#also. this is half very similar to thoughts i have about an (unrelated) oc i have so i dont want to put this on the main post but also. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

shadowsong26fic · 5 years ago

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The Family of Spies AU

AKA ‘Shadowsong should not have unsupervised access to multiple fandoms at once: Exhibit A.’

I kid. Mostly.

Anyway, it’s that time again--time for an AU Outline! It feels like forever since I’ve done one of these. …and by ‘forever’ I mean the last one was the SPN/Person of Interest crossover back in January.

This one is, uh, also a fairly niche crossover. It’s inspired and helped along by @tigerkat, who introduced me to one of the two fandoms and whose Star Wars OCs I’m borrowing to make it work. (Also, one or two bits in here are more or less lifted from our IM conversations on the subject

Basically, the short version is, I’ve been watching Nikita, and TigerKat and I have put together this whole extended family for Kallus and Zeb and one thing led to another, wires got crossed in my brain, and here we are.

Welcome to my Star Wars/Nikita fusion.

So, first, some relevant background:

In everything TigerKat and I developed, Alex and Zeb end up collecting/adopting four kids. (TigerKat, feel free to correct me on any details that are Off in any way!)

First kid they adopt is Mirah, shortly after the events of ANH.

Mirah is Human, and around three or four at this point; her parents were part of an extremely pacifist sect, of the kind where even defending yourself against someone trying to kill you is Not Okay. The sect was wiped out (probably not by the Empire, last I heard?) and Mirah was the only survivor; she watched her parents died right in front of her. Alex ended up there on an unrelated mission, and brought the little girl back to base.

Turns out, she’d gotten Attached and would not sleep without him close by.

(I mean. He’d gotten Attached as well but there is a Conversation to be had here, and he and Zeb haven’t actually had it yet, so…yeah.)

So, that’s how they get Kid #1.

Mirah later grows up to be essentially a mob boss/puts together a semi-legal syndicate. She doesn’t have a whole lot of faith in the law.

Second kid is Orryn, something like a year or two later, I think?

Orryn is a Donogh (species name subject to change; they’re basically like human-sized rabbit hobbits), and four or five years older than Mirah. His father and older brother were killed when he was born, and his mother eventually found her way to the Rebels after that. Donoghs tend to have very large families, so the fact that he’s an only child is a little Weird.

His mom is a friend of theirs, and when she dies, Alex and Zeb take Orryn in as well.

He is very Soft, both physically and metaphorically (like I said, rabbit hobbits), and like the sweetest kid you’ll ever meet.

(Mirah learns very quickly to weaponize her brother’s Sad Eyes. She’s very good at getting what she wants.)

The other three kids all end up taking Zeb’s last name; Orryn keeps his original one (his people are matriarchal and matrilineal).

He grows up to be a mechanic, and has a more typical family for his species with nine kids.

Third is Shamie, who’s roughly halfway between Mirah and Orryn; they get adopted a month or so before ESB.

I’ve written about them here; but the most important bits--

They’re Human, agender, and a former street thief/pickpocket. They help Zeb out when a mission goes sideways after his local contact fails to show up, and Zeb decides to keep them, because he really can’t leave them there for a long list of reasons. They’d been on their own for close to a year at that point, and were roughly eight or nine.

(The conversation where Zeb checks in with Alex about this is very entertaining, because he texts to confirm that a third kid is okay in the middle of a firefight. Alex is less than thrilled.)

Shamie and Mirah are basically platonic soulmates. There’s just a sort of click when the two of them meet.

They grow up to be a priest of a sun/fire deity.

Fourth is Hanula, better known as Hanny.

She’s a Lasat baby who they adopt a few months after Endor, after Zeb mentions to the elders on Lira San that he and Alex have been considering a fourth kid, maybe starting with an infant this time, and maybe someone of his own species this time…

Some time not too long after that, Hanula is placed in his arms and he’s told ‘good luck.’

She’s stabby, as in she likes to Stab Things as a baby (usually with, like, a fork), which later gets translated into cooking--she ends up as a Chef.

While she does turn up, of course, she’s not super relevant for this crossover, but she’s Delightful so I thought I’d share anyway XD

(There’s also Alex’s sister and her sons, plus, uh, the various grandchildren, but they’re also not super relevant to the crossover. I can share details about them if anyone’s curious, though.)

As a note, I’ve only seen like half a season of Nikita at this point; so while we’re starting from the same basic premise, I don’t really expect this to converge with actual future plot points like at all. So.

Also, as a result of that, this outline will probably also take on a certain resemblance to Alias and/or other similar Spy Dramas.

Anyway. So. Let’s get this show on the road.

Kallus takes on Nikita’s role in this--Death Faked For You; trained to be a super spysassin by a Shady Black Ops Group from his late teens/early twenties. Much like Nikita in her canon, he meets someone while on an extended cover assignment and falls in love.

Division is less than thrilled with this, and so arrange orders Zeb’s death.

(Obviously, this doesn’t take, because I am Not About That. But Kallus genuinely believes Zeb is dead, which is what pushes him to break free, much like Nikita’s reaction to Daniel’s murder.)

(Zeb also thinks Kallus is dead; he, of course, got picked up by the Ghost crew, but more about him later.)

Mirah will take on Alex’s role (which is why I started referring to Kallus that way, even though in my head and in this outline up to this point he’s mostly Alex XD).

Probably a blend of the two backgrounds--her parents/the sect she grew up in were taken out by Division; probably with the cover story that they were a Dangerous Cult, but the exact reason was more likely Profit or something. Since they mostly weren’t? At least not in the ‘need to be dismantled’ sort of way.

Kallus, like Nikita, was on hand and made sure that the little girl survived, but wouldn’t/couldn’t follow up since he was still a mostly-loyal Division agent at that point. He tracks her down after he breaks free, and they start working together.

She eventually talks him into the idea of her infiltrating Division, as that will better suit their plans to dismantle the organization.

(…really, most of this early part is not super different from Nikita and Alex. Mostly summarizing for anyone reading this who’s unfamiliar with the show.)

Shamie is an older/prior recruit; they’ve been here a few months. Their marksmanship is pretty much bottom of the barrel, so far as the current crop of recruits go, and their hacking skills could use some work, but they’re one of the best at hand-to-hand/other close-quarters combat, and they’re probably top third with explosives and other detail work. And they’re generally a pretty phlegmatic person. Not many of the other recruits keep cool under pressure as well as they do.

They’re probably fairly close to being evaluated and promoted to full Agent status when Mirah is brought in.

The two of them, as in their normal lives/timeline, immediately click. Mirah reports back to Kallus, confirming her infiltration was successful, and also mentioning Shamie.

“Remember what I told you about making friends,” Kallus warns her. “Losing them will be hard. And you can’t know how loyal this person is to Division. Be very careful.”

Mirah internally rolls her eyes, because she’s not dumb, she knows that.

A few more quick parallels, for the Higher Ups at Division:

Arindha Pryce stands in for Percy.

She just has the right blend of Genuine Competence buried under Not As Good As She Thinks She Is to match up with him.

Founding member and leader of Division.

Thrawn stands in for Amanda.

Like, okay. The two of them, for a variety of reasons, have vastly different management styles.

But in terms of his actual skillset and the role Amanda plays, at least on paper? Which is to say, supervising training/constructing covers/monitoring recruits and agents and their mental states?

(Plus, the whole…resident torturer/interrogator/etc. thing…)

Yeah, he could pull that off.

Pellaeon stands in for Michael.

Because I love him.

Also the Vastly Different Dynamic between the Head of Division, the Whatever Amanda’s Actual Job Title Is, and the 2iC/Head Field Operative with these three as opposed to Percy, Amanda, and Michael entertains me.

(Pellaeon is more loyal to Thrawn than Pryce, but only if it came down to an Actual Contest between the two of them would that ever be relevant. He’s extremely competent, but occasionally a little too involved with the recruits, in a fairly paternal sense. Especially since he’s probably a good twenty years older than Michael. But I digress.)

So, Mirah is successfully inserted. That goes pretty much the same as in Nikita canon, completely with Kallus making a splashy return to Division’s radars.

(Probably not at Zeb’s grave, though; if Zeb even has an actual grave.)

She starts interacting with other recruits, including Shamie. The two of them click pretty quickly, all things considered, but given the circumstances…yeah, they keep a certain level of distance, at least for now.

…well, at least on the surface, anyway. Mirah is even more determined to burn Division to the ground if they breathe harm in Shamie’s direction.

(For their part, Shamie may or may not start to notice a few anomalies, but they keep that knowledge to themself for now.)

For a few months, it’s pretty much the pattern the early S1 episodes have--Mirah will get details on an official Division op, pass them along to Kallus, he’ll be on hand to foil it. She gets activated briefly once or twice, but is mostly just working as a regular recruit for her cover.

Plus, you know, evading Thrawn’s suspicions; all that good stuff.

Pellaeon does take a liking to her--she reminds him of Kallus, who was one of the better recruits, and he keeps an eye out for her, much like Michael does for Alex in canon.

Shamie gets activated for their final evaluation/first kill mission about two or three months after Mirah gets recruited. They succeed, but some of the aftermath/followup confirms their previous suspicions about Mirah, and they’re left sort of struggling with what to do about it.

On the one hand, they’re a fairly loyal Division agent at this point, and what Mirah’s doing is probably going to get a lot of their fellow agents, maybe even some recruits, killed. And they know that probably some of what’s been reported as Kallus’s activities is exaggerated, or at least spun to make him look Evil and Division look better, but they know there’s a grain of truth to it.

On the other...they spent a few years, as a child, working for a thief-runner/gang. This was…not a good situation. Gotta keep the baby thieves in line. And they’ve seen other recruits get canceled before. As much as they don’t necessarily want to go against their superiors in Division (again, gotta keep the baby thieves in line; they know what the consequences of that would be), they also know that that loyalty does not go both ways. They are expendable. All of the recruits and agents are.

And they like Mirah. And if they don’t look out for each other…well, who will?

Besides. It’s not like they have any actual proof. Bringing this to Pellaeon, who likes Mirah, or Thrawn, who likes no one--let alone Pryce--seems like it’ll backfire.

So, they stay quiet about what they’ve guessed, and wait, and watch, and work.

Things change when Orryn is recruited.

Mirah and Shamie both take one look at this sweet, gentle boy and have the same thought--he won’t last. He’ll be cancelled within a month. Maybe sooner.

Pryce questions the choice of bringing him in, too; it was Thrawn’s idea. No, he’ll never make field agent, but the boy’s good with mechanics, and computers. If he can survive the training process, they can put him to use there.

Sort of considering him for Birkhoff’s role.

Shamie, even as a full agent, doesn’t have the access or the tools they need to spring Orryn, as much as they want to.

But Mirah--Mirah has Kallus, and a way to contact him.

“This isn’t about my friend. This is about a sweet kid, too sweet for Division, who will be killed or broken if we don’t do something,” she says. “And isn’t that part of what we’re doing here? Trying to make sure that doesn’t happen to anyone else?”

Kallus is torn. Because, on the one hand, she’s absolutely right--it’s why he was reluctant to send her in undercover (oh, yes, the thought had occurred to him) until she suggested it.

But on the other hand, getting a recruit out of Division without compromising Mirah’s emergency exfiltration strategy is going to be Hard. And as much as he wants to help this kid, he also wants to help/protect the one he has already.

He tells Mirah, eventually, that he can’t promise anything, but he’ll start working on a plan.

Mirah…

Remember what I said earlier, about Mirah tending to get what she wants?

Mirah gets to work on her end. The way she sees it, if she figures out a way to get Orryn outside somehow, whether it’s getting him temporarily activated like she was that one time, or some other excuse, then Kallus won’t have a problem rescuing him.

Of course, she’s just a recruit herself, and she can’t muck around with that without compromising her cover. She’s half-tempted to just shove Orryn out her escape tunnel, her own exit be damned, but Kallus specifically told her not to do that, so she holds back.

