#also the “archivistes” being record keepers

[cinammonelles]

Babe wake up Bookman Clan of vnc just dropped

[anshares]

Renheng- Xingyue Apocathery Diaries Au anyone? 👀👀

Click read more for a little bit of plot brainrot

Renheng part:

Jinshi = Ren

Maomao = Dan Heng

Lihaku = Jing Yuan

Gaoshun = Kafka

Basen = Silver Wolf

Xiaolan = March and Stelle

Dan Heng entered the imperial palace to work as an archivist/Record Keeper

Ren and the rest of the Stellaron Hunters work in the internal affairs department/ spy network but are posing as a minor palace department on the records.

Ren hires DH after witnessing his talents and him preventing a disaster that might shake the imperial palace. Dan Heng hates working for Ren.

He finds him annoying while Ren is amused because most people look at him with fear but Dan Heng reaction is new to him. It's not fear but mere annoyance and disgust he finds cute.

March works inside the inner palace as a court lady to one of high ranking consorts

Stelle works outside the palace and is sorta affiliated with the spy network department but not directly.

Her infos is more on the underbelly side; both of them will be very good in hearing the gossip and various wealth of info in the palace.

One time during one of their investigative missions, they were running away from an assassin with a gun and jumped down a waterfall to escape.

When they are trying to find a way out of the cave behind the waterfall Ren carried Dan Heng on his shoulders to give himi leverage since there was a hole above but then an actual frog jumped on his head startling him which made them lose balance.

So the two fell down into a suggestive position and Dan Heng’s hand was in Ren’s crotch that;s how he found out how BIG his weapon is, but Dan Heng pretended that nothing happened and just said "im sorry i may have crushed a frog"

Good luck to his forbidden archives that Ren will explore someday

Xingyue part:

Lakan = Yingxing

Fengxian = Dan Feng

Dan Feng is the highest ranking courtesan in Verdigris, he doesn’t sell his body but his art and he is a master of poetry, dance, singing and strategy games. That’s why his bidding wars reach astronomical prices.

Dan Heng is Dan Feng’s son with a court official, Yingxing

Yubie = Madam, Dan Feng’s biological parent and Dan Heng’s grandparent

Yingxing and Dan Feng met in Verdigris when one of his co-workers invited him to get a drink at one of the famous brothel houses in the capital.

Dan Feng is the most sought after cuz let's be serious everyone digs that stare he gives also Yingxing thinks he has beautiful eyes. Dan Feng is untouchable,unlike other courtesans. He is more of an intellectual person and Yingxing fell for that beautiful mind of his.

Yingxing is a low rank government official in the manufacturing/crafts department; at the beginning his salary couldn't afford frequent visits but over time he proves himself capable with his weapon crafts.

Yingxing worked his way up and saved a lot so he could get to spend precious hours with Dan Feng, he isn’t very impressed at first because a lower ranking official that couldn’t ever be a regular to suck money out of, but the passion that Yingxing has for craftsmanship and the desire to use his skills for some greater purpose—far beyond what he sees in most jaded clients—made Dan Feng fall for him.

Sometimes Dan Feng is by the window waiting for when will Yingxing come back but tries not to show how happy he becomes when Yingxing does.

Yingxing may be a formidable opponent in games but he can’t ever really beat Dan Feng in them since Dan Feng wins most of the time he doesn't mind at all! enjoys it even and most of the time he makes it up with his charisma and charm.

Yx: says something witty or flirty to df while making his next move

Df on the outside: hmph

But on the inside: *is melting*

As the two grow closer, they will be distraught on how quickly their time together passes by each time. Around the time Dan Feng price went astronomical and rumors were being bought out so they did the baby trapping that horribly backfired.

Yingxing was sent to war and was gone for a long time for a few years. He got what he needed a high enough salary to buy out df but it was too late seeing the state the house is in and how yubie is chasing him away make it seem like Dan Feng died.

Yingxing was in despair and blamed himself for everything he wished he could turn back time. when he found out but got hope when he saw his son Dan Heng with his adoptive mother Baiheng who took care of Dan Heng in the years both parents were not available.

Time skip to present with him redeeming a courtesan cuz he lost a bet with his son. He got a lotus flower as clue from Dan Heng that Dan Feng is still alive but like lost his mind and sick.

When Yingxing found out that Dan Feng was hidden in one of the sick rooms of the brothel, he immediately ran toward it.

He opens the door and sees Dan Feng still as beautiful as the day he met him.

He chooses to redeem Dan Feng no matter the price. They got married but sadly Dan Feng died a few months after.

[sovaghoul]

Another Sorgae Tarot post. I went home sick and wanted to write but my brain refuses. This was already written.

The Magician is a card of resources, and the wisdom to utilize them. He has before him all four traditional Tarot suits, and points his hands to indicate, "As Above, so also Below." He urges us to tap into our own power and enact our Will, that it be in accordance with the Divine. Like him, we have all we need, if we learn where to look.

We assigned the God in the East, the Archivist, to be the Magician. He is like a Great Librarian, a Scribe, the Keeper of all records and lore. In our interactions with Him, He is always more than willing to answer questions and share Knowledge. However, His Knowledge is so vast, we have to know the right questions to ask, or we cannot hope to recieve the answers we need. We have renamed this card The Keeper.

The Archivist is associated with knowledge and additionally archetype of the Prophet. Questions to Him must be distinct, or the answers will be too vague to understand, but He will often aid the questioner in narrowing the focus of their query so as to elicit a more helpful answer.

He sits in the East. This is the Element of Air, the place of the Power of Knowledge. It is associated with communication, and so He can easily communicate with the other Gods of our pantheon without any of Them being present.

Although he is associated with the written word, asking Him to assist in creative writing is inappropriate, as that deals with inspiration, and so is the domain of the Muse (more on Her in another post). Though it is one example of an East-West connection (a prevalent theme in Sorgae), the physical act of writing coupled with the ethereal act of inspiration.

[gemsona-advice]

Gonna ask a bit of a long one, I'm working on a Steven Universe infection AU and what type of gem do you think would work for like a doctor, a type that would for a nurse, and one that would work for a record keeper / filmer (like writing down what happens) thanks for you time!!

Obsidian, steel, and titanium are some common/standard (I suppose) materials for scalpels! That seems pretty doctor-y to me. A metal (obsidian is a glass, so this excludes that) feels very cold and clinical, which makes me think of doctors too.

Sometimes the show takes inspiration from crystal healing... lore, I suppose? And if I remember correctly that often cites pink gems as being good healers. Lithium is also a medication often used for people with mood disorders, and luckily, lepidolite and lithium quartz are lovely pink gemstones that both contain lithium! One of those could work pretty good for a nurse? (I imagine the quartz would be something closer to a war nurse)

Considering that it sounds like data, datolite would be a funny gemstone type for an archivist I think!! TV stone (ulexite) and writing opal (which actually has a different name, but I refuse to refer to it as such) could be good candidates. Additionally, gemstones that display little triangles on the surface (like this diamond- I see these shapes variably referred to as "trigons"),

are sometimes called "record keeper" stones!! I... do not know why, but it seems like appropriate information.

[insomniaccipher]

EDIT (24/3): so um, I posted this way way too early. In my sleep deprived state I guess I posted it rather than save it as a draft, since it's clearly not done. I'm not going to private it, people have already seen it so expect this to be updated with the remaining notes. Sorry and thank you for understanding!

(tw for mention of depression and a depressive episode)

After a few days of me being absolutely fucking drained and progressively chipping away at this, and having a surprise d3pr3ssiv3 episode

(seriously though, don't do what I did and work yourself into a depressive episode. I'm okay now, but I should have rested before I crashed.)

And I can finally present the original sketches, notes (internal dialogue included) and with additional notes provided by present me.

Thank you to the few people who showed interest in my little character for being patient with me, I know I wasn't super loyal with the time frame and kept having issues arise but here it is. I apologise for not having a full illustration of them, It's one of those things that I have to be 100 percent satisfied with and right now, it's not there.

Thank you so so much again and I hope you like them, please feel free to critique them or ask questions but try to keep it polite please. Love you all!

Page 1 (left) - Bits and bobs

- Originally I was thinking of giving Arc moving tattoos. This was because I wanted them to have a more clear connection to ink since they would already be around it quite a lot also I imagine it would have been funny for Arc, who is a very calm and collected person, to be in a frustrating situation but can't express it so their tattoos just fucking loose it showing that they are fucking fuming but looks calm as can be.

After I decided on the hat with a veil however I decided to scrap the idea, or at least save it for a different character, as I realized the character would feel too busy and between the two ideas I liked the hat and veil more.

- There was a short-lived idea of them having blackout tattoos but after a bit of research I decided not to ask I wasn't sure if they had any cultural significance, so better safe than sorry.

- Arc, as stated in the notes, is seemingly always calm. That doesn't mean they can't feel frustrated, sad, embarrassed it just means they can keep their composure and level headed. They're like one of those people that if you upset them they'll walk out the room yell and throw shit and walk back in calm as can be.

- Their role has by now developed more than just being an archivist, as now I see them as just a general records keeper. They find and keep old records and text organised, while also writing down new information and such. I'm not changing their name though, cause honestly I've just grown attached to their nickname.

Page 2 (right) - the first note and ideas

- Weirdly enough, the very first idea I had for this character wasn't their story or personality: but their hat and veil. Yup. I just liked the idea of a character with a big halo hat and a veil hiding their face.

- There was another character at one point or they might have been the same, I don't exactly remember and the details between them were similar enough that it's possible that they were just the same character just with minor tweaks. But that character was more connected to the band (again as in the personas/characters they play, not the irl people) while Arc is more of a solo unit.

Mentioning this other character is relevant because, and this is purely based on memory, I think the whole reason they were reworked/scrapped/whatever-the-fuck I did with them was because a hat and veil wouldn't be practical on stage.

- Anyway whenever they do take the veil off, either for more delicate work or they have to be in public, they'll put on a basic mask that covers the majority of their lower face.

- A lot of stuff I see, so forgive me if it's not actually a popular concept, seems to make the band members some form of inhuman. Which I fucking love, however to be honest the inhuman stuff was always kind of going to be part of them no matter what, even if I hadn't chosen the hat and veil concept (See top bullet point for the moving tattoos concept).

[archivyrep]

Archives and archivists are anything but neutral [Part 3]

Continued from part 2

In the first episode of Recorded by Arizal, Arizal begins to define what an record keeper means, to her.

Star Wars is not the only series with these themes. Recorded by Arizal seems to hint at the idea that "archiving will never be neutral" and is not a neutral act. This is because the protagonist in that series, which will likely never be made into a full series, Arizal, dreams to be a record keeper. In that series it is a person who will "travel across the world, trying to document it for those within the city...with the records she collects and creates." This recording of information, through a series of vlogs, will undoubtedly be shaped by what Arizal sees as important to preserve, with other aspects falling by the wayside. She will be collecting records for an archive, bound to the "records themselves, and their creation" as a keeper, even though her efforts will make the history of her city that much richer and fuller, for all to understand.

Reprinted from my Wading Through the Cultural Stacks WordPress blog. Originally published on Feb. 9, 2022.

The same could be said about Peridot in Steven Universe. As I've written closely, what she does is closest to a records analyst, while engaging in some tasks like an archivist. In those capacities, she is tasked with gathering information about the Cluster. What she is collecting is colored by her knowledge of Gems and her beliefs, which is steeped in the Homeworld ideology that the Diamond rulers are superior while everyone else is lesser and insignificant. They are "pebbles" as she terms them at one point. She later learns her way out of these destructive thoughts, beginning to love the Earth, and everything on it. What she collects and records changes as a result.

The basement archives in The Ghost and Molly McGee, Phineas and Ferb, The Regular Show, and Stretch Armstrong all have collections which have their own organizational systems, even it is portrayed as haphazard at times. These systems are clearly not neutral and are arranged in such a way that it reflects the biases, beliefs, and actions of those who organized them, and the rules governing those arrangements.

Of these series, Stretch Armstrong features an archivist. He is named Grandpa Park, a Korean-American man who is the grandfather of one of the protagonists, Nathan Park. He is a former reporter who is wise and knows the secret identities of the protagonists. The stacks of basement newspaper archive is organized by whether something is "local" or "worldwide." It was one of the earliest posts on this blog and I remember being so excited to watch it, as it featured an archivist, unlike anything I had seen up to that point. There is no doubt that his experience as a reporter affects how the archive is organized, along with his personal biases, although he is not hemmed in by institutional rules, as this archive is all his own.

Different media formats, as presented by Archie, in the season 4, episode 30 episode of Regular Show, entitled "The Requirements to Waken the G.O.O.F."

Like Stretch Armstrong, The Regular Show also features an archivist, named Archie the Archivist. He is also known as Archie and works in the library. Other than the fact he is a Laserdisc Guardian who defends the protagonists from those who want VHS to be dominant, very little about him is known. He only appears in two episodes, "The Last Laserdisc Player" and "Format Wars II," and never again after that point. Even so, it is clear what he is doing is not neutral. Rather, he is a keeper of data from "bad" people as he is taking sides in a conflict.

I could go through many other shows that I have watched since 2020 with archives and archivists. Even so, I feel that this post is a good starting point to this topic, and one that can, hopefully, built upon in the future in ways that discuss this in depth.

