unsettling merriment. “Give me a minute to fetch my sword.”

“Quit it.” Wilson grabbed his jacket to stop him. “All right, you win. I must have been wrong. That still doesn’t explain your puppet’s behaviour though.”

“Maybe he just wanted to end it.” Maxwell shrugged, putting away his book.

“End what?”

“Its life.”

Wilson blinked. “Is that a thing that they do? Do they get… depressed?”

“You’d get depressed too if you were a somewhat sentient, disposable tool forced to chop trees for the entirety of your fleeting existence.”

Wilson considered the silent worker for a long moment, before Maxwell stretched his back with a showy yawn.

“Well, as entertaining as watching you achieve absolutely nothing for the last fifteen minutes has been, I think I’ll head off. Feel free to keep trying if you think that you may have better luck without me interfering with your blooming powers.”

“...Right. I think I’ll head off as well.” Wilson murmured. He turned on his heels and took a step towards the camp, and found itself right before- no, within the puppet, as it was passing by to put down another full basket. The puppet seamlessly phased through him, as they oft did, but the basket could not. It bumped against Wilson’s chest and fell on the ground, berries rolling everywhere. The puppet stopped. It looked down at the basket, somewhat dejectedly. Then, its eyeless face turned towards Wilson. Straight towards him.

Maxwell clicked his tongue, shaking his head. Wilson’s blood froze in his veins.

“...Uh, sorry.” He found himself saying as he knelt down and started gathering the scattered fruits. “Here, I’ll just…”

The puppet observed him for almost a full minute. Then, when Wilson was almost done cleaning up the mess, it grabbed two full baskets and walked off towards the camp.

“...When you say that one of these days getting in their way will get me killed, you’re clearly joking, right?”

“Not really. A duelist could definitely do it, with enough motivation. But foragers don’t have much violence in them.” Maxwell stopped for a moment. “Although, if I were them, and I am, I wouldn’t be above ganging up on you, tying you to a tree and chopping off a few of those luxuriant locks of yours.”

Wilson instinctively run a hand through his hair. “That’s not funny.”

“That wasn’t a joke either.” Maxwell smiled one of those creepy smiles of his. “Good afternoon, pal.”

Wilson silently tried his hand at an improvised hex centered around broken ankles, bees and Glommer’s goop. Just in case. He shook his head as he finished gathering the spilled berries. He put the basket near the remaining one, wondering if carrying them to the camp himself would be enough of an apology for-

He blinked, his thoughts finally connecting. It had dropped the basket. The puppet had dropped the basket.

“Maxwell, wait!” Wilson called out, but Maxwell had already disappeared. Should he find him, tell him? It may have been an accident. Maxwell- he would almost certainly deem it an accident, wouldn’t he? And yet, the puppets were always so very precise with their movements, and so very aware of their surroundings… Could Wilson have…?

He stared at the baskets, more confused than ever.

[pixiedst]

No Takebacks // Kim Taehyung

Genre: Angst

Characters: Kim Taehyung x reader (ft. Park Jimin)

Warnings: Mentions of a car accident, swearing

Summary: With a mad scientist as a father, Kim Taehyung travels back in time to win the reader’s heart.

Word Count: 5,318 

“Taehyung!” Jimin calls. “Hurry up, we’re gonna be late!”

Kim Taehyung comes running down the stairs, his dark hair a mess, backpack slung on one shoulder and the top buttons of his uniform undone. He rushes to put on his new shoes and trips on his way out of the house, slamming the door shut and into Park Jimin’s car.

Jimin chuckles as he watches his friend run his hands through his hair in a lame attempt to keep it down. With his left hand on the wheel, he steps down on the gas and drives down the road.

“What time is it?” Taehyung asks, fixing his buttons. “My phone’s dead.”

“That’s why you didn’t answer any of my calls. Hey your shoelaces are untied.” Jimin says. When his friend gives him a look, he laughs. “Don’t worry, we still have half an hour before first period.”

“What? Then why’d you say we were gonna be late?” Taehyung asks, raising his voice.

Jimin only laughs at his reaction. “I didn’t feel like waiting for you outside your house like I was picking you up for a date.”

“God, you’re unbelievable! You messed up the timeline!” he yells, slouching in his seat.

“What are you talking about?” Jimin asks.

This is when Taehyung only realizes his slip of the tongue and decides to stay quiet. He looks out the window as if he didn’t hear.

The trees and buildings go by like they’re running. He watches the blur through the glass, reminiscing on the way the world looked like that when he came back.

Disguised by the look of a regular watch, Taehyung’s Time Manipulator wraps itself tightly around his wrist, feeling heavier every second as he slowly reaches the school building.

Having a mad scientist as a father isn’t exactly something to be proud of but it has its perks. This is one of them. He’s never travelled back so far in time before, but after practicing every night while his dad was asleep, he’s almost sure he can do this right. He has a mission. That’s why he’s here. He’s willing to set things right and change the way things ended up being in the future.

He’s thought about this. He knows the Grandfather Paradox, where somebody goes back in time to kill their grandfather before the conception of their mother or father, which only prevents the time traveller’s overall existence.

But he’s not going to kill anybody. He’s not crazy. He only wants to change one little thing, which he’s sure isn’t going to affect anybody’s lives drastically but his own.

He’s going to get Y/N before Min Yoongi does. He failed before but with this second chance, he’s not going to let that happen again.

Jimin parks the car, and before he even turns off the ignition, Taehyung gives him a quick thanks for the ride, opens the door and almost leaps out of the car to get to his first class.

He didn’t do this last time. Ten years ago, well in his perspective, he was almost late for class and made it just in time to see the girl of his dreams sitting next to another boy. Of course, this wasn’t a big deal at the time, but if he changes this one little moment and gets that seat before the other boy does, he might have a better chance of getting Y/N’s love.

Getting this new idea makes him silently thank Jimin for lying to him about being late. Messing up the timeline by just a little bit might actually get him what he wants. He makes a mental note to promise Jimin ice cream later in the afternoon.

Just as he hoped, the classroom is still empty. He takes the seat next to the one he remembers Y/N sat in before. As he places his bag on the floor, he begins to realize just how weird this might look. If he remembers properly, he was never early for class. Granted, he was never late either. But it would still be a strange sight to see Kim Taehyung sitting inside the classroom at least fifteen minutes before the actual class begins.

With this thought in mind, he takes his bag again, slings it over his right shoulder and steps out of the room. He decides to buy a quick snack from the vending machine and a water bottle and roams around the hallway, waiting for students to come inside.

A couple minutes pass and he takes his phone to check the time before remembering its state. Huffing a breath, he shoves it back in his pocket and peeks through the window to look at the clock.