The opportunity comes when one of Mirah’s prior breaches is discovered, two or three weeks after Orryn’s brought in.

Possibly the shell program she and Kallus have been using to talk; possibly something else and she didn’t cover her tracks quite well enough (i.e., breaking into Pryce’s office). No one’s tied it to her, not yet, but things are Tense.

Kallus asks Mirah if she needs an extraction, and she again brings up Orryn. “I’m good,” she says. “But the sweet kid I was telling you about…”

“We talked about this,” he says. “And I am working on it, I promise.”

But before either of them can do anything, Orryn ends up at the wrong place at the wrong time, and one of the guards is convinced he’s the mole.

Thrawn points out that this doesn’t make much sense--the serious breaches started well before Orryn was brought in.

Pryce agrees, but insists on letting the situation run its course, to see if it can flush out the real mole.

And Mirah has a Thing about people she’s attached herself to getting hurt.

Mirah manages to somehow get Orryn out of wherever he’s being held. She sends a quick message to Kallus--“Sweet Kid coming out, they think he’s me”--and takes him to the exit tunnel.

They are pursued, of course. By the overzealous guard--and by Shamie.

Mirah gets Orryn into the tunnel and prepares to stand her ground.

Shamie catches up first.

And handles the situation Very Differently from the way Thom does in Nikita canon.

“I’m not turning you in,” they say. “You got Orryn out?”

“Yeah.”

They nod. “Good. Okay. They think he’s the mole, but they’re gonna realize someone helped him escape, unless--”

And then the guard catches up.

There is a Fight. The guard manages to shoot Shamie (not seriously; through-and-through in the upper arm), who tosses Mirah their gun, and she fires back, putting two in his chest.

“…we can work with this,” Mirah says, pressing her hands onto where Shamie’s bleeding. “If we…if we stage it so he pointed the finger at Orryn to cover his own crimes…”

“You have any evidence we can plant on him?” Shamie says. “M’good at that. Planting evidence.”

“Yeah,” she says. She has a key card, and a few other bits and pieces. Shamie, hands shaking slightly, positions them appropriately. “And Orryn…”

“Was also a plant,” Shamie decides. “Sent in when the guard’s cover got shaky, to extract him. But he managed to get away in the confusion. We underestimated him.”

Mirah thinks about this for a minute, then nods. “I think I can sell that,” she says, as more guards start heading their way.

“Good,” Shamie says. “…talk later.”

Mirah nods, and Shamie blacks out, leaving her to spin the lies they need to survive this.

A few hours later, Mirah touches base with Kallus to confirm Orryn got out safely, and to inform him he has another inside agent.

So, the situation has improved somewhat! Unfortunately, it’s also been damaged--since the shell program was found, Kallus and Mirah don’t have secure communications. That first message she got out, about Orryn and Shamie? Yeah, she can’t use that route again, or she’ll establish a pattern.

On the other hand, Shamie is a full agent, which means they have an apartment and the freedom to move around and set an in-person meet. Which Kallus wants anyway, to evaluate Mirah’s friend.

(And, if they check out, to spoof their tracker and give them freedom of movement. Always a plus.)

So, Shamie and Kallus use another one-off communicator to set an in-person meeting, so they can talk.

“You did help Mirah and Orryn,” Kallus acknowledges, after they’ve run through their prearranged confirmation signals. “That counts for something.”

“But you think it could just be me establishing a cover,” Shamie said.

“The thought occurred.”

Shamie doesn’t say anything right away. “I hear all kinds of things about you,” they finally say. “Some of it seems true. Some of it seems exaggerated. I know you’re Division’s enemy, but that…” They shrug. “I trust Mirah. And she trusts you. That’s good enough for me.”

“And Division?”

“I know how gangs work,” they say, flatly. “I used to work for one--they ran a bunch of kids, pickpocketing. Thing about gangs is, most of them do some good in their community--take care of external threats, or whatever. That’s how almost every gang started, anyway. Division may have more money and fancier gadgets and a bigger community, but they work the same way. And most gangs, even if they keep helping their communities sometimes…somewhere along the line, it turns out to be about profit and power more than anything else. But that’s not the issue. The issue is…you can tell, when a gang’s leadership, the loyalty they demand from their members…you can tell when they reciprocate.”

“And Thrawn and Pellaeon and Pryce don’t,” Kallus says.

“Pryce for sure,” they say. “Pellaeon does, but he’s more loyal to Thrawn than the rest of us. Thrawn…is harder to read.”

Kallus considers that for a moment. “You know, what we’re doing--it’s dangerous. I can’t protect you. I burned my one extraction route getting Orryn out.”

“All of my choices are dangerous,” Shamie says. “But like I said. I trust Mirah. She trusts you. I don’t trust Division.”

Another moment of silence. “Here’s our communication protocol,” Kallus finally says. Because Mirah trusts them. And I trust Mirah. If I don’t trust her--what am I even doing here.

Shamie also, as it turns out, has valuable information Mirah didn’t have access to. While not as successful as Kallus, there’s another group working to take Division down; getting involved and throwing off some of their ops.

“Should we reach out to them?” Mirah asks, when this filters back to her.

“No,” Kallus decides. “Most likely, they’re another mercenary group. Trying to be another Division, another Gogol, and take out the competition. There’s a slim chance that they’re actually on the level, but if they’re not…Best to stick to ourselves and avoid drawing in any outsiders.”

The kids agree, because he’s the expert, and drop the subject.

He does, however, ask Shamie to keep tabs on this other group as best they can without compromising their cover. Which should be easy enough.

(Of course, Shamie can only tell him as much as Division knows about them, which isn’t much. They’re a small group, probably a five- or six-person team, and they tend to ghost in and out of situations without leaving much evidence behind…)

The other new advantage they have is Orryn.

Remember why Thrawn wanted him recruited? He’s good with tech and gadgets?

Orryn gets a look at Kallus’s setup, particularly when he’s trying to figure out how to re-establish communications with Shamie and Mirah.

“I can fix that,” he offers.

Kallus blinks. “Plan was, establish an identity and get you out of the country, into hiding,” he says. “Which I will do, I’m working on it, but--”

“Division hurt me, too,” Orryn says. “And Mirah and Shamie are in trouble, and so are you. I want to help.”

Kallus eyes him. He knows, just as clearly as Mirah and Shamie did, that he cannot take this kid into combat. On the other hand…he would’ve been recruited for a reason. And Kallus is well-trained and skilled, but there might be something to said for raw talent and an expert touch.

“All right,” he finally says. “We’ll prep an exfil for you, just in case, but it’ll be some time for me to put it together anyway. We’ll see how things go.”

Orryn nods, and gets to work.

And so pass the next few months, with Mirah working her way up towards qualifying and passing the information she has access to, and Shamie and Orryn supporting Kallus in the field.

Eventually, Mirah goes on her qualifying evaluation, and passes with flying colors. She’s an interesting counterpart to Shamie--she’s a sharpshooter and just as deadly as they are in hand-to-hand, but she doesn’t work as well with the explosives and so on.

Meanwhile, Shamie is a very tactile person--if it’s a hands-on task, especially one that requires a lot of detail work (such as setting up a bomb), there are very few people who can match them. But they have issues with distance kills and with the computer stuff.

Mirah is set up in her apartment, not too close to Shamie, but enough that they can meet. They’re in the same city.

The two of them, on their own, are pretty terrifying assassins.

Shamie is fairly innocuous-looking; dark hair, dark eyes, skinny, blends into a crowd. They’re also the most chill/calm person in the known universe, so people tend to gravitate to them in a crisis. And they’re kind. Genuinely kind, in a way that invites people’s trust.

This is what makes them an excellent priest in another life. And in this one…Beware The Nice Ones is a trope for a reason.

Mirah, on the other hand, is much more overtly intimidating. Unless she’s making an active effort to pretend otherwise, she exudes Danger. She is ruthless and practical.

She is also extremely skilled, good at manipulating people, and very hard to convince to back down.

Now imagine the two of them working together.

Unstoppable and terrifying.

And Division (and Kallus) are both aware of this.

So, they actually end up partnering quite a lot.

The four of them are circling closer and closer to closing in on Pryce and taking her out permanently--Thrawn as well, and Pellaeon as a third priority, but Pryce is their top target--when things Change again.

Mirah and Shamie are put on a wetworks op that requires a team. Probably similar to that one prince dude and the museum.

They feed Kallus the intel, as always, and he comes up with a plan to foil it.

But there are a couple of issues.

He needs Orryn for this op, for one thing. And not just as background, on-site.

When he scouts around to do his own prepwork, there are some technobabble things he need handled, but they need to be within range. Twenty yards, twenty-five on the outside.

So, his first priority--well, maybe not first, but certainly Up There--is to plan out Orryn’s escape route if things go wrong.

The second issue is that Shamie thinks this might be another mission the Unknown Third Party may also crash. Since they still don’t have a lot of intel, that’s potentially another five or six people coming in.

And that’s if they’re correct in that it’s the mystery team, and not Gogol or someone already on the radar.

But the opportunity to interfere with Division and save a life or two is too good to pass up, despite these problems. Kallus plans his counter-mission, and they get to work.

Phase One of the mission goes fairly well. Shamie does confirm a third party is involved, but at first, their presence doesn’t cause too much difficulty for either Our Heroes or Division.

Shamie gets the assassination target pinned down somewhere Kallus and Orryn can extract them; Kallus gets the victim to the prepared escape route, and then returns to deal with the secondary objective; the one that required Orryn--some sort of hacking/virus/Planting Evidence type thing.

Well.

So my Art Skillz are far from up to par, but here’s a general overview of the layout of the scene where they do:

...so I can’t figure out how to make tumblr embed it without throwing off all the rest of my formatting so, click the link.

Where things go wrong is when Kallus gets a good look at the closest member of Team Unknown.

Who is very, startlingly, distractingly Familiar.

And he does the worst possible thing he can do in this situation.

He freezes.

Naturally, another member of the Division team sees the opportunity and takes it.

He gets hit three times in that second--chest, abdomen, upper thigh. Serious injuries.

Mirah immediately runs to him, laying down cover/suppression fire at her supposed Fellow Division Agents.

(…yeah, remember that whole bit about her parents dying in front of her? She’s. Uh. She’s come to view Kallus as a second father. This is Not Okay.)

Shamie follows, of course; she gets to Kallus.

They hesitate for half a second. “…get him out of here. I can handle this. Go.”

Mirah nods and drags Kallus back to the van--

--only to find that Orryn has been taken.

She can’t--she can only be in one place at a time. She’s good, but she’s not that good. And Kallus, her teacher, her unofficially-accidentally-adopted dad, is dying in front of her.

She gets into the driver’s seat and books it.

Shamie fires after her, but…well, marksmanship has never been their strong suit, so they fail to stop her.

This is basically Mirah’s worst nightmare made real.

Her dad is dying.

Her brother is missing.

Her other sibling is trapped and about to be probably tortured.

She is holding together by a thread and the only thing keeping her going is if she falls apart now, Kallus will die.

Okay. Time to do something about that. She can’t do much, but she can do even less about the other things, so. Time to do something.

She gets a tourniquet on his leg, pressure dressings on the other wounds, but she’s pretty sure his lung’s collapsed and she doesn’t know how much other internal damage there is. Her training in field medicine/dressings Will Not Cut It on this one.

Now, Kallus has a contingency--he always has contingencies, he loves contingencies--but Mirah doesn’t know his medical contingency and he’s too unconscious and bleeding-out to tell her.

She can’t take him into an emergency room, obviously, but there’s an urgent care center close by. And Orryn’s stuff is still in the van. Which means she can hack into their records find out who’s coming off shift--because there will be someone coming off shift--and stick a gun in their face.

Which is exactly what she does.

