#The way the world starts fraying as you get too far away from civilization too. the whole thing is undeniably unnatural

[bunnieswithknives]

Something that really caught my attention was when I was rewatching the first scene where the Parkour God was introduced and he refers to Parkciv as quote "The Parkour Civilization I built." and that really got me thinking. There are so many ways its implied that the world wasn't always how we see it in the series: the existence of trees despite none growing naturally, the existence of farm animals despite none spawning and various blocks that should be impossible to obtain in Parkour Civ, all implying that these things are hold overs from the past.

The memory is the most damning evidence to me because, even though parts of it were fabricated, the version of the world in that memory had to come from somewhere. Its completely implausible to me that Seawatt made it from scratch as a main theme of the series is being unable to imagine a world that isn't like the one you've grown up in; even when trying to fix the world Evbo literally cannot imagine a world that is foundationally about parkour. We know where Seawatt was born too, and there's never any indication he interacted with the 'real' world. The only explanation left is that the memory already existed and Seawatt just overwrote it to include himself so where did the original memory come from? Likely the Parkour god himself.

We don't know much about the Parkour God because he only shows up very briefly, but I don't think I'm overthinking this. Throughout the series we get to see the humanity revealed time and time again of characters who are at first presented as untouchable: EMF, Parkour Legends are just revealed to be regular people, and Evbo's own ascension to godhood proves the Parkour God's role is just the same. So yeah I don't think intuiting a whole life for him all that much of a stretch.

So where am I going with this? I think the Parkour God was a regular player who through the power of command blocks reshaped the world in his image, functionally destroying it in the process. The world of parkour civilization is, objectively pretty unlivable. No greenery spawns naturally, no animals, and the player population always seems dangerously low.

At a certain point I think he realized that what he had done was unsustainable but without any idea on how to 'fix' his new world, he delegated the task to the players still left, letting them basically sort out a caste system on their own and giving them a slice of his power in the form of the 2 command blocks. By the time he relinquished this control back to the players nobody left had been alive before Parkour Civilization began so they just continued with how it was, trying to save a system that is fundamentally broken because it was all they knew.

Having thoughts about the Parkour God from Parkour Civilization if anyones interested..

[mrs-bartowski]

My dudes. My guys. My pals.

I’m about 10 seconds away from going feral.

So, I’m the kind of unfortunate chump whose brain requires continuity. Meaning, when I started thirst watching Supergirl during its mid-season-2 hiatus and came across the realization that it had crossovers with all the other arrowverse shows, my brain tasked me with watching them all. I won’t put you through a recount of this arduous feat, but it does leave me with the certain advantage of having immediate and full-contextual access to any parallels between supercorp and canon CW DCEU couples.

Normally, this is a good thing, because it’s just another crumb to obsess over. But I just finished watching Legends 6x02 and...I. AM. FUMING.

I literally don’t even know where to start, but know that if you’ve made it this far you’re in for a long ride because my entire being is in Scream mode right now and I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop typing until it passes.

OKAY. So.

Meet Sara Lance (lol jk y’all thirsty gays know who she is I mean look at this flawless human)

Next, meet her ******* Ava Sharpe (who is literally the definition of white European beauty standards-based perfection because she’s a clone from the future)

And finally, meet Gary Green. He’s...well, he’s Gary.

Sara started out on Arrow and is now the captain of the Legends. Ava was the director of the Time Bureau and Gary was an agent, and now they are also members of the Legends. Sara has been there (and been the show’s effective lead) since season 1. Ava and Gary both came in at the beginning of season 3. 

Gary is (as pictured) an absolute fool, but he is also kind of regarded as the one the Legends Must Protecc. The whole team is considered a family, and, while they are not necessarily labeled as best friends, Gary has been Ava’s longest and most loyal companion, and Sara has a way of adopting him because she’s the best equipped to keep him out of trouble.

So, why is all of this relevant to why I want to go feral? Because it sounds a bit familiar, yes? Member of the team that is somewhat a black sheep, doesn’t get included fully or all the time but often comes in with save-the day type shit (even though with Gary it’s more of a distraction than a save because he’s a mess of a man). Close friend to one of our two main heroes and, subsequently, that hero’s closest companion puts them at the top of their Protecc list. Has little faith in his relationships with the team so he is constantly going out of his way to help in whatever way he can to prove his usefulness. And so on and so forth.

Well, 6x01 marks exactly 3 years since Gary’s first appearance, and what did we find out in that episode? That Gary is an alien. And not just any alien - an alien who was sent (by the woman he was traded to) to get close to Sara because she has been labeled as one of the world’s most dangerous creatures. Not to mention, his species of alien feeds on humans (not him of course, he’s reformed, but nonetheless not a friendly species). And we find out all of this because he and his master abduct her.

Sara finds out in person while Ava and the rest of the Legends solve the mystery on their own. Now, I’ve drawn a lot of comparisons between Lena and Gary to make a point about the time frame and nature of their relationships, but let’s take a look at Sara, shall we? For starters, she’s been “dead” either literally or supposedly about...what, 15 times now? If you think that’s an exaggeration, here’s the link to her fan wiki which says she’s been presumed dead 10 times and actually dead 5. The sg writers tried to sell season 5 as “the fight for Lena’s soul” but Sara LITERALLY LOST HER SOUL when she got resurrected in the Lazarus pit. 90% of Sara’s character development has been based on her certainty that she is too close to death and evil and destruction (getting possessed by a demon, perhaps, had something to do with this?). She was an actual literal assassin and she has left civilization out of anger and pain to go back to that life once before.

She has always believed that she is too dangerous to have real love or relationships or friends. And now she has found and built and led this family through time and space and she’s done so with this goofball by her side that is endearingly attached to the love of her life. So, how does she react when she finds out Gary is an alien? Well, clearly, she goes down a dark path, right? She cries and screams and talks about betrayal because she’s had such a hard time with feeling like she only ever puts the people she loves in danger and now here she is finding out there’s been a human-eating alien in her family for three years that was tasked with observing her and keeping her in check because she is exactly that dangerous?

Yeah...try again. This is how Sara reacts:

And then there's another scene that apparently no one even bothered to put on YouTube where you can see the pain in Sara's eyes when she asks him “why me?” You can see how hurt she is that after 3 years she’s just finding out that their friendships is based on lies and that she has trouble keeping her faith in it. But in both of these instances where are the “crocodile tears?” Where are the fearful, shaky confessions from Gary about his fear of losing the only people who have ever really loved or cared about him and desperate justifications about how he just wanted to protect them and keep them in the dark so his master didn’t come after them? Where is the outrage from Sara about how everything Gary has reassured her about over the past three years when she was scared to let the damaged-soul assassin inside of her out was a lie and he doesn’t get to tell her who or what she is again? Where is the determination from Ava to make Gary pay for not only lying for three years but for ABDUCTING THE LOVE OF HER LIFE TO HAND OVER TO A FLESH-EATING ALIEN??????

Nowhere. Those things...they’re nowhere. There’s anger. There’s pain. There’s doubt and heartbreak and fury. There’s betrayal and helplessness and desperation. But there is no scene with Sara standing on a balcony and Gary looking up at her longingly because he wants to talk to her about the secret and he knows it will change everything between them. There is no scene with Sara and Ava lamenting over what this means for Gary and the team and the world because he’s no longer the person they knew. There are no romantically-scored scenes of them looking teary-eyed at the pictures they took together or reassurances that the others’ intentions are good and trustworthy now that the truth is out in the open. There is nothing to imply that the last several years of friendship are now entirely suspect (damaged, frayed, clouded, maybe, but definitely not voided) because Gary kept this secret to protect them. And Gary isn’t made to feel obscenely guilty or shameful because his intentions were good and he only did what he felt he had to. But most of all, the world doesn’t feel like it’s going to end.

And I’m not talking about we’re now scared Gary will take his master’s side or Sara will suddenly decide that she never wants an alien to fool her or hurt her again so she’s going to make sure he doesn’t have the choice. I’m just talking about the way they address each other. There are no sobbing tears or laments over the biggest mistakes of their lives - even though it’s quite possible Gary could see this as his. There are no screaming matches over betrayal and mistrust and years of doubt and confusion. There will be no episode dedicated to going back and seeing what could have happened - what kind of danger they could have avoided from the alien(s) controlling Gary - had he told them the truth sooner because that’s the only way to save him and the world. There will be no episode where he has to single-handedly save them multiple times as some example of redemption. There will be no adamant looks and declarations about how the team knows his intentions were good and they forgive him. There won’t be any of that. Because Sara is not in love with Gary. And Ava is not in love with Gary. And Gary is not in love with either Sara or Ava. They’re just close friends. Family. Loved ones who mean a lot to each other but whose betrayal and seeds of doubt don’t bring on emotions whose force and ferocity could be acceptable for finding out the apocalypse is nigh.

I have many, many more feelings about this but right now I’m going to go write things that will make me feel better and not things that make me want to gather every writer from every CW show in a line and run down the line smacking them all in the face while the Legends writers watch and cheer. But I’m fuming. THIS is what it looks like when a years-long, heavily weighted lie is revealed between close friends/family. So, in conclusion, Supercorp endgame or die.

[newtonsheffield]

Can you do Anthony’s reaction when someone disrespects Kate at work or in her personal life about her relationship with Anthony or her job position? Anthony defending her and Kate loving him all the more and/or maybe slightly annoyed.

Hello! I’m so sorry that this request has been just... collecting dust in my inbox I’m truly the worst! And I’m doing something even more reprehensible and combining it with another request ugh! I know! I know! I Will get better at this I promise!!! 

Another Anon asked: Can you write about Kate defending the Bridgertons? I feel like someone would bad mouth them and Kate would totally stand up against them and everyone would be impressed. 

Okay! On with the show this is also kind of related to a post I made ages ago about a dude objectifying Kate at her University reunion but I can’t find it. Anyway, Dudebro David is back.

“Oh Fuck!” Kate had sighed when Lucy had handed her her schedule this morning, glancing down the list, her eyes rolling when she saw the name David Warner listed as Mr Smith’s divorce attorney. Lucy’s eyebrows widened, her hand fiddling with the engagement ring on her left hand a little nervously.  “Is something wrong?”  Kate sighed “No, I just... I know Mr Smith’s attorney from university. We... didn’t date exactly we just...” Kate trailed off awkwardly. Lucy made a surprised little noise.  “Oh. Well. This should be... interesting.” She said, a small smirk starting on her lips. Kate had tutted.  “David is a professional, I’m a professional. It’ll be fine.” 

It was not fine. From the very moment he’d arrived David Warner, his square jaw set, his hair swept back with a little too much product, had been... snarky at best. He’d pulled Kate in by the arm leaving a kiss against her cheek that had made her want to cringe.  “Sheffield! It’s good to see you!” He’d said, a smirk on his face, his hand dropping to her waist. Kate had pulled back, nudging his hand from her and said sharply,  “David. I trust you’ve been well.” hoping to discourage him. It did not work. His eyes had flicked over her as they’d sat at the conference table, settling on the rings on her left hand, narrowing a little. And then he’d really started, He’d shot down every attempt at civility, glared at her, made several unseemly inferences. And Kate couldn’t help but wonder if he’d always been this disgustingly misogynistic. She was relieved when Lucy finally stood and said briskly,  “I’ll show you out Mr & Mrs Smith.” And yet David Warner had lingered as they’d walked through the hall 

“I can’t believe Kate Sheffield sold out!” He said, smirking irritatingly, and Kate could feel the thin strand of her patience fraying slightly further. “You also work for a well known firm David, I can’t imagine your billable hours are worth much less than mine.” She said, a tight smile on her face, desperate to end this interaction. David laughed a little humourlessly “We both know I was always going to do this. Kate Sheffield was going to save the world.” Kate bit back a tut, forced herself to remain civil as she said  “Well circumstances change David.” her voice cold when she thought about the real reason she’d come straight back to London after graduating. David opened his mouth to say something else, a sneer forming on his lips though what he was going to say she would never know.  “Kate, honey, there you are I was just going to pick up Edmund from-” Anthony said appearing in the bullpen from his office rather suddenly his eyes widening in surprise ad slightly odd recognition as he took in David. Perhaps they’d worked opposite one another before.  “Oh! Sorry!” Anthony finished awkwardly. David’s expression dropped into something curiously like disgust forming on his face. Anthony cleared his throat. “David wasn’t it? We met at your reunion I believe.” Anthony’s voice was tight, a warning almost, as his hand went out in front of him. Kate felt her eyebrows shoot upwards in surprise. David eyed Anthony’s hand, the sneer coming to his face all over again as he looked between Kate and her husband. 

“And here he is. The second way you sold out Kate: Mr Anthony Bridgerton!” David’s voice was dripping his derision, his jaw set, his eyes narrowed Kate felt her mouth open in surprise a little at the statement, felt Anthony’s arm tighten protectively around her waist.  “Was it getting on your knees for the most notorious man in London that changed your circumstances Kate?” David continued, chuckling to himself a little “You know, they say law’s a bit of an old boys club but it sure must be easy for you girls to sleep your way into a partnership. And The Bridgerton’s? Of all people Kate I mean come on!” Kate felt her patience finally snap, but apparently Anthony’s patience had frayed much quicker. His voice was cold fury when he spoke  “Mr. Warner, I’m afraid I’m going to ask you not to speak to my colleague that way, I don’t tolerate disrespect towards the employees of this firm in any way. Even less do I tolerate it towards my wife, Sir. Kate is extremely capable, far more than some and was promoted on professional merit alone, I assure you.” He finished coldly, his jaw set, his arm moving as though to move Kate behind him to shield her from what was being said. Kate refused to move, anger building in her chest., she could see Gregory moving closer towards their small group, his arms crossed. David sneered again,

“Come on Bridgerton, pretty honourable for you to marry her afterwards I’ll admit, and I’ll admit from what I remember it might have been worth-” He said, cutting himself off as Anthony lunged towards David his hand thrown out, likely to throttle the man, stopping only when Kate caught his arm, her voice surprising even her in its softness  “Anthony don’t.” Anthony’s posture relaxed, turning back towards her, his eyes softening immediately, Kate felt her own anger ebb away as their eyes caught. 

“He’s not worth it.” She said softly, and then turning towards her former acquaintance “David, if you’re a tenth as smart as you pretend to be you’ll stop talking.” His mouth opened, sneer still fixed in place, Kate shook her head  “David, maybe my life did go down a different road than I thought it would, but you’re exactly where you were ten years ago, tearing other people down to make yourself look bigger, and I feel sorry for you. My life is absolutely none of your business, and it has no impact on my ability to do my job. Which by the way, one of us graduated top of their class, the other scraped out of the bottom ten.” Kate finished, feeling a little smug at David’s mouth falling open in surprise. Anthony arm wrapped around her waist again, she could see the smug smile on his face, his thumb rubbing along the rings on her left hand. 

“I am extremely proud of my association with the Bridgerton family, David. And we look out for one another.” Kate said lightly, turning towards Gregory who was standing behind Kate, his arms crossed, doing his best to look imposing despite his bowtie  with Mario and Luigi in a jumping high five, their hands meeting at the knot. “Gregory, could you show Mr. Warner out, please.” Kate finished, tugging Anthony from the scene as Gregory gave her a kiss on the cheek before gripping David Warner tightly by the upper arm. 

Anthony remained unnervingly silent as Kate pulled him into her own office. His jaw still set in anger as Kate slowly collected her things before turning to her husband, whose eyes were glistening. Her stomach swooped uncomfortably. “You shouldn’t listen to the things he said about you, Anthony.” Kate said, reaching her hand out and running her fingers through his hair. Anthony’s eyes, which had closed at the contact, shot open again at the end of her sentence. His voice came out choked. “Kate, I’m upset because of what he said about you. I’m trying to stop myself from running after him and strangling him.” Kate’s heart clenched at the earnestness in his voice “Anthony, I don’t care what he says about me. I don’t care what anyone says anymore.” And it was true, truly the only emotion she’d felt as she’d stood listening to his words was surprise. David had never really been the type of person to say insults to someone’s face, if he hadn’t insulted Anthony’s family, truly she would have been more impressed at the guts it had taken to say what he’d said about her.  “We both know what really happened, right?” Anthony nodded quickly in response “And that’s all that matters. I really do love you you know.” She finished standing slightly on her toes to kiss him lightly as Anthony hummed happily, his posture relaxing. “I love you too, Kate. And you, really are the most incredible person I know.” He said wrapping her in a tight hug, his chin resting on her head, they stayed wrapped together for several moments before Kate chuckled to herself. Pulling back, with a smirk on her face she said,

“And besides Mr. Bridgerton, we both know only one of us has gotten on their knees in this office, and it wasn’t me. Now let’s go and collect our Son.” tugging Anthony from the office laughing as he puffed his chest out and said  “You’re damn right. And I’d do it again.”                   

[bug-the-chicken-nug]

Mistral would still need the aspect of "how did they not just die poisoned by their own negativity before they could even get a foothold as a major world power" to be addressed though. At least as of writing this, what makes the most sense to me is that even Mistral wasn't *always* that bad, and that its racism would still typically manifest in a different way than outright hostility. So basically it had a leadup period where people actually used to get along alright, this actually resulted in something strong and functional... and then overcrowding and resource depletion starts kicking in. The first frays in the system kick in, you get wealth and land hoarding starting to manifest, with those on top now having a vested interest in needing things to redirect people's frustration towards while also keeping them all convinced that they *deserve* to keep having more than everyone else. So to kill two birds with one stone they start conquering land, often by making predatory "alliances" where you slowly consume and vassalize your neighbors in a "nicer" way, if you can't afford all the strife of aggressive conquest. The racism initially manifests as xenophobia towards everyone still in these outside lands- people you can "safely" dump on and complain about because they're far away and more nebulous as a concept anyway. Foreign Faunus, with their "weird" features and comparatively "weirder" customs, steadily drift towards being like Extra acceptable to bitch about. But Mistral's Thing, it's "rationalization" that glues its society together, is that Faunus *aren't* stuck being inherently inferior, noooo, don't be silly! Of course it's possible for Faunus to become "good enough" to be fully equal! They just have to be upstanding, loyal, and work hard! It isn't racism, it's just pointing out "genuine" flaws and moral deficiencies that can be overcome with enough willpower! Therefore, all the nice, smart, civilized Faunus are still our friends! (Please don't revolt please don't revolt please don't revolt we JUST re-stabilized the economy please don't revolt) Nevermind that the system slowly got to a point where it's five times harder for a lot of Faunus to prove their worth compared to regular humans! You're just being negative! I could easily see this leading to systems where Faunus from old, respectable bloodlines basically get a free pass, sometimes actually being *better* liked than certain humans, and certain sub-types of Faunus end up being better-regarded in Mistral right off the bat. Lion Faunus, for instance, being seen as "cool" and "brave" and "strong" (aka, definitely part of how Lionheart became a headmaster) So, people's racism towards the Faunus "in-groups" manifests in the same vein as "Asian people are good at math!" or "Black people are stronger and faster!", and makes a lot of people peddling it think they're being *nice*. But even for out-groups of Faunus, I imagine that there's still that air of "talk mad shit while they're not there, then clam up as soon as they walk in the room" With how Mistral was previously under emotional repression mandates too, I think that would only further this sort of behavior. Lingering cultural echoes of it still causing Mistral to have a "quieter" sort of racism too. Still different from Vale racism, but still not actually the kind of thing where people intentionally mock you to your face. It'd be more like... A typical Vale racist is generally well-meaningly ignorant, and will be perfectly cordial up until they fumble and say something prejudiced without even realizing they did. A typical Mistral racist will be cold and aloof with you, and openly give you weird looks, but generally still not outright insult you. They'll be the type to always say "not racist, but-". They'll judge you ten times harder for any moral failings. They'll be the type to say "I can't be racist, I have a friend who's a Faunus!" (but the Faunus will basically always be one of the "good" kinds with a "good" subtype, though)

the hardest part about doing a full rwby rewrite has to be just the fact that the racism plot was important to a bunch of characters, and yet the existence of Grimm elevates racism from being just cruel and irrational to now fundamentally SO stupid and self-destructive in an immediately obvious, non-abstract, direct cause/effect sort of way that you have no idea how they didn't drive themselves extinct.

Like if anything they should be living in super collectivist communes where the problem wraps around to everyone being kind of TOO nice, in a nervous, forced kind of way.

Everyone "talks like a therapist" or makes all their words watered down and soft like they live in a show for little kids... On purpose. Because they're terrified.

Social rules like "Every time you greet people, it's also heavily encouraged to compliment them," or "Even the smallest disagreements should be held quietly/privately", stuff like that.

People who seem cheerful and friendly but are really just constantly emotionally suppressed and have so much buried anxiety that they don't even *know* they have anxiety anymore, or really even classify it as such, because this is just How It Is to be a person living in Remnant.

You just. Live like a prey animal and do your best not to think about that too hard.

Like I think if it DOES still have racism my go-to explanation would be that it actually *isn't* popular opinion that negative emotion attracts Grimm, and to make this discrepancy obvious right away.

This is just something that has been long suspected, but only somewhat recently confirmed, and the people who profit off of the suffering of others just keep desperately pretending it isn't true and slandering all the studies involved, because as long as they have others to insulate them from the fallout of their terrible choices, they never learn anything.