Would this be the right time to go inside? Y/N isn’t here yet. It wouldn’t be weird to be sitting next to her old seat, would it? It’s not like the teacher is strict about this kind of stuff anyway. But what if she sits somewhere else? He can’t just stand up and take the seat next to her. That’d be creepy, and that’s the last thing he wants to be. He wants her to like him, not get creeped out.

After being lost in his thoughts, he almost doesn’t notice Y/N passing by him and walking straight inside the classroom. The only reason he breaks out of his trance is because he recognizes those shoes. They were her favorite pair.

His heart begins to beat harder in his chest. He pats his hands all over his head in another attempt to fix his hair. Giving up, he waits a few seconds before going inside the room. He watches her find her seat, which is the same one as he remembers. And just as he hoped, the seat next to her is empty.

Score!

He makes his move. He steps toward her area, and just as he makes his way closer, his eyes catch the same boy from ten years ago on his way to the same target. He can’t let this happen again.

Faster than he expected, Taehyung surprises himself as he dashes for the empty seat. Although he makes it, he also gets everybody’s attention, including Y/N’s. The room is suddenly silent as all eyes are on him.

He racks his mind for an excuse and blurts out the first thing he can think of. “My shoelaces are untied. Just slipped a bit. Don’t worry about me.” For evidence, he raises his left leg to show his untied laces.

Everybody goes back to their regular conversations, almost forgetting him. Taehyung releases a sigh of relief and sits more comfortably on the seat. He does as he did years ago, placing his bag on the floor, pulling out his textbook, notebook and pens. The only difference is that he’s sitting next to Y/N. He places his right hand over his watch, silently thanking it for its power.

The class goes on as usual, and just like before, Taehyung doesn’t understand a single word coming out of their teacher’s mouth. Numbers and Xs and Ys and other weird symbols next to them still confuse him.

In the corner of his eye, he can see Y/N nodding and answering along the class, writing down notes that somehow look neat. She’s always been smart. He liked that about her. Even ten years later when she gets married and announces the birth of her first daughter, he never let his feelings for her die down because he knew what his dad was working on all this time. He had this plan in mind for years.

Maybe he’s not so different from his mad scientist of a father.

Before he knows it, the bell rings and all the students to get up, get their things, and rush out, not caring what their teacher is announcing.

He presses his lips together as he slowly gathers his things. With Y/N doing the same next to him, he isn’t in much of a rush as the others are. When he’s almost done, his teacher calls him over.

“Taehyung. Can I have a word with you?” she calls.

This didn’t happen before. He pushes the thought aside and walks toward his teacher.

“Anything wrong, Miss?” he asks.

She lets out a sigh. That can’t be good. “Your grades are dropping. You’re a smart kid, Taehyung. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m starting to think you might need a tutor.”

His eyes light up like a million stars. Ten years ago, he wouldn’t have had that reaction. He probably would have even whined about it, but now it looks like a gigantic door of opportunity has opened up.

“That’s a great idea!” he says. “Maybe someone from this class? So I wouldn’t be uncomfortable?”

“I was thinking of a teacher-“

“No! I get… squeamish around teachers. I’m- wooh, I’m already kind of losing my breath here, Miss. I might need a trusty classmate to do the job. Someone with top grades, listens in class all the time, takes perfect notes…”

Can it be any more obvious?

Thankfully, the teacher gets it. “You know what, that’s a good idea. Y/N!”

She walks towards her, getting her attention. It feels like Taehyung’s heart is going to leap out of his chest.

Thank God!

This is finally his chance to get to know her. Of course, throughout the years after this, he’s already known so much about her—they were friends, after all. But he’s sure that getting this new opportunity is going to let him see more sides to her and, if things goes as he wishes, maybe she’ll be able to open up to him. That would be the biggest step to achieve his goal. All he has to do is be a good student.

He watches her nod at the offer, their teacher telling her how this is going to be extra credit for her. Knowing Y/N, she would never pass on an opportunity of extra points like this.

“How does every Wednesday sound to you?” she asks, her eyes meeting his for the first time this whole day.

The sudden eye contact makes him want to melt on the spot, but he holds onto the nearest seat and leans on it cooly, pretending to be calm.

“Um, maybe we can meet more than just once a week? I really need to pass this subject. My parents would kill me if I fail or even get below a B,” Taehyung says.

Technically, he’s not lying.

Y/N thinks for a moment, considering the suggestion before nodding. “Alright. Are you okay with meeting up every Saturday too?”

“Yes!” he says a little too loudly. He clears his throat and brushes his nose. “Yeah. That’s, uh, that’s cool with me.”

“Okay! I’ll see you on Wednesday after class,” she says, flashes a smile, and leaves the classroom.

He watches her leave. When she’s finally out of sight, he releases a heavy sigh and laughs out loud, forgetting the presence of his teacher, who simply gives him a strange look. He doesn’t even care. He’s gonna be meeting the girl of his dreams more often than he expected.

Stealing his dad’s Time Manipulator was the best idea he ever thought of. Everything is going just the way he hoped for!

-

It’s Wednesday afternoon. There was a car accident just over an hour ago so there’s crazy traffic outside the school. As much as Taehyung would pity whoever was involved in the crash, he can’t help but feel a surge of excitement in his veins. It kind of makes him feel guilty. Normally he’d sympathize. But right now, waiting for a bus that won’t arrive any time soon makes him strangely happy.

Y/N stands next to him, watching the trail of cars in front of them, a small breeze making her hair flow. It’s like Taehyung is watching a movie. How can someone be so beautiful?

When she feels his stare, she averts her gaze to him, making him look away. At the corner of his eye, he sees her turn her head back to the traffic.

She lets out a sigh. “What do we do now? If we don’t get to your house soon, we can’t start our lesson. Should we just postpone-“

“No!” he says before stopping himself. She looks at him. “Uh, I mean, we can still make it. Why don’t we just walk a bit and ride a train?”

“I don’t really like trains, but I guess we don’t have a choice,” she says. “Let’s go, then.”

She walks ahead, with Taehyung quickly following, making their way to the nearest train station. It’s a five or so minute walk.

Outside he’s completely calm, but he’s really just hiding the excitement that’s bubbling on the inside. He’s walking next to Y/N, going to his house. Normally in Korea, that would be a big deal, but she isn’t the type of person to care about going to other people’s homes. She’s just so comfortable with people, and that’s what he loves about her.

When they find seats in the train, Y/N rubs her eyes and yawns as she scrolls through her phone.

“Are you tired?” Taehyung asks.

She nods slowly. “I didn’t get much sleep last night. I had a chemistry test today and had to stay up to study. I’ll try to do my best today, though.”

“You can sleep for a bit. We won’t be there for a couple of minutes. I’ll wake you up when we’re there,” he says.

She nods again and puts her phone in her bag. Taehyung can tell she’s falling asleep quickly because of the sudden calmness of her breaths. He smiles a bit and takes out his phone, checking all his social media. It’s funny seeing all the old posts again and memes that are trending in this time. It’s quite amusing.

