#He apologized don't worry

[tyanis]

Throwback to that time a jetlagged Stephanie Panisello tried to spin an also jetlagged Nick Apostolides on a chair and ended up getting smacked in the face with his flailing arm.

This is how the Resident Evil voice actors have fun.

[coddda]

deleted L Change the WorLd scene tbh

[ryllen]

hanging around sebastian is automatic code to become a mom friend

[sysig]

I really like @theratpy​‘s Dr. Zo :D I like him for normal reasons don’t even worry about it don’t read into it at all haha (Patreon)

Bonus Ratticus

[lulushuu]

have some silly doodles to counter the other angsty drawing!

[desultory-novice]

"There Will Be Blood Shed"

" '...Don't do it?' " " 'I want to live...?' "

"I wanted to live too."

"...Once..."

-

Soooooo, as you can imagine, I finally listened to "The Only Thing I Know For Real" from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and while apparently the character in question became something of a meme, for a first time listener, the song hit hard enough that before I knew it, I was sketching murder boy doing what he does best.

Like, not every line hits hard, but a significant number do.

"Memories broken" -Check

"The truth goes unspoken" -To Adeleine? Oooh yes

"I've even forgotten my naaaaaame" -Check and check

"I don't know the season or what is the reason I'm standing here holding my Blade" -I love the "don't know the season" part especially because on Shiver Star "summer" is what we would call "winter." Poor, mixed up kids

"A desolate place without any trace It's only the cold wind I feel" -That's Shiver Star in a nutshell

"It's me that I spite as I stand up and fight" -"Spite" in the sense that he's only hurting himself by doing this but also he regrets finding himself forced onto this path, yep...

"The only thing I know for real There will be blood shed" -See title

"The man in the mirror nods his head" -Reminds me of the Apologies title card I drew where Noir and Blade are reflected upon each other in the gleam of the sword.

"The only one left will ride upon the dragon's back" -....Okay, I have no witty comment here. Dragons are just a rock song thing! Oh! He did wear that dragon onesie when he was little??

"Because the mountains don't give back what they take." -Pfft! I'm sorry! I got curious and listened to "Wheelchair Sam" FIRST and thanks to that visual of him rolling down the mountain, I can't hear any of the "mountain" lines without laughing XD

"Losing my identity Wondering have I gone insane?" -Ahem! Back to serious and yeah. Though, Noir was usually too focused to stop and question what he was doing (...he couldn't dare...)

 "Looking downward from this deadly height Never realizing why I fight" -Ahh...this one hurts, thinking about all the nights he would sneak out of bed to hang out on the roofs and the number of times he peered over the edge (into the abyss...) Though Noir knows why he fights, he probably spent a lot of time wondering why he's alive

-

「やめろ？」 「まだ生きたい？」 オレも生きたかった… …かつて、な。

Sometimes I hear certain chunks of dialogue in Japanese in my head first and have to translate them into English to get down what I want them to say XD And I just really like the idea of Noir being "I might've sympathized, but I just don't have room for that anymore. I have too much to do before the end and you're standing in my way."

[dawnthefox24]

Illari: This bloodline ends with me. Lifeweaver: That's the fanciest way I've ever heard someone say "I'm gay". Illari:*starts crying* Lifeweaver: D-Did I say something wrong?

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Got any trans HCs for the amphibia trio? I love the many different interpretations I've seen from this fandom

I don't know about specific headcanons, I know I'm considering making Anne trans in RiAAU but I haven't decided yet.

In one hand: it would be interesting to think how she deals with her first periods because, well, amphibians don't have those, and Hop Pop assumes she's dying (she doesn't tell anyone else because she's so embarrassed). Not that he tells her that, but it really freaks him out. He thinks she has some sort of internal damage, and it's only after months of research that he finds out about some rare mammalian species, such as a few monkeys and rodents, that experience the same cycle Anne goes through. The whole point of this is that it makes Anne feel even more out-of-place. She doesn't remember her world or her parents, only that she came from "somewhere" (possibly another continent) full of people of her species, and she wonders if things would have been easier if she grew up with her biological family. I mean, surely this would be easier. It just serves as a reminder that she knows nothing about her species, not even its name, and she has no idea of how her biology works or what is good and bad for her or how long she'll live or what changes she'll go through.

.

