#Although it’s late and from an already pre-existing WIP

[heyhellohihowareyou]

I Wanna Kiss Your Lips

Day 1 of MaeIso week: Firsts/Lasts

Ao3 Link

It was currently New Year’s Eve and some time past 11:00 PM. Maehara and Isogai were currently sitting at Maehara’s backyard looking at the stars above them.

For a moment, Maehara turned his gaze at his boyfriend. Just looking at him made him smile. He wanted to kiss him before the year ended. Prior to this moment, they never had their official first kiss. While yes, Maehara has earned himself a couple of kisses on the cheek and forehead from Isogai, they never had their first ACTUAL kiss. Y’know, on the lips.

That thought ran through Maehara’s mind. Sure, he was long past having his first kiss but Isogai hasn’t. He could rush in and kiss him now but he wanted things to go smoothly. His boyfriend deserved the absolute best and Maehara wanted to give that to him.

Isogai noticed Maehara staring at him “What?”

“You’re like really pretty, you know that right?” Maehara said as he played with one of Isogai’s brunette strands of hair.

The boy before him turned away but it was obvious he was flustered.

“Pretty, huh?” Isogai said while still looking away, “Don’t you think “handsome” sounds more fitting?”

“What? Have a problem with being called pretty?”

“Well, no.”

Maehara couldn’t help but smile, “Well, I like calling you pretty so, I’m going to keep calling you pretty. That okay?”

“Yeah, it’s okay.” He paused before saying, “I like pretty.”

God, I love him, Maehara thought.

After that, they sat in silence for a couple of more minutes. Maehara checked his phone and saw it was already 11:45. If Maehara was going to kiss Isogai before midnight it had better be soon. Time was running out.

“Um, Hiro?” Just like that, Maehara was snapped out of his thoughts.

“Yes, Yuu?”

“Weird question, but uh, what was your first kiss like? Y’know like, on the lips.”

“My first kiss huh? Well, it wasn’t bad or anything. You remember Jun, right?”

Isogai thought for awhile then nodded, “Wasn’t she…”

“Yup, my first girlfriend.”

“Weren’t you guys like, ten?”

“It still counted! Anyways, we didn’t do much besides hold hands and hug a couple of times. One day during recess, she pulled me under the jungle gym and kissed me. She ran away afterwards.”

“Hm, I don’t think you told me that part.”

Smirking, Maehara moved his face towards Isogai’s closer, “You jelly?”

“No, I’m not.” Isogai tried to look away from him but Maehara moved closer. Rolling his eyes, Isogai pushed him away.

“Anyways, why’d you ask?”

“Well, no reason in particular.” His cheeks were beyond pink, “It’s just, uh, you know how we haven’t officially kissed yet, right? On the lips at least.”

“Huh, really? Haven’t noticed.” That was clearly a lie but Maehara wanted to see where this was going.

“Yeah, well, it is New Year’s Eve and all and it’s almost midnight and y’know what couples usually do at midnight?” He fiddled with his hands, “Well, uh, I guess what I’m trying to say is, um…” He gulped, “Can you kiss me?”

Maehara looked at Isogai for a moment before grinning, “Oh?”

He nervously chuckled, “Well, I don’t have any experience with kissing and you have like…a bunch.”

“Well, you didn’t have to put it like that now.”

“I figured that we should have our first kiss before the year ends. With you kissing me of course. Um, if that’s alright with you?”

“Why of course.”

He smiled, oh so wholesomely in Maehara’s eyes, “Great! So what should I do?”

Maehara leaned in and tilted his chin up, “Just sit there and look pretty as always. Okay?”

He nodded and closed his eyes.

It’d be a lie to to say that Maehara didn’t adore Isogai. So much so that he couldn’t help but just sit there and admire him for a bit.

He sat there in awestruck when Isogai peeked one of his eyes open and Maehara was quickly reminded of what he should be doing.

“Hey, keep your eyes closed!”

“Sorry sorry!” He shut his eyes and briefly laughed.

That small laugh of his was music to Maehara’s ears.

It was hard to tell if his heart was racing out of love or out nervousness. Both was the best option it seemed.

Like Isogai had said, Maehara was certainly over experienced when it came to the whole kissing thing. But he couldn’t remember the last time he felt this way. This nervous. Through all his time kissing girls it never felt as if his heart was going to beat out of his chest like it is now.

That was probably because Isogai wasn’t just some girl to him. He was so much more than that to him and he loved him with all of his heart.

Sensing Isogai was getting antsy, he finally put their lips together.

There were two words to describe it. Pure heaven. Both of them felt as if they were on cloud nine.

Maehara moved his hands to hold Isogai’s face and Isogai held them.

The kiss felt so different from the other ones Maehara had. It felt familiar. It felt comforting. It felt safe.

It felt right.

He didn’t want to stop honestly.

He could tell that Isogai didn’t want to either.

Unfortunately, the tender moment was interrupted by the booming, cackling sound in the sky.

They looked up and was greeted with extravagant fireworks above.

Maehara pulled out his phone and checked the time again. It was precisely 12:00am.

It was midnight.

Maehara looked up and smiled.

He sat there admiring the fireworks for a while and then turned his eyes back to his absolutely, lovely boyfriend.

Isogai wasn’t looking at the fireworks, instead he was touching his lips from what it seemed like absolute satisfaction and wonder. He closed his eyes and smiled to himself.

He put his gaze back onto Maehara and they locked eyes.

“So, how was that for your first kiss?”

He hummed, “It was nice. I loved it.” He took my hand and squeezed it, “I love you.”

“I love you too, Yuuma.”

He nodded and fiddled with his fingers, “So, how was the kiss for you?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Well, yeah! Is that weird?”

He shook his head, “It isn’t weird, okay? And if you enjoyed the kiss, of course I would as well. I loved it, too.”

“That’s good.”, Isogai looked up and leaned his head on Maehara’s shoulder, “Happy New Year’s, Hiro.”

Maehara put his head on top of Isogai’s, “Happy New Years, Yuu.”

[fluffypotatey]

So I haven't seen S5 and I've been considering what fics I should try to get out before the English drop for lmk (although it's already a little late/I hope people will still read what I already got as wips) and since you've seen it, I was wondering if you think I should floor it on finishing a fic where mk and wukong are room mates for a comedic but also slightly angsty oneshot bc wukong's house is gone post s4 and they have shenanigans and some fights happen, or if such a fic would still be of interest after s5 and I can hold off on it? I also had an idea for the mountain monkies to move into the city for a bit and go a little wild and everyones trying to gather them back together/keep them safe and maybe that's detached enough from the mains I'll still do it but yeah idk

S5 being here so soon has me a tad stressed about fic haha (I have like 10 wip ideas but the others are dragonfruit or something that I don't think S5 could affect)

i say still go for it!!! i love the idea of swk and MK being roomies, having fun shenanigans and angst, and it still fits where s5 begins tbh

you can even tag it “pre-s5” or just “s5 does not exist here” bc as far as i know, there’s no set timeline for where s5 begins after s4 so

[bigskydreaming]

Making this its own post because replying to the ask got so weirdly formatted I can’t even. Oh tumblr. You work so well.