© 2022 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Update: As I half-expected, people on /r/archivists were annoyed by this post. One cranky archivist declared "any article that uses Attack of the Clones as evidence of anything in the real world is not well." Another said it "seems like a bad faith post" because "a lot of people get that information and organizational systems are products of people and have biases but this is not the argument that is being made," adding the "blog post barely touches on real archiving before it focuses almost entirely on fictional archives in pop culture." Its almost like these people don't understand what this blog is about, jeez. I'm really just waiting until I get banned from /r/archivists, as I think it is coming. We'll see what happens. In response to this, Sam Cross told me "This is why I stay away from Reddit most of the time" and I can agree with that.

[autumnmobile12]

In Witchfinder, I’m playing with the idea of a Castlevania AU where the mob never attacked and the Belmonts never reached a point of near annihilation.  Which means developing other family members.  The family tree for this one is the same tree I've used across the board, mainly recycled from my Castlevania/Hellsing crossover. (Y'know, if it ain't broke...)

...

We all know Trevor, but front and center is his older cousin and the current family head, Leon. (Named after their ancestor.)  Since inheritance in Wallachia was not primogeniture based, I’ve had the headcanon that the Belmonts’ family head was based on merit and not the accident of being the firstborn. So instead of Trevor becoming the family head after his father's death, it's taken up by Leon instead.

Leon's design was tricky. I wanted to find a good balance between his own ethnic individuality and a general family resemblance. Trevor's father and Leon's mother, Leonel and Anne, were brother and sister. I also like the idea the Belmonts were a well-traveled family, not to mention lived near a major trade route between Europe and Asia, therefore multi-ethnic, and were essentially a genetic roulette.

...

To the left is Grace, the youngest of this generation.  She is Trevor’s sister and the family's chronicler and archivist. She is the keeper of the Hold’s knowledge, organizing the collection and acquiring new books.  It also falls to her to record all the births, marriages, deaths, achievements, and anything else of significance that happens within the family.

She’s also very self-conscious about the scar on her nose.  Because it’s half-hidden by her spectacles, it annoys her that her scar ‘isn’t as cool as her brother’s.' There is some bittersweetness to Grace.  She’s sixteen years old, so at the time the mob attacked, she was just a baby.  So in the canon timeline, she’s really the one whose life had barely even started.

Her design was partially inspired by Integra from Hellsing, courtesy of the Castlevania/Hellsing crossover.

[fanwarrior321]

“This is a ‘story.’ A single volume, guaranteed to start with birth…and end in death. Joy. Anger. Sorrow. Hope…and despair…All those exist to prove the life that once was. They are memories…and records. Being forgotten is a pardon, but it is also a loss. Therefore, we wrote them down. Within or bodies, countless books…are placed in our care…and handed down…so that they will not be lost. We are the fangs that reveal blood—‘Archivistes’ Keepers of Memory.” VNC 58

[tokkiyuna-rabbit]

I found a post on spinosaurus you might enjoy. I can't send complete links over the ask box so I broke it up a bit.

h ttp s : / /w w w. reddit . com/ r/Dinosaurs/comments/1i7t6l0/a_message _t o_ the _dinoscalers/

Mystery as in you don't know why you made the character part of the Jiangxi province. You might be able to figure it out if you posted her and talked to people, I was thinking, but I could be wrong.

The library of Alexandra may not have even been destroyed by Caesar. Some records state that Alexander was accidentally blocked by a bunch of Egyptian boats (ironically enough), and had then burned to get them out of the way, which spread and may have only set part of the library on fire, mainly the storehouses. Which, while they held many books, is a far cry from the entire library.

Also, since it was part of a larger international educational campus of the Mouseion, it is unlikely that they held the only copies of all the texts contained within. After all, people from all over the world came to study, and we know texts were translated for that.

The entire Library of Alexandria would probably have been destroyed along with the entire city by Aurelian about 100 years later. And apparently it was already in decline, with the scholars being expelled from the city, so they would have taken texts with them. There may be some records of the campus and the books being moved to a new location, as well.

So, If the Library of Alexandria was part of the Mouseion, and the Mouseion still existed long after the fire, then it is unlikely that the library was destroyed by Caesar. Especially given how meticulous Emperor Caesar was with keeping texts and records in the first place, I doubt he would have wanted to risk it burning.

And still, with all of that, we still don't definitively know where Punt was. The Red Sea region, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, Yemen, the horn of Africa? Who knows? Somalia did name a region Puntland after the mysterious old kingdom, though.

I used to want to be an archivist or librarian as well, but I hear those are actually way more fast paced than how they are depicted. Also, I don't think the pay is high enough to live on nowadays.

I see your own archivist is evolving, lol. I think she looks and sounds great! Funny thing is, I remember from older posts and discussions that Nayeon was almost named Tokki, as well. But we still can't figure out on if we thought Yamato was named in relation to Yamatai.

The king not wanting to be recorded falling off his horse was definitely Joseon. Given what we know of the utterly strict caste system, making extra records was probably the only way they could ever rebel and have some power in their lives. After all, they would have been born into the role with no other options in life. It could have even been fun for them, given their protections. The real question is which ruler gave the record keepers and archivists immunity to retaliation for keeping the records, and was it a forethought or a law created later.

Actually, looking it up, the records are a Korean national treasure called the sillok (Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty), and appears to have been primarily started in the Joseon dynasty. Although the records of the last two kings may actually have been compromised due to Japanese rule.

All the same, it appears as if the records are complete enough for a movie to have been made about one of the rulers, known as Diary of King Yeonsan. Which could be interesting to watch if it follows what the archivists put down!

From a religious standpoint, the Latin word for left is similar to the word sinister, so there are groups that believe left handedness is a sign of evil. It's a real issue in some religious schools, from the stories I have heard. In other places it is just culturally considered rude to use your left hand instead of the right.

Yeah, my dad still sees me as his little girl, so he likes my BF but also pretends he does not know we are dating sometimes.

I love the image on Reddit! And it's so true. I swear T-rex fans are annoying (just kidding. I don't actually care about it). Anyway, the image is adorable and I love it. Thanks for showing it to me!

Oh that! Yeah, I am still curious about that. Though, I think I remembered. But, the reason is too dumb that I cannot bring myself to admit it. I am also too shy to say anything. I don't wanna look like I am obsessed with their country cause we all know how well that goes.

If that is truly what happened, then that has to be the most misfortunate thing to happen. Considering you mention Emperor Caeser was with records and such. And even if only the storehouses got burned, it is still sad to hear.

I hadn't been aware the library was part of a bigger sysetm. This is my first time hearing this. Though, it would make sense. Translations of texts have always been a thing hasn't it? Especially if scholars from different places gathered up in certain places from time to time.

Regardless on who destroyed the Library, it's gone for good. A bit sad nonetheless. Even if we think that hadn't had the answer of where Punt, they still must of had something that perhaps we will never get the chance to know.

I wished I could still be an archivist. Studying for a career I don't have too much passion in is annoying. The pay is somewhat ok. But, considering that my boyfriend is going to have good paying career then I feel like I need a career that makes money too. I mean I went to university for 4 years. My other option was to be a teacher, but with how things are then I will rather not.

Also, thank you! So far, I love on what I am doing. Originally, I wasn't going to make her have a prosthetic because I was too hesitant to draw it (and cause I just have some bad memories associated to character designs with prosthetic). But, after looking at some, I decided to just try it. So, now her design is there. Nayeon's name being Tokki is a nice choice. Though, I would say it would definitely make her sound part of the show since some character names are just their species. By Yamato, you are referring to Japan right? I am not too familiar with Japanese history or names, so I never heard of Yamatai. I did search it up and it could be a strong possibility. But, I wouldn't be sure either.

I assumed it was Joseon. For some reason, I also assumed it could have been the predecessor as well. And definitely, I mean if the King was bad then the archivists would hesitate to put that information down. Especially if they had immunity and the ability to do so. I am sure all historians are thankful on whoever gave them such immunity. I mean, so much history perserved and less likely to be bias (Well, not true because humans are biased creatures. There are rarely unbiased things).

I remember hearing a lot of books were destroyed by Imperial Japanese troops. So, the last two Kings' records being compromised isn't a surprise at the slightest. I mean, if they compromised it and made it seem the country was in a decline then they could justified their actions (though I think they believed themselves to be the best "race" of Asia? So, who knows on that?)

That sounds like it would be an interesting watch. I will have to watch it whenever I don't have 4 assignments due on a Sunday. I hope it does follow the archivist. I wonder if there are other stories of any mischief from them and others.

I can understand the cultural side of things. I think it has to do with restrooms or something. Religiously, I guess I can see where they are coming from. But, I mean if you are still writing down what you are being taught then it really shouldn't matter. Then again, I am not religious so I don't know if it would be right of me to say anything. All I know is that my classes at a Catholic church did not seem to care or there were no left handed people in my classes.

Oh, so your dad is aware of your own boyfriend. My dad is unaware and it will probably stay like that until further notice. My boyfriend told me that once he settles in his career field then he would probably want to talk to my dad.

[trevorxparrish]

COVAIRECITYRP TASK 021: ❝  SECRET KEEPER ❞

Is your character good at keeping secrets? Explain. He excellent. With his job, discretion is more than a quality, it's a mandatory requirement. Also, having grown up in Covaire City as a civilian, Trevor knows the value of secret, but also the power of a good secret keeper.

Do people tell your character their secrets? Explain. No. As an archivist and someone who is known – at his work – for being by the rules, he's usually someone that people avoids. But when you can sense emotions and detect lies, combine with being observant and knowledgeable, some secrets are impossible to keep from him.

What’s your character’s darkest secret? At this moment, that secret isn't his. But he strongly suspect Elijah to have once been a hunter.

What’s the secret they are most embarrassed about? Trevor isn't embarrassed by any of his secrets, they just weight heavily on his shoulders.

Do they have a secret that could ruin their life? If yes, explain. In his mind, the worst secret he keeps, is the fact that two of his brothers tried to assassinate him——— and came close to succeeding. As a family with an impeccable track record - at least, in the eyes of the city - Trevor truly feels that such knowledge would bring the downfall of his family's legacy.

Whom do they tell/share their secrets with? Explain. No one. Trevor was thought to endure in silence. So even Edgar, who he was the closest to, didn't know about his sixth sense, no one did. Trevor is very good at keeping things close to his chest.

Has anyone ever told your character’s secret to someone they shouldn’t have? Explain. No. Because there was never something to tell in the first place.

Has your character ever told anyone someone else’s secret? Explain. No. He's never known many to begin with, and values loyalty and respect too much to say anything. So unless it's something that can be dangerous for the city, he won't say anything.

How far would your character go to protect their secrets? Explain. It's hard to say, because Trevor has never been put in a difficult situation concerning his secret. And since most people might not understand why he's so concerned about seemingly meaningless family secrets, he appears to be an open book to them. He's never been pushed into a corner.

Does your character write their secrets down anywhere? Explain. No. As an archivist, he knows that anything written down might live forever one way or another.

[plokoonsdisapprovingeyebrows]

fuckit im posting some Cybertronian caste system rambles now. copypasted from discord bc im lazy, names redacted except for mine.

THIS IS THE OLD DIAGRAM. IM GONNA SHIFT SOME SHIT AROUND IN THE NEW VERSION LOL

also note: this is historical worldbuilding, i.e. the shit megatron and optimus got rid of. just wanna make that clear xD

catboy orion pax — Today at 6:50 PM

ok so to start with i wanna get rid of the summary words

theyre like loosely applicable in terms of how social organisation went but there's enough variation that it was never a guarantee

like for example, the guard castes that work around the well of all sparks and at the palace of the primes were more like T3  than T6 and sometimes higher

and sometimes different places had different priorities so you might get a scientist in, like. kaon or some shit who's T4 at best

jhgfgdfds — Today at 6:54 PM

Jazz is a chronicler, right?

catboy orion pax — Today at 6:55 PM

yep, he and orion are both in t4

buuuuuuut the chroniclers rank sliiiightly higher

there are internal ranks within the tiers (but it’s less like a ladder of rank than a vaguely-defined cloud of midges jockeying for position tbh)

my headcanon is the chroniclers are the ppl writing down history and life as it happens, and the archivists - their caste name is 'record-keepers' - are the ones maintaining and working with that data

the hall of records also has a guard clade that rank about t4 bc they have to, and a clade of cleaners/maintenance workers who rank about t6 and dont interact with patrons. both of these are ranked higher than they would otherwise, and are pretty well off compared to castes that do similar jobs in, say, the global undercities, but they still get kind of a shit deal in comparison to everyone around them. it’s all relative.

red alert is somewhere in that general T4 data handlers' area too

i made a joke about, if you're using the Grid (the part of the Datanet that isn't a complete dumpster fire), you have like a 1 in 3 chance of red alert being ur own personal FBI agent meme

hgfdgg — Today at 7:08 PM

so is Prowl lower ranked than the rest, at tier 6?

