#*looks at scorpion’s weird black void face*

[ask-the-walls-scream-au]

Dream 1…

“I remember when I was a kid the staff would tell me things about my papa.

How he wasn’t always like that, he’d always been narcissistic sure but when he first arrived, they said, he wasn’t a killer, just a brat.

But they could see the fear in his eyes the moment he stepped inside, as he told them something was wrong with the building.

At the time they cast his worries aside and told him that it hadn’t been in use for awhile but it was perfectly stable. He said nothing more.

And that was that, they thought, he had just been worried about stability. But as the months passed he gained a… condition… that just kept getting worse.

The staff that had been with him since before he came attested that he had always been obnoxious… rude… self centred… but never violent. They all repeated his sentiment from when he first arrived. There was something wrong here…”

[beardedhandstoadshark]

If Smash Bros is a kid playing with toys, Melee is said kid getting older, and Brawl/Subspace Emissary is them growing up and struggling with the societal pressure to stop being into "childish things“ already vs going "fuck you cringe is dead“ to them, then where does that leave Sm4sh and Ultimate?

Especially Sm4sh, with the Master Core. That thing was weird, right? It came out of nowhere, created nightmare fuel, and dropped dead on the ground.

So I‘m proposing: it continues right where it left off. Tabuu is dead, and with it, The Cringe. The first kid, then teen, now adult is living their best life creating sickass crossovers of more games than ever before now that they‘ve got a Steam Account.

But anyone who‘s ever grown up ridiculed, be it for their hobbies or their interests or whatever, who’s spent their entire life up until then perfecting how to hide what they love from anyone else and no one to share, knows: The shame doesn‘t leave. Not completely.

It lingers, it festers, in the back of your mind and out of sight on most days, all the little jabs and familiar hurt every single act of love reminds you of piles up one by one, until one day in the middle of it all it finally cracks, and bursts out stronger than ever.

Or in other words; if you fight the hands on a high enough difficulty, it gets interrupted by the Master Core violently ripping out of Master Hand.

Aside from Master Hand specifically being the Creation half of the Hand Duo, putting emphasis on that, the Core’s forms are interesting. It starts off as a humanoid giant with no face but a glowing head, sweeping arms arms across the stage like someone shoving their things off a table, the head bursting open into a vacuuming void or slammed on the ground.

Defeat it, and it turns into a Beast. With sharp teeth and spikes in its back, claws like a T-Rex and scorpion tail, it looks like a chimera of animals a kid would find cool.

After that, too-many swords with spiky edges and even spikier decoration barely made out. Look me in the eyes and tell me you didn’t have an edgelord phase as a 13y old where you thought stuff like this was the sickest shit ever.

Then the next phase: You. Or rather, the character you picked to make it this far. If it’s your first time, most likely your favorite or Main too. It’s programmed to be bigger than the player and have all your custom moves and equipment, but as you defeat it, it shrinks down in size as the Black swarm slowly clears to show the colors underneath.

If you defeat it in the 3DS version, this is where it ends. In the WiiU version, you get another phase: Subspace Emissary Body Horror Edition. A maze that plays just like Brawls (Tabuu’s) Subspace, but in the form of a body whose guts you traverse, where you have to find and hit 4 hearts that audibly beat. It spits you back out after the first 2, but you go back in to finally finish the job,

And there it is. The Master Core. Cleared of the festering swarm, it’s just lying there. Still. Glowing a bit, a rainbow of the previous forms’ colors contained with black and white. Behind all the darkness, there is nothing that can really hurt you.

(Unless you wait for too long. Because if you wait for 45 seconds, it will fly back up and unleash Tabuu’s attacks on you.

Because if you don’t do anything against those thoughts and ignore them, the shame will just come back to strike you.)

So you go kick it, and it comes back. You strike it, it comes back. Next kick, it comes back again, another kick, strike, every time it comes back, but every time, it flies a bit farther, takes a bit longer, is easier to get rid off, until finally, for the last time, for real this time- GAME!

So that’s what the Master Core is, imo. The literal Core of all the negative thoughts that festered over the years of the kid, teen, adults’ shame of loving the things they do, ending in them finally coming to terms with their childhood experiences and moving past them once and for all.

(And Ultimate’s spirit mode is them getting into the Smash Bros fandom on the internet but if i ever explain that one it’s in a different post)

[pinkiepiebones]

Last night I dreamt I was taking some sort of aptitude test with many others inside a huge theatre. Among those in the testing group were people from my high school (still looking as they did in HS of course), dead people, and FBI Special Agents Mulder and Scully. The test itself was very strange- it was printed on glossy magazine paper and no one got a scantron sheet; we had to mark our answers on the glossy paper in pencil and just hope we didn't rip the pages. And the actual questions weren't much better. There were things like, you'd read several paragraphs about someone, then be told to "choose the image that best represents the character." But none of the images were of people. It was five images of, like, a blurry sunset, a body floating face down in water, a wet street, etc.