@themessofthecentury  asked:

jsksjf my tumblr notifs are bugging and i didnt see your post but!!! The patron Saint of Robins?? I am much intrigue!!

(This is from this ask game, just....gotten to late, lololol. And I still have more I’m getting to, no worries. Just had a rough couple days is all, laid me up a bit.)

Okay, so The Patron Saint of Robins is kinda like the situation at the end of Grayson, except also not at all. And actually this is one of my older WIPs, and according to Scrivener I started it in 2015 afhislfhalhfalf, so it really has nothing to do with that. Also, its Young Justice-verse, but for two specific reasons:

1) YJ-verse is my go-to for Good Dad Bruce Wayne, when I don’t want to actually tackle the issues I have with his and his kids’ dynamic in comic book canon. I don’t carry over things like the adoption issue or the Robin succession into YJ fics, as I don’t think there’s anything that suggests they’re ever a specific issue in YJ and I don’t feel a need to make them one. So pretty much anything and everything I write in YJ goes with the backstory that Dick’s already adopted by Season One, and he’s the one to grant each later Robin permission to use the mantle, with no conflict over that, and more of a pre-Crisis transition to Nightwing than the post-Crisis firing from Robin. And this fic inherently needs Good Dad Bruce Wayne to work, lol.

2) I needed Klarion the Witch-Boy. Who of course exists in comic book canon, but is muuuuuch different there, and I just needed him to be a little demonic evil shithead, who sets everything in motion to get payback on the heroes for thwarting the Light in Season One, and he targets Robin due to being the oft-cited ‘first of the baby brat heroes’ and the ‘heart of the cape community.’

You don’t really need to be familiar with YJ canon at all for this one, as it goes sharply AU from after Season One, and only faintly and vaguely references specific events from that season. And I use my own YJ-ized version of the Titans as much as the actual YJ Team.

So basically, the plot of this one is to take revenge on the heroes for spoiling his game in Season One, Klarion plays a new game, by putting a chaos curse on Robin. It essentially erases him from peoples’ memories, though he’s perfectly able to make new ones. If he re-introduces himself to someone ask Dick Grayson, for instance, they don’t suddenly remember who Dick Grayson is or was, but they don’t forget about him again from that point onward, its like they meet him for the first time as a stranger.

But the curse part of things is only Batman can break it and restore everyone’s memories of Dick and his actual history, and only by identifying him for who he really is. And Dick can’t be part of breaking his own curse or else it seals it and makes it permanent and unbreakable forever.

Which of course leaves Dick completely miserable at first, understandably, and Bruce (and everyone else Dick knows, to varying different degrees) feeling some kind of loss but with no idea what it is they think or feel that they’re missing. Dick makes some half-hearted attempts at starting a new life for himself in Gotham, and in the process befriends a street kid named Jason Todd, though Dick introduces himself to Jason with just the name Robin.

The way the curse operates is it restitches together peoples’ memories to cover up the gaps where memories of him would go. So for instance, even though Jason never knew Dick before the curse, he was familiar with Batman and Robin just as much as any Gothammite was.....but due to the curse, the name Robin, upon meeting Dick, had no special meaning to him or anyone else. As far as he knew, Batman had always operated on his own in Gotham, the first teen superhero was that Speedy kid in Star City, etc. So when Jason first meets Dick, he just thinks he’s some dude whose name happens to be Robin.

Eventually, because Dick’s been kinda torturing himself by spying on Bruce just to ‘keep an eye on him’ and still watch his back, and he’s recognized by now that Bruce is mourning his loss without even knowing that he’s missing something....so Dick, who has also kinda come to see Jason as a little brother figure due to watching out for him as well....decides to kill two birds with one stone, unfortunate pun not intended. (Jason doesn’t die in this one, lol). Basically, Dick puts in motion the chain of events that lead Jason to stealing Batman’s tires, because he doesn’t know EXACTLY what Bruce will do but he knows it’ll get his attention in a big way and Bruce will take it from there.

One thing leads to another, Jason ends up living with Bruce and when eventually he wants to be trained by Bruce so he can do what he does and protect kids like he used to be.....when asked to pick a name....Jason names himself after the guy who always looked out for him, and who led to him being found by Bruce in the first place. He doesn’t know that his friend ‘Robin’ steered him towards those tires deliberately, just to bring him and Bruce into contact, but he does credit him with making the suggestion that ‘inadvertently’ (as far as he knows) enabled his and Bruce’s introduction, and so he names himself in honor of the boy who helped him and who he tried to track down again to similarly help, after Bruce adopted him, but was never able to find again.

Over the years, Dick also ends up steering Tim, Cass, Duke and Damian to Bruce in different ways than comic book canon (Steph and Babs’ debuts remain their own, as family adjacent but not family specifically) and thus is integral to the forming of the Batfam and has a connection with them even before the curse ultimately ends up broken and he’s able to reclaim his full identity. And each of them end up Robin at least briefly, like Steph is never Robin in this AU, and sticks with Spoiler, whereas Cass IS briefly Robin before becoming Batgirl after Babs. I did this for a few different reasons...

One, I really like that Cass is never Robin in main continuity as it creates a different dynamic between her and Dick than most of their siblings have, BUT I’ve always been curious to play around what Cass-as-Robin might even be like, just for an AU. Two, part of the Black Bat and Batgirl but never Robin sequence of mantles for Cass in the comic book continuity is like.....although it doesn’t get explored nearly enough, Babs was as much a kind of mother figure for Cass as Bruce was a father figure, despite Babs’ young age. So it makes more sense for Cass to stick more to just Bat-mantles than to ever be a Robin in the comic books. But in YJ, Babs is even younger, and just way too young to have the specific kind of dynamic that leads to that in the comic books, so its not as unreasonable IMO for her to have a different dynamic in her early days in the family here, before becoming closer with Babs and taking up the Batgirl mantle after she moves on to become Oracle.

And then also, and this is also the primary reason for making Duke a Robin briefly, before Damian is old enough....I got hung up on the title and it just didn’t work as well if it was Robins + Cass and Duke, lololol. See, in addition to helping steer the family into the points of introduction that make them a family, over the years he also acts as like, a guardian angel figure to the various family members, looking out for them and interceding in times of extreme danger, like when Jason is almost killed by the Joker. He’s always in disguise, but the kids eventually compare notes and realize there’s a singular figure behind each of their introductions to Bruce and the guy swooping out of nowhere to save their behinds whenever they’re most in danger, and Jason eventually connects this back to the guy who apparently NOT so coincidentally suggested he go after the Batmobile’s tires that fateful night, and the kids end up jokingly/not-so-jokingly referring to this figure as the Patron Saint of Robins. (Shout-out to the occasional mentions/allusions of Jason’s Catholicism).