catboy orion pax — Today at 7:09 PM

i think prowl might be admin caste level, tbh

the enforcers are like, the vast majority of them are t6 because that's all they need to be to interact with tiers 6, 7 and 8, who are most of cybertron

there will be t6 officers and then there's be higher-caste officers

probably local command structures vs regional

in rise, prowl is in a regional commander sort of position, trying to run an anti-cartels unit of sorts, and it isnt going well

ultimately they fall under the ministry of justice, which is headed by T1 mecha

tbh the main thrust of this system, as it applies to my fic, is that it has like bureaucratic bloat out the wazoo

there are a lot of castes that just fuckin exist?

they do the same job as some other caste or few but somehow they ended up in separate castes, with the different legal status and restrictions that implies, and the caste system as a whole just shrugged and moved on because fuck dealing with all that shit

absolutely nothing about my cybertronian government is an efficient system lmfao

jhgfjgdf — Today at 7:14 PM

I blame the quints

catboy orion pax — Today at 7:14 PM

[cackles]

tbh it sort of came from the quints but it wasn't ultimately their fault

there was like... the quintessons tried to take over cybertron and add it to their colonial empire three fuckin times

they failed every time but it was a close run thing that wreaked an apocalyptic level of destruction and disruption on cybertron

the ppl who finally beat the quintessons the third time were scared to shit of them coming back for a fourth go, so they did everything they could to turn cybertron into a unified state for the sake of better defense

previously it had been fragmented, kinda like europe in the middle ages? in theory the kings paid homage to the prime and took his thoughts into account but in practice they mostly got left to their own shit

i want to say there were like five large-scale social reorganization tactics that the empire used to try and make a centralised single state but i can only remember three of them rn

1) enshrinement of caste system (didn't have an 'untouchable' equivalent at the time, that came later); 2) creation of a state religion out of the bits of the previous religions that played nicely w each other, and 3) imposition of a global language of government

oh yeah and there's a thing called rank-exempt

cause sometimes the Govt acknowledges that the caste system just makes shit Kinda Annoying so if ur sufficiently useful the ppl ur useful to can apply to have ur restrictions temporarily or permanently lifted so u can be even more useful to them

but ultimately the system is just Bad For Society in a variety of ways and nobody’s been brave enough to admit it, so it stumbles on with a chokehold around the Empire’s figurative neck.

[ollieofthebeholder]

leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

Read from the beginning on Tumblr | Also on AO3

Chapter 59: Statement of what comes now.

[CLICK]

[PANTING BREATHS, ECHOING SLIGHTLY, THAT SLOWLY EVEN OUT]

JON

Wh-what…what…?

Martin! Martin, where—where are you? I can’t—oh, God, I can’t see anything, I can’t—did that—

(in a different tone of voice) Martin? Are you here?

[ECHOING SILENCE]

JON

…Okay. Okay, this—this isn’t reality. This isn’t—he’d be here if I was—

Right. Okay.

(more loudly) Hello? Hello, is anyone out there?

[MORE SILENCE]

JON

W-wait…wait, is that—there’s something—okay, okay, I’m not blind, it’s just…dark. I can cope with that.

Right, okay. Think, Jon. After what you just did…if you’re not in the Institute, if you’re not in the world you’re used to, then you’re probably…somewhere else. So things are going to follow dream logic, right?

Right. Dream logic. (sigh) So I suppose I go looking for a switch.

[ODD CHITTERING, BUZZING NOISE THAT SUDDENLY STOPS]

JON

Oh, for—there has got to be away around this. No light switch, no walls, and I don’t trust the floors, so…

What am I supposed to do, say “Let there be light”?

[LOUD THUNKING NOISE, LIKE SOMEONE SWITCHING ON STAGE LIGHTS, OR AT LEAST A SPOTLIGHT]

JON

Seriously?

(frustrated sigh) Well, at least I can see now. I—wait. What in the—who’s there?

[A VOICE BEGINS SINGING SLOWLY, FAINTLY AT FIRST BUT SLOWLY GETTING LOUDER]

ANNABELLE

One elephant went out to play Upon a spider’s web one day She had such enormous fun She called for another elephant to come…

JON

You have got to be kidding me.

(resigned sigh) Right, here we go…

[ODD NOISE STARTS UP AGAIN, PUNCTUATED BY STICKY RIPPING SOUNDS, FADING IN AND OUT AS IF RESPONDING TO PRESSURE…OR FOOTSTEPS]

ANNABELLE

Hello, Jon.

JON

Annabelle Cane. Why am I not surprised?

ANNABELLE

You don’t sound pleased to see me.

JON

Let’s just say yours is not the first face I wanted to see when I woke up.

ANNABELLE

I have good news for you, then. It isn’t. You’re not awake.

JON

Oh, you can invade dreams now too, can you?

ANNABELLE

You aren’t asleep, either. And I think you already knew that.

JON

Oh, goddammit.

[A MOMENT OF SILENCE, SAVE THE FAINT ODD CHITTERING NOISE]

JON

…Wait. That noise, that’s—

And it gets louder every time we—

[CHITTERING SUDDENLY GETS LOUDER, WITH A FEW CLEAR WORDS HERE AND THERE, THEN FADES AGAIN]

JON

Are these tapes?

ANNABELLE

A fine material to spin a web with, don’t you think?

JON

It’s you.

A-all this time, all these—the recorders, the, the tapes…it’s all been you?

ANNABELLE

Well, not all me. Not all of it, anyway.

The Mother of Puppets has always collected stories. There are more reasons than one it’s called spinning a tale, you know. And spiders…it’s so hard to keep them out of places. People don’t generally call exterminators for them. Not for only one or two, and not if they don’t seem dangerous.

So yes. The Web has been lurking about the Magnus Institute, and the Archives, nearly as long as there has been an Institute. Listening. Drawing from the stories. Weaving a tapestry that tells the history of the world…and its future.

But this web? This one is mine.

JON

The tapes I recorded…

ANNABELLE

Oh, yes. All the tapes since you became the Archivist are here. Listen to this!

[A SQUEAL, THEN A CLEAR PLAY OF THE TAPE FROM MAG 000.2 - PRE-LAUNCH TRAILER]

ARCHIVIST ON TAPE

It’ll get you too. You can stare all you want, make your notes and your inquiries, but all your beholding will come to nothing. When the time arrives, and all is darkness and butchery, you’ll wish you had stopped listening and run.

[ANOTHER STICKY SOUND, LIKE SOMEONE PULLING OFF AN ADHESIVE BANDAGE]

JON

(shocked) That—that was—I only did that one as a test, to—to see if the recorders would work…

ANNABELLE

And they did. Admirably.

Go on. Try one.

JON

Look, I don’t—

ANNABELLE

You’re curious, aren’t you? You want to know.

There is no time here. Not really. No hurry. No pain. Nothing can hurt you if you indulge your curiosity a little bit. And it might not be so easy to believe once you leave.

Pick a strand. All you have to do is touch it, like so—

[ANOTHER SQUEAL, AND THEN ANOTHER RECORDING BEGINS TO PLAY FROM MAG 22 - COLONY]

MARTIN ON TAPE

—wasn’t anything to do with spiders that ended up after me. Almost wish it had been. (nervous laugh) I like spiders. Big ones, at least—

[RECORDING CUTS OFF WITH STICKY SOUND AGAIN]

ANNABELLE

—and you can hear them.

JON

He doesn’t anymore, you know.

ANNABELLE

Like spiders? Oh, believe me, I know.

I don’t think he’s liked them since he found out what happened to you. Not that I can blame him, of course. How do you feel about clowns these days? Or being alone?

JON

I—

ANNABELLE

Go on, Jon. Touch one. It doesn’t have to be…fresh.

JON

Why are some of these—

Is that…ash?

ANNABELLE

Dust, mostly.

(considers) Well, some of it might be ash. It depends on why that section of web isn’t used anymore.

JON

(tartly) I didn’t know being obscure and mysterious was in the Web’s domain.

ANNABELLE

It is if you want to manipulate somebody who’s addicted to knowledge.

Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’m not trying to manipulate you. It’s just a habit at this point, really.

JON

…Fine.

[A COUPLE OF CAREFUL STICKY, CHITTERING FOOTSTEPS, THEN A SOFT SQUEAL BEFORE A RECORDING SHARPENS IN, FROM MAG 134 - TIME OF REVELATION]

PETER ON TAPE

What does—puzzle me though, and I mean that genuinely, is—why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin while Jon was in there.  (brief pause) It’s a question, Martin, it’s—it’s not an accusation.

MARTIN ON TAPE

I don’t know. And I just – felt like it might help. He’s always recording, and I thought it—it might help him…find his way out.

PETER ON TAPE

Interesting. Were you compelled?

MARTIN ON TAPE

I don’t know. Maybe? I-I, I definitely wanted to do it.

[RECORDING FADES OUT ON THE LAST WORD]

JON

(shocked) Th-that, that was—that hasn’t happened, that didn’t happen…

ANNABELLE

This time.

JON

You knew? When, when I met you at Hill Top Road, when you…you knew I’d come back from the future.

ANNABELLE

Of course.

You and Martin, your Martin, you came back after Jonah Magnus made you end the world. The Keeper of the Light led you to a door, that led you through some halls, that led you to another door, that led you…back. To get—

JON

—a second chance.

ANNABELLE

A second chance? Hardly.

JON

And just what is that supposed to mean, exactly?

ANNABELLE

Only that.

JON

…Fine. F-fine. Be mysterious and vague. See if I care.

[ANNABELLE LAUGHS KNOWINGLY]

JON

How do you know…the tapes. You just told me you’ve been listening to the tapes. Martin made his statement about those halls—

ANNABELLE

But you didn’t.

You haven’t talked about what your journey was like to anyone, have you? Not even Martin. He knows you came through the same halls, but not what you saw. He doesn’t know that for you, there were no colors and no changes, that every hallway was the same and there was no way to tell when you were getting closer, until you reached that long tunnel.

The one with the glass walls and ceiling, like an underwater aquarium. With dark shapes you couldn’t make out pressing against the outside, trying to get your attention. With thousands of whispering voices, over one another, so hard to make out, pleading, promising, coaxing. Offering you anything you desired if you would only make it stop, blaming you for their suffering, demanding how you could just walk on by as if—

JON

Stop.

ANNABELLE

You didn’t know you were recording, either. You’ve grown so used to those recorders that you didn’t even notice them anymore. And yet, I was listening.

JON

You were—what?

Y-you—you’re from the future, too!

ANNABELLE

Mm. That’s more complicated than you think it is.

JON

How did you know what we were doing?

ANNABELLE

Because I set it in motion.

JON

…You…you what? Those halls, that—that portrait gallery, that—

ANNABELLE

Which one?

JON

Which—both of them. The ones that—that Martin had to face.

You said you listened to the tapes, you—

ANNABELLE

I did. And I was…shadowing you both, I suppose.

You never wondered how I was at Salesa’s, did you? Not why I was there, how I was there.

JON

I…to be honest, I don’t remember much about those days.

ANNABELLE

I don’t mean while you were there. I mean after. You never thought about how I could have ended up outside my own domain, let alone outside the Apocalypse altogether.

JON

I tried to think about you as little as possible.

ANNABELLE

(heh) I’d be hurt if I didn’t understand completely. I suppose if I’d been lucky enough to escape the Spinner of Webs, I’d want nothing to do with any of her children either.

But you know the rules of the Apocalypse, Jon. It never occurred to you to wonder how a Watcher could stray from their domain?

JON

Martin did. And Helen. They both—

[STATIC CRACKLES; IT’S THE ARCHIVIST’S STATIC, BUT IT SOUNDS UNUSUAL IN A WAY THAT’S DIFFICULT TO PINPOINT]

JON

The Distortion never truly left its domain. Never went far from its doors. And while the domains we saw Helen in were seemingly those of other fears, they all had at least an element of the Spiral in them.

Martin was in the unique position of being both Watcher and Watched. He had the domain he oversaw, small though it was, but he was also, perhaps, the only sufferer in a domain that belonged to me as me and not me as the Eye itself. He could walk the world unharmed because what hurt him was watching my pain and power grow in equal measure, the suffering of not knowing what I would choose in the end.

And you…

Your domain was like Daisy’s. It was the other domains, woven through them like a silken thread, a subtle tug of manipulation. It was the tapes that kept recording our journey and the tugs that led us to people we tried to help or conquer and a thousand tiny maneuverings to keep us moving ahead.

[STATIC FADES; JON GASPS SLIGHTLY]

JON

That…that shouldn’t have felt like that.

ANNABELLE

You’re a bit far from the Eye here. But to be fair, so am I.

JON

We’re in the middle of your fucking web!

ANNABELLE

But my web. Not the Web.

Any power the Mother of Puppets has here is residual, and comes through me. Any power the Ceaseless Watcher has here is residual, and comes through you. I brought the web to show you, to help you understand, but it doesn’t belong here any more than we do.

JON

You were—you were manipulating those tunnels. To…what? Slow us down?

ANNABELLE

To help. Well, you didn’t need it, but Martin…

JON

Martin is stronger than you think.

ANNABELLE

Do you know whose domain that was?

JON

The Spiral’s. Of course.

ANNABELLE

And the Eye. Together.

Together they hung that gallery of accusation, the paintings that all seemed to hold Martin responsible for their deaths. His friends, his family…strangers he never met but felt responsible for. Its purpose was to keep Martin lost—disorientated and in crippling pain and anguish. Forever.