At some point during the test a large screen unfurled on the stage and a video of legally-distinct-from-Muppets puppets started parading across the screen in a line, from the left side to the right, jabbering excitedly. The last not-Muppet in the line had a black and white face and a glittering blue cloak and I stopped taking the test completely to declare "I know that guy! Papa Emeritus!" Then the puppet in the video seemed to turn to look at me and wink. Then the screen went black, but only for a second. Then there were three women in these elaborate gold and black corsets and gloves with long claws and their hair was done up in gold chains and shaped like scorpion tails and they had black glittery eyeshadow and black glittery lipstick. The women began dancing in a highly and expertly choreographed way in a cave-like void while a thumping EDM-tinged Ghost song played. The women's facial expressions remained blank as they danced, and the video occasionally flashed images of Papa's heterochromatic eyes. It was weird and hypnotic and the song fucking rocked. I can't recall a word of it now but rest assured that that shit slapped HARD.

Then I turned in my test and got a top 1% score somehow and that led to me trying to purge a ghost- an actual poltergeist, not the band- from a public bathroom. Shrug emoji.

[callunavulgari]

TOP 25 FICS OF 2017

1. A Somaal Universe by @kaikamahine | Steven Universe | 7.5k

Connie flips over the next card. ��'Most likely to -’” She reads out loud, and then dissolves into laughter and has to start over, propping the card up on her bump. “'Most likely to freak out when you go into labor and break the speed limit getting to the hospital?’” 

“Pearl,” Amethyst and Jasper say in unison.

Heather Says: It was really difficult to choose between this and Favor For Your Four-Chambered Heart as favorite Elizabeth fic for the year, but in the end this one won out because it was one of the first fics this year that made me well and truly happy.

2. The home front by aesc | Stargate Atlantis | 10k

“This had better be the Sheppard residence,” Rodney says, brilliant, agitated life and volume against a monotonous day and Dave’s subdued welcome, “because I’ve been driving around for hours and if I ever find the woman who did the voice on my GPS system I’m going to personally amputate her vocal cords.”

Heather Says: I read this in the pool, precariously balanced on the top step with my body angled weirdly so that I wasn’t holding my phone over the water. I started it before I got in the pool, of course, but I couldn’t put it on hold long enough to swim, so I finished it in the water.

3. Junk Cheap by DevilDoll | Stargate Atlantis | 13.5k

If you were thinking you’d love to read an AU where Rodney is a college professor and John owns a junk shop, this is the story for you.

Heather Says: This might be my favorite SGA fic that I found this year, which is funny since going into the fandom I would have told you that I’d prefer to read fics set in canon. I mean, c’mon. Atlantis? Why would I want to read anything set anywhere else? But this fic perfectly captured John’s lazy personality and Rodney’s crotchety... everything. It’s fabulous.

4. Unidentified by fiercelydreamed | Stargate Atlantis | 30k

Fourteen years, eight months, and seven days after John and Rodney meet, the clock starts all over again.

Heather Says: I’m not typically one for the amnesia trope. I’ve found some good fic for it, but most of the time either the angst or the second-hand embarrassment gets me too hard and I end up exiting out of the fic. This fic was intricate and engaging and introduces a Rodney just off-center from the Rodney that we know.

5. Black Helicopters at Dawn by whizzy | Stargate Atlantis | 240k

Screw the bet. Rodney was going to prove the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Oh, and incidentally, he might just catch the United States Air Force with their pants around their ankles.

Heather Says: This fic is long. And beautiful, and sad, and kind of a lot. Also if you’re like me you’ll have to find the third part of it on some weird, sort of sketchy website that hopefully didn’t give you viruses. Or if you’re really desperate you can ask me to send you a copy since I think I still have it somewhere.

6. Like a Lightning Strike by miss_aphelion | Hannibal | 71k

In a world where omegas are instant celebrities and treated like royalty, Will just wants to be left alone. So he keeps what he is a secret, managing to avoid the spotlight and the restrictions that come with it for nearly twenty years.

Then a case goes wrong, and his secrets start to unravel before the entire world—and even more worrying, it happens in front of Hannibal, the alpha that was already fascinated with him before he knew what he was.

Heather Says: Okay, so remember how I said I wasn’t crazy about the amnesia trope? I am really not crazy about the A/B/O trope. Done well enough it’s intriguing, but I read a really awful one way back in the day that basically scarred me for life. That said, this fic came along and hooked me hard. It hasn’t been updated since April, which is disappointing, but it’s well worth the read, even unfinished.

7. Lord, Save Me from Your Followers by anamatics | Supergirl | 27k

Kara, perhaps out of a want for thoroughness in her story, perhaps out of a Millennial-born urge to creep on a the social media of a woman she finds intriguing, discovers that Lena Luthor has a pretty active following on Instagram one afternoon not long after their first meeting. She debates it, just for a moment, before following Lena.

Heather Says: Don’t watch Supergirl? That’s fine! Technically I’ve only seen a couple episodes myself! Read this anyway! This fic has that perfect realness to it that I’ve only found in a very select group of fics and it has cute girls kissing to boot.

8. hood & glove by @fahye | Yuri On Ice | 12k 

“I don’t mess with the fae,” Otabek says.