They never tell Bruce about this figure (at least before Bruce starts to put together clues on his own), because they all figured out that for whatever reason, this person despite wanting them all to meet Bruce seems to want to avoid Bruce himself, and they kinda want to respect that as a kind of payback for his help, and also like....Bruce, even a kinder, gentler Bruce, is still Bruce. And when Bruce is gonna Bruce, that means Batparanoia. And all of them for various reasons DO trust that this guy has nothing but good intentions towards them, and so they don’t want to like....ruin or tarnish the positivity they associate with his intercession in their lives with paranoia or treating him like a bad guy. Which ultimately is really just smoke and mirrors for saying that he’s kinda a ‘just for them’ secret. Its a Robin thing.

(Until its not).

Because meanwhile, Dick, in between meeting the various Batfam members and pulling strings and looking out for them from the shadows, at first travels the world looking for ways to break his curse. But when ultimately its clear that the only way to break it is the loophole built into it already, Bruce identifying him for who he really is, but without Dick doing anything to steer him towards the answer, Dick settles into a new hero identity as Nightwing, and forms the Teen Titans, a public group of young superheroes (minus Roy and Wally, unfortunately, but still with Donna, Garth, Raven, Kory, ignoring season 3 Vic and also Terra because AU redemption arc what what, etc). And the Teen Titans avoid both the Young Justice Team and the Justlce League with EXTREME measures, much to the other heroes’ confusion and aggravation, because in the early days of the Titans, in a moment of what he’d term weakness, on one of his ‘bad days,’ Dick tells them enough of his story that they’re able to put together a good sense of what happened and who he really is by reading between the lines and what he leaves unsaid....

BUT as a result, all end up extremely committed to not mixing and mingling casually with the rest of the cape community because they don’t want to risk dropping any hints about the guy under Nightwing’s mask, in case that might count as steering Batman towards clues and seal the curse for good. So I have a lot of fun with having the Titans just nope out of the scene the second the bad guys are defeated even when they have to team up with other heroes, leaving the other heroes confused as hell and trying not to be all ‘WHY DON’T YOU LIKE US??”

Anyway, so yeah, that’s the gist of this one, lol. With it of course following the eventual plot that like...the Batfam starts to Detect and put things together.

ANYWHO!

Snippet

Damian versus Klarion: Round One

“Aww, its adorable that you think you’re in my league,” the Witch-Boy cooed in an absolute mockery of sympathy. Damian bristled, but before he could do anything more than that, he was faced with a much more pressing matter as reality completely lost its mind.

The walls of the cavern fell away in an instant, only to be replaced with a whirling dervish of winds all around them, as if they now stood in the center of a cyclone that bled red and silver and black. It shrieked and wailed in a chorus of voices just on the other side of being comprehensible, a symphony of the damned that set every nerve in Damian’s body aflame with a primal instinct to get out, to find silence, to be anywhere but here.

He’d barely staggered a step backwards when the ground erupted beneath him, splitting apart into jagged obsidian shards that bobbed precariously in the sea of magma barely glimpsed through cracks now spiderwebbing their way across the floor. Spears of lightning burst upwards through them, stabbing impossibly at the heavens rather than raining down from them. They hissed and crackled as they flickered like forked serpent tongues of electric violet and black. The forks becoming branches, the pillars of sky-shattering light transforming into the trunks of great trees that grew upwards and outward, weaving a canopy overhead. One that wept violently red leaves that fell gently to the ground, only to hiss and bubble like acid once they did.

“See, normally this is when I’d hit someone with a little razzle-dazzle like this,” Klarion called out over the song of madness he’d created, as it crooned and careened wildly all around them. He snapped his fingers, and in the span of a second it all ceased. Reality reaffirmed itself, and all was right with the world once more…except now the two of them stood at the end of a hallway in Wayne Manor.

Damian stumbled, the sudden reappearance of firm ground paradoxically being the thing to challenge his balance. The demon boy standing beside him crooked his thumb and forefinger in the semblance of a gun, the smile pasted across his face one of wickedly gleeful malice.

“But you, kiddo, you’re special. Cuz there’s nothing I could do to you now that could top what I’ve already done, so why try when I can just savor the moment instead?”

“What are you babbling about?” Damian demanded roughly. In the wake of what the Witch-Boy had just conjured up with nothing more than a gesture, he was keenly aware of how flimsy a shield his bravado made. He just had absolutely no idea what else to fall back on.

Klarion only threw back his head and laughed though, skipping merrily down the hall as he did.

“I know something you don’t know,” he sing-songed and Damian lost what little grasp of his patience he’d managed to hang onto.

“You overestimate my need for an answer. Attempt to intimidate me all you wish, but I have no desire to indulge your little game any further.”

Klarion jerked to a stop and spun around, his face screwed into a childish pout. He stomped his foot, petulance personified. “I’m not intimidating you anymore, I’m gloating! Ugh, you’re so stupid! They’re completely different, how can you not tell?”

Every light in the hallway flickered and fizzed abruptly. The walls wavered, bubbled, momentarily molten as if made of wax.

Again Damian was reminded just how mercurial this being he was faced with was, and how dangerous. Perhaps, as Father would say, this was not the time to indulge his own instinctive inclinations. Or as Todd would put it, just because you’re already fucked, that’s no reason to fuck yourself over more than you have to.

Crude as his older brother was, there was occasional merit to his…pithiness. Not that he would be admitting that any time soon, of course.

“Fine. What is it you wish to gloat about then?” Damian grated out. The appeasement, such as it was, tried its best to stick in his throat before finally clawing its way free. But at least it proved worth the effort when the godling’s mood reverted back to impishness as readily as with the flip of a switch.

“Well. Its like this, you see.” Klarion said. He dragged it out as he folded both legs underneath him to sit cross-legged in the air, plopping his head into his hands. “I did a baaaaaaaaaaaaad, bad thing to your family, a loooooong time ago. And none of you have done anything about it, because you don’t even know! Isn’t that funny? Doesn’t matter how big a hero Daddy Bats is if he doesn’t even know what needs saving huh? Little Catch-22 there, you might say.”

“Yes. Quite hysterical,” Damian said dryly. “So what is it you claim to have done then?”

The Witch-Boy just sat there, regarding him with amusement, and the seconds marched on into minutes. Damian’s skin crawled. Prickling with impatience and possibly something…more. He wasn’t quite ready to name it anxiety or something as melodramatic as all that yet. In fact, he’d rather not put a name to it at all, but today did not appear to be a day for configuring things to his liking.  

Klarion’s wicked grin grew as if sensing his thoughts, though to the best of his knowledge (and Damian did quickly ransack the library of his memory just to be sure) there was no indication telepathy was included among the Chaos Lord’s many, many powers. And still that detestable smile stretched slowly wider all the same, in perfect synchronization with the rising tide of Damian’s unease. Perhaps the Witch-Boy’s file was in need of annotation.

“How many doors would you say are in this hallway?”

“What? Seven.” Damian snapped out his answer, annoyed by the non sequitur. Not to mention baffled. Was it too much to expect even a semblance of linear thought from the Chaos brat?

