#TSW!Mych

[thessalian]

H, I, J, K, L?

H - trusts their horoscope the most

Erm ... not a lot of my characters actually come from places where horoscopes are a thing, but I would probably go for TSW!Astrid. In her case, it’s only because she’s very, very, very old and she figures whatever her horoscope predicted is going to happen at some point. “Sometimes the stars are just a little delayed-gratification about the whole thing; that’s all!”

I - tends to idolise people they shouldn’t

That would probably be TOR!Srina. Not that she ‘idolises’ people overmuch ... mostly because she seldom if ever shows anything that might be recognised as ‘an emotion of any kind’ ... but she believes that aptitude can and should be set aside from morals so she’ll tend to say some complimentary things about some people who are objectively awful people just because they’re very damn good at what they do ... even if ‘what they do’ is awful.

J - tells the most dad jokes

TSW!Mychae, definitely. Mostly because she and her dorky-ass husband are in competition over who can tell the Daddest Dad Joke. (Chris is still winning on points.)

K - is the most skilled in the kitchen

That one goes entirely to the little nest of Jalliras, with TOR!Lira winning on points because she has that whole thing with more interesting ingredients in the GFFA and also, because miraluka and literally having no eyes and only seeing in the Force, managing culinary excellence while being functionally blind. I mean, the Force guides her, but she kind of had to figure out how the Force was telling her that her onions are properly caramelised.

L - lies the most

Eeegh, that’s hard. Weirdly? I’m going to go with TOR!Mychae on that one. I mean, she and Srina are almost neck and neck but Mych wins because she lies a lot about being ... well, okay, and cheerful, and stuff like that. (She got mistreated by the first person she declared her love to, and abandoned by the second, and while it was over an in-game decade ago and she’s as over it as you can be about that kind of thing, she’s just never ever going to be the same again and has no intention of giving her heart to anyone. Third time is not the charm.)

[thessalian]

A, F, M

A - is the most attractive

Objectively, that would be Alisaie, my aasimar bard-barian. Not just in terms of looks, though she definitely has those. Her CHA is through the damn roof.

F - is my favourite

...ooooooooooooh I hate this one. All the time hate. It’s a Sophie’s Choice thing and it never works because it depends on what mood I’m in. But if I have to pick one ... TOR!Jallira. And I only say that because her character arc was unexpectedly beautiful.

M - is the biggest memer

TSW!Mychae, definitely. She is aggressively online and she has a tendency to record all the weird and wacky shenanigans of her household (which involve, among other things, an adorable and very large and very dumb dog, a very tiny calico cat, and a goofball of a husband) and post them to TikTok. Her view count is epic.

[thessalian]

Q, S, T, U

Q - is the quickest to judge others

Huh. It occurs that very few of my OCs are actually particularly prone to judging others. I think the closest I’d come is TSW!Srina. She’s a Srina, she’s Illuminati, and you have exactly one shot with her. One. You fuck around, you find out why that is a bad fucking idea.

S - has the strongest spirit

TOR!Jallira, definitely. She could not possibly have survived everything she did and ended up so good-natured otherwise.

T - is the most terrifying

I’m not the best judge, since I’m the one being terrifying at them, but objectively, it’s probably one of the ones you don’t know. Solita Giovanni, of Clan Giovanni - my one and only Vampire: the Masquerade character. She was designed to be creepy as fuck - the Flaw that makes her look like a corpse, and while she did smile more than Srina does, she only did so when the option to hurt someone came up. She was the family accountant in Italy but got Embraced into the family proper when she caught wind of some embezzlement and took steps to rectify the problem; found the first link in the chain of embezzlement and tortured information out of him. She got everything, and in the process she fucked up the guy doing the embezzling so badly that even his ghost was broken beyond salvation ... and she had said ghost bound to her as a pet. Because she was proud of what she did to that man’s body, mind and spirit. Also she kind of forgot his name and so did the new, badly shattered Spectre, and her English wasn’t very good and she got “bats in the belfry” and “nutty as a fruitcake” a little mixed up so she named him Fruitbat.

Shame our ST was a bit of a dickwaffle.

U - is the most unapologetic about the way they live their life

...Is ‘all of them’ an answer? Jalliras aside, I get enough ‘apologising for existing’ in real life; I try not to bring it into my leisure time. But probably TSW!Mychae is just slightly ahead of all the rest of them just because there’s something to be said for someone who will randomly declare it “My Husband Is The Best Husband In The World Day” and pelt said husband with confetti and tell total strangers how awesome her husband is.

[thessalian]

Lovey Dovey OC Development Prompts; ♥ (05) What is the most romantic thing your OC has done for someone else? , ♥ (06) What is the most romantic thing that has been done for your OC? , ♥ (09) What is your OC’s favorite small way to show their love? , ♥ (10) What is your OC’s favorite big way to show their love? , and ♥ (28) What is something unconventional that your OC thinks is romantic? for TSW!Mychae!

5) ‘Most romantic’ is kind of subjective but if you want Big Meaningful Gestures, how about “basically fucked over the entire Illuminati and broke every rule about what information should never be given to an enemy faction just so that he wouldn’t lose something that really mattered to him, all the while never saying a word about how she felt because she knew he had a girlfriend at the time and didn’t want to complicate his life in any way”? Does that work? She loved him enough to fuck up her entire life with, as far as she saw it, zero hope that it would ever be reciprocated.

6) For Mychae, the most romantic thing Chris ever did was to modify and rethink his ideas on what constituted “the kind of romantic gesture my angel deserves” - when he realised she was uncomfortable with castle getaways and luxury stuff and started taking her to corn mazes instead.