"I'm not asking you to mess with them," JJ flat-out lies. 

Heather Says: I’ve tried to say things about this three times now. There are fairies. Otabek is a hero. The king of the fairies fell in love with a human and the weather is fucked up. And there is some truly spectacular art within.

  9. With Fire in Their Eyes by @asukaskerian | Yuri On Ice | 8k

He lands butterfly-light in a swirl of hair and glittering gauze, and the ceiling crashes to the rink all around him.

His ears are ringing with heartbeats, his efforts, the cries of the crowd. The rink wobbles under him -- must have landed a bit wrong but he can work through it. Only there are things strewn all over the ice; people usually know to wait until the end to throw roses and tokens and --

Not applause. Screams. The light is wrong because a fourth of the ceiling projectors are missing. The sky is dark. No stars. Something gleams behind the broken sky. And moves. Something he can't -- won't -- something.

Something that's looking at him.

Heather Says: It’s a Pacific Rim/Yuri On Ice crossover. What more could you want?

10. What We Pretend We Can’t See by @gyzym | Harry Potter | 131 k

Seven years out from the war, Harry learns the hard truth of old history: it’s never quite as far behind you as you thought.

Heather Says: I’ve been a fan of gyzym’s stuff since way back in 2009? 2010? Whatever year it was, it was on livejournal back when Inception was a thing. So when I got the notification that she wrote something new? And that the new thing she’d written was 130k of Draco/Harry? I was over the moon. 

11. No Less Unthinkable by @rageprufrock | Yuri On Ice | 79k

In which Katsuki Yuuri fights a losing battle with chronic anxiety, the quadruple Salchow, and his own judgment four drinks in — but wins the war.

Heather Says: I’ve been affectionately dubbing this fic the slutty Yuuri picture show, because damn. The porn itself is exquisitely written, yes, but more than that is the way Yuuri himself is written. That realness that I was talking about above is very prominent here too. 

12. Slithering by @astolat | Harry Potter | 27k

Draco found the nest down in the Manor’s cellars, while he was clearing them out.

Heather Says: I have a weakness for fics with snakes, okay.

13. Hermione Granger’s Hogwarts Crammer for Delinquents on the Run by @waspabi | Harry Potter | 93k

'You’re a wizard, Harry’ is easier to hear from a half-giant when you’re eleven, rather than from some kids on a tube platform when you’re seventeen and late for work.

Heather Says: In addition to just being really fucking great all around, the soundtrack to this fic lead me to some of the best music that I’ve listened to this year.

14. the king of oak by @picqueries | Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them | 38k 

The first thing Percival Graves does after being released back into the world is buy a new wand. He's at Greymalkin's for ten minutes and the only wand that works for him is raw aspen, whiter than bone and so rough that Graves gives himself a splinter conjuring a storm of birds. The wand—dragon heartstring, a most unusual wand for an American wizard, according to a flustered Greymalkin—feels wild, and Graves empties half his wallet on the counter and keeps his hand on his new wand all the way home.

The second thing he does is quit his job, because honestly.

("Grindelwald did his research before he put on your face," Seraphina says reasonably. "And it's not like you're open with your personal life. He has us all fooled."

"He wore scorpion stickpins!" Graves shoots back, somewhat less reasonably.

Seraphina looks at Graves, his pressed creases, his immaculate shirt, the red ruby cufflinks he's wearing to hide the starved brittleness of his wrists. "I'm sorry," she says. It is not enough to make him stay.)

The third thing he does is get jumped by Credence Barebone in an alley.

Heather Says: Okay, okay, okay. But. Wizards are descended from fairies. Should I say it again for those in the back? Wizards are descended from fairies. Honestly, even if this fic had been horribly written I’d be hooked just on that concept alone. Fortunately it’s written beautifully, and is a complete work of art.

15. apocrypha by aerynlallaboso | Dishonored | 97k

The Eighth year of the reign of Empress Emily Kaldwin, First of her Name, the second year without a whisper from the Outsider, is the year the Void chooses to mark the end of an era.

Heather Says: This wasn’t the first Dishonored fic that I read, but it was the first one I’d read that was longer than 5k, and I was just so goddamned pleased with everything about it.

16. A Year In Toussaint by @astolat | The Witcher | 30k

Geralt had no damn idea what to do with a vineyard when Anna Henrietta gave him Corvo Bianco, but he figured it couldn’t be that bad.

Heather Says: Between the Stargate Atlantis and Harry Potter, I read a lot of astolat’s fic this year. I’d noticed that she’d been writing fic for the Witcher, but didn’t much care because I never really played the games. But I was bored one day, so I read one of her Witcher fics. Then another. And another. And then I went out and bought the games. This one is my favorite.

17. wild peaches by @notbecauseofvictories | The Labyrinth | 3.5k

The morning after Sarah Williams defeats the Goblin King, she gets up and makes toast.

Heather Says: The feel of this fic is basically what I want out of everything that I read for the rest of my life. Just the right amount of magic, but eerie and timeless. I have read this fic at least five times since it was published and will probably go on to read it another five times next year.