Suddenly he feels a weight on his right shoulder. His body freezes. Turning his head slowly, he sees her head leaning on him. His heart is beating so fast, he wonders if she can hear it.

He begins to slow his breathing to calm himself down. He can’t keep moving his shoulders if he doesn’t want to wake her. Glancing up, he looks at the small map showing the train’s direction and finds that they have two stops left. He sighs. If only they can stay like this a little longer.

When the train is almost at their stop, he uses his left arm and gently shakes her shoulder, trying to wake her up. It doesn’t take long. Within a few seconds, she begins to stir and her eyes open.

She doesn’t move her head yet, like she’s taking in the situation. When she realizes why the world is tilted to the side, she jerks up and keeps her eyes on the floor as she fixes her hair.

“I- sorry,” she stutters.

Taehyung holds back his laughter. “Don’t be sorry. It’s fine.”

If only she knows how fast his heart is beating right now, watching her as her cheeks flush. He unconsciously touches his watch again as they wait for the train to arrive.

“New watch?” she asks, trying to ease the tension. But Taehyung only feels more tense. “You didn’t have that on a few days ago. I noticed you keep touching it, so I figured it’s new.”

He takes his hand off the device. “This? Oh, it’s my dad’s. He gave it to me.”

He only lied about the second part. Technically, at this time, his dad hadn’t finished it yet so it wasn’t given to him. He didn’t steal anything either since everything in the future hasn’t happened. But what about the watch? Is he gonna wear it forever? Even when they’re together? What happens if he takes it off?

“Tae?” Y/N asks. “Tae. We’re here.”

Shaking his head, he mumbles a reply even he doesn’t understand and follows Y/N out. They head straight for the exit, going to his house.

The walk is silent. He can’t tell what she’s thinking about, but he does notice her occasionally looking at him. He pretends not to notice. When they reach his front door, he types in the pass code, with Y/N respectfully looking away and they step inside.

It’s just how he left it. Messy as usual. In the future Taehyung is much more organized and clean, but he remembers that in this time, he’s messier and dirty. He awkwardly takes his shoes off and scratches the back of his neck.

“I’m sorry about the mess. I thought my mother would- right. She had to go to work early today, and my dad’s always in his lab,” he says. “Totally my fault. My room is cleaner, I promise.”

When they get there, they get to work straight away. The textbook is out, along with their notebooks and pens, and Y/N starts explaining everything to him. It doesn’t feel like it, but three hours fly by quickly. When Y/N checks her phone, her eyes widen.

“Yeah, it’s getting late,” Taehyung says.

Y/N shakes her head. “No, that’s not it. I’m just surprised you survived three hours of math and didn’t spontaneously combust.”

They laugh at that. She’s right. Normally, when he was this age, he would’ve slammed the book shut in three minutes and grumble to himself about how much he doesn’t need this subject. But now he does. He needs her.

The front door slams shut.

“Must be my dad. He’s probably going out to get more stupid materials for another invention,” he says, rolling his eyes for effect.

She closes her textbook and puts her things away. “I need a reward,” she says.

Taehyung shrugs. “Sure. What kind? Ice cream? Tteokbokki?”

She smiles and shakes her head. “Can I get a tour of your dad’s lab? I’ve always wanted to see inventions in the making.”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Let’s go then. He won’t be back until a couple of hours.”

Some families use basements as storage rooms, others use it as a lab for a mad scientist to make his crazy intentions. It’s like stepping into a whole other world. The walls are covered in bookshelves and whiteboards with drawings and arrows, making a confusing mind map. Blueprints blanket over the long tables with crazy things like tubes and cake sitting on top of them. When Y/N asks about the cake, Taehyung tells her to ignore it.

At the back of the room, where there’s no light, is another shelf but covered in a white sheet. Curious, Y/N steps toward it. Taehyung doesn’t stop her. She pulls the sheet down, revealing everything his father created. There are labels taped on them for identification whether they are failed devices or successful. To her dismay, most of them have the letter F on them, with only one labelled with an S. Carefully, she picks it up.

“What does this do?” she asks.

Taehyung turns around and examines it. He flips it over and sees a little name that says Time Resetter, and suddenly he his limbs feel like jelly. He almost drops it, but Y/N catches it in time.

“Sorry, it got too heavy,” he lies.

He’s been doing that a lot lately.

“What does it do?” she asks again.

He shakes his head. “Nothing important. Some kind of resetter or whatever. Whatever, it’s another useless thing my dad made.”

Y/N grazes her hand over the devices on the shelf, the dust of each one getting on her fingers. These are the things Taehyung’s genius father created, and he calls them useless? Sure, they don’t work perfectly or have completely failed, but just because some things don’t go right doesn’t mean it’s the end of everything. His father failed to make some of the things he dreamed of creating, but from the looks of the things around them, it doesn’t seem to have stopped him at all.

She turns around, walking past Taehyung and heading straight for the blueprints blanketing over the long table, curious to find out what his father is working on now.

“A ‘Time Manipulator’?” she asks, picking up one of the blueprints.

Taehyung feels his blood turning cold. He pushes away the urge to run over and take the blueprint out of her hands and crumple it to pieces. That would only make him look suspicious. He has to play it cool.

“What, like time travel? Is my dad really working on that?” he forces a laugh. “That’s not gonna happen.”

Y/N shrugs. “Hey, if he can make something called a Time Resetter then I wouldn’t be surprised if he can actually pull this off. Your dad is smart, Tae.”

The watch feels heavier on his wrist. He covers it with his other hand, feeling a tinge of guilt swell in his chest. He knows what he’s doing is wrong. So many things could happen and mess up his plan, but he took the risk anyway. He knows this. What he doesn’t know is Y/N’s gaze meeting his awkwardly placed hands.

“Are you okay?” she suddenly asks.

“What?” he says almost too quickly.

“Didn’t you cough?”

“Cough? I’m not si-“ the sound of a man’s coughs interrupts him. Taehyung and Y/N look at each other, frozen. He mouths, “My dad.”

The door begins to open, and faster than he could imagine, Taehyung rushes to Y/N and tugs on her arm, bringing her to the bottom of a table far from the one they were standing by, away from the light. He pulls her body close to make sure neither of them are seen.

Seconds after, Taehyung’s father steps inside the room, clearing his throat. He places a small bag of what seems to be medicine. He’s sick, Taehyung thinks to himself. He wasn’t sick before.

He ignores this thought and continues to stay still. How they’re going to get out without his dad noticing, he’s not sure. But it doesn’t matter to him right now. The girl he’s been in love with is leaning against his body. Who cares if his dad is feeling a little under the weather? He’ll get over it.

Y/N wriggles under his arms. She turns her head a bit to meet his eyes then tilts her head a bit to point to his father. He hasn’t noticed, but his dad is observing his unsuccessful machines. What Y/N is trying to tell Taehyung is that he is pre-occupied.

