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lesbian-roguefort · 4 years ago

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all of supernova’s lore lol

! disclaimer i wrote this universe like. four years ago lol. !

also it’s split up into three time periods

part one

so basically to preface the concept of the entire au with some context (the details of which i remember the least out of anything): something something the fucking war happens. you know, the one with xerneas and yveltal? they find a compromise to stop tearing humanity apart and shit by choosing a prophet to fight every 200 years or so. whoever gets 5 or so wins in a row (i don’t remember the exact amount) wins the war. the two agree on this and go sleepy.

enter asteria, an aspiring pokémon professor in the region of miramare (a region that i made up out of my whole ass) (tl;dr it’s a small tourist-y island region in the waters between sinnoh and johto). she grows up in a small town on the western end of the island with her friend calypso. they both have big dreams of training pokémon — at least, until calypso’s dad dies in a pokemon-related accident and her mother forbids her from leaving their small town in fear that she’ll die the same way. asteria is saddened by this of course, but continues to pursue her goals

one night, asteria is instructed by her local Pokémon professor, the woman whom she had been taught under, to go out into the forest east of their town. she is told by the professor (prof. redwood, iirc) that that night would be the night that xerneas and yveltal would each choose their prophets, and that scientists were picking up traces of their energy in their own region. asteria understands and sets out for the forest that night. what she doesn’t know is that calypso ends up running away from her home that same night, determined to become a Pokémon trainer like her friends would soon become. do you see where this is going.

something something xerneas chooses asteria as their prophet, effectively trashing asteria’s dreams of becoming a professor, and yveltal chooses calypso as their prophet.

a few days after that night, when asteria has had enough time to process her thoughts, she realizes that oh shit she has to fucking do this because the weight of the world is literally in her hands. she goes back to her professor and chooses her starter Pokémon for the first time. she chooses cyndaquil :)

as she sets out on her journey for the first time, she discovers that, oh shit!, xerneas also blessed her with the ability to understand Pokémon. her cyndaquil ends up telling her that his name is Vincent. vincent is slow to warm up to asteria, but they eventually become friends :)

asteria’s next Pokémon that she catches is none other than sora, a kind little starly who is the actual greatest ever /lh. she and Vincent become friends quickly, forming a sort of brotp together as a powerful double team :) they enjoy training together and they (eventually) become really good friends.

the next Pokémon to join the party is none other than spark, a shinx (which you just saw how he dies. So,). he and sora become friends REMARKABLY fast, hitting it off immediately. spark, who is a little smartass and a bit of a competitive asshole, appeals to the competitive part of sora’s personality and they get along very well.

so sora and spark become really good friends and form a sort of... you know... rivalry :) asteria and Vincent are just standing by each other in the back like 🧍‍♀️🧍

the next Pokémon that asteria catches is a kirlia who was trapped under a fallen tree. she’s very shy at first, but eventually she introduces herself as Eleanor. she’s got A Backstory and tl;dr in her colony her mother raised her to be the leader, putting a lot of pressure on her to act proper and mature at all times. her father was much kinder to her and allowed her to have a lot more freedom, but he eventually died. Eleanor was like ‘ok fuck this’ and ran away.

tl;dr for that tl;dr eleanor had mommy issues

eleanor finds her place as both a healer and a fighter, and she gets along especially well with Vincent, who shares her calm nature.

then, of course, they encounter the very final member of their party: marti. and good lord.

marti is a young misdreavus who traps the team in their little spooky pocket dimension before asteria and the others find out what’s going on and confront them about it. it turns out that marti had lived alone in the forest for as long as they could remember, being a mischievous little bastard and playing around with everyone they saw. asteria enjoys their nature and invites them onto the team.

marti and eleanor become very good friends, with marti especially looking to learn healing magic from eleanor. everyone grows to love them tbh. literally no one could hate marti.

so to start off with how sora and spark’s dynamic develops, we’d have to start with when sora first evolves. spark becomes a little bit jealous with his competitive nature and all and starts training like hell to top her. when he eventually does evolve though, something switches in those two. they go from playful rivals to Rivals Rivals and become a little more bitter towards each other

eventually their bitterness towards each other becomes Serious and they go from rivals to borderline enemies. spark evolves into a luxray Much quicker than sora reaches her final stage, simply because he’s been so fucking. competitive with her. sora’s just fucking tired man she wants to Rest. she likes fighting w/ spark but she eventually gets VERY fed up and lashes out against him. the two fight and sora Finally evolves mid battle, knocking him the Fuck out.

after that, the two agree to be a little kinder to each other, agreeing that mayhaps their fighting got a little out of hand. they become playful rivals again :)

now for eleanor and marti because i love them

i think i originally had them have a kind of falling out like sora and spark had? but i don’t like that anymore actually so it’s getting scrapped 💖

eleanor and marti’s development is best summarized by them becoming closer with one another and marti learning how to heal ppl with their moves n shit. they are literally the fucking cutest help idk how else to summarize it

part one of supernova ends with the team settling down in a house :)

and that’s a wrap babey!!

part two

so remember calypso? yeah? well she’s coming back for part two lol

basically she ends up meeting a young banette with no name who literally fucking murdered their entire family. Lol. she takes them into her team as her first and ONLY Pokémon. fucking idiot

i did say that yveltal chose calypso as their prophet right. because that happened and basically ooOoOoOoO mind control yadda yadda and she’s told of her mission to kill asteria. she agrees because she has literally no choice. calypso ends up telling banette of her mission, who agrees to help her unconditionally because she’s the first person to actually show them love.

basically banette is literally a m//njumper type character who turns out to be a puppeteer-kind. Lol!

so here’s where the story gets a little more confusing lol

it’s easier if i preface this with a little knowledge on calypso’s character. so, uh, fun fact: she really likes knives! like, she really likes knives.

so yveltal blesses her with a special little knife that can mind control anyone it stabs. Wow! incredible

if i remember correctly there were three times that the knife was used prominently. the first time was when a wild Pokémon attacked calypso out of the blue and she had no other choice but to use the knife on it. from there she was able to control it for a bit before releasing it from her control and leaving it unconscious. she kinda goes :o and takes note of how it’s used

she later devises a plan to use it against asteria and co.!

banette sneaks into asteria’s house at night and sets up a sound barrier in the entrance so that no one can hear they’re there. using the power of Spooky Shit they lure the only awake Pokémon on asteria’s team out of their room. and, wouldn’t you believe it!, it’s spark!

banette lures spark in and traps him in a little shadow dome arena type area, where they fight for a bit until banette eventually bests him and stabs him RIGHT the fuck in the chest. bada bing bada bam spark is now under banette (and effectively also calypso)’s control. yay! /s

spark stays under calypso’s control, attempting to blend in with everyone else and, y’know, not appear possessed for several days as calypso bides her time. eventually, she has spark lure asteria and everyone else outside directly into a trap by calypso and banette, who attack them on first sight.

asteria and co are taken off guard and forced into battle, and now spark is against them! oh fucking no! sora is especially distraught by this lol

still though it’s 2 v 4, and marti eventually fires a shadow ball that breaks the knife. seeing that they can’t win, calypso and banette fled, leaving spark Un fucking conscious on the ground in front of asteria and everyone else

so spark is left behind, again, Un Fucking Conscious. asteria and the rest of the team are left to decide what the Fuck to do with him.

after healing themselves all up, they take spark back to their house and are left to just kinda. Wait for him to wake the fuck up? sora ends up visiting him the most frequently because she’s bored when he’s not around . And also she misses him. A lot. Because she Cares Him.

asteria’s like “well shit what now?” and everyone agrees like. “We just wait for spark to wake up because he’s like. Important?” and asteria just goes “yea agreed”

spark stays comatose for a solid six or so days until he FINALLY wakes the fuck up. when he’s questioned about what happened with calypso he explains that all he remembers is getting stabbed before blacking out. everyone just looks at each other like 👀 and they just kinda agree that it was good that they destroyed the knife.

uhhh something something asteria and co end up going to Actual Hell for their final battle with calypso :) and when I say hell I mean The Nether Minecraft. it’s got red stone and lava and yeah it’s literally just the nether fucking minecraft. they fight nearby this fortress built out of dark red stone and it’s literally just a nether fortress.

this time they can’t pussy out of the battle and they have to actually Fight Calypso to the Death so. :)

asteria’s team ends up getting their shit Rocked by banette because of the circumstances and the special Attributes of Hell allow them to mega evolve w/o a mega stone. so they end up getting Big Ass Claws that they use to absolutely FUCK over most everyone. eleanor and marti try their best to keep the rest of the team alive but they’re fucking dying too.

(also special thing abt this universe: in this universe, Pokémon have two health bars! one is the health bar that you see in game, the one that counts down to them passing out. after that health bar runs out, if the Pokémon wills it, they can Wake Up. then they gain a second health bar, which counts down until they Die. Like For Real.)

(this battle is to the death so they Die or they Live.)

in the center of this fortress they’re fighting in is a BIG ass void. like a pit that drops down into a void. asteria and calypso are fighting near this giant ass void, asteria with spark and sora by her side and calypso w/ banette. something something spark gets Severely fucking injured. Like a huge ass claw injury down his side. so does sora but ykyk.

asteria gets pushed and nearly falls down into the void. she’s hanging onto the ledge. just as calypso is about to push her off, she suddenly snaps back to reality in a moment of “oh shit what have i done” and attempts to save her. banette, to put it shortly, doesn’t like this. they have become obsessed with calypso’s original goal of killing asteria and nearly kills calypso getting her away from asteria.

banette, left with asteria alone, pushes her down into the void below, literally killing her. Like Literally Killing Her.

caught up in their victory, though, banette doesn’t see everyone else about to get their ass. tl;dr banette gets shoved down into the void as well and asteria’s team wins the battle, despite asteria being. Y’know. Dead

something something asteria ends up coming back to life through the power of xerneas going “wait she won. She should be alive.”

everything is good and the team is nice and happy and generally alive :)

haha......... unless?

part three

okay, so before we get into how asteria’s team ends up tying in with the crew in part 3. i’d like to preface this with some information on the characters of part 3 :)

alexis is the Pokémon trainer for everyone in part 3! she’s a bit like asteria, just w/o all the prophet stuff. she loves the outdoors and is generally very outgoing and adventurous. she has a huge heart and loves literally everyone. except people undeserving of love but yk

lance is a decidueye and was alexis’s starter pokemon! when we first meet him in the story he’s a dartrix but Eventually. eventually he becomes a decidueye. he’s a little quiet but he’s also very nice and especially enjoys reading a lot :). he’s quick to anger though. so. yes that’s important shhh.

hazel is a ribombee and is literally the sweetest person ever. she’s the healer of the team and is an absolute sweetheart. she’s the kind of person to give platonic kisses. she can be a bit cowardly at times though.

edith is a mimikyu! she’s generally very shy and quiet, but once you get to know her, she’s the absolute best. she would literally give her friends the world if she could. she’s also very skilled in battle and is probably the strongest of the whole team.

cheryl.... gets introduced later ;)

soooooo we all remember spark right? right? ahaha. Haha.

so basically this man goes to sleep one night and then the next morning wakes up in alola. this is obviously terrifying for. Numerous reasons. but the main one on top of him being completely lost is that he is no longer a luxray, but rather he’s been changed back into a luxio. he’s also lost all of his abilities. so not only is he completely lost, but he’s also powerless, too. he’s got damn terrified.

so he’s lost and confused, barely even knowing how he got there, half believing he was in a dream. and then, at last, to top it all off, some fucking dartrix comes flying at him and half scratches his face. and then he gets a fucking pokeball thrown at him. overall, he is not having a good time.

disoriented beyond belief, spark is brought to a pokecenter where he meets his new trainer and teammates. turns out that dartrix that attacked him was a chill dude named lance, and he also had two other teammates, hazel and edith.

(i actually don’t remember how alexis came to know spark’s real name? we’ll just say that edith can speak in alexis’s mind and translate aight)

they all introduce themselves properly, with edith being shyer than the rest. overall though, spark’s terrified and just wants to go back home lol. even at this point, he’s still convinced he’s in a dream of some kind. because, of course, at any time now he was going to wake back up at home. aaaaany time now. /s

the new team end up going through the day together, and spark goes to sleep that night still exhausted and confused.

when he wakes back up in the same place the next morning, he’s even more confused.

despite the circumstances, lance and spark end up becoming good friends. spark also gets along well with hazel, and he eventually is able to befriend edith, too. he’s hesitant to become loyal to alexis, though, because his loyalty still only lied with asteria.

and then he starts getting weird dreams about another island. one with beautiful gardens, tall mountains, and trees. he starts to recognize that something is there, but he’s not sure what.

someone else has a different revelation around this time. surprisingly enough, it’s lance! despite him and spark being friends, he starts finding some things about him to be a bit strange. like how he’s weirdly skilled in battle for being such a low level. and how he hardly responds to alexis. at first he shrugs it off, but then it becomes too strong to ignore. he starts to look for answers.

on their way across the region, lance ends up stopping at numerous libraries, looking for books that might contain the answers he’s looking for. for a while, he finds absolutely nothing, and as he searches, he considers giving up. he starts wondering if everything really is just a coincidence.

at the same time, spark starts getting even more vivid dreams about this place. he discovers that it’s a valley of some kind, one with lots of trees and greenery. it’s nice. one night, he gets the sudden revelation that there might be something there waiting for him. the thought resonates too much for him to leave it alone.

spark also begins to warm up to Alexis as he begins to realize that this could very well just be his life now. he doesn’t want to give up hope that he could go back, but he’s like 🤏 this close. That Fucking Close. the only reasons he’s hanging on are because a) he had literally spent years w/ asteria and b) he has no clue how he even ended up in alola in the first place.

insert the Pokémon moon plot as filler. anyways,

alexis and her team head over to ula’ula island as their next destination! and something that i remember very vividly from the plot was that y’know how you battle hau as soon as you get off the boat? yeah spark gets K fuckin O’d in that battle, but as soon as he’s unconscious, he gets the most vivid dream he’d had yet. he then realizes that ‘oh shit is that valley on this island?’

enter route 10!

meanwhile, lance stays behind to check out the library in town. lo and behold, he finds information on exactly what he was looking for and discovers a little known phenomenon known as the island scan effect, in which abnormal energy levels in an area can cause a Pokémon to have their entire consciousness move into a body that materializes somewhere in another region. the Pokémon’s former body on the other end of the island scan effect enters a coma until the Pokémon dies. or, if the Pokémon’s comatose body dies, then the Pokémon’s new body will become their true one. lance, reading up on this, realizes that it explains a little too much about spark.

the realization then dawns upon him that in order for him to have become so skilled in battle, for him to have taken so long to warm up to alexis, he must have originally belonged to a different trainer.

this causes lance to fall into a spiral of bitterness in which he no longer believes spark is deserving of a spot on the team, and especially not a spot in alexis’s heart.

MEANWHILE, spark walks the fuck into route 10, immediately recognizing it as the location from his dreams! he barely even takes a few steps past from where he made that realization before he’s ambushed just as he had when he’d first awoken in alola: talons to his face.

lo and behold, guess who the fuck it is. Guess. Guess. You definitely can’t guess. Not my fave OC at all. No sir nope not at all. Not predictable whatsoever.

it’s sora because of course she’s here :)

ma’am is in a very similar position to spark: she got bumped down an evolution, and had to live her life in a completely different region. however, when they meet each other, they recognize each other immediately. there’s just something innate about them that brings them to realize that the other was. There.

as soon as they realize that the other is There. In Front of Them. they both become super happy with the reunion :). alexis sees this and goes :)?? but is generally happy that spark has found someone he. Recognizes? she guesses. and, of course, sora joins the party :)

soon after, spark ends up Finally evolving back into a luxray. sora is a little jealous. Just a little.

pov i say meanwhile a hundred times to demonstrate how lance and spark’s stories end up branching off from each other. Anyways,

meanwhile, lance is Thinking about how what the fuck, where is spark even from?? sinnoh??? bitch. and how he just apparently met someone that he previously knew? and how she’s super skilled too? and how she hardly responds to alexis either? he realizes that basically, this is absolutely no coincidence and is absolutely the work of some weird natural phenomenon. his bitterness increases.

meanwhile spark and sora are very happy to see each other again, and they start talking about what the fuck just happened? Like lol they just suddenly got zoomed off to alola? fucking alola? aka completely foreign land and they just had to blend in like it was nothing. they bond over this weird experience and also start to question whether or not they’ll ever get back to asteria again. they decide that even if they never see her or the others again, they’ll still have each other. they’ll figure out a way, of course.

from this point forward it’s mostly just filler with the plot of moon UNTIL...... cheryl arrives :)

alexis trades to get cheryl, a young vulpix who is very sweet but naive. she ends up falling mostly under the wing of lance, who takes her as a kind of daughter figure, acting as her mentor. for a while, he forgets about spark’s whole situation and simply takes care of cheryl. he gets so caught up in helping her out that he stops being bitter for a bit :)

sora and spark enjoy her presence as well, sora especially, who find enjoyment in sharing with cheryl her best battle tactics and strategies. the two end up bonding a lot.

cheryl also ends up being one of the only people who edith warms up to quickly! edith actually ends up loving cheryl /p :) (edith also ends up loving hazel. no slash p we’re girl kissers here)

so as the plot moves forward, cheryl eventually evolves into a ninetales. she also learns the move sheer cold. you know. the one that only has a 30% accuracy but will always kill when it hits? yeah this is important :)

plot progresses yadda yadda and alexis becomes champion! yahoo! now what?

well, as it would turn out, sora and spark are not the only two who have made their way into alola. banette’s there too, but not physically. since ghost type Pokémon can’t truly die (they’re already dead), banette(‘s spirit) goes over to alola to fuck with sora and spark a bit. maybe to get them killed. who knows. they may or may not have manifested themself within lance’s mind and fucked with his bitterness towards spark a bit. Mayhaps.

now, you may be wondering, where’s the ultra specific plot device to propel the plot forward into the climax chapters? well, i’ve got just the thing for you!: a deadly hurricane is on course to hit alola, and as champion, alexis is expected to help deal with it. she doesn’t want to risk any of her Pokémon getting hurt though, of course, so she sends them all into The Box. Ahaha. Ha.

little does she know what terrors will occur in The Box.

so you know how each box will have a background, right? well inside The Box, each sectioned background is a different area. everyone is set down in an area that resembles a sort of maze. they split off, searching for the exit to the maze so that they can find an area to relax a little. spark and lance team up as well as hazel and edith, whereas cheryl and sora split off on their own.

spark and lance find the middle clearing of the maze. from the center clearing, there’s a little open end that stretches out into open sea. spark looks out over that open sea, admiring the water and how the artificial sun sets upon it. too bad he shouldn’t have turned his back to lance, though.

lance takes an arrow and shoots it clean through his throat, just as spark turns around to face him.

almost immediately, lance regrets doing this, of course. because, i mean, what the fuck? and then there comes the cherry on top. guess who discovers the center of the maze just in time to watch that arrow slice spark’s throat?

sora lol

it goes without saying but she is absolutely mortified. she runs over to spark as he collapses on the ground, only to find that he’s already dead and the blow was fatal. she is infuriated.

sora, absolutely blinded by terror and fury, flings herself at lance to get vengeance. she fights him for a good minute until lance leaves himself open for too long and she is able to slice open his own throat with her wing. he also dies pretty much immediately, the blood loss being a bit too much.

this traumatizes sora lol

soon enough, the others reach the center of the maze and sora is forced to explain what happened to them. hazel makes futile attempts to heal the two of them while edith is just fucking depressed, man.

cheryl runs away, sobbing inconsolably.

hazel urges sora to go after her and to try and explain what had happened. understanding, sora attempts to follow cheryl the best she could, taking tips from other Pokémon in The Box at times.

no longer having a host in lance, guess who banette proceeds to infect the mind of next. Guess. Guess. Guess. Guess who’s emotionally fragile and naive enough to fall under their order. Guess. /lh

sora eventually tracks cheryl into a box much farther from where the murder had taken place, discovering that she had gone into a snowy themed area. when she finally confronts cheryl about lance’s death, she refuses to listen. she absolutely can’t stand to hear any justification for a murder like that because lance would never kill anyone, right? she only ever knew him as the kind man who helped introduce her to the team. he would never have killed anyone. especially not one of his own teammates, right?

sora doesn’t know how to respond. she tries again to explain, but before she can speak again, cheryl lashes out at her, suddenly overcome by a foreign power. completely mad with grief, cheryl attacks sora with everything she has in her. every attack, every tactic: everything. sora can’t find it in herself to fight back. all she tries to do is defend herself, but it’s difficult. eventually she slips out of consciousness, and then back into consciousness. as soon as she recovers though, cheryl sends her her final move: sheer cold. it’s dead accurate, and as soon as it strikes sora, the biting cold freezes her to death.

and then she wakes up in her bed back at asteria’s house, surrounded by all of her former teammates.

including spark. Who is alive.

she cries and hugs him. obviously both are deeply traumatized now, and the situation back in alola isn’t getting solved any time soon, but for now they have each other.

also marti x eleanor is canon because i said so.