If he had kept going down that corridor, he would never have found the door to the past. And the Keeper would never have been able to find him. Both of them had too much of the Lonely in them—just enough to keep them both isolated and searching. If they didn’t know where to meet.

JON

(whispers) My God.

They—they knew what we were trying to do. Of course they did. And they didn’t—

ANNABELLE

It’s not about foresight. Neither of them really have that. That domain was a mix of the Spiral and the Eye. It’s just what it was designed for, that’s all.

JON

That’s all? It was more than enough.

So which did you—

(with horrified realization) The paintings of me. You did that.

ANNABELLE

To remind him.

JON

Of what, for God’s sake?

ANNABELLE

In part, of what he had to prevent—what he had to stop from happening. What you’d been through and he had to make sure didn’t happen. In part, it was letting him experience your pain. He’d heard what you went through, of course, but to actually see it…in so many ways, that would make it worse, and make his determination stronger.

And, of course, part of it was just putting you back in his mind over everyone else. It was the last little…anchor tethering the two of you together, to the past. Something to keep him present so the Keeper could find him.

JON

And show him that last painting. Thankfully.

Did you know about that one?

ANNABELLE

I put that one there, too.

Surely you didn’t think the Keeper knew enough to have done it.

JON

I—n-no, no, but—

Why?

ANNABELLE

Why show it to him?

JON

Why that moment?

ANNABELLE

Because it wasn’t on tape.

I left you alone while you were in Scotland, up until the end. You two deserved a few weeks…unobserved. Alone together. To figure out what you are to one another.

Actually, I had quite a job keeping the Distortion distracted so it wouldn’t pop in and interrupt. It was something of a challenge.

The first time, anyway.

JON

The first time?

ANNABELLE

Oh, we’ve done this dance before. In its fashion.

JON

What dance?

ANNABELLE

The Apocalyptic Tango, I think Martin called it once.

[JON SIGHS IN EXASPERATION]

JON

Do you ever give a straight answer? Or tell the truth?

ANNABELLE

I’m hurt! I’ve been nothing but honest with you this whole time.

JON

(dry as the Sahara) And the other times?

ANNABELLE

Mostly you wouldn’t have believed me.

I did try a time or two. You always insisted it wasn’t possible, or that there must be some sort of catch. You only believed me once, and even then, I don’t think you believed. You simply wanted it to be true.

JON

Are you trying to get me to compel the truth out of you?

ANNABELLE

The way you did Peter Lukas? Or…which one was it? Breekon?

You don’t need to force it, you know. All you have to do is…ask nicely, and I will spin you the tale.

JON

…

Statement of Annabelle Cane, regarding the Web’s plan. Recorded direct from subject…ah…

ANNABELLE

At the end.

JON

…Statement begins.

ANNABELLE

This is the house at Hill Top Road.

This is the crack beneath the house at Hill Top Road.

This is the hole that lay in the crack beneath the house at Hill Top Road.

This is the truth that lurked in the hole that lay in the crack beneath the house at Hill Top Road.

This is the spider that peered at the truth that lurked in the hole that lay in the crack beneath the house at Hill Top Road.

These are the strings that moved the spider that peered at the truth that lurked in the hole that lay in the crack beneath the house at Hill Top Road.

This is the hand that pulled the strings that moved the spider that peered at the truth that lurked in the hole that lay in the crack beneath the house at Hill Top Road.

This is the Mistress that bore the hand that pulled the strings that moved the spider that peered at the truth that lurked in the hole that lay in the crack beneath the house at Hill Top Road.

This is the web that cradled the Mistress that bore the hand that pulled the strings that moved the spider that peered at the truth that lurked in the hole that lay in the crack beneath the house at Hill Top Road.

This is the blade that cut the web that cradled the Mistress that bore the hand that pulled the strings that moved the spider that peered at the truth that lurked in the hole that lay in the crack beneath the house at Hill Top Road.

This is the hero that wielded the blade that cut the web that cradled the Mistress that bore the hand that pulled the strings that moved the spider that peered at the truth that lurked in the hole that lay in the crack beneath the house at Hill Top Road.

This is the story that begged to be told of the hero that wielded the blade that cut the web that cradled the Mistress that bore the hand that pulled the strings that moved the spider that peered at the truth that lurked in the hole that lay in the crack beneath the house at Hill Top Road.

Again, and again, and again, and again.

So few of the things that are Fear are gifted with foresight. The End, of course, knows what will come, because the End is inevitable. All things end, sooner or later. The Web cannot see the future but it can see…patterns. The threads of a story, and what they will be when they weave together.

When the Mother of Puppets first saw the crack beneath Hill Top Road, she thought she understood what it was. A hole in reality, a portal between universes. Places where fear had not touched, where it was not known. But then she saw it for what it was. A crack, not in space, but in time. A way to move between moments. And she began to plan For she saw the threads, and she knew that someday, someone would end the world. And when that happened…eventually, all would end. Even fear cannot last forever, in a world where nothing new is born. Eventually, all must end.

Her plan has been the same, for years. Generations. Choose a champion, mark them young. Put them in the path of a fear, and wait. Then, should the world end at the hands of that fear, tug that champion to cut the strings of fate and send all bound up in it through the crack…and back in time. Back in time enough that they could stop it.

And really, it should have worked.

To a point, it did work. Again, and again, and again, and again. Jonah Magnus sent you his ritual, you read it, the world came to an end. You tried to repair it. You walked to London…and there it got complicated.

The trouble is the Spinner’s plan depended, in the end, on your choice. We told you that you would have had to simultaneously blow up the Archives and stab Jonah Magnus, and then all would have been thrown back in time. In truth, that would not have worked—not if Jonah was still the Eye’s Pupil. It had to be you. You had to choose to take his place…and then have the tethers cut. Then, and only then, would you be sent back with the knowledge to alter things.

Sometimes I told you the original story, that it was a crack in reality and would send all the fears somewhere else, or scatter them across worlds. Once or twice I told you the truth. As I said, it was so hard for you to believe me, regardless of what I spun. Mostly you thought I was manipulating you, lying to you, trying to get you to doom a thousand other worlds. Occasionally you thought it would end the world faster. Only once did you believe me—in a time when I came to you in a cabin in what was once Scotland, a time when I knew you would not act if you did not know you could turn back time, a time when the man you loved turned back for his umbrella and understood what he was hearing and tried to save you and the world.

JON

No…

ANNABELLE

It never quite worked, in the end. Time and again, the strings would be cut, the world would snap back…and time and again, we would retread the same paths. Over and over. So little I could change, so little I could do differently before the Apocalypse and I tried to find a new way to get you to be in position to be dragged back.

Finally, finally, it happened. You tried to take Jonah Magnus’ place, to hasten the end and starve the fears…it would never have worked, of course, but you tried. Martin anticipated it, though, he tried to stop you before you killed Jonah, to delay you while the others lit the fuse. You were faster than he thought, though, and had already become the Pupil of the Eye. You told him to go. To save himself. But Martin would not leave you, despite the danger. Rather than watch him die for nothing, you told him to cut the tether. And he did.

It worked the way the Web intended, of course it did. But for you to remember and be able to fix it, you would have both had to be alive when you came through at the other side. Even one of you would have been enough. But when I woke again and plucked the strand of the Web, I could hear that neither of you remembered.

Neither of you had survived.

[JON MAKES A PAINED NOISE OF DISTRESS]

ANNABELLE

It was then that I realized that Mother’s plan depended too heavily on precise timing. She wanted me to try again, of course. Strangely enough, the Fears never knew it had happened, not even the Web. But she reminded me, again and again, about her plan, told me what strings to pull.

This time, though…this time I thought I’d try something a bit different.

I did what I have done every other time. I stayed with Salesa, I spoke to you both. I followed your progress through the tapes, and when you disappeared beneath the tunnels…I acted. As I promised him, I killed him, and I took his camera. I brought it to London, to the Institute…to the Panopticon. But this time, I brought it up to the belly of the beast. I took it to the office of Jonah Magnus.

The camera wasn’t strong enough to dispel the entire Apocalypse there, of course. But it created enough of a hole to break Jonah free of the Eye’s hold.

He was as pleased to see me as you might expect. Demanded to know what I was doing there. And I told him. I told him I had come to warn him.

JON

What?!

ANNABELLE

I told him that his precious Archivist was far from resigned to this new world he had brought about, that he was coming to stop it. To stop him. I said that you were bringing Martin with you and that you had a plan, and if he wanted to continue his reign, he’d best do something to stop it.

JON

Did you have any idea what that something would be?

ANNABELLE

Patterns. Of course I knew.

Jonah would never have harmed you, even if he could have; he still hoped to get you on his side. As you learned tonight. On the other hand, he would have known, or at least guessed, that the only thing stopping you from joining him was Martin. And even if he couldn’t hope to win you over by separating you…he would at least have found a way to use that bond against you.

JON

(shouting) Martin could have died because of you!

ANNABELLE

Perish the thought! My dear Jon, do you know know how many times I’ve been through this loop?

Even when I filled him with spiders, there has never been a time you could bring yourself to harm him in the slightest, let alone kill him. Faced with a choice between letting him die or getting revenge, I knew you would save him. Of course he wouldn’t have died.

[JON SPUTTERS INDIGNANTLY]

ANNABELLE

And I made sure you had somewhere to recover. I had already nudged the Keeper towards that door.

He couldn’t have done it, of course; he was too tightly bound to the Light—not the Lonely, not the fear he watched over, but the Light itself. If it fell, so would he, and he cannot leave it for long. Even if he had come back, he would have been unable to make a difference in anyone’s past. But of course he thought of the Archivist. His godson. And when you thought Martin might be taken from you, you experienced the precise fear that summoned one of his doors—the fear of being forever separated from the one you love.

Perhaps the original plan would have worked eventually. Perhaps someday you, or Martin, or both of you, would have survived long enough to awaken in the past and remember. But I think it’s better this way, don’t you? Much more…direct.

And look how much you’ve spared the others from.

JON

The others—G-Georgie, Melanie, Basira—in, in that timeline, the one Martin and I left. Did they…what happened to them?

ANNABELLE

The Keeper and I took care of that. Don’t worry.

After he saw you safely through, I introduced myself to him and told him what needed to happen. He fetched Basira and took her to the tunnels beneath the Institute, and then I came myself. I told them what Jonah had done, what you had done, and what they needed to do.

I gave them the choice. The same one I often gave you. I told them they could either…let things stay as they were, allow things to die out in time, and keep apart from it, or end it. Take out Jonah Magnus and blow up the Institute simultaneously, and send all the Fears back in time as well—the Fears, and any of us too tightly bound up in them to survive without them.

I know you won’t believe me, Jon, but I never influenced them to make the choice they did. Basira did ask me what they usually chose, and I did tell her that I had never known them to choose anything other than one option, but I didn’t tell her what it was. I knew it would be important for you to know that, whatever they chose, it was their decision and their decision alone.

JON

(heh) I can’t imagine Melanie not choosing the option that allows her to kill Elias.

[ANNABELLE LAUGHS]

ANNABELLE

Neither can I. And she didn’t choose differently.

As I understand it, Melanie made her way up alone—being blind, of course, the fearful things on those stairs could not affect her—while Basira provided a distraction and Georgie lit the gas aflame. Melanie took the camera and aimed it at Jonah Magnus to bring him down, and then while he tried to belittle her, she stabbed him, just as the building blew.

JON

And then what happened? Did they survive?

ANNABELLE

I don’t know. But they succeeded, or I wouldn’t be here.

JON

…

How many others has the Web done this to? Tried to—manipulate into a savior?

ANNABELLE

Oh, I don’t know. Hundreds?

Most of them would have failed. Many never made it beyond her. I was one of them, actually, a child tested out but ultimately found lacking, although I was the only one I think she would have trusted with this. But you…the Mother of Puppets saw the threads of your life. So many Fears noticed you as a child that you were bound to fall afoul of one of them eventually. And as soon as she realized where Jonah Magnus’ thoughts were trending, and where they would eventually lead, she knew that you would be a perfect candidate to complete the ritual in the end.

So she chose you. She lured you in. And you resisted her pull. She knew then that you would be the only one strong enough to succeed.

JON

I only survived because someone else took my place! I would have died if he hadn’t—

ANNABELLE

My dear Jon. Has anyone meant to be claimed by a power ever actually handed away a book or an artifact willingly?

Had you been meant to be the Spinner’s in the end, Mitchell Hopkins would never have been able to take that book from you, let alone read it. Mister Spider was a test, a test that you passed.

A test I never would have.

JON

…

…Was that his name? Mitchell?

ANNABELLE

It was.

It is.

And now you know everything.

[A FEW MOMENTS OF SILENCE, SAVE THE TAPES CHITTERING IN THE BACKGROUND]

JON

I—I suppose I should be grateful that we don’t remember all of…these. All these…cobwebs.

I’m damned grateful I don’t remember—

ANNABELLE

I must admit, that was a bad one.

JON

Getting through that…it was hard enough with Martin. I don’t—I don’t see how I did it alone.

Especially after—especially knowing I—

Did I know?

ANNABELLE

…

You spent far longer at Salesa’s that time than you did any other time. In the end, I had to go with you almost all the way to London.

…Yes. You knew.

Not at the time. Not when it happened. But the Eye made sure you Knew the details in the end. You ran into Basira and she asked where Martin was—

JON

—and the Beholder forced me to describe it.