BUT, on the other hand: Trans Anne. Let's start with the obvious: amphibians don't have penises or vaginas and they reproduce externally, meaning they like... release eggs and sperm in the water and they mix without the involvement of either parent, meaning no one knows what the cultural significance of a "penis" or a "vagina" tends to be in most human cultures. As a literaly 3yo, Anne probably didn't have an extensive understanding of s.ex and gender, and it wasn't like the clothes she showed up with told Hop Pop much. She just knew that, as time went on, she found herself relating more and more to the female frogs of Wartwood, and she almost subconsciously began to refer to herself as a girl. There wasn't any big coming out moment, more like a point in which, after months of ambiguity (this kid kept using different pronouns for herself) she just settled on some good ol' she/her and began picking somewhat girly clothes when Hop Pop took her to the market.

It's not like the concept of trans people doesn't exist in Amphibia, it's just that Anne didn't realize that was her situation until, at least, meeting Marcy, and noticing the differences between them. It's not like either of them had ever seen another human from up close, so they didn't know what to expect anyway. Anne's only encounters with Sasha beforehand had consisted on magical girl swordfighting in the sky and whatnot. Certainly not enough to discuss their unique biology, which is something Marcy is very excited to discuss, since she's never met anyone with her same "condition" before, and she wants to know everything, so she uses her as her little rat lab whenever she has the chance. Even then, since she also lacks all knowledge of human s.exual dimorphism and its cultural implications, she doesn't associate anything about either of their bodies to any specific gender that could possibly be asigned to anyone based on biological feautures. Since Sasha remembers the most from Earth, she's probably the only one who could maybe possibly remeber her mom or the kindergarden teacher saying something about "the difference between boys and girls", but by the point she's in speaking terms with Anne, and by the time she realizes their bodies are different, she doesn't really care.

That's not to say Anne doesn't experience dysphoria or that she never undergoes any kind of physical transition. It was probably around the time her voice started to change during puberty that she realized her case may be kinda unique: neither Marcy nor Sasha's voices have changed that much, she can tell even though she only sees Marcy in person like once every 3 years and all the words she exchanges with Sasha consist of death threats and insults. Plus, there's a clear difference between """male""" and """female""" voiced in frogs too. She doesn't want to sound like a man! She doesn't want to be anything like a man! Men are gross! Sorry Sprig, Hop Pop, but it's true. Men are icky icky yuck yuck and Anne is a girly girl. She doesn't want to turn into Stumpy! Or Buff Loggle! Oh, no, is that her future? She commits the triple mistake of 1) sending a letter to Marcy that same day, 2) knocking on Maddies' door promising her firstborn if she can save her from turning into Stumpy, and 3) she becomes obsessed researching mammalian biology in the archives. Bad decision. Bad bad. She's discovering things to feel dysphoric about she never even knew existed! Did you know mammalian mothers feed their offsprings with "milk" that comes from their "mammary glands"? Did Sasha and Marcy have those? She hates herself a little for checking out Marcy next time she sees her and she realizes that, indeed, in the past years she's grown a pair of those that Anne does NOT have. She notes that both she and Sasha are pretty much hairless. She used to think hair was a normal mammalian trait! That weasel that tries to eat the frogs every winter sure is covered in it!

Maddie shows up to her door with a bunch of new spells to try out, happy to have a willing subject. Most embarrassingly, Marcy starts doing her own research as soon as she gets Anne's letter and sends her all her discoveries, and now Anne feels mortified because Marcy knows about all the bad bad very bad changes she's going through (Marcy, for her part, is just fascinated by the nature of their "condition").

It takes a bit, but after a few very frenzied weeks, Anne comes to understad what's going on: her species had certain level of sexual dimorphism and she just happened to have been born with the supposed "sex" usually associated with "men" as a social category. When Hop Pop finds out, he burst into laughter. Oh, it was THAT all along! Anne made it sound so complicated, but it was just the same things he went through when he was younger, just the other way around ("Say what now Hop Pop?")! A few curses here and there and she won't have to worry about these so called "mammary glands" and "hair" anymore, though in the meantime, as Maddie perfects a human-friendly curse, she gets turned into all sort of different creatures. By the time it's done, she just wants to feel like... herself.