9) Mychae’s favourite ‘small’ way to show her love (and for her, it seems small) is blending their occasionally varied tastes and interests. He likes cooking and wants to feed her stuff that didn’t come out of a toaster or microwave? Okay, sure; she’ll buy him kitchen equipment and make it extra geeky. He likes ancient texts and translating? She’ll build him mechanical ravens to sit on his shoulders, transcribe his notes, and occasionally shout “WHO DO VOODOO WE DO FUCK YOU!” at any Jawa who dares interrupt him while he’s working.

10) Every so often - entirely at random but always in public, Mychae will declare it “My Husband Is Awesome Day”. Always when they’re on a day out. She’ll shower him with confetti at intervals, tell anyone with whom she ends up interacting (shop clerks, waiters, bus or taxi drivers, whoever) exactly how awesome she thinks Chris is, and shouts things like “I have the best husband; prove me wrong! Actually, don’t, because you can’t! It’s science that my husband is the best!” She will do this all damn day, while taking him to the kinds of places he enjoys most.

28) Mychae/Chris ‘date nights in’ are always a little unconventional by the standard definitions. She considers it romantic when Chris lets her pick the menu and entertainment options - doesn’t fret about her eating habits when she orders in pizza and keeps her company while she plays Fatal Frame while cheering her on with “You’ve had ample practice with dealing with this kind of creepy nonsense by now" and having inspiration-thoughts about how a camera might work for dealing with the Gaki in various Kaidan parking garages, then curls up with her to watch horror movies until they fall asleep on the sofa, usually using Chewie as a pillow.

[thessalian]

For the 55 More Random Dialogue Prompts; number 3. or 4. for TSW!Chris and TSW!Mychae.

((Get you a writer who can do both.))

The more-or-less ‘secret’ world in which the Qiin-White family lived meant that occasionally they were sent on separate missions ... this largely because the Templar Order avoided sending Chris on any mission involving the technology or technomancy that was Mychae’s speciality, since his natural response was to stab it and no one got any decent intel that way. That tended to mean that when his angel was away, Chris ‘Fableweaver’ Qiin-White occasionally had to make his own missions.

Which was why, when Mychae ‘Cantina Rat’ Qiin-White came home, with a rucksack full of parts and a big rawhide shoe for Chewie (their big, dumb, loveable floof of a Newfoundland), she found Chris sat on the sofa, grinning as he gestured towards a somewhat battered and oil-stained cardboard box. Mychae looked at it with vaguely wary curiosity. “I know that look. What did you do?”

“Look in the box and see,” was all Chris would say, making another expansive gesture at the box.

Mychae being a very intelligent individual, she threw the rawhide shoe to Chewie and put her rucksack of parts away before she peeked into the cardboard box. After a moment of stunned silence, she pulled out two items - a carefully crafted rendition of a TIE fighter made largely out of old auto parts and a high school yearbook. Eventually, she asked, “Where did you even get that? And how? I thought my parents threw this away!”

“Not a bit of it.” Chris’ grin just got wider. “They stuffed it all in a storage area at the back of your father’s work area. You recall that colony of blajini I ... encouraged to move near to the scrapyard by your parents’ home?” When Mychae nodded, still looking a little nonplussed, he went on: “I mentioned to them that it might be a good time for them to approach your father with their manifesto again. While all the yelling was going on, I went on ... let’s leave it at ‘a little raid’. Some of those bits they were hiding were too good to let sit and gather dust in the home of someone who doesn’t appreciate them.”

Mychae looked at her husband for a long moment. While she was forthright about most things, for the first year or so, Mychae’s family had only been conspicuous in her life by their absence. When she finally admitted, through asides and offhand comments, that her family had been sexist jerks who had refused to support their daughter’s intellectual pursuits in any way and ignored her almost completely when she refused to even attempt to fit the ‘trophy wife’ mould ... well. Chris admired his wife and supported everything she was and everything she did, and he made it a point to troll her abusive parents in subtle but long-term ways. Hence the blajini colony across the junkyard from their house. His raid was another part of that ... though mostly it was because he wanted to see, and to provide her with reminders of, what she had overcome to get to where she was now.

Rather than address any of what she saw in his face directly, Mychae told Chris, “...Okay, but this isn’t fair. Your parents brought out the baby pictures but not the high school pictures. There’s no reciprocation here!” The tone of her voice and the expression on her face was gentler than the words themselves; her own quiet thanks for the thought at least, despite the complicated emotions that the production of those bits of her childhood produced.

Chris had anticipated Mychae’s reaction, and come prepared to both derail some of the less pleasant emotions he saw in her face and offer reciprocation. He rolled his eyes in mock resignation and brought out a photo album. “All right; in the spirit of fair play, I’ll let you go through this first.”

Mychae sat down next to Chris as he opened the photo album to a random page, which unfortunately was one of him at sixteen, all elbows and knees and braces on his teeth, and a school uniform in an unfortunate shade of maroon. Confronted with how her beloved cuisinart had looked as a teenager, compared with the rather attractive man he had become, she froze for another moment. Finally, she said, “...I can’t believe this is what you looked like in high school. I was picturing you as being Prom King, but I was clearly way off base.”

Chris blushed at the first comment, but the second brought a wave of curiosity that doused the blush for a moment. “What’s a ‘prom king’?” he asked, bewildered. “I mean, the Proms are the summer season at the Royal Albert Hall--”

“Okay, let me show you what a prom is in my weird-ass birth country,” Mychae told him with a chuckle, flipping over to the Senior Prom spread in the yearbook she’d pulled out. “I didn’t technically go to my senior prom, but I think they actually got a shot of me crashing the party - and the DJ booth - in Otomachi Una cosplay.”