ANNABELLE

You said yourself, more than once. None of this has ever been to the benefit of humanity. Or any individual human.

JON

Or whatever I—whatever we are.

ANNABELLE

What defines a human, anyway? The limitations, or the abilities?

We can do more than what an ordinary human can. But we can still do all the things that an ordinary human can, too. We think. We feel. We love, Jon.

As far as I’m concerned, that makes us human.

JON

…Who do you love, Annabelle?

ANNABELLE

I was the first to hold him. Did you know that? I was staying with Harry and his wife while I was at university, just before I took part in that study. They wanted someone to read to him before he was born, so he would learn the stories. Harry worked late, trying to make a better life for them all, and Elizabeth…well, she was blind, so she could tell stories fine, but she wanted him to hear books too. Every night, after dinner, I’d sit and read to her belly. He came early and Harry didn’t get to the hospital in time, so after Elizabeth, I was the first one to hold him.

Harry picked out his first name because he knew I hated that book. Elizabeth softened it by picking a middle name after me, but…she always called him Charlie. I think she knew, even then.

A couple years after I became part of the Web, the Desolation took Harry, probably to spite me, but…Harry was never the one I cared about. Elizabeth, at least, died as peacefully as anybody can. It may not have been pleasant, or timely, but at least it wasn’t to serve a power. Just bad luck.

…

Get him away from that grandmother of his if you can, will you?

JON

One of us will.

ANNABELLE

That’s all I ask.

JON

Well, I—I suppose, in light of all that’s happened…it’s the least I can do.

ANNABELLE

You believe me, then?

JON

It happened. It’s over.

Whether once or a hundred times…it happened the way you said at least once. And we won. That’s enough for me.

…Yes, Annabelle Cane, I believe you.

ANNABELLE

For what it’s worth, Jon, you did all the hard work on your own. You and Martin, and…the others. In your time and this. All I did was get you here.

JON

The others…

(sharp intake of breath) Oh, God. The Unknowing. Has it—have they—I-I can’t, even if we were in the Panopticon, I couldn’t See it. But you—there, there were tapes.

Are they…?

ANNABELLE

That one. I think.

JON

You think?

ANNABELLE

It added itself to the web just before you got here. It’s either theirs or yours.

[BRIEF PAUSE, THEN THE SQUEAL OF TAPE BEFORE A RECORDING PICKS UP - FAINT CIRCUS MUSIC, THUMPS AND TAPS THAT MIGHT BE SOME KIND OF FOOTSTEP, FLOORBOARDS CREAKING, SHALLOW BREATHING, FABRIC RUSTLES]

PRESENT ARCHIVIST ON TAPE

I love you.

PRESENT MARTIN ON TAPE

I love you.

TIM ON TAPE

I love you.

Tell me when.

[DEEP BREATH]

PRESENT ARCHIVIST ON TAPE

Three…two…one…

[MORE FABRIC RUSTLES, DETONATOR CLICKS, EXPLOSION BEGINS BEFORE ABRUPTLY CUTTING OFF]

JON

Oh, God.

ANNABELLE

And to think I thought you had a terrible sense of timing.

JON

At least they said something before—

O-oh, God, Tim. Tim—you know as well as I do that in my time, he—and I—were they all in the middle of that?

ANNABELLE

More or less.

They didn’t walk into the Unknowing, at least. Martin listened to what you told him and wouldn’t let them open any doors. But it had to be blown up from the inside to be sure of getting all the charges. Your counterpart and Martin’s wouldn’t leave Tim behind, however much he tried to make them.

JON

What happened after that?

ANNABELLE

I don’t know if there is an after that yet.

JON

And we’re back to the cryptic bullshit.

ANNABELLE

On the contrary. I said exactly what I meant.

We aren’t exactly anywhere right now, or any when. This…place…I wouldn’t call it a domain, but it exists outside of both time and space. The rules are different here. Time, if it passes at all, passes differently.

They might have just pressed the detonator. They might have pressed it hours ago, or days ago.

JON

(dismayed) Days?

ANNABELLE

All I can say is that wherever, whenever they are, they are out of reach of my tapes. And your sight.

Fortunately…I know someone who can give us those answers, even from here. Maybe especially from here.

JON

Who else is here, for God’s sake?

[ANNABELLE SINGS THE NEXT LINE IN THE SAME SLOW, MEASURED VOICE AS BEFORE]

ANNABELLE

Two elephants went out to play Upon a spider’s web one day They had such enormous fun They called for another elephant to come…

[STICKY FOOTSTEPS APPROACH OVER THE TAPE WEB]

OLIVER

Hello, Jon. It is all right if I call you Jon?

JON

…Oliver? Oliver Banks?

OLIVER

In the…well. In the manifestation, I suppose. I don’t know if any of us is here in the flesh.

JON

(disbelieving laugh) You’re…not quite what I expected.

OLIVER

Is that an invitation for me to comment about how Death so rarely is what we expect, or a manifestation of you wondering why Martin would possibly be jealous of someone like me?

ANNABELLE

If you knew either of them a little better, you’d know Martin’s reasons for being jealous are almost entirely in his head.

Also, he’s never met you.

OLIVER

Mm, true. We always seemed to miss one another.

JON

You—hold on. You’re from the future as well?

OLIVER

Like you and Annabelle. Well, more like Annabelle, I suppose. You had to be the Pupil of the Eye before you were tangled enough to get dragged back with the Fears. Me? Without Terminus, I’m just…dead. And we’ve already established that that’s not where I want to be.

JON

…Did you know? When you came to the hospital?

OLIVER

That we’d done this before? Of course. I long ago stopped being surprised at what you would choose.

JON

Then for God’s sake, why—

OLIVER

Because you had to choose, Jon. It was always your choice.

Think of it as a crossroads. You stood at a fork in the road, where one path would take you back to life and the other would take you on to, well, whatever came next. The trouble was that the signposts were covered.

You could have chosen without knowing which path was which, but that’s not your way. Not when you know enough to know that one was…mm, wrong, shall we say? One would have led you where you wanted to be, one where you didn’t.

JON

I didn’t want to die.

OLIVER

There’s a difference between not wanting to die and having something to live for.

JON

(deep breath) Right, well, I definitely have something to live for, so I’ll be going now.

Uh, how do I get out of here?

OLIVER

Ordinarily? You don’t.

JON

What?!

OLIVER

This is Terminus’s realm. Well, sort of. A little pocket on the outside edge of it.

JON

Another crossroads.

OLIVER

Mm, not so much. More that you’re standing in the middle of the path.

JON

So which way is back?

OLIVER

Life is a journey traveled in one direction only.

JON

(tartly) Yes, well, so is time, but here we all are.

I’ve already chosen to live, Oliver. (with slight malice) Can I call you Oliver?

OLIVER

(not rising to the bait) This isn’t a place where you get to choose.

JON

…So you’re saying that’s it.

After all that, after everything I—everything we did…this is the end. There’s nowhere else for me to go.

ANNABELLE

How many times have you walked out of another entity’s domain? Not counting the Apocalypse. We’ve already talked about how that doesn’t count.

JON

I…twice. The Buried and the Lonely.

Three, I suppose, if that crossroads counts.

OLIVER

That was a metaphor. You were close to Death, but not its realm. If that makes sense.

JON

Not really.

ANNABELLE

The Buried and the Lonely, then.

What brought you out?

JON

From the Buried, it was the—the tapes…it was Martin putting those tapes on top of the coffin. W-weaving me a rope…or a ladder.

The Lonely was simple enough to leave. The way out was together.

ANNABELLE

With Martin.

JON

…Yes.

ANNABELLE

Exactly.

Not all strands of a spider’s web are to capture or to control, you know. Sometimes, they are simply…to anchor.

JON

…

…That’s why you offered to bind me to Martin. It wasn’t about—it wasn’t for strength or power at all.

ANNABELLE

Not to defeat Jonah Magnus, no. There’s more than one kind of strength, more than one kind of power. I did tell you that you would need it to survive what was coming.

JON

It brought Martin back when Peter Lukas visited the Archives and he almost got swallowed by the Lonely again. It—it grounded me, kept me from losing control while I was taking down Jonah.

And now…

ANNABELLE

It can guide you home.

[OLIVER LAUGHS]

OLIVER

You know, people always talk about some legendary “red string of fate”, but I’ve never actually seen a real one before.

Let alone one woven from cassette tape.

JON

You knew I had that tether from the beginning.

OLIVER

Truthfully, I didn’t think it would work. Plenty of people have things they think are tying them to life, but they aren’t strong enough to resist the pull. Most threads snap.

JON

Not this one.

I made Martin a promise. And I never break my word.

OLIVER

A good thing, when your tether is almost literally made out of your words.

JON

Ha, ha.

…Wait. B-before I go…the Unknowing. Are they—she said you would know.

OLIVER

It’s over. It worked. They brought the house down.

A lot of tormented souls set free, all at once. Quite the rush, really.

JON

The three of them—my counterpart and Martin’s and Tim. What happened to them?

[OLIVER SIGHS]

OLIVER

Two of them will be fine. Some cuts and bruises, but they’ll be up and about sooner rather than later. They might already be up and about. Time’s difficult to discern here.

The other…I suspect I’m going to need to pay a visit at some point. Clean off those signposts.

JON

Don’t wait six months.

OLIVER

I shouldn’t be more than a couple weeks behind you.

JON

…That’s less comforting than you think it is.

OLIVER

Then it must be terrifying, because I was definitely going for ominous.

[JON SIGHS…AND LAUGHS RELUCTANTLY; ANNABELLE AND OLIVER LAUGH TOO]

JON

I suppose we’ll meet again, Annabelle.

ANNABELLE

…No. No, I don’t think we will.

JON

Tired of me already?

ANNABELLE

I was watching them for you. Not just through the tapes. I was lurking in a corner of that room.

I don’t know that I made it out.

OLIVER

(gently) You didn’t, I’m afraid.

Your choices are more limited. Stay here with your web…or see what comes next.

[A SHORT PAUSE]

JON

We’ll keep the recorders going.

In case you’re still listening.

ANNABELLE

…Tell Charlie his aunt loves him very much.

JON

I will.

Oliver…don’t take this the wrong way, but if I ever see you again, it will be too soon.

OLIVER

Death always comes too soon.

JON

That was definitely not meant for that aspect of you.

OLIVER

Fair.

ANNABELLE

Have a good life, Jon.

You and Martin deserve it.

JON

If I may borrow from another…may you find your rest where no shadows are cast, and no eyes may see you slumber.

ANNABELLE

(audibly smiling) From you, Jon, that is a true blessing.

[DEEP BREATH]

JON

Right. Hold on, Martin.

I’m coming home.

[CLICK]

[bibliocratic]

‘this is the trouble, even now, with being an archive’

or: Martin’s not the only one overly susceptible to the Lonely 

nebulous post-160 domestic future, hurt/comfort and softness, jonmartin and the cottagecore life they deserve

Jon loses himself in the odds-and-sods shop.

The sign on the door makes promises of it being a cosy bookshop. And there are books, certainly, stalagmites of tomes and paperbacks and collections teetering graspingly up towards the ceiling.

The books are absent flatmates however compared to the boisterous gaggle of stuff that takes up room everywhere else. Teacup candles balanced on Norton Anthologies. A wooden rocking horse keeping the dusty Faber and Faber poetry company. It's bizarre flotsam of the most incomprehensible comforting sort, and it sometimes bustles its way to star in the shop's equally manic window display.

Which is why Jon first came in. He'd told himself that this trip into town was an in-and-out only affair; pick up the spices he couldn't get at the small-stocked village shop, buy more firelighters and return some of Martin's horde to the library from whence it came. He's entertaining some thoughts of making a start on pruning back some of the more frivolous bushes in the garden if the weather holds, though he knows his knees won't credit the idea by the evening if he does so.

But then he saw the pen in the window. Silver filigree engraved at the end like frost spiralling up a window, the base colour deep and blue. 

And it's not anywhere near Christmas, and there's no birthdays for another few months, but Jon looks at it and he can see Martin sat in the two-seater in their living room,  holding the pen, tongue between his teeth as he worries at words, scratching and rewriting and humming when he's caught upon a phrase he feels sits well.

He goes inside with all the furtiveness of a guilty cat. Maryam is at the counter today, and she beams to see him. And he intends – completely – to pick out the pen and be done with it. But Maryam gets talking even once he's pointed out and paid for the pen, and he's twisted up in the soft and easy twirl of her conversation. The pen does come with a box, a regular black affair, but she mentions that they've got in a few antique pen cases down at the back of the non-fiction isle – covering P for Persian Empire to T for Travelogues – and Jon fancifully commits to having a leisurely look because he's going to have to wait for the next bus back anyway, quite taken by the idea of being able to leave such a distinguished looking surprise on the side-table near Martin's armchair for him to find when he comes in from work.

He considers the cases with a furrowing frown, as though weighing up some great decision. For so long in fact, he doesn't notice the shop dip quiet, the muffled steps and page-flicking of other patrons muted to silent.

He glances up, around. Puts back the supple brown leather case he was thinking over, stepping out of his isolated row.

There is no one at the front desk. No one in the other shelves. Through the clogged-up and slapdash window display, he sees no one on the street outside and a sky starting to grey with the threat of rain.

