#The narrator is okay I guess but he would hold a knife to my throat because he's kinda fucked up and sadistic like that and I just don't

[iddybittysnail]

if people can talk about The Narrator being their baby girl I can talk about The Curator like that too

The Curator should be my husband because shes just sooo baby boy like that..... and shes sooo silly I know shes like in only 2 endings but thats okay our wedding is tomorrowg.. /j

[sor-vette]

Chapter Nine | Heart of Kindness O'er Ran

At the turn of a new leaf, you find yourself dancing along the knife’s edge. To keep yourself from falling over, you must ask three questions: what do they have, what do they hold dear and how far will they go to make you stay with them?

▶ w/c: 4.5k

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Jane braces against the wall, visibly shaking in the knees.

“Why would you attack me with a vase?” she cries, clutching at her throat. You make something similar to a shushing gesture with your hands.

“I didn’t know it was you!!”

She breathes in and out, hard, but in time manages to calm down. You look each other over and find that much has changed.

To you, Jane looks thinner as if withered in a way. Her eyes constantly scan the room for any danger and on her fingers you see black lines, forming depictions of flowing symbols.

To Jane, you look taller and in a way more imposing. There’s a look in your eyes that resembles Them and she tries not to shudder.

“What are you doing here?” you whisper, half - angry, half-confused. Jane shakes her head, breaking out of her daze and straightens. In an attempt to assert some kind of authoritative presence.

“Listen what I’m about to say, is going to sound crazy, like, really unbelievable but I need you to think ov-”

“Is this about the soulmate thing?” you interrupt.

She blinks. Then again. Then once more.

“I guess we’ll just skip to the good bit,” her tone is dead. “Oh, before I forget, they’re also-”

“Immortal?”

She throws one casual hand in the air, grimacing as if to say “but of course”.

Jane had considerably settled down when outside, citing “unbearable stench" inside. You offer her chamomile tea but she refuses to touch it.

“How did you know I was involved in all of this?”

“Not like you gave an Oscar-worthy performance, last time,” you scoff good-naturedly, over-elated to see her. You hadn’t yet fully grasped just how isolated you were this last month. Jane winces.

“Oh, yes, that. Are you okay?”

You peer over the mug and your network grinds to its full until it offers a suggestion. Her weird tasting coffee.

“Did you cause my mysterious illness?”

Jane doesn't dare to take her eyes away from the wooden flooring.

“I’m really sorry!! I had no idea, really, none at all, that he would give you his blood that same evening!”

You choke on the tea, chamomile going right up somewhere your nose.

“He what? His what? Who's he?”

Jane raises her head in astonishment.

“Jung Hoseok, I believe, is his name. Ah, I guess you’re not omniscient after all. Didn’t come here for nothing, then.”

You sit silent, urging mutely for her to continue.

“What I’m about to tell you I know very little of. I don’t think that there even is a person outside of Them who actually does know the full story.”

Them Jane spoke with an ominous finality and you’re thrust back to the marble stairs of the busied ballroom. Had you not thought the same when you first met? Why now it seems like the intonation was far too aggravated, almost insulting?

“Long ago and I don’t know how long exactly, rumours began amongst the witches that something dreadful was passing through the world.”

“Witches?” you interrupt her, “witches?”

Jane tapped her chin, deep in thought.

“Ah, probably should have started with that… but I already thought of a theatrical story on the way here - ! Anyway, yes, witches. Get over it. ”

You splutter. Certainly, you had no doubt Jane was mixed in all of this but you had not given the existence of witches a serious thought. In hindsight, it made sense.

“May I please continue? I really prepared this one.”

You grumble but signal for her to continue, holding in the bursting dam of questions. She lowers her voice once more, too eager to take the role of the chilling narrator.

“One year, said to be in wintertime, They settled down, near a village of a powerful coven, then called Sallington. Immediately arguments arose as often such things do when two powerful groups begin to measure. The Coven did not like these men, they were strangers after all. So that same night they went to their house with either the plan to kill them or banish them, no one knows. However it was, the villagers of Sallington found their bodies strewn across the nearby field. The witches were buried quickly and without names, for they had no faces to recognize when They were done.”

You swallow harshly.

“And so the stories began to spread and various kinds, the insane or the brave, sought out these strangers, largely for a fight, only to end up little more than a torn pile of sinew not long after. And in time the Covens called them in their language “Rhogyerya” or the Living Dread as that would be the closest translation. They of course already had a name, in Korean of that time, but during that day and age, this part of the world knew little of what lay across the ocean.”

Jane hugs herself tight, breathing out into the dark night and peering warily over the horizon.

“How long have you known all of this? And how did you even get to know all of this?”

“Did you not listen?! I am a witch. Have been for the last four months. Those friends that I told you about, remember?”

You nod along.

“Some of them are proper witches, not all, just some. The area I come from was built upon the remnants of the south of Sallington and I guess despite it being many years now, the residents still have an inclination for magic.”

“So, you’ve been a witch all this time?” you ask, somewhat tersely and Jane huffs back, glaring disagreeably back at you.

“No, of course not! I said an inclination, not a guaranteed predisposition!” she then sighs, calming down.

“At any rate, it was only after I met them, in the office, that I began to feel odd. My “inflammation”,” she air quotes, looking pensive, “was actually a sort of an archaic, hereditary protective system kicking in or so Lauge theorizes. Witches are not that keen to investigate their origins, something about disturbing the Sacred path. ”

She grimaces and falls silent. You think over her words, in time gathering your thoughts to mumble a sentence.

“How does this all tie to me?”

“In every possible way!” answers Jane, beginning to tap her stained fingers on the metal fence of the balcony. “For these strangers were not full in count when they first arrived. As far as we know there were only three in Salington, then five and then at the beginning of the last century there were seven. And now there are eight, or they hope to make you the eighth.”

“So they had been human, once?” you question further, not really surprised at anything anymore but still growing more confused.

“I presume some of them, I do not know of the three, but the younger ones definitely were not immortal from the start. The myth is that long ago, so long ago that neither you nor I can even begin to understand, when all souls were made, there was one that was so dark and rotten that the powers that be shred it apart. The soul fell but unluckily for the world, its pieces managed to seep themselves into existence.”

You want for Jane to stop, to give you a moment to think everything over but she persists on, pouring one dreadful realization after another until you feel like drowning in your own body.

“And so they became people and I use that term arguably. The mortal possessor of the soul piece when in contact with the rest does not die and does not gain more life. And if they choose to merge with the other pieces, they fade from the mortal world entirely and dwell in the never-ending shadow of their united power,” she then looks at you, grimly, face contorted in sharp worry.

“Sooner or later, perhaps later if strong of will or reluctant to begin with, but inevitably the other souls will find and from their darkness devour the remaining one.”

There is a long pause as you sit and count your heartbeats. One fades into tens and those tens into dozens as it beats madly in the cage of your chest. The sound of the faraway wind gnaws eerily on the stone peaks.

“That,” you clear your throat to give the voice some power, “that is what’s going to happen to me?”

Jane shrugs her woeful demeanour dropping.

“Well, it’s what the myth says,” she says casually, shrugging again, “and while I don’t believe all of it, I reckon there must be some truth in the old stories. They did after all return here on the very eve of your birth. It was no coincidence for them to smuggle their way into the gala that you were so conveniently working for at the time. I'm afraid that now, once they've found you, never of their own will, should you be let go. No…no, they're bending all their might to make you stay,"Jane pauses, looking deep into the full cup of chamomile.

“We can of course test our theory but I don’t think anyone here has any remaining doubts about being in a suspiciously watchful centre of attention.”

No, you had no doubts about that.

“I - I began to worry about you that same evening of the gala. It only grew worse when I came into all of this but at that time I did not know the full extent of Their being and I made… a lapse in judgement," Jane sighs ruefully. "The coffee that you drank had an improvised protection potion in it. I consulted with the Coven elders to make it but it was old enough for there to be errors in the Grimoire. Mixed in with Their blood it created a disastrous effect and I’m very happy to see that you, my friend, had enough strength to survive it.”

No wonder they had lied. This singular small truth would eventually uncover the whole web of deceit in one fell swift move. It was far more convenient to fake a story about an infected lung.

“I saw then that They had some destructive power and thought of little else but keeping you in their hold. I tried to raise an alarm among others, but they would not listen and soon shunned me out. I could only watch from a distance as it all unfolded. Of course, I could have just reached out but I was - I was -” she stammers, her hand resting on the line of her throat as if guarding some old injury. The following words were but a whisper.

“I was afraid. And I did something that I’m not proud of. I left you be,” she mumbles hazily, peering at you with moist, apologetic eyes, “I abandoned you to your fate, folding my hands as if there was nothing else to be done.”

“So why are you here then?” To your own surprise, your voice is understanding. And even in the depths of your heart, you do not find much resentment towards Jane. Perhaps you’re so starved of contact with the outer world you were ready to forgive anyone anything. Or perhaps you did not believe it had been such a horrible fate from the start. You shake your head, scolding yourself. Has it not been dreadful? You were after all just now ready to bolt to some distant corner of the world.

(So why hadn’t you, already.)

“After everything, I backpacked north, in search of a new Coven… I had angered...people and desperately needed protection. It was them who actually shed the majority of the light on what was happening with you. And ever since then I have been most worried about you and about what They would do. A week ago, we summoned a sort of a council and decided to amass what you could call an army.”

“An army?” you echo, worry rising, but it was not towards those people.

Despite hearing over and over again how powerful they were, how they could rip whole communities apart, the thought of an army coming for your boys is deeply upsetting. Your hands and back are clammy and you feel an increasing urge not to run away but to run towards them, in a warning. Briefly, an image of Hobi, fighting for his life as he was being drowned in a mossy lake. The picture fills you with such trepidation, you cling to the edge of the glass table, feeling the sudden onslaught of bile. It disappears but the fear it caused does not. Jane misinterprets this as a general fear for your own safety, even though that was currently the farthest thing from your mind.

“We made a promise not to hurt you, though I have to admit that promise is flimsy at best,” she says, her form growing restless. She begins to pace.

“Hence why I’m here. To get you there.”

“You want me to go to this Coven that wants to kill me, kill them?” you ask, disbelievingly. Though you yourself had lamented over the lack of destination should you run -

(Should.)

- It didn’t seem like the safest idea to go to people who had their pitchforks recently sharpened.

“Y/N, only by a miracle, by miracle, have They allowed you to be to your own devices for so long. I fear that with everything, your relative safety has passed. Did They say anything about moving you away?”

You stubbornly refuse to grace her with an answer but it is not needed. Jane chuckles dryly.

“Yes, we are running out of time, you more than me. Their plans are not yet in motion but are quite ready I think.”

“Jane, I don’t want your coven or some army killing them.”

She only grimaces.

“No, I didn’t think so. I am actually wondering if you can leave at all.”

There is such a bite to her tone, that instinctively you bristle, a renewed attitude rising - resolute.

“What does that mean?”

“Why haven’t you left yet?”

You pause while standing up, seething.

“I’m trying to! As you can see, I’ve packed my bags!”

Jane laughs again, mocking.

“Really? Then leave, leave now!”

You turn around, in wrathful determination yanking the straps of your backpack but as you reach towards the handle of the balcony door, you find your legs suddenly heavy as if either other force or you yourself is unwilling to take another step.

“Yes, I fear my delay has proven to be faithful,” Jane speaks up behind your back, straightening and with new courage venturing closer, “I fear there’s more of Them in you than it at first appears.”

“So what are you going to do? Stand there telling me vague scary omens like an old lady?” you ask, sharply, still clutching at the bag, but not daring to touch the door.

“Oh, I can’t do anything!” Jane exclaims, throwing her hands in the air, “I can’t make you do anything because you are too stubborn to listen and if I would try to remove you by force your mind could break! As it is in this world, it is up to you to save yourself. To make a choice to leave, if you, of course, even want to leave.”

Frustration and anger seep through you like molten candle wax. More than ever before you feel like a marionette tied to all the passersby of the world, governed by their decisions and not your own. In either way, it would be a betrayal. Should you stay here, you would be whisked away and no matter whether stories were true or not, you would remain in their midst, betraying your own free choice. If you would leave, there was the possibility the Coven would kill you or worse kill them and that too is unbearable. There was no right decision and just before your network collapses entirely, a dreadful shimmer of an ambiguous hope rises in your heart.

You could try, naively perhaps, you could try to dissuade the army to disband. To convince them that the danger was not as present and ready to pounce as they thought. And buy yourself both time and space to think about how much you actually want to be free from them.

Jane said they were wretched and rotten but you refuse to believe it. They were perhaps too hungry and perhaps ran too freely but you could not pin such horrid terms to their loving, gentle expressions. Maybe, if you were once again very clever, you could manoeuvre the opposition to stand down, simultaneously obtaining more information. You wrangle your hands, settling in the risky decision with all the remaining determination you have in your skull.

“Where do we need to go?”

You listen carefully for any sounds at all in the surrounding dark of an emptied house.

The kitchen clock. The hum of the fridge. A ghost creek on the stairs. You can’t hear Bo Young but as you recall the boys proclaimed worry of your solitude, you don’t fool yourself into thinking she wasn’t somewhere around. Slowly, step by step, you slide on your socks towards Namjoon’s cabinet. You had insisted to Jane it would be closed, surely, he never let anyone in! That one time he’d caught Jungkook trying to break the lock, a slipper was hurled. And still when you, with witholden breath, reach for the golden hand-shaped doorknob, it creeks open with a thin, menacing sound. Hastily you look around, taking in as quickly as you could. It is a veritable Eden. Cactuses, monstera plants, succulents and pots of flowers adorn every nook and cranny of the small space. On the wall there stretch bolted in shelves, overpacked with old books, crystals and hundreds of vials with unreadable labels. Like Jane’s apartment had been that day.

You gently push away the leaves of the monstera plant and look over the inventory of the table. An unassuming notebook sits open and as you flip through it you find long walls of text written in a language you’ve never seen. It’s not Korean, nor English, nor Russian, Thai or anything remotely similar. The letters flow freely and with much elegance, down the page vertically, marked through with a single, bold line. You quickly brush through only pausing to briefly examine a sepia coloured picture. It had already nearly faded due to the passing of unforgiving time. It was them, in the 1920s if you had to make a guess. Lazing around among a cornucopia spread out on a dining table so dark, that to you it looks like a bottomless pitch. You let the pages of the notebook obscure the photo, hiding you away from their ever-watchful eyes.

As you look around desperately you settle for the pen snuggled in between two small cactus’. This will have to do. You’re just about to leave the office when a breath touches your nape. You shudder in fear, whipping around, terrified to see either Namjoon or someone else standing there. However, there is not a single soul. Your gaze falls on the suspicious emptiness perched between the shelves. Traditionally there would be a safe hidden behind the painting alas it is not there. You march towards the empty wall and trace the wooden fibres. Your nails dip into small, hollowed lines and as you trace around, you find that they make together the shape of a perfect rectangle. So there is something there, just nothing resembling an opening. Again and again, you go over the form, in time putting together invisible words, etched faintly around the rectangle.

With Love Correctly Spoken, I Shall Reveal You, My Dearest Token.

Oh, did it have to be a fucking riddle.

In the back of your mind that stands on the lookout for danger, you hear Jane’s three taps on your bedroom door frame. A sign to hurry up. Telling old ghost stories had proven to be time - consuming and you had no doubt they would not linger even one second longer than strictly necessary.

Time is running out in vast strides and you nearly turn away, to run and leave the empty wall with riddles to its existence but -

- it feels wrong. Like the wrong choice made between offered options of a dialogue. You are rooted to the spot and can avert neither gaze, neither focus. So you oblige, racking your brain frantically for an answer. You look around, tracing every cover of every book. All but one is unfamiliar to you - the red spine of “The 1000 Greatest Odes to Our Love”. You take the book, swaying slightly under its weight and crack the large book open.

In it, as promised were a great many poems and lyrics, sorted diligently by year and authors. As you sift through it, amidst the speeding pages you notice flickering black imprints. An ink. You turn to page 605 and find next to one of Shakespeare's sonnets, Jin’s name staring back at you in sharp, neat handwriting. Joon’s handwriting. As you glimpse further you notice that all of their names were scattered throughout the book next to underlined verses filled with soft sentiment. You presume, and yes you presume, it’s not like you wish for it, that your name must be somewhere here too.

(Now you’re just lying again.)

On page 808 you find the lengthy ballad of one Samuel Taylor Coleridge, titled simply “Love”. Next to it stands the bold curve of “Y/N”. You read it quickly over, putting every mind-numbing literary interpretation class to good and panicked use.

As you read it, you see why Namjoon had chosen this particular poem. Though its tone was more presumptuous than you’d want, it fits him like a glove. The last three verses are so hard to read, that you have to take a breath and turn your focus to the sounds of the house. Jane’s three taps now ring incessantly in the distance. There was no time left.

So you read and try not to see yourself through Namjoon’s eyes, kneeling amidst black satin sheets and finally giving in. Or at least what he thought was finally giving in.

She half enclosed me with her arms,

She pressed me with a meek embrace;

And bending back her head, looked up,

And gazed upon my face.

‘Twas partly love, and partly fear,

And partly ‘twas bashful art,

That I might rather feel, than see,

The swelling of her heart.

I calmed her fears, and she was calm,

And told her love with virgin pride;

And so I won my Genevieve,

My bright and beauteous Bride.

With love correctly spoken… You flit over the poem’s lines, stopping at the last verse. It was either all or nothing. In a whisper you repeat Coleridge’s words, feeling slightly stupid as walls, last time anyone checked, didn’t have ears to listen with, but if there were witches who was there to decide what does or doesn’t exist. There is a quiet click and a small edge of the wall pops open. Trembling in anticipation you open it and then become confused.

It was a simple box. Black in colour and worn over time. On top of it laid a seal with a rough, amber stone embedded in the middle. Nonetheless, you reach towards it, grasping it tight. To take it with you. More enchanted by an unknown guide than your own rational thinking.

You exit the office, with all the bounty tucked safely into a spare backpack and freeze when a pair of brown, bespectacled and worried eyes look back at you.

Bo - Young.

She stands like a deer in headlights, mouth wide in terror and her hands shake. In them, she’s grasping at her constant companion - phone. It is open and through its glow, you can see the open call and its ID.

Mr Kim Taehyung.

You both stare, frozen in terror for similar and yet different reasons. You can hear Taehyung’s worried questions of where you were and how Bo - Young begins to tremble when he repeats himself in an increasingly sterner tone.

You put your hands in front and beg, mouthing “please”. She gapes and seems undecided, right until the moment when she raises the phone to her ear and smoothly, much more smoothly than she appears, says:

“Yes, Mr Kim, she’s sleeping in her room right now. Should I wake her up?”

He replies no, they’ll be there in 5 minutes.

5 minutes.

She drops the call, still shaking and you can only murmur faint words of breathless gratitude. She doesn’t move aside but doesn’t stop you either. Standing worryingly still and mute. You leave her be, pleading that when they find your empty bed they’ll push all the blame to you and not her.

Together with Jane, you make a run for it, through the backdoor and onto the familiar hiking trail. It will lead you to a small brook that flows into the city river, from there you will fall northeast, away from the city and into the great wilderness that lies in the middle of the continent.