“Are you suuuuuuure?” The Witch-Boy stretched his query out obnoxiously. “Maybe you should count again. Just for kicks and giggles.”

Damian throttled back each and every retort attempting to spring to his lips, stuffing them back down and cramming a lid on everything he most dearly wished to say to this most vexing of…shitheads. Once again, it appeared as though nothing less than Todd’s preferred form of nomenclature would suffice. Wonderful. On top of everything else Damian had to deal with today, he seemed to be finding common ground with the man all over the place. Was there no end to the indignities he must suffer?

But marshaling his own formidable willpower, Damian took a deep breath and indulged the Chaos Lord, glancing his eyes down the length of the hallway and counting out each doorway one by one. There was his own room of course, with Cassandra’s to the right of his, and the room Brown used when staying over to the right of hers. That was three. Then there was Thomas directly across from his own room, with Drake to his right and Todd just beyond that, with Father’s room at the very end of the hall, his master suite staggered and with no direct opposite like the others. Seven.

Except all of a sudden there was a door directly opposite his father’s. For a total of eight.

Damian’s brow furrowed in consternation. The faint whispers of uncertainty already seeded throughout him bore fruit, ripening into poisonous stabbings of doubt.

“That’s not real,” he stated with as much conviction as he could muster.

The Witch-Boy’s smile only grew wider still. “Isn’t it, though?”

“There’s never been a door there before,” Damian persisted, striding confidently down the hall towards it. The Chaos Lord flitted ahead of him, inverting til he was upside down and skipping merrily once more, though this time from the ceiling.

“Or has it been there all along?” He sing-songed some more.

“I would think we might have noticed if it had been,” Damian growled.

“Yes, you’d think, wouldn’t you? You are all supposed to be a family of detectives, I thought. Makes you wonder…if you could miss this, what else might you have failed to notice?”

Damian snarled to himself and did his best to shut out the demon boy’s prattling. He quickened his strides, eating up the length of the hallway in his haste to reach its end. He wasn’t sure what opening the door would prove, let alone what bewilderment the godling had conjured on its other side, but it appeared the only end to this game of his was through it, so let there be an end to it already.

And yet, for all his certainty - or best facsimile of it - he couldn’t help but pause once he reached the door in question. His hand hovered within reach of its brass knob, but some instinct, some…caution, held him at bay. As much as he wanted to dismiss all this as just one more of the Chaos Lord’s inane charades, there was a tension in the air that felt too weighty to be the product of just magical conjuring. Something more was in play here. Real forces were at work. His father might disdain magic, but Damian had been around enough of it himself to know when true power had been raised. And the span of empty space between his hand and this hither-to-unseen doorknob held more of it than Damian had felt throughout all the mad warpings Klarion had made of reality thus far.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Klarion asked from somewhere overhead. His voice, usually pitched to carry, was so soft for a moment Damian mistook it for his own inner doubts. “Some doors are easier to open than to close again, you know.”

Even knowing the goading for what it was couldn’t stop Damian then, and with a simple breath to fortify himself, he reached for the knob, spun it once, and shoved the door open all in a single sharp movement.

The Witch-Boy giggled up above.

The door swung wide, a forceful arc that should have revealed anything and everything within it all at once; the better to react quickly to whatever that might be. Fine in principle, perfect in execution, but thwarted by one small detail:

There was nothing on the other side.

And not in the sense of it being just an empty room, but true nothingness. A pitch-black abyss darker than the deepest night, yawning forth from the doorway in a vast, impenetrable shroud. Nor was anything hidden in the darkness, Damian knew, even if just intuitively. He could feel it, that he stood on the edge of an impossible cliff, that there was nothing beyond this threshold but an aching chasm of emptiness and loss. The surety of it hung in the air, thick and heavy, a miasma that seeped through to his side of the doorway and clung to him like the moisture of a fog beads upon the skin.

Klarion’s head suddenly popped up alongside him, hovering just over his shoulder.

Albeit still upside down.

“Well that doesn’t seem right,” he mused, tapping at his lips with a forefinger. “What do you suppose is meant to be in there?”

The last of Damian’s brittle patience shattered.

“Enough! What is the meaning of all this, demon? Speak plainly, for once in your miserable existence!”

His self-preservation instincts and the reminder of just who it was he was shouting at kicked in too little too late, but he wouldn’t take his exasperated fury back even if he could. He was who he was after all. But fortunately, that described the Witch-Boy just as accurately, and rather take offense or perceive any actual threat from Damian’s rage, the Chaos Lord just shrieked with laughter and sprung backwards. He flipped right side up, still hovering in mid-air, and clapped his hands with glee.

“Oh, I should have done this ages ago,” Klarion sang out. “Why, you’re almost as fun as he used to be. Back before he got all droll and serious, that is. He’s no fun at all anymore, nothing like this. Never wants to play, always just running back to his tower with that little bitch of a demoness.”

His face soured like he’d just sucked on a lemon. But rather than stop there, his countenance kept morphing into an increasingly savage scowl, the longer he ranted. The hallway was suddenly sweltering, baking with unseen heat that twisted the air into shimmering ribbons. The small horns sprouting from his forehead burst into scimitars of flame that cut through those ribbons and set them similarly ablaze.

“Always putting on airs like she’s some kind of royalty, just because her Daddy Dearest put the fear into a few peasants back in the day,” the Witch-Boy snarled viciously. “As if that’s enough to put her on par with the likes of me. No one is the likes of me. NO ONE!”

Reality itself quaked with the force of his shout. White-blue flames spat forth and crescendoed down the length of the corridor, splashing against its walls and searing them to a crisp. Damian braced himself for all the good it would do, keenly aware of the void still gaping hungrily behind his back, but before the fire could become an actual danger to him as well, all was quiet once more.

Silence hung in the air much like the demon boy, poised yet motionless. Suspended. Waiting.

And then Klarion simply inhaled and brushed his hands down the front of his garments, smoothing out the wrinkles as he reclaimed his calm. The corridor restored itself to its former self, curtains of vintage reality unrolling from the ceiling to the floor as though papering over the damage. Damian felt rather than saw when the portal behind him swung shut and was replaced with the expanse of ivory paint and ornate sconces he was used to seeing in its place.

“I am one of a kind, after all,” Klarion finally remarked. It was a casual drawl offered forth almost off-handedly, as if more a reminder to himself than uttered for anyone else’s sake. He used one hand to spell out letters in the air. They appeared and vanished again in bursts of fireworks and fluorescent flame. “U-N-I-Q-U-E.”

“As I, apparently, am not,” Damian said, seizing upon the Chaos Lord’s restored calm and good cheer. “Who is this ‘he’ you mentioned? If I’m to be pitted against him as entertainment in your eyes, might I at least know his name?”

“Nuh-uh-uh,” the Witch-Boy scolded. He wagged his finger at Damian. “No spoilers. That’s not how the game is played.”