18. where the weeds take root by @beenghosting | Supernatural | 30k 

“Are you happy? Y’know. Just—being here,” Dean says, gesturing to the yard with his beer bottle. “Being with—I mean, you used to fight in celestial wars and—and save the world. Now you’re growing vegetables and talking about chickens.”

Heather Says: I really adore slice of life fic, especially when it’s an after-the-war-is-over sort of thing rather than just some fluffy AU that the characters have been stuffed into. I haven’t touched anything Supernatural related in years, not because I didn’t love the characters, but because the show was on this slowly creeping spiral downwards, and I just couldn’t. This though, feels like a very organic end for my two favorites, so thank you for giving me closure.

19. Heart and Home by lc2l | Les Mis | 97k

In an alternate Paris, werewolves occupy the majority of the ruling classes, making and adjusting policy to suit their interests. The punishments for a human attacking a werewolf can be brutal, unless they have the protection of a wolf pack.

How this translates to ‘claim Grantaire as your mate to get him out of prison’ is something Enjolras is still trying to get his head around, but he’s never been one to give up on a cause even when it’s sleeping on his sofa.

Heather Says: I, like many other people, watched the movie adaptation of Les Mis several years ago. My ex-girlfriend liked the play, but I’d never seen it. Loved the movie. Loved the play, once I got around to seeing it. But until this was recommended to me by a dear friend, I never once thought of it in the context of fandom. And werewolves! 

20. World Ain’t Ready by idiopathicsmile | Les Mis | 185k

Enjolras presses his lips together. He already looks pained, and Grantaire hasn’t even opened his mouth yet. That’s got to be a record, even for them.

“I need a favor,” he says at last. 

"With what?" says Grantaire. "Ooh, are you forming a cult? Can I join? I'd be awesome at cults, I just know it." He ticks off his qualifications on his fingers. "I love chanting, I look great in robes—" 

Heather Says: The thing about high school AUs that no one ever tells you is that as you grow up, one of two things happens. Either the high school AU in question triggers a massive influx of nostalgia that basically cripples you emotionally or it has you cringing away from the screen, groping blindly until you can ex out of the tab. I’m happy to say that this one is more of the former.

21. despite what you’ve been told by @caseyvalhalla | Yuri On Ice | 14k

When Victor falls, he goes down hard.

Heather Says: All I wanted out of the Yuri On Ice fandom was a good, long in-depth look at the inside of Victor’s brain. This is the fic where I got it.

22. these things take time by sonhoedesrazao | Les Mis | 63k

He’s always wary of making assumptions; even more so when Grantaire is concerned. He knows he’s not the easiest person to deal with. People either like him or can’t stand him, and it’s easy to respond to those reactions, but Grantaire—Grantaire is hostile and mocking, Grantaire scorns his beliefs, and Grantaire stays.

Heather Says: This fic soothed my soul during a particular rough patch this year. There are dates and misunderstandings and some pretty intense UST and it’s just wonderful all around.

23. Watercast by @fishwrites | Voltron | 113k

Shiro has been a Galra prisoner for over a year; with his flight feathers clipped and unable to fly. Desperate to escape, he jumps overboard while being transported to the capitol on a Galran ship. Lance is a merman who saves him from drowning. Keith thinks Shiro is about to become mermaid dinner. Hunk just wants Lance to stop going to the surface all the time, dammit!

Heather Says: When the most recent chapter of this came out, I ended up going back and rereading it, because I was on the beach, and it seemed like a really good time to read about mermen and flying bird people and I am just. So excited for this fic all over again.

24. Fifteen Men in September by ballantine | Black Sails | 34k

Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

A Black Sails origin story for the song.

Heather Says: I stopped watching Black Sails after the end of season one, because there was a lot of things that we were watching at the time, and it was the one to get cut. I don’t even remember how this fic got recced to me, but I’m thrilled that it did because it’s made me go back and keep watching.

25. Patience on a Monument by betts | Game of Thrones | 21k

Having a Jaime in your life means living in a soap opera, except you can’t DVR it to watch later, and the main character sometimes ends up in your guest bedroom for an undisclosed period of time because he has a woefully codependent relationship with his sister.

Heather Says: It’s. So. Good.

[heartslogos]

seas who could sing so deep and strong [64]

“You kept your boots,” Judge says. It’s…not the weirdest thing he’s come out with. It isn’t even the most off-tangent thing he’s said to her in his time consciously knowing her. It speaks volumes to the way she knows him that she doesn’t even trip over that opener.

Kore just shrugs and says, “I’m not breaking in another set.”

Judge’s first action as a newly awakened Tenno - person, not frame - was to get new boots. No, that’s not exactly true. He did a bunch of other things first, but the first thing he did for himself as in, like, taking care of himself as a person not a concept, was to get new boots. Because the ones he had were tight and while they were comfortable in that they were all soft and broken in, they were starting to get small.

Kore is still wearing her boots from their original cryo-sleep after the War, the Zariman boots. He knows she’s got others lying around somewhere, he’s just never seen her wear them. She’s changed her transference suit style about three times since he’s known her as awake, but the boots are always the same.