#rift murmurs #supernova (universe)#AGAIN I FIRST CREATED THIS UNIVERSE LIKE. AGES AGO.#i only just infodumped about the lore last night so this is #all copy pasted from discord lol #rift’s ocs #moonjumper negativity #< for later in the infodumping

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trophywifejimgordon · 4 years ago

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okay so, oswald’s stupid aliases meta? oswald’s stupid aliases meta.

after returning to gotham in 1x3, oswald fairly quickly takes on a few false titles, first when confronted by a fish mooney lackey in an alley who recognizes him as the ex umbrella boy (in a panic, he tells the man that he must be confused, his name is dmitri... yeah, no), then when trying to endear himself to don maroni (trying to claim italian heritage, he calls himself paolo), and finally, in 1x4, when introducing himself to barbara (”i’m peter. peter... humboldt.”).

so.

of these, and i’m separating the last one into two parts, i pretty much have the least to say about dmitri. while oswald has some time off screen to think about the other names, the confrontation with the mook forces him to come up with that one on the spot, so imo it’s the least likely to have heavy significance; likely he just chose it because it’s a very slavic name to fit the very slavic accent he’s not fooling anyone with. if i were really pressed about it, i might point out that dmitri is derived from demeter, the greek goddess of the harvest (among other things). demeter is responsible for the growth of the crops, but also presides over the cycle of life and death and the sacred law; one of her titles is “law-bringer,” referring to the idea that idea that law and order formed in agricultural society. the interaction oswald has here with this mook is notable in that--before he kills the guy--oswald insists that “gotham needs him! [he is] its future!” oswald aligning himself, consciously or not, with being responsible for gotham’s fertility, its health, and most of all its structure, would not be out of character for him, and is in fact directly supported by his interactions with the man to whom he gives the fake name.

but that’s all pretty tenuous.

next up, paolo! this one, i had fun with. see, i had a somewhat classical education. i read the inferno. that being so, my immediate connection with the name paolo (and, indeed, the only major literary connection i could find) was to the story of paolo malatesta and francesca da rimini. they’re condemned to the second circle of hell for their lust, yadda yadda, whatever. i’m mostly just concerned with the man himself; one source (from the owlcation page on paolo and francesca) describes him as “a romantic sort, a man not really interested in the world around him.” (emphasis mine.) which is fun, because guess what oswald’s doing at the time that he gives this name? he’s almost just been hired as a dishwasher at bamonte’s, maroni’s favorite restaurant. given the job, he’s warned that he hears nothing, sees nothing, says nothing. in all likelihood, oswald gives maroni this name mainly for its obvious italian origin, attempting (successfully) to endear himself to the obviously italian don by claiming “his mother’s” italian ancestry. however, there are a lot of italian names he could have chosen from. i don’t see why his choice of this one couldn’t also be a subtle way of reaffirming that he’s following the rules set out for him. paolo malatesta’s wikipedia page (and like, wikipedia as a source, i know, i know, but) takes this a little further, recounting that paolo is traditionally portrayed as a man “not very inclined to aspirations for power.” very NOT oswald, obviously. at the same time, very appropriate for his meek act as he slowly endears himself to maroni. even spicier, though, is this: “recent investigations, however, reveal [paolo] as a young man very attentive to politics and immersed in the political intrigue of the time.” so, could this mean that his fake name is not only a reaffirmation of his lowly position, but also a very, very veiled hint that he’s more than he seems? it would feel appropriate, in this case, that the traditional interpretation of malatesta is the one that oswald is banking on to facilitate his squirm into maroni’s inner circle, while the contemporary reading is the one he actually identifies with. that’s oswald all over; in touch with the old ways, yet in a class all his own.

a little less dramatically, paolo, like the anglicized “paul,” has roots meaning “small” or “humble.” so, in more ways than one, the name can be seen as oswald bending at the knee to maroni’s apparent superiority... and beginning to bide his time.

now, peter humboldt.

you know, i really never did like this name? i’ve watched 1x4 at least six or seven times, and it always kind of made me go :/ when he offered it, because it’s just kind of... ugly, i guess. i have to say though (while i still think it’s ugly on sound alone), i’m fully obsessed with it now.

like i said, i’m breaking this down into two parts. my analysis of the “peter” half, as with my analysis of “dmitri,” is a little more tenuous, just because it’s a fairly plain, common name. however, the low hanging fruit is the apostle peter, and never let it be said that i don’t take the low hanging fruit. so... peter. on the surface, oswald doesn’t have a whole lot in common with the story of peter the apostle, and that kind of threw a wrench in my analysis for a while. being inclined to fit that particular square block into this particular round hole, though, i got there. don’t worry, y’all. my penchant for bullshit knows no bounds.

first thing’s first, it bears note that “peter” was an alias of sorts for the apostle, too, since his given name was simon/simeon. he was jesus’s first disciple, and went from that to eventually heading up the church after the crucifixion and all following, becoming the “first pope.” such an ascension is a little reminiscent of oswald’s from umbrella boy to the head of the gotham underworld, i guess. and that’s cool. But We Can Go Deeper. i think it’s always kind of useful to keep in mind who the alias is for at the time; who oswald is trying to fool. in this case, the recipient of his bullshit is barbara kean, with an audience of an already in-the-know jim gordon. before his ascension, and furthermore, before either of them joined with christ, peter was already affiliated with a few other disciples: andrew (his brother), john, and james. (neither here nor there, but st. james was the first of the disciples to be martyred. jim...) peter and james--and the others, but i’m talking about peter and james--worked together; they were fishermen. in light of his audience, i think that it’s not entirely inconceivable that oswald is affirming his pre-ascent connection to james gordon (who he does exclusively refer to as james for the duration of the scene, rather than the ‘jim’ we get a lot more later on). not to mention, you know, the whole nautical theme. it’s not a particularly inspired link, but it does kind of work for him. additionally, while i still admit this is not the strongest meta i’ve ever written, oz choosing this name for these reasons would pair nicely with a running theme later in the season (that gets more or less dropped off by season 2, disappointingly), wherein oswald is repeatedly implied to have at least a tenuous christian background and some possible lingering expression of faith... think about the season finale, when falcone tells him he’ll burn in hell and oswald is momentarily taken aback, admitting, “i do worry about that.”

(while i’m on this particular bullshit, one other thing that peter is known for is denying jesus three times after his death, but ultimately being forgiven and heading jesus’s church anyway. because i am a lover of Increasingly Tenuous Connections, i kind of see this as foreshadowing of the twist in 1x7. oswald’s protests to fish in the pilot that he would never betray her are reminiscent of peter’s insistence that even if every other disciple renounced jesus, he would not. naturally, he did betray her, and implicitly falcone through her. he continues renouncing his falcone ties, first by secretly joining maroni and then by openly joining maroni and threatening to spark a gang war... but at the end of it all, we learn that his “loyalties” (such as they are) never actually changed--he’s still falcone’s man. just. idk. idk. i’m Thinking About It.)

aaaaand, finally, humboldt.

so :)

this is the part that i honestly wrote this whole thing to explore. because the thing is? i looooooove that he chose the name humboldt, now that i feel like i know why he chose it. i still think it sounds like a stupid name, but the subtext? the implications? UGH!

right off the bat, my first impression was just that it sounds like the word “humble,” which goes back to the thing with paolo. neat enough. but, this name isn’t given to don maroni--it’s given to barbara. and remember, that’s important. so, what does humboldt mean, other than that? well, the one person with that name famous enough to bear mentioning is apparently alexander von humboldt. i’m certain that the name is, one way or another, a reference to him... and i’ll get to why in a second. he was a prussian (so, eastern european--check) polymath, as well as a naturalist, romantic philosopher, explorer, etc, and raised mainly by a single mother to boot. not all of his hats are directly related to oswald’s interests and skillsets, i’ll grant you, but the fact that he was a naturalist does have direct implications for why i think oswald choosing this name was a deliberate reference to this person by the writers of the show, because see, the thing is, there were quite a few animals named after him... including Spheniscus humboldti.

the humboldt penguin.

given that it’s gotham, i do have to acknowledge the possibility (probability) that that’s as deep as it goes. the writers were looking for a clever way to slip another penguin reference in there (they’re not. exactly. subtle, especially in season one, with the way that the characters are going to turn out), they looked up breeds of penguins, found this one, that’s it. but, on the other hand, there are other breeds of penguins that they could have chosen, and they chose this one. whether it was deliberate or only an accident, the decision was made, and i am running with it.

because, like, another fun thing about humboldt: he was gay.

(side note 2: you know tfw you’re on someone’s wikipedia page and there’s a ton of information about them and their life and their contributions to science but you’re like outta my way i ONLY want to know this man’s sexuality? ah, the personal life tab. where would we be without you.)

well, it’s one of those situations where you have to decide if you’re going to try to ascribe modern sexuality labels to historical figures, and at the end of the day, i won’t really get into it. however, though there is some scholarly discourse that cites him as a largely asexual figure (and while i’m definitely not getting into it and do not intend this as an attack on the asexual community in any way, i have to say an obviously gay man being desexualized to make him more palatable feels... familiar), the facts seem undeniable that he experienced same-sex attraction, whether or not you want to define this as exclusive. it is speculated that he had notable affairs with or at least vehement attraction toward wilhelm gabriel wegener, reinhardt von haeften, françois arago, and possibly his valet seifret, among others. maybe gotham writers didn’t intend for this little throwaway alias to be read as an announcement of oswald’s sexuality (although, even if “humboldt” wasn’t, the exchange he has with barbara--“i never get to meet any of jim’s friends, because he doesn’t tell me anything” “men.” “don’t i know!”--sure was... something), but as i am not a coward, i am perfectly content to read it as one anyway. and don’t forget what i said--this is the alias he gives to barbara. barbara, about whom he knows a possibly suspicious amount, given that she’s almost irrelevant to his political schemes. barbara, whose apartment he went to for jim gordon. barbara, who is, perhaps, his perceived romantic rival.

look, it’s probably just a name and a penguin joke. but what’s the point of metatextual analysis if you can’t be like “he showed up and told barb his name was peter humboldt because he wanted to affirm that his origins are tied to saint jim’s and let it be known that the two of them are in competition for jim’s attention all in the most dramatic way possible and while smugly congratulating himself on being so clever and subtle”?? this isn’t really a threat--in contrast to how creepy he is with women he is threatening, namely fish and liza, oswald is downright courteous to barbara--so much as it is an indulgent expression of petty jealousy. i think he wants jim but perhaps doesn’t even realize the extent or in which way yet; he just wants barbara to know, on some level, that she’s sharing, and jim to know (because jim is just as much an audience to his performance here, and he knows that the alias is fake, might be driven to consider, with that detective brain of his, why he chose what he chose...), on some level, that they’re tied.

oof. ok. that was a lot, but one last thing. since i’m already indulging in gratuitous oswald parallels with humboldt anyway, i might as well point out this line from a letter he wrote to reinhardt von haeften, after von haeften’s engagement to a woman: “Even if you must refuse me, treat me coldly with disdain, I should still want to be with you... the love I have for you is not just friendship or brotherly love, it is veneration.”

i’m on my bullshit, but... you can hear it in his voice, right?

#gotham #oswald cobblepot #meta #text post #.....#gobblepot #look. look. the fact that dissecting gotham like this is inherently futile vs. I Want It To Be That Deep Dot Jpeg #i was writing my notes on 1x3 and 1x4 of gotham last night #and on a lark #a laugh #i went down a rabbit hole of 'hey i wonder if that name was supposed to mean anything'#TURNS OUT!!!!!#i could have done this in a 'in this essay i will' format but that would rob me of the opportunity to actually go ham #which is obviously unacceptable. given the circumstances.

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pxppinmolly-archived · 4 years ago

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——— BASICS!

NAME: Danielle / Dani !

PRONOUNS: She/Her

ZODIAC SIGN: Sagittarius

TAKEN OR SINGLE: been single since the day I was born baby

——— THREE FACTS!

HUGE HORROR NERD. I’m a big sucker for horror films, have a growing collection of movies and memorabilia, a horror themed ita bag and even did a whole speech on the evolution of the horror genre for a speech class one semester.

I cosplay!! I go to cons every year and do my thing -- have a handful of cons stories if yall ever wanna hear’em LMAO

Sue me but I like collecting funko pops. I have like.. between 30-4- atm, and my goal w them is to get at least ONE of every harley quinn and also as many horror themed funkos I can

——— EXPERIENCE!

PLATFORMS USED: First started rping on the old days of Gaia, deadass would RP in the Towns or VJ room back when it was a thing and dabbled in forums. I crack rp’d on Facebook, rp’d with V on Skype freshman year of high school and here we are now. On tumblr and discord!

——— MUSE PREFERENCE!

GENDER: I play EXCLUSIVELY females. I don’t I’ll ever really pick up a male muse, tbh. I have a big issue with being seen as masculine in any sort of way and also don’t feel comfy playing a male character ack ack

LEAST FAVOURITE FACE(S): Hi what the fuck does this mean.

MULTI OR SINGLE: When I first came on Tumblr my Alice Angel blog was a single ship for awhile. Honestly it was nice and fun buuuuut... Mun didn’t come on much and also like... They were still multi ship themselves and it wasn’t exclusive with me so it was a lil... Yknow? But also tbh? I love all kind of dynamics w diff characters, so. In theory? Single ship is cool but I doubt I could practice is again KSKS

FLUFF / ANGST / SMUT

FLUFF : I ! LOVE MY FLUFF!! Please I love fluff threads a lot -- especially my hurt/comfort stuff man. I’m an emo and sensitive lil thing har har har.

ANGST : I say it everytime. Im not a fan of Angst BUT! That’s always a lie. I like angst and all that and my GOD does it happen a lot both cus of me and others but!! i like my angst as I said with. Some comfort usually cus im WEAK ok

SMUT : Mmmm. Hard to exactly say!! I like smut in theory? I’ve always been like. Nervous about it and very selective who I write it with. I fear I’m not exactly great at it considering I havent wrote such things in... Years. And also being an ace girl and no experience in any departments ever Im like. Nyooming. KSKSKS. But I do like to write it on the occassion with muns and muses I know well! I think there’s a lot of potential with smut and so much that could happen and do and forces at play and yadda yadda yadda.

PLOT / MEMES: Please send me memes. I’m terrible at plotting and memes are gr8 ice breaks in my lil lovely opinion. I’m not against plotting, ofc, but Im usually like. Ack. With ideas sometimes unless something rlly hits me. Wah wah!

———–

Tagged by: I saw like a handful of other people do this so I’m taking it nyeh heh heh.

Tagging: this meme can only be seen and tagged by other gay people so

#OOC #MUN #Spin The Bottle (Tagged Memes)#wacka wacka wacka

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agallimaufryofoddments · 5 years ago

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DMDP Chapter 42 Thoughts

Not hot-off-the-grill thoughts, since I’m posting this on Jan 21 and YP published their translation on Jan 17. Four-day-old leftover thoughts, delivered anyway because I for some reason decided to make DMDP chapter reactions a thing and keep up with it I must.

Well, and because I still want to. Also because an anonymous person left a ‘comment’ on the DMDP Wiki chapter 42 article/summary I wrote saying how it made their heart race in excitement to see what’ll happen next; seeing their enthusiasm for the chapter and how much they were/are looking forward to Ch.43 was, how do you say...nnnn, nice? Motivating? Anyway.

I’m 80% sure that when I glanced at page 1 I went--”Wait, what about Eightport’s second client?” ...so having my question answered on page 2 was vaguely satisfying.

That she managed to rope her boss/the chief editor into being the second client guinea pig is also vaguely funny. On the one hand the Chief wonders “about the kind of person who’d use her own boss as a guinea pig” (reasonable)--but in the end he’s the kind of boss who’d agree to it, it seems, so maybe it wasn’t unreasonable for Eightport to ask.

He’s also the sort of editor/journalist who recognizes a story too good and/or important to entirely ignore, so I’m guessing he agreed to come partly to get a read on “Polka” for himself; get a gauge on the story potential and to what extent Eightport’s hunches are rooted in reality.

I was also going to suggest he partially came out of concern for her, but nah--his request here for her to hand the case over to the more veteran reporter “Himura Atari” is a direct reaction to the abnormal police situation at a building the police have a history with. He might have thought there was potential to be concerned; in any case, he was right.

I wonder if we’ll end up meeting this Himura Atari or if he’ll just remain an occasionally referenced name.

I don’t particularly like or dislike Eightport, but I’m bothered that I don’t know her age. She’s clearly not incompetent and this is her third year at the company, but I assume she’s under thirty (let’s say 21 or 25)--she’s very much the “ambitious/headstrong young visionary” reporter archetype that is so often set up for a nasty fall...

I just deleted a whole paragraph clarifying/expanding on my opinion on Eightport so far because it threatened to be two paragraphs and I don’t have the time today to rewrite two paragraphs for half an hour.

“If anything else comes up, I’ll give you first dibs on exclusive news.” / Um, ‘anything else’/’news’ related to the fortunetelling case, or just a random juicy story in general?

“I’ll make him the center of this case if I have to!” / Snrk. Sounds legit.

“I’ll make him the center of this case if I have to!” --Narita, on any given character at any given time.

something something everyone’s the central figure in Naritaland, main protagonist yadda ha

“Great Detective Sharkolumbo” / The sad thing is Sayo could be making that up on the spot or actually referencing some fictional media in DMDP and I have to assume it’s the latter.

All this time I thought she simply sent Xiaoyu out to buy shark merch and groceries. Maybe there were hints re: the gemstones out there, but if I noticed them I forgot them in the interim between chapters. I’m not bothered, since the jewels were unexpected in a good way.

“Hey look, things that may help to progress the plot!” ha

Also good as a character moment for Sayo. I have no doubt her room and board are a non-issue--like, Rozan wouldn’t send her there w/o ensuring money for food and maybe the extra strain on utilities, and she’s not an official tenant (right?) so it’s not as if she’s paying Clarissa rent. If she is, I assume raw gemstones aren’t uhh, acceptable legal tender (I mean, I suppose Clarissa would know someone--probably the Grocer--who could turn those gemstones into cash for her, but c’mon).

Anyway hey! Proaction! Contribution to the plot! She was never really an active obstacle to the plot since she pretty quickly learns of and accepts the fake Polka, and I wouldn’t call her ‘pure sharkomic relief’ or ‘deadweight’ given her serious conversation with Misaki--what she’s always had is the potential to be a useful ally of Corpse God, given her wealth and Shinoyama status, and this is the first time she actively uses her resources on his behalf.

I hope the CG’s plans for the gemstones do come to pass (i.e. that her actions weren’t for nothing), and I hope this isn’t the last we see of her taking the initiative/taking action for a while.

This time around she used her wealth on his behalf...so maybe next time it’ll be her voice/power as a Shinoyama that lends “Polka” critical support?

In a way that might already be indirectly coming to pass, since Xiaoyu now knows Sayo knows “Polka” is an impostor. If Rozan’s vouching for the fake Polka wasn’t enough on its own to thoroughly sway Xiaoyu, given how much Xiaoyu venerates him (ah, except that might be precisely why Xiaoyu wasn’t immediately singing a new tune), maybe Sayo vouching for CG as well will be important.

Narita while I’m glad you’ve let us know the Grocer is keeping tabs on the police situation and now knows about the gemstone situation--uhh how many more updates on the Grocer’s own information updates will it take before it becomes relevant? I suppose someone will come along to request the Grocer’s services eventually--though it might be neat to see the Grocer reach out to someone first.

Oh lordy lou, Xiaoyu knows about the corpse in the basement passage.

Ey, Urai made it back to Youtoukorou in one piece. He seems scared enough of potentially, uh, no longer remaining in one piece that I wonder if he’ll try begging Clarissa to let him stay in the bar--maybe in whatever that shadowy room from a few chapters ago was? Might think it’s safer to stay in a place regularly inhabited by contract killers then go home on his own.

On the other hand I assume the police are keeping an eye on Youtoukorou...wait, but Urai doesn’t yet have a reason to be afraid of the police, I think.

anyways Nishida’s decapitated corpse huddling next to Urai on the floor in the same shivering pose is oddly sweet and possibly one of my favorite panels of the chapter.

Takumi bolting at the sight of Arase, godspeed. Good to know the building has a back entrance or something one can slip out from; I mean, it would be weird for a building not to have a back entrance, but...never mind.

I’m not a bad cook at 23, but I envy Xiaoyu’s cooking skills at 19. I also seem to remember that he retrieved a single portable burner/hob from his bag the morning after he and Sayo arrived to cook an egg...and the kitchen area as seen in the one panel in this chapter doesn’t look very equipped (at least from that angle)...so did he somehow accomplish all of that with just a burner, some steamer baskets, and either a pot or wok or both or...

It might take longer to cook with a single burner but since steamer baskets are usually stackable he might at minimum have been able to steam both batches of dumplings at once in a wok while----while-- why am I spending so much time on this.

Takumi fleeing was the right call, given that Arase is definitely looking around for him... oh right, Arase has extra motive to do so now that he’s made the Higuro-Takumi connection. Wasn’t he looking forward to running into Takumi that morning? I have a memory.

I...really like that Iwanome crouched down to look “Polka” in the eyes.

“the policeman shouldn’t know about that symbol” | HE STRAIGHT UP LEAPED TO HIS FEET AND YANKED YOU FORWARD BY YOUR ROBE TO ASK WHAT YOU KNEW ABOUT IT

“Oh yes that was a totally normal and understandable reaction from someone who knows nothing about the symbol. Under no circumstances could that have implied he knew anything whatsoever.”