With that, they settled down for a long evening of anecdotes and snack food.

[thessalian]

Fireworks (Fic)

Happy birthday, @true0neutral - hope it’s been good to you!

“Y’know, my country is way more sensible about holidays with fireworks.”

The Qiin-Whites were sitting on the roof of their building, wrapped up in one of Addie’s latest quilting projects while they watched small-scale backyard firework displays erupt like hyperactive multicoloured fireflies over the London skyline. They were using Chewie - their superbig, superdumb Newfoundland - as a backrest, mostly because it was the only way to keep him calm during fireworks displays. He didn’t get scared; he simply wanted to chase the ‘explodey squirrels’ and restraining him by main force, not to mention cuddles and scritches, was the best way to keep him from running out a window or off the roof.

Chris looked over at Mychae a little taken aback, and Mychae grinned at him in clearly ersatz innocence as he asked, “How do you mean? I thought you said you liked Guy Fawkes’ Day. That it was ... ‘hardcore’.”

"Dude, you celebrate someone trying to blow up your government building and everyone in it by setting off fireworks and having massive bonfire parties in honour of his massive failure. That’d be like Canadians doing the same thing for the War of 1812.” She shrugged and looked a little disappointed as she added, “I am a little disappointed you don’t do the ‘penny for the Guy’ thing anymore.”

Chris couldn’t help but chuckle. “You want to see people burn Guy Fawkes in effigy?”

“Eh, the Guy could be anybody,” Mychae countered with a lofty wave of her hand. “And you know I could craft up a good one. Plus I think it’d make people feel a little better about their chances to effect real change if they got to burn their asshat leaders in effigy once in awhile. That kind of thing takes balls.”

After a moment’s thought, Chris nodded. She had a point, as these things went. But once again, one of her trains of thought had taken them away from his question, and while he always enjoyed the mad scenery she led them through on her conversational joy-rides, he still wanted an answer. “So if you like Guy Fawkes’ Day, even without the effigies, why ‘not sensible’?”

Mychae looked at him with an arch expression, mostly trying to keep her glasses adjusted to let her see his face from a fairly awkward angle. “Fireworks displays and outdoor parties in November? Hardcore, sure, but a pain in the ass. You know, because cold and all?”

“You like Halloween, and that involves running around at a similar time of year, sometimes in skimpy costumes.” Chris knew he wasn’t winning this argument, but he would have fun trying. “Not just the trick-or-treating thing, either. I recall your birthday date being three hours in a supposedly haunted corn maze this year.”

“And I thanked you perfectly adequately for that when we got home, I thought.” Mychae gave him a cheeky grin and a wink, eliciting a blush and a minor ‘gnarp’ noise from her husband at the memory. “But at least that’s running around and moving. Bonfire parties are standing around a field or something, hoping you can get close enough to the fire for Jack Frost not to nip your nose clean off your face. And the food is fiddly. Who eats baked potatoes with baked beans standing up in the middle of a field?”

“Well, I apologise for Mr Fawkes not having the decency to try to blow up Parliament at a less inimical time of year, then.”

“And the baked potatoes?”

“Perhaps we just haven’t got the hang of hot food eaten standing up. The spectre of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, perhaps.”

As Chris had intended, Mychae laughed at that, then extricated herself from the quilt. “So, we ready to add our own light show to this thing? It’s about that time.”

Chris nodded and rose, draping the quilt carefully over Chewie, who was vibrating with the need to go chase exploding squirrels clear across the night sky if that was what it took. Then they moved to the exact centre of the roof, stood facing each other, and counted off.

“Three...” Mychae winked at Chris as she started the countdown.

“Two...” Chris reached out and adjusted her slightly crooked glasses before booping her on the nose.

“...One!”

In unison, they channeled their anima into the vibrant display of the Ophanim. The manifestation of their wings added a particularly intense burst of light and colour to the fireworks cornucopia of London’s night sky, and the protective and healing magics they left in their wake spiderwebbed the building in blue and gold, making it seem as though they’d got a head start on their Christmas decorations but hadn’t had the right colours on hand.

When their feet finally returned to the ground, they held each other for a long moment - as much with their illusory anima wings as with their arms, at least until the former faded from sight.

“Happy Guy Fawkes’ Day, angel.”

“And you, my beloved lunatic Cuisinart.”

Then Chewie knocked them both over, eager to get in on the cuddle-pile again, and romance was more or less lost to the adorable and hopelessly nerdy chaos that made the Qiin-White house a home.

[thessalian]

43. “Why are you/we whispering?” TSW!Mychae and TSW!Chris

Chris was seated on one of the armchairs in the Archive lounge, feeling rather over-the-toppedly British. He had tea. He had a cranberry scone, probably courtesy Jallira, and he had a dusty old tome in his hand - one that he was reading for fun. This, he mused to himself as he sipped his tea, would be where Mychae would throw a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and call him ‘Giles’.

From behind him came a whispered, “Hi.”

It was only years of training that kept him from throwing his tea in the air. “DAH!” Setting down teacup and book, he turned in his seat to find Mychae peering around the armrest, eyes shining with mischief and glasses shining with reflected light off the anglepoise lamp on the table that further solidified that ‘way too stereotypically British’ feel to the scene.

Now that she knew she had his attention, Mychae leaned forward a little and murmured, “I wanted to tell the world how much you mean to me.”