She drags the doctor into the van and points her at Kallus.

“Fix him,” she snaps, but she stops pointing the gun at her at this point--she needs her attention elsewhere to drive and fend off Division agents in pursuit, among other things, and surely this doctor will be overcome by that whole Need To Heal thing. Hippocratic oath. Whatever.

Doctor stares at him. “He needs a hospital, I can’t--” Even as she moves towards him.

(Because there’s that whole Need To Heal thing. Hippocratic oath. Whatever.)

Mirah starts the car. “I’m not gonna tell you again.” She tosses the doctor their first aid kit--which is pretty Extensive. Not on the level of the one at the safehouse, but still impressive. “Anything you need that’s not in there, I’ll get at a pharmacy. Now. Do your damn job or I swear to God.”

The doctor looks at Mirah one last time, then turns her attention to Kallus, and opens the kit.

“Good,” Mirah says.

(And then, while the doctor is stabilizing her dad, as soon as she can pull over for a second, she gets rid of her tracker. She has the standard one, in her thigh.)

(And probably kills a Division agent or two pursuing them along the way…)

When the doctor has finished patching Kallus up as best she can with the supplies on hand and what Mirah stole from a convenient pharmacy, she says, “He really should be in a hospital. He needs a transfusion, and should be on IV antibiotics. And I think there was damage to his femur I couldn’t fix without imaging.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Mirah says. Note to self: rob a blood bank. And a hospital. Saline won’t cut it. I wonder how hard X-ray machines are to steal…

“I’m guessing you know how to change the dressings, and how often to do it,” the doctor says.

“Obviously,” Mirah says. She grabs a handful of money, and shoves it at the doctor--she did her job, she should be paid for it; people should always be Appropriately Compensated for the things they do and in this case that means actual money--as well as the badge she’d pulled out of the doctor’s purse. “You can go. Oh, and, Doctor Sloane? This never happened. You never saw us.”

“Right,” she says.

“Because if you say anything,” Mirah says, “I will hunt you down and kill you. Clear?”

“…crystal,” she says, and takes the money and walks away.

Mirah takes a few more distracting turns (with a couple pit stops for those last few Necessary Supplies), a very roundabout route, and eventually makes it to the safehouse. She gets Kallus set up as comfortably as she can, under the circumstances, on one of the beds, manages to take thirty seconds to check for any messages from Shamie or Orryn, and then curls up in a corner and just…melts down.

Like I said Mirah’s Worst Nightmare.

Let’s check back in with Shamie, who is about to have an extremely rough several days.

Because they get to go spend some Quality Time with Thrawn in full interrogator mode.

And they get the works--torture, hallucinogens, manipulation, everything. To figure out how much they know about Mirah’s compromised loyalties, back to Orryn and everything.

When that comes up, they repeat their older story--that they spotted Mirah pursuing Orryn and the guard, and followed. They got there, there was shooting, and they were sure it was Orryn, or the guard, but maybe it was Mirah. They know she killed the guard, and Orryn was never good at combat skills, just tech…

After somewhere between three days and a week of this, Thrawn can’t get Shamie to admit anything incriminating, and leaves them in a cell to report back to Pryce.

“I would estimate there’s somewhere between a twenty and fifty percent chance that Mirah managed to turn them,” he says.

“So, we cancel them,” Pryce says.

“We could,” Thrawn says. “But that is not my recommendation.”

“Oh?”

“I recommend surveillance,” he says. “My prior sessions with Shamie indicate that they’ve had very little human connection or affection in their life. Even we, for all we provide them, have a tendency to view our recruits more as tools than as individuals. It is absolutely within their makeup to latch on to the first person to treat them and value them as an individual. Which may mean they joined Mirah and Alexsandr’s crusade--or may mean that affection blinded them to things they should have seen in Mirah. If the former, they will lie low for a while, but eventually grow complacent and reach out to their partners. If the latter, they will redouble their efforts to prove their loyalty. And their skillset is not one we can replicate at this time--there’s one recruit showing a certain promise, but they’re very new, at least a year away from graduation. Assuming that particular recruit actually lives up to their potential.”

“So,” Pellaeon cuts in, “letting Shamie live, either way, we gain something valuable.”

“Precisely,” Thrawn says.

Pryce considers for a moment. “Very well, I’ll bow to your expertise. Shamie can return to their prior status. Add more cameras to their apartment before sending them home. And I want to upgrade their tracker.”

“I agree,” Thrawn says. “This would be an excellent time to test out the kill chip program.”

So, Shamie is kept in medical for another day, to have the surgery for the new implant and patch up some of the more significant damage from their interrogation.

They use one of the Contingencies to send a quick message to Mirah and Kallus, confirming they’re alive, and that they have a new tracker and may not be able to keep in regular contact for a while.

So! Let’s see what became of Orryn in the meantime, shall we?

And to do that, we actually have to jump back five years, to the night that made Kallus leave Division and vow to bring them down.

Zeb was military, special ops. He met Kallus when the latter was living on extended cover, and Zeb was about to get out.

They met in some kind of dojo/gym/whatever, and had one of Those sparring matches.

(You know the ones I mean. Where it’s like 30% fight and 70% foreplay?)

They danced around the issue for a while; Zeb knew Kallus works for the government somehow, and is pretty sure he’s either CIA or NSA under some kind of NOC (non-official cover). Eventually, though, they get together.

They have about six months, with Kallus staving off Division as best he can, and Zeb going through the process of finishing out his military service/resigning his commission--as soon as he wraps up one last investigation--and then he proposes.

And, yeah, he thought about waiting until he was completely out, but then he figured--there’s only so much time in a life, and why waste it?

Kallus is getting everything together so the two of them can disappear, when the Cleaner comes.

I’m…not sure exactly how this all works, so we’ll handwave all this. Basically, each walks away thinking the other is dead, and can credibly believe this without a body.

I think probably Kallus saw Zeb go over a cliff or something after getting shot, and Zeb found a whole heck of a lot of blood when he climbed back up to where he’d fallen from, and figured it was Alex’s.

Ooooh, better idea--while he’s climbing back up to help Alex--he thinks this attack has to do with him. With that last investigation, which was actually into some kind of Hinky thing that was either Division or Gogol…

And now the building is on fire. And Alex was still in there.

He tries to run in, but the building is too unstable, and the entrance collapses in front of him. Burying Alex--or whatever’s left of him--completely.

Kanan finds Zeb kneeling in front of the rubble, and takes him home.

He and Hera patch Zeb up, and basically explain what they do--which is something to do with trying to uncover groups like Division; essentially terrorist/assassination/murder-for-hire organizations that operate under a thin veneer of government officiality.

“Modern-day privateers,” Hera says. “Only we’re not at war, and these people commit atrocities at least as awful as the ones they’re supposedly trying to avert.”

“We work in secret,” Kanan adds. “Because when we try to work out in the open…”

(Yeah, this is how Depa died in this AU. She started this operation, possibly with Cham Syndulla, and things went Badly.)

“We think you caught on to the operations of one of the groups we’re trying to identify,” Hera said. “We don’t have a name for them, but they’re US-based, with ties all over the world.”

“Most of…most of what I had on ‘em was in the house,” Zeb says.

“So, we start again,” Kanan says.

“But…at this point, Zeb, you’re legally dead,” Hera says. “We all are. You won’t have the access to intel that you used to.”

“I don’t care,” Zeb says. They killed my fiancé. What does it matter if they killed me, too? “I wanna bring them down.”

Kanan smiles, and offers him a hand. “Welcome to the Ghost Crew.”

So, for the next two years or so, the Ghost Crew, along with Zeb, does more or less the same thing Kallus has been doing--try to suss out Division operations and interfere with them as best they can.

Of course, they don’t have insider information.

They don’t even know the name of the organization they’re hunting.

Plus, Division isn’t their only target, even if it’s the one Zeb’s most interested in. They also interfere with Gogol when they catch on to their missions, and a few other organizations throughout the world.

So there’s only so much they can do, and while they are certainly a nuisance to Pryce et al, they don’t have the same level of impact that Kallus does when he comes out swinging.

Naturally, things shift a little when a mission goes slightly less than as planned.

It’s mostly under control--it was primarily surveillance at that point; Zeb was in a restaurant scoping out their target. Unfortunately, one of said target’s bodyguards ID’d him; maybe not specifically as Ghost Crew but certainly as a Threat to their principal.

That’s about when the shooting started.

Zeb can’t get to the front door; the bodyguards now actively trying to both kill him and extract their principal are in his way; so he heads for the kitchen instead.

Yeah, he could try to pursue and complete his objective, except it was a capture mission, not a kill, and he can’t get through that many guards and get out with the target. Not by himself.

He yells at the staff to get down and stay down, and most of them listen. There’s a couple of cooks, a waiter who was grabbing a couple plates to run out, and a kid washing dishes.

Of course, Zeb loses his footing somewhere along the line and skids. He recovers fast, but the closest guy chasing him did not have that problem and is too damn close for--

--or Bad Guy could get smacked in the face with a soapy cast-iron skillet, courtesy of Dish Washing Kid.

Split second to consider the consequences, but there are two other shooters in pursuit; so Zeb does the sensible thing and grabs the kid so she doesn’t get hurt, and finally makes it to the exit. Steals the first convenient car he sees, and books it.

Once he’s pretty sure they’ve lost pursuit, he turns to the kid, who’s--shit, he’s not good at guessing kids’ ages. Maybe twelve? Shit--anyway, an actual kid, which complicates things.

“Uh. Sorry about back there,” he says. “Listen, I’ll take you back to your parents in a couple hours, after the heat’s died down, I promise.” Pretty sure the bad guys aren’t gonna hunt you down if they couldn’t grab you right then and there…

“Foster parents,” she corrects. “They’re okay, I guess, but it’s not like they actually pay attention to me. They own the restaurant.”

“I should still get you back to them,” he says. “Better for you in the long run, kid.”

“Hanny,” she says. “My name’s Hanny.” She looks at him expectantly, but he doesn’t respond in kind.

“Right,” he says instead. “In the meantime, uh…” He pulls off--they need to switch cars anyway--and takes a second to text Hera.

“So I accidentally kidnapped someone.”

“…accidentally.”

“Yeah, there was shooting, had to run through the kitchen, she hit a guy with a frying pan, couldn’t leave her there.”

“Right,” she responds, after a few seconds where he can practically hear her rolling her eyes. “How much of a fuss is she making?”

“Uh. None at all, actually.”

“All right. Bring her here, we’ll figure out how to handle this later.”

“Thanks, I owe you another one.”

He gets Hanny back to the safehouse he and the Ghost Crew are currently using.

Hera glowers at him for a minute, then makes sure Hanny is settled in an inner room before going out to have A Word.

“Zeb? That’s a child. An actual child.”

“Yeah, I know,” Zeb says. “Still couldn’t exactly leave her there. I’ll take her back to her parents…well, foster parents…”

“Our rule is, we don’t hurt kids!” Hera says.

“Does she look hurt?” Zeb says. “Look, this wasn’t my fault. I went through the kitchen, she got involved all on her own. Not like I told her to bash the guy over the head with a skillet!”

“I know,” Hera says, and takes a breath. “I know, sorry. I shouldn’t’ve snapped at you. But you need to take her back sooner than later. Tonight, if you can.”

Zeb nods. “Uh. Soon as I get her to actually tell me who her parents are. She said they own the restaurant, but…”

“Yeah, you probably don’t want to go back there.” She considers a minute. “I’ll see what I can dig up, get you an address.”

“Good,” he says.

“Why can’t I stay here?” Hanny asks, from the door.

“…because you’ve got parents--”

“Foster parents.”

“Who are probably worried about you,” he finishes.

Hanny snorts. “No, they’re not. They’ve got six of us, and mostly use the money they get from the state to keep their shitty restaurant afloat. They won’t miss me.”