[hiddenwashington]

the city is still and quiet. the only sounds coming from the wind blowing through the trees as the city sleeps; perfectly at peace. for months now, there has been nothing. no brutal murders, no magical poisons, life has been… almost dull. but as the magic in washington tends to work, the moment you get comfortable, disaster strikes.

as the sun begins to rise, the citizens of washington are awoken by a crash of lightning, a blinding light that quickly engulfs the city. as the light fades, people begin searching their homes, trying to find their roommates, spouses, and friends who have seemingly vanished into thin air. before worry can fully set in, the snarls and growls of something inhuman fill the air. those remaining in the city realize they have far bigger worries than missing loved ones.

as they look out their windows and run into the streets, they see beasts and monsters completely foreign to dc. if one looks closely, they may recognize some of the creatures from the world they were born in, creatures they thought they’d never see again. enchanted corpses crawl up from the river, hellish monsters tear through the streets, soldiers armored in white march across the white house lawn, and creatures cloaked in black float over the rooftops, spreading despair wherever they go. those remaining in dc will need to fight to survive if they wish to see their loved ones again at the end of this storm. it’s time to prepare to fight creatures that most had never experienced before, or ones they were trusting to be locked away in their home worlds. will you team up with fellow citizens to fight? hunker down and pray for it to end? or enter the streets to save those who have never seen these monsters before? whatever your choice is, just make sure you make it through the storm.

for those who vanished, they wake to find themselves on a deserted island. there’s no civilization in sight, no land in the distance, and no way off the island. those who attempt to escape the island by swimming or using their abilities are thrown back to shore by a forcefield manifesting as powerful wind. at first, it seems they’ll be fine, stranded and trapped but, they’ve dealt with worse. seemingly, all they need to do is wait until whatever magical surge the city has conjured up this time runs out. but then it begins to rain, clear droplets that, at first, are easily mistaken as water, but it burns as they touch your skin. as the trapped citizens take shelter from the growing storm, they wonder what exactly they’ve gotten themselves sucked into this time.

after some time, it stops, but the relief is once again short lived as a new disaster begins. every hour, the island is plagued by some new horror. as if on a timer, it cycles through storms, fires, and magical surges, keeping those trapped just as much on their toes as the ones fighting for their lives back home. can they beat the clock, surviving on the island with nothing but each other and the trees to protect them?

once again, the magic of dc has turned dark and frightening; surging at an uncontrollable speed. the more time passes, the longer the storm rages on, the clearer it becomes that the city is changing. allowing unknown entities, and perhaps even more to pass through to this world. the tides are changing, perhaps for the worse.

                                                           ~~~~~

-- the city of dc is once more plagued by a surge of magic, separating the residents from their loved ones all over again. half the city has been transported to a deserted island off the coast, trying to beat the clock as each hour on the hour a new plague hits them. it can be anything from acid rain to poison fog coming through the trees. they must survive long enough to make it off the island, unable to escape and swim to shore. while the other half is stuck in dc, trapped in the city with no word of their family being safe or not as creatures and beings both familiar and not begin to swarm the streets. they must make it through the storm as these creatures are set on making this city run red with blood. can they outlast the monsters from home and afar? can their loved ones return all in one piece? these questions remain unanswered as the magic surges on, the tides are forever changing. only time will tell what it will look like as the storm finally calms.

OOC INFORMATION

hello, hi, welcome friends!! welcome to hidden’s 12th !! event !! we are beyond excited to be able to bring you yet another labor of love, and chaos from us!! it has been such a blessing to come up with twelve amazing events for all of you and we cannot wait to see how you guys take this one and run! we absolutely love the energy behind it and we hope you guys will as well!! there’s going to be so much to do on both ends of this, and it’s going to be hard hitting from beginning to end!! please read on for all of the rules and information surrounding the event and please as always have fun friends!! we hope you enjoy this as much as we did putting it together!! ♥

DATES :

july 10th - july 20th july 24th

this event will last for one week in character, ten days for us !!

CHARACTER GROUPING :

your characters have been split up randomly between both dc and the island

you can find where you will be on the list here 

if you find that too many of your characters are in one group, please let us know and we will break you up !!

LOCATION INFORMATION :

washington dc --

all the information you’re going to need to know while trapped in the city of washington dc

here your characters will face monsters both familiar and not. there is a long list of them that we have taken from a multitude of different fandoms to give a mix of difficulty but also variety. 

you can find the full list of creatures here 

your characters will have full run of the city as always, they are free to make safe houses, try and save people, run head first into a horde of zombies for the thrill of it. anything you can really think of. 

these monsters will not rest, making the streets everyone has learned to call home unsafe and filled with chaos. try to outlast, to out run, and survive long enough to find your loved ones in the fray.

these monsters will not just attack people from the fandoms they are from, they are free game to attack and be attacked by any and all citizens whether you have seen them or not. so be prepared to fight things you’ve never heard of!

the island --

all the information you’re going to need to know while trapped on the island in the sea

your characters have all woken up on a deserted beach, no sign of the city in sight, the only think they hear is the crashing waves against the ocean. it seems safe enough, except for the barrier keeping them all here, trapped with no way off. 

through out their time here, the island is a ticking clock, slowly getting ready for it’s next surge, it’s next wave of disasters to strike. 

each hour a new trial will happen, you can find the full list of them here

we admins will not be making a post for each time the disasters shift, so, please make use of the random number generator found on the doc. use this to decide which disaster will be taking place during each of your threads. you are free to decide any which one just so long as you use a variety throughout your time on the island.

if we see you only writing with one disaster we will come message you to ask you to shift gears to a different option. we want everyone to enjoy but also get the full experience!!

your characters are going to have to outlast these disasters and survive as they attempt to cause harm to you and those around. stay safe, protect your fellow citizens and best of luck!!

CHARACTER DEATHS / INJURIES :

this island and these creatures are not here for a fun vacation or to be friends. this surge is dangerous and we want to make sure you all are prepared for such. of course, it is always completely optional for your characters to get hurt or die, but we want to give the information in case your characters get into a bind either from the ticking clock of the island or from some monster taking a swipe at them!

as far as injuries go, you are more than welcome to have any of your characters become injured. if it is something minor like a sprained ankle or some cuts, you do not have to message us admins about it. but if it’s more major, like broken bones or major cuts, please make sure you message us admins so we can keep track of it! 

now, for anyone looking for death plots, we are going to be limiting the number of character deaths per mun, that way we can keep track of the updates on the main and make sure that people are branching out with different plots beyond death!

the limit will be if you have 5 and under characters, you are limited to 2 characters. if you have 5 or over, you are able to kill 3-4 characters!

if you do plan to kill anyone, please remember to message the main, that way we are able to update the memories statuses of your characters post event!

QUICK HOUSEKEEPING :

one stop shop for all your plotting, posting and tagging questions !!

feel free to begin plotting now! you can post plotting calls, starter calls or anything of the like !! just remember to keep any in character posts saved for the 10th!

please hold any and all non event threads until the event has concluded on the 20th! you are free to pick them up again after, or start fresh with your characters adjusting to yet another magical surge.

you are welcome to have your characters text each other if they are in different groups, but remember the connection is spotty and unreliable. we also want to make sure everyone is focusing mainly on their groups so please, do not over do it. if we see too many text threads, we will have to remove this feature.

please tag all posts (in character , out of character , para , etc ) with hwevent12 

please make sure you tag all interactions with which group your character is in : examples like ‘ event : the island ‘ , ‘ the city group ‘ , even just ‘ the island ‘. this way people know which group you are in when interacting!

keep your eyes on the main for any information pertaining to the event as the days trek on!!

as always, this event is mandatory for all members !!

please remember that not everyone has to have their memories altered, and you are free to keep your character either aware/unaware !! but be sure to remember that if they do have their memories altered, this will affect them in the long run after the event as well !!

and as always, have fun, get creative, think outside the box and enjoy the chaos of our twelfth event!!! we cannot wait to see what you all do with this during the event and beyond !! please don’t hesitate to ask any questions, we know this is a lot of information to take in, so let us know if you need any help! and again, as always, please like this when you have read it all! ♥

[realfuurikuuri]

Chapters: 20/? Fandom: Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart (Cartoon) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Mao Mao/Tanya Keys, Mao mao/badgerclops

A/N: Finally managed to get out chapter 20, so alls of y’alls should go read it.

Direct Link to Ao3 Chapter 20

Chapter under the cut:

 The day was ending. The setting sun lit the sky on fire with orange and deep blue. On better days, Mao Mao might have been able to take a second and enjoy it. Instead, there was this      ...feeling    overwhelming his insides. He could feel it in his fingers and in his toes. Maybe it would be better to say he couldn’t feel it. Like he’d completely burned it would out every emotion he could possibly feel and was left with nothing.

       When was the last time he had a “better day”?

 Maybe when he was sitting in his mother’s lap at barely five years old.  They were vaguely remembered moments. The two of them sitting in the garden at dusk as he fidgeted with childish energy. Unsure of what they were doing, yet enjoying the moment so much he was unable to stop. Of course, those moments had to end. Childhood gives way to adolescence and then finally adulthood.

 There were the times he spent with Tanya. It was nice. Free from most of his shackles. The shadow of the Mao-clan wasn’t constantly looming behind him when he had a family of his own in front of him. Then all of that had to come crashing down around him, leaving him only with that damnable shadow.

 Then there were the first few days he was in the Pure Heart Valley. It was a land unsullied and untouched by the outside world. Literally a blank canvas for him to try and make something worthwhile. No tragedy, no family, no burdens existed here. However, all those things had to follow him into even the most remote places and eventually dominate his life again.

 Mao Mao covered his face with his hands, like he could shield himself from the shame attacking him from all sides.

 He pulled his hands away and looked around. He was on the outskirts of everything. The city out of sight, his HQ which was already far from civilization a dot on the horizon, so small, he might be mistaking the tears in his eyes for it. He wiped them away, and then again. He looked at his one remaining hand wondering if he was somehow missing before he realized that he was crying.

 That was the final straw that broke him. Or maybe that was what made him aware he was already broken.

 Maybe it was that realization that hit him harder than anything else. It knocked the wind out of him, and made his knees buckle until he was in the grass. He clawed at the dirt, trying to grasp something to help him at least sit up, but everything slipped right through his fingers.

 * * *

 Badgerclops sat down, his back against a tree. The cicadas had quieted down by now. It really was getting late. He was thankful to finally get off his feet, if only for a short, small, and quick break. It didn’t just give him time to rest, it gave him  to think. He thought about his acing feet, the growing hunger in his stomach, but those thoughts were transient and inconsequential.

       The thought that really weighed on his mind was that of his friend, of his partner. When they met, there was this sort of unspoken agreement between the two of them. That their lives started the second they met, and don’t you dare ask about      anything    that came before. A proposition Badgerclops was eager to agree to. He had baggage he’d much rather throw away than unpack. He never imagined he meet someone with enough to rival him, or even out do by a country mile.

       Two entire lives he never mentioned. One surrounding a family (if you could call it that) who didn’t know what reciprocal love was. And a relationship crushed into a fine dust by his own hands, well, just hand. He never would’ve imagined he’d have a child. Seemed like too much of a straight shooter to have one.

       That was the most difficult part of working with him.

       The calamities that’d walk through your front door demanding to be fixed by a man who could never fix himself. He was sure that’d when he finally managed to push Tanya and her son out of the valley. What’s next? A mountain sized monster coming after the Ruby? The rest of his family showing up to debate inheritance? Wibbildy wobbly time-shenanigans? He didn’t really put anything past fate? Or misfortune? Or whatever was in control of his mess of a life.

       It certainly wasn’t him.

       Badgerclops stood up with a groan. He rested his feet a bit, but they were still sore, and his knees were now staring to feel funky, too. He wasn’t even that old. Maybe the saying “stress ages you” is actually true. In that case, the past month probably yanked years off his life.

       He looked up. The day was getting old and the night wa just being born. His search started late in the day; there wans’t much time anyway. He stood up resolved to continue tomorrow, if he could find him at all.

 * * *

       Mao Mao sat there on the hillock. The tears had dried up, the ground felt steady beneath his feet, and he had nothing else to give. That was probably the worst part of it. When you come back down from those emotional extremes, you find that birds still sing, that grass is still green, and the world keeps turning. These all consuming problems are small, inconsequential, and yet they consume you all the same.

       If his problems were small, yet still consumed him, how small was he?

       He cringed and looked away, trying to push that realization out of his mind, but it stuck to him like a mosquito. He slapped it away a thousand times, ignore it like it wasn’t there, but it buzzed around in his own head. He absently scratched the back of his head, his frustration growing and mounting. It was only natural that he’d throw his head back and let out a groan of frustration, but when he looked back down there was something staring back.

       Staring back wasn’t the right word, for it had a featureless pink face.

       Mao Mao’s first instinct was to lurch back, tumbling over himself, barely escaping to his feet. A smooch as h’ed like to say that his hardened reflexes as a warrior were the cause, his quivering knees were undeniable. His dry tongue. The sweat creeping down his back. This was ruthless fear.

 Where did it come from? He didn’t hear it approach, didn’t even smell it. What was this creature? It shambled towards with long gangly limbs, and an unnatural uneven stride. He didn’t recognize this from his families Monster Manual. He didn’t recognize it from his personal travels… or, maybe he did.

 This fear he was feeling wasn’t the fresh kind. It was the kind thrown back in your face when dredged up from childhood memories… no. The fear was potent, but it wasn’t aged like wine. It was like a fresh soda all shaken up. So filled with bubling energy that it was about to burst.

 He wrapped his tail around his scabbard and pulled out his sword. He held his sword up high, edge facing the sky, the tip pointing at the monstrosity. He didn’t notice that he’d taken a more defensive form than unusual until he’d pushed away to quick strikes.

 Their was a sickening shriek as the creatures claws ran down his blade.

 They say many things can bring back memories. Smell is the usual subject. Smelling a dish in a restaurant that reminds you of mother’s homecooked meal. Personally, Mao Mao had alays been much more sensitive to sound. Maybe itwas his big ears or just a more personal quirk. Something as simple as falling into the mud while a bird chirps would forever taint the dove’s song to him.

 Right now, hearing claws rake across his blade like nails on a chalkboard, forced memories back up like vomit. Memories literally tinged with the flavor. There was something else with them. The stink of alcohol. A woozy haze. Explosive fear. He’d seen this creature before. Where? When?

 The realization hit him like the claks scouring his chest.

 He backed away, defensive posture still going strong. The wound wans’t deep enough to do more than draw blood, but the pain sung with every movmeent. The apin wasn’t enough to send him reeling, it was the word etched into his vague memories with clarity.

 Demon.

       He couldn’t believe he forgotten any of it. His sword began to shake and his knees began to buckle. Whatever stalwart resolve he usually had was falling away. He barely had time to retaliate when the demon lunged at him. He moved forward, pus the grasping hands with a strong thrust. Most things would die witha  sword throught he head, but the demon just pulled itself off. Frayed bits of its heads sewing itself up as it stumbled around.

       Thar’s right… He coldn’t kill this thing.

       Escape was his only option. His eyes flicked to the forest. His first mistake. When they flicked back to the action, he nearly had his eyes taken out. HE pulled his head out the way as claws scraped his cheek. His form was broken. It was a buried and sloppy mess of parries or slashes. No, not even that. He was swinging his sword, guiding the attacks away from himself.

       He was retreating. Each step back to gain space meant lost ground. How long could he keep this up? His arms were sore and his hands hurt. His movements were getting slower ad slower until he knew he’d reached his breaking point. He pulled back, catching the demons’ left hand, and pushed forward to catch the right, but his reactions were just a hair too slow.

       The claws slipped right on past and were homing in. Probably would be the end to his adventures if the demon hadn’t made a simple mistake. Something so innocent as shambling too far and losing its balance, throwing the attack wide and nearly taking half his face.

        The demon fell face forward into the dirt. Someone with honor or pirde may have let it stand back up, but there was only fear to be found here. Mao Mao stuck his sword and the ground and pushed it forward. One quick swing, to split his enemy in half. He hated to let luck decide a duel, but if it decided to be on his side for once than he’d accept her offer.

       He let the sword hang limp in his hands. It was done, mostly over, when he saw the threads writhing like worms. They moved of their own accord wth no pattern, rhyme or reason. No wound -no matter how egregious- id more than bother it.

 That wasn’t right.

 That wasn’t fair!

       He picked his sword back upw ith a haphazard grip. Slammign it down over and over, chopping, ripping and tearing, sending thread into the air like they were guts until eh could do no more. And it still wasn’t enough. There were bits and pieces left. A part of its head, maybe its hip, a forearm, and somethign else. Just lumps of thread, and yet they all seemed to defy every bit of reason.

 When would it stop?

 Could it be stopped?

       What to do? What to do? Even if there were anything in the Mao family handbook for killing immortals there wasn’t any way he’d remember it. His eyes searched the remains as they slowly stitched themselves back together. Was there some sort of core he needed to destory? Some weakness he could exploit? All he could do was pikc up the pieces. One after the other and throw them as hard as he could.

       It wasn’t very far. Barely enough to toss them out of the clearing and into the shrubbery before he fianlly took one part from himself.

       Even if it couldn’t stop the inevitable, it just might delay it.

 * * *

       Issues compounded on each other. He’d wasted most daylight looking for a fool, and did month’s worth of walking in hours. Exhaustion only got Badgerclops to come home even later. Jǐngti and Tanya were still at HQ. Either that, or they didn’t tun off the lights. Even the short steps up the porch were a pain in the ass, and when he checked the front door it was locked.

       The first thought that floated through his mind was that Mao Mao was home. He never locked the door. Why would he, when their closest nieghbor was miles away? It might have ben a problem if there wasn’t a spare key under the mat. Sure t was a generic post anyone could find, but again, who would break into their house?

       He opened the door and didn’t lock it behind him. He didn’t notice Tanya sitting on the couch until he was halfway across the room. Jǐngti was in her lap while she storked him behind the ears.

       “Did you find him,” she asked.

       “No,” he answered.

       Their conversation stopped there.

       Badgerclospd decided he’d just go to bed for today. He had a logn day of searching tomorrow, or that’s what he thought until he heard a sound at the door.

       Frantic footsteps up the porch and the sound of the door being thrown open was enough to get Jǐngti to sit up.

       In came Mao Mao, sweat and blood soaked his fur. He was covered in more fresh wounds and had a dazed, distant look in his eyes. He’d probably be more worried about that if it was the first time he’s done it.

       “There you are wHAT THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE?”

       At first, he thought Mao Mao was carrying… he didn’t really know anything about what he was carrying other than that it was pink and long, but upon close inspection it became clear it was a forearm. Did a Sweetipie catch Mao Mao at the wrong time? No. He had this dazed look in his eyes, and bloody wounds. There wasn’t any Sweetipie that could do that.

       Tanya and Jǐngti crowded around him, getting a look at Mao Mao and the thing he was carrying. It didn’t look like it came from any animal. It looked like it was sewn from thread. A macabre piece of patchwork that was still moving. Tanya moved to cover her child’s eyes.

       “What is that?” he asked again.

       Mao Mao stared down at it for a minute, like he wasn’t too sure himself. “An arm.”

       “      Whose    arm?”

       “...the Demon’s.”

       Badgerclops stewed on his information for a bit before he sighed. “Well, Mao Mao’s finally lost his goddamn mind.”

       “You say it like he didn’t lose it a long time ago,” Tanya added.

       “Hey!” Mao Mao waved the severed arm at them, “I’m being honest here! I really mean it! I was attacked by a demon and-”

       As Mao Mao waved it around it continued to move and writhe with a mind of its own, eventually slipping from Mao Mao’s grasp, and finding a place of its own. The thread moved, worked by deft, invisible fingers, suturing itself up to flesh until it was as snug as a bug in a rug. Everyone stopped to watch Mao Mao, lift his new arm and bend the fingers.

       The Demon’s arm had attached itself to Mao Mao’s severed stump, and now become his own.

[bisexualpirateheart]

                                 ~   Pictures of the Past   ~

(Inspired by this utterly beautiful Miranda & James art of @liviladoodles)

               Their first year in Nassau the past is slow to die.

One

He stumbles up the path to the cottage, trying not to breathe too hard, hand pressed flat against his hip. The pain isn’t that bad yet. He knows there are worse wounds, this will barely leave a scar, but now the adrenaline is wearing off, the pain is getting to him. It seems like an eternity before he can reach the steps.

Miranda has the door open before he’s there. “James?”

“It’s all right.” He says, though the wince of pain belays the statement. “I’m all right.”

She looks down and catches sight of the blood seeping across his hip. “James!”

“I’m all right.” He hisses again, stumbling up the steps. His name sounds wrong on her lips. Everything feels wrong these days. The cottage isn’t home, nowhere is home. They have no place to call their own. This is a temporary situation. It won’t be forever. He’s not staying on this godforsaken island forever. He made that vow the first time his boots hit the sand that day they arrived.

So different from the previous times he had been here when he had started to see Thomas’s vision for himself.

Miranda guides him to a chair. He sinks into it while she fetches a basin of water and a cloth. She sets it on the table beside him, her hands working busily. “Get your coat off.”

Wincing he sheds the coat, letting it fall to the floor. His shoulders ache, his entire body aches for that matter. He rests his head in his hand for a moment.

Miranda reaches for his shirt, and he raises his arms obediently, stifling a cry of pain as she pulls it free from his shoulders.

In the lamplight the wound looks worse, raw and bloody. He sets his teeth as Miranda cleans it.

“How did this happen?”

“I was in the vanguard.” He says shortly. He’s still new to his crew, still proving himself. It’s strangely easy to throw himself into the fray of violence. He doesn’t let himself think about that, only knows that the stillness at the center of a battle is a rare kind of peace. Of course there are always risks. He can’t help that. He didn’t see the man with the sword coming at him until he turned, only able to dodge at the last moment.

Miranda dresses the wound in silence. He can feel her judgement at his carelessness though he chooses not to acknowledge it. Neither of them want to address where they are these days. This is all they have now.