Quietly, they jog to the door, careful to not make a sound. Y/N is about to turn the knob when a voice stops them.

“Do you kids really think you could sneak away from an old man like me?”

Taehyung gulps as he feels his heart pound even faster than before. His dad is right. There’s no keeping secrets from this guy.

“Are you Taehyung’s girlfriend? Finally?” the scientist asks with an eyebrow raised.

Y/N immediately replies, “No, sir, no. I’m just a friend. I came over to tutor him in math since he’s struggling.”

“Alright, then is going into my lab a part of your lecture?” he asks.

She answers, “No sir. It was my idea. I was curious and convinced Taehyung to bring me here.”

Taehyung’s dad shifts his gaze to his son. “Well? Why aren’t you saying anything?”

The young boy’s lips suddenly become dry. The fact that he had messed up and got the both of them caught is clouding his thoughts and blocking his throat, keeping him from saying anything. No one can hide anything from his father. That’s why he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

“How many?” his dad asks.

Taehyung looks up. “What?”

“How many years did you go back?”

He can’t breathe. The world is spinning at the speed of his heart as he watching the scene unfold before his eyes. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They weren’t supposed to get caught. He was supposed to have Y/N’s heart and be with her like he planned, like he always wanted. There has to be a way to change this situation, like… a reset.

He jolts to the shelf at the back and pulls the Time Resetter, flipping the ON switch. He hasn’t a single clue on how to operate the device, but he doesn’t have much of a choice left. A small screen appears, showing too many options, but he doesn’t have enough time.

His dad rushes over and tries to take it out of his grasp, but he clings on to it desperately.

“Kim Taehyung, let go of the Time Resetter!” his father shouts, but the boy only hugs it tighter.

Everything is happening so fast, Y/N is frozen, trying to keep up. She watches her friend and his father grapple for the device. There has to be something she can do.

That’s when everything is starting to come together. Taehyung acting weird in class as he ran for the seat next to hers, his enthusiasm when she was assigned to be his tutor, him smiling when she realized she fell asleep on his shoulder and lastly, the watch. She knew it looked familiar when she saw the blueprint.

She walks over to the table where she found it and examines it more. Her theory is right. The watch on the blueprint is the same one around Taehyung’s wrist. She almost wants to laugh. The guy actually went back in time to go out with her. How stupid could he get?

She heads to the boys and stands next to her friend. God, he messed up so bad. “Taehyung,” she says, in a soft voice.

He stops and looks at her, his eyes shining with tears. Taking the opportunity, his dad takes the resetter from his grasp and walks across the room. But Taehyung doesn’t care about that anymore, not when he knows what’s about to happen.

“You don’t understand,” he tells her.

“I do,” she says.

That’s enough for him to break down crying. She pulls him into a hug before he can fall on the floor. He clings on to her body as if fearing she’ll disappear. The sad thing is that his fear is about to come true.

“Why would you do this? Why would you do something as stupid as this?” she asks him, trying to keep her voice from breaking.

“I love you!” he cries. “That’s why! Is that so wrong?” He turns to his dad. “Is it?”

Y/N turns his head to face her. “How many years did you go back?” He only shakes his head, but she needs answers. “How many?”

Taehyung drops his head and mutters, “Ten.”

She pulls away and steps back.

“Y/N-“

“Ten years. You went ten fucking years back in time for what? Me? You had a life! You had a future! And you were willing to throw all that away?” she screams, enraged.

Taehyung steps closer to her. “I did it for you.”

“Did you think if I’d even want that? Did you think I wouldn’t find out any sooner? Dammit, Tae, you’re so dense!” she says.

Taehyung’s head falls, droplets of his tears making small puddles on the floor. Y/N releases a sigh and places both hands on her hips. There is only one thing left to do. She turns to Mr. Kim and he looks back at her. Without a word, he flips a coupe switches and presses a few buttons before walking back and handing the device to her. When Taehyung sees this, he stumbles back, hitting a table and books and blueprints and other scraps topple to the floor.

“No!” he sobs. “No, no, no!”

Y/N makes her way toward him and tries to give him the machine but he only shakes his head.

“Please, don’t do this,” he says, looking at the Time Resetter as if it were poison.

She wipes a tear before he can see it. “You have to. What you did was wrong.”

“What am I supposed to do then? When I come back?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “That’s for you to decide. But I hope you make the most of your time there and live well. Love like the way you should. Not like this.”

There is silence after she says this. Taehyung continues to stare at the machine, and she may be imagining it, but Y/N swears she saw something flicker in his eyes, like he’s considering it.

She’s about to tell him to take it when he looks up and meets his eyes with hers. “I just have to ask you one thing before I go,” he says.

There’s a sudden whirl in her stomach but she tries to ignore it. “What is it?

“In the days of me being here, the days of us together. Did you, even just a little bit, have any feelings for me?” he asks.

She blinks and steps back before she can stop herself. Taehyung notices her sudden change in position and stands up straighter, refusing to take his eyes off of hers.

“No,” she says, failing to keep her voice steady. In attempt to hide her emotions, she places the device on the nearest table and turns around. “Take it already. I have to get home.”

Taehyung steps forward and takes her hand, spinning her around. “Then tell me why you’re crying.”

She pushes him back. “Just take the Time Resetter, Tae. Take it and erase this. Live your life like you should have, and I’ll live mine.”

Knowing he is out of chances, he finally does as he’s told and takes the machine with shaky hands. He releases a sigh and wipes the remaining tears that roll down his cheeks. He looks down at it, then to his father and then to her. He can feel everything inside of him break.

“No takebacks,” she tells him.

Before he can regret it, he smashes the red button and everything goes black.

-

Taehyung wakes up on a chair in his dad’s lab. The bright lights on every corner of the room blur his vision. Everything is the same as before except the blue walls are full of holograms of information. The blueprints that once cluttered the tables are now what shows on the thin touch screens, accessible by a single swipe.

He looks at his wrist, the Time Manipulator resting on it. He lets out a sob.  Everything hurts. With tears welling his eyes he pulls it off, the device humming beneath his fingers. He places it back on the table where he took it from.

Every day, every hour, every minute and every second he spent ten years ago—it’s so hard for him to even fathom it—never existed. But in a way, it did. He knows this because he remembers every detail of it, even if he doesn’t want to. It feels like the Time Resetter’s punishment; forced to remember every drop of pain from his mistake.

He stands up and slowly walks to the shelf at the back of the room. Ten years into the future, even with all the new technological advancements, his father never changed the dusty sheet. He pulls it down and sees the Resetter. He takes it.

A couple tears fall on it and he doesn’t bother to wipe them off. He places it back on the shelf and looks at the watch on the table. It glows in the light as if mocking him.

