#STRIKING A DEAL WITH DEATH ITSELF. RISKING YOUR LIFE TO GET YOUR LOVER BACK. IT'S THE GREATEST ACT OF SELFLESS DEVOTION

[rotisseries]

hear me out y'all, byler orpheus and eurydice au.

kind of like all those "mike following will into the upsidedown" fics, except the upsidedown is, well, the underworld.

like mike already canonically has a guitar in his room and there's more than a few byler band aus so clearly we're all up for musician mike wheeler, and then just like, the tragedy of it. the tragedy of that myth, I'm obsessed with it.

like??? following your lover beyond the end, desperate to bring them back because they are what makes life so worth living, and you do the impossible, striking a deal with death itself, where you and your lover are allowed to leave, so long as you do this one simple thing? you walk out and you can't turn to look back at them, you have to trust that you aren't being tricked. and you almost get there. you almost make it. but in a singular moment of weakness, caused by the same love and devotion that led you down under in the first place, you cannot bear the unknowing, the uncertainty of whether they are really accompanying you out of the darkness. so, despite it all, you cave, and you turn back. and as you look at your lover, fading quickly, as you realize they were with you this whole time, there's grief, but there's no blame or resentment. only a final understanding that this is how it was always going to turn out. like it makes me so insane sorry.

anyway the concept of will dying and mike following him, dedicated to getting him back, only to, in the end, fail? because in the end, he couldn't keep himself from looking back at who he loves??? tell me that doesn't fucking slap you can't

[harveywritings92]

Happy death day: Reaper reader (Vergil's Ver) pt.2

When Y/n open her eyes this time she was in the forest, her mind was swimming as the hunger pangs she felt from earlier were much worse then from this morning she also had a sense of anxiety not the normal anxiety of being lost in an unknown place, but that type anxiety that small child would feel after being separated from a parent in a large crowd.

She had the sudden urge to find and be near Henry... Y/n's legs were shaking as she pulled herself up, she shuddered hugging Henry's hoodie close to "Damn.... it's so cold." She hissed leaning against a tree, she could see her breath and was even more confusing to the young reaper. *It's August... So why is it so damn cold?!* She resisted the urge to throw up when heard a familiar voice speak up behind her.

"Finally awake I see..."

Y/n felt a chill go down her back as she cautiously looked over her shoulder to see a pair of glowing blue eyes glaring at her from the darkness she swallowed. "Ver-" a summoned sword suddenly shot out the y/ht woman flinched as it embedded itself next to her head. "I didn't say you could speak..." The half demon hissed venom dripping in his tone the y/hc bit her tongue as Vergil stepped out the shadows in his Sin Trigger Form and the way his tail was moving his was pissed.

Y/n throat felt dry as her former lover leaned close to growling. "I'll admit you almost had me fooled, " the y/ht woman swallowed not understanding what he was on about. "Taking her face to manipulate me, You've gotten more foolish in the demon world..." then it clicked he though Y/n was a demon!! "Any last words before I end your misery?" the y/ht woman tried to speak but her voice wasn't working... 

"Nothing to say? that's fine for me." he hissed Y/n felt tears falling down her cheeks as the half devil raised Yamato ready to strike Y/n finally found her voice only able to scream. "VERGIL!/STOP!?" a man's voice snapped at the same time as hers Y/n opened her eyes to see Yamato a hair's length from slashing her neck as Vergil turned glaring at the person who dared intervene.

Y/n felt nothing but relief to see Henry standing at the clearing entrance out of breath, but with a serious expression on his face. "You..." Vergil growled obliviously thinking Henry was the master mind behind his girlfriend’s copy, "Just barely made it, sorry snow-pea." he gasped before straightening up to his full height.

Vergil turned away from Y/n keeping and summoned his doppelganger to guard her in case she tried to run.  and the two men started walking towards each other and stopped a few feet apart mainly because Vergil was pointing Yamato at Henry expecting a fight the elder reaper just yawned before getting down to business.

"Why have you come here?"

"Simple You've borrowed something from me without asking, I'm here to collect."

"You'd risk life for that lesser demon-"

"Pfft, Demons? is that what you think we are? *chuckles* naw mate we're reapers."

Henry watched Vergil's eyes widened for a second. "Surely the elder son of Sparda know what that means?" the raven haired reaper stated in a mocking tone as the half-devil lowered Yamato.

 Vergil had read about grim-reapers when he was younger they were the selected few mortal souls of the recently deceased forced to walk the earth collecting an unknown amount of souls, in order to attain entry to the afterlife.

Without a word de-triggered as he looked to where Y/n was cowering he called off doppelganger causing Y/n to slide down to ground and hug her knees shaking not noticing Vergil cautiously walk up to her, she could feel him staring over her pathetic shaking form.

*this...was Y/n...my Y/n?"* Vergil mind echoed his eyes stung he felt a rogue tear escape down his cheek before dropped to his knees and with shaking arms held her against him, Y/n's was scent was soo different from the one he remembered, it was no longer lively, sweet, and jubilant, instead it was she smelled of dead flowers, fresh rain and grave soil. "Y/n. " he said with shudder in shock that he had attacked her, he was shaking as he pulled her closer.

Y/n was in shock she's never seen Vergil acting like this before... she cautiously looked up from her knees to find the normally cool-headed and orderly man, was breaking apart right before her eyes...she wanted say something but froze when she felt the familiar sensation of bile rising in her throat.

Her fear overlapped the feeling hunger she had felt when she woke up, on instinct she tried to shove Vergil away so she could heave, he was and stronger then the y/ht/wt woman. "Move!" she snapped confusing Vergil who watched in shock as this golden vapor spilled from his girlfriend's mouth and one of her arms went spectral. "What's happening?" he demanded alarmed Henry pinched the bridge of his nose."Nothing! she's jus-" Y/n beat him to it. "I'm hungry..." she whined causing Henry to facepalm and Vergil to stare her in disbelief.

later

Cut to the the trio in a roadside diner Henry's brow twitched as he stared at Vergil who was sitting across from him with Y/n sitting in his lap; Yamato resting against the window, as said reapling was eating a plate eggs and cinnamon toast. 

The half devil was calmly sipped a cup of coffee, while he kept his eyes on the elder reaper with a calculated glare, the raven haired man had tell him how Y/n had com into his care... That was the deal.

[silverlysilence]

An Emissary’s Duty

@madcapmiss and I have worked together to bring you this little collaboration steaming from the comment section of Spirit of a Guardian.  (She did most of the work meshing the two ideas into one and I formatted the DMs into this, please praise her).  Enjoy.

Officially he's come as a peaceful emissary, looking to negotiate a trade agreement with the young chief of the Hooligan tribe. Officially. Truthfully his people have sent him to take the boy’s measure and gather the pertinent information needed to launch a successful attack.

They've heard the stories, of course. Who hasn't by now?  It’s been the talk of the entire Barbaric Archipelago for the last few years.  The stories growing and new details added with each rendition.  Still, they're not fool enough to actually believe in such tall tales. They go beyond the realm of far-fetched and straight into the downright insulting.

They say the chief rides a Night Fury, the Unholy Offspring of Lightning and Death itself; more than that there are whispers he is more kin to the beast than he is to men. They say he struck down Drago Bludvist, a nightmare of a man who once slaughtered nearly every Chieftain in the isles in the space of a single night. They say he defeated a vast army from beyond the archipelago with only five warriors at his back. They say he built himself wings, that he can command dragons and call lightning and walk through fire. They say that he is so fierce that the queen of the fair folk herself asked him for an alliance, that when he grew lonely for companionship, he stole a god from Asgard itself for his lover.

The emissary, like the rest of his tribe, holds these stories in contempt. It's one thing to exaggerate your strength to ward off attackers, but this boy’s efforts have strayed beyond the realm of arrogance into utter foolishness. Stoick the Vast may have been formidable in his day but he must have long since lost his wits to old age if he's stepped aside to let a child trying to frighten them all with shadow-tales to take his place. Given the hubris of the tales, a few of the weak-minded foals whispered that they’d heard his tribe were acting on behalf of the Gods themselves. It was only right that more sensible, worthy men should deal with such upstarts before the Gods decide to take offence and retaliate against the whole of the archipelago over such blasphemy. And with a prize as rich as Dragon's Edge there for the taking, there's plenty of incentive to be...worthy.

He was expecting to see the dragons of course because there had to be SOME seed of truth in the stories for the rumors to have spread so far. There are more than he expected but it's fine. They've been fighting dragons for generations; they could still take the Hooligans with some cunning and a bit of Dragon Root. Though there are a handful of oddities beyond the dragons that catches his eye and makes him pause; the shimmering liquids in the alchemist's workshop, a burnt-orange orb of light that flickers in the corner of his eye as he passes a short brunet Viking only to disappear whenever tries to catch sight of whatever made the strange glow.

The minute distractions hold his attention far more than they should as he fails to notice the way the dark-haired alchemist looks at him from over her potions, or the sharp-edged grin she flashes at the young Guard Captain. He fails to hear the mean-spirited chuckle that escapes the stocky, mace-wielding warrior at her side when the burnt-orange orb seemingly appears off to the side but a twist of the head reveals nothing there. He doesn't see the danger in the way said Guard Captain goes from straight backed and polite to lazily welcoming.

He doesn't know to be alarmed by the very distinct silence from a pair of twins that only ever pass unnoticed when they have business to attend to. He does, however, take notice of the tattoos and scars the broad-shouldered man who leads him through the village at the young Guard Captain’s command. The man is strong, the emissary will give him that, and has obviously seen much of both war and the world, but he isn't worried. He's felled bigger of men under less than ideal circumstances. Case in point, the hulking blonde squealing over baby dragons isn't even worth mentioning, though the sword he carries on his waist would make a fine trophy. Better by far than those spears with blackened tips the pair of blondes lazily trailing them carry.

Then he enters the forge and his dismissive hunger shatters, his heart pounding in a helpless echo of the smith's hammer blows.

There's a tall figure looming over the anvil, wielding a large blacksmith’s hammer with the ease other men lift their ale flagons. His head is bent intently over his work and there is lightning crawling, dancing, skittering over his skin like ripples on water. A blinding bolt leaps from smith to anvil and the emissary flinches violently. A second bolt cracks from the anvil to a nearby workbench. He draws a shaking breath and firmly reminds himself that a single rumor validated is no reason for the creeping dread trying to rise in his throat. A third bolt leaps from the anvil to the smith, twisting around his arm like a snake before dripping down to race across black scales.

The emissary blanches. There, a terrible black beast is curled at the forge-master’s feet, near invisible in the shadows but for the acidic green of its eyes, the deadly fangs glittering from its snarl, and the lightning crackling across it's hide. The emissary swallows hard and though he tries to rationalize, to remind himself that yet a second partially-validated rumor is no reason for alarm, he cannot help taking an involuntary step back.

He doesn't get far. Someone is in the doorway at his back, blocking his escape route. The young Guard Captain's voice calls out to the forge-master, and a detached part of his mind wonders when she had arrived and where his original guide has gone. The man (is he even a man? Surely not. This- this thing before him cannot possibly be flesh and blood, to pretend otherwise is nothing but a polite fiction) doesn't respond right away.

Instead he sets his hammer down and walks away to quench the red-hot metal held casually in his bare hand. He plunges the metal into the barrel of water against the far wall, flames dancing up his arm as vivid green eyes crackling with storm-light glances over his shoulder towards the mortals standing on the threshold. The emissary could feel his hands trembling, his adrenaline spiking as his mind shouted at him to draw his weapon and fulfill his duty to his tribe, to strike down the threat before it could reach them. He still had the element of surprise on his side and even if he died in the attempt, even if the Guard Captain killed him afterward, his people would sing his praises and he would be welcomed into the Halls of Valhalla.

He wraps a trembling hand around the hilt of his blade as those terrible eyes seemed to wring both the breath from his lungs and the strength from his soul. He sends up a brief but heartfelt prayer for the courage to die well and is gathering himself for a desperate attack when a sneeze breaks the tense atmosphere. Once more the emissary's eyes are pulled towards the fiendish dragon curled in the deep shadows at the foot of the anvil.

For the first time he notices a delicate pattern of ice ferns curling across half the creature’s scales, spreading across the floor around it. Even in the intense heat of the forge the frost refuses to melt. The dragon rumbles, lifting a wing to reveal a slender silver-haired youth rubbing sleep from icy blue eyes. The boy stretches and the ferns spread almost searchingly across the floor, reaching the chief and twining lovingly up his ankles and calves almost to his knees.

The emissary feels his heart leap to his throat as the creature that is clearly NOT a mortal boy rises and nonchalantly walks across the room towards the chief. He doesn't even look in the emissary's direction, but the blade in his hand suddenly burns with a deadly cold that leeches all warmth from his flesh. He's forced to jerk his hand hastily away from the weapon or risk losing fingers to its chill. The youth smiles, kisses the chief softly on the cheek, and asks if the man would like for him to show their guest to Niflheim since he clearly didn't have any courtesy.

The chief agrees.

He collapses where he stands and begs; for lenience, for his life. He begs them to keep the white-haired jötnar runt away from him. The last earns him a terrifying scowl from the jötnar but the chief relents and the smirking Guard Captain leads him out of their lair, back to the alchemist's workshop where the dark-haired woman sits waiting for them with her shimmering vials and a too-sharp grin.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

*Victorian England little orphan boy voice* please sir, tell us a story. Any story you like. Just hopin' tho if ye please that it be gay? Thank you kindly sir. Thank ye

June I’ve had this sitting in my inbox for AGES with no idea what to write for you even though that’s absurd because EVERYTHING I write is gay so I’ve decided to just. give you the 4400 word first chapter to a possible future fantasy heist novel that I wrote the other day. hope you like it, I liked writing it.

Fen Davos was no stranger to being woken in the dead of night. It had been a hallmark of the neighborhood in which she had grown up, soothing as any lullaby, and was a staple of her current line of work. One did not last long as a guard in the Royal Palace of Deralia, not even a low-ranking guard, if one was not willing to jump out of bed and snap to attention at the oddest of hours. 

Even taking that into account, it was not often that her wakeup call came from excitable urchins who had plainly clambered in through the window. Alarmed to find the ragamuffin child shaking her and leaning right into her face, Fen did the only thing that made sense at the moment: she swung a fist to put some distance between them.

“Oof!” The child hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, rolling and clambering back to her feet immediately to sulk. “Why’d you have to do that? I only wanted to wake you up, you big skunk. It’s an emergency out there.”

Fen knew that voice. Groaning, she slid out of bed and touched a hand to the globe of moon moths that stood on her night table. Startled, the insect began to flutter around their enclosure, filling the room with a soft white light.

The urchin girl’s mismatched eyes went wide, either marvelling at the splendor or adding up how much she could earn selling such a thing to a pawnshop. “Get a load of that! That’s fancy!”

She would be impressed by that, wouldn’t she? Fen had, when she was first promoted into the palace lodgings. She’d spent a fortnight worrying about the poor moths living and dying in that glass prison before it dawned on her that they were only little wisps of magic, not real flesh and blood creatures that could live and die. Grouty came from the same neighborhood, only a few blocks poorer; of course she’d want to have a good look.

Fen to a firm step to the left, putting herself between the moon moths and Grouty. “Focus up. Why are you here? Is someone from the neighborhood hurt?”

“Not exactly.” Grouty rocked back and forth on her heels with a sly look on her face. “I don’t know, wasn’t really that important. You’re probably too busy. Guess I could scurry off and grab a constable…”

“I’m not going to pay you for the pleasure of being woken up,” Fen snapped. Nevermind that she couldn’t have even if she wanted to; guards’ wages were doled out in the form of credit that was handled by the palace’s Master of Credit so that they never saw a single cold, hard coin. The idea was that they were more likely to live more virtuously if all their purchases had to be approved by someone else - or that they would at least have to pay for their guilty pleasures with their own coin. For someone like Fen, with nothing in the way of family money or extra income, that meant living an upright life indeed.

Still, she wasn’t without a few little luxuries. Knowing perfectly well that Grouty was unlikely to budge without bribery, she yanked open the drawer of her bedside table and withdrew a bag of sweet, soft caramels. She hurled it at Grouty, who let out a little yelp of surprise.

“There, you little louse. Now, for the last time, what’s going on?”

The urchin girl had already fumbled a candy halfway unwrapped, looking gleeful. “Lighten up, would you? It’s Maricelli, over at the theatre. She’s gotten in some trouble with a burglar.”

“You mean she’s been burgled?”

Nah, of course not,” Grouty said, teeth already caramel-bound together. “I mean some idiot tried to burgle her and she’s got him tied up to a chair with a crossbow pointing between his eyes. I don’t know what she needs you for.”

Fen sighed, then started on gathering up her boots, jacket, and sword. It was amazing, really, how the old neighborhood had a way of dragging you back.

A flying carpet for two across the city at such an unorthodox hour didn’t come cheap, but Fen consoled herself by thinking of it as an investment - as in, by not running the entire way on foot, she wouldn’t have to worry about her heart or lungs bursting from the strain, which was surely investing in her future. 

The carpeteer let them off in front of the Perlicker Theatre, which proclaimed its name loudly with a sign that had been done up by some enchanter so that the words shone in a truly eye-watering shade of pink. After a few piteous early years of struggling for respectability the Perlicker had accepted its lot and proudly declared itself ‘The Best Worst Theatre in Town,’ becoming known for shows that featured death-defying fire stunts, incomprehensible musical numbers that frequently ended in nudity, and fake blood that could squirt fifteen feet into the audience - sometimes all at once, if you were lucky. Throughout the early evening the whole street was rocked by the laughter, screams, and music emanating immodestly from the Perlicker. 

Peak hours were long over, though, and even scandalous entertainers needed their sleep. Fen followed Grouty around to the back door, where a low-rent guard nodded and let them into a stairway that led up to apartments reserved for the Perlicker’s best and brightest. 

In the finest of these suites - a spacious arrangement with its own bathroom built in and a balcony that overlooked the theatre’s discrete maze garden - was Mericelli Rabineaux, sitting daintily cross-legged in a claw-footed armchair. She was wearing a gauzy floral robe, her purple hair in curlers, balancing a cup of tea on one knee, and, as promised, aiming a crossbow at a most unfortunate fellow who was bound and gagged with a variety of silk scarves in a chair that matched the first. 

“Lovely to see you, Fen. It’s been too long,” Mericelli said with an unnerving calm. “I’d love to catch up, but I was hoping you might be able to help me with this teensy little situation first.” 

Fen gave the man in the chair a long, hard look, and wasn’t sure whether or not she was relieved not to recognize him. Things would be messier if he were some unfortunate from the old neighborhood, of course, but at least she’d be in her element. Without that sort of advantage she wasn’t sure what would make Mericelli assume she was the right person for this job. 

“No promises. I’m assuming there’s a good reason you couldn’t grab a constable off the street to handle this?”

Mericelli laughed in a showy way that belied no actual humor. “Naturally. This is no petty theft. We’re dealing with heartbreak! Betrayal! Scandal! The potential ruination of a perfectly good career!And worst of all, the potential to inconvenience someone irritably wealthy. Would you like to tell it?”

This last question was directed at the man tied to the chair; Mericelli even jabbed the crossbow a little in his direction for emphasis. He was looking a little queasy from the odreal, and the appearance of Fen - a strapping young woman, armed with a sword and an expression that said she wasn’t very fussed about using the sword on someone if it meant getting back to bed sooner - had done very little to put him at ease. He shook his head as well as he could. 