Judge doesn’t know why, but for some reason that’s really comforting to him.

Kore puts said boots to the side before she straightens up and starts to unbuckle and unstrap the plates that go over her chest and stomach.

“Shouldn’t you take the shoulder part of first?” Judge asks, gesturing to the large caplet and metal cauldron on Kore’s right shoulder.

“This part is more uncomfortable.”

“So you’d rather break in a full body suit than boots?”

“Your feet are your foundations,” Kore gives him a bland look, “Based on how you keep tripping over yours, you’d think you’d know that by now.”

“I haven’t tripped on myself in,” Judge counts off on his fingers, “Five whole drops.”

Kore rolls her eyes, “It doesn’t count if you just keep using Titania to fly around. She doesn’t need feet.”

“Untrue, how do you create a trampoline effect if she isn’t using her feet?”

Judge wants to ask Kore why the sudden change. Why is she now red and white and black and metal plates and sharp metal edges instead of flowing cream and layered pink? He wants to ask why she switched out the casual and flowing suit she had for this new one? This new one that reminds him of soldiers from the origin system.

She’d say that he’s the detective between them, to figure it out.

Sometimes there are things he wants to hear from her own mouth, instead of through his own deductions.

-

“So…you and the Alpha?” Judge asks.

Kore’s head snaps to him and her Rhino looks as incredulous as it can given that Rhino has even less recognizable facial features than most other warframes. Judge isn’t sure if he can tell Kore’s emotions based on how well he knows her or maybe she’s just so expressive she can get it through a warframe’s lack of face.

“Now? Really?” Kore’s got one arm up, the flames of her Aegis roaring over Rhino’s arms and shoulders as she holds herself in place to protect their cargo. She gestures with the flaming Silva towards the Grineer gunners shooting at them, “You want to talk about our alliances with other tenno right now?”

“You’d have run away otherwise,” Judge protests, raising  Mag’s fist and jerking several snipers out of position before aiming his Boltor and pinning them down. “You’re friends with the Alpha?”

He knows this is true because she’s slightly nicer to Alpha than she is to everyone else, except him. He has no idea how that happened because Kore’s…kind of mean and a little selfish, and Alpha doesn’t really talk and is overall an extremely generous person who worries a lot. But the two get along and sometimes when Judge goes to look for her, her Cephalon says she’s running missions with Alpha.

“I don’t know,” Kore replies, Rhino’s head jerks and Spooky appears out of stealth crouched next to her, hackles raised. “Give them hell. Aim for the optics.”

Spooky vanishes in a glimmer of gold and moments later the Grineer gunners start flailing around, falling over backwards as sparks and blood fly from gauges left on their face plates.

Rhino stands and charges forward, shield folding against its arm as it raises the Silva to attack.

“You don’t know if you’re friends with the Alpha?”

“Are you friends with Alpha?” Kore replies, “He’s just there, Judge. Like, I don’t know, a decorative statue or a holo-screen. Or a Helios.”

“I think Alpha does a lot more than a holo-screen or Helios.”

“Probably, but you wouldn’t know it,” Kore points out.

Which is true, Alpha gets most of his work done when no one can see him and are therefore terrified of the unseen and unknowable.

“I think I’m friends with the Alpha,” Judge says, “I mean. I think he worries about me?”

“He worries about everyone,” Kore says, “You talk to him, though.”

“You don’t talk to him?”

“Judge, I barely talk to you sometimes,” Kore replies.

Which is…actually true.

“You can be friends with someone without talking to them. We spent years not talking to each other.”

“That’s not a choice, Judge, at the time you didn’t have the mouth and I wasn’t about to ruin that,” Kore says. There’s no real heat to it, just facts. “I don’t know. I’m sure we’re allies. We both hate New Lokka’s guts.”

“I didn't know that Alpha could have negative feelings,” Judge says. It sounds like a really weird thing to say about someone until you’ve met the Alpha, who’s lowest opinion on something is neutral.

“Why are you asking?” Kore asks before backhanding a Grineer Scorpion with the Aegis so hard that they go flying.

“I like knowing that you’re making friends,” Judge says.

Sometimes Judge wakes up from strange dreams where Kore is in trouble and he can’t get to her and there’s no one he can ask for help because no one else knows Kore. Sometimes he has dreams where he wakes up and there is no Kore, here never was a Kore, because Kore was all in his head and there’s no one to prove otherwise.

Sometimes Judge is afraid that he’s dreamed her all up. He can’t tell if that’s his own unique brand of messed in the head or the Void poison and hallucinations learning him deeper and better.

“Allies,” Kore insists, leaning Rhino’s weight down on its right foot as she crushes a gunner while holding her shield up against fire from a ballista, “They’re not friends, Judge, they’re allies. Come on.”

[canaliculi]

Mud Mud MUD

WIP :3

Earl was both proud and terrified. The air inside the burlap tent was hot and weighted, cloyed with the scent of smoke and bodies piled close together. Children clustered around, mute and dirty and pale. They looked like faded images. Like pictures of children that had weathered many storms, with creases and thin white lines crinkling over their delicate facades, the imperfections so numerous as to form a hazy gauze across their appearance, forever obscured.