“There.” Miranda finishes bandaging the wound and steps back. With a sigh she brushes her hair back from her forehead.

He reaches for her hand and pulls her close, pressing his face into her dress. “I’m sorry for worrying you.” It’s just words, it certainly doesn’t mean he won’t do it again (they both know it will happen again) but it’s all he has to offer her here.

Miranda cups his jaw with her palm and looks at him. There’s a smile on her lips, but it’s all too brief for his liking. “Be careful, James.” She whispers. “Please be careful.” She doesn’t tell him to do so because he’s all she has. Because if she loses him, she’ll be alone in the world. He knows that. He doesn’t need her to say it, or maybe he does. Maybe if she actually said it, he would stay. Perhaps he would take care. But Miranda doesn’t utter the words and he knows that next time he’ll be at the front of the vanguard again, sword at the ready.

Later they’ll go to bed, and move slowly against each other. Miranda taking care because of his wound. Him burying his moan of release in her hair. The soft pressure of her breasts against his chest as they lie there together.

It will still take him a long time to fall asleep afterwards, but feeling her rest against him, and the sound of her breathing, it will almost be enough.

                                                     ~ * ~

Two

He can’t stop seeing the ship surrender to a man as he lies there in the candlelight.  He’d simply told Miranda that they had been successful in their venture. He had brought her a bottle of wine from the ship’s store. And for the first time he saw what he was becoming through her eyes.

This was true pirate spoils sitting here on the table between them. For a moment he wondered if she would reject it, and with it, the man he was now. It would be within her rights to do so. She’d never asked for any of this. Even now, he wondered if one day he would return to the island and find her gone. He wouldn’t blame her if that day ever came.

Still, when she reaches for the bottle, smoothing her fingers over the glass, he feels the tension in him ease.

“This is a rare treat.” She smiles faintly. “Thomas always liked this red.”

It’s a knife point, a reminder, a gentle wound to let himself not get too proud of this victory. There was a reason he was doing this after all. He should remember that.

She fetches the glasses and they’d drunk the wine with dinner that night. And now Miranda is asleep and he can’t stop thinking about the ship that had surrendered to him simply because of his name.

His new name.

He gazes down at Miranda. There are times that he marvels at her accompanying him here. She could have simply cut ties with him after Thomas and gone elsewhere alone, somewhere civilized like Paris or Boston, somewhere far away from London and their memories and collective grief. Far away from him.

He wouldn’t have blamed her if she had done that either.

But she had come here with him instead.

He tilts his head, studying her, remembering the first time he had ever seen her, how carefree and beautiful she had looked.  

“You’re still awake.” Miranda murmurs. She opens her eyes and looks up at him. “What’re you thinking about?”

“The first time that I saw you.”

“Oh?” She shifts a little, resting her chin in her palm as she looks at him, hair falling over her shoulder. “That afternoon on the dock.”

“No.” He says after a moment, and there’s a flicker of surprise in her eyes. “That’s the first day I spoke to you. The first time that I saw you was a few weeks before, shortly after I’d been assigned as Thomas’s liaison.”

“Oh?” Miranda looks up at him. “Where were we and why don’t I remember seeing you?”

He smiles. “Because you didn’t see me. It was a party and I was merely delivering a message for the Admiral.” He pauses, remembering standing there on the edge of a ballroom as a footman found the gentleman he was supposed to speak with.

The room full of dancers had held no interest for him. He had no designs in politics or titles. All he wanted was to make captain and have a ship of his own to command. But as he waited, he heard someone mention Lady Hamilton, a whisper and a meaningful look, and he had followed the gaze to the brunette woman dancing among the crowd.

She was lovely in a way that would have arrested his attention even if he hadn’t known who she was. But knowing that she was the wife of the lord he had met earlier in the week, there was a pang of some undefinable emotion within his chest. They made a handsome couple no doubt. He could picture them quite easily together.

The man dancing with her had leaned in close to whisper something in her ear and she tossed her head back and laughed, the sound sweet and fleeting above the music.

He turned his attention back to the business at hand, pretending he hadn’t been staring at Lady Hamilton.

“Ah, “ Miranda nods as he relays the memory. “That would have been at the Thornbys, I believe. Thomas wasn’t there that night or I’m sure we would have spoken.”

“I’m sure of it.” He murmurs.

Miranda smiles. “Was that the first time you heard any rumors about me?” She moves her hand to brush along his forearm, just a light affectionate touch.

He shakes his head. “No, that was later.”

“But you had heard them before the day I came to your room.” Her fingertips are feather soft upon his skin.

“Yes.” He admits. “I had heard them.” It had been easy to dismiss them at the time, but when she had appeared at his door that day, clearly comfortable entering his room with him only in his shirt and leggings…

He shifts on his side, watching her as she gazes at him.

Wordlessly, Miranda parts her legs. He reaches for her nightgown, drawing it up to her thighs. He shifts to move over her, positioning himself. The first thrust inside makes him draw a sharp breath as she exhales slowly.

Miranda’s hands settle on his shoulders. She draws him close to kiss and then her hands move over his bare back, down to his backside, pulling him even deeper inside her. It’s the kind of desire she had early in the start of their affair, a natural hunger for him and his body that he had been entranced by. The wonder of being loved and desired by the two of them, separately and together, had been something of a miracle to him. He would never forget it, for the rest of his days, no matter how bleak they were now.

Miranda shudders helplessly as she comes, legs wrapped tightly around his hips. He can feel the tension and surrender in her body as she does, hears the soft exhalation of breath that follows her release.

He buries his face in her shoulder as he finishes, thinking only of the press of her body against his and the warmth of her skin and how she tastes like the past and the future all rolled into one with the stolen wine on her lips.

As he slips out of her and turns to lie on his back it strikes him. It’s the first time since they’ve been here, the first time that they’ve fucked and he hadn’t thought of Thomas. Not fully, not entirely, not like he had the first time they had lain together in this cottage, conscious of the absence presence between them, the wound too fresh for words.

He turns to look at Miranda and her face is almost severe in the shadows of the fading candlelight. Is she thinking of Thomas? Was she able to sense his moment of forgetting?

Miranda utters a faint sigh and leans in to brush a faint kiss across his lips. She doesn’t speak as she turns back to the pillow and he doesn’t ask her.

It was only a brief moment of stepping into the past without the overwhelming ache of grief and he doesn’t know how to feel about that, doesn’t know what to do if the grief ever leaves him. He won’t forget Thomas; he won’t allow himself to forget Thomas. It’s impossible. He knows this was only a moment, but he still feels guilty for allowing it to happen.

He feels guiltier still for no longer being that lieutenant he once was. He’s left James McGraw behind on the docks of London. There are days now where he doesn’t miss the regulations and restrictions of the navy life that once was his. There has always been a freedom at sea, but now he truly understands the meaning of that word and it intoxicates him.

Tonight he feels like he’s truly become the name he chose for himself. Tonight, he is Flint.

                                                        ~ * ~

Three

The cry wakes her from her sleep. Miranda knows it immediately. She’s heard his grief before but it was nothing new at this point. Usually he quieted himself after a little while, especially if she touched him.

Still, she waits a few minutes to see if the dream will cease on its own. Dream or nightmare, she’s never sure which it is these days. Which it ever was. Is a memory of someone treasured and lost both at once? Some days she thinks one, and some days another. Still, on her own behalf, she doesn’t wish them to end, whichever they are. They’re the only times she sees Thomas anymore.

James stirs beside her. This time it’s a softer noise that escapes him. A quiet pained noise, slipping through his teeth as though even in the dream he doesn’t want to let it be uttered at all.

She touches his shoulder lightly, hoping it’s not one of the nights he wakes in a start, reaching for the sword at the side of the bed.

He quiets under her touch. This time she’s a soothing presence, and for that she’s thankful and a little relieved. She doesn’t know if she has it in her to talk tonight.

She waits a little longer to make sure he’s settled back into sleep before she rises from the bed and leaves the room.

The cottage is dark but she knows it well enough now to traverse it in the dark. She goes outside onto the porch, looking out at the night.

It’s a warm evening and she leans against the railing, drinking it in. it’s been nearly a year since they came to Nassau and now Miranda’s no longer sure what she even expected from it. Or if she ever truly expected anything at all.

From the moment Thomas was said to be dead all her hopes had died as well. She knows that James had still harbored hope of returning to London and rescuing him from Bedlam. He would rescue Thomas and they would return to Nassau and the three of them would make a life for themselves, far from the reach of Alfred Hamilton and the British navy and the society that had rejected them.

She knows that it was his hope and it shattered when he finally accepted that Thomas had died. With Thomas’s death they were just two people left alive, adrift in a new existence, hollowed out of a former dream. It isn’t too late for them to go somewhere else, to not be shackled to this place. Miranda knows that, but she’s not sure James does.

James.

Flint.

The new persona whose coat James has donned for his new role as pirate captain. It seemed like a fanciful tale, something Miranda would have heard in a salon back in London and been amused and intrigued over. But now, as part of the tale, and yet at the same time not…she doesn’t know anymore.

There is no room for Lady Hamilton in Captain Flint’s life, and so she has become Miranda Barlow, a widow leading a quiet existence who happens to share her home with a pirate captain. She already knows that even in Nassau their relationship will cause her to be judged just as she was judged back in London. Even the fringes of society don’t like to see a woman making a life for herself and choosing the people she shares it with, the people she chooses to share her bed.

“Miranda?”

She starts, turning to see James standing in the doorway watching her.

“Couldn’t sleep.” She offers.

He nods, coming out to stand on the porch beside her. His hands rest on the railing besides hers.

Miranda looks at them and wonders how many men he’s killed since coming here. It doesn’t seem real, but there are days when there’s still blood in the creases of his fingernails and in his hair when he returns to her and she knows not to ask.

James looks down at their hands and places his over hers without speaking. She smiles faintly.

Why are they here on this island trying to put together a fractured dream? How can he still think there’s something to be built here with no Thomas? And yet somehow she knows…he won’t give up on this dream of Thomas’s so easily. Somehow, even if it’s only as a pirate, he still wants to make a difference here. There’s no surrendering that dream now. It’s all he has.

There’s a quiet voice inside her that whispers, ‘He has you.’ And Miranda doesn’t know how to answer that she knows it’s not enough. They will not be enough for each other, no matter how much she wishes it were different.

“Were you dreaming about him?”

James presses his lips together faintly. He looks off into the shadowy garden, the darkened shapes of fences and trees almost menacing in the nighttime. At last he murmurs, “Yes.”

Miranda sighs softly.

“It was of Bedlam.” James whispers. “And I so nearly reached him before…” He cuts himself off, drawing his hand away from hers to grip the railing again.

“James.”

He turns his head away, not willing to be comforted this time, resolutely staring out at the darkness surrounding them. In the trees somewhere, a night bird cries softly.

Miranda takes a deep breath, not wanting to be the first to go in, back to the stifling dark bedroom, but the peace is gone from the night with his presence here and she doesn’t know how to tell him that.

At last James sighs as well. “Coming?” He asks her softly, his hand brushing her shoulder, a mute apology for not accepting her comfort as he has in the past. Countless nights where she sits with her arms around him, stroking his hair and soothing the lingering fears.

She shakes her head. “In a little while.”

He hesitates and then presses a kiss to her hair before going back inside.

Miranda lets herself sink down on the porch floor then. She leans her back against the railing, drawing another deep breath. She does this until the heaviness in her chest has receded and she can breathe freely again.

She doesn’t know how much longer she can go on like this. This isn’t how their lives were supposed to go.

                                                        ~ * ~

Four

The first thing Miranda thinks of that morning when she wakes is that the rain has finally stopped and later she should be able to work in the garden. Contentment slips over her as she lies there, still drowsy with sleep. She loves the still small but slowly growing garden that she’s made since coming here to Nassau.

The second thing she thinks is that it’s been one year since Thomas’s death. It hits her slow like she’s drowning in slow motion, like she’s sinking deep into the ocean, grief filling her nostrils and pulling her down into the depths.

She can’t breathe. James, Flint, whatever the fuck his name is now – she knows the anger in her is both aimed and not aimed at him in this moment- still sleeps and she can’t just lie there beside him right now. If she could trade him for the husband she’s lost, she would do so in a heartbeat.

The dew is still on the grass when she steps out onto the porch. It’s barely dawn.  The morning glistens before her, fresh with the newness that every day brings. It’s exquisitely beautiful; it breaks her heart further.

Miranda slides down to sit on the steps, clutching at her arms helplessly. She doesn’t even know the exact date of Thomas’s death. This is simply the day, that wretched awful day, where she learned of it.

In a way there are several anniversaries of this grief. The day she and James had to leave London, leaving Thomas behind. The day of learning of his death.  And the day that James had accepted it. For days, weeks, afterwards he had refused to believe the letter was true.

“They want us to forget him.” He told her. “Thomas wouldn’t….he wouldn’t leave us.”

Miranda hadn’t wanted to believe it either, but the weight of carrying that hope as James was doing, of living for that meager chance, was too much. If she did that, she would shatter. Scream wordlessly into the world and let the sound never end, echoing out into the sea for all eternity. The only way to survive was to accept it. Instinctively, she knew this.

So she had simply folded the letter up and put it away in the drawer, closing it softly before fetching her hat and going for a walk, away from the cottage and James and the past.

When she had returned hours later, he’d been waiting, enfolding her in his arms silently and she let him. But he was still clinging to the hope and she had walked beyond it. There was no meeting on the path for them.

And yet, eventually, James had accepted it as well. She could see it in the curve of his jaw as he dressed, fastening his swordbelt. In the way he drank more on the evenings when he came back to her, sitting for hours. In how he would look at her, guilt in his desire, even as they moved together, before release came and rescued them both.

Miranda remembers all of this as she sits there, weeping softly into her arms. How has she survived an entire year? The ache threatens to swallow her whole, and the temptation to let it is strong.

But she draws a breath, slowly releasing her arms from the position she had folded herself. The sun shines softly though the leaves. The dew patterns break as she places her feet in the grass, walking out into the morning. The breeze around her carries the scent of the sea. The earth will be rich and damp when she works in it later. The garden is waiting.

Miranda looks up at the sky and knows today is just one day. That there will be times when she doesn’t feel this possibility in the start of another day. But it’s the first time she thinks, perhaps there is still hope beyond the past in London.

She turns to go back into the cottage and stops.

James stands on the porch, watching her. He is still James on this morning, bare-chested, barely dressed (how that would have scandalized the neighbors in London) watching her out of those careful arresting eyes that she loves so dearly, that Thomas loved as well. His hair is longer now and the beard and mustache he’s kept to maintain the role of Flint suit him. She thinks, not for the first time, that the life on this island suits him.

“Miranda?”

She licks her lips and doesn’t speak as she walks across the grass. His hand touches her shoulder almost tentatively as she reaches the porch.  She leans into it, closing her eyes. She doesn’t have the strength to speak of what day it is.

“I know.” He murmurs, kissing her hair.

She looks up at him, unable to keep the tears from filling her eyes again as he cups her face. The kiss is a sigh shared between them, their lips wordlessly sharing their grief. And yet, Miranda can feel the warmth of the sun on her skin as they stand there silently, and it is still a new day.

[schrijverr]

I Wrote My Own Deliverance

Chapter 10 out of 10

Alexander Hamilton is reborn as Alex Hambleton. He is desperate not to make the same mistakes twice, but it seems he is stuck in the narrative, unable to get out. Familiar faces pop up all around him as he attempts to keep his previous life a secret and write himself out of the story.

On AO3.

