#I can't even tell you how many times I went back and rewrote his dialogue just to get it perfect

[mxliv-oftheendless]

The Deadly Game

Ok, so people said they wanted to read this, so ask, and ye shall receive! I am actually super eager to see what y’all think of this little snapshot (although knowing me “little” is about three pages in Word lol). It’s not action-packed, but it is pretty tense. I hope it’s as tense as I intended it to be. I hope you guys like it because I kind of want to write more; this show is dark, which means an opportunity to see how dark Heather can go! 

Quick disclaimer: if you have not watched Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated (which, what is wrong with you, go watch it this instant), BEWARB! There are like huge spoilers ahead! I also own nothing except the awesome badass that is Heather McMann. Read on and enjoy, you meddling kids!

It was late at night by the time Heather got home. She rode up her driveway and stopped, killing the engine and removing her helmet. As she got off her motorcycle, she stopped and looked up at her house.

There was an uneasy feeling in her stomach, the feeling that something was off. Not enough that she wasn’t fearing going into her house altogether, but enough that she definitely felt it as she stared up at her house.

Of course, she’d felt such feelings ever since she first set foot in Crystal Cove—the whole town felt off no matter where she went. She put down the bike pedal and headed up the walkway to her front door, ready to grab her phone in case she needed to call the police. 

Heather unlocked her door, and stepped inside, shutting nd locking the door behind her. She entered her living room and looked around, taking in her surroundings in the light from the kitchen and the small nightlight she had plugged in somewhere. Nothing seemed out of place, or stolen. Plus her front door had been locked, and thanks to her investment in a good burglar alarm, she would have known if someone—or something—had broken in.

Unless, of course, they disabled the alarm.

Heather tried to ignore the thought and kept scanning the room. Then her eyes fell on the window across the room. It was one of the windows of her house that received the most sunlight, so it had various flower pots clustered around it.

And it was also wide open.

Heather’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps she was wrong, but she was very sure that window had been closed before she left.

Now on high alert, Heather stepped over to the window and inspected it. From the bright light of the moon, she could clearly see that someone—or something—had forced it open. Heather slowly reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, unlocking it and meaning to call the police.

“What beautiful flowers you have.” Heather froze at the voice. It was light and pleasant-sounding, with a thick German accent. She knew that voice.

Heather turned around, putting her phone back into her pocket. Sitting perched on top of her armchair was a parrot. He was partly enshrouded in shadow, but there was enough light for Heather to make out his purple plumage, the white hair atop his head, and the purple scarf around his neck. She could also see his one piercing green eye, and his other milky eye—although that was due to the long scar traveling down his face and through his eye. He was sitting there casually, as though he did this all the time, and was stroking one of the flowers from the nearest hanging pot with one of his wings.

“One of the things you miss when you are in a cage,” he said, almost conversationally, “is the simple beauty of the flowers. It is good for me that you adore them so much.”

His voice—gods, Heather hated that voice. It sounded almost naturally pleasant, like he was having a good day just by seeing you. It promised things, things you didn’t even know you wanted yet. And just about anyone could be manipulated by that voice, without even realizing it.

That was, of course, only if you didn’t know the intimate details of the animal it belonged to. Which Heather did.

She frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’d heard you escaped your cage. I figured you’d come visit me eventually.”

“As always, my dear schwarze dahlie, your keen intelligence is refreshing. I cannot begin to tell you the stupidity of some of the guards at the animal asylum.”

“So to what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from Professor Pericles, the only bird worthy of a mention on a list of sociopaths?”

Pericles merely smiled at her, and somewhere in her mind she knew he knew her hatred of that smile. “Merely to pay an old freunde a visit.”

Anger flared up in her. “We are not friends. We were never friends.”

“True, but we shared mutual friends. How are dear Brad and Judy?” Heather hesitated. “Now, now, my dear schwarze dahlie, it is a simple question. You mustn’t be so paranoid.”

She had good reason to be paranoid. But Heather decided nonetheless to answer with the truth. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard from them in years. But you, of course, know perfectly well why.”

Pericles nodded in concession. “True. I do hope they stayed together—such a lovely couple they made. Their son is a perfect mix of them, wouldn’t you say?”

Heather froze, nails digging into the sleeves of her jacket.

“My dear schwarze dahlie, you really think I couldn’t see the resemblance dear Frederick has to his parents? One look at the boy told me all I needed to know. It is lucky for our dear Mayor that Frederick grew to resemble him—saves a lot of questions from being asked.”

Heather wanted to growl at him. Instead she just gritted her teeth and glared at him. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call the police.”

Pericles simply laughed at her. “Call the police? Oh, but my dear woman, we both know you will do nothing of the kind.”