“That’s a shitty situation, I get it,” Zeb says. “It’s still better than staying here.”

“Why?” she demands.

“Because I’m legally dead, for one thing,” he says.

“But you’re not actually dead,” she points out.

“I also do a lot of really dangerous things,” he says. “What you saw in that kitchen back there? Ordinary Tuesday for me.” Which is, yeah, a bit of an exaggeration, but…

She rolls her eyes. “Not like I’m asking to come into another shootout with you. Just stay with you instead of the Smiths.”

“Why do you want to stay with him?” Hera cuts in. “And ‘because he’s not the Smiths’ isn’t a good enough answer.”

Hanny chews that over for a minute. “I like him,” she says. “He actually gives a damn about something other than his stupid restaurant, or self-image, or whatever. And he apologized for kidnapping me, which is sort of weird, but nice, I guess? I don’t know, I just do.”

“…that whole bit about doing dangerous things,” Zeb says. “I can’t really look after you.”

She rolls her eyes again. “I’ve been looking after myself for ages anyway. Besides. I’m seventeen.”

He and Hera stare at her.

“…would you believe fifteen?”

Zeb’s less sure about that one, but the look on Hera’s face is answer enough.

“Okay, thirteen, but still. Plus, I cook. I’m really good at it, too. Especially when I have access to decent knives. I’m guessing that’s not a problem here?”

Well, okay, it’s not like they have a lot of kitchen knives floating around, but he could--

…shit.

Zeb turns to Hera. “…sorta running out of counter-arguments here…”

Hera looks from him, to Hanny, and back again. “…fine. I’ll babysit when you’re out in the field.”

Jumping back to the present!

So, Zeb doesn’t actually spot Kallus at this point.

Or, rather, he sees that another party is involved, and does out of the corner of his eye spot the guy going down and then Division agents running at him, but not enough to actually identify him.

He alerts his team to the presence of the Third Party--who they’ve been aware of, since Kallus and his team went active a few months ago.

(It was Sabine’s idea to nickname the team Fulcrum. Since they seem to be a pressure point that really gets to the Shadow Agency they’re chasing, and might be enough pressure to move the lever and make actual progress…)

(Look, it made sense in her head at the time, whether or not the others bought the reasoning, and it stuck.)

Of course, they’re not sure if Team Fulcrum is actually on their side, or just looking to cause Generalized Chaos. Or take Shadow Agency down to take its place. After all, they seem to have an almost personal vendetta against the Shadow Agency and some of the tactics they’ve used…

Ezra and Kanan slip around to the Fulcrum van, and find Orryn inside. They see this sweet kid, assume he’s a hostage, and extract him. There’s no way their team will get through the firefight between Division, Mirah, and the reinforcements intact, so Kanan calls Zeb back, they get Orryn into their vehicle, and they go.

They get Orryn back to their base, and he makes it Very Clear that he was not, in fact, a hostage.

“The people that had you in that van--”

“Were not Division,” he says. “They’re the ones who rescued me from Division, after I was recruited.”

“…I’m sorry,” Hera says. “We made a mistake. Division--they’re the government agents who were attacking that building back there?”

Orryn blinks. “…you didn’t know that?”

“We’ve never had a name for them,” Kanan says. “Maybe we should start from the beginning. I’m Kanan, this is Ezra, Hera, Zeb, Sabine.”

“Orryn,” he says. “…you’re trying to bring Division down, too?”

“Damn right we are,” Zeb says.

“…okay,” he says, and fills them in on what he knows.

Which is, comparatively, not all that much. He didn’t see too much of the internal structure--he wasn’t there for long enough--but they have names and so on to attach to them.

He tells them how Division recruits people in their late teens/early twenties, and trains them as assassins. He tells them how Mirah went in as a double agent, and she and Shamie and Kallus broke him out. He tells them how they tried to get him into hiding, but he offered to stay and help with their tech, which is what led them here.

(He doesn’t, of course, know Kallus’s real/full name--not something shared readily; and even if it was, that might not be the full name Zeb knew him under, so Zeb remains in the dark.)

(Part of why Orryn’s being so open about this is because he’s gotten a pretty good idea of the kind of team Hera and Kanan are running here; he also…it’s something to focus on other than the Very Strong Probability that Kallus is dead, likely Mirah with him, and Shamie, and…)

(On the other hand, if his new family is somehow still alive, they could use all the help they can get. And maybe Kallus would’ve been more cautious, and Mirah would’ve been more suspicious, and Shamie would’ve held back a little more, but Orryn knows how hard this fight will be, and how much they need genuine allies. And so he makes the first move/takes a leap of faith.)

So, to sum up the last few sections before we move on, here’s where we stand after the FUBAR mission where Kallus finds out Zeb is still alive:

Kallus has been badly hurt--near-fatally--and is more or less out of commission for the foreseeable future; not to mention whatever long-term/permanent damage he might have sustained.

Mirah’s cover is blown, and while she pulled herself together after her meltdown once Kallus was safe, she’s still teetering a little on the edge, especially as more and more time goes by without hearing from either of her siblings.

Shamie is fighting desperately to maintain their cover, still deep in Division, but now with little to no support.

Orryn is with Zeb and the Ghost Crew, with no idea if any of his family is still alive, and missing a few Key Pieces of Information that might help smooth things over.

(Yeah, this day went Super Well for everyone.)

After a couple days, though, a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel--Kallus wakes up.

Okay, technically, he’s sort of half-woken up a couple times, but this is the first time he’s been lucid enough to actually process being awake and/or interact with Mirah.

She sees him trying to sit up and is instantly there.

“Stay down, you’re hurt.”

He sinks back without too much argument, and she takes a second to make sure he’s really awake, really back with her, and then, as people with her particular personality and background are likely to do, covers up her fear with “How dare you.”

“Mirah…”

“You got yourself shot! You froze!”

“I know, I--”

And then the look on her face, she’s clearly just barely holding back from bursting into tears (which, she’s done enough of that over the past three days damn it) and he just…wordlessly holds out his arms, offering a hug.

Very, very carefully, she curls up next to him and clings, and she does burst into tears at that point, and stays there until she’s cried herself out.

“…sorry,” she says, when she gets her breath back.

“It’s fine,” he assures her. “And…so am I. For scaring you.”

She nods. “I know it wasn’t on purpose.”

He laughs a little, which is a mistake, because that hurts, but manages to get out, “when I get shot on purpose, it’s generally not this…bad.”

“I know,” she says, then hesitates before blurting out, “Iloveyou.”

He’s taken a little bit by surprise--he was her handler as much as her friend, and that’s not exactly conducive to…but he can’t deny that he’s come to think of her as a favorite niece, or maybe even a daughter, and…

Between being caught off guard, and the pain, and the bloodloss, and the drugs she’s probably got him on, he can’t find the words to respond.

So, of course, she tries to backtrack.

He cuts her off, “love you, too, Mirochka.”

(LOOK fandom has decided he’s a Space Russian ANYWAY so for this AU either one or both of his parents was a first-generation Russian immigrant so FAKE RUSSIAN DIMINUTIVES FOR EVERYONE. Also it makes me smile. So there.)

She brightens and clings again. Very, very carefully.

But he can already feel the room start to spin and blur at the edges. “Probably gonna pass out again. Don’t be afraid.”

“Okay,” she says. “Just don’t die.”

“Of course not,” he says, already fading. “Still have work to do.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not allowed to die when we’re done, either.”

“Right,” he manages to say, before he’s out again.

The next time he’s fully conscious and lucid is just after Shamie finally managed to send word they’re alive.

Which is, naturally, his first thought. To ask about Shamie and Orryn.

Mirah tells him--Shamie’s at least alive and free enough to make contact, but Orryn is still missing.

Kallus, at this point, is half-convinced he hallucinated Zeb--it would make more sense, obviously; Zeb is dead, he knows that, he saw him die, and yet…

On the other hand, he finds himself desperately hoping it wasn’t a hallucination, for more than just his personal needs. If Zeb has Orryn, then he knows Orryn is safe.

“I tried to get him,” Mirah says.

“I know,” he says. “It wasn’t your fault. None of this was.” It was mine.

“What happened?” she asks, and the question had to come sometime, but he’s not sure he can explain. Not sure he should, as on-edge as she is already.

But she’s asking, so he does the best he can.

“I thought I saw…someone,” he says.

“…interesting pause there…”

“A ghost.”

“…cryptic. Are you gonna keep doing that, or…?”

He looks away. He can’t bring himself to say his name. “It couldn’t have been…I know it couldn’t have been, but I saw him, I was sure, and for a moment, I…I lost control. Again.”

I let you all down.

“…again?”

He struggles for a moment, then says, “I told you, before you went into Division…I told you why I left, didn’t I?”

It takes her a minute to get it. “…oh.”

“I only…I only saw him for a moment, and I may have been seeing things.” He takes a shallow, shaky breath, and blinks rapidly for a moment. “But if it was real, and Orryn’s with him, then he’s safe. I am certain of that.”

Mirah nods. “Then I’ll go find out.”

“Be careful,” Kallus cautions. “Division will be out in force, looking for you. And Shamie can’t--they have to keep their head down. Even if they’ve managed to satisfy Thrawn for now--” He starts to get up, because he needs to hit the ground running on this one, pain and shakiness be damned--

“Don’t you dare,” Mirah snaps, pushing him back. “I’ll be careful. Trust me. Papa.”

“I do,” he says; his head is spinning again and he’s gone chalk-white. “Just…don’t get overconfident.”

“I won’t,” she promises. “Go back to sleep. I’ll text every hour.”

“Please,” he says.

“I will,” she promises, and by the time she’s out the door he’s unconscious again.

Of course, by the time she gets back, he’s somehow managed to muster the strength to get himself over to the computer.

“What did I say?” she says, annoyed.

“I did sleep, for a while,” he says. A little breathless, but he’s still conscious, and it doesn’t look like he’s torn any of his stitches, which is probably a goddamn miracle.

(Of course, they are long overdue a miracle or two.)

“I found footage of the incident,” he says. “Target had security cameras all over. I wanted to see if…see if I could track Orryn that way.”

“And?”

He shakes his head. “But I can be sure Division didn’t take him. I accounted for all of them.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes,” he says, then hesitates. “Nothing more from Shamie, which…I don’t know. You find anything?”

“Maybe,” she says, and hands him a blurry photo, of Orryn--with Zeb.

The world spins around him again, just like it did back in that firefight, because there’s no mistaking it this time.

Mirah mistakes his reaction for him being about to pass out again; he vaguely hears her mention going to kidnap Dr. Sloane again; he cuts her off.

“No, it’s…it’s him.”

“Oh!” She considers for a moment. “Good. I’ll go get him.”

He nods; he can feel his heart beating erratically and knows he should probably do something about that--relaxation exercise, get horizontal, something--but first thing’s first. “Tell…no.” He can’t think of a good verbal code, but he has something even better.

Using the chair to hold himself up and keeping as much weight off his injured leg as possible, he starts over to the wall.

“Let me--” Mirah starts.

“Wall safe,” he says. “Keep forgetting to program your fingerprints.”

She makes a face. “And you’ll go to bed as soon as you get whatever it is?”

“Yes, fine,” he says. He makes it to the safe, and opens it, pulling out a fist-sized stone and handing it to her. “Show…show him this. He’ll know you’ve seen me.”

“I will. Now, bed.”

“Right,” he says. But his head is spinning and it seems so very far away right now. I possibly overdid it. “I’m just going to…sit here for a moment first. Catch my breath.”

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll be back soon.”

“I know.”

There is, of course, a slight problem with sending the meteorite instead of some kind of verbal message. One that, if Kallus had been firing on all cylinders, so to speak, he would’ve figured out.

A verbal message can’t be pulled off a dead body, after all.

…yeah, Zeb pulls a gun on Mirah when she shows up.