It's true that there are some things about her body that make her feel weird, like they don't quite fit in, but there are others she only worries about because she compared herself to Sasha and Marcy, which wasn't fair to anyone involved. Did she really want to fundamentally change parts of her body because of insecurities she developed last week over a book about lemurs? Then, a second set of fears come in: what will happen when she goes back to her place of origin? Because she does want to find her birth family. Will they recognize her, if they're looking for a boy? Will they think she's lying if she claims to be their daughter? If she changes only a few things but doesn't "go all the way", will people there think she's a freak? Will she ever be able to fit in with those of her species?

Does she really care so much about what other people think? She just wants to be herself. Some of the changes she's been going through are making her feel less like herself and more like she's being turned into a tax collector from Toad Tower. Those things have to go - her voice, for example. And she wants a more femenine silhouette (she may or may not show Maddie photos of young Mrs. Croaker as a reference). She wants a softer face. She's seeing her face changing in the mirror and she doesn't like it. She wants it to stay round and soft, not to grow hard and sharp or big and rough. She's not so sure she wants those "mammary glands". It's not like she ever thought about having kids, and the whole "breastfeeding" thing just seems gross, but after her research, and finding out she could have kids with, I don't know, maybe Marcy one day (a thought that makes her blush), she thinks it may be a good idea. She'll consider it. Maybe later. Her genitalia... well, she's used to what she has now. It already took her like 10 years to fully figure out what it was and how it worked and starting over with a whole new set just feels like too much work (also, the babies, the potential babies with Marcy). Frogs and toads have neither "penises" or "vaginas" so there's not a lot of information, and based on books about lemurs and her own empirical experience, comparing herself to other mammalian species isn't too useful. She'll leave it the way it is. She'll see if there's anything else she wants to change later, or if she wants to go back on something.

Marcy is surprised next time Anne visits Newtopia. In her letters, she described this strange transformation in excruciating detail, but seeing her in person now, holding her face in her hands, all she sees is the same Anne she's always loved.

A few more ideas:

HEADCANON: in Amphibia, two people of the same "s.ex" can reproduce through magic, which means there has to be a concious effort and intent. The external fertilization process there's no such thing as a pregnancy, and there's no such thing as s.ex. All reproduction is intentional, which means there's no need for abortion either. There are processes to destroy fertilized eggs and embryos, but they look completely different from human abortions.

Amphibians may perform acts resembling s.ex for pleasure or fun but they look different from human s.ex and have no relation to reproduction.

Andrias is the only person in Amphibia who knows enough about humans to know how they reproduce (a process he finds repulsive). He never tells Marcy, of course, though once she becomes queen, she finds his secret library and his hidden tomes on "alien biology", some of which talk about humans. He's also the only one who knows humans can have children on accident, and that Anne is the only human in Amphibia who could cause something like that to happen (he reads all of Marcy's correspondence). He knows his daughter is very close to this weird farm girl penpal of hers, and even though she's still a child, he worries for her future and the future of the crown. This new discovery could land the crown in the hands of a dynasty of aliens if he's not careful. Is it weird that he spends so much time worrying about his 12yo daughter getting pregnant from another 12yo? Yes, yes it is, but he already controls every aspect of her life, it's not like he's going to stop at her sexuality, future, real, or imaginary.

Man now that I wrote it all down, I think this option is more compelling than the first. Maybe I WILL go with this one.

[smile-files]

there's something interesting to be said about how nickel's female friends have to constantly school him on how horrible he is but animationepic won't say it

[ascendedofthesea]

Kou

......

A long drawn out sigh.

...sure, I guess I could try that. That's what the problem is. Maybe I should line all the signs with the heads of Pokemon and humans who refused to heed them. Stain the wood with their blood, while I'm at it.

[......you can't tell if he's kidding or not...]

[spongebob-connoisseur]

The month long Patrick Show episodes marathon has finally come to a close. Ending on a lovely note with Slappy robbing the Star family blind <3

[nexus-nebulae]

do lazy villagers usually not leave their houses. bc broccolo has had three separate fights with other villagers on my island and i don't think I've seen him leave his house in days

[whimsicalcotton]

Max: yeah no one really likes me haha i don't really have friends at blackwell

Kate & Warren: [so astronomically worried about her that it transcends the timeline resetting]

[cerealbishh]

"You okay?"

"Mhm."

"Good, now go get ready and wish for the best."