As you run, bags heavy, the box clanking softly, nestling between some spare clothes, you see the reflection of the house illuminate the road before you.

They were home.

Jane sees this and falls suddenly to her knees, gawking fearfully at its sharp concrete edges. She shakes her head hysterically, crawling somewhere but unable to coherently move. You had never seen so much fear in a person’s eyes. You grab her roughly by the arm, pulling her upward. More and more lights switch on and in a second they find you gone. Loud, alarmed cries erupt from the house, so loud you can hear them distinctly even at this distance. You tug Jane forwards, now breaking into a sprint.

“Y/N! No, no, no! Please don’t!” a voice shouts, behind you, growing nearer at a remarkable speed. It is Jungkook. His eyes are at first wide but then narrow in murderous rage when he glimpses Jane’s shivering figure. She grows smaller underneath his frown, sobbing fearfully in your neck. You push her away, shielding her with your body, taking slow, measured steps backwards.

“Y/N, whatever she told you, it’s a lie. Really! We would not hurt you, we would never hurt you!” he pleads, terror splashed starkly on the lines of his face as he sees your determination to leave.

“Please, return back! Baby, please, just don’t do this! Anything but this!”

“Would you let me leave if I wanted?” you ask, throat dry, “Would you let me go if I said I didn’t want to be a part of it all?”

For a second it seems like he’ll burst into tears but then his expression hardens. And it is a very different Jungkook standing in front of you. He looms above you tall and menacing, and his hair falls onto his forehead, shielding the ever-present softness in his eyes.

“No,” he replies plainly. Behind him, more and more noises travel forward. So you grasp Jane’s hand, running away with all your existing strength.

He does not follow.

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Trivia:

In Coleridge’s poem “Love,” the narrator is attempting to win over a woman by appealing to her tender emotions. Though at first the woman in the poem is reluctant to be together with the narrator in the end she gives in as she considers both his offer and the mortal nature of life

Namjoon assigned to Jin Shakespear's "Sonnet 29"

The number 808 (given to Reader) as an angel number means there are forces either trying to direct you or reassure you towards a specific path or life decision

The black lines on Jane's hands are sigils similar to those that Jungkook and Taehyung used way back in Chapter Two to enter reader's dreams, but for Jane, they are a part of a protection spell

The black cedar box is yes the one that made an appearance in chapter 6. Continuity, always!

The photo of the boys in the 1920s (found on Pinterest):

So, so, so! Everything is going to shit. Thoughts, opinions? What do you think will happen? Is the reader stupid for going to Jane's new coven? What do you think of their backstory - does it seem true or is it just old stories? Will the boys catch up with the intrepid heroines? Are they evil or just lonely? To what exactly does this all lead? Please do share all your thoughts it makes my day! Thank you.

Tag list:

@mayla548; @singukieee; @themasterbob; @ot7nem; @ilsan-seoul; @ithtefani; @meowsimpson; @littlrmills14-blog; @gingerspicetalks; @fixation-or-psychosis; @needyomnivore

Happy reading!

[itrytowrite-things]

Murder podcasts

Spencer Reid x reader 

Summary: Y/N has a tendency to listen to murder podcasts while doing chores, one day Spencer comes in unannounced scaring Y/N into action. (This summary sucks but it’s fluffy) 

A/N: shout out to @with-paint, she helped me form some of this fic so check them out. 

The eerie background music and narrator filled the kitchen as I scrubbed diligently at a plate. I blinked down at it, trying in vain to remember what the hell I used it for that would cause such a stubborn stain of food. Sighing, I squeezed the soap bottle some more and ran hot water over it. Maybe soaking it would help? 

Grabbing a few of the cups I had washed, I spun around from the sink to a towel I had laid out earlier. I scrunched my nose as cold soap suds ran down my arm, hit my elbow and fell to the floor in a sticky mess I didn’t want to deal with right now. 

I was so engrossed in the podcast playing over the Alexa that I barely even processed the grueling chore that was longer than normal. I was lost in the words, that an hour longer scrubbing at dishes seemed almost fun. The dishwasher had completely died a couple of weeks ago. 

Normally Spencer would speed read the manual to figure out what was wrong with the stupid machine. But unfortunately, his case in Michigan was taking longer than he anticipated. So, he hadn’t been home to look into it, leaving me to hand wash the dishes. I didn’t mind, it was a mindless task and allowed me to catch up on my favorite podcast. 

“They found her body a week later, twenty minutes from their house,” I shook my head at that, case freaking solved. Her husband obviously killed her. I mean there’s no way the police didn’t solve this case, come on.

I moved from the towel back to the sink, sticking my hands back into the soapy water. I always believed that I should be a detective. I could solve these cases easily, Spencer claims that suspicion can only take me so far and the reason that they don’t catch the guy is not because they don’t suspect it, but because they don’t have hard evidence. I normally just scoff and give him a kiss knowing that I would get the bad guy in the end, “hard evidence” my ass. 

“Two months later the police came in and found Jeff’s disembodied head laying on their kitchen counter.” My jaw dropped and I turned around furiously, bringing a wet butter knife with me, on instinct I pointed the knife at the device. 

“Oh shit.” I said to the speaker, as if it were relaying the case itself. Well turns out I was wrong. I cleared my throat and lowered the stupid knife. I placed it down and tried my best to look less scandalized. We all make mistakes. So I might have been a little off in my husband theory, but I mean I had only heard half the case at that point so it doesn’t speak anything of my amazing detective skills. I nodded at that and tossed the knife into a little stack of silverware. The metallic sound echoing around the kitchen. I smirked at my good throw and turned back to the sink. 

I quickly got into the true grove of washing the dishes, listening to the more gruesome details of the case. Turns out the killer did quite a number on old Jeff. I was halfway done with the remaining dishes when I felt a tap on my shoulder sending my heart into a frenzy. 

I whirled around quickly bringing the closest item with me as a weapon. The plastic spatula slapped the asalint straight in the face creating an awfully loud twack sound that bounced off the kitchen walls. I blinked in horror at realizing who exactly was standing in front of me. 

Spencer's cheek turned red immediately. 

“Oh my god! Spence! I am so sorry!” I dropped the spatula and brought my other hand to his face trying to soothe his skin. My hand was covered in water and soap suds, and it dripped down his face onto the already wet floor.

“I am so so sorry. You scared me.” I rubbed my thumb over the spot, feeling his heated skin. Jesus, I felt awful. I didn’t hold anything back when I hit him. I figured I was fending for my life, not greeting my boyfriend. 

“It’s okay.” His much larger hand cupped mine removing it from his face. The redness had died down a little, making his skin a rosy pink instead of the previous bright red. He looked adorable which only made me feel worse. Who looks that cute after getting slapped in the face with a spatula? 

Spencer startled me yet again when a chuckle came bubbling out of him. His laugh was like someone bottled the sound of happiness. It made my own laughter arise every time without a doubt even if I didn’t understand what was funny.

“I guess I don’t have to worry about you protecting yourself.” A loud squeak sound emitted from my body unexpectedly followed by more laughter. I slapped him very lightly across the chest, kissing his unharmed cheek. 

“You're lucky I wasn’t cutting vegetables.” I said,  rustling my way into his arms pulling his body against my tightly, loving the way his laughter shook my entire body. I felt the short press of his lips against the crown of my head before tucking my head into the nook of his neck. I inhaled deeply, taking the scent of him with me. The apartment had started to lose its scent with him being gone for so long. I was beyond eager for the apartment to smell like us again.

“I think those podcasts are giving you wild ideas.” 

“They would never find your body Dr.Reid.” I teased, poking gently at his side making him squirm in my grip. Another round of laughter filled the small space, it was only when it died down that I realized my podcast was still running in the background. 

“Alexa, stop,” I shouted into the air stopping the podcast. “The neighbor did it.” I said with coincidence knowing that my answer was correct this time. Spencer let out a belt of laughter, nodding his head, a big grin on his face. 

I pulled back from Spencer taking in his features for the first time. He looked tired, his eye bags had doubled creating a skunk in effect. I could see the trouble in his eyes, the case was hard. It killed me to see him after a hard case, he looked more and more defeated after each one. However, it was what he loved doing and my job wasn’t to erase the trauma of his job, but to ease him back into daily life. I thumbed his eye bags lazily, a pout taking over my face. 

“You wanna take a shower and I’ll start us some dinner.” I asked gently. Not wanting to completely destroy the quiet we created. He nodded slightly looking younger than ever. I quickly pulled him back into me taking all of his weight. “I love you bub.” His hair felt silky against my fingertips as I disentangled the curls. 

“Love you too.” He mumbled, his heated breath warming my skin. I waited a few comfortable minutes rocking our conjoined bodies in the cozy silence of our kitchen, I took a deep breath and said what was on my mind. 

“You wanna talk about it?”

I don’t ever ask Spencer for the details of his cases. He either goes into a tangent without prompting or doesn’t feel like talking about it. I used to think that talking to Spencer about his job would be like listening to my murder podcasts. It honestly was one of the things I was excited for, but I soon found out it’s nothing like that.

When Spencer spoke of cases it was personal. He felt every death that was caused and saw every killing through the eyes of monsters. He held so much emotion in his voice when he spoke of the victims, that I often can’t help but cry. How a person can hold that much pain and still continue to do it everyday, is beside me. 

He shook his head, squeezing my torso before finally pulling back and placing a soft kiss to my lips. 

I continued the dishes, washing the last few. I left the podcast off, listening instead to the shower from down the hall. I scrubbed off the last of the grime before starting the oven. A simple dinner was always best in these situations. I pulled out a pre-made chicken pot pie from the freezer and placed it in the oven. 

As I moved to dry and put away the dishes while waiting for pie to finish. Spencer emerged from the bathroom freshly bathed. He wore a thin gray shirt paired with some soft looking sweatpants. My upper lip jutted out automatically. God I love him. 

“Feel better?” I kept my voice low, not wanting to startle any peace that the shower might have brought him. He nodded slowly. 

“What did you cook?”

“A chicken pot pie, I hope that’s okay.” 

“It’s perfect.” He smiled and returned to my arms, kissing my neck once before tucking his head into my neck. The edge of his wet hair scraped against my skin in an uncomfortable way, yet I only moved enough to rub circles into his back. 

A loud beep emitted from the oven caused me to jump in Spencer's arms. He let out a small chuckle. 

“Pick us something to watch and I’ll plate us some food.” I hummed turning my back to him. I heard him walking towards the living room as I bent to retrieve the hot food. 

Spencer sat criss cross on the couch, Les Enfants du Paradis was displayed on the TV. I handed him the steaming bowl and sat down, sitting close enough for our knees to knock together. I have no idea what Les Enfants du Paradis was, but I would watch literally anything he wanted as long as he was here. 

“It’s in French, but I figured I could whisper the translations to you while we watch. Or I could pick something else?” 

“No! This is perfect Spence. I love it when you translate, you tell the story better.” He let out a little blush highlighting his previous slap mark. I bit my lip and winced slightly, “How’s your face?” 

He touched the spot faintly, he didn’t wince when his fingers made contact which was a good sign. However, I have an inkling that a small bruise would form in the center of the slap which was going to be a fun story to tell his colleagues Monday. 

“I’ve had worse, but you wield a lot of power with a cheap piece of plastic.”

“I am professionally trained in the art of spatula wielding Spence, don’t try that at home.” I stared at him, my face blank before a blast of laughter came out of both of us. One can only be so serious when you are talking about slapping people in the face with kitchen utensils. 

Spencer started up the movie, and we remained there for the rest of the evening. Laughter and dramatic sighs followed by even more dramatic translations from Spencer. At some point he went so off script that even I could tell his story was bullshit. I didn’t call him out though just allowed him to spit nonsense, I would let him create fake French stories until he was blue in the face if that meant we got to stay in this happy bubble forever. 

[autumnsart22]

First time in College: Suna x reader

College AU with the Haikyuu boys: Suna Rintarou x fem reader 🤤

Let me know if you want part 2 :)

He is literally so fine I--

Art creds go to agatha123naruto

God, you should never have agreed to do this. Your laptop was calling you, Attack on Titan already pulled up and ready to watch...and yet here you were, shifting uncomfortably in a tight crop top and booty shorts your roommate had provided you with. You crossed your arms over your stomach, trying to hide yourself, but you only succeeded in pushing your tits up. 

“Hey, relax, it’s just a party.” Kiyoko smiled softly from her side of the room, applying some chapstick and holding a pair of sneakers. 

“Ugh,” you rolled your eyes. Yes, it was just a party...but it was also the first college party you were going to be attending. And a frat party at that. Ugh. 

The first few months of college had been perfectly well off without them, and you weren’t exactly sure why Kiyoko had been able to convince you to come along this time. Maybe you had felt a little like you were missing out when your roommate would come back giggling and tipsy late into the night every weekend, and maybe you wanted to put a bit more effort into socializing. You had friends, but not a huge group--which was fine. But also, college was a time to try new things...even if that meant frat parties. 

“Don’t worry, you’ll probably know some people. And if not, you can just stick with me.” Kiyoko finished putting on her shoes, heading towards the door. “We’ll get drinks as soon as possible.” 

You sighed, resigning yourself as you followed her out the door. 

The party was just as bad as you expected. It was packed in the house, the lights dimmed, flashing, and confusing as people pushed from all sides. You almost spilled your third drink as you searched for Kiyoko, pretty much impossible in the darkness. You had lost her a little while ago when she had started talking to a guy named Tanaka, and now she seemed to be missing. 

“OI!” You looked up to see a clearly wasted, shirtless guy standing on the table, a bottle of beer in his hand. He had blonde hair with a dark undercut, and you were pretty sure you recognized him as one of the frat guys...maybe Atsumu? You didn’t know him well enough to be sure. “We’re putting on a movie, if you fuckheads want to join,” Asumu yelled, practically falling off the table. 

Maybe Kiyoko was with them watching a movie. 

The crowd swallowed you up again as you headed towards where Atsumu had disappeared, but you managed to push your way into the living room. There were four couches stuffed into the wide space, but every seat was taken, including spots on the floor. 

You scanned the room for Kiyoko’s hair, but yet again, no such luck. The projector was set up to play a horror movie, and your stomach clenched unpleasantly as you realized what it was. You really, really hated horror movies--did they seriously have to pick this to watch?

You bit your lip, but the lights were dimming and you had to stop standing awkwardly off to the side. You spotted the arm of one of the couches that was free, but that same couch was also filled with frat guys with girls in their laps. Would I be weird for taking a spot next to them? Would they be ok with that? 

Shit, calm down. This isn’t high school, and I’m a bad bitch. Also, I’m sexy as fuck. I got this. 

Right. You straightened your shoulders and marched across the room, dodging random girls sprawled across the floor mixed with bongs and beer bottles. You barely even glanced at the occupants of the couch as you settled precariously on the arm, as far from them as possible as the movie began to play. 

Almost immediately, your heart was racing and fingers digging into the cushions, and you wanted to run from the room. Why, why, why had you done this to yourself? You could have just turned and left the living room to begin with. Fuck trying new things. 

You were considering how you’d make a subtle escape when a drunken kid with bright orange hair slammed into your shoulder as he tried to get past, causing you to lose your balance on the arm of the couch and fall directly into the lap of one of the guys to your right. 

For a moment, you were too stunned to move, and you could only stare up at the equally surprised face of one of the frat boys. He had dark brown hair and yellow eyes, the whites tinted red; presumably from the joint in his hand. The smell of weed rolled off him, and you were pretty sure that it wasn’t his first one. 

“Oh-Oh my god I’m so sorry,” you gasped, rolling awkwardly off him onto the floor. “I didn’t mean to--I mean--um--” 

“Look what you’ve done Suna.” You glanced over to see the same shirtless guy from before, the one you assumed was Atsumu. “You scare off all the girls.” 

The lap guy, Suna, just shrugged and took another hit. 

“No, that’s not...” you tried, your halfway drunken brain desperately trying to calm down. “I fell on him.” 

Atsumu grinned at you. “It’s ok, you don’t have to bother with him. He’s a piece of shit anyway.” 

“I didn’t say--”

“What, so you want to sit on his lap?” 

“What????” How was this conversation even happening? You wanted to punch Atsumu in the face, and you also wanted to sprint from the building and never show your face to the light of day again. 

Unfortunately, now Suna was looking at you, as were the other frat boys sitting on the couch and the girls on their laps. “I mean,” you cleared your throat. “I- I guess.” 

Idiot. IDIOT. 

“Ah nice. You see Suna, that’s how you get girls--”

“Fuck off, Atsumu. Stop pressuring her.” Suna glared at him, and you let out a breath...until his yellow eyes turned to you, and your lungs hitched yet again. “You can if you want, but we’re holding up the movie.” 

He was right; someone had paused the movie since Atsumu was standing right in front of the projector, which meant everyone was waiting on you. 

“Are you ok with that?” You asked as you stood up, trying to sound confident and bored. 

Suna’s eyes lazily trailed down and up, and he shrugged. “Whatever.” 

Ouch. “Uh, right.” 

He leaned back on the couch, his legs sprawled wide to give you room between them, and your heart began to pound. Jesus Christ. 

You awkwardly sat down, trying to give him space in the very limited area, but his thighs were still pressed tight up against your ass. 

The movie started again, and almost immediately every muscle in your body tensed up. At the first jump scare, you flinched so hard that you elbowed Suna’s knee, making him grunt in pain. 

“S-sorry,” you whispered, hands shaking a little. 

He shifted, leaning forward so you could feel the heat from his chest inches away. “Hey, are you good?” 

“Um, yeah. I just really hate horror mov--” The serial killer stepped out from behind the door and you gasped, turning your face away. 

Suddenly, you felt Suna’s hands pressing against your ears, blocking out the creepy music and the sound of people getting murdered in front of you. You looked up at him in surprise, and he shrugged, leaning even closer. 

“Horror movies are worse with sound,” he said in your ear so you could hear him. 

“Thanks,” you murmured, and he smirked. 

“You can relax. You’re so tense, it’s freaking me out.” 

You let out a breath, forcing your muscles to unclench. It was more comfortable, but it also meant that you were now flat against Suna’s chest, his hands still on your ears. 

You tried watching like that for a while, and it was better, but in the end you decided that sound or not--horror movies weren’t your thing. You ended up hiding your face in Suna’s shoulder, until you realized what you were doing and quickly jerked back.

“Oh sorry, I didn’t mean to get in your personal space--”

“It’s fine. Be quiet.” He wrapped his arms around your waist, tucking you against his chest so you could easily bury your face in his shoulder. He smelled nice, mostly of pot, but with undertones of mint and almond or something. 

As the movie continued, he turned his head to press his lips against your ear. “Want me to explain what’s going on?” 

“Oh...okay.”

“So basically...ugh what is even happening.” You smiled a little at his annoyance. “So this idiot girl just went into the house when clearly she shouldn’t have, aaaand there’s the murderer. Damn she’s dumb. Honestly he’s kind of dumb too, why is he running with a knife? That’s a safety hazard.” 

You snorted, feeling a large part of your fear drain out of you at his stupid narration. 

“This is literal shit,” he muttered. “How does this scare you?” 