Chris, unable to figure out whether he was touched, confused or going slightly insane, or whether maybe there was something to Jallira’s insistence that he get checked for hearing loss after too close proximity to too many explosions, blinked at her. Finally, he asked the only question he could: “But … why are you whispering?”

“Because you’re my whole world, bro.”

Again, ‘moved’ warred with ‘this must be what going mad feels like’ in Chris’ head. “…Bro?!?”

“Broooooooooooo.” With that, Mychae handed him her iPad, then vanished behind the armchair again. More or less literally.

Chris blinked, read the iPad screen, and the meme upon it…

…and then after that, all he could do was laugh. Sometimes, people asked him how they hoped to keep the romance and surprises alive if they literally lived as man and wife forever. Somehow, given the sources she could and would mine to tell him she loved him, Chris Qiin-White didn’t think that would be a problem.

[thessalian]

♦: Slow dancing !

For the Templars, Yule was pageantry and pomp in the form of a fairly significant banquet-ball. Chris Qiin-White, newly wed to an Illuminati defector, attended, mostly because his pupils - Addie and Jallira - seemed to need the support. Jallira had been to a few of these too many, and was having a difficult time guiding her boyfriend through the ins and outs of high society gatherings. The reverse was true in the case of Addie and her boyfriend; Vincent kept trying to discreetly nudge the right fork to the tall Texan Templar who could not wear her formal gown with anything like conviction.

This was part of why Chris was, at least throughout the banquet portion of the proceedings, without an escort. His wife - a fairly off-the-wall American born in a small, not-overly-affluent town in Washington but transplanted to New York before the ink was even dry on her high school diploma - had barely looked up from her workbench the few times he’d brought up the invitation. “It’s an oversight,” she’d said when he pointed out that she was named on an invitation. “I’d piss people off if I showed up for banquety goodness. They expect conversation and while I could talk to you for some of it, the minute the table turned or whatever they to to make sure no one monopolises conversation–”

“Wait; you know about the table-turning thing?”

“I research! Anyway, I’d end up with some stuffy dude gabbling at me about some stuffy conservative bullshit and I’d be me at them and it’d be a mess. Absolute mess. Besides, I refuse to sit down to a meal where the forks I’m expected to use - just the forks, right? - outnumber the fingers on my right hand.”

Chris had desperately tried to come up with an argument to that, and couldn’t manage it. He couldn’t even claim she was indulging in hyperbole about the forks. Chris was a stubborn cuss most of the time, but he knew when he was on to a losing argument … and more to the point, given it was to do with his angel’s happiness, he was willing to concede.

But his pupils needed him. So he went, and used each of the six forks, and resisted the urge to bring a touch of Mychae-silly to the proceedings by pulling a Charlie Chaplin with two of his six forks and the roast potatoes. Instead, he got through the dinner with only a couple of glasses of overly busy wine to fortify him and ended up at the edge of the ballroom floor, watching Addie try to learn basic ballroom dance on the fly and debating on how soon he could leave the younger girls he’d all but adopted to their own devices and go home, to comfy slippers and Mario Kart and watching Chewie freak out every time the Gojira-shaped Christmas tree belched steam–

Suddenly, the sound of a fanfare - tinny, a little distorted, clearly being played by a smartphone speaker - rose over the music. Chris turned, almost half-sure what he would find…

And it still surprised him.

As he’d about expected, Mychae stood on the threshold of the ballroom, looking at the stares she was getting and grinning. However, Chris had somehow thought she’d turn up in jeans, or possibly one of her cosplay get-ups. Instead, his Mychae - his angel, his new wife - stood in a truly stunning red high-necked strapless ball gown. Chiffon inlays in the skirt, yellow and orange and gold to give a flame effect, allowed it to bell out as she did a little twirl to show off both dress and shoes, which shone in reds and golds like carnival glass lampshades.

She’d even brushed her hair.

Chris stepped forward and offered Mychae a hand, and she took it with a grin, spinning into his arms as they took the floor. She surprised him again by being a surprisingly adept dancer in places other than a mosh pit or a DDR platform. “I thought you weren’t coming,” he said when he could finally manage actual coherent sentences that would not devolve into ‘gnarp’.

That got another grin, this one as kind as it was mischievous. “I said I wasn’t doing the meal. The forks, y’know? But c’mon. You know I love to dance. And besides, I always wanted to know what it was like to be the Cinderella.”

Chris chuckled and snuggled her a bit as they danced. “If that means we disappear at midnight for less stuffy, I’m all for it.”

The mischief that was her trademark took over her grin. “I even painted up the car for the occasion.”

Chris gave her a look that clearly said ‘wut’ as she danced them in the direction of one of the windows of Temple Hall’s grand ballroom. There, parked out front with two parking valets giving it a wide berth and some very suspicious looks, was her vintage VW Beetle. Usually it was painted TARDIS-blue. Today, it was pumpkin-orange. She’d even pasted a jack-o’lantern decal on the bonnet. “DAH!”

“Too Jack?”

“WAY TOO JACK!”

[thessalian]

A Good Bet (Fic)

((Prompt - “Oh my god! You’re in love with them!”))

When the ex-Illuminati walked into the Crucible bar, Zamira Vata gave her more than the quick once-over new recruits got. Anything less would just be mental; until her truly mind-blowing Face Heel Turn at Stonehenge, the only thing that marked Mychae Qiin as anything but the Good Little Illuminatus was her constant presence alongside--

It hit her hard enough so that, interrupting Qiin’s attempt at a ‘hello’, the first words out of Zamira’s mouth were, “Oh my god! You’re in love with him!”