He notices – far away, like glancing through the wrong end of a telescope – that his breathing is getting faster.

“Maryam?” he says, but his voice croaks heatless. He tells himself that he's too old for this now, to be taken in by such worn-down ghosts, that she's gone in the back, that it's just gone quiet, that's all. But the silence is a terror that begets greater, stronger strains, a cycling distress of pin-balling fears and memories, and there is no one around, no one coming, and the panting of his own body is so loud in such an empty space.

And he has always been more easily enveloped by some fears than by others.

He hears the wash of mile-distant waves, as though behind the shelves to the front of the shop, and thinks not here, not here.

He tries to shake his head loose of the fog beginning to bind it like cobwebbing wisps. But the world has such terrors in it, and the Archive keeps record of them all. And that's what Jon is, in the end. A dutiful collection of horror, cruelly moulded into such service by a long dead man. He's long since unshouldered the mantle of Archivist, yet Archive has proven to be such a long-lived, enduring post.

Behind his eyes, he plays out the washed-out retellings of all those almost lost to the Lonely.

He's the statement of Zoe Aristidou, who moved to a beam-bright city but brought her fog along with her, who lost her face amongst the impartial crowds, sanded away like a wind-abused statue.

The statement of Keira Hurley, who struggled to make friends, who drank thinking it might stuff up the gaping absence inside her where the fog was beginning to spark up like struck flint, who would lose her keys, and her wallet and whole days to unremembrance.

There is the echo of beachland nearby and Jon's lost sight of the shelves. The layering cares and carefully tended wards that make him up are starting to peel away.

He rubs at his hands and the colour wipes off like highlighter on whiteboard, smearing before vanishing, his skin blotching with an absent glass-colour of nothing at all. And it's not real, it can't be, it's years since he sighted this muted, mist-encrusted shoreline, the way it gnawed at and  sapped Martin's skin translucent, younger then, his hair still unpicked by white.

But it's so easy to return here even after all that time. Like tripping over your own feet.

It is peaceful here. It always is.

Jon grips the pen, feeling the drunken choke of the statement of Keira Hurley, how it makes his legs unmoored and unbalanced, and he thinks no, no, I'm going to give this to him, I'll surprise him, I'll leave it on his side table to find when he gets home. And the statement is thick on his tongue, as he recalls how she woke up, head woozy, and she had not known where she was, had forgotten her address, her name, and the muted panic of her fear sleeked her face with tears, and Jon shakes his head fervently to try and clear it.

He thinks of how Martin will glow, pleased, will say something like you shouldn't have, or even, you know I don't need any more, and Jon will say, I know but I wanted to, I know but I thought of you, I know but I wanted to make you happy.

There is sand crunching underfoot as he walks, and he's getting lost.

He is the statement of Agneta Blom regarding her grandmother Ebba Blom, swallowed by the fog in her later years at a nursing home; the statement of Lakshman Hamal, the last member of his regiment far from home; the statement of Finlay Erskine, a lone lighthouse keeper midst a terrible storm.

And Jon is one man but he is also all these stories – he breathes in salt-damp from a wave spray that leaves freckles of water struck across his face, he feels the knotted ache in his legs from where he's crouched, tense and gripping his kukri for hours, the over-softness of blankets and pillows and the faded mist of lavender down an empty hallway.

He feels his fingers cramping around the sides of the pen, and he wants to think of Martin, to fill up with recollections of him,  but Martin is someone Jon knows, someone Jon loves, and it is so very hard to remember he is Jon at the moment.  

The fog that subsumes him like a dust cloud, it's muffling. Quiet. He who is Agneta Blom and Lakshman Hamal and Finlay Erskine and so many other names that are layering palimpsest over Jonathan Blackwood, he wanders the beach to the shoreline, letting the sea lap over his shoes. The sky is expectant with dour rainclouds, and his jean cuffs are getting wet, and he hears a distant tumult of voices ever so far off. Like a muttered conversation in another room, a tune playing in a building he is walking past.

“...call the school.... It's Mr Blackwood, Conor... one of his turns.... don't crowd the poor man, let him be...”

The Archive drinks in the flat, null landscape with interest and lets the fog bury into the soft spaces of him. It wants to walk out into the shallow waters and see what swims there.

There's a pen in his hand, and it's heavy, and it weighs him down shore-bound.

“Jon? Hey, hey, Jon. Don't go out so far, yeah?”

The Archive sucks in a breath. It is not salted with a harsh coastal grind, it does not bite at his throat. The air is warm, dry with indoor heating, and the people he is not, Agneta and Lakshman and Finlay and Mairead and Pavo and so many more witness to Forsaken, begin to slough off him like autumnal leaves.

There is a hand on his arm, someone being shushed, a breathing like someone's been running.

“That's it, you're doing so well, you can do it.”

He is Jonathan again. He blinks loose the crisping grains of salt that have begun to sediment in his lashes. There are tears streaming down his face, he realises belatedly, and he is trembling like he's freezing.

He looks at Martin who makes up such a happy horizon to be greeted by, looking down. His tie become loose, who has come from work, sweat-patches at the front of his chest, his throat and face reddened with exertion, who is still wearing his navy lanyard, has board pens clunking in his pocket. Martin who is grounding him.

“I...” he says, clearing his throat feeling stupid, and then he is thrusting out the pen almost bullishly. “I got you a pen.”

Maybe Martin doesn't understand how important it is for him to see. But he nods delicately, and carefully nods, takes it from Jon's shaking fingers – You shouldn't have, you know, he says like Jon's foolish, but fondly, ever so, just like Jon thought he would, and Jon almost sobs to be granted such a small victory.  

“You wanting me to call Doctor Varma, Mr B?” comes the tentative, worried voice of Conor at Martin's elbows – sixteen, his voice breaking awkwardly, helping out in the shop after school; Jon remembers lending him books when he was a precocious, demanding child, voracious for knowing.

“We should be ok,” Martin replies kindly. To Jon, he says:

“Julienne's car's out front.”

Jon frowns, confused, before remembering – theirs is in for its MOT, Martin must have borrowed it to cross the three miles between the villages. There is something heavy around his shoulders, warm and scratchy, and he wants to wonder but the questions are sunken in the softness still lingering in his head.

“Do you need...?” Jon starts, and the words are thick and phlegmy in his throat. “The school...?”

“Julienne's covering my last class,” Martin says soothingly. “They understand.”

Jon nods. Years ago, he might have apologised, stewed in how much he needed Martin today, but time has wasted away those anxieties.

“Thank you for coming for me,” he replies instead, his voice still sea-bitten and hoarse, and lets Martin lead him wobbly-legged out of the door so they can drive home.

[mk-wizard]

Alpha Trion: An Analysis of the Wizard of Bots

Hello, Transformer fans. Today, we pay our respects to the elderly by doing a character analysis of the Autobot who no matter how much we come to know about him, the more mystery there is behind his character. Let’s delve into the history, facts and all around definitive traits about the Autobot sage Alpha Trion.

Alpha Trion was first introduced as the mentor of Optimus Prime as well as the keeper of all Autobot knowledge that is written, contained in the Matrix and beyond in the G1 cartoons. He is also in many ways a father figure to Optimus Prime and Elita One who he watches over on Cybertron. While this is still up in the air, it is heavily implied by his colouring, traits and the appearance of his wife Beta (more on her later), he is the biological father of Elita One and therefor, the father-in-law of Optimus meaning they are in fact all family. Alpha Trion’s demeanor is that of a wise old man with a lot of life and war experience who comes across as perpetually calm, but with a slight hint of mischief and a liberalism. His trademark appearance is of an elderly bot with the doll type frame, his armour is red and blue while being the first and so far, only bot to sport a cape, he has a long beard and (while we don’t see it) long white hair beneath his helm, his alt mode is a hovercraft and he was the first bot in the Transformers lore to wear actual glasses.

In his case, he wears them not only because his optics aren’t what they used to be. They actually help regulate his psychic powers as he is a very powerful diode (a psychic Transformer) and has abilities that would be considered as magic even by other bots which explains how he survived on a Decepticon dominated Cybertron dying only of old age in the original G1 cartoon. To be precise, his glasses keep him from using his powers automatically and he has a plethora of them; clairvoyance, hypnosis, aura reading, telekinesis and telepathy. And for the record, those are just the psychic powers we know of. With such a long list and taking into account how powerful he is, Alpha Trion needs those glasses to keep his powers in check so they don’t overload his mind or uses them on someone he didn’t mean to use them on.

Another thing about Alpha Trion is that like Optimus, the “Trion” in his name is actually a title. In Autobot culture, there is always one Trion who serves as the religious figure, the head archivist, the sage, the second in command of all Autobot kind and the keeper of all sacred data including that which is exclusive only to the Trion to know. Unlike being a Prime in which you become one by assignment by the previous Prime or it was literally in your code to begin with, being a Trion is a spiritual thing so the selection is done by divine intervention. As soon as the current Trion passes on, the divine Trion protocol gets passed onto the Autobot who Primus deems worthy though in some cases, if the current Trion has a good guess of who will be their predecessor, they will take time to train them. A Trion’s special abilities by default are being a powerful diode with a plethora of psychic abilities though the bot usually had them to begin with as well as other spiritual abilities. In the case of Alpha Trion, he has some powers the whole time, but they were nowhere near what they became when he became ordained. Another thing that is worth noting about Trion’s is that they are not actually fighters and seem to take an oath of pacifism of which they are not allowed to commit any direct act of violence though they are allowed to help provide tools or assistance during war.

Going back to Alpha Trion specifically, his life’s story begins when he fought in his own war though his was a little different. Back in his day, the Autobots fought to free themselves from their slavers the Quintessons. During this time, he went by the name A3 though he still sported facial hair and a pair of glasses. He also proved to be quite the fighter and rebel with a personality that was a similar to Rodimus’. Like Optimus, he had a wife who fought alongside him who went by the name of Beta Maxx or simply Beta. While she was dressed in green, we can see that she still has a striking resemblance to Elita One and even A3′s armour style back in the day was a lot like Elita’s which further hints that they are her parents.

After the war was won, we can assume that the two of them lived very peacefully and happily on Cybertron and quite possibly had their daughter. It was also during this time where A3 was ordained and was now took on the name of Alpha Trion. It is not known who the previous Trion was though it is heavily implied by Alpha Trion’s disciplined behaviour and extensive knowledge that he had a chance to be trained before getting ordained. It is also not known who the Prime during this time was though it is most likely that it was one of Orion Pax’s parents. When the Decepticons attacked one day and both Orion Pax and Ariel were injured, Alpha Trion rebuilt them into warriors known as Optimus Prime and Elita One. It isn’t known what became of Alpha Trion’s wife though a lot of evidence suggests that she was one of the casualties in the war between the Autobots and Decepticons. As the war went on, true to his duty and oath of pacifism, Alpha Trion acted as a guardian to Vector Sigma and would only assist the Autobots on Cybertron in their war. He was also an unofficial member of Elita One’s team by acting as a strategist and an adviser. When Elita One got captured, he had a hand in freeing and helping her before once again going into hiding. While Alpha Trion managed to elude the Decepticons and never even got taken prisoner, he sadly did not live to see the long awaited peaceful era as he died of old age near the end of the war appearing only as a ghost yet still offering help even from beyond. In the G1 cartoons, it is has never been confirmed who the new Trion was after him.

According the the comics, Ultra Magnus was his predecessor and faces the same struggle that Rodimus does as Prime; he has a very big pair of shoes to fill and often questions if he can do the job. In the War for Cybertron cartoon, Ultra Magnus was implied to be the new Trion in secret after Alpha Trion was murdered by Megatron and after he was killed, Bumblebee became spiritually ordained with the Trion protocol appearing before him in the form of Alpha Trion. In the Animated series, Alpha Trion appears once again as a sage figure though the extent of his role and title is not explored. However, it is heavily implied that his influence and rank goes far beyond that of a Prime. In the Prime series, Alpha Trion died in the war though it isn’t known if he was killed or died of old age. Before he did pass away, he passed the key to Vector Sigma to Optimus for safe keeping and appeared to Optimus in spirit when he was close to death to help him join the Allspark. It isn’t known who took up the Trion mantle after Alpha in Prime though. In the Michael Bay movies, Alpha Trion did not make an appearance, but Sentinel Prime was modelled after him in appearance though his personality could not be more different.

While Alpha Trion is not a mech of action, his legacy is definitely comparable to that of Optimus’ in that we can picture no one else with his role, but the wise old mech. Despite not appearing often in the cartoon, he made quite an impression that lasted and cemented itself in the lore. If Optimus Prime is to Autobots what Papa Smurf is to the Smurfs, then one can say that Alpha Trion is what Grandpa Smurf was to them. He has a similar role to Optimus, but is the one person who surpasses him in terms of wisdom and has an incredibly different view of the world for it. It has been confirmed that Optimus is very conservative whereas Alpha Trion is in fact liberal hence why he not only allowed his beard to grow out, he flaunts it which is unusual in Transformer society as hair is usually not considered as a desired trait for mechanical beings. And while that side of him was not very explored, Alpha Trion has a mischievous side and was at times known to be defiant. It is kind of a shame that he never got a chance to meet Rodimus because I imagine the two of them would have gotten along well. As a side note which I find amusing is that Alpha Trion from his youth to his silver years was always consistently handsome according to sources because he was athletic. Well, you don’t live THAT long unless you stay in shape and in his defence, anyone who can sport a superhero style armor while being able to show that much leg at that age must have aged well. I do hope that in the next era, he will be showcased more as a regular character rather than just a background one because he really is one worth showcasing not just as the Trion, but just as himself.