She restrains herself from responding the way all her training has told her to respond to a gun in her face, because she knows how important Zeb is to Kallus. “Rude,” she says instead.

Zeb snarls at her. “Where the hell did you get that.”

“From Papa,” Mirah says, like it should be obvious. “Are you going to let me in?”

Papa? Zeb had never imagined the monsters that killed Alexsandr--who did the kind of things Orryn described--would have children. “…no,” he says. “You’re going to take me to Papa.”

It’s the best, most solid lead he’s had in forever, more concrete than Orryn in terms of tracing back to the specific people who killed his fiancé, he finally has an actual agent, a string to pull to unravel Division and end them.

“Well, yeah,” Mirah says, because that is the plan. But not right now.”

Zeb glares at her. “No. Now.”

Mirah sighs. “ORRYN!”

Orryn, who heard the commotion and was already on his way, joins Zeb at the door. “She’s okay, Zeb. Really. This is Mirah, I told you about her?”

Zeb is…not at all sure what to make of all this. But he lets her in while he tries to figure it out.

(Keeping her covered with the gun, of course. As much as he can when the first thing she does is wrap Orryn in a flying tackle hug.)

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Orryn says, clinging back so hard. “I was worried.”

“You were worried!” Mirah says. “You know what you’re supposed to do in a firefight! Keep your head down, and wait for Papa to come get you!”

“I know,” Orryn says. “But I saw him go down, and then…” I got grabbed, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do.

Mirah nods. “I already yelled at him about that.”

Which is not what Orryn would’ve done, but he knows his sister, so he’s not surprised. “And…and Shamie, are they with you? Are they okay?”

“They’re alive,” Mirah says. “They got in touch. But they’re still undercover. We’re working on it.”

“Touching as this reunion is,” Zeb interrupts, “you need to tell me where the hell you got that rock.”

“I already told you.”

“Not enough.”

“Well, then ask,” Mirah says. “I don’t know what you know.”

“Who the hell is Papa, and how the hell did he get that meteorite?” Zeb asks.

“No idea where he got it,” she says, which is true. “He just told me to give it to you.”

Zeb stares at her, for a long moment. “What the hell kind of sick joke--”

“What?” Mirah says. “Explain, because I have no idea what the hell you mean.”

“He’s taunting me,” Zeb says, flatly. “Whoever he is.” ...on the other hand, that means I’m close…or they know I have Orryn. He frowns, then shakes his head. “But to use this to lure me out…”

Now it’s her turn to stare. “Lure you? You’re the one who demanded I take you places!”

“Because you turn up, out of the blue, on my damn doorstep, holding that!”

“Because Papa told me to!” she says. “What’s so important about it, anyway?!”

“It’s something I gave to--” He stops. “Your people, Division, they took it off him after they killed him. I’ve spent the last five years trying to track down the bastards who did it.”

And SUDDENLY EVERYTHING IS CLEAR.

“You didn’t see him,” Mirah realizes.

“…what.”

“Okay,” she says. “We can go see Papa now. But leave your gun behind, he’s been shot enough this week.”

“No, seriously, what the hell,” Zeb says. “Saw who?”

“Papa,” she says. Obviously.

“You still haven’t told me who that is!”

“Because I love him, but he’s sometimes a secretive jerk and I don’t know his full name and that’s embarrassing, okay?”

Zeb just stares at her for a moment.

Mirah sighs, exasperated. “Orryn, do you know Papa’s full name? I don’t have any pictures, and I don’t want to wake him up by calling.”

Orryn shakes his head. “Never had that much access to Division’s computers, and you know he doesn’t talk about that stuff. …Shamie might know, but…”

“I’ll text,” she decides. “They won’t get it until it’s safe.”

“Like hell I’m waiting for that,” Zeb says. “Take me to him. Now.” “First, leave the gun behind,” Mirah says, and there is No Room For Argument in her face or her tone.

Zeb considers this for a moment.

He’s dealing with one guy who’s apparently been shot all to hell, and one baby agent…he’s got the raw physical strength to overpower her if it comes to that. Besides, she didn’t say anything about other weapons.

“Fine,” he says, and ostentatiously puts both the gun he already had out and the backup from his boot on the table.

“Thank you,” she says. “Orryn, you coming?”

Orryn hesitates for a second. “…someone should probably stay with Hanny.”

“Who’s Hanny?”

“My kid,” Zeb says. “…kinda. Long story. Can we go?”

“Sure,” Mirah says. “Hanny can come, too.”

“Hell no,” Zeb says. “I don’t bring her into potential danger if I can avoid it.”

“If you say so,” Mirah says. “Just a suggestion.”

So, Orryn and Hanny stay back at Zeb’s place. Mirah texts Kallus to let him know they’re coming.

He. Uh. Wakes up on the floor by the wall safe when his phone buzzes. Never quite made it back to bed…oops.

Part of him thinks he should probably correct that, but on the other hand, standing up sounds like Work right now. He’ll just…wait here. Gather his strength.

Oh, right, I should text back. “Fine, see you soon.”

As they approach, Mirah once again warns Zeb that Kallus has been shot, so he is not allowed to get him worked up or let him out of bed.

“Yeah, you mentioned.”

“It bears repeating,” she says. “And he is not allowed to die.”

“Copy that,” Zeb says, though he makes no promises. Whoever Papa is, he had Alexsandr’s meteorite, which means he Knows Something about the people who killed him.

She opens the door to the safehouse. “PAPA YOU HAD BETTER BE IN BED.”

…well, at least he hasn’t moved from where she left him last?

Mirah gives him her best Aggrieved and Disappointed Face.

“…I think I fell asleep here,” he says, wearily.

And then Zeb has a Moment.

Because he couldn’t quite see Mirah’s papa from this angle.

But he knows that voice.

“Did I or did I not tell you to go back to bed,” Mirah says, but she knows it’s gonna be a lost cause for at least a few minutes. “…I’ll lecture you later.”

“Alex?” Zeb says. Whispers. It takes him a few seconds to actually get the name out and it comes out strangled and disbelieving.

And even though he already knew Zeb was alive, he’d seen him in person and then the picture, something about it…he’s here now, it’s real--

Fortunately, before Alex can try to get up, Zeb is right there.

“You were…you were dead, I thought--”

For his part, Kallus cannot form words right now. He just reaches up, hand shaking, to touch Zeb’s face.

(Mirah, in the background, discreetly texts her siblings with an update.)

(Orryn, upon reading the text, asks Hanny if she’s ever seen The Parent Trap.)

(“Because I think your spy dad and my spy dad used to be together. Wanna go join them?”)

(Hanny doesn’t need to be asked twice.)

Zeb, at that point, just scoops Kallus up and, very gently, puts him back in the bed.

“Oh, good,” Mirah says. “Now we need to keep him there.”

“No arguments here,” Zeb says.

And this had better not be a dream, he adds, in the privacy of his own mind.

Of course, there’s a lot more catching up to do from there, and a creepy organization of spysassins to take down, but I think we got enough here for one outline, lol. XD Future developments, of course, involve Team Fulcrum (who keep the nickname because Why Not) teaming up with the Ghost Crew to actually take down Division and shoot Pryce in the face; getting Shamie’s kill switch removed; and then…whatever adventures the Family of Spies might have in the future. Maybe head down to Miami, run into another team of former spies. Or up to Boston, run across a team of thieves…

The point is, they’ve found each other again. The rest…well, the rest is just Details.

#shadowsong writes star wars #shadowsong writes crossovers #shadowsong writes self-indulgent bs #au outlines for the win #tigerkat24

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ask-shakespearehigh · 6 years ago

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Q&A post with the Mods!!!!

This is going to be a long one oh boy

How strict is the delineation of creative control vis-a-vis characters/plays between the mods? (@pedanticlecturer)

We generally have the plays split up along lines of “what we know”— we have a list at the very beginning of the blog. Sometimes we’ll draw the others’ characters (mostly me drawing some of Star’s…) but even then the final say on characterization is up to the “main” mod for that play — mod aster

what aster said -- mod star

What is your favorite play? What is your favorite character in terms of how they were written in the source material? (@pedanticlecturer)

I think my favorite play overall is Macbeth, just because I like the vibes (and the fact that I too could kill Macbeth), the fact that you don’t say it’s name in theatres, and the fact that it’s a play I did a full read through and analysis of in class. Favorite character? Puck from Midsummer. — mod aster

uhhhh,, hmm. ive always had a soft spot for midsummer since i saw it with aster esp bc of how fun the costumes were. of the comedies it has the largest potential to be the most visually pleasing bc of the concept of fairies,,,and im gay and dramatic so i love that. id die if i got to costume design for midsummer,,,or be in it,,,yeah. fav character. hmm. probably mercutio?? i recently saw a version of romeo and juliet where mercutio was played by a woman and oh my god it was amazing!!! not to mention mercutio’s portrayal in baz luhrmann's INCREDIBLE version of r n j!!! (I based my mercutio design on him) he just spends the entire time making dick jokes. love that. -- mod star

How do you answer asks so fast? I mean it's great but I'm impressed 😂 (Anon)

Personally, it’s a mix of: notifications on, quick drawing speed, and using the blog to avoid my class work — mod aster

aster is fast and (as you can see from all of my answers) im lazey -- mod star

Are there any elements/characters of the plays you're covering that you would have liked to work into this blog's plot, but couldn't due to the constraints of the setting or the synthetic nature of the blog? (@pedanticlecturer)

I wanted to make everyone gay but unfortunately due to plot constraints we have to have some hets but that wont stop me from making it lgbt as possible. -- mod star

I did want to make The Tempest more of a central play, but it just didn’t translate well. Similarly, other supernatural elements like the witches in Macbeth. This isn’t so much a constraint mentioned, but my own time/energy means that I want to show the Macbeth backstory, in a specific format, but I can’t right now— mod aster

Is there a hierarchy of import when it comes to each play's individualized impact on shakespeare high's general arc? If so, what plays are crucial to the foundation of the story? Which ones did you do mostly for shits and giggles? (@pedanticlecturer)

This is phrased like an ACT question and i might not answer it right so sorry in advance but: mod aster and i only selected a few plays for each of us to do given we dont know all of shakespeare’s works, but we tend to put more emphasis on the the more well known. But it also comes down to 1. How much we have plotted out for each play and 2. What the followers ask about most. Our two most popular are hamlet and macbeth bc people are familiar w those but around march caesar always becomes relevant again. I didnt even have designs for some of the characters until someone asked about them. -- mod star

I would say the same as star— it generally comes down to what people ask about. I will say that the overall plot is sort of separated into “has happened” and “is happening”. Like, the human potion of Midsummer, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth are all in the “aftermath” portion, while Twelfth Night, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet, among others, are happening. We’re trying to incorporate as much as we can, and I don’t think any of them were really put in without some thought.— mod aster

What personal significance does shakespeare hold in ur guys' lives? (@pedanticlecturer)

I go to a theater school rn and so ive dealt w shakespeare (although not all of them) it also helps that i was in loves labours lost last year as moth and that i read hamlet and r n j. Theres also a theater in my state that always does One Big Shakespeare per season and they always do them super well!!! My love for shakespeare probably started w seeing midsummer at that theater w mod aster!!! So. Theater kid rights!! -- mod star

To be honest, I got back into Shakespeare Because of the blog. I’ve been friends with some people that got really Pretentious about Shakespeare, and it kinda put me off of it. I did have a book of abridged plays (the plays’ plots written out in prose, basically) that I read as a kid, which is what got me into not only the plots of a lot of the plays, but also the idea of having them illustrated. And, same as star, the theater in state does the One Big Shakespeare— and they tend to do some really cool things with the costumes, setting them in diff time periods. I haven’t been able to see any lately since I’ve moved, but they still slap. — mod aster