 Earl gripped the sides of the podium tight and cleared his throat. He wasn’t prone to introspective and rambling thoughts – it must have been Cecil that had him in this mood. Cecil, who wasn’t here. Cecil, who hadn’t been here, since-

 Since-

 It was hard to put an exact date on it. The creeping distance that had stolen, micrometer by imperceptible micrometer, between them. The distance between two people, highlighted by the closeness that had once been in its place. Much like the distance between people here, in this physical space, was highlighted by the sudden occurrence of children taking up said space. Most folks in the audience seemed content to eye them warily and grumble about personal space, so Earl figured the ceremony could keep going.

 Not like he had any say in that.

 His lips moved and his throat worked and his mouth and tongue scorched. His teeth felt electrified, and then they felt loose. The last communal nightmare, hosted by John Peters – the farmer – had heavily featured loose teeth. Maybe this was all a dream. Earl was speaking and the children were pressing in close. Their hands were grubby and their ragged and uneven nails tore at his clothing where they gripped fistfuls of it tight.

 Earl was speaking and he didn’t know what he was saying. The words just poured forth, his body acting as the conduit for them, a faucet blasting full force with its handle lying torn off and discarded in an unknown corner of an unknown room. The air tingled and he could feel a deep thrumming coursing through his body. It turned his bones to tuning forks, vibrating in his body to recreate a single, desolate tune. The thrumming wriggled in the soft organs of his body, in the few lax muscles that weren’t clenched into hard lines from exertion. It made Earl feel like angles and lines, holding together wet and delicate bags of meats.

 Cecil wasn’t here.

 That was probably a good thing. Earl didn’t want him to be here. But that didn’t stop Earl from wondering. Where was he? Did he feel the deep thrumming of blood and earth? Could he taste the bitter sharpness of ozone? These weren’t new thoughts to Earl. He often wondered where Cecil was, what Cecil was thinking. If Cecil were somehow, coincidentally, doing the same exact thing Earl was doing at the same exact time.

 His eyes met those of a terrified NVCR intern cowering in the corner of a tent. There was a red light shining from behind Earl, illuminating the faces of the crowd before him, but Earl could not turn around to find its source. He did not even try. His body trembled and the burning pain from his mouth had spread down to his throat now, following along the hollow canal of his alimentary system. When the scouts went for their Advanced Cleaning badges, one of the requirements was to disentangle that entire fetid line, end to end, from whatever body they deemed appropriate. Intact and uninjured, with all its attached and accessory organs in place.

 Cecil had helped him get his own. Cecil had puked when they’d tried to do it on a dog. They’d ended up picking apart a deer together instead, and it was still one of Earl’s fondest memories. Both of them elbow deep in thick, sweet smelling blood, splatters of the same liberally dotting their clothing and faces. Cecil’s brow furrowed in deep concentration as he plucked at the fat and dense connective tissues binding the deer’s intestines to its greater body. The red streak his hands had left in Cecil’s blond hair when he suddenly, hungrily had dragged him forward.

 They had, of course, felt bad about the realtor, who’d had to find a new deer when all was said and done, but Earl had gotten his badge, and Cecil had congratulated and celebrated with him more than once for that particular notch.

 The ground was shaking. Sweat accumulated into thick beads on his forehead and neck, until they gathered enough mass and weight to roll down his skin in a smooth unbroken line and the process could start again. Earl was proud. He was proud of what his troop had accomplished. He was honored that they called him Scoutmaster. They had come to him, scared and worried and unsure of themselves, of their town, of their future, and he in turn had been privileged to guide and instruct them. To watch them grow into themselves and sometimes even surpass his own abilities.

 Regardless of how strange Franky and Barty had become in recent weeks, they were the same boys he’d known for most of their lives. Franky had even come up to him, just a few nights back. Almost taller than Earl now. He’d clapped his Scoutmaster on the shoulder, and there were dark, thin veins that writhed under the surface skin of his face that hadn’t been there before. There were sharp tears in his pupils that turned them from round to black starbursts, and his eyes were bloodshot. Or maybe his sclera were just mostly blood. But the nervous smile was all Franky, and the Scout had chewed on his bottom lip, even as his voice echoed intangibly around them.

 Thanks, Scoutmaster Harlan.

 Earl didn’t bother to ask what the thanks were for, only nodded. He felt a bright surge of warmth in his heart that turned into something cold and dead in his throat.

 Oh, my mom made you some cookies, too, but I...

 Franky’s free hand was holding a warped conglomerate of plastic. Indeed, Earl could see hard fragments of scorched cookies among the twisted and melted down remains of the container they had once been stored in. The Scoutmaster had frowned, and then jumped as he smelled burning cloth, Franky’s hand on his shoulder well on its way to searing right down to the skin.

 Some of these new badges are trickier than others.

 The words had whispered in the air around them, sheepish and hesitant, while Franky snatched his hand away. Earl had ruffled his hair and accepted the mangled container. Scouts activities were designated successes or failures on the merits of them outcomes – no one cared how hard you tried to subdue that desert scorpion if the end result was your purulent and bloated body on the sands – but sometimes, maybe, Earl figured it was the thought that counted.