Anyway, what is your take on the Autobot elder?

If you have a Transformers theory or character analysis you want explored, please let me know in my ask box. And please, support me through Patreon or Ko-fi if you want me to make Transformers merch and videos. Or if you want a commission of your favourite bot, let me know in my shop. All links are on my profile page.

Thank you for reading and please, stay safe.

[munstarr]

The Guardian: part 3

Hello everyone! Welcome to part 3 of this slow burn! I am having fun writing this, hope you enjoy!

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That night Mirin had given her a tour of a lifetime, this opulent circular building was actually his home. He had taken her to each room and she was happy to find that her key card had been given access to each space. Some rooms held documents and information panels, others held more interesting things like collecticbles from his travels and art work, overall each room was a new experience to behold.  On the last part of their tour he dropped her off at her room,  mentioning his was down the hall in case she would need anything. As Mirin walked away she couldn’t help but glace back at his towering frame, he was well over seven feet tall she noted as she had stolen glances at him all throughout the tour. He had been a bit different than the other Nuks she’d previously met, his skin had more scales than leather she noted, it even had a lovely faint iridescent purple hue in some lights. Mirins teeth also seemed even sharper,his mouth should have been frightening since it was filled with razor sharp teeth. But biting her lip she remembered the way he’d sharply smirk or gently rumble every time she said something he found a bit amusing, she was starting to feel calm already thanks to his jauntiness. Scanning into her room, there was an instant relief that there were no boxes on site. The nuks seemed to have placed her art and other things on the walls, that made her happy. Walking further into her space she noticed some things were placed upside down but she appreciated the sentiment . Yawning Azura decided she was ready for bed,the day's excitement had hit her all at once and she was worn out. Stripping off her second skin pants and putting on her silky pink bonnet she leaped into her huge new bed. Ready to drift off to sleep her last thought was about needing to ask for a stepping stool on her next Earth request form, slowly her eyes reluctantly fluttered closed. 

The next morning Azura laid asleep drooling onto her soft cozy pillows as her room spun around slowly transitioning to show the bright purple sky through the large window, her room spoke in a soft angelic voice “Lady Emem, it’s time to rise and prepare for your first day” , grumbling Azura sat up and slinked off her bonnet and eye mask with a stretchy yawn. Rubbing her eyes she straightened up,looking around and then out of her floor to ceiling window in confusion “Oh! That’s right, I live on a different planet now” she laughed dumbfoundedly, how could she forget! Only she could forget she moved to another planet, that’s jetlag for ya she thought. Jumping out of bed she inspected the two doors in her room, finding one to be a washroom and the other her closet.  Swaying into her bathroom she prepared for the day, after touching every button possible she was able to start the water and indulge in a quick sudsy shower, letting the water be the breath of life for her tight curls.  Dripping all the way into her closet she was happy to find her uniforms there waiting for her, the closet also featured a massive amount of empty space.  Azura felt hopeful she wouldn’t always have to wear black, afterall she thought bright colors looked lovely on her silky chocolate skin. Dressing quickly she applied a more neutral creamy lipstick to her soft lips, gathering her hair into a beautiful high puff, she decided to leave out bang ringlets to frame her soft face. Inspecting herself in the mirror she was very happy she could do this in a short amount of time, she wanted to be downstairs earlier than The Guardian to be prepared for the day. Gathering her identification cards she headed out to the study where he instructed her to meet him, with a slight bounce in her step she was very pleased with her morning start thus far. Scanning into the study the door sang “Welcome Guardian Keeper Azura'' she would never get used to that she thought as she stepped into the study.Only to find that Mirin was already there, sitting at his desk “oh, your guardianess, I wasn't expecting to see you so early” she said looking at her time keeper, she had been here an hour early after all.  “I was going to prepare for you,” she said admittedly, trying to hide her disappointment. “How fitting, I rose early to prepare for you” he said in his booming voice. Standing he smoothed out his frame hugging dark outfit and walked over to a door and rolled out a huge onyx colored tower filled with food. “ I read that you might enjoy a meal before working. I ordered you the first daily meal out of many” he said matter of factly adjusting things on the tower. She had to admit that for someone with no visible eyes he was very attractive, even early in the morning,his sharp smile made her fan girl in secret. After spending yesterday stealing glances at him she had to admit she had a hidden urge to run her fingers over his leather scalded skin. She was curious to know if the texture was as strong and smooth as it looked, that thought made her squeeze her thighs together slightly. Walking over to meet him she saw the food tower contained things like sausage, egg, liver, beans, waffles and so much more food than she could ever possibly eat. She was a bit confused but was excited to eat non the less. “I ordered what they call ‘a full english breakfast’ he said in air quotes looking down at her. Restraining a giggle she smiled, ‘’that's so thoughtful sir, but I- I.. am actually not from england '' she said reluctantly, that would explain the liver and blood pudding she thought. He seemed to be confused, tilting his head slightly. Packing her plate with waffles and sausage she explained as they went on to discuss the day's plans. The Guardian had sat opposite her after activating the fireplace, while she ate he explained a bit more about his job and exactly what she would be helping him do while she was with him. Apparently there were few guardians appointed, and Mirin was the guardian of knowledge, he kept all original record copies, and was an archivist for the sector of the planet in which they lived. Azura felt amazing she could help with such a thing, she had worked in an office and a library previously so she was happy she could help him. He mentioned to her how sometimes they would be in the archives and other times they would deliver information and attend planetary meetings.  After chatting more over breakfast the room had fallen comfortably silent, with only the sounds of crackling fire filling the warm room. She was lost in thought, happy the man she was working with turned out to be more than agreeable, that eased her nerves a lot and helped her feel even better about her decision to move . “So” he said breaking the silence ‘’ would you like to visit the archive today?” he said with a sharp smirk that made her stomach flutter. “Yes sir,  I’m ready to help any way I can” she said confidently with a sharp nod. 

Over the next few weeks Azura and Mirin got to know each other even more, working in the archive was a quiet job when they were being serious. When there were no visitors he would give her tours of the endless scrolls and show her holograms of places on the planet and far off places, she was excited to learn that they could visit many of them sometime soon. During their shifts he would try to explain all the Nuk humor and show her maps, she was always so enchanted by how passionately he talked about his job. She loved when he’d softly rumble after she asked a question about something he was interested in, and he’d do it even deeper when she was speaking about topics she enjoyed. He seemed most happy when she would get excited about potential places for them to explore together. After hearing his stories it seemed he usually traveled alone and was happy at the implication they’d go places together now, at least that's what she gathered from his husky purrs.

 This current shift had been a quiet one, them both working hard on different projects, only stopping to really interact when she had a question or he needed her assistance moving files around the building. They were currently working on compiling the right documents for an upcoming meeting for the Guardians of his sector. She could tell by his silence throughout the day he wasn't looking forward to it, she could also tell by the way he talked about the upcoming event. She couldn't be sure why but decided it would be better to ask later when they weren't so busy. Closing down the archive Azura noted how tired Mirin looked, she could see it in his body language that he was ready to head home. She noted how he got like this on days usually on days when it was very busy and they didn't have time to talk much. It made her sad to see him so quiet especially since he was usually such a bright light to be around. “You know, I could try and teach you another Earth board game when we get home” she said suggestively knowing this would perk him up. When he did not respond while working the keypad she gingerly took his clawed hand into hers, rubbing the back with her other in calm circles. This made him freeze and straighten up completely  , picking up her tiny hands in his, he faced down to them looking at them for what felt like minutes. This confused her and she let out a soft gasp in surprise when he let out his long deep purple tongue and licked up the  back of her palms slowly and almost sensually. Azura was shocked silent and held her breath for what felt like ages. “Oh, I see, this gesture is a term of human affection and care” he said with a tired shy smile, he placed her hands down and patted her afro “You are very sweet women, I would enjoy that very much,let's proceed home” he said with a newly found tired smile. Confused, she suddenly remembered that Nuks could get information from taste and she was able to breathe again, even though she had to admit the feeling of his cool tongue on her hand had sparked something she was hoping it wouldn't, she could feel the electricity and it flooded straight down to her core. “Shall we go?” he said, tilting his head questioningly offering her his large hand, she nodded taking it. She couldn’t help but feel bad for indulging in this moment as he guided her to the transporter. She was only trying to help cheer him up after all, at least that's what she told herself. 

[writersrealmbts]

Con Amore: Part 14

Bulletproof Melody Sequel

Description: Con Amore– A directive to a musician to perform a selected passage of a composition tenderly, with affectionate emotion, or in a loving manner; an instruction to the player of an instrument meaning ‘with love’ or ‘lovingly’. Three years with all seven of your loves, three years of relative peace. But now everything is threatened as darkness surges from the horizon.

Originally Posted: 05/27/2020

Tags: Superheroes, Ot7

Fluff/Angst: 3,631 words

A/N: Dudes, stepping on a toothpick and imbedding an inch of it into your foot hurts like the dickens and makes walking a little difficult. Just in case you were wondering. Also, I’m trying to finish this series and it’s almost over, just bear with me a little longer.

“Nightingale!” Huening Kai’s face lit up as he recognized you.

Yeonjun glanced at the other boy, then relaxed as well, the tree slowly setting you down.

“We were just discretely practicing using our powers together,” Huening Kai explained, hugging you.

You pulled a twig from his hair. “Define discretely.”

“It doesn’t go above the tree-tops,” Yeonjun answered. “This area has the densest canopy, and is furthest from anyone that might detect us.”

You nodded. “We met, but you were slightly delirious. I’m Nightingale.”

He dipped his head. “I’ve heard much about you. I’m Yeonjun.”

You dipped your head in return. “Come on, back to the house.”

They nodded, walking with you.

“How is everything going?” Hueningkai asked, bouncing a little. He seemed much better after spending time with all of the boys, and it made you feel lighter in your heart to see him that happy.

You would take any source of happy you could get since you felt like you were way too close to crying.

“Well, everyone was alive when I left, so nothing much since the last update I sent to Soobin.” You glanced at the sky. It was beautiful, wherever this safehouse was.

“We cleaned the house, and got everything ready and set up, just like you asked,” Yeonjun said quietly, a little nervous.

“Thank you, Yeonjun. I appreciate everything you boys have done, and are doing.”

Soobin was reading when the three of you entered the house, but he looked up and closed the book.

The other two were talking while doing origami, but they halted when they noticed you.

You nodded. “Hey boys.”

Soobin came over to you, a questioning look.

“Let’s sit down and we’ll talk about what’s going to happen from here on out,” You said, addressing all of them.

They sat down around the table with you, looking nervous.

“I guess…before we start I want to gauge how much you guys know about the whole situation.” You kept your voice soft, slightly melodic, to try and maintain a sense of calm in them. You didn’t want to scare them, you just wanted to know what they knew so that you wouldn’t be repeating things they already knew.

“The Temple is gone, but they’re still out there, preparing to fight alongside you,” Huening Kai started, seeming nervous still. “The Conservatory is also a dangerous place, and we…were in danger there.”

You nodded.

Soobin looked worried.

“The group that they’re fighting is one that takes supers and strips them of their powers,” Taehyun spoke softly. “That is, if they don’t kill them.”

“You’re pregnant,” Beomgyu added. “You were supposed to be here alone for the remainder of the battle to keep the baby safe. But…they were too powerful to bring to the conservatory, so you sent all of us here, to keep us safe. Because the conservatory…isn’t…safe for people who are powerful. So, now you’re going to be relying on us to help you through however long it takes for the fighting to stop—which could be after the baby is born. We can’t be detected, because that could put all of us in danger. And if there is danger, you’ll be relying on us to protect you to some extent.”

Soobin’s eyes widened. “You’re….”

You nodded. “Due date is February 6th.”

Yeonjun was sitting up straight now. “Will the baby…have your ability?” He asked carefully.

You appreciated the discretion he showed. “There’s a very high possibility.”

He nodded sharply, looking more certain and determined. “Then we’ll keep you safe.”

Beomgyu and Soobin looked confused, but the other two nodded in acknowledgment, both looking a little awestruck. Huening Kai probably knew a little bit about you being pregnant, but he probably hadn’t put everything together.

You took a deep breath. “You all know each other’s real names?”

They all nodded.

“We…we were talking about forming a team,” Beomgyu told you, meeting the other boys’ gaze.

“Your team really…we really admire them. I don’t know if we’ll ever be as good as them, but we think we could do some good.”

You nodded. “You three wish to leave the temple?”

Taehyun frowned slightly. “We wish to cooperate with the temple, but have autonomy.”

You smiled. “That’s fine. I’m not going to stop you, I just…was surprised.”

Yeonjun was smiling now. “I think it was good that we had time together before you arrived.”

Soobin was smiling quietly, emitting a sense of peace. He let his pointed ears show around them, a sure sign that he felt comfortable.

“I’m glad you all are getting along so well. Now, I’m going to…fill in the blanks.” You looked around. “Let’s sit in the living room. This is really uncomfortable.”