...

Oh hold up, I forgot for a hot minute there that Corpse God never actually saw what Hosorogi drew for Iwanome.

Seriously. Go back and check Chapters 24-25. In Ch24 the Corpse God admits it was too dark for him to make out what Hosorogi had drawn (I assume due to the veil?), and in Ch25 he asks Hosorogi what he drew but Hosorogi demands a 1 million yen fee (before saying it has to do with one of his ‘lingering attachments’)--CG never pressed him on that.

In other words please ignore the capslock yelling above.

If the CG had at any point cause to think Iwanome knew remotely anything about the symbol he obviously would’ve done something about it already, jeebus. And if he’d actually witnessed Hosorogi drawing the symbol for Iwanome then that would’ve been the point anyhow, i.e. the point where he’d go what the fuck how do YOU know about this and the manga would have proceeded very differently.

Amazing how basic one’s logical reasoning is when one has more than two brain cells. Oof.

"Polka. Polka! What I wrote down for this detective before... The truth is--!”

I think I described this moment in the wiki article as something along the lines of, “Hosorogi realizes too late the consequences of his own secrecy and attempts to alert...” and I stand by it, though I admit the “realizes too late the consequences” bit might be borderline presumption.

I think it’s a reasonable interpretation of Hosorogi’s uh........body....language...here. He remembers the moment when Iwanome grabbed CG by the next, goes “...Ah?!” and I assume this is him remembering CG doesn’t know why Iwanome reacted that way, that he never told CG what was on the paper.

Him attempting to tell CG the truth first is him anticipating the consequences here--of CG missing information that Iwanome is acting on, probably anticipating that CG will later be none too happy with him for keeping his own knowledge secret, etc.

Oh God it’s 5 PM, don’t tell me I’ve spent the last two hours writing this post.

“You’re in touch with Hosorogi somehow, aren’t you? If possible...can you let me see him?” OH NO Iwanome is far too earnest here for me to handle oh nooo

I’ve been a bit ambivalent about Iwanome clinging to hope that Hosorogi just has to be alive--one the one hand I’ve wanted to go, “Iwanome, really--you’re in denial; aren’t you supposed to be level-headed--my guy, really...” but on the other it’s a bittersweet and human thing to have faith in someone and simultaneous denial, and at the very least seeing how much Iwanome believed/believes in Hosorogi and clearly respected him/thought highly of of him has been touching.

In fact it may not even be that Iwanome necessarily spent these last five years 100% convinced Hosorogi was alive--possibly he may have spent them in that mix of resignation, hollowness, denial buried under reluctant acceptance that Hosorogi is gone in some capacity... albeit with that denial very shallowly buried. He’s so eager to think Hosorogi’s alive; he jumps at the chance to say Hosorogi is still alive; not to downplay the symbol/message’s significance to him (i.e. how they’re something ‘only’ he and Hosorogi should know about), I agree they’re not not easily explained, but still. He clings to that hope so readily, so tenaciously.

The earnestness of his top panel on page 19 though...hhhh oh the pain. (It’s earnest, right? Or is it just me? Am I reading his expression/plea wrong?) I immediately recalled the language used during the fortunetelling session--where CG describes the loss of Hosorogi as a heavy scar/injury/wound that has left Iwanome one-winged--and...I guess the earnestness I’m seeing in him now makes that strong metaphor all the more visceral.

Hosorogi’s death isn’t something he’s healed from, he has never gotten over it, in losing Hosorogi he has (I extrapolate) lost a mentor figure/guiding hand/model of strength to emulate and rely on/be supported by or support in turn. He continues to follow in Hosorogi’s footsteps five years on despite having become a leader (of Comps-3) in his own right.

I could probably go on (and likely will if/when Narita gives us more insight into young!Iwanome and alive!Hosorogi) but I have spent far, far too much time writing these last several paragraphs and this post in general.

“We’ve come too far...for lies to work on me now” | Oof this is a great line to leave the conversation at, would make for a nice emotional thrill/beat in an anime episode, I love it and hate it, please deliver on the rest of the conversation ASAP.

I am excited for a potential turning point in Iwanome and CG’s relationship so far/new chapter in their understanding of each other probably even more than I want to see the fallout of Hosorogi keeping secrets. Big question is whether we’re actually going to get a Hosorogi-Iwanome reunion or if Hosorogi will be against them communicating. For reasons.

Is that

Is that a shark head on Takumi’s shelf in the background

I didn’t notice it the first time I read the chapter but now I will not unsee it

WHY

Maybe it’s merch/memorabilia...? If so I wait for it to come up in conversatoin with Sayo.

Ah, here we go. Higuro--and Momoya--have made contact with Takumi. Nicenicenice. The question ultimately wasn’t if they’d meet (though I asked that question too), but when. Glad it was sooner than later.

What is Momoya holding? His sword? Doesn’t look too much like one...

The questions now are: what do Higuro and Momoya want with Takumi--and what Takumi will do in response.

Specifically whether Takumi will promise to do whatever they want/confess any info they need through his tears (just like he did with Arase, when he sold his and Higuro’s fellow SotS members out) --or if he’ll stand his ground and say he won’t betray his friends

Of course Takumi might very understandably go from standing his ground to “tearfully promising to do what Higuro asks” should Momoya threaten his life sufficiently; hmm, what if he stands his ground even then only for Momoya to then threaten Xiaoyu or his other ‘friends’?

Higuro might see that as some amount of evolution as a person, i.e. going from someone who’ll cave to threats to save his own life to someone who caves to threats to protect his friends’ lives. Ah, the power of connections.

Mm, you’d think Higuro would consider the Shinoyamas to be pretty powerful connections. Would he think there’s a risk of pissing off the Shinoyamas should he ‘do’ something to Takumi? But even then, his own connection to Takumi is too good not to use.

Anyway should Takumi end up promising to do whatever after a few threats courtesy of Momoya, it would still leave the possibility of him ultimately siding with the CG.

That’s the thing, isn’t it: Takumi’s ultimate connection isn’t to Polka Shinoyama, it’s to the Corpse God. A very powerful connection that Higuro doesn’t know about--yet--but one that might make Takumi think twice before cowtowing again so easily. He has no such allies in Sons of the Styx (I assume); now he does. Higuro thinks twice about messing with people who have powerful connections--Takumi has one backing him up this time.

If I remember right Higuro believes the most powerful connection is one based in love (I think?), though, so CG’s connection to Takumi wouldn’t be worth that much if CG didn’t care for Takumi ‘that much’. (He cares enough to consider Takumi a friend, so that’s not a problem, but Higuro might not assume that. Takumi wasn’t the type of person up until now to make love-based connections; why would he start now?)

I could probably continue this line of thought but it’s 6 PM and I shouldn’t.

I should actually just stop here, but wait what if someone in CG’s crew calls Takumi’s cell phone about what’s going on w/Arase and Iwanome? (or what if Arase somehow calls him, oof). Taking that call while Higuro and Momoya are watching might be good for some suspense.

I do actually have to stop myself here otherwise I’m toast (I’m already toast); at this point I’m just spitballing any number of ‘things that could possibly happen’ and anyone can do that. It’s 6:05 PM. I still want to finish that paper by tonig...eh, midnight...or at least a completed draft of it.

#Dead Mount Death Play #DMDP #DMDP Update #DMDP Spoilers #I hate myself; it shouldn't take three hours to write a post like this.#I have to stop rewriting sentences over and over; I spent the last few hours at the library last night #attempting to restructure/rewrite the first two or so paragraphs of the essay.#I kept rewriting the first couple sentences of the redux second paragraph over and over and over.#I am probably going to go now do exactly that. kill me.

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miraculous-ladybum · 5 years ago

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Miraculous Fic Idea

I’m not sure if I’ll ever actually write this, but I dreamt it up one night and feverishly wrote it down at 3 AM. In case I never get around to it, here’s the rough outline I wrote. (I’m sorry for the terrible writing but again it was 3 AM and ya girl was going FAST)

· Ladybug gets sick of chat’s flirting, tells him he can’t possibly think it would actually work

“but my lady I am so suave”

“ok then pick a random girl and pretend she’s me for a week and tell me how that goes”

“what but my lady”

“is there a girl in front of you in class?”

“no”

“behind you?

She single

She cool

Her

What

Do it and then tell me how successful you are I promise she’s gonna be just as annoyed

· Ladybug think she smart bc she offloads chat onto someone else

· Adrien starts flirting with marinette and she is v confused

Marinette.exe has stopped responding

· Chat is like wah she hates me I love you this is pointless

“u gotta act like SHE IS ME buddy ok you gotta get over this”

Chat realizes she was trying to get rid of him

§ Dumb bb takes a fucking hint for once

§ “FINE THEN OK’

· Actually acts like it’s her

Marinette starts responding like ladybug when she’s off guard, Adrien v encouraged

Wow this is actually getting easier also she puns too #soulmate

· He asks her to a picnic, it’s awks at first then they have a fuckin blast

Actin like ladybug and chat noir

Possible chasing antics

· Cue AKUMA

· Ladybug asks how it’s going he says well but he feels wrong abt it when he still has feelings for ladybug

Lb is like listen bub it looks like you got smth good with her and it’s not gonna happen with me ok

What no

Ya know that guy I’ve been in love with for like forever well recently it’s actually been going really well with him and I think we have a chance so like.. you need to move on ( >:) DRAMATIC IRONYYY)

· Cue Sad Adrien

· Decides to Actually Try To Move On with mari

Asks her on a dinner date :O

· Awks at first then he’s like UGH I’m sorry I can’t I just can’t get over this girl

Mari sad

But like she said it’s never gonna happen and I need to move on and I really like you but it doesn’t feel fair while I’m in love with her

Mari Grows A Pair and is like well frankly My Dear this girl is not worth it she is an IDIOT for turning down an amazing guy like you yadda yadda yadda she blind and her heart is stone cold and you deserve a girl that’s gonna return the love you give out #becauseyoureworthit and I think we have a great thing going (she starts to ramble and almost says bc I really like you but then she realizes what she’s saying and is like oh shit)

Adrien is just like :O

She’s like WOW LOOK AT MY WRIST I HAVE A PANINI IN THE OVEN I MUST LEAVE and starts to leave but then Adrien is like what were you going to say

And she is all torn but then swallows it bc GODDAMMIT THIS WAS GOING SO WELL UGH and is like I really like you

Then he’s like thank you marinette that actually…really helped. You’re right

And she’s like …yeah duh

Then he’s like oh you had to go?

No the panini can wait the oven wasn’t on

And they have dessert

· When he drops her off he’s like thank u for what u said at dinner

And she’s all blush blush

· Then he kiss her on the cheek and with his lips like an inch away from hers he’s like I really like you too

Then he gets in the car

Marinette is frozen then does a whole happy dance

· Cue Adrien starting to get an Actual Crush on mari

Marinette looks amazing today wtf

No she looks normal dude

No way (gushes abt her)

My man you’ve got Marinette Vision

§ Cue whole class being thirsty 4 mari

§ Chloe tries to deny it but then sabrina outs her as thirsty too

· Flirting shenanigans yeehaw

· After class one day on the steps Adrien is abt to get in the car then runs back and movie kisses mari

I’ve been wanting to do that for a while

· Kitty and lb have a <3 2 <3 abt their new boos

· More dating shenanigans

· Lila gets mad and is like mari is cheating on Adrien w/cn

Whole class gets mad

Mari is upset and is like babe I promise

Adrien is like lol that is the wurst lie evah I believe u mari

Nino sees them bein Happy Couple and is like dude u gotta know

Adrien gets Mad

Tells off lila in front of EVERYONE hahaha

· Ok time 4 a reveal I think buckle in

· Ok so Circumstances Happen and they end up in a battle with hawky

· Chat’s ring gets removed somehow and he promptly gets stabbed by the hawks

Emotional Scene w/ lb

ADRIEN NO

“ladybug...take my ring... beat this fucker”

He dies

She gets ring somehow (depends how he lost it rn tbh)

She kiss him one last time

Puts on ring becomes GOD

· Everyone is like :O (mb rena and carapace are there idk yet)

· She MAD

Transformation is she GLOWS FROM EVERY ORIFICE AND FLOATS OFF THE FLOOR MENACINGLY AND HER HAIR IS FLOATING AND IT’S MAD WICKED MAN

Everyone still like :O

· Hawky tries to say something and she is like SILENCE (also her voice is all boomy and needs to be in a Scary Font)

· Dumb boi hawk still tries to fight and she just wipes her hand and both she and him disappear

Go into a meadow v peaceful as just themselves

They have a heart to heart

Gabe knows he been beat and gives his miraculous

They reappear and she does the most fuckin snatched miraculous ladybug of all time

Like Ultra Power

EVERYTHING in paris is fixed

Not just akuma stuff EVERYTHING

§ People in the hospital are cured

§ Adrien revived ofc

§ But also

· Peacock miraculous is fixed (maybe they got it on the way to gabey haven’t decided yet could be an interesting future plotline but idk yet)

· And So Is Emilie

Downstairs, deep under Agreste mansion, someone else awakens…

· Gabey goes to Jail

Nobody checks on emilie bc he didn’t tell mari she was in a Shrine she thought she was like Dead ya know

· Everyone is happy

· Butterfly miraculous is returned

· But then like a week later they discover that master fu has been brutally murdered

His apartment is ransacked and the butterfly miraculous is GONE

Idk yet How the others survived but they do

§ We’ll figure something

· Suddenly, an akuma!!!

· There’s a new Hawkmoth in town

· Emilie.

· Ya then like a whole second part maybe with post reveal relationship or just a cliffhanger and then there can be a sequel or just ya know a segue into the adult canon

#miraculous ladybug #ml fic idea #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #lemme know if i should actually write this #i wrote like half a chapter of it #i can post that later if y'all want it #lemme know

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mewmewchann · 3 years ago

Text

(warning - this contains spoilers for up to DFTH chapter 4 so don’t read if you aren’t caught up)

“Oh?” Slade put a hand to his chin with a smile. “Whatever could you be referring to?”

“You know damn well what I’m referring to.” Kokoro hissed, her glare narrowing.

“Tsk,” Slade pouted, crossing one leg over the other. “You know full well you brought this upon yourself.”

“Bullshit. You and...Whoever else is up there in this ‘writers room’ made this happen!”

“Does that matter, though? You still chose to do what you did. Your actions were your own.”

“I did NOT!” Kokoro slammed both hands on the desk. “You heard what Tsumugi said, this was all scripted! I had no free will!”

...

Slade put back the nameplate she’d knocked out of place.

“Figures she wouldn’t tell you about that part,” He sighed. “Of course she’s still embarrassed about that...”

Kokoro was confused. “...What?”

Slade smirked, laughing to himself.

“About what!?” She demanded.

“The script ended at chapter 3.”

Kokoro froze. “...Huh...?”

“And that,” Slade pointed with a grin. “Is the money shot.”

“W-wait, what do you mean it ended at chapter 3!? It still went on for-”

“Three more chapters after that, yes yes I know.” He spun his chair around, making a dismissive gesture with his hand. “That was completely out of her control.”

“What!? How!?”

“The script - at least, how she originally wrote it,” Slade explained. “Was meant to end at the chapter 3 trial. All of you were meant to vote for our beloved protagonist and get executed for making the wrong vote, and then Ayano would commit suicide. But because of Jasper turning the trial on its head, the killing game went further than Tsumugi intended.”

...

Kokoro took a horrified step back. “...W-wait...” Her eyes widened as the realisation dawned on her. “...You’re saying...You’re saying that-”

Slade spun the chair back around with a smile. “Everything that happened after the third trial was unscripted.”

Kokoro was shellshocked into silence.

“Why do you think Monokuma didn’t interfere, hm?” Slade continued, a mocking superiority entering his voice. “When Jasper lied about the existence of a traitor. Why do you think he didn’t stop him?”

“B-but...He-”

“Above all else, why do you think Rantaro didn’t kiss you back?”

She stopped.

“Yes that usually is the moment the hero would kiss the love interest, and the sappy music would start playing, yadda yadda yadda. You were on the money in that regard.” He went on. “But we’d gone past that point. He had no interest in you. You should’ve known that, you know?”

“But he was meant to!” Kokoro sputtered. “I...! He just had to, he-”

“But he didn’t.” Slade’s expression darkened. “He outgrew his role as the protagonist.” He prodded a finger into her chest. “But you didn’t outgrow your role as his sidekick. You really should have, at this point.”

Kokoro was silent. Her mouth pressed into a line and she turned her eyes to the floor.

“Well if we’re done here,” Slade pulled his chair back. “Are you going to stop berating me? For forcing you to follow orders that were actually tasks you were completing of your own accord?”

...

Slade smiled. “Good girl.” He leaned back in his chair, putting his feet up on the desk as his eyes gleamed menacingly. “Welcome to Danganronpa 53.”

"I hate what you have turned me into."

#writing prompt #danganronpa oc #danganronpa 52 #fanganronpa #fangan oc #Mew using a writing prompt as an excuse for a DFTH character study? It's more likely than you think #As for the context uh #Consider this like a bad ending #I guess #Slade #Kokoro Hikari #Despair From the Heart

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minijenn · 7 years ago

Text

Universe Falls Chapter 51

SURPRISE BITCHES!!!! AHAHAHAHAHAH GUESS WHO WROTE AN ENTIRE ORIGINAL CHAPTER OF UNIVERSE FALLS PRETTY MUCH ENTIRELY UNDER WRAPS! YEAH THAT”S RIGHT FUCKIN ME! AND WOOO BOY IS THIS ONE A FUCKING DOOZY TOO! ARC 6 OPENS WITH ANGST AHAHAHAHAH But yeah this one is like... completely original and it kinda is mostly a bunch of character interaction, going downward from the last chapter and whatnot,, yadda yadda whatever whatever. Either way, I hope you enjoy it because its time for some BOMBSHELLS AHAHAHAH WOO BABY!

Previous: http://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/172209617169/universe-falls-chapter-50-part-2

Chapter 51: Lost and Found

WLICWC YPDVS NDR CSDRGP D POE WMMP WS RPPIMMHV WSDX TTPI FZUKOE ZLAE RRCP ZES WRWT SDW NZZ GOXH XO WLKHE EYT EKI QFHWTTRR RPPEIYV: HIO USSP GS WSDX WLV VIRKX?

A teardrop splashed onto the page, staining it as the hand writing the letter stilled. A tug of grief pulled at the writer’s heart, grief that prompted even more tears as they continued their letter.

“I should have told them.”

Their script was flowing and elegant, but their message was sad and solemn, though hard to make out through their pressing tears. Still, it was a message that needed to be relayed all the same, even if they weren’t sure their intended recipient would ever receive them.

“If I had just let them know about the danger we were facing from the beginning, then maybe none of this would have happened…”

They sighed, pausing to shake their head remorsefully. It seemed as though regrets of the past never really died, no matter how much time and healing passed.

“But I did what I had to… for them… for us…”

The very act of writing the letter itself was becoming almost too painful to bear, given the nature of it, but they had put this off long enough. If they didn’t finish this now, then chances are, they never would.

“If you were still here, then I know you’d understand…”

The letter was nearing its end now, but even so, it still felt incredibly incomplete. After all, there was so very much to say that a simple handwritten page couldn’t ever hope to contain it all.

“But you’re gone… and its all my fault… just like everything else…”

Another tear slipped down their cheek, just one more do add to the almost endless flow that had begun even before they had ever sat down to write this letter. A letter that could only ever serve as a forever insufficient, eternally empty way of reckoning with the wrongs of the past.

“And I’m so, so sorry… for everything I’ve done…”

Steven awoke with a gasp, his eyes wide as soon as they opened as his mind reeled from whatever it was he had just dreamt about. By all accounts, what he had just seen made no sense to him whatsoever, but what made even less sense was the fact that his cheeks were damp with tears. Apparently, the very same tears he seemed to have shed in his unexplainable, context-free dream.

Yet that wasn’t all. As the young Gem slowly pulled himself up out of bed and wiped his face dry, he couldn’t help but feel weighed down by a wave of immense guilt, guilt that he couldn’t really pin the source down for. After all, the only things he had fallen asleep with last night had been worry and uncertainty given everything that had happened the previous day and all that had been uncovered, but for once, he had been relatively free of any tangible guilt. So then why did he feel like he had done something so horribly, unforgivably wrong?

For a moment, Steven simply sat on the edge of his bed, trying to sort these mysterious, almost random feelings out, quite alarmed by just how heavy they seemed to be. And yet, his focus was soon diverted away from his own confusion emotions as he overheard quiet voices coming from the front porch. Steven’s brow furrowed as he recognized these voices to be those of the Gems, and given just how shaken they had all been the last time he saw them the previous night, he couldn’t help but tiptoe down from the loft and press against the wall near the door to listen to what they were saying.

“There’s no denying that he was close to Rose,” Garnet said, leaning against the railing as Pearl hung close to her, though Amethyst was oddly somewhat distanced from them. “The journals alone are proof of that.”

Steven quickly realized that the Gems had to be talking about Ford based on this mention of the journals, and even though he felt somewhat bad for eavesdropping on them, he couldn’t resist. Especially given the apparent and now forgotten camaraderie between them that the young Gem still wanted to know more about.