“Fine. It’s about those,” Mericelli said. She nodded at a hatbox on her coffee table, overflowing with handwritten notes and pressed flowers the like. Groaty, who’d never met a personal possession she didn’t want to put her hands all over, descended on it at once, pawing through the papers with abandon.

“Gosh, this still reeks of perfume!” she announced. “The really hideous-smelling kind that you know must be expensive!”

“My former lover is a man of good breeding, not good taste or sense,” sighed Mericelli. “I always urged him to try a new scent, and every time he’d return with something more offensive. I found that charming, for awhile.”

Fen looked between the actress, the burglar, and the box of letters and thought she could see the equation answering itself as plainly as if the numbers were floating in the air before her. “Good Brights, please don’t tell me you’re blackmailing him.”

“Me? Blackmail him? I would never! Unlike him, I have no need for other people’s money,” Mericelli sniffed. “This a cowardly preemptive strike, according to our friend Mister Burglar, because the little gibbon is afraid of me doing something to ruin his wedding.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because he broke up with me a week ago by sending me the newspaper announcing their engagement.”

“It’s right here!” Groaty piped up, waving the offending clipping with obvious glee. “I remember hearing the newsmongers talking about this. ‘Lady Ifi Suwayama to Marry Sir Edwin Nicely in Surprise Ceremony.’ It’s all very suspicious on account of how sudden it was and how much more money her family’s got than him.”

“I can’t stand rich people,” Fen said with feeling. “I still don’t understand why I’m here, though. You clearly handled the burglar all on your own.”

Mericelli looked solemn, drawing her robe more tightly around herself as if the diaphanous flowers could protect her from what was coming. “There will be more, though. Neddy is a nervous boy, and once he’s got an idea in his head he can’t shake it until he’s done everything in his power to get rid of it. At risk of sounding like some fainting damsel, I am afraid of what he might do to me if he’s gotten the idea that I’m dangerous to him and his new bride.”

And I want you to fix it, was the unspoken end to that sentence. That had been Fen’s role for as long as she could remember, ever since she’d been old enough to toddle and hold a bottle and started getting left in charge of other children around the neighborhood. When you were flat out of luck and couldn’t out a single step in the right direction, good old Fen Davos would always be there to figure it out. She’d spent her whole childhood running herself ragged to fix other people’s messes, then grew up and decided she might as well get paid for it.

There could be no getting paid to straighten things out between Mericelli and Sir Nicely. Fen would have to be very discreet indeed, as it would look unseemly for a palace guard to be meddling in the affairs of actors and high society. She was pretty sure she couldn’t get all the way fired, not with her track record and connections, but there was every chance she’d get demoted back down to the city beat. No more cozy room of her own in the palace, that was for sure.  

Mericelli gazed at her imploringly, the effect greatly magnified by her smudged black eye makeup making her appear extra tragic.

“Fine,” Fen said. “But let’s show Mister Burglar out before we give him any valuable information.”

He was small and wiry, as many of the best burglars were. Unfortunately for him this also made him extremely easy to pick up for somebody built like Fen, which is to say, the opposite of small and wiry. She untied him and hefted him easily, holding him by the seat of his pants and back of his neck before he could so much as squirm. 

“Better luck next time,” Fen told him. “Don’t hit the pavement on your way out.” 

Easier said than done, considering the way she tossed him over the balcony. The good news was that the burglar - who had some experience with this sort of thing - managed to aim his fall so that he landed on the heaps of trash set out behind the Perlicker, which had a bit of a cushioning effect. The bad news for him was that this trash drew stinging possums by the dozens, and they were fiercely territorial critters.

Don’t worry, he didn’t die.

As soon as he’d topled out of sight Mericelli put aside her teacup and crossbow and got to her feet, stretching so dramatically that you’d have thought she had spent a century in that chair. “Goodness, that was unpleasant. I really do appreciate you getting over here in such a hurry, Fen, you’re a pal. Can I get you any refreshments? I’m about to ravage some instant ramen, personally.”

They reconvened around the table jammed in the tiny corner kitchenette, over which a small facsimile of a chandelier twinkled. It seemed every inch of the place shimmered or shone in some way, every surface festooned with cast-off pieces of costumes, wigs, dancing shoes, masks, and outrageous costume jewelry, interspersed with candles, empty cups, and old magazines. It was an impressively ostentatious sort of clutter, and suited Mericelli well. She was much more at ease now that the burglar had gone, bustling around fixing up eggs and a mix of spices to dress up the cheap noodles.

“I have no excuse for not inviting you over sooner,except that it’s been one thing after another. Ned was taking up a shameful amount of time for awhile, and of course there’s always work - shows almost every night, choreography to learn and costumes to fit during the day. I suppose I don’t have to tell you how that is; the guard must keep you busy. You got the cactus I sent when you were promoted to the palace, didn’t you? Did you think it was funny? I thought it suited you better than flowers, and it lasts longer anway. And that’s all going well? It must be. You look good, definitely better fed than I’ve ever seen you. What’s the food like up there?”

“Can’t hold a candle to your ramen,” Fen said as a bowl was set in front of her - chipped, secondhand, with faded images of saccharine puppies gamboling around the rim. “You look nice. Purple hair suits you.”

Mericelli, seated now at the head of the table, preened happily. “It’s lilac, actually. Isn’t it something? You’d be astonished how often they make me dye it some fiendish new color. Pretty soon I’ll have to go blue and green again, for the Mermaid Festival, and before that I spent practically forever with silver hair for The Widow of Salamander Street.”

Groaty momentarily paused slurping up her noodles and looked thoughtful. “I liked the posters for that one, they were scary. Only you’re too young to be playing the Widow, though.”

“Forgive me, I didn’t realize you were a discerning theatrical critic. I’m playing the Littlest Fairy in Springtime Follies now; is that better for you?”

“You’re too old for that!” Groaty protested. 

Fen raised an eyebrow. “You do the Follies here? That’s a children’s story.”

There was just enough reproach in her voice to make Mericelli look ever so slightly ashamed of herself. “Yes, well, we’ve made some changes. Fluffed up the songs a bit, added some conflict and drama and the like, threw in a few jokes. Not much actually happens in the original, if you think about it.”

“Not much needs to happen,” Fen said stubbornly, “it’s a lovely poem about doing good and helping others.”

“Exactly, and now it’s a lovely poem about doing good and helping others that happens to have a bit of racy stuff added in for flavor. I have a very suggestive dance with the flock of satyrs, it’s great fun!”

“Thrilling. Not that I don’t want to hear more about you defiling nursery rhymes, but why don’t we talk about your Nicely fellow now. Namely, how you think I can help.”

Mericelli’s face fell immediately, but as always she was able to collect herself and carry on. “Of course. First point of order, I’d like his letters kept somewhere safer, because I may need them if he tries to force me out of the city.”

“Is that likely?”

“He didn’t just send me the newspaper,” Mericelli said. “There was also a very long, rambling, painfully insincere letter about how he’s cherished our time together but feels he has to grow up and do the responsible thing by marrying a woman wealthy enough to let him be a kept man. He unsubtly suggested that it might be best for me to leave Brighthaven altogether, on the grounds that it would be terribly embarrassing for both of us if certain details of our relationship were to get out. You know how the upper crust are - they get terribly fussy about their children mingling too much before marriage, and I have enough of his awful attempts at erotic poetry to potentially call his whole wedding off.”

“Gross,” Groaty said vehemently. 

“Seconded,” Fen agreed. “What about you though? No offense, but I thought actors were supposed to list scandals on their resumes. How does this hurt you?”

“Well, the sex part certainly doesn’t. But I’m afraid that in the course of our relationship I may have shared certain other intimate secrets with him, pertaining to my profession. I said some things about certain senior members of the theatrical community that wouldn’t reflect kindly on me at all, and could possibly keep me from ever coming near a leading role again if they were feeling petty. And I may have revealed one or two things about a few of the… less advertised events we put on here at the Perlicker. Those could get the whole place shut down, if I’m not mistaken.”

She delivered the monologue well, with clear eyes and hardly a quaver to her voice, but Fen could see how much the idea of it distressed her. Her work, her art, was everything to Mericelli, and she’d spent years taking undignified, unmemorable roles to get as far as she had. The Perlicker may have been a hotbed of ill-repute and tackiness, but it did command a certain kind of glamour and the dependable audience that Mericelli craved. The idea of having her entire career yanked away so soon after her star had finally started to rise had her more scared than she could admit.

“Right, then,” said Fen. “Here’s what we’ll do. You don’t panic, okay? I know someone who knows everything that happens in this city; I want to talk to her before we decide how worried we should be. He might just want his bad poetry back.”

“So I’m just supposed to live with burglars letting themselves in at all hours at my former lover’s behest?” Mericelli demanded.

“Absolutely not. If you trust me to, I’ll take them with me now and move them to the safest place I know later today. Groaty? You’ll need to run over to Ardessa’s and let her know I’ll be stopping by. Tell her I need a favor and that she’s probably not going to like it.”

Groaty pursed her lips, thinking it over and weighing it on her mental scales. “That’s a pretty big ask. You know how cranky she gets about same-day appointments. What’ll you give me for it?”

“What about this delicious meal I fixed for you, little ingrate?” Mericelli asked.

“Nah. That just covers me getting Fen in the first place, ‘cause you made me do it in a hurry and promised you’d pay me back later,” Groaty insisted. 

“Alright, a week of baths here in my own tub. I’ve got fancy soap for bubble bath and everything.”

“Urgh, a week? What do I want that many baths or?”

Fen was feeling wildly out of her depth here. She didn’t want any of this showing up in her credit records, not to mention she didn’t think the Master of Coin would approve of her using palace funds to bribe a little urchin girl.

“How about this, then?” Mericelli went to her coffee table and fished around in the mess of handkerchiefs and playing cards, coming up with moonstone brooch painted with sinister black spiders. “I wore it when I was playing the Widow. Pawn it, wear it, put it in our slingshot, I don’t care. It’s yours.”

“Geez, that’s great! I’ll go hang around Ardessa’s right now, so I can get her first thing in the morning!” Groaty snatched the brooch up eagerly, immediately disappearing it into one of the many coats that comprised her shapeless gray coat. She slurped down the last of her ramen and hurried out the door, giving Fen and Mericelli an awkward little salute as she went.

“I should be on my way as well,” Fen said quietly, getting to her feet. “It will be sun up soon, and there will be questions if I’m not accounted for. Get some rest, alright? I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything, I promise.”

She gave her old friend a hug, during which Mericelli squeezed Fen a little extra tight, then departed with the incriminating hatbox tucked under her arm. She considered finding another carpeteer but ultimately decided against it. Saving money never hurt, and in any case she needed a chance to think. Prestigious as working at the palace was, there was nothing like a walk through the streets of Brighthaven in the wee hours of morning to really get the brain working. Fen had told Mericelli not to panic and she meant it, but she would personally be planning for the worst case scenario so that she could be twelve steps ahead if it arrived. Already there were more moving parts to this than she liked, and she had a gut feeling things would only get more convoluted.

By the time she got back to the palace she was tired in body and mind. She nodded to the guards on the gate, who gave her an odd look but didn’t make a fuss about it, and headed straight for the most secure place she could currently access. Ardessa’s tower was the ultimate goal, of course, but a princess’ chambers would do until then. No one stopped her there, either; everyone was well aware of the young princess’ special fondness for Fen.

Twelve was already awake when Fen entered her room, hunched over her workbench in pajamas and a pair of enormous magnifying goggles and tinkering with the mechanical innards of her latest cuckoo clock. 

“Hello, you,” the princess said vaguely when Fen hugged her from behind and kissed the top of her frizzy head. “This is awfully early. Would you like some breakfast?”

Someone had been around with a tray, fat blue pancakes and fresh fruit and bacon done perfectly crispy. Fen helped herself to a few grapes as she kicked off her boots, then had a heavy seat on Twelve’s canopy bed. 

Twelve wasn’t her given name, of course, but the Deralian royal family were sticklers for tradition and only had so many names to go around. Twelve’s given name was shared with two of her eleven older siblings, several aunts and uncles, and innumerable distant cousins, so being referred to by birth order had honestly seemed more affectionate to everyone involved. 

Her family did cherish her, truly, but they were also large and sprawling and had quite a lot on their royal platters, but given how far removed she was from any chance of ever sitting on the throne she did tend to slip through the cracks from time to time. Twelve’s parents had long since lost their patience with arranging for etiquette lessons and politically advantageous marriages by the time their last child was of age for such things, and as such she was largely left to do whatever she liked so long as it didn’t embarrass the family too badly or cause any international incidents. For the most part Twelve was perfectly content to spend this freedom in pursuit of increasingly niche hobbies.

There were a few downsides, of course, namely practical ones: when it came to protecting the line of succession, the palace guards started cutting corners somewhere around number six. Still, even the worst-protected princess enjoyed security miles better than the average person. 

“I need to hide this here for a few hours,” Fen said, sliding the hatbox beneath Twelve’s bed. “Sorry, it’s a long story. I’m trying to help a friend.”

Twelve spun her chair around, pushing her goggles up to get a better look at her girlfriend. She was concerned by what she saw. “Helping friends is always a yes from me, but you look exhausted. What have you been doing?”

“Had to get across town to help clean up after an almost-burglary,” Fen said, yawning through half the explanation.

“Good Brights, is your friend okay?”

“She’s fine. The burglar had a rough time though.”

“Ah. Atta girl.” 

“You know I hate to ask for favors,” Fen said, “but I still need to do a few more things today to wrap up the loose ends. Could you tell the Captain you need me all day, to stop her harassing me about it?” 

“Only if you’ll get a few hours of sleep before you go. Uh uh, no arguing about it!” Twelve said, swiftly anticipating the next words out of Fen’s mouth. “The sun’s not even up yet. You can at least have a nap before you go running off to be dashing and noble and heroic.” 

Fen lay back on the bed, smiling as she shut her eyes. “Not hardly that exciting, goose. I’m doing what’s right, that’s all.”

Twelve clucked her tongue. “Get under the covers, would you? Get comfortable. I’ll go see about getting you the day off.”

She dropped a kiss on Fen’s cheek and disappeared into the hallway for a bit, having some word or other with the other guards about a dire need to requisition Sergeant Davos for the day in order to have her run some very important personal errands. No one was likely to question that too closely; the last time Twelve had requested Fen’s presence for personal reasons neither of them had left the princess’ room for a solid day. 

By the time Twelve returned Fen had dutifully crawled under the covers and was already half asleep. Fen could hear her girlfriend taking great pains to move as quietly as possible and slide into bed with as little jostling as possible, and it made her smile into the pillow. Twelve was not particularly graceful or stealthy by nature, but it was sweet how she tried. She wrapped an arm around Fen’s middle, cuddling her close and planting a kiss on her neck, and Fen exhaled contentment. It took a lot to quiet her mind and put a pause to her planning, but falling asleep cuddled up with Twelve worked better than any sleeping potion she’d ever tried. 

[probskay]

Silence in the Air

The silence in the air is tangible. It is long past midnight. All 3 people in the room are staring each other down. There are two others, just outside the door, discussing things in private. 

This is going to end with someone dead on the floor.

Elizabeth, wearing a brisk evening gown and her hair up in a shoddy bun, is openly brandishing a knife. She twists it back and forth between her hands, eight inches of steel blinking continuously in the light. She’s convinced she’s going to be the reason someone dies tonight, and she wants it to be known to everyone else that this is her intention.

Mack desperately doesn’t want to be here, and yet here they are. Mack is just a butler. They’ve never seen more than a thousand dollars in their savings account at any given moment, but this gig was finally giving them the chance they needed to save up and transition. They aren’t out to Elizabeth about being nonbinary yet, and their bowtie is getting tighter and tighter around their neck with every passing minute.

Arthur is here because he tried stealing a single pendant from Elizabeth’s well guarded safe. He was nearly successful, but Mack fucked up keeping watch, and they both got caught in the safe. This whole gig took two fucking years to set up and put together, and it was ruined because some dipshit kid couldn’t keep their hands off the gold. Arthur told them, numerous times, We’re in here for one thing and that’s it. It will make us a fortune.

Outside, Officer Du Bois is talking to the person who caught Mack and Arthur; Elizabeth’s secret lover, Anna. Du Bois can clearly tell Anna is nervous. He has ideas about why- besides the presence of a police force he knows isn’t quite friendly to queer people- but holds his tongue. Right now his job is to listen. He’s trying to get all of the details, and he doesn’t have anyone nearby to help him.

Anna is fucking mortified. She’s dead and she knows it. Elizabeth has a knife and she plans on using it. This pig doesn’t even have a fucking gun, and she knows he isn’t going to put himself in front of a knife for some dyke he doesn’t even know. Elizabeth’s husband is going to find out about this, and Elizabeth doesn’t want Anna to have the chance to come clean about this. Oh, but the way Elizabeth’s hair gleamed in the gentle moonlight...

“Anna,” Du Bois snaps his fingers. “Anna, I know you’re going through a lot right now but I need you to stay with me.” She’s barely in her underwear and a night gown. She’s probably freezing. Du Bois watches her shiver. Offer her your coat.

“Oh. Of course, officer,” she says. “Where were we again?”

Du Bois slides off his coat. “Here,” he says, “Put this on. You’re freezing out here.” Good thing he’s got a jacket underneath as well.

She takes the coat and wraps it around herself. She’s surprised. She’s not sure if this cop is putting on an act to gain her trust or if he legitimately cares about her well being. “Thanks,” she mutters.

You can’t just dodge around the issue. She’s in danger. Du Bois knows this, but he doesn’t legitimately think asking her about her danger will help her in anyway. A different voice speaks up: You might not, but it could lead her to open up more. 

Anna stares into the pig’s eyes. There’s something going on behind that lid of his, and she wishes she had any idea what it was. She can watch the gears turning in his head, but she can’t see the hands of the clock turn.

Du Bois sighs. “There’s something more troubling you, isn’t there?”

Anna tenses up. She’s glad the large coat is hiding her body enough so that he can’t see the motion. “I don’t know what you mean, officer. I was just cold.”

He does see her tense up, however subtle that might be. He’s had that coat for five years, he recognises when every single wrinkle in that battered old thing shifts. There it is. Strike the heart. “Don’t worry, once this is over you and Elizabeth will be able to rest in peace.”

Anna shuffles in place, trying to keep from wincing. Barely a moment has passed, but she can tell there’s so much going on in the officer’s head. His eyes, almost imperceptibly, are scanning every inch of her.  “You think Elizabeth is going to kill you, don’t you?” he says.

Her eyes widen. Nail on the head, chief. “She’s got a knife, and she hasn’t stabbed anyone else in that room yet. If she wanted the thieves out of the picture, she would’ve done it. You think she’s waiting for you, because you were the one who ran and left to get a police officer. This encounter is the only thing extending your life, because once I cuff those two and walk away, you’ll be alone with Elizabeth, and that’s the last thing you want right now.”

If Anna wasn’t scared of this cop before, she sure is scared of him now. How the hell did he figure all of that out so quickly? She’s barely told him anything. She was going to try and run away- no, sneak away- when the chance arose, but there was no chance. This cop is never going to let her go now.