Ships: none

Warnings: none, but tell me if I missed anything or if you want me to tag something!!

~~~~~~~~~~~

“- Oh my god, you have been roommates with Aaron Burr for over a year!”

Alex winced. He’d hoped everyone had forgotten that detail, but it seemed not as the entire room exploded once more. With a last “What the shit, Alex,” from Laurens the room fell quiet to look at him expectantly.

He shrugged and said: “I made my peace with Burr, he’s pretty cool.”

And with that the whole room was send into disarray again.

“How!” John shrieked, “He murdered you!”

“Yeah and he had his reasons. I hate to inform you, but I was the one that said yes to the duel and insulted him the whole way through.” Alex shot back, “Besides, I thought we had just established that this time things can be different. If I can believe in Aaron, I can believe in myself. So far he’s been nothing but civil to me, he’s just another student wanting to live his life.”

It was quiet for a moment and Alex offered: “And Betsy already punched him, so even-Steven?”

“Only you, Alexander.” Eliza face palmed.

“I try.” he grinned.

“Wait,” Angelica said and Alex was scared of what she remembered, “You already knew at the party. Why did you come if you knew you would get punched?”

“First of, I didn’t want to assume and I only put the pieces together when the fist was already flying at my face. Second, I kinda did deserve that.” he told her.

“That’s not exactly healthy.” John pointed out, but he shut up after a look from Alex, the other had too much dirt on him and John was honestly the last who could talk about fighting as a coping mechanism.

Alex stuck his tongue out, as he turned and grabbed his phone: “Speaking of the party and Aaron, I probably need to find him before he does something stupid with his self-esteem issues and blame complex, like no offense, but our last meeting was not the most important thing ever.”

“You died.” Lafayette pointed out.

“Happens to the best of us,” Alex shrugged, “Case and point.”

“Ego much.” John grumbled and Alex just smiled as he called Aaron anonymously, the man probably wouldn’t pick up otherwise.

“Ah, yes, with me, Alex, your favourite and only roommate.”

“No, I’m not here to yell at you. I would have done that already if I wanted to.”

“Yeah, naturally, I never come back on my words.”

“They’re here yeah, already yelled at me and stuff.”

“I cannot with a 100% certainty promise that you will not get punched, but I am willing to try and convince them otherwise.”

He hung up and turned to the others: “Aaron is coming over, be nice.”

“Why would I be nice.” John pouted, arms crossed.

“Because, my dear Laurens, I have forgiven him and he could use some friends.” Alex explained.

“I’m with John here, I don’t want to be his friend.” Eliza mirrored John.

Alex smiled and said: “I know, Betsy, I know, but he hasn’t had it easy either. Even more of a nay-sayer and all around stick in the mud this time around. He has no one, you know how much it sucks to have no one.”

“Theodosia?” she asked, but Alex could tell her bleeding heart was giving in.

“Hasn’t come back, yet.” he smiled sadly at her.

“Alright, I won’t punch him then.” she threw her hands in the air.

They turned to John, who moped: “Whatever, but I’m not going to be nice.”

“Oh come on, man.” Herc said, “Making fun of Burr was always fun, it’ll be like the good old days when we were right and he told us to shut up.”

“You have a warped idea of fun, mon ami.” Laf told him.

“Like you weren’t there every single time to join in.” Herc shot back as they dissolved into squabbling.

Alex smiled and finally felt like he could take a breath. He had his friends around him again and no matter what the world threw at him, he could take it. He was home.

A knock at the door shook him out of his musings and he threw a look over his shoulder as he walked over to the door. Before he opened it, he warned: “Be nice.”

Aaron was indeed standing there and Alex greeted him cheerily: “Aaron Burr, sir.”

“Alexander” Aaron greeted with a wince.

“Come on, don’t be like that. If I had known you would become more boring, I would have never written another public document to fuck with you.” Alex grinned.

“Don’t antagonize him, Alex.” Eliza called out.

“Yeah, we all know how that turned out last time.” John huffed.

The comments didn’t really help, because Aaron winced as he started to back away, clearly on the brink of running.

“Guys, please try to be civil.” it earned Alex some disbelieving snorts, “Look at him, he’s about to cry. Are you gonna make Aaron Bartow cry?”

“Oh, it’s Aaron Bartow now?” John huffed.

“Yes. Yes, it is.” Alex said, “Just like you’re John Lawson and I’m Alex Hambleton. We’re not the same people anymore and I forgave Aaron a long time ago. He deserves people who know and understand as much as the next person.”

“You forgive me?” Aaron voice sounded so small and fragile that all retorts that might have been, died before they were spoken.

“I do.” Alex told him, “I saw your face, you know? When you shot. You were bracing for a bullet and when it didn’t come you looked so heartbroken and surprised. Van Ness had to drag you away. I don’t forget easily. I know I’m abrasive and a loud mouth that has an opinion on everything, who makes rash decisions, so I don’t blame you for wanting to protect yourself.”

Aaron looked at him wordlessly, unsure of what to say.

Alex grinned: “I’m aware you have a stick up your ass, but are you going to stare at my handsome face the entire day or am I going to get a hug.”

“You’re an asshole.” Aaron told him as he clutched the other tightly.

“I’ve been told.” Alex replied, merely holding on just as strong.

It took a while before either let go, but Alex was planning to hide for today and standing in the hallway with his door open was not ideal, especially as time went on and more people got the news, so he pried Aaron off him and led him inside.

He turned back to properly close the door when it was slammed open by none other than Tom, or Thomas Jefferson, he wasn’t sure who he had in front of him.

“You.” he pointed at Alex, whose eyes grew wide as he held up his hands, probably Jefferson he thought, “You motherfucker.”

Jefferson slammed down his hand and seethed: “This, really? You and your fucking pamphlets have to- Ugh! It’s always fucking you with your big ego and thousands of words that don’t even make sense most of the time and-”

“Hey, dude, calm down.” Alex cut him off, “What got you so mad?”

“This triggered my memories.” Jefferson admitted with venom, “Not the history lessons, not my face in buildings, not my legacy fucking me over or even that stupid musical. But you and your constant need for attention.”

“Ah,” Alex is quite unsure about what to say and one look at the others confirmed that neither did they, so he weakly offered, “At least you remember?”

“Like you think that’s a good thing, I read your stupid pamphlet, Lord knows I did, and it sucks, asshole.” Jefferson snarled, “We both know that.”

“It gets better when you find people.” Alex said, gesturing to the others, who waved awkwardly.

“Maybe, but I don’t really have anybody, now do I?” Jefferson told him and Alex would’ve never thought he’d see the day where he sympathized with Jefferson, though in front of him was Tom as well, not just Jefferson anymore.

“I thought we were kind of friends?” he replied, “I like debating with you and we agree more this time and, look, I know people we knew.”

Jefferson looked at him as if he had three heads as he slowly said: “You, Alexander Hamilton, you- you want to be friends? With me? Did you hit your head? Like is there something wrong with you and are you missing your memories? You hate me.”

“No, I hate Thomas Jefferson and if I recall correctly, your name is Tom Jamesson.” Alex replied, “And if you look closely, you’ll see Aaron Bartow sitting there. Besides, I think I can handle more debating in my life.”

“Only you would keep someone in your life to fight with them.” Tom said with a faked annoyance, “Though my name is actually Thomas Jamesson, so get your fact straight.”

“Well, then, Thomas, welcome to my humble abode, now please shut the door behind you before nosy strangers come in.” Alex said when Thomas’ reply wasn’t a blunt no.

Thomas snorted: “You published your life story again and you’re worried about nosy strangers.”

“It’s about the principle of the thing, I wanna do it all official, maybe hold a press conference, get a dinner thrown in my honor, make a long speech that everyone is forced to listen to. It’ll be great.” he grinned.

“The fact that I believe you is disturbing.” Angelica piped up.

And so they roped Thomas into the fray that was their little Revolution crew as they talked about their life now and their life back then. They compared notes on what was different and what was the same.

Apparently the Schuyler sisters were now childhood best friends and Angelicas memories had triggered those of the others. Eliza remarked: “Peggy was so sad she couldn't come to slap you into next week, but she has her internship.”

“Not looking forward to that.” Alex winced, “And I thought she liked me?”

“She does, she just likes fighting more.” Angelica commented humorously, “Being able to have opinions and do stuff, has really gotten her out of her 18th century shell.”

“Good for her.” Alex nodded.

“That’s what I said!” John exclaimed excitedly.

They moved on to Lafayette, who told them it was same old French noble blood and being send off to America for better education and to explore the world. He pouted over not being as close to Washington anymore, but brightened when he told them about the tea they drank together every other Wednesday.

John didn’t say anything about his father, besides the fact that he was a Senator and still a dick, or other family for that matter, but he was ecstatic that he would be able to become a Doctor this time around and he loved his study dearly.

Thomas didn’t really say much either. He was still struggling with connecting his two identities and what that meant for him. When asked about James, he sadly said: “If I saw him, we didn’t recognize each other.”

“Hey, we’ll find him if he’s out there.” Alex comforted him, then joked, “He probably remembered and tried to stay as far away from here as possible to avoid seeing me again.”

It got a small huff of amusement out of Thomas.

Alex looked at Aaron to ask about him, when his phone rang. Nervously he picked up: “Hello, yes, this is Alex Hambleton speaking.”

“Ah, you’ve read it then.”

“I understand.”

“Within the month?” Alex asked surprised, “Then I get to keep my scholarship? Thank you so much, sir!”

He turned to the others who were waiting expectantly as he grinned: “Looks like I’m getting registered and my plan for world domination is still on track.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Herc yelled, getting cheers from the others.

Alex smiled in the midst of his friends with a future bright and obtainable. A story ready for him to write how he saw fit, unbound by mistakes of the past.

He might be an old story in a new place, but there was always room for a rewrite. They were already on the second draft anyway.

[crypterion-moon]

Tiamat: Rise in Shadow p.2

Summary: He’s ended up in a new world, one that is surprisingly similar to his but everyone is so much younger. Tiamat, unable to resist his curiosity begins to observe, acting impulsively.

The Light realizes that they have problems concerning their operations

Tags: Violence, Gore

Tiamat's head was ringing, and it was damn annoying as well as slightly painful. It took a whole lot of effort and will to just open his eyes with his whole body screaming at him for the abuse. Not the first time, he told himself, had worse happen to him on Batman's watch. And then he realized there was a possibility he wasn't alone. His eyes shot open and he lifted his head enough to give the surrounding area a quick scan around before dropping back to the ground, face first of course. He felt as if he got kicked in the head by a horse, which was a close enough comparison given how hard he was hit. 

Fortunately it seemed like the Blight Hounds didn't seem to make it through or were dropped off elsewhere, hopefully somewhere far away, like a different dimension. He was about to seduce and kill a young man who would later become a gang leader as he'd been told by Oriviane, one of the oracles. Though it had nothing to do with Tiamat or the wraiths what his destiny would have been, his name was listed. He would die sooner or later.

It would have just been another night of ending someone's life with pleasure until they were suddenly ambushed by those damned monsters. Ambushes weren't all that unusual though it served to be a pain in the ass having to kill his targets before they ran off. Tiamat was always prepared for these moments and it wouldn't have been a problem if his psyche as well as his powers didn't decide to fluctuate right at that moment. It earned him a swat to the face from one of their malformed paws, and they were strong, if not smart.

“Damn, I hope they didn't scratch me,” Tiamat grunted, as his fingers came away wet with blood. 

He glanced at his surroundings, a thick but not unruly gathering of trees blocked much of Tiamat's field of vision like a forest, preventing him from seeing too much farther, but he could hear a the low drone of activity, human activity just beyond the edge of the spot where he stood. Tiamat followed the sounds, noting how oddly neat these trees were spaced almost as if...he reached the end to find wide open spaces filled with people either picnicking, strolling or playing, and beyond that was a city. Its buildings jutting up unpleasantly over the foliage. His portal navigation had landed him in the middle of a park in god knows where, again. In fairness, it was a stressful moment, trying to open up a door while fending of mutant mutts and no doubt, they must've been scattered over other realms. He really needed to get the hang of this before it sent him into somewhere much more unpleasant.

Strangely, as he kept passing through the thick growth of trees he could hear the sounds of civilization cars and voices, not too far away and as it turned out, he’d reached the edge of what turned out to be a reserved patch of forest. Now he was staring from under the shade, normal civilians passing by going about their business. At least he was sure he wasn’t on some god-forsaken hell. He was about to move forward when a sudden explosion erupted about fifty meters away. He flinched back into the cover and watched intently.

Through the throngs of screaming people, a figure emerged from the wreckage, large and imposing and an awfully familiar at that. It was Bane. Still duped up on Venom.

“Come out you spineless cowards, come out and face Bane!”

Good lord he was obnoxious as ever. Watching him thrash about like a child throwing a tantrum was almost comical. He took out a substantial chunk of the cement ground throwing it about, thankfully most of the crowds had retreated but he was posing a serious threat to bystanders. For now, it seemed that the only damage he was intent on doing was to the surrounding inanimate objects, smashing to be exact, unimpressive really. Then the drugged up criminal fixes his gaze on some unfortunate man on his way to work. Tiamat grinned. Perfect, he had some stress to work off.

Just when he had taken a step out, suddenly Bane was ambushed. Teenagers sporting colourful sets of powers and abilites. One of them, a green skinned boy morphed into a bull charging Bane relentlessly and recklessly. A young blond woman with a bow joined in, notching and releasing arrows effortlessly with near perfect aim. The flashy one dashed in to deliver a series of, flimsy punches. When it comes to Bane, nothing short of a strong punch will affect him, but somehow, Tiamat could feel that was merely to add to the distraction.

Something bigger was coming his way. 

Just as the thought materialized, a large black and blue jean mass came flying in, crashing into Bane with a loud thump and crack that definitely was the sound of a few broken bones. The villain was sent flying back from the impact while the recent addition to the fray watched with a triumphant expression, back straight, floating in the air with the symbol on his chest on display. A Super.

The sight of the S brought memories, slamming back into Tiamat .

“Hey Broody.”

Kon smiling as he hovered over him making terrible jokes about his height, his personality being not as colourful as his costume. Fighting together with their teammates against extraterrestrial terrorists. 

“You know he doesn’t mean that.”

Kon comforting him over his arguments and fights with Bruce and Jason. Hearing Kon’s voice beg him to come home again and again until he couldn’t hear him anymore. And when he finally opened his eyes, he was holding Kon’s head in his bloody hands.

Tim doubled over gagging, holding himself steady grasping a thorny vine that grew along the trunk of the tree, his hand so tight around it the thorns pierced skin and blood ran down his palm and the vine.

“Damn it, not now, keep it together...” he fought to keep the memories suppressed. Just then a giant crash spooked him out of the lapse and he looked up in time to see a huge Gorilla in a stupid hat flattening down everything In its way, with a machine gun to match. Following behind were what looked like a few hired goons, of course, why not. Bane always made sure to be stocked up on henchmen and backup.

This was however turning into a bit of a joke and Tiamat was getting bored of watching.

“Robin!” A slight figure leaped out of nowhere at the command, unleashing a whole arsenal of batarangs and smoke pellets. The flying pieces of metal successfully took down a portion of the goons while the pellets burst, enveloping the area in thick smoke. No one can see through it accept for Superboy but they had definitely planned this enough not to require visibility. Tiamat ’s suspicions were confirmed when the green shapeshifter charged right into the smoke, audibly knocking out more of the hired guns, both Robin and the archer jointly disabled the remaining men caught in the smoke. Bane could be heard roaring over the commotion, Gorilla sniffed and grunted. Suddenly, Superboy and a girl with a familiar symbol dived in, tackling the two. The team’s hard hitters best suited for tanks like Bane and the Gorilla. Tiamat guessed they must be this world’s Teen Titans, which meant he had to be careful who he came in contact with.

After a whole load of punching and kicking, the two villains were finally down, disappointingly enough, how boring. They began discussing something together possibly about whatever mission they were on while the blond with the lasso and the speedster began tying everyone up. Just then the  farthest man lying just a meter of where Tiamat was hiding got up and started sprinting off into the woods.

Tim watched the man as he made his escape into the darkness, soon noticed to be by the teens, his lips stretched into a sinister grin. He sat back on his haunches, preparing for the chase.

“Let the hunt begin.”

“We have a runner,” Nightwing sounded slightly fed up, his tone coloured with annoyance as he watched the last of Bane’s hired gun run of to the woods. No one could blame him, since it’s been a long day and no doubt, going to be a long night for him in Bludhaven, the wicked never sleep. So the team started off after him as the heavy hands came to take the criminals away for locking up. Kid Flash was definitely the fastest but not the brightest, and in an environment like a forest, odds were that he’d trip up or spend the whole day searching high and low for the man, so it was a good thing he wasn’t here or he’d run off not knowing where he was going or running into. Beast Boy had the right idea though, as a hound, he had the escaper’s scent. So they followed him into the thick growth. 

Finding him was actually harder than they thought, he had no tracker so all they could really rely upon was Superboy’s senses and Beast Boy’s ability to track as an animal, even then Connor couldn’t see past all the trees with his vision and Garfield lost his scent a few times.

“He must be in the deepest part of the forest by now,” Artemis said.

“Keep searching, if he’s going back to base this could mean finding the ones responsible for the meta-trafficking,” Nightwing ordered.

“He could be headed towards the docks, it’s the quickest and closest way out,” Robin said, it made sense and Nightwing agreed, it was the only other place that anyone could find a way to get off the island. As they got nearer to the docks, Superboy stopped all of a sudden, his teammates stopped as well.

“Superboy, what’s wrong, is-” Wondergirl began to say when he shushed her, his ears picking up whimpers and sobs and some frantic words that were to muffled for him to hear properly. But he could tell which direction.

“Over there,” he said, facing in the direction of the sound just off to the side to where the docks were, .

They followed Conner to what looked like the deepest part of the forest when he faltered and bent over looking shaken.

“What’s wrong,” Nightwing asked, checking him over with concern.

“Someone screamed and it wasn’t any scream, I mean a real scream,” Connor looked up and around, panicked, “I can’t hear him anymore.” 

With this disturbing reveal, Nightwing and Robin both took off in that direction, with the others following after Superboy had recovered. Beast Boy was in the lead again, with the scent strong this time and they ventured on before Garfield started yelping, then, the smell hit them hard, the smell of blood and urine.

“Oh my god,” Artemis let out a hoarse whisper.

Everyone stopped, their mouths hanging open in shock. The corpse lying before them was definitely their runner, but he wasn’t going to be answering questions or going anywhere but the morgue. His limbs stuck out at odd angles like he was flailing about so much they were arranged haphazardly, his uniform was ripped open and so was his throat. The chest area bore several gashes. Right arm ripped off and legs punctured. He looked like he’d been mauled by a savage animal except, no animal can make such clean cuts as the ones on his chest, the claws must have been thin, needle like. His mouth hung agape with terror and he must have been scared enough to wet himself with the darkened patch on his pants mixing with the blood that was now seeping in, staining the grey a darker shade.

“Wha- who could have done this?!” Cassie gasped. Nightwing took a tentative step forward, he’d seen bad things in Gotham but never something like this here. Something had made it’s way on the island.

He looked back to see Robin had also followed his movement but he seemed to be on the verge of getting sick, he was too young to witness something like this. Nightwing didn’t want to baby him. Working as Robin alongside Batman meant being in the middle of things like this but still...he glanced back at the body. This was too horrible.

“You guys, go back to HQ, call Batman, tell him we’ve got an issue, possibly something worse than the crisis at hand,” he ordered the rest of the team, “Robin, look at me, I know it’s going to be hard but go back with them, take the rest of the day off.”

“But I-.”

“Listen to me, Tim, I’m not putting you off missions because I think you’re not up for it, but I’ve had something like this happen before and it isn’t something you can just shake off, take it from a guy who tried winging it,” Dick gave him a wry smile, “Go home you earned it.”

Both Nightwing and Robin looked at the tattered remains, “I don’t think it’s exactly safe there right now.” 

Batman was waiting for them when Nightwing and a few others were finished assessing the situation and had returned to their new cave headquarters. The mountain they had once called base was demolished and smoothed over but in the process of retrieving precious components the had managed to unearth tunnels and caverns formed long ago when lava still flowed here.

It was almost like the old one, well, technically it was, or rather an extension of the old cave.

Batman was tapping away at the computer when they finally arrived.

“I’ve heard a lot about what happened, report.”

Aqualad, Blue Beetle looked rather ill, Nightwing wasn’t happy to have dug his hands deep into the case. 

“Nothing good,” Dick said as he produced a image storage card from one of his compartments, and slotted it into the computer then turned to the rest of the teens gathered around watching curiously, “If any of you guys just ate and don’t have the stomach for this, you might want to look away, especially you Static.”

“I think I’m cool, I’ve been working on this team for a while.”

None of them seemed to be able to look away and Nightwing raised a brow questioningly but relented, “Suit yourself.”

The series of images that popped up on the screen were...hard to digest. The first image of the dead gunman in the woods was obvious, to some but there were more, far more to come. And they got bloodier and bloodier, multiple bodies piled upon each other or strewn around warehouses, corridors, missing limbs, missing eyes, throats torn, one had his skull crushed and a few sliced cleanly in half. All merciless, and brutally killed. All in the same uniform. 

Some retching could be heard in the background, a few of the teens’ eyes had gone wide and forced to look away. Even Superboy, claiming to be fearless didn’t find it easy to be seeing this. Bart grimaced.

“We can assume that this was the base where our runner was going to and whoever, whatever got to him got here first, from what I can tell there were no survivors.”

“Oh god,” M’gann’s voice was merely a whisper.

“Have you determined who they were working for?”

“Only that the hired muscle belonged to Luthor and the whole operation was headed by Bane. The base located just a few miles off the coast was built overnight, it’s supposed to be temporary. That’s how they got so many guys to infiltrate the island. Today was supposed to be the first wave, scout and weaken we know the Light is pulling strings again and they were planning to completely take out the Young Justice.” 

“The full attack was scheduled two days from now, a whole army coming at us...there were a lot of people stationed at that base.” 

Nightwing looked visibly shaken, but he collected himself enough to give the rest of the report, “That’s all the information I was able to recover from their smaller caches, along with the shots we took of the scene but the rest of the data that was in their main computer, is gone, no messages, no videos, all taken or destroyed,” Nightwing looked grim. 

Batman narrowed his eyes and turned back to the screen, scrolling through the images stored on the memory card. The info explained only a portion of the operation but nothing on what transpired there, no indications of unusual activity, which meant that whatever happened, happened suddenly and quickly. His mind racing through a million possibilities, scenarios, potential suspects who wanted in on this operation or just to sabotage it. Joker was on the list, even if he worked with the Light before, he and they both knew he was a wild card of sorts and could turn easily on any one. But this…

Beside him, Robin had taken a step forward analysing each photograph, the investigator inside of him pushing past his queasiness to work out all the clues and Bruce didn’t miss a single moment of that.

“Whoever did this knew what they were doing, but it wasn’t exactly planned, no, I think it all started with the runner,” Batman said.

“How can you be sure?” Aqualad questioned.

“No prior reports of related activity and in such a short time period starting, with your fight with him he’s done a lot of damage,” Batman continued before Jaime cut in.

“Wait, he?”

“Just one person?” Artemis added.