Qiin blinked; there was something akin to panic in her eyes at having been ‘outed’ so blatantly, but mostly her facial features spoke of amused confusion, which was what eventually fueled her response: “On my planet, we usually start with ‘hi’. Or, y’know, hand on weapon and not-so-idle threats, which I’d totally get in a case like this.”

Zamira made a sort of ‘pssht’ noise of dismissal as she waved Qiin into one of the plush red leather seats. “Right, I’m not bothered about most of that, yeah? I seen you in Fusang--”

That got a raised eyebrow from Qiin. “We all go masked in Fusang. Plausible deniability. Or are you one of those Echani-likes who can read people’s combat styles?”

“I dunno from ‘echani’ but yeah, I can get a pretty good idea of how someone moves. You ain’t one’f them well-camping arsebiscuits, at least. But I know the kinda damage you could do. ...Saw what you did to your own crew at Stonehenge.”

“...It wasn’t like they weren’t gonna respawn,” said Qiin, sheepish but defiant. “And they were being ... assbiscuits. I like that one.”

It was then that Zamira Vata realised how elegantly she’d been led off the original subject. “You did that for him. You’re in love with the bloody Archivist!”

Apparently realising she wasn’t going to get out of this one, Qiin debated. Zamira was pleased to note that Qiin apparently elected on the gods’ honest truth, to judge by the deep sigh. “If you wanna call him that, yeah. Pretty much since day one. Look, I know he’s got a girlfriend and I’m not gonna mess with that. I care that he’s happy; if she makes him happy, that’s good enough for me.”

“...People like you don’t really exist, do they?” Zamira was giving Qiin the serious side-eye, but all she could read on the former Illuminati’s face was brutal honesty. “I mean, you love him, you want him to be happy, sure, but ... don’t you want to be with him?”

Qiin shrugged. “Sure. And hey, if his girlfriend was into sharing, I’d be all for that. But not everyone’s poly and I’m not even gonna make the suggestion if it might fuck things up. But being with him doesn’t have to be the live-in sexytimes place. I’m cool if it’s just him and me against the Dreamers or Morninglight or Orochi or whoever the fuck is threatening the world this week. That, you’ve gotta give me, gets a lot easier if I’m not batting for Team Paranoia anymore.”

After a moment’s thought, Zamira nodded. “Easier still if you’re on the right side; I getcha. And gotta say, we could use some new blood that doesn’t scare so easy. Old Guard could use a shake-up.” She frowned at the prospective 'new blood’. “You gotta know Blue Team’s gonna have a hitter after you. They aren’t so keen on people checking out.”

“Yeah, they oughta rename the Labyrinth the ‘Roach Motel’,” Qiin said with a chuckle. “And look, the whole recruitment to the Templars in the wake of the Stonehenge mess? Not my idea. I didn’t want to bring potential hitters to your door; Helen of Troy is not my bag. Just ... Fableweaver got really insistent. He’s gonna do something stupid if I don’t at least sit the interview. Which ... I guess this is it. Honestly, I’m not in this to sell secrets about Team Paranoia. I’m in it to save the world without worrying about that Swarm bunch or the rumours I’ve heard about the Hive. If I don’t get in, I’ll cope. But I’m only disloyal when I’ve got cause to be. You would not believe the shit I put up with from the Illuminati before I finally had enough.”

Zamira gave Qiin a thoughtful look, then folded her arms and said, “I might. Try me.”

Two hours and many drinks later, Zamira Vata was giving her verbal report to Richard Sonnac. “I say we sign her on,” Vata said. “She’s done more for Temple Hall as an Illuminati than most of our agents do.”

Sonnac nodded. “I’m aware. Since her appearance on scene, Mr White’s reports have actually contained valuable data rather than fifteen pages boiling down to ‘I stabbed it and it exploded’.” After clearing his throat, he asked, “And the ... other matter?”

"You were right; she’s dead gone on him.”

Sonnac chuckled a little and shook his head. “Were I a betting man, I’d wager on them figuring out that he feels the same sometime in the next week.”

Zamira grinned. “Already talked to Konrad. He’s giving three to one on eight days.”

After a moment’s consideration, Sonnac said, “Perhaps a small wager. If only for the challenge of actually getting money out of Herr Engel.”

[thessalian]

23: how they act when they're sick, 15: how they react to a brainfreeze, and 10: their fashion sense for TSW!Mychae

23: Depends on the sick, particularly given bee, but let’s take ‘the flu’ as a catch-all. Honestly, there’s not that much difference - just lower energy levels, trying to set the world record for consecutive sneezes and using it as an excuse for all the hot and sour soup.

15: Mychae prides herself on not reacting to brainfreeze. She spent a lot of childhood scarfing down Slurpees too fast in the summertime so she’s effectively immune.

10: Mychae’s fashion sense is … eclectic. She’s got a little bit of everything in her closet - a couple of really well-tailored suits, a few pretty classy dresses, soooooooo much cosplay kit. But for the most part she sticks with casual - jeans, T-shirts with geeky-ass slogans, huge stompy boots, leather jacket - with occasional forays into very light goth and moderate to heavy cyberpunk. Steampunk too, sometimes, when she’s in the right mood.

[thessalian]

38: "Oh boy. I'm on the weird side of YouTube again." for TSW!Mychae

When Mychae and Chris Qiin-White weren’t in the field, they tended to occupy separate parts of the Temple Hall Archives. While Chris sat cataloguing, containing and occasionally beating into submission those various bits of ancient weirdness that field teams brought home for study, Mychae handled the weird cybertech that got dragged out of the field and kept beating her head against the metaphorical wall that was the attempted modernisation of the Templars’ data records and filing system. Mychae being rather skilled at her job and quite the multitasker, not to mention easily bored, she made the more office-bound parts of her life a little more manageable by web browsing, sending out links to her various contacts when something looked particularly interesting.