You huffed, annoyed at his condescending tone. “I don’t know, just the jump scares, and the creepy lead up, and the music...I just hate it.” 

“Do you want to leave? You don’t have to watch, you know” 

“I…” I clenched your fists, suddenly determined. “No. I can make it through.” 

“Why…? You’re literally not even watching.” 

“Just shut up. I’m facing my fears.” 

He laughed under his breath, and you felt it in his chest. “How admirable.” 

He patted your head, taking another hit of the joint, which was practically gone. “Want some of this?” He gestured to it. 

“Oh, sure. That’s fine?” 

“I wouldn’t have offered it if it wasn’t.” “Right...” You took the joint from him and took a deep hit, and then another, just needing to relax. It didn’t stop you from almost jumping out of your skin when the murderer suddenly pushed someone down the stairs. 

Suna smirked at your terror, and you glared at him. “This isn’t funny!” 

“Kind of is.” 

It took another twenty minutes, but then finally the film was over, the lights were turned back on, and you were facing Suna again. 

“Thanks for doing that,” you said, a blush creeping up your cheeks as you met his pretty eyes. 

He shrugged. “Sure.” 

“Well, uh. I should probably go. Maybe I’ll see you around.” 

“Wait, hold up--”

You didn’t wait for his response as you rolled off his lap, awkwardly waving, before practically running from the room. 

You found Kiyoko sitting on the couch with your friends Suga and Daichi, and you must have looked pretty panicked because she didn’t protest when you dragged her from the frat house.

“So...how was it for you?” She asked imploringly as we made our way back to our dorm. 

“Um….” You weren’t sure how to answer.

Part 2

[luckydicekirby]

*predicatable* the daudsider fic where daud gets killed by hc corvo...

LMAO honestly thank you i love talking about this fic…the original idea behind this was realizing that if Corvo kills Daud at the end of Brigmore Witches, it’s by cutting his throat. And that’s how the Outsider died, so obviously they should talk about it! Weirdly this ended up being kind of an afterthought in the fic itself, which is mostly just Daud being gay and sad, as is his legal right. I guess this is the only time I’ve really written Daud POV. Or actually Daud at all? I tend to mention him a lot in fics as a rhetorical device but he never really shows up, oops. 

wrapped around your ankles over the waterfall, for anyone else playing along at home!

Never let it be said that Corvo Attano doesn’t know how to handle a knife. He makes it quick. Daud hardly feels the cut as it crosses his throat. He’s already fading when Corvo tosses him over the side of the building. He doesn’t feel himself hit the ground.

There is like, something subtly wrong with the rhythm of this paragraph, it reads a little flat? Two of these sentences need to be combined and then I think it would be fine. Riveting commentary I know.

When Daud contemplated death—a common enough way to kill time, for an assassin—he liked to think it might bring him peace. Foolish, to expect that peace was something he could ever have.

Daud, I think maybe thinking about dying all the time is a YOU thing.

He opens his eyes. He’s lying on stone. The Outsider peers down at him, and around them the Void is no different than it’s ever been, gray and cool and harsh.

“It was a very pretty speech,” he says. “But Corvo Attano heard enough pretty words for a lifetime when he lived in Dunwall Tower. He spent his days learning that they only ever hid viciousness and cruelty, knives poorly sheathed. The Loyalists toasted him eloquently before they poured poison down his throat. Why should he have believed yours to be any different?”

I leaned more into like, shrine-style speeches than I usually do in the Outsider’s dialogue here, probably because that kind of dialogue makes him sound like an asshole. It’s SO fun to write. 

Daud sits up and presses a hand to his neck, the place where Corvo’s knife cleaved his skin in two. His hand comes away bloody. It looks almost black in the gloom of the Void.

“You saved me,” he says, voice shredded to pieces, and the Outsider laughs.

God the kind of implied hopefulness of this is really crushing, huh.

“I don’t take sides,” he says. The lying bastard. The moment Corvo Attano was Marked, the moment the Outsider decided he was special, the outcome of this day was decided. “You’re dying, Daud, your life slipping out from between your fingers. A fitting end for a man who spent his life spilling a river of blood. I wonder what you’ll do with these final moments. Curse my name?”

“Fuck you.”

Walked right into that one my dude. Also “I don’t take sides” NEVER stops being funny unfortunately. And ‘spilling a river of blood’ I think is just straight up from one high chaos Outsider shrine speech or another.

“Always so predictable,” the Outsider muses, and Daud hates him, hates himself, hates the sick curdling feeling he always gets in his gut when the Outsider sounds disappointed. Sounds bored. The same sickness that stayed with him for fifteen years while the Outsider ignored him, until Daud blundered his way into Corvo Attano’s life and suddenly became interesting again. 

That’s being in love, Daud. Sorry, in your case it’s terminal!

“You begged him for your life. I admit, Daud, that surprised me. And Corvo refused to give it to you. Your one last request denied. How does that feel, Daud? Like justice? Like redemption?”

And this is like, endgame narration style dialogue. Good times.

It feels like blood sliding through Daud’s fingers, spilling down his coat. Dozens of people have bled on this coat. Jessamine Kaldwin did. And now Daud will be the last. “It doesn’t matter. It’s done.”

He wants it to be done. He wants the peace he knows he doesn’t deserve, but even now the Outsider won’t leave him alone, staring at him with his too dark eyes. It itches like bloodflies under his skin, the Outsider’s eyes on him, and yet Daud has never been able to hate it the way he should. He’s always craved it, as if he’s no better than the likes of Vera Moray, crooning to her rats about the black-eyed boy who will abandon her. Who abandons everyone, in time.

On the bright side, number of times Daud has made a guy into soup is still zero, so you’re still doing okay.

Corvo will feel like this one day. The thought should console Daud. It doesn’t.

“Of course it matters, Daud,” says the Outsider. He kneels down beside him and presses his hand against his throat, under Daud’s own. It’s cold, shocking enough that Daud starts, and the bastard laughs at that too. The Outsider has never touched him before. He would remember. “History is determined by men like Corvo Attano. By the men who kill Empresses and the men who take revenge. He could have let you live. He almost did. That future still hangs in the balance. A fish hooked but fighting against it. Soon enough it will have swum away.”

I love a good weird Outsider metaphor.

“So let me go,” Daud says.

The Outsider runs his thumb along the edges of Daud’s wound. It should hurt. It does hurt. Daud doesn’t try to move away. “My throat was cut, once,” he says. “The day that I was made what I am. It’s a terrible way to die. I can’t remember how I felt about it. I was going to do what you did. I was going to beg for my life. But they never gave me the chance.”

He must be telling the truth. This close, Daud can see the scar.

See I like, wrote the bit about them dying the same way and then all the subsequent dialogue I wanted to write was like, unrelated depressing gay bullshit, so I just went with that. I do like “I can’t remember how I felt about it”, it gets at everything that’s so fucked up about the Outsider’s like, whole existence. The most fun way to write the Outsider imo is just as a dude who fundamentally does not understand the human experience of anything, including his own literal human experiences.

The Outsider draws his hand back, covered now in Daud’s blood. Daud knows precisely how much blood the human body can hold, and he’s bled too much for anywhere but the Void.

I was like what am I talking about, is knowing about blood anatomy and assassin thing, but actually I think this is a joke (“joke”) about him having gone to college. 

“What would you have said?” Daud asks. He can’t look away from the Outsider’s hand.

The Outsider ignores him. He takes Daud’s jaw in his hand, smearing blood across his cheekbone, and tilts it to the side. He speaks into Daud’s ear. “Was it all my fault, Daud? Whispering in your ear, making you think you were somehow important?”

Does the Outsider ignore this question because he’s a bitch or because I couldn’t think of an answer? Who can say! 

Also the Outsider actually literally whispering in his ear is the kind of dramatic bullshit I fully believe he would do.

“You’re such a little shit,” Daud growls, and he has both hands fisted in the Outsider’s coat before he can think, before he can remember all the reasons that he has never dared touch the Outsider, no matter how much he loathes him.

“loathes” lol ok

The Outsider watches him, and does not let him go. They would be breathing the same air, if either of them were breathing anymore. “With my Mark, you thought you were going to change things. And you have.”

I still go back and forth about whether Mark/Marked should be capitalized. This ambiguity is the Outsider’s greatest crime.

I can no longer remember if there’s any canon basis for Daud ever having wanted to change the world for the better; it is my sacred duty to assume that everyone’s a sad former idealist though.

“From where I stand, the world looks exactly the same.”

“You killed an Empress, and saved her daughter. History peeled away from the curve of your blade like skin from a knife. I gave you what you wanted, Daud: the power to make your own regrets.”

Oh god what a gross metaphor. I like it a lot but also, yikes.

The Outsider slides his grip from Daud’s jaw back to his hair, and he yanks his head back. Daud chokes on nothing. He can feel blood dripping down his throat, can taste it on the back of his tongue. He clenches his fingers, and finds them too weak to hold onto the Outsider’s coat any longer.

Oh sorry I forgot the other reason I wrote this fic, “being kinda horny for people getting their throat cut” apparently. Like this blocking is so gross but, unfortunately.

“Are you going to let me die?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” The Outsider tilts his head. He looks curious. “Death made me what I am. I wonder what it would make of you.”

“A corpse,” Daud tells him.

“Daud,” says the Outsider, still so fucking disappointed. “Your problem has always been that you lack a grander vision.”

“Dead is dead.”

“Not when it happened to me.”

“I saw what was in Attano’s coat. If you make me into a thing like you did to the Empress—”

“If I wanted to cut out your heart, you would sit still and let me,” the Outsider says. “You can try to hide it with all the anger in the world, Daud, but you would do anything for me.” His voice is dispassionate, as if he were not filleting Daud to the very bone with his words.

I remember that I added this line in while editing, because Ruby got mad at me about it. “If I wanted to cut out your heart, you would let me” IS the most sarahcore thing I’ve ever written probably. Play to your strengths I guess!

Also can you imagine like, Daud style heart lines. Just miserable.

“A word from me after fifteen years, and you picked yourself up out of your guilt and grief to scour Dunwall from end to end. You didn’t have to kill Delilah to save Emily Kaldwin. You killed her because you were jealous. You thought you could kill Corvo too. But after you’d already murdered his dear Jessamine, you couldn’t bring yourself to do it.”

“Shut up,” Daud says. A rasp from his ruined throat.

The Outsider kisses him, cold lips and colder tongue, and Daud makes the same noise people make when he slides a knife between their ribs.

I am pretty happy with how the tone of this fic is basically ‘getting stabbed but in a sexy way except you still very much got stabbed’. Seems right for the ship!

There’s blood on the Outsider’s mouth when he lets Daud go. Daud wants to kiss him again more than he wants to live.

God what a depressing line. I like it a lot but hey Daud? You good???

“You should let me die. You should give Attano what he wants.”

“But I am,” the Outsider says. He touches Daud’s cheek, like the parody of a lover. “Corvo wanted his revenge. But more than that, he wants to be the kind of man above needing it. The kind of man who can raise his daughter well, and teach her to be kind, and good, and all the things that Empresses should be.”

Of course. Daud bleeding out before him, and it’s all about Corvo fucking Attano. “So you’re going to save me for Attano’s sake.”

Daud is miserable and jealous: the fic.

“I told you,” the Outsider says, eyes more pitiless than the sea. “I haven’t decided yet.”

This line…is really good. I love a good snappy ending line and this is probably the best one I’ve ever gotten, tbh. nailed it past sarah! there’s also like, no universe where this fic ends in a less weird and ambiguous way, because like frankly I can’t even figure out what that would be. Like where do you go from here. Nowhere, you live in this terrible moment forever!

Anyway, sorry that the only daudsider fic I’ve ever written is mega depressing and half about the Outsider also being in love with Corvo, but he’s VERY mean to Daud so surely that makes up for it!

[welcometothepenumbra]

JUNO STEEL AND THE STOLEN CITY (PART ONE)

SOUND: RAIN. TRAIN ARRIVES, CREAKS TO A STOP. DOOR CLANKS OPEN.

CONDUCTOR: Ah, good evening, Traveler. And welcome… to The Penumbra. Take your seat, please, take your seat.

MUSIC: STARTS.

SOUND: DOOR CLANKS SHUT.

The junction lies just ahead, Traveler. If you’ll allow me just a moment.

SOUND: TRAIN WHISTLE.

(CHUCKLES) Well, next stop? Hyperion City.

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING.

A month is a very long time to stake out, but Detective Steel is nothing if not dedicated to his job. And so he sits on a rooftop, day after day, watching the Museum of Colonized History, waiting to see the gangster who is supposed to pay for a killing here, and absolutely nothing has happened.

Until today. Suddenly, the month of quiet has given way, and threats old and new are jumping out of every shadow. But when the metaphorical and literal Martian rain are both 90% acid, Detective Steel had better find cover, and quickly.

SOUND: TRAIN BRAKES. DOOR CLANKS OPEN, RAIN.

Our next stop: Juno Steel and the Stolen City.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

MUSIC: STARTS.

JUNO (NARRATOR): If you get up early enough and you catch it in just the right light, Hyperion City can be sorta beautiful. The billboards backlit by the early morning light, the dew-spackled trashcans, the sunrise shadows cast by highscrapers and floating mansions… it’s really somethin’. And every time I see it I wish I was dead.

My name’s Juno Steel. I’m a private eye, and I usually don’t see any side of the city that comes earlier than noon, but, lately I’ve been changing things up. Seeing a lot of sunrises. Drinking a lot of coffee. Saying no to old habits like sleep and… no, pretty much just sleep.

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

RAMSES O’FLAHERTY (FROM COMMS): Juno. Status report.

JUNO: Oh, hey Ramses, it’s… been a big three hours since four AM, got some real exciting stuff to catch you up on.

RAMSES: Glad to hear it. You’ve only been staking out for, what? A month? (CHUCKLES)

JUNO (NARRATOR): I’d been following a lead for weeks on someone who was trying to sabotage Ramses O’Flaherty. And it all pointed here: the Museum of Colonized History, so far on the outskirts of Hyperion City that the building’s roof had to be rounded just to fit on the inside of the Dome. Even here, the buildings were jammed tight enough together you didn’t have room to breathe – and it was at this museum, under the cover of all that sprawl, where I’d supposedly catch a one-eared woman doing some shady business. Which you’d think would be pretty exciting. It sounds exciting, doesn’t it? But what it actually translates to is sitting on a rooftop from early morning to late night, watching a museum all day, every day, until you get so bored you wonder how hard you’d have to pull to take your toes off.

MUSIC: ENDS.

RAMSES: Are you listening? Do I need to get you a cybernetic ear to go along with that eye? I asked if you’d seen any sign of Yasmin Swift’s employer yet.

JUNO: Nope. But my foot fell asleep and I’m bored out of my goddamn mind. That’s the status report. Now entertain me before I take the ‘stir’ out of ‘stir crazy.’

RAMSES: Entertain you? Well, I suppose I’m already the city’s clown. Why not be Juno Steel’s, too?

JUNO: Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.

RAMSES: Not that bad. Would you like me to read this headline to you? Molly Chung, Uptown Bulletin: “Opinion: Ramses O’Flaherty’s Campaign Is As Old And Stale As He Is.”

JUNO: That’s just one—

RAMSES: Hyperion Chronicle: “Study: Pilot Pereyra’s Increased Funding to HCPD Doubles Prison Population, Halves Crime Rate.” That study is just so incredibly inaccurate, by the way. The Beacon: “Treasurer Insists O’Flaherty’s Budget Won’t Balance, Quote, ‘No Matter What Math Says.’” Elysium Times—

JUNO: Okay, okay, so it’s pretty bad. (SIGHS) Explains how Pilot won so many damn elections, anyway. Takes a lot of skill to smear your opponent without getting your hands dirty.

RAMSES: Oh, their strategy is a lot more impressive than that. Everyone knows Pilot’s a crook – but they’ve changed the conversation so that’s a plus. If we’re going to live in a city full of cutthroats, the reasoning goes, we should at least have a cutthroat on our side, too. That’s been their platform for years: the world doesn’t play fair, so why should we?

JUNO: Well, at least nobody’s tried to kill you lately.

RAMSES: Always be grateful for the little things, yes. I wouldn’t rest on those laurels just yet, though – whoever this is, if they’re after my campaign and not just me, their biggest strike will come at the eleventh hour. They still have four days before the election.

JUNO: Guess that means I don’t get to leave this goddamn roof, then. Which is fine, but I guess I just didn’t know doing good would look so much like doing nothing.

RAMSES: Juno…

Nevermind. Your physicals say your knife wound is healing. Are you, ehm… making progress in your physical therapy? They must have given you stretches, or something like that?

JUNO: Yeah, well… doesn’t mean I do ‘em.

RAMSES: You should. It’s not like you have anything better to do up there. You could at least make use of the care I pay for. I have to protect my investment.

JUNO: Yeah, I read about that. The cyber-eye is hooked up to my nervous system, so if my brain function stops, it stops. That’s a lot of creds down the drain.

RAMSES: I didn’t mean the Theia.

We’ve been working together for some time now, Juno. I truly hope that– by which I mean, I hope you don’t think that I merely think of you as… uh, well…

JUNO: Wait, Ramses – hold that thought.

RAMSES: Oh, thank God.

JUNO: I see someone.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

Down in the alley by the museum… the woman with one ear! The Piranha.

JUNO (NARRATOR): She’d gotten away from me once, and I wasn’t gonna forget that. The Piranha, who’d nearly killed Maia King. The Piranha, who was all sharp teeth and a need to bite. If she was behind this, I thought, that would explain the methods used to go after Ramses so far. Roasting roller-coasters and killer criminal consultants seemed like the right kind of over-the-top from the mind that brought you the cat-bomb.

It took everything I had in me not to go down and get her right then. But sometimes you need bait. And sometimes that means leaving a piranha on the line in hopes you’ll catch a whale.

RAMSES: Well? What’s she doing?

JUNO: Just waiting around, it looks like, but… why?

SOUND: CAR DRIVES UP.

Hang on, a car just pulled up. Someone’s leaning out, it’s…

Uh… uh, Ramses?

RAMSES: Juno.

JUNO: You’re not gonna believe this.

RAMSES: You and your buildups. This had better be worth it.

JUNO: It’s Mayor Pereyra.

SOUND: DISTANT CAR DOOR CLOSES, FOOTSTEPS.

Mayor Pilot Pereyra is doing back-alley business with a killer, and I caught them red-handed.

RAMSES: Well. That was worth it.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Pilot Pereyra, Mayor of Hyperion City for four years running, was famous for their stiletto heels. They had a new pair in a new hideous color every week, and Pilot made killings off of ‘em. Both in the literal sense – just ask Sal Barone, found floating in Mars’s orbit with two of Pilot’s heels jammed into his throat – and in the financial sense – like how for a year after, every crime boss in Hyperion paid Pilot hand over fist for a pair like the one that killed Barone. Because Pilot Pereyra didn’t just organize crime: as mayor, they defined it. And if this was the whale the Piranha was gonna bring in… hell, maybe her getting away had been a good thing after all.

RAMSES: You’ve undergone the modifications to the Theia’s Rec Mode, haven’t you?

JUNO: ‘Course I have. I skipped physical therapy last week to do it. Theia, Rec Mode.