🥰😘💙🥰🥰💜💟🥰I ��💗💚😍😍LOVE🖤🖤 YALL ♥️♥️🧡💛💚💝❣️💕💘💖💗💓💞💝❤️💛💜 okay now i have a question i swear— how long have the two of you been doing art??? and what were your first shakespeare plays??? (@hellaghosts)

Uhh i started drawing when i was like idk 12 and i have the giant boxes of sketchbooks to prove it!!! I moved to digital art at abt 14-15 but mostly stayed traditional until this yr when i got a Neat New Tablet so some of my sketchbooks are sitting abandoned rip. My first shakespeare was either romeo and juliet or midsummer nights dream and i love both of them v much!!! I have a very old piece of art that i did for r n j for my freshman class assignment on it and it hasnt aged well alsdjfjafd circa 2016 i think??? -- mod star

Oh man. I started drawing when I was about 10, but it was Bad. I don’t think I got much into drawing again until I was about 14? Sometime around the end of middle school/beginning of high school. I would say I started getting into drawing as more than doodling/coloring edits sometime around 2015-16? I would draw on my iPad with my finger, then I got a tablet for my computer, and now I pretty much stick to my iPad with an Apple Pencil. My first Shakespeare play was….. uh…… probably Midsummer???? I have No idea. We would go to plays when I was little, so I honestly don’t remember if I saw others before. It may have been Romeo and Juliet— I had that book where it was the original and the “modernized” with the little dog that explained things— which, if you know it makes sense, but if you don’t is probably a bonkers answer. — mod aster

Do you think this blog has like? An overarching thesis (be it b/c intentionally or simply b/c ur own take on the world has bled thru to the point where u believe it’s central to the piece at this point)? (@pedanticlecturer)

Not gonna lie, I had to read that like three times AND dm you to figure out what you were asking from us and all I have is “be gay, respect women, write your own happy endings”. — mod aster

This blog started with an ides of march shitpost and you think we have enough brain energy to write a whole thesis? I projected feelings of found family onto my half of the blog but idk if that counts. Be gay do crime 420 69 -- mod star

What’s the nature/rough dynamic of ur relationship? How do y’all know each other? (@pedanticlecturer)

Met mod aster when i was like 4 and even tho we didnt live close we became like, best friends although the Best part didnt start until we were like 13-ish and eventually we talked like non stop (about anime and homestuck. Yknow. 13 year old kid things) and we didnt see each other a lot bc of Distance and now its even worse bc aster is in colleg.,e but we consider each other siblings regardless of family bc we’re adopted into our own respective families so that bled over into our friendship and it would feel weird calling him anything other than my brother now. We’ve seen each other at our best and worst and if you really want a good insight on what we’re like as siblings watch griffin and justin mcelroy’s overview video of catlateral damage wherein i am griffin and he is the long suffering justin. -- mod star

Star is basically my long distance sibling and functionally the only cousin I recognize bc like their parents are basically an aunt and uncle and like our dads look enough alike that we’ve both accidentally gotten the wrong dad for a hug or similar so like. Anyways yeah Star is the Griffin to my Justin, complete with our absent middle brother who we love dearly— mod aster

Dubiously relevant q but what kind of music do y’all listen to when u do art (if that is indeed a habit either of u partake in) (@pedanticlecturer)

It can depend on the piece? I was working on some (unrelated) oc prints that were song-focused, and for those I just listened to said song on loop. Sometimes I have playlists. Sometimes I’ll just be in a Mood and throw a song on loop. But a lot of time for the blog, I’ll listen to The Adventure Zone for the billionth time, because I have Too Much Attention. I’ve also, on request from Star, linked the most recent “loop song”.— mod aster

I tend to obsess over the same like 3 songs every few weeks so those get listened to on repeat but it also depends on the tone of what im drawing or who im drawing i might genre switch bc of that. If im drawing ophelia i stick to lana del rey and if im drawing hamlet its the neighborhood, horatio is sufjan stevens etc. i have categorized,. Most of the characters i draw into different songs/genres/energies of music but not like i ever follow that. Sometimes i just pull up a really long nonsense video and forget to draw. Essentially: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ -- mod star

How’d y’all come up with ur pseudonyms? (@pedanticlecturer)

I love space so much and my main blog is starryeydsailor space gay rights!! Im also tiny and full of energy and bright so basically i;m star -- mod star

Uhhhh i was like “hey i want to do uhhhhhh flower?” And then I google searched flower names until I found one I liked —- mod aster

How did you end up deciding the rough timeline of events in canon? (@pedanticlecturer)

It’s mostly determined by like. How we choose per story? If that makes sense. Like, we just take story by story, and decide “is it happening, has it happened, and when?” And then we fit them together in relation to each other just by dint of. All existing at once. Like, I knew I wanted Macbeth to be in aftermath, because like, even though there’s no murder, the way I’ve translated it to the AU is still kinda heavy, and it’s something that I don’t know that I could do properly if it were happening right now. Also, it’s more interesting IMO to have them at different times. Tl;dr we wing it per story and slot them together— mod aster (mod star agrees I just can word better, in theory)

If you could tell the story of shakespeare high in a different format than an ask blog, would you? Obviously y'all are making very good use of the format, but would you want to write this as a animated series or like? a comic book? or is the form inseparable from the story? (@pedanticlecturer)

I kinda wanted to do a webcomic or maybe to plot develop through like, animatics but the element of surprise comes from the asks we get and really makes us think so the blog is a good start. We didnt think we’d get this far -- mod star

Pretty much what Star said— there are certain elements where it’d be neat to do as a comic or as an animatic. Like, the fantasy dream is like, an anthology webcomic of each story, where you can like, see other characters in the background and stuff. But to be honest, we develop a lot by what we’re asked— there was a post about developing worldbuilding by being asked questions and then pretending you’ve thought about the answer, and it’s not far off. Personally, it’s hard to just lay out a story, because I have a whole WORLD and what’s relevant? What are people interested in? It’s by getting questions that I can then focus in on an area to develop. And yeah, we Super didn’t think we’d get this far lmao — mod aster

Any headcanons about your characters that you don't think will ever come up on the blog through asks or plot posts? (@pedanticlecturer)

I could make a whole separate post for this!!!!! Mostly its voice headcanons (and by mostly i mean like 1 or 2) or relationship hcs!!!! -- mod star

Honestly same. I don’t think I have voice headcanons for mine, though I bet I could find some. I’ve got a bunch of miscellaneous headcanons that just kinda float around, but like they’re scattered, too numerous for this post, and also not always things I’m sure are canon yet.— mod aster

#mod post #mod aster #mod star #q and a #birthday #we cant seem to read more AND tag so like brb gonna go kill god

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ratemisia-wool · 3 years ago

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howdy. a bit of a VERY long post but i have a bunch of stories for some of these so i wanna share them

1. not sure if this counts but... i kinda found out i was nonbinary and asexual because of an oc? so basically i noticed abt 3 years ago (how time flies right) that all of my ocs were cishet, and i wanted to shake things up a little bit because i felt kinda bad for that and thought i might as well put in the effort to learn some things and be more inclusive. well, i started looking up lgbtq+ titles and alignments... and related with some of them... and had a bit of an "oh shit" moment, as you do

(in case you're wondering, that oc is named puffin, he's pansexual and uses he/him, and i still use puffin in rp from time to time because he's just an incredibly fun character to rp)

2. first oc (at least, the first one i remember or have any records of) was a cringy self insert five nights at freddy's oc named felix, way back when i thought fnaf was cool (so probably 2012-13.) i still hold a begrudging respect for felix the fox, because ultimately, you could probably trace every oc i have now back to him in some form or by some traits

3. music. all my good ocs were at least partially inspired by music - puffin (same puffin as in question one) was partially inspired by TrusT by half•alive, make-believe (a more recent oc) was inspired by Freak Show by Set it Off, viceroy (another more recent oc) was inspired by Bells by The Unlikely Candidates.

unrelated but man, i wanna get back to viceroy. he had a lot of potential as a character and i miss him :(

4. this one... most of the time, my names for characters are insanely thought out and go through a careful process that sometimes can take hours. for instance: there's viceroy, who in the original iteration was designed as a SilkWing king for an RP that needed one. I decided Monarch would be too on the nose, so i found the viceroy butterfly - another, similar looking butterfly that is often confused for a monarch butterfly. i also had a bunch of other reasoning about the actual political position of "viceroy," but it makes no sense in retrospect so i will just skip that. oh and there's puffin who i just... made up a name on the spot that somewhat kinda fit, and didn't want to change it afterwards. so it could be pretty much anything that motivates me to name my characters whatever

5. puffin sounds like sean bonnette from ajj, ember (yet another oc i miss) sounds like sam tinnesz, make-believe sounds like jaidenanimations, oryx probably sounds like uncle iroh...

(skipping a bunch)

11. most definitely ember: they've been completely redesigned more times than i can count. i have changed their backstory, name, gender, social standing, probably everything about them... to the point that they were for a while canonically the child of two previous iterations of themself. there's also a possibility that i may not be thinking of ember specifically at all and that's one of the old names i formerly used for them.

12. ember. no questions asked. they have killed thrice before and will do so again with sufficient motivation

13. bloodmoon. i wrote a story with him as the main character

14. probably make-believe

15. puffin

16. yes (see 13) and no.

17. that's a hard one, but i might have to say puffin just because he's a classic and he's still cool after so long which is rare and precious

18. bloodmoon. i used him a lot, but that's actually why i have grown to resent him. bloodmoon became the most flawed and unlikeable part of the story halfway through due to plot holes and flaws in his personality, and he's become a symbol of my hubris, and i hate him personally for it.

19. ruko ka'rut (wow, not a wings of fire one for ONCE.) he's not really fan content of a published work of fiction or anything like most of my ocs are, but he's loosely adjacent to the HFY (Humanity, Fuck Yeah!) universe and that's his original setting so...

this was gonna be a MUCH longer post but i ran out of steam writing it so here you go go

ORIGINAL CHARACTER ASKS

I always want people to ask me about my OCs but they never do SO WHY NOT MAKE A LITTLE GAME so we can answer some stuff!

Reblog this with your own OCs! I'd love to see people use this, these games are so fun- as someone who writes a lot I always wanna talk about this stuff

Send an ask with the corresponding number to get an answer for it

----

If you're sending an ask, feel free to ask about a specific OC or OCs!

Have you ever picked up a habit from developing/writing one of your own characters? And if so, who and what?

Who was the first OC you made?

What inspired you to make a certain character?

How did you find the name for a certain character?

Do you have any voice claims for your OCs?

Are there any other preexisting characters that inspired an OC?

What things in real life make you think of an OC?

Is there a certain song or playlist of songs you have that make you think of an OC/your story for them?

What is one of your character's theme songs?

Do any of your OCs contain any symbolism in themselves/their story?

Which character has been through the most design changes?

Which OC is most likely to kill somebody?

Which OC do you make art/media with the most?

Which OC/s do you relate to the most?

Which OC/s make you think of yourself the most?

Do you have a written story including your ocs? If so do you think you'll ever publish it?

Who is your favorite OC?

Who is your least favorite OC?

Who is your most recent OC?

Do any of your OCs have pets? What kind? NAME?

What is one of your character's biggest fears?

Do your friends and family know about your OCs/story? How much?

Have you ever seen something/someone that looks like one of your characters IRL? What was it like?

Are there any preexisting characters that your OC gets compared too a lot?

Are there any two characters that are like a dynamic duo/group?

What's your favorite relationship/dynamic between a set of OCs?

What's the nicest thing someone has ever said about an OC/OCs?

What's the meanest thing someone has ever said about an OC/OCs?

Do any of your OCs have AU designs/stories?

Which OC has been the hardest to develop/design so far?

Which OC do you wish you had more art of? (Recieved, making yourself, etc.)

What's been the most ambitious project you've made/are making surrounding your characters?

Have you ever had to kill off an OC? How hard was it?