“W-well even if they do, that doesn’t mean we can just take everything he told us yesterday at face value,” Pearl huffed crossly. “For all we know, he could have been fabricating any given part of all that just to… to save face or something.��

“As far as I can tell, he’d have no reason to lie,” Garnet shook her head, her manner seemingly calm, though there was still some uncertainty beneath it. “And the evidence does add up: our gems on the portal, what happened in the bunker and with the Society… Everything points to the fact that there was indeed a time that we worked together with Stanford. We just don’t remember it.”

“And that’s exactly the problem!” the white Gem moaned impatiently. She paused for a moment, anxiety filling her features before she spoke up again, her voice even softer as she clasped her hands together tightly. “G-Garnet? I… I know this is ridiculous to even bring up but… what Stan said yesterday about Rose knowing something regarding our memories… you don’t think-?”

“H-hey! Ste-man!” Amethyst suddenly spoke up with a tightly forced grin upon noticing Steven standing on the other side of the screen door. The young Gem flinched, having wanted to remain discreet, but still, he emerged from the house nonetheless somewhat sheepishly as Amethyst continued greeting him. “H-how ya feeling? You somehow manage to get some shut-eye after, uh… everything that went down yesterday?”

“Y-yes,” Pearl chimed in, offering her young ward a placating smile. “We know that a lot happened yesterday, what with the agents, the portal and everything else, s-so if you feel like you need to talk through any of it, t-then we’re right here to listen.”

Steven frowned as he took in the warm, but ultimately fake smiles each of his guardians were offering, smiles that were merely serving as masks for much deeper, underlying dread and apprehension. “Uh… I think I’m ok…” Steven said evenly enough, though this wasn’t entirely the truth. For much like the Gems, he too was quite concerned by the accusation that his mother had some knowledge of what happened to their missing memories, an accusation that, by all accounts, he didn’t want to believe just as much as they didn’t. Still, he didn’t bring this up just yet, at least not so directly. “But um… i-is there anything you guys wanna talk about?”

The Gems exchanged a surprised glance at this, but even so, Amethyst played it off. “Uh… like what?”

“Like…” Steven bit his lip, unsure of where he really wanted to go. After all, there was so much to talk about in light of what happened in the past 24 hours alone that it felt like he’d never truly be able to cover it all. Still, he figured he’d start with at least one of his pressing curiosities. “Like, are you guys… mad at Mr. Ford for… well, for what happened back when Mom was still around?”

“Steven, we don’t remember what happened back then,” Pearl sighed, glancing away. “And even if we did, we’d be hard pressed to forgive Stanford based on everything he told us about that disastrous machine of his…”

“Well, to me it seems like he just made a mistake…” Steven said somewhat sympathetically. “And he made it sound like it was a mistake that he was pretty sorry about and that he did just about everything he could to try and fix.”

While Amethyst and Pearl didn’t share this sentiment, Garnet couldn’t help but smile somewhat at this as she placed a gentle hand on top of her young ward’s head. “Maybe you’re right, Steven,” she said, catching her teammates off guard somewhat. “But there’s only one way we can know for sure: we need to find our lost memories, once and for all. There can be no more putting this off. As of right now, it’s the only way we can finally learn what really happened for ourselves and why.”

“But how are we supposed to do that?” Amethyst asked hesitantly. “We still got like, no clues about what happened to them. Well, unless you wanna believe what Stan said,” the purple Gem scoffed harshly upon mentioning the conman, her ire towards him over his betrayal still quite apparently. “Which I sure as heck don’t.”

“Neither do I,” Pearl asserted firmly. “There’s no way Rose had any involvement in what happened to our memories. More likely than not, that was just another one of Stan’s countless lies and after everything we’ve seen and heard yesterday, I’d say he’s just about the least credible source of information out there!”

“Well… what about Mr. Ford?” Steven suggested thoughtfully. “I mean, he seems like he’s really smart; he did write the journals and he built that portal, so… maybe he might be able to help us figure this out.”

The Gems were hesitant about this idea, to say the least, their expressions alone conveying that none of them were really too keen on asking the author for help in this matter. Still, given the fact that they had essentially no leads, none of them could deny that the assistance of a proven genius would be rather welcome in solving this long ongoing mystery. Or at least getting somewhere closer to the truth than they had ever been before. Which was why, when Pearl and Amethyst looked to her for the final verdict on this plan, Garnet simply shrugged, showing that she was every bit as clueless as they were for a change. “It’s worth a try.”

A great deal could change over the course of 30 years; this was something that Ford was well aware of, largely since it was a matter of common logic. But what exactly had changed during his absence was what the author hadn’t been able to anticipate, and as he reacclimated himself to his native dimension, he was quick to find that some changes were much more alarming than others. For example, the discovery that he now had a great niece and nephew was fitting, welcome even given that he had never really had the chance to be much of an uncle prior to the portal incident. The revelation that Rose was no longer around and the Gems bore no recollection of him, however, was much more shocking and much more disheartening, to the point that he was still largely trying to process it all himself. But at the moment, the change that Ford found the most appalling and offending was what Stan had apparently done to his home over the past 30 years, both cosmetically and functionally.

What was once his proud and stately research base had been transformed into a tacky, homely tourist trap dubbed the “Mystery Shack”, of all things. Ford scoffed to himself as he stood outside of it, sketching the changes to its exterior out in his third journal as a form of venting his frustrations. It was bad enough that Stan had embezzled his name, but to turn his property, his home into a tawdry, fabricated sideshow for mindless vacationers to pass through and sink their money into was perhaps the most disrespectful slight his brother had made against him yet. Which was why Ford had absolutely no qualms about sending Stan the harshest glare he could muster upon noticing the conman emerge from the shack a moment later.

“Mornin’, Sixer,” Stan greeted casually enough, even though he was still aware he was essentially walking on eggshells with his brother now. Which, of course, was far from what he had wanted after finally saving him after 30 years, but even so he had no choice to accept the tense state of things between them. For now, at least. “What are you up to? Makin’ up for lost time by writing more ‘nerd notes’ in those ‘nerd books’ of yours?”

Ford’s glower deepened somewhat upon hearing this teasing, teasing that he would have laughingly accepted from Stan back when they were kids, but now only saw with contempt and bitterness. Much like how he viewed his brother in general at the moment. “Two things,” he began coldly as he shut the journal. “One: my journals are not so-called ‘nerd books’. They’re important, highly detailed chronicles of my research of Gravity Falls, and after wrongfully using their knowledge for the past 30 years now, I’d think you’d have finally come to understand that, Stanley.”

“Yeesh, I almost forgot how annoying you are when you get into one of your little ‘genius’ rants,” Stan rolled his eyes at Ford’s sour scolding. Still, the author paid his callous remark no mind as he continued.

“Two: care to explain the meaning of this?” he nodded to the Mystery Shack, his expression alone conveying that he was far from supportive of it.

“What’s there to explain?” Stan shrugged. “Like I said yesterday, I did what I had to do to keep things up and running here. It gave me a way to keep your bills paid so I could stay here and keep working on your dumb portal. When you think about it, the Mystery Shack pretty much saved both our butts, whether you wanna admit that or not.”

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I didn’t want to be saved?” Ford asked sharply. “That perhaps I was willing and ready to sacrifice my own wellbeing for the sake of protecting the entire universe by wanting the portal to remain deactivated forever?”

“Ugh, you sound just like Rose used to with all that self-righteous garbage,” Stan remarked dryly. “No wonder you two were such good friends; you two are probably the some of the most pretentious know-it-alls the world’s ever seen. Well, you and Pearl.”

Ford’s reaction to this was much harsher than Stan had been expecting as he took a step closer, his expression fierce with genuine fury. “Say what you want about me, but you will not disrespect Rose Quartz like that,” he growled bitterly. “She is—was one of the closest and most trusted friends I’ve ever known, even despite everything that regrettably went wrong between us. In fact, Stanley, I’d even say that she’s done more for me than you ever have.”

It took every ounce of willpower Stan had in him to keep himself from punching his brother square in the face upon hearing this. Because how dare he uphold the honor of the Gem who had stubbornly tried to keep him trapped in another dimension for thirty years as opposed to take the side of his own brother who had risked so much and worked so hard to save him. But even if he didn’t intend to physically harm Ford, that still didn’t stop Stan from lashing out and grabbing his brother by the collar of his sweater and sending him an incredibly harsh glare. “Listen here, Sixer,” he began, his tone chillingly hostile. “You’re kidding yourself if you think that stupid pink broad was some kinda perfect saint, because she was just about the exact opposite of that. She was nothing but a lying, stubborn, selfish bi-”

“Grunkle Stan? Grunkle Ford?” Stan instantly cut himself off upon hearing Mabel’s confused questioning. The brothers starkly turned to see their nibblings both emerging from the shack, Dipper a good bit behind Mabel, though neither of the kids seemed to be in really high spirits as they looked to their uncles questioningly upon seeing how Stan was holding onto Ford rather threateningly. “What’s going on?”

Stan was quick to release Ford after a beat of somewhat awkward silence and both brothers readily scowled away from each other, giving the younger twins a pretty good impression of what was going on, despite their uncles’ attempts at playing it off. “Uh, n-nothing!” Stan remarked with a forced, fake smile. “Me and your Grunkle Ford were just, uh… we were…”

“We were just… catching up,” Ford finished, sending another critical glance Stan’s way before he turned to address his nibblings with a much softer expression. “Anyway… Good morning, children. How are you feeling? Neither of you are suffering from any sort of portal radiation from yesterday, are you?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think so…” Mabel said, innocently shaking her head. “But I am going through a bit of a sugar rush from the baker’s dozen of super chocolatey chunk cupcakes I had for breakfast!”

Ford took pause, looking to his niece with apt concern upon hearing this, though he didn’t get much of a chance to ask Stan about her nutrition habits before Dipper cut in. “Don’t worry, Mabel’s pretty much on a perpetual sugar rush,” he said dismissively, ignoring his sister’s flustered scoff as he perked up while addressing the author. “B-but anyway, Great Uncle Ford, I was just wondering… Did you really take on a Gremloblin on your own? What do you think the secret behind the bottomless pit really is? Have the Gems ever told you any huge secrets about the war or Homeworld? Do you think there are any ghosts out there above a category ten? Did you and the Gems ever try to find a way to fix corrupted Gems? What did you do when-”

“Ah, s-slow down, my boy,” Ford interupted with something of a bemused chuckle at this round of rapid-fire, curious inquiries. “Based on all those questions, it seems as though you really weren’t kidding yesterday when you said you read my journals.”

“Oh, several times over, at least,” Dipper said with clear pride over this fact. “Well… to be honest, the only one I’ve really gotten the chance to read is the third one, but it’s still super informative!”

“Hm…” Ford duly noted, raising an eyebrow as he flipped through the later pages of the journal still in his hands. “So I would be correct in assuming that you were the one who made all these… additions to this one, then?”

Dipper’s excited manner faltered upon noticing that Ford looked less than pleased about the notes he had compiled on his own within journal 3 throughout the summer. “Um, y-yeah, I… sorry…” he muttered, glancing down sheepishly as he realized his unintentional slight against the author. After all, he could have never even considered that when he first began recording his findings on the journal’s empty pages, but now he wished he had never written anything on them at all in light of the disapproval he had apparently garnished from his longtime unknown idol.

Mabel was the first to pick up upon her brother’s newfound fretfulness, but as soon as she placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, Dipper was quick to pull it away with returned bitterness, refusing to so much as even glance over at her. Proof that he was still just as upset with her as he had been last night, something that only served to make Mabel feel even worse about it all.

Stan readily noticed the shared, silent despondency of both his nibblings, and he was quick to blame Ford for it as he sent him a sharp, almost furious glare. The author himself didn’t really notice that though as much as he did his own tactlessness towards his nephew in particular, but before he could make an attempt to apologize for it, the informal family gathering was suddenly interupted.

“Hey, Mr. Pines!” Soos exclaimed with a cheerful grin as both him and Wendy showed up for their shift. “And hey, Mr. Pines!” the handyman greeted again, this time to Ford as he passed him by.

“’Sup, Stan Two?” Wendy nodded to the author sardonically, already well informed of his arrival thanks to Soos’ thorough recounting of the tale. “Nice turtleneck.”

While Ford was rather confused by the pair’s arrival, Stan spoke up with something of a relieved sigh, glad that his employees unknowingly broke through the ongoing tension. “Glad to see you two are actually both on time for a chance,” he remarked, crossing his arms. “I don’t expect any customers today, but as you can tell, the shack is kinda torn up from yesterday’s fiasco, so get to work and make this place look a little less like a sci-fi portal exploded underneath it, ok?”

“You got it, Mr. Pines!” Soos grinned with an eager thumbs up as him and Wendy headed off, though he didn’t hesitate to express his excitement to his coworker in a frenetic whisper. “See? I told you, Wendy! There really are two Stans around here now! Isn’t it great?!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Wendy remarked dryly, pulling her phone out of her pocket and disinterestedly texting away. “Of course, it would’ve been better if you hadn’t kept me up until 3 AM last night telling me about it.”

“Oh yeah…” the handyman frowned briefly, though he hardly let this dim his innocent elation over it all. “Sorry! Next time we have a bunch of huge truthbombs drop on us, I’ll only keep you up till 2 AM to tell you about them!”

“…Gee, thanks, Soos,” Wendy deadpanned, rolling her eyes as the pair went about their respective tasks for the day.

“Stanley,” Ford began as soon as the cashier and the handyman were out of earshot. “Who are those two… young adults?”

“Uh, my employees, poindexter,” Stan said. “You already met Soos yesterday, and the sarcastic one is Wendy. Might as well get used to seeing them around here, just like the Gems. Speaking of which…” The conman let out an aggravated sigh as he nodded ahead to the Gems and Steven as they came down for the temple, their expressions all rather tense and uncertain as they approached the Pines, who returned their gazes just as stiffly.

“Uh, h-hey, you guys,” Steven greeted them with a small, but genuine smile.

“Hi, Steven,” Mabel said just as awkwardly, though her smile faded as she glanced to the rest of her family. Dipper still stood alongside her, but he refused to spare either her or the young Gem another glance, Stan’s expression was still set in a cold scowl away from just about everyone, and Ford was clearly apprehensive and anxious as he gave the Gems only a terse nod of greeting. One that none of them made any sort of effort to return.

“So… um… h-how is everyone after, uh… yesterday…?” Steven asked unsteadily, rather concerned that the Gems hadn’t stepped forward to address Ford concerning their memories yet, like they had previously planned.

“We… could be better…” Mabel noted, rubbing her arm as she looked over to Dipper once more. “R-Right, bro-bro?”

Of course, Dipper didn’t bother giving her any sort of response as he instead turned away from her even more, his arms crossed as he let out a small, almost bitter sigh. Steven and Mabel exchanged a silent, worried glance at this, realizing that he was still clearly upset with them from what happened yesterday. Though exactly why he was still carrying this grudge so heavily and adamantly was beyond either of them.

Even so, a bout of general uneasy silence lingered between both the Pines and the Gems, none of them quite sure of what to say in the aftermath of all that had unfolded, mostly as a result of no one really knowing where they stood with each other now. Things between the kids alone were shaken and soured, but then there was the tenuous, largely forgotten ties between Ford and the Gems, not to mention the distain still very much present between Stan and Ford themselves. Really, it was as though they were all on unstable ground with each other, friendships fractured, relationships ruined, and everything else left in just as many shambles as the shack standing before them currently was.

Still, that didn’t mean there could be no attempt at fixing at least some of it.

“Hey, uh… Amethyst?” Stan spoke up, looking to the purple Gem apprehensively as she finally spared a glare in his direction. “I, uh… um… I was thinkin’ of blowing off some steam after everything that’s happened with a good ol’ Revenge Trip tonight. Are you along for the ride or what?”

“I dunno,” Amethyst muttered, her arms tightly crossed as she scowled away from him. “I think I’m gonna be busy doing just anything but that.”

Everyone was rather taken aback by the fire in the purple Gem’s tone as she said this, especially Stan as he flinched back, as if her harsh words had actually hurt him, which in a way, they did. Fortunately, they didn’t linger in the air for too long before Ford cut in, collectively addressing all of the Gems, though not without clearing his throat somewhat awkwardly. “So, h-how are you three doing? Have you happened to recall any of your memories of our… time together?”

“A-actually…” Pearl began, averting the author’s gaze as she spoke tightly. “That’s… why we’re here… we… w-well, we were hoping that… we… you-”

“We need your help,” Garnet finally finished where Pearl was unable to out of pride.

“Oh, r-really?” Ford asked, somewhat surprised by this request. “With what?”

“With finding our lost memories,” the Gem leader continued just as evening. “At this point, we’re not sure who else we can go to aid us with this, and so we have no choice but to ask you.”

Ford took pause, both confused and somewhat offended by the Gems’ apparent hesitance to seek his assistance, something that Steven in particular noticed and quickly made an attempt to clarify. “Uh, I-I think what they meant is that we think you could really help us figure all this out, Mr. Ford,” he said with a warm, hopeful smile. “Your journals already proved to us how great you are at solving mysteries, so this one’s bound to be a cinch for you!”

The author finally grinned at this, clearly glad for this vote of confidence as he began to exude the very same confidence himself. “Ah, yes, well in that cause, I’d be more than happy to help in any way I can, just as I said I would yesterday,” Ford said, adjusting his glasses as he offered the Gems a genuinely friendly smile, one that none of them returned, though their expressions did soften somewhat. “Now, I suppose the best place to start would likely be… Oh! I know! The memory gun! Back when Fiddleford built that infernal contraption, I had always doubted that it would be able to work on Gems, but seems as though it could be the very thing responsible for stripping you three of your memories!”

“Uh… yeah, we already figured that,” Amethyst huffed, rolling her eyes.

“And that wretched Society of the Blind Eye didn’t have our memories in their archives,” Pearl added with a frown. “So where exactly are they? And who would dare to even take them in the first place? And why?”

“…Those are all very good questions…” Ford noted thoughtfully. “We have the answer as to how, but everything else is still up in the air… Which means that we’ll need to look into a variety of possible scenarios that could have resulted in the loss of your memories. Its bound to be a lengthy process, given how many sheer possibilities there are, so we’ll have to be patient and hope for the best in analyzing each of them.”

“Ugh, we’re tired of waiting!” Amethyst groaned hotly. “We’ve been waiting to figure this junk out all summer! We want our memories back now!”

“That’s… understandable…” the author remarked, trying his best to remain tactful amidst the Gems’ mutually thin patience. “But relatively unlikely. I’m sorry to say this, but to me it seems as though finding the key to restoring your memories could take quite some time, if we can even find it at all.”

Despite their shared disappointment upon hearing this sum of probability, the Gems didn’t get to voice it as a familiar horn blared out, followed by the arrival of a familiar van. Greg sped into the shack’s lot, slamming on the breaks as he stuck his head out the window rather frantically. “Steven! Thank goodness you’re ok!” he cried, jumping out of the vehicle to rush over to embrace his son. “I wanted to come check on you as soon as I saw that huge explosion of light on this end of town, but the road here was blocked off by this huge tree and they only just cleared it out this morning! Heck, it took so long to get over here that I even managed to pick Connie up along the way.”

“Steven! Dipper! Mabel!” Connie called as she hopped out of the van herself and hurried over to her friends. “Are you guys alright? I haven’t been able to get in touch with any of you since the other day! What’s been going on!?”

“I think the better question is what hasn’t been going on…” Dipper remarked somewhat dryly.

“Connie! You’ll never believe what happened!” Steven exclaimed. “We just-”

“Wait! I wanna tell her!” Mabel excitedly cut in. “So it all started when Grunkle Stan got arrested by these government agents-”

“And they tried to take me and the Gems away too-” Steven interjected before Mabel carried on.

“So we tried to prove his innocence only to find out that he-”

“That he had all these fake IDs and this huge machine under the shack-”

“Which turned out to be this crazy powerful portal that his long-lost twin brother came out of-”

“And he wrote the journals and he used to work with my mom and the Gems years ago but-”

“But they kinda hate each other now and everything’s all awkward and weird and confusing-”

“But we’re trying to sort it all out by finding the Gems’ lost memories by thinking about all the ways they could have lost them!”

“Pretty intense, huh?” Mabel finished this rapid-fire tale, one that left Connie aptly confused as she tried and failed to catch up with it all.

“Uh… what?”

“Long story short,” Dipper cut in much more calmly. “Is that Grunkle Stan’s been hiding an interdimensional portal under the shack all summer that he opened up again to bring his brother back here.”

“Ohh…” Connie mused in understanding. “That makes much more sense! Well… kind of. The whole ‘interdimensional portal’ thing is something you guys will definitely have to fill me in on later.”

“Would you believe that’s hardly even the craziest part of it all?” Dipper asked with a small, but growing smile of excitement as he dropped down to a whisper. “The craziest and the best part is that Stan’s brother, our Great Uncle Ford, just so happens to be the author of the journals himself!”

“Wait, what!?” Connie gasped, completely stunned upon hearing this and knowing full well just how baffling this mystery had been to them all for the entire summer. “You guys finally met the author?! And he’s your uncle?! No way!”