THEIA: Rec mode. Activated. Two hours of video storage. Remaining.

JUNO: That’s more like it!

THEIA: Error: Wireless uplink not found. Cannot transmit footage—

JUNO: What kind of low-rent eye did you get me, O’Flaherty?

THEIA: —Please connect to a physical uplink.

RAMSES: One day you’ll think of the Theia like your first car, Juno: all these quirks will just be part of its character. You’ll connect to a physical uplink later.

JUNO: And where the hell does that go?

THEIA: Caution: you don’t want to know.

JUNO: Fine, fine! Just zoom in, already.

THEIA: Zooming in.

SOUND: MECHANICAL WHIR.

JUNO: Damn it, they’re not even looking at each other. It’s like a junior high dance down there. If I could just hear what they’re saying…

THEIA: Suggestion: would you like me to activate. Lip reading protocol?

JUNO: Uhhh… s-sure… if you got a minute.

THEIA: Lip reading protocol. Activated.

SOUND: FUTURISTIC TECH-Y NOISES.

Compiling approximations of voices based on throat movement, infrared analysis, and audio recordings on public record.

SOUND: DING.

Application complete. You’re welcome.

SOUND: BEEP.

PILOT PEREYRA: Interested is definitely one word for it. It’s not every day that an employee tries to become a business partner. So. How much is it going to cost for that information to become my personal property?

PIRANHA: Oh, info’s been free for years, Mayor Pereyra. Information proliferates, see? Doubles, triples, and that don’t cost a dime. So the price ain’t on the info: that’s a gift. The price is on me applying that info for you, and that, well, that’s gonna cost a little more than you got on hand, I’m thinking.

PEREYRA: You’d be surprised how much I can get how quickly.

PIRANHA: (CHUCKLES) This is worth more. Used right, this little legend could be worth more than the whole damn city. And it could fit just right into your next big move. I just want to get in on the ground floor, see? Nothing wrong with that.

PEREYRA: (LAUGHING) Oh, buddy, I think you’re a little confused about what’s going on here.

JUNO: Whoa. Ramses, Mayor Pereyra just pulled a gun on her I– I think. It’s just a bulge in their coat, but… how long has that been there?

Uh-oh.

PEREYRA: What is it now?

JUNO: Theia, zoom in.

SOUND: MECHANICAL WHIR.

Big guy, brown jacket, standing under a lamppost. I think he might be watching me.

RAMSES: Of course. It makes sense that Pilot would have someone covering them.

JUNO: Well, they’ll have to wait. I still don’t have what I need.

RAMSES: Juno…

JUNO: Theia, lip reading again.

SOUND: BEEP.

PEREYRA: The payment’s a gift. Either you’re stepping away from this, or I’m pushing you off. Up to you, really.

PIRANHA: Oh, scary Mayor Pereyra, please don’t. (LAUGHS) I know you like to make inconvenient people disappear. That’s why I’ve made myself as convenient as possible. A luxury you can’t live without, see? Like air conditioning. Or those grocery carts that push themselves. (LAUGHS)

PEREYRA: Just remember who works for who, okay? I’ve got the entire HCPD in my pocket, and that means, I know how often little administrative mistakes happen. Real stupid things, like, uh, putting someone in solitary and losing their papers. Shuffling someone into the life-sentence pile when you meant to put them in the parking-ticket pile. Little stuff.

PIRANHA: I get it. Play nice or get off the court. Easy enough.

So what’s the plan? When do we do the job?

PEREYRA: Preparations are all set. You’ll be in there. Midnight.

JUNO: Midnight tonight?! …Ramses, they’re going to hit the Museum of Colonized history tonight!

…Ramses?

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

THEIA: Caution: your comms has been. Disconnected.

JUNO: What?!

THEIA: Transmission interference detected.

JUNO: You’ve gotta be—

…kidding me.

JUNO (NARRATOR): There was another person on the roof with me. They were over by the fire escape I’d used to climb up here hours ago. For a second all I could do was wonder how the hell they’d gotten up from the street so fast… until I realized it wasn’t the same person I saw down there. Brown coat, sure, but where the other was broad-shouldered and looked like somebody I might want to buy me a drink or two, this one was thinner, flightier, and more nervous. They were making a big point of not looking at me, scraping something off one shoe with the other, checking their watch, looking at the dome flickering overhead, trying to look… casual? I think? There was a bulge in their coat that might’ve been a comms jammer. Or a gun. Or a whole lot of other unpleasant things.

THEIA: Target is fifty feet away. Recommended course of action: blaster fire.

JUNO: You got real chatty after that update.

THEIA: Target. Approaching.

JUNO: I’m not gonna shoot ‘em, alright? Just keep translating what Pereyra’s saying. They’re getting to the good part and then I can get out of here.

SOUND: BEEP.

PEREYRA: All security in there’s got a panic button for instant lockdown, but, so long as you don’t get seen, there’s nothing wrong with a late-night visit to the museum.

So you’ve got the codex, huh? How many square miles does that thing cover?

PIRANHA: The whole city. (CHUCKLES) That’s a lot of information, Pilot. If we get it.

PEREYRA: When we get it. You have to visualize. You have to believe.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I couldn’t help it – hearing those footsteps, feeling my heart race: I glanced over my shoulder.

THEIA: Target is fifteen feet away.

JUNO (NARRATOR): The distance was bad – but it wasn’t the distance that made my blood run cold. It was what I saw on their chest as they pulled their lapel back.

THEIA: Firearm detected.

JUNO (NARRATOR): No, wasn’t that either. It was the thing right underneath the gun: a badge, with the letters HCPD shining on it.

And that was bad. Because to the dirty cops in the HCPD – so, most of ‘em – Pilot Pereyra was their ringleader. If I threatened Pilot, the cops wouldn’t bother with a trial. They’d pretty much go straight to the chair. Not the electric one, just one they’d shoot me in.

The cop had stopped pretending not to see me now. They pulled the gun.

VOICE: Freeze!

THEIA: Calculating distance to next rooftop.

VOICE: If you’re waiting for backup, you’re not gonna get it. I have this area checked. You’re alone.

JUNO: Nope, not waiting for backup.

THEIA: Next rooftop is within. Jumping distance.

JUNO: Just stalling on this next part, ‘cause I’m gonna hate it. Bye!

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

VOICE: Hey! Get back here! I said freeze!

THEIA: For optimal timing, jump in three… two… one…

JUNO: (SCREAMS)

SOUND: THUD.

JUNO (NARRATOR): It was a beautiful flight. It was a beautiful landing. And, just to finish the set: the cop made a beautiful shot.

SOUND: BLASTER SHOT.

JUNO: (GRUNTS)

VOICE: (DISTANT, FADING) Crazy idiot, jumping that far – don’t move! Not that you can! Oh, what a day, what a day, get a call from my landlord, now this…

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

SOUND: SLAP.

VOICE: Wake up.

I said wake up.

SOUND: SLAP. DISTANT MUSIC.

JUNO: Wow, this alarm is annoying. You mind hitting snooze for me?

SOUND: SLAP.

Ow! Ow, okay, I’m up.

VOICE: About time. And if you want to stay awake, you’ll tell me what you know.

JUNO: I… don’t want to stay awake – that’s kind of what I just said.

VOICE: What? Don’t question my threats!

SOUND: SLAP.

JUNO: Wow, you got a lot of slaps in you, huh? This pretty much your whole playbook for interrogations, or can I expect some surprises?

VOICE: You want surprises, huh? Hm, I’ll get you some surprises…

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I wanted them off me for a second so I could get my bearings. I was tied to a chair in a room with concrete walls, cold, damp air, tools hanging from hooks across from me. My first thought was medieval torture chamber. My correct thought, a few seconds later, was suburban basement.

When the cop was on their way back, I got a look at the name on their uniform. “L-T L-O-O,” it said. Lieutenant Loo. Never heard of ‘em.

SOUND: DISTANT, MUFFLED VOICES.

VOICE (LOO): So, now that I’m prepared… do I have to send a laser through your head, or are you going to tell me what I want to hear?

JUNO: You’re a natural-born leader and that eyeshadow looks great on you.

LOO: What?

JUNO: Do you all wear coats like that? Yours looks a little nicer than your buddy’s on the street, but I—

LOO: Coats? My buddy on the str– what are you talking about?

JUNO: If you don’t know? Nothin’.

LOO: But—

JUNO: So what were you doing on that roof, anyway? Funny place to take a walk.

LOO: I was gonna ask you the same thing.

JUNO: Not very original of you.

LOO: It was my plan first!

You’re the one tied to the chair! Why am I answering the questions?

JUNO: I don’t know. Why are you?

LOO: Low self-esteem and a natural tendency to follow orders– oh, damn it! (GROANS) Look. I know you were watching Mayor Pereyra. What did you see?

JUNO: No idea what you’re talking about.

SOUND: SLAP.

Ow! Slaps? Again? You’re holding a gun!

LOO: Shut up! Tell me what you saw!

SOUND: SLAP.

JUNO: Ow, quit it!

LOO: Not til you tell me what you…

That looks like a cybernetic eye. You didn’t record anything, did you?

JUNO (NARRATOR): The hardest part of any interrogation is the balancing of information: figuring out how much the other person knows, how much they want to know, how much you know, how much you can make them think you know, and, most importantly, how little you can make them think you know.

LOO: So? Did you?

JUNO: Yeah, what’s it to you? Since when has recording people without their permission been a crime?

LOO: Send me the footage. Now.

JUNO: Rather not.

LOO: Send me that footage, or I pull the trigger.

SOUND: GUN COCKING.

JUNO: Not gonna help you any. Eye’s worked into my brain – that’s how it does all these weird things like make me shoot faster and speed up my reflexes and give me this one dream over and over again where I’m falling into a giant birthday cake that has my mother’s voice. You kill me, and all the data on it gets scrambled.

LOO: Just send me the footage, then.

JUNO: Love to, once we get to the station. Why didn’t you bring me to the station, anyway? I mean, this is a nice basement, but still. How’re the kids?

LOO: The what?

JUNO: You’ve got half a dozen sand-sleds up against the wall over there. I can tell at least three of your kids are little because one, those mittens are tiny and adorable, and two, all the left ones are missing.

LOO: Those aren’t… I-I’m not…

JUNO: Taking your dirty cop business into your home, huh? Pilot Pereyra covers your boots in mud and you track it all inside?

LOO: Mayor Pereyra? But I wasn’t—

JUNO: The hell are your kids gonna think of you, Loo? Embarrassing. A train wreck.

LOO: Oh! This isn’t my house!

SOUND: DISTANT, MUFFLED CRYING.

Damn it, now look what you made me do!

JUNO: You’re a cop who breaks into people’s basements for interrogations? What’s wrong with you?

SOUND: DISTANT DOOR OPENS. CRYING GETS LOUDER.

CAPTAIN KHAN: (DISTANT) Loo! What the hell is goin’ on down there?

LOO: (YELPS) Captain Khan! I-I-I-I didn’t mean—

SOUND: DOOR SLAMS SHUT. STOMPING FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO: Captain… Khan?

KHAN: You done questioning him yet? You show up at my apartment with someone in a damn duffel bag and then you wake the baby?!

Oh, no. No, no– d-agh, God damn it, it’s you!

JUNO (NARRATOR): Omar Khan was a good guy – and that’s why he’s one of the only cops in Hyperion City that I never wanted to deal with. The other ones you could punch all you wanted and never feel bad about it, but Khan… was clean. And that meant I had to play nice, or else…

Nothing, okay? I’d just feel bad. I liked Khan. He was a good cop. He became the Captain of my old precinct after I left and he’d really turned the place around, or… so I heard. And that meant the world was a better place with him in it. Or whatever. Ugh.

Also probably worth saying that Khan didn’t feel the same way about me.

KHAN: Loo, you moron! You didn’t tell me the Nosy Nanette you brought in was Juno goddamn Steel!

LOO: Am I supposed to know who this is?

KHAN: Oh, right. You’re new.

JUNO: Come on, Loo. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that the first thing you’re supposed to do at a new job is catch up on the old gossip?

KHAN: We can’t trust a goddamn word Steel here says! Didn’t anyone tell you about the Hijikata case?

LOO: The… what? Please?

KHAN: You got spaghetti in those ears, Loo? Don’t they teach you curiosity in diaper-school anymore? Captain Hijikata! Of the one-five-one, our goddamn precinct! It was the case of the damn decade and this walking pile of nitroglycerin decided to—

JUNO: We really don’t need to get into the details, thanks.

KHAN: We can’t trust him. Especially when it comes to taking down someone reeeally big. Steel’s a glory-pig. Honor-hound. Wh-whatever. Anyway, why’s he here? You said this had something to do with our op?

JUNO: ‘Course it does, Captain. I’m gonna help you take down somebody really big.

KHAN: What?!

LOO: Uh… he’s telling the truth, Captain Khan. He— (GULPS) …saw the meeting.

KHAN: And where the hell were you?!

LOO: Seeing him… seeing the meeting.

Traffic was really bad and I got a call I had to take I’m sorry.

KHAN: God damn it! After months we finally get someone on the inside with Pereyra just to get the details on this meeting and you missed it because you were on the comms?! How the hell are we gonna pin them now? You got another sting ready to go, Loo? Do you? In the next four goddamn days?!

JUNO: So that’s what all this is? A sting to catch Pilot?

KHAN: Of course it is! The hell do you think we are, some kinda sneaky-sneak on-the-take-takers? No way. We’re— (COUGHING) We’re the good cops.

JUNO: …There are… only two of you.

KHAN: ‘Course there aren’t only two of us, blockhead! There are– I don’t know, four or five, at least.

LOO: Captain, there are more than five—

KHAN: Well, I’ve never counted, alright? Maybe you don’t give two ding-dongs about doing the right thing, Steel, but some of us are busy trying to make the world a little better! We’ve been tailing Pereyra for months, and I’m not gonna let you get in my way.

JUNO: Not planning on it, Captain.

KHAN: Oh. That’s– nice.

(CLEARS THROAT) So, uh… did you see what they were talking about?

JUNO: Yeah.

KHAN: You wanna tell us?

JUNO: Nah.

KHAN: I knew it! You weasel! You skink! You… momonga!

JUNO: Don’t know what’s got you so upset, Khan. I wasn’t lying. I’m not gonna stand in your way – I’m just not gonna say anything unless I get to come along for the ride.

KHAN: What?!

LOO: There might be one way around it, Captain. He said he recorded it all. On his… eye.

KHAN: On his…!

…on his eye. Hmmmm.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

Hey, look at that. You didn’t have that last time I saw you. Where’d you get it, Steel?

JUNO: Left my real eye under my pillow and the eyeball fairy dropped it off.

KHAN: Doing something illegal is my guess. For one of your usual business partners. Valles Vicky, Clark the Shark, Cecil Kanagawa… something that’d leave a trail, I’ll bet.

JUNO: You’re close enough that your mustache is leaving a trail into my mouth, Khan. Back off.

KHAN: (GROWLS)

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

Lieutenant!

LOO: Yes, sir!

KHAN: I want as much data as you can get on everyone Steel’s talked to for the past three weeks. Pull from Security Office databanks, private camera feeds, everything. How long’d that take you?

LOO: About two days, sir.

KHAN: Meanwhile I want you to get Goren to look into that eye: make, model, most importantly, how to pull the data out of the damn thing. Tell her she has a day and a half.

LOO: Yes, sir!

KHAN: Ha-ha! You hear that, Steel? We got you this time. Either you tell us what you saw, or in two days, we’ll know.

JUNO: Y’know, Khan, I got to hand it to you: that’s pretty impressive. Two days is fast.

KHAN: You bet your booper it is.

JUNO: But not fast enough to make it in time for Pereyra’s heist tonight.

KHAN: …What’d he just say?

LOO: I think he said… that Mayor Pereyra’s gang is going to do a heist tonight.

JUNO: At midnight, specifically.

LOO: At midnight, specifically.

KHAN: Yeah, yeah, I heard him.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Poor Khan looked like a balloon with all the air let out. Or, maybe just a balloon that was depressed. And that meant I was playing the interrogation game right. I’d given them just enough info to make them think I knew more – to make them want to work with me. And sure, I didn’t actually know more; but so long as they didn’t ask for anything else, that never had to be a problem.

KHAN: No, no no, wait, you know what – I don’t buy it. You could’ve just made that up. Might not know a damn thing, could’ve just made up some heist tonight to get us going. No. I think we’re gonna wait the two days. But thanks for the intel.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Well, so much for “not a problem.”

But interrogation’s like a high-stakes card game, and that means there are two ways to win. Either you actually get a good hand… or you bluff. Last card game I played like this, I wasn’t the one bluffing.

Wasn’t alone, either.

But no matter what I wanted, I was alone now. So I played my last card… and I bluffed.

JUNO: It’s in the Museum. Pilot told their gang to hit the Museum of Colonized History at midnight tonight and I know what they’re gonna steal.

LOO: Huh?!

KHAN: Huh. That’s… specific.

And if it’s supposedly tonight, it’s not like we’d have to wait long to find out if he’s lying.

LOO: But the Museum of Colonized History is huge, Captain! If it’s just the two of us, how can we be sure we’re going to check the right part? While we’re in the North Wing, the mayor’s gang could be robbing the South Wing.

JUNO: Captain, look. I know you’ve got a million reasons not to trust me on this. I know my reputation’s not exactly sparkling, and one time I tried to steal classified evidence off your desk, and later that same day I handcuffed you to a car, which was very funny, but also very wrong, probably.

KHAN: Steel—!

JUNO: And I know you probably have a million good reasons to take Pilot down and I might only have one but it’s a pretty damn good one, so I just. Need. To be there. Tonight. …Okay?

KHAN: (GROWLS)

LOO: Captain. This close to the election, this might be our last chance. If we could just get one person from Mayor Pereyra’s gang to talk—

KHAN: Alright, alright, fine. I’ll babysit the P.I. You happy?

JUNO: I’m happy.

KHAN: But listen up, Steel. When I’ve got the scent of something big, you’d better not get in my way. You try it, I’ll show you just how scary Omar Khan can get. Got me?

SOUND: DISTANT DOOR OPENS.

VOICE: Omar! We just got another one of those letters from the landlord! Do you want me to open it, or—

KHAN: Damn it, Noor, I told you I’m doing business down here!

VOICE (NOOR): Oh, do you have some friends over? Did you ask them if they want some pasta?

KHAN: I said we’re busy!

NOOR: Omar! What kind of a host are you! You drag them into the basement, let them make all this noise, wake the baby—

KHAN: ALRIGHT, FINE!

Do either of you want pasta?

(SIMULTANEOUSLY) LOO: No thank you. JUNO: I’m good.

KHAN: They don’t want pasta!

NOOR: What?

KHAN: I SAID THEY DON’T WANT PASTA!

Are you sure?

JUNO: Yeah, thanks, I’m all set—

LOO: Actually, I am a little hungry.

KHAN: Nevermind, I’ll come up and get two bowls in a minute, Noor! Thank you! I love you very much and I’m glad we’re working on our communication!