Batman gave Robin a look, body language he was trained to understand, by now, he’d analysed all that he could in those shots and was already organising them into vital information in his head, he started, “There’s blood on the floor that doesn’t match the shape of any of the men in the photos, it’s distinctly male given the size of the footprint, and it can’t be female as the toes are not narrow enough. The back of the print is narrower so the heel must be high, that alone separates it from the any one of the Lex’s men.” 

“Plus there are some distinct marks in front of each print, they look like dots but on closer inspection,” Robin zooms in on one particular print showing a print with several patterned holes in the front, “Our...killer has clawed feet.” 

“Whoa,” Bart said.

“What the hell could that be?” Static threw up his hands frustrated in the riddle talk, “Our mystery guy has clawed feet and is wearing high heels? Apart from fashion statement, is he human? Meta like us?”

Batman and Nightwing exchanged looks, everybody just looked worried.

“You’re thinking something else aren’t you.”

“Without further investigation we don’t have much to go on, but our gut instinct says the same, someone, something has made it here.”

“And whoever or whatever that is, is extremely dangerous,” Nightwing warned.

“Are you even sure it’s just the one guy?” Kon asked.

There was a pause, Batman turned to the screen, scanning the pictures of mutilated and half eaten bodies littered across it, before he answered, “With this kind of carnage, let’s hope we’re just dealing with one threat and not an army.” 

Meanwhile at Lex Corporations, news about the massacre had reached Luthor, and he was not amused. He sat at his desk scrolling through the reports and the images attached, articles that were published days before. He cared little about the men he hired to do his work but was no savage and seeing the aftermath of the attack, he could only conclude it was performed by one. He could put the blame on a few named psychopaths but wild guesses may not help his case. The announcement given by the Batman claimed that it was both a calculated move and a spur of the moment impulse. The  So now, he had a rabid but logical killer on his hands, probably headed for him. With nothing to help identify them it could turn out to be any one person or maybe more, he’s had attempts on his life but it helps to know the suspects, Arsenal a most recent example but a missile is easy to see, easy to counter. From what Lex could tell, this one will give no warning, far too unpredictable.

“Mercy, make the call, our protective measures won’t be enough I’m afraid,” Luthor said. His bodyguard immediately took out the phone to begin dialling, “I have a call to make myself.”

“So, you’re saying that you’re being hunted, why am I not surprised?” Klarion smirked.

Luthor cocked an eyebrow in response to the jarring comment but continued, “If I may continue, it is but a theory, the only thing that causes doubt is the suddenness of the incident. I’d rather be safe than sorry that’s all.”

“A few dead men and you’re concerned?” the Queen mocked lightly, “How very unlike you.”

“Simply cautious my dear, unlike some,” Luthor shot back, making the woman wrinkle her nose slightly but comment no further.

“Now, now, no need for us to argue over such matters, I understand how important it is to be vigilant, Luthor. You have our support. Let’s hope this setback doesn’t last too long,” Vandal said.

“Thank you, I’ll lay low for a bit, in the meantime we should end the threat while it’s still early.”

Klarion hummed in playful doubt, “I dunno, maybe whoever this is could be fun to play with. They’ve caused quite a stir everywhere.”

“Oui, perhaps this newcomer will make a good ally,” the Brain said in his heavily accented English. Lex looked doubtful, as the Queen but both Savage and Klarion seemed open to the idea, Klarion more so with a glee in his eyes. As long as chaos was involved anything would be enough to keep the boy happy. Though the other members were uncertain, a little bit of investment could go a long way. With both Black Manta and Ra’s unavailable to comment, the majority voted on watching the newcomer first, see if there was anything he could offer and act when the moment was right. 

“Let us observe for the moment, we shall soon see if he can serve the Light.”

[peepingtoad]

||—@dokuhebi​ submitted:

They are at a bar, the evening is warm, the people are cheerful, the drinks are free, and they are surrounded by familiar and trusted faces. This is no time to be feeling more blue than the curaçao cocktail sitting in front of them. One of far too many in their light weight system. Loosening a tongue that was far too cutting and dangerous to be so honest. But then, they remind themself, they are also only in their twenties, and had already been swept up in the dealings of multiple wars, civil and global. Assignments since they were seven. Orphaned since they were six. So really - what right did any technicality the universe could offer have to tell them they ought to wait for the ‘appropriate time’?  Their golden eyes are watching him, the way his hand fits around the entire glass, the way he so quickly gets through each drink - yet somehow seems to be more sober than the serpent. How the white hair framing his face moves with him when he laughs, the shape of his eyes and lips when he smiles, the little glances he steals between them and Tsunade.  And if they were being fair - which they self admitted they were not, and refused to be - they may realize that for every glance he steals at Tsunade, he gives one to them. That every time he offers her a drink, he offers them one. That if both they and she were cold, he would forfeit his jacket and then his shirt so both of his team mates were content. It should be enough. But when was anything enough for the viper? Especially when they found themself brooding a little too much.  Because that was perhaps, one thing no one had found the trick to saving them from. Not since the day their parents died. Not since they caught a glimpse at the monsters in this world, and became so haunted by the prospect, that they imagined these monsters even when all was peaceful. Tormented by a monster once real and now more commonly fabricated. So as they move the straw in their glass, stabbing at the drink more than indulging it, they can not help their quip. The moment their teammate makes some statement, promise or playful joke about keeping the serpent and Senju princess safe, their golden eyes snap up and away from their drink. Not at all within the realm of festivity as Tsunade and Jiraiya offered. No, their voice, regardless of the smile they offer that shows little more than teeth, is coated in venom and tactless query.  “What if you could only save one of us?” It isn’t a fun question, it doesn’t hold any playfulness. It is far too real a possibility in their shinobi lifestyle, and it is far too accusing a question. Too timed. It had been plaguing them for the longest while. Not quite who he would rescue, for they are not afraid to protect themself out on the field. But instead, a backwards way of trying to dissect his mind and decisions to find out who he loved the most. And while any sensible person would perhaps find a quiet moment to ask the man such a thing in private, for a true confession, the serpent must set up a trap, and corner him. If they ask him one on one, he may just say he cared for them, to appease them. But how much more blocked in the man is when Tsunade sits beside the serpent, both team mates facing Jiraiya. Of course, they don’t pose it as something serious. No, they disguise it as one of their mistimed and socially inappropriate jokes. How they are accused of being cold, cruel and weird for their off beat demeanor. An easy hiding place, madness.  “Say we both drank poison, and you only had one cure. Or we were both targeted by enemies, and you could only intercept one attack,” they ask, toying with their drink as they toy with him, acting much like a cat playing with a mouse before eating it, wanting franticness and panic, or there simply wasn’t any fun, “well? Who would you save?”

With a countenance as naturally severe as theirs, it’s always difficult to say whether Orochimaru is even having a good time or not; even with alcohol thrown into the mix, it makes them no more easy to read than if they were stone cold sober. The only thing working in Jiraiya’s favour is many years by their side, of knowing them and their ways, and knowing that periods of watchful silence (a different beast to their regular silence) tends to mean that there’s something unpleasant going on within that unfathomable mind of theirs.

And it’s just like Jiraiya to simply let them lie dormant when first he senses that this silence is indeed one of those silences, figuring that if they want to say something, they no doubt will. No doubt waiting for the perfect time to pipe up amid the pleasant buzz and clatter of patrons and bar staff. 

Until then, however, Jiraiya has every intention of maintaining the levity of the evening as well as he possibly can—first of all, because it had been quite some time since they all had a short reprieve home, and second of all because they damn well deserved it. After months spent surrounded by the drab grey of Ame, whose ruined ground was by this point nought but scorched earth, blood and the rot of corpses pounded into a slurry by the relentless downpour… yeah, he very much ached for his home, and wanted to make some good memories here to tide them over once they were sent back into the fray.

Still, it’s only natural that given the state of the world around them and the overall horrific turn their lives had taken, conversation soon turns to lighter recollections of their exploits, the frankly insane things they’d survived so far, and the numerous ways they’d saved each other’s skins. After all, the name Densetsu no Sannin had spread like wildfire, right to the point where it had become very well known at home, where the familiar visages that greeted them were of the utmost awe and (far less familiar) respect. 

So it had been a simple thing to stir up some excitement and revelry with wild tales, until the three of them were left alone once more to chat more freely as they were wont to. In hindsight, it’s always easier to play up the theatre of their feats when one isn’t currently in that place of peril, with death reaching out to wrap barbed tendrils around one’s throat and yank them flailing into the underworld—but even then, the tall tales sold to random patrons come with a certain lull afterwards, punctuated more noticeably by the stabbing of a straw against ice and glass than he’d paid heed to so far.

And when Orochimaru speaks up, which Jiraiya had been starting to expect was coming like the most quiet yet brutal storm, he only needs to see the smile before he realises it won’t be good.

The stirring of the drink, whose colour was dimming thanks to the ice melting faster than they were imbibing, creates a little whirlpool in the glass that Jiraiya finds himself equally as mystified by as the question at hand. Oh, how he feels like he’d somehow been shrunk down and trapped in that boozy vortex, being spun endlessly around by a cruel and relentless hand! The unfortunate fact of the matter is, he has no idea what they’re really thinking while asking this, which is probably clear in the suspicious quirk of his eyebrow, and yet his own tipsiness is enough that despite gripping his glass a little tighter, he’ll rise to the challenge. 

He won’t let himself flounder and sweat, and he certainly won’t let whatever game was being played get under his skin… and yet it still rankles him enough that the atmosphere becomes tinged with a certain… frost.

Most of the time, he thought it was Tsunade that really had no problem hurting him. But times like this come as an unpleasant reminder that she simply isn’t as subtle about it as they are. She’s straightforward. She doesn’t test him. Whereas when it comes to Orochimaru, the needles come so subtly in the dead of night, in the form of some question or comment, and without even the moonlight to afford him that warning flash. He’s had it before, where a casual conversation somehow ends with him feeling like he’s fucked up—so it sets in rather quickly that there’s nothing cute or fun about this line of questioning whatsoever, for all he gives a hum of amusement into the next swig of sake, before setting his glass bluntly down again.

“Are you forgetting how not ordinary we are? Surely not, my dear friend,” the sage says coolly, in that irritatingly old-and-wise tone of his—the one reserved for moments of profound wisdom and bullshitting such as these. “What’s poison, after all, to the finest medic the world has ever seen? Or to a disciple of Ryūchidō whose blood is said to match that of the most deadly viper itself?”

That was one of the more wild rumours that had surrounded Orochimaru, for sure, but Jiraiya is ever one for playing up the mystery. He knows damn well they’re a B type—just like him, just like Tsunade. Sometimes he wonders whether that was a purposeful choice on Sensei’s part… or a grave oversight. Putting that matter aside in his mind, Jiraiya taps his chin thoughtfully, trying to maintain the illusion that this is a well-meaning expression of Orochimaru’s characteristic curiosity rather than a test of… well, he’s not sure what, because he refuses to ease up on the illusion, you see.

“Well, Tsunade’s more likely to save herself from a mortal wound,” he continues, inclining his head towards her, “and you’re more likely to evade an attack in the first place…” Having nodded towards Orochimaru, he stares somewhere above and between them for a moment. “As for me? Well I’m as tough as a cockroach, not to mention quite wily, aren’t I? But I’m only one guy. Can’t I say I’d send my body to one, and my protective shield of hair to the other? I’ve got about a hundred tricks that means I don’t hafta choose…”

It’s a cop-out, and he knows it. Plus, that illusion… it really isn’t holding up that well. He just knows that saying the wrong thing will get him in trouble, or perhaps even come across as some grave betrayal… and that includes refusing to give a conclusive answer.

One or the other, Jiraiya. Think about it, think about it—would saying I’d just off myself for the two of them be acceptable? No no, probably not…

“Urgh, fine. In a situation where there was absolutely no option, no wiles or nothin’ that would help, just straight up choosing… I guess I’d simply have to go for the least annoying one.” He shrugs matter-of-factly, then spares a sneering side-eye and irritating lean towards their dearest medic, who is fast nearing drunken belligerence. “Sorry Tsuna!~” 

His subsequent jolly guffawing is cut short with an ‘agh, ouch!’ as he is rather predictably socked in the arm for such a comment, not that Tsunade really seems to care. Mind games like this aren’t exactly her thing, and certainly not while drunk. In fact, in her drunkenness she slurs something or another about ‘not needin’ t’be saved by no-one, much less you, idjit���… which in part, may have impacted his choice to go that way at all. 

Because really, how does one answer such a question in all seriousness? And what would they say, more pertinently, if asked the same ruthlessly unfair question? They’d never know, because neither of them ever would. 

And Orochimaru should see it, how unfair it really is, in the way Jiraiya turns his teasing gaze from Tsunade to them—and how in that most minute of movements it takes to refocus his attention onto them, his overall demeanour shifts from merry to overcast, no matter how his lips try to hang on to that signature cheeky curl. There isn’t a particular message he’s trying to convey in that look, no specific reprimand or indication of exactly how serious his answer had been… just a certain wounded discomfort, marred with something else. Something that he himself can’t place, not even with the benefit of inhabiting his own thoughts.

What he does know, however, is that there’s certainly more truth in it than his skilfully casual approach to the answer, in the end, had let on… something that may not be as simple as a measure of love, which they were deviously trying to weed out of him, but of his fiery protectiveness for them in particular, which was admittedly a shade stronger than what he felt towards Tsunade. And maybe that is, in and of itself, reflective of his love for them… or, perhaps, what he feels he is to them. What value he has to them, in comparison to her. It’s far too much to figure out on such a pleasant night, the first in months, with the alcohol flowing and emotions hastily smothered beneath tall tales.

Whatever it is though, he just hopes that they recognise it somehow, lurking in his soft, subdued eyes, and that they’re satisfied.

[seekingseven]

The Most Sincere Kind of Lie (Ch3)

Chapter 3 of my Linked Universe fanfic! Also available to read here on AO3 :D 

┍━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━┑

The pink pads of Legend’s fingertips reverently brushed the mirror’s handle, running themselves over the tiny engravings and elegant handiwork. Under the sparse moonlight he could barely make out the ridges and bumps of carefully-etched Sheikah symbols on the mirror's rim. The Sheikah magic in the Lens of Truth must have been very strong, then, for it to persist even during fusion. Even now, he could feel the lens' dark magic intermingling with the cascade of light magic the Magic Mirror had always contained. But the enchanted aura of this artifact was much less stable than either of its constituents: intense, dark, and almost uncouthly passionate. While the Lens of Truth had a certain, smug mysteriousness about it, and the Magic Mirror had a quiet, enigmatic confidence, this artifact...

This was something entirely different.

His hands hovered over the mirror's surface and his own pale, angular face stared back at him. With a start, he noticed the delicate web of capillaries that pulsed against his sclera and the split, dirty ends of his bangs -- he needed a good nap and a good shower more than anything else right now.

Of course, that wasn't going to happen. Not when Hylia had decided to pity his ravaging, insatiable curiosity by giving it something to feast off of. Legend turned the mirror over in his hand, wondering what exactly this...thing...could do. It didn't have a name, not that he could tell, and when the realization dawned on him that he got to name it himself, he couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. Well, it would be easier to name the artifact once he knew what it did. He was no fan of obscure, enigmatic names as the other heros were, so it shouldn’t be difficult. Time could keep his "Golden Gauntlets" and "Lens of Truth." To Legend, simple names like "Magic Mirror" and "Magic Cape" were far superior. The veteran flipped the artifact back over. The mirror’s glass was an odd, shimmering shade of gold, almost like it had been coated by liquid yellow diamonds before placement into the rim. The longer Legend stared at it, the brighter it got.

Perhaps it was a portal? What was it that the Wise Man had said earlier, about what the hypothetical-turned-real artifact could do? Something about a dimension between dimensions. He nodded to himself. It would make sense, this artifact seemed hungry enough to bend space and time itself.

For a second, Legend wondered if it was actually a good idea to be fiddling around with this thing. He instantly brushed the thought away.

He'd been messing with reality, space, time, and the fate of a kingdom his entire life. This would be nothing for the Hero of Legend.  

Really, what's the worst that could happen?

Legend stared at the mirror's golden glass with redoubled intensity. This always worked with the Magic Mirror; just looking into it long enough would be enough to suck him into the Dark World. That didn't seem to be the case with whatever-this-was. And it couldn't have the same functionality as the Lens of Truth, if only for the simple reason that it wasn't a lens. Legend settled backwards on the cushions. He flinched as Hyrule muttered softly in his sleep and shifted closer towards him, reaching out a callused hand for the frayed corner of Legend’s tunic.

The veteran hero subconsciously flicked the hand away and got to his feet. Perhaps if the Wise Man was still awake they could figure this out together. Eyes still trained on the mystery mirror, Legend began to pick his way across the room. The moonlight was bright enough to ensure he wasn’t stumbling around blindly, but too dim to give him any confidence that he wouldn’t trip over a stray bag or bedpost.

He gave the mirror a half-hearted, throwaway glance.

His eyelids opened so wide that the muscles underneath them strained.

The mirror's glass was no longer golden, instead, it was a dull, obsidian black. The metal around it boiled with magic and shook temperamentally under his grasp: insistent, demanding, impatient.

Blue eyes flitted around the silent room, trying to find the source of the disturbance. Something had provoked the mirror's tantrum. There was no competing magical aura in the room, aside from the petulant shivering and hissing of the artifact in his hands, so it couldn’t be that. And there weren’t any monsters nearby -- Hyrule had assured them that Ganon’s lackeys never traveled this close to civilization. His eyebrows cinched as his chin fell to his chest. What could it be? He let the artifact drop to his side.

He nearly screamed when the metal flared and burned his skin.

It wanted something.

Whatever this thing was, it wanted something, and it wanted it NOW.

The smell of charred flesh filled Legend's nostrils. He pointedly ignored the melted strings of his skin clinging to the metal, thankful for his incredibly high pain tolerance, and looked around for an object he'd never seen. What did this thing want? What did it--

His eyes alighted on Wind's sleeping form. The artifact in his hand cooled in recognition of his epiphany, almost as if to apologize for its earlier outburst, and all but pulled Legend towards the sleeping boy. Legend crouched down to get a closer look. A halo of bright hair swept across the flat bridge of Wind's nose and cheeks, fluttering in the rouge breeze. The undersides of his fingernails were still crusted with the retributionary cream he'd smeared on Hyrule earlier that night, and a sweet, content smile tickled the pale skin of his lips.

Legend's soul revolted within himself.

He would rather have his entire arm burned off than sacrifice a child to...whatever this was.

A rusty voice spoke up in the back of his mind and cut off his thoughts.

"Do you wish to see this Hero through his own eyes?”

The artifact. It had almost the same reverberating voice as the Master Sword, albeit cracked and somber from millenia of disuse.  

He said nothing. He thought nothing. The artifact repeated its question.

“Do you wish to see this Hero through his own eyes?”

Oh.

The mirror didn’t want to hurt Wind. The mirror didn’t want to hurt anyone. It just wanted to show Legend a vision of each hero ‘ through their own eyes.’ Legend's eyes widened greedily. A thousand questions effervesced to the tip of his tongue. He bit them back. Magical artifacts weren't known for their straightforwardness or conversationality, and besides, he was growing impatient.

The artifact asked its question for the third time.

Legend nodded.

The world turned white. The ground beneath his feet tore itself away, and the terrifying lightnessness that came with nighttime terrors of falling shook his entire body. Reality spun and spilled around him, sloughing away in brilliant, iridescent shards as his consciousness was ripped away and ejected into another dimension.

He woke up in a room with no sound and no light and no air. The only thing he knew was that he was choking, he was drowning, that the darkness had forced its way up his nostrils and into the back of his mouth. Tastebuds he didn't know he had revolted at the bitter taste of ash, and he coughed pathetically. Slowly, he got to his feet, almost smiling at the sight of his bare feet and the brown, itchy cloth of his pajama pants beneath him. The mirror had been kind enough to let him keep not only his consciousness, but body as well.

In most situations, that was a good thing.

He decided he would interpret it as such.  

Legend's legs started moving, towards what and for what neither him nor his appendages could fathom. The black eventually melted into blue; the crisp, clean smell of sea and salt and sand carried on a breeze of unknown and unknowable origin. With nothing else to do, the hero kept walking, marveling as the world took form around him. The ground beneath him became water -- water he walked on as if he was a son of a goddess -- and a distant, sandy hill came into view. A tall silhouette stood on the hill's highest crest, face and form indecipherable from the distance between them.

High, shrill notes of a pan flute floated by Legend's pointed ears. They were cheerful and lilting, accompanied by the rapid bristle of a guitar, and melted in the airless atmosphere as soon as they were born. The figure in distance finally came into view as the music and lapping waves reached a crescendo.

Wind.

It was Wind, but taller, stronger, prouder. An emerald tunic strained against the tight muscles of his chest and pinched the bones of his slender hips, skirting around sinewy thighs. A long, droopy cap fluttered genialy in the breeze behind him and waved mischievously at the dumbfounded Legend. There was a cool confidence in his shoulders; despite the fact that they were bundled with sheets of strong, stringy muscles, they were relaxed and easy. Two hands, broad and smooth, rested on the purple hilt of the Master Sword. His hair was an almost neon yellow, bleached from the sun and glossy with health. Wind's lips were set into a blashempously calm smile. His dark, cunning eyes stared straight through Legend, as if the veteran hero was nothing more than a ghost.

The mirror's harsh, rusted words came to mind.

“Do you wish to see this Hero through his own eyes?”

Legend's eyes pricked upwards and a subdued thoughtfulness settled onto his shoulders. Of course. Of course. This made so much more sense than it was supposed to. This was who Wind saw himself as, the hero Wind knew himself to be: confident, proud, and strong. This was the Wind he tried so hard to communicate to the others, only to have his hair ruffled and be dubbed the group's collective "little brother."  Legend took a tentative step forward, relaxing imperceptibly when the movement went seemingly unregistered by pseudo-Wind, and reached out towards the smiling ghost.

The vision started to crack, first browning around the corners and then shattering from the center. Legend swallowed a scream and stared hard at the ghost as his consciousness roiled within him. He bit back the urge to resist the pull of reality when a flash of recognition skirted across the ghost's dark eyes.

Light.

Dark.

Sea.

Wood.

Legend's body crashed onto the room's wooden floor. The overpowering stench of smouldering skin and stomach acid smacked him upside the head, and every muscle in his body contracted at once. He breathed in deeply, greedily swallowing the air, and turned over on his back. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Wind's sleeping form -- just as small and precious as ever. He instinctively checked his magic reserves. They hadn’t even been touched. As his vision began to clear and the fear subsided, a familiar fire burned at the back of his head.

This mirror.

This portal.

The tiny muscles lacing his knuckles moved on their own accord, grabbing the mirror that laid next to him and drawing it close to his face. His breathing slowed. His mind raced. This mirror. This portal. This...