The first voice speaks again. You were completely correct. Now she’s even more scared, though. You shouldn’t have pressed further. If you leave her here alone, her blood will be on your hands. Her death will be your fault, whether or not you arrest Elizabeth afterward. Du Bois thought about this. 

“You’re right!” Anna suddenly cries. “Elizabeth is going to kill me. She’s been cheating on her husband with me for seven months, and she’s going to end my life. He can’t find out about me, do you understand? She can’t let him find out about me. I’m just supposed to be some eye-candy maid for him, and just dust the corners. I know I should’ve left so long ago, but the money was decent, hormones are expensive, and- and-”

Harry nods. He doesn’t say anything. She’s already opened up. Like a shaken up can of pop, she’s finally burst.

“I love her!” She proclaims. “I loved her so fucking much, even though I knew how much of a risk it was. I knew that I wasn’t going to make it out of this relationship safely. I held out hope that one day Elizabeth would sweep me off of my feet, take me out to her boat, and we’d sale off into the pale ocean and onto other land. We’d be safe, and it’d just be her and I. We’d be alive and okay and her husband wouldn’t seek us out.”

Anna is crying at this point. Du Bois wants to cry, too, but he knows he can’t. He can’t just break down in front of a witness. He can’t just let her die, either. He has to make a tough choice, though: keep her here while he sorts out everything between everyone here tonight or let her run away and find new safety right now.

Anna is sobbing and she can’t stop. This is the last night she will ever see the sun, and it wasn’t even between the legs of an older woman. An older, graceful, beautfi- no no no! Those thoughts won’t do at all. She can’t rely on Elizabeth anymore. Elizabeth isn’t her love anymore. She’s alone in this world- again.

Du Bois takes her hand. He knows this is the greatest risk he’s ever going to take on his job, even greater than the time he was shot twice- though both shots only tore some skin off of his side- leaping from the cover that was about to collapse on top of him and the cover that was barely holding itself up during a firefight nearly eight years ago, but it was one he was willing to take. He slips her a business card. “Get out of here, Anna. Call me in 6 hours. We’ll figure this out.”

Anna takes the card, and she runs. She isn’t coming back. She doubts she will call this cop, either. One mercy doesn’t mean a fucking thing.

Du Bois turned back inside. There were still three more people he needed to deal with. He was sure he knew the whole story at this point, no one had lied to him about anything so far, but he still needs to figure out what to do about this whole situation.

“Officer Du Bois, you’re finally back,” Elizabeth chides. “I’m certain Anna treated you well.” Elizabeth digs the knife into her table and drags it down, leaving a sizable mark in it. This was the fifth one she had made so far. Mack winced every time they saw it, and Elizabeth relishes their fear.

Mack, despite every muscle in their black ass telling them otherwise, stares in the cop’s eyes. They need to show they aren’t afraid. This cop couldn’t do anything to them. Mack would get out of here just fine. They knew it. Whatever prison this cop would put them into couldn’t be worse than what they knew Elizabeth desperately wanted to do tonight.

Arthur rolls his eyes at Elizabeth’s statement. “Yeah, alright your highness, you’re rich and your servants,” he put a lot of venom into that, “are well behaved. Are you going to let us go or what?”

Elizabeth huffs, indignant. “You think you get to just leave? After breaking into my home? Attempting to steal my family heirlooms?” She scoffs and shakes her head, looking at Officer Du Bois. “Can you believe this officer?”

Du Bois nods. “I can. Although, according to this lad, the pendant isn’t actually yours. It was stolen from another family who wants it back. He was hired to get it back.” This was what Arthur had told him earlier, and it checked out later when Elizabeth let him examine the amulet. It didn’t actually bear her family crest, but the DuFrasne crest. “It’s a surprise to me that they only requested the pendant be stolen back and not anything else as revenge.”

Mack looks over at Arthur in shock. Why hadn’t Arthur told them this? Arthur shuffles in his seat. “Yeah, so really I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was basically a subtle repo-man. That’s allowed, right?” It’s a cheap excuse, he knows, but it’s better than nothing.

“No, it’s not,” Du Bois says. “The DuFrasne’s should’ve contacted the police about the theft, and had us perform a proper search and investigation. Taking the law into your own hands is also a crime, and they will be investigated as well.”

Arthur shifts in his chair. He really wasn’t in the mood to deal with the pigs for however long that would take. This was supposed to be an easy job, in and out, and then he was going to take a long trip out to some nice little island and lay low for a few years. Now he’s stuck playing footsies with “the law.” He had a plan B, cold against his leg, but he really didn’t want to have to use it.

Elizabeth scoffed again. “You have absolutely no proof I stole that pendant in the first place.” She couldn’t believe she was being accused of such things. She was rich, no one was supposed to question her. This cop was just supposed to clean up after her, not do whatever he’s doing.

Mack noticed the tight grip Elizabeth had on the dagger. Her knuckles were white.

Du Bois crossed his arms. “Elizabeth, you’d best put that weapon away. You’re in the presence of a police officer, and that can easily be read as a threat.” Elizabeth laughed. “You don’t even have a gun,” she said. “How do you plan on enforcing any law if you have no weapons to do so?” 

Arthur did his best to avoid laughing, too. It was obvious the cop didn’t have a gun. His holster was empty. There’s not a cop within a hundred miles who conceal carries. If this one was the exception, he was probably breaking some rule himself.

Mack’s eyes shifted to the holster. They hadn’t even thought to see if the cop had a gun. You always presume they do, because if you look at their hip they’ll think you want to steal their gun and shoot them. They weren’t willing to take that risk, but they did just now anyway. Now they know this cop can’t do a thing to stop from leaving. They could stand up and walk away right now.

The knife digging into the table was more audible than any previous dig before. Elizabeth made sure it was deeper, too. “So what are you going to do tonight, officer?” She followed this up by tossing the pendant onto the table. The clatter of its chain was suddenly subdued when contrasted with the knife.

The pendant released some sort of black mist upon hitting the table. Mack saw it, and looked around to see if anyone else did. No one even looked at the thing. They were all too busy staring each other down. Mack returned their eyes to the pendant. They couldn’t see the mist anymore.

Du Bois straightened his shoulders. He knew what Elizabeth was trying to do, and he wasn’t going to let it happen. He’s avoided corruption and bribes for the last six years at least, and he wasn’t in the mood to break his streak as the cleanest cop in his precinct. “I’m going to put all three of you under arrest for further investigation. Come quietly and we won’t have any issues.”

Arthur’s eyebrows rose. The pig was going to arrest the wife of a rich man? That was a bold move, unheard of until today. He had no intention of being arrested, but he was tempted to stick around just to see what would happen. Of course, that would void his deal with the DuFrasne’s, and a bit of fun at the expense of Elizabeth was not worth giving up that money.

Elizabeth stood up, holding her knife at her side. “Fuck you!” she shouted. “I know my rights. You have no precedent to arrest me.” This cop was either stubborn or stupid, because no one arrested Elizabeth. She had every cop in a twenty mile radius under her thumb. What was this bastard doing?

Du Bois briskly reaches a hand into his jacket. He didn’t have his gun, but he thought this bluff might do something worthwhile.

Arthur sneaks his hand down the legs of his pants and reaches for the gun he took. A six barrel revolver, incredibly uncommon in these areas. More fire power than most of the handguns that people could get. Of course, the one cop hiding heat had to show up tonight.

Mack’s eyes scanned everything, as if in slow motion. Elizabeth was standing at the ready, waiting for the chance to strike. Arthur was reaching into his pants, and the bulge of a pistol was suddenly apparent. The cop was also reaching for something in his jacket- wasn’t he wearing a coat earlier?- but they doubted it was actually a gun. Du Bois was bluffing.

Mack lastly, glanced at the pendant again. It looked malevolent. Something wicked was surrounding it, and no one else was paying attention.

Du Bois felt the danger. He carefully eyed Elizabeth- he could probably take her if he had to- then glanced at Arthur and Mack. Mack was slowly scooting his chair sideways, away from everything. That was a reasonable response. Arthur had a hand down the leg of his pants. It was clear he had a gun. Du Bois began to calculate actions within his head.

Elizabeth’s gaze darted amongst everyone in the room, too. Du Bois remained focused on her. Arthur was staring immediately between the two of them, as if planning an escape. If Elizabeth attacked the cop, she knew Arthur and Mack would flee while they struggled. She couldn’t have that.

Elizabeth took a sharp step toward Arthur, and Arthur knew who he was going to point his gun at. He immediately stood up and pointed the gun at Elizabeth. “I don’t make a plan without accounting for all the risk, madame.”

Mack could see the amulet becoming more and more volatile with every passing moment. He carefully stood up, getting ready to run the moment it was convenient- or possible, honestly.

The room was standing still once more. Du Bois still simply had his hand in his jacket, and he knew at this point he didn’t have a bluff worth anything. He slowly pulled his hand out of his jacket and prepared to tackle whichever of those two made the first move.

That’s your gun! A voice spoke to Du Bois. Shit in a biscuit, it was indeed his gun. He recognised the barrel, with a small inscription on the side. It was illegible at this point, but it used to say “Lady Death.” The owner before him was a bit gruesome. He’d been missing this gun for a year and the precinct refused to issue him a replacement. He thinks he lost it during a chase, where he must not have closed up his holster properly. Someone must’ve snagged it during the in-between.

Arthur has 2 bullets in the gun. If he makes a shot, he needs to make it count. He stares down the barrel of the gun, straight at Elizabeth. He takes a second to glance at Du Bois, who he notices has not drawn a gun but has his hands out his coat. The pork chop bluffed.

Elizabeth is sitting in silence as well. So much for that idea. She’s fuming. She was going to fucking kill these god damn thieves and that god damn cop and the god damn girl. She’s done playing games. She’s done playing around with everyone. That amulet deserves to be with her. It’s her amulet. It was always meant to be her amulet. “Fuck it,” she says, before grabbing the necklace and running.

Arthur is surprised. “Wha-” is all he manages to say before realising he doesn’t know what he’s watching.

Mack sees the mist wrap its way up Elizabeth’s arm. It has a vice grip on her flesh. Her skin color is becoming paler, and her veins are darkening.

Du Bois rushes her. He charges directly at her. He can tell she’s running toward the window, and he has to stop her before she jumps. This is only a second story, but that fall would certainly break a bone, at least. 

Elizabeth is almost there. She’s nearly there. The window is right there.

Mack watches the mist take over more of her. Are those three not seeing this? Arthur suddenly notices what’s happening and takes the chance. He whispers to Mack “Let’s bounce.”

Du Bois grabs Elizabeth’s arm. She turns and stabs at him with the knife. Du Bois steps aside and uses her own momentum to throw her back into the main room.

Elizabeth somersaults back to her feet and leaps at Mack, who was following behind Arthur. She raises the knife with her hand in the air and shrieks. Arthur turns around at the sound of the shriek and sees this. He fires.

Mack’s ears are ringing.

Du Bois is running to grab Elizabeth again.

Elizabeth no longer has a knife curled between her fingers, but instead carries four fingers and a thumb. This means nothing.

Du Bois sees Elizabeth is preparing to jump off of Mack’s back. He tries to grab her ankle, but she’s already airborne. “Shit!” he cries.

Arthur sees her gliding toward him. There is no blood leaking from her palm. She’s looks sickly, like death. Her hand is wrapped around his throat, and her nails are digging into his skin. Nothing about this is right.

Du Bois shoves Mack out of the way and assesses the situation. Arthur dropped his gun. Elizabeth is tightening her grip around Arthur’s throat. He’s bleeding.

Mack fucking knew it. Mack fucking knew there was something wrong with that fucking pendant. She’s a fucking monster now. She’s being possessed by some kind of fucking demon. She’s covered in that mist now- there’s absolutely no way everyone else hasn’t seen it by this point- and she isn’t bleeding. She’s about to strangle Arthur to death, and she isn’t even human anymore. This is fucking bullshit.

Elizabeth grasps even tighter. Arthur gurgles. Her thumb touches her ring finger. She pulls, lifting her hand above her head. The smell… it’s delicious.

Du Bois already dove for the gun. He’s already crouched and aiming the revolver at the back of her head. She cackles and let’s go of Arthur’s windpipe.

Du Bois steadies his hand. He breathes out. He fires.

Elizabeth was right. She was the reason someone died tonight, technically. Consciousness returns to her for just long enough to witness Arthur’s corpse on the floor before she, too, fades from this existence.

Du Bois sighs. He checks the chambers of the revolver. It’s completely empty. He got lucky.

Mack sees the black mist swiftly retreat back into the pendant. That can’t be a fucking good sign.

Du Bois gets up and begins to assess the damage. The first thing he does is try to pull the pendant out of Elizabeth’s hand. It’s much easier to do before rigor mortis sets in.

Mack witnesses the fucking cop go for the amulet. They lean over and pick up the knife. “Don’t touch that fucking amulet,” Mack says.

Du Bois stops. He looks at Mack, and sees that they’re currently armed. “What do you know about the necklace?”

Mack curses. “Are you fucking dense? Did you not see the black mist that possessed Elizabeth? And how it disappeared the moment you killed her? Back into the amulet?”

Du Bois didn’t see any of this. Though, glancing at her hand, he does now see that she only just started bleeding. That is strange. “Hand me the knife, then,”

Du Bois instructs Mack.

“What? Mack asks. “What do you plan to do?” This cop is loose as hell. What would the knife do to the amulet?

Du Bois holsters his gun, only just realising he was still carrying it. The weight is simultaneously comfortable and burdensome on his hip. “I’m going to cut off her hand and place it into an evidence bag.”

Mack eyes Du Bois. They sigh. Du Bois still has the gun. There isn’t a damn thing this knife would do anyway. They hand the knife over, and Du Bois takes it. Du Bois saws her hand off. He then slides the entire thing into an evidence bag he took from his jacket.

He stands up. “Will you wait here, Mack, while I radio my precinct and let them know about this, or do I have to arrest you?” Du Bois is done. This is only the fifth person he’s killed during his 21 years of police work. He wants to go home and be fucking done with this case for the night.

Mack shakes his head. “I- um-” They don’t even know where they would go or what they would do. Their plan was to get paid by Arthur and then leave this place for a long time, probably forever. 

He gets into his buggy. He radios his precinct and tells them to get over here. He’s exhausted.

Mack sits in the hallway, alone. If they wanted to, they could probably go back into the safe and take some valuables and run away. They don’t think they should, however. Whatever was going on with that amulet only they could see. They don’t really want to be working with any cops, but they need to figure out why they could see it but no one else could.

Anna is cold. She stole Elizabeth’s purse from next to the door before leaving, and it had a lot of cash in it. She ran for a long while into the night. She paid for a hotel room at least two miles away, and she lies in bed, on top of the blankets, still wearing the officer’s coat. She would need to buy some clothing tomorrow. Or send someone else to do it, more likely.

She sighs. She isn’t sure where she is going to go from here. She at least has enough money for the next two weeks, if she’s careful. What will she do after that?

She reaches into one of the coat pockets and finds the business card the cop gave her. She pulls it out and looks at it. “OFFICER DU BOIS,” it says. It has a phone number, too. Phones are wildly expensive, even Elizabeth didn’t have one. If you wish to make a phone call, you usually have to wait in line at a payphone.

Anna thinks about the card long and hard. Maybe she’ll give him a call. She doesn’t know what else she can do.

[kacchanislife]

HI BITCH I GOT ANOTHER REQUEST! I’ll probably ask one weekly! So like how about when Both bakugo and his s/o and severely injured during the villain attack and they thought That they finished him but he’s is still there and he starts to attack Bakugo but his s/o save and tied to fight him? And bakugo is too hurt to move so he’s just on the ground screaming in despair? THANK YOUUU ILYY MAYBE WE CAN TALK SOMETIME

HELLLOOOO!!!! Is this what it’s like to have a mutual?! I LOVE YOU TOO!! Thank you for your request, as always!

(I’m so sorry, I cried at the ending)

Warnings: cursing, angst, death, blood, the whole schabang

n/a: the italics are flashbacks. Your quirk is a variation of wind manipulation where you can breathe in deeply to create a vortex and you can exhale to create gale force winds. Psionic can either stop time completely or slow down time in her favor, she carries multiple blades on her like Stain. 

You and Bakugou have been partners in Hero work for some time. Your quirks compliment each other, you offset his higher temperament, and well, you’re lovers. Of course you two work together, Bakugou doesn’t trust others won’t make sure you get hurt on the job and you keep his mouth in check. You love him and he loves you and everything is wonderful.

So today was like any other one your usual patrols. The only real difference was the recent slew of crime that’s been running through the area. Bakugou has gotten a new case to share with you about a villain named ‘Psionic’ who is said to be able to pause time. This basically meant they could do anything and everything while they pause time. You had searched the file and found that what they usually did was steal precious gems; the unfortunate thing was when they were caught because there’s a zone on their quirk they would kill whoever was in the way.

You doubt this ‘Psionic’ could hold up against yourself and Bakugou. You were seansoned pro heroes who knew how to fight both close- and far-ranged. You weren’t worried, you were with Ground Zero and he was with Whirlpool, aka you. There really was nothing to worry about.

Unfortunately, you severely underestimated Psionic. You underestimated your strength and your ability and you underestimated how much Bakugou wanted to protect you over defeating the villain. You messed up, you really did.

You come back from your headspace, where you lay on the ground five feet away from Bakugou and both of you are hardly able to move. You feel the tears start to slip down your cheeks. How did you get here again? You struggle to move and to remember all the fast movements that ended up here.

You remember…

Walking alongside Bakugou talking with him amicably about dinner plans, “I was thinking we can do hotpot with Red Riot and Chargebolt tonight? Maybe Pinky too if we can convince her to make the drive out.”

“Maybe,” Bakugou pauses before he speaks again. Trying to form his opinion on the matter. “I fucking hate Pinky though. We’re not inviting her. And Chargebolt better keep his fucking voice done for once! Swear that guy can’t stop talking and it’s shitty.”

You laugh and shoulder-check him softly as you continue to walk down the street. The two of you were patrolling a street that was usually popular but it was nighttime now and no one was around really. Villains don’t do crime in broad daylight if they want to get away with it after all.

Besides the looming threat of a villain hanging over the two of your heads, it’s a very pleasant night with smells so clear and such visibility you could live your whole life outside. A smile crosses your face and blow out a tiny bit of air, watching it swirl in front of you due to your quirk. You feel so content and like nothing can go wrong.

“Hey Ground Zero, you think we’re gonna catch the villain tonight? Or you think they turned themselves in out of fear knowing they’d have to face off against us,” you move faster than him so you’re now facing him while walking backwards, a few steps ahead. You playfully strike an intimidating pose before you freeze.

A groan leaves your lips as you roll over to look as Bakugou wheezes in what you imagine is a very painful way. You struggle to your knees and crawl towards him. You can hear sirens in the distance and you’re so thankful that despite the weeks the two of you are going to be in the hospital for the villain is dead. Pro heroes don’t normally kill villains, it only happens in extreme situations where subduing them wouldn’t be possible. Like tonight.

“Fuck,” Bakugou curses as your apply pressure to the wound in his side. He’s still bleeding, but he’s alive and help is on the way. “I fucking hate that two-bit villain. That bitch is going to rot in hell and I’m glad we’re the ones who placed her there.”