Keenly aware of the boy’s power once more, Damian gritted his teeth and pressed on. “Well, if there are to be rules, shouldn’t I at least know what those are?”

Klarion sucked in a deep breath, drawing himself up along with his inhalation as though preparing for some great speech…and instead just toppling backward, flopping onto an extravagant fainting couch that suddenly appeared beneath him, though similarly floating in the air.

“I can’t recall at the moment.” His now-faint voice drifted up from where he lay buried amid a mountain of pillows. “I’ve had a terribly exhausting day. But you’re supposed to be a detective, remember? Go…I don’t know. Detect things.”

He flapped an arm at Damian dismissively, and then crooked a finger into a twirling motion that set his divan to spinning in lazy circles.

“Isn’t life grand?” Klarion sighed fondly. “With all its twists and turns, its eddies and swirls. I mean, take the two of us. Scant hours ago, we were mortal enemies, and just look at us now.”

The Witch-Boy lazily rolled his head to the side as the couch drifted to bring him face-to-face with Damian. His lips spread wide in that malevolent, wicked grin of his once again, but somehow it managed to be even wider than any he’d shown off before. His eyes blazed with a hellish inner light, and his voice, when next he spoke, dropped deep into a demonic register. A bass that boomed forth and set Damian’s very bones to rattling.

“Ain’t we got fun?”

[therealsaintscully]

[TJLC] Distracted by AGRA (or the many hints about personification of death in The Six Thatchers)

PLEASE CONSIDER THIS A WORK IN PROGRESS. IT’S NOT PERFECT BUT  I HAVE SOME GOOD IDEAS HERE, I THINK, SO KEEPING IT FOR NOW.

A FEW DISCLAIMERS: - I’m not a native English speaker and this wasn’t betad, so excuse the less-than-perfect English (although you’re about to find out what native language actually is). - I’m very new in the fandom and in reading/writing meta, this would be my second meta post tbh, so excuse the amateurism. - Everything I’m about to write here is based on very quick and easy Google searches. I’m BY NO MEANS AN ACADEMIC! I’m not well versed enough in any form of literary analysis to claim more than that, but perhaps this post will be a breeding ground for new ideas. If you are an academic and you find these interesting - please go ahead and expand on them. - Lastly, this may have been picked up before by other meta writers and if so - I’m not aware of it, as I’m quite new to this fandom.

tl;dr: The Six Thatchers seems to be full of hints about the personification of death and cultural/religious representations of it, in a way that may even hint that that Mary = death, and/or that Moftiss were very preoccupied with the idea while writing it. It should be noted that I find these tidbits interesting in the context of well-established TJLC theories I’ve been reading up on a lot lately, namely EMP and M-Theory. I found these details interesting in the context of reading TST as something that’s happening in Sherlock’s MP as he’s dying and suspecting that Mary is dangerous and perhaps even linked to Moriarty.

AGRA > Samarra > The Four Angels of Death

As these things always go, I’ve been re-watching episodes while researching my WIP fic ‘Turned’. I have this new habit these days of only listening, instead of actually watching the episode in search of a fresh perspective. This time I was blown away, once again, by Sherlock and Mycroft’s conversation about AGRA. It’s a VERY odd conversation considering the topic, and what caught my ear this time was Mycroft mechanically reciting facts about the city of Agra. Why Agra, I asked? What’s so important about it? Nothing, the way I see it. One search led to another and I looked up Samarra, thinking perhaps I’ll find some connection between the two cities, but couldn’t.

The search for Samarra and the parable about it led me to the Appointment in Samarra wiki page, which mentions that the title of the book comes from a retelling of an ancient Mesopotamian tale by W. Somerset Maugham (the source of the next quote is here):

"The Appointment in Samarra" (as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933])

The speaker is Death

There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate.  I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise.  I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

There is also a very interesting study guide link from this website, which asks some very interesting questions about tale, such as Maugham’s decision to make Death a non-omniscient narrator of this tale, as well as a woman. I’ll return to Death being referred to as a woman later. However, since I have no expertise in literary readings, I’ll leave it to others who might be to add some more here.

More below the cut:

The version of the story in TST is a bit different; the servant is absent from the tale; it is instead the merchant who has the nighttime appointment with Death in Samarra after being startled to see Death that morning in the Baghdad market. (This note was taking from a wikipedia entry about another - apparently-  very deterministic play by Maugham, Shepey.)

Anyway, the Appointment in Samarra wikipedia mentions that Maugham’s story comes from a much older version recorded in the Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 53a.

The Talmud is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism. I’m a Hebrew speaking Jew, though an atheist one who isn’t well-read in religious texts at all, but I was intrigued enough to look up the Hebrew Talmud version of the text (in fact it’s originall in Aramaic, but wikipedia offers a Hebrew tranlsation). A quick Google search led me to the wikipedia page about the personification of death, and that’s when things got interesting.

Under the section about the grim reaper in Judaism, a story from the Talmud is mentioned, which seems to be another version of the Appointment in Samarra story. Here’s the story, translated by Google Translate, because I couldn’t find an English version:

The Babylonian Talmud tells of a sage, Rabbi Bibi, the son of Abiy, whose angel of death was often in his company. Rabbi Bibi heard the angel of death ask his emissary to name a woman named Miriam (Mary) who was a hair dresser (the future mother of Jesus). The messenger of death accidentally killed another woman named Miriam (Mary) who was a teacher. The angel of death said to his messenger: "I asked you to kill Miriam the barber and not Miriam the teacher." The messenger of death replied: Then I will bring Miriam the teacher back to life and bring before you Miriam the barber. The angel of death said to him: If you have already brought Miriam the teacher, leave her with me along with the rest of the dead. The angel of death asked his messenger: How did you manage to kill the teacher Miriam even though it was not her time to die? The messenger of death replied: She was killed before an opportunity to kill her - she was fiddling with the stove with ember in her hand to clean the stove. Inadvertently she caused a burn in her leg - and when a person was harmed and his determination of his time to die was undermined - so I had a chance to kill prematurely. The sage, Rabbi Bibi, asked the angel of death: Do you have permission to kill people before their pre-determined time has come? The angel of death answered, "Yes, for it is written, 'There is no one who has perished without judgment.' 

(According to wikipedia, this story is taken from תלמוד בבלי, מסכת חגיגה, דף ד, עמוד ב – דף ה, עמוד א).

AGR(A?M?)

Alright, I said, two Marys, escaping death but then meeting it eventually. It happens.

But as I read on… that Hebrew wikipedia page mentions another personification of death, the angel of death Azarel. Azarel has three ‘colleagues’ (e.g archangel) in Islam (and in some variations, they also exist in Judaism and Christianity): Jibrail (Gabriel), Israfil, commonly thought of as the counterpart of the Judeo-Christian archangel Raphael, and Mīkhā'īl (Michael).