(PANTING) Ah– alright. So, like I said: all business, Steel. You’d better get used to that. First, farfalle; then, you and I take a little trip to the museum.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

JUNO (NARRATOR): In P.I. work, a real big lie is like a summer rainstorm: it comes on suddenly, it’s really hard to get out from under, and it’ll burn just all your skin off if you don’t get dry quick. Summer’s pretty rough on Mars.

I’d told a whopper of a lie back in Khan’s basement, and I’d gotten soaked before we ever made it to the museum. All it took was nine words, said while Loo was driving us:

KHAN: So where in the museum are they gonna hit?

JUNO: I, uh, told you, Khan, if I say that, you’ve got no reason to bring me.

KHAN: Yeah, whatever, keep your secrets if you want, I don’t care. But the Lieutenant at least needs to know which door to drop us off at.

JUNO (NARRATOR): The Museum of Colonized History is huge: blocks and blocks of dome prototypes and early terraforming pods and the mummified remains of the first space-colonists. If I picked a door at random, we’d miss the heist entirely, and there went my lead.

So what did I know? Not much. The Piranha shared some intel with Pilot, but it wasn’t enough on its own; there was something in here with information on it, and Pilot wouldn’t know how to read it without the Piranha.

One of the last things I’d picked up before Loo zapped me was a word: “codex.” A codex that covers the entire city. I had no idea what that meant, not yet, except for one thing: there was one wing of the Museum dedicated to things that covered the entire city.

KHAN: So? You’d better have something, Steel.

JUNO: The Hall of Maps. West entrance should get us there. Come on, Loo, you better speed this thing up; we don’t want to be late again.

LOO: I know, I know.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Loo dropped us off at the Hall of Maps at 11:30. We crawled through the window and crept past walls covered with old paper and flickering diodes, images of a thousand sprawling Marses measured and cut-up and categorized. There were maps from throughout the ages: before the telescope, before the terraforming pod, before the transgalactic travel engine.

It was beautiful, or whatever. But there was one thing that stuck out to me most of all:

JUNO: God, this place stinks.

KHAN: You get a free pass to the wonders of human progress and all you can think about is the smell?

JUNO: Yeah, basically. I hate that musty old hard drive stink. Just mold and motherboard-termites.

KHAN: It’s history, damn it! These are the maps that invented space colonization, Steel! You wouldn’t be here without ‘em!

JUNO: So that’s a con. Got any pros?

KHAN: (GROWLS) It’s not worth talking to a punk about the unpunkable. You couldn’t see the value of these maps if they reached out and tickled your whiskers.

JUNO: Anyway, why do you care? Aren’t you from Earth?

KHAN: (GROWLS)

JUNO: If you want history, Earth’s got thousands of years on literally anywhere else – you don’t have to travel thirty-four million miles to find history. People leave a mess everywhere they go.

KHAN: Sometimes a place means more than just itself. It’s an idea, or a promise, or… something. And even if that promise doesn’t get kept, it means you can go there and expect them to keep it. Demand they keep it. You know what I mean?

JUNO: I… huh, I-I do, actually, but, what promise—

KHAN: It’s like with my Little Mom. Made this curried lasagna every Tuesday for Big Mom. You do that long enough, it’s like a promise, right? Gotta keep a promise, or it goes bad. We’re all just like egg-noodles in the lasagna, skim milk in the sauce. Never should’ve thrown out that recipe.

JUNO: And hey, just like that, I lost you.

Found someone else, though. Hide!

SOUND: WALKIE-TALKIE BEEP.

VOICE 1: (DISTANT) Hallway B is clear. Moving on target.

SOUND: WALKIE-TALKIE BEEP.

KHAN: You get a good look at ‘em?

JUNO: It’s pitch black in here, Khan, of course I didn’t get a good look at ‘em.

THEIA: May I suggest. Night-vision mode.

JUNO: …Yet. Did not get a good look yet. Will in a second. Come on, follow them.

SOUND: SOFT ELECTRIC HUM.

THEIA: Night-vision mode. Activated.

JUNO: Looks like they’re armed, and… it’s hard to make anything else out from this far away.

KHAN: Gun sounds like a good reason to stay far away to me.

JUNO: Unless they’re one of the gang’s lookouts – then we can’t risk losing ‘em.

KHAN: Muh, alright. Then I guess we’ll just stay far away from close up.

SOUND: WALKIE-TALKIE BEEP.

JUNO: Wait, they stopped!

VOICE 1: Reporting in. Just heard a noise outside the First Light Room. I’m gonna go check it out.

SOUND: WALKIE-TALKIE BEEP.

JUNO: Damn it, damn it, damn it!

KHAN: Don’t get your petticoat in a twist just yet, Steel.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS.

Looks like our burglar oughta burgle some better ears. He’s walking away from us.

JUNO: He’s headed into that exhibit. Follow him.

SOUND: WALKIE-TALKIE BEEP. RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

VOICE 1: Didn’t find anything. Returning to group.

SOUND: WALKIE-TALKIE BEEP.

JUNO: You hear that? He’s going back!

KHAN: So?

JUNO: So we have to pick ‘em off one by one, don’t we? Learn what we can from each one, and then—

KHAN: Hang on. Something’s not right here.

What the hell are they trying to steal, exactly?

JUNO: I told you, I’m not gonna—

KHAN: —because you needed to come along, you said. Well, now you’re along. It sounds like we’re in the room they’re robbing.

JUNO: And while you’re wasting time, he’s gonna get away!

KHAN: So tell me, Steel. What are they stealing?

JUNO (NARRATOR): Sitting there in the dark, with Khan’s hand on my shoulder, all I could think about was that this was our moment and we were letting it pass us by. Because at the tail end of every failure case, there’s always one moment you can look back at and say to yourself, “I should have taken the shot.” A single mistake. A moment that you can beat yourself up about for years. Thinking about how if you’d just done it, if you’d just jumped when the time came to jump, it all would’ve worked out in the end.

Staring at that shadow in the doorway, I knew one thing: I wasn’t going to let this be that moment.

SOUND: FABRIC RUSTLING.

KHAN: Steel, what– what the hell are you doing, Steel? Get back here!

JUNO (NARRATOR): “I’m not gonna look back at this and wish I’d done something,” I thought.

And I was right. Later I’d look back and wish I hadn’t done anything.

JUNO: Hmf!

VOICE 1: Oof!

SOUND: HEAVY THUD. RUSTLING.

JUNO: Alright, buddy, you’re gonna tell me what your gang is after, and you’re gonna tell me now.

KHAN: Steel, he’s reaching for something!

JUNO (NARRATOR): So I panicked.

SOUND: BLASTER SHOT.

VOICE 1: (GRUNTS)

KHAN: …A gun? Where the hell did you get a—

When did you take my gun?!

SOUND: ALARM.

God damn it, what now?

PIRANHA: (DISTANT) Ugh, the alarm! Unless you want a laser through each of your thick skulls, you’re gonna find who hit that god damn alarm, see!

JUNO: Come on, we have to hide. We’ll let the Piranha clean up her own mess.

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

PIRANHA: Well? You see anybody?

PEREYRA: Hey there, no reason to get all excited. Looks like our party crasher just crashed.

KHAN: That voice… is that Mayor Pereyra?

JUNO (NARRATOR): It was. The Piranha. Two goons. And Pilot Pereyra.

What the hell were they doing here? Why the hell would a crime boss on Pilot’s level show up to their own heist?

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make any sense.

KHAN: Oh, no. No way, no how.

JUNO: What?

KHAN: That fancy eye of yours make you soft in the cerebellum? Look at that gangster’s face! She doesn’t recognize that poor sucker you just knocked out!

PIRANHA: Well, well. Just who the hell are you?

PEREYRA: Looks like a museum security guard. And it sounds like he flipped quite the alarm.

PIRANHA: Damn it, I thought you said you knew the patrol schedule!

PEREYRA: Hey, Pilot Pereyra makes the trains run on time, but I never promised to make the guards do the same.

PIRANHA: (GROWLS) Alright. If that’s how you wanna play it… plan B. We’ll have to blow our escape plan, but—

PEREYRA: Leave the escape to me. Now. Show us how it’s done.

PIRANHA: Fine. Hey, you. What’s your name?

VOICE 2: His name’s Mike. He doesn’t talk.

PIRANHA: Good for him. Hold this comms, Mike. We’re gonna take a home movie.

JUNO (NARRATOR): The Piranha stepped closer to the guard I’d stunned.

And she pointed her gun right at his head.

SOUND: GUN COCKING.

The Piranha’s flashlight caught his badge and I saw his name and… I’d never unsee it again: Barton Pollock. Barton. Sounded like my brother’s name, if you thought it fast enough, if your mind was spinning around it. Bart to his friends, or Barty? Kids, husband, wife, friends?

I felt so sick that when Pilot stepped forward, hand up, I even let myself get hopeful for a second.

PEREYRA: Hey, hey now… let’s not rush in without thinking, alright?

PIRANHA: You said solve it my way, so I’m solving it my way, see? You have a problem?

PEREYRA: I do, actually.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Maybe they’ve got a soul after all, I thought. Maybe this city isn’t as bad off as I thought it was.

PEREYRA: Your blaster’s on stun. Better set it to kill – you can tell the difference on video.

JUNO (NARRATOR): That thought didn’t last long.

PIRANHA: Thanks, Mx. Mayor. Start rolling, Mikey.

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BEEP.

Dear Museum of Colonized History Security Force, HCPD nightowls, late-night comms scanners and all other busybodies: we know right about now all you got blasted with a hell of an alarm from this exhibit, and we know you’d probably like to do something about it.

Well. Me and my associates invite you to consider a different option, see: we got about a half-dozen hostages here we was hoping to trade for clean getaway, but if any of you flash so much as a siren? Well. We might just have to do something to those good citizens. Something… like… this.

SOUND: BLASTER SHOT.

JUNO: No way. No way, no way, no way…

KHAN: (GRUNTS)

PIRANHA: Your move, coppers. (CACKLES) We’ll call again in fifteen minutes. Cut the feed, Mikey.

SOUND: BEEP.

How’s that for style?

PILOT: Not bad. Just… make sure I don’t end up in frame.

PIRANHA: I’m a professional, ain’t I? Now let’s go check on the hostages – and our map.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

JUNO: I can’t believe… I can’t believe she killed him. While he was out cold. Khan, what do we do?

Captain?

KHAN: Never should’ve listened to you. Damn it, god damn it, I knew I should’ve waited. I knew it!

JUNO: What…?

KHAN: You don’t know a thing about this heist, do you? You didn’t know the guard. You didn’t know Pereyra was gonna be here. You knew a little, sure, enough to dupe me. But this was all just another Juno Steel lie, wasn’t it?

JUNO: The heist was tonight. So what if I didn’t know everything? You were gonna sit back and just let it happen.

KHAN: You think that guard’s kids care which of us was right?

I can’t even blame you. I’m the one who listened. I’m the one you took the gun from. Damn it, I should’ve waited. Damn it!

JUNO: Khan?

KHAN: Just shut up and give me my gun.

JUNO: …Okay.

KHAN: We rushed in, that’s the problem. And now we’re… here.

(CLEARS THROAT) But it’s not gonna happen again, Steel.

MUSIC: STARTS.

You hear me? From here, we do it the way we always shoulda: slow. And nobody dies anymore, you hear me?

JUNO: Slow? But Captain—

SOUND: FABRIC RUSTLING.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Khan grabbed me by the coat and pulled me so close I could smell the pasta on his breath – and see his eyes twitching, wild. Scared.

KHAN: We do this by the book. And the book says nobody. Dies.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Khan was in the kind of mood right then that you don’t argue with, so I didn’t. Didn’t tell him what I thought: that I had no idea what book he was talking about, but any book that tells you nobody’s gonna die is lying. Because you can romanticize the past all you want; put it in a nice case with a tasteful little plaque next to it, but the fact is, that the book of time is written in blood. Elections, colonization, policework… you don’t get the fancy statues and the pretty maps without dropping a few bodies along the way. Which isn’t to say those people deserved to die, or that their killers deserved to live. Just, that history is only written by those who live long enough to write it.

Barton Pollock didn’t deserve to die.

Yasmin Swift didn’t deserve to die.

I can’t even swallow the idea that the Proctor deserved to die, not while there was a way around it. But the fact was that they were dead and I was alive, and that had been the price to get to this moment… for now.

I was sure it would cost more before we were done. It always did. The best I could hope to do was make sure the right person footed the bill… even if that meant paying up myself.

MUSIC: ENDS.

***

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING, MUSIC.

CONDUCTOR: If you’ve enjoyed this tale, please consider donating to The Penumbra on Patreon. Our artists work tirelessly to bring you these stories, and if you have the means, we hope you will support our efforts. Every dollar helps. You can find that page at patreon.com/thepenumbrapodcast. If you support us on Patreon at the $10 level or higher, you’ll receive access to commentary tracks like this one, from actors Kate Jones, Avi Meehan, and Joshua Ilon, and co-creator Sophie Kaner:

SOUND: TRAIN STOPS, DOOR SLIDES OPEN, RAIN.

SOPHIE: …Well I also think that, I’m sure, Joshua and Kate can, um, relate to… playing themselves. (LAUGHS)

KATE: What?

JOSHUA: I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about.

AVI: Oh, can I say one more thing?

SOPHIE: Yeah!

AVI: Can I say one more thing? Can—

SOPHIE: Say two! Say three!

AVI: I think, another thing that was really exciting was, um I’m a non-binary hume [is this a word?], and getting the opportunity to play a non-binary character was sooo gosh-dang exciting for me, just because it’s sort of like, ‘alright, you’re small, you look kind of– you, you’re just a girl!’ And I’m like…

SOUND: DOOR SLIDES SHUT.

CONDUCTOR: You can also support The Penumbra by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter @thepenumbrapod, following us on Tumblr @thepenumbrapodcast, telling your friends about us, telling your friends to tell their friends about us, and especially by rating and reviewing our podcast on iTunes. Every rating, comment, and kind word spreads our stories further and inspires us to keep creating more and better tales to come.

We would like to give special thanks to all who support us on Patreon, but especially to Francie Liana, Charlie Spiegel, Minchowski, Lynné Herman, Jaimie Gunter, and the Princess and the Scrivener for their incredibly generous contributions per episode. Thank you.

This tale, Juno Steel and the Stolen City, was told by the following people: Joshua Ilon as Juno Steel, Elliot Sicard as Captain Omar Khan, Avi Meehan as Lieutenant Loo, Simon Moody as Mayor Pilot Pereyra, Sophie Kaner as the Piranha, Matthew Zahnzinger as Ramses O’Flaherty, and Kate Jones as Noor Khan.

On staff at The Penumbra: Kevin Vibert is our lead writer and recording engineer. Sophie Kaner is our director and sound designer. Grahame Turner is our script editor. Noah Simes is our production manager. Alice Chung is our designer and financial manager. Original music by Ryan Vibert. Promotional art by Mikaela Buckley.

The Penumbra is created and produced by Sophie Kaner and Kevin Vibert.

I’m afraid this is the end of the line for today, dear Traveler. We hope you will ride with The Penumbra again soon.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

[dragonpickle29]

What's Happening?

Writing Prompt:

The narrator was running late and just showed up to a story already in progress. He doesn't know who the heroes or villains are or even what genre this is.

(prompt by @writing-prompt-s)

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

"I'm sorry I'm late!"

"Just get on the mic, Jordan!"

"Yes, ma'ma!"

The curtain rises. The audience quiets itself. The lights come on.

A maiden stands center stage, looking for something in her picnic basket.

She looks to the left of the stage. She continues rummaging in the basket.

The audience waits for her to find whatever it is she's looking for.

Frantic whispering can be heard from backstage.

"Should I say something?"

"Yes!"

"Oh! A girl stands... in a forest? She rummages through her basket."

The girl finds what she's looking for and holds it up for the audience to see.

"Aha! An apple!"

She takes a knife out of her basket next and uses it to cut a piece off the apple. She drops it on the floor and walks to the left a few feet before dropping another piece. She repeats this until she's out of sight of the audience.

"Oh! She's leaving a trail!"

Murmurs of understanding run through the house.

A boy in a long dark cloak wanders onto the stage next. He looks around.

"He's looking for her."

A sigh can be heard backstage if you listen.

He sees the apple pieces on the ground and he picks one up to inspect it.

"She left the trail for him."

The boy looks offstage. He mumbles something.

"What?"

The boy glances quickly at the crowd before running off stage.

The audience whispers. Parents look at each other as if to ask what's happening?

A sharp noise comes from a microphone peaking.

"Get your hand off the mic!"

"Sorry!"

The cloaked boy runs back on stage and gets back in position.

"Okay, apparently the trail was not for him, but I guess he's gonna follow it anyway because that's what you do when you find apple slices in the woods, am I right, fellas?"

An uncomfortable laugh echoes throughout the room.

And so the cloaked boy follows the trail of apples, picking up each slice as he went.

After he had cleared off the stage another boy walked on, this one wearing a crown of silver.

"Ah, here's the prince."

After looking around the stage for a bit and finding nothing, the crowned boy walked away, back the way he came.

The lights dimmed and the curtain came down, only to reopen a moment later. The girl sat on a log in the middle of the woods, waiting for her prince to come.

"Uhh... the girl waited." The narrator was starting to sound irritated.

The cloaked boy appeared. The girl gasped.

"The girl gasped. This man was not the man she had been expecting."

The man crept towards the girl and pulls something out of his cloak.

"Oh my god, he pulled out a knife. I'll be honest, this is not where I thought this would go."

The girl started to run away but the man moved towards her fast, grabbing her arm.

The girl screamed and struggled.

"The girl screamed and struggled."

But the crowned boy appeared.

"But the crowned boy appeared!"

The cloaked boy grabbed the girl and held her to his chest, knife against her throat.

"Holy shit!"

"Jordan!"

"I'm sorry but, holy shit! Is he gonna kill her?"

"Jordan!"

"No!" A sudden yell comes from the prince. "He's not! Not if I have anything to say about it!"

"What are you doing?" hissed the villain.

"Saving the love of my life!" The boy had to shout to be heard.

"Hey! I'm the one that's suppose to be talking here!"

"The do your job!"

"Fine! The villain pushed the maiden to the ground! For it was not her that he wanted!"

The actors on stage froze.

"That's not..."

"THE VILLAIN PUSHED THE MAIDEN TO THE GROUND! FOR IT WAS NOT HER THAT HE WANTED!"

The cloaked boy pushed the girl roughly to the ground.

"Ow!" she protested.

"The villain told the prince his true desires. He didn't want the maiden, she was just a means to an end. The person he truly wanted was..."

The audience was on the edge of their seat. So were the actors.

"The prince!"

The room gasped.

"Absolutely not!"

The cloaked boy grinned. "But my prince! I know you love me, too! Kiss me!"

He started towards the prince but the boy backed up so quickly his crown fell off.

The maiden giggled from where she sat on the floor.

The prince looked backstage. "I'm not kissing him! It's not even in the script! The real script!"

"Don't be homophobic, Prince. You wanted me to do my job and I am. Maybe you should try it out."

The prince looked at the villain. The villain smiled.

"Fine!"

They kissed.

The maiden squealed and clapped from the floor.

"And so the villain got his prince! And they lived happily ever after!"