His body moves for him. He strides toward it and puts his hand on it, and then he stops. He pulls himself back, resisting every urge to take it, and falls on the floor against a wall.

He screams and cries.

“No takebacks.”

[def-initely-soul]

How about xiumin based on monster/lucky one mv?? (◑‿◐)

^ ^ 

Bias: Xiumin from EXO

Genre: Lucky One/Monster AU

Words: 1.4k

You never imagined you’d work in a secret facility that investigates phenomena that have to do with every known mythology on earth.

I mean you were just a biochemist with a degree in Genetics. How did you get involved with monsters and gods and everything else that seemed completely taken out of a children's book?

The answer is money. You saw the flyer for a facility needing new scientists like physicists specialized in nuclear physics, chemists with a degree in clinical biochemistry and biologist specializing in genetics. The flyer said nothing else except the fact that the facility paid well.

Putting all these together, you should have known something was sounding fishy, but the promise of a big salary when you were one step away from getting evicted was all you needed to contact them.

When you had arrived at the headquarters, they never explained exactly what it was they were doing. They just gave you a list of thing that were your duties and giving you your contract for signing. There, with big bold letters was a vow of confidentiality which initially triggered some alarms in your mind. The next page though was another article with the guarantee that those experiments weren’t tested on animals. Upon seeing that, your doubts had dissipated and you had signed the contract.

But now, after three months working here, you’re not sure what you are doing anymore.

The facility is focused on foreign mythologies. Norsic, Greek, Aramaic, Indian, Japanese, South African and much more, giving attention to their various deities. And more specifically they took interest in the offsprings of those deities.

Because apparently, besides the whole thing of mythologies being real, those deities had children with humans as well.

And you currently are supervising one of those children.

You only know him as experiment number 99 or Xiumin. You’re assigned to monitor him, through his vitals and blood tests, but every time you go on your appointed date for the usual check up he never speaks.

He never pays attention to you, his gaze stuck on the wall next to him, as you check his vitals and gather a blood sample. You don’t even know his real name, as “Xiumin” is a name given by the company.

After your first meet with him, you had asked curiously about the people that were here. A colleague had reassured you that everyone here was on their own free will, including the person you were assigned to.

Weeks passed where your cheerful “good mornings” were met with stunning silence. And today is the day you snapped.

“I don’t get what your problem is!”

The loud yell makes Xiumin flinch and he turns to look at you with wide, surprised eyes. This is the first time he is looking at you.

“I mean, I’m perfectly polite towards you! I only try to make everything better for you, trying to figure out what you need and I’m met with this invisible wall!” you let out in exasperation, as the man keeps on looking at you from his seat on the bed. The surprised look gone, only a mask of indifference over his features.

“I would get it if I was some sort of an evil scientist that did unspeakable things to you, but everyone here is trying to do nothing but good!”

A scoff sounds inside the room. It’s also the first sound he did with you present.

“Are you really that naive?”

Now it’s your time to look at him, shocked. 

His voice sounds rough, coarse, undeniably from all the time he remained silent. But his words are angry and meant for you.

“What?” you whisper shakily, your eyes on him as he stands up from the bed.

“Do you really believe everything here is done for our own good?” he says, taking a slow step forward.

You swallow nervously, refusing to doubt your beliefs. “I do,”

He chuckles, the sound sarcastic and fake. “Then you really are stupid.”

“Excuse me?!”

He walks towards you slowly, his eyes dark, swimming with anger.

“Do you know what they do to us? Do you know that the only reason they want us is to use us for what we are? Not to learn more about our “parents”, no...” he says threateningly, trapping you against the wall, his face morphing into a face o disgust in the word “parents”.

“What do you-”

“They want our powers,” he announces, his body almost pressing against yours and you suck in a breath. You look at him wide-eyed and suddenly, his hands are on your temples.

Then your vision changes. You’re in an unknown room but you’re certain it’s inside the facility. The tiles are the same pale green you’ve come to hate. There in the middle of the room stands Xiumin, tied up against a table, his body standing up, struggling to break free.

“Let me go!” he yells, the sound hazy and drowned as if you’re watching a dream.

“Tell me your real name,” a commanding voice sounds, unfazed by the fear in Xiumin’s words. The man puts some injections in Xiumin’s body and he hisses from the pain.

Then Xiumin spits the man straight into his face, throwing a furious “Fuck you!” at his directions. The man simply swipes the saliva off of his face and he turns to the machines next to the table.

“I was hoping we would go through the easy way. I guess I was wrong,” he states calmly as he presses a button on top of the machine.

And the scream that comes out of Xiumin will be following you for the rest of your eyes.

“Stop! Stop! Make him stop!” you yell to no one in particular, as Xiumin’s body contorts into weird, unnatural angles.

Then suddenly the image disappears as you’re met again with his wide, surprised eyes. 

Your voice breaks into a sob, as tears roll furiously down your cheeks. You had no idea what was really happening. And all this pain, all this suffering... You’ve been a part of it.

“I am so sorry,” you gasp, trying to control your sobs as Xiumin still looks at you surprised.

You put your hand on your chest, as you struggle to breathe. “Why did no one stop him?” you ask desperately.

“Because no one cared.”

You turn to look at him, now every note of anger absent in his eyes. Only sadness covering them like a blanket.

“Well, until now that is...” he adds when he sees your heartbroken stare and he gives you single smile. You smile back tentatively, wiping your tears.

“I really am sorry for everything they’ve done to you. To any of you,” you whisper, looking shamefully at the floor. He moves forward towards you, grabbing your face with his hands as he lifts it to meet your eyes.

“Why do you care so much?” he asks but the question isn’t accusing. Only curious.

You shrug as you look at him. “No one deserves to be treated like that....”

He stares at you, open mouth and wide eyes as if he’s staring at the stars for the first time in his life. And he finds he can’t look away.

You wipe your cheeks again and this time you’re more determined than before as you look him straight in the eyes.

“I promise I’ll do whatever I can to help you. All of you,” you declare with a passion you didn’t know you have and then you move quickly to leave his room. You can’t raise any suspicious if you are going to bring this facility down.

But before he exit, Xiumin’s voice captures your attention. “What is your name?”

You turn to him, his expression soft and magnetized by your form. You give him a soft smile.

“Y/N...”

He repeats your name quietly, rolling it on his tongue, deciding he likes the sound of it.

“What are your powers?” you ask curiously. 

Xiumin puts his hand forward and an ice stake appears from the center of his palm.

“Ice... My father is an Ice Giant...” he says, his voice quiet and nostalgic.

“...And your name?” you ask cautiously, aware he might not answer.

This time he smiles back. 

“It’s Minseok.”

[ragwitch]

Halloween prompt: 14. Darcy/Daniel Sousa (from Agent Carter) Phone calls from the past.