You give a noise of agreement as you continue to staunch his bleeding. You’re glad Psionic is dead too; that was the most frightening experience of your young life and you don’t know if you could’ve faced someone like that alone. “Hey,” Bakugou’s voice reaches your ears again.

Looking down you see him struggle to move and rush to make him stay still. He had taken a lot more damage than you in that fight and you didn’t want him to hurt himself more or…

Or die.

Tears fill your eyes at the mere thought of him dying. You never want anything to befall Bakugou, you love him too much and you wouldn’t live with yourself if he could never get up again. More tears leek from your eyes as the sirens get closer and you don’t catch the rest of what Bakugou says as you get swept up in the events of the night again.

When time resumed for you Bakugou was alread fighting Psionic. You didn’t realize she was a woman as you look at her now fighting against Bakugou with a sword? Yeah, you realize, it’s a sword and she’s using her quirk to deal blow after blow to Bakugou.

Your body is hardly tired after being frozen in time and you start to activate your quirk by breathing in deeply. The air around your starts to become a vortex with the point of origin at your mouth and you turn to face it toward Psionic as Bakugou makes a hasty retreat. He knows the signs of your quirk whether you were using vortex or gale. Which both were the same thing just one you breathed in and one you breathed out.

Psionic is caught off guard and the panic on her face shows as Bakugou lines up his AP Shot. You two know the drill, he fires his explosions to get sucked up into your vortex and right before they can no longer be effective you shut off your quirk and allow the villain trapped in the vortex to take the damage.

You know you’re taking a great risk of being frozen in time again due to the proximity of Psionic, but you doubt she can activate her quirk while she’s so flustered. Besides, you know your vortex is next to freezing and even moving within them is a task in and of itself.

You shut off your quirk to see Psionic burned on her face and neck. Direct hits, but she recovers fast and punches you in the face. You reel backwards for a moment before meeting her blow for blow. Bakugou is struggling to find an opening with how fast Psionic is moving and how fast you have to move to keep up, you’re usually not this slow.

You realize as she stabs you in the shoulder with a small knife that she knew Bakugou wouldn’t attack with the risk of you getting hurt. And you come to terms with the fact that she’s a lot more proficient with her quirk that you thought and a lot smarter too. Psionic slashes you multiple times and it takes all your concentration not to get fatally wounded. You feel yourself pause again.

It was too late before you realized Psionic was still alive. A belt was around your throat choking you and you could see her hair out of the corner of your eye. You couldn’t believe that bitch wasn’t dead after you personally created a hole in her torso. Bakugou’s red eyes catch yours and you can see the tears streaming down his face. He can’t move and he can’t save you from a villain he couldn’t beat.

You twist in Psionic’s grip elbowing her as hard as the strength in your body can muster in her wound. She growls and holds tighter to the belt. The two of you are shifting on the ground as you try to gain the upper hand and throw her off. She’s not budging and your air supply is quickly dwindling.

It doesn’t help your throat was already bruised from her punching you there and one of her knives still buried in your lung. You know it’s your lung because you can’t activate your quirk. Your quirk depends on your lungs and you can’t activate it. The panic was slowing starting to set in.

You can hear Bakugou screaming and crying still unable to move- helpless as you die right in front of him. No, you won’t die until Psionic stops breathing for good. You won’t let her have the chance to hurt anyone else. No chance to hurt Bakugou. Not him. Not him.

The battle rages on as you time back in. Bakugou has multiple gashes and you could see one of his arms were broken. You can’t let him get hurt anymore, you frantically start searching for something you could wrap in your quirk. You see the sword Psionic was using earlier and grab it, she sees you moving and you freeze again.

You grab her hands with the belt as dark spots dance across your vision and throw her over your shoulder. You don’t know how you do it as all your strength is nearly gone from your body, but you turn the tables around. Psionic struggles underneath you as you dig a painful knee into the hole in her torso.

Your hand hovers over the blade embedded in your skin between your ribs and in your lung. You know pulling it will kill you. You’ve already been feeling the uneasy sensation of air leaking into parts of your body it should not be in. You know taking the knife out will collapse your lung and you’ll bleed out instantly.

There’s no way you make it out of this fight alive and you look into Bakugou’s eyes one last time. They widen in realization and he redoubles his efforts to move and do something. God anything.

“(Y/n)! Don’t! Please fucking don’t,” his voice is raw and it’s painful, but you keep staring as your hand grasps the handle.

Time resumes once more and you nearly scream at the sight in front of you. Bakugou has a deep wound on his right side, multiple lacerations on his legs and arms, and he’s bleeding so heavily. He’s losing.

You spot the sword you were trying to grab before you were stopped lying still discarded. Psionic seemed to have more blades on her than you thought, but that worked out in your favor now. You pick up the sword and you feel the unbridled rage settling inside you as you active your quirk once more.

The sword starts to be wrapped in wind you’re blowing on to it. It’s cold to the touch and you turn to find Bakugou coughing up blood on the ground. Psionic is two feet away from you, you’re a terrible hero to not have noticed and to have continuously been caught in her quirk. She has a longer knife than the one she stabbed and slashed you with earlier, you should fear where she’ll stab you with it, but you're too angry to care about your safety.

You can feel your movements slowing down as she speeds toward you. You have to make this count. All the air in your lungs and in the reserves of your suit come bursting out as you aim the sword at her midsection. Psionic reaches you and you feel the hot pain of the knife piercing your skin. You spin the two of you around so your back is facing Bakugou and you release the wind.

The explosion-like force of pent up wind being let go blows the two of you back. You catch a glimpse of the bloody sword sinking into the side of a building and the hole it left behind in Psionic’s stomach before you hit the ground. Everything is painful and the wind was truly knocked out of you. You feel bones crack, but you won and you kept Bakugou from getting killed like he kept you from tonight.

Bakugou is still screaming as you pull out the knife. Psionic is still struggling beneath you even as she bleeds out and is unable to activate her quirk. “Please god no,” his voice breaks your heart, but you’d rather he lives than you. “(Y/n) don’t leave me. I love you. Please!”

Bakugou is begging you to stay alive. There’s so much pain in his beautiful red eyes and you finally force yourself to look away. You raise the bloody knife and drive it home in one of Psionic’s eyes, you aren’t really sure which. You’re vision is doubling, but you no longer hear her grunts and no longer feel her movement.

Checking her pulse you conclude she is really and truly dead this time. You cough vigorously and the pain of the violent movement wracks your body. Blood gushes from your wound and from your mouth. This is it.

You still can’t look Bakugou in the eye as you speak, “You were always a better hero than me. Keep being the best hero, for both of us. I love you.” Your body collapses on top of Psionic’s and the last bit of strength leaves your body as the pain fades.

The sirens are here, but you aren’t. Bakugou screams and cries into the night, cursing his ineptitude and cursing you for leaving him.

He never does truly recover- 

He never patrols with anyone again,

He never forgives emergency services for arriving late,

He never stops wishing he could’ve traded places.

He never forgets you, and 

He never loves anew.

... 

He wishes he was there with you. 

[magicianbound]

“Think of What the World Could Be” - An Asravos Drabble

This drabble goes out to the incredible @arcanawise! ;w; I was struck with inspiration for this a while ago (remember that night you killed me by sending me this song?), and since your birthday was coming up I couldn’t resist! I love you and everything we write together so much, and these two adorable, sassy, thirsty magic bois are no different! THAT SAID I also couldn’t resist throwing a bit of angst at them, since, ya know, I’m me xDDD (ALADDIN SHRUG)

Happy birthday, Sam!!! I hope you have a birthday that’s as awesome and amazing as you are! <3

***TRIGGER WARNINGS for panic attacks, self-depreciating thoughts, mentions of death, and descriptions of burns! Read safely, everyone!***

He’d thought he’d finally found the answer.

It had seemed so obvious when the thought struck him, enough that he’d been shocked he hadn’t thought of it before.

Asra had known how he felt about Aaravos for longer than he should likely admit, but now he knew that the elf felt the same. Considering the recent...advances in their relationship, consulting the Lovers now made perfect sense. Romantic ideals were only part of what the Lovers embodied, albeit a large part, but now that they had crossed that line...

And yet his most recent journey to the Lovers’ realm had left him dismayed, more so than he’d ever been. Perhaps it was his own fault. If any of the Major Arcana would have the answer, he’d dared to hope it just might have been them.

Instead they’d told him he was at a crossroads, and advised that he be prepared to make a choice steeped in consequences. Sacrifice. The Arcana rarely spoke plainly; normally Asra wouldn’t be so frustrated with vague pointers and riddles, even enjoyed parsing together the meanings of the beings he so revered.

But as he sat at the edge of the largest pool in his oasis, gazing into an endless expanse of stars reflected in rippling water and trying in vain not to let his thoughts drift to the most beautiful star in his life, Asra could feel his patience wearing thin.

He’d met with a dozen of the remaining Major Arcana, now. The fact that over half of the most powerful beings in existence couldn’t offer an answer boggled as much as infuriated him. All his life he’d held onto his faith in the magic his parents taught him. Through all his life’s trials, it had never failed him. He had to believe it wouldn’t fail him now. Magic was willpower—the more he believed it, the more likely it was to be true.

If he had to search every nook and cranny of the realms, if it was the last thing he did...he would find the key to freeing Aaravos. In that moment Asra drew upon the well of power within and swore it with all his might, and the promise etched itself into the very fabric of the oasis. The landscape hummed in response, and the luminous plants around the pool flickered until they shimmered the same colors as the stars that adorned Aaravos’ body, twinkling in such a familiar way that it made his heart swell.

Wait—

Asra paused, focusing on the sensation unfolding in his chest. The air shifted, and his magic picked up on something, dangerous and coming closer.

But that shouldn’t be possible. There were hostile creatures in the magical realms, but nothing should be able to enter his gateway without his permission. Violet eyes cast about the edge of the pool as he stood, hands poised at his sides and magic on high alert.

“Asra.”

That voice. It haunted his nightmares and stained his worst memories. Sickening dread filled his stomach before he even felt the manifestation of raw, corrupted power at his back, so immense that it bled into the edges of his aura. On instinct he beckoned to the oasis, and a surge of magic came to meet him, manifesting as a kaleidoscopic glow around his hands as he turned to face an adversary he’d hoped to never deal with again.

Even after the defeat he’d suffered, the Devil stood tall before one of the parties responsible. His hulking form was only made more intimidating by the waves of magic he exuded, and the piercing red eyes that leered from inside a circle of wickedly curved horns. The stark white of his fur didn’t even reflect the colors of the oasis; he was a streak of pure black and white, a tear ripped into the glowing, vibrant landscape that proved how much he didn’t belong.

“You.” Disdain twisted Asra’s features and darkened the word into a curse. “What are you doing here?”

The Devil gave no reaction. He merely watched Asra with cool disinterest, eyeing his magic in the air like one would observe an ant about to be crushed underfoot. Utterly insignificant.

“It seems our time apart has sullied your manners,” he finally said, low and leisurely as if they were a pair of casual friends having a chat. “Is this how you treat all guests in your gateway?”

“Guests are invited.” Thankfully he hadn’t brought his most recent guest with him—the thought of Aaravos being subjected to meeting the Devil knotted his stomach. “If you came looking for a fight, I guess I should thank you for confronting me in my own gateway.”

The Devil shook his head, tsking like a disappointed parent. “So hasty. You should know by now that grudges are a mortal construction. I mean you no harm. In fact, I’ve come with valuable information. It would do you well to listen.” Asra remained unmoved, coiled and ready to strike, and the Devil sighed, meeting his glare with a look just shy of exasperation. “Come now, Asra, you’re a knowledgable, well-traveled magician. You know that there are benefits to having an open mind…when I can give you something you want.”

Asra bristled, a cold hand of dread slithering down his spine. The words were a violent alarm in his mind, so similar to those spoken years ago.

A trap he let himself fall into. A bond he can’t escape.

A deal he can never forget.

“I want you to get out of my gate,” Asra spat. A tense silence dragged on where the Devil watched him expectantly.

“Make me, then, if you’re so opposed to my presence. Oust me from your realm and I’ll take my leave.”

It was a blatant challenge, a dare to strike first that the Devil knew Asra wouldn’t take. His magic may be strongest in his oasis, but he couldn’t be sure it was enough to take on a Major Arcana alone. For the first time in longer than he’d realized, Asra found himself wishing that Trinity was at his side if only for her immunity to the Devil’s influences.

He and his magic remained alert, but Asra made no move. Fists clenched hard at his sides as he stood his ground, appearing undaunted even as his heart pounded at the base of his throat, threatening to choke him.

Blood-red eyes gleamed, darkly amused. “I thought as much. Even you don’t know all there is about magic. Listen well, and you may learn something.”

The Devil’s air was languid as he moved, starting a leisurely walk around Asra’s form—circling, watching. Asra turned with him, keeping an unflinching hold on his gaze. “You know my power, and you know the feats of which I am capable. I’m sure I needn’t remind you of how I brought Trinity back to life. How I pulled her wretched soul from the void and transcended it across realms.”

Fire sparked in Asra’s veins and leapt to his lips before he could think better of it. “How dare you—“

“Ah ah.” The Devil held up a hand and raised his brow: a threat, if not a subtle one. Asra seethed, his magic rippling with it, but fell quiet. The Devil hummed in mild displeasure. “You also know how I hate rudeness, so try not to interrupt. As I said, you’ve seen what I can be capable of, when given the proper incentive. What seems a miracle to mortal beings is child’s play for a Major Arcana of my power. I’ve come here because you’ve failed to notice a plain and simple truth.” He made an offhanded gesture. “Or perhaps you simply refuse to admit it.”

The more the Devil spun his riddled words the more dangerous he grew, and Asra didn’t have time for them regardless. “Get on with it.”

A smirk curled across his face. “Very well. I know what you’ve been searching for. I know that you’ve been scouring the realms and seeking council with the other Major Arcana, and yet the entire time, you won’t admit to knowing the obvious solution. I have immense power, enough that transcending Trinity’s soul across realms was painfully trivial.” His eyes hardened, and he spoke his next words slowly, deliberately, “You have ignored the fact that doing the same for a living being is an even simpler endeavor.”

Asra’s throat went dry. The words shocked him so deeply that he could only stare, blinking stupidly as they processed. And when they did…

The dread constricting his chest multiplied tenfold. His panic was so powerful that he felt it seeping into the oasis around him, heard the crackle of fissures opening in the ground beneath his feet. How did the Devil know about Aaravos? After the ordeal in Vesuvia he’d slinked off to his own realm, and Asra hadn’t seen nor felt any hint of him across the realms since. How could he have known about their travels, much less about the solution they were trying so desperately to find?

And yet, if the Devil meant what he implied…

For a split second every hope, every dream that had blossomed in what remained of Asra’s heart shone freely on his expression. It was a momentary chink in his armor, but a moment was all it took for the Devil to notice. The Arcana’s mouth curved just so, a flicker of cruelty shining through the diplomatic facade.

“You—what are you saying?” Asra wouldn’t be the first to say it aloud. Couldn’t risk planting the seed in the Devil’s mind if it hadn’t sprouted there on its own. But the gleam in red eyes told him all he needed to know.

The Devil almost looked smug, staring down the curve of his horns. “I have the power to set Aaravos free.”

The statement hung leaden in the air, refusing to absorb even though the Devil allowed a pause for it to do so. It seemed such a short time ago that Asra had traipsed through the realms of magic with Aaravos, hand-in-hand and wishing for a miracle with every step, every touch, every kiss.

Traveling the magical realms always felt like a dream, but sharing them with Aaravos? Their aim had been the same—endlessly looking for the key to his imprisonment—but with the return of the elf’s senses bridging the final chasms between them, the journeys had barely remained about their search.

They had become so much more. The first journey became the chance to find what they’d both been missing. The second became the chance to give in to what they’d craved, to satisfy their barely tempered desires. The tenth became the chance to admit to feelings long-since labeled hopeless and buried.

For those short, incredible times, Asra could forget about all the obstacles that stood in their way. He could forget about the elf’s imprisonment. He could forget about the hole in his chest that so easily pushed others away.

The experiences had only stoked Asra’s fire. He ran himself ragged scouring every inch of the realms. He barely rested between journeys, had stopped returning to the shop and instead took brief respites in his oasis, driven by a renewed, desperate desire to have those same experiences with Aaravos outside the magical realm.

Asra had lived so much of his life wanting what he couldn’t have. Loving from afar and slowly crumbling under the burden. If Aaravos was free, Asra could find a way to him in his own world. They could truly be together. No more barriers, no more reservations.

Could the Devil really grant that miracle?

It took a physical effort for Asra to tamp down any trace of hope. The Devil’s brazen promise had cracked the mask that hid it from view, and Asra scrambled to cover the gaps. “Even if I believed you, you don’t give miracles for free. That’s why you’re really here.” The Devil had to want something. After the plot he’d spun to try and merge the realities, Asra could scarcely imagine what he could be planning now. “What do you want?”

“Fear not, magician, my price is a mere trifle, no higher than one you’ve already paid.” The Arcana stopped circling, standing directly in front of Asra and facing him fully. “All it would cost...is the remaining half of your heart.”

The Devil’s gaze pierced into him as he spoke those damning words so casually, drilling a sickening sensation into his chest cavity that stole the air from his lungs. It wasn’t often that Asra could feel the difference, but in that moment the hollowness at the center of his chest ached, like it was reacting to the presence of the power that had torn it open in the first place. Asra stiffened, gritting his teeth against the wrongness of the feeling. All the while his thoughts raced, waging war against logic and magical instincts. The magic gathered around his hands flickered and dimmed, dispersing in his distraction.

Disbelief made him want to refute the Devil’s claim. A slew of protests nearly escaped out of sheer desperation, but the magician swallowed them down. All his teachings, the magical knowledge he’d accumulated throughout the years—it all spoke to the opposite.

The soul was the most complex part of a mortal being. If the Devil could retrieve a human soul after death, mold it to accept a heart that wasn’t its own, tether it to a body that was barely organic...what great struggle would shifting the plane of a physical form pose? Asra had seen the Arcana do it, been powerless to do anything but watch as the Devil had whisked Trinity into the void and left her stranded in the realm between realms.

Asra knew nothing of the powers that held Aaravos captive, but he knew the Devil’s power intimately. It wouldn’t even be difficult for a being like him.

And all it would cost...

A hand raised and pressed against his chest, feeling his own half-strong heartbeat against his palm. To anyone else it might seem an unfathomable cost, but Asra held no great attachment to the piece that remained. Not when he’d paid as much before. Not when he’d be giving it up for Aaravos.  

What was his heart for, if not giving to those he loved?

But it wasn’t the cost itself that unsettled him so. Something about it didn’t fit.

For Trinity, the piece of his heart had been needed to replace her own. Without it, her soul couldn’t have connected to its new body; Asra’s heart was what allowed her to live, a logical price to pay for her miracle.

But Aaravos was alive, safe in whatever distant realm where his full body resided. Freeing him was a matter of moving a physical form, not inhabiting one. To demand the remains of his heart in exchange would mean…

The Devil’s low chuckle shattered his thoughts. The sound echoed immeasurably, growing until it somehow filled the endless sky, pressing in until Asra could barely tell he was standing in his vast oasis. The sound crushed him, leeching the color out of the air, the plants, the ground—compressing until he was trapped. Confined.

Chained.