The audience stood and clapped for the actors. This play had been a lot more interesting than they thought it would be.

The actors bowed.

"The End!"

•••••••••••••••••••

Author's Note:

Just a little disclaimer, the prince was fine with kissing a guy on stage! The only reason he hesitated was because it wasn't the original script. He wasn't forced into anything he didn't wanna do, because you should never force anyone to kiss someone they don't want to kiss :)

[talysalankil]

@psylenco replied to your post: @psylenco replied to your post: ...

Okay so this person left me a massive response and now I’m actually frustrated as happens every time I dare raise criticism against a tumblr darling so let’s go.

Sunny gets kidnapped because she’s an infant. Olaf can easily just hold a knife to their throats but that’s just boring.

I’m not saying Olaf has to put a knife to their throat, just that reusing the same solution twice in as many stories is…lazy. Like, purely from a storytelling standpoint, it’s lazy. It makes you look creatively bankrupt at the second story out of the four in this season, which is…a bad look.

Also, “because she’s an infant”? She’s apparently as intelligent as her siblings if not more (her subtitles literally have her speaking Italian, and of course she beats a guy at poker even though she didn’t even know how to play) and has what can only be described as superhuman strength in her jaws (which also means this piece of tape would probably not muzzle her very efficiently; there’s a reason real-life muzzles surround the entire jaw rather than being focused at the point where lever effect would make Sunny’s jaw the most effective).

So she’s an infant when the plot demands for her to be helpless, but she also isn’t when necessary? Good job with the consistency.

Also if everyone is a bad guy, it wouldn’t make sense. The issues with morality are called a “conflict”. Any writer knows that a conflict is good for stories.

Um…what? You’re right, conflict is good for stories. But I have no idea what you’re talking about with “issues of morality”. Do you mean the fact that most of the characters aren’t good or evil? Because that has nothing to do with conflict…at all.

But since you brought it up, conflict requires agency to be meaningful. So far, in the show, the only person who’s expressed any agency is, ironically, Count Olaf. Literally everyone else is reacting to his actions. That does not make for a compelling story.

Conflict generally arises from the protagonists’ wants and needs conflicting with each other and with the antagonist’s opposition. Here, the Baudelaires don’t want for anything (in the sense that they have no goal set out in front of them). They have situations to escape, but that is not the same in terms of analyzing a story.

It’s not like you couldn’t give the Baudelaires something to want that revolves around escaping abuse. That’s…basically what every Cinderella story does with their protagonists. But this story doesn’t provide us with that. The kids have no goal to work towards. That makes for poor protagonists, and therefore, a poor story.

And it’s very hypocritical to say the children are whining babies when you are doing the same about the plot. They’re A. Children, B. Chased by a murderer/ possible pedophile C. Lost their parents and home. D. No one listens to them. So excuse them if they seem to cry a bit.

Me saying I am frustrated with the show = children not doing anything when put in a situation that they are fully aware they should escape? Um…what?

I have no problem with them crying/grieving. I have an issue with them not doing anything. For a show that you claimed is about self reliance, they sure don’t do a lot of that. I mean, seriously. "The Bad Beginning” is resolved by appealing to an authority figure anyway and swaying her to their side after she’d been fooled by Olaf, how is this self-reliance?

[Side-note: I should point out the glaring ignorance of basic “show don’t tell” with Klaus’s speech, but I realize that’s an intentional quirk and use of tone so I’ll let it slide. That said, it does mean the protagonists’ biggest action in that climax happens more or less off-screen while Lemony Snicket narrates to us. I’m just saying. It doesn’t help with the kids’ lack of agency.]

Speaking of the grieving…they don’t do a whole lot of that either, actually. They are vaguely miserable, but as far as crying or…well, expressing any kind of emotional pain, there’s not much of that anyway. What there’s a lot of is apathy. Which I guess could be part of the grieving process, but again, doesn’t make for very relatable characters or work for a story that’s supposedly about self-reliance.

And no, not everyone is bad, youre just missing the point. Poe and Monty are willfully ignorant. Justice Strauss was blinded by her dreams.

I didn’t say they were all bad. Although…they kind of are. It’s the banality of evil—look it up.

Which, incidentally, would make for an interesting theme…if it wasn’t pushed to the extreme that it is here. Take for instance Olaf’s first lie to Poe: telling him that “closest living relative” means closest in proximity. Doesn’t Poe do this on a regular basis? Or have some common sense? Hell, even if I were to accept Poe is fooled by that definition (which is hard to believe when the person trying to play with words can’t use words himself), Olaf doesn’t even provide evidence that he’s related to the children or that there are no relatives living closer that he does.

See, the banality of evil requires a competent villain to work. The whole point of that concept is that people’s apathy in the face of evil allows it to prosper. But that does require a competent villain, which Olaf…isn’t. Also it’s a pretty tough and complicated subject in general, so you want your non-evil characters to be…regular humans with regular human brains.

Gustav and Jacqueline who?

Idk I should ask you that, I’ve barely seen either of them and considering Jacqueline got trapped even though she clearly knows what’s going on she’s not striking me as any more intelligent or competent than the rest of the case. And Gustav…I don’t even remember what happened to him. So eh. Whatever you say.

Sorry for the long posts but it doesnt make sense to criticize a miserable (But not bad) story if the narrator himself says its a miserable story. And sure, forget the kidnapped parents i guess cause the misery just gets worse.

You’re missing the point of my criticism though? I’m not criticizing the story for being miserable, I’m saying the execution of the story to make it miserable is lazy and requires everyone in it to be unbearably stupid. The concept is a good one, the execution is shoddy.

Of course, that is all opinion even if I’m using facts to justify my opinion and you’re still free to like it. 

As for the kidnapped parents, yeah I know they’re out there but it’s like…a subplot. If the main plot makes me angry watching it I’m not sticking around for the subplot, with or without cobie smulders. Sorry.

anyway sorry if I missed things I typed this in 5 minutes bc I had to leave.

[sorayahigashikata]

Chapter 61: "I said 'therapist,' not 'the rapist'!"

[inacciaio-archive]

underworld blood wars descriptive audio notes (spoiler warning, do not read if you haven’t seen the film)

So, if you can’t tell, I’m very analytical, especially when it comes to the characters I portray. I have about five books talking about Ann and for Semira, not only did I watch the movie a bunch of times, twice in theaters, I’ve now bought the dvd and am doing an analytical study of both English captioning sets, as well as a study of the descriptive audio just to see if I can learn anything from it that I missed. (Edit after watching: Oh yeah, there were so many things the descriptive audio pointed out to me and I was thrilled to notice them.)

“David slumps against the truck” legit made me giggle way harder than it should’ve. 

Varga snaps and motions a group of vampries aside. (you go varga)

A regal looking vampire steps out from behind a desk. (mm hm regal af)

In a tunnel. (this line came out of nowhere and I wasn’t expecting it and again I laughed. And thought of that ‘dig a tunnel dig dig a tunnel’ song)

Semira gives Thomas a look. (hey hey hey my plan worked *winks* thanks for going along with it, thomas)

Wearing an elegant black dress, Semira motions for them to stop. (okay the audio describes no one else’s clothing but Semira’s.)

Cassius scowls. (again a line that made me laugh. waiting for more “Cassius scowls.” through the whole movie.)

In her office, Semira stands in front of a mirror. She stares off thoughtfully as Varga strokes her back.

Shirtless, Varga wraps her arms around her waist. (Narrator is getting into it yo)

She runs a hand up his cheek and through his hair. Semira guides him onto his knees in front of her. 

Staring off, Semira takes wavering breaths. ( totally didn’t describe the part where Varga’s head was up her skirt but okay. Guess the blind have to come to their own conclusions when it comes to Varga using his mouth or his hands or even some other kinky shit while down on his knees.)

Semira strokes the paralyzed vampire’s forehead then walks away. (more on my thoughts of this action another time)

Semira enters and David raises his gun. (At this point, something happened that I hadn’t noticed before: Thomas says no and gestures David to put the gun down. Despite what he knows now about what Semira has done, he still doesn’t want her to be shot. He pulls out his sword but it seems his intention is to only distract her, not kill her. )

Thomas attacks, kicking Semira away. (Again, not really a move of being lethal, a move of trying to get her away or to weaken at most.)

Thomas strikes Varga in the face, knocking him back. (Even to Varga, he makes no move to stab at Varga, he just knocks him out and gets him out of the way. It seems he planned to do the same with Semira.)

He brings his blade to Semira’s throat. (Again, he makes no actual move to slice it. She has her sword away from his, it would only take a second to slice her throat with the position he’s holding her in. It’s clear he wants her to stand down, unknowing that Semira would actually make a move to kill him.)

Semira stabs Thomas in the gut. (This happens when he’s holding her sword hand and restraining it, though he must’ve missed the second sword she had sheathed away. She pulls it out  quickly and he seems genuinely shocked when he’s stabbed. He’s not dead yet in this moment.)

She stabs him again in the back, blood pours from his mouth. (He dies with a true look of surprise on his face. It really seems that Thomas had no intention of killing Semira, and that he hadn’t thought she would try killing him either. They were close friends. But as I spoke of in my meta, she had a choice to make, she could have one not both, and she chose her plan over her friend.)

Semira and Varga stare after them. Semira recoils from sunlight, then grins wickedly. 

In an armory, Semira addresses the council members. The round-eyed vampire, and others. (who the fuck is the round-eyed vampire. maybe alexia?)

Semira drops blood in a glass container of water, watching it permeate. Varga stands behind her. The water turns green. (Another thing I didn’t notice despite my countless times watching this film. So apparently blood mixed with nightshade placed into water will turn the water and blood green. Good to know.)

Alexia leaves the security room where two humans lie dead in their chairs. (OOOOOH ALEXIA, DAMN. I never noticed this part of the film either. Alexia, not only are you committing treason by siding with the lycans, you also committed treason by killing humans, another huge no no. Not even Semira kills humans in this movie. Yeah, Semira commits treason in other ways but even she knows humans are strictly off limits.)

In her office at the castle, Semira takes off the lid of a large crystal goblet containing blood, then picks it up. Wearing a faint smirk, she walks towards the center of the room. 

(I fucking love this description) Varga watches as she slowly lifts the goblet to her lips. Blood spills down the front of Semira as she drinks. (Suggesting that she’s unlike herself in this moment; usually she fights without getting a single drop of blood on her, unlike most other combatants in this film, but in this moment she’s so focused on drinking the blood and gaining it’s power that she doesn’t even notice the blood spilling down her front.) She drops the crystal goblet. Semira’s veins darken beneath her pale skin as the blood courses through her body. The veins gradually disappear and her lips curl into a smile. Varga looks on tensely.

Later, Alexia kneels before Semira in her office.

Semira brings a hand to Alexia’s chin, gently guiding her to her feet. (also Alexia’s face is just oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit)

Semira leans in and kisses her on the lips. Alexia stares fearfully. 

Blood pours from a slit in Alexia’s throat. Semira walks away. Grasping her neck, Alexia drops to her knees, falls over, lying in a pool of her own blood. 

Semira and Varga signal and death dealers aim guns. 

He takes out a tiny metal vial. He hands the orb back to the vampire who distributes a vial to each council member. Cassius sniffs it then eyes David with surprise. (why did I fucking laugh hearing the narrator casually say “Cassius sniffs it”)

David watches as Cassius pours blood from the vial onto his tongue. Each council member follows suit. They wear stunned expressions. (Narrator left out how one was offered to Semira but she didn’t take it. Yet again, blind people have to come to their own conclusions about whether or not Semira took one, or was even offered one.)

Varga stands still, Semira eyes him. (ooo she’s like wtf varga I told you to kill him, fuckign listen) Varga points his gun at Semira.

David strides away, Semira gets detained. 

Two death dealers lead Semira to her room. Looking up, she spots swords on display. (oh such a bad mistake they made)

A council member gets taken out. (welp one of them is officially dead)

Elsewhere two death dealers lie dead. (everyone saw that coming.) Semira stands nearby, gazing at her reflection in a mirror. She holds a sword. 

(And now, a play-by-play of Semira and David’s fight)

Semira attacks David but he ducks her swing. They move down a hallway, clashing swords. David slams Semira’s head into a wall. She makes a leaping kick, sending him through her office doors and onto his back. David gets to his feet and disarms Semira and throws her across the room. Semira takes a halberd (a battle axe) from a display. She uses the long weapon to disarm David, then stabs him in the chest. A vein shimmers on her arm as she pins David to a wall. She pulls out the halberd and then he falls to the floor. David breaks her weapon in half and slashes at her with it’s bladed tip. Semira takes the blade back and nearly hits him. David strikes her. 

Elsewhere, Semira knocks David down, then flips over him, flinging him against the wall. David throws two knives, but she catches them in mid-air. David kicks a sword into his hand and attacks. She misses a jab and David slams her head into a mirror. She stabs him in the thigh and kicks him onto his back. He lays on the floor, coughing blood. (ah how she would’ve won if she hadn’t allowed herself to be distracted)

David pulls the knife from his leg and throws it into the control panel on the wall. The window shutter rises and sunlight bathes Semira. She basks in it, unharmed. 

David stabs her through the mouth. Semira collapses and David walks off with his sword in hand. 

[forkanna]

[AO3 LINK] [EF LINK]

NOTE: "It's the CLIMAX!" - Haruko, FLCL (as in story climax; there are a few more chapters after this)

Actually, it wasn't Simon Lee. What I mean is, it was the crazy psycho evil Simon Lee from Scott's memories and from my annoying dreams on nights where I couldn't sleep. The real one was just this nerdy little Chinese kid I almost-kinda dated before I met Scott. Shortish, wearing thick glasses, kind of a dick but not really a threat to anyone.

This dude in the purple tracksuit was seven feet tall and limber, with gently-windswept brown hair and a much trendier pair of glasses perched on his smug nose. His hands were in his pockets, as if completely casual and disinterested in anything we had to contribute, but the fury in his eyes and the way he had shouted definitely said otherwise. Somehow, he wasn't that intimidating, despite the size and everything. I mean, Knives had just taken apart a monster much more huge than him all on her own, right? This chump didn't stand a chance.

"Surprised you remember," he spat back at me as he strode closer to the cage, laying a hand on one of the bars. To her credit, Princess Pine looked afraid of him; at least she didn't somehow find him attractive despite the fact that he was a douchebag. "After all, apparently Pilgrim wasn't good enough for you, either. Why such high standards? Gingers don't even have souls, much less a right to spurn the advances of someone as majestic as-"

"We don't have souls?" I cut him off, gesturing to my body. "What the fuck do you call this? Maybe you should just leave now, before it gets messier."

Sneering, he nodded at Knives. "You think this he-she will treat you any better? Pathetic."

Even while Knives's face was darkening with mingling anger and shame, I was curling my non-tangible hands into fists. "You… better not… say that again."

"Say what? That she's a freak who thinks owning a few skirts makes her a real girl? Not like you haven't thought it before. I know; I'm actually living inside your head, so there's no sense in trying to hide the tru-"

"NOPE. I meant it, you fucktard. Get out of my head. Now."

The bars of the cage were as solid as ever… but something was happening to Princess Pine. Most of her fear and her cowering had subsided, and now she was sitting on the floor of her prison, looking up at him with white-hot fury in her every pore. Neither one of us were happy with the way he was speaking about Knives. It pissed me off that I wouldn't be able to hit him the way I was, but that didn't matter. I was just angry and She-Hulk wanted to smash.

"Do you… really think I'm a freak?"

Instantly, I forgot about Simon and turned back to Knives. "No. God, no! I mean, maybe I did right when I first found out, but like, people think dumb shit all the time. When we first met, I also wondered if you knew kung fu and drank green tea. And like… you do, but there's also a ton more to you than just being Chinese, so like… you're Knives. Not just Chinese, not just trans, not just any one little byte of data in your profile. You're a whole person. I, um… I get that now in a way I didn't when we met, so…"

"NegaKim is right," the princess assured her, again trying to push her way out of the bars to get to her 'prince'. "We all have intrusive thoughts we cannot help. But that never stopped me from loving you."

"HEY!" I snapped. "That was my line to say! You don't get to steal my line, faker!"

Knives was looking between the two of us, barely paying attention to Simon. "Wait… you said- I mean, she said that you… I mean, do you?"

When I saw the other Kim opening her mouth to answer, about to beat me to the punch again, I rushed to blurt out, "YES! I love you, Knives, you idiot!"

"That wasn't a very nice way to phrase it," Princess Pine grumbled, annoyed at missing her opening.

"Maybe if somebody gave me a minute to get my thoughts together, I could have put a little more finesse on my declaration, you high-class hologram!"

Finally, Simon chuckled and tried to reinsert himself back into the conversation, arms now folded over his chest as he mimicked an imposing figure next to the cage. "Oh, she's no hologram. You really haven't figured out who she is, have you?"

"Shut up, Mr. Velour. Women are talking."

"Why you little-"

"Let me out of here!" the princess hissed. "I can help you defeat him! Together, we will, we must!"

"How ungrateful!" he burst out, turning to shout at her. "I gave you meaning again, drew the host's attention to you, and this is how you repay me? The thanks I get! Well, forget this! I'm bringing it all down!"

As I started to ask Knives if she could just cut him to pieces and we could skip this whole cutscene, he began to grow. Like, in a Power Rangers kind of fashion. Seven feet became eight, then nine, then about ten when he stopped, rippling muscles threatening to burst the threads of his tracksuit. In fact, the front did rip open to reveal his pecs and abs, which might have been attractive if I were a little straighter, and if they weren't bright red and abnormal. At the same moment, he reached behind himself to retrieve a giant golden axe, glowing with unnatural might.

"Fuuuuck me," I breathed.

"Quick!" my copy was hissing at us, reaching a hand through the bars. "Don't any of you have a bottle of Soft? It can turn these bars back and we can cut through them easily!"

"Why, what are they made of?" Knives demanded as she got both of her weapons back out, readying to do battle.

"Skin! I mean, where do you think you are? Everything in here is skin!"

Both myself and Knives exchanged a disgusted glance. But we didn't even have a chance to brace for impact, or to try to strategize further. Even as we looked on, a giant green pipe appeared coming out of the ceiling, and out fell…

Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers.

Of all the people in the known universe, there they were, in my heart-chamber-thing. Scott was hanging onto a bright pink parasol and Ramona's arms and legs were wrapped around his front as they slowly drifted downward, eyes wide as they stared at the scene they had stumbled into. Ramona looked about the same, except half of her hair was pink and the other half green, which really looked kind of hideous but it would probably be different next week, anyway. Her fishnets were ripped in a few places, and her heavy-duty blue rollerblades were probably close to being retired, but otherwise she looked good, I guess. Whatever.

There was something else about Scott I noticed right away.

"Dude, you're bald."

"Hey to you, too, Kim!" he called down, and he actually sounded like his usual cheerful self. "What's new?"

"What's- Scott, seriously? It's time for a casual game of catch-up right now? Right now?"

Ramona cleared her throat and said, "I think she means the big purple-suited dude."

"Oh." They touched down with barely a noise, and Scott folded up the umbrella. "He must be the next fragment of the Gideonflux."

"The what?" Knives asked. But then she smiled and waved. "And hi!"