[desultory-novice]

Apologies AU - Good Ending Drop

Hey, everyone. It was my goal to finish Apologies in tandem with the Tournament, but for health reasons, I won't be able to as I planned. Because I tied the story to the tournament and don't feel like untangling it again and making everyone wait more, I'm going to give you all the ending spoilers, as I promised I would if I became unable to finish the story.

What I'm about to describe is THE Good Ending. The True Ending I had planned out almost from the beginning!

-

In the main-verse...

Susie, who sees too much of herself in Adeleine, decides to take matters into her own hands to bring the girl's older brother back.

She takes the vial of Dark Matter Swordsman DNA that was harvested from King Dedede. Meta Knight catches up with her and argues against it. It's foolish, dangerous, and liable to be nothing but painful to all parties involved. But Susie anticipated interference and asked Zan to bodyguard her. When Zan arrives (late) to the lab, the argument has caused the vial to begin to react to all the negativity in the room. Zan recognizes its contents as Dark Matter and insists on calling Lord Hyness, who in his own quirky way, analyzes their problem and suggests that while the contents are too weak to survive on their own, a resurrection could be possible, using Void's powers to mimic a hive queen, supplying whatever creature emerges the power to survive on Popstar without burning up into ash...

-

In the tourney-verse...

White-Haired Noir is at peace with his life and has come to accept the death of his precious little sister many years ago, but...a part of him still wishes to make Adeleine happy.

Using his fairy-born dimension sight, he discovers an Alternate Noir who is 98% percent compatible with main-verse Noir. This is the Purgatory!Noir from the Re_Birthday post. And he drags this unstable, utterly clueless Noir out of this peaceful void without his permission and secretly "volunteers"  the massively confused, un-alive but un-dead teen boy for the Kirby OC Tournament.

It is White-Haired Noir that is the "good" voice on phone and in Noir's head, encouraging rationality. His goal? Get Noir some friends. Get him to face up to/open up to people about his past. And get him caring about his life enough that he wants to live...! 

White-Haired Noir has seen what the main-verse Star Allies are attempting and knows that the odds of them actually bringing "Noir" back instead of just an emotionless monster are low without a compatible "Noir Soul" (haha) to inhabit the new vessel.

Over the course of many in-tourney events, including Noir learning to have faith in the sibling bonds he built with Gooey despite being Dark Matter at the time, learning to separate himself and Adeleine as individuals instead of clinging to her to his own neglect, privately opening up to King Dedede, who put the pieces together post-possession, about some awful stuff Noir put up with for years in secret from Raquelle's father (who privately loathed Neichel AND her kids and took it out on Noir) to "pay" for Adeleine's good life...

And lastly, using the power of wishes to interrogate if THIS Noir's true wish is to die and be free, to have never been born, to have had a normal "perfect" life, or if he simply wishes for a second chance to be with those he cares about... White-Haired Noir determines that Tourney!Noir is ready and reveals his plan to him. Noir confesses to him that he really does want to live and be with his family again and offers up his stronger soul for Susie and the gang's vessel.

-

Back in the main-verse...

The experiment is a success! They have brought, well, something back. It is not quite like Dark Matter Swordsman in form, nor is it exactly a human boy. It looks a little bit like a spiky haired-Gooey.

After some tense questioning of the emotionless, memoryless, unresponsive goo, it...suddenly seems to awaken. With the voice of a deeply shaken and scared young boy, the violet-eyed blob questions the mad scientist, cultists, and masked man surrounding him... Where the hell is he? And where are his little brother and sister?

Meta Knight welcomes Noir back to the world of the living.

Later, after Noir has time to dress himself in an appropriate scarf, Adeleine and Gooey are brought in and it is a happy and tear-filled reunion all around as Noir confirms that, while this form is strange, it's not dangerous and he's not in pain. He is then re-introduced to King Dedede, whereupon it's revealed that even though Noir likes him, he's still a snarky teen punk at heart, as he sasses the king horribly. (Dedede has gained another kid, but at what cost? XD)

...And that's it.

That's the ending to Apologies I've held onto for nearly a year.

For reading through all that, here is a short comic I drew a while back of the reunited family having a snowball fight in White Wafers.