They transitioned easily.

You gave them the complete rundown of what the Oasis group was, how they operated, and how they were looking for you. You covered the entire plan for fighting the Oasis, and possibly the Conservatory. Why you were going to fight the Conservatory. You started from the initial attack on the boys to today, leaving out the aspects involving your archives.

Because that was a completely different topic.

You took a breath as they absorbed the complete plan, hand resting on your stomach.

Taehyun didn’t look surprised by any of it, calm as you explained everything. So much that you figured he had known the moment he read you. So, while you were finishing explaining, he was getting everyone some water.

You gratefully took the glass he handed you, meeting his gaze. “You read me completely?”

He looked away. “I’ve read everyone. It wasn’t on purpose. But…there’s still something about you that I know is there, but that I couldn’t read. Like there was a steel wall that I came up against.”

You nodded slowly. “Okay….”

“Sorry, I really didn’t mean to read you, I know—”

“You couldn’t help it, you weren’t in the best condition,” You excused with a shake of your head. “Sit. I’m going to tell you guys some things that will never be repeated. Ever. Because it might be important during this time where we’re relying on one another.”

They all sat up a little straighter, looking concerned.

You quickly hummed a protection song, making sure only they could hear what you were about to say, then curled up in the chair to start what would have to be a story to explain everything. “There are objects in the world, artifacts, that can hold or that were imbued with power. Sometimes the power is so quiet, no one ever notices, and other times they are so powerful that everyone notices—and use it to their advantage. No matter what the power is, in the wrong hands it can be very dangerous. For many generations there have been supers, specialists, who collect these objects to protect the world. They are known as archivists by some. Librarians. Warehouse keepers. Bankers. Historians. They are born with two powers—the ability to sense powers in others and objects, and the ability to store absolutely anything. These stored items go into pocket dimensions that usually can only be accessed by those who have the same abilities. They pass the duties on, generation to generation, building up the store of powerful objects and recording each one in a truly extensive inventory manifest. They can store things like happiness, or they can store things like a sword that has been imbued with the powers of a super-villain who was able to control people through their blood. A spell scroll, or a spoon that makes soup cold but drinks hot.”

Huening Kai laughed a little.

You smiled. “New, powerful objects are created almost every day, and it’s the job of these archivists to track them down and remove them from the public before they can be used in a way that would be detrimental to the world. Which sometimes means stealing. The wrong thing, for the right reason.” You met Beomgyu’s gaze.

He met it and nodded.

“But, over the years, the main archivist line dwindled due to…various issues. The collapse of a mine, an aging artifact that turned another to dust, another one that got turned into a frog when they weren’t careful enough and…well, they were happy for the rest of their life but no one was able to turn them back.” You shook your head as you thought about that one. It was sort of bittersweet. His wife joined him as a frog, and they had lots of tadpoles—but even if he had been turned back, he would have been stripped of his powers by the artifact turning him into a frog. It was probably best he live his life the way he did. Frogs aren’t as affected by death. “Until there was only one lineage left. They had one child, a son. He was an excellent archivist—smart and skilled. He was the best retrieval specialist that had been in the family in ages. And he met an acrobat, a woman with music manipulation. He helped other supers, and he married her. She helped him with the archives. Everything has a melody to someone with music manipulation, and finding things with similar melodies helps keep things organized in a way that keeps the archives safe for those that enter it. She helped him work out a way to neutralize the artifacts in the archives.”

“Your parents?” Soobin asked.

You nodded. “My parents. They died. My mother died when I was sixteen. My father three years ago, in that fight in my hometown—even though I had believed him to be dead since my mother’s death.”

“You’re the last archivist?”

You shrugged. “As far as I am aware. There could be other lines out there, but none that I’m aware of.”

“The rocking chair,” Soobin whispered. “It really was….”

You nodded. “Very. I’m so sorry.”

He shuddered, curling closer to Yeonjun. “And the whispers I heard?”

“Very real,” You whispered, wishing it didn’t hurt him to hear this.

He nodded though. “But you got rid of it? After…?”

“It’s gone. It’ll never hurt anyone again. Not as long as the archives are safe.” You had gone to the place where he had lived after taking him to the orphanage, having heard his story of his parents and why he joined the conservatory. That rocking chair had it’s own archive, one that you locked in the most complicated way possible to try and prevent even yourself from going in.

“Good.”

Yeonjun put an arm around the other boy’s shoulders. “And you do all of that while still fighting with them?”

You shrugged. “I’ve been focusing more on the archives the past few years, but yes. I fight with them when they need me. But, there’s some more we’re going to have to go over.”

They waited for you to continue.

“While we’re here, we’re in hiding. Everyone needs to believe that we are normal. So if I go somewhere with you, you’re going to address me by my real name. Y/n. Use language barriers to your advantage. The cover story is that Soobin is my brother-in-law, and his brother travels for work. You guys came visiting with him for the summer for a new experience. Okay?”

They nodded.

You nodded in return. “Other than that, as long as the house stays relatively clean, you’re free to do as you wish. I’ve been having a lot of overpowering memories lately, so if you hear me singing….”

“Get Soobin-hyung to stop you?”

You hesitated, then nodded. “Earplugs usually help, too. I’ll make sure to soundproof my room in case I sing in my sleep—it hasn’t happened since I was a child, but I’ve never been pregnant before so we’ll see what happens. Which rooms did you guys take?”

“Uh, we’ve just been sharing two of the rooms. We left the master bedroom and the one next to it.”

You nodded. “Okay, well, that works. I’m going to go lay down for a while, and rest my back.”

“Okay, we won’t let you down, Noona,” Soobin said, smiling at you.

You smiled back and headed to the master bedroom, laying down with a sigh of relief. It was much better than those school beds.

But so very empty.

You curled onto your side, arms wrapped around your stomach. “We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”

And you kept telling yourself that, imagining it in all of their voices.

“We’ll be okay,” She sang softly, rubbing her nose against yours. “We always are. Now, try again.”

You looked nervously around. “But…what if I break something?”

“Then we’ll fix it. You, me, and your dad. Or, we can go get ice cream while your dad fixes it.” She gave you a conspiratorial look. “Now, just try.”

You took a deep breath and stared out across the water. You should sing. That was the whole point. But you were scared. The last time you had sung, you had brought down an entire building. What if you destroyed the lake? The trees? Your mom?

She wrapped her arms around your shoulders and held you tight. “I know it’s scary. We can sing things in and out of existence. It is a very big responsibility. Maybe even more so than the ability you inherited from your father. We can make people feel things, and see things. It’s really important that we learn to control our abilities, hone these abilities so that when the time comes, we can do whatever we need to—whether that’s protecting those we love, or…something else.”

“I don’t want it,” You told her, on the verge of crying. “Why did I have to have any powers? I don’t want this!”

Her grip tightened on you, your voice having just enough melodic edge to cut through and take down the nearest trees which crashed down loudly.

You trembled in her hold. “Mom.”

“It’s okay, hummingbird.” She held you tighter as another tree crashed around you, singing the words. “We’ll be okay, little one. Just you and me, little one. Hold on tight, and don’t let go. I am here, and I love you so.”

“I’m scared,” You whispered eyes shut tightly.

“You are safe, little one,” She continued singing, her voice drowning out the sounds around you. “Wrapped so warmly in arms, you will never come to harm. Just hold tight, little one. Know that things will be alright, little one. With your song within my heart, we will never be apart. We will be okay, little one. Just you and me, little one. You are loved and you are safe, that can never be erased. We will be okay.”

When you opened your eyes, the whole forest had flattened around you, but there was a perfect circle around the two of you where no tree or branch had landed.

“Tinny, he’s hurt!”

You whipped toward Hoseok, then hurried over. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I need to get bback to the others,” He said, rushing out.

You quickly started checking Yoongi over, humming along to his melody to strengthen him. You grabbed bandages and the suture kit. “You’re supposed to be careful.”

“Sorry,” He apologized, but he sounded like he was in pain.

“Don’t be sorry, be okay,” You scolded, but it was more teasing than anything. “You’re lucky I know some healing melodies.”

“Please tell me you aren’t going to go all Disney on me,” He groaned.

“Have to admit, it’s effective,” You countered, sanitizing the wound and the area around the wound. “But no, I was going to go for Lord of the Rings, possible Chronicles of Narnia if I could remember how that one melody goes, but mostly I was going to go for Lord of the Rings.”

“Remind me to help you write better healing songs,” He hissed, gripping the table.

“Have you even heard this one?” You countered. “Also, you can’t be in too bad of shape to be bantering with me this much.”

“Need to get back out there, no one’s watching their backs.”

“The problem is that no one watched yours,” You argued. “Now hold still. I’m going to stitch this, and try to heal you a bit. Now, I know it won’t sound like a healing song, but it is most effective.”

He winced, but nodded.

You started stitching him up carefully. “Immen duath caeda, sui tollech gwanna tach omen, boe naid bain gwannathar, boe cuil ban firitha.”

He seemed to relax fractionally and you could feel his gaze on you.

“With a sigh, you turn away, with a deepening heart, no more words to say. You will find that the world has changed forever.” You finished the last suture. “And the trees are now turning from green to gold and the sun is now fading, I wish I could hold you closer.”

He was still staring at you when you met his gaze, having finished the song.

“Did it not work?” You asked, a little concerned. It felt like it had to you.

“I’ve never heard you really singing before, or…I have, but this is the first time I feel like I’ve actually heard it.” He finally looked away. “You have the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard.”

You checked his wound one last time. “That should hold you over until after this. Go. Watch their backs.”

He stopped you after getting up again, gently kissing you. “You should sing more. You look so happy when you sing.”

You shook your head. “No. It’s too dangerous.”

He sighed as he turned away from you.

“We’re gonna die,” Jimin said, running behind you. “We’re gonna die.”

“We’re not gonna die! And we’d be even less likely to die if you hadn’t stolen that bracelet from the archives!” You argued, skidding around a corner. “Now, I have to make hallways and argue with you while being chased by hellhounds!”

“Not-nice doggies!” Jimin yelled. “Bad doggies!”

“Very helpful!” You skidded around the next corner, losing your footing and scrambling to get back to your feet and down the new hall.

“How do we stop the not-nice doggies?!”

“Well, I have one idea, but it’ll effect you too.”

“Do it!”

“But—”

“I’d rather you do something to me than those things! What are you going to do?”

“Sing a lullaby, but it could put you in such a deep sleep that you might not wake up!”

“I’ll wake up. You’ll wake me up. Sing the lullaby!”

You were pacing, trying to think of another song. One that would wake him. But you had tried every song about awakening or coming out of sleep or dreams that you could think of and….

“It’s not your fault,” Jin said softly.

You jumped, not having realized he was there. “It actually is. It takes more power than the human body can handle to sing an artifact into dormancy and I should have….”

“He knew the risks. Frankly, sleeping to death sounds way better then getting torn apart by demonic dogs.” He came over and leaned against the table next to you. He had a sheaf of papers.

“What’s that?”

He looked at it sheepishly. “Well…we all wanted to come up with songs to help you help us. This was mine. I thought…maybe it might help?”

You took it as he offered it. “‘Awake’.”

He shrugged again, ears and face getting red. “I know it’s a long shot—”

“You’ll have to sing it first,” You said, looking through it. You didn’t necessarily need him to, but you wanted to. You took the sheet music over to the piano.

“Oh…I….”

“It is your song, after all.” You pointed out, studying it for a moment before resting your hands on the keys, anything to distract yourself. Maybe you were too focused on the issue.

So he sang, and you harmonized.

Jimin woke up.

“I don’t get it,” Jungkook said, staring up at the ceiling with you. “So, you can’t even sing a harmless song like…‘ring around the rosie’?”

“First of all, there is nothing harmless about that song considering it’s believed in some circles to be a song about black death, and since I’ve heard that theory…it’s not exactly something I would like to experiment with.”

“Yeah…maybe not. What about…the itzy-bitzy spider?”

“That’s cruel and unusual punishment, even for spiders.”

“Baa baa black sheep?”

You paused. “Surprisingly tame, but still not great for the sheep.”

“Mary had a little lamb?”

“I turned someone into a sheep by singing that song. Took me weeks to turn him back,” You muttered. “And then I had to erase both of their memories and it was a whole debacle.”

“Jack and Jill?”

“Really? You have to ask about that one?”

“Oh, right. Probably not a good idea.”

“Probably not.”

“Wait, will our kid have your powers?”

You grimaced. “There is a strong possibility?”

“Is the alphabet song safe?”

“Yep.”

“Thank God. Any others?”

“Why don’t we cross that bridge when we get to it?” You suggested.

“Because I think this might take longer than we have,” He laughed, rolling onto his stomach to look at you better.

“And you can’t think of anything else to talk about?”

He grinned. “And I can’t think of anything else to talk about.”

You laughed, closing your eyes.

But when you opened them….

There was a soft knock on the door.

“Y/n? We made dinner if you’re hungry?” Soobin called gently.

You took a moment to get your breath back. “Be out in a minute,” You called, wiping away the tears that had formed in your eyes. You couldn’t break on the first day. You just…couldn’t.

~~~~

Part 13.   Part 15.

Masterlist.  ~  Series Masterpost.  

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