He nodded upward as he grinned at her. "Hey!"

"The Gideonflux," Ramona provided. I always admired her ability to actually focus, unlike either of those other two dorks. "The seven remaining pieces of Gideon Graves's telepathic mind that he left behind when we destroyed him a year and whatever ago. You didn't know about it?"

Myself and my 'prince' shook our heads. Princess Pine looked a little guilty, but she didn't respond; probably, she had figured it out, or Simon had been grandstanding and literally told her.

"Anyway, yeah, Scott and I have been trying to track them all down before he rises again. We're on… what is it, three?"

"Four, I thought," Scott answered, rubbing his hand over his oddly-bald head. Still freaking me out.

"Okay, there was the one in the mummy's tomb, the one in the book under that old castle… the one in the Krispy Kreme… what am I leaving out if we got four?"

Scott was thinking too. They were both having a hard time coming up with it. Then he snapped his fingers. "Right! You took care of that one on your own, you didn't wanna talk about it?"

Her lip curled. "Oh yeah. That was nasty. Think I blocked it out… yeah, nevermind, Scott's right; it's four. And Super Simon Lee makes five."

"Wait, how do you figure that?" I demanded. "What does Gideon have to do with Simon?"

"Nothing. Not the real Simon; he's still doing pretty well at his IT job in Vancouver. We had to find out, since the name was our only clue for the next Flux piece," she went on in an undertone, seeing how confused we both looked. "This was something Gideon did to both you and Scott to put you at odds. It didn't really work in Scott's case, since he's kind of a dope. But yeah, when I hopped the highway through his head and saw no sign of Simon, and since we already broke his hold over me a long time ago, there was only one other place we could think of to look."

While Scott pouted, Knives stepped forward and pointed her knife over at Simon. "So he's not real? I can defeat him and not feel bad for beating up a real person?"

"Knock yourself out. And hey, you look pretty good, Knives. Working out?"

"Oh, yeah! Training, you know, all that. Plus I'm using this new moisturizer, it's made from-"

"ENOUGH!"

Everyone turned to look at the clearly-furious fake Simon, who was heaving breaths and glaring icy death at his room full of opponents. Raising the axe high, he sneered at me, "If I can't have you, no one will!"

"Somebody get this asshole a line read," I snarked. "Can you believe what he's spewing? Makes Lucas Lee look like a Tony award winner."

"Let's get him!" Scott shouted. At that instant, a pale blue sword burst from his chest, and he pulled it free as a narrator's echoing voice said, "Scott earned the Power of Loyalty!" while plus-bonuses briefly appeared above his head. Ramona reached into her bag and pulled out her hammer, and Knives crouched down with her blades, ready to pounce on the monstrous inflated form of a former boyfriend that had been twisted by one of Ramona's evil exes into something to keep a piece of my soul trapped within a subchamber inside my chest cavity.

My life is abnormal.

Ramona struck first because he ended up being closest to her, driving the hammer into his knees; he barely flinched before batting her aside, where she flipped to race down the wall on her skates. Scott and Knives double-teamed him, Scott jumping at his back with a downward stab as Knives tried to dart in past his windmilling arms to get him in the chest or the ribs. All attacks thwarted. He didn't beat them back, but he managed to make them dance away to avoid getting hit. When Ramona got to him again, she went for an uppercut and caught a piece of him, but he barely staggered; he seemed more enraged than anything, and grabbed her by the leg, swinging her in a quick circle before letting her go, hurtling toward me.

"I got you!" I cried, opening my arms — and feeling her pass right through them. "I don't got you."

But she was fine, already popping up and motioning for Knives to hop onto her shoulders. She did, and Ramona started racing around Simon in a circle while Scott used the sword to block a few of the energy blasts he sent flying at them. When they got to his side for the fifth time, Knives hopped off and stabbed for his eyes, but he deflected her at Scott, who was just getting to the other side now, sending them both down. He just barely managed to roll out of the way of a foot-stomp, and flashed an upward swipe at the shoulder that managed to score him, but didn't seem to slow him down much.

The fight was going badly. Like, they were doing great, but Super Simon really did just seem impervious to most of the attacks. At this rate, they were going to lose because he would simply wear them out by outlasting their stamina reserves. We had to do something!

"Let me out!" Princess Pine was shrieking at me. "Please!"

"We're a little busy!" I snapped at her impatiently. "God, I'm glad you've been locked up, you whiny piece of-"

"No! You have to let me out, or they can't defeat him!"

Surprised, I floated over to her cage and leaned closer still. "Say that again?"

"Verily! Only through my body will you have the power you need to overcome his defenses! Without this, their efforts will be for naught! And he's already damaged your heart enough as it is!"

"Why do you talk like you're in fucking 'Twelfth Night' or something? And what do you mean, damaged my…"

But even as I said it, I looked around and noticed what she meant. There were several areas in the chamber that looked like they had been hastily repaired. Most of them sturdily, but a few were just a single wooden board pushed up against a gap and nailed into place. Now, there were a few new tears and fractures being made by this epic battle; things that would need fixing up once we defeated him. How did I miss that? Probably too distracted by the whole bizarreness of there being a chamber in my heart that would serve as the stage for the final battle.

"Fine. You're right, I'm an unholy mess. But how is me letting you out going to help? And how do you suggest I do that, anyway? If I can't break this cage, and you can't break it…"

"Trust me."

"I don't! You're trying to steal Knives from me, and you keep calling her a 'prince', and… and I think you're part of Simon's scheme! So thanks, but no fucking thanks!"

Finally, she started to look a little more panicked than simply distraught and angry. "We don't have time! You… you must, or… or we'll lose her!"

It did shoot a pang through me at the thought. But I had faith in Knives. I knew she could defeat Simon, I knew that the other me was totally off the mark. All I had to do was trust in the one who had given me a reason to trust her.

Except then I saw Knives's knives get knocked away, watched her skitter across the floor toward me. Letting out a yelp, I went to drag her into my arms as Ramona and Scott did their best against the behemoth, but it wasn't happening because my arms couldn't do anything. I was useless.

My uselessness was going to get us all killed. While fighting a figment of my imagination.

"I'm sorry," I breathed down at her, watching her dazed eyes trying to focus on my voice. "This is my fault… I couldn't figure out that something was wrong inside me, and now… you have to deal with it, when it's not your fight. Should be mine. Only mine, and only my responsibility to do the clean-up work. But I can't. I'm a piece of shit."

"No, Kim!" she assured me, voice still numb but getting stronger as she started sitting up a little, flashing me her best smile through a black eye that would look way worse in an hour or two. "You're not, don't say that! Nobody could have expected any of this to happen, y'know?"

But I was already feeling that vice-like grip of terror around my heart again. The same way I felt it just before I turned to stone for the last time. As I felt it, I watched Simon growing larger, spikes jutting out from his forearms and shoulders, and Ramona and Scott hopped back to reassess the situation…

And it kind of all clicked into place. The problem wasn't my inadequacy. Wasn't my saltiness or my fear of commitment. Well, the last one was a little closer to the mark: it was my fear. I was being a coward. Being selfish.

"Okay," I breathed, standing away from her and turning toward the cage. "Enough of my whining."

"Kim?" Already, I had drifted through the bars, curling my lip at the joyful smile Princess Pine was wearing. Using my face for that purpose was just wrong on so many levels. "Kim, wait, what- KIM!"

"If Scott could be big enough to do this… so can I."

Then I started merging with her. Letting my soul get consumed by the annoying, bleeding-heart version of me that I wanted to punch if I could have.

"Don't worry!" Scott was calling out as he leapt over a ground-pound. "It's not as bad as you think it'd be, trust me!"

And he was right. A few seconds later, I had a body again, and I felt almost completely normal… except a little lighter. A little stronger and more full of purpose than I had ever been in my entire life. My hands pushed outward against the bars, and they shattered, freeing me from the prison in which I had never truly been trapped. Only been convinced I was trapped by anxiety and depression, and a deep-seated uncertainty that I could ever fully trust anyone at all.

But I had to. Even if I only trusted Knives, I had to trust someone. And I had decided to try trusting myself for a few minutes, too. Take that for a test drive.

"NO!" Simon growled, then lashed out with his tail — must have missed when that grew in — and knocked away the hammer Ramona had been about to bring down on his head. Loosing a mighty bellow of rage, he initiated a spin move that was deadly from all the spikes, launching himself at Scott…

I called for a weapon. Somehow, I thought if I just made that same kind of self discovery Scott did, I'd get one. Maybe a gun; that'd be cooler than a sword, right? But nope. Nothing came. Still, at least I could help Knives stand up now that I no longer owned ghost-hands.

"Thanks," she whispered, then whipped out a few throwing knives from somewhere or other. "He's mine!"

And on the battle went. It actually took a while, but they seemed to be turning the tide now. Before, it had been a stalemate, but in some small way, I think me breaking out of the cage shook Super Simon's confidence. Or maybe the cage was some kind of energy siphon and me breaking out my other self really did lower his regeneration stats, which was why each hit they landed dealt more damage now. Whatever. The point is, a few minutes later, he was starting to stagger, his attacks were sluggish and dumb, and missed pretty often now. Somewhere in there, he managed to destroy Scott's sword and it turned into a dozen little ghostly dog bones before they vanished, but he grabbed one of Knives's daggers from the corner and tossed her the other one, and they made it work with those.

Finally, they had him on his knees, wrists tied with Knives's scarf and Ramona's hammer weighing his head down so he could only barely glare up at us. He looked even more demonic than before, teeth jagged and eyes blazing red. He chuckled darkly.

"You can't kill me, Kim." I was holding his own golden axe high above my head, ready to strike. "I'm a part of you now. I'll always be a part of your nightmares. Killing this form of mine will solve nothing."

"Maybe, maybe not. But I'm tired of looking at your fucking face!"

His head came clean off, spraying the same green blood everywhere that the other monster had, before his body burst into coins. We all glanced at each other, surprised at how sticky and nasty it felt. Scott was the first to laugh.

"Well, that was a thing."

"Doof," Ramona snorted, though it was clearly with a fond tone. Sighing, she turned to me and frowned. "Sorry about the mess. This has been some of the hardest resistance we've ever had to recovering one of these."

As she was saying it, I watched Scott stoop to the floor where the body had been to pick up a little triangular "G", like the logo on the doors of the Chaos Theater. It glittered an oddly sinister green, but I only had a second to wonder about that before he popped it into his jeans pocket and out of sight.

"Uh… yeah." Clearing my throat, I said, "This is probably asking a lot, but if you guys can help me clean up? I mean, otherwise it'd probably take years…"

"Sure," Scott said at once, pocketing some of the coins, as well. I noticed both Knives and Ramona already were, too. "Where's your mop?"

"Really? Just like that?"

Scott stood up a little more fully and shrugged. "Hey, I kinda owe you a little repair work. Especially here, since I'm pretty sure a few of these holes are my fault."

Had me there. Normally, I would have said that he was a dick, or just scoffed and turned away. But I found myself saying, "Yeah, probably. I have a lot of healing to do. It's hard work, Scott."

His smile finally slipped off. But he didn't do much else, only shrugged and kicked at a little blob of slime-blood. "Yeah."

"But I can do the repairs myself. Just help me clean up this mess and we'll go back to working through our own drama."

"Can do, Kim. But hey, if you ever need a hand…"

"Thanks, but…" I caught Knives before she could walk past, holding her hand up. "Already have one."

"Really?" he piped up, the smile springing back to full force. "That's awesome! Wondered if anything was gonna come of that."

"What?" Knives asked, shocked. "You mean, you knew about it? I didn't tell anybody!"

"Well, I kinda walked in on you guys," he admitted with a shy little laugh, scratching the back of his head. "At Julie's aunt's, we were all super wasted? Figured it was none of my business, though. But man, you were really making out! Like, a lot!"

Sighing but at least grateful that he wasn't making a huge deal, I glanced at the two of them before I said, "Get used to it, because… I'm in love with her."

The echoey voice said "Kim earned the Power of Love!" and a glittering pink spear came out of my chest, a little taller than me once pulled completely through and with a couple of wicked prongs on either side of the main spearhead. A magnificent weapon. There was only one problem.

"FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC!" I shouted at the world in general. "So now I get this! Where was it fucking ten minutes ago when we needed it?! UGH!"

                                                To Be Continued…

[welcometothepenumbra]

PETER NUREYEV AND THE ANGEL OF BRAHMA (PART TWO)

CONCIERGE: Welcome back, Traveler, to Part Two of Peter Nureyev and the Angel of Brahma. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the tale. Or else.

***

SOUND: FABRIC RUSTLING. DISTANT AMBIENT ECHOES.

NUREYEV: Good morning, Juno. Did you sleep well?

JUNO (NARRATOR): I didn’t open my eyes for a minute. So long as I kept them closed I could imagine I was somewhere else. In a hotel room at one of those hot springs on Venus, maybe, or just in my apartment, waking up at noon on a Tuesday with a killer headache and Nureyev… there too.

I opened my eyes. No spa, no apartment. Just the holding cell Miasma had prepared for us. Couple of bedrolls in a Martian burial chamber.

SOUND: FABRIC RUSTLING.

JUNO: How long was I out this time?

NUREYEV: Careful, don’t sit up so quickly. You’ve taken quite the hit to… wherever that thing hits you.

JUNO: (PAINED) I’m alright. Just gimme a sec—

NUREYEV: Shhhhh. Lie down again.

JUNO: I said I’m fine, damn it! Just—

SOUND: RUSTLING.

—turn down the walls, wouldya? They’re… they’re so damn loud; every time I look at ‘em my eyes try to make a break for it.

NUREYEV: Yes, those carvings are… unsettling, aren’t they? The writings of an extinct species: symbols and even ideas from minds millions of years gone.

JUNO: I don’t care what they say, those damn things give my heebies jeebies.

Hell were they writing in a burial chamber, anyway? The guy’s dead; it’s not like he’s gonna get up and read all their bad poetry anytime soon.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

NUREYEV: Now that you mention it, Juno… I’m not certain this is a burial chamber.

JUNO: There’s a coffin right there.

NUREYEV: The dangers of looking from one culture to another. It looks to us to be a coffin, but these carvings suggest otherwise. This set of drawings shows the box in use: one Martian is placed in the box; they seal the lid; and when they open it again: two Martians exit.

JUNO: Glad to know stage magicians were alive and well in ancient Mars.

NUREYEV: These carvings… they’re the best-preserved I’ve ever seen. I didn’t know there were any drawings of the ancient Martians, yet here they are. Miasma must have found this tomb and kept it a secret. These symbols, here…

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

A single Martian body; it spreads, its hands reaching to either side; a gap begins to form, and then—

JUNO: Ugh. Stop it.

NUREYEV: Fascinating. They reproduced asexually, by splitting. This isn’t a burial chamber – it’s a birthing chamber.

JUNO: Eww.

NUREYEV: You’ve taken a rather aggressive disinterest in these Martians, Juno. Aren’t you supposed to be a detective? Hunting down mysteries, exploring the unexplored…

JUNO: It’s enough trouble trying to figure out why people do what they do. I don’t have time to worry about a bunch of supersized germs a million years dead.

NUREYEV: They scare you, don’t they?

JUNO: Swinggggg and a miss. Haven’t been scared of ghosts since I turned thirty-seven.

NUREYEV: If they killed each other off, you wonder—

JUNO: Stop it.

NUREYEV: What’s keeping humanity from doing the same?

JUNO: I said stop it!

SOUND: RUSTLING. FOOTSTEPS.

NUREYEV: Juno… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.

Come back. Sit down. Don’t walk away.

JUNO (NARRATOR): And then it hit me all over again. That red room. Mag, with the huge owl-eyes. Nureyev. The knife.

NUREYEV: (ECHOING) Don’t… walk away from me! …I’ll do it! I swear I will!

JUNO (NARRATOR): A murderer. A monster.

NUREYEV: Juno? What’s wrong?

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO: I-I just… (CLEARS THROAT) Nothing, I’m fine.

NUREYEV: You hardly look—

JUNO: You wanna get your hands off me?! This isn’t a goddamn honeymoon suite.

NUREYEV: …Alright.

JUNO: So how are we gonna get out of here, anyway? Master of break-ins isn’t worth much if he can’t break out.

NUREYEV: We’ll escape when the opportunity presents itself. No guard patrol is perfect; this one will make a mistake eventually.

JUNO: Only question is whether that mistake happens before or after we’re dead.

NUREYEV: We’ll survive. We’ve never failed yet.

JUNO: The hell do you call this, then?

NUREYEV: A momentary inconvenience.

JUNO: God damn it, would you just… knock it off!

NUREYEV: Knock what off, Juno?

JUNO: I don’t know! Just cut it out!

NUREYEV: (SIGHS)

SOUND: FABRIC RUSTLING.

JUNO: Back off.

NUREYEV: No, I think I’ll sit right here.

Juno, I thought I heard Miasma ask you something. Something I’ve asked you before.

About how you could have looked me up any time you wanted to.

JUNO: I know.

NUREYEV: So. Why didn’t you?

JUNO (NARRATOR): We’d been in that tomb for days. We’d hardly slept, hardly eaten. Miasma had done everything in her power to break us.

And then I looked at him, and… those eyes. Even in this cave underground, they were so bright.

How the hell did he do it? Stay so bright through all of this?

JUNO: I was scared, okay? Scared I might find… aughhhh.

NUREYEV: Afraid you might find something you couldn’t forgive?

JUNO: If it turned out you were a monster… like if you’d done something really unforgivable. What would I do?

NUREYEV: It sounds terrible. To be a detective with the key to a mystery in your hands… and too full of fear to turn it.

Well. What if we solved that mystery now? Together.

JUNO: Look you up? Sorry, I don’t think I’m gonna get a good comms signal ten miles underground.

NUREYEV: We don’t need the comms. You have an uplink right here.

JUNO: You want me to look through your memories?

NUREYEV: You can’t run from my past forever, Juno.

JUNO: You sure about that? I’ve been doin’ some cardio lately and I think I’m gettin’ pretty quick—

NUREYEV: You’ll discover it all eventually. There’s no getting around that. So… look through my memories now. Then decide whether Peter Nureyev’s baggage is worth your time. Or if you and I part ways, once all this is done.

JUNO: Nureyev…

NUREYEV: The choice is yours – but, I’d rather you made it now.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to know. But… I had to know. Comes with the territory, in my line of work: get too curious for your own good, poke your nose in where you shouldn’t, and if you hurt yourself along the way, well, maybe you’ll live to lick those wounds later.

JUNO: (SIGHS) Alright. Let’s do it.

NUREYEV: Excellent. Only… Juno?

JUNO: Yeah?

NUREYEV: When they brought you in, your face… there was so much blood, and…

JUNO: Yeah, yeah, I got it under control. Let’s just get it over with, alright?

NUREYEV: Alright.

Now, um… how does this work, exactly? Do we say a magic word, or something like that?

JUNO: You shut up and let me concentrate, mostly.

NUREYEV: Ah. Will do.

JUNO: And… (SIGHS) Just try to clear your mind. Or whatever. I guess.

NUREYEV: (CHUCKLES)

JUNO (NARRATOR): It was almost easy by now. I closed my eyes. I let my mind reach out to touch his. I felt for the handle.