Which meant that some days, Chris’ possessed Kindle let out repeated pings as she kept spamming him with whatever weirdness Tumblr or Twitter or whatever else she was looking at threw in her general direction.

When the header “OH BOY; I’M ON THE WEIRD SIDE OF YOUTUBE AGAIN” showed on the email, he almost hesitated to click the link. Then he sighed, muttering, “If this is another jukebox rampage…” as he clicked the link she’d sent him.

Two minutes later, he stuck his head into her office. He was briefly derailed by her computer blaring a remix of Dragostea Din Tei and showing some incredibly trippy animation of a pony she referred to as Pinky Pie, but managed to pull his attention off the psychedelic train wreck long enough to ask, “Alpacas.”

“ALPACAS!”

“Walking towards the camera to the tune of the Imperial March.”

“STAR WARS ALPACAS!”

“…When does Rogue One come out again?”

The cheerful tone of the yelling became drowned out by aggression and what could only be described as ‘rage-sulk’. “NOT SOON ENOUGH!”

Chris got distracted for another moment as psychedelic ponies gave way to some really horrifically creepy-looking mannequins screaming at increasingly higher pitches, then shook his head and blinked it away. “All right; what’s driven you to the Weird Side of YouTube today?”

She clicked on another open tab (while the creepy mannequins were mercifully hidden by this, the wraith-like shrieking continued), showing him an article about some kind of Rogue One boycott. “So-called ‘alt-right’ fascist bigoted fuckmuppets saying that the fucking DISNEY CORPORATION had scenes reshot to call Trump a racist.”

Chris considered that (easier now that the mannequins had finally stopped screaming) and then said, “…But Trump is a racist.”

“AND HE’S NOT IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY! …which is a fucking shame,” she added with a sigh, “but never mind.”

Chris considered this for a moment. A lot of this made sense. His wife was almost as far from a straight white male as it was possible to be, and then only because she was only part-Korean. The whole ‘fascist president’ thing had to be very, very hard on her, since she really did want to still like her country. She didn’t just go out and stab things the way he did; she had other, somewhat more creative outlets. Yes, they drew him into the madness, but he was pretty used to that, given nearly ten years of bee by this point.

He leaned over and shut the tab with the Rogue One Boycott article down, then recoiled a little at what he saw on the screen. “What the bloody hell?!?”

Mychae squinted at the tab header. “Pikachu on Acid? Awesome! And my upload should be up by then!”

Chris looked at her. “You’re. Uploading. To the weird side of YouTube.” Mychae just grinned at him, and he took his cue. “I’ll … be in my office. Wait for the screaming.” With that, he exited.

Five minutes later, his email client pinged again.

Three and a half minutes after that, he burst into Mychae’s office and stared at her for a moment. She was already watching the door, giving it - and him a faux-innocent look. “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?”

“…Reaper. Soldier 76. And Reinhardt. Doing Caramelldansen?!?”

“I WIN THE WEIRD SIDE OF YOUTUBE!”

[thessalian]

15. Knowledge, TSW!Mychae and TSW!Chris

“Can you make scuba gear?”

Mychae looked up at Chris, who was grinning up at her from across her worktable. She had replaced her glasses with what were probably prescription welding goggles (her eyesight really was atrocious), and the combination of curiosity and the goggles made her look wider-eyed than usual. “You can’t buy scuba gear?”

Chris grinned at her. “You can make BETTER scuba gear!”

After blinking at him for another moment, Mychae eventually gave up and asked, “So ... my beloved cuisinart ... why are we looking at scuba gear?”

Chris held up a copy of one of the local free papers, and an article about what appeared to be a lost city having partly risen from beneath the waves. “Look! ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE!”

Mychae sighed and buried her head in her hands. “Not another ancient temple. Why is it always ancient temples? Why can’t it be occultech anymore?”

Chris looked at her; this was not the reaction he was expecting. “We just never hear about occultech anymore...”

Mychae looked up at him with a raised eyebrow. “Yes, we do. Or more like I do. I just don’t tell you about it anymore.”

At that, Chris felt a pang of actual hurt. “Why not?”

“Remember the installation off Buenos Aires?”

Chris winced. “I apologised for that!”

“That does not change the fact that you stabbed what you didn’t understand without so much as looking at me first and blew months of potential knowledge for me.”

“Well ... but that was just the once!” Chris understood the reasoning, but he didn’t like it.”

“And how many Red Hand bunkers?”

Chris winced again. “...six.”

"And Orochi installations around the globe?”

“I had my reasons!”

“I could have hacked them!”

“They were probably full of Filth!”

“That does not mean I couldn’t have hacked them.”

Chris grumbled, conceding the point. “All right, next time, it’s whatever occultech madness you find.”

Mychae gave him a suspicious look. “You will stab things.”

“I will endeavour not to stab things.”

“You are the cuisinart!” Mychae threw up her hands in despair. “Stabbing things is your modus operandi!”

After a moment’s thought, Chris offered, “I could leave the sword at home?”

“AND the fist weapons.”

Chris whimpered. “But Jallira was just teaching me--”

“NO. FIST. WEAPONS.”

Chris sighed, but nodded consent.

“And you don’t shoot anything.”

“Unless it moves.”

“Unless it’s obviously trying to eat our faces.”

“All right, fine.”

“Shake on it.” Mychae extended her workgloved-hand across the workbench.