So wait, that’s -- that’s Azarel, Gabriel, Raphael... as in AGR(A)?  Whoa.  That fourth angel mentioned in Islam is Michael - which doesn’t hold up with AGRA - but could that be a coincidence? We’re told two things about BBCSh’s AGRA, but we can’t really know they’re actually true. The first one is that Mary claims it’s her initials, which we later learn is possibly not true - John gets mad realizing it’s another lie. The other thing is that Mary claims to be ‘R’, for Rosamund, but we can’t be sure about that either. However, another cool detail: in Christianity, Raphael is generally associated with an unnamed angel mentioned in the Gospel of John, who stirs the water at the healing pool of Bethesda. Yes - I know, the M really doesn’t fit there, but M really is a character that stands out in the BBCSH universe, doesn’t it?

Moving on to more cultural references of the personification of death the Hebrew wikipedia page offers, note that I haven’t read the first and it’s been years since I watched the second:

Death with Interruptions

In Death with Interruptions by José Saramago, they mention, death is a woman, and she falls in love with one of her future victims. She decides to spare his life: Every time death sends him his letter [notifying him of his imminent death], it gets returned. Death discovers that, without reason, this man has mistakenly not been killed. Although originally intending merely to analyse this man and discover why he is unique, death eventually becomes infatuated with him, so much so that she takes on human form to meet him. Upon visiting the cellist, she plans to personally give him the letter; instead, she falls in love with him, and, by doing so, she becomes even more human-like.

Chess and The Seventh Seal

Another reference is the film The Seventh Seal, about a knight returning from a crusade, and discovers his land his ravaged by plague. The knight encounters Death, whom he challenges to a chess match, believing he can survive as long as the game continues. Does that remind you of any particular promo pics?

What I find interesting in all these references, is that they all seem to deal with questions regarding ‘dealing with death’ that, in the context of EMP for example, can be seen as Sherlock ‘running simulations’ (or asking philosophical questions) on how to deal with his current situations:

- ‘Do you have permission to kill people before their pre-determined time has come’? (Can people time die before their pre-determined time? Can people escape pre-determined death?)

- Can you interrupt death with love? Was Mary supposed to kill John, fell in love with him and thus his death was postponed? Is John still in danger?

- What can one do to postpone death - perhaps challenging it to a game, hoping for survival as you distract it?

Tagging other meta readers/writers who I think might enjoy this ; let me know if you don’t - I won’t tag you again): @sarahthecoat​​, @devoursjohnlock​​ @inevitably-johnlocked​​ @possiblyimbiassed​​ @waitedforgarridebs​​ @tjlcisthenewsexy​​  @loudest-subtext-in-tv​​ @therealsaintscully​ 

[sp4c3-0ddity]

Tell me about Paparazzi and Not One of Ours!

WIP Meme

ah the Paparazzi fic...the fic that I will one day write...definitely...absolutely (even though it still only lives in the notes on my phone...because i had this idea while i hiatus in August ;_;)

the concept (a post-season seven fic) is that somehow the paparazzi exists on Earth despite an alien invasion (heck some of the paparazzi are aliens...and Sal advertises in the tabloids), and the Paladins are instant celebrities for obvious reasons so naturally the paparazzi pry into their private lives...

(Hunk voice:  she is not my girlfriend!!)

anyway one of them waggles their eyebrows at Pidge (so to speak) and is like so you’re surrounded by these young handsome and heroic men so surely one of them has caught your eye?? and she’s Annoyed because she’s been badgered with questions like this A Lot lately so she snaps (eager to get them off her back although it backfires and joke’s on her) and name-drops Lance

everything kind of spirals downhill from there. Pidge is mortified she told the whole damn universe she has a crush on her teammate, Lance is Stunned that his teammate has a crush on him (and that he found out through a tabloid rather than from her), and Hunk and Keith face-palm the entire time

(Matt, with Pidge’s vlog playing in the background:  well that explains a lot)

naturally Lance confronts Pidge about it (because she’s in Avoid Mode) because he’s kinda hurt she didn’t tell him, but she lies (or well...it’s somewhat true) and says she just wanted the paparazzi to quit bugging her about her nonexistent romantic life so she used his name as a placeholder and doesn’t actually like him like that

(You, me, and their mother:  lies)

Lance is hurt (the Nile is a river in Egypt) and uh...they don’t talk for a bit (or something like that) and eventually they make up when Pidge comes clean. he wonders if she would’ve told him on her own and she admits she would’ve kept it to herself because what’s the point?? (he’s already kinda dating Allura by then anyway) BUT the important thing is that they are Friends again!!

cue a montage of tabloid “headlines” vaguely documenting the evolution of their relationship, culminating in one accompanied by a photo (this is where i would’ve begged an artist to collaborate with me because a Picture is worth a thousand words and i have a Very Distinct image in my head) of Pidge and Lance holding hands or kissing or some other Sweet Romantic Affection thing while they both flip off the “camera”

that was...basically the whole fic...but anyway

and Not One of Ours!! oh boy this one got to about 25k words before i went on hiatus and so kinda...abandoned it?? i did post the first scene as a preview, but the concept is rather dark...

basically Pidge is captured by someone who subjects her to both “pleasant” and “unpleasant” hallucinations in a quest for information...but also to make her miserable, really. on top of which due to Circumstances she thinks Lance is dead (don’t worry, he’s not)

it’s split between flashbacks to Pidge’s captivity and the present to her tormentor’s trial (also between Pidge and Lance PoV because...why not alternating PoV??). also as a result i got to kinda...explore other realities?? like one where the Galra invaded Earth pre-Voltron (and without Voltron i suppose) and another where the Kerberos mission was a success...and another where Matt Holt didn’t recognize Pidge when she found him ;_;

i may save the concept, even if i don’t continue the fic, of “character experiencing wish-fulfilling hallucinations while also being Grounded to reality by some terrible fact of life” because i love it so

aaaand here’s a ~1200-word excerpt for fun:

Pidgetaps her fingertip against her thigh, counting the sentry’s patrol while she crouches in a shallowcrevice she strongly suspects is the opening of a trash disposal chute. Herbreath sits trapped in her lungs while she waits, and she releases it in a huffas the sentry passes.

Pidge sneaks out of her crevice and intothe hallway that she knows from scouting and testing the boundaries of herfreedom will lead her to the ship’sbridge - from where she can send her teammates a distress signal and bring theship down from the inside.

She creeps down the hall, wary of stickingto the blind spots of any surveillance cameras she finds and ducking intodoorways at the hint of a patrolling sentry or Galra serviceman.

“…refusingto awaken.”

Pidge halts just past an open room whereshe suspects the living servicemen take mid-shift breaks. Her mind spurs heron, telling her that whatever they’respeaking of has nothing to do with her - except to distract them from spottingher - but her heart isn’tso sure.

She backs up a step, keeping the roombehind her while staying out of sight of its occupants, to listen:

“Eventhe Druids can’t wake it,” a soldier tells his fellow.

“Butwe’re holding its Paladin hostage,” the fellow says, sounding confused.

Pidge stiffens, her eyes widening. What Paladin?

She bites the words back, keeps fromstorming into the room and demanding information - because why would they giveit to her? She has no bite to match her bark, no bayard to hold to their throatand no Lion of her own to threaten them.