“Way!” Mabel chimed in brightly. “And you gotta meet him too, Connie! Come on!” Before Connie could really even respond to this, Mabel and Steven were pulling her over to where Ford was still in the midst of conversing with the Gems, largely not paying much mind to the two new arrivals as the continued discussing matters of memory. Or at least they were until Mabel blithely interupted. “Grunkle Ford, this is our friend, Connie!”

“I-it’s an honor to meet you, sir!” Connie said with an amazed smile as she shook the author’s hand. “Your work is so fascinating! Honestly, if it wasn’t for your journal then we probably wouldn’t have made it out of half of what we’ve been through this summer alive!”

“Oh, well… that’s… good to hear…” Ford noted, unsure of what to really make of that, though he offered Connie a small smile all the same. “What’s really fascinating (and rather concerning) though is just how many children seemed to have read through my research over the course of this summer alone…”

“Uh, we probably shouldn’t tell him that Gideon had his second journal then, should we?” Steven whispered somewhat awkwardly.

“Wait a second,” Greg interjected, having overheard the conversation. “I-I can’t believe it… You’re him!” The former rock star’s jaw was dropped as he approached the author, clearly in a state of disbelief that nobody else really understood. “You’re Stanford!”

“Um… yes?” Ford raised a confused eyebrow, unsure of what the former rock star’s apparent amazement was all about.

“Wow! This… this is incredible! I never thought I’d ever get the chance to actually meet you myself!” Greg exclaimed with an incredulous chuckle. “After all, Rose said you were basically gone for good but then again, Mr. Pines has been working on that portal to try and bring you back all these years, so I guess it’d only make sense that he’d finally get it up and running eventually.”

“Yeah, Greg,” Stan deadpanned, not noticing the Gems’ growing expressions of absolute shock beside him over what Greg was divulging. “Told ya I’d figure it out.”

“Heh, well, I’m sorry for ever doubting you, I guess,” the former rock star grinned, flusteredly rubbing the back of his neck before he turned back to Ford. “But man, if only Rose were here! She’d be so happy to see you again! Well… happy and maybe a little upset about the whole portal thing but still, she’d-”

“Excuse me,” Ford interupted rather stiffly. “But… who are you exactly?”

“Oh, right, sorry!” Greg laughed again as he shook the author’s hand warmly. “I’m Greg Universe; Steven’s dad.”

Ford was silent for a moment upon hearing this as he looked between the former rock star and the young Gem, his brow furrowing and his expression largely not changing as he put the pieces together. “So you and Rose were… I see…”

“Y-yeah, she… used to talk a lot about you,” Greg remarked, still grinning slightly. “In fact, she even-”

“Greg!” Pearl’s very sharp exclamation interupted the conversation, prompting the young rock star to glance over at the Gems. All three of whom looked simultaneously dumbfounded and outraged all at once. “You knew about the portal?!”

“I, uh… oh!” Greg gasped, his eyes wide as he looked between the angry trio in newfound fear. “D-did I say portal? I-I… I meant, um… I didn’t know anything about any… w-well, you see, I-”

“Forget it, Greg,” Stan remarked, rolling his eyes at his former employee’s hectic attempt to explain. “The jig is up. They already know about everything.”

“No, we don’t!” Pearl scoffed, completely appalled. “We don’t know a thing about what’s happened to our missing memories and we certainly don’t know why Greg, of all people would know more about all this than we do!”

“D-Dad?” Steven spoke up apprehensively. “You don’t… y-you wouldn’t know anything about what happened to the Gems’ memories about Mr. Ford and the portal… would you?”

Greg froze up at this, this question completely catching him off guard, especially as he looked to the Gems starkly. All three of them were silently demanding answers, answers that he had no idea how to give, even if he could. So instead, he went with the easier alternative. “N-no,” he shook his head, his voice shaky as he tried to sound as convincing as possible. “R-Rose… Rose never told me anything about that. I’m sorry…”

“What do ya mean Rose never told you about that?!” Amethyst spat harshly. “Seems like she sure had a heck of a time telling you everything else!”

“Everything she didn’t bother telling us…” Garnet added, clearly hosting a glare underneath her shades.

“W-wha—no!” Pearl exclaimed hotly. “You two can’t be serious! Rose couldn’t have known what happened to our memories! It makes no sense!”

“What doesn’t make any sense is that she would have told Greg about all of this and not us,” Garnet remarked, adjusting her shades as she tried to remain as calm and as rational as possible.

“M-maybe she just never got the chance to?” Steven offered anxiously. “L-like… maybe your memories were erased right after I was born.”

“But that wouldn’t make add up,” Dipper interested, shaking his head. “Grunkle Stan said something about their memories being erased almost 22 years ago.”

“Well, I mean, as far as I know,” Stan said with a small shrug, unwitting eliciting ire from the Gems with such a remark.

“And how exactly would you know that?” Pearl asked, glaring coldly at the conman. “Unless you happened to have some hand in all this yourself, Stan!”

“Ugh, seriously, with this whole accusation thing again?” Stan scoffed. “I already told you, I don’t know anything about what happened! And even if I did, why would I keep something like that hidden from you three for so long?”

“Oh gee, I dunno, Stan,” Amethyst growled sharply. “Maybe for the same reason you kept that dumb machine hidden from us! Or those fake IDs! Or every other stupid secret you’ve been sitting on for years now without even thinking about being honest for a change!”

“It seems as though you would have a pretty good motive,” Garnet nodded. “With us not knowing about the portal, that likely made it easier for you to work on it without us trying to stop you like Rose would have wanted.”

“A-and for all we know you probably recruited Greg back when he used to work here to help you keep all this under wraps,” Pearl huffed angrily, shooting a fierce glance over at the former rock star as well. “Both of you were in on this for all these years! You must have thought that you weren’t going to get caught, but you are, so you might as well just admit it, Stan, and tell us where our memories are already!”

“I ain’t admitting nothing because I didn’t do anything!” Stan protested adamantly. “Even if I did keep this whole portal thing under wraps from just about everyone else, I never went after your memories to keep you three from getting in my way! That’d be just stupid!”

“Well, then it sounds like it would be exactly your kind of plan, Stan,” Pearl remarked crossly.

“Oh I’ll show ya what my kinda plan is!” the conman exclaimed, beyond infuriated by these groundless allegations to the point that things quickly devolved into an all-out shouting match on both sides. With both Stan and the Gems as outright outraged as they were, they held nothing back as they argued brutally, all of them acting off emotions rather than any real logic as they held their grounds against each other. The others were all rather surprised to see things heat up so aggressively, especially the kids as they stood on the sidelines, watching in dismay as everything seemed to explode in absolute fury all at once.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Gems so mad before…” Connie muttered, her eyes wide in alarm.

“Me either…” Mabel agreed stiffly. “But I don’t get it. Why do they think Stan got rid of their memories? He’d never, ever do something like that!”

“Yeah, just like he wouldn’t run an incredibly dangerous portal underneath the Mystery Shack, right?” Dipper asked, his tone quite dour as he crossed his arms and largely dropped out of the conversation.

“Uh, w-well, either way, we’re not gonna figure out what really happened to the Gems’ memories with everyone arguing like this,” Steven said earnestly. “Come on, you guys, we have to do something!”

Mabel and Connie were quick to follow after the young Gem, intent on trying to make peace between the conman and the Gems. Dipper, on the other hand, hung back somewhat, his hands shoved into his vest pockets as he instead glanced over at Ford, opting to discreetly listen in on the conversation that was just striking between him and Greg.

“Hey, uh… M-Mr. Pines?” the former rock star began rather awkwardly.

“Please, call me Stanford.”

“Oh, um, ok, Mr. Stanford,” Greg continued, still being as respectful as he could. “I just, uh… W-well I know the Gems aren’t really in the mood to hear this right now, but I didn’t… I wasn’t-”

“You didn’t have anything to do with what happened to the Gems’ memories?” Ford finished presumptuously, glancing the former rock star up and down. “Well, I figured that much, considering how you and Rose were apparently… ahem, together. At the same time, I also don’t think Stanley was responsible for this either. My brother may be a lying, unscrupulous cheapskate, but despite his many faults, it seems highly unlikely that he’d do something as lowbrow as outright take a person’s—or Gem’s, for that matter—memories . Then again, I suppose there really is no way to know for sure until we figure this mess out once and for all.”

“Um, yeah, about that…” Greg took in a somewhat unsteady breath. “I… Well, Rose, she-” The former rock star cut himself off, dropping his voice down to a serious whisper. “Look, she missed you… a lot. Heck, almost every time she brought you up, she’d end up blaming herself for what happened to you.”

“But it wasn’t her fault,” Ford said, his tone softening quite a bit upon hearing this.

“Well, of course it wasn’t,” Greg agreed. “But you know Rose; she always felt so much for everyone, especially her friends.”

“That she did…” the author remarked with a fond smile in the pink Gem’s memory. “And our friendship was one I always valued very highly. I only wish… I wish I could have had the chance to speak to her one last time, even if it was only for the sake of saying a proper farewell… I still can’t believe she’s really gone…”

“A lot of the time, neither can I…” the former rock star glanced down sadly. “But, she always wanted one last chance to talk to you too, which was why… right before she had Steven she sat down and wrote everything she never got the chance to say to you out. She said she didn’t know if you’d ever make it back here, but if you ever did, then she wanted you to have it. So she gave it to me to hold onto, just in case, and now that you actually are back, well, you might as well have it.”

Ford was rather surprised to hear that Rose had apparently left him some sort of note, but all the same, he followed Greg over to his van, where the former rock star dug around the back of the vehicle for a bit before finally finding what he was looking for. “Aha! Here it is,” he grinned as he pulled a light pink envelope out and presented it to Ford. “And here you go. To be honest, nobody’s ever seen what it says before. I just… didn’t think it’d be right to read something that she only meant for you, you know?”

The author was silent at first, his eyes wide as he held the envelope, apparently the last message Rose Quartz herself had left for him, as though it was the most precious and fragile thing in the entire world. And given just how much the fact that it existed at all meant to him, it very well could have been. “I… T-thank you… Greg,” Ford said, absolutely genuine in this sentiment.

“You’re welcome,” the former rock star said warmly, nodding his affirmation before stepping away to give the author some privacy as he opened the envelope up. Ford wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, even as he initially glanced over the lengthy page Rose had written for him, but even so, it was as though he could hear her lovely voice saying every word to him as he read it silently to himself.

Dear Stanford,

If you’re reading this letter, then that means that you’ve finally made it home, back to Earth and back to Gravity Falls, where you truly belong. A part of me, a part that dismisses all of the danger this world would be put in if such a thing ever did happen, has spent the past 16 years hoping this day would come, and that I’d be there for it, to welcome you back with open arms. But… I know I’ll never get that chance… I’ve made a choice… I want to do something that no Gem has ever done before, to create something that this world has never seen before… But the only way I can do that is at the expense of myself… A sacrifice not too dissimilar to one you were willing to make the last time we met.

But even so, if this letter has found its way to you, then I’m no longer around, or at least I’m not around in the way you were used to. Because in a sense, I’ll forever be a part of the child I’m about to have, a child I hope you’ll hold nothing against, even despite everything that went wrong between us.

Speaking of which… I feel as though I owe you another apology for, well, everything really. Not a day goes by that I don’t regret how hard and fast our friendship fell apart… Even before you fell into that portal, there had been so many times when I wanted to go down the hill and pour my heart out to you, but I never ended up working up the nerve. Funny, isn’t it? How I had all the courage in the world to stand against my former home and fight for this planet until the bitter end, but I didn’t have enough to walk a few feet and simply tell you “I’m sorry”?

You need to know that if there had been another way to bring you back, even if it was just for a second, I would have taken it. But the portal was far too risky; I knew that. That’s why I did what you asked and kept the third journal hidden safe and sound, even from your brother (You never told me you had a brother, by the way). I tried everything I could to right our wrongs and fix our mistakes…

And in the process, I only ended up causing so many more.

Its much too… risky to divulge everything here, but… something happened several years ago. Something that none of us were prepared for, though I should have been prepared. It was a threat I knew, a threat we both knew… a threat swept through our lives and nearly took everything away in the process. And I wasn’t able to do anything to stop it.

I Can only myself to blame for what happEned that awful night. I should hAve told them. If I had just Let them know about the danger we were faCing from thE beginning, then maybe none of this would have haPpened… But I did what I had to… for them… for us… If you were still hEre, then I know you’d undeRstand… But you’re gone… and iTs all my fault… just like everything else… And I’m so, so Sorry… for everything I’ve done…

I need, need you to know that, Stanford. I need Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl to know that. I need my child to know that. I need everyone I’ve wronged because of this to know that. I never wanted to hurt any of you, I promise that. I just wanted to save you, my friends, this planet, everything I truly care about. But it seems I’ve only managed to hurt them all instead. Which means I suppose the key to healing them lies not with me, but with whoever comes next… And I have the upmost confidence that they’ll succeed where I have failed.

There are so many more things I want to say to you, Stanford, but I know there would never be enough time to write it all out. I had thought to offer you one final apology but that just didn’t seem right, as sorry as I truly am. So instead of lingering on the shadows permeating our past, I’ll leave you with a reminder of the light that once shined through it instead.

Do you remember the first time we met? Amethyst had pointed out your six fingers to the rest of us, and at the time, I had thought that was the most spectacular thing about you. Little did I know that I’d quickly find out that there was so much more to be amazed when it came to you, Stanford. Your intelligence, your determination, your passion, all these things and more made me realize that you were by far one of the most special humans I’ve ever had the privilege of getting to meet, and believe me, I’ve met plenty. There were times when I saw it: you underestimating your own brilliance and abilities, but those were things I never once doubted. Which is why, despite how impossible things might seem right now, I encourage you to hold onto the words you wrote at the start of the journal you entrusted to me years ago, words that I hope will inspire you and comfort you, even when I can’t:

“Ad astra per aspera”: To the stars through difficulties.

Yours truly,

Rose Quartz

Ford had never been one to get too emotional, but he was unable to stem the silent flow of tears as he finished reading Rose’s final words to him. Up until that point, the author hadn’t put too much thought into the pink Gem’s absence; of course, he knew that she wasn’t around anymore in place of Steven existing, but some small, irrational, yet persistent part of him still wanted to believe that it wasn’t true. That Rose would make her long-awaited appearance and that everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be. And yet, upon reading her last message intended for him himself, the truth of it all finally sunk in once and for all: Rose Quartz really was gone, most likely never to return. Even after 30 seemingly endless years of longing and remorse, he’d never get to speak to her, laugh with her, apologize to her, to simply see her ever again. It was a crushing reality, to the point that it was almost unbearable, to know that he’d be forever separated from one of his closest and most cherished friends, left with only a page of ultimately unfeeling letters to remember her by.

Yet at the same time, three of his other most invaluable friends were still there, still present and still alive and well. The only problem was they held no recollection of the bond they used to share, the camaraderie they used to uphold. A deep sense of loneliness filled Ford as this wave of realization washed over him yet again, a kind of loneliness that he hadn’t even ever felt traversing the empty voids of the multiverse. The author truly wanted to help restore the Gems’ memories to them, to the point of near desperation almost, but if he was perfectly honest with himself, even he didn’t know where to start with such an arduous task. By all accounts, the chances of things ever returning to even a shadow of how they used to be seemed incredibly slim, to the point that Ford was beginning to lose hope that such a thing was even a possibility at all.

Despite the still-ongoing argument between Stan and the Gems, Ford paid none of them any mind as he looked down to Rose’s letter again, its ending catching his attention in particular. “Which is why, despite how impossible things might seem right now, I encourage you to hold onto the words you wrote at the start of the journal you entrusted to me years ago, words that I hope will inspire you and comfort you, even when I can’t: “Ad astra per aspera”: To the stars through difficulties.”

“To the stars through difficulties…” Ford muttered to himself, taking in a steadying breath. It was a Latin phrase he had always been very fond of, one he had heard during his college years and kept close to his heart throughout his studies, both academically and in Gravity Falls. He had always seen it as a call to greatness, an affirmation of aspiration, no matter how daunting circumstances might seem. But now, the author began to realize that perhaps it held another meaning as well; perhaps it wasn’t just a message of upwards inspiration. Perhaps it was also just what Rose had said: a message of hope, of comfort, a promise that even though the road ahead seemed dark and uncertain, the stars of something better could still be reached regardless if one only worked hard and persevered enough to get to them. And while this was only a mere small spark of hope, it was one Ford decided to hold onto nonetheless, as the final piece of encouragement Rose had to offer for him. Encouragement that could perhaps at last lead them towards the answers they were all looking for.

Ford couldn’t profess to understanding everything concerning what Rose had spoken of in her letter, but several parts of it came across as somewhat bizarre to the author, to the point of being downright cryptic almost. Ford had never known Rose to be so indirect; the pink Gem, with her relative lack of understanding when it came to human subtlety, had always been very literal and forward in her conversations with him. Yet the vagueness in her letter threw the author off, especially when she sparsely described whatever apparently disastrous event had transpired quite some time ago. Certainly there must have been a reason that Rose hadn’t just written it all out if it was so significant and horrific; because instead of transcribing it all, the pink Gem had left only clues, breadcrumbs really to something that already seemed to lead to something so much more.

“I’ve only managed to hurt them all instead. Which means I suppose the key to healing them lies not with me, but with whoever comes next… And I have the upmost confidence that they’ll succeed where I have failed.”

“Whoever comes next…” Ford read once again, initially confused by what this meant until he happened to finally glance up from the letter and over to the still-brawling group just a few feet away. Or more specifically, towards Rose’s son, Steven.

The author was somewhat hesitant, knowing that he was really just working off mere conjecture alone as he approached the young Gem, Rose’s letter still in hand. In truth, Ford was still rather confused about exactly how the pink Gem had managed to reproduce at all, much less with a human, but his curiosity about Steven’s no-doubt bizarre hybrid biology would have to wait. After all, a far more pressing question needed answers now.

“Excuse me, um… Steven, was it?” Ford addressed the young Gem, placing a hand on his shoulder to pull his attention away from the ongoing fight between Stan and the Gems. Despite the tension behind them, Steven offered the author a friendly smile and a nod of patient confirmation, prompting him to go on, even as the other kids took notice of this almost random interaction. “Rose—I mean, your mother left this letter behind for me before she-” Ford cut himself off tightly; just because he had accepted the reality that Rose was gone didn’t make it any easier for him to admit it out loud. “A-anyway, the nature of this note implies something that I’m rather unclear of, something that she made it sound like only you can figure out.”

As Ford handed the letter off to Steven for him to see it, the quarrel between Stan and the Gems gradually fizzled out as they glanced over to the exchange between the author and the young Gem. An exchange that just about every single one of them disapproved of on some level, especially Stan. “Ford, what did I say about-” the conman’s sour callout was interupted by his brother, who put a silent hand up before patiently turning his attention back to Steven. The young Gem himself was focused on his mother’s letter, his eyes wide as he skimmed over it and tried to make sense of its more mysterious parts, though he did glance back up at Ford as he slowly knelt down to his level.

“Steven, this-” Ford stopped short, his brow furrowing, almost as if he wasn’t entirely sure how to put this, though he continued on a moment later anyway. “I should be honest… I have reason to believe that this letter might hold our first real, tangible clues about what’s happened to the Crystal Gems’ memories.”

Upon hearing this, Pearl was more than ready to speak up in heated protest against it, though Garnet quickly stopped her. “Wait,” she urged, keeping her sights trained on the conversation unfolding before them, one that could prove to be very helpful in their most pressing cause.

“Which is why I feel compelled to ask…” Ford continued, hesitantly but earnestly. “Would you be willing to help me decode the clues your mother left behind and uncover the truth behind this mystery once and for all?”

Steven didn’t answer this right away, instead taking a moment to glance back at his guardians somewhat apprehensively. Amethyst’s expression showed a general sense of apathy towards the situation at large, while Pearl intently shook her head in staunch disapproval over such an idea. Garnet, on the other hand, looked to the young Gem expectantly, with a air about her that told him that this was his choice to make alone. And as Steven turned to the author once more and took in his sincere, solemn, almost sad even, he found that it wasn’t that hard of a choice to really make.

“W-well, I’d love to help, Mr. Ford, I really would,” Steven said with a small but fretful smile. “But… I’ve never met my mom before. She stopped, uh… being around when I was born, so I didn’t get the chance to really know what she was like which means I might not be the best person to figure out what she tried to say here…”

“Oh…” Ford’s expression fell in slight disappointment as he rose to stand. “Well, I suppose that… does make things complicated, doesn’t it?”

“Well… even if I don’t know a lot about Mom myself, that still doesn’t mean we haven’t figured anything out about her,” Steven ventured, taking a glance over at Dipper, Mabel, and Connie. “In a way, we’ve… kinda been learning more about her all summer in some… pretty crazy ways.”

“Yeah, that’s right!” Mabel spoke up brightly. “Like the time we found her light canon out here near the shack and used it to blow that Red Eye to smithereens!”

“Wait, you… you kids found the light canon Rose asked me to hide away years ago?” Ford asked, aptly surprised.

“Yeah and we’ve been to hear healing fountain,” Dipper added intently.

“And her hidden armory,” Connie said with a nod.

“Heck, we even found her sword and its scabbard!” Steven’s smile widened with confidence. “And we’ve solved a bunch of other huge mysteries too!”

“And that’s why they call us the Mystery Kids!” Mabel chimed daringly.