“How do you know?” she challenged. She pulled out her phone and held it up, showing him the number pad on the screen. “I could call them right now, and send you back to that cage where you belong.”

Pericles eyed the phone screen, and Heather was pleased to hear the pause before he spoke again. “You would do well to remember who you are dealing with, my dear schwarze dahlie.”

“And you would do well to remember who you are dealing with,” Heather returned. “You may have the smartest brain in the world, but you’re still a little bird. I could easily overpower you and send you back to prison, save Mystery Inc. and Mr. E the trouble of having to track you down.”

Pericles’s eyes narrowed; he was seriously considering her words. “So give me one good reason why I shouldn’t do all of that right now.”

“The fact that we both know it will solve nothing,” Pericles answered, in far too smooth a voice for Heather’s liking. “Even if you succeed in sending me back, in the end, it will solve none of the problems Mystery Incorporated faces. And,” Pericles added, “if such a thing occurs, where you do send me back, in the end, all the secrets you have worked to bury will be brought to light again, most likely by the same kinder you wish to protect.”

Heather glared at him, working to keep her voice even. “That’s never going to happen. Even you, for all your smarts, know nothing of who I truly am.” A small smirk came to her face. “I’m the one puzzle you can’t figure out.”

Both of them knew she was right. Sure, Pericles knew some details—why else would he take such pleasure in calling her that nickname?—but even what he knew wasn’t the real truth. It was the one victory Heather had over the damned bird, knowing that she had buried her past so well even he couldn’t find it.

“Perhaps,” Pericles said, and even though his voice sounded the same Heather saw in his body how miffed he was by that reminder. “But the fact of it solving nothing still stands. You know this as well as I do. The die has been cast; the game has begun once more. Fortunately for you, and the kinder, it is important that they remain alive. So you may take solace in that I do not mean them any harm.” For now. 

She didn’t take much solace in that at all. “If that’s all you came here to tell me,” Heather said, “then it’s best you leave. It’d be a shame if all of your plans were to be ruined by a neighbor seeing me talking to you.”

“Not quite,” Pericles replied. “I have one more piece of advice. From this point on, I would watch your back. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to you for meddling into things beyond your understanding.”

“I could say the same for you,” Heather responded. “You should remember that when you try to meddle in things you don’t understand, you always pay the price. One way or another.”

She let that statement hang in the air in the ensuing silence.

“Well, we shall see,” Pericles said after a moment. He spread his wings and flapped himself up off the armchair. “Sleep well tonight, my dear schwarze dahlie. Flowers do not sell themselves.”

As Pericles flew toward the open window, Heather turned around to head down the hallway to her bedroom.

“I do have one more question to ask you,”

Heather stopped walking, but didn’t turn around. Pericles continued. “If you were the esteemed Mayor Jones, and you stole something from me… where would you hide it?”

For some reason, a part of Heather didn’t want to answer the question. For all her dislike of Jones, they were alike in that they knew how far Pericles was willing to go to get what he wanted. But then she remembered everything else Jones had done.

He got himself into this mess. Let him get himself out of it.

Heather turned her head towards Pericles, who was looking in her direction. “He trusts me about as far as he can throw me. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

She turned her head back around and disappeared down the hall, the sound of flapping wings haunting her every step. 

[maneaterwithtail]

A lot of people were acquainted with him through his prolific participation in News & Politics, but to me Aaron was always an author, one half of the team behind Hybrid Theory. That fic was a bastion of creativity, drama, and wry humor; a ludicrous and ambitious premise, played gloriously straight. It provided me with much-needed hope and entertainment in years past. His death comes as a punch in the gut, and takes the wind of optimism out of my sails.

I never knew him well, and now I never will. Rest in peace, Aaron. The world is lessened by your absence from it.

-orm Ember

I didn't want to write this. 

Not just for the obvious reasons, that nobody likes to say goodbye to a friend like this. I didn't want to make this about me, because it isn't about me. I wanted to say something about him, to tell his story, to express the tiniest part of the loss I feel in a way others could understand. 

But I came to realise that it wasn't for me to tell his story. I can't. That story was for him to tell, and unfortunately, he cannot. The only story I have to tell is the story of us. So that's what I'll do. 

I met Aaron Peori when we were both new in high school, about twenty-five years ago. Glace Bay High was the tenth of the eleven schools that I attended in my eleven years of schooling, and so by then I was almost as well-practiced in "meet new friends" as I was in "meet the new local pack of bullies". Walking home, I noticed one guy about my age that always walked alone, reading a book. In other words, a fellow nerd, a weirdo, an outcast. Like me. After a couple of days of spotting this lone reading fellow, he happened to be reading a book by Christopher Pike, an author I also had books by. That was, as the saying goes, an opening.

"Hey, isn't that a Christopher Pike book?" I asked this stranger, casually, as if I hadn't already known.

He looked up at me, not even showing any surprise that some weirdo had walked up and asked about the book his nose was in. "Yes," he said, peering at me owlishly from behind his glasses, then after a moment added, "He's a good author."

By the time we reached home that day, we were already good friends. From that point on, in fact, we were virtually inseparable, aided by the fact that he lived almost literally in my backyard.

From the very beginning, we were creative collaborators. At first, we were using GI Joes and a few other toys in elaborate setpiece dioramas that spanned his house's enclosed front porch, and sometimes spilled out to occupy part of the year as well. Factions, sacrifices, betrayals, and no doubt embarassing-in-retrospect dialogue were all a part of those first afternoons and weekends.

I think he first got a copy of the Marvel Super Heroes RPG from his cousin. Before I'd met him, Aaron and his cousin had both been drawing their own comics about a space-based superhero team called Sonis. Now, with a tool that you could use tell stories about superheroes, and rules to arbitrate - our new great dioramas were ones made of words, not toys. I quickly made my own "expanded universe", about a group of mercenary superheroes called Heroes For Hire. 

At that point, what turned out to be a very long-lasting pattern was set. Aaron was the GM, and I was the player. Aaron created the worlds, and I lived the characters in them. He did want me to be the GM sometimes (it's more fun being the player!), but I was always uncomfortably aware how much better at it he was than me, and so I felt intimidated to pit my own lesser stories against the epics he created.

As time went on, another pattern that would be long-lasting emerged: Aaron and I's stories became vastly greater in scope. He rewrote the resolution system of the game to account for much higher power levels than the original design used (Ochre feats!), and eventually we dispensed with the rules altogether, playing completely free-form with no set rules and only the occasional dice roll. I learned to handle multiple characters at once, and bored at the success easily reached by my insanely overpowered characters, learned to find more fun in getting them in trouble instead. Aaron learned to handle the narrative challenges faced by trying to craft stories about protagonists who had literal "I win" powers, and weren't very likeable to boot.

Very little of Heroes For Hire would be something I wouldn't be embarassed to show off today, but my former internet nom de guerre "Blade" comes from the most central and overpowered character of those days.

About a year before I left Cape Breton, Aaron and I discovered two things of lasting consequence: anime, via his having a comic adaptation of the movie "Project A-ko" in his huge box of comics that I would regularly raid, and fanfiction, which I had been introduced to via USENET by another friend of mine, Mark MacIsaac. After I left, Aaron had more free time, and thus he started writing a story that combined two of his favourite things: the then-popular anime Ranma 1/2, and Star Wars. 

Aaron wrote prolifically, longhand on sheaths of paper, in his inscrutable and typo-laden scrawl. My role in those first stories, for all they were credited under both our names, was just to type these up and edit them - but that wasn't a small task, to be fair. I can type 60wpm despite still pecking with two fingers instead of touch-typing, a skill that dates to those early manuscripts. 

That level of collaboration, though, wasn't enough. Soon we took to role-playing games again, and I took on various Ranma characters in lengthy phone conversations where he was once again the DM. Those games formed several of the plots for Ranma: Curse of Darkness, and the entirety of the plot of Kyoto Chronicles (sadly never actually finished), along with other stories both Ranma and non that never made it to the internet. Again, he would write the scripts and I would type them up, now with more creative control and editing. 

The time came when we once again lived in the same city, able to really collaborate with both of us writing scenes. All of this finally culminated in Hybrid Theory, our longer-than-Lord-of-the-Rings magnum opus, and something we were both pretty proud of despite the various flaws and that we totally botched poor Rei's character arc.

After writing something like that, we were sure, it would be easy to write something for professional publication. But unfortunately, it never came to be. Circumstances separated us again, several promising projects got stalled after a few chapters, and then the grinding workload he faced at his job hurt his ability to write consistently.

But Aaron never stopped writing fanfiction. His mind never stopped working. Most of what he wrote was "junk" in his words, and he wouldn't even show it to me, but he was still thinking up stories and worlds and his favourite thing of all: elaborate fight scenes. He once told me he could write in any series, no matter how crappy or derivative, "as long as the main characters can run up walls".

It frustrates me that I cannot prove to anyone here how brilliant Aaron was, because that brilliance was hidden behind the various flaws in his prose style. His prospensity for typos never did much improve, though he could at least spellcheck stuff he wrote on a computer rather than longhand. He never got hung up like me searching for the exact right word, and so he often just used the same words over and over. For those that read his last work, I can only explain that I took out a ton of "snaps" - "snapped her head back", "snapped his wrist forward", "the snake snapped out" and yet there are STILL that many in there. I was going to do a much more thorough editing pass when it was finished. 