“You always were a perceptive one.” A full grin cleaved across the Devil’s features, red eyes and pointed teeth flashing with hunger. “Your heart isn’t required to complete the deed, but some price must be paid. Proper incentive. This time…your heart would belong to me.”

Asra’s entire being reacted to those words: every fiber, every atom, every drop of arcane power that made up his magic reared back in primal fear. Instinct drove him to retreat, only to find that he couldn’t move. His feet were rooted, and he looked down just as a pair of red chains burst from the ground.

Chunks of fertile earth scattered in all directions. Before he could react the chains snared his legs and Asra cried out, blistering pain accompanying every inch higher that the Devil’s bonds coiled. Through the burning Asra scrabbled for his magic, and it surged out of every speck and seam of the oasis, rushing to his call and channeling towards the chains. The supernatural bindings hissed and writhed against the magic building up beneath them like a second skin of water, forcing them to loosen until they released him fully and dissolved in a rush of heat.

As soon as he was free Asra crumpled. Pain sapped the strength from legs covered in hellish burns, and he buckled to one knee. His rage blazed just as hot, and amethyst eyes hardened, sure as his voice as he shouted, “No! I won’t fall for your tricks again!”

The Devil had inched closer, his towering form looming over the magician with barely concealed hostility. The Arcana’s tone carried a hint of laughter when he spoke, like he was amused by Asra’s resistance. “Our bargain for Trinity’s life was no trick. I never promised the state of her mind upon return, and you never asked. Surely you’ll be wiser in that regard this time around. I assure you this too is no trick. You needn’t hunt for your beloved’s freedom any longer.”

Refusing to be looked down on by the likes of the Devil, Asra ignored the pain and struggled to his feet. While his footing wavered his magic remained strong where it materialized into a shimmering shield between them, protecting him from being snared again. “I am wiser this time around—wise enough to never believe you.”  

The Devil huffed and the amusement faded from his features, seemingly losing his patience. “If you won’t listen to my word, then perhaps this will sway you: surely you know that Death is under my heel. Every mortal being is merely a clock ticking down, and Death sees how much time is left; they see where, and when, and why a mortal’s time will come.” His wicked grin returned, delighting in the horrors he spouted. “They have seen that your search is in vain. Without my intervention, your beloved Aaravos will die the same as he is now: imprisoned and fragmented.”

The words struck him more painfully than any physical blow or burning magic. It was stated with such confidence, such triumph. Asra’s eyes searched the Devil’s countenance desperately, but there was no hint of doubt. His broken and battered heart shuddered, aching with the horrible truth, with the knowledge that it had to be.

Major Arcana couldn’t lie. It didn’t stop the Magician from spinning riddles, or the Devil from weaving deceptions that bent and mutated the truth. Perhaps it was the shock, the all-consuming panic that took hold, but he couldn’t see how those words could be a deception. They were a stated fact, a damning condemnation that shook the very core of what was left of him. Asra couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t comprehend much less react when the Devil chuckled like he’d already won.

“Despite what you think of me, I am a being of reason. I see that you need some time to consider.”

It was with a triumphant air that the Devil turned away, casting a final glance over his shoulder. “Seek me out in my realm when you’ve seen the truth. I will leave the path open to you.”

A swirling portal yawned open in front of the Devil, colored with shades of blood and fire. In the next step he passed through and it sealed as quickly as it had formed, leaving Asra alone in the oasis.

Time stretched on yet Asra stood frozen, shaken and paralyzed to his core. His vision blurred and his chest tightened, breaths coming in shallow, frantic gasps laden with pain as the jagged edges of his sundered heart shredded him from the inside.

He’d thought they had all the time in the world. He’d believed with everything he had that they would eventually find a way. Now that illusion shattered around him, and he could do nothing but stand and watch, could do nothing as horrific truths compiled atop his shoulders and crushed him into stardust.

Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing always nothing—

Why was he always left with nothing?

An anguished cry wrenched from him as he disbanded his magic, letting it explode with the force of his fury and heartbreak. He dropped to his knees and the earth shuddered beneath him, the glowing colors of the oasis tinging dark and stormy. Pain flared in his legs once he hit the ground, but he barely felt it in comparison to the desolation and misery that thrummed through his veins with every heartbeat.

Tears pooled in violet eyes and spilled over, leaving streaks down his cheeks. He curled in on himself, pressing his arms to his stomach in a desperate, futile attempt to hold himself together. He hadn’t even accepted the Devil’s deal, and yet Asra already felt empty; he ached down to his core, the hollow of his chest stewing vacant in the wake of his remaining heart stopping in response to the fear, the anger, the misery—

He didn’t know how long it took him to come back together after falling apart. He heaved and shook and sobbed, until finally the scorching pain from his injuries broke through. With effort he straightened his legs, hissing between his teeth as he carefully rolled up his pants to reveal the burns. His hands trembled where they hovered over angry, blistered skin, his thoughts circling each other like a pack of wolves as healing magic streamed from his palms.

Soothing waves encircled the wounds and he closed his eyes, his sobs slowly tapering off as he lost himself in the ebb and flow, letting his awareness drift and meld with the familiar magic of the oasis. After a time his breaths evened and his panic faded, dispersing into the fathomless cosmos above.

He knew that hysteria was exactly the reaction that the Devil wanted. If he gave into his despair he’d only be playing right into the Devil’s hands.

No—if Asra did pay the Devil’s price, he’d at least do it with a clear head and no room for doubt.

If what the Devil had said about Aaravos’ fate was true, Asra would give anything to save him. He wouldn’t let what happened to Trinity happen to Aaravos. He wouldn’t fail someone else he loved.

He couldn’t lose anyone else.

Eventually Asra heaved himself to his feet. The pain had lessened, the crisscrossing burns healed from open and raw to faded, angry red, but the remaining damage required more time and power to heal than he could spare. He winced and staggered a few steps when he stood straight, but the strength in his limbs held, and that was all the go-ahead he needed. He swallowed down the lingering tendrils of panic, shoved aside his feelings so he could think rationally.

He couldn’t believe the Devil’s words until he heard Aaravos’ fate from the source. He’d never been to Death’s realm, didn’t know the path or what to expect along the way, but it didn’t matter.

He’d travel to the end of the endless void if he had to, drew in a single, stunted breath to steel himself against the very real possibility. A hand disappeared into his bag and emerged clutching a gold-plated compass as if it were a lifeline, white-knuckled fingers trembling around its familiar shape. As soon as the lid flipped open, the arrow jolted and froze without a wobble, magnetized to his heart’s desire.

As he started walking, taking slow, painful steps and desperately ignoring the lingering ache in his heart, the oasis brightened in stilted fractions. Despair brightened to determination. Determination brightened into love, so powerful that the ground glowed beneath every footfall.

He’d vowed to free Aaravos. No matter the time. No matter the effort.

If it was the last thing he did...

Whatever he had to give...

No matter the cost.

[rhetoricfemme]

Foregone Conclusion | Jean/Willy Tybur | SNK

Rated: M | 2003 words | AO3

Everyone deserves at least one charmed beginning. Unassuming meet-cutes and intentions to traipse into the future holding hands, potential disturbances far from mind and entirely unseen.

For Jean Kirschstein, Liam Tybur was just that.

Honey blond clasped at the nape of his tanned neck, slightly crooked teeth inside of a billion-dollar smile.

Class was being held outside that morning, as their instructor had deemed walls inferior to the sun-warmed seats of the university amphitheater.

Jean had shown up early, slinging his backpack onto an empty seat and cracking open a book to bide his time. Try as he might, however, his focus continued to fall victim to a small cacophony several rows over.

Right. Of course, it had to be him.

Liam spoke with his hands while regaling classmates. Elaborate and important talk of how he’d spent his summer trailing precariously elevated cliffsides and narrow mountain roads, though something about his tone somehow remained humble.

Be it the decibel of his voice, the story itself, or the way his eyes scanned the class while speaking, Jean found Liam Tybur an altogether strange creature, and impossible to ignore.

Judging by a series of blink-and-miss glances, Liam didn’t want him to.

He’d shown boyish curiosity when he finally approached Jean, all at once bold and demure. Sweet and confident.

Expectant.

Directing his eye back into his book, Jean doesn’t look up again until he sees a pair of sneakers in his peripheral vision. The white rubber soles of said shoes are almost entirely covered in Sharpie-laden sentences. Of course they are.

“What’cha reading?”

“Ah,” It had been the perfect foil to Liam’s poise when Jean had opened his mouth to nervous laughter. “Death Farm. It’s about cadavers?”

A nod of his golden head, a pursed lip smile. “Well that’s something, isn’t it?”

“Everything is something.”

“Morbid.” Jean assumes this was meant to be flirtatious, when interestingly Liam is beginning to sound apprehensive. Regardless, he summons the gall to point toward Jean’s bag. “So are you saving this seat for someone?”

Jean takes his time. Gives himself as many long-passing seconds as he needs to assess the person in front of him. Three weeks into class, and they’ve exchanged more words in this amphitheater than their collective time inside the classroom.

“Not really.” A lopsided grin and sweet hazel sparks, and the backpack finds itself moved to the ground. “Go ahead and sit.”

At the end of the day, Liam would be alright.

Jean had been watching the way he lived out one thought to the next; the way people were drawn to LIam, and he drawn right back to them. The way he found existential beauty and crisis in the smallest of things. Liam was gifted with the disposition to find catharsis in the mere act of breathing, and he’d then go on to tell all the world about it.

For as endearing as Liam could be, Jean was not proud to admit that he had long since considered him a touch obnoxious.

There was guilt pinned to the anti-sentiment. Of course there was, but there was also the guilt born from the fact that when Liam looked at Jean, there was one word left after all the others had gone away.

Loving.

This, and the fact that Jean simply could not force himself to feel the same way.

“Can’t believe you’re going to be gone all of spring break.” Liam rolls onto his side, snakes his arm around Jean’s waist as he lays motionless on his back. “Would’ve been nice to lay around for a few days. Read some books together, binge watch something. Eren’s going home, right? We could’ve…”

It’s discreet when Jean moves away from the lips grazing across his neck, compensating for the loss by affectionately trailing his fingers through long blond hair.

“You don’t like the books I like.” Jean teases, wanting for absentminded bliss, but instead settling on lazily braiding his lover’s hair.

“No, no I don’t.” Liam’s laughter is good-natured, and Jean imagines that he’s going to miss it. “It’s fine, though. Nice of you to help your brothers move into their house.”

Truth be told, Jean’s been looking forward to this. The glee in Reiner’s voice when he’d called more than a month ago now, telling Jean they’d done it—they’d actually gotten a fucking house, and the only thing that would make the deal better is if Jean drove up and helped them move in.

While Jean has no regrets about going to school in Ohio, nor does he believe he’s cut out for a lifetime of distance from the people he calls home. He’s come to discern what he believes to be an acceptable arm’s length of separation based on how quickly he can get himself home when wistfulness strikes. Or on those rare occasions that someone he cares about is in a genuine position of need.

It hasn’t escaped Jean’s notice, but more appropriately it’s hounded his mind that so much of his spare mental energy is guided toward a small number of people, none of whom are a convenient distance away.

It’ll only occur as an afterthought the following morning, when Jean is more than halfway there, that he’s no sense of longing for the arms that for the past several months have delighted in keeping him warm at night.

For the moment, Jean is still too preoccupied thinking about all the work he’ll have to keep him busy. How much time he’ll have to engage in conversation that isn’t happening in the form of a text, the long drive ahead…

“…sorry, what?”

“Whenever you get a chance to come home with me, I was saying.” Liam locks eyes with Jean, the question in his gaze contradicting the certainty of his words. “They don’t call me Liam.”

“No? What’d they call you, then?”

“Willy.”

Jean can’t help but smile. It’s the sort of name that incites images of innocence and childlike wonder, and so despite the way Liam cringes at the name, Jean can’t help but find it fitting.

“When you’re at home what do they call you?”

“Just Jean.”

“No nicknames?”

He thinks of the obvious. Of how second-nature it is to hear his parents, Levi or Reiner call him by that annoying, but well-loved nickname. Thinks of how Bertholt reserves it for quieter moments, or how Marco’s brows had raised in sweet amusement the first time he’d heard Reiner call him Jeanbo.

“Just Jean.”

“Mm.” Liam’s arm wraps tighter around his waist. “Just Jean, it is.”

The movements that once caused Jean to pulse with heat now serve to remind him of how far they’ve dropped off. How far in his own ruminations he’s come. How he’s uncertain whether the man beside him is ignoring the growing chasm Jean has struck in the space between them, or if he truly doesn’t feel it.

Despite all of this, he’s not immune to Liam’s charms. Jean’s body still responds generously to a certain degree of caresses and touch. There’s a high level of adoration worthy of being defended, even if Liam could never bring himself to press in upon request. He could never bring himself to grip or pull hard enough for Jean’s tastes.

The amped up coil in Jean’s gut has long since died. And so he reroutes the desperate, romantic attempts of lips at his neck before the rest of his drive has a chance to go cold.

Liam sighs, full of heat and lacking inhibition when his clothes land in a heap on Jean’s bedroom floor, letting Jean guide his hand between his legs.

“You’re so to-the-point these days.” Sharp commentary amid languid strokes of a tongue. “Where’s the boy who looked at foreplay as if he couldn’t live without it?”

The comment is playful, if not inquisitive, but it leaves Jean with an unavoidable chill growing in his belly.

“M’right here.” He hooks a leg behind the strong, familiar waist, unable to muster anything better, even as a going-away present. “Guess I’ve changed a bit.”

“No.” Liam sighs pleasantly, ignores the way Jean tenses as he revisits his neck. “You’re just stressed. Have you changed? Or is it just a season of life?”

“Seasons change.”

One fades off into another, and when it finally comes back around some things are never quite the same.

Jean grabs hold of him, then. Flips their bodies without warning and watches how Liam flushes at the sight of Jean hovering above him.

“No more talking tonight.” Soft eyes and insistent fingers are as incongruous as Jean’s words. “Okay?”

Liam’s arches skyward, hands grappling for purchase at Jean’s thighs.

“Okay..” He’s barely time to respond. “Jean!”

Sealing their lips together, Jean robs them of the opportunity to share words. They engage one another from the same bed, though they exist on separate planes.

Jean kisses hard but is careful when he thrusts into Liam’s heat. Takes his time, listens to the steady rise of blood and nerves, desperate to find their common ground before it’s time to go. He can’t close his eyes—please, not now—because if the sex is increasingly emotionless, fuck it still feels good.

Climbing higher, Jean drags Liam willingly along with him. Meets the wet gaze of perfectly sincere eyes, because if Jean closes his, if he so much as looks away he risks clear blue irises melting to soulful brown.

He can’t do that to Liam.

And it’s a truth he’s not prepared to reconcile himself to, yet.

Liam comes first, hot and messy across his and Jean’s stomachs, biting into Jean’s kiss hard enough to draw blood. It’s everything Jean could have wanted, but oh, not like this. Not from his Liam, who in six months has not once kissed like that.

Stumbling into an orgasm he wasn’t ready for, Jean sobs with elation before melting into the arms braced against his back.

It takes some time to reconcile themselves with reality. To remember their limbs, find their breath again before rolling off opposite sides of the bed.

Before he knows what’s happening, Jean finds himself inquiring as to where Liam is going. For a moment, the only sound is that of pink-stained tissues hitting the trash can, but then Liam hits him with a pensive little smile.

“I think I’m gonna go back to my place tonight.” Thoughtful words to accompany the slow, affectionate rub of his thumb across Jean’s mouth. “You’re leaving early in the morning, right?”

“You can stay if you want.” Jean whispers almost silently. “I didn’t say I wanted you to go.”

“I know.” Again, Liam plays at the purple blossom he’d left at Jean’s lip. Sighs. “I know you don’t want me to go, Jean. But maybe I have to.”

The grip Jean keeps on Liam’s elbow borders just on the other side of too tight, though he isn’t asked to let go.

“It’s fine.” Liam promises, grips Jean’s shoulder in return. “Go home. Come back. Maybe things will feel different then.”

The laughter that falls from Jean’s lips comes out almost sad and sardonically.

And so it goes, that after a nearly sleepless night, Jean climbs into his car at four in the morning.

At some point he finds himself driving across old, familiar roads. Doesn’t think twice when skipping the exit that would take him to his parent’s house, opting instead to drive on just a little more.

It’s just after eight a.m. when the apartment door creaks open, predictably left unlocked just for him. Jean spills inside of the tiny living room, simultaneously renewed but exhausted when he crashes onto an old couch, and quite honestly proud of himself for not landing on the floor.

Throwing an old blanket on top of himself, he settles in for however long a nap he can get before Reiner inevitably jostles him back awake.

How merciful that his brothers seem to be choosing to sleep in. How fortunate that Jean’s mind seems to agree with his body, and has no interest in staying awake.

He’s so tired, in fact, that when a hand gently tucks the old blanket around Jean’s tired shoulders, he sleeps on.

None the wiser. Entirely unaware.

[keldae]

Drastic Measures (chapter seven)

“I have names for you, Your Majesty.” Larill’s blue holofigure shimmered in the air before the Eternal Throne. “The assassin is a former Jedi Knight named Xaja Taerich; and the terrorist, a rogue intelligence operative, Theron Shan. Chancellor Saresh is not fond of them, and, as a result, was more than willing to give up their identities. Apparently Taerich is a traitor despite being hailed a Republic war hero, and Shan, she believes, is an incompetent idiot.”

“And she did not surrender not the assets themselves?” Arcann frowned behind his mask.

“The Chancellor and her people were convinced that Taerich was long dead, and the Supreme Commander stated that Shan had been killed recently.” He paused. “We may be dealing with rogue, unsanctioned elements.”

“Perhaps Shan was sent to the Spire on a suicide mission,” Arcann mused. “If the Republic’s SIS authorized it, Commander Malcom would have been aware of it, even if he neglected to inform the Chancellor.”

“And thus be surprised to learn of the plan failure and Shan improvising something completely unsanctioned.” Larill stroked his bearded chin in thought. “I do not believe his shock came from a failed plan -- he was nowhere near angry enough. He seemed to be upset over Shan’s reported death, perhaps for personal reasons.”

“The terrorist, connected to the Supreme Commander? That would be important information to determine, Larill.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Larill seemed to glance at a datapad on his end of the call. “Once I received their names, I did some prying into Taerich and Shan’s files. They were not strangers -- they had worked together before on several missions, some classified. Reports indicate that they may have been lovers.”

“Lovers? That might explain why he abandoned his task to set off the charges when he found her frozen.” Arcann tapped his metal fingers against his mask-covered chin. “Get me everything the Republic archives have on them, and their intelligence services’ search for them. And get me everything on Commander Malcom as well.”

“It will be done.” Larill bowed. “Do you have any other commands for me?”

“Given that I do not know how competent the SIS’ remaining agents are, I am sending you a report of a possible sighting on an Outer Rim world, Rishi. Taerich and Shan may have been seen with an accomplice. Find what you can about this man.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Larill vanished, and Arcann stood up to pace in front of the Throne.

Xaja Taerich… yes, that was her name. He still could clearly remember the fire in her eyes as she stood bravely over the corpse of her Sith colleague; the way she’d spat furious words and very creative insults at his father, even though her hands shook with fear in binder cuffs. Anyone who could stand up to Valkorion in such a manner was more than able to kill him, and she’d been more than willing to do the deed. Arcann remembered well being knocked back by his father’s lightning strike, looking up in time to see the Jedi pouncing from on high like an avenging angel, driving her lightsabers through Valkorion’s back. He had been grudgingly impressed by her courage. Still, that courage all but deserted her in the freezing chamber: her terrified screams still echoed in his mind in quiet moments.