What scene that you've written/imagined is your favorite?

Which OC would beat you up if they met you IRL?

Which OC would probably be your friend if they met you IRL?

On a scale from 1-10 how angsty are your OCs?

Do you like telling random people about your characters, or is it a more private thing?

What's your favorite part to draw on a certain character?

What's your least favorite part to draw on a certain character?

#ask game #ask games #oc #oc asks #bellasaurus ask game #murder tw #murder cw #wings of fire #humanity fuck yeah #hfy #wof #wof oc #hfy oc

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mahousparkles · 7 years ago

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Character Design in Magical Girl Raising Project: Arc 1

One of the things that immediately caught my attention about MGRP was the character design. The outfits don’t go together as a lineup in the way traditional magical girl outfits do, rather they exemplify each individual character’s abilities; this allows the viewer to learn a great deal about the character just by looking at them.

I’m sure other people have made similar posts, but as a passionate character design enthusiast I’d like to discuss my personal thoughts on the character design in Arc 1. I’ve tried to keep everything as spoiler free as possible. And yes, I do plan to do the other arcs, so stay tuned!

Snow White - 7/10

I actually like Snow White’s design, but with all the competition, I need to be a bit strict. Her outfit may not be as interesting as some of the other characters’, but that seems pretty intentional; Snow White is *supposed* to be the cliche, idealistic magical girl protag, so the artists didn’t have a lot of wiggle room with her design. Considering that, they at least managed to give it some unique elements. I especially like the bows on her boots and the ribbons on the front of her top that look like suspenders.

Ripple - 5/10

Ripple’s design has always been confusing to me. I don’t hate it per se, I just think there’s a little too much going on in it. It’s supposed to look like a cross between a kimono and a bathing suit, but really it just looks like a bikini with some fishnet accents and... pom poms? That’s at least one too many things for an outfit. I do like the scarf though, and the shuriken shaped hair accessory.

La Pucelle - 9/10

La Pucelle’s design was the first one in the series to get me really excited. It’s a simple and expressive costume that represents her personality and motifs as a magical girl. It sticks to two central themes, dragon and knight’s armor, and doesn’t have any unnecessary elements that stray from this theme. The frills add a splash of femininity without being overwhelming, and the muted, earthy colors are pleasant to look at. Altogether, La Pucelle’s design just seems very... cohesive. It’s well thought out.

Cranberry - 8/10

When I first pulled up this image, I planned to give Cranberry a 7, then it changed to a 7.5, then to an 8. The more I look at her design up close, the more I find myself liking it... but that’s kind of the problem. The fact that I didn’t take notice of the interesting parts of her costume until I sat and stared at it for five minutes means that her design is a little too ornate to appreciate at a glance. I think the main culprit is the huge purple roses; they grab your eye, and that’s the only thing you notice. I consider the jacket and tights to be the most fun parts of Cranberry’s design, so it’s a shame that they aren’t more noticeable from the get-go.

Ruler - 10/10

I consider Ruler’s design to be one of the most successful ones in the entire series. It sticks to a single theme and it’s immediately recognizable, but at the same time, it has those subtle, unique accents that make it fun to look at. The little diamonds in her hair and on her ears. The vertical stripes on her tights and bows on her shoes. The black lace adornment at the bottom of her dress. Every detail comes together perfectly to encapsulate Ruler’s vision of herself as royalty.

Yunael and Minael - 4/10

My favorite parts of their designs are definitely the speech bubble halos. It’s a cute idea that combines two aspects of their characters in a simple and effective way. Which makes it all the more disappointing when the rest of their designs are fairly, well, dull. They’re not bad, they’re just nothing very new. It’s also annoying how I can never tell them apart.

Tama - 7/10

This one boils down to personal preference; I’m not a huge fan of animal-based costumes, and I’m not really a dog person, so I didn’t love Tama’s design at first glance. But for what it is, it’s actually very well put together; the crop top and leg warmers are cute, and it follows my rule of sticking to a central theme. I respect it as a design, and don’t really have any formal critiques, it’s just not my thing.

Swim Swim - 5/10

I really feel like I should hate Swim Swim’s design. A swimsuit, headphones, bat wings, and whatever those weird tentacle things are? In one outfit? I mean, I know that 5 out of 10 isn’t a stellar ranking, but someone who breaks all my rules of good outfit design should at least be below Ripple, right? But oddly enough, I don’t mind Swim Swim’s design. Maybe it’s because the color scheme is consistent enough to tie together the unrelated elements. Maybe it’s because Swim Swim is actually a little kid and it makes sense for her to design a Mary Sue OC with bat wings as her avatar. Or maybe I just think that little garter on her leg is cute.

Hardgore Alice - 8.5/10

I couldn’t figure out whether to give an 8 or a 9, so I finally said fuck it and brought decimals into this. I’m sorry. Truthfully this design is a 9 in my book, but I’m afraid I may be letting the fact that Hardgore Alice is my favorite character in the series affect my review of her design. So I had to knock her down a peg. Well, half a peg. Anyway, despite pretty much looking like something I could pick up at any gothic lolita store, I like this design a lot. Is it just because I like Alice in Wonderland? No. Well, maybe. But I also like the muted colors and overall simplicity. And the bunny, of course.

Calamity Mary - 8/10

Whatever your opinion of her character may be, Calamity Mary’s got style. The fringe on her sleeves, the holster at her leg, the giant spurs on her boots; Calamity Mary is a cowgirl, and you can tell. The wild-west attire looks modern without being overbearing, there isn’t too much or too little going on. My only complaint is that I wish the hat was bigger and more pronounced! The hat is such an important part of an outfit like this, and I feel like it gets kind of lost with its size and shape as is.

Magicaloid 44 - 6.5/10

I have very mixed feelings about this design; all in all, I think it was the hardest on this entire list to rank. It is unique and relatively centralized, but it’s also kind of... clunky. Looking at it, it’s hard to understand what’s going on, and that’s a problem. Are those spiky things supposed to be her hair? If so, why do the bangs look so out of place? What’s up with the crown icons on her arms and legs? Is her skirt poofy or flat? I can’t help but overthink everything when I look at Magicaloid’s design, so although I don’t hate it, it kind of irritates me.

Top Speed - 9/10

Top Speed has another one of my favorite character designs in the show. Her design is a seamless combination of magical girl and witch, all in warm Halloween colors. I love her chunky braids and cape, the lace around her hat, and the frill on her sleeves. She’s immediately recognizable as a witch, but these little feminine details also help her fit into the magical girl ensemble.

Weiss Winterprison - 3/10

Um... yes. That’s a coat. Okay, next.

Sister Nana - 7/10

It’s hard for me to decide whether or not I like Sister Nana’s design. Impulsively, at a glance, I’d say I like it, but I can’t quite put my finger on why. The religious motif isn’t really my thing, but the simple black and white colors with a splash of red in the shoes pleases me. I also think the cross shape is used very creatively, especially with the neckline. I can’t really tell what those cushion-like things on her legs are supposed to be though.

Nemurin - 10/10

Maybe I should have given this one a 9.5 because I think overall I still like Ruler’s design the most, but Nemurin is certainly a very close second, albeit for very different reasons. Nemurin’s design isn’t as straightforward as Ruler’s or Top Speed’s are, mainly because “pajamas” is an incredibly broad category, and the artists have more room to be creative. Despite this, her design is wonderfully balanced, it doesn’t seem stuffy, and the colors work nicely. The long, dragging pigtails, the little clouds in her hair, the uneven socks; everything about Nemurin’s design tells us that this is a girl who likes to sleep and dream all day.

Thank you so much for reading my silly post, I hope you enjoyed it or it at least gave you a few things to think about. Feel free to tell me what your favorite design is in the tags!

#mine #magical girl raising project #mahou shoujo ikusei keikaku #character design #character discussion #outfits

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shadowsong26fic · 7 years ago

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Let’s Go Steal A Crossover: Part 1

No real plot here, this is mostly the background/backstory details.

Note/Disclaimer: this particular outline features an OC of mine and as a result is fairly self-indulgent. Because what else are crack outlines for?

That out of the way, here we go!

For the Leverage crew:

This is more or less in a S3 sort of environment--they may or may not be chasing Space Damien Moreau, but in terms of their team dynamic, etc., that’s where they are.

(Let’s be real, though, they are TOTALLY chasing Space Damien Moreau.)

(Who is, as in Leverage canon, very much a power-behind-the-throne kind of guy.)

(I.e., he is not a Moff or an Admiral or a planetary ruler or a sector governor or anything like that.)

(He just happens to have quite a few of them in his pocket.)

(He’s not affiliated with Black Sun or any of the Hutts or any other established syndicate, either. He’s his own thing.)

Nate--

He’s from a fairly prosperous Mid Rim world, went to a Core World university (probably either Coruscant or Alderaan).

The Clone Wars started right around when he graduated, if I’m parsing the timelines and ages right.

So, granted I’m making this up on the fly based on things I half-remembered, but while there are non-clone non-Jedi military officers, they’re mostly High Command types.

However, Nate does not have the background, experience, or connections for that kind of work.

He spends the War working for his home sector/planet's senator, as an investigator/learning about security/etc.

(How he manages to pull this off, despite his father’s legit Shady Past, is probably a Story in and of itself.)

Postwar, he goes into the private sector, working for an insurance company.

(Where he meets Sterling.)

(And Maggie.)

(And Sophie.)

Incidentally, while he doesn’t have the inside information to really disbelieve the late-stage propaganda, he’s a little Perturbed by exactly how quick and bloody the end of the war and the transition to the Empire was.

Something Is Not Right here, but he’s not sure exactly what, and is not yet so disillusioned to do anything about that doubt. But it remains, in the back of his mind, to resurface when everything falls apart.

This is, however, a large part of why he leaves public service.

From here, Nate’s backstory is more or less the same as in canon.

(I did toy with having Sam dead of Inquisitors instead for a while, but that would not translate right and, more importantly, is too mean to Maggie.)

(I love Maggie, have I mentioned that?)

Sophie--

What can one say about Space Sophie Devereaux.

...about as much as one can say about the canon version, honestly.

She’s Kuati, that much everyone knows for sure.

Whether she’s actually of the minor nobility is up for some debate.

(Yes, there was an equivalent of the King George Job)

She was in her early/mid-teens when the Clone War happened. Kuat itself seems to have been mostly untouched, but under heavy military guard because of the valuable shipyards.

She left Kuat three or four years postwar, and began creating her various aliases and legend.

(And occasionally working as an actress, of course.)

...yep, that’s pretty much what I have here.

Hardison--

Also pretty similar to his canon backstory, except that he’s slightly younger--probably closer to Jyn Erso’s age/two or three years older than the Skytwins.

Like Nate, he’s from the Mid Rim, but he’s from a planet that was heavily contested during the War.

(i.e., it ended up pretty bombed to hell)

(his parents died towards the end of the war, which is how he ended up with Nana)

His particular brand of invention/cleverness is particularly useful in a slowly-recovering warzone, though.

Parker--

Parker is actually from Coruscant.

The underlevels.

One of the kids who consistently slipped through the cracks, under both the Republic and the Empire.

Until Archie Leach found her.

And then unleashed her on the Galaxy.

And now, the fun part--Eliot!

Eliot is, in fact, a clone.

He was part of the so-called Last Batch; born (decanted?) about six months before the end of the war, so he never saw action during that conflict.

There were whispers, among the older cadets--the ones who were mature enough to hear echoes of a voice in their heads, who knew at least bits and pieces what the adult clones had done and why.

(The whispers are carefully, carefully encouraged by some of the adults who were able to fight through the compulsion. Not well enough, or fast enough, to save their Jedi, but damned if they wouldn’t protect their little brothers. Who will grow up to be men, not weapons. Which means that most of the Last Batch and varying proportions of the older cadets had their chips removed before leaving Kamino.)