“So I think that between the four of us,” Steven went on. “Maybe we can figure out what the deal with Mom’s letter is and if it has anything to do with the Gems’ memories!”

“Oh… well, are you sure you kids are really up for a task this… daunting?” Ford asked, not entirely convinced of their merit.

“Oh believe us, we’ve been up against plenty of daunting odds this summer,” Connie assured with a bit of an ironic laugh.

“Yeah, nothing stumps us as long as we’re working together!” Mabel boldly proclaimed. “Right, you guys?”

“Right,” Steven and Connie affirmed with clear resolve, though Dipper was noticeably silent as he glared away from the rest of the group. The young Gem in particular took notice of this, his heart sinking a bit as he realized that part of his impromptu plan still wasn’t working; the Mystery Kids were still fractured in some way, and as long as they were, then chances were, they wouldn’t be getting anywhere to any degree. Including fixing the past and moving forward into the future, things that all needed to be done sooner rather than later, as far as Steven was concerned.

“Uh, Dipper?” he began with a small, anxious smile. “You’re on bored with us in this too, aren’t you?”

Of course, Dipper didn’t respond to this right away, instead looking to the young Gem with a rather incredulous scowl, one that said everything that words didn’t really need to about how he was feeling about both him and Mabel at the moment. In truth, the pair was surprised that he was carrying this apparent grudge out for so long, neither of them really understanding why the decision they had made in the heat of the moment before that blinding portal still upset him so much. But at the same time, it was something of a small relief when Dipper let out a relenting sigh, even if his manner didn’t lighten up at all as he made it very clear on where he stood in all this. “Fine, whatever,” he complied sourly. “But only until we figure out what happened with the Gems’ memories.”

“Well… i-it’s a start…” Mabel said to Steven as Connie looked between her three friends in confusion, not knowing where this apparent tension between them all really came from.

“Uh… what’s going on with you guys today?” she asked with a concerned frown.

“It’s a… long story…” Steven whispered to her. “We’ll fill you in later.”

“Well,” Garnet spoke up, her hands on her hips and a hint of a coy smile on her face as she looked from her teammates to the kids. “I don’t know about you two, but for me, there’s no one I’d rather trust with a mystery like this than the Mystery Kids themselves.”

“Yes, well then,” Ford said, still somewhat uncertain about this plan of action. “Reasonably the best thing to do first would to be to carefully analyze Rose’s letter for any of its more subtle, possibly leading details. Then depending on whatever we uncover, we can work from there to-”

“I said,” Garnet interjected, crossing her arms. “We were going to trust the kids with this one.”

“Oh …r-right…” the author cleared his throat as he backed off, somewhat flustered as he let the kids investigate the matter on their own.

“Uh, well actually, Mr. Stanford’s plan seemed like it’s a pretty good one,” Connie shrugged, reading Rose’s letter from over Steven’s shoulder.

“Yeah, there does seem to be something off about this letter…” Dipper noted, putting his bitterness aside as he became invested in this mystery himself. “Like this paragraph right here. Some of the letters are just… randomly capitalized for some reason. Why would Rose do that?”

“Well, normally she wouldn’t,” Pearl cut in pointedly. “Rose’s handwriting was impeccable, just like everything else she did.”

“So… that probably means she had a good reason to do that,” Steven mused. “And in only this part of the letter too… weird…”

“Maybe she was just really tired when she wrote that part?” Mabel suggested, though even she didn’t really buy into such a theory too much.

“Or maybe…” Dipper trailed off as a newfound idea came to him, one that he was quick to act on. “Quick, someone write this down!”

Connie was quick to do so, pulling out a piece of paper and a pen as she recorded all of the letters that Dipper read out, each one of them bizarrely and improperly capitalized within Rose’s letter. Everyone else watched this work with baited breath, hoping that perhaps it would lead them to some kind of answer, though by the time they were done, the results they had gotten were… less than conclusive.

“Ok, so it all adds up to… CEALCEPERTS…?” Connie read, raising a baffled eyebrow as she did.

“Uh… I’m pretty sure that’s not a word…” Mabel frowned before quickly perking up. “Though it does kinda sound like seal-experts! Oh! What if Rose wanted to tell everyone that she was secretly a seal expert!?”

A beat of doubtful silence passed at this bizarre limb before Steven went off on another one. “CEALCEPERTS…” he repeated, looking to the letter once more. “Does that mean anything to any of you guys?” he asked both Ford and the Gems collectively.

“No,” Ford said, equally confused by this odd clue.

“Not at all,” Garnet remarked as the other two Gems shook their heads.

“Dad?” Steven ventured, hoping that perhaps the former rock star might have some kind of idea.

“Sorry, kiddo, I got nothing,” Greg shrugged. “What about you, Mr. Pines?”

“Ugh, heck if I know,” Stan rolled his eyes impetuously. “I think I’ve had enough of dealing with Rose and her little ‘mysteries’ for one day. I’m takin’ off. I have a feeling you nerds will be just fine without my ‘help’.”

And with that, the conman turned on his heel and headed for the shack, not bothering to spare another glance back at either the Gems or at Ford as aggravated as he was with them both. “Just as well,” Ford scoffed, rolling his eyes at his brother’s attitude. “Stanley wouldn’t have been much help in this anyway. Or much help in anything else, really.”

“I heard that!” Stan shot back crossly, though he didn’t bother to stick around and protest it any further.

“Hm… what if this CEALCEPERTS thing isn’t really a word…?” Connie theorized, tapping her pen against the page thoughtfully. “What if it’s… something else?”

“Oh yeah!” Dipper exclaimed in realization. “For all we know, it could be a message written in code, or an acronym, or heck, even an anagram!”

“What’s an anagram?” Steven asked curiously.

“It’s when the letters of a word are all mixed up and out of order,” Connie explained, sitting on the ground so she could work properly. “Like, for instance if we took CEALCEPERTS here and tried to turn it into something else using just the letters it has in it.”

“Oh I think I got one!” Mabel said, looking over the bizarre word once more. “Maybe this is supposed to be two words? Like… CASTLE CREEP?”

“Or… LACE SCEPTER?” Dipper tried, though he was quick to denounce the result. “No, that can’t be it…”

“Um… what about CREPE SELECT?” Steven guessed with a shrug.

“Or it could be ELECT RECAP…” Connie mused. “But none of these make any sense… There’s got to be one that-”

“Wait,” Dipper interupted, his eyes wide with realization as he worked through this in a different way. “PACER… PLACER… PLACE… It’s some kind of place… And then what’s left makes… ERECTS or…” he trailed off with a stunned gasp before revealing what he had uncovered. “SECRET… SECRET PLACE! That must be what its supposed to say! Secret place!”

“Secret place?” Amethyst asked dubiously. “Uh… like what?”

“Maybe its talking about some place that was a secret to Mom?” Steven purposed thoughtfully. “Like… oh! I know! Mom’s secret armory!”

“Steven!” Pearl quickly chastised upon mention of the pink Gem’s hidden sanctum. A sanctum that she would much prefer to keep the relative secret that it was.

“Oops… sorry, Pearl…” the young Gem rubbed the back of his neck. “I kinda forgot about the whole secret part of it…”

“Wait… Rose’s armory…?” Ford asked knowingly. “The one buried under the town cemetery? I’ve been there before. Rose took me to see it years ago after I asked her about advanced Gem weaponry. It’s really quite impressive!”

“What?! She took you to—oh… that’s right…” Pearl grumbled, crossing her arms with a scowl as she recalled the journals’ mention of the armory.

“Armory?” Amethyst asked, confused. Confusion that Garnet mirror as well. “What the heck are you guys talking about?”

“Well… why don’t we all just go there together?” Mabel suggested. “After all, it does sorta seem like it’s the place that anagram thingy in Rose’s letter is talking about, so its probably worth checking out, right?”

“Wha—no!” Pearl protested adamantly. “We can’t all just go to Rose’s private sanctum like its some kind of… field trip! It’s already been defiled by far too many intruders already! We should just leave it well enough al-”

“Pearl,” Garnet interjected calmly, placing a hand on her frustrated teammate’s shoulder. “We know this place, whatever it is, was special for both you and Rose. But if there’s anything there that could possibly lead us towards the whereabouts of our memories, then we have to go investigate it.”

“B-but…” the white Gem’s argument weakly fizzled out as she realized Garnet was right. If Rose’s letter indeed pointed towards any leads in particular, then the armory was most likely the exactly that. And as much as she wanted to preserve that special place’s sanctity, she wanted to reclaim her and her teammates’ lost memories even more. “A-alright…” she sighed reluctantly as she began to lead the way towards the cemetery, feeling as though she was breaking something important and cherished between herself and her former liege as she did. “Then… let’s go…”

Since there was no warp pad leading to Rose’s armory, the collective group of the kids, the Gems, and Ford had to walk across town to get there, in a trek that was spent mostly in stiff, awkward silence. Along the way, however, Steven, Mabel, and Dipper all managed to fill Connie in on more of the details of what had happened over the past two days, each of them telling her disconnected accounts that both confused her and allowed her to understand the newfound division among them at the same time. A division that, for all intents and purposes, she found wise not to take a clear stance on, lest that create even more of a rift between them all than there already was.

Things were still in a relative state of silence even as the group ventured into Rose’s armory, the vast, cavernous hold still just as pristine and stately as ever. And while the kids, Pearl, and Ford were largely unphased by its familiar, sparkling interior, Garnet and Amethyst were quite amazed by it, seeing as how they had never once step foot into this secret sanctum that belong to their longtime leader.

“Well, uh… here we are,” Steven announced as he stepped up onto the central platform. “Mom’s armory.”

“Incredible…” Garnet murmured, adjusting her shades amidst looking around the cave.

“Seriously…” Amethyst agreed, her eyes wide and her jaw dropped. “Why didn’t Rose ever tell us about this place? Its not like we would have went and blabbed about it to anyone.”

“M-maybe because it was just… really special to her,” Steven ventured with a bit of a reassuring smile.

“Then why’d she show it to these two?” Amethyst nodded over to Pearl and Ford.

“Well she showed it to me because I was her most trusted confidant!” the white Gem proclaimed with a proud smile that quickly disappeared as she glanced over at the author. “Or at least… I thought I was…”

“Rose brought me here purely for the sake of historical research, I can assure you,” Ford clarified conclusively.

“Oh, right, research…” Pearl scoffed coldly. “Research about her private sanctum that you went and liberally recorded in those infernal journals of yours for the entire world to see, right?!”

“T-that was never my intention!” Ford protested earnestly. “I only wanted to-”

“That’s enough,” Garnet interupted staunchly as she wisely stepped between the pair. “We are not getting into another argument today. We need to focus on finding answers, no matter where and what they might be.”

“Well then, this is as good a place as any to start looking,” Steven said as he tapped his hand down onto the central switch, which instantly lit up the moment he made contact with it. Ford and the Gems all watched in apt amazement as the young Gem cycled through each of the weapon collections the armory had to offer, with Mabel and Connie both helping him out by poking him in the right places to get them to appear. However, none of the armory’s contents seemed to point towards any further clues, from the Armor of the Fallen, to the Axes of Ages, to the Heretic’s Anguish, to even the Quatizine Trio. Even some of the collections the kids themselves had never seen before were ultimately fruitless in anything that told of missing memories or untold secrets, aside from the existence of the armory itself. And by the time they had been through everything, the majority of the group was starting to get quite frustrated by the lack of any real, tangible hints they were still facing.

“Ugh, this is stupid,” Amethyst groaned impatiently as Steven began going through the weapons once more, just to make sure there wasn’t anything they had missed. “Wherever our memories are, its pretty obvious they’re not here, so why are we still wasting our time doing this?”

“Because Rose’s letter pointed towards a secret place,” Garnet reiterated. “And, given the fact that so few actually knew about this armory, I’d say it was exactly that.”

“W-well even if this place was a secret, I don’t see any reason why our memories would have been stored here anyway,” Pearl said pointedly. “Especially since, as we’ve said multiple times, Rose had nothing to do with their erasure!”

“No, of course she wouldn’t have,” Ford agreed with complete sincerity as he looked over the pink Gem’s letter to him again. “However, she did imply that she might have known what happened to them after they were taken. Which means that the leads she’s offered for us are the best we have to go off of for right now.”

“If those leads are even pointing towards our memories,” Pearl countered. “Which, for all we know, they not be at all.”

Based on this bout of speculation, a round of heated debating broke out between Ford and the Gems, one that wasn’t quite an argument, though given how on edge they all were, it could have very well been mistaken for one. The kids watched in unanimous dismay as the adults bickered, knowing that such contention seemed to be a running theme today, one that didn’t show any signs of breaking any time soon.

“Ugh, more fighting…” Mabel sighed with an exasperated frown. “How are we ever gonna figure any of this stuff out if everyone just keeps getting mad and yelling at each other?”

“I guess its because everyone’s just a little tense…” Steven noted sympathetically. “Especially the Gems; they won’t really tell me a lot about it but… its sorta like everything’s just been turned upside down for them and they don’t understand why or how. It can’t be easy for them.”

“Well… do you think finding their memories will really fix that?” Connie asked worriedly.

“I…. don’t know… Maybe?” Steven replied, honestly. “I think what’s bothering them the most right now is the chance that Mom might have actually known about what happened to them, but… that doesn’t make any sense… Why would she keep a secret like that from them for all those years?”

“Well, she did keep this whole armory thing a secret from Amethyst and Garnet for a whole bunch of years, it sounds like,” Mabel pointed out.

“Yeah, but… this is different,” Steven frowned fretfully. “This armory was hers’. But the Gems’ memories belonged to them. If she knew all this time, then why would she keep something that’s theirs hidden from them, especially something this important? Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl were her best friends, so why wouldn’t she trust them with their own memories?”

“Oh gee, I don’t know, Steven,” Dipper spoke up, his tone quite cross and sardonic as he glared at his sister and the young Gem. “Why wouldn’t Rose trust her friends on something really important? Then again, its not like you and Mabel really know anything about putting your trust in the right people, now would you?”

“Uh… what are you talking about, bro-bro?” Mabel asked, exchanging a confused, but still concerned glance with Steven upon hearing this.

“Are you serious?” Dipper asked in harsh disbelief. “You guys still don’t get what the problem is here?”

“W-with the Gems?” Steven guessed, though even as he said it, he knew that wasn’t the focus of this conversation anymore.

“No, with us!” Dipper exclaimed in unbridled frustration. “With what you guys did yesterday! You two saw what the journals said; that portal could have torn the universe apart and killed us all! And you both were in the perfect places to put a stop to it and save us all but you just… didn’t!”

“B-but everything turned out fine!” Mabel protested, not understanding her brother’s perspective on this. “We’re all still ok and now we even have Grunkle Ford around! Aren’t you happy about getting the chance to meet him seeing as how he’s the author you’ve been just about dying to find all summer?!”

“Well, of course I am!” Dipper snapped, his hands in tight fists at his sides. “But that’s not the point! The point is that you guys knew something really bad could have happened, and who did you decide to trust about it in the end? Not me, you know, your twin brother, one of your best friends? No, you decided to trust Stan, a literal conman who we just found out had been lying to us about basically everything all summer!”

“Dipper, we didn’t decide to trust Mr. Pines over you,” Steven clarified gently. “It was just a really intense, heat of the moment sort of thing and we were being pressured on both sides and things just sort of… happened.”

“Things just ‘sort of’ happened?” Dipper repeated with a cold scoff. “Oh what you mean like how you guys ‘sort of happened’ to go have a little ‘chat’ with Peridot even after the Gems and I told you not to? Or, Steven, like how you ‘sort of happened’ to keep me trapped in a fusion with you just so you could feel good!? Or, Mabel, how you ‘sort of happened’ to not help me with the laptop which left me with only a psychotic, sadistic demon to turn to for help!? Or how you guys just ‘sort of happen’ to always do stuff like this! You always have to do what works for you guys, what you guys think is right. Well maybe what’s right for you two isn’t always right for everyone else, did you ever think about that?! Oh, well, of course you didn’t because you two just hate thinking about anything even remotely unpleasant, don’t you!?”

“Whoa, hold on-” Connie attempted to intervene upon seeing how heated things were getting, though Mabel quickly, angrily interupted her.

“Dipper, none of that is fair and you know it!” she exclaimed sharply. “I thought we already settled all this! What happened with the invasion or with Bill is none of our faults and neither is what happened yesterday! Don’t you get it?! If we had shut down that portal yesterday, then Grunkle Stan would have never gotten to see his brother again! He wasn’t trying to destroy the world; he was trying to save his family! I totally would have done the same thing if you were the one trapped in some nightmare dimension like Grunkle Ford was!”

“Would you have, Mabel?” Dipper asked dubiously. “Because if we’re being perfectly honest here, I don’t think you would. After all, I’m always the one who has to end up sacrificing the things I want and need for you, not the other way around! If Bill was right about one thing, it was that. And you pretty much just proved that completely yesterday by not hearing me out about hitting that shutdown switch! The one time I ask you to do something that could have potentially saved the entire world and you don’t even listen to me!”

“Dipper, I—we wanted to listen to you!” Mabel argued back intensely, and by now, Ford and the Gems had start to take notice of the effective shouting matching that was unfolding pretty much between just the twins at this point. “But your problem is that you think way too much with your head and never with your heart! Because me and Steven went with our hearts yesterday and they turned out to be right! Why can’t you just accept that!?”

“Because you didn’t trust me!” Dipper reiterated fiercely, clearly upset enough that he was almost to the point of tears, though he held them back nonetheless. “How many times do I have to say it?! A few weeks ago you guys made such a big deal about how important it was that we stand together and listen to each other, but then you two turned around and did the exact opposite of that! Do you guys even know what that felt like to me? It was like you guys just… shut me out, like you-”

Steven suddenly interupted with a sharp gasp of realization upon hearing this, his eyes growing wide as he finally hit what very well could be a breakthrough in everything. “L-like what Mom did to the Gems…” he muttered, his eyes wide as he stared up to the nearby pink platform.

“Steven?” Connie frowned in confusion, the twins doing the same as they wondered how any of this related back to the argument at hand.

“Pearl,” Steven began, looking to the white Gem as he started to work of this realization. “You said that Mom used to keep a lot of secrets because she wanted to protect everyone?”

“W-well… yes…” Pearl nodded, unsure of where her young ward was going with this. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, if that’s true, then that means Mom didn’t keep secrets from you guys because she didn’t trust you…” Steven continued, pacing around in the shallow water of the cave as he continued thinking thins out. “She did it to keep you guys safe from… something…”

“Something…” Amethyst repeated, raising an eyebrow. “Like… what?”

“I… don’t know…” Steven shook his head. “But I don’t think that’s the important thing here anyway. What’s important is that she did trust you guys, and she trusted you too, Mr. Ford, didn’t she?”

“W-well, I’d like to think that she did,” Ford remarked, glancing down in slight shame. “For a time anyway…”

“Well, she trusted you enough to show you armory, and a bunch of other things too!” Steven assured thoughtfully. “But… what if there were things that she still kept secret from everyone, things that she didn’t ever tell anyone about ever, because she wanted to keep her friends safe from something really bad.”

“Well what kinda secret would that be?” Amethyst asked, hands on her hips.

“It would be something like… hm…” the young Gem had to take pause from his ongoing line of reasoning here, knowing that he was still missing one essential piece out of this growing puzzle. A piece that had to be something that neither the Gems nor Ford had any prior knowledge of. A piece that could very well lead to the answers they were all still so desperate to find. A piece that, as it finally dawned upon Steven in another burst of sudden realization, was much more pinker and fluffier than he thought it would be. “Lion!”

“Lion?” everyone save for Ford asked rather incredulously, all of them now completely lost by the young Gem’s newfound, bizarre conclusion.

“We gotta get back to the temple, right now!” Steven implored, splashing loudly through the cave as he ran towards its exit, the others all curiously following after him. “Come on!”

No one really understood what Steven had in mind for his impromptu plan as they arrived back at the temple, save for the fact that it apparently involved Lion. Almost as soon as they all stepped inside, however, the young Gem wasted no time in frantically rushing forward and urgently calling for his pink pet, knowing that time was of the essence in solving this longstanding mystery now.

“Lion!” he shouted, glancing around for the pink beast as the others filed in behind him. “Lion! Come on out! We need you to-”

The young Gem was interupted as the pink beast suddenly leapt down from the loft above, nearly knocking him down in the process. As Steven re-steadied himself, he let something of an exasperated huff out upon seeing his comforter draped over his pet’s head. “Ugh, Lion!” he groaned, pulling the blanket off of him. “How many times do I have to tell you!? My bed is for me to sleep on, not for you, even when I’m not here!”

“By Tesla’s coil…” Ford muttered in amazement as he stepped forward to take a better look at the pink beast. “T-that lion is pink!”

“Uh, yeah, tell us something we don’t know,” Amethyst rolled her eyes.

“What a scientific marvel!” the author continued with an impressed smile. Lion sent him an unenthused glare but surprisingly didn’t growl at him as he curiously approached him. “And he’s so tame too! Certainly, he has to have some sort of magical or supernatural origins! Where on earth did you find him?”