This got longish and this got saaaaaaad which I apologize for and hope is okay

14. ‘The phone keeps ringing but no one’s there when I answer.’

Pairing: Darcy Lewis/Daniel Sousa

Rating: T to low M

Warnings for feels.

The landline had come with the apartment. It was even advertised in the listing. Phone line included, long-distance billed. Darcy found this sort of whimsical and charming. Who used a landline these days? She toyed briefly with the idea of canceling her cell service, hooking up an answering machine, and going back to a simpler existence where she only took calls at home. And then she quickly tossed the idea out because that was crazy.

Either way it worked out fine because for a year, five months, and sixteen days the phone never rang and everyone that came over thought it was hilarious and listened to the dial tone for the sake of nostalgia. No big deal.

_

The first time the phone rang it was October 1st, Daniel was in her shower, and Darcy was considering joining him because he gave the best head rubs while he washed her hair. Also, because Darcy pretty much couldn’t keep her hands off him.

She jumped at the sound of bells jarring out of the wall in her living room.

Brrrrrrrrrring!

Brrrrrrrrrring!

Brrrrrrrrrring!

She stared at the old fashioned black rotary phone on it’s little wooden shelf and then shrugged. If it was a telemarketer, she would hang up. She might as well enjoy the novelty of the experience.

“Hello?” she said.

There was quiet, and soft static.

“Helloooo?” she repeated. Still nothing. Maybe her free phone line didn’t really work after all. It wasn’t like she was about to complain to the super about it.

She hung up the phone and went to find Daniel.

_

She met him that summer in the hallway. He was leaning onto his crutch, green canvas army bag over his shoulder, squinting up at the number on her door.

“Hey, you lost?” she asked, and shifted the bags of groceries off her shoulder where they were digging bruise lines into her skin.

“I…I think so,” he said, and then he turned to look at her and Darcy tried not to think about that fact that she probably had sweat stains in weird places ‘cause it was steamy hot out and she’d just lugged a week’s worth of food five blocks. And that this new guy had a jaw that could cut glass and short dark curls she wanted to dig her fingers into.

“My key says one-eighteen,” he said, and he held the tag out for her to look. “But it’s not working.”

“Oh yeah,” she said, nodding. “This happens a lot. You came for the pre-furnished apartment? It’s eleven-eight actually. Kind of a bonkers system if you ask me.”

“Uh…yeah. You got an elevator?” he asked, glancing down at his leg.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “It’s also bonkers. Lemme put these inside and I’ll show you.”

He didn’t have trouble with the old Otis manual elevator at all actually. Pulled the gate back and forth without blinking an eye, counted the floors up and knew just when to pull the lever. That probably could have been her first clue if she’d known what to look for.

_

She wondered. Of course she wondered. Was it the army? Was it the battle of New York? Prosthetic and crutch aside, Daniel was obviously carrying something on his shoulders. Some days he just seemed so…elsewhere.

They’d been in Central Park together, their first unofficial date, eating ice cream and holding hands and suddenly he had just…stopped, and stared at the skyline. She’d joined him because sometimes she forgot that she was living in New York City and just plowed through the neighborhoods like she didn’t have the time to be amazed by it all.

But then after the time stretched out she looked at him. There were lines in his forehead and something in his eyes like…like he was trying to memorize the buildings or trying to correct the view in front of him.

“Are you alright?” she asked. She was carrying things too and she didn’t want to press at places that she didn’t want pressed at either.

He looked at her, searched her face, studied her lips, and then blinked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m alright.”

_

The second time the phone rang was a few days after the first. Daniel had her squeezed to his side in bed and he was patting her shoulder softly with his hand.

“Mmph.”

“Darce. Phone.”

“S’not real.”

“Phone. Phone ringing,” Daniel said, nudging her shoulder. Darcy ignored him even as the phone blared for the fifth time. “I’ll get it,” he said, and started to shift.

“Ugh,” Darcy said, and rolled out from under the covers. She wasn’t going to say so cause he wouldn’t want her thinking it, but she didn’t want him to have to limp out to the living room with his crutch while he was half-asleep.

“Darce, you’re naked,” he hissed as she shuffled out into the hall.

“Well I’m not turning the lights on,” she grumbled. She doubted anyone had the lucky timing to be looking in her living room windows at all of three o’clock in the morning.

“Hello?” she snarled into the receiver.

This time it wasn’t static. There was an intake of breath at the other end of the line.

“Hello? Who is this?”

It was quiet and Darcy wasn’t even sure if she was imagining the faint exhale. All she knew was that she was naked and there was someone breathing over her phone line and in any 1990’s teen movie that meant someone was looking in her window. So she slammed down the phone and ran back to bed where Daniel was barely managing to keep his eyes open.

“Whossit?” he asked.

“No one,” Darcy whispered and then she burrowed close against his skin.

_

Before they slept together Darcy had the sense to ask, “Hey…you’re sticking around for awhile, right?”

After all, he’d shown up at the apartment building with a duffle bag, and while he kept the little studio clean, it wasn’t super…lived in. After she’d invited him down for dinner the first time they’d just sort of…fallen in together. He was friendly, he had a dimple on his chin, and he managed the careful balance of being a gentleman without being patronizing.

The question seemed to puzzle him, or maybe it was just taking him a minute to gather his thoughts since she asked it after kissing him back into the arm of her couch and sliding his hands up inside of her t-shirt.

“As far as I know I’ve got nowhere else to be,” he said, and then he grinned and the smile reached his eyes and she was gone for him.

It was just so easy not to hear what was missing in those words.

_

Sometimes at night he would wake up from a dream, and sit up in bed, and run his hand up and down her back, big palm covering her spine.

“Nightmares?” she asked once.

“Weird dreams,” he said. “Like…like some other place. Other people. Just remembering where I am.”

So she rolled over and tugged him down to lay against her, and helped remind him.

_

The calls came, and came, and came, all month. Sometimes in the morning while Daniel was running across the street to grab them breakfast and she would ask ‘Hello?’ over and over again as she watched him from her window. Sometimes while she was cooking, and she would pick up the receiver and hang it back up again, heart pounding. Sometimes at night, while Daniel was inside her, kissing at her neck, and she would hold on tight to him and squeeze her eyes shut and they would ignore the insistent sound until it stopped again.

_

On Halloween the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. It rang all morning before she left for work. A neighbor texted at lunch threatening to break her door down and unplug it. And as she and Daniel was walked into the building together after stopping the grocery store together, they could both hear the clanging from the first floor hallway.

Darcy spun in step. “Let’s make pasta at your place tonight.”

Daniel was squinting at her door, and then back at her. “I don’t have pots. What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing. Change of scenery,” Darcy said, trying to step back down the hall to the old elevator that she invariably ignored unless Daniel was there to tame it for her.

He plucked her keys off her fingers where she’d had them ready and passed her with quick steps.

“I’m just so sick of the sound!” Darcy said.