In the distance, back where my body was, I felt a set of slender fingers close over mine.

I opened the door.

SOUND: STRANGE HUM STARTS, STOPS.

MAG: (WHISPERING) This should be the central security room. Now, Pete: the plan?

NUREYEV: (WHISPERING) Make it to the Guardian Angel System’s core, steal the reactor that powers it, and make our getaway. But I still don’t see how we’re supposed to get from here to the Core with all of those security cameras—

MAG: Hush, hush. You think I don’t have another trick up my sleeve? For shame, Peter. Lesson one of thieving: a security camera is an obstacle, yes, but it has one glaring weakness: it sees.

NUREYEV: This is a very inconvenient time for you to go senile, Mag.

MAG: I think you’ll understand in a moment. Now, prepare yourself. You’re going into this security office and taking care of the constables on your own.

NUREYEV: I’m what?!

MAG: Bon voyage, Pete!

SOUND: DOOR OPENS. SOFT THUD. DOOR CLOSES.

VOICE 3: D– did you hear that?

VOICE 4: Sounds like it came from around the corner. Probably just another supermaggot. I’ll take care of it.

NUREYEV: (WHISPERING) Damn it, damn it! Mag, what in the hell do you expect me to—

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

When trouble arises… I disappear.

SOUND: CHOKING, GASPING. THUD.

VOICE 3: So? Did you take care of the… who the hell—

SOUND: WET THUD, GRUNTING, THUD.

NUREYEV: (SIGHS) Alright, Mag. The room’s clear.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS, CLOSES.

MAG: And in record time! Incredible, Pete! Your fingers always were quicker than mine.

NUREYEV: Care to explain why I wasn’t privy to this part of the plan?

MAG: You’re learning on the job, my boy, and half of expert burglary is reacting on the fly. So just call me “the fly.”

NUREYEV: No.

MAG: Now take that constable’s clothes. I’ll take the one by the door.

NUREYEV: How can you be so sure that they’ll… fit.

This constable is exactly my size.

MAG: And this one is my size! Fancy that! Ha-ha! Lesson one of thieving, Pete: you can do anything with unlimited access to a digital work schedule and complete roster of all employees.

NUREYEV: Including getting them to deliver you exactly the uniforms you want, so that we can pass through the security cameras.

MAG: Precisely. Now, move out of the way and pay attention. I’m going to show you how to work a security console.

During my tour with Rossignol, I was able to get the security camera image of every room in this compound…

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BEEPS.

…except for one. There were several cameras pointed at that door, but none showing what lies on the other side of it. So what’s the only conclusion to be drawn?

NUREYEV: It’s a bathroom?

MAG: Of course not—

Well. Hadn’t thought of that.

NUREYEV: Mag!

MAG: Well, we’ll find out shortly, won’t we? Think of this as a learning experience. You’ll have a very short career as a thief if you don’t keep learning.

NUREYEV: Mag, what do you plan to do after all this?

MAG: Enjoying life without the constant fear of being murdered by the sky is fairly high on my list.

NUREYEV: You know what I mean. What’s next for Peter and Mag?

MAG: Well, Pete, I suppose what you do is entirely up to what you want to do. All jokes aside, I think I… might want to retire.

NUREYEV: (SCOFFS) Retire? You? I don’t believe it. Someone would have to chain you to a resort planet first.

MAG: Well, perhaps, but… I’ve been at this a long time, Pete.

NUREYEV: Well, I certainly won’t be retiring. I’ve hardly gotten started, and I want to be big, Mag, the biggest. I want everyone to know who I am. I want the wealthy to fear me and those in need to call for me. I want—

MAG: Whoa, whoa! Save some future for later, would you? We still have a job to do in the now, boy.

NUREYEV: Right. Sorry.

MAG: Don’t be, don’t be. I’m just as excited for that day as you are, Pete – I expect reading your name in all the papers will be the crowning achievement of my very accomplished career.

There. We’re in the system. I have access to the video feed from the other side of that blind door. Now we can prepare for what lies on the other side…

SOUND: BEEP.

Four armed constables. Wonderful.

NUREYEV: Let me guess: “Lesson one of thieving: never go in outnumbered?”

MAG: Well, this must be an outpost before the final room. Four guards is… extensive.

NUREYEV: But… not undoable. Can you shut down their communications with this security device?

MAG: Absolutely.

NUREYEV: As long as we ensure that no more can enter once we’ve started, we should be able to incapacitate them in this order…

JUNO (NARRATOR): (OVER THE ABOVE) Nureyev walked Mag through the whole process. Now, speaking as a guy who’s made a career of getting into trouble completely outnumbered, it was a good plan. Better than I could’ve come up with. And from the look in Mag’s eyes, better than he could’ve come up with, too. They talked it through a few times and made their way to the door.

NUREYEV: (WHISPERING) Ready?

MAG: (WHISPERING) Ready.

NUREYEV: (WHISPERING) Alright. In 3… 2… 1…

SOUND: DOOR OPENS. SLOW FOOTSTEPS. DOOR CLOSES.

VOICE 5: (YAWNING) Is it time for the shift change already?

VOICE 6: It isn’t. What’s going on? You two don’t have clear— (YELPS)

SOUND: THUD.

VOICE 5: Call for help—! (GRUNTS)

SOUND: PUNCHES, WET THUDS, GASPS.

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

VOICE 7: This is Wilkins, reporting in! We’ve got a situation down in… hello?

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

You… you cut the signal, didn’t you?

NUREYEV: Pray that’s the only thing we cut today, sir.

VOICE 7 [WILKINS]: D– don’t move! You can kill me if you want, but… but I’m not lettin’ you through here!

MAG: Well, I think you’re a bit confused about how killing works.

NUREYEV: Mag! The plan!

MAG: But I suppose this is not the time. (SIGHS) Alright, alright, my hands are up. I suppose you’ll want us to call off our third comrade, then?

WILKINS: Your what?

MAG: Our compatriot? Colleague? Coworker? I’m having difficulty understanding your difficulty, sir.

WILKINS: Where are they?

MAG: Where else? Right behind you.

WILKINS: (GASPS) I-I can’t believe I fell for… where– where’d the other one go?

MAG: Oh, the friend I came in here with? He’s an interesting one. Very impressive. When trouble arises, he just… disappears.

WILKINS: Where are you? Show yourself!

MAG: One minute, he’s there; the next, he’s taken off. One minute, your head is there; the next, he’s taken it off.

WILKINS: Stop, stop!

MAG: I’ll give you a piece of advice, if you like: he always strikes from above.

WILKINS: Up… up in the ceiling? Where? I don’t see— (YELPS)

SOUND: THUMP, GRUNT.

MAG: Well done, well done! Posing as a corpse. Master of disappearances, my Peter Nureyev!

NUREYEV: Well, I learned from the second-best.

MAG: Very funny. Now, shall we deal with the reactor?

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS. DOOR OPENS, CLOSES.

NUREYEV: So this is it. The core of the Guardian Angel System.

JUNO (NARRATOR): The room was a big metal cylinder, stretching up so high that the ceiling was lost in shadow. Sticky red light clung to every surface. In the center of the room stood a huge transparent column, and within the column, glowing softly, floated—

MUSIC: STARTS.

MAG: The reactor. Look at it. Untold lives, like your father’s, taken by the lightning bolts of this self-proclaimed god. We destroy a deity today, Pete.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

Now, to unlock the reactor…

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BEEPS.

NUREYEV: That music… we must be just below the square.

I think I remember that place, Mag. When we were up there, I-I swear, I remembered… something.

MAG: A memory? Really?

NUREYEV: I… think so. But not like any other memory I’ve had. Just… a feeling.

MAG: Peter, it will really be best if you forget all of this about the square, hm? You’ll sleep better.

NUREYEV: Forget? How am I supposed to forget the city I was born in?

MAG: (GROWLS)

SOUND: BEEPS.

COMPUTER VOICE: Reactor shield disengaged.

MAG: This is it. The ship I’ve arranged for us should be waiting outside once the shields go down. Are you ready to make our big getaway?

NUREYEV: …Wait. What do you mean, “sleep better?”

MAG: I’m grabbing the reactor. Get ready to run.

SOUND: CANISTER UNSEALS. LID CLOSES.

COMPUTER VOICE: Warning: Levitation reactor disengaged. New Kinshasa will fall in—

MAG: Go!

COMPUTER VOICE: —approximately ten minutes.

NUREYEV: What did that just say?

COMPUTER VOICE: Warning—

MAG: Our death sentence, if we don’t leave now!

COMPUTER VOICE: —evacuate. Evacuate. Evacuate.

NUREYEV: New Kinshasa is going to fall? Crash into Brahma, with all of these people on it?!

MAG: That was always the plan, Pete!

NUREYEV: You said we were going to stop the weapon!

MAG: I said we were going to take down New Kinshasa!

NUREYEV: I didn’t think you meant literally!

COMPUTER VOICE: Levitation power at ninety-five percent.

NUREYEV: We can’t do this! If my father risked his life to keep people free, Mag, I don’t think he’d want you destroying his home!

MAG: What’s gotten into you today, Pete? I feel as though… I don’t even know who you are!

NUREYEV: I’m home for the first time! I could have family here! You can’t just take it away from me after one day, there has to be another way—

MAG: Peter, stop this nonsense! You couldn’t possibly remember New Kinshasa!

NUREYEV: Why not? I lived here with my father, you said so, and if he—

MAG: Oh, for God’s sakes, there’s no time for this. You can’t remember New Kinshasa because you’ve never been here before!

NUREYEV: I… what? But… you said… m-my father…

MAG: I said your father was a great man, and I meant it. To make you, he would have to be.

NUREYEV: Have to be…

You never really met him, did you? You just… made it all up. You lied to me for years.

MAG: I may have said things that I invented, Pete, but I have never lied to you. Everything, everything I’ve said… it’s all been in service of the truth. New Kinshasa has to be stopped. That is absolute. For life to be worth living for those down below, this city has to be destroyed.

NUREYEV: But… why would you lie? People already think it’s terrible, they know it has to be stopped, they—

MAG: I lied because of how you’re acting this moment, Pete! Because in the face of uncertainty, a revolution crumbles. History is complicated. Facts take years, decades to prove absolutely, and in the meantime, people are killed.

Did I ever know your father? No. Am I certain there was a man like him, somewhere on Brahma? Completely. And I know that there will be more like him if we don’t stop this city now.

NUREYEV: And… you’re certain there’s no other way to do this, then?

MAG: Absolutely.

NUREYEV: How am I supposed to believe that, Mag? If you’ll lie, if you’ll say anything to prove your truth, how do I know this isn’t a lie, too?

MAG: Peter—

NUREYEV: We can’t do this. Even if it isn’t my home, it’s someone’s, and I won’t destroy it. Put that reactor back, and we’ll find another way.

MAG: And how long will that take? How many more deaths?

COMPUTER VOICE: Levitation power at ninety percent.

MAG: That’s enough. We can talk about this later. We’ve wasted enough time already.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

NUREYEV: Mag, come back! You are not taking that reactor away from here!

MAG: I’m sorry you’re upset, but you’ll understand, Pete. You’ll understand.

NUREYEV: I said you aren’t leaving!

SOUND: BLADE UNSHEATHING.

MAG: Really, Pete? You’d draw a knife on me?

NUREYEV: Bring it back.

MAG: The man who pulled you off the streets. Who raised you.

NUREYEV: The reactor, Mag! Now!

MAG: …I won’t.

I stand for something, Pete. I thought you were the same.

Here’s something else I stand for, Peter: I won’t draw a knife on my family. Do what you like. But I will not strike back.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

NUREYEV: Don’t… walk away from me! …I’ll do it! I swear I will!

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

(GASPING) Haaaah!

SOUND: WET THUD, GRUNT, CLATTERING.

MAG: (GASPING)

SOUND: RUSTLING.

Oh, Peter… oh, my boy.

SOUND: CLUNK. RUSTLING.

(GASPS)

NUREYEV: (AFTER A PAUSE) Mag… oh, Mag, Mag…

The reactor.

SOUND: CLANKING. RUNNING FOOTSTEPS. CANISTER OPENS, LID CLOSES.

COMPUTER VOICE: Reactor restored. Levitation power regenerating.

NUREYEV: There. It’s fixed. All… fixed… no. Alright. You have to do something, Peter. You have to do something. But… what? What the hell do I do?

VOICE 3: (DISTANT) They went this way! They must be in the core!

VOICE 6: (DISTANT) But… why would they put the reactor back?

VOICE 3: (DISTANT) It doesn’t matter! Arm up and get ready to take them down!

NUREYEV: It could be so easy. Just wait for the guards to take you out… and let that be the end of Peter Nureyev.

The… end of Peter Nureyev…

SOUND: DOOR OPENS.

VOICE 3: Hands up!

VOICE 6: We got another body on the floor!

VOICE 3: I said put your hands up!

NUREYEV: They’re up, they’re up. There’s no need to shout.

VOICE 3: I’ll scan him and look him up. You check his pockets.

VOICE 6: Got it. Drop the knife, kid.

NUREYEV: If that’s what you want…

SOUND: CLATTERS.

Though I’m afraid the knife is the least of your worries. You can’t take away the most powerful weapon in my arsenal, after all: my anonymity.

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BEEPS.

VOICE 3: Don’t get too used to that, buddy. Census database says his name is… Peter Nureyev. I’m callin’ it in.

NUREYEV: You may have found a name, constable, but I’m afraid it won’t be worth much to you. A name is but a signifier of the past, and the past is behind us. But as for the future…

Officer, in my pocket you should find a pen. I recommend you take dictation with it. I’ve a message to deliver.

VOICE 6: You can make whatever statements you want at the Constabulary.

NUREYEV: Today I’ve demonstrated that I can destroy New Kinshasa. Today, I’ve decided to let it continue floating. For now.

Pay attention, constables, because this is the important part: every time you fire a laser from this city, know that I come that much closer to destroying it. Know that I can do so whenever I please. Know that I will always be among you, that I could be anywhere, anyone, for I have no name, no past, no identity, and I never will again.

It’s plain and simple, constables. You cannot catch what you cannot name. With no identity, I’ve nothing to tie me down. And so, when trouble arises, I can just… disappear.

VOICE 3: Shut him up, already!

SOUND: PUNCH.

VOICE 6: Oof!

SOUND: HISS.

VOICE 3: (COUGHING) Where the hell… where’d all the smoke come from? Damn it, he’s getting away! Stop him, stop him!

JUNO (NARRATOR): He made it out, of course. And with those quick fingers of his, he made a new interplanetary passport – and the first in a long, long line of fake names.

And as Brahma faded into the distance, the man who used to be Peter Nureyev had just one thing to tell it:

NUREYEV: (DISTANT) Juno! Someone, come help, quick!

JUNO (NARRATOR): No, he– what? Ah, that doesn’t…

SOUND: BUZZING.

(GROANS)

SOUND: FABRIC RUSTLING.

NUREYEV: (DISTANT, GETTING CLEARER) He’s bleeding! If you don’t come in here this instant he’ll die, do you hear me, and then where will you be?

What’s the matter with him? You can help him, can’t you?

SOUND: CLANG. FOOTSTEPS.

He’s… fine then? Well… I suppose I should thank you.

SOUND: CHOKING.

…for giving me just the opportunity I needed.

SOUND: THUD.

Juno… can you hear me?

JUNO: (MOANS)

NUREYEV: This is our chance to escape! You have to get up! Now!

SOUND: RUSTLING.

(PANTING) Come… on…!

SOUND: THUD. DISTANT FOOTSTEPS.

More of Miasma’s assistants… there’s no time. Listen to me, Juno. I won’t leave you here, do you hear me? But… this is my opportunity, and if I don’t take it…

JUNO: (GROANS)

NUREYEV: Shhh. I don’t know what it is you saw in there, but… I’ll be back. I promise you I won’t disappear. Do you hear me?

Goodbye, detective… for now.

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

JUNO (NARRATOR): So this looks pretty bad.

MUSIC: STARTS.

Alone in a Martian tomb, surrounded by killers, and now, my one ride outta here just rode off without me. It all looks a lot like the end for Juno Steel… unless you buy what Nureyev said. Unless you trust Peter Nureyev.

So, Steel. You’ve seen his past, now. But the question remains: who is Peter Nureyev?

Peter Nureyev is… the son of a revolutionary who probably never existed. And Peter Nureyev is the son of a thief, too, a man who showed his love through lies up until the moment Nureyev killed him. And, Peter Nureyev… is a name – a name whispered in the shadows of a floating weapon, a monster under every bed in a floating city of tyrants.

Peter Nureyev is a thief without a home. And he was a thief without a name… until me.

Because Nureyev was wrong, all those years ago. He said a name wasn’t worth anything. He said that he’d never have one again… and then he gave me his. A gift I didn’t understand. So who is Peter Nureyev? Peter Nureyev is a man who makes me feel… makes me feel… a lot, okay?

And I know he’ll be back, because I know one more thing about Peter Nureyev: I make him feel a lot, too.

And why not? Everyone’s got a flaw. Here’s hoping his doesn’t get him killed.

MUSIC: PLAYS, THEN ENDS.

***

SOUND: RAIN, MUSIC.

CONCIERGE: If you’ve enjoyed this tale, please consider supporting The Penumbra on Patreon. Every dollar helps. You can find that page at patreon.com/thepenumbrapodcast. If you support us on Patreon at the $10 level or higher, you’ll receive access to commentary tracks like this one, from actors Joshua Ilon, Kate Jones, and Noah Simes:

SOUND: DOOR CREAKING OPEN.

JOSHUA: Peter Nureyev… to quote Miasma, he gets what he wants. He’s a very… he knows what makes him happy and he pursues what makes him happy. He’s, he’s an adventurer. He’s Indiana Jones. He goes after cool stuff. And Juno, I think from a very young age learned to be very hesitant and to not trust good things…

SOUND: DOOR CREAKING SHUT.

CONCIERGE: We would like to give special thanks to all who support us on Patreon, but especially to Hannah Tsim, Elizabeth Miller, and Angel Acevedo for their incredibly generous contributions per episode. Thank you.

You can also support The Penumbra by liking us on Facebook, following us on twitter @thepenumbrapod, following us on Tumblr @thepenumbrapodcast, telling your friends about us, telling your friends to tell their friends about us, and especially by rating and reviewing our podcast on iTunes. Every rating, comment, and kind word spreads our stories farther and inspires us to keep creating more and better tales to come.

This tale, Peter Nureyev and the Angel of Brahma, was told by the following people: Noah Simes as Peter Nureyev, Ryan Marchant as Mag, Joshua Ilon as Juno Steel, Kate Jones as Miasma, Sophie Kaner as Rossignol, and Jason Mellin, Scott Galica, and Kevin Vibert as the ensemble.

On staff at The Penumbra: Kevin Vibert is our lead writer and recording engineer. Sophie Kaner is our director and sound designer. Grahame Turner is our script editor. Original music by Ryan Vibert. Promotional art by Mikaela Buckley.

The Penumbra is created and produced by Sophie Kaner and Kevin Vibert.

I’m so sorry you’ve been called away, dear Traveler. We eagerly await your return.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.