Freezing you to cover up my role in my father’s death was a mistake, Arcann mused. I should have just executed you. You were still weak if you felt fear like that at the end. But he hadn’t brought himself to order the death of the pretty Jedi woman. Something about her was… fascinating. That much fire in her spirit, that much power within her grasp… Arcann wished he’d had the idea to convert her into the Knights of Zakuul before he’d frozen her. She would have been an asset to rival even Vaylin.

And if that spy had worked with her before… any man with an inclination towards women would have fallen for Taerich’s alluring presence. Had they truly been lovers, it was little wonder that Shan risked everything to find and rescue her. He must have been powerful in his own way to sway her to him. Yet the spy hadn’t used a lightsaber during their escape from the Spire; Arcann had seen the footage, watched him using ordinary blaster pistols. He’d also seen the way that Taerich had stayed very close to him, and how the spy had angled himself so as to protect her…

The Emperor snarled. He would not be jealous of a likely-Force-blind spy, of all people.

And if she’s a Republic war hero as claimed, the Supreme Commander would want her back for morale and strategic purposes. I would have, if I had been in his position. Was this a joint effort with remnants of the Jedi Order? Arcann frowned.  Most of the Order itself had fallen on the battlefield. Those that survived were grief stricken and hollow. They scattered to the far reaches of the galaxy and silenced their sabers. A plan to retrieve a hero of the Republic could achieve a moral victory, reigniting their will, and stoking the embers of war yet again. Was someone -- Commander Malcom -- attempting to push the Republic to the brink of war yet again?

Arcann frowned. It was possible that the Commander knew nothing, that Shan was acting alone. There’s only one way to find out, he thought. Until Shan and Taerich are found, Malcom will be our only link. I will know the originator of this insult, and they will answer for it. 

The shuttle whined as it exited hyperspace just over the small world known as Manda, verging on the border between the Mid-Rim and the Outer Rim. Theron swooped down toward the planet’s atmosphere, his gaze shifting between the viewscreen and the detection icons around the shuttle. “I’m gonna try and set a new destination before the hunters figure out where we’ve gone,” he called over his shoulder. “How are you doing, Xaja?”

“Shoulder hurts, but I’ve had worse.” Her voice sounded tight with pain, but she didn’t sound weak or frail anymore. That was already improvement. Theron risked a glance back to see her sitting upright on a chair, the jacket pulled back off her shoulder so Kimble could treat the wound. It was a pretty gruesome blaster shot, but Theron could already see that it wasn’t life-threatening, just painful. That was good. That was very good.

The proximity alarm sounded as pursuing ships dropped out of hyperspace just behind them, and Theron swore eloquently as he banked the shuttle hard to the left. It just got worse. “Dammit, hold on! We got company!”

“Can we lose them on the planet’s surface?” Kimble shouted as he stumbled, dropping some piece of medical equipment with the movement.

“Manda doesn’t have much to hide us,” Theron answered as he maneuvered upward and around. For a moment, one of the enemy ships was in front of him; he opened fire and missed, but the shot did force the hunters to adjust their course out of the line of fire. “Our best chance is to jump and try to lose them.”

“Because that worked so well last time,” Kimble sarcastically commented.

“Do you have any better ideas?” Theron snapped over his shoulder, groaning when he saw another late-coming ship enter the fray. Laser fire peppered the sky in front of him, making him jerk hard to the side to not get hit.

“… No,” Kimble grudgingly admitted, “but there’s got to be a better option than --”

Four ships against one shuttle? The odds were never in their favour. Theron grunted as a shot hit the side wing of his shuttle and made the vessel jerk. “Kriffing hell. New plan!”

“Great! What’s the new plan?”

“Step one is to not die.” Theron brought the shuttle around and fired, and counted himself lucky that he managed to get a glancing blow on one of the ships pursuing. “Step two…” He scowled at the system warnings blazing across the console. “We’re not hyperspace jumping, not unless we want to die terribly in the tunnel.”

Xaja let loose with a couple of decidedly non-Jedi-like expletives that made Theron feel at once startled and immensely proud of her. “So now what? Land on Manda and hope there’s another shuttle we can steal if we can’t repair this one?”

“Assuming we survive long enough to reach the surface, yes --” Theron blinked in surprise as the late-comer ship suddenly swooped over his viewscreen and opened fire. He recognized it as the Phantom-class ship he’d nearly run into while fleeing Rishi, and for a moment couldn’t decide what surprised him more: the firepower of the supposedly civilian-class shuttle, or the fact that it scored a direct hit on one of the hunter vessels, igniting it to dust. “Huh. Competition for the prize?”

“What?” Kimble appeared at Theron’s side and looked over his shoulder. “Looks like someone doesn’t want to share a hundred million credits.”

The fine hair on the back of Theron’s neck stood on end. “Either that or we might have a friend,” he mused, then yelled as another hit nearly tore the controls out of his hands. “Kriff it. We’re going down!” He aimed the shuttle toward the planet’s surface and descended hard, eyes darting between the radar behind him and the viewscreen in front. The three other ships were in close pursuit, although one suddenly disappeared in another ball of flame. He didn’t have time to wonder if the Phantom had been protecting them, taking out the competition, or had just been shot down themselves -- Manda’s atmosphere was rapidly clouding his vision. Maybe landing in the middle of a storm will give us enough cover to escape.

He’d never been on Manda before, and knew only enough to know that the planet was scarcely populated and supposedly spacious enough for shuttles to land with little problem. Must have picked the one mountainous area to land on, he silently grumbled as he veered sharply around a mountainside, then yelled as a third shot to the back of the ship sent him spiraling further downward, sweeping into a valley.

“This is gonna hurt! Brace for impact!” he shouted back. Jungle trees swarmed his vision and his poor shuttle ricocheted over and between them. His chest pounded against his yoke, his head smacked the bulkhead. The shuttle finally made contact with the ground -- hard -- and skidded for kilometers, a cleared trail behind them over the rocky terrain.

He was still for several long seconds after the crashed shuttle stopped moving, mentally checking to ensure each of his systems responded. He found he had to focus on breathing before he could move. “Xaja? Kimble?” he breathlessly called out.

“Still here, Theron.” That was Xaja’s voice. Soft and thready, it sounded like she was in pain. When he crawled out of the pilot’s seat and stumbled up to her side, however, she was scrambling to her feet and didn’t appear to have been too badly thrown around. Kimble was there, too, but was slowly sitting up. Blood trickled out of cut somewhere on the back of his head, visible in the nape of his neck. “How bad are we doing?”

“Not sure the shuttle’s fixable,” Theron confessed as he braced himself on the table and crouched to check on Kimble, “but I’ve seen worse. You two hurt at all?”

Kimble cracked an eye open to squint up at Theron. As he did so, the former operative could see his pupils were slightly dilated. “You’re bleeding, Shan.” When Theron frowned and patted at his face, he could indeed feel a trickle of blood streaming down from his temple. “Gimme a sec to get up and I can take care of that.”

“You worry about yourself,” Theron grunted as he helped the medic sit up. “I’m not the one who was knocked flat.” The sudden whine of another rapidly-descending ship made all three of them look sharply up. Each winced despite themselves at the sound of a nearby crash. “That’s not a good sound.”

“I hope that was one of the hunter ships and not that other sleek lookin’ ship,” Kimble muttered as he slowly maneuvered himself to a chair.

“Unless that Phantom is looking to keep the payday for themselves,” Theron grunted as he started slowly making his way to the shuttle entrance. He paused beside Xaja as she knelt beside Kimble and dropped a hand to her good shoulder. “I’ll take a look --”

“Theron!” Xaja grabbed his hand and gave him a worried look. “You’re not going out there by yourself!”

“You’re still sick,” Theron said as he kissed her forehead. “And I’m hurt less than you or Kimble are.” He wasn’t going to admit to how woozy and nauseous he felt -- maybe he’d hit his head a little harder than he’d thought. “I’m not going far, Xaja. We need to know how kriffed we are, though.”

Xaja gave him that too-knowing frown he’d received a lot of on Yavin and Ziost, the one where he swore she knew just how terrible he felt. Although considering the strange bond they seemed to share now, he supposed that wasn’t impossible. “I’m coming with you --”

“No, you’re not. Kimble needs someone guarding his back, and I’m not letting you risk getting captured.” All three gave a start at the sound of blaster fire and screams outside. “That’s a ship firing,” Theron murmured, frowning in thought. “One of those two ships still has operational weapons systems and they’re low enough to use it on the ground.”

“Theron, I’m not the only high-value target they’re chasing! You’re worth just as much to them!”

“Look,” he started, “Kimble can’t exactly go investigate with that concussion, and your shoulder’s still out of commission.” He frowned as the sound of blasters and shouting got much closer. A tell-tale thump against the hull spoke to their proximity. “I’ll be okay, Xaja -- I’ll come back to you, I promise.” He kneeled to kiss her, then stood and crept toward the shuttle exit.

When he got the door partially opened, the first thing he saw was rain -- and lots of it. He’d landed in the middle of a downpour, and the pursuers hadn’t hesitated to follow him down. If he squinted, he was sure he could see the silhouette of a downed ship nearby in the rain. There were bodies on the ground too, somewhere close to a dozen humanoid figures with different armour styles that he could just see in the dim light. He frowned when he saw a couple more figures skulking around. There was no sign of the last remaining ship that he could see, and he wondered if they’d just done a few low flybys before taking off.

He scowled and slipped out of the shuttle, cringing as the rain immediately plastered his hair down and started trickling down his neck. Blaster drawn, he crept around the side of his vessel and hunkered down in the shadows. There, two figures that he could see approaching, then a third far to the right -- then the third figure crumpled noiselessly, and Theron thought he saw the glint of light off a durasteel blade. But what --

A heavy fist slammed into his gut and made him reel before he was all but thrown against the side of the shuttle. The bounty hunter’s stealth generator shorted out as he loomed over Theron and grabbed him back up by the front of his jacket. “You’re the biggest pain in the ass of a bounty I’ve ever hunted,” he growled. “Zakuul better be up front with those credits they’re offerin’ for you!”

“Toxicity eight!” Theron shouted as he aimed his gauntlet and squeezed his fist. The dart flew out and just missed the bounty hunter, who growled and punched Theron again, earning a wheeze. The spy grunted and snatched up his dropped blaster, aiming it vaguely upward and firing, and earning a holler for his trouble as the shot hit the hunter’s leg.

“You kriffing Hutt-spawn!” snarled the hunter as he swiped at Theron again. Head still swimming, the spy only just managed to duck out of the way. “It’s a good thing they don’t care about you bein’ alive, just identifiable. I’m gonna kriffin’ rip out your innards an’ then kark up that pretty lady friend you got --”

Fury made Theron’s vision go red, but he didn’t have time to react as a bright blue lightsaber blade ignited in the darkness. A scream made him aware of another approaching hunter falling into a heap as Xaja ambushed him from the shuttle entrance. Despite only having one working arm, it seemed she could still wield a blade well enough to kill from the shadows, even if she couldn’t stay out of a fight. It was less endearing a trait right now than it had been on Ziost or Manaan.

“So she is a kriffin’ Jedi,” growled the hunter. He punched Theron hard enough to make the spy see stars and flop bonelessly on the wet ground, then hurried up to the shuttle entrance with a growl. Xaja had to have seen or heard him coming -- Theron could feel a sudden burst of worry and of anger from the tug in his mind that felt like her. The lightsaber hummed as it spun through the rain, steam rising from the blade as Xaja countered the hunter’s attack. Theron groaned as he rolled to his stomach and struggled up to his knees, seeing two more hunters approaching through the darkness. She can’t hold off all of them, he knew, and raised his blaster to shoot.

He never got the chance. A third figure suddenly emerged from a stealth field behind the hunters, and the guy on the left dropped with a spray of what looked like blood, his assassin spinning a dagger with terrifying efficiency. The other whirled and fired in what seemed to be a panic. The assassin neatly avoided the shot and dove in, nice and close. Theron just saw the blade take the hunter through the ribs and watched the hulking humanoid fall.

A cry behind him drew his attention and the former operative turned just in time to see the hunter knock Xaja against the hull of the shuttle. She dropped with a strangled cry, her lightsaber deactivating as she fell. Blaster fire immediately followed, aimed at the hunter. Looking back, Theron noted the assassin had drawn a blaster, and focused his attention on the hulking mass.

Snarling at the interfering shot, the hunter ignored his Jedi target long enough to fire back at the assassin. The shot seemed to deflect from some sort of protection field the mysterious figure had deployed, and then the assassin was charging, dagger flying from his offhand. Theron heard the ding as the blade missed the target and hit the shuttle door, followed by  the growl as the hunter jumped at the assassin. “They’re mine! That hun’red million credits is mine!”

The assassin didn’t answer, saving his breath to dodge out of the way and shoot from the hip as he moved. I’ve seen that fighting style before, Theron realized with a frown, rising painfully and raising his arm. Where have I seen that? And the ship… some report… He shook his head in an attempt to clear the addled thoughts. Need a clear shot. Guy with the knives might be a friend. At least he’s probably not gonna kill us right off. With how quickly the assassin was moving around the hulking, well-armoured hunter, it was hard to get a clear line of sight. The hunter roared and swung wildly. When he finally landed a blow, the assassin grunted and stumbled backward a step.

It was just enough for Theron. “Toxicity ten,” he snarled, and this time the dart found its target. The hunter fell in a heap, and Theron sagged against the side of the shuttle, warily watching the assassin as he regained his footing and turned in his direction. I really hope you’re not another hunter out to take out the competition, buddy, he wearily thought as the humanoid figure approached. Because I don’t think I can see straight enough to take you down.

A hand gently yet firmly gripped his chin, and a light shone from the assassin’s other hand. “Oh, good, you’re not dead after all.” That voice sounded all at once entirely too familiar, and Theron suddenly knew exactly where he’d seen the man’s fighting style before.

“Cipher,” he grunted, and tried to ignore the pain flooding through his chest where he’d been punched by the hunter. “Don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see you before.” Xaja, at least, wasn’t going to be turned in for the bounty today.

“You are such a pain in the ass, Rookie,” the older spy complained, and a second later Theron yelped as he was smacked upside the back of the head. “And before I forget, Korin says hello.”

Right. Korin probably would have told his father about his best friend’s suicide note. Theron felt himself inwardly cringe. “Yeah, I deserved that,” he grunted.

“Honestly, he said to punch you, but there’s nowhere I can really punch you that wouldn’t do more damage.” Reanden Taerich pulled Theron around to the back exit of the shuttle with a strength that a man his age really shouldn’t have otherwise had, then looked around in worry. “Xaja?” he called out. Was that fear Theron could hear in the older man’s voice?

“… Dad?” Movement in the shadows from where Xaja had been knocked down and had dropped her lightsaber. Her voice was faint and strained; Theron could sense both pain and a disbelieving, shocked hope. “Are you?…”

Reanden pulled himself away from Theron to run in the direction of Xaja’s voice and drop to his knees. “Easy, baby girl,” he murmured as he carefully lifted Xaja’s slim frame off the wet ground. His voice changed from a cocky, arrogant older spy to a terrified father. “Oh, honey, look at me. I’m here, kiddo. Dad’s got you, you’re safe --”

Even in the dim light, Theron could see Xaja throw her uninjured arm around her father’s shoulders and cling to him, and he swore he could see the one-time Cipher Nine’s back shaking as he held his missing daughter close. The sheer relief and sense of protection and safety that he sensed from her through their bond made his own limbs weak -- or was that his throbbing head and aching ribs?

“Kriffing hells, Shan!” was the last thing he heard before his world went black.

When Theron came to, he was immediately assaulted with the scents of antiseptic and kolto, irritatingly bright lights just overhead. “Ah, welcome back, young one,” said a too-cheerful voice. Cracking an eye open, he was immediately greeted with a smirk and a white beard. “That’s one nasty concussion you gave yourself, Agent Shan. You can count yourself fortunate you didn’t puncture one of your lungs with those broken ribs either.”

Lokin, he thought, recognizing the man from the Revanite incident years prior. He sat up slowly -- with assistance from the doctor -- and groaned with the effort. It offered his first full view of his surroundings. The medbay was unfamiliar, a single bed with a kolto tank in the corner to the right, a desk to his left. It was sleek and clean, with bright lights flooding the area. Has to be the Shadow, he thought. The cipher agent’s personal shuttle had been mentioned numerous times in the reports. It was the first time he, as a former SIS operative, had been afforded the chance to come aboard. He just wished the reason hadn’t been quite so painful.  “Where’re Xaja and Kimble?” he slowly asked when he felt like the ship wasn’t spinning around him and his lunch wasn’t on its way back up.

“Over here,” Kimble’s voice sounded. Theron looked over, seeing the other man slouching in a seat with a clean bandage around his forehead. “Why didn’t Xaja ever have a medbay like this on the Serenity? This place is stylish as hell!”

“Probably something to do with the Order’s budget restraints,” Lokin suggested with a shrug. “Imperial Intelligence had a bit more leeway with their credits.”

Kimble groaned. “Life is so not fair.”

“Oh, you kids don’t know the half of it,” the elder doctor said with a grin. He looked back to Theron when the other spy tried sliding off the medical bed. “Easy, Shan. That concussion hasn’t healed itself in the last hour. You’re going to be quite a miserable young spy for a bit here.”

“Wonderful.” Theron rested his arms on his knees and bent over for several long minutes to focus on breathing and not throwing up. “Where’s Xaja?”

“She’s safe, I promise. She and her father are still talking out in the main seating area. They’ve got two years to catch up on, after all.” Lokin started putting away most of his medical gear. “And Agent Taerich’s quite relieved to have her back, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

“You have no idea.” Reanden appeared in the doorway to medbay. Now that they were in a dry, well-lit area and not fighting, Theron could see the thinner, more drawn features of the older man’s face; the greater amounts of grey peppering his dark hair; the deeper lines around his mouth and eyes. The last two years had not treated Cipher Nine well. “I rather think I owe you one, Shan, much as it pains me to say it.”

“Can I get that in writing?”

“No. The fact that you found my daughter alive is the only other reason why I’m not following through on Korin’s request to punch you.”

“I’ll take what I can get.” Theron craned his neck to peer around Reanden. “Xaja?”

“I’m okay.” Theron’s heart relaxed when the red-headed Jedi appeared beside her father. New bruises were visible along her jaw and cheek, left arm in a sling, but she offered him a tired smile. “We’re all okay, all things considered.”

“Yes, for being the subject of the single largest bounty posting I’ve ever seen. Fifty million -- each -- just for information leading to a capture.” Reanden shook his head and protectively wrapped an arm around Xaja’s shoulders. “You two are going to be the two most hunted people in the galaxy, and I don’t imagine information on you will be far behind, Kimble.” That earned a groan from the medic.

Theron grimaced. “Okay. Then we need to figure out a plan to vanish before other hunters start catching up. We’ll have to see if there’s anywhere safe we can hide out.”