To just say it was amazing would have been the epitome of an anticlimax, but the veteran's mind could think of no other word. This thing was a portal to a dimension between dimensions, a harbinger of visions both true and false, a witness to the most sincere kind of lies...and it laid in the palm of his hands. The mirror had answers to questions he didn’t know he had.

A curious, hungry lust burned in his chest. Answers. Answers. That's what he wanted. That's all he wanted. That's what the mirror wanted to give. He pushed himself to his feet. The mirror sat coldly in his hands. Its glass was golden again. He made his way across the room, legs heading towards the bed but mind racing for a reason to stay awake. Maybe the mirror still had something to give? It had to, it hadn’t unfused into its components yet. He had to stay awake. He had to see. Legend stared at the golden glass, silently hoping for it to turn ashy once more and invite him back inside.

The mirror was silent. It didn't burn, shiver, or shake, instead dangled from the tips of his burned fingers with resistance and resolution comparable to that of a dead man. Was it tired? Perhaps it had drawn on its own magic reserve. The Wise Man had said that these fusion artifacts were unstable and temporary, so maybe the magical aura was settling down before splitting back up. The warped, melted flesh of his palms nuzzled against the mirror's cool handle. He would have to heal that before anyone noticed, but all his healing potions were downstairs. His brows furrowed as Legend made his way back to the bed where Sky and Hyrule were sleeping. The two had shifted around so much in their sleep that there wasn’t any room for him now, but that wasn’t really an issue. His mind mulled over the issue that was, quite literally, at hand. He needed to either heal the burn or have a story for it -- and if he wasn't in the mood for interrogation now, he wouldn't be in the morning.

Time let out a massive, wet snore that nearly ripped Legend out of his skin. The veteran hero, surprised and unstable on his feet, toppled backwards onto the bed Hyrule and Sky were sleeping on. His bones banged against theirs, but, miraculously, neither of them woke up. Legend shifted uncomfortably between the two sleeping heros and pulled the mirror out from under him. Some of the cream smeared on Hyrule's face and hands had rubbed off on the side of the bed where Legend was supposed to be sleeping (not a big deal, in all honesty, he knew he wasn't sleeping tonight) and a vial of red potion dangled from his belt. Most likely, the traveler had forgotten to leave it downstairs. How beautifully convenient! Legend unclipped it softly and took a swing of the drink, smiling as the blistered, burgundy skin on his hand cooled and healed. Hyrule wouldn't be mad, he thought as he clipped the potion back to the traveler's belt, and he would make sure to pay back the traveler the next day. Legend's fingers curled idly around the mirror's handle and he brought it to his face to check that the red potion hadn't left a crimson scrim on his upper lip.  

Legend was confused for only a split second, then he gasped.

The glass was pitch black.

It was still awake, and it had something to show him.

Legend grinned, previous preoccupations completely forgotten, and inched closer towards Hyrule. The mirror began to clear, almost turning golden once again, and Legend scooted backwards. Okay, it was clear the mirror had no interest in Hyrule. Vertebrae in his back popped as he twisted around, and Legend panned the mirror over Sky's sleeping face. The last vestiges of gold on the mirror's glass were instantly replaced by crashing, boiling waves of black.

"Do you wish to see this Hero through his own eyes?”

"Yes," he heard himself whisper. There was no hesitance in his voice this time.

The world seized once again, shattering around the edges and sending thin, spidery cracks across his vision. Darkness pooled between the fragments, oozing between small shards of reality and swallowing them whole. The floor was gone, the air was gone, his mind and emotions and pale, sleep-deprived body were sent hurling through a bridge between worlds.

He didn't need to catch himself this time. With a soft thump, his feet hit the floor, and his mouth was assaulted by the taste of metal and snow. The slippery taste clung to his tongue, and Legend ran the back of his hand over it in an attempt to wipe the tang away. It only grew stronger. Oh well, so be it. It didn’t matter. Anyway, there was no need to stand here. He knew how this thing worked. Nothing was going to get done if he stood here and lamented the odd taste in his mouth or the very, very bad feeling in his chest.

Legend didn't walk this time, he ran, he sprinted down the airless, soundless, lightless corridor. The world created itself as he moved, replacing black with white, the vacuum with whispers of music, the emptiness with the crisp, clean scent of air never breathed in before.

Cool, gentle, white fingers combed through his hair, and Legend noticed with a start that he was quite literally walking through clouds. He sent a tentative glance to the endless expanse of blue underneath his feet and praised the mirror for forgetting to introduce gravity to this fever dream. There was no ground beneath him, and he walked on the surface of the sky with ease.

The quavering soprano of a harp threaded its way through the silence, careful and slow. No other instruments accompanied it except the hushed singing of a child, the heavy smell of heartache thick in each note. It sounded almost familiar, like a hymn reversed or a favorite childhood lullaby played backwards, and Legend's thrumming heart slowed. He started walking faster, refusing to let himself melt into the music. He was here to meet someone, not to listen to pretty harp music. Clouds stared curiously at the hero as he ran through their wet bosoms, and Legend blinked away the dewey residue they left on his eyelashes. Up ahead, he could make out a figure standing sleepily on a small, grassy hill.

He didn't need to be told that this was the pseudo-Sky he'd come here to meet. The Sky saw himself as. Frankly, Legend wasn’t expecting much. Sky had always struck him as a pretty well-put together guy, and the veteran’s mind was already thinking of which of his other incarnations might offer a more interesting vision.Legend’s legs carried him towards the distant figure regardless, and his burning curiosity propelled him forward each step. As he approached, the clouds around ghost Sky started to shift. They clustered in Sky, almost queuing up behind each other, and gradually took on an uncomfortably familiar form. The wind first whipped the clouds into something vaguely humanoid, then pulled back the sides of their heads into pointed ears. A biting breeze whizzed around the clouds and sculpted chests and legs and something resembling tunics and swords.

Cloud Links. An army. They covered the entire blue expanse ahead, standing shyly and awkwardly in front of the figure on the hill. Legend drew closer, drawing himself up onto the grassy hill where Sky’s ghost stood. Completely ignored by the spectral figures around him, Legend stared at the scene with comfortable amazement.

Sky, eyes half-closed in his ever present amiable grin, unsheathed the Master Sword from its scabbard and held it out to the first Cloud Link in front of him. The white, puffy arms reached out for the sword. They turned black the instant it held the hilt. The Cloud Link screamed as he was torn from the inside out, blistering boils of red and black and blue bubbled and popped across his chest, and his existence was wiped away by a vicious breeze. Each Link that stepped up met the same fate. A scream, then they were nothing. The air grew thick with black smog, bitter and angry and ashy. Each Link stepped up in front of Sky, blank eyes hopeful and ignorant, only to watch as their bodies were shredded where they stood.

Ghost Sky was still smiling: unseeing, unfeeling, unknowing.

He kept holding out the sword.

He kept murdering the Cloud Links.

The harp music continued happily on.

Bile crept into Legend’s mouth.

The music began to quaver, and Legend noticed that something black and scaly was creeping up Sky's arms. The skin split and sloughed off, revealing hard, obsidian sheafs underneath, and Legend's eyes widened as a white X drew itself on the ghost's forehead. Puffs of charcoal leaked from Sky's eyes, which had grown small and hard and orange, and trailed down his face in the imitation of tears. The music exploded into an orchestral wail; the drums shook, the choir screamed, the violins shrieked. Sky's hair slowly turned from blond to black to bright and flaming. His chest, now covered in scales, bulged and tore through the green cloth of his tunic.

The demon was still smiling; smiling a horrible, grieving, heart-broken smile.

There were no more Cloud Links left.

The Master Sword clattered to the floor. Legend moved instinctually to pick it up, only to be knocked back by the demon on the hill.

Sky, Sky's ghost, Sky's demon, whatever it was, stared at him blankly before letting out the most terrified, devastated howl Legend had ever heard.

It opened its mouth to speak, to scream, to apologize and beg for forgiveness, but Legend was already falling. The sky, black, red, and green, throbbed and bled as the veteran hero plummeted into an uncreated abyss.

Red.

Green.

Hero.

Demon.

Legend's face, wet with sweat and tears he didn't know he shed, stuck to the bed's fabric. He didn't need to breathe, he didn't want to breathe, he didn't want to do anything. He didn't want to think about what he'd just seen, or what he'd just learned, or the implications of what he should do now.

His fingers reached for the mirror if only to console himself, the same way one might reach for a mother’s hand after being spanked or cling to a toy being torn away. But his hands wrapped around two individual artifacts. The Lens of Truth and Magic Mirror. They’d unfused.

Well, he’d had enough excitement. Perhaps the same was true for them.

He laughed. There was no hint of mirth in the hollow, choking noise.

Since when had he become so quick to lie to himself?

┕━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━┙

[mobius-prime]

121. Knuckles the Echidna #22

Dark Alliance (Part One of Three): You Say You Want a Revolution…

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Jim Valentino Colors: Barry Grossman

So fair warning - this arc is very politics-heavy. I've already criticized the inclusion of politidrama plotlines in the comic before, despite my own personal interest in them, so I won't go over it again. What I will go over is that this arc also includes quite a few tasteless references to the Nazi regime of World War II, starting with the intro page. See, every issue in this arc begins with, rather than the traditional intro page that recaps past events and introduces plot points to come, instead a speech or quote relevant to the current story. This one is a parody, if you will (though played completely straight) of the "First They Came" poem by the German pastor Martin Niemöller, referring to how many people stayed silent while the Nazis oppressed and enacted genocide upon groups that those in silence didn't belong to. In this altered version, "Anonymous" claims that Robotnik came for hedgehogs, squirrels, rabbits, and foxes first, during which the speaker stayed silent as they were an echidna and didn't want to get involved, and so by the time he came for the echidnas there was no one left to speak up for them. Of course, quite aside from the fact that this is completely disrespectful to the real-world situation that the actual poem describes, that's not even how the Robotnik coup went down. Robotnik, upon dethroning King Acorn, pretty clearly just started roboticizing all Mobians indiscriminately without regard to their individual species. Not only that, but he didn't even get a chance to start on the echidnas, as all of them were either contained in their pocket universe on the Floating Island, or hanging out in Albion, which it appears Robotnik never even knew existed. I don't know, the whole thing is clearly an attempt to seem really intellectual and deep on Penders' part, but it just comes off as insensitive instead.

Anyway, onto the actual story. We open in the house of High Councilor Pravda, who appears to be the main political leader of the city. In the dead of night, Pravda is awakened by a window smashing downstairs, and angrily stomps down to confront the intruder, believing it to be "dingo trash up to no good." Instead, he is dragged out of his house roughly by several Dark Legionnaires, while the leader, called Kommissar (her title, not her name), admonishes him for his apparent hypocrisy regarding his anti-technology stance.

Well, she seems lovely! As she has her people drag him away, we pan to Haven, where Knuckles is demanding answers from his grandfathers on his father's whereabouts. To his credit, Sabre is genuinely apologetic to Knuckles, believing that they should have been a lot more forthcoming with him a lot sooner, but Knuckles really isn't having it, and can you blame him?

As a side note, this is about the point in the comic where the eyes of characters such as Knuckles and Tails, formerly depicted as black pupils as in the classic games, start to gain some color. We already saw it with Tails a little while back during the Sand-Blasters two-parter, and it's very inconsistent between issues (for example, you'll notice his eyes are blue instead of purple up there), but you'll start to notice it in screenshots from here out before their designs finally stabilize to their modern forms, similar to their designs from the games.

While Knuckles continues to demand to see his father, we ourselves see Locke, who is dropping off Remington, Julie-Su, Lara-Le and Wynmacher back in Echidnaopolis. Remington asks him how things went with Lara-Le again, and Locke acts like he's all regretful that he couldn't woo Lara-Le back to him or something, which like, really man? You're divorced and haven't spoken properly in years, and she has a new fiancé now, did you really expect to just manage to sweep her off her feet again and get remarried? Julie-Su tries to approach Locke to thank him for saving the whole group, and finds herself recognizing his appearance somewhat. Upon asking, she's shocked to find out that he's Knuckles' father, and asks him about Knuckles' whereabouts. Remington ushers her away before they get a chance to speak further, probably to protect Locke's privacy, and as he jokes with her that it seems like she actually cares about Knuckles, Locke muses to himself that his son is likely furious with him, which, yeah, not far off there buddy. He has an idea of where his son might have gone, and as he speeds off in his air vehicle, we jump over to the Kommissar, who has by now dragged her captive all the way back to the Dark Legion's current hideout… and oh boy, inside we get to see a familiar f- …uhh… okay, well, I won't call him a familiar face, because we've never seen him looking quite this messed up before, but it's Dimitri, okay? It's Dimitri back on his BS.

Guess he had to have some, uh, extensive reconstructive surgery after his rather literal fall from grace. And unfortunately for everybody who doesn't want to be ruled over by a cyborg'd up monstrosity of a dictator, he's got a new takeover plan in mind for the city!

Back in the more civilized areas of Echidnaopolis, Remington is having his driver take Wynmacher and Lara-Le back to their apartment when they find the streets blocked by a protest from dingoes, agitating about their lack of housing and accommodations within the city. Remington tries to resolve the situation peacefully by requesting that if they must protest, to at least let traffic pass while they do, but at that moment a giant flaming fireball comes out of nowhere and starts wrecking the place, and the whole thing devolves into a big brawl between the protesting dingoes and the watching echidnas.

Remington calls Haven for backup, and while I'm not sure who exactly in that nest of grandpas he expected to go rushing out of there for something as simple as a protest gone wrong, luckily for him he mentions Lara-Le over the comm, and Knuckles immediately enlists Archimedes' help to poof him out there to help his mom. Meanwhile, we get to see that Locke has completely, thoroughly misjudged where Knuckles would be hanging out at this moment, having thought for whatever reason that he would be brooding inside the Chaos Chamber next to Mammoth Mogul's ugly frozen mug.

Now this is some well-appreciated character development from Locke. I've been heavily criticizing him this entire time for how he's handled his interaction, or lack thereof, with his son, and I'm glad to see that Lara-Le's admonishments seem to have gotten through to him. While he won't get a chance to catch up with his son right at the moment, at least we know the big talk isn't that far off in the future.

Knuckles and Archimedes poof into the fray on the streets, and Knuckles begins throwing punches at whoever gets close enough, which as everyone knows is the single best way to end a violent brawl - by participating! Despite being an echidna himself, he doesn't hesitate to throw punches at other echidnas in the bunch, with Archy adding some of his own fire breath into the mix. If anything, I'd say he accurately judged the situation, which is that the dingoes were peacefully demonstrating and it appears to have been an angry, racist echidna who threw the first molotov. General Von Stryker makes his entrance, and despite him predictably acting aggressive and blaming echidnakind in general for the dingoes' treatment, Knuckles actually agrees with him that the echidnas are being really crappy, and offers a truce so they can discuss what went wrong and how to resolve it. Meanwhile, back in hell - I mean, the Legion's hideout…

This is probably the single most disturbing page in the comic so far, if you ask me. This guy is begging, screaming, for mercy and they put him under like nothing's wrong and start doing surgery without his consent (obviously) on his brain. Dimitri, watching the proceedings, starts mwahaha'ing to himself about the whole affair, as apparently Pravda is the direct descendant of Menthor, the councilman who denied his and Edmund's proposal to use the Chaos Syphon all those centuries ago. He's determined not to get careless with his power again in the future, and now that he's defeated death by old age through the sheer power of adding more and more cybernetics to his failing frame every time something goes wrong, he's ready to get his long-due revenge.

In another part of the city, Knuckles and Archimedes poof right into the middle of the Chaotix, who are pleased to finally see him and hopefully get a chance to catch up. As he explains what was going on with the protest, Julie-Su arrives and gives him the "why" he was looking for, which is that, naturally, Pravda was kind of a racist ass and wasn't working very hard to ensure the dingoes would have housing built for them in a timely manner. However, elections for the position of High Councilor are coming up in a few days, and Pravda has ever-so-mysteriously been missing since the previous night, with his traumatized wife too messed up to be able to talk about what she saw. She slyly mentions when questioned that "a little birdie" gave her all this information, leading Vector to rather rudely blame her for "having friends in low places" and generally acting as distrustful of her as ever. Seriously, Vector's been kind of a jerk to her ever since she left the Legion, and you just know that situation is gonna come to a head sooner or later. But enough of them - let's head back to the Kommissar, who's having her people reenact Kristallnacht in the streets of Echidnaopolis! (Told you this arc is full of tasteless references to WWII…)

She reports in to Dimitri, who is pleased to hear about her progress on the senseless property damage and random citizens she's beating up for no reason. Like, the regime seems cacklingly evil enough to want to do this kind of stuff, sure, until you hear Dimitri's actual plan for takeover this time - he's implanted control chips into Pravda's brain, and is going to use him as a mouthpiece for the Legion's ideals in the upcoming election!

So, wait. You want to get your new mind-slave to cast your organization in a positive light, and at the same time you're having one of your main commanders go around smashing windows and beating people up in alleys? How is this master plan of yours supposed to work, exactly? That entire Kristallnacht page could be removed from the comic and not only would it not impact the story, it would make it make more sense than it currently does. I seriously think that it was only included to draw more parallels to the Nazi regime, because there's just no way it makes any real sense otherwise. Sigh, Penders. Why do you have to be like this?

[korora12]

Ladybug Week Day 2 - Bedtime Stories

Day 1 Day 3

Word Count: 3810

Grimm. Monsters of nightmare, of bedtime stories meant to scare children. Behave, little Tenny, or the creatures of grimm will fall from the sky and eat you. No one knows where they come from or even how they function since grimm fade and dissolve upon death.

What is known is this: they are the greatest danger any space-faring civilization will face. Grimm move freely through space without need of a ship or air, their black bodies invisible against the void and only small white masks reveal their presence. Their method of moving through space so quickly is a mystery. It’s unknown what they eat, or even if they need sustenance. They don’t seem to be intelligent; at the least, no one has ever been able to communicate with them. Where there is one grimm, you can be sure there are more, and their only goal seems to be the eradication of intelligent life throughout the galaxy.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Today was just not Ruby’s day. What started as a simple escort job for a crateship carrying raw construction materials to Draconis 3, known locally as Eltanin, had quickly gone south when a spawner appeared from nowhere. Spawners were massive grimm that ranged in size from football field to small island nation and did exactly as their name implied; they spawned more, smaller grimm. Ruby thanked the stars that the one that had appeared, vaguely whale-shaped and covered in tentacles, was only a little larger than the crateship they were guarding. They would’ve stood no chance against an alpha spawner.

Crescent Rose was fast, agile, and deadly, which made her perfect for dealing with the smaller grimm, and thankfully she wasn’t alone. A second ship, the Crocea Mors, had also been hired for the job. She was an old ship, old enough that she would’ve fit better in a museum than out in space, but she’d been well-maintained and still seemed to function well. She was much slower than Crescent Rose, but her heavier weapons let her crew unleashed hell on the spawner directly.

Still, two ships against an effectively infinite stream of grimm was not good odds, and the numbers began to take their toll. Crocea Mors couldn’t stay on the spawner long enough to do any real damage to it without getting swarmed, and every time Crescent Rose swooped in to pick some grimm off her hide, they were forced to leave the crateship wide open. During one such run, grimm had managed to break into the crateship through a side window. The area had been sealed off from the vacuum of space, but not before several dozen of the creatures had boarded the ship.

Ruby had made the decision to dock with the crateship to protect the crew; Jaune would just have to make do without them for a bit.

Yang had stayed on Crescent Rose, taking control of her many guns and pointing their firing AI at any grimm that drew close. Ruby, Blake, and Weiss had rendezvoused with the crateship’s small crew, then started hunting grimm on foot.

Since this was their first real battle together, Ruby made sure to keep an eye on how her crewmates fought. She herself had brought her lazrifle onboard; her ballistic rifle would’ve been more effective against the grimm, but it was also more likely to blow a hole in the ship walls. Each pull of the trigger caused a small explosion of heat and light wherever she pointed, but only a sustained pulse would be able to tear through a space ship’s thick, coated walls. With a sixteen-centimeter bayonet attached to the end, her gun was nearly as long as she was tall, but Ruby was far too familiar with its heft for that to hinder her.

While Ruby held back and mowed down grimm with near-perfect aim, Weiss was the first to rush in to the fray. She was a materia, a silicon-based species made of light-generating crystals who had made their home on the planet Atlas. Weiss in particular looked like someone had carved a human out of white diamond or glass. Their bodies, though usually mobile, were extremely hard, allowing her to fight grimm up close without worry.

Watching Weiss fight made it obvious why Yang was so smitten with her. She wielded a thin sword and lazpistol in tandem, and the way she moved was like art in motion. One wouldn’t expect a creature of stone to flow like water, but she managed to do just that as she danced between opponents, blade flashing and gun firing. She wore a pair of modded magboots that let her glide across the floor without lifting her feet and could send her shooting towards an opponent like a particularly pointy missile.

Following in her shadow was Blake. Weapons wielded in opposite hands and blade a bit broader, she was nonetheless similarly equipped as Weiss, but the way she fought set her apart. Where Weiss had danced, Blake instead flew. Her naturally high strength and reflexes were further heightened by selectively overclocking certain internal systems, causing her to move almost too fast to follow. Ruby had very good eyes, but it seemed the grimm were not so lucky as they fell to her sword and gun as easily as they did to Weiss’ as she leapt and bounded through their numbers.

The trio was making short work of the grimm when the entire ship suddenly shook. Ruby immediately hit her helmet’s comm. “What was that?”

“Are you kidding?” Yang’s voiced rang in her ear, tinged with panic. “Try looking outside!”

The sounds of battle faded as Blake and Weiss finished clearing out the hallway. “We’re not near a window. Tell me what’s going on.”

“The spawner just latched on to the crateship. I had to break loose to avoid being crushed.”

A new voice joined their channel. “We’ve lowered the barricades on all the windows and airlocks,” Captain Braun, the man in charge of the crateship, said. “Most of the breached areas are blocked off, but the site of the initial breach is still unresponsive. Atmosphere is dropping in the areas ahead of you, and if they get much further, we’ll start losing our shipment.”

“Jaune has an idea for destroying the spawner,” Ren chimed in next, “but we’re going to need some help to line up the shot.”

“Right.” Ruby’s mind whirled. The situation might be different, but what needed to be done was still the same. “Yang, rendezvous with Crocea Mors and give them whatever help they need to kill that thing. Captain Braun, close off the areas behind us. I don’t want this ship to completely depressurize if they break through.”

“You risk getting trapped if I do that.”

As the only member of the boarding party that couldn’t last for hours in the vacuum of space, Ruby was equipped with a skintight spacesuit, an oxygen tank, and a helmet, all worn under a large red cloak. “I’ve got three hours of oxygen. That should be plenty of time to clean up and get everyone inside before I run out.”