 He was proud of Franky and Barty. He was also terrified. For them. For himself. For the rest of his troupe. He was terrified of what he knew of the circumstances surrounding this ceremony and even more, he was terrified of what he did not know of the circumstance surrounding this ceremony.

The burning pain reached his guts and from there spread outwards like a brush fire, catching on the branches of his lungs and seizing through them in lightning bolt arches. Earl was surprised smoke wasn’t spilling out of his mouth. His voice had risen in volume but lowered in pitch. From what he could make out over the dark thrumming of the ground beneath him, over the high whine of a tinnitus buzz in his ears, his voice sounded guttural. Unnatural. Inhuman.

 The mute children’s blank faces were no longer blank. Their eyes had sunken far into their sockets, only visible as a dim glimmer in the recessed pock marks below their brows. Their mouths hung open in silent screams, jaws yawning wide with tiny audible clicks of their jawbones snipping in and out of place. Earl thought they might be hissing, and also thought that hissing might be a little melodramatic when all was said and done.

 Whatever was using him said it’s finishing piece, the last syllable resounding off his lips like a thunderclap that left Earl hunched and heaving for breath. And then there was an awful, plummeting sensation, as though the world had dropped out from beneath his feet. No, that wasn’t accurate. The world was still there, but it was slippery and wet and all of it was sliding down, down, like a sucking mouth had opened in the earth’s crust. He could feel the children clutching at his limbs with sharp fingers, an additional weight to struggle against as he scrambled and kicked at the damp, muddy hillside he found himself slipping down.

 Something hot and bright was crackling at his booted feet – a jagged, spitting tear in the world. The children were hissing, and cold breath and colder spittle flicked over his skin as he fell, closer and closer. As his feet spilled out of his world and into the next. Earl breathed in one last breath and yelled out one last word – he was both sure and unsure what that word was – as, with handfuls of wet clay clenched between his fingers, he fell into the void.

 There was a moment, or a fraction of a moment, or a fraction of a fraction of a splinter of a moment, while Earl was falling, that he saw. The garish, iridescent crack that something – the Scout Ceremony, or mere coincidence – had opened swallowed everything, people and loose packed sand and the deep parts of the desert that rested beneath them all, damp and sodden and withholding. It was good practice and good manners to shut one’s eyes tightly when falling into an unearthly void, but Earl hadn’t had the sense of mind to do so. He was still straining, still desperately wishing to see someone that wasn’t there.

 So his eyes were open for the split second that his body passed through the portal. He saw colors and shapes. Their arrangement was probably meaningful. He saw sharp lines that passed through one another. Electrified swirls that shifted rapidly through the entire color spectrum he knew and then did something weird. Behind and above it all, a rising pressure throbbing against the backs of his eyes, was a thick, black nothingness. Words came unbidden to his mind – remembered words that had once been forgotten words. Cecil’s words, about a hole and a beach and mice. Not mice, handfuls of mice. Scratching and biting and tearing over one another as they filled a void.

 A void.

 A void.

 And then Earl blacked out.

 Time was, for the most part, broken, and thus did not carry much meaning. Time was also, entirely, conceptual and impractical, and thus carried no meaning at all to a Scout. Earl awoke and did not know how long he had been unawake, only that a gap existed in the subjective recordings of his life. More importantly, he also did not know where he was.

 His body’s particular orientation was prone. He was facing a dark sky that pelted him continuously with fat rain drops. His limbs and back had sunken into a thick, muddy earth. Everything was darkness, almost-

 a void

 -completely black, but at regular intervals the entire world would flare up hot and red. The light would illuminate the roiling underbellies of heavy dark clouds, and catch in glimmering refractions among the vertical lines of rainfall. Earl pushed himself to a sitting position, the weight of his body shoving his hands deeper into the soft and slurping ground. He looked around, waiting for the blink of the light. Nothing but the sound of water into water, an even drone accompanied by uneven speckles. The light shown again, the dark underbellies of the clouds, and the flat, wide expanse of

  A Desert Floodplain.

  Earl struggled to his feet.

[heartslogos]

seas who could sing so deep and strong [78]

“I thought you hunt and drink kuva with Persephone,” Judge says as he pulls his sword free from a Grineer scorpion’s corpse, “Why are you so obsessed with seeing her face? You’ve seen it?”

“Well. I’ve seen her,” Punk replies, “But she always has her suit’s hood up and when we drink she turns around or hides behind something and I’m kind of a dick but I’m not so much of a dick where I’d go and be persistent about it.”

“But you’d go around her back and ask me what she looks like?”

“It’s not the same as me trying to peek in on her,” Punk says, idly tossing a kunai up before catching it and flinging it over his shoulder. It hits a Grineer sniper with surprising accuracy. If Kore saw it she’d be impressed. “Paint me a word picture.”

“Pink,” Judge replies immediately.

“Ok, I figured that much. She changed her suit recently, though. Still pink under that?”

“Pink hair,” Judge amends.