“And new transportation.” Reanden frowned in thought. “Your shuttle might be salvageable with enough work, Shan, but it’s already been tagged. SCORPIO picked up some of the chatter above Rishi before we took off after you. The three ships that jumped after you aren’t a concern anymore, but if they were transmitting their coordinates back to their friends, there’s going to be a lot more activity in this system soon.”

“Great.” Theron sighed. “This just made things a lot more difficult.”

“If you think you can stand up and function well enough to salvage anything you desperately need off that shuttle, we can shoot it and make it look like it disintegrated on impact.” The Imperial gestured in the general direction of the site. “It might slow the pursuit enough for us to get you somewhere safe.”

“Do you have somewhere in mind, Dad?” Xaja tilted her head up at her father, pale face drawn with concern.

“There’s a couple of options. I know the locations of a few different anti-Zakuulan resistance cells that might be able to hide you. If all else fails, we can change your appearances and hide you somewhere on Tatooine or Taris or Hoth -- somewhere nobody will think to look for you.” Reanden absently ran his fingers along Xaja’s hair and the Jedi visibly relaxed into his shoulder. “Your brothers might be able to work something, too. Korin knows most of the underworld, and Sorand has connections to the Mandalorians or plenty of influence within the Empire.”

“Are he and Shara still a thing?”

“Yes. They’re adorable.” A grin tugged at Reanden’s mouth for a moment before he sobered again. “We might be able to get you to Lavisar. The old house is supposedly abandoned, so nobody should think to look for you there. It’s not ideal, but…”

“It’ll be something, and better than Hoth… well, warmer than Hoth,” Theron agreed as he finally stood up, holding onto the table -- and Lokin’s arm -- to stay upright. “’Kay, I’ll grab what I can from the shuttle and wipe what I can’t take with.”

“And with any luck, the burnt-out wreck should make people think you’re dead at a first glance. It won’t hold to a bioscan, but it might buy you enough time to disappear.” Reanden turned and kissed Xaja’s forehead. “Stay put. We’ll be right back.”

“Yes, Dad.” Xaja gave her father a smile, then slipped out from under his arm and gave Theron a hug as he approached. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” she murmured with a worried frown.

“I should be asking that about you.” Theron rested his forehead against hers for a moment. “I’ve had way worse than a concussion and a few broken ribs. I’ll be fine.”

The Jedi still appeared doubtful for a moment, but finally nodded and stretched up to kiss Theron’s cheek. “Okay. You’ll let my dad know if you’re feeling worse?”

Like hell I will. “Of course.” Theron smiled and gave Xaja a chaste kiss, aware of her father lurking nearby. “Back in a sec.” He finally stepped away from her, toward the exit of the medbay. He felt less shaky and weak with every step he took. Whatever Lokin had given him while he was out, it seemed to be helping with the concussion.

“Here, put this on,” Reanden suddenly said, his voice surprisingly gruff. He shoved a dark, oversized jacket into Theron’s arms. “Your other one’s still drenched and I don’t need you coming down with pneumonia on top of everything else.”

Theron supposed the jacket was something of a begrudging thank-you for finding his daughter. The older spy waited while he shrugged on the borrowed jacket, then led him to the exit hatch of his ship. Theron had only a few paces in which to admire the sleek interior of the shuttle, but it was long enough to kindle a bit of envy over the obvious budget discrepancies between SIS and Imperial Intelligence.  Was that real wood inlaid in the floor? Reanden’s voice brought him back to the matter at hand. “Your wreck’s about a hundred metres or so away.”

“That close?” Theron said as he followed Reanden out into the rain and shivered at the wind on his face. At least this jacket was proving waterproof, and warm. “We didn’t see you come down.”

“Oh, good, the ship that Intelligence spent millions of credits on does have working stealth systems.” The sarcasm was evident even with his back turned to Theron. “You weren’t focusing terribly hard on trying to track us, for obvious reasons.”

Theron rolled his eyes as he trudged through the trees to the wreck of his shuttle. “How did you know where we were? I heard what you said about picking up chatter over Rishi, but…”

“I’ve got contacts everywhere, kid. One of them saw you in Raider’s Cove and sent me a message. I got there just in time to see you hauling jets away from the planet and jumped after you.”

That made sense, Theron reasoned. He nodded as his shuttle came into view and scrambled in the narrow entrance. Either Kimble had opened the door just enough to let himself out, or someone had forced the shuttle open enough to get him out. “Far as physical items go, there’s not a heck of a lot,” he commented. “Kimble’s going to want his medic bag though… Xaja doesn’t have a lot on board that she wasn’t already wearing.”

“Understandable.” Reanden accepted Kimble’s rucksack as Theron handed it over and set to accessing his computer systems. “Shan… Theron. I need to know something.”

“Hmm?” Theron looked up at the use of his first name and quirked an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“She was missing for over two years. Every scrap of information that I pulled off of Zakuul indicated that she was dead. Even the rumours of an Outlander assassin all came up with false leads and dead ends.” Reanden leaned over and gripped Theron’s shoulder. The younger man paused in his work and turned to meet an intensely piercing brown-eyed stare. “How the hell did you know she was alive and where she was?”

Theron hesitated for a long second. How much did Korin tell him?… “I didn’t,” he finally admitted. “Finding her was a lucky accident. I had no intel on her either.”

Reanden’s eyes narrowed. “What were you doing on Zakuul that had you finding her? All Korin told me was that you’d sent him a suicide note from there.”

“Kriff.” Theron hunched his shoulders and sighed, trying to figure out a way to get out of this. “Korin and I had been tossing around the idea of finding a way to strike at Zakuul where Arcann thought he was safe, so I’d gone in on reconnaissance. Then I found Xaja alive and, well… the rest is history.”

“Almost, kid. How did that suicide note play into this?”

“I’d had a note programmed to a dead man’s switch in my head, just in case.” Theron tapped at one of his implants and tried not to think about how desperately he hoped the older spy believed his lie. “It malfunctioned, and I didn’t catch it until we were on Rishi.”

“Hmmm.” Reanden appeared to let the subject drop for the moment. “So Arcann had her as a prisoner this entire time… how the hell did he get her off the flagship alive?”

“She doesn’t know.” Theron shrugged as he started downloading essential data into his implants. “She got knocked out on the ship, and woke up en route to Zakuul. They took Marr alive too, and he was actually executed. They were going to execute Xaja too, but Arcann freed her long enough for her to kill the old Emperor.”

“So the assassin rumours were true.” Reanden frowned. “And Arcann imprisoned her to cover up his role in his father’s assassination…”

“It gets better. She swears up and down that Valkorion was Vitiate’s latest form.”

“What?” Fury shot through Reanden’s eyes, mingled with disbelief and horror. “The son of a bitch was on Zakuul the entire time? Then what the fuck did we see on Yavin and Ziost?” He drew a steadying breath. “He’s actually dead this time, though?”

“He’d better be,” Theron growled. “I don’t think Xaja could deal with him a third time.”

“I wouldn’t be able to if I was in her boots. Oh, the poor kid…” Reanden raked a hand through his mussed-up hair. “So Arcann used her to kill Vitiate, and then imprisoned her and made the rest of us think she was dead. That bastard’s going to pay for this.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually agree with you on something,” Theron muttered. “I think I’ve pulled everything valuable off of here that I need. Wiping the rest of the data now.”

“Good.” Reanden hiked the rucksack over his shoulder and started poking into the storage bins on board the small shuttle. “Anything else essential you need out of here? Diaries, perhaps? Porn holos?”

“Very funny,” Theron retorted. “Just a sec.” He crouched beside the bunk and opened a secret compartment in the floor, and retrieved three items. The set of old dog tags bearing his father’s combat identification details went around his neck and the worn-looking journal covered in his mother’s handwriting was neatly tucked into his jacket. The one holo of Xaja that he’d been able to preserve from their entire first stint on Rishi disappeared into his pants pocket, and then he stood up. “Good to go.”

Reanden nodded and stepped back toward the shuttle exit. “Works for me,” he replied. “Let’s move. We’ll shoot out the shuttle and take off; figure out our next step from there.” He waited for Theron to shut the shuttle door from the outside, then fell into step beside him as they walked back to the Shadow. They didn’t speak for the short, cold journey, both lost in their own thoughts. Theron, for his part, was too busy pondering their next moves. Didn’t Korin say he was working with one of the resistance cells in the Outer Rim? Reanden’s gotta know where he is. Hiding out on Tatooine won’t help us find a long-term cure for Xaja, but maybe it’ll give us a chance to- His eyes widened. I didn’t tell him about the carbonite poisoning. Kriff. Maybe it won’t-

The Shadow was a scene of chaos when the two spies reboarded. Reanden’s eyes narrowed as he hurried up the ramp, hand reaching for his blaster pistol. “What the hell’s going on? What -- Xaja?” Theron followed the older agent on board and felt his face drain of colour when he saw Xaja laying on one of the couches in the seating lounge, far too pale.

The Jedi turned her head at the sound of her father’s voice and gave both him and Theron a sheepish look. “Had another spasm,” she whispered. “Took out my entire leg.” Theron could sense how upset she was with this development and her embarrassment at everyone fussing over her. Fear lurked beneath it all.

“And there’s nothing in this medbay that -- oh, good, you got my bag.” Kimble stood up from where he’d been crouching by Xaja’s side and hurried over to take the rucksack from Reanden. “Those meds shouldn’t have worn off so fast,” he muttered as he hurried back over to his patient.

“What are you talking about?” Reanden sounded as anxious as an Imperial-trained spy could. “Shan, what did you not tell me?”

“Fierfek.” Theron shot the older spy a wary look. “I might’ve forgotten to mention that when I found Xaja, she was in carbonite. The Zaks karked up the carbonization process, and Kimble says it poisoned her.”

“All through her nervous system,” Kimble added as he started rifling through his medical gear. “You got anything in that medbay that’ll help with neurological damage, Lokin?”

“Neurological poisoning from carbonite?” Lokin poked his head out of the medbay and winced. “Oh, Master Jedi, you’re in for a world of hurt, my dear. Kimble, show me what you’ve got, we’ll figure something out.”

Reanden turned to glare at Theron. If looks could kill, the younger spy would have been a crispy pile of used-to-be-human on the floor of the Shadow. “You ‘might have forgotten’ to mention that she was carbonite poisoned? I might punch you after all, Shan.”

“Dad! No punching Theron!” Xaja started to sit up, until the second that Theron saw -- and strangely felt -- the dizzy spell hit her. She fell back against the couch as Kimble swore and Reanden ran to her side. “Please, don’t… no fighting…”

“Okay, baby girl. No fighting, I promise.” Reanden stroked Xaja’s hair even as his forehead creased with a worried frown. “SCORPIO,” he called out to the bridge. “Target the other shuttle until it’s a burned-out wreck, then get us off-world.”

“Understood, Agent,” spoke the feminine droid’s voice from the bridge. The Shadow lurched slightly as it rose up and came around. Theron heard the guns open fire and winced only a little bit as his shuttle was destroyed. SCORPIO emerged from the bridge and surveyed the gathering with what he could only describe as a condescending look.. “And where are we going from here?”

Reanden didn’t answer for a long moment, looking down at Xaja, then at Theron and Kimble. Theron could almost hear the gears turning madly in the older spy’s head until he finally spoke. “Imperial Space. Set course for Dromund Kaas. It’s the last place anyone will look for a Jedi or a Republic spy on the run.”

[kuroko26]

WHITE ROSE WEEK-DAY 5

Day 5: proposal

On a day usual for many huntsman and huntresses, team RWBY found themselves in a two weeks mission on the swamps of Mistral. It was supposed to be a simple Grimm extermination the mayor of the village said, that it was just a pack of Beowulf he said but that small pack not only was not small, but it also had Ursa, Boarbatusk and a Death Stalker to boot! It was practically a miracle that a Nevermore wasn’t part of this!

But thanks to a good teamwork, kick ass summoning and just good old ass kicking, team RWBY prevailed against the creatures of Grimm, sure they haven’t finished yet but most of the problem have been solved and that was good.

Except for a certain pair of huntresses, this just brought another set of problems. Previous taking this mission, Weiss has made all manner of arrangements to attend a exclusive event at a Buffet where food and wine of all the kingdoms was going to be served and she planned to attend with her girlfriend Ruby and have the best time they could ever have.

For Ruby it meant something else. While it also meant the chance to have a great time with her lover, to the redhead, it was the perfect chance to enact her plan to propose to Weiss. After such a long time together, she thought it was time to bend on a knee and pop up the question.

But not everything was bad. Due the fact that this mission got extended and the people might have omitted a few details, the mayor has offered to pay for all expenses, he even let them use his hot tub from time to time.

And so, on a free night before heading once again to deal with the last batch of Grimm, the four girls were about to take that chance to enjoy themselves in that hot tub but first, Weiss, Blake and Yang went to get some snacks and beverages while Ruby waited for them in the hot tub.

The scythe wielder decided that if they couldn’t make it back, she would make the best of the situation, her with her beloved team; after all, she carried the ring with her all the way from Vale because she was afraid of actually misplacing it back at home and regardless of the risk, this could be considered a happy accident.

Meanwhile, Weiss was having similar thoughts about this issue as she was also planning to propose to her girlfriend of many years and the event she worked so hard to get entrance, was the perfect place and moment to enact her marriage proposal, as she lamented to both her teammates.

“Klein even took all the bother of getting Nana Schnee’s wedding ring and sent it to me! Everything was set up to be a wonderful night and now all my plans have been torn asunder!”

“Now Weiss, I think you’re overreacting a bit, sure, the plan couldn’t be applied but you still can take the plunge and ask my baby sister the big question and this nice bottle of Mistrali wine will set a nice mood for it! Relax!” Yang reassured her future sister in law while showing to her the aforementioned wine bottle.

“Like Yang said, you can’t cry over spilled milk so why not make the most of the situation?” Blake asked.

It was good to have both Yang and Blake’s support on this endeavor as she confided in them before planning the whole proposal and getting the blonde huntress blessing.

Suddenly, the conversation was interrupted by a cry for help that came from the nearby window and prompted the three women to look for the source of that scream: a 10 years old looking boy.

“Help! The Grimm are coming and they have surrounded some of the citizens near the village!”

Ok, that didn’t sound good and so they hurried up to get ready and make Ruby did as well, which the redhead did quickly thanks to her semblance, not forgetting the precious ring and reunited with her teammates, ready for action.

The enemy this time were an alpha, a creeper and two ursas bigger than the last Ursa they fought. First thing was to get the trapped people to safety and lead as many Grimm as they could far from the village. Thankfully, no one was hurt and things seemed to be going well but it’s not good to chant victory early.

As the Ursa were finally destroyed, the team of huntresses didn’t sense the approaching of a King Taijitu until it was a range close enough to eat them in one bite. Luckily, all four could dodge the attack barely on time and with the help of the freezerburn move, they gained a bit more distance and time to plan a strategy.

“Ok, let’s get one of the heads stuck in those rocks over there, cut it and then we deal the other head and we need someone to act as a distraction hmmmm Blake?” the leader said.

“Leave it to me” the faunus replied before taking off. Weiss decided to help Blake while setting all to trap one the heads of the snake like creature with Ruby and Yang providing cover from the other head.

The task went actually well but before they could destroy the trapped head, the Taijitu, or more accurately, its black head, got a head start on them and giving time for its twin to free itself and resume the attack on the four huntresses who took some damage this time, thankfully diminished by their auras.

But this attack carried on another problem for the silver eyed warrior as on the white head’s quick attack, not only it managed to snatch a huge part of her cape, the box with the ring fell right into its mouth…not good at all.

“OH. HELL. NOOO!” Ruby shouted with all her strength before diving straight to the jaw of that monster too fast for her teammates to react before it closed its mouth, which it did.

What happened next was composed of shouting of their leader’s name in an anguished tone, desperate attacks on the offending head and it would have been easier if it wasn’t for the twin head attack but in the middle of the confusion, a strange light emanated from the beast’s mouth until suddenly it was destroyed completely. Out of it, emerged Ruby with her silver eyes glowing for all to see and once she put her look on the other head and it was done for.

The not so fabled silver eyes power, capable of striking a Grimm down with just one look, had made a quick work of their enemy. Even after “getting the hang of it” like the scythe user would phrase it, Ruby rarely used this mysterious power which made her teammates wonder while also getting both worried and angry, what prompted her to use it in this situation.

As Ruby rose from the ground and shook a bit of dust out of her shoulder she was tackled by her very upset lover.

“What in the hell was that Ruby Rose!? How dare you make us worried like that!”

“Ah Weiss….” Blake tries to get the white haired woman’s attention without success.

“Honestly, we have talked about doing things like that before, but it seems you haven’t learned, have you!?”

“Weiss!” This time, Yang tries to get the former heiress attention who was actually shaking her lover in the middle of her frantic rant.

“Do you want to kill me with a heart attack!? Is that what you want Ruby Rose!?”

“WEISS!” This time, both Yang and Blake shouted.

“WHAT!?” Weiss responded with the same force as the former call only to be pointed at Ruby, who lost consciousness in the middle of Weiss rant.

“Oh”

“Oh indeed” Blake replied before noticing a little box that fell out of Ruby’s hand and showing it to her teammates, which were surprised and marveled by the tiny object in equal proportion but then they decided to put it in a pocket and get their leader the first aid she could need back at the village.

Some hours later, Ruby finally regained consciousness and like other times before, her lover was at her site, patiently waiting for her to recover consciousness and to further assist her.

“Weiss?” Ruby’s answer came in the form of a slap to the head, followed by a very passionate kiss from the one she called out for.

“You really are going to be the death of me, you know that?”

“I know what I did was stupid, even for my usual stupid but Weiss, believe when I say it was worth it because….” The red haired huntress realized the prized box was out of her sight and started looking for it frantically until her beloved put it in front of her.

“Looking for this? It fell from your hand when you passed out and Blake retrieved it for you. I get this ring might be valuable but your life is more important. Don’t ever forget that” the Schnee completed her plea by caressing her lover’s cheek.

“Weiss, I get what you mean but I really worked hard for this and I couldn’t bear losing it and I just well, reacted” as Ruby explained the best as she could before taking the little box and getting out of bed.

It was now or never. She stood before Weiss and bend on one knee and opening the box with the ring on it.

“Weiss, I know that when we met each other, I didn’t make a good impression but you really have caught my interest since day one and a part of me knew I started getting a crush on you since that day. Time passed and we have been through so much, but we have managed to stick together and build this relationship of many years so I want to take our relationship to the next level and be with you for the rest of my life” Ruby makes a pause to take a breath of air before continuing while Weiss just stood there silently.

“So I ask you: Weiss Schnee, would you marry me and make me the happiest woman in the world?”

The former heiress eyes started to water and the she just couldn’t help herself but to get on her knees and plant a kiss on her lover’s lips.

“My Ruby…of course I will; in fact, I was planning to do the same. That’s what going to that special buffet was all about”

“So that’s why you were upset about missing the event huh?” everything being clear now for the redhead.

“Indeed that was the reason I was upset about missing our reservations but this isn’t so bad. We can celebrate our engagement once we get back to Vale”

“Yes we can…with the whole family and friends right?”

“I wouldn’t want it otherwise…I love you Ruby”

“And I love you too Weiss”

And so, the lover’s decided to celebrate their relationship’s new level with a simple make out session, lost in their own world unaware of a pair of spectators at the door that saw the whole scene from the beginning.