Ruby could hear heavy metal walls slam down behind her. She pressed a button on her helmet and it fabricated a clear visor before her eyes, sealing her off completely. It cut her off from most sound, but her crew was fluent in Atlesian Sign Language. “Let’s go,” she signed.

The trio continued down the hallway, more barricades dropping behind them as they went, until they finally reached their goal. At the end of the hall were a pair of massive metal doors partitioning them away from the gaping hole in the ship that Ruby knew was on the other side. Unfortunately for them all, a lot of grimm had made it through before the barriers came down, and some were still there, trying to pry it open. A loud bang on the door suggested there were yet more grimm still waiting to pile through.

Ruby attacked first, using the advantages of surprise and range to take out three grimm before they realized what was happening. One, a round thing held aloft by long, spindly legs, fired a series of white spines from its back. Blake deflected several with her sword while Weiss and Ruby let them shatter harmlessly against their skin and cloak respectively.

The spider-like grimm was already dissolving, courtesy of Ruby’s crackshot aim, by the time Blake and Weiss closed the distance between them. The battle was over in under a minute.

Ruby activated her comm, speaking into the silence of her helmet. “That clears up the grimm that got through. Now as long as the doors hold we’ll be—” She was cut off by a loud clang as both doors shook violently.

“Ruby,” Weiss signed, managing to get her point across despite both her hands still carrying her weapons, “please stop talking before you get us all killed.”

The trio backed away from the doors as they shook again. “Activate magboots,” Ruby signed. The women managed to stick themselves to the floor just in time for a fourth strike to tear a hole between the doors. Ruby’s cloak whipped around her as all the air in the hall suddenly decided it wanted to be outside. The onrushing air pressure bent one of the doors at an angle, widening the gap further.

Small, tube-shaped grimm, each no bigger than a small dog, began pouring through the opening in droves. They were covered in legs, as many jutting upwards as facing the ground, and each leg was tipped with tiny claws sharp enough to dig into the metal floor and pull them forward in spite of the onrushing air. At their size even a lazpistol could do enough damage to kill one with a well-placed shot, but there were so many they threatened to overwhelm them through sheer numbers.

The airflow cut out before the invading grimm managed to fill the space between them, leaving the room depressurized and its occupants free to move again. “Spread out,” Ruby signed, and her crewmates obeyed. Before the grimm could spread in response, she leaned over into a runner’s crouch, gun held tightly in both hands. Lines on her suit began to glow before the world blurred passed her.

Cybernetic enhancements in her legs, coupled with further enhancements in her boots, put Ruby’s top speed somewhere around 100 kilometers per hour while on the surface of Vale. With no air resistance, on a ship with lower gravity, Ruby topped out closer to 200.

Grimm scattered as she sped through them; she lowered her bayonet blade into their numbers, further spreading her range of destruction. With a slam of her legs she leapt high enough to bounce off the ceiling, bleeding off momentum with the help of gravity, then came to a complete stop by landing feet first in a puddle of ex-grimm directly in front of the open doors. Her crimson cloak settled around her, long enough to reach the ground and protect her from the claws of any grimm she missed.

Ruby took a moment, as her crew began picking off the stragglers, to take a look inside. Or perhaps it was outside now. Whatever purpose this room had once served, it wouldn’t be able to return to the task anytime soon. Most of the outer wall was gone. Remnants of window frames hinted at its previous shape, but they had largely been ripped away. In their place was a giant tentacle as wide across as the room was tall. A large chunk of flesh was missing from the end of it, no doubt repurposed into the attacking grimm.

Had the tentacle been responsible for breaking open the door? Much of the room was still blocked off from her angle, but if she could poke her head through quickly, she might get a better read on what they were facing.

Her comm sprung to life in her ear. “Ruby, look out!” Blake shouted.

She was already backpedaling before she could see why. A massive hand, black as night, grabbed the side of the bent door. Another one joined it, then two more. A great heave peeled the door from the wall, revealing the creature behind it.

Even hunched over as it was, the grimm’s head brushed against the ceiling. It’s bone-white mask, bulbous, mouthless, and misshapen, sat squarely between the shoulders of four pillars of muscles that might be called arms. Its furred torso, as wide as it was tall, rested atop four squat legs that spread in each direction for balance.

It tossed the door aside and charged.

Ruby’s crew was already moving before it reached them. Blake leapt straight up, slashing repeatedly at its torso as she rose, then ricocheted off its shoulder. Turning in midair, she began unloading her lazpistol into its mask as she flew backwards. Ruby put distance between herself and the monster and, the moment Blake was clear, started taking shots at its elbows, wrists, and shoulders. Weiss dashed around its feet, tearing gouges and jabbing holes in its legs and knees.

The creature kicked out a foot at Weiss, three stubby toes latching on to her and slamming her into the ground. A brief flash of purplish-white shone from inside her; the equivalent of a scream of pain for a species that spoke with light instead of sound.

Blake was already hurdling towards her, having bounced off a wall to redirect her flight, when she saw her scream. A full-force flying slash severed one of the toes, giving Weiss enough room to stab upwards into the sole pinning her down. The grimm flinched backwards and Weiss was able to free herself. Blake grabbed her arm to help her up, and neither seemed to notice as the monster raised two fists to the ceiling.

Not enough time to warn them via comm, Ruby instead did the only thing she could think of to get them out of harm’s way. She dashed forward at high speed, grabbing both of her crewmates as she passed, narrowly avoiding its falling fists and skidding to a stop in the room beyond their foe.

Blake gingerly rubbed her side where Ruby had grabbed her, but nodded her thanks anyway.

The grimm struggled to turn its oversized bulk in their direction, buying them a little time. “We’re wearing it down,” Ruby signed. “If we keep attacking it from different angles it should have trouble keeping up with us. Stay in motion and don’t lose focus.”

Before either woman could respond, the room began to shake. Ruby’s eyes widened in shock as she had a sudden realization. She’d zeroed in too much on the giant grimm attacking them that she’d forgotten to account for the spawner tentacle still protruding into the room. She’d assumed, based on experience, that it’d used up so much mass making their current foe that it wouldn’t be able to spawn more grimm for a while. She’d failed to consider that it could still attack them directly before she rushed them all into its range. It had no way to sense their exact location, Ruby was pretty sure of that, but that didn’t stop it from flailing wildly until it hit them.

She wrapped her cloak tightly around herself and hoped it would hold up. Weiss was zipping along the ground, dodging the writhing tentacle as best she could. And Blake…

Ruby’s heart stopped beating as she watched Blake misjudge a jump and take the full force of the spawner straight on. She hit the wall and didn’t bounce back.

Ruby screamed Blake’s name and it echoed in her ears.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The world was dark when Blake reactivated. She lay in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. A warm breeze blew through an open window, carrying with it the scent of flowers and grain. She was on a planet, then, which didn’t square up with her most recent memory of being thrown against a wall by a Grimm. Sitting at the side of her bed, head in her arms and seemingly asleep, was one Ruby Rose.

She was still wearing her spacesuit and cloak, with signs of helmet hair clear atop her head, despite the fact that Blake’s internal clock told her over a day had passed. A book lay half-open by her side, next to her discarded helmet.

Blake shifted in the bed and Ruby bolted upright. “Blake! You’re awake!” Her silver eyes were rimmed red, adding to her bedraggled look. “Thank goodness, I was so worried.”

“Hey.” A quick self-diagnostic revealed that most of the damage she’d suffered had been repaired. But still she wondered, “What happened? Is the crateship and crew okay?”

Ruby nodded while rubbing some sleep from her eye. She spoke in a quiet tone, more reserved than her usual cheer. “Yeah. Jaune’s plan worked. Yang says he had a mass driver that launched high-yield explosives straight into the spawner’s mouth. Blew it to smithereens. After that it was just clean up. Most of the Grimm retreated, and Weiss and I were able to kill the one on the ship and get you back to Crescent Rose.” Her hand dropped back to the bed. “But you were hurt really bad, more than Weiss could fix on her own, so we took you to a hospital once we got to Eltanin.”

Blake looked around the room she was in. It most certainly did not look like a hospital room. It looked more like someone’s house. She had a pretty good idea how the rest of the story went.

Ruby balled the bedsheets between her fists. She continued, “when we got to the hospital, they wouldn’t even look at you. They said…” she broke off, looking away. “Well it doesn’t matter what they said. It’s not worth repeating. Yang was ready to start threatening people if they didn’t admit you until one of the doctors pointed us towards a clinic in a nearby town.” She shook her head as if trying to clear it. “How could they do that? Just turn away someone in need?”

“It’s unfortunately common,” Blake answered, though she suspected the question had been rhetorical. “Hospitals aren’t legally required to have someone on staff who’s familiar with FAUNIS biology. Without anyone who can give the proper care, they’re allowed to turn us away.”

“It’s not right.” Blake could see tears forming in the corners of Ruby’s eyes. “You could have died. And they were going to let it happen. People like that…” she trailed off, not finishing the thought aloud.

Blake placed her hand over Ruby’s, pressing down until they finally unfurled. She understood Ruby’s anger viscerally; she’d felt it herself more than once.

When Ruby met her eyes again, her voice was quiet and plaintive, begging for an answer. “Are these the people we’re out here trying to protect?”

It was a difficult question. Blake couldn’t deny that she resented those sorts of people. But she’d also seen where that resentment could lead if left unchecked. “There are good people too, who do deserve protection.” She waved her hand around. “Who was it who took us in?”

Some of the visible tension began to leave Ruby’s shoulders. “Dr. Zong. He’s a FAUNIS too. Most of the town is, from the looks of it.”

Blake left Ruby to her thoughts. This was an important moment, but Ruby had to figure out for herself what it meant. It was easy to go from “these people willfully and cruelly hurt me” to “they don’t deserve my protection” to “the world would be better off without certain people in it”. She’d started down that path once, and getting off it had cost her dearly. She didn’t want Ruby to suffer the same way.

To be honest, Blake’s brush with near-death bothered her a bit as well. Diagnostic logs showed that a crack had formed in her core matrix, the one part of a FAUNIS’s body that wasn’t replaceable. Repairing it would’ve required careful application of properly programmed nanobots, which a hospital not set up for treating FAUNIS likely wouldn’t have had. If left unchecked, the damage could’ve worsened, causing loss of memory, personality, or even identity.

So the pair sat in silence for a while, until Ruby at last broke it. “I’m sorry.” She turned her hand over, wrapping her fingers around Blake’s. “I’ve seen racism before, but it was different this time. I was so scared that you might not wake up. The thought that I might never get to see you again… I wasn’t even that scared when the spawner showed up, but from the moment you hit the wall and didn’t get up, I wasn’t able to think straight.”

There was something more here. Something Blake was supposed to say. Ruby was important to her, Blake knew that much. Even though she’d only known her for a couple months, Blake found herself drawn towards her captain in a way that wasn’t entirely unfamiliar.

She’d told herself at first that her interest was only in trying to prevent Ruby from turning out like that man. But the more she got to know this woman, the more certain she became that the similarities she’d noticed were only surface similarities. At their cores they were drastically different people.

And anyway, getting things right with Ruby wouldn’t make up for or undo her past failures.

Despite that, there was still a definite attraction there, but it wasn’t the sort of thing Blake was ready to put a name to. So instead she said, “Thank you,” and hoped it was enough. She squeezed Ruby’s hand with her own, then pulled it back.

“Of course,” Ruby replied.

Unable to meet her captain’s eyes, Blake’s sight instead fell on the book splayed out on the bed nearby. “Did you fall asleep while reading?”

A hint of pink touched Ruby’s cheeks. She picked up the book, gently straightening creased pages before shutting it fully. “It’s an old adventure novel my dad used to read me to help me sleep. I thought you might like it, so I was reading to you. Not that you probably heard any of it. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” Blake said, parroting Ruby’s earlier words. “Are there any grimm in it?”

“Completely grimm-free. It’s a fantasy story about a married couple, a historian and an archaeologist, who discover an ancient civilization and are changed by its unknown magics.”

“Sounds interesting. Do you want to keep reading it to me?”

Ruby’s face lit up with a grin as she flipped back to the first page. Blake did her best to stay awake, listening as a story filled the air between them, but doing so proved difficult. The air was warm, the bed was soft, and Ruby was nearby. Before the first chapter was done, she’d turned once more to the land of dreams.

[cargopantsman]

Brotherhood of Steel 

Document Serial Number: 876-X4J7

Origin Locale: Commonwealth Wasteland (Formerly known as Boston, Massachusetts)

Origin Date: 2288.01.05

Document Subjects: Commonwealth, Glowing Sea, Ruby Lowell

Document Title: Expedition Into The Glowing Sea

Origin Format: Oral Brief Presentation

Origin Author: Ruby Lowell, Knight

Document Format: Transcript

Document Author: Dan McCarthy, Scribe

Document Classification: Restricted

Document Classification Scope: Brother of Steel, Knight or greater

BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION

The Glowing Sea is the region southwest of Boston, formerly called Attleboro, which sustained heavy nuclear bombardment during the Great War. Current theory holds that a mass bombardment of this region was either due to miscalculations of strikes on Boston and Providence proper or an attempt to wipe out both cities with intense detonations between them.

Either way, the area now known as "The Glowing Sea" is still a highly irradiated wasteland even two centuries after and is the source of local "Rad-Storms," storm systems that move through the sea, suck up isotopes, and later dump residual fallout in their path.

Expedition into the sea is, of course, ill-advised. There is much preparation required to venture in and survive long enough to venture out. I, foolishly, went in and am now here to tell you why it was a stupid idea.

To emphasize how stupid an idea this was. I went in with a suit of power armor that was a cobbled mix of T-45d and X-01 Mk V gear. I only brought 10 StimPaks, 5 Rad-X doses and 2 Rad-Away packs with me. Weapons kit was a suppressed 10mm pistol, suppressed .308 long range rifle, and a drum mag combat shotgun. 

I'm going to assume that most of you gathered here are more well traveled than myself. I've heard your stories of the [New California Republic], New Vegas, Capitol Wasteland, and even the Midwest Campaigns. You've all seen all kinds of wastelands and I can appreciate that.

The Glowing Sea makes all of that a stroll through the park.

The approach to the [Glowing] sea from Boston, particularly Diamond City, is standard. A few locations of note with the usual Super Mutants, Radscorpions, occasional raider bands to get in the way.

At some point though the sickly grass stops growing and you're treading over gravel and bedrock. The horizon you're used to [Knight Lowell gestures an even plane across her torso] disappears as the ground begins to climb upwards [Knight Lowell gestures a sweeping upward motion]. There aren't anymore trees here. Just the shattered remnants of an elevated highway and the trunks of ancient trees, their branches blown off and petrified into pikes jutting up from dead earth.

Right around here your Geiger counter starts to… hum at you. Not an occasional click or chirp, but a quiet, steady chatter that's more unnerving than an honest ping of an alpha particle.

This is the point where you'll feel something is wrong in your soul.

On my approach the ground was pretty uniform. The blasted trees don't offer anything in the way of cover. You're out there, you're exposed. Even with the Power Armor, the landscape gets in your head. You crouch down and try to blend with the land. You begin to anticipate something [stressed] coming at you.

You look around and there's nothing.

You scout through your scope and there's nothing.

And you move on another 50 paces and stop. You look around. You scope around.

Nothing.

Just dead trees, dead land, and you.

And the ever growing buzz from the Geiger.

And so you press on. Scouting and waiting and trying to get to the ridge so you can see anything. You can't shake a feeling though, because you're so wired at this point. Not that some thing [syllabic stress] is watching you, but that every thing [syllabic stress] is watching you. And you don't know if all of that [Knight Lowell gestures vaguely around herself] wants to kill you or is just watching to see how you die.

But you press on. And I know some of the vets out there are thinking "Oh, rookie nerves," and I want to assure you old dogs that this is not rookie nerves.

This landscape is wrong [stressed].

No wasteland has this amount of nothing.

And then it gets worse.

You won't notice it at first, you'll be too busy trying to figure out where the deathclaw is going to pop out from, but it will register in your subconscious and every bone in your body in your Power Armor will be screaming at you to turn around.

It's the sky.

The color begins to change.

I'm sure some of you that have been at the Prydwen's forecastle at night have seen the glow of the sea even from here. Well, even during a daylight approach there's a point where that glow taints the sky. And as you press on the color of everything sickens. It's the only way to describe it.

[Knight Lowell pauses for 40 seconds]

When you reach the ridge everything is yellow. It's all piss and a chattering Geiger counter. There's a small stretch of space where you can see the devastation and putrefaction laid out before you and it's heart wrenching. The ground looks wrong and the only sign of civilization where I stood was the blown out framework of a church off in the distance.

I think it was a church. I didn't really go investigate.

I had the primary detonation crater marked on my map and my main goal was to get there and get out, just to see it.

So I pressed on to the southwest and my terror was mixed with a sense of awe. My guard was down for a moment as I just [Knight Lowell pauses] processed this sublime experience. The horror takes you and you have to let it embrace you at this point.

It didn't take long for the nerves to get edgy again though. The visibility turns to [expletive] in a matter of 250 meters. That's when you realize that A.) this ridge you've been climbing is the edge of a massive crater and B.) you're walking into a radioactive caldera that spans a few clicks [kilometers].

At this point the Geiger counter is chittering away like static and the haze is straining your eyes because you know [stressed] that something out there wants to kill you even though you can't fathom how anything could survive out here.

So you creep 20 paces and scope, more frequently than on the approach because you can't see [expletive] and everything is feeling increasingly wrong as you move forward. Even when you think it's as wrong as it can be it gets worse.

Then you see it.

A body laying on the broiled, glowing ground through the sickly strontium fog. Not a skeleton. This humanoid thing still has something resembling flesh on it. You have to hedge your bets that that there is a feral [ghoul]. So I line up my sights and blow its head off with only a dull echo bouncing around the place.

And now you start scoping everything. Praying your eyes are as keen as you thought they were. Because now not only is the air getting thicker, but the ground is breaking up. There are crevasses and mounds and crags and gullies and all kinds of places for [expletive] to hide or for you to stumble on a nasty.

And the [Geiger] counter is getting louder, and you can literally feel the heat. The radiation at this point is so constant that the shielding of the [Power Armor] can't keep it all out. At this point I took my first Rad-X.

Creeping on I spotted more bodies here and there and sniped them. It was either a waste of ammo or insurance, and out there insurance is worth it.

The first problem was the bugs. The fliers. There are small ponds of [pause] radioactive sludge just glowing and stewing in these pits out there and like some poisonous swamp they harbor your bloatflies, bloodbugs, and stingwings. But unlike their wasteland cousins these [strong plural expletive] are robust. A 10mm round can demolish the monster bugs out in the normal world, but the [strong expletive] bugs in the sea don't pay any mind. I may as well have been throwing sticks at them.

And before anyone wants to think "Oh bugs. How scary," remember these [strong plural expletive] have acidic projectile vomit or proboscis like steel in the regular wasteland. They can burn or pierce through the joints in a [Power Armor] rig. And in the sea your undersuit is the only thing between you and a [expletive]-ton of radiation. And the deeper you're in the farther you are from safety.

A pistol doesn't do [expletive] against these [strong plural expletive]. Once they get a bead on you it's shotgun all the way. Up-close spread damage and praying nothing else is within earshot that can pin your position. Because you're going to be firing constantly to take out these bugs.

Of course the first thing you do after making a ruckus like that is get the hell out so any nasties coming to investigate don't find you there. The mistake I made was in no longer being terrified of my surroundings and just booking it.

Into a small pack of radscorpions. 

Again, these [strong plural expletive] are far more resilient and the same dangers apply regarding them clawing or stinging through your armor with the added bonus [sarcastic tone] of having venom in your blood that is also exposed to radioactive, toxic air.

[Knight Lowell pauses for 20 seconds]

Now at this point the adrenaline is in active mode. I'm trying to survive tactically, killing things before they have a chance to even nick me. What's happened here is I've been driven deeper into the sea, and while I've kept my bearings I had a strange crash once the fray was over.

Because all of the stress, strain, and environmental horror was still there when the initial adrenaline rush passed. And we all know that feeling of the after action jitters, but now you have that crash compounded by this persistent realization that you [pauses] are [pauses] in hell.

So let me wallow this story in the landscape again. Visibility is [expletive], the ground is this ashen sand, the sky is stained with puke filtered sunlight. It's barren all around. I found a moment's shelter, cover in the rooftop entrance of an ancient factory at ground level [stressed].

The [Power Armor] had no signs of a breach but I already needed a second dose of Rad-X.

[Knight Lowell pauses for 30 seconds, visibly distraught]

The Glowing Sea is a perverted monument to the destructive nature of mankind. There's probably no way I can convey the kind of existential horror of the place, but I was already entertaining thoughts of letting it consume me. To just succumb to the overwhelming monstrosity.

That's when I knew I had to keep moving. 

The cruelest part of the sea is in the small fragments of civilization that remain. That factory, a half buried Red Rocket [fuel station], a crashed airliner, the shattered frames of buildings strewn about the landscape.

What I thought was the plain leading down to ground zero was just a secondary blastwave depression. The ground slowly began to climb again, such that I found myself approaching another section of elevated [stressed] highway at ground [stressed] level. And one of the most sublimely terrifying visions as the sun filtered and glared through the haze to silhouette the grainy outline of a massive deathclaw on the road.

I stood, [corrective pause] crouched frozen in space and time. Even as the toxic heat made me sweat in the [Power Armor] I had a vicious chill course through me. I was already too close to it for comfort, begging it not to see me right in front of it. Luckily it didn't notice me and I was able to get into a good firing position to take it down.

That was the second deathclaw I'd seen in as many hours. 

We all know that stress reduces the efficacy of Rad-X, and the persistent rads in that hell were leaking in, I was on my third Rad-X already and still had four treacherous clicks to find the primary detonation crater.

As you get deeper into the sea the haze just keeps thickening. The [Geiger] counter just gets louder. Each footstep needs to be judged if you're stepping onto a patch of soft ash or blasted bedrock. The wind starts to howl around as the actual heat of the place creates these violent drafts, kicking up all the fallout into the air.

Your progress is step by step, ploddingly slow. You can't see anything, so you try to make it so nothing hears you in the clunking Power Armor. That's the paradox out there is that the very atmosphere hides you, but for all you know you're only ten meters from a monster.

That's how when I reached the edge of another ridge I spotted a feral [ghoul] shambling about. I took it down with a .308 but what I didn't see was the entire pack of the [strong plural expletive].

Now these ferals in the Glowing Sea are just as amped up as any other [strong expletive] that can survive out there. A .308 can take one down in one shot, but when there's suddenly ten of them rushing you that rifle just ain't fast enough.

Those of us here that have been around the block enough with your run-of-the-mill ferals kind of look on them as a game. A shooting gallery. Short of stumbling on a large pack they're not much to worry about as long as you're a good shot.

The danger here is you can't see, right? I see ten coming at me. And those [strong plural expletive] are fast [stressed]. And I don't know if any or how many more are behind them.