(....and now I’m going to have to do something completely unrelated with the Last Batch and their relationships with their various older brothers at some point, aren’t they.)

Eliot, like most of his generation, goes into the Stormtrooper corps when he’s mature enough.

He stays in for a while--a good couple of years. He’s separated from his brothers, for the most part, but a few are with him. One by one, they die or desert--he covers for the ones who get away.

He’s the last. He bonded with a few of the non-clone troopers, and it isn’t until there’s no one in his unit he feels like he needs to stay for that he leaves.

(He promises himself, when he leaves that armor behind, that he’s not going to find himself in that situation again. He has only himself to look after now, and he is damn sure going to stay that way.)

He starts wandering, working as a bounty hunter/assassin for hire.

(He does have one brief, slightly surreal encounter with Boba Fett.)

(Who is Not Thrilled that one of the millions of men with his face is trying to do his job.)

Occasionally, he’s even hired by the Empire.

(Any jobs he does for them, he of course does from safely behind a mask.)

He spends some time on Mandalore, carefully connecting with his roots and finding plenty of work in that planet’s increasing unrest.

(There is a Story to tell here, I’m sure, possibly one involving Bo-Katan and/or Korkie Kryze...)

And, of course, he spends about six months working for Space Damien Moreau.

He occasionally, in his travels, has come across his brothers--ranging decommissioned Clone Wars vets, to older cadets, to others of the Last Batch.

He tends not to seek them out, though, and to avoid interacting when he can.

There’s too much baggage, positive and negative, with all his brothers of every generation.

Besides. He promised himself he wouldn’t put down roots with a unit or a team again.

Miscellania--

Their first job together runs much as in canon, and they settle in as a team and loosely follow the same overall storyline as in canon.

Nate knows damn well that Eliot is a clone, though he didn’t until they met in person.

(While he didn’t work directly with the GAR and never met any Jedi, he did meet several clone soldiers. It’s a hard face to forget, when you’ve seen it several times over the course of three years.)

Sophie figures it out, too--she met several soldiers assigned to guard the shipyards.

Their marks generally don’t figure it out, actually.

Not a lot is known about the Last Batch.

I mean, sure, if any of these industry/corporate titans actually thought things through, they’d remember that the clones were in production up through the very end of the war, so obviously something must have been done to the ones who were too young for combat at that point.

But, honestly, even if some part of you is aware/acknowledges that there are younger clones running around, are you really going to expect one to wander through your door pretending to be a chef/caterer or a pro baseball player or a country music star or an IT tech or...

(Parker and Hardison figure it out when one of their marks actually does identify Eliot as a clone.)

(They don’t particularly care, except Hardison remembers/learns about the rapid aging factor and starts using his downtime to try and find a fix for that.)

(When he’s not playing Space WoW, anyway.)

(Or helping Nate with whatever sketchy and underhanded Long-Term Scheme he’s got in mind right now.)

(They’re not on the black box yet, of course, but probably right now most of Hardison’s not-active-job time is spent on tracking Moreau.)

(He and Parker have probably been tossing ideas back and forth about robbing Kamino to try and find a fix, though...)

(Or at least the Last Batch’s records.)

(But that is a plot for another fic. And possibly one of the things they end up doing during the six-month break between S4 and S5.)

The Skytwins’ Team:

Here’s where the super self-indulgent part comes in.

So, this is technically an offshoot of an offshoot of Masks!Verse, which is a very near-canon AU (what I call an In Spite of a Nail AU) where Lavinia exists. Essentially, in Masks!Verse, nothing we see onscreen during the OT happens any differently, but there’s some Interesting Stuff happening elsewhere that sets up a different post-ROTJ timeline. Nothing at all changes until three years after ROTS, when Lavinia is born, and after that only things she’s Directly Involved In change, and most of that is internal Imperial power plays, at least through ROTJ.

(TFA more or less happens because I like it, but the road there is a little bit different and the canon I was operating from is locked there. I.e., due to what Lavinia and her daughter in this timeline end up doing, things go much more AU starting with the opening sequence of TLJ.)

Masks!verse, incidentally, is technically Lavinia’s core timeline, in that it’s the first one I created of the three base timelines I have for her (Masks, Precipice, and PT-generation), but that’s a whole separate conversation. It does probably explain why Masks!Verse has like a million variants/offshoots, though...

Anyway. Digression aside, this crossover actually draws from a Masks!Verse offshoot that I call the Lavinia Organa AU.

(You can probably guess where this is going.)

(It’s very much an Exactly What It Says On The Tin type thing.)

(And, honestly, could do with its own outline for the rewrite of ANH alone...)

But the Cliff Notes version:

When Lavinia is born/announced, Breha goes to Bail and says “we managed to successfully rescue/kidnap one Sith Lord’s baby daughter, we should rescue this one, too.”

They had never really decided on only having one kid, after all. Just at least one, and they wanted a daughter.

(It just ended up not happening in canon because of the need for secrecy/not wanting to complicate things and put Leia at risk.)

(I saw a meta post the other day that points out that Bail was clearly ready to take both Skytwins, but then Yoda said to separate them.)

(This may or may not have come up in primary Masks!Verse, incidentally, but there, they decided it was too risky and they had to focus on protecting the daughter they already had.)

(It’s arguable how much kidnapping was technically involved in adopting Leia. But they do just straight-up kidnap Lavinia. They also fudge some records and release carefully-timed photos and do not make any in-person appearances with her so they can claim she’s three months younger than she actually is.)

How do they pull this off? ...IDK, magic? Handwave for now, it is out of the scope of this project.

Leia and Lavinia grow up pretty close.

(Not that they never fight--they bicker constantly, especially in the years before Leia starts taking a more active role in the Rebellion and a more official role in Alderaan’s government.)

(Lavinia, at thirteen, isn’t really allowed to do much at that point, but she backs Leia in everything and helps a lot with the background research/legwork.)

A couple notable details: Bail and Breha decided pretty early on that they wanted to tell each of their daughters a shell of their bioparents’ stories, leaving out the key details but sticking more or less to the truth as best they could without putting their girls at risk.

So, Leia knows basically what she was told in canon--that her birth mother was a close friend of her parents, they didn’t know her birth father well, and both her bioparents died at the end of the Clone War.

That’s enough for her. She knows who her real parents are, and doesn’t especially care about her bioparents at this point. She has other things to worry about/deal with.

Lavinia is told that her birth mother died shortly after she was born, and her birth father was Not A Good Person and lost custody of her.

So, the thing about Lavinia--it’s less prominent in this AU because she had a functional childhood and parents who treated her like a person and not a spy/asset, but she’s very...the way she puts it in Precipice!Verse is that she doesn’t like walking into a room unprepared. And this shell of a story about her birth parents feels like the kind of thing that could bite her actual parents and her sister (and her) in the ass in a major way.

So, very quietly, around the time Leia starts working as an active Rebel agent, she starts digging into it, trying to identify her bioparents.

She doesn’t find any stories around her official age that match what her parents told her, and she doesn’t think they would lie.

But, she reasons, they might have skewed things or lied about her age to protect her from her biofather.

And then she learns Emperor Palpatine had a daughter, who died, who’s approximately the right age.

When she asks her parents about this, they don’t lie. They confirm it for her

(They would have done the same for Leia, if she had done the legwork and asked them point-blank, but like I said it’s not something she particularly cares about at this point.)

Lavinia then asks if she can tell Leia--they’ve actually been getting closer since Leia suddenly developed all these Adult Responsibilities, and the events of the Princess Leia novel happened.

This pretty much cements their relationship. While they still bicker a fair amount--they’re both pretty strong personalities, and not always compatible ones; Leia being a Soldier and Lavinia being a Spy, plus they’re teenage sisters who are fairly close in age--but they are Ride Or Die Full Stop from this point out.

By the time ANH actually rolls around, they’re both active Rebel agents--Lavinia works mostly with Intelligence and to a point with supply/other support forces, because she’s good at reading people and mapping interpersonal networks and figuring out who to approach, while Leia does more or less what she does in canon.

Again, the actually rewrite of ANH would be its own outline, so the important bits (with minimal detail in case I do end up doing this one properly at some point):

Lavinia and Leia are both on the Tantive.

Lavinia takes a shuttle/tender ship/something and separates, hoping to act as an additional decoy, that Vader will assume that the big ship is the Obvious Decoy and focus on her instead so Leia can get the plans to Kenobi safely.

Vader, of course, has the resources to track both of them so this doesn’t work.

Lavinia ends up tagging along on the Falcon and ending up on the Death Star with the others.

Everyone, including Obi-Wan, actually makes it off the station alive.

Lavinia was running around in the air vents for a while, and left behind a blood sample. On impulse, Vader runs it--he wants to identify all of Obi-Wan’s co-conspirators as quickly as possible and while there are no clear shots of her face on the surveillance footage he has, this is an available resource he can use.

Obi-Wan tells Luke and Leia who they are to each other (though sticks to the Certain Point Of View story about their biodad for the time being).

They have a moment of “...well, that explains a lot” and just accept it and move on.

So, at this point, there are some Key Secrets going on:

One, that Luke and Leia are the twin children, biologically, of Anakin Skywalker and Padme Naberrie Amidala.

People who know this: Obi-Wan, Luke, Leia, and Lavinia (they tell each other pretty much everything of this level of importance.)

Two, that Anakin Skywalker is now Darth Vader.

People who know this: Obi-Wan, Vader, Palpatine.

Three, that Lavinia Organa is Palpatine’s biological daughter.

People who know this: Lavinia, Leia, Vader, Mon Mothma (who they told in a “so this might be a Thing and we want to make sure Someone in High Command is prepared JUST IN CASE).

(They probably tell Luke before too much longer, but they do not share this detail with Obi-Wan.)

Right, so. Those are the Most Important Details for the purposes of understanding Let’s Go Steal A Crossover, I think.

Anyway, I’m drawing from this AU for two reasons:

(Or, three, if we include the fact that I Like It And I Can.)

First, it’s an easy way to get the Skytwins’ team connected/integrated with a minimum of Drama.

Second, because it’s kind of where the whole crossover concept came from. I was babbling at my very patient roommate about the Lavinia Organa AU (specifically about potential ESB/Cloud City plot points), and realized “lol, I could make a religion Leverage team out of this.”

“....WAIT I COULD MAKE A LEVERAGE TEAM OUT OF THIS!”

Here’s how it works:

Hitter: Leia. Who is a tiny ball of rage a lot of the time, and takes after both her bioparents in a large degree. She is definitely, definitely their combat specialist, even if she hasn’t really played that role in her previous work.

Hacker: Han. He’s the one who’s good at improvising tech, etc.

Grifter: Lando. Quick, act shocked.

Thief: Luke. Very different style from Parker, of course, but still.

Mastermind: Lavinia. Who, while not in any way going to use it as he did, inherited her biological father’s aptitude for strategy and manipulation.

The dynamic isn’t 100% the same, of course. For example, Lavinia may be the strategist, but Leia is more the team lead in the field. But it still lines up really great and then I started poking at the Leverage backstories above after the initial concept occurred to me and here we are.

Miscellania:

This crossover takes place in a vague “timelines mean nothing” sort of state. As I said before, the Leverage team is more or less in S3. We’ll say the Skytwins team is somewhere around ESB, though obviously the background leading them there is going to be Very Different.

The actual plot is going to start with The Two Live Crew Job In SPACE and go from there.

(Possibly getting more complicated, as we throw in Sterling and/or Vader and/or Obi-Wan and/or the Ghost crew.)

(In that last case, the Ghost crew never split up/Kanan never died/Ezra never went on a road trip with Thrawn and a bunch of space whales.)

And...that should cover it! Sometime this week (I’m hoping before Solo comes out), I’ll put up Part Two, which will cover the Actual Plot.

#au outlines for the win #masks verse #shadowsong writes star wars #shadowsong26fic

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