But if one of her teammates was alsocaptured, she needs to find them before attempting her own escape.

“It’sjust an unfeeling machine,” the first soldier says. “Why would its Paladin’ssafety be its concern? That’s like threatening to kill one of us so that asentry will violate its programming.”

The other soldier snorts before dissolvinginto a full-blown guffaw. “Oh,I would like to see that.”

Pidge scowls, wishing she didcarry a weapon. What do these two know anyway? They’d never witnessed Red lunge for Keith orBlack crouching over Shiro or—

Grief washes over Pidge, an ache fillingher chest when she realizes how much she misses Green. How long has it beensince she felt something of her Lion inside her head?

How long has she been a prisoner?

“Notfor much longer,” Pidge swears.

She detours to a nearby directory, sighingin relief when it doesn’trequire Galra biometrics to unlock - not her first piece of luck, and it’senough to make her wonder if this is too easy until she shakes her head andfocuses on the task at hand.

Pidge memorizes the ship’s layout and the route to the ship’shangar as best as she can. She traces the route on her arm and mumbles thedirections under her breath, but before she can exit out of the directory,metallic, clanging footsteps sound behind her.

She sprints down an adjacent hallway, justin time for a small contingent of sentries that pass along with a supervisinghelmeted Galra soldier. He scowls as he marches and speaks into his comm, “Why didn’t you post more security at hercell doorthen?”

“Her”?Pidge covers her mouth to muffle a gasp, her heart pounding even faster.

They know.

The soldier pauses to listen to some reply,and Pidge stalks him and the sentries on silent, bare feet.

“Yes,sir,” the soldier says, his shoulders slumping before he straightens again. “I’malready on my way to the cargo hold.”

Pidge stumbles on her next step, herstomach leaping, but recovers while wondering why.

If Pidge escaped, why would they send moresecurity to the cargo hold?

Unless the Lion isn’t in the hangar, and they think she’llseek it.

Pidge decides it’s time to trip an obvious trap.

She sets her jaw, her hands curling intofists, and chases the soldier and his accompanying sentries at a distance. Ifshe can just catch a glimpse of the Lion, she can ascertain which of herteammates was captured and free them.

Pidge discards her tentative plan theinstant she lays eyes on the Lion.

On her Lion.

Her jaw drops at the sight of the GreenLion cocooned within a particle barrier, at the heavy guard surrounding her, atthe Druid standing before her, its cloak billowing in some unfelt breeze.

As Pidge hides behind a crate and watches,the Druid raises their arms, and an arcing beam of violet quintessence shootsfrom their hands.

It strikes the particle barrier, the greenhexagons flashing violet as the barrier absorbs the blast. The living soldiersin the hold observe from a wary distance, turned in different directionsundoubtedly to keep watch for Pidge.

Pidge bites her lip, her thoughts occupiedwith this new dilemma. How to get to her Lion?

How to wake her up without making hervulnerable to the Druid’sattacks?

She pinches her eyes shut and reaches outto Green with her mind.

Her eyes fly open when she senses nothing.

Pidge grits her teeth and thinks, Why can’t I hear you, girl?

Panic rises within her with every tick sheextends tendrils of thought towards the Lion with no response, not even a hintof a consciousness touching hers. It’slike…

The soldiers she overheard were right, andthe Green Lion is little more than an unthinking machine.

Why have you shut me out? Pidge wonders as she swallows around a lumpin her throat.

Is it because she’s a prisoner and her Lion needs a strongand freePaladin to pilot her?

No… Pidge sags as the first tears escape. Shewipes at them, failing to muffle a sob as she wraps her arms around her legsand buries her face in her knees.

No, no, no.

It’sall wrong. Pidge knows it’sall wrong, so why—

Her tears still, cutting herself offmid-sob at the flicker of a memory playing through her mind. Doubt strikes her,and she glances over the crate at the Lion, frowning.

She wasn’tcaptured with the Green Lion. She and Lance took hisLion - the Red Lion, so why—

The crate explodes, shoving Pidge away withthe force of the small blast. Heat tears at her already tattered clothes andscalds her skin, and she gasps in shock, her heart jumping into her throat, asher shoulder collides with the floor.

Her cheeks and arms sting with a multitudeof cuts, her whole body aching from the blast and fall as she slowly sits up,rubbing her pounding head.

The Druid stands over her, a ball of purpleenergy floating over their hand.

“Thesearen’t real,” Pidge tells them. She touches her face, and when her fingertipscome away bloody, she feels no surprise. “None of—the Green Lion shouldn’t behere!” She bolts to her feet, stumbling at a wave of dizziness and when herankle nearly gives out underneath her with a spike of pain shooting up her leg,and shouts, “You can’t replicate the bond between Paladin and Lion, can you?”

[coutelier]

Another sxcerpt from my current WIP. This one continues straight on from the last excerpt I posted. I was going to put a break there and cut away to something, but it would have been to some villains talking and we’ve already got three POV characters and had a few asides at this point so I didn’t want to have another one so soon:

The signs took them to a laboratory which at first didn’t seem much more impressive than science labs at school. There were some lockers, computers, sinks, those little racks filled with tubes, and a refrigerator filled with labeled jars that probably you shouldn’t pinch no matter no hungry you were. There were a few other pieces of apparatus but one thing stood out - a console in the middle of the room with a cylinder extending from its top up to the ceiling. Jennifer went straight over to it, taking a moment to scrutinize the controls and read some data off a small monitor.

“What is it?” Kaya asked. Jen’s answer was to turn some switches. The surface of the cylinder peeled away, dropping into the console to reveal a glass water-filled tank. Inside the tank was what at first looked like a tall purple leaf, but looking closer revealed that it was actually of many fronds branching from a central stalk held closely together. “Okay,” said Kaya, “so, what is it?”

“It’s not a plant,” Jennifer told her, “There’s no photosynthesis happening in there. It’s like a Charnia - a fractal life-form from the Pre-Cambrian era.”

“Well it doesn’t look that old,” Kaya pointed out, “so is it like a clone or something?”

“Very, very unlikely. No, I think this is more like a living reproduction created here. The label calls it ‘Syn’.”

“Great name. But this thing doesn’t look all that dangerous. I don’t see what it’s got to do with invisible bark skinned creatures.”

“This might have just been the start,” Jennifer nodded toward a set of doors opposite those they had entered this room from. “We should look deeper.” They headed in that direction, Jen with her wires and tablet ready but then she paused, perplexed.

“What’s wrong now?” Kaya asked.

“I-it’s locked,” Jennifer stammered. “I mean, locked-locked. There’s no panel.”

A glance confirmed that the door was, most simply, locked. Kaya almost laughed, but the truth was she would be ashamed too if this adventure came to naught. There could well be answers in there, and all that was in her way was a few inches of metal. “You spent years studying the security and doing all that fancy computer stuff, but you never thought you might just need a key?”