-

(Not to unnecessarily over-explain the story but because the comic is a little vague, I have to tell you that no, Noir does not ever return to human after his revival. I meant it when I wrote in several places that their parting on Shiver Star was the last time they'd see each other "...in this form." This is merely meant to depict a moment in which Adeleine, seeing her brother alive and smiling and laughing and having real fun for the first time in so long, is able to imagine his old self smiling and is at peace that her brother is finally free from the hurt and misery he bore up with for so long.)

(...And yes, he has a long, silly tongue just like Gooey. Which is why he hides all but his eyes behind the scarf. Gotta keep up that cool older brother look even as a little goo creature! While Noir can't become human - frankly, he doesn't miss having a human body, given the stuff in his adolescence and being over-stressed, underfed, under-slept and just overall sick all the time in his later teens - he does eventually acquire the ability to shift into his old "Swordsman" form for short bursts of time.)

-

(Lastly, you might wonder how I could have had this exact ending in mind from almost the beginning when so much of it is tied up in recent posts like the tourney? ...Well, originally what was going to happen to allow Noir to be properly resurrected into the Dark Matter Goo body is that the Dream Rod from Star Allies was going to appear in response to a grieving Adeleine's wishes to see her brother again, bringing Noir-as-Swordsman back. At least for a LITTLE while, as it would be revealed that with Zero dead, Noir, who was entirely composed of Dark Matter at this point, couldn't survive on Popstar. Every moment he was there, his body was burning.)

(Still, he lasts long enough to have one final talk with Adeleine that helps heal him from the torturous events of DL 3 - in which we learn a highly disappointed Zero drove Noir to the absolute breaking point, shattering his mind and his newly regained soul. Adeleine also tells Noir she has finally realized everything he did for her during their childhood and apologizes to him for not seeing it before. With dawn on the horizon, Noir asks to look over Adeleine's sketchbooks with her before the end... He dies one last time, peacefully, while Adeleine finally gets to properly mourn him.)

(Then, all the "main-verse" sections proceed to happen as stated above!)

-

(...Okay, okay. One last thing. There was also an alternate ending planned where Magolor, taking advantage of the fact that Merry Magoland was built on a nexus point, finds a way to reunite Adeleine and White-Haired Noir - still a teen in this version - using his theme park as a union point, as special birthday gift for Adeleine.)

(I was kinda fond of this one for reuniting the timelines, but it opened up a lot of questions such as, if Magolor made it so that Noir and Adeleine from two different dimensions can see each other as long as they're both in Magoland, could others from the WH Noir-verse see the main-verse this way? It invited too many questions, so that's why I scrapped that one and just let White-Haired Noir grow up instead.)

[bcdrawsandwrites]

Day 3: Sensory deprivation / Overstimulation / Isolation

Characters: Helmut Fullbear, Otto Mentallis, Bob Zanotto

Warnings: Panic attacks, references to drugs

Summary: Helmut volunteers to be the first human guinea pig for Otto's new invention. Nothing can go wrong there.

---~~~---

Helmut filed into the Heptadome with the rest of his friends, watching as they began taking their seats on their usual beanbag chairs. Seeing Bob settle into his seat, he grinned, and abruptly plopped down next to him. Bob's face flushed as he scooted over to make room. "Helmut...!" he whispered.

"Yes?" Helmut replied, leaning against Bob's shoulder.

"Knock it off, you two," Ford said as he walked past, swatting his hand in front of their faces. "We got some important business to attend toOOOO—!"

And immediately Ford was yanked by a transparent blue hand into Lucy's seat as she gave him a playful look. "I don't know, Crully, I think they have the right idea."

Helmut and Bob couldn't resist a laugh as Ford's face flushed as well.

Meanwhile, Otto cleared his throat from his place in the center of the chairs. "If you're done engaging in a study in hormones," he said, ignoring the laughter, "I have some important news!" He held up a small oval-shaped case, which he TK'd slightly above his hand for a better view. The color, a bright green with pale pink markings, sang a pleasant woodwind melody in Helmut's mind.

"Nice colors," Helmut said with a nod. "Has a nice sound to it."

Cassie tilted her head. "Isn't that just the smelling salts?"

"It was a smelling salt container, but I repainted it," Otto replied.

Bob leaned back against Helmut, crossing his arms. "So are we here to admire your incredible painting skills, or...?"

"While that would be nice, we're here to discuss something else."

"Good, because they look like a—"

"We're here to discuss what I've packed into this container," Otto went on, pulling the capsule back into his hand and holding it between two fingers. "You see, for the past week, Ford and I have been testing a new invention of mine: Super Sneezing Powder."

"Oh!" Compton scratched his head. "I was wondering where my pepper kept going..."

"I assume that's not something that's just for pranks?" Lucy asked, leaning closer as she draped an arm around Ford.

"No, this should never be used for pranks." Otto covered the capsule with his other hand. "This powder has the ability to cause someone to���quite literally—sneeze their brains out!"

Helmut exchanged a surprised glance with Bob, and noticed everyone but Ford and Otto doing the same with each other.

"We've successfully tested the powder a number of times now," Otto went on.

"Er—what, exactly, did you test the powder on?" Compton asked.

Otto avoided Compton's gaze. "We've successfully tested the powder a number of times now," he repeated, "and we believe that now is the time to move on to human testing."

"Wait, you want one of us to sneeze our brains out?" Bob asked.

"Correct. I believe we're ready to move on to that point. We just need a volunteer."

Ford nodded. "Yeah. And if y'all decide to chicken out, I'll be stepping in."

"Oh? Does that not make you the chicken, hoping someone else will take your place?" Lucy smirked, poking Ford in the ribs.

He swatted her hand away, only half-heartedly. "No, it means I'm givin' y'all to take the opportunity first if you want!"

"It sounds like a fascinating study," Cassie remarked, "but... is it safe?"

"Well, so far, we've not had a single death!" Otto replied. "So, there's that."

"What's it like?" Helmut found himself saying, leaning forward. "Like, when you're out of your body." Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Bob snapping his head toward him, but his partner remained silent.

"Now that is an excellent question!" Otto said, turning to face Helmut with a smile. "And that's exactly what we hope to find out! You see, while the initial tests were successful, we couldn't get much useful information out of our subjects."

"Th-they were animals, weren't they?" Compton shrank back. "Oh dear..."

"Maybe, Otto, you should have asked one of our zoolepathy experts for help on that front," Cassie remarked coldly.

"Ah, but it wouldn't be near as useful as a human subject!" Otto replied. "That's why we're asking for volunteers."

"You are asking for volunteers," Bob snapped. "There's no we here."

"There's me, too, Zanotto," Ford retorted, raising a brow at him.

"And me," Helmut said simply, his eyes still on Otto.

"What?!" Bob jumped up from his seat and stood between Helmut and Otto. "Helmut, no! You don't have to go through with that!"

"I know," Helmut replied with a shrug. "But I want to. It sounds cool."

"Excellent!" Otto exclaimed, perking up. "That's settled, then! You owe me twenty pieces of psitanium, Ford."

"Paaah—!"

"No, it's not settled!" Bob cried, shooting a glare at Otto. "I—can you give us a moment?"

Before anyone else could respond, Helmut found himself being ushered out of the Heptadome. "Something the matter, Bobby?"

"Yes!" Several plants around Bob coiled in on themselves aggressively. "I don't trust Otto with this! We don't know what's going to happen!"

"I mean, we haven't really known what was gonna happen with anything else we've done, either," Helmut shrugged. "Isn't that the point?"

"Well, yeah, but..." Faltering, Bob looked down at the ground. "It's just... messing around with our minds is one thing, but this is your brain we're talking about. This could really be dangerous."

"Otto said it wasn't—" 

"He said the animals didn't die!" Bob snapped. "Not that they were okay!"

"Hey, hey." Helmut bent down, taking Bob's hands and looking into his eyes. "Listen. If something happens to me, you have my permission to make one of your plants smack him in the face. Okay?"

Bob drew in a breath, staring into his eyes for a long moment. A pained look crossed his face. "...Why do you wanna do this, Helmut?"

Helmut frowned, glancing away. "Well... it does sound cool," he admitted. "But... also—if you're, like, just a brain, you can't feel everything else, can you? You don't have eyes or a nose or mouth or anything like that."

For a moment, his thoughts drifted back to the many times when he'd stood off to the side of the stage, and even when he knew there was no audience there to greet him, the bright lights and their glare and heat felt overwhelming, not to mention the sounds of the bulbs buzzing and the stillness of the theater. Or that time he tried going to a parade—it was incredible for all of five minutes before his head started pounding from the sound, and his vision swam from the overwhelming colors and voices and instruments, and within a few more minutes he was huddled against a nearby wall, his body shaking and his mind blank. Even small moments in the Gulch could be too much, when there were six different voices all shouting over one another, even in jest rather than anger.

He heaved a long sigh. "I just... think it'd be nice to not have to deal with that for a little while."

Bob was silent for a long moment, and Helmut's heart pounded. Just as he was about to apologize, Bob spoke up: "...So you promise you won't get mad if I smack him in the face?"

Helmut's face broke into a grin, and he wrapped his partner in a tight hug. "Nah, you do what you gotta do, Bobby."

—-

They met in Otto's lab. Helmut set Bob down, having levitated up there himself, and did not comment on the fact that Bob could have easily used a plant to carry himself up. 

"Good to see you!" Otto said with a smile. He was picking up a jar filled with a strange green fluid, and Bob eyed it warily.

"What's... that for?"

"Oh, this?" Otto lifted up the jar to indicate it. "Well, we can't have brains just lying around! This serum here preserves them and keeps them from getting infected."

Bob groaned, but Helmut stared at the fluid in interest. The sight of it gave off the pleasant taste of apple pie. "Woah, neat."

Setting the jar aside, Otto's expression turned more serious. "Eager as I am to get on with this, I do want to let you know what we know will happen next." He pulled the sneezing powder capsule out of his pocket and held it up. "I'm going to open this right beneath your nose, and you'll take a whiff, same as you would the smelling salts. Except this time, it will cause you to sneeze." Otto pointed a finger at his own head, then down to the front of his face. "Your brain will then exit out through your nasal cavity."

Bob winced. "Isn't there a better way you could do this?"

"Aside from cracking your head open, no," Otto replied flatly. "But from there, I'll place the brain in this jar to keep it safe. You should still be able to communicate with us, in theory."

"In theory?"

"After a few minutes, we'll take this—" he picked up a large metal funnel to indicate it "—and use it to insert your brain back into your body via the ear canal."

"Man, I want some of whatever you're on that makes you come up with this stuff," Helmut said with a laugh.

"Maybe later," Otto said dismissively, lifting up the capsule again. "On your end, I want you to focus on... well... whatever you can. Communicate with us, if you're able, and try to remember the sensations you experience when you're out of your body. I'll want to hear everything!"

"Got it!" Helmut nodded. "Sounds good to me."

"You're sure you want to do this?" Bob whispered, leaning close.

"It'll be fine, Bobby," Helmut whispered, patting his partner’s back before turning to Otto. "Let's do this!"

"Excellent!" Smiling, Otto stepped up to Helmut, holding out the capsule. "Cover your nose, Robert."

Bob gave him a look, but did as he said, plugging his nose and putting a hand on Helmut's shoulder. He gave it a squeeze, and Helmut was pretty sure it was mostly for Bob's sake, not his own.

When the capsule was placed under his nose and cracked open, Helmut took a whiff. Immediately he could discern the scent of about half the spices in Compton's cabinet, along with the worst itch he'd ever felt in his life, which was now directly inside his nasal cavity. His nose wrinkled as he drew in a breath, and he barely had time to register Otto scrambling for the jar of green fluid before—

"Ah—CHOOO!"

The world was gone.

There was no color, no sound, no scent, not even the taste of the crisp early morning air. He felt the slightest sensation that he was floating, but that was it.

This was definitely the weirdest trip he'd ever been on.

As weird as it was, it was the slightest relief to not be bombarded with the world around him, and he basked in the sensation of utter calm.

Yet... it wasn't—not entirely. Something was still nagging at his senses—or at least, one of them, anyway. Remembering what Otto had said, he focused on that, and realized it was his sixth sense—his psychic powers—that was still active. Curious, he reached out, and realized he could sense Otto and Bob nearby. In fact, he could roughly tell how far away from them he was. It wasn't far, and he perked up, trying to reach out to them.

"Hey, guys! This is awesome!" he said.

Except he didn't.

He didn't have a mouth to speak with, so no sound came out. It had nowhere to come from.

The thought sent a bolt of fear through him, but he shook his head—only to realize he couldn't do that, either. Okay. He reached out again, trying to figure out what he could sense, and realized they were talking. In fact, he could get a rough idea of what they were saying:

Get it under control! This is so unusual—

Him, not it! What is wrong with you?!

Yet knowing what they were saying somehow wasn't any comfort. For one, they were distressed, and two, he... couldn't actually hear them. It was them, but without their actual voices. If he thought for a moment, he could apply their mental voices to what he was sensing, but the fact that he had to do that at all was sending more ripples of panic through his mind.

It's okay, it's okay, he thought. I just need to take a breath—wait, no, I can't breathe. His eyes widened, except they didn't because he didn't have those, and he couldn't see and he couldn't hear or smell or feel, he could only think and he couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe—

Some nightmare loomed at the edges of his consciousness, circling around him with a speed he couldn't even comprehend, and he felt like he was surrounded, overwhelmed, with nothing to be overwhelmed by except the sheer amount of nothingness around him make it stop make it stop make it stop make iT STOP—

There was a sudden jerk, and abruptly the world was.

The fresh smell of morning assaulted his nostrils along with the remains of overly-spicy peppers and whatever earthy scents were emanating from the greenhouse below, and the water and the lab and the brain preservation juices and the awful cologne Otto was wearing. Bright colors stabbed into his eyes, from the sun screeching down into every gap in the lab, to the color of the jar on the counter, to the blue sky outside the window, and even Bob's jacket.

But even more than that—

"HELMUT, CAN YOU HEAR ME?!"

"GIVE HIM A MOMENT! BUT, PLEASE, HELMUT, WHEN YOU GET THE CHANCE, LET ME KNOW EVERYTHING!"

His heart pounded in his ears, his own breath sounding like the roar of a cougar.

"OTTO, HE'S NOT RESPONDING! IS HE OKAY?"

"I DON'T KNOW, HE HASN'T TOLD US! I'M SURE IT'S FINE, THOUGH. IT WAS ONLY FIVE MINUTES!"

"IF YOUR STUPID SNEEZE POWDER OR BRAIN JUICE DID SOMETHING TO HIM, OTTO, I AM GOING TO FU—"

"SHUT UP!"

The silence of the other voices made Helmut realize that the third one had been him.

But the world hadn't shut up—he could still hear his heart, his breath, the birds outside, the water, the wind, the creaking of the trees and plants and—

Bob's hand clutched his tightly, and while he felt like his skin was exploding from the contact, he gripped it for dear life as his breath came in shallow gasps, and what felt like no air entered his lungs. Already the world was starting to feel distant, now, the sounds and feelings and smells miles away from him. He was out of his body, but not like he'd been before. It was his soul, his soul was leaving his body— "Bobby—I can't breathe—I think I'm dying—"

"It's okay, it's okay," Bob whispered, squeezing his hand. "You're gonna be okay, just breathe." He forced out a laugh. "Hey, Compton's making soup tonight! I grew some really nice onions, and potatoes, and carrots, and Ford—Ford got some bacon, because of course he did—it's gonna be great, okay?"

Helmut listened as his partner continued to ramble, the soft voice gradually bringing him back as the harshness of the world began to fade. But by the time he was grounded, he found his head was pounding, and his nose ached—he didn't know his nose could feel like that—and the exhaustion he felt made it hard to move a single muscle in his body. He let Bob lift him up on his feet, and leaned heavily against him.

Abruptly he remembered what they'd been doing. He glanced up at Otto, only to look away again when he saw the agonized, distressed look on his friend's face, accompanied by clear tear streaks down his cheeks. Helmut had never seen him that distressed in his life.

"I'm... I'm sorry, Helmut," Otto choked out.

"It's okay," Helmut said, and even speaking felt like it took great effort. "I just... d-don't think I can do that again."

Otto let out a shaky sigh, and Bob led Helmut toward the doorway. A large vine reached up from the ground, ready to carry them both down, but before it did, it suddenly bolted out behind them.

Looking back in surprise, Helmut realized Bob had done the same, but his partner's face was contorted with rage. The vine, the width of a lamppost, was whipping toward Otto, who staggered back in terror.

Before Helmut could even gasp, the vine stopped inches short of striking their friend. It held there for what felt like an eternity as Bob glared into Otto's eyes, before slowly the vine pulled away, wrapping gingerly around Bob and Helmut and gently carrying them away from the lab.