Punk points in the direction Chic had went off to, in search of ammunition and credits in lockers and supply crates, “Pink?”

“I think we’ve had this conversation before,” Judge says. “Why are you so invested in figuring out what Persephone looks like anyway?”

“And that’s another thing, do you call her Persephone all the time? Does she call you Hades all the time? Do you guys know each other’s birth names? It seems weird that you know my birth name but not your girlfriends.”

Judge’s stomach feels a little fluttery at the word. Girlfriend. Such an old word. He likes it though.

“I know her name. And everyone knows your real name.”

Sometimes Punk puts Jude on over the signals and relay broadcast requests instead of Punk. Everyone knows that Punk and Jude are the same tenno. Everyone. Judge is pretty sure even the Grineer know it.

“I call Persephone by her name when we aren’t planet-side, or when we’re alone,” Judge says, “Like when we’re on our ships and we’re working on something together.”

Punk ooo’s, “So you’ve been on her ship, have you? How did that come around?”

Judge’s mind dredges up that first disastrous boarding attempt, and Kore’s - in hindsight, very appropriate - fury.

“Not so good, actually. But we’ve got a system now,” Judge replies.

Something whizzes past Mesa’s head, Judge can feel the faint stirring of her bandana, and Punk’s hand raises up, catching a still-quivering Spira. Its red ribbon dangles elegantly.

“If you two are done,” Kore says through their group’s channel - voice, of course, synthesized modulated, and scrambled - , “Can we go? I’ve got tube men to crack open.”

Punk flicks his wrist and the spira goes flying over his shoulder, right into the eye socket of a Grineer bombard.

“You never sound as peppy as you do when we’re busting Tyl Rygor,” Punk says.

“It’s the anticipation,” Kore mocks.

-

“Hm,” The Empress hums, tilting her head, “Fascinating.”

And then her fist pulls back and she punches Punk’s Atlas straight in the ribs.

The Warframe - amazingly enough - lurches forward and there’s a bright blue light as Punk stumbles out of it, rubbing his side and looking confused.

“What?”

The Empress examines her black gloved hand, eyebrows raising. “Interesting. So it works.”

“What works?” Punk asks. “Why did you punch me?”

The Empress shrugs, “I was curious. Continue with what you were doing.”

Punk looks nervously at Kore. “Uh…”

Kore shrugs. She’d seen the Empress do it while Punk was talking about sports but she doesn’t say that.

Punk nervously goes to step back into his Atlas. The Empress watches him expectantly.

“Are you…going to do it again?”

“A theory becomes a law through consistent results over repeated experimentation,” the Empress replies.

“Uh?”

“Perhaps,” the Empress says, waving her hand, “Do continue. You were talking about…the Conclave? Something involving the Conclave or one of your several sporting events. Carry on.”

“I’m kind of scared to,” Punk says.

Kore would be too. She’s never been punched so hard that she’s flown out of transference. Kore didn’t even see the Empress using Void energy in that punch.

The Empress takes one step back and pointedly gets swallowed in her Excalibur frame. She then sits down, and puts her nikana over her lap and gestures for Punk to continue.

“I forgot what I was talking about,” Punk says to Kore.

“If you think I was paying attention,” Kore responds, “You are overestimating how much I care about sports by a great deal. I literally just asked you one question.”

“Oh, right. What was the question?”

“Have you seen Hades?” Kore grinds out, because she’s been standing here listen to Punk talk about sports for what feels like ages all the with supposed promise that information on where Judge is, is somewhere in there.

“No,” Punk replies.

Valkyr’s hand curls into a fist, “You said yes.”

“Oh. Sorry,” Punk’s Atlas rubs the back of its head, “I mean. Maybe? I thought you meant, like, in general, have I seen him. And  yeah, sometimes I see him at Conclave with Chic and they’re watching the games. But today? Nah.”

Kore looks at the Empress.

“I have not,” the Empress says, “Seen your partner today. Is something the matter?”

“He escaped,” Kore says.

“He escaped?” Punk repeats.

“He’s sick,” Kore says. “His Cephalon had him in quarantine but he had one of his…things where he didn’t want to do the sensible thing and recover so he snuck off his ship and now his Cephalon is three seconds away from fragmenting with worry.”

“He got sick?”

“Fell into a river on Jupiter,” Kore says, “As a Tenno.”

“Yikes,” Punk says, “I’ll help you find him. We’ll take him to Cetus. They’ve got people there who can heal you. They know some of the old ways of healing. And maybe they’ll knock him out for you, too.”

The Empress stands up, affixing her sword to Excalibur’s hip, “I will message the Alpha. Hades needs to take care of his body. Persephone, finish checking the relay. Punk go to Cetus. Alpha will check the plains. I will contact Chic and have her keep an ear to her contacts in the trade circuit.”

“And you?”

“I will check the other relays. And make it known that I am most concerned for him and that I would very much like for him to be returned to his ship, post haste,” the Empress says.

Kore doesn’t know why but she feels a shiver of dread down her spine.

She really, really hopes that someday she is a faction of impressive as the Empress is.