The 10mm is the only quick weapon I have and I assume one round isn't gonna drop one of these ferals. So I go for the legs. Just willing every round to tear through a knee and at least force each one to a crawl. Time slows in that weird way when everything is going so fast and you just keep firing at those scrambling kneecaps. 

And it's a horror show. We all know how to suppress that visceral terror of these zombies [a pre-War term colloquially synonymous with ghoul]. After a long enough time we don't even feel it. But out there, with everything else forcing you to be unhinged, ten half-rotted, half-mummified corpses charging you at speed will make even a Paladin [expletive] themselves.

I was able to bring five of them to the ground before they closed on my position. The others I had either winged or missed completely. The fight then turned to knocking them away from me and firing point blank at their skulls. The sound of their bony fingers scratching at the armor still echoes in my head as they swarmed me because I knew if any of them cut the joints I was [strong expletive].

I was lucky. I took care of the swarm and was able to finish off the crawlers. If it weren't for the extended clip on the 10mm I would probably be dead.

[Knight Lowell pauses, turns away from the assembly for 25 seconds, readdresses the assembly]

The rest of the trek to the primary detonation crater was blessedly uneventful. But nothing happening is almost worse than fighting an enemy. Where even approaching the sea when the sky is still mostly blue is unsettling. Where once all semblance of normality is gone is unnerving. Where after inching your way through this blasted hellscape for hours is unhinging. The shrouded unknown is unbearable.

The psychological toll of this expedition can not [stressed] be understated. It cannot be adequately described, but it must not be understated. You, as members of the Brotherhood, have a better idea of what the pre-War world was than anyone else in the wastelands and reaching ground zero is indescribably traumatic.

[Knight Lowell pauses, clearly emotionally distraught, for 30 seconds. She chokes back tears.]

Most of you know this, but for the record, I am the sole survivor of Vault 111. A Vault-Tec project that resulted in me being cryogenically frozen. I lived in the world before the [Great] War. I fought in the Resource Wars [a time of global warfare that ultimately resulted in the cataclysmic nuclear exchange].

I know what the Commonwealth looked like when it was called Massachusetts. When Boston was a bustling, vibrant city.

Coming out of the vault and seeing the wasteland was horrifying. Seeing my home, my neighborhood, an abandoned and crumbling shadow of what it was. Seeing Concord, Lexington, and finally Boston as these shattered, blasted ruins overrun with violent gangs and giant green-skinned monsters. I woke up into a nightmare.

And finally seeing the Glowing Sea, finally seeing Ground Zero, broke me.

I fell to my knees and sobbed like a child. I no longer cared if a pack of ferals took me down, or if a radscorpion crashed through the ground and killed me. I didn't care that, even after 210 years, my Geiger counter was screaming [stressed] at me.

I wanted to die from this nightmare.

But eventually I stood up, turned around, and made my way home.

And to a doctor.

END TRANSCRIPTION

END DOCUMENT

Brotherhood of Steel 

Document Serial Number: 876-X4J8

Origin Locale: Commonwealth Wasteland (Formerly known as Boston, Massachusetts)

Origin Date: 2288.01.04

Document Subjects: Commonwealth, Glowing Sea, Ruby Lowell

Document Title: Expedition Into The Glowing Sea, Analysis

Origin Format: Written Notes from Debriefing

Origin Author: Arthur Maxson, Elder

Document Format: Written Log Entry

Document Author: Arthur Maxson, Elder

Document Classification: Restricted

Document Classification Scope: Brother of Steel, Elder Eyes Only

The debriefing of Knight Lowell shall be logged separately [Document 876-X4J6], but certain notes should be kept of a higher priority. Knight Lowell's actions have been indispensable in our investigation into the so-called Institute, but for the sake of maintaining order in the ranks her actions will be officially disciplined for recklessly and unilaterally endangering herself.

Of particular interest is the settlement of a group of persons identified with the Children of Atom cult. Their survival in such a high radiation environment is particularly vexing, if not warranting of further study. Also curious is Knight Lowell's reports of their hospitality considering the aggression shown by the Children of Atom sects in the Commonwealth.

Of paramount interest is her meeting with the ex-Institute scientist known as Virgil. While a being that is an affront to the values of the Brotherhood; an intelligent super mutant associated with the synth producing Institute, if he is indeed an honest defector his insight could be most valuable in our campaign.

I will allow Knight Lowell to use him as an asset until such time as his usefulness expires.

In the meantime Knight Lowell shall be restricted on medical leave to ensure the prolonged radiation has no lasting effects. This medical leave will be officially considered her suspension from active duty.

I also wish to note here a commendation to Knight Lowell's dedication to the mission as she insists that she continues to act alone in trapping the Courser necessary to hijack the molecular relay so as to not expose the Brotherhood's involvement until a proper assault can be mounted.

END DOCUMENT

[buzzdixonwriter]

America: Not The New Jerusalem, Merely Another Rome

”When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” -- Paul the Apostle (1 Corinthians 13:11 KJV)

”And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” -- Jesus Christ of Nazareth (John 8:34 KJV)

Ronald Reagan, tending the garden of thorns Dick Nixon had sown, referred to America as “a city on a hill”, thus appropriating Jesus’ words via John Winthrop through John F. Kennedy.

It’s interesting to chart the progression.  Let’s do so in reverse.

Reagan: ”I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.”

Kennedy: ”I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before…’We must always consider…that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us’. Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us—and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill—constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities…History will not judge our endeavors—and a government cannot be selected—merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these. For of those to whom much is given, much is required…”

Winthrop: ”Now the only way to…provide for our posterity is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God, for this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man, we must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities, we must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality, we must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor, and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body, so shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace… for we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world, we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak…curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whether we are going”

Jesus: ”Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.” (Matthew 5:14 KJV) 

Go back and read Reagan’s statement.

While I’ve trimmed Kennedy and Winthrop’s quotes and edited the latter for clarity (God bless Noah Webster for standardized spelling!), there’s a striking difference between what they saw as a city on a hill and what Reagan saw.

Reagan operates under the presumption that of course we’re the best, of course everyone else will look up to us, of course we are the New Jerusalem referenced in the Bible.

We are God’s anointed, His new chosen people.  America is God’s Promised Land, a nation to which all other nations can merely hope to aspire to be.

Our shitte truly stinketh notte.

Reality?   We have fucked up and we have fucked up badly.

Compare Reagan’s self-congratulatory, ignorant nostalgia with the dire warnings of Kenney and Winthrop.

Yes, there is great promise.

Yes, there is great potential.

Yes, we are a city on a hill.

But Kennedy and Winthrop both cautioned that history and the world would not be kind if we failed to live up to our own grandiose promises.

 (And, yeah, there’s irony in that, considering how both failed to make good on those promises, ///but at least they knew the danger was there///.)

Look at Matthew 5:13, the verse immediately preceding Jesus’ original “city on a hill” reference: ”Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.”

America is no New Jerusalem, no Holy Israel of the New World, no Promised Land.

Rather, we are the New Rome, an empire built on greed and ruthlessness and blood and genocide.

And slavery.  Let us never omit that original sin, or its bastard step-sibling, white supremacy.

As long as the history of this nation was written by the Parson Weems of the world, be they well meaning hagiographers or unprincipled propagandists, it was the history of white Christianist* men of property succeeding because God and / or providence had deemed them the masters of the universe, the unquestioned rulers of the earth.

(Oh, there might be a mean one once in a while, maybe an occasional bad one, but it was a white man with money’s world, and if non-whites and non-males wanted to enjoy even the slightest taste, the first thing they had to doo was make sure white Christianist male supremacy reigned supreme.)

Our nation has been at war virtually its entire existence.

It has slaughter and subjugated literally millions of people around the world.

Don’t give me that bullshit about the American Revolution being a good and just war -- Canada stayed under British rule and did just fine, thank you, and although they have their own problems, a far less bloody history than the United States.**

Don’t give me that bullshit about the Civil War being a good and just war -- there shouldn’t have been any need for a civil war if the first shipload of African slaves to arrive in North America had simply been seized and freed.

Don’t give me that bullshit on World War Two being a good and just war -- if Hitler hadn’t declared war on us, we would have never gotten involved in Europe.***

America has waged incessant war against other nations and native peoples in order to make a few wealthy people even wealthier.

Can we justify the War of 1812?  No.

Can we Justify the Mexican War?  No.

Can we justify the Spanish-American War or the too numerous to recount Latin American bush wars?  No.

Can we justify the Philippines, or Korea, or Vietnam?

Don’t even pretend we can justify what we’ve done in the Middle East.

And as terrible as those are, those are the crimes we’ve committed against others.

Look at how terribly we treat one another.

After centuries of enslavement, African-Americans then needed to endure the humiliation of segregation.

Hispanic Americans who can trace their ancestry in this land much further back than any Anglo found themselves aliens in their own country.

Women and non-Christians and anybody outside of toxic white male heterosexual norms declared unfit and excluded from the public sphere.

And we allowed the tiny greedy few at the very top to rob us and pick our pockets and let our families and children suffer because they promised us if we did so, they’d let us feel that we were the best simply because we were white Christianist males.

We are long overdue for our moment of clarity, our agonizing reappraisal, out “come to Jesus” moment when we recognize our sins and shortcomings.

We gotta stop eating our own bullshit and recognize ourselves for the villains we are.

Only by identify the source of the contagion and draining the virulent infection can we hope to cure it.

”Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

”And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.” -- Jesus Christ of Nazareth (John 8:44-45 KJV) 

 © Buzz Dixon

 *  “Christianist” is a term coined by the political commentator Andrew Sullivan to refer to those people who are culturally Christian, who may even think of themselves as Christian, but in reality are as far from the teachings of Christ as is possible and just use their so-called Christian identity as an excuse to do whatever the fuck they feel like doing because “God loves us and forgives us and wants us to be in charge”.

**  The taxation in “no taxation without representation” referred to England trying to get the colonies to take at least partial responsibility for triggering the bloody Seven Years War (in the U.S., the French & Indian War) that virtually drained England’s treasury and wrecked a couple of European empires in the process.  One may argue the crown made a fatal misstep in not allowing token colonial participation in parliament, but you can’t say they were unfair in wanting the colonials to help pay for a war ///we started/// in direct violation of international treaties.

***  Not only were many prominent Americans against getting involved in European affairs, but a large number were pro-Nazi to boot, and they went to ground only when Hitler made it impossible to defend him any longer. And while we’re at it, let’s dispel with the myth that Hitler and the Axis would have won if the U.S. hadn’t stepped into the fray; Hitler lost WWII on June 22, 1941 when he invaded Russia. Contrary to the popular culture of the US and western Europe, it was Russia that took on the brunt of the German war machine, and Russia that painstakingly ground them down at great cost. To put it simply, Russia would have still beaten Germany without the help of the Allies; the Allies might not have beaten Germany without the help of the Russians.  And while Japan was reeling from saturation bombings and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Russia declaring war on them was the moment they realized there was no hope left.

[onburdenedwings]

The Appeal of Sleeping Potions

{{Another long rambley thing that I worked on on/off for most of yesterday. It may not be fully lore compliant, but oh well. Hints at spoilers for HW, kinda. I don’t like proofreading, oops.}}

{{ TL;DR: Cele has PTSD-related insomnia and heavy scarring after one of his first excursions as a Temple Knight. Don’t ask him to take off his shirt.}}

Even before the Calamity, Coerthan winters had been bitterly cold. The snows had just started to take hold, and this was to be one of the last expeditions before the army withdrew for the season- or at least, that was what his commander had claimed. Whether or not Celestaux believed him or not was up for debate, for they all knew that it depended near entirely on the results of the excursion. At the very least, this wasn’t meant to be a war party- rather, they were setting out to give the Western Highlands one final sweep before the ice set in.

The battalion had set out from Falcon’s Nest, following the road north and across Black Iron Bridge to start with a sweep of the northern reaches of the Highlands. They’d swept through Hemlock, stopping only briefly to rest before continuing north through Gorgagne Holdings. And so they continued on in this manner, circling the Highlands counterclockwise to eventually work their way back in. The river crossings were, arguably, the worst- for in some places, it had frozen over and in others only appeared to have done so- on more than one occasion, a knight had nearly been lost to the clutches of ice too thin to bear the weight of a unit crossing.

Despite the occasional incident with the local wildlife, the journey passed relatively without incident. The men were in good spirits as Camp Riversmeet came into view, eager to settle in for the night somewhere a bit closer to ‘civilization’ than the middle of the godsdamned wilderness. Cannons, it seemed, did wonders for morale when they’d spent the last tenday patrolling on foot. The fire was blazing, and they set about pitching their tents beside the ones more permanently affixed within the fence. Tonight, they would have their first proper rest in days and tomorrow, gods willing, they’d find the Bed of Bones just as ‘safe’ as the rest of the Highlands and return for another night before setting back out for Falcon’s Nest and, eventually, back to Ishgard proper.

But plans did not always go as intended, for what was life without a bit of chaos?

Celestaux found himself awake before he realized what had awoken him. Had that been a dragon’s roar? His sword lay sheathed beside his bedroll, and he reached for it and the shield against the tent pole before pushing his way out. The fire still raged in the pit in the center of camp, and the guards on high alert. He craned his neck, squinting up at the stars in an effort to try and spot the beast in question.

Nothing.

Knights were beginning to flood the camp’s center, bleary-eyed and yawning. Those who did not stir at the first sound were quickly shaken away and admonished, and hardly a bell had passed before they’d all assembled in full kit to await an attack that did not come. Tension slowly eased, and while more guards were stationed, the rest of those set to return set about packing up the tents and preparing the morning meal. The mood had lightened, and while they were quite reasonably on high alert, spirits were still high. The sun rose higher, raising the temperature a fraction of a degree, and the order to set out was given. The plan to carry minimal equipment was debated, it was ultimately decided to carry just enough to last them, should they be waylaid.

There was something about stepping foot into an area known affectionately as The Bed of Bones that made one feel uneasy. Celestaux had been of the opinion that they should await reinforcements, for a dragon this close to a well-established camp was not going to be a good sign but he was young and early in his career and had little voice, despite his arguably greater social status amongst his unit. He kept his hand on his sword, free hand twitching to reach for his shield at every noise not quite human.

A shout from the rear had him spinning, shield in hand before he’d even thought about reaching for it. The roar that sounded shook him, resounding deep in his bones as the scaled creature soared overhead and banked before diving for their position. Another call went out, and the sound of a dozen visors snapping back down into place echoed. The call for dragoons went out, and Celestaux raised his shield as they sprung into action. A lance struck true, and the dragon came crashing down with an ear-piercing shriek of rage. From a cavern above, a great figure arose. It let out a bone-chilling roar, and from the caverns high in the cliffside came the sound of beating wings.

“Ambush!”

Celestaux wasn’t sure who had sounded the alarm, but he fell into position with his shield-brothers at his back. They closed ranks, shields and lances raised to face the onslaught that came. While the dragons that attacked were no great wyrms, their claws and teeth were still deadly. The man to his left was snatched up and carried off in the chaos of leaping dragoons and swinging swords, and Cele spared him only a glance- just long enough to watch him fall into the river below as a lance pierced through the beast carrying him off.

“Dzemael!”

The sound of his name snapped him back to the present, and he spun just in time to raise his shield and fend off a smaller beast that had broken past their perimeter. He grunted, pushing back and slashing out with his sword to draw blood. The creature screeched and fell at his feet, staining the snow red. He stared at it, eyes down just a bit too long. Another harsh shout of his name drew him from his thoughts, and he turned to rejoin his unit in the fray.

Crimson stained the snow and leached into the river, scaled corpses littering the ground; from the corner of his eye, Celestaux spotted a still figure that looked disturbingly like Riorant beneath the body of a slain beast. He spared a prayer to the Fury, turning his blade back on the creatures descending upon them. The battle raged, and slowly the unit began to move back towards the mouth of the cave that led into the ring of cliffs. Fury willing, the roars and sounds of battle had reached Camp Riversmeet- if they pulled back far enough, reinforcements could reach them sooner. And in the worst of cases, they would be all the closer for the next patrol to carry their bodies home.

Mercifully, it seemed they were making some semblance of progress; the number of swooping shadows had slowly begun to decrease- and while the number of dragon corpses was rising, Celestaux was not convinced that all that had disappeared had truly been slain. They pressed further back, the chirurgeon among them working overtime to keep those not heavily injured up and in the fight. Celestaux kept his shield up, the healer carefully in his peripheral vision in the event that something broke through their line. Distantly, he could hear the shouts of another unit echoing through the cavern. By the Fury, it was past time!

A shadow blocked out the sun, and Celestaux raised his eyes just in time for the beast to fall upon him. Talons tore through his chainmail like butter, and he let out a shout as he thrust his blade up into the beast atop him. The dragon reared back it’s head, and with what strength remained, Celestaux raised his shield to block the mouth of razor-sharp teeth from tearing open his throat the same as his armour. Claws tightened around his torso, piercing his flesh and tearing open his stomach. He screamed, blood filling his mouth until he felt like he was drowning. Shouts rang out, and the beast attempting to tear him apart released him. A face appeared in front of him, ringed by shadow as his vision began to fail. Their lips moved, but the sound was garbled and nonsensical. The world began to fade, and try as he might, he couldn’t quite hold on- his eyes flickered closed, and the world fell away…..

____

“-n’t know. He will wake up when he wakes up, my lord.” An unfamiliar voice spoke in soothing tones, to a figure he could not make out.

“That’s unacceptable-” Ah, his father was here. Perhaps he should be comforted that the man had dragged himself out to visit. Instead, he embraced the rising darkness and fell back under.

____

“Celestaux?”

Now who was that? He could feel himself surfacing again, mind far more steady this time around. A noise approaching a grunt escaping him. This was not his father, despite the vague familiarity of his voice, and he was growing tired of slowly rising into consciousness only to immediately retreat. Nay, it was about time he awoke.

“By the Fury, are you actually awake this time?”

He opened his mouth, attempting to speak- for nothing to come out. His brow furrowed, eyes slowly easing open to look at the figure looming over his bedside. Orlant- the healer that had been at his back during the assault- seemed positively delighted that he was awake. Celestaux cleared his throat, immediately regretting the action as pain rocketed up and down his chest.

“Gods, man, easy.” Orlant pressed a gentle hand to his shoulder, a tight frown at his lips. “The Fury Herself must have blessed you, to survive that. I knew I was good, but even I didn’t think I was that good.” He chuckled, the sound more than a little nervous. “Now, I fixed you up best I could, but the results likely won’t be pretty. Just remember we didn’t all make it.”

“Who?” Celestaux croaked the word, mouth far too dry. Was there water? He tilted his head, both to get a better look at his visitor and catch sight of his bedside table. As if reading his mind, Orlant picked up a glass of water and carefully held it to lips while he took small drinks.

“Ser Riorant. Ser Saivex. Ser Vozelle. Ser Idronne is in rough shape, but they think she’ll make it. Whether or not she’ll be able to lift a lance again is another story.” The healer shook his head, setting the cup back on the small side table. “Odds are good for you, I think. Best chirurgeons in the city came as soon as you were stable enough to bring in. Benefits of being nephew to a Count, huh?”

“Mm.” So he was back in Ishgard. How distasteful. It did confirm, however, that it had been his father’s voice he’d thought he’d heard. He wasn’t sure whether he was shocked or annoyed that his father had come to see him in hospice. He settled for a mixture of the two, before his eyes slowly began to close again.

“Get some rest, Celestaux.” Orlant’s voice was already far away, but the permission to sleep was well appreciated. He settled back against the pillows, easing the tension that had already formed in his shoulders. “Gods know you’ve earned it.”

____

A moon passed, and slowly he did heal. The skin and flesh beneath mended, leaving minimal permanent damage. All things considered- his survival and relatively low impact on quality of life- was borderline miraculous. The scarring left behind was heavy; long, deep gouges across his stomach and lower chest that would fade only the faintest bit over time and and a far cleaner line over his cheek from the bridge of his nose to his jaw. The physical reminders, he found, were the least of his concerns.

At first, he’d been too tired and drugged by healers to remember a thing. But as he was weaned off the potions and various concoctions that had been intended to expedite his recovery. The fog in his mind cleared, and that had been when the screaming started. Every time his eyes drifted shut, the screech of dragons and pained cries of his shield-siblings as they met their death rang in his ears. Riorant’s still form flashed through his mind, accompanied by the open jaws of the dragon that pinned him moments before it consumed him whole.

Orlant had been the first one to notice his health once again begin to decline. By the end of Celestaux’s first venture back, the shadows beneath his eyes were near pitch in colour. The healer had waited until they’d arrived back in Ishgard before handing him a potion and ordering him to drink it all only once he’d settled into bed. Celestaux had been suspicious, but he did as ordered- while the healer had no real authority over him, he had an idea of what he’d been given. He was not surprised to awaken a full day later to his fussing mother and her insistence he be up and dressed before he made them late for the latest family gathering.

And so the cycle started- fitful nights of little to no sleep on military excursions followed by mini comas fueled by potions slipped into his bag by the ever-watchful healer. Reliance was, almost certainly, a terrible idea- but Celestaux found himself with few choices, and while the original screams of trauma began to fade over the years, he’d earned plenty new scars and the nightmares to go with them.

Leaving Ishgard had meant leaving his supply behind; he’d intended to simply quit, but moons of no sleep eventually took its toll, and he once again relented. When that began to burn through his wallet, he learned to make them himself. The scars on his chest ached only once in a blue moon, silenced just as easily as the dreams with just a swig of something strong. That, at least, was considerably cheaper to achieve.

More than once, he'd tried to wean himself off of them properly, to try to learn to manage without them, but often times that just led to a small fussy Xaela insisting on making tea and taking some of his workload; on the worst occasions, it led to a fussy pirate, and worrying him was the last thing he'd wanted. The dreams were silenced and rest achieved, albeit artificially.

But artificial was better than not at all, and facing the demons that haunted him was something he was not yet ready for, especially in light of the new history uncovered. The war had been a lie. The hatred deserved. The deaths and the scars left behind marks to remind them of how they had been wrong.

The appeal of sleeping potions had grown only stronger.