Chris took it, shook it, and then kissed it, trying to ignore the taste of engine grease. After a pause to beam at her giggle, he asked, “So ... no scuba gear?”

Mychae sighed. “...Gimme two days. I hate ancient knowledge. What’s wrong with new knowledge?”

“Will those soft pretzels you like mollify you a little?”

Mychae grumbled, then nodded acquiescence. “But only if they come with coffee.”

Chris laughed. “As you will, Angel.”

[thessalian]

For TSW Mychae: 5, 9, 16, 32 and 46.

5) Mychae is definitely the ‘sexually confident’ type. She’s the woman who has erotic poetry tattooed down her back (in Enochian, incidentally), who points out hot women to her husband and states that she’d be willing to share if it was an option (and in the same spirit, he agreed that he would try a boy-boy-girl three-way if, like, Tony Stark ever became a real person instead of a fictional character). Also she pole danced for extra cash while she was in college and is double-jointed everywhere, and she puts that to good use in the bedroom.

9) Mych is all about the autumn. She likes the weather, the turning of the leaves, all that. Also Halloween, which is her favourite holiday and she sulks abominably that she’s moved to a country that doesn’t do Halloween, and decorates her building haunted house-style for the holiday out of sheer spite. (Also 31 October is her birthday, so she feels really cheated that she’s living somewhere that she can’t pretend that everyone is celebrating her birthday with her.)

16) Outside of combat training, some people might think that Mychae would be more the couch-potato type, being as heavily into computers as she is, but not so much. She eschews Wii-Fit, but she has a Dance Dance Revolution set-up at home, which she uses regularly, and she does yoga. The only sport she got into in high school was gymnastics, and even that not on a competitive level, but now she uses it to get to hard-to-reach places to install new speakers for her insane surround-sound set-up in the living room, or the Deep Roads (a habitrail set-up she developed for her mechanical ferrets) clipped to the walls.

32) Aaaah, the question to which @true0neutral in his Fableweaver ICness would love the answer to. She’s actually got pretty simple tastes, all told - all day at an amusement park, doing all the really insane rides and then watching the sunset from the top of a Ferris wheel, followed by takeout in front of an all-night sci-fi movie marathon ... that would probably be the ideal date for her.

46) Gods, name an affectionate thing and Mychae probably does it to Chris on a regular basis. Snuggles, mostly, in the guise of butting him with her shoulder to emphasise a point or get his attention.

[thessalian]

19. Cuddling, Mychae and Chris

The Qiin-Whites had issues with holidays. Chris always wanted to take them on quiet vacations to old castles or isolated cabins, whereas Mychae considered being taken away from her computer or her inventing kit for any length of time as some hitherto unimagined torture. Still, since Chris’ main drive behind these holidays was the opportunity to snuggle up someplace peaceful and undisturbed, they managed to find a compromise.

Which was why Chris and Mychae sat snuggled up on the sofa, Mychae almost in his lap and Chewie hovering nearby and occasionally setting his massive shaggy head on someone’s leg for reassurance that he was still loved, grumbling at the television. He flailed, and only the fact that Mychae believed in wireless controllers the way some people believe in gods prevented him from yanking it out of the console altogether. “This is ridiculous,” he sighed. “I’ve killed locusts the size of buses. I’ve shot Deep Ones in the face. With a rocket launcher. And now I can’t shoot a worm?”

Mychae giggled and leaned into Chris, tucking her head in the hollow between his neck and shoulder before planting a kiss on his jawline. “You and buttons just don’t get along.”

“How are you this good at this?” Chris, mollified to a considerable degree by the affection, still had a grumbly note to his voice. “This controls like those logging excavators!”

“You and buttons,” Mychae repeated, still giggling. “Seriously. The controls aren’t that bad, honest! I mean, I’m taking a handicap here; I’m used to it on the PC. And honestly, you don’t like buttons, technology hates you and I’ve been playing this game for most of my life. That and the fact that I’m way more of a tactical thinker than you are is why I am kicking your ass at Worms Battlegrounds.”

“Mrph,” was Chris’ only reply for a moment as Mychae annihilated yet another of his troops. Then he asked, “If you’re used to it on the computer, why are we not playing it on the computer? I might be better at it than ... well, this.”

Mychae looked up at him, green eyes contrivedly wide and innocent behind her glasses. “But then we couldn’t cuddle. I’m all about the cuddling here.” To emphasise her point, she kissed his jaw again.

Chris couldn’t help but grin his derpy grin and chuckle, despite the ass-kicking he was taking. He tightened his arms around her and snuggled, still chuckling, even as he made another attempt to take out one of Mychae’s worms who looked poised to drop a grenade or something on three of his remaining forces.

The shot went wide. “Sonuva--”

Mychae just chuckled and annihilated his forces. “Want me to kick your ass at Mario Kart next?”

“A sound plan,” was Chris’ only reply. His main priority was Mychae’s happiness, after all, and little made her happier than demonstrating video game mastery. He would still try his best to win, of course, but having his wife take pride in all the things she was raised to avoid was worth the continual losses.

The cuddling was a significant bonus, of course.

[thessalian]

14. “You’re supposed to talk me out of this.” TSW!Mychae and TSW!Chris

In the first week of their living together, Chris had got quite used to waking up to some truly bizarre noises from Mychae, who nearly never slept and thrived almost exclusively on caffeinated beverages, Pop Tarts and ramen. (Chris was working on fixing that, but it was a slow process.) Usually his girlfriend’s DDR playlist, but occasionally cackling and explosives.

Today was a ‘cackling and explosives’ day. More out of curiosity than anything else, Chris threw a robe on and shuffled up the stairs to Mychae’s workspace, which took up most of the floor upstairs, to find out what fresh madness his lady-love was concocting this time.