“In the desert, a few months before this summer started,” Steven replied, stroking his pink pet’s fur. “But… he has this huge tree inside his mane, i-it’s a little hard to explain, but there are a whole bunch of stuff in there. Stuff that I think used to belong to my mom… Its where we found her sword and this tape she left for me, and there’s a lot of other things in there too. A-and…” he turned to the Gems as he briefly paused, clearly nervous as he purposed his latest idea to them. “Maybe it’s the ‘secret place’ Mom’s letter talked about. Maybe… its where your memories are.”

“Oh, Steven, don’t be ridiculous,” Pearl scoffed. “The chances of our memories being hidden inside Lion’s mane are even lower than them being at the armory.”

“It’s a good guess,” Garnet assured, placing a hand on her young ward’s shoulder. “But it just doesn’t seem very likely.”

“No!” Steven protested, pulling his shoulder away. “Garnet, you said that we have to investigate anything that could lead us to where your memories are. Well I really do think that whatever’s inside Lion’s mane could at least help us get closer to finding them! Please, just… trust me on this, ok? It’s worth a look, isn’t it?”

The Gems said nothing to this, instead exchanging an uncertain glance before they all backed off to allow Steven the room to do what he needed to. The young Gem himself took in a deep, steady breath as he nodded to Lion, who simply tilted his chin up, granting his master access to the pocket dimension tucked away inside his pastel mane. And, taking in a deep breath and letting go of any reservations about what he might find, Steven jumped right in.

The grassy fields of Lion’s mane were just as calm and peacefully silent as Steven always knew them to be, though unlike the countless times he had visited them before, this time, something felt… different. It was as though the very atmosphere, or lack there of rather, that covered the seemingly boundless space was filled with something ominous and unsettling, almost as if it knew what he was there looking for.

And it wasn’t happy about it.

Even so, Steven forced himself to ignore the growing dread in his own heart as he pressed forward through the tall grass, the large, pink tree still afar off in the distance, though it loomed closer with each step he inched towards it. As he ventured closer, his breath dutifully held and his eyes focused on his destination, the young Gem couldn’t help but think about his mother. Rose Quartz, the leader of the Crystal Gems, who saved so many and gave so much. Who harbored so many secrets, both big and small. Who had left so much confusion and uncertainty behind. Who, the more he learned about, the more he seemed to know nothing about at all.

“She was more than just nice,” his father had told him with a warm, earnest smile of deepest affection and love. “She was sweet, and selfless, and funny, and brave, and beautiful, and amazing…”

“Your mother always believed that trust was something that shouldn’t be given away so easily,” Garnet had said, but Steven couldn’t help but question that supposed belief now, in spite of it all. “She believed it was something that should be earned, and that everyone should be given the chance to earn it.”

“I don’t know what kind of sweet, little fluffy lies the Gems have been feeding you, kid, but your mom was far from the amazing, perfect, flawless goddess those three thought she was!” Stan had harshly criticized, with a kind of disdain that the young Gem now understood the reasoning behind. Disdain that, in a way, he even saw as somewhat reasonable, at least from the conman’s perspective.

“She was always, always thinking of humanity, of the earth, of her fellow Crystal Gems over herself,” Pearl had said with a loving sigh of adoration, one that perhaps, Steven started to realize, carried some biases to it all their own.

“I was always able to bear my secrets to her, just as she often entrusted her own secrets to me,” the journal had read and Ford still echoed his sentiments of deepest respect for the pink Gem even now. Sentiments that, much like the Gems’ refused to be shaken. “I can only hope she’ll understand. She has to understand. She’s the only one I still completely trust…”

“Then again, I’m hardly surprised,” Bill had said during a moment of such high intensity that it had barely even registered again in Steven’s mind until now. “After all, your mom did the exact same thing way back when before just making everybody forget about it later on!”

Steven had to take in a sharp gasp of realization upon recalling this callous remark, to the point that he was forced to stick his head outside of Lion’s mane ever so briefly to catch it. He didn’t even bother sticking around to answer anyone’s pressing questions as he quickly shoved himself back inside, his mind absolutely reeling by what the dream demon had said several weeks ago no. There was no way, no way Bill could have been right about that; certainly it had to have been just another one of his infamous lies and deceitful ploys. The idea that Rose had known where the Gems’ memories had been all this time was bad enough; but the implication that she had been the very one to take them in the first place was something else altogether. Certainly, it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. Because…

“Take care of them, Steven…” Rose had said herself to him in a tape made years ago. A tape filled with so much warmth and love and sincerity that it usually pushed all thoughts of his mother’s shadowed secrets away. But not this time. Because as Steven scaled the hill leading to the tree, the only thing left in place of that warmth was a bitter chill, in place of that love was fear, in place of that sincerity was doubt, more doubt that he had ever really felt before. She had entrusted him with the Crystal Gems, with the protection of the earth and everything upon it. Those were burdens he could handle, burdens that were heavy yes, but manageable. But she had also left him with her secrets, with the ghosts of her past still unreckoned in the present, with all the horrible mistakes she might have made. With all the things that he knew he wasn’t strong enough to carry, even if he wanted to.

And as he finally reached the tree and happened to peer just beyond the chest resting near its base, he found just about the heaviest burden she could have left him with.

His heart sank with a feeling of absolute woe as he caught sight of it: an unassuming glass tube, the very same kind the Society of the Blind Eye had once horded en masse. It lay gently in the low grass, a label pressed to its side that bore a very simple designation written in a deceptively beautiful script:

“Crystal Gems’ Memories”

Steven’s hands were shaking as he reached down to pick the tube up, grasping it ever so gently as he pulled it into his grasp. Tears had started to well up in the young Gem’s eyes as the realization crashed down upon him all at once that it was all true. That Rose really had been keeping this momentous secret from her teammates, from her friends all this time. That she had barred them from the truth, truth that they had agonized over missing for so very long now, truth that she could have very well stolen away from them herself. Truth that he had finally, finally found, and truth that he had every intention of returning to who it rightfully belonged to.

Something that his mother had apparently never bothered to od.

Since he was starting to run out of air, Steven quickly bounded down the hill, practically leaping out of Lion’s mane and back into the house as he landed on the floor clumsily. As tense as everyone was, no one really bothered to give him too much of a chance to catch his breath as they all crowded around him, eager to hear his findings.

“Steven, are you ok?” Mabel asked with concern upon noticing the tears streaming down the young Gem’s face.

“Did you find anything in there?” Connie asked, equally worried as Steven slowly pushed himself up to sit.

“Uh… y-yeah…” he muttered morosely, looking down to the memory tube held tightly in his arms. “I… I think I did…”

Steven let out a sad sigh as he held the tube up for the Gems to see, a unified gasp of shock escaping them as they realized what it was. The young Gem had always imagined this to be a moment of immense relief and joy for his guardians; the long awaited reunion with their lost memories should have been exciting and liberating. But instead, it only felt like a betrayal of the absolute worst kind.

“T-those are… they can’t be…” Pearl whispered, wrapping her hands around Garnet’s arm tightly.

“T-they are…” the Gem leader said weakly, not even hiding the dismay in her tone.

“B-but… but why were they… in there all this time?” Amethyst asked, shaking her head in disbelief.

Garnet took in a deep breath, steadying herself for her teammates as resolve filled her expression. “There’s only one way to find out,” she said, looking to the memory tube first, and then to her teammates. “Gems?” she offered, though neither Amethyst nor Pearl seemed very keen on taking the initiative. “Alright then, I’ll go first.”

The others all watched in tentative silence as Garnet took the tube, placing her palms against both of its end tips. However, the moment she did so, a spark of energy rushed from the tube to the two gemstones making contact with it, eliciting a gasp of surprise from the Gem leader as she went rigid and still. For a moment, her expression only conveyed shock; her jaw dropped and her eyes unreadable underneath her shades. No one else had any idea what she could have been seeing, what memories she was recalling, what secrets she was learning, but in the end, it all proved to be too much for her as she let out a sharp, distraught cry, her hands flying away from the tube as she stumbled backwards. The tube itself nearly shattered on the ground, but fortunately, Pearl managed to catch it just in time as the others all looked to the compromised Gem leader in concerned alarm.

Garnet said nothing as she backed against the far wall, her shades disappearing to reveal her trio of eyes, all huge with terror and oncoming tears in an expression of unabridged fear that none of them had ever seen on her before. Her breathing was shallow and uneven, a hand pressed tightly against the side of her head as she shook it repeatedly, as sign of how unable she was to comprehend what she had just seen.

“G-Garnet…” Steven asked, taking a small, hesitant step towards her. “A-are you… ok?”

The Gem leader didn’t respond, her eyes darting downward as she remained in her state of silent, frantic panic, completely unresponsive to everyone else around her. Pearl and Amethyst in particular were quite stunned to see their usually steadfast leader so shaken, and as they looked to the memory tube again, they were both left wondering if reclaiming what she just had was even worth it at all. “W-what did she see just now?” Amethyst asked quite apprehensively.

“I-I don’t know…” Pearl said, warily eyeing the tube once more. “Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been that bad, right?”

Amethyst simply shrugged in response to this, something that Pearl took with a readying sigh as she began to lift the tube up to the gem on her forehead, knowing that was how Garnet had absorbed the memories contained therein. And much like Garnet, Pearl’s expression went completely blank as she touched it to her gemstone, though it only took a moment or two for the same kind of horror to fill her eyes as she let out nothing short of a scream of anguished fear. The white Gem practically threw the memory tube away from her, though Amethyst managed to nab it with a well timed stretch of her arm before it could hit the wall. All the same, Pearl let out another heartbroken cry as she quickly collapsed to her knees, choking on several sobs all the while as she wrapped her arms tightly around herself.

“H-how could we… w-we were tricked, we didn’t… what have we done?!” she cried miserably, her voice rising in yet another agonized shriek before she broke down into the same, tearful, inconsolable state Garnet was still in. The kids, Ford, and Amethyst could all only watch their absolute breakdowns with apt alarm, none of them having the faintest idea about what apparent horrors their previously lost memories could hold. The purple Gem in particular looked down at the tube anxiously, knowing that if she were to gain those memories herself, then she’d likely fall apart just as her teammates had. And yet…

“Amethyst, wait,” Steven stopped her as she began to pull the tube towards the gem on her chest. “Y-you don’t have to…”

The purple Gem’s expression turned grave as she heard this, shaking her head solemnly as she spared another pitied glance towards Garnet and Pearl. “Yeah… I do…” she muttered despondently, taking in a deep breath before she placed the tube against her gem. Just like her teammates, it took a moment for Amethyst to really respond to whatever secrets the tube held inside it, but when she did, her reaction wasn’t one of shock or grief. It was anger. The purple Gem let out an appalled gasp, her eyes igniting with furious fire as she ripped the memory tube away from her, letting out a fierce shout as she slammed it hard into the ground, shattering it into hundreds of irreparable pieces.

“She lied to us!” Amethyst practically screamed with fury, her fingers tightly knitted into her messy hair. “All this time! All these years and she couldn’t even bother to tell us anything just so she could hide her own mistakes!? How could she do this to us?!”

“Do what?” Ford asked, both immensely concerned and immensely curious as he addressed all three of the Gems. “What happened? What did you see?”

As soon as the author asked this, the Gems all snapped their gazes over to him, each of them wearing some variation of a hostile scowl, something that Ford was genuinely caught off guard by. “W-what did we see?” Pearl began coldly, wiping her tears away and replacing them with anger as she stood. “I’ll tell you what we saw! We saw-”

“Pearl,” Garnet quickly cut in, still against the wall, though her expression had hardened somewhat. Her shades were still gone as she sent an intentful glance towards the kids, silently telling her teammate that what they had witnessed was something that didn’t need to be discussed in front of them.

The white Gem heeded her leader, though all the same, she turned to Ford briefly, whispering only two words that none of the kids were able to hear, though they left the author completely in shock. “W-what?” he stammered, hoping he had heard Pearl wrong, though she didn’t bother to repeat herself as she abruptly turned on her heel and marched towards the temple, letting out another remorseful, bitter sob as she did. Amethyst followed soon after, grumbling hotly to herself as she stormed into her room, not even sending another glance back at the stunned group behind her. Garnet lingered just a moment longer, her three-eyed sights fixated on the broken remains of the memory tube on the ground before her, as if it held any of the answers she was failing to find.

“G-Garnet?” Steven spoke up apprehensively, taking a step towards the shaken Gem leader. Garnet briefly glanced up at him, her eyes filled with pain, regret, fear, and a million other things at once as she prepared to speak to him, only to end up saying nothing at all. Instead, she simply summoned her shades once again, standing upright as she too retreated inside the temple, unable to even begin describing the horrors her and her teammates had just seen.

“W-wait!” Ford called after her, rushing up to the temple gate just as it closed. “Please, just tell me what happened! W-what did he—what did Rose do to…” The author trailed off, stilling his knocking on the door as he let out a defeated sigh and hung his head in shame, knowing that, based on the incredibly small amount of information he had so far, he couldn’t help but blame himself for it all.

“G-Grunkle Ford?” Mabel spoke up anxiously. “Are the Gems… ok?”

Ford hesitated in turning back to face the kids, but when he did it was with a small, largely fake smile of reassurance. “Ah… um… t-they will be. There’s no doubt that whatever memories they just recalled were… somewhat intense. It’s understandable that they’d need a little time to… adjust, so to speak…”

“It was Mom, wasn’t it?” Steven asked, his back turned to everyone else as he instead stared at the portrait of his mother rather coldly. “She was the one who erased their memories. That’s why they were hidden in Lion’s mane; she put them there. Like Amethyst said, s-she lied to them…”

“I-I… I’m not sure if she… M-maybe she just… She…” Ford stammered, clearly unsure of what to say as he looked to the serene portrait of the pink Gem himself. The author knew there was much that he could have said, not just to the kids, but to the Gems, to himself really, in a moment like this. Unspoken regrets, unkept promises, unabashed guilt; but in the end, he said none of it, opting to take the same route of silence as the Gems had by making a swift retreat of his own. “I… don’t know…” he mumbled to the kids as he passed by them, his tone and his manner both low and remorseful. Yet all the same, he did stop briefly as he began to step outside, offering the kids something of a bittersweet smile as he left them with a few genuine words of affirmation. “You know, despite how everything turned out, you kids really did come through and figure this conundrum out, and that’s something to be proud of. The four of you really make quite an impressive team.” Ford let out a small, somewhat sad laugh as he finally left, though not before muttering one final, wistful statement to himself. “Just like myself and the Gems did back in the day, I suppose…”

And with that, the author departed, leaving the kids alone in a state of heavy silence as they all tried to wrap their heads around everything that had just happened. There was no doubt that something significant had changed with the restoration of the Gems’ memories, but exactly what that something was was largely unclear. However, Steven hardly even thought of this apparent change as he instead continued staring at the picture of his mother, his hands slowly clenching into tight fists at his side as his despair started to grow into frustration. Which in turn, quickly grew into a rare kind of anger he was powerless to control.

“I can’t believe it…” he began, quietly at first, though his volume quickly rose as the others all looked to him in confusion. “All this time, all this time we’ve been trying to figure out what happened to the Gems’ memories, and the answer was always right here! Mom took their memories! They were her friends and she stole from them without even thinking about how much it might hurt them!”

“Oh, Steven…” Connie frowned, wanting to comfort the young Gem amidst his upset anger. “M-maybe she had to erase their memories. Whatever the Gems saw… it looked like it really scared them. Maybe that was her way of helping them deal with that.”

“But why couldn’t she think of another way?!” Steven exclaimed, distraught as he began to intensely pace back and forth. “Why did she have to go and take something that was so important to them and just… just hide them for so long without telling anyone?! She didn’t give them a choice or anything, she just did it to try and fix whatever happened, but it didn’t fix anything at all! It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t right! It’s just like-!” The young Gem cut himself off with a sharp gasp, his eyes widening as he realized he had no right to be upset with his mother for such a momentous mistake. After all, he had nearly done the exact same thing to one of his own friends just a few mere days ago.

Steven’s eyes welled up with tears, a guilty sob escaping him as he looked to Dipper, who, up until that point, had only been watching the young Gem’s outburst in concerned alarm. However, his surprise only grew as Steven suddenly rushed towards him, pulling him into a tight, sorrowful hug that admittedly caught Dipper completely off guard.

“S-Steven, what-”

“Dipper, I-I’m so sorry!” the young Gem cried morosely. “I finally understand why you were so upset with me and Mabel about what happened yesterday! Its because we didn’t trust you! B-because I didn’t trust you, a-and that’s why I almost erased your memories back when we were dealing with the society! I thought you couldn’t handle it all but I was wrong! I was only thinking about how bad I felt then, about how scared I was yesterday that I didn’t even t-think about how… about… about anything else! You’re right… I-I… I’m selfish… Just like my mom was…”

Dipper had to take pause upon hearing all this, still lost in surprise as he felt the young Gem sob miserably while still maintaining their embrace. For the first time, he couldn’t help but feel guilty himself for the grudge he had been holding onto so tightly ever since that portal blew open. A grudge that, in light of everything they had uncovered and everything that they had been through together, seemed far too petty and unimportant to really hold a place in his heart any longer.

And yet, before he could let it go, Mabel spoke up, her tone shaken yet sincere as she managed to join in on the hug between the boys herself. “Dipper, I… I’m sorry too…” she said, much softer than Steven had, though tears were starting to fill her eyes as well. “You were right… we really did shut you out. We broke our promise to stick by each other and be a team, and then we—I guess I just thought that things would get better on their own, so I didn’t even try to make it right… J-just like I always do, right?”

“Mabel, no…” Dipper protested softly, gently pulling himself out of Steven and Mabel’s shared embrace. “Y-you guys didn’t… I was just…” He trailed off, trying to focus everything he wanted to say to them both down to something concise, meaningful. And once he did, he couldn’t help but do so with a remorseful sigh. “I… I was wrong. About Stan, about the portal, about… well, just about everything. In fact, when it comes to the big things this summer, there’s probably about only a handful of times when I’ve actually been right. And I guess I was just so tired of being wrong about everything all the time that I wanted to blame it on someone other than myself so… maybe I sort of just… pinned it all on you two. Which is something else that’s wrong, when you think about it, because you guys totally don’t deserve that. You did what you thought was right. And… in the end, it turned out for the best. I mean, it brought Great Uncle Ford back to where he belongs, it led to us finding the Gems’ memories—for better or worse—it gave us the answers to so many of the questions we had this summer. So… I’m sorry for holding it all against you guys. What happened yesterday… it changed pretty much everything. But the one thing that it shouldn’t change because of any of it is us.”

“And it won’t,” Mabel assured with a small, but steadily growing smile. “Remember what we talked about last night? About not getting all stupid like Stan and Ford, and heck, even the Gems did? Well, we’re not gonna turn out like them. We’re better than that, all four of us are!”

“That’s right!” Steven agreed as they welcomed Connie into their quickly developing group hug. “Because we’re…”

“The Mystery Kids!” they all chimed in together, laughing warmly as they all pulled together, both physically and symbolically. The past few days, the past few weeks really had been tumultuous for all four of them, through trials ranging from Homeworld invasions to battles against demons both external and internal to even interdimensional portals and hidden memories sealed away. But even despite all the strain it had been put under, their bond was a resilient one, built to last under the pressure stacked against it without crumbling apart. What was lost between the kids had been found, and as long as they kept sight of it, so it would remain.

And yet… even despite the comforting assurance of their newly-secured friendship, the kids still had their worries. Worries of the past they still knew nothing about, about the mistakes and terrors laying dead but not buried somewhere years before any of them were even born. Anxiety about the present, about how things were now as shaken and shattered as they were in light of everything they had learned.

And most of all fears of the future, of what they’d find as they moved onward into the unsteady, uncertain darkness ahead, where literally anything or anyone could lie in wait.

10 notes · View notes

markhycks · 7 years ago

Text

markhyuck au where

mark is a real estate agent trying to sell a house that has been unoccupied for years but donghyuck (the ghost who haunts it) won’t let him. warning: very long post / aged up!markhyuck

—- i wrote this bc i had to get this out of my system - yall can keep scrolling if u dont like markhyuck !! ALSO i have z e r o clue how the real estate industry works so this is probably super inaccurate

ok so:

no one wants to buy this property bc its apparently haunted by a ghost

mark thinks thats just stupid

hes just trying his very best n rly wants a promotion !!

so his boss (obviously taeil bc we love a moon taeil managing a real estate business) offers to give a raise n promotion to anyone that can sell the house bc the last dude that tried to got so close but the couple pulled out last min after hearing abt the rumours

mark thinks he is aBSOLUTELY FULLY CAPABLE of selling this house so he tells his boss he wants to give it a shot

taeils like r u sure you’ve only been working here for 6 months

n mark lee’s all hell yea i got this thats why rumours around the world are saying mark is abs-

so boss man’s like aight ill leave this task to you

everyone else in the office is all :000000

sicheng the cute intern is all ARE YOU SURE ABT THIS MARK in his broken chinese n he’s all cute and worried and its the first time the others have heard him speak this much

jaehyun his bff in the office is like good luck man bc he once tried selling it too but whimped out after encountering so called ghost

so anyways mark has to go inspect the property the next day

he gets given the keys yadda yadda

when he turns up to the house (which, mind you, is a very nice house located on the outskirts of town by a little lake) and opens the door he hears a loud “WHO GOES THERE”

and mARK FREAKS TF OUT

like he legit jumps n he’s pretty sure he almost peed himself n hes sso oso scared but then he remembers his mission and that he’s not going to turn out like the rest and he w I L L sell this house

so he loosens his tie with a d e t er m i n e d face and enters the home

“whos there!! show yourself!”

he thinks he sounds pretty fierce but it actually came out a quiet squeak

anyways it’s silent for a bit and mark’s like super wary as he closes the door behind him

“LEAVE THIS HOUSE IMMEDIATELY!!!” and suddenly theres a picture frame thrown at the wall

mark panics again and he’s so close to running out but he stays determined!!! bc!! fully capable mark!!