But that is all surface-level. Where Aaron excelled was in his vision for a setting and story. He could take the ridiculous and make it somehow sublime - indeed, he often challenged himself with making ridiculous or cliche concepts work. He could keep track of a million dancing pieces and know precisely which should enter the stage, and from where. It's not that I didn't contribute meaningfully to our collaborative efforts, but I often felt like a child with crayons colouring in the lines of a sketch by Da Vinci. Even if my colouring was good, it wasn't the masterpiece.

His players knew, though. Another habit Aaron kept for the rest of his life was GMing (though he enjoyed playing, when the opportunity was afforded to him), even if he couldn't do it as much in recent years. Aaron was a masterful GM, able to coax out strong story arcs and dramatic moments from players of any skill level, able to make NPCs that the players hated or loved or both, able to coax rambunctious player parties into dramatic clashes and events that never felt railroaded. But perhaps even more than that, he was a master of making game rules work for him instead of against him. Aaron loved role playing game rules: one of his primary hobbies and uses of his spare cash was to buy new gamebooks, even if he never planned to use them for a game. He'd devour them, expertly analyse their strengths and flaws, modify and house-rule them to his liking, and even a notoriously tricky game to GM like Exalted flowed smoothly in his hands.

His set of replacement Dragonblooded charms are still the best and most flavourful charmset ever made for them. And he always maintained that the best game system to run Star Wars with was the pulp action game Adventure! - which was the very last game I'd play with him. He was, as always on these matters, completely correct.

In another world, even with the problems we had, I'm sure Aaron could have been a published author. The problem, if problem it was, was that Aaron's prolificness stemmed from his own joy in writing and creating. Ultimately, if he was more interested in writing about a magical self-insert Sakura than he was in something "professional", then that's what he did. He took note of criticism and changed things if he got it, but ultimately the only critic whose opinion he internalised was himself. He wrote because he enjoyed writing. If somebody else enjoyed what he did, great. If nobody did, he'd write anyway.

Aaron and I were so close that my father asked me if we were gay once. We weren't - I'm straight, and he was (unknowingly at the time) asexual. But we loved each other anyway. We had the kind of easy camraderie and understanding where we could nostalge and talk for hours upon hours, week upon week, and never get bored even when we didn't have really anything to talk about. We were never bored of each other's company. From that very first day we met, we understood each other in ways that nobody else ever did, or ever would. I never pictured my life without Aaron in it. I was going to be a writer, I knew at 15 years old, with Aaron. I was going to move back to Canada someday - and live near Aaron. 

There is a hole, and it cannot be filled. It hurts, and it will always hurt. And yet I am greater for having it. It is unthinkable to wish that I didn't have it. My life without Aaron is unthinkable. I'll have to think of it, maybe another day, but not yet.

Aaron's last few years were difficult in some ways. He stuck in a predatory, horrible job that left him perpetually sick and exhausted, the only thing in the 25 years I knew him that actually forced him to stop writing and GMing for any length of time. He was too proud to take help, too tired to look for an alternative. He nearly died of a perforated ulcer a few years ago, and that added "chronic pain" to his ailments, and being him, he would only take painkillers when it became unbearable. It was unsustainable, we knew it, but he was always reaching for that promotion that would finally bring the shorter hours he had been asking for. In the meantime, he'd always say "Don't worry about me, I'm fine." I wish he had been right.

And yet.

In those same years, Aaron discovered himself. He discovered that he wasn't the strange not-wanting-sex freak he had grown up thinking he was, that there were many people like him out there. He got in touch with the emotions he had suppressed within himself due to a traumatic childhood experience, and while he sometimes had difficulty handling his newfound sadness (he was striken by grief like I'd never seen over the death of his grandfather) or anger (political topics were verboten in our conversations over the last few years), I believe that for all the pain and overwork and lack of creative output he was still in some ways never happier than he was these last few years.

He told me once that he wanted to find a partner of either gender, who didn't need or didn't want sex, but could be with him and hold him close when he needed it. I cried, and told him I knew he could find someone once he was out of that job. He deserved it. He deserved that happiness too.

This forum (although not solely) had a lot to do with him discovering himself, and that is why I felt I had to post about him here. You meant more to him than you know, and to some of you, though I don't know your names, I owe a debt I can never repay. Whoever you are, thank you so much. You helped him in a way I couldn't. The joy and hope of his last years came from the help you gave him.

And that's the end of the story of us. Aaron was exhausted, pushing himself beyond what he ever should have - now, at least, he can rest. Aaron was in pain, but now the pain is gone. There was nothing good or right or kind or acceptable about it, but it can't be changed, it can't be helped. 

Goodbye, Aaron. I love you. Thank you for writing stories with me.

-Chris Mcneil addressing sufficient velocity forums