His arrival in the doorway was marred by having to duck out of it again in a great tearing hurry as something launched towards his face at some speed. It sort of exploded as it hit the wall, but there was no fire involved and the shrapnel was not particularly durable. Picking a chunk of it out of his hair, he examined it minutely. It appeared to be a chunk of muffin. A sniff and a nibble identified it as banana nut.

Mychae’s voice came through the open doorway next: “Sorry! Having some issues with the biometrics! C’mere, you fiddly little–” The rest was drowned out by the sound of an electric screwdriver.

Chris peered into the workshop/lab area. He hadn’t paid much attention to the bits and pieces Mychae had brought in for the tinkering until now. There were bits of robot and half-gutted computers and the shattered remains of the power armour that had saved her life from the most comprehensive assassination attempt (the one that he had to thank the former MI6 Illuminati for, really, because it had prompted the cohabitation with Mychae that he was already greatly enjoying) and small mechanical ferrets running around handing Mychae tools. And when he finally focused on what Mych was working on right at that moment. “…What the fresh hell did you do to that photocopier?”

“Lavazza needed a playmate,” Mych told him. “Or, y’know, a colleague. Comrade in arms. If you’re going to have aerial rescue supply drops of coffee, you need someone bringing in the rest of the needful as well.”

Chris blinked. “…wait. wut.”

Mychae gestured at the thing with wings he’d noticed earlier; closer inspection revealed it to be a coffee maker. “Meet Lavazza,” she told him. “Not the most comprehensive AI in the world but enough to process preferences of how people take their coffee and deliver to the appropriate person by virtue of voice activation and facial recognition. But you’re always telling me that there shouldn’t just be coffee, that there should be actual breakfast, and so Xerox over here should help with that.”

Chris blinked at Lavazza, which beeped cheerfully at him. “You named the coffee machine Lavazza.”

“After the coffee. Yes.”

“And the photocopier Xerox.”

“Not just a photocopier! Printer and scanner, too. I took out the fax machine functionality because Shiba’d get jealous.”

“And chew ankles, yes,” Chris agreed in some odd cross between a chuckle and a sigh. “And it also fires muffins.”

“I tried Krispy Kremes but they got a bit messy and the icing glaze kind of gums up the works.”

A thought occurred to Chris: “You’re not just doing this for the flat, are you.”

“Nope!” Mychae addressed her reply to the guts of what appeared to be the built-in muffin cannon. “Lavazza and Xerox are going to come live at Temple Hall. They won’t be happy unless they’re being useful, so I’ll let them live in the Archives. Everyone likes muffins and coffee. Or they should.”

Chris considered that, then nodded. “I’m sure Shiba will deal with any particular detractors, and at least two of the Jawas will defend Xerox to the death if you include chocolate chip muffins in the mix somewhere.”

Mychae peeked up over Xerox’s lid, meerkat-style, with a perplexed blink. “I’m talking about bringing a muffin launcher and an aerial coffee delivery system into work.”

Chris nodded. “Aye.”

“And you’re actually encouraging me.”

“Aye.”

“You’re supposed to talk me out of this. I mean, that’s how it normally goes.” Mychae looked more bewildered than ever.

Chris grinned. “I think it’s a brilliant idea, actually. Good for those all-night research binges I end up on from time to time, and tests the reflexes. Lord knows the Jawas could use some honing of their reflexes, with Shelf 173 still lobbing books at people’s heads.”

Mychae looked at Chris for a long moment, clearly processing that there was someone on this planet who was not going to tell her ‘don’t do the silly thing’; who was in fact going to encourage her to do the silly thing because ‘the silly thing’ made his life more fun. Then she vaulted over Xerox, muffin cannon and all, and tackle-hugged him so hard they ended up in a laughing pile of limbs on the floor.

After a long moment of that, Chris added, “But we’re getting a dog. You need a pet with actual fur. Maybe a Newf.”

Mychae pulled her iPhone out of a pocket, googled to find out what Chris was talking about, then grinned. “Only if we can name him Chewie.”

Chris burst out laughing again. “Of course.”

[thessalian]

★★★★★

* TSW!Srina is honestly only with the Illuminati because she knows exactly what would happen if she left, and because the Phoenecians (where she suspects that she’d feel more at home) may or may not be working for people who want to end the world. (”Still, at least Team Purple has target acquisition beyond, ‘go there, see if something needs blowing up’…”)

* TSW!Astrid has the kind of Third Age tech that most people would kill to have a look at in her flat. A fair bit of it. …In all honesty, it’s the equivalent of a home entertainment centre, but she refuses to downgrade to current-gen technology unless she has no choice.

* Addie’s first job was very a much under-the-table graveyard shift at a convenience store. They kept a shotgun under the counter and when the Templar recruiter found Addie there, Addie’s response was to point the shotgun at the recruiter’s face. When the recruiter responded with a smile, a nod, compliments to her reflexes and “Yes, that’s about what we’re looking for; just different targets”, Addie was finally derailed enough to listen.

* Mychae eased through the whole ‘being beed’ thing fairly easily; she was used to channeling a lot of mental energy and this seemed to follow the same pattern, so she ended up channeling all of that anima power into her project at the time - a battle robot for the Robot Wars competitions her university’s robotics club ran. It ended up sentient and way too powerful, and Mychae blacked out most of Manhattan building it. That was what alerted Illuminati recruiters.

* TSW!Lira brought her pet lynx Socks to work one day to make friends with the Temple Hall cats. Surprisingly, it worked.