Daniel paused, key in the lock and frowned back at her and she felt a sudden burst of exhaustion as tears welled up in her eyes.

“It keeps ringing and ringing,” Darcy said, breath hiccuping. “And I swear to god, there’s someone on the line but they won’t say anything and I’m so sick of it!”

The phone was still going, blaring loudly as Daniel opened the door and hurried into the apartment, Darcy rushing to catch up with him.

“Hello?” he snapped into the receiver. “Who’s calling?”

“Daniel? Is that you?”

The voice was tinny but everything else in the apartment was silent and still and Darcy almost dropped the groceries to the floor. Daniel’s face went white and he stared straight ahead at the cream and mint striped wallpaper.

“Daniel? It’s Peggy. Is that you?”

Darcy felt her stomach turn over as he answered, “Yes. Yes it’s me. I…I’d forgotten.”

“Howard got it all wrong, Daniel,” the voice on the line said and Daniel wiped a hand down his face.

Darcy excused herself to the kitchen, heart crashing down to her toes, and even further.

_

He didn’t leave right away. They had a few more days together. Days where Darcy learned everything about who Daniel Sousa really was and where it became painfully clear all the questions she had failed to ask him while they were together. Days saying goodbye.

Darcy was joining Tony in the Howard Stark Is To Blame For My Emotional Injury club. It wasn’t Daniel’s fault his memory was scrambled in the time leap. Darcy never thought she’d say this but…Tony really was a good scientist. He found the flaw in Howard’s work right away and it had taken Jane all of two days to sort out how to send Daniel back. And the two days might have been generous stalling, a gift from a friend.

But on the third day he kissed her goodbye in the center of the lab and pulled away, lips parted, at the edge of saying something- asking to stay maybe, or asking her to come. But then his mouth shut and she stepped back and Jane set the machines whirring. And less than a minute later Daniel Sousa was gone.

That night the phone in the apartment rang.

She was out of bed and running down the hall before she’d even really finished waking up, eyes sore and puffy from crying.

“Hello?” She was catching her breath, the sound echoing over the line. “Hello?”

She waited, held her breath until her chest burned, and heard a quiet puff of air, a sigh. She tried to swallow and couldn’t manage.

“I miss you too,” she whispered. There was a long quiet, another shaky breath, harder this time, and then the line clicked dead.

[lifehasparallelparkedonmycorpse]

Ok here are some good movies-

●Kubo and the Two Strings-

Kubo accidentally awakes an evil moon spirit and has to go on a quest to stop him. He is joined by a Monkey and a Beatle Samurai as he discovers things of the past on his journey.

If you like action adventure this is a good one. It’s all stop motion animation that is done wonderfully. It's story line is simple, but it has twist and turns. The character’s are likeable and the movie is family centered.

●Secret of the Kells-

Brendon is basically a alter boy, but in ye old Ireland when Christianity was recently introduced and the vikings were the bane of everyone's existence. He lives in a town fortress with books. The book is the mcguffen of the movie. The priest who is writing it needs some berries for ink so he sends Brendon on a quest to gather them. This is where new Ireland meets old as the legends of the forest are real. He is befriend by a odd child like being.

It's gorgeous 2D with so much Irish culture, especially since it's placed in a time where the old Irish tradition where slowly being lost and being replaced with Christianity. The character’s are fun, especially the child character’s, who the film mostly looks at, and it's just a fun ride.

●Adventures of Tintin-

It follows an adventurous and smart teen who's known for solving mysteries and a drunk himbo sailor. The plot revolves all around a bottle boat unlocking mysteries of hidden treasures and brings on the shady ass people, trying to get that dough.

It's just pure adventure and the characters are endearing. The plot is just fun and is a mystery that slowly comes together into a fantastic story.

●Ringo- A Lizard actor who pretends to be this big bad sherif in a town of anipomorphic creatures so they don't beat his ass. This works, and now he has to duel the rattlesnake with a machine gun.

It may be a western, but it's my western! The characters are funny, relatable, and interesting. The character designs are iconic as is the animation style. It's a wild ride, but you want on this one. You REALLY DO

--------

TV Shows-

●Secret Saturday's-

You will definitely have to to a pirating site (like https://www.thewatchcartoononline.tv) to see it. It was a show in the 2000s that no one remembers for some reason even though it was fantastic.

The premise is that there are secret scientists all around the world, they look into the strange and particular. One day, at a archeological site, two of the scientists found a strange stone. It was found that this stone could bring about mass destruction for it held the location of Kur, and ancient evil. So they cut it into 3 pieces. The story follows years later with the two scientists having a kid with strange abilities. While the villain tries to take their piece after he managed to steal the other 2.

This was slept on and it's so good. Action, adventure, story arcs, witty comedy, decently diverse cast, and a fantastic world.

● Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go- This feels like a fever dream, but it's another 2000s one that was slept on

Follows a kid with his super powered robot monkeys and has a villain that freaked me the fuck out as a kid. Like goddamn Mr. Skelotor 2000, what the fuck. It has a story like, I don't remember it, because it felt like a fever dream with mechs and terrifying monster designs. And some of the story lines were great. I remember the character development from season one to season something and it made you question things.

If you like comedy, acton, drama, and mechs here you go.

●Banana Fish-

If you haven't watched it, do it. It's basically a crime drama. It has so many ups and down, makes you cry, cry a lot. And the two mains are so gay for each other, and you really see it as series goes forward

I don't want to spoil anything, but I do want to warn of sexual violence. One of the mains, Ash, has been sexually assaulted as a kid and it goes into heavy stuff with his baggage from that.

● FLCL-

This is a weird anime, but also short. It has such good characters. It's a coming to age story that can tug at your heart and make you laugh. This kid has robots come out of his head, because this bass chick ran over him and accidentally gave him a head portal. It has a lot of twist and turns at it's 6 episode run and has such good characters

i’m so unbelievably bored of all the sequels, prequels, spin-offs, reboots, and live action remakes so if you know a good animated movie that’s not disney reblog this with the title in the tags. i’m craving new content with good stories i haven’t experienced yet

[mattymattymerduck]

Once Upon A Time [Pt. 1]

Summary: In a universe very different from the one Charles is used to, you’re a bartender. But just because you live in a world filled with princesses and magic and singing chipmunks doesn’t mean life’s a fairytale - a lesson Charles is soon to figure out for himself. (A Charles Xavier Enchanted!AU)

Warnings: A couple swears, Charles is probably pretty ooc, my bad :3

Word count: 1500

A/N: I’m writing this for @hunters-from-stark-tower 's AU challenge, and I’m so so sorry it took so long!!!! I have like five drafts of this first chapter because I couldn’t find a good way to write it, but I think I’ve got a handle on it now :D I hope you guys like it!!

In hindsight, Charles really should have expected something like this to happen.

Well, maybe that was asking too much of himself, but when had any X-men fight not included a curve ball? He probably should have noticed that it was too easy from the start, and that something extraordinary and/or disastrous was on its way.

And he would say that he realized too late that they were all in terrible danger, except it wasn’t exactly too late because he managed to get in front of the blast sent towards Peter just before it smacked Charles dead-center in his stomach.

It’s not exactly a comforting feeling, being surged into darkness and waking to find yourself face-first on an old cobbled street. Charles thought that the most concerning thing was that the fight had disappeared. The fight which, prior to the sickening feeling of being dropped through miles of surging space, had encompassed him and his team.

After this initial curiosity, his second wonder was that he had never seen the street he was on before. In fact, there was no street at all back on the battlefield he had fallen unconscious on. It was all blaring sun and crumbling limestone, where as here there were fire-lit street lamps and ivy-strewn buildings lining old fashioned streets.

He thought that he was dreaming, maybe, or that the blow to his abdomen had been the last he would ever feel. Needless to say, that last thought left a bitter taste on his tongue as he pushed himself up on his elbows.

“Gaston, I swear to god, you get your inebriated ass home right this second.” When his grogginess faded slightly, Charles traced the angry voice to the other side of the street, where a mass of muscles straining against red fabric was grumbling in a similar position as himself. The woman standing over him with her arms crossed harshly didn’t look like a force to be trifled with.

“You know the rules, I’m not gonna have you harassing Belle in my bar unless you want to stumble home with a black eye and a fresh lick of sense in that empty skull of yours.” The guy mumbled into the brick road again and Charles watched her eyes roll and her arms unravel to grip her hips, like she was trying really, really hard to control her anger.

“Yes Merida is off limits! Now pick your sorry ass off this street and go home. You’re more trouble than your business is worth Gaston, one of these days I’ll stop serving you anything but tap water.” Sternly, she stood glaring at the Gaston guy until he had gathered himself off the hard road and stumbled out of sight. Then, just as she was preparing to turn and head back, she spotted Charles on the ground, looking equally unimpressed with a neatly arched eyebrow.

“Great, another stray. What exactly are you doing down there, stranger?” You asked loudly, taking a step or two closer. Charles gave you a sort of breathless grin, in a way that he was terribly confused and disoriented, and so breathing wasn’t quite a priority.

“I’m trying to figure that out myself, actually.” His voice was raspier than he thought it should’ve been, like he hadn’t used it in years. You gave him a strange look and he politely tried to cough it away. “Would you mind terribly, telling me where I am?”

—

It seemed to be a common theme for you to be unimpressed. Charles had only known you for a good half hour, so maybe it was just your current mood, but as you helped him scrape himself off the road and all but hauled him inside your bar, it was the most you could do not to grumble.

“Awe Y/N, can’t we keep him?” Once he was set up in the back room, leaning heavily on the back of the chair he was left to collapse in, a handful of your waitresses decided to flood in and see what was going on.

“First of all, we don’t ‘keep’ them. Ariel, get away from him.” You whispered angrily, almost protectively. Meanwhile, Ariel prodded Charles like he was some sort of fascinating machine she’d never seen before. Her red hair fell over her shoulders in waves, but did little to hide the growing curiosity in her green eyes.

“But he’s pretty! Oh, what if he’s a prince?” She made a sort of gasp and clapped her hands together, twisting around excitedly. “What if he’s your true love? This is always how they happen!”

“Please get back to work. I don’t pay you to poke people and accuse them of having a soulmate.” You say flatly, waiting for her to tuck her hair behind her ear again before practically gliding out of the room, pulling Belle with her.

“Fine, but I’m calling it!” She practically sang, returning to the rowdy customers she had been neglecting.

Frankly, Charles was still trying to wrap his head around his setting, but all this talk of true love and royalty has his head spinning even harder.

“Sorry about her, she’s been here for years but she likes to pretend she grew her legs yesterday.” You sigh exasperatedly, falling into your own chair and staring Charles down curiously. In your bad mood you had hardly had a chance to size him up and figure out where he might have come from.

“Grew her legs?” Charles asked hesitantly, not sure if that was an expression he should be familiar with, or if it was just another strange thing about this town.

“Yeah, you know, 'cause that’s Ariel.” When he showed no understanding you went on. “Eric’s wife? The face behind that whole Ursula disaster years ago?”

“You mean, the fairy tale? The Little Mermaid?”

“Well that seems a little derogatory. I know she’s short and all but-”

“No, no that’s what her story’s called, which you should know, seeing as you’re citing it.”

“I’m what? Look, buddy, I have no clue what you’re on about, but if you don’t show my staff some respect I have no problem kicking you out of here like I did Gaston.” Charles sighed in irritation, pinching the bridge of his nose to clear his mind a bit. It wasn’t like him to get so worked up after such a short amount of time, but this entire situation seemed ridiculous.

“Y/N, was it? I’m don’t mean to disrespect anyone, but I really don’t have the time to play make-believe with you. My friends, last I saw them anyways, were in danger. And now I’m here, wherever here is, with no news on how they are or what state they’re in. So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t believe you when you tell me I just had my cheeks pulled by a mermaid princess.”

“And I’m terribly sorry you’re inconvenienced, sir, but that’s not my problem.” Your tone is icyer now than it had been all night, and Charles might’ve been worried about this if he weren’t focussing all of his worry on Peter and Raven and everyone else. “In any case, you’re in my bar, the Jolly Roger.”

“Like the boat from Peter Pan?” If it was a themed bar, that would at least explain the weird fairy tale fixation you had. It seemed a reasonable enough explanation to him.

“My ship has nothing to do with that little punk, and I’d advise you to stray away from bringing him up under my roof.” You growled, making Charles scoot a little deeper into his seat.

“Look, I’m not a customer. I’m just looking for some directions to the nearest airport, please.” Charles pleads; his confusion doing little to help hide his annoyance. He didn’t have it in him to tag along with your kids stories, he needed to get back to his school and make sure everyone was okay.

“What on earth is an airport?”

At this point, Charles had lost all patience in trying to get a reasonable, modern response from you. He didn’t like using his powers on complete strangers if it could be avoided, but he wasn’t getting anywhere with you and your in-depth persona.

It wasn’t until he looked in your head and actually verified your confusion that the thought occurred to him; maybe you weren’t acting. Then he wasn’t sure which was a more concerning prospect; being alone in a room with a crazy amnesiac, or living in a world made up of fairy tales.

Then again, hadn’t weirder things  happened in his own world? Where scientists turned into blue monsters and kids could shoot lasers from their eyes? What was so different about fairies or big bad wolves, when he could literally control a person’s mind with his own? In that case, wouldn’t he be able to find someone who could throw him back into his own universe, with a potion or spell or something?

So really, he just needed to find a witch/wizard and he’d be back home in no time.