“I might be able to pick it,” Jen insisted, reaching into her coat for what looked like just some pins and needles. “It’ll just take a while.”

But Kaya already saw it was futile. “You’ll never pick it open with those,” she said. “If I had my tools…” that was on her, of course. She’d left them in the wreck of her car. But there had to be something in this laboratory…

Jen peered at her old friend suspiciously again. “You’re a locksmith?” She asked incredulously.

Kaya crossed her arms and muttered, “sure. Something like that.” It seemed paradoxical to her that Jennifer, who clearly had a low opinion of her anyway, refused to just acknowledge the truth. Maybe she just wanted Kaya to say it - admit out loud what she had become. Although it was an odd circumstance in which to claim any moral high ground… there were footsteps and Kaya glimpsed a shadow moving outside. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered. There was only one option where they could hide and that was the lockers, so she quickly took Jen’s hand and dragged her over. There was a coat or two hanging inside but luckily enough room for them both to fit. Jen seemed surprised and confused, enough that she didn’t resist being stuffed inside before Kaya squeezed in beside her.

Mere seconds later the footsteps were definitely inside the lab. Then they stopped. Kaya wondered why, then… the tank! They’d left it open - a silly oversight. Sure enough they soon heard a low murmur that suggested the cylinder was going back up again. Kaya could only hope that whoever was there would assume they or some other egghead had simply forgotten to raise it earlier. There was another problem - in her haste Kaya had shoved Jennifer’s face against some fur coat and now heard her whisper, “I think I’m going to sneeze…”

“Shhh!” Kaya urged as quietly as she could. “Pinch your nose!”

But it was too late. The locker opened and Kaya found herself blinking at a tall, dark skinned woman with her hair in a bun who did not look too happy. “What are you doing in there?” The woman asked.

The only explanation Kaya could think of was, “we’re agoraphobic?”

“Get out,” the woman was obviously unsympathetic to the condition. “I’m calling security.”

That meant she hadn’t yet… and she might have a key to those doors. The woman was taller and seemed quite fit, but if Kaya got the jump on her…

“Doctor Sarkis!” Jennifer gasped with surprise matched by the woman’s own.

“Jennifer?” The doctor asked. “How… why are you here?”

“That’s,” Jen avoided eye contact but this time out of genuine guilt and fear.

“That’s complicated…”

“Well you had best start explaining,” Doctor Sarkis obliquely eyed Kaya. “Who is this?”

“Cade,” Kaya put on a friendly smile. “Kaya Cade.”

“Sounds familiar,” Doctor Sarkis thought. “Isn’t she the one who used to bully you?”

Jennifer shifted her feet furtively. “N-not the only one,” she admitted. “And it was years ago. We’re adults now.”

“Did she put you up to this?”

“No… coming here was actually my idea.”

“It’s true,” Kaya nodded, “I was ready to turn myself in to the dibbles… the police, but Jen said we’d find answers here.”

Doctor Sarkis screwed her face in confusion. “Police? What for?”

“There was a creature,” Jennifer said. “Or maybe several creatures.”

“I called it a faerie,” Kaya piped in, “but we don’t really know what it was. It was invisible.”

“An invisible creature?” It was plain the doctor was already considering what kind of medication they would need.

“Only at first,” Kaya tried to clarify. “Then it rained and it de-cloaked and was strong as hell and had some kind of bark-like skin.”

“Maybe armor,” Jen suggested. “I was able to analyze a sample of its blood and I believe it was synthetic.”

“So,” Doctor Sarkis repeated it all in head, “you think we created an invisible faerie here at the lab that somehow escaped?”

“Well,” Kaya shrugged sheepishly, “it kind of sounds a bit mad when you say it like that.”

“It’s impossible,” Sarkis said, turning from them. “You’ve already seen Syn, I presume. We’ve had some success reproducing simple organisms but a creature like you’re describing is far beyond what anyone has done.”

“That’s not the same as impossible,” Jennifer gently pointed out.

“No,” Doctor Sarkis conceded, “but this is the most advanced genetic engineering facility in the world and it’s taken us decades to get this far. For anyone to have created an organism capable of acting freely would not only be unethical but they’d have skipped thousands of steps testing and understanding what they were doing. No one would be so reckless.”

Jen answered bitterly, “Alvin Stag would be…”

“Even if that were true, he answers to Meridiem now and I doubt they’d allow him to do anything that could prove costly to them.”

Kaya was missing out on a whole lot here. She knew that Alvin Stag founded this company and that Jennifer never liked him - she perhaps suspected him of having something to do with what happened to her parents. But Kaya still had so many questions, so she decided to start with what was in front of her. “Excuse me,” she said, raising a hand. “What, exactly, is it that you’re doing here? What’s that thing in the jar?”

Doctor Sarkis looked between the two intruders. After a moments consideration she seemed to resign herself. “Synthetic biology,” she said, revealing ‘the jar’ once more. “The next step in genetic engineering. Syn wasn’t modified from an existing organism. We designed and wrote her entire genome on the computers here, then implanted that code into a synthetic cell and allowed it to grow. Simple, really, although the creation of artificial cells capable of self-replication, that can be complicated.”

“But why?” Kaya asked. “What’s it for?”

“Use your imagination,” Jennifer chided, “there’s no end to all the good you could do. Plants that can absorb and recycle greenhouse gases, crops that can grow in any environment, bacteria that can clean up waste. Medicine, biofuel, space travel, terraforming… if perfected, the only limits to this are your imagination.” “Most of our work is with single celled organisms,” Doctor Sarkis nodded, “with focus on bioremediation and medicine.”

“Okay,” Kaya nodded along as well. She actually got it, but it seemed to her they were avoiding something obvious. “So all of that is what good Jen would do. But, what about evil Jen?”

There was a long moment of silence before Jen answered. “You could create a virus…”

“That’s why we’ve kept all this from the public,” Doctor Sarkis tried to assure them. “Yes, in the wrong hands someone could make a devastating weapon, but nothing happens in this lab without the approval of myself and an ethical committee.”

“But this wasn’t always your lab.”

“Before me this was your father’s work. Syn was his creation. He believed he could create a better world, not just for you, but for every human.”

Jennifer never argued with her dad. If he believed in what he was doing then there was no doubt she would as well. But, “what about Stag?” She asked. “He’s an ass,” Doctor Sarkis admitted, “but he doesn’t interfere with us. All he cares about is our progress and patents. This was your father’s work… you should see it all. Come.”

The doctor left them to open the inner doors, leaving Kaya alone with Jennifer for a moment. She slid next to her friend whispering and grinning, “you know her, then?”

“Yes,” Jen nodded. “I’ve known Jana for years.”

“So, we didn’t actually need to break in here at all? You could have just asked her to let us in?”

“Well,” Jennifer puffed indignantly, “I-I didn’t know she would be working now. Besides, I didn’t want to get her into trouble.”

Kaya made a motion as if to strangle her, but Jennifer squeaked and quickly escaped to follow the doctor. Kaya had no choice but to swallow her frustration and follow as well.