“no i have to sell this house and i won’t leave until i do so!!”

and it just goes silent again until the voice speaks up again

“who are you”

“i, um. mark?”

“you sound unsure”

“well. i mean, would you kill me for being a little nervous? jheesh”

he looks around. where is the voice even coming from? it projects through the entire house like its on speaker

mark’s not sure where he got this sudden confidence from but he feels a lot less scared than before so he just loosens his tie and walks around the house with his clipboard, doing his lil inspection

the ghost? spirit? whatever it is doesn’t say anything and mark just shrugs and carries on with his business and before he knows it an hour has already passed

“hey spirit” he calls out

and it’s like silent for ages

so he just shrugs and he’s about to leave when

“you can’t sell this house. it’s mine”

and mark just stops at the door and he can’t help but feel a lil sad at the spirit’s sad tone bc it probably has like so many memories in the house and it probably hasn’t crossed over or whatever (he’s not sure how the whole supernatural thing works but he’s watched ghost whisperer before)

the last thing mark says before he leaves is “i’ll be back tomorrow and you better be gone”

he thinks he hears the spirit scoff but maybe its just his ears

honestly mark has a hard time believing all of this and he goes to bed that night wondering h o w he’s going to deal with this situation

anyway mark turns up the next day and this time the spirit doesn’t seem as hostile

that being said it continues to threaten mark and starts moving objects around

but honestly mark (and his newfound confidence) only rolls his eyes as makes a list of the repairs that need to be done (bc deep down he doesnt believe any of this is actually happening)

so they fall into a routine

mark keeps coming back and the spirit keeps threatening him

sometimes it tries to sabotage his work by moving things around

mark’s gotten so used to it that he literally just sighs like “give it back”

the spirit actually listens to him and does

eventually they start talking more

mark’s found out the spirit’s name is donghyuck but that’s all the information he knows

he thinks it’d be inappropriate to ask stuff like “oh so how did u die” so they just end up having the most random conversations

“make sure you paint the hallway walls blue. the mustard yellow is so outdated”

“you’ll leave and let me sell the house if i paint them blue?”

“i never said that”

and mark ends up spending more time at the house than necessary

so one day jaehyun pulls him aside at work n he’s all “dude??? are u ok? you’re hardly in the office these days”

and mark’s like “yeah man u know its just the repairs for the house they’re taking ages”

jaehyun is suspicious but shrugs it off and tells him to be careful

taeil asks how the task is going and mark suddenly gets all nervous for no reason bc HOW IS THE TASK GOING??? he doesnt even know 

he just gives another casual response n says the house should be ready soon for him to start bringing in clients

taeil just pats his back and wishes him good luck

when mark finishes work that evening he literally feels so down bc he literally had one j o b but here he is being all chummy with a ghost that haunts this house and its all just so messed up in his head

he doesnt know what makes him do it but that evening he ends up going to the house

“someone’s working the night shift”

mark just blinks in confusion at the words because what the heck. he’s meant to be here for work and this isn’t work so w h y is he here at 7pm on a friday???

instead he just takes a seat on the floor by the wall in the empty living area and sighs like a sad puppy

“what’s the matter?” donghyuck asks and his voice sounds genuinely concerned??? if anything it scares mark a bit

“who - no. what are you?” he finally asks

and then there’s silence

it’s literally like that for almost an hour before mark asks again

“are you like some kind of ghost? spirit? do you need help crossing over? i just. i really need you to leave and you’re not making my job any easier and i’m so confused and half of me doesn’t even believe any of this is real”

silence

it almost convinces mark that he really is going mad because there’s no such thing as ghosts and he’s just talking to an empty house

until a quiet voice says

“i’m neither of those”

mark feels so, so confused and he just ruffles his hair in frustration

“then what are you?”

“what’s your favorite color?”

he’s taken aback by the question

nonetheless, he responds with a quiet “green”

“green is disgusting. red is better”

“red is literally the color of the devil i’m guessing thats what you are”

he’s expecting an angry remark but instead he’s met with soft laughter and all mark can do is smile in return

he ends up spending the night at the house talking to donghyuck all night

it’s a saturday the next day and mark is so co n f u s e d when he wakes up to the smell of pancakes?

he follows the smell and finds a plate of pancakes sitting at the table with a note “i’m assuming you never ate dinner last night. eat up - D”

mark thinks he’s living in a dream bc did a ghost just?? COOK for him??

reality at this point has become so warped in his mind that he doesn’t care anymore and he starts eating

he hears laughter

“calm down youre eating as if its your last day on earth”

he sticks up a middle finger at no one in particular, hoping donghyuck will see it from wherever he is, and he’s only met with more laughter

when he’s finished eating and rinses his plate (which he has no idea where it came from) he’s thinking about what donghyuck said to him last night about not being a ghost

“donghyuck”

“mark”

for a brief moment he’s startled. it’s the first time donghyuck’s said his name and he’s not sure how he feels about it. if anything, the tips of his ears growing red must indicate a positive sign

“what ar- i mean. how do yo- no. what do you look like?”

silence

he runs a hand through his hair with a frustrated sigh before leaving the house again

he doesn’t return for another week

when mark comes back, he’s with a client

mr johnny seo and his boyfriend chittaphon seem extremely keen in the property and want to move in despite hearing rumors about a ghost

mark doesn’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing

johnny and chittaphon are into that buzzfeed unsolved kind of shit and run their own vlog series on youtube and theyre just e c s t a t i c that they might be moving into a haunted house

mark thinks theyre weird as shit but he wants that promo

donghyuck probably doesn’t mind sharing anyway

when he thinks back to donghyuck he feels a pang in his chest and dare he say it, he misses them?

anyways

mark takes the couple back to the house and he feels weird

he can’t pinpoint what’s wrong but he just feels strange inside his chest

there are two things he’s learnt about johnny and chittapon:

one, they cant keep their hands off each other

and two, they can’t stop filming every waking moment of their lives

so when they’re following him to the house with their giant ass camera and chittaphon’s giggles, mark can only roll his eyes as he inserts the key

but the door won’t open

mark’s confused - he hadn’t come back to change the locks so why won’t the key fit?

he feels slightly flustered in the presence of the couple and their camera and he laughs nervously

they must feel pretty bad for him because they laugh nervously too

mark tries again but to no avail and sighs in frustration when it hits him: donghyuck - this was clearly his doing

mark clears his throat awkwardly before turning back to the couple “i’m sor-”

“LEAVE AT ONCE”

johnny and chittaphon jump back, eyes wider than saucers while mark has to c o n t a i n himself from rolling his eyes at donghyuck’s ~scary voice~

he half expects the couple to run away but instead johnny only begins to roll the camera once again and there’s a look of nervous excitement on chittaphon’s face

mark turns to the door once again and hisses “donghyuck open the door”

he hopes the couple haven’t heard him but judging by the looks on their faces, they have

“LEAVE MY HOME AT ONCE BEFORE I CURSE YOU AND YOUR FAMILIES”

and mark can only snort

johnny looks absolutely f a s c i nat e d by this point and mark groans internally before beginning to knock on the door

“donghyuck not cool just open the damn d o o r before i break it down”

there’s silence and mark takes it as his cue to try unlocking the door with his set of keys again

it works and he allows the couple to enter

donghyuck attempts to scare the trio a few times during mark’s tour of the house by moving things around - causing johnny to drop his camera at one point and chittaphon to curse at him for bringing it because its probably broken now

anyway the tour goes t e rr i b ly

mark is pissed

he’s not sure what johnny and chittaphon are feeling

when he sees the couple off he just shuts the door angrily and donghyuck just g i g g le s

“what the fuck man did u have to do that?”

“i told you to leave”

“and i told you to leave. what is even your problem???”

at this point mark’s just yelling and donghyuck doesnt seem to care tbh

there are a few more clients he tries to bring that week and the week after

they all go awfully thanks to donghyuck and by the end of the fourth week mark is on the verge of giving up

donghyuck on the other hand seems to be having way too much fun

“can you just like, stop?” mark sighs

he’s very very tired at this point and he’s considering giving the keys back to taeil and telling him he can’t do it

he’s picks up his blazer that he’d taken off earlier and is about to leave when he hears a

“where are you going?”

mark just releases the loudest snort before turning to the empty walls of the house and raising a brow at nothing in particular

“are you kidding me? i’m done. congrats donghyuck you get to keep your damn house”

donghyuck doesn’t say anything

- when mark shakes his head and turns to open the front door

it won’t open

“very funny, donghyuck. open it so i can leave”

he’s met with silence a g a i n so he pulls the keys out of his pocket

“wait!”

he whips his head around in confusion bc its the first time he’s heard donghyuck speak in such a desperate tone

he feels his ears growing red again

“uh.. yes?”

there’s a couple seconds of silence before donghyuck speaks in a quiet voice

“you asked me what i was right?”

mark just scoffs bc why is he even having this conversation at this point

he decides to answer anyway

“like every day but sure”

“go to the loft”

mark spends a few seconds contemplating whether he really should or not

he follows his gut instinct and makes his way to the loft

he’s only actually been up to the loft once just because it takes forever to get up there

when he climbs up the ladder and looks around at the empty space he shrugs

“well?”

“go up to the bookshelf on the far left”

mark feels like a child being directed right now but he follows the instructions anyway

he feels slightly nervous and a part of him wants to escape

its congested up here and he can feel the back of his neck grow sweaty like he’s been waiting for this moment for ages!!!

a part of him wants to run out of the house as quick as possible he’s not even sure what hes expecting

“now um.. move that red book on the end”

mark’s hand is s h a k i ng at this point and he slowly does what hes been told

suddenly????? the bookshelf starts moving

and then it hits mark

its a fake bookshelf thats actually meant to be a revolving door

mark is literally about to collapse bc he doesnt know whats waiting for him on the other side

when the door finally reaches the other side all he can do is stare

he feels like he’s in a different world, standing in the loft which resembles an open space apartment, with a tiny window and a mini kitchen on the side, a door which leads to what he assumes is a bathroom and a small bed

but that’s not what catches mark’s attention

standing in front of him is the most b e a u t i f u l boy he’s ever seen in his entire life

he doesn’t look much younger than mark himself, slightly shorter with dark red hair, golden skin and the biggest chocolate brown eyes he’s seen on a person

mark doesn’t know how to react

his mouth goes dry and the boy looks so frightened standing there in his own vicinity that mark’s afraid he’ll disappear if he touches him

“donghyuck?”

clearing his throat in an all too familiar voice, the boy speaks

“that would be me”

mark passes out

when he wakes up a while later, he’s on an unfamiliar bed and he looks around with narrowed eyes - realising that it wasn’t a dream and donghyuck is in fact a human living in a loft

mark looks around at the place and his jaw drops when he sees the wall opposite the bed is fULL of screens capturing cctv like images of almost every corner of the house

there are about three computer screens at the desk and mark is baffled

it looks like the bedroom of a teenage hacker

“oh good you’re up. i thought you were dead” donghyuck says, walking over to him from the kitchen with a plate of food

mark sits up slowly, his head is aching and hearing donghyuck’s voice like this, so clear, so close to him, so soft - he thinks he’ll pass out again

he feels himself growing warm when donghyuck takes a seat beside him on the bed, putting the plate on his lap before getting up

before he can, mark grabs his wrist “wait”

“you probably have a lot of questions” donghyuck speaks over him

“well, yeah”

“eat up we’ve got all night” donghyuck says

mark hasn’t even made eye contact with the other boy yet because he can’t bring himself to

donghyuck is intimidatingly beautiful

“i- what time is it?”

“9. you were out for hours”

“it’s been a long day” mark shrugs, taking a bite of the surprisingly good food donghyuck managed to cook up

so it turns out donghyuck’s family were the owners of the house but he’d been left an orphan as a teenager

in order to avoid being taken into social care, he made his own living space up in the loft so no one would find him - once he’d turned 18 they stopped looking for him and using his intelligent brain, he’d conjured up all the right devices to make it seem like the home was haunted by the ghosts of his family members

mark is baffled by the end of the explanation

“but the things moving around the house..”

“ever heard of remote controlled toys and simple physics?”

mark nods slowly and donghyuck just shrugs casually

later on donghyuck shows mark how he’d managed to keep up this strange lifestyle of his

he also finds out that donghyuck is not much younger than himself like he’d predicted - there are only a few months separating them

mark ends up spending the weekend at donghyuck’s place

when it’s sunday night and mark’s getting ready to leave, donghyuck actually walks him up the front door

it feels weird to say the least - hearing donghyuck’s voice like this and not projecting through the speakers he had hidden behind the walls

he doesn’t want to admit it to himself, but donghyuck’s voice is sweeter than honey and he feels like melting every time the younger speaks to him in a quieter tone

“hey donghyuck” he says, once he reaches the door and turns to the younger

“hm?”

“you ever thought about just.. buying the house?”

donghyuck lets out a laugh

mark finds it condescending

“do you think i have the money to do that?”

“well since you’ve managed to maintain it so well - yeah” it turns out donghyuck does weird internet jobs from home where he gets paid a shit ton of cash through his online services - mark thinks its illegal but doesn’t want to say anything

donghyuck shoots him an amused smile and shakes his head

just as mark pulls the handle of the door, there’s a warm hand on his and all he can do is gulp as he meets donghyuck’s nervous eyes

“you won’t still try to sell it.. right?”

mark remembers his outburst a few days ago and he sends the younger a sympathetic smile, shaking his head slowly “i won’t”

“thanks” and then donghyuck’s hand is gone

mark lowkey feels sad at the loss of warmth but it returns when donghyuck asks him in the most v u l ne r a b l e voice

“will you be back?”

“i don’t know”

mark tries to ignore the heartbroken expression on donghyuck’s face while he’s driving home that night

the next morning at work mark feels miserable

mainly because it’s a monday but also bc of donghyuck

he’s just so conflicted and he doesnt know what to do

when he’s on his break and passes by taeil’s office, he hears taeil talking to one of his co-workers nakamoto yuta, a guy who transferred to the company a few months before mark joined

they’re talking about the house and most importantly they’re talking about mark

“boss just give me the house i’ll do it - i’ve already got a couple people i know who would be willing it purchase it despite the current situation”

“yuta you very well know this is mark’s-”

“boss it’s been over a month now and he’s scared off all his clients. please?”

there’s a pause before he hears a “alright. i’ll talk to mark tomorrow”

mark just p a n i c s because all he can think about is donghyuck

that night mark drives back to donghyuck’s place and the door is already open for him

“you came back” donghyuck sounds breathless - like he just ran down from the loft

- mark sees sparkles in his eyes and his stomach does a backflip

“i came back” he repeats, the smile on his face growing

when he’s later sat down on donghyuck’s bed, eating the leftovers from the dinner donghyuck’s just made, mark explains his work situation to him

the younger boy nods, trying desperately not to let the sadness show on his face but fails

“hey” mark says, bringing a hand to the younger’s cheek

it’s weird but neither of them say anything

donghyuck thinks mark has the softest!! hands

“i won’t let them sell it” he says in the s o f t e s t voice and donghyuck wants to melt

instead he just scoffs and shrugs mark’s hand away

“if anything, i won’t let them sell it” he says and mark laughs

deep down they both know it’s not selling the house that’s the issue at hand; it’s mark not having an excuse to keep coming back

the atmosphere is weird and tense when mark leaves that evening

donghyuck walks him down to the door again and mark has the urge to hold has hand and tell him it’ll b ok

just as mark’s about to get into his car donghyuck calls for him

when mark turns around donghyuck is suddenly !! in his arms!! and wow! soft and warm donghyuck!!

about a hundred alarm bells go off in mark’s head and his heart is POUNDING but all he does is bring his arms around the younger boy and tighten the hug

when mark arrives at his own place he thinks that donghyuck doesn’t just sound like honey, but smells sweet like it too

he decides honey is his favorite smell

the next day at work mark isn’t surprised when yuta greets him enthusiastically in the morning

he also isn’t surprised when both he and yuta are called into taeil’s office

mark has to act fast - he can’t let yuta take this from him

he’s been up all night thinking about this, thinking about donghyuck

so when taeil’s about to speak up, mark cuts him off:

“boss i want to purchase the property for myself”

both taeil and yuta’s jaws drop and he’s pretty sure he hears jaehyun gasp from outside the door - the office wasn’t exactly a large place

“you want to do what”

“yes. i’ve thought this through and yeah. as a customer, i want to buy it. i’ve already spent so much time at it it practically already feels like home” donghyuck feels like home

“i’ve already thought about selling my place for a while now anyway - and i don’t think anyone else would be more willing to buy this house more than i am”

taeil and yuta stay silent

eventually taeil agrees but hands over the property to yuta to sell to mark

when they all come to a deal or whatever mark is dragged aside by jaehyun

“is this why you spent so long there? you wanted it for yourself?” poor bb he is so confused

mark just smiles and nods “yeah, guess i did”

mark doesn’t return to the house for another few days - he’s gotta tell his parents about his abrupt decision to sell his place and purchase a new one

since he lives in a different town from his parents, they offer to come with his younger brother jisung to help with the move out - he tells them its ok and that he has lots of helping hands here and he’ll call them over when he’s settled in

mark heads to the house towards the end of the week, the contract behind his back as he unlocks the door with his keys

“hey spirit - come out wherever you are!” he calls out playfully

to his surprise donghyuck’s already on his way down - trying not to smile at the sight of the man in front of him

“mark lee”

“donghyuck” he says, unable to contain his excitement as he holds up the paper in front of the younger

donghyuck squints at it, confused for a moment before his eyes widen

“YOU DID WHAT?????////”

“i bought this house!”

donghyuck doesn’t know whether he should laugh or cry

“what the hell you just bought my house?!”

mark’s slightly confused bc he thought donghyuck would be happy

donghyuck looks like he’s abt to burst into tears and mark the awkward turtle starts panicking again

“i - i thought it would be better than a random person buying it??”

“nO because a random person would never buy this house for as long as im alive and now yOU just came out of nowhere and TOOK POSSESSION OF IT??!?!?”

donghyuck’s a lil mad bc he feels like the house is all he’s got and now its gone and he’s mad at himself for letting his guard down in front of mark and getting so attached to mark and falling for mark and he doesn’t even realise he’s saying this all aloud until mark stares at him with wide eyes

“you what?”

silence

“you do realise not saying anything won’t work anymore since i can actually see you now, right?”

silence

“donghyuck”

there’s a quiet mumble “sowhatifilikeyou”

mark feels like he’s about to comBUST

donghyuck’s face is literally the color of a tomato and he just shrinks and he’s so cute mark wants to kiss him

so he does

donghyuck’s lips taste like the warmth of the summer, the confused and nervousness of their feelings, but most importantly they taste sweet - just like honey, just like donghyuck

when mark parts from the kiss first, donghyuck’s fingers curl softly into the material of his shirt, he presses his forehead against the younger’s

“i’m sorry i did this all without telling you - i just. i did what i felt was right. this feels right, donghyuck. being with you feels right.” mark’s just so nERVOUS and half of what he says comes out so shaky until donghyuck responds quietly

“i want to be with you”

mark wants to pass out

this time however, he doesn’t

anyways~~

time skip a couple of weeks

donghyuck moves out from the loft and they settle into the house properly

after much insistence donghyuck removes the cameras from around the house except for the exterior and they turn one of the spare bedrooms into a little study for donghyuck where he can do his “illegal business”

mark suggests him getting out a bit more and donghyuck reluctantly agrees

mark takes donghyuck out on dates to the movie theatre and out for breakfast

donghyuck is so nervous in public and is practically glued to mark’s side the whole time it’s adorable

they’re both living so d om e s t i ca l ly its sickening

at mark’s housewarming he tells his family and friends that he met donghyuck through tinder

jaehyun doesn’t believe him bc donghyuck’s voice sounds so familiar but he doesn’t know where from - he chooses to drop it though bc the couple in front of him look so happy so he goes to bother sicheng

“hey loser” donghyuck walks out from his study room one sunday afternoon when mark’s on the couch watching tv

“yeah??” mark lowers the volume

“cough up your rent for the month - we gotta pay the water bill cause your fatass won’t stop showering every two minutes”

mark almost chokes on his spit

“me?”

donghyuck nods, flopping down to take a seat beside him

“idk if you’ve noticed but im the owner of this house if anything you should be coughing up rent”

donghyuck snorts “owner in name. we all know who this house rly belongs to”

mark gives him the stink eye “listen you little shi-mph”

before he can begin his string of insults donghyuck’s already climbed onto his lap and his lips are on mark’s

and they live happily ever after !!!!

#markhyuck #mark #haechan #donghyuck #nct #nct dream #nct 127 #fluff #au #markhyuck au #otp cries #taeil the boss #jaehyun and winwin the cutest co-workers #johnten #but only minor #headcanon

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