These spectators decided to take their leave but not before one of them mumbled:

“Well, that was a thing”

————————————————————————-

Well day 5 done and two more to go.

And just for clarification: unlike Ruby, Weiss didn’t bring Nana Schnee’s priced ring with her. It’s safe back at their home in Vale but she still wanted Ruby to know her intentions just in case something happened because Weiss always wants to be prepared for anything….or at least that how I imagined it.

See ya!

[zippdementia]

Part 58 Alignment May Vary: Beginning a Battle

After the crazy events of last session, my players have some decisions to make. Nysyries is no longer under the sway of Nazragul, Lord of the Maakengorge, and so is no longer compelled to gather his soul jar and convert the dead of the upcoming battle into his minions. Furthermore, she no longer needs to feed on human men in order to keep her druidic abilities, as she is free of the Rusalka’s curse, the culmination of which was to tempt her to murder Lord Jarmaath of Brindol. 

But these things also beg the question: what is her goal? For the first time in nearly the entire campaign, Nysyries is free to make her own decisions. Well, in Poseiden’s name, now that she wields his trident, but nevertheless it’s an unusual place for her to be.

After some discussion, Aldric asserts that his plans have not changed: “I’m not going to Brindol to save it,” he says, “though that may very well happen if I’m there. I have my quarry to hunt.” He is referring to the Behir Varanthian, the self styled “Mother of Dragons,” who killed his fellow Green Company and started him on the quest for revenge.

Nysyries decides to follow Aldric. “I don’t want to see this world ruined,” she says. “Not by the undead and not by the hordes of this Azor Khul, the Dragonlord. I at least owe it to my deceased companions to finish what we started. This war is mine as much as anyone’s, now.”

Planning for Battle

“You used to ride with the Green Company? I grew up hearing stories about them. It was like having a piece of my childhood torn away when I heard they had been disbanded.”

Aldric looked Delora Zann up and down, trying to guess at her age. He couldn’t be more than five years older than her. “We grew up hearing the same tales,” Aldric said. “And for a while I got to live my fantasy. But we weren’t disbanded. We were murdered, by the one calling herself the Mother of the Hoard.”

This is an interesting scene in the original module. Ostensibly it’s a chance for the players to shape the form of the battle to come. The module, obviously, can’t account for every possible outcome of this meeting, so it leaves it to DMs to pay attention and change the battle on the fly. It is also a chance to introduce the main players for the final chapter of the campaign. One problem I have with this is that these characters come in too late to have any real bearing on the plot. After all, this is the penultimate chapter! So it is a struggle to make players care about them and their little infighting and conspiracies.

I do a few things to try and combat this. For one, I add another player. These particular characters do not recognize Zennatos, from the Tomb of Haggemoth campaign, but the players do and it makes them feel that much more connected to the city when they see him on the council and find out that this is his homeland and he has returned to defend it because “someone once told me that I should spend the rest of my life doing good, if I wanted to keep it for long.”

Of course, there is also the mayor of Drellin’s Ferry and his lieutenant Delora Zann to check in with, as the players have not seen him since before their turn to evil and their failure to rescue two of his prominent citizens: Sera the Halfling and Soranna the captain of the guard. Nysyries was around for all of that, and there is a wonderfully roleplayed awkwardness to their conversations as she is forced to recall the deaths of these citizens as well as of Trakki and Tyrion, whose presence the mayor looks for. This gets even worse when the leader of the elves (also here) requests an update on Trellara. Nysyries keeps everything very vague, saying that Trakki and Tyrion fell, that they failed to rescue the citizens, and that Trellara became separated from them in a storm. None of it lies, but definitely not the whole truth.

I also try to ramp up some of the personalities here. Immerstal in particular I play as pompous and braggadocios and Aldric takes the bait, snapping back at him like a rooster that has seen its own reflection. The two are too alike to be friends, so they decide to duel in the morrow, putting them in a very intense position. See, Adlric knows that Blackrazor will try and murder Immerstal, not just knock him out. And if that happens, they are removing a major weapon from the battle to come, possibly sealing the doom of Brindol. But Aldric’s pride does not let him back down and so the duel is set.

By the end of the conference, the players have made friends with Lord Jarmaath and his warrior generals, but have failed to impress Tredora the cleric (and Jarmaath’s not-so-secret lover), Lady Kaal (directly opposed to Jarmaath), and Immerstal. For battle plans, they come up with the idea to send Aldric outside of the southern city gates with a contingent of horsemen, in case the Red Hand sends a force there. If the southern gate is clear, Aldric will ride up the flank of the main force at the Western gate and harry them as he can.

Nysyries, meanwhile, will man the Western gate with Immerstal and a number of the city’s finest defenders. They will hold as long as possible, then fall back to pre-planned locations: emptied buildings from which they will snipe and use magic to harry enemies as they advance down the streets. The streets have been turned into a long death trap by using barricades to block off huge portions of them and force the direction of the enemy march. This will eventually lead them to the final stand at the city’s grand temple, where Lord Jarmaath and the final contingent of clerics and warriors wait to defend the city to its last if the worst comes to pass and the enemy makes it that far.

Granted, there are some things that are guaranteed to happen in the battle. The gates will fall, for instance. It’s not much of a final battle scene if they don’t. But I’ve tried to let everything after that be more organic. I know the final fight is supposed to take place on the steps of the temple, but I’m okay if that doesn’t happen. I want the player actions to shape this conflict and the idea about siphoning the enemy through a maze of city streets is a solid one. The enemies, of course, have some tricks up their sleeve that aren’t in the original. We’ll get to that soon. But first, we have a duel to fight.

Well, actually, even before that, there is one more odd thing that occurs. The night before the duel, Aldric gets a vistor at the abandoned inn he’s staying at (the city has mostly evacuated). The visitor is clearly of noble birth, though he doesn’t give a name. Instead, he offers Aldric a deal: let Lord Jarmaath come to some accident during the upcoming war and Aldric will be gifted with the location of the Behir’s lair, so that he may finally avenge his fallen company.

Aldric doesn’t agree one way or the other and the noble tells him he doesn’t need to. His actions will speak louder than words. Then the noble leaves and all attempts to track him after this fail.

The Duel

“Ready to die?” Aldric asked jovially with a broad smile. Across the green field, Immerstal visibly stiffened--not an easy accomplishment, considering the man already walked around like he had an immovable rod shoved up his posterior.

“We shall see if you are worthy of your arrogance.”

“No, seriously. I mean that you will die if you fight me. This blade,” he held up Blackrazor, the dawn light sucked up in its night-sky surface, “will not let you live.”

“Then that is not the blade you should be using.” Tredora’s voice was best described as musical, her look best described as appraising. There was a harshness to the music, though, and the appraisal must have been a poor one to turn her lips down into such a frown.

Aldric met the Aasimir’s gaze evenly. “The blade is my blade, it is the only one I use.”

“That is a choice you make,” Tredora said. “Allow me to offer you another one.”

Tredora offers Aldric a magical blade to replace Blackrazor for the purposes of the duel and he accepts it, solving some of the concerns that he might kill immerstal, their ally, during this fight. Tredora is also making a point: showing him he does not need Blackrazor to fight. She is trying to rehabilitate him, but Aldric may not have much interest in that.

The duel itself is a tense fight! I use Archmage statistics for Immerstal, who creates illusions of himself and darts around the dueling field, taunting Aldric all the while, trying to incite his anger by calling into question his bravery and abilities. For his part, Aldric uses the incredible defensive abilities of the cavalier to severely limit what Immerstal can do to him. He has the ability to add to his AC, or to turn successful dexterity saves into no-damage results (instead of halved damage). He hits hard, too, even without Blackrazor, and trades blows easily with Immerstal. Immerstal doesn’t get off many hits himself, but the ones he does are massive strikes from his lightning bolt spell, at one point dealing something close to 70 damage on a single hit (this from a level 9 lightning bolt). When Aldric survives this (barely), Immerstal, exhausted and bloodied, calls the fight in Aldric’s favor.

The two actually bond over this, putting aside their differences and celebrating their bro-ness by visiting Immerstal’s pocket dimension brothel. There’s even some slight hints of romance between the two. God, but I love my group.

Nysyries, meanwhile, misses the whole fight because she’s off getting drunk with the dwarven mercenaries, arriving only at the fight’s very end to comically ask “what did she miss?”

Conversion out of Context

It’s time to talk about my conversion in some critical terms.

When I first set my sights on Red Hand of Doom as a good campaign to play, nearly two years ago, I was a much different GM. Less experienced, less willing to take risks and go off page. Yet today as we approach the end of the campaign, I look back and see how far I have drifted from the source material. I look ahead to my notes for upcoming sessions and see, too, just how much further I am going to go (hold onto your butts). The reason I bring this up is that my journey log for this particular campaign, originally conceived as a straight play test of a Red Hand conversion, no longer really is serving this purpose. I’ve made too many changes to the core story for it to work as a conversion guide any more.

This isn’t a bad thing. Rather, I would say that all of the changes made were directly based on actions and back stories of the characters which is what a good game of Dungeons & Dragons should do. I’m serving a story here, the story of these characters and their ambitions, and that is more important to me than running a pure conversion. That said, it is difficult to tell another GM how to properly restat, say, the battle of Brindol when I have adjusted everything for two players of higher-than-intended level... oh, and both of them have Legendary Weapons. Not to mention the thematic changes: I have Ulwai wielding the Rod of Storms, for instance, and I have Varanthian the Behir directly tied into the backstory of Aldric.

In short, because this game is our story, it is not your story. It can’t be, and at a certain point any statistics I post are going to be meaningless outside of that context. So while I will continue to post stats for my game, I am not going to go back as originally planned and compile them into an official conversion for Red Hand of Doom. Let these Journey Logs stand as a campaign journal, more than as a proof of concept. If you want a more or less official conversion, I recommend this one by Daniel Pryor. I’m not quite sure where to download it anymore, but some google searching can probably find the answer... if anyone does figure out a place to purchase or download, let me know and I’ll add it here! I’ve used some of these stats in my own run through and it’s a very good conversion. Maybe I’ll review it in more detail after my own adventure is completed.

That said, while I can’t say how my stats would end up in your game, I do think this journey log has offered and continues to offer good advice on how to run the module’s situations. I am going to continue that advice into the actual Battle of Brindol, which I’ll cover in my next post. Because I do think the Battle needs changes. As written in the module, it’s kind’ve.... boring. What makes it boring is highlighted by a gaming philosophy that I have developed over the last two years as a GM, something that I think can help GMs in ensuring that their games stay lively and memorable every session.

More on that next time, in the Five C’s of RPGs!

[doctorwhonews]

Torchwood: Believe (Big Finish)

Latest Review: Writer: Guy Adams Director: Scott Handcock Featuring:John Barrowman, Gareth David-Lloyd, Eve Myles, Naoko Mori, Burn Gorman, Arthur Darvill Big Finish Release (United Kingdom) Running Time: 3 hours Released by Big Finish Productions - April 2018 Order from Amazon UK "We're responsible for everything we do, Val. Every book you've written for money that tells people what to think, every DVD you've produced for money that tells people what to change about their lives. Every speech, every assembly, every word - you don't get to do that and shrug away the responsibility." Upon learning of Big Finish’s successful acquisition of the Torchwood licence back in 2015, fans the world over – this reviewer included – immediately began drafting their personal wish-lists for the franchise’s impending audio continuation. What happened next after Miracle Day? Could Owen and / or Tosh return to the fold despite their demises in 2008’s “Exit Wounds”? Was it time to learn the fabled secrets of Torchwood Two? And no, seriously, when were we moving on from Miracle Day so as to get that failed US soft reboot’s sour taste out of our palettes? Perhaps the most pressing point on the agenda, however, was just how swiftly the studio could reunite Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, Toshiko Sato and Owen Harper for any lost missions beyond those we witnessed on-screen in Seasons One and Two. Well, we’ve waited three years – the Owen-less 10th anniversary celebration The Torchwood Archive notwithstanding – to discover the answer, but it comes in the form of perhaps the range’s most satisfying boxset to date, Torchwood: Believe. Isolating his latest scripts from both the sinister activities of the Committee in Big Finish’s monthly releases and Cardiff’s present apocalyptic state in Aliens Among Us proves a genuine masterstroke on Guy Adams’ part. Rather than forcing newcomers enticed by the return of all five Torchwood Three members to hit pause and purchase past releases in order to decipher what’s occurring here, the regular range contributor delivers a totally standalone affair, albeit one which still packs no shortage of emotional punches thanks to further exploring many thematic and character strands first established in the original show. Part of what makes this approach so successful from the outset is how comfortably familiar Believe’s opening moments will seem to those fans who’ve followed the show in all its forms since Day One (episodic pun fully intended). At first, we’re presented with a run-of-the-mill debrief led by Owen into the ongoing exploits of the Church of the Outsiders, a seemingly innocuous religious cult whose efforts to hasten humanity’s ascent to meet – and interbreeding with – alien species include stealing classified UNIT data, dabbling in illegal cyber augmentation as well as setting up their own TV channel, community centres and full-fledged indoctrinatory academy. It’s a quintessential sequence that feels ripped straight out of the TV show, with each cast member helping to remind us of the lead ensemble’s witty rapport: Owen (Gorman) righteously assured of his every move’s necessity, Toshiko (Mori)’s reserved tendency to serve as the voice of reason, Ianto (David-Lloyd)’s still-growing confidence within the team dynamic, Gwen (Myles)’s often gung-ho attitude tempered by the personal grounding that she brings to the agency and Jack (Barrowman) as enigmatic as he is charismatic. So far so Torchwood, then? Clearly, we’re in for three hours’ worth of Avengers: Infinity War-style crossover banter, right? Not exactly. As Adams and producer James Goss accurately highlighted in the midst of Believe’s pre-release marketing campaign, the show – in its on-screen incarnation – would often split up the team to achieve different goals within the context of the wider mission, thereby allowing time to explore how each character’s individual passions and flaws affected their outlook on increasingly hostile situations. Indeed, the same rings true here as Ianto pairs himself with one of the Church’s devoted disciples to further investigate their goals, Tosh pursues the sect’s resident accountant Frank Layton (brought to life with self-titled and loathsomely complacent aplomb by ex-Doctor Who companion Arthur Darvill) and Gwen meets Church leader Val’s introverted daughter Andromeda, all while Owen oversees operations from the Hub and Jack heads off to pastures unknown. Yet to simply describe Believe as but a scattershot collection of plot threads which eventually converge would severely undermine the scale of Adams’ achievement, not least in challenging each member of the team with dilemmas the likes of which they’ve arguably never faced before. The Church’s interstellar ambitions resonate in extremely different ways for each of our protagonists, with Jack for instance earnestly admitting his yearning to travel the stars as he once did with the Doctor, Ianto – as with The Last Beacon in April – once again forced to consider whether his ties with Torchwood Three threaten to rob him of any soul, hope or life meaning, and most notably the show’s beloved unrequited romance between Owen and Tosh taking the most disturbing detour imaginable. For make no mistake, the scribe who showed us Suzie’s darkest inhibitions in Moving Target and took Gwen on a high-octane car chase with her local counsellor in More Than This has no qualms about taking further bold risks this time around either. Much as Gorman and Mori looked overjoyed to reunite their wayward almost-lovers when posting about their recording experiences on Twitter, the pair – both as actors and characters – are put through the dramatic ringer and then some here, Tosh’s efforts to extract any key intel possible from Layton about his supposedly selfless church-turned-charity soon developing into Children of Earth-level territory which could uproot her budding romantic tension with Mr. Harper forever. Think of a fall from grace on the scale of a Greek tragedy and you'll only just scratch the surface what's in store, as one of the pair colossally oversteps their reach to devastating effect. Thank goodness, then, that both stars knock the ball out of the metaphorical park with captivating, psychologically intricate and often downright heartbreaking performances. We’ll avoid spoilers here for the sake of preserving your listening experience, save for that the Tosh-Layton storyline builds to an extremely unsettling crescendo, to a place where this reviewer isn’t entirely sure even the TV show would’ve dared to tread on BBC One / Two / Three. Heck, Big Finish themselves rarely tend to stray into territory as macabre as this, barring some of their early Doctor Who Main Release excursions like Colditz or the Doctor Who: Unbound range, but when the results are so painstakingly powerful and haunting as this, one almost wishes that they’d take the leap of faith more often. Such narrative ambition on Adams’ part doesn’t end there – it pervades Believe on a conceptual level as well. Ever since juggling verbose duck companions with religious satire in The Holy Terror, Big Finish have shown their complete willingness to interrogate faith, its cathartic and chaos-inducing consequences for its followers / opponents, as well as whether anyone has the right to brazenly dispel theistic beliefs. Believe takes this contemplation to another level altogether, as Jack’s met with the profound existential dilemma of knowing that the Church’s desire to have humanity mingle with aliens will eventually come to pass, while Owen considers whether he’s fuelling the mission out of mere ego or indignation at religious groups’ naivety surrounding the afterlife, and Ianto undergoes an epiphany surrounding that aforementioned intervention by Torchwood into the beliefs of others without any consideration for the victims left behind come the mission’s denouement. Rhian Blundell's superb work as Ianto's endearingly sincere and passionate guide Erin helps immeasurably in the latter regard, with her and David-Lloyd's characters striking up a quaint college romance of sorts that won't fail to take even the biggest Jones-Harkness shippers off guard. Two questions might justifiably have occurred to readers of this review by now: why didn’t Torchwood Season Two’s final episodes make mention of these character moments if they’re so pivotal, and where does the inevitable alien antagonist factor into processes? Let’s tackle those in linear order – unlike Believe’s refreshingly non-linear structure, with Episode 1 in particular zipping cleverly between Owen’s initial debrief and each teammate’s consequent mission. Considering that Adams’ exemplary three-part tale situates itself explicitly between the events of “A Day in the Death” and “Fragments”, that it’s so intent on progressing arguably unresolved threads from the show such as the extents of Tosh’s loyalty, Ianto’s increasingly challenged worldview and Jack’s tendency to withhold the truth even from his comrades might stretch the credibility of its status as a ‘canonical’ in-between-quel for some. Nevertheless, just as some of Big Finish’s finest Who productions took slight liberties with continuity in the name of ambitious storytelling, so too does Believe admirably follow that route so as to truly test our perceptions of these evolving characters in fascinating, often remarkably unsettling ways. That also brings us onto its aforementioned extraterrestrial presence – again, staying clear of spoilers, Torchwood’s finest hours frequently arose from dealing with the worst of humanity rather than alien foes, which affords Adams the creative licence here to pit the team against fallible but equally rational members of their species whose sympathetic motivations only further the personal stakes for both factions. So in spite of bringing together the Famous Five as well as temporarily restoring classic elements from the show such as the fully-operational Hub and – of course – the SUV, Torchwood: Believe fast cements itself as anything but your average all-guns-blazing detective drama. There’s no denying that its audacious character arcs, unspeakably heartrending performances from Gorman and Mori, and realistic shades of moral greyness will result in a challenging listening experience for long-term fans, but those elements also set the boxset apart as an awards-worthy tour de force in truly provocative science-fiction. Between the masterful Beacon and the game-changing Believe, 2018 could be the year where everything changes for Big Finish’s Torchwood range; if that’s the case, then one thing’s for sure – Guy Adams and his entire lead cast are ready. http://reviews.doctorwhonews.net/2018/05/torchwood_believe_big_finish.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr