#and before they were all so readily available) but also as perhaps the first ghost story i ever read: i was gifted a book of ghostly tales

[mariocki]

A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Signalman (BBC, 1976)

"The tunnel collision is the worst to be feared. Your nightmares would go hard to equal it. The wreckage becomes hideously compressed in the confined space. If fire breaks out, the tunnel and its ventilating shafts become furnace flues. You cannot see in the dark to get the wreckage and the bodies out. The screams of the injured and dying echo in a most... persistent way. It's the shape of the tunnel, you see, sir."

[lavendermin]

if all stars fell at once (4) | xiao

pairing | xiao/reader

word count | 3.1k

genre | fluff, light angst, developing relationship, overall domestic

warnings | light smut, eventual smut

Routine.

Defined as habitual tasks you partake in on a regular basis. These monotonous daily routines are what provided a grasp of control amid the uncontrollable and brought you order in a time of uncertainty.

The dawn of a new day started with the bittersweet greeting of the mourning doves’ songs. It gently tugged your consciousness forward, your weary limbs stretching out beneath warm covers. Your eyes would peek open and be greeted by the same dull room, bed tucked in a far corner. The sheets over old furniture still haunted you, the house inherited by past ghosts of memories.

It was a husk you resided in, perhaps a tomb you inherited. And as with every morning, you push the thought away.

A quick wash-up and breakfast helps kickstart your day before you’re off to run any errands listed off in your mind already. Fresh morning dew still glistens on the grass when you leave.

Days where errands would carry you to the harbor would have their own side routine you knew fairly well. Checking Bubu Pharmacy for any medicine pickups for the village elders, a quick chat with Ganyu as you passed her during one of her duties, a passing stop to the markets by the docks for supplies, and the occasional prolonged stay for lunch per the invitation of Zhongli and his courteous acquaintance. Every week, just like clockwork.

The busy day would wind down near the docks, watching the waves as they crashed upon rocks and taking in the scent of the sea spray that swept by you with it’s breeze. If you closed your eyes, the sounds of the sea and bustling voices of the harbor would meld together into one— a comforting cacophony of background noise to keep you grounded before the harbor’s relentless energy swept you away.

The city was a little much for you. It made you miss the tranquility of the small place you resided in tucked far back in the village.

And so everyday your heels pointed back towards home, ending with a meal in between more work you buried yourself in until odd hours of the night.

This was the routine you came to know with seldom any out-of-the-ordinary variation.

And then, curiously, slowly, the yaksha you came to befriend incorporated himself into the routine— first embedded into your routines and soon enough ever-present in your heart. Perhaps you could say that he altered your habits for the better.

Nowadays, leaving the harbor after errands is pleasant. No longer does the road back to Qingce isolate you into your thoughts. The sun that casts mesmerizing hues upon the sky as it sets leaves a pleasant warmth on your face. You look forward to his name on your tongue.

‘Xiao.’

The summon rings out clearly amidst his tumultuous headspace, bringing brief peace with the familiarity of the voice. In an instant he’s at your side, the ominous mist that enveloped him subsiding. There's a wordless question in his eyes as he shyly laces his fingers with yours.

With a light squeeze of his hand, you reply, “Let’s go home.”

There’s a pleasant silence that accompanies these walks, his hand firmly holding yours as if you might slip through his grasp at any given moment. On occasion, he would ask how your day went just to hear your voice. Though he wasn’t fond of the crowded hustle and bustle of the harbor, hearing your little enthusiastic retelling was enough to leave him with vivid imagery. Your voice was his comfort.

Arriving home has also taken on a newfound normalcy. With Xiao around, the once-empty house you inherited no longer feels foreign. Finally, with sure conviction, you can say it feels like your own.

Shelves that were once scarce with items and decor were now neatly arranged with ornaments and small handcrafts that Xiao has given you. The bookshelf that was once littered with dust and cobwebs is now rich with rows of books of all sorts. Even tables and bedside stands that were once empty are now always adorned with flowers that you and Xiao pick while out stargazing. These items are glimpses into the new pastimes you treasure to make time for.

Today was one such day where the breeze was pleasant as the sun tucked away for the night. However instead of being outside, you chose to take up comfort reading indoors. There on a pile of blankets and pillows you sat comfortably, Xiao resting his head on your lap to intently listen to you read aloud.

The adeptus reminded you of a cat that’s getting comfortable with a stranger they keep meeting. The spots he chose to rest on were getting much closer in proximity, but never directly on you. That is, until you boldly asked if he would like to rest on your lap and he settled there gratefully with your permission.

You closed the book, running your hand through his hair to get the yaksha to open one eye. “Are you sure you want to hear me read this poem book again? I’m sure you know it by heart at this point,” you pointed out with a laugh. “Why don’t you choose a book this time?”

There was a moment of contemplation before Xiao relented and went to search through the many book spines readily available. A glistening stone caught his attention again—his hand visibly hesitating for a moment.

You leaned your body over a bit from your comfortable pillow haven, curious as to what book he would select. Part of you expected him to select a random one off the bookcase, and was surprised to have a quaint little red book placed in your hands.

“I’ve been meaning to ask… about this one,” Xiao started, his face neutral but betrayed by the twinge of pink that was hidden by the dimness of the lamplight.

“This is…?”

He shrugged. “The subject of this book— is this something you like?”

Confused, you opened the cover. Inscribed on the inside in unmistakable cursive was a message from a certain librarian— a friend. Your brows creased, mouth pressed in a thin line as your eyes skimmed over the note the particular librarian left. A subtle feeling of dread crept over you.

‘Hey cutie, sent you a few goodies that were offloaded from our catalogue this season. Thought you might enjoy this one to spice things up a bit. I know how curious you were about the forbidden section, so here’s a little glimpse for you.’

Oh no… You quickly skimmed through some pages of the book that felt hot in your grip. Or perhaps it was your entire body flushed with embarrassment at the lewd imagery the story portrayed

“I–I didn’t… I d–didn’t know Lisa sent this along with the other books. This book— I haven’t read before so… um…” You anxiously bit your lip, voice growing quieter the more you went on. “I–It was a gift. I didn’t know.”

Xiao hummed, hand grazing your reddened cheeks curiously as you fanned your face. There was practically steam rolling off you.

“So,” Xiao started cautiously, “The things the book spoke of— it’s not something you like?”

If you were red before, you couldn’t possibly imagine how you looked now.

“N–No! I mean— Yes. I mean—!” You fumbled over your words, flustered over such an erotic novel unknowingly being in your possession.

“So, it makes you… happy?”

“Xiao— Stop, please— I’m going to die of embarrassment,” you squeaked into your hands.

His persistent curiosity would be the death of you at this rate. You buried your face under a pillow, too overwhelmed by the suggestive images still swirling in your head.

A little dumbfounded by your reaction, Xiao could only watch your huddled form hide away as he awkwardly rubbed your back in an attempt at reassurance.

The adeptus finally gained a bit of your attention, quietly inquiring, “Do you not wish to talk about that type of subject?”

The grip on your pillow slowly eased up, partially uncovering your face to meet his gaze. There wasn’t an ounce of discomfort on his face, and it was reassuring save for the fact that you were the one needing to explain.

“It’s not… that I don’t want to. Intimacy like— that—“ You pointed accusingly at the book now in his hands. “Is something, uhm, highly emotional— in a good way! Ah, what am I saying… It’s an act of love and bonding with a significant other, so to speak. Usually. Ah— it’s a little complicated.”

As you fumbled with your train of thought, his hand slowly placed itself over yours, thumb brushing over your knuckles. It drew your little state of panic to a close, feeling him press his lips to your forehead in a moment of soft distraction. It quickly brought a small thankful smile to your lips.

Kisses made you happy. This was a fact Xiao had learned.

“Let’s talk about it another time. Do not stress yourself over it.”

You nod timidly, choosing to hide your face in the crook of his neck. “...Okay.”

Xiao leaves not too long after, disappearing into the shadows to diligently tend to his duties. Sleep finds you quicker when he’s not around, though your mind is still tumultuous.

You had half a mind to go straight to Mondstadt and give Lisa a stern reprimand, not that she would care. If anything, it would fuel her amusement and her teasing would become more unbearable especially when your heart could barely handle Xiao boldly initiating displays of affection. That librarian was more perceptive than her languid facade let on.

For the time being you buried the cursed erotic book within cluttered closet boxes and called it a night.

Out of sight, out of mind.

—

A bead of sweat rolling down his temple caught a glimmer of the pale moon watching over him. Beasts that were affected by his karmic debt laid strewn across the battlefield. It weighed heavy on his mind, a distasteful reminder of increasing demonic activity with the Lantern Rite a few weeks away.

There was a light burning sensation that twinged Xiao’s calves and arms, and he rolled his shoulders to relieve his muscles from the fatigue of ceaseless combat. His tired muscles were just about ready to turn in for the night and make his way to Wangshu Inn.

But he paused. The voice tugged at his mind.

‘Xiao…’

There was no mistaking it. It was your voice.

The ache in his muscles was an issue for later. There was strain in your voice, evident discomfort. The reason was uncertain but as much as Xiao wanted to deny it, he was alarmed ever so slightly.

A blur of black mist was all it took and he was gone under the serene moonlight. When he found you, his guard was high with lingering confusion. An intruder was his first thought.

A quick walk around the house, footsteps lighter than the breeze that accompanied him. Nothing. No other presences detected either.

‘You called me, but why?’ Xiao questioned.

The bed gently dipped with quiet creaks where he sat next to you, brushing his thumb over your cheek. Your peaceful sleep was broken as your brows slightly furrowed, breathing slightly labored with small whimpers you let out.

“...X–Xiao,” you quietly whimpered amidst your sleep.

Ah, you had summoned him in your sleep then. How odd. It was a first, to say the least, but he couldn’t be upset with you.

‘Another nightmare…?’

Just how bad could a nightmare be that you would desperately call his name in your sleep, he wondered? But a promise was a promise. He was determined to rid you of your ailments if it was within his power.

The yaksha took in a deep breath, focusing himself fully before slowly exhaling a puff of dark mist. The aches in his body went ignored.

Dearest dream eater, won’t you save her?

—

The sound of his footsteps pacing a dark corridor— humid, stuffy as he pressed forward following the muffled sound of your voice. It’s something he will never forget though he feels he should.

To feel haunted by a dream’s fragments that refuse to vanish is something he should laugh at. It’s not real.

Then why?

Bits and pieces are burned into his memory. Perhaps in a torturously pleasant way he never really imagined. Blame it on him never finding someone he considered such private feelings with.

Xiao did not stay that night after consuming the dream, nor did he come back to check on you come morning as he usually did. On the tiled roof of Wangshu Inn he lays, brows furrowed and a strange warmth pooling throughout his lower torso.

The memory is unlike others that plague him, though it causes him inner turmoil with the increased bodily frustration.

Those eyes… haunt him. The smugness on the face that stared back at him then was enough to piss him off. The reasons festering in his tightened chest he couldn’t quite explain. The fragments would rewind and play, rewind and play, over and over since that night.

‘So,’ the familiar red stranger began with an amused smirk. ‘Looks like the yaksha really will answer any call of his name.’

They made it a point to maintain eye contact as they pressed their lips to your temple, arms holding your back flush against his chest.

Those piercing jade eyes— a mockingly similar exterior. It was like Xiao stared at a twisted reflection of himself conjured by your dream, the red accents in his hair and clothes a fiery scarlet akin to the bubbling anger he felt upon seeing the illusion lay its hands on you. The fact that they spoke in his same voice was enough to raise a rumbling growl within Xiao’s chest.

Quiet huffs left your parted lips as your chest heaved, a scarlet sash tied over your eyes like a blindfold.

‘Xiao, I–‘ Your body shivered at the feeling of his hands gliding over the inside of your thighs. It made you let out an involuntary whimper, cheeks aflame with arousal.

‘That’s enough,’ Xiao commanded the dream illusion of himself through gritted teeth.

The scarlet-hued Xiao shifted you in his lap, his lips set in a mocking smirk as his hand slipped between your legs to elicit sweet mewls from your parted lips. What Xiao wouldn’t give to conjure his spear then and there to wipe that irksome grin off his own face.

The illusion hummed, making it a point to place a kiss to the swell of your exposed chest. ‘Surely you don’t mean to ignore our person’s feelings? Or our own, for that matter. How crude of you, adeptus, to try and stop something she begged me for— something our body clearly begs for, as well.’

‘Quiet.’

The silence was deafening, though the illusion only seemed to stop momentarily out of amusement in seeing how long the real Xiao could uphold such a serious facade. Internally, he battles with two new emotions he hadn’t experienced before— jealousy and arousal. Somehow, because he could channel a warrior's rage through jealousy, the other warm feeling seemed to be drowned out. For now.

‘Silence me all you’d like. Deny your desires until you grow numb, for all I care. But for your human, these desires are your bond,’ the illusion persuaded, unbothered by the icy daggers Xiao glared through him. ‘Isn’t that right, my love?’

His fingers slowly working at the sweet, throbbing ache between your legs left you unable to form any coherent thoughts. Perhaps it was deliberate so your mind was elsewhere, drowning in a hazy pleasure. The gasps and mewls leaving your shaking body were slowly getting to the adeptus. Ironic, just how similar to that stupid book this was.

Xiao scoffed, and prepared himself to finish what he had sought out to do. ‘I don’t concern myself with desires. I’ve had enough of you.’

As Xiao unraveled and crumbled the dreamscape around him, the illusion remained smiling with sly intention.

‘Dishonesty will get you nowhere, Adeptus Xiao. She will be forced to forget this dream, but these feelings you both harbor cannot be erased so easily.’ The illusion lifted the ribbon from your eyes, leaving Xiao momentarily frozen.

Eyes are the windows to the soul, and what he saw in those misty eyes left his body aflame— confused. His tongue darts out to lick his lips, and he swallows thickly.

Once you get a taste, a dormant desire will begin to flourish.

The sly illusion holds their hand out invitingly, jade eyes unreadable as they scrutinize Xiao’s movements. It’s hesitant— the small step forward he takes.

‘What are you waiting for, adeptus?’

—

There’s a harsh gust of wind that blows through, the skies of Liyue harbor a dull grey with the rolling storm. The crashing sounds of waves upon the rocks below the docks resonate with your tempestuous heart. Weary eyes scan the horizon of the uneven sea, looking past the peaks of Guyun Stone Forest in the distance. You cling onto the hope of catching a glimpse of something— something to ease your worrisome heart.

“It’s been a few weeks,” you note quietly, the door of the balcony clicking shut as you walk back into the warm home office.

Yanfei answers without looking up, her hands still furiously scribbling on the parchments that have slowly accumulated into a towering pile. “He’s probably busy. With what exactly, I wouldn’t know— but I’m sure you have a better idea.” She sighs, regretting the coldness of her blunt tone. She adds in a softer tone, finally looking up, “Sorry, I’m not much help if it’s not consultation involving the law.”

The legal adviser can only watch helplessly as your eyes drift back to the window to gaze out beyond the sea’s horizon.

“He’s going to the Lantern Rite festivities with you, right?”

You turn back enough to meet her hopeful gaze with a sad smile. The silence is all the answer she needs.

“Was that a stupid question to ask?”

You shake your head, and turn your face back to the window so she can’t look further into the feelings you try to conceal.

The Lantern Rite was in a few days, and Xiao was nowhere to be seen. Though there've been occasions where you hardly saw him, this… this time was different. It was a feeling you couldn’t shake off and it filled you with uneasiness.

The thought of calling his name and receiving no answer terrified you. Doubt was quick to grip your mind in a vice.

“I think I’m the stupid one.”

[rainbowbutterfrosting]

The Revived - Chapter 20: Some Light Reading

This is chapter 20 of the Dream SMP multichapter fic @dramaticsnakes​ and I wrote together! I hope you’ll enjoy!

AO3

Read in order (on Tumblr)

Characters in this chapter: Wilbur, Ghostbur

Word count: 4,137

Cw: A lot of pain, inflicting pain, tensions between characters, food/eating

Fic summary: Wilbur was alive, and it was such a magnificent feeling, that made his mind spark with anticipation. It didn’t take long, however, for Wilbur to realize that this new breath of life, was not just his own. An echo-y voice hides in the back of his mind, and before he knows it, the transparent version of him he saw at the endless train station, is a lot more ingrained than he’d expected him to be.

And Wilbur really shouldn’t care. Because he’d be damned, if he spent the life he’d awaited for so long, babysitting a lost cause of a ghost, stuck in the very same limbo Wilbur spent so long in. It was an even exchange, and one Wilbur wasn’t going to mess with. Why exactly he ends up setting out to get the ghost out of his mind, in order to save the both of them, however, is beyond him. And perhaps Wilbur’s past isn’t as easy to leave behind, as he’d hoped it would be.

It was not an entirely pleasant experience to wake up, lying on the floor with his leg in a strange elevated position. In fact, he wouldn’t have been entirely convinced he’d woken up at all, if it wasn’t for the wave of pain bursting through his head. It was pounding, and his vision was blurry enough for him to almost believe he was sitting on a chair, blindfolded again.

There was no one around to punch him though. Just a huge empty bunker, and a smell of scattered paper. He didn’t have the slightest clue what time it was, or for how long he’d slept. As he squinted at his surroundings, there wasn’t the slightest hint of natural light. Just the torches above him.

There was silence.

“Ghostbur?” he said, his voice hushed.

“Oh! You’re awake! Good morning.” The ghost’s words were quick, though tinted with relief. There was something exhausted about them too, however. Wilbur got up from the floor, crawling back to the chair. He sat down on it, getting a better view of the room. “How are you feeling?”

Wilbur cracked his neck, stretching his arms. “Wonderful,” he said.

“Actually?”

Wilbur tensed up, closing his eyes momentarily. He took a deep breath. “No. Not really.”

There was a sigh from Ghostbur, but it wasn’t one of annoyance. It was rather melancholic. Relieved, perhaps. “Yeah… Me neither.”

While the words weren’t exactly good news, Wilbur’s lips curved up just slightly. Perhaps it was just the honesty. There was something silent and intimate about the words, breaking through the silence. The mutual pain. Not that that was too comforting in the long run. “Shit, my head hurts,” he noted, not necessarily to anyone but the empty room, placing a hand on his forehead.

“Mhm...” Ghostbur said, and everything indicated he was feeling it too.

They sat there in a less uncomfortable silence, Wilbur’s limbs heavy, as he looked at his bandaged leg. The regeneration potion had helped quite a bit, he realized as he tried to move it, but he still doubted he’d be able to stand on it confidently. He noticed some dryness leftover from a few tears right underneath his eye. He froze. “Ghostbur?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you… If I cry, do you feel it?” It was a risky and perhaps vulnerable question. The mention of the tears only seemed to make his head pound more. For a moment he was almost thankful everything was far too blurry for him to think properly.

“I don’t know.” Ghostbur said, with far more nonchalance than what was probably deserved, “My face often burns anyway.” He paused, as if he only just then realized what he was saying, “I mean, that’s okay though! It doesn’t feel so bad when it’s on the face anymore.”

The words sent an unwelcome shiver down Wilbur’s spine. He went quiet for a few breaths, unsure what to say. I’m sorry, he felt he should say, but it didn’t taste familiar enough. I can help you, he considered, but he realized it was yet another empty promise. Thank you, he wanted to say, but it was far too vague, and far too broad, and he wasn’t thanking Ghostbur for feeling pain. None of it sat right with him. He shook his head. “Is there anything you wanna do?” he asked instead. 

Ghostbur let out a breath. “What can we do?”

And wasn’t that an excellent question? Wilbur closed his eyes.

“Should we… Should we find someone?” Ghostbur asked.

Wilbur looked at his leg. He looked to the books, filled to the brim with information. He looked at the food readily available to him. He bit his lip. “I… I don’t think it’d be safe while my leg is still healing.”

“Oh, right, right,” Ghostbur said, sounding mildly disappointed, but it wasn’t too noticeable.

“There are some books we could read,” Wilbur tried, feeling as if it was a bit of a weak offer.

“I like books,” Ghostbur said, and Wilbur wasn’t sure if it was entirely sincere or not. Then, the tone turned softer. As if a pleasant memory passed by. “I used to write books.”

“Really?” Wilbur asked, tilting his head.

“I had a library! I wrote things down, and I read all the history books I could find. Tried to organize it all,” Ghostbur explained, sounding a little more excited at each word.

As Ghostbur spoke about it, Wilbur found some faint memories in the back of his mind. Organizing books, and writing down new information. Searching for something. “Did you like history?” Wilbur asked, and for an absurd moment he felt like an actor, asking someone if they enjoyed their latest movie. He huffed at the thought.

“I did. I tried to figure out what you did when you were alive. Everyone looked at me in different ways, and I-” he trailed off for a moment, “I don’t know, but I did enjoy reading.”

“I wonder if there is anything you wrote in here,” Wilbur mused, trying to ignore his own curiosity. 

“I don’t think so. Most of them were destroyed when-” He abruptly stopped talking, the last syllable sounding strained.

“When what?”

“My head hurts,” Ghostbur simply replied.

Wilbur slowly nodded, not quite sure what to make of the lack of an answer. “So… To pass the time, how about we read some books here? We can find some information about the revival too, and try to figure out how to get you- how to free you, in the process,” he looked at a different spot in the air, realizing there was nowhere to make eye contact with the ghost. “How does that sound?”

“Okay!” Ghostbur said, “That sounds good.”

He could finally get started on the work. It was something Wilbur was itching to do. He was itching to occupy his hands and his mind with something. His mind was still simultaneously going at thousands of miles a second, and carrying thousands of pounds with each thought. He needed something tangible. Something he could keep in his grasp.

At first, he grabbed the nearest book on the shelf. Quite a big one titled “Governments and Communities of History”. He almost dropped it as he held it in one hand, but he shakily moved it over to the table.

“Governments and Communities of History,” he told Ghostbur. He flipped inside and into the table of contents. He skimmed most of it. It started with the beginning of everything and continued to list political parties that he vaguely recognized. He flipped towards the end, hoping to find the knowledge he missed over the months he was gone. His eyes lingered onto “Eggpire” as he flipped to the corresponding page. 

He cleared his throat, “Ready, Ghostie?”

“Yep!”

“This section is about the Eggpire. ‘The Eggpire is an alliance between BadBoyHalo, Antfrost, Punz, Ponk, Hannahxxrose, and Skeppy.’ Huh, I don’t really know most of them. ‘The alliance was formed on January 14, 2021 between the founders, Bad, Ant, Punz and CaptainPuffy. However Puffy is the only founder to leave. She joined Anti-Eggpire (also known as Pro-Omelette) due to a disagreement in views.’” Wilbur chuckled as his head throbbed in response, “The second name is way better.”

Ghostbur made a sound of agreement. Just as Wilbur was about to read again, he had a realization, “I think this is the same Puffy from the flower shop, but I’m not sure.”

“I think so.” Ghostbur paused. “I mean, I can’t imagine a lot of people are named Puffy.” 

Wilbur nodded, “Good point.” He took a breath before continuing, “The keystone of the alliance is the crimson red egg located in Badboyhalo’s statue room. The Egg is meant to be a source of chaos and a way to subdue the rest of the server. Despite the Eggpire being formed as a military coalition by Bad with Ant, Puffy, and Punz, most members of the Eggpire have joined due to being corrupted by the Egg.” 

Wilbur cringed, “Are they that bad at commanding that they couldn’t genuinely recruit people? Wait- where did the egg even come from?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there was a big red chicken that laid the red egg?”

Wilbur exhaled out of his nose to resemble a laugh, “These guys are fucking losers, who else tried to resemble me while I was gone?” 

He flipped to the beginning of the book as Ghostbur chided him, “Language.”

Wilbur rolled his eyes, but his headache seemed to worsen from the action, “Pardon my French, I speak it like a bitch.” Wilbur smirked to himself as he heard Ghostbur’s upset noises.

His eyes glossed the table of contents, as he barely focused on the words. He exhaled sharply as his mind settled on L’Sandberg? No- that couldn’t be right. It was L’Manberg and it was long gone. 

He flipped to the page to verify it, before seeing the text that he mumbled out loud, “L'Sandberg (formerly L'Puffyberg and L'Puffberg) is a nation created by BadBoyHalo weeks after the end of the Eggpire.” It oddly reminded him of himself. Starting L’Manberg then creating Pogtopia because it was taken away. L’Sandberg was even named in an odd reference to L’Manberg, perhaps he would have to check the place out.

He was about to read the next part as he reread the previous lines. A strange familiarity ran through his mind. “I’ve heard of this Badboyhalo guy, but there’s no way he’s the same dude that would create a nation along with a cult-y alliance.” The only person he could picture as he read the name was a demon that dressed in red and black. He saw him bumbling around the streets with a blue man with shining skin. 

While they’d had small conversations before, he wasn’t even a hundred percent sure about his name. Part of him wanted to call him SaintsofGames, which he assumed might’ve been his actual name, or perhaps an older title.

He tried to imagine the friendly demon who cooked muffins on Saturdays being a general, but all he got out of return was the throb in his head to increase. “Have you ever heard of Badboyhalo?”

Ghostbur thought for a moment, “Yeah, I think Tommy mentioned him once? I don’t really remember all the details though.”

Wilbur hummed, “He seems neat.”

“Wilby?”

Wilbur looked up from the book and into thin air, “Yeah?”

Ghostbur whined out, “My head hurts.”

Wilbur nodded, but winced as it somehow worsened the headache. “Mine as well.” 

“Do we got any… I don’t know what it’s called but it’s sweet drink.”

At Ghostbur’s words, Wilbur’s stomach growled. “I don’t know, but I’m gonna see if I can find something to eat.” Wilbur faintly chuckled, “That’s probably why I’ve got this killer headache.”

Ghostbur made a small hum of agreement as Wilbur awkwardly realized that he would have to walk to get food. He moved from the chair, hissing in pain as positioned himself to stand on his uninjured leg. He slightly toppled from the unbalance, but didn’t have too many problems staying steady. 

“Alright, I’m gonna warn you now that it might hurt.”

Ghostbur’s voice was laced with panic, “Wait, what are you doing now?”

“Don’t worry too much. I’m just walking around in the bunker,” Wilbur reassured. “My leg still hurts so I might fall or something.” 

Ghostbur sounded displeased, “Okay, just make sure to be careful.”

“I will.” His eyes searched the room for possible food. He smiled as he remembered the carrots and melons growing downstairs. That smile quickly faded when he thought about the idea of stairs.

He hopped over to the general direction of the stairs, occasionally stopping to maintain his balance once again. At the final step he nearly stumbled, but caught himself just in time by grasping at the nearest wall. He was reminded of the exhaustion that followed his trip to Phil’s house when he’d just returned. It seemed like ages ago by now. He tried not to let the thought linger.

His leg ached slightly as he limped along to the crops. He licked his lips, as he looked at the melons that only served to remind him of his hunger much more. It occurred to him that it had been a while since he last ate. In fact, he had no clue exactly how long it had been at this point, the amount of sleep he’d gotten remaining a mystery to him. Instead of dwelling on that, he reached down at a melon, carving it into several pieces. He didn’t do a particularly great job at it, but it hardly mattered. 

He saw himself down on the nearest chair, eating each piece at an impressive pace. The sweet taste seemed to get to his entire body, working almost as many wonders as a potion would.

For a strange moment, Wilbur wondered if the water in the watermelon would cause any harm to the ghost. He couldn’t hear any screams nor pleas, which was fortunate. Being able to consume anything at all was most certainly a plus. To be fair, if the water there was enough, saliva likely would too, and that was a can of worms that Wilbur didn’t have the brain power to consider even the hypothetical of.

Once Wilbur had devoured the entire melon, he felt just a little more at ease. He felt less dizzy, and his body and mind seemed more connected than before.

While the throbbing in his head had ended, he noticed the pain in his leg. He closed his eyes for a small moment as he tried to think of a solution. He did all the medical treatment he really could at this stage. He fiddled with the rind of one of the melons before he realized he could make a potion of instant health.

Attempting to start a drug empire turned out to be helpful after all. 

He ran through the materials he needed in his head. Netherwart, blaze power, and a glistening melon. He stood up but his vision swarmed with black spots for a few moments. His stable leg shook as he leaned against the wall. It stopped seconds later, but he was filled with exhaustion that told him to forget about the potion.

Yet, he hopped to a chest near the farm. It wasn’t far away, but the action by itself seemed laborious. He shuffled through it, but found nothing of use. He hopped over to the stairs, quickly grabbing two nether warts from the farm before he started going up.

It was a long process, but he eventually made it up the stairs. He took a shaky breath as Ghostbur chimed in, “We’re still in the bunker right?”

Wilbur nodded, “Yeah, back up the stairs.”

“So are we doing more reading?” A slight boredom filled Ghostbur’s voice, but Wilbur couldn’t tell if it just arrived or if it had been there for the whole day.

Wilbur hopped to Tubbo’s chest before leaning against the wall once more. “Makin’ potions.”

Ghostbur softly gasped, “Oh, I’ve never done that before! I saw Phil and Techie doing it once though.”

“Sounds neat,” Wilbur responded, half-paying attention while looking through the chest. He pushed around some of the items in there before finding three blaze rods with a few stacks of cobblestone shuffled around. He spotted the crafting table next to the chest and he quickly melded the items together into a brewing stand. He held the brewing stand normally as he put the spare blaze rods in his coat pocket. 

He closed the chest and opened the one next to it. Twenty iron ore, random concrete blocks, and miscellaneous mob drops. He was about to close it when he saw a yellow shine under some rotten flesh. Wilbur let out an exhale of relief, “We’ve got all the stuff we need.”

Ghostbur excitedly clapped, “How do you make potions?”

Wilbur put the brewing stand down on the crafting table. “Well, you start with oh fu- n! Fun, fun, yes.” He didn’t know why he censored the swear in front of Ghostbur, but it somehow felt better than letting out a curse. “I forgot the glass bottles.”

“That doesn’t sound very fun.”

Wilbur let out a dry chuckle, “You’re right.” Wilbur thought for a moment, “There might be some in the chest next to that cauldron.” His eyes ran over the cauldron that he didn’t even know was filled or not. He pursed his lips. His uninjured leg was shaking slightly, but he didn’t exactly have another option. Well- he could always suffer. Yet that would mean the suffering of Ghostbur as well. 

He didn’t exactly care about the ghost, but he generally preferred not hearing his pleas. He quickly hopped over to the cauldron, only to collapse at the wall behind it. He closed his eyes tightly, wishing to any possible deity out there that there was water in the iron container. 

He swung his hand inside the cauldron, not daring to look inside, as if the water would disappear if he did. He felt water about half-way into the swing as he smiled. However, the instant he did that, he heard a cry of agony in his mind that instantly made him open his eyes and recoil, immediately taking his hand out of the water. “Ghostbur what’s-” Ghostbur’s previous words ran through his mind quicker than he could even process them.

It- Water burns me. I’m sorry I just didn’t expect it.

As regret plagued his mind, Ghostbur’s whimpers followed alongside them. The whimpers that reminded him of his agreement with the ghost.

W-warn me next time?

Sure.

Although he hadn’t intended to hurt Ghostbur, guilt overtook him. “Ghostbur, I-” forgot about the really important thing that hurts you if I forget! I just don’t care about you at all!

The familiar cynicism made him externally cringe. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I- I know. It- it hurts, Wil.”

Wilbur somberly nodded, “I know, I can’t do anything about it right now.” Wilbur hated how pathetic his words sounded.

Ghostbur’s typical pleas filled his mind before the pattern was interrupted, “C- could you dry it off?” It took a second for Wilbur to realize what the ghost was saying with the sobs intertwined in the shaky words. But as soon as he deciphered it, he immediately took his hand to his pants, rubbing it to make sure most of the water was off.

It didn’t take long for all of the water to be gone as he hesitantly spoke, “How does it feel now?”

“Better than before.”

Wilbur weakly pulled his body up against the wall. He opened the chest next to him to find it was full of glass bottles. He grabbed three of them out as he closed the chest and put the brewing stand on top. He tried to fill the bottles up in the cauldron, but found that his usual method involved dunking his whole hand into the water. 

He attempted to just tip the bottle so more water would enter, but upon pulling the glass bottle back up, he sighed. He knew from his early days that you needed a certain amount of water in order for the potion to properly work. Too much water made the solution diluted, causing the effect to be much more muted than it should be. Too little water made your body feel off the rest of the day, assuming the potion even works in the first place.

“Ghostbur?” He felt an odd pressure on his chest as he imagined the ghost’s whispers from before.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve… I’ve gotta dunk my hand in water again.” He could feel the ghost recoil.

“Alright,” Ghostbur took a shaky breath. “Make it quick if you can.”

“I will.” Wilbur exhaled slowly himself. Although it wouldn’t hurt Wilbur, he felt a sense of unease as he quickly dipped his hand in the water. A muffled groan echoed in his mind. He looked towards the other empty bottles in his hand as he slightly frowned.

“Ghostie, I won’t make you do anything, but I’ve gotta ask you something.” Wilbur didn’t wait for a response as he continued, “The pain you felt was from me filling up one bottle. I could just brew with this bottle and drink the potion.” Wilbur momentarily closed his eyes as the words on his tongue tasted bitter to him, “Or I can fill up the other two bottles in case of emergencies. I won’t pressure you for either option but-”

“Wilbur, I know I should choose the extra two bottles.”

Wilbur cringed at the truth. “I mean- you don’t really have to choose that option. We could just start brewing if you’d like.”

Ghostbur sighed, “I can take it.”

Wilbur despised the words, but he responded, “Alright, my hand is going in.” He quickly filled both of the bottles, trying to ignore the muffled scream that ringed in his mind.

He forced himself to block it out as he turned back to the brewing stand, filling it with the three full bottles as Ghostbur’s noises died down. He rubbed his hand on his pants before taking the nether wart he had and putting it in at the top. Only silence greeted his ears as he remembered he needed some blaze powder to power the machine overall. 

He crushed the blaze rod with ease, putting it in as the rest of the process seemed automated to him. He barely processed his movements as he soon watched as the mixture turned into a bright red, He took the glass bottle away from the stand, as he swirled the liquid around, watching it carefully. It was almost hypnotic. He held the bottle to his lips and took a deep breath. “I… I’m going to drink a health potion for my leg.” He bit his lip, “It might hurt a bit.”

“Oh.” Ghostbur said, his voice sounded a little quiet, “Okay, I’m ready.”

Wilbur nodded even if the ghost couldn’t see him, and took a large sip from the bottle. He kept drinking, not removing the bottle from his lips. His throat was burning at the sensation. He closed his eyes tightly, feeling the pain spread through his body, as if the headache from before had decided to pound in his leg instead of his head. His blood felt as if it had momentarily been replaced by the burning potion, removing his attention from anything but it. He tried to breathe his way through it, each breath coming through as a quick hiss.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed, before the pain transitioned into a comforting warmth. He opened his eyes again, trying to step down on his leg. The pain had decreased significantly. He let out a relieved breath, and gave an accomplished smile. “It’s much easier to walk now,” he said.

“Is your leg better?” Ghostbur asked hopefully, “Are you going to leave the bunker soon?”

Wilbur frowned. He shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “The leg could still use some time to heal and…” he looked at the bookshelves above, “There might still be some information we can use here.”

“Right.” Ghostbur said, suddenly sounding determined, “That makes sense.”

Wilbur tried to chuckle, though it came out so silently and breathlessly, that it was hardly a noise at all. He took a step on his much more useful leg, feeling relieved as he could walk more or less without limping. He walked to some chests he hadn’t looked at yet, and rummaged through them. If he was planning on staying in the bunker for longer, it would be optimal to know what supplies he had available to him. He was reminded of his exile, before Pogtopia was built, as he and Tommy assessed their remaining supplies, to figure out what they had to work with. His heart became just a little heavier at the thought, and he decided to put the thought away, for as long as he could.

Among the most noteworthy items he found was a clock at the bottom of one of the chests. It looked old, as if someone had forgotten they’d put it there in the first place. Wilbur picked it up, inspecting each side of it. The hands of the clock moved ahead each second, making a rhythmic little ‘tick’ at each step. The sound was comforting to him somehow, ringing through the silence of the solitary bunker.

It read 5am.

It took Wilbur a few moments to figure out if the clock was functional and accurate, though he eventually concluded that it was highly probable. He wasn’t sure when he’d fallen asleep, nor for how long, but at least this would let him keep track of the now. Slowly, he walked up the stairs again, much more successfully this time.

As he reached the bookshelves, he stopped, staring at the nearest empty wall. There was a faint ticking from the clock in his hands, and he felt as if he was staring into nothingness. Staring at a silent wall. A half-bent nail was firmly placed on it. Gently, Wilbur placed the clock on it, until it was hanging there safely. He sat down on the chair, and allowed his eyes to close, as he centered his mind. He had a goal in mind, and as soon as possible, a plan would be shaped from the muddled thoughts.

It was time to get to work.

[mimik-u]

Archive

Summary: As a part of the extensive process for documenting the war, Pearl and Blue Diamond prepare to have a conversation about Pink.

Prompt: One of the Diamonds interacts with a Pearl (either “our” Pearl, our “their” Pearl) post-CYM

Note: My gift to @runrundoyourstuff​ for our holiday gift exchange. Dani, your writing always inspires me—I’m always looking to it for your complex understanding of characters, your depth, and the beautiful way you have with words (always so thoughtful, even to the syllable). Thank you for all the wonderful conversations that we have. I’m so lucky to have you in my life!! And please check out her gift to me—Seasons! I’m so excited to read it, too!!!!

AO3 Link

—

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Steven reminds her for the fifteenth time since he woke up this morning and bounded down from the loft to interrupt her daily newspaper reading. He’s sitting on the corner of her desk in Little Homeschool now, one of his jacket sleeves scrunched up at the elbow and the other rolled down, leveling her a serious look beneath his bushy brow, mouth pressed into a thin line.

It strikes Pearl suddenly, and for no readily available reason, that her little boy has grown up somewhere in the space and span of two measly years.

Soon, if he keeps growing, he’ll be even taller than she is.

“Yes, you’ve made sure I’m aware of that,” she returns wryly, absently reshuffling her notes again. They’re half-English, half-gem glyph in a shorthand that only she understands, alternating languages from line to line depending on when glyphs were not sufficient enough to capture all those once-foreign concepts to gemkind: love, romance, the depths of sacrifice. Gems didn’t need symbols to encode for these complex sensations, even if they felt them, and perhaps especially if they did.

It was scary to love someone on Homeworld.

It was terrifying to love them so powerfully that you would risk your very gem for them.

Traitors were duly punished.

Survivors were rare in Era One.

(Garnet can attest to that.)

“I’m just sayin’,” he protests playfully, sounding rather like Amethyst, and even resembling her when he raises both of his palms in mock surrender. “I know this project is important and all, but it’s not as important as me knowing that you’re comfortable…”

Pearl places her papers down and straightens them neatly, all the while feeling the force of Steven’s expectant gaze.

The strength of his love.

It warms her all over.

It colors her pale face.

But when she finally glances up at him, even though her cheeks are assuredly pink, she keeps her voice and resolve firm.

(Though she’ll never say this to him, not now, not anymore—never again—he reminds her so much of his mother sometimes.)

(His kindness, his warmth, his goodness.)

(Because Rose wasn’t all bad—not really. Not to her, at least.)

“I’m fine, Steven,” she reassures him. “I promise. I wouldn’t have agreed in the first place if I wasn’t. This isn’t the first time I’ve done one of these recordings, and it won’t be the last either.”

“But never about… this, you know”—he makes a vague pointing gesture with his hand, struggling for the right words—“and never with a Diamond.”

He says the word Diamond nervously, like it’s one of the expletives that Amethyst has gotten more comfortable in dropping now that Steven is a bonafide teenager, and he’s simply waiting to see Pearl’s response, how she’ll react.

She certainly did give Amethyst one hell of a scolding the other day.

“This is history,” she returns quietly. “It’s painful history, yes… but that can’t be helped.”

“But it can!” He argues pointedly, his eyes wide and incredulous, his voice scratched around its strained edges. “You don’t have to share the things that have hurt you for the entire galaxy to see, Pearl. That isn’t what this is all about.”

“But I want to.” And there’s a sense of finality in her tone that closes a mouth that had already been half-wrenched open in preemptive protest. Pearl takes the opportunity to reach over then and place a hand on Steven’s jean-enclosed knee, smiling gently. “Of course, there are a couple of details I’ll keep to myself—keep between you and me—but for the most part, I’m ready to tell this part of the story. Indeed, I think it’s essential that I do.”

“For archival purposes?” Steven asks dryly, resignation in his voice, a little teenage petulance, too.

Pearl pats his knee once, laughs lightly, and then withdraws her hand.

“For closure,” she says simply, but then, because she knows it’s not enough for him, and she wants it to be enough for him, elaborates. Explains. (It isn’t quite justification, though.) “Two years ago, I was bound by your mother’s final command to never talk about what we did. And most of the time, I didn’t want to… I don’t think I could have forced myself to even if I tried. As you got older, though, as you learned more about your mother and all of her many… complexities…  as you began to have questions—so many important questions—I knew I needed to but couldn’t. And now…”

“You have a choice,” Steven finishes for her, realization washing across his face, unbending the protective sharpness in it.

“Exactly,” she nods approvingly, “and so I’ve thought about it… I’ve weighed everything out carefully… and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is what I want—to claim our history… even  though it’s painful, even if it still hurts. I’ve had trouble doing that before, even with secrets in my own volition, and I don’t want… I refuse to let that be me anymore, Steven. I don’t want to live with thousands-year old ghosts anymore.”

Though his brow remains furrowed, though there’s something in the dark of his eyes that remains a little unsure, Steven nonetheless blinks to show that he’s heard her and nods solemnly to indicate that he understands.

It’s a simple gesture.

It means a lot.

And she smiles at him in radiant, weary relief.

A few months ago, Homeworld and Little Homeschool scholars had a conference to determine how best to record, preserve, and proliferate the history of the war, and all the events that resulted in Era Three. There are extensive gaps in Homeworld’s own archives, which had been scrubbed free of mentions of it in obedience to Yellow Diamond’s commands, and Little Homeschool, of course, being relatively new, doesn’t have an archive so much as it has a file cabinet in Pearl’s office that’s at the very least meticulously alphabetized. And so, they decided upon creating a universally accessible Archive, a series of recordings and documents and interviews delivered by gems and humans from both sides of the war, giving accounts of all that has happened in six thousand elapsed years.

Most of the Crystal Gems have done several recordings.

Garnet, Bismuth, and Pearl did one just last week on the Battle of the Ziggurat.

Biggs and a few other defected Homeworld soldiers have covered some of the minor battles.

Yellow and Blue Pearl have recorded a few on what it was like to be in the palace during the war.

And even the Diamonds themselves have proffered their perspectives whenever they’ve had the time.

Because the scholars emphasized early on that it was essential for all sides of the story to be brought to the table in order for the universe to get the fullest canvas of what it meant that Pink Diamond started a war that her half-human son would one day finish.

The minutiae of Homeworld politics.

All of the many battles.

The rebellion.

The beauty of Earth.

The aching desolation of Homeworld after the faked shattering.

Gems’ encounters with humans.

Humans’ encounters with gems.

The casualties.

The grief.

And what that does to a gem—to hold her comrade’s shards in her hands.

What it does to people.

The various townies have given their accounts of what it was like to live through alien invasion after alien invasion, to see their beloved Beach City upended so many times, right before their eyes.

War.

“When does it start?” Steven asks in a would-be-casual voice, straightening up from her desk and stretching his arms over his head before pulling them back down again. With a meticulousness she fancies he inherited from her, he finally fixes his sleeves, dragging the cuff of his left arm to perfectly match the length of the other.

“In ten minutes,” she replies.

“Do you want me to stay?” Lines crease his eyes even as he offers it. “I can if you need me to.”

He glances at the still dormant Holo-Crystal on the desk and just as quickly glances away, finding her face.

Searching her own gaze, even at the very moment she searches his, the both of them looking for something to be concerned about and unfailingly finding love.

Pearl knows for a fact that he doesn’t want to listen, that he’d rather not hear the sordid story all over again.

He’s seen it.

Goodness, he’s half-lived it through the mire of her own head.

But she also knows that if she asked him to, he would do it.

Just for her.

He’s selfless like that.

He’s Steven.

“Go,” she smiles softly at him, leaning back in her chair. “Get out of here. If you and Amethyst will grab the stuff from the store, I’ll make cookies for dessert tonight.”

Steven returns the gesture crookedly, and the relief in his eyes is almost mistakable for excitement.

“Chocolate chip?” His voice young, almost childlike.

“Do you even need to ask?” Her voice fond, always motherly.

“Thanks, Pearl!” He chuckles. He half-skips. He snatches his car keys from the desk and all but slaps the door handle. “Love you.”

“Love you too.”

He winks his final goodbye, twists the knob and in a brief flash of golden sunlight, disappears into the day. The door clicks to a merry close behind the shuffle and haste of his heels.

And Pearl is left alone, hands templed delicately in her lap, staring at a deadened Holo-Crystal that’s lying almost forlornly on its side. 

Her smile slips away from her mouth like falling sand the moment she thinks she’s safe.

She shuffles her papers again.

She stares, very quietly, at the crystal.

She looks, just as pointedly, away.

Occupies herself by touching her notes again, raking her fingers over all the words that give a form to the one secret she had kept to herself for thousands upon thousands of years—not entirely out of her own will.

She wasn’t lying to Steven when she said that she wanted to do this.

She was lying about the fact that she was fine to do it.

Somehow, in the tangle of her own head, it makes sense to her that these sensations are not mutually exclusive. It’s perfectly compatible to want to do something that’s scary and still feel intensely scared about doing it.

Fear doesn’t stop at the threshold of a made decision. 

After all, if fear had ever stopped her from doing what she wanted, then she would have never loved Rose Quartz.

So she stares at the Holo-Crystal, and then she emphatically doesn’t.

Tries to distract herself.

(Eight minutes til…. seven.)

Fails. 

Abruptly gets out of her chair, a sudden restlessness in her lanky limbs, and begins to pace the floor, sunlight from the nearby window dusting her skin gold in square patches, in slivers. When only one minute remains, and the Holo-Crystal suddenly glows a bright, electric blue as a warning alert to a scheduled call, she throws herself back into the chair as forcibly as possible and tries to arrange her face into an expression that’s just as equally cool.

Focused.

Put together.

Fifty seconds…

She pushes a hand through her hair and hates herself for doing so; assuredly, she just ruffled it, and now her hair will be a rumpled mess on a hologram for time immemorial.

Thirty seconds…

What in stars’ name does she do with her hands? Arrange them on the desk? Temple them on her lap? Place them stiffly by her sides? She settles for some awkward combination of the three—templing them on the smooth surface of her desk with her elbows at stiff angles.

It’s highly uncomfortable.

Twenty seconds…

She could bail now, and Steven wouldn’t think the worse of her for it. She’d join him at the beach house after he returned from the grocery store, and he’d help her make the cookie dough and never say a word as to her cowardice. Perhaps he would even be relieved that she decided not to go through with her intentions in the first place. After all, they weren’t strictly necessary… that was one of his arguments even… someone else could do it… could tell her story… and it would all be the same.

Ten seconds…

But she wouldn’t be relieved.

She wouldn’t be proud of herself.

She could live with herself, yes, but she wouldn’t be able to forget that when the opportunity came to speak her truth freely, she refused to, denying a voice that had already been long denied.

So many times over.

From the very first moment she emerged into the world as a gem whose highest and only pleasure was to serve.

Five seconds… the Holo-Crystal begins to blink rapidly, throwing its frenetic hues in quick pulses across her desk.

And so she has to do this then.

Four seconds…

She wants to.

Three seconds…

It’s her narrative and no one else’s.

Two seconds…

Not even Rose’s.

One second…

Maybe especially not hers, even if she isn’t ready to admit that yet, to face that raw fact.

In a diamond shaped burst of energy, the Holo-Crystal throws its projection upwards with a series of gem glyphs that she reads with both trepidation and ease: ACCEPT FEED? YES OR NO?

Breaking the solemn temple of her fingers, swallowing her electric, jangling nerves, Pearl, against all her better judgment, presses yes, and the glyphs fall away, replaced by a live portrait of a gem who somehow looks exactly like Pearl feels. 

Arctic eyes wide.

Charcoaled beneath with thousands of years worth of shadows.

Brow furrowed with indecision.

With hesitancy.

With all the indelicate trappings of fear.

“Blue Diamond,” Pearl greets coolly, jerking her head in a stiff nod. Somewhere deep in her gem, an odd impulse to salute pulls at her facets.

“Pearl,” the Diamond returns softly, almost wonderingly—as though the name is unfamiliar on her tongue. In a way, it likely is. The Diamonds once viewed the Pearls as objects as opposed to gems and referred to them in such a way.

The Pearls.

Our Pearls.

They were interchangeable.

They were possessions.

In the Reef, they even came with accessories: staffs and wands and batons.

“Thank you for consenting to do this,” Pearl continues in that same clipped but professional tone. “I think this will be an important entry in the Archive.”

“Aye,” comes the quiet reply, thoughtful. “Yellow and White don’t quite understand it entirely yet, but there is rationality in this—in proffering the fullest account of our history for anyone to access it if they so choose. It’s about preserving her… all of our legacies—the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

Pearl is suddenly reminded that of the three remaining Diamonds, Blue was the one who upheld the human zoo, who perceived it as a relic and immortalized it as such.

Steven had told her about all of those bubbled Rose Quartzes.

Dozens of them.

Hundreds.

Made to cover the illusion of Rose’s identity.

Punished for a crime that they didn’t perpetrate. 

Perfectly preserved in stasis and purgatory for thousands of aching years.

“And so often the ugly,” Pearl emphasizes scathingly, and it’s a condemnation of them all—of Rose for making the Quartzes, of Pearl for being complicit, of Blue Diamond for imprisoning them and calling it mercy.

“Yes,” Blue agrees faintly, new lines forming beneath her eyes. “We did some terrible things…”

Her demureness and her honesty irritate Pearl for some reason—perhaps because she didn’t expect them, or perhaps because she very well did and still finds that they ring false, insincere, affected. How could they not in the face of millennia worth of cruelty and injustice? How can two years of positive growth overturn the effects of two hundred thousand?

Perhaps it’s simply that she believes in action as correctives and atonements.

Perhaps she doesn’t trust mere words, even though this is what this entire event is all about in the end—mere words. 

Perhaps she wants to see it in Blue Diamond’s eyes for herself—the change in them, the repentance.

And perhaps, at the very same time, she doesn’t want to look too closely in case she finds precisely what she’s looking for.

“Yes,” she repeats primly. “You did, and today is about looking backwards to that, about assessing all the things we did and didn’t do—on both sides of the war.”

Blue Diamond absorbs this all quietly, looking downwards, strands of silvery-blue hair falling from her neat parting and across her tall forehead.

“How exactly do we do that?” She asks. “Where do we even begin?”

Admittedly, they’re both excellent questions, and now it’s Pearl’s turn to glance down, to recognize the scrawl of all her neatly organized notes and suddenly realize that they feel insufficient for the task at hand, bare.

The word love crops up so many times, but nothing is said about the overwhelming force of that love—the all-consuming dimensions of it.

How Pearl would have been content to stay in Rose’s presence forever, and that alone would have been enough.

And how complicated that same love was.

How it was sometimes tangled in programming and servitude.

And how at other times, it was dangerous, bold, revolutionary, transcendent.

And how it hurt sometimes.

Perhaps even all the time.

Love so deep that it felt like pain.

Even English doesn’t have the capacity to describe those complexities of emotion.

Even language itself.

“Well,” she begins hesitantly, before she has all of her words in order, “when I press record… we simply have to… you know… talk about it, about everything that led up to the Corruption Song, sparing no detail.”

“Simple, is it?” Blue Diamond asks quietly, and there is slight admonishment in the question, ancient sadness in her geometric eyes, in all the lines and shadows beneath them.

“No,” Pearl replies, glancing away from the screen. “Not at all.”

Loving Pink Diamond was so many things.

It was not, in fact, simple.

“But it’s important,” she continues, her voice gaining strength, “maybe even necessary for us to at least try to tell our stories as fully as we can because she never felt like she could tell her own.”

“That must have been so lonely for her,” Blue whispers, anguished, the words half-caught in her throat.

Pearl forces herself to look at the diamond portrait again.

To search the other’s expression.

To acknowledge the truth in it.

The love.

The pain.

The love that feels so much like pain.

“It was, I think,” Pearl murmurs. “She wanted to be everyone else but herself—on that day. On all the days afterwards as we recovered the shards of our companions, as we had to fight their corrupted selves. Maybe even until the very end when she became Steven.”

And this, she thinks, is the fundamental truth of Rose Quartz above all, one she doesn’t think she’ll share with the rest of the universe, one she thinks will keep between herself and Steven and now… Blue Diamond.

Rose loved the entire world.

She was moved by it. Endlessly.

She loathed herself.

And seemingly the entire world—Pearl included—pedestalized her.

“We did that to her,” Blue says, and there’s venom in her voice, an air of admission. She brings her tall hands upwards and spiders them across her face. “We… I… never told her that she was good enough. I required her facets to be perfect and scolded her—punished her—every time she so much as toed our harsh lines.”

“You never told her that you loved her,” Pearl says, and there’s solemnity in her voice, an air of accusation. She clenches her own hands on top of the surface of her notes.

Glyphs interspersed with words.

Pain.

Love.

Grief.

“And when you finally showed that you did,” Pearl continues, closing her eyes at the memory of a world being swallowed in white light, of a sky being rent by the echoes of so many thousands of gems screaming to the same tune of the Diamonds’ feral, wailing song, “you destroyed nearly an entire population to do it… all of you… together.”

“Yes,” Blue Diamond can only utter between the gaps in her fingertips.

There is nothing else she can really say.

No defense against the indefensible.

“This is the story we have to tell,” Pearl finishes unsparingly, and yet, at the very moment she does, she leans backwards in her chair, suddenly exhausted, completely drained, as though she’s already done all the telling and the reckoning and the processing and the labor.

But she’s only scarcely begun.

They both have.

“Not only for this project… but for ourselves, too. We owe ourselves that, at least—the ability to claim everything that we’ve done.”

“Or”—Blue finally lets her hands fall away from her face, leaving only the carnage of overbright eyes behind—“that has been done to you.”

She’s talking about her own atrocities—this Pearl immediately intuits—but Pearl thinks about a different Diamond instead.

A covered mouth.

A hibiscus flower.

And command to never speak of this again.

Because no one can know.

“Yes,” Pearl can only utter.

There is nothing else she can really say.

No defense against the indefensible.

They lapse into silence then, the static from the hologram’s particles humming in the still air.

“It’s a tragic story,” Blue Diamond says, “but I believe you're correct… we have to tell it anyway. For that very reason—so other gems will know the truth… and remember it… remember her.”

Pearl slowly reaches forward to grab the Holo-Crystal, her fingers hovering just above the recording mechanism.

“It’s a story about love,” she quietly asserts, renegade defiance in her voice. “About all different kinds of it, really.”

“The good, the bad, and the ugly.”

And so often the ugly.

“It was complicated,” Pearl only says and presses record.

It’s not an admission here; she's already admitted to this fact—several times over.

To anyone who will listen.

(No one really does.)

Rather, it's a tiny kindness.

Maybe to Blue Diamond.

Maybe to herself.

And maybe even to the memory of the long dead ghost who sits in the space of the thousands of lightyears between them, hands beneath her chin, smiling gently at some beautiful thing that she just saw.

A flower, perhaps.

A human.

An infinite, changing sky.

A world where she could perhaps learn to love herself in the same way that she loved others.

Entirely.

[itsclydebitches]

YYH Recaps: Koenma Appears

Welcome to episode two, everyone! Before we get to the recap proper, I want to continue down Nostalgia Lane for a moment. Remember how last time I mentioned a Hiei bookmark I used daily back in middle school? Well, I tore through an old "treasure box" I created as a kid (a collection containing everything from a shark tooth to a small book on witchcraft. You know, the important things every child needs) hoping to find it... but I didn't. It's a hard life we lead.

However, I did find some other YYH relics that I thought you all might enjoy seeing. Behold — and, if you'd like, laugh at — my collection:

First up is a picture of young Toguro and Genkai that I wanted to use as my bookmark, but found that it was too wide. For the record, I didn't (and still don't) care about Toguro much, he was just the byproduct of finding a cool Genkai picture. Not shown is the back of the image with the names of my classmates because I made them all sign this along with our yearbook.

God bless my friends for putting up with me.

Second is a collection of very pretty trading cards that I ordered from god only knows where. I have vague memories of not finding any at my local comics shop and convincing my mom to let me order on The Olde Internet. Did I want the trading cards to trade them? Absolutely not. They exist to sparkle and make my heart happy.

Finally, I've saved what is perhaps the best for last. Now, you have to understand that grade to middle school age Clyde did not have the education that she would receive later on, which includes a knowledge of the ephemeral nature of fanworks and the importance of accurate record keeping. What this means is that I have absolutely no context for this. No author, no explanation... just the image itself.

Was this a standalone fanart? A part of a fic? Some specific request or just the will of the artist? I cannot answer these questions. I tried a reverse image search (which is, admittedly, the extent of my tech skills) and you know what the single hit I got was? "Fiction." Thanks, google. So yeah, I can only assume that my child self considered Kurama giving a de-aged Hiei a bubble bath adorable enough to save, but the artist wasn't important enough to jot down for future viewing. Sorry about that, mystery artist. And, as should go without saying, if anyone does know where this came from please let me know! Though I suspect that this is a case of a YYH-specific site closing down and the fanworks getting lost along with it. That happened a great deal before the age of AO3 when volunteers decided to put their time and talent towards saving fanworks of all sorts... 

But enough of all that. Let's get to recapping!

As we established last episode, Yusuke and Botan are on their way to the spirit world to kickstart Yusuke's ordeal. Watching this after over a decade of consuming other media, I really appreciate that Yusuke acts like a human person and asks lots of questions about this. When Botan is cryptic for the sake of the audience — we're going to see "the person" who can explain everything — Yusuke is justifiably like, and what person would that be?? I mean, this is also a way to establish basic facts for the viewer and it simultaneously feeds into Yusuke being someone who is difficult for the sake of being difficult — "If someone wants to say something, they should come to me!" — but it's just nice to see a character who doesn't accept cryptic BS because the story needs them to. If Botan gives an unclear, but ~dramatic~ explanation, Yusuke is going to call her out on that.

So she explains that they're going to see King Yama and Yusuke is all whoa whoa whoa, there's royalty involved? Suddenly, he's not so adamant that they come to him. 

Botan tries to reinforce this rare spark of humility and demands that Yusuke be on his best behavior from here on out.

Pff. Yeah right.

But “he can send you to oblivion forever if he wants to!” is a suitable enough threat to cow Yusuke for now. Which is interesting considering that a few hours ago he was happy to accept hell as his rightful ending. Granted, we could argue that there's a big difference between hell and oblivion — a character may not be afraid of punishment in the same way they are a lack of existence — but I'd say this ties more into Yusuke's development at the wake. Now that he's accepted that people care for him and that he should strive to return to them, the threat of having it snatched away actually means something. Even if that line is otherwise positioned as a comedic moment.

Botan flies them through a portal where we see the River Styx below and Yusuke comments on how big everything is. At first I was like, "What are you talking about? You were just flying over some major city in fictional Japan, wasn't that big too?" but this line makes more sense when they reach the palace and you realize that yeah, it's big. As in, the camera blurs while tilting down its length to show how insanely tall it is. Yusuke and Botan are tiny gnats at the gate's entrance.

"Oh man, what a pad!" Yusuke says and sure, that's one way to look at it lol.

Botan announces that she has a "new arrival" and the gates open for them, but so far there's no one else around. One part of me wants to question the time and budget put into this scene because shouldn't there be, like, thousands of people? Even just waiting outside? The idea that this is the hub of the underworld and that Botan is responsible for ferrying all the souls, yet she is guiding just this one (1) dude for a solid day is, from a world building perspective, kind of nuts. But beyond the need to develop Botan as a character (she can't be a part of the story if her job is treated realistically, with all the endless work that entails), I think this choice functions rather well from an atmospheric perspective too. Meaning, this moment is supposed to be rather tense for Yusuke. He just died, just found out the afterlife exists, just discovered a desire to get his life back, and is now about to meet a King who can toss him into oblivion if he's rude — which Yusuke always is. So this is a Very Dangerous Moment and their relative isolation feeds into that. As does the setting. Yusuke flinches back from the hallway, saying that it looks like a giant throat, so he is now literally walking into the belly of the beast. 

Suddenly, the size of the palace isn't an indicator of awesome wealth, just general intimidation. Also, check out the spikey purple mountains in the background and the harsh reds of the scene, especially compared to the soft yellow of the river. All of it is designed to create an, "Oh shit" reaction in both Yusuke and the audience.

Yusuke's image of King Yama matches these surroundings:

Oh wait! Wrong character ;)

He's massive, red, shadowed, and poses a formidable threat. And how does Yusuke deal with threats? By fighting them! Even those he can't hope to beat. Remember, this isn't a situation where Yusuke has any power here, but he still desperately holds onto the possibility that he might. What if he gets off a punch on King Yama's nose? Then goes for his eyes? Yeah, that'll work! 

Overlooking the fact that it absolutely would not — Yusuke's fantasy conveniently skips how he escapes Yama's clutches — what exactly is Yusuke hoping to accomplish here? Somehow take over the entire underworld? Escape as a ghost and live out his afterlife in hiding? We don't know and that's because Yusuke doesn't know. He doesn't think ahead, he just obeys this instinct to fight. An instinct that, crucially, overrides everything else. Botan has already told him that all Yusuke needs to do is be polite and everything will be fine, but it's not even that Yusuke believes that he can't achieve that; that he knows himself too well and, fearing a slip, starts planning for a potentially inevitable confrontation. There are simply no plans outside of battle plans. Yusuke just hears about someone vaguely intimidating and his brain jumps straight to, "How do I beat him in a fight?" no matter the odds, or that other options are readily available to him. Again, much of YYH's characterization occurs though its comedy, so outside of the general humor of witnessing this fantasy, it actually does a stellar job of reinforcing precisely who Yusuke is. In life the only thing he had going for him was his ability to fight. It was his one joy, his one skill, arguably the one good thing he did if we frame those reflexes as "saving" the kid... so is it any wonder that fighting dominates his every thought? It's all he knows.

And, as we'll see down the line, that single-minded obsession is very useful to the spirit world.

For now though, Yusuke finishes his absurd plans to take down King Yama and Botan asks what in the world he's muttering about back there. Which is an unintentionally hilarious line because by the end Yusuke is not muttering, but full on shouting. Botan. How did you not hear him?

Not important. They reach the next door and we get our first inkling that all is not as Yusuke (and we) expect when Botan leans into an intercom to say that they've arrived. Tech in a fantasy spirit world? This feels not only out of place, but rather... mundane? That's the point. When the doors open Yusuke expects his super scary monster, but gets... a whole lot of monsters that aren't scary at all!

The underworld is run by various demons (or ogres), though their looks are contrasted with the harried office worker personalities they've got going on. Someone is running by with a comically tall stack of papers. Someone else is shouting into a cell phone. The first two demons we see cross paths, looking like they're about to punch one another, just as Yusuke expects... except they're just dramatically getting out of the other's way, worried not about the hierarchy of this realm, but the fact that someone is behind schedule. The nerve!

"This place is a madhouse!" we hear somehow shout and yeah, that's the joke. The afterlife is just as chaotic, overworked, and — ultimately — boring as any human office. For all the strangeness of seeing hundreds of demons, this is familiar.

Which, alongside Botan's bubbly nature contrasting assumptions about the Grim Reaper, is one of the first instances of YYH undercutting the viewer's expectations in terms of looks. No one entirely looks the part they play in this tale and if you're trying to teach people to look past surface characteristics... there are worse ways to do it. Horrifying creatures with horns and sharp teeth? Nah, they're just chill dudes trying to do their job. Cutesy girl who looks like she belongs in a mall reading magazines? Nah, she's the Grim Reaper. Terrifying delinquent with a spine-chilling reputation? Nah, he makes faces at kids and saves them from cars.

Of course, the "nah" isn't accurate either. These are monsters with horns, Botan is a cutesy girl, and Yusuke is a delinquent with that reputation. The message isn't so much that people look like Thing A, but get to know them and you'll discover they're actually Thing B, it's the idea that you can be A and B (and C, D, E...) simultaneously. People — or rather, seemingly simple archetypes — can, in fact, embody multiple characteristics at once.

We'll get our third example in just a second.

Yusuke makes a comment about this being the "dead people stock exchange" — accurate — and Botan leads him to a more ornate door past all the desks. It's clear they've arrived at King Yama's office, since she's bowing and formally presenting him to... someone. Yusuke looks around for the giant beast he's imagined, only for a tiny voice to hail him from the ground.

Looks are deceiving!

“This is Yusuke Urameshi and he’s honored to meet you." Botan knows what's up. She knows Yusuke isn't going to express anything of the sort without some prompting. Too bad he's busy cracking up at this apparent child running the show. Side note: Yusuke has a fantastic laugh.

He even goes so far as to accuse Botan of lying to him.

“Why would I lie about such a thing?!”

“Why would the spirit world be run by a toddler?”

It's true! That’s a legitimate question! I love that Yusuke asks questions. The "toddler" goes on to explain that he's actually the "mighty Koenma," son of King Yama, though he's lived fifty times as long as Yusuke, "so watch your mouth." Assuming Koenma knows and/or remembers how old Yusuke is — fourteen — and is good at math, that puts him at seven hundred years old. He looks good for his age!

"And in addition to knowing the secrets of the universe," he says, "I am quite potty trained."

You've gotta love Koenma.

Yusuke's attitude changes drastically once they get down to business. Koenma produces an egg, saying that Yusuke's ordeal is to hatch it and face what comes out. The hatching part isn't difficult, all he needs to do is keep it on his person. The challenge is in the fact that this egg will feed off his spirit energy and that energy in turn will change what kind of creature develops. If his spirit is wicked and cruel, so will be the beast and it will devour Yusuke upon hatching.

However, if his spirit is good and kind, the beast will become a sort of guardian, guiding him back to his living body.

Note though that throughout this conversation the egg is always a "beast." It's a "monster." It's not necessarily intentional, but there's a strong bend towards the negative here in the description that really emphasizes the whole "ordeal" aspect. Koenma briefly reassures Yusuke that he can remain a ghost if he prefers, but he's already made up his mind. Despite another threat of being lost to a void — this time through spiritual digestion — Yusuke takes the egg almost without hesitation.

He regrets it later though.

"I can't believe I did that."

Can we blame him? I'd be nervous about some egg feeding off the energy of my soul too and I'm a former, almost straight A student (damn you, math) with no life-altering regrets and a general desire to put as much good into this world as I'm able. I’m boring. But what if those occasional, mean little thoughts you have add up? What if the prejudices you're still unlearning stack against you? Does the egg care about what you do, or only how you feel about the act? This sort of test would eat me alive!

Maybe literally. 

Good thing Yusuke doesn't have time for an existential crisis!

Just as he's beginning to regret this decision, Botan points out that it won't matter if he passes if he doesn't have a body to return to. Now, why wouldn't he have a body? Maybe because his mom is set to cremate him tomorrow.

Whoopsie.

Yusuke is, understandably, distraught. We get another excellent exchange:

“Botan, is there any way for ghosts to communicate with living people?”

“Yes.”

“SO ARE YOU GONNA TELL ME?”

I swear, Yusuke is the only smart protagonist. I mean, he's dumb as a sack of bricks at times, but that's neither here nor there. Bless this fictional boy for reacting like an actual person. 

Botan explains that people are more attuned to the spirit world when they're asleep, so Yusuke can deliver a message to someone in their dreams. Seems easy enough. They first head to Atsuko, but find that she's raging drunk and nowhere near sleep. 

"You fool!" she yells. "No one gave you permission to die!" Atsuko continues to yell about how plenty of people survive car accidents, so why couldn't you? "Were you mad at me, Yusuke? Didn't I raise you right?"

Botan comments on how sad the display is. Yusuke's response?

“The only thing that’s sad is now she’s got one more excuse to act that way."

Y'all, that's some mature shit for a goofy shonen anime. Yeah, Yusuke recognizes that, while she's obviously heartbroken, his death has just given her another reason to do what she's been doing for years: drinking herself into a stupor. Toss in Atsuko putting the blame on Yusuke — "No one gave you permission to die!" — plus the belief that she did do a good job — "Didn't I raise you right?" — and it paints a rather bleak picture. This is by no means an uncommon theme. Negligent parents, whether they're framed that way or not, are pretty common in shonen series, but it's still rather jarring to re-watch this as an adult and go, "Oh. The situation’s like that." It's honestly a lot when you remove it from YYH's otherwise humorous, casual context.

Yusuke heads to Keiko's next and finds her sound asleep, commenting on how her room looks more "girly" than when they were kids. Check out that smile!

He's about to try and deliver his message, but Keiko is in the midst of a nightmare. “She’s crying… what’s wrong?”

Oh my god. Remember how I just said Yusuke is also the densest protagonist around? Example A right here. You just died, you fool! You just saw Keiko collapse at your funeral. What do you think is wrong??

We get a peek at Keiko's dream where she is — shockingly! — thinking of Yusuke. He's far out of reach, walking away and unresponsive to her calls. Keiko soon trips and Yusuke disappears completely.

Luckily, she has the real thing at her bedside. Yusuke tries talking to her and at first it's unclear if this supernatural stuff is really working. That is, until Keiko murmurs about how heavy he is.

Reassured, Yusuke delivers his message that Keiko needs to help Atsuko pull herself together and, most importantly, call off burning his body. We get this very soft and pretty background to establish their yet unspoken feelings for one another, though Yusuke gets close with, “I’m coming back. I don’t want to see you cry anymore" as he brushes her tears away. Aww.

Keiko wakes, thinking at first it was just a dream, but no, "I'm sure I felt it."

The next morning she heads to Atsuko's to explain the dream, only to first hear that Atsuko had a dream too, this one about Yusuke "living in some other world full of ogres and he kept knocking them down until he became their leader." It sounds absurd, of course, but it brings Atsuko some comfort to think of her boy in a place like that and Keiko backs down. Right, she'd only had a comforting dream too.

Now, there are two important parts to this exchange. The first is that this is an excellent example of how you let the characters drive the story, rather than forcing the characters adhere to the plot you've come up with. Meaning, in the latter situation, our cast would have needed to have their personalities twisted and the viewer's suspicion of disbelief tested to give Yusuke what he needs: a sleeping family member willing to believe his message. But it absolutely makes sense for Atsuko to be drunk rather than sound asleep, so Yusuke can't rely on her. Likewise, it absolutely makes sense for Keiko to be asleep, but not believe the dream once she's woken up. After all, how many times have we been persuaded by something in the dead of night only for things to look more logical and less likely in the morning? The characters act both like themselves and like people who do normal, people-ish things, which means that Yusuke runs into more conflicts. That's good! It not only raises the tension and stakes — now he has less than a day to convince someone — but makes his inevitable success feel that much sweeter. A less well written show (cough-RWBY-cough) would have had the characters change their personalities, behave in unlikely ways, or just come up with a sudden, contradictory solution because Yusuke needs to keep his body. Instead, Yusuke actually has to work for that within the bounds of the rules established and the likeliness of each plan succeeding. The first one fails? Move onto plan #2.

Second, this dream of Atsuko's has some cool implications within YYH's world. Meaning, we're about to learn in just a moment that some people are naturally more aware of the supernatural than others, even when they're not asleep. We'll also see down the line that spiritual awareness tends to run in families... so perhaps Atsuko possesses more than the average mother? I'm not saying it's necessarily intentional on the author(s) part, but we can choose to read this dream as evidence of spiritual awareness — true insight into the world Yusuke was just in and the fantasies he'd had about conquering it — rather than just a coincidental joke for the viewer. After all, Yusuke gets his own spiritual awareness from somewhere...

(Okay, so there's totally another, canonical reason for that, but we can have both!)

So, as Yusuke puts it, “This dream business isn’t gonna cut it.”

“There’s always the final method," Botan says.

“You always this vague?”

I am literally living for these interactions.

Botan explains that the more extreme form of communication is possessing a living person, but there are two rules attached: it has to be someone you know and the vessel has to be someone who is quite spiritually aware, as discussed above. Atsuko isn't a contender because the story hasn't acknowledged that she might be sensitive, that's just my own headcanon now. Yusuke outright says, “In that case I’m screwed. There’s no one like that!"

Cut to good old Kuwabara.

At first it looks as if he's just oh so conveniently sensing a spirit right when the audience has learned he has this power, but in reality it's Yusuke and Botan flying behind him that sets it off. Again: this show is pretty good about keeping things internally consistent, rather than making choices because That's Just How Stories Work, I Guess. Kuwabara's friends note that he's acting strangely and I love this detail that apparently one of the guys is new to their group because the other two need to explain that this is the "tickle feeling." Ever since Kuwabara was a boy he's been able to sense the dead around him. Some nice, some... not so nice.

He looks directly at Yusuke — even though he's not able to see him — and declares that what's following them is “A puny low-level ghost, like a haunted racoon or something.”

I'd support Yusuke's anger more if he hadn't just exclaimed his surprise that Kuwabara serves a purpose 😂

Yusuke is pissed enough though to proclaim that he won't do it, nuh-uh, no way is he possessing this guy's body. Botan's response is one of my FAVORITES in the WHOLE SERIES:

"Here's my impression of Yusuke: look at me, I’m burning!”

Literally 75% of this series is just about a found family sassing one another and I love it.

Obviously this helps Yusuke remember his priorities and he grudgingly agrees to the plan. Botan prepares Kuwabara's body somehow — idk, spiritual magic or whatever — and warns Yusuke that he only has an hour to find someone and warn them because a human body can't handle possession any longer than that. Sure. I buy it.

So Yusuke takes control and please ignore the incredible ethical issues here. The show will never acknowledge them again. 

He blurts out, “Hey, check it out! I’m inside Kuwabara, feeling smooth!"

Istg I don't remember the series being this unintentionally gay. I don't even ship Yusuke/Kuwabara and I'm digging the possibilities here lol.

Back on track, his friends drag him with, “Looks like he’s back to normal” because again, 75%. What's not normal though is Kuwabara (Yusuke) suddenly charging down the street to leave them behind. He heads straight to the restaurant where Keiko's parents work, demanding to see her. They're rightly concerned about this stranger barging in and screaming for their daughter.

Upon asking who he is/why they should tell him, Yusuke makes his biggest mistake: “Because it’s me, you guys, I’m Yusuke!”

Obviously the time limit and raw emotion of knowing who he is has outweighed the knowledge that, you know, no one would believe that. Yusuke has spent the last two days bopping around as a ghost and familiarizing himself with some of the afterlife's insanity. The knowledge of what's normal for everyone else — AKA, not dead boys appearing in strangers' bodies — is not at the forefront of Yusuke's mind.

So, Keiko's parents react accordingly! The father in particular is disgusted by this claim, going so far as to threaten Yusuke with his knife and outright insult Kuwabara's looks: “Yusuke was never ugly like you… we were close family friends with that boy!" His wife chimes in that this kind of joke is particularly heinous on the day of his funeral. Between Atsuko drunkenly blaming Yusuke for his death and Mr. Takenaka grieving for what he might have been, this is one of the few times we see someone just sad for Yusuke's passing, exactly as he was and without regrets or criticism. "We were close family friends with that boy" paints a nice contrast to the delinquent persona Yusuke was cultivating.

As he's thrown out of the restaurant he says, “We should have special passwords for times like this!” Fun fact, my family does! Well, not this exact situation lol. I was given a password as a child to memorize in case my parents ever needed to send someone else to pick me up or interact with me in any way. If the stranger didn't know the password, I was to kick up a fuss. I rest easy with the knowledge that this password would not doubt assist me if I was ever in Yusuke's position!

With Keiko's parents a bust, Yusuke starts sprinting to everywhere she frequents with the hope of running into her. Or at least he tries. 

Yusuke is suddenly waylaid by a group of nameless teens with a bone to pick with Kuwabara. And you know what? I like it. I wonder how much of my praise stems from coming off of RWBY Volume 8, but it's just so nice to watch a story where the plot — simple as it is — hangs together. We've established that Kuwabara is a street fighter. Last episode we watched him start a fight with Yusuke. Yusuke is on a time limit. Now Kuwabara's tendencies have created a new hurdle for Yusuke!

Needless to say, Yusuke kicks butt, even in Kuwabara’s body. 

As one guy is passing out he says, “Man that hurt! I didn’t think anyone could throw punches that hardcore except Yusuke Urameshi."

Yusuke: “Darn, giving Kuwabara a good name." LOL

You think this challenge is finished though? Nah. Over the course of about half an hour Yusuke encounters a comical number of people trying to get even with Kuwabara. 

As always, I like the nods towards this writing decision to help justify it, with Yusuke wondering how Kuwabara has pissed this many people off. If you want to pull off something that has a low chance of happening, it can help to give the characters a "Seriously?" moment. If both they and the audience are on the same page over how ridiculous this situation is, the audience is more likely to accept it once the character does.

By the time Yusuke escapes his hour is nearly up. However, thanks to some coincidental plotting, he spots Keiko's friends just across the street! 

YYH does a decent job of making its characters feel like they have their own lives outside of what's immediately happening on screen and we get a good example of that here. We pick up the girls' conversation partway through, both of them worried about Keiko's state of mind and, given that we'll see in a second that Keiko was in the store with them, it implies that something happened to reignite this worry. They're off enjoying their day, doing their own thing, there was an event we're not privy to, and now we catch the response to that. It just helps make the characters feel more well-rounded even though they are, at their core, one-dimensional background characters who don’t even have names yet.

Case in point: the one girl is still concerned with their image. "People are starting to say things!"

Yeah, your friend's childhood friend just died. Hopefully they're saying, "Poor thing."

Anyway, Yusuke runs up to ask where Keiko is only for both girls to run away screaming. Turns out his face is messed up from the numerous fights and Keiko's friends are easily scared. 

Luckily, Keiko comes out just a second later and Yusuke is faced with the challenge of how to convince her in, oh, about five minutes. Remember, we've already established through Keiko's parents that just saying, "I'm Yusuke" doesn't work. That's why he hesitates. It's not just drama for the sake of drama, he's stuck.

“I’ve known her my whole life, there must be something between us that only I would do!”

Yeeeeaah. About that 😬

Suddenly inspired (I suppose that's one way to put it...) Yusuke runs up behind Keiko and grabs her breasts. “Keiko, nice uniform! They’re so squishy!”

It goes without saying that, like flipping her skirt up, this isn't okay. More specifically, the problem lies in the story framing this as a joke for the audience, something to laugh at despite Keiko's discomfort, rather than the concept of two childhood friends actually be that comfortable with one another. But, as already established, this is one of the more ehhhh aspects of Yusuke's characterization that, luckily, will mostly disappear as the story goes on.

Note though that the show clearly wants us to think highly of this. Not just as a "joke," but as a smart solution to his problem and more evidence of their inevitable relationship — the background becomes the same soft, bubbly background we saw during their dream conversation. And, admittedly, it does work. Keiko instinctively slaps Yusuke hard enough to knock him to the ground and he starts laughing, saying that he doesn't care what anyone on the street says, she hits the hardest.

What I do like about this is that the assault isn't the only thing Keiko bases her faith on. Not only has she already had the dream, we get to see Yusuke from her perspective, showing all the mannerisms she picks up on by superimposing Yusuke's real body over Kuwabara's. Indeed, she says as much: “I knew it was you from the first time you spoke…and it’s not just your stupid gags, or how you laugh. There are ways you move and speak that in a hundred years I wouldn’t forget."

Catch me crying in this club!

Knowing she believes him and that he's almost out of time, Yusuke reiterates his message: please don't burn my body and also keep Mom on track. Only, you know, it's phrased far better than that lol. As he speaks, both Yusuke's and Kuwabara's voices overlap until the latter grows fainter and only Yusuke's voice remains. His body too. It's a nice touch, avoiding the awkwardness of Keiko having this moment with a stranger, even if that is what's happening on some level.

“I know I’ve been a bum to you at times, but please wait for me."

His hour up, now we can get the awkwardness! Kuwabara comes out of his weird trance thing to find Keiko crying against his chest. Wow, he thinks, this girl must be really into me! 

God, to have the confidence of Kuwabara.

Of course, Keiko quickly realizes it's not Yusuke anymore and slaps him too for cuddling her closer. My favorite thing is that when she does this a crowd INSTANTLY appears. I mean they TELEPORT in. We needed an audience for Kuwabara's shame and YYH delivered, all logic be damned.

“Um, sorry about that!” Keiko yells as she runs away, because she's a good person who recognizes that weird spirit things just went on and Kuwabara isn't actually to blame.

“No, that’s okay. I probably deserved it," Kuwabara responds because he's also a good person and I didn't appreciate him nearly as much as I should have as a kid.

Keiko runs all the way to Atsuko's place where she finds her dressed for Yusuke's funeral. She blurts that Yusuke might still be coming back and Atsuko goes, "He already has." Turns out she opened his coffin to "smack him one more time for leaving me" — yikes — and found that his heart had started beating again, just as Koenma said it would. 

Being in a shonen anime, they apparently decide to just trust Keiko's message rather than, idk, taking him to a hospital or something.

The camera tilts up to show that Yusuke has been watching all this, including that both women break down again and comfort one another. Aww. How heartwarming.

What's less fuzzy though is this mysterious egg. Yusuke takes another look and finds that it has developed a heartbeat too, presumably in time with his body's. He theorizes that he did decent things today, right? But Botan (teasingly) points out that he did beat up a lot of other kids. Rather than getting angry, Yusuke remains uncharacteristically pensive, emphasizing the magnitude of what this means for him. He's got to get it right.

No pressure or anything! We'll have to see how Yusuke balances his karmic scales in the next episode. Until then, I'll try not to put all my TV time into Star Trek: Voyager :D 

See you then!  💜

[wickedmilo]

SURVIVAL TIPS | MILO & WILLOW

PLACE: A bookstore TIMING: Way, way back when Milo first became a vampire SUMMARY: Milo and Willow accidentally cross paths, and realise they both have the power to distract each other from their problems WRITING PARTNER: @willcwthewisp​ CONTENT WARNINGS: None

Milo couldn’t remember the last time he had unironically set foot in a bookstore. After graduating uni, it all felt a little pointless. He had books, though they were at his parents’ house, far beyond his reach now. And reading felt too trivial considering the latest developments in his life. Why would he ever need books? What could they possibly have to offer him? But this evening, against his better judgement, he had been struck by the overwhelming urge to go to a bookshop. To steal back a semblance of the normalcy belonging to his previous life. With Harsh’s constant, and unexpected support, he was feeling more in control than ever before. Though his grip on his cravings remained tenuous at best, he figured he was capable of a short visit. After impatiently waiting for the sun to set, he had hurried into town, slipping quietly through the familiar door. The bell above him rang out, announcing his arrival, and the sound caused a wave of nostalgia to wash over him. Maybe he missed this more than he thought. Once upon a time, before he had allowed himself to spiral, he would come here. His mom would find new books for him to study. His dad would nudge him away from the children’s section, towards the classics that were technically beyond his reading level. If it’s easy, then what are you learning, Milo? You need to be challenged. He could still hear his tone, the exact way he would make not being able to choose his own stories sound like a privilege rather than a frustration.  

Drifting through the various sections, taking in the new sounds, and scents he had never been able to appreciate before, it wasn’t long until he found himself standing where his parents used to encourage him to stand. They would search through the shelves, talking amongst themselves to determine which novels were best suited for their son. Even now that he had a choice, he was drawn to the books they had selected for him. Maybe it was a warped sense of loyalty, maybe he missed the simplicity of having every decision made for him. Gently running his fingers along the spine of Great Expectations, he wondered whether Charles Dickens had lived in a world of vampires, and ghosts. Certainly Edgar Allan Poe had to have known about the existence of the Supernatural. It made him want to revisit the tales, search for any hint that might indicate the world had always been this confusing. Finally pulling Great Expectations from the shelf, he turned to walk towards the seating area, completely unaware of the person walking in the opposite direction. He stumbled backwards the moment he saw them, very nearly walking into them. A sheepish grin on his face, he did what he could to hold his breath. Harsh had already warned him doing so would draw attention, but he didn’t see any other option when people got so close. “Shit- I’m sorry. I didn’t see you.” 

Willow was to the point of desperation when it came to finding the book she was looking for. For some unfathomable reason it wasn’t available anywhere that she could find online. Maybe it was simply so popular that most sellers had run out of it, but either way she’d ended up braving the trek to the bookstore after hearing they had a copy in stock. Books were one of the few ways she’d managed to stay sane in her self-appointed isolation, filling her head with stories of the outside world that she couldn’t bring herself to experience anymore. But she should have known going out into public once again was a terrible idea, and that became clear the moment she nearly collided with another being. Her eyes widened in alarm at the severity of the close call, already imagining how she could have sent the young man standing in front of her flying through multiple shelves of books.  

“Oh god-” Willow gasped as if she’d been startled at a haunted house, hand clutched to her chest as she took a few, healthy steps backwards to put some space between her and the stranger. “No, no- I didn't see you there either, I’m sorry.” Her nerves had been set on edge by the near run in, and she was doing her best to steady her breaths, trying not to think about the ten million ways this interaction could go poorly if the stranger got too close. “I was just- I wasn’t watching that carefully where I was going, I guess.” A lapse on judgement on her part. She should know better than to walk blindly when she was a walking disaster waiting to happen. 

Milo was already tense, doing his very best to hide it. But it made him feel a little better to hear the stranger’s heart pounding in her chest. Clearly he wasn’t the only person who had been caught so off guard, and clearly he wasn’t the only person so panicked by the close proximity. The relief didn’t last for very long though. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, the sound of her pulse served as an unwelcome reminder of how dry his throat felt, the new reality he was desperately trying to ignore. Before he could take a further step back, the woman had done so for him, and he watched her curiously, wondering whether she might also a reason of her own to keep her distance. “Are you okay?” He asked, genuinely concerned for her. “No- I wasn’t looking either, it was my fault as much as it was yours!” He insisted. If he had been more careful, as careful as he should be given his current situation, this wouldn’t have happened. But he was already tired of being careful. Was one evening too much to ask for? One evening of reading books in a bookstore like a regular human being? “I, uh-” He held up his copy of Great Expectations, still holding his breath between sentences as though such a desperate gesture might be able to fix all of his problems. “I was distracted too…”

“Oh- oh, I’m fine!” Willow tried to assure, not wanting the young man to think he’d startled her too badly— even if he had done just that. “Are you alright?” she asked out of politeness. He didn’t seem very shaken, but it was only in her nature to ask in return. Forcing a chuckle, she clutched the book she’d fetched to her chest, as if it could protect her. “I think we’re gonna have to either agree to disagree, or just let me take the blame.” She wasn’t particularly in the practice of letting the guilt fall on someone else when it came to situations that involved herself. “Oh, are you reading Great Expectations?” she asked as she took in the title and cover of the book. It wasn’t one of her favorites- mostly because she’d been forced to read it in highschool, but it was still a classic and staple. In her opinion, it had ghosts that weren’t really ghosts, and that was something she’d been drawn to. 

Smiling at the woman’s insistence that she really was okay, Milo allowed himself to relax as much as he dared to. It wasn’t easy, trying to find a balance. Trying to stay aware of his surroundings, while also staying aware of himself. He could only hope one day it would become a part of his routine, something he did without even needing to focus. “I am.” He answered quietly. He wasn’t sure how true that was, but he sincerely appreciated the question. “I mean, if you want to take the blame I have a track record of avoiding responsibility.” He teased, laughing quietly at the fact that he was being entirely honest now. “I’m not going to try and stop you.” Glancing down at the book in his hands, he stared at the cover for a moment too long. There were so many childhood memories connected to it that it was difficult to look away from. “I guess so.” He grinned, offering her a shrug. “My parents made me read it as a kid… I’m kind of missing the simplicity of that, you know? My biggest worry being how quickly I could get to the end of a book.” Finally tearing his gaze away and looking back up at the stranger, he realised he had yet to introduce himself. “I’m Milo, by the way… So, are you going to tell me what you’re reading? Hopefully something far less cliché.”

Part of Willow was glad that the young man hadn’t insisted on taking the blame as many people were often wont to do. Generally that just resulted in a tiring back and forth until they found some sort of compromise, or forgot what they were talking about altogether. “Perfect,” she settled the burden of blame with a chuckle, her smile still warm. “Glad we agreed on that as easily as we did.” He seemed nice despite her nearly running headlong into him. Her head tilted curiously to the side, listening closely while he spoke of his parents and books. “Oh- well that’s...sweet in a way. And it makes sense.” She could certainly relate to wishing for a simpler time, often thinking of the days she’d been able to walk free without fear of breaking someone in half via telekinesis. “Books are a good way to forget the world for a bit.” They were her favorite method of escaping behind painting. “Oh- I’m Willow,” she replied quickly, a little embarrassed that she’d forgotten to introduce herself in the first place. “I don’t think Great Expectations is necessarily cliché,” she offered politely with another little laugh before continuing on. “But mine’s called ‘Leave the World’.”

Amused by Willow apparently being grateful he was readily allowing her to take the blame, Milo realised he was genuinely beginning to enjoy her company. His smile only growing as she talked about the ease of the decision, it was refreshing not being seen as somebody argumentative, or petulant, even if the context could barely be considered serious. “It was a pleasure discussing business with you.” He replied, feigning sincerity as he caught her eye. Raising his eyebrows as she called his actions sweet, he wasn’t sure he would use that word but perhaps from an outsider’s perspective his explanation could be seen as sentimental. “Yeah, you could probably call it that.” He admitted, absentmindedly tapping his fingertips against the cover of the book still in his hands. “I don’t know… I hadn’t really thought about it. I don’t even know why I came here really, I think I might be looking for something that’s just... impossible to find, you know?” His old life, his humanity... Realising the stranger was right, his smile softened into an open, and unguarded expression. Books were a good way to escape, however briefly. And though there were no hidden doorways here allowing him to step back into the past, maybe a brief escape would enough for now. If achieving one was even possible. Maybe it needed to be enough. “Leave the World?” He couldn't say he had ever heard of it. “I don’t suppose there are any tips in there? I could use a vacation from this place.”

The younger man’s words brought a laugh to Willow’s lips, and she was grateful for the bell-like sound as she reminded herself how few and far between interactions like this had been. Sure- she’d talked to people in her self-imposed isolation, had even seen a few humans here and there, but there was nothing that could replace the actual company of another living and breathing person. “I hope I don’t have a bill coming in the mail for this business talk,” she teased back. Her shoulders relaxing another inch while she let herself slip a little further into comfort. 

The expression on her face took on a more sincere air as her head tilted curiously to the side, a gentle nod of understanding shaking it in the end. “I think...a lot of people feel that way, if we’re being honest.” And she didn’t see any reason not to be. Even ghosts were looking for something that seemed impossible to find. After all, that was why they’d stuck around in the first place. “But I also haven’t met anyone that hasn’t eventually found what they’re looking for. Sometimes you just need help, you know?” That was the job of the medium or exorcist in her mind— to extend that helping hand when someone needed it. “And sometimes the answer isn’t what we expect, but I think you’ll get there eventually.” Another chuckle shook her gently before she gave her answer. “No tips in there unless you’re looking for ways to survive and deal with the apocalypse. But if you’re looking for some ‘vacation’ books I can take you to some of my favorites?”

Milo laughed too, his eyes shining. “I wasn’t going to but now that I think about it my rent is probably due.” He teased, unable to help himself. He could hardly consider their conversation business talk, but he was enjoying it more than he would ever have expected to. Although he liked his time alone, socialising had always come naturally to him. He had no issue with talking to people, getting to know them when their paths somehow managed to cross with his own. He missed this, he missed making new friends. His smile fading somewhat as Willow became serious again, he appreciated her honesty. It made him sad to know what she was saying was probably true, but it also helped him to feel less alone. Sometimes he just needed to be reminded of that fact. “Yeah, I guess you’re right…” He murmured, knowing the sense of relief would be temporary. How long until he convinced himself otherwise? Until his own mind erased Willow’s wisdom? “It’s easy to forget sometimes, you know? Especially when your problems are so… specific.” He admitted, offering her a hesitant shrug.  

A smile tugging at his lips again, the mention of hope was comforting, regardless of the fact that everything felt pretty hopeless right about now. He was more stable than he had been, though still not used to his new life, still close enough to his old one to actively grieve for it. “You really think so?” He asked, knowing his longing would be obvious in his voice. He made no effort to hide it, too distracted by the mention of finding answers, by the sound of Willow’s heartbeat, by the book in his hands still reminding him of his childhood. “I really hope so…” Maybe she was right. Harsh was helping him now, and things were getting better. The progress was slow, but it still counted as progress. “Thank you.” His smile became more genuine as he felt a strange rush of affection for the woman he barely knew. Apparently she believed in him, apparently she was convinced one day he might actually be okay again. “Hm, I think tips on how to survive might be more useful to me than vacation books.” He was only half teasing. “But if you’d be up for the company, I’d love to see some of your favourites.” 

“Well- you’ll just have to send over the prices so I can get a look at them. My sister’s actually better with stuff like that anyway, so I’ll probably pass them on to her,” Willow chuckled. It was true though. Meg had needed to negotiate quite a few contracts along with her manager when it came to her spot as a blossoming celebrity. She’d missed this as well. Even though she’d always been a little more on the quieter side, Willow had always loved seeing a new smile wherever she could find them. Her warm expression shifted into concern another time as Milo continued to speak of his problems. She might not have the abilities to go along with being a proper medium, but she’d still been raised as one, and along with that came a compassion geared towards helping. “Well if you ever need reminding just message me, alright? I’m easy enough to find on the town forums. My full name’s Willow Finch if you want to search me, though.” Maybe she was coming on too strong when it came to being helpful, but it’d always been hard for her to draw that line. If she wanted to help, why shouldn't she make sure the other person knew it without a doubt?  

“Of course I think so,” Willow repeated with another soft smile, already happy to see the smallest flash of hope enter into Milo’s eyes. “I haven’t met a person yet that couldn’t find what they were looking for. Even if it took time. And even if it wasn’t what they were expecting.” The poor guy. She could practically feel the desperate wanting in his voice, could recognize it because she herself was on a seemingly hopeless quest for answers when it came to her own problems with telekinesis. There had to be an end...right? But a smaller voice in her mind reminded Willow that endings weren’t always happy. Nevertheless she brushed it aside, and turned to start on her way towards her favorite section of the store. “Come on- I think we can find some books that fall into both categories,” she finished with a grin over her shoulder. 

Milo continued to smile in response to the joke, leaning into the way this woman seemed able to distract him from his problems, if only for a brief moment in time. He could see she was being genuine, that she actually wanted to help, and he wasn’t used to that. Not anymore.  “I hope she doesn’t take a cut of the check?” He teased, his smile growing as she insisted she was always going to be there if he needed a reminder that all hope wasn’t lost. It was an odd thing for a stranger to offer, but given his life as of late, he didn’t feel as though his gauge on what was normal even functioned anymore. It had been permanently shattered when he woke up as an official member of the undead. Slipping his phone from his pocket, he held it out to her, encouraging her to plug her name and number into his list of contacts. “I might take you up on that, you know…” Why not? What did he have to lose by making another hesitant friend? “Willow Finch… your name has superhero vibes, has anybody ever told you that?” His eyes were shining as he was reminded of who he used to be, the kid who spent his free time split between the comic book store, and the many questionable establishments White Crest had to offer him. He was still very much that person, but nothing felt quite so simple anymore. He only wanted things to be simple.  

His smile fading when Willow insisted he would eventually find what he was looking for, some sense of peace, some way of being content with what he had become, maybe even some level of control when it came to fighting against the bloodlust continually scratching the back of his throat, he was impatient, but he was also happy just to believe that the answers were out there. He would find them, and maybe, just maybe, he would be okay. Surprised when she started to walk away from him, he faltered before hurrying to fall into step beside her, holding his breath as her movement caused the smell of her blood to permeate the air. He didn’t know what she meant by both categories, surely survival books and vacation books were on two very different ends of a spectrum. But he didn’t care, he wanted to understand, he wanted to follow her. Because, for some reason, she made him feel like there was hope, like he existed as more than some miserable outcome, and that was proving to be incredibly rare. 

[scribbles97]

Left Behind - Part 2 - Chapter 14

And now on to Part 2, just when things were meant to be settling down, they get a hell of a lot more complicated again. 

PART 1 /  Chapter 14 / Chapter 15 / Chapter 16 / Chapter 17 / Chapter 18 / Chapter 19 / Chapter 20 / Chapter 21

Read on Ao3

Lucy hadn’t been sure that writing was a good coping mechanism. That letters that would never be read was simply holding onto ghosts of the past rather than letting them go. Sally had assured her otherwise though, that getting thoughts and feelings out on paper would help her process and organise what she needed to. Her mother-in-law had even given her the empty journal to write in.

She hadn’t realised just how many thoughts she had shared with that little book until she found herself writing on the last page. For the time being her little corner of the world was under control so she could allow herself the chance to flick back through the notes of the last few years written in her scrawl.

It was John completing his NASA training that had dominated her first entry, following exactly in his father's footsteps to gain his space rating, ready to be launched into the atmosphere. Jeff should have been there on launch day, imparting all the wisdom he had for space flight on their red haired son. Lee had been there, flown back from the retreat specifically for the occasion but the advice wasn’t the same from an Uncle as it was from a father, even if the sentiment was still there.

She hadn’t expected Lee to stay home after that, yes he had been calmer, more at ease than she had seen him since Jeff had been gone. There was still something there though, hidden behind the blue of his eyes and never spoken about even when she had asked. It was still there, even four years later, she had hoped that he would eventually say something to her but the conversation had never come and after a time she had given up asking.

Flicking forward a few pages and she had to smile at the photo stapled onto the page. The 2056 Olympic games, and the achievement of a lifetime for Gordon. She knew he kept the gold medal safe in his room on the island those days. Months of literal blood, sweat, and tears had been worth it. Days when he had been convinced he couldn’t do it, where the balance between school and swimming had gotten too unequal and Lucy had had to be the harsh reminder that both were equally as important. The win had been celebrated in true Tracy style that night by them all.

What she hadn’t realised at the time was how Gordon decided to continue the celebrations in the weeks that followed. She had trusted the sixteen year old to use his free time well. School finished, medal won, it was only a matter of a few months before he would be joining the academy. It was only when the newspapers had picked up on the underaged Tracy partying late into the night that she had realised just how far he had taken his liberties and she had been forced to step in with sharp and strict consequences.

Too much on her plate, the Tracy Industries board had said. Too busy to be a proper mother, the papers had reported. Too soft on them all, Lee had commented.

It had all stung. Even with Hugh helping with the business, she was constantly busy. Even with Scott flying Thunderbird One, she was still needed on more rescues than she would have liked, Alan still needed the care of his mother to oversee his school work and be there for bedtime at the end of the day. Meals needed cooked, paperwork needed approving, maintenance needed completing.

She had started to break, wondering if Jeff could have done it better, questioning if she should have taken his place.

There was a big chunk after that which she knew could be skipped. Some of the pages had been torn out in the past, hurt or anger being unleashed on them when there was no other outlet available. Rough, heavy sketches adorned the corners of some of the pages, depicting the monsters that had snuck in and haunted her mind, forcing her to take a temporary step back from IR.

There was one entry half way through the darkness that she always paused on and never failed to make her smile. It had been just before Christmas, John was only a few weeks returned to earth from his latest stint on the NASA orbital. It hadn’t bothered her that he hadn’t returned straight to the island at the time, he was a grown man, if he had things to do she wasn’t going to question it.

At least not until he turned up on the island with International Rescue’s best space operator in tow.

She knew Scott had spoken highly of Ridley, and she knew he had taken the chance at his Passing Out party to introduce her to the family’s own astronaut. That the two had apparently kept in touch after that, sharing tips and advice on space travel and managing both in and out of orbit. John had admitted having kept it very quiet from everyone, unsure of his own feelings and where the friendship had been going for the longest time.

It had felt unprofessional to squeal at one of her own operatives, but it had always been John she had worried about the most, lacking a certain confidence that the rest of her boys carried. Of course, she hadn’t been sure that a relationship was something he aspired to in life, and so had never said anything more about it when he hadn’t readily taken up the conversation with her on more than one occasion. That he had turned out to be the first of the five in what seemed to be a serious, steady relationship had made her heart swell for him.

Smiling to herself she made a mental note to check when the pair were next rota’d down from space at the same time, quietly hoping they would come out to the island for some time off before each of their next rotations.

Debates against herself filled a few pages, half way through his training Virgil had been asked what area of the organisation he wished to specialise in. Whilst for Scott there had been no question, for Virgil the decision wasn’t quite so straight forward.

The young man held a degree in engineering, but his interest in helping others had him leaning towards the operative line of work. When he had brought EMT training into the mix she had raised her eyebrows but listened regardless. It had been clear he had wanted to be able to do everything in order to be best equipped to help.

A visit to Roca and discussions with other students in various stages of their training had revealed Virgil wasn’t the only one in that boat. Looking at the broader picture, Lucy could see they had a point. Not everyone was Like Scott or John, with one set career in mind and a focus purely for that.

What had surprised her most was when Gordon had thrown his name into the ring for wanting to study more than one specialist area, apparently also keenly interested in following the EMT route alongside being an aquanaut after his olympic training.

Questions from the educational board had followed, comments that she was simply going out of her way for her boys rather than doing what was best for the organisation. The students had stuck with her though, as had the current operatives, all too aware that being part of IR required each and every member to have more than one simple skill set.

It wasn’t the only change that Virgil turned out to be responsible for. Tanusha and Penelope had been qualified security operatives for year at that point, yet he had pointed out they seemed to have very little in the way of contact with the rest of them.

Lucy hadn’t thought much of it, yet had found herself questioning it in the pages of her journal. Did the two women need more contact with the team they were assigned to? Was it her place to order them back to the Island more often to keep in contact? Or was it better that she kept her nose out of it and trusted the judgement of the experts?

A quiet word with Kyrano had confirmed Tanusha could well benefit from being based on the Island, and some discussions later she had moved in full time.

It was from there that drawings of a new jet started to fill pages, ideas jotted here and there for secret gadgets and silent flying. It was only then, two years after Tan’s move, that the newest of the Thunderbird fleet was finally coming together.

Protest had come from Alan at the discovery of a new Thunderbird being built, the teenager unhappy that he seemed to be the only family member somehow not involved in the operation. The youngest didn’t understand his mother’s worry, it was likely he never would. In time she knew she would have to let him join, and it would likely be sooner than she would like. It had been a consolation prize to let him near the simulators once he hit thirteen, a clear breach of protocol but better than him trying to break into an actual ship. The scores he had quickly racked up though had made her jaw drop and sent her for the records they kept. The boy was beyond a natural, more skilled without any training than some of the students she saw with two years under their belts.

A promise of eventually having a place to pilot Thunderbird Three had made his face light up, even as Lee had scowled behind her son’s back. Yet, what else could she do? It had always been Jeff’s promise to the youngest, the rocket painted the brightest red just for him in a reminder that someday she would be his.

Protocol stated that Alan would have to be twenty before he stepped near the ship. Knowledge of her youngest son told her that staving him off for another five years was going to be near impossible.

Alan being stubborn. Virgil officially joining her team. Gordon working as an apprentice alongside his two older brothers. Somehow none of them seemed like big things in comparison to her final entry.

The Hood, Gaat, Kyrano’s brother, had seemingly vanished alongside Jeff. There hadn’t been any confirmed activity relating to him since the incident involving both Tanusha and Kyrano.

Four years had lulled them all into false security, hope had started to creep in that perhaps he was gone for good and no longer out to get them and everything else relating to International Rescue.

There were whispers though. Kyrano had reported murmurings that his brother was back in the business and looking for assailants to take under his wing.

It scared Lucy for what his reason may be.

Things were different after four years, her sons were in the business now, she couldn’t afford to risk their lives.

Yet she knew she couldn’t drag them away from it either.

Closing the book she sighed heavily, shaking her head as she looked to the photo next to her bed, “What do I do Jeff?”

[somar78]

A Brief History of the Bricklin SV-1 – Everything You Need To Know

The Bricklin SV-1 – A Canadian Match for the Corvette

In April 1975 Car and Driver magazine had the opportunity to do a head to head test of the Chevrolet Corvette and a new Canadian built rival, the Bricklin SV-1. You can read the full May 1, 1975 test here, but in summary the performance of the two cars was near identical.

The Corvette had a North American rival that not only matched its performance, but which also matched it in terms of style and crowd gathering ability.

The Bricklin was looked upon with great interest by another prominent Detroit figure, John Z. DeLorean.

DeLorean found that he and Malcolm Bricklin could not form a business partnership so he went off to begin a project of his own: the car with gull-wing doors that he created was the one Doctor Emmett Brown turned into a “time machine with style” for the movie “Back to the Future” and it bore a striking resemblance to the Bricklin SV-1 with its gull-wing doors and clean angular styling.

The Bricklin SV-1 however could get to 88 miles per hour rather more quickly than the DeLorean thanks to its 220 hp V8 engine.

Plumbing Supplies And The Subaru 360

The story of the Bricklin SV-1 began as Malcom Bricklin dropped out of college and invested his time and talents into his father’s hardware and plumbing supplies franchise, which was based in Orlando, Florida. With his strong entrepreneurial skills Malcom managed to turn the family’s business into a multi-million dollar franchise of a chain of hardware stores and with such an elegant sufficiency of finance behind him, not to mention being flushed with success, he decided not to stop there but to see what other projects his Midas Touch might make possible.

By this time it was the mid 1960’s and to understand Malcom Bricklin’s next choice of project it is helpful to see his decision in the historical perspective – what was going on in the world at that time?

The 1956 Suez Crisis had shown people the ease with which their supplies of fuel could be threatened and in that period of post-war austerity the Suez Crisis caused the British government to reintroduce fuel rationing while in the US and Canada the idea that the future would herald the demise of the big American car and see its replacement with smaller and more economical modes of transport gained some traction.

This was the period in which the “bubble cars” from such makers as Heinkel and BMW Isetta became popular in Britain and Europe and even had a footprint in the United States: a young rock ‘n roll singer named Elvis Presley had been driving around in his Messerschmidt bubble car before his career took off.

In Britain this was the period that gave birth to the iconic Mini, and motor scooters also became fashionable with young people. Seeing these things Malcom Bricklin could see an opening for establishing a franchise business just like the one he’d just set up for hardware, but this time selling small cars and motor scooters.

He found a Japanese company – Fuji Heavy Industries – who were wanting to establish a foothold in the North American market – and who made the Fuji Rabbit motor scooter, and who also made the Subaru 360 micro car which was basically a bubble car with four wheels instead of three. So his next venture was to set up Subaru America and start selling franchises for those products.

While the Fuji Rabbit motor scooters sold like little hotcakes the Subaru 360 was dealt a death blow when the Chicago based  “Consumer Guide” magazine reviewed the Subaru 360 and found it fared worse than anything else in crash tests, so they stated that it was “the most unsafe” automobile on the market. The little Subaru that had proved to be a perfect small car for Japan and her roads back in the mid-1960’s was way out of its depth on roads shared with the huge American cars and pickup trucks.

This led Malcom Bricklin to conclude, perhaps too hastily, that Subaru America had no future, and so he sold his interest in the company and with all that lovely investment capital burning a hole in his bank account he got thinking about how best to invest it in a new money-making venture.

The “Safety Vehicle 1”

1965 had seen the publication of Ralph Nadar’s book “Unsafe at Any Speed” and it was in this environment that Malcom Bricklin began putting together his ideas for a car for the 1970’s. He seems to have reasoned that there would be little point in trying to produce a standard family car as the major manufacturers were already doing that and he could not be competitive. To begin in the car industry he needed a Halo automobile, and that meant a sports car.

He could create an exotic sports car and, just like Lotus Cars of Britain, he could make it economically on a small scale. Toyota were making their 2000GT, Mazda made their Cosmo, and Chevrolet the Corvette. He could do something similar but he needed an angle to make his car something different and desirable. Safety seemed to be high in the public interest at that time so he decided to build the Bricklin Safety Vehicle. This was to be a car that delivered what British car maker MG promised in their advertising for their sports cars – “Safety Fast”.

Bricklin established a new company, General Vehicles Inc. based in Phoenix, Arizona, and went looking for a suitable place to set up manufacturing. His research would ultimately take him to Canada, to the maritime province of New Brunswick, where the Premier Richard Hatfield would embrace the project as a way to provide employment for local workers.

With this in mind the provincial government would provide an initial subsidy of USD$4.5 million to get the first run of cars into production. Not only that but they would also provide an empty factory building and a promise to subsidize the worker’s wages.

As the project took shape two production facilities would be established in New Brunswick, one in St. John and a body construction works in Minto.

Design and Development: From Prototypes to Production

Malcom Bricklin got started on the concept and development of his new sports car in 1971. The original concept work was entrusted to Bruce Meyers of Meyers Manx fame but was transferred to a designer named Marshall Hobart who worked to perfect the design in collaboration with Richard Dean Sawitskas, who is best known by the name Dick Dean.

Dick Dean had become famous during the mid-late 1960’s, particularly because of his 1969 Shalako which made the cover of several magazines including Car & Driver, Rod & Custom, Motor Trend, Hot Rod, and Playboy. It was because of one of these cover stories that Malcolm Bricklin sought out Dick Dean to help with his car project.

Malcolm Bricklin’s initial idea was to make something a bit like a British Lotus in concept. It was to be powered by a four cylinder Opel engine and was to have a fully independent suspension to give it superb handling.

The four cylinder engine idea was scrapped quite early, presumably because the car’s performance would have been on a par with the Brazilian Volkswagen SP1 and SP2 “sports” cars which were notably under-powered. So a Chrysler “Slant Six” was installed instead. This Chrysler engine was the one used in the popular Chrysler Valiant sedan and it had an excellent reputation as well as being common. It was an engine that most mechanics would know how to fix, and for which parts were readily available.

The design was done in the conventional way for building a new production car; from clay mock-up models, and then the development and construction to create a running prototype. This first running prototype is interesting as it shows the nature of the original design concept. Dubbed the “Gray Ghost” because it was painted silver-gray this car mated the Chrysler engine to a four speed manual gearbox and also used a Datsun 510 rear differential and fully independent trailing arm rear suspension.

This combination would make that Bricklin prototype quite like the 1969 Datsun 240Z in terms of performance and handling potential. The car used a range of off the shelf parts from Datsun, Toyota and GM Opel and had a tilting steering wheel assembly from a Chrysler.

Malcolm Bricklin began working with Herb Grasse Design and Advanced Vehicles Concepts (AVC) of Michigan in 1972 to work from the “Gray Ghost” and re-engineer it into a production ready car. Significant in this process was the work of Tom Monroe who would go on to become the Chief Engineer of Bricklin’s company.

In this period AVC built seven of the next eight prototypes.

These prototypes provide a summary history of the re-engineering and development of what would become the production car.

The first of these was painted red and had a fiberglass body on a steel perimeter chassis. The engine used was an AMC 360 V8 which was later changed to an AMC six cylinder. This car did not use the Datsun 510 fully independent rear suspension but instead used a front and rear suspension from the AMC Hornet. This meant it had unequal “A” arms with coil springs and telescopic shock absorbers at the front and a live axle with semi-elliptic leaf springs at the rear. The brakes were also from the AMC Hornet and comprised discs at the front and drums at the rear.

The second also had a fiberglass body and was painted in yellow-ochre. This was the first prototype to have a fully fitted out interior. Its first engine was an AMC 360 which was then changed to a Ford 351 with automatic transmission. This car was later painted red.

The third was fitted with a red acrylic body and had an AMC 360 engine and automatic transmission.

The fourth had a white acrylic body and four speed manual transmission.

The fifth car was used for crash testing and had a white acrylic body and automatic transmission.

The sixth prototype was not completed but was only made as a chassis, frame, and “bird cage”.

The seventh was fitted with a “Suntan” acrylic body and automatic transmission.

The eighth and last prototype was made with an acrylic orange body and was used for crash/impact tests. This prototype was built by General Vehicle Incorporated (GVI).

The Bricklin SV-1 Production Cars

The production of the Bricklin SV-1 began in 1974 with 774 cars made. These cars were built on a steel perimeter chassis with a tubular steel cage around the passenger compartment to provide a safe cocoon for the occupants, and it was also fitted with an integral roll bar to provide roll-over protection.

This was a period in which it was thought that US regulators might ban convertible cars because of their lack of roll-over protection and Malcolm Bricklin’s team were doing all they knew to do to ensure their car would pass or exceed the most stringent safety regulations.

Much changed from the original concept of a lightweight sports car with a fully independent suspension. The engine grew from four cylinders, to six cylinders, to eight. To accommodate the power of the V8, and to use affordable “off the shelf” parts, the rear suspension was changed to a live axle with leaf springs. The original fiberglass body was changed to fiberglass with an acrylic top layer which had the color of the car molded in so the car did not need to be painted, and minor scratches could be buffed out.

The engine used in the first production Bricklin SV-1 was the AMC 360, a V8 that was used in the Jeep J-Series, Wagoneer SJ and Cherokee SJ, as well as being used in the AMC Rebel and Matador passenger cars of that era. This choice of engine was without doubt influenced by availability issues: GM would not have wanted to supply engines to a company that was going to build a car that was in direct competition with the Corvette for example.

The AMC 360 engine as fitted to the SV-1 had a displacement of 5,896.1 cc (359.8 cu. in.) and was fitted with a four barrel carburetor. When development of the SV-1 began in 1971 this engine had been producing 285-295 hp, but as emissions regulations came in during mid-1971 this was reduced to 220 hp.

Had the engine not been subject to those emissions restrictions the SV-1 would have had a 5.9 liter 285 hp V8 under the hood and would have been a lively little performer. As it was though the 220 hp V8 was an impressive feature of the SV-1: we can be sure it looked good when the hood was raised, that it sounded gorgeous, and that it performed nicely despite having 3,470 lb of car to haul around – the SV-1 was no lightweight and would have benefited greatly from extensive use of aluminum alloy – but steel was cheaper and much easier to weld.

For the early production cars the available gearbox was either a BorgWarner T-10 four speed manual or Chrysler Torque Command 3 speed automatic sending the power to a live rear axle with a ratio of 3.15:1 which was mounted on semi-elliptic leaf springs with telescopic shock absorbers. The front suspension was by unequal “A” arms with coil springs and telescopic shock absorbers. Brakes were 11″ vented discs at the front and 10″ drums at the rear providing a swept area of 328 square inches.

Being a “Safety Vehicle” the design team incorporated what were probably over-engineered impact bumpers front and rear. To their credit these bumpers were integrated into the body styling beautifully and were one of the starring aspects of the SV-1 design.

As a small scale production vehicle the designers of the SV-1 had to use off-the-shelf parts wherever possible and for the tail lights Herb Grasse decided to use the same tail light assembly as he had on his De Tomaso Pantera. This was a tail light set made by Italian company Carello and were also used on cars from Lamborghini and Maserati: so “off-the-shelf” can be pretty exotic.

Stylish, but more controversial was the decision to use gull-wing doors. Gull-wing doors were chosen ostensibly as a safety feature as the doors would not open into the passing traffic flow. They are also good for getting in and out of a vehicle in the limited space of a car-park. However, on the downside, a gull-wing door has to be lifted up rather than just swung open and so the weight of the door becomes an important factor.

Each gull-wing door of the SV-1 tipped the scales at around 90 lb, which was too heavy for a person to lift open unassisted. These gull-wing doors were power operated by a hydraulic system which made door opening push-button effortless, but which was noted for being slow. If the hydraulic system failed however opening the doors manually was very difficult and beyond the muscle power of many people.

A major drawback to the hydraulic system used in the SV-1 was that if one attempted to raise one door at the same time as lowering the other one it would cause the hydraulic pump to fail. This is a failing that should never have found its way into a production sports car, but it did.

In 1975 Bricklin was forced to change engines from the AMC 5.9 liter 220 hp V8 to a Ford 351 cu. in. (5.8 liter) small block Windsor V8 which was rated at 175 hp, that modest power being partly due to its breathing through a two barrel carburetor. Although this was a distinct drop in power by comparison with the AMC’s 220 hp we should consider that the Ford Windsor V8 had been the engine fitted to the Ford Mustang, Shelby Cobra and Sunbeam Tiger in various forms.

So although in the Bricklin of 1975 it was not an engine that would cause neck straining acceleration it was an engine that would have allowed for some significant tweaking. Carrol Shelby had his Windsor V8’s getting up to 390 hp. So the potential was there, but Bricklin were in financial trouble by that stage and were not going to be able to capitalize on that potential.

Murphy’s Law Manifests

Most readers will be aware of Murphy’s Law which tells us that “Nothing is as easy as it looks, everything takes longer than you expect, and if anything can go wrong it will, at the worst possible moment.” For those who aspire to building a sports car we should probably add “Everything will cost more than you expect.” And all of these things came to pass for the Bricklin SV-1 just as they had for the creators of the original Chevrolet Corvette.

As originally created the Bricklin SV-1 was intended to be a direct competitor to the Corvette and if things had gone according to plan it would have been. The cost estimates for the SV-1 originally predicted the car would sell for around USD$4,000. When it entered the market in 1974 the Bricklin actually cost USD$7,490, which was almost double the original price estimate.

By comparison in 1974 a base model Chevrolet Corvette sold for USD$6,082. The price of the SV-1 would continue to spiral upwards and by 1975 the Bricklin price was USD$9,980 and the base Corvette USD$6,810. Despite that Bricklin managed to establish more than 400 US dealerships and had thousands of cars on order at the time the company was forced into receivership.

The things that killed the Bricklin were the same things that killed many other automotive startups – poor quality workmanship, over pricing, and labor relations problems. The cars were built using mechanical parts made in the United States and so those parts posed no problems. At the St. John works the factory hands were tasked with the job of assembling the cars. This was the first point of difficulty as the quality of that assembly was sub-standard and this was particularly acute in the first year of production 1974.

The second major area of difficulty was the Minto body works where the problems encountered in getting the acrylic layer to bond with the fiberglass resulted in a wastage of about two thirds of panels produced. Bricklin brought in Archie Hamielec, an expert from the McMaster University of Hamilton, Ontario. With his help the wastage rate for panels was reduced to around a fifth of production, which was obviously a lot better than two thirds but still not ideal.

The final straw was that Bricklin was hiring workers in a place where unemployment was at around 25%. This must have meant he was getting a lot of unskilled and under-skilled labor. There is reported also the problem that when hunting season came a large portion of the workforce left work and went hunting, leaving the factory badly understaffed.

So to sum up, the Bricklin was not killed because it was an inferior design – although if you were 6 foot tall you’d be much better off with a Corvette – but it was killed off by problems related to labor, quality control, and unforeseen technical problems related to the bonding of the acrylic and fiberglass of the body panels.

Despite having a backlog of orders on the books Bricklin was forced into receivership in 1975 with the last few cars being built from remaining parts in 1976.

Bricklin SV-1 Specifications

Chassis and Body: Steel perimeter frame with roll bar and tube steel cage around the passenger compartment. Fuel tank protected on five sides against impact damage. Body made of fiberglass with a colored acrylic layer bonded to it obviating the need for painting. Colors available were Safety Orange, Safety Red, Safety Green, Safety White, and Safety Suntan.

Engines: For 1974; 5,896.1 cc (359.8 cu. in.) AMC 360 OHV V8 engine delivering 220 hp and 315 lb/ft of torque. For 1975 and the few cars made in 1976; Ford 351 Windsor 351 cu. in. (5,752 cc) OHV V8 delivering 175 hp and 286 lb/ft of torque.

Transmission: For the AMC 360 engine – BorgWarner T10 four speed manual gearbox (137 cars), Chrysler Torque Commander three speed automatic gearbox (635 cars). For the Ford 351 Windsor engine – Ford FMX thee speed automatic (approximately 2,100 cars). Rear live axle from AMC Hornet with final drive ratio of 3.15:1.

Suspension and Brakes: Suspension system taken from the AMC Hornet. Front; Unequal “A” arms with coil springs and telescopic shock absorbers. Rear; Hotchkiss live axle with semi-elliptic leaf springs and telescopic shock absorbers. Servo assisted braking system from the AMC Hornet. Front; 11″ vented discs. Rear; 10″ drums. Total swept area 328 square inches.

Steering: Recirculating ball sector and gear. Turning circle diameter 34′ wall to wall.

Wheels and Tires: 15″ Wheels wearing FR 60 x 15 tires. No provision for a spare tire.

Dimensions: Length 178.6″ (4,536 mm), Width 67.6″ (1,717 mm), Height 48.25″ (1,226 mm), Wheelbase 96.0″ (2,438 mm), Kerb weight 3,520 lb (1,597 kg), Fuel tank capacity 21 US gallons. Ground clearance 5.5″.

Performance: Standing quarter-mile 16.6 seconds (attaining 83.6 mph). Top speed 118 mph (190 km/hr).

The End of the Bricklin SV-1 Story

The Bricklin SV-1 was a pioneering automobile and like any trailblazer it contained features that were new, unfamiliar, and therefore features that would attract negative criticism from reviewers. One area of criticism was the thickness of the “A” pillars and general lack of visibility from within the vehicle.

This was caused by the integration of the cage around the passenger compartment and integral roll-bar and the aerodynamic body style. Nowadays cars are constructed with integral roll-over protection and commonly have air bags installed in the “A” pillars which makes them sufficiently thick that the blind spot created can obscure an entire car from view. This is something that drivers of modern cars are used to and have learned to compensate for, but that was not the case in 1974.

The Bricklin went to market as an unfinished prototype and suffered accordingly. It was created by a highly competent design team who got most things right – except for the mechanism for the gull-wing doors. Added to that the factory was staffed with workers who had mostly not worked on an automotive production line before and had to learn on the job. The resulting sub-standard workmanship would appear to have resulted from what would seem to be a lack in leadership, and a failure to train workers adequately. Financial pressures, including pressure to get cars rolling off the production line quickly, would seem to be the principal underlying cause behind putting an unfinished model into production in a factory that had been hastily established and staffed.

Nowadays the Bricklin SV-1 has a keen support network in the form of the Bricklin International Owners Club. Many of the surviving Bricklins have been stripped and completely restored and in that process the faults, including the gull-wing door mechanism, have been fixed so these restored cars are examples of what should have been, but wasn’t back then, but is perfected now.

The gull-wing door fix is the design creation of Terry Tanner and you can find more details from Bricklin Parts of Virginia.

Another good source for Bricklin SV-1 happiness is Big H Bricklin Parts and Service who are located in St. Louis, Missouri.

The Bricklin SV-1 appears on “worst cars” lists from time to time. From a design standpoint it doesn’t really belong on any “worst cars” list; the faults were in quality control and the need to cut costs during production. Had the money been there to give the car impeccable manufacturing quality control, sort out the door design, tweak up the suspension, and give the engine the Carrol Shelby treatment, a Bricklin could have been quite a machine. Which makes the Bricklin SV-1 a historic classic that is as yet largely undiscovered.

Perhaps its real moment of fame will come if the classic car collector market discovers it.

Photo Credits: Bricklin, Subaru America, Mecum Auctions.

The post A Brief History of the Bricklin SV-1 – Everything You Need To Know appeared first on Silodrome.

source https://silodrome.com/bricklin-sv-1-history/

[minijenn]

Keys to the Kingdom Chapter 9

AN - Hey a pretty short turnaround time for a pretty short chapter. Neat! Anyway I don’t got a ton to say about this one since its more or less a stepping stone chapter, but it still has some fun stuff in it all the same so enjoy!

Previous: https://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/185003790469/keys-to-the-kingdom-chapter-8

Chapter 9: At Dusk

You must be kidding me, Did you really think I could say no?

“I wanted to meet you… at least once.”

The myriad of bizarre happenings of the past several days had set out a path that had ultimately led him here. The old mansion was a place that Roxas was only vaguely familiar with from the countless rumors and myths spread around town about it that made it practically infamous. But those things couldn’t have been further from his mind as he stood before it now, awash in growing confusion, dread, perhaps even frustration as he desperately tried to reach out for answers he could never seem to grasp. It was like everything he thought he ever knew was steadily, rapidly crumbling apart at the seams all around him, the foundation he thought he should have been standing on shattering apart piece by piece.

And yet… the turbulent tide he was lost amidst slowly started to calm the moment he caught sight of her. Her simple white dress and slight frame practically blended into the spotless curtains she was standing in front of, a hand pressed against the glass window as she starred down at him silently, sadly from above. In many ways, she was almost like one of the ghosts rumored to be inhabiting the dusty halls of the otherwise abandoned mansion, but he knew better. He knew she was real, at least as real as he was anyway, he had seen her face, heard her voice, felt the connection between them that he couldn’t explain. A connection that couldn’t be broken, no matter what chains of memory came undone.

“Roxas…” she mouthed his name from beyond the glass, or at least she thought it was his. For all he knew, it could have been someone else’s name altogether. And by all accounts, it probably was.

“Naminé…?”

Naminé…

“Thank Naminé…” Sora whispered to himself as he found himself slowly slipping out of yet another one of Roxas’ memories. In a sense, it was like waking up from a distant, yet nostalgic dream, blurring the fine line between memory and reality just as much as his own image tended to blur between himself and his Nobody. Despite the fact that he had largely grown accustomed to this nearly constant flux in and out of a past that wasn’t even his, Sora couldn’t deny that it still felt rather disorienting, perhaps even a bit deceptive. For as he stole another glance up at the window of the stately, yet silent mansion before them, he found that, unlike what Roxas’ memories had shown him, Naminé was—unsurprisingly but still disappointingly—nowhere to be found.

“Did ya say somethin’, Sora?” Goofy asked, glancing back at the Keybearer.

“Hm?” Sora shook his head, finally fully grounding himself back into the present. “Uh… no. I was just… um…” He trailed off, finding himself at an odd loss for words. Something that had been happening more often than usual, he realized.

“Did you see another one of Roxas’ memories?” Donald inferred curiously.

“Y-yeah!” Sora nodded. “Well… at least that’s what it was this time…” he muttered to himself, briefly recalling the ominous voice that had pulled against his heart mere moments ago.

“What do you mean this time?” the magician asked, aptly suspicious as he happened to overhear the Keybearer.

“Oh, uh, nothing!” Sora said, forcing a calm laugh to allay his confused companions before quickly changing the subject back to the mansion before them. “So… what do you think, guys? This place is even creepier than I remember.”

“Well, they do say this mansion is haunted…” Goofy noted as Donald cringed with clear fear at the very thought.

“Haunted, huh…?” Sora repeated, largely to himself as he looked up to the large window once more. He was hardly superstitious in light of everything he’d seen and experienced, but as he thought back to that sinister voice and the frightening affect it had on him, he couldn’t help but wonder if those ghostly rumors maybe held some merit after all.

The already on-edge trio was even more set off the moment something happened to lightly skim the Keybearer’s shoulder from behind. Sora nearly summoned his Keyblade, Donald and Goofy likewise loudly panicking alongside him as they all quickly spun around, only to find an equally startled Hayner, Pence, and Olette standing behind them.

“Yeesh…” Sora huffed, suppressing a sigh of relief at seeing the trio of familiar faces as opposed to the alternative. “Thanks for the heart attack!”

“Oh what?” Hayner smirked. “Did we scare you guys?”

“Not a chance!” Donald retorted back, shaking his first admantly.

“Our bad,” Olette chuckled, aptly amused.

“So, how’d it go?” Sora asked the trio collectively. “Did you get any leads?”

Their otherwise playful manner fell into disappointment at this as they shook their heads truthfully. “Nope, ‘fraid not,” Pence admitted fretfully. “The asking around town thing was a total bust.”

“Yep, looks like this old mansion is our only hope,” Hayner added, looking to the mansion. The others all turned to do the same, each of them carrying the same resolve that the answers they were looking for could be held somewhere inside.

“You guys ready?” Olette asked, eager to continue their search.

“Another Twilight Town awaits!” Pence chimed in boldly.

“Yeah,” Sora readily agreed, already taking the first step towards the mansion. A small burst of warmth filled his heart as he did, one that unmistakably came from Roxas himself. Almost as if he somehow knew just how far they were all willing to go to find a way to bring him back to them. And it was that warmth, that feeling of bright, expanding hope that they both seemed to share, that prompted Sora onward further still, determined to do exactly that.

Since the collective group knew exactly where they needed to go, they didn’t waste too much time checking most of the mansion’s otherwise empty, dust-settled rooms. Instead, they all made a beeline for the basement, its clean metallic walls a far cry from the rest of the old mansion’s dilapidated state. Now bereft of its original purpose, the computer room was also just as quiet as the rest of the abandoned building, save for the occasional idle beep and blip from the several-screened machine tucked securely inside it. A machine that, at least as far as any of them knew, was just about their last resort to finding their first and possibly only clues to helping Roxas.

“Here we go!” Pence exclaimed excitedly, rushing to the computer the moment he saw it. Since the others knew full well this was his area of expertise, they all congregated around him as he took charge in operating the rather complex machine. “The password was… uh… ‘sea-salt ice cream’, right?” He tapped the phrase in, which, just as it had before, granted them access to whatever data the computer had stored. “Ok, I’m in. Now let’s get that transporter working…”

Since Pence was already largely familiar with the process, opening up the transporter that would lead the way to the alternate Twilight Town should have been easy. However, what none of them were expecting was for the computer to flash red, emitting a blaring warning alarm almost as soon as the attempt was made. “Oh man…” Pence frowned as the computer’s main screen was overtaken by an error message. “The transporter’s been protected….”

“Protected from what?” Sora asked, aptly confused.

“I guess from us?” Pence ventured a guess. “We can’t use it to get to the other Twilight Town.”

“Why not?” Hayner cut in, clearly annoyed by this sudden roadblocked. “It worked before! We sent Sora there!”

“Well, that was then and this is now,” Pence shrugged.

“And… there’s no other way?” Olette asked, frowning.

“…None that I know of…” Pence admitted, tapping a few more keys on the computer, though to no avail. A general sigh of clear disappointment rose up from several members of the group upon hearing this, all of them quite dejected to know that they had come all this way only to be met with nothing. In fact, they were all just about ready to turn around and head back to town, or at least they would have had the Gummiphone not happened to ring at that exact moment.

Still not entirely familiar with the device, Sora fumbled somewhat as he pulled it out of his pocket and answered it, only for Ienzo to pop up on the other end of the line. “Hello, Sora,” the researcher greeted amicably. “You wouldn’t happen to be standing in front of a computer, would you?”

“Huh?” Sora raised a surprised eyebrow. “Well… yeah. But how’d you know that?”

“I was tinkering with Ansem’s computer,” Ienzo explained. “You know, to decrypt the code that was left in it? And I noticed that someone had logged in from another terminal. I figured it might be you.”

“Oh, yeah! The log terminal!” Sora exclaimed, putting on a front of understanding, which of course, Donald was quick to call him out on.

“You don’t know what he said,” the magician correctly inferred, cross his arms.

“Oh, and what, you do?” the Keybearer retorted in a dry whisper.

All the same, Ienzo happened to overhear this bout of bickering from the other end of the line and let out a small, amused chuckle before posing the group another question. “So if it wasn’t you, then… who did log in?”

“Oh, hi there!” Pence chimed in as Sore handed the phone over to him. “This is Pence. I’m the one who logged into the computer.”

“Good,” Ienzo nodded, allayed. “As long as we know it’s a user that we know we can trust.”

“Yep. But… we’re kind of stuck here,” Pence said, glancing back over at the secured computer. “One of the programs is protected so… I can’t run it.”

“Which program?”

“Ugh! The transporter to the other Twilight Town!” Hayner snapped, frustrated at how slowly the conversation seemed to be going. “It’s the only way to find Roxas. You gotta help us!”

Ienzo seemed quite surprised to hear this news, the implications sending his scientific mind practically reeling as he mulled over it. “Another Twilight Town…? And a ‘transporter’? Okay… a virtual town inside the computer, made of data… Fascinating! Maybe I can do something to help… Pence, let’s get a network set up; that way we can try to look into this on both ends of the spectrum.”

Pence agreed and the two got to work on doing just that, exchanging information in order to connect the two computers together despite the span of worlds standing between them. Despite how well versed both Pence and Ienzo were when it came to the tech they were working with, it still took quite a bit of time to get everything completely set up on both ends. At least an hour had passed with very few updates given, which was why it wasn’t too surprising that in that amount of idle time, Sora had nodded off more than a few times, much to Goofy’s amusement and Donald’s annoyance. Still, it was something of a relief when, after what felt like ages to just about everyone else, Ienzo finally announced that the lengthy process was at last complete.

“Ok, sharing is enabled,” the researcher confirmed, effectively snapping Sora out of his most recent bout of standing slumber.

“Oh! Were you able to fix it?” the Keybearer asked, eager to hear any new developments.

Ienzo didn’t provide a clear cut answer at first as he instead opted to explain exactly what him and Pence had just accomplished. “Now that our two computers have been successfully networked together, I can take control of the terminal there and change the privileges. So in a sense… yes, we did fix it. Or at least allowed some form of progress to continue.”

“And Roxas?” Sora pressed, largely not caring about the specifics so long as it all could help his Nobody in some way.

“Yes. For the virtual world to be completely realized, Ansem the Wise would have included Roxas’ full data in the construction. Meaning, somewhere on your machine, there’s a log of that data that-” Ienzo stopped short, noticing that Sora looked more or less completely lost in all the technicalities on the other end of the line. Which was why he decided to finish explaining in a much more simpler route to grasp. “Uh… basically, we can decipher Ansem’s code more quickly and we can analyze the virtual Twilight Town while we’re at it.”

“Ohhh, ok! Great!” Sora smiled, more or less understanding, though he was still admittedly confused by how it all worked. Still, the researcher’s upbeat tone alone was more than enough to convince him that there was a chance that this could work after all. “I can’t computer so… do that.”

“Glad to know you’re following along,” Ienzo smirked knowingly. “Don’t worry. We’ll handle it. Chip and Dale will be helping me out here on this end. I’ll call you back as soon as we know anything more.”

“Thanks,” Sora nodded, genuinely grateful for the help all around. In a way, he did feel somewhat inadequate when it came to looking for answers in this way, given his relative lack of experience with computers and data and research and the like. But it was still a relief to know that there were so many others who had decided to join him in his cause to help Roxas, from Donald and Goofy, to the Twilight Town trio, to even Ienzo and his crew afar off in Radiant Garden. Certainly, Sora hoped, with so many people working together towards the same goal, there was no doubt that they’d find a way to bring Roxas back in no time at all.

“Oh, before I forget—a bit of troubling news,” Ienzo continued, his tone turning grave. “It’s about one of the Organization’s former members. You knew him as Vexen—but to us, he was Ansem’s apprentice, Even. He was recompleted like the rest of us, but hadn’t regained consciousness yet. Then, sometime after Lea left, Even vanished. Aeleus and Dilan—the two you knew as Lexaeus and Xaldin—went out to look for him, but… he’s just gone. And I’m starting to worry.”

“You think he’s on their side?” Sora asked, remembering Yen Sid’s warning that the Organization would likely be seeking to fill out the rest of their ranks in any way possible.

“I think it’s a real possibility,” Ienzo said earnestly. “He’s a devious researcher. You should be careful.”

“Got it. Thanks again!” Sora bid the researcher farewell as the call came to an end, making sure to keep his warning in mind for future reference.

“Oh no!” Hayner suddenly gasped in apparent alarm as he turned to Pence and Olette frantically. “We got work! I totally forgot!”

“Really?” Pence asked as Hayner already got a head start in hurrying out of the room. “But what about all this?”

“Hey, both are important! We’re gonna need some cash to go to the beach. Also, don’t forget the pretzels. Gotta buy four now,” Hayner grinned, especially as Pence began counting out, confused.

“Ooh, I get it!” he exclaimed in realization, knowing that Hayner had the idea of bringing Roxas along with them. An idea that both Pence and Olette readily agreed with for whenever their long-awaited day at the beach finally did arrive.

“He’s thinking ahead,” Olette chimed in with a wry smile of her own.

“Later, Sora!” Hayner said as he took his leave, Olette going to join him.

“Bye, Donald! Goofy!” she waved to the trio fondly as they all returned the farewell.

“See you guys!” Sora called out after the pair as Donald and Goofy also offered their own goodbyes.

“Oh, and since I’m manning the computer here,” Pence began, remaining in his seat as he glanced back at the duo. “You guys are in charge of earning my share!”

“No pretzel for Pence!” Hayner teased, sticking his tongue out as him and Olette ran out of the room.

“Hey!” Pence shouted after them, ignoring Sora, Donald, and Goofy’s shared amused laughter. All the same, he made sure to assure the trio that he’d continue working on digging up what he could glean from the computer, collaborating in tandem with Ienzo all the while. And with that, the trio was quick to realize there wasn’t really anything else they could do at this stage but wait for any new information to be uncovered that could help further their cause. It was somewhat disappointing, for Sora in particular, to know that there wasn’t much help any of them could provide right now, but at the very least, the effort to help Roxas had been kickstarted. The mission to bring him back into the existence he deserved to have was well on its way. And for now, simply keeping the comforting idea that this could soon be more than just a distance hope in mind would certainly suffice.

By the time they left the mansion, Sora had noticed that the usually steady tide of Roxas’ memories flowing in and out of his heart had gradually started to slow to a crawl. Even as they emerged from the derelict building, he found that he was met with essentially none of his Nobody’s memories whatsoever, to the point that even the light pull that had been more or less guiding his heart since they arrived seemed to have completely faded out. And yet, alarmingly enough, what wasn’t gone was the same dull, persistent pain that had sparked in his heart when he had been trapped under the influence of that still-unknown voice. A pain that only seemed to amplify tenfold when the trio was stopped in their tracks by the arrival of a figure they were all too familiar with.

“So, you think you can bring Roxas back?”

Sora practically choked on a gasp, his heart suddenly seizing up with so much sudden agony that it nearly knocked him to his knees. Donald and Goofy noticed his wavering swaying as he clutched at his chest in a weak, yet desperate attempt to stop the swelling pain. Neither of them had the faintest idea as to what could have possibly been afflicting their young companion, but all the same, they were quick to support him on both sides as they all turned to see exactly who was standing right outside the mansion gates behind them.

“Ansem!” the captain and magician exclaimed, largely since Sora was still far too breathless from the pain to do so himself. Yet that pain only seemed to spark once more as a dark corridor opened up right beside the seeker of darkness, making way for yet another one of the Organization’s leading members to arrive.

“Xemnas!” the trio shouted in unison this time, collectively startled and set off upon being met with two of their most dangerous adversaries at the same exact time.

“Roxas should have never existed in the first place,” Xemnas began coldly, cutting right to the chase. “What you seek is impossible.”

Sora jolted at this, filled with a sense of righteous anger at such a dismissive claim overtaking the pain still pounding through his heart. “Y-you’re wrong!” he retorted boldly, forcing himself to stand upright without Donald and Goofy’s help, as much of a struggle as it was for him. “Roxas does exist! His heart’s inside my heart!”

“His is far from the only one,” Ansem said vaguely, ominously even.

“And in the unlikely event that you do manage to separate the two,” Xemnas continued just as evenly. “Where is it you think you can put his heart?”

“W-well… Roxas used to live in the other Twilight Town , right? So, m-maybe… we can…” Sora trailed off, instantly regretting his knee-jerk idea before he could even say it out loud.

“So, you understand the shortcomings of your ‘brilliant’ plan,” Ansem assumed, arms crossed. “The other Twilight Town is just data. Any existence Roxas might have there would ultimately be an empty one.”

As much as Sora didn’t want to say it, he couldn’t deny that this claim was absolutely correct. Ienzo had said that Roxas’ data was likely contained within the digital Twilight Town, which meant that it would have very well been possible to find a way to set Roxas himself up within that world. And yet, as stable of an idea as it was, it was far from satisfying. Sora didn’t want to see Roxas stuck in a disconnected version of the world that was only barely real to begin with; he wanted to see Roxas brought back into the real world, to reunite with the real people who likewise wanted to see him return. He wanted to truly meet his Nobody, not just in dreams or data or distant memories, but face-to-face for the first time. And, simply put, just throwing Roxas into the alternate version of Twilight Town would accomplish anything but that.

“Hm… Ansem and Xemnas used to be part of the same person, right?” Goofy spoke up, seemingly going off on an entirely different tangent altogether. “But look, now they exist separately just fine. If they can do it, then I don’t see any reason why you and Roxas can’t find a way.”

“Oh, yeah!” Sora exclaimed, instantly allayed by this vote of confidence. Sure enough, it had to be true; if their foes could accomplish such a seemingly impossible feat, then certainly him and Roxas could too, right?

“Yeah! You tell ‘em Captain Goofy!” Donald chimed in his support as well. Ansem and Xemnas, however, were unphased by the trio’s newfound excitement.

“In that case, by all means,” Ansem nodded, surprisingly calm.

“Nothing would please us more than Roxas’ return,” Xemnas said, keeping his sights trained on Sora in particular. “After all, freeing him from the depths of your heart would at last allow us to fully lay claim to our thirteenth member.”

“You wish,” Sora scoffed harshly, still trying his best to ignore the persistent sting ringing through his heart. “Roxas will never answer to you again!”

“Still so blind,” Xemnas shook his head with almost something of a knowing smile. “We are no longer interested in having Roxas as a member. In fact, he is one of the only obstacles standing between and our true final vessel: you, Sora.”

The ripple of shock that struck the trio upon hearing this was sharp and swift. In fact, it might as well have pierced Sora clean through the heart for the amount of intense anguish that rushed through it, so immense and powerful that he could hardly bear it. And yet, instead of crumbling under the crippling strain, he remained standing, as if frozen in place by all of the frightening thoughts and feelings running through his heart and mind all at once. However, he wasn’t really pressed to provide much of a reaction to this disturbing claim, as Donald and Goofy did more than a suitable job doing so in his stead.

“No way!” Donald shouted fiercely as both him and Goofy stepped in front of Sora protectively. “Sora would never be a part of the Organization!”

“That’s right!” the captain admantly agreed. “And we would know! We were there to help save Sora from becomin’ one of Xehanort’s vessels!”

“A valiant effort, that was ultimately for nothing,” Ansem countered before addressing Sora directly. “You can feel it, can’t you? Already the darkness is starting to take a hold upon your heart. And through that darkness, soon you find yourself helpless to resist the master’s call to join our ranks as the vessel you are destined to be.”

“Call…” Sora repeated softly, his eyes widening with the dawning, horrific realization. “That voice… I-it was…”

“It very well could have been,” Xemnas interjected knowingly. “Or… perhaps it was the shadows of your own heart, urging you towards the proper path. Either way, you would do well to heed it; resisting its command will only delay the inevitable.”

At that very moment, the pain coursing through Sora’s heart spiked yet again, and this time, it was fully enough to send him collapsing to his knees, even despite Donald and Goofy rushing to fret over him worriedly. “N-no…” he began weakly, glaring up at Xemnas and Ansem with as much defiance as he could muster. “I don’t care what you try to do to me, I’m not about to lose myself to the darkness!” At this, the Keybearer began to stand, struggling somewhat, until Donald and Goofy helped him rise to boldly, brazenly face their foes once again. “So you can just go and tell Xehanort to find himself another vessel because it’s never going to be me!”

The captain and the magician smiled proudly to their young companion upon hearing his resilient proclamation, both of them glad to know that he hadn’t lost his verve against enemies as dangerous as these. And yet, even despite Sora’s courageous show of determination, Ansem and Xemnas hardly seemed to care.

“If that is what you believe, then you are free to struggle and suffer until your heart can no longer bear the weight of the freedom you’re so desperately trying to cling onto,” Ansem concluded, his tone disapproving and icy.

“But keep in mind that if you truly do want to bring Roxas back, the only way is for you to give your heart up for his,” Xemnas added, presenting a disparaging truth that Sora knew all too well. “Which means that try as you might to resist the darkness, calling upon its power is your only hope for releasing his heart from your own.”

By this point, Sora’s hands were clenched so tightly into fists that they were practically shaking, his anger towards this pair and their callous claims, especially when they came to Roxas, rising by the second. “You really think I buy any of that?” he asked challengingly. “I don’t need the darkness to help Roxas or anyone else. I’ll find another way instead, you’ll see.”

“Go on then,” Ansem remarked with the slightest of mocking grins. “But remember: the shadows are never out of reach if you need them.” At this, the seeker of darkness nodded to the space behind the trio, where, as if on cue, a sizable group of Heartless was arising from the grass, ready to attack. Xemnas swiftly added onto the monstrous horde, calling upon a swath of Nobodies and creating an aptly dangerous force that was already deadest on besetting the trio before them.

Sora stole a brief glance away from the creatures to the duo that had summoned them, noticing that they were getting ready to take their leave instead of confronting the trio in battle themselves. “Enjoy whatever fleeting time you have left to bask in the warmth of the light,” Xemnas began, already calling upon a dark corridor for their retreat.

“For soon enough, you will stand in the depths of darkness alongside the rest of us,” Ansem finished with a dark, goading grin.

“Now… set your heart free,” both of them proclaimed just as they disappeared into the darkness from whence they came.

“Wait!” Sora shouted after them, summoning his Keyblade in the hopes of catching them before they could get away. They still managed to, however, as the Keybearer’s attention was quickly diverted back to the horde of Heartless and Nobodies his companions had already started to engage in combat.

“Sora!” Donald called warningly, narrowly dodging a wide swing from one of the several rampaging Dusks.

Seeing that his companions could clearly use the help, Sora hurried over to join them, though even as the battle properly began, he couldn’t really shake his own immense desire to prove the malicious duo wrong. “It’s not darkness,” he muttered to himself as he entered the fray, feeling the pain in his heart finally, thankfully dissipate altogether. “Not if it helps him!”

And with that, the Keybearer threw himself into the fight alongside his companions, taking the force of Heartless and Nobodies head on. Despite their numbers, the creatures were a small obstacle at best, and hardly any of their main focus with their thoughts still unanimously on their alarming encounter with Xemnas and Ansem mere moments ago. The implications of their cryptic statements were discouraging, downright frightening in some instances, but of course, the trio only found time to properly discuss them once the monsters they had left behind were fully cleared out. And, once they did manage to successfully oust the Nobodies and the Heartless alike, that’s exactly what they did.

Donald and Goofy were the first to reconvene after the fight was through, though they were quick to turn their already fretful attention over to Sora instead. He stood apace away from them, his back turned and his expression unknown as he stared off into the twilit forest ahead, lost in thought over everything they’d just heard. As worrying as what Ansem and Xemnas had said concerning him had been, the Keybearer was far more focused on what they had said about Roxas. He refused to believe that the only way to help his Nobody would be to play right into the Organization’s hands. There had to be some other way, and even if he had no idea what that way might be, he was willing to do whatever he could to find it.

“Herc said…  ‘with all our hearts’…” the Keybearer muttered to himself, finding more meaning in the hero’s inspiring words now than ever before. “Okay. Then all my heart it is. I’m getting Roxas out.”

“B-but aren’t ya worried about what they said?” Goofy asked, aptly apprehensive. “About… y-ya know?”

“A-about you being a-a… a vessel?” Donald finished, just as worried.

Sora paused at this, glancing back at his companions to find their expressions awash in dread and concern solely for him. Concern that he couldn’t help but appreciate, especially given the circumstances. “N-no,” he shook his head, his hand lightly skimming over his now-calm heart. “No, I’m not. They probably only said all that stuff to try to psych me out or scare me, but its not gonna work. And besides, its like you guys said; you and Axel and Riku and the king all saved me, so there’s no way that whole ‘vessel’ thing could be true, right?”

Donald and Goofy exchanged an initially uncertain glance at this, neither of them entirely sure when they considered all of the odd happenings that had been going on since this new journey began, to Sora in particular. And yet, when they met their young companion’s bright, reassuring smile, their worries were quickly put to rest. After all, if Sora had begun to fall victim to the sway of darkness as Ansem and Xemnas had claimed, certainly he wouldn’t be able to maintain his usual upbeat resolve. His confident, carefree smile was proof enough for them that he was still himself, and that was something that both the captain and the magician hoped would never change.

“Well… ok…” Donald relented somewhat halfheartedly. “But still, you need to be careful, Sora. Especially if the Organization really does wanna force you onto their side.”

“Which is why, if ya start noticing that anything’s wrong or off, ya gotta promise to tell us about it,” Goofy asserted with a rare stern sincerity in his tone. “That way, we can help keep ya safe from anything the Organization might try to do to ya!”

“Oh, come on, you guys, nothing’s gonna happen,” Sora assured lightly, though he was quick to recant his casual manner upon seeing the gravely serious expressions his companions shared. “B-but… ok. I… I promise.” The Keybearer looked away as he said this, knowing that he had already largely broken this promise by not telling either of them about the voice or the pain that had both pressed so viciously upon his heart.

If their brief encounter with Xemnas and Ansem had confirmed anything for Sora, it was that the voice somehow taking complete control over him had been no random happenstance. The pair had hinted that it could have very well been Xehanort himself, but even then, the Keybearer wasn’t entirely convinced that was the case. As for what the voice had truly been, he still wasn’t sure, but he was resolved against the idea that the dark duo’s claims of him being the supposed thirteenth vessel were anywhere close to correct. True, he had nearly fallen victim to such an alarming fate during his and Riku’s exam, but in the end, Xehanort’s plans for him had ended in failure, or at least that’s what he’d heard since he had been largely lost to relentless slumber at the time. Still, Sora firmly believed that his friends’ courageous, selfless efforts to save him had been successful in the end. Any evidence or claims to the contrary were likely nothing worth worrying about whatsoever.

Or at least, he hoped they were nothing, because the alternative was absolutely unthinkable.

With Heartless and Nobodies and the like still out and about as they were, Sora, Donald, and Goofy had decided the best course of action would be to return to town to warn Hayner and Olette of the lurking danger. They did so, meeting up with the pair amidst their job of hanging posters up around town and urging them to stay on their toes against any lingering threats that may lie in wait around the area. And with that message relayed, the trio realized that their time in Twilight Town had just about come to an end. After all, they still had yet to begin their search for the Keys in earnest, and as far as any of them could tell, they weren’t going to find any of them here. Still, they all made sure to solidify their shared resolve one more time to continue working towards helping Roxas, even if all they could really do for now was wish and hope for his eventual return. And while it perhaps wasn’t the quickest or most direct way of bringing that return about, at the very least, it was something.

Still, as the group began exchanging their fond farewells and parting words, they were completely unaware of the fact that they were being closely watched from above. Ansem and Xemnas stood atop a nearby building, more or less unseen by any of the oblivious townsfolk below as they observed the Keybearer in particular with careful, confident scrutiny.

“He still believes that his heart is safe from the influence of darkness,” Ansem sneered, crossing his arms as he looked down at Sora condescendingly. “Pathetic.”

“His heart is strong, to be sure,” Xemnas mused more evenly. “But in the end, his naiveté is bound to be his downfall, if not his obvious weakness for those he cares for most.”

“Well, that should be an easy weakness to exploit, huh? Especially when you think about just how many ‘friends’ that kid seems to have.”

The pair turned at this, unsurprised to see a dark corridor open up on the same rooftop they were are as Xigbar stepped through it to join them. Neither Xemnas nor Ansem offered him much of a greeting as they instead turned their focus back to Sora, not noticing the freeshooter’s almost cocky smirk as he did the same. “Still, aren’t you making it a little too obvious?” he asked the pair, having witnessed their earlier encounter with the trio from afar.

“We were instructed to guide him,” Xemnas said simply. “To point him towards his proper place among our ranks, no matter how long his… ‘recruitment’ might take.”

“Oh, so it really is him, huh?” Xigbar asked, still smirking. “And I thought Xehanort was just pulling everyone’s leg by dropping all those hints. But I gotta say…” The freeshooter took on a faux thoughtful look as he kept his sights trained on the unwitting Keybearer. “He doesn’t really look the part…”

“He will,” Ansem assured. “In time.”

“Hmph, well, you two seem confident that he’ll just fall perfectly into place,” Xigbar mused dryly. “But let’s not forget how many times Sora still managed to rain on our parade. So what’s the plan for when he ends up slipping through the cracks and figures out some way to keep his heart out of Xehanort’s reach?”

“He won’t,” the seeker of darkness concluded. “And if he does find a way to waver from the path we lay, we destroy him.”

“But in that case… we’ll have to find ourselves another vessel,” Xigbar pointed out. “Oof, the old man would not like that. He seems pretty deadest on Sora in particular for some reason. Wonder why that is…?”

“The reason is not important,” Xemnas rebuffed succinctly. “What is important is that the process has begun. Try as he might to refuse or resist, there is nothing Sora can do to protect his heart from the tide of darkness already overtaking him.”

“And once that tide inevitably tears his heart apart,” Ansem added, as they all looked back down to Sora once more, their dark intentions for him clear. “Then we’ll be there, to pick up what’s left of the broken pieces…”

At this, the rooftop trio finally took their leave, allowing the still unaware group below to continue on their journey, wherever it might take them next. However, there was still yet another pair of eyes focused on them, this time from an even higher vantage point: the clock tower itself.

From this lofty height, one of the telltale black cloaks of Organization XIII had just been thrown, discarded by its most recent ex-member who was more than ready to cast off any sort of association to the group and to its leader in particular. Still, his newfound independence didn’t mean he didn’t have his own agenda in mind. For as he caught sight caught sight of the Keybearer leaving town far below him, he felt a spark of all too familiar warmth burn in his heart, a warmth that he hated and craved all at once. A warmth that would help him claim what was rightfully his, once and for all. “There you are…” he said darkly, not even having to question if he had picked out the right face in the crowd. After all, his was nearly exactly the same. “Looks like I’ve finally found you… Ventus…”

Next: 

[kaneowldust]

Report 10: Dragonspyre-Riders of Drakes or Race to Malistaire

Report 10: Dragonspyre-Riders of Drakes or Race to the Crown of Fire

Ah Dragonspyre, how many many MANY hours have I wasted in your realm once upon a time. How many times I’ve farmed Malistaire and others to get the best Death Class gear available. Oh the days when you has to scrounge the forums and the commons to get four players to join in farming the final boss for his coat. So many…many…hours. And how it would take one to two hours to beat the final level and trust me, when you are farming, it is a real pain in the butt. Heck there was not even as much incentive outside the badges to complete all the side quests because of the Level 50 Max cap and pretty much wasting potential experience points. And the fact we could not get the actual coat is a bit of a bummer. Maybe it is available somewhere else if anyone comments on these, but as far as I know that is not the case.

So the story for the final section is pretty straight forward. You need to find a way to get to the Great Spyre and to do that, you are going to need a Drake. However, getting a Drake is not going to be easy. First you need a Dragon Rider’s staff which makes you backtrack through the previous worlds and beat the bosses again in order to get the chests. Then you have to get a crystal headpiece. And finally raising a Drake from an egg and armoring it up so it can fly you to the top. Again, much like the previous levels, the DragonSpyre Academy section has its own story and builds upon the history of this devastated world; something is memory serves I never really felt from Celestia (but we’ll know better when we get there).

From here we learn about the relationship between humans and the drakes (which are smaller versions of dragons and are said to be a lot more docile than their counterparts). You got a hint of this in the Drake Hatchery area and now it’s your turn to learn and take to the skies on one. I do like the fact that a lot of the ghosts are more than willing to pass on their knowledge or are still fighting the titan army in their own ways. Still if there is something that I’ve felt was a bit off a loss was that aside from the first level we never really get to see things from the Draconian’s point of view. There isn’t much we know about them outside of them being destroyers. Some hints that they did try to emulate some of the things like armor and magic. And what of Ivan Soulsinger? What was his purpose? Like okay, he’s enthralling Drakes, but why. At least with other bosses Vika Markmarker, Vesta Shadowmark, and Yeva Spiderkeeper even with what minimal dialogue we do get from them, we can figure out their motivations. But Ivan? He says he wants to borrow our bodies and turn the Drake ghosts into stone monsters. Honestly this is the only side quest in Dragonspyre that doesn’t feel like it really gives anything-no history, no world building, nothing. But it’s really only one in this level unlike the many that were in Marleybone. And thankfully, it’s a fairly short chain of side quests that don’t take too long.

I will have to admit that this area was one of the most frustrating for me. A lot of the enemies and bosses you had to fight were either Ice school or readily used that accursed Ice Shield. And for a school that doesn’t hit as hard as other classes that can be really frustrating. Not to mention capping it off with that -25% ward that enemies like to use a lot. Granted it’s been over seven years but I don’t remember them using this ward as often if at all. I get it you want to make levels harder, but by gods this constant debuffing made thigs difficult and more infuriating than fun or strategic. This can be really difficult for a solo player and some of the dungeon areas are very tedious without a second player.

Also you have to have at least a second player joining you for the Malistaire fight since there are a lot of triple enemy fights you need to get through in order to reach the top. Plus there is an area where you have to beat both sets of enemies within a short amount of time. And as Level 50 capped players you had to get a team of four together in order to complete this. Now I wasn’t there for the original Malistare fight at least when you fought both Malistaire and Sylvia at the same time. Plus his health was 100,000 and he used a lot more cheats back then. He seems a bit nerfed in here now. Or it could have been I was with two level 60 players who had a lot more attack power than yours truly. Trust me, this used to be a real pain to pass.

Also this was before Celesta was even brought up online and Grizzlehiem had just come to the surface. So it would make sense for Dragonspyre and its final boss to be the toughest thing out there. I think they might have made him a bit easier as to make the boss curve a little easier when adding new worlds. I mean we’re at what HOW many levels now? On a side note, I am impressed with the cutscene that they added after the big 10 year update was pretty neat. I wonder if we’re going to see this in future levels. Perhaps not because that is a lot of work.

So at last we have completed the original worlds and on to the added worlds. Take to the sky my friends!

[okimargarvez]

HURT- open wounds

Original title: Hurt.

Prompt: Luke’s dark thought, destiny, contrasted love.

Warnings: sexual content, dark thoughts.

Genre: angst, drama, romantic, smut, dark, mistery, frienship.

Characters: Penelope Garcia, Luke Alvez, BAU team, O.C.

Pairing: Garvez.

Note: multichapter.

Legend: 💏😘😈🔦🐶❗🎈👻.

Song mentioned: La tua vita intera, Tiziano Ferro.

Hurt- Masterlist

MY OTHER GARVEZ STORIES

Chapter 5-

Yet she insists on going to the Quantico headquarters alone. She doesn't want others to know. -Not yet-. For him it's indifferent. He doesn't care what others think. Although he quickly became attached to the team. Or so he believes. Because as soon as she leaves her home and gets on the subway, his head starts to spin at full speed. And the ghosts visit him. It had been too good. It had lasted too long, the fun's over.

It's tremendous not to be able to be himself. Not being able to touch her. Smile at her. I'm screwed. Completely fucked.

Then she arrives one morning with bags in hand. She stops in front of his desk. He must hold himself back so as not to stretch his hands towards her body.

-It's just a little something.- he smiles at her, confused. There is hardly anyone. It's still early. He chose to get there first, hoping that filling out some paper would help him divert his attention from his fixed point. From his obsession. But it hadn't been like that, as he could readily imagine.

-For me? - he asks, hoping for a positive result. She shakes her head.

-No! Not for you, it's for Roxy. But you have opposable thumbs, so you can open it for her.- his face widens into a smile as he peers into the smaller bag and discovers some... biscuits. Which turn out to be unfit for his dog's diet. And telling this to her is a titanic enterprise. How badly this gets him, seeing her so sad because she was wrong. Fortunately, there is a second gift: a sweater. Pink. He would see it much better on her. It would exalt her forms. Then her damned phone ring -We have a case.- he can't avoid turning his head towards her, following her until she disappears in the meeting room.

 On the jet, he continues to rethink the information he has acquired on previous nights. The way she had stripped completely naked before his eyes, her sincerity. Totally exposed. Vulnerable at the highest level possible. If he had wanted, if he had been a sadist, a madman, a wicked person, he could have made her what he wanted. It was as if she had given him the opportunity to hold her palpitating heart in his hands, crystal, both for the transparency and the fragility of this material. The responsibility she had given him, unwanted and unexpected, had completely stunned him. She had left him numb.

Then some particular episodes come to his mind in random chronological order. She had told him that on public transport she never sat down. She always carried a book with her, because you never know, if the environment around her was dark, if the world tried to suck her down the drain, she would let herself be carried among the clouds on the balloon of fantasy; and then it was the only way to endure the noise of the crowd, the confusion, without really becoming estranged from the real context in which she found (and so it would not have been if she had listened to music with headphones). And at the same time, she had tried to explain to him how much in those moments, crushed between men in suits and ties, briefcase in hand, cheeky ruminant little girls, indifferent of their half-open backpacks, old women stubborn to not sit because "The next stop is mine", how often she lost herself to think how beautiful, varied, vast the world was. How many occasions, how many people we don't have the possibility to meet. She had felt a sense of loss towards something that had never been. And perhaps never would have been.

So, she had stared at him intently, making him understand that it could also have happened between them. Thanks to that criminal, only thanks to Daniel Cullen, to the escape organized by Mister Scratch, their paths had crossed. So, he owed his happiness to the bastard who had almost killed his best friend and had ruined his life. A beautiful paradox. And now this asshole was comfortable in a psychiatric hospital and there was even the risk of freeing him, because he was no longer the Crimson King, he was a rind of a man, the one who had left Lewis; he was any person he didn't know, he didn't feel he had committed any kind of crime. Always that he wasn't pretending.

Luke remembers the question Hotch had asked him. Do you want to kill Daniel Cullen?

And his answer: I took an oath to uphold the laws of this country. So... Yeah. Yeah, I want to kill him.

How much of these events had influenced in his first "approaches" with Penelope? He had not unloaded all his tensions on her? It wasn't just the shadows of his past or a desire to be "healed", as he had told himself until now. It was much more. He needed to throw, fling on someone else all that weight, which bent his back, prevented him from thinking rationally. And poor, little Penelope, she had found herself in the wrong place at the right time. And now that mistake had proved to be the greatest miracle that could ever happen to him. But he didn't stop feeling guilty, wrong, horrible, thinking about how he acted. How much he had used her, and yes, it cost him to admit it, even ill-treated. And to what he had received in return: love, tenderness, understanding, total availability.

The screen turning on interrupts his thoughts, more or less: it's the face of his woman, the one that occupies the visual rectangle entirely. -My crime fighters- she begins, as she usually likes to define them -I have some news for you: Amanda Berxtrom awaits you at the police station upon your arrival.- while providing important data, he is attentive and in "operational" mode. But as soon as the screen goes black, as if someone has pressed a button in his head, he re-starts from where he left off.

If only he could tell her. If at least he managed to get rid of this extra burden, this sword of Damocles, before it fell between them, definitively separating their lives. Because until he had said nothing to her, the "thing" would continue to grow, to incorporate him, drag him down with it. And there was the usual problem: there were other things that she should have known, before she could think, hypothesize a relationship with him.

And Luke realizes it while they're starting the landing maneuver. He wants that. He wants a serious relationship with her. And he can't have it. But he can't do without it. And so he's a hundred percent messed up.

 She cares about everyone, each of the members of behavioral analysis unit. Just as she wanted a deep good to anyone who had been part of it, even in a very limited way, like Jordan Todd. But for the first time since Derek said goodbye to the Bureau, she rehearsed that feeling of amplified anguish, at the thought that there is someone who she loves in a special way, out there to fight against the contemporary dragons of our society.

Well, it's useless to make fun of herself. She's in love. Wretch world!

Worse than a teenager. She is in the phase of the Little Prince: "If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to feel happy. As the time passes I shall feel happier and happier. At four o’clock, I shall become agitated and start worrying; I shall discover the price of happiness!". She does her job, she researches possible connections to identify the bad guy. But she does so with the knowledge that first they'll catch the unsub and first she'll see him again.

Oh my God, I'm so ruined.

And he, what does he feel? He didn't say anything to her, but the way he made her feel that night, the attention he gave her, the way he looked at her all the time, as if he were contemplating something precious, to be treated and protect with nails and teeth... it gives hope her. It's a while she doesn't see those shadows obscuring his already dark eyes. But she doesn't be fooled that they have disappeared forever. And she doesn't want that he censors anything in her presence. She wants him in integral format. Full package. Full price. Evil and good. In sickness and in health.

Till death do us part.

Amen.

 Why the hell that phrase does come to his mind right now? What does that have to do with what Spencer has just said?

When I was five, no, maybe they were already six... Zorba, my kitten, my first pet, was hit. My parents tried to sell me the story that he was gone, and indeed it was true, in a "better place" or so-called. But I saw it. I saw his body deformed by the impact with the car. He was agonizing. He was still alive. Mom didn't want that I knew it. But I discovered that a neighbor had to go there to "stop making him suffer". I have done absolutely nothing. I know I couldn't, I was just a child. But this is one of the things that still haunts me today. And when I went to Alaska with the team, one of the few times I was in the field, it happened that the signal was gone, I was talking to my boyfriend... I went down to check and I heard a cry. Human, though hardly recognizable as such. I was afraid, I would say a lie if I asserted the opposite. But I couldn't stay there, doing nothing. Why I didn't go call someone who would be able to do a better job than mine? Because there was no time. I knew he could no longer be saved. But I didn't want the last thing he saw was the face of his killer. Whose had taken his life from him... how it could have happened to me.

She had continued, adding the details of her exit, the frightening noises amplified by the fear, the wind that hissed, freezing every limb, the ferrous smell of the gushing blood, of the life that abandons the body of that poor man, the grass that crunched beneath her feet. But he interrupted her, because he wanted an explanation. What do you mean with "it could have happened to me"?

Penelope had sighed. And then spat everything out, exactly as he would have done with her own saliva or her own phlegm.

About ten years ago I went out with a man. I don't want to make this too long. He was attractive, at least for me. I had repaired his computer and he asked me out. I found it strange. I'm not the girl men see across a smoky bar and write songs about, I told Derek at the time when I told him about it. And just because of his answer, don't get me wrong, I don't want to least to blame him, it was only my responsibility, my naivety and stupidity. However, almost as a consequence of his sentence, I decided to accept the invitation. Just... this man was a policeman with the killer hero syndrome and he was convinced that I was identifying him. As a result, he shot me, hitting me very close to my heart, on the stairs of my apartment. And he also bent down to make sure I was dead, that his plan was successful. I had to hold my breath. In those conditions. As my head thundered, the forces faded, I heard David Bowie calling me, I thought I saw Mom, Dad and even Zorba, who made me a sign of reaching them... and I managed to deceive him. I don't know how. I don't know what I was holding onto. But what I know, and that I knew even then, is that I never wanted my last look to be occupied by my killer. That his indelible image remains forever on the retinas. I don't know if you've ever seen See No Evil...

TAGS: @theshamelessmanatee @itsdawnashlie @talesoffairies @janiedreams88 @kiki-krakatoa @yessenia993 @teyamarra @c00lhandsluke  @gcchic @arses21434 @orangesickle @entireoranges @jarmin @kathy5654 @martinab26 @thisonekid @thenibblets @perfectly-penelope @ambrosiaswhispers @maziikeen92 @lovelukealvez @reidskitty13 @jenf42 @gracieeelizabeth27 @silviajajaja @smalliemichelle99 @charchampagne14 @ichooseno  @ megs2219 @rkt3357 @franklintrixie @thinitta @chewwy123 @skisun @maba84 @saisnarry @myhollyhanna23 @thenorthernlytes

[mimik-u]

Multitudes

Summary: On the 6,242nd anniversary of Pink Diamond's shattering—nearly a year after the Diamonds discovered the existence of Steven—Yellow Diamond, as she always does, searches for Blue. Pre-movie.

Note: It has been far too long since I've written Bellow Diamond, and I've needed this very story lately—something about allowing yourself to feel your emotions while also continuing to move forward.

AO3

—

It is with a studied rhythm that Homeworld’s twin suns pull each other up through the darkness, blanketing the sky in a soft pink glow as they ascend, going slowly, all gentleness. Yellow Diamond watches the familiar spectacle from her latticed window, hand beneath her chin, mind elsewhere as the fractured light glances off the angular planes of her face.

To a being who has lived ten thousands of years upon years, the emergence and passing of a new cycle is but a blink of the eye, a meaningless unit in the long linearity of her given lifetime. And yet, as she has learned so viscerally in even just the past six thousand years alone, the surest, and perhaps only way to measure time is to judge it by the movements of the other gems around her.

And by other gems, she means Blue Diamond.

For she always means Blue.

Her strength, her weakness, her light, her darkness, her partner, her monomaniac fixation, her fellow goddess, her friend.

(The dichotomies and multitudes of their relationship have always stunned Yellow Diamond at best and scared her at worst.)

For six thousand years, she scheduled her entire existence around knowing exactly where the other matriarch was at all times. In-between court sessions and trials and all of the various other councils Yellow convened alone, she sent Pearls to inform her of where Blue Diamond was and what exactly she was doing. The trail of her mourning was as readily available to her as reports on potassium deposits in faraway colonies.

She learned, intimately, that Blue rotated between haunts every so often like an organic beast migrating between seasons. Each spatial relic of Pink Diamond’s past were but pastures to graze in prolonged misery.

Against her own volition, Yellow came to understand that some cycles, by the sheer fact of what they once were, were harder for Blue Diamond than others.

The anniversary of Pink’s emergence into the world.

The day they decided to bequeath her her own colony.

The remembrance, the haunting, the sadistic exhibition of her shattering.

Before they laid eyes on what they had thought to be her shards, the Diamonds had never truly known pain, the sharp dimensions of it, the astonishing depths. 

When Blue Diamond’s screams rent the air for the first time, the entire Earth seemed to scream with her, wailing an unholy, feral song to which the three deities did not know the lyrics, though they sang along anyway. With their hands outstretched towards the colony Pink Diamond had once called home, they tried to fill in the melody the best that they could.

And they corrupted hundreds upon hundreds of gems.

And they shattered thousands more.

Because they had never lost anything before then.

And they wanted to make someone else and everything else feel the extent of their loss, too.

It is not an excuse.

A justification either.

It is only history, raw and unsanitized.

Yellow Diamond abruptly closes her eyes against the rosy sunrise as though stung, her fingers spidering against her tall nose.

Today would have been the 6,242nd anniversary of the shattering. 

Nearly a year ago, they learned that everything they had ever assumed about their beloved Pink Diamond was a lie—including this very date.

Still, the old memories come unbidden—the shards, the terror, the ungodly screaming. 

And yet, the familiar is now tempered by the newer sensations that have surfaced to foreign planes in her mind ever since she has met, loved, and wanted to do better for Steven Universe: the guilt, the helplessness, the fragility of everything, of it all.

When Yellow Diamond snaps her eyes open again, the images still burn the backs of her retinas, and it all comes together in one jangling, dissonant, clashing symphony—lights and noises, echoes and pale ghosts: the shards, the guilt, the terror, the helplessness, the ungodly screaming, the fragility of everything, of it all.

She is naked.

Fifty foot tall, the fragments of thousands of gems all over her hands, she is exposed.

With a violence that startles Pearl—who’d been running algorithms on her screens—Yellow stands up from her alcove, stretching her long limbs extensively, as though trying to excise something out along with the stiffness, too. 

“Sorry,” she says gruffly, glancing away. (She’s working on it—she is—but apologies still don’t come easily to the matriarch.)  “Just have somewhere I need to be.”

With a few quick taps of a nearby panel, Pearl pulls up and enlarges a video feed of the throne room. A snatch of heavy blue fabric dragging against the floor is all she needs to see.

“... that wouldn’t happen to be the throne room, my—I mean, your—um, Yellow Diamond, would it?” (Pearl is working on it—she is—but thousands of years of ingrained slavery are hard to completely forget, too.)

Relief mixed with gratitude mixed with awkwardness darkens the gold around Yellow Diamond’s sharp cheekbones.

“Thank you, Pearl.” 

A similar blush scribbles itself across the bridge of the smaller gem’s nose. 

“Of course.”

(They’re both working on it—they are—Diamond and Pearl alike, trying to figure out what it means to be companions in Era Three. Equals. Maybe one day, friends, if such an unstudied phenomenon can happen between them after all these unchanging cycles of mastery and slavery.)

(But she wonders to herself—she wonders this every day—is there grace enough in this universe for the Diamonds?)

(Is there such a thing as absolution and reprieve?)

Brow furrowed above her eyes, Yellow finally sweeps out of her chamber, heels clicking reliably against the marble veined floor. 

(She doesn’t know.)

(She isn’t sure she wants to know.)

The passage between her chamber and the throne room is a covered bridge, the path intricately laid, sunlight slanting through the arches and onto her handsome armor in patches. 

She doesn’t stop to look below—doesn’t have time to spare even though she has all the time in the world—but even as she walks, she can hear all the many ways that Homeworld is changing, the echoes of the reforming city drifting up to the palace like sacrificial smoke. There is the humdrum of communication—talking and conversing, snatches of loud laughter. And there is the steady thrum of ship traffic zooming through the brightening sky. 

She knows, without looking, that there are flashing colors and newly constructed infrastructures. Councils are being formed, the judicial system overhauled independently of the Diamonds' oversight. Representatives for the various Gem types are elected fairly and democratically. An economy based on rare rocks—locally sourced from Homeworld’s own Kindergarten—is slowly but surely being constructed by business minded Peridots. Gems from all eras and cuts and cabochons are cohabiting side by side, communing and learning to coexist without prejudice and fear.

Their world, for the first time in millions of cycles, is evolving.

For good and for the best.

With a pang that tightens her diamond as she finally approaches the intricately carved double doors leading into the throne room, Yellow Diamond wonders what it means that she is falling into the same pattern she has threaded year after year for 6,242 years.

Do Diamonds ever change their facets?

Or are their hardnesses immutable, unchanging?

(She wonders—she wonders this every day—if one day the universe will pronounce judgment on the three of them for their crimes against Gemkind?)

(Will doing better be enough to lighten the sentence?)

(Is doing better the same as being better?)

She curls her fingers tightly around one of the quartz handles and pulls outwards, her nerves suddenly electrified as the square of light from the door slowly pools into the throne room and across the floor, inching and seeping until it touches the hem of a heavy, dark robe. 

“Yellow.” Blue Diamond looks up, awed. “You remembered.”

As has been the Diamonds' shared habit lately, she's kneeling in front of the warp pad, cerulean fingers neatly templed on her lap, her posture reminiscent of the weeping statues in the Saturnal Spire, many of them immortalized in prostration. Yellow can see the traces of wetness beneath her grooved eyes, a telltale and familiar sign of what has already passed and what is yet to come. 

“Did you think I would forget?” She asks, immediately loathing that the question sounds so vulnerable and needy, as though she’s dependent—and maybe she is—on a negative answer.

“Truthfully?” 

“Yes”—she interjects impatiently—“I always want to know your truth.”

But, to Yellow’s surprise, Blue laughs quietly, the edges of her plump, blue lifted along the contours of her smile.

“Stars above, you still never wait for someone to finish their thought, do you?” 

“I didn’t intend to interrupt! I just—“

“Yes, I know, Yellow. Come.” Blue Diamond extricates her hands from one another and pats the empty space next to her. “Be with me, please.”

It is an irresistible request, an invitation that Yellow could never refuse (though she has never fully tried). With a few, stiff strides, she join the other matriarch on the floor, sitting crosslegged, even as her armored spine is ramrod straight. 

Appropriately chastised, her cheeks are dark with golden flush.

“Are you happy now?” Yellow mutters beneath her breath.

“Yes,” comes the quiet reply that very nearly paralyzes her. Perhaps realizing this, Blue Diamond extends the same hand she used to gesture towards the floor and places the tips of her fingertips on the spines of Yellow’s gloved knuckles. “I am…. in my own small way—happy and also undeniably sad. It is a curious contradiction.”

“Oh,” Yellow Diamond can only say, swallowing hard. 

“Oh,” Blue Diamond agrees, leaning—softly, very gently—against her, so that their shoulders touch. Her silvery hair falls to the side at the movement, the light from above crowning her head in liquid amber.

In gold.

“I didn’t wish to be alone today,” she admits, frowning, “but for the last six thousand and sundry years, you have unfailingly ensured that I never was alone on this date... even when I thought that I wanted to be, even all the times I pushed you away.”

Yellow‘s breath hitches, shallow of air.

They’ve scarcely talked so openly before, even now, and perhaps especially now that the Diamonds are trying their damnedest to amend the wrongs of their pasts.

Even beyond that, intimacy is hard.

Indeed, it is one of the few lessons that the resilient general has yet to master for all of her focus and control.

She still doesn’t have all the steps in order yet... if there are even quantifiable steps to intimacy at all.

“You pushed me away often,” she finally says, and try though she does, she can’t quite keep an accusatory tone out of her voice. 

(Even if the Diamonds don’t wear their wounds, that doesn’t mean they were never inflicted.)

“I know,” Blue confesses, closing her eyes tightly against what Yellow knows to be a deluge of memories. “I knew all along most likely. I wanted to hurt you as were hurting me. If I could make you feel even a fraction of the misery that I did... if I could make any gems who crossed my path understand... I was quick, injudiciously so, to do as much.”

The matriarch is precise when it comes to identifying and analyzing her own emotions—incisive—another ability which Yellow never quite learned in thousands of millennia.

“We don’t have to talk about this now,” she says quickly, “if it’s too much.”

(It's always too much for Yellow.)

“But I want to.” Blue abruptly opens her eyes, and Yellow is startled to see that they’ve hardened, her expression pinched. “I mean, I suppose I need to... for there is this feeling in my chest, Yellow. It pulses in my very diamond and has expanded with each passing second that I have been up today. And I want to get rid of it—I must.”

Her fingers tense where they rest upon her hand, and the space between palm and knuckles, blue and gold, is electric with energy, pulsating.

The column of Yellow Diamond’s throat is thick, sticky with feeling.

“I have a feeling, too,” she admits, her voice surly. “When I awoke... and recalled what day it was... I couldn’t shake it.”

Blue’s eyes are wide and tired, weary with six thousand cycles of mourning. The carnage is pooled all over her face. It scarred both of them. It nearly maddened White. 

“Name it, Yellow,” she whispers, and it is almost a supplication, desperate and reverent on the Diamond’s lilting tongue. “Please.”

What is there to do but comply?

What stands between her and a handful of words except her own sheathe of an ego of a personality?

Yellow Diamond flinches before she ever opens her mouth, half-hating and entirely fearing what she is about to make their reality.

“I miss her, Blue.”

“And?” Because Blue Diamond knows—she always seems to know—when her sentences are unfinished, when words remain unspoken. 

Yellow’s eyes burn, the leakage threatening to spill out.

“And I feel guilty about it, for missing her now… after what we did to her... after what we have done to so many other gems.”

To ourselves, too.

To each other.

More unspoken aches, though the merciful Blue Diamond is kind enough not to call her out on them.

A single tear glances down her long, oval face, collecting calmly on the point of her chin.

“How can we be moving on,” Yellow continues, wiping roughly at her eyes with her other hand, “if we are here again? The same place we have been every year for the last six thousand years? On the floor, broken. Our world is turning, Blue! Evolving! Transforming! Do we not revolve with it?”

If this is the pattern and the routine to which they inevitably return, does this not mean that they will one day become stagnations and calcifications?

Monuments and monoliths to their own shattered pasts?

What is all their progress, their actions and their actions and their atonements and their actions, if they cannot ever abstain from this vicious ceremony?

Will they still be here, six thousand years more from now, missing a gem who will never come home to them again?

Will there never not be a day when a rosy, pink sky doesn’t evoke her name on their tongues?

Pink Diamond.

She used to sing flowers into full bloom.

When Blue isn’t immediately forthcoming with an answer—her dark lips parted slightly in silence—for the first time in the entirety of her existence, Yellow feels no triumph in being right.

There is no pleasure in the conception and epiphany of their eternal damnation.

There is only acceptance, she thinks, glancing down at the warp pad, dull and empty. 

(Steven hasn’t visited in twenty-one cycles now.)

Stoic and unceasing resignation.

“Yellow Diamond...” A tall hand cups her chin gently and draws the general’s gaze upwards until all the goddess sees is blue. Her eyes. Her complexion. Her alice blue hair. Her lips. Blue Diamond looks at her all over, and there is an ancient sadness engraved in all the geometric lines of her face. “Do you really believe that multiple things cannot be true at the same time?”

“I—“

“No,” Blue cuts her off firmly. “Let me finish, please. We have done horrible things, and we are trying, every day, to do better. We hurt Pink immeasurably... and we are hurt—stars, we will be devastated—by her loss forever. Those sentiments are not mutually exclusive.” Blue’s voice hitches, her warm breath so close that Yellow can feel it on her skin. “They can’t be... or else, what do we have to look forward to for the next thousands of years of our lifetimes? How can we deal with the enormities of our lives if we do not allow our lives to be enormous—both an exemplar and a testament to complexity?”

Yellow stares at her companion incredulously, wanting to believe in the grandiosity of their existences (again) but not quite daring to (as she had once so easily done before).

Dichotomies and multitudes and holistic systems of so many moving, working parts—Yellow Diamond, for all of her intelligence and logic and ratios and statistics, does not know how to compute them. Her morality has always been a straight line that favors extremes, tilting like an unbalanced scale, from one weighted end to the other.

“But you feel it, too,” she argues hoarsely. “You have a feeling in your chest as well.”

Her gaze unwittingly travels down to Blue’s gem, gleaming brightly against her cerulean complexion.

But the other Diamond, fingertips still captured beneath her chin, doesn’t allow the moment to linger, insisting, with a gentle nudge, that Yellow Diamond holds her head up high.

“And so this just means we have a final pair of questions to ask ourselves, yes?” Blue smiles lightly, all tenderness and sadness, all warmth and terrible grief.

Dichotomies and multitudes.

They stun Yellow Diamond, and they perplex her, and they frustrate her to no conceivable end.

Even now, she isn’t sure that she’s following, and yet, as the two of them sit here—linked by touch and millennia and memories—she knows, without ever being able to articulate the sentiment into words that would matter or make sense, she would follow this gem to the ends of their world, conceivable or otherwise.

“What do we do with this feeling now that we have it?" Blue’s smile only deepens, becoming more felt, arctic eyes melting. "And how do we make sure it doesn’t go to waste?”

Her face shines in the brilliance of the warp pad’s newly glowing light.

“Today,” she says, “we allow ourselves to feel the pain of losing Pink... and we play with Steven Universe... and we not only love him, but show him that we do.”

“And tomorrow?” Yellow dares to ask.

A concentrated beam whooshes downwards from the ceiling of the palatial hall.

“Tomorrow”—Blue Diamond squeezes her hand—“we can move forward again... hand in hand.”

There are colonies to continue dismantling and long corroded infrastructure to repair. Homeworld’s grid system needs to be replotted, and a Kindergarten on Iphigenia would be a meaningful location to repurpose as an organic life conservation facility. Transportation services between Homeworld and Earth are still being configured, especially given Earth’s less than spaceship friendly atmospheres and surfaces. Former gem experiments require a delicate unraveling and a reckoning both for Yellow Diamond who ordered them to be carried out in the first place. Blue and White and Yellow Diamond alike, all three of them in harmonious union and sync for the first time in thousands of years, want to build a memorial spire in Sector 9 for the Rose Quartzes to inhabit if they should so choose—a place of rest and healing, circled all throughout with restorative waters.

“I... like the sound of that.” 

The tentative beginnings of hope creep into her low voice.

“I thought you would,” Blue teases as particulate matter and atoms and long reclaimed stardust begin to arrange themselves into the boy named Steven Universe.

“We start now.”

[robedisimo]

Blade Runner 2049 [SPOILER-FREE REVIEW]

[Disclaimer: this review is based on the Italian dub of the film. As such, all opinions on the quality of dialogues and acting are subjective and partial.]

I’ve seen things – not many, but a few – you people wouldn’t believe. One of them is an empty theatre at the premiere of a Blade Runner sequel. All things considered, it’s not hard to understand why audiences, all hope beaten out of them by fifteen years of prequels, sequels, remakes and reboots, would initially shy away from this obvious candidate for disaster.

Yet we few, we happy few, who dared to sit down in a darkened theatre hall with low expectations and a hole in our wallets came out three hours later with the most unexpected of feelings: that of just having seen one of the best films in 2017, and possibly in quite a longer while than that. Thirty-five years in the making and likely one of the most warily anticipated films in our collective lifespans, Blade Runner 2049 is a small modern miracle. The ways it could’ve gone wrong were almost innumerable – two of them, Harrison Ford and Jared Leto, are right there on the poster – but, somehow, it managed to push through it all.

There’s very little I can say about this film without spoiling its plot, so let me get a few technical evaluations out of the way before getting to the true meat of the matter. Blade Runner 2049 is, first and foremost, a gorgeous piece of cinema. Denis Villeneuve (Arrival) once again proves to be one of the most prominent rising stars in contemporary filmmaking, elevating this sequel – and the blockbuster genre as a whole – to pure cinematic art. It doesn’t hurt that Villeneuve is probably more in touch with the description of “arthouse director” than Ridley Scott was at the beginning of his career, either; still, the bulk of the praise must go to director of cinematography Roger Deakins, whose now-inevitable fourteenth Academy Award nomination could result in civil war if this film doesn’t get finally get him a damn Oscar.

There’s little point in my describing the film’s visual feel: you have to see it for yourself. I’ll just say that the use of light in its scenes is some of the most arrestingly beautiful I’ve ever had the pleasure to see in a movie, and that the number of shots worthy of being framed and put on exhibit far exceeds my ability to recall at the moment. This is a supremely good-looking film, expanding and building upon the original’s seminal aesthetic in ways that update the franchise for a 2010s audience while staying true to the first film’s retro, neo-noir vibe.

The world 2049 creates is a deeply immersive one, believable and tactile in its concreteness. Everything that made Blade Runner’s cyberpunk design memorable is remarkably echoed and scaled up, resulting in often monumental sets of majestic dystopian grace. A great deal of credit for that also goes to Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch’s score, booming and rumbling with ominous tones and never quite content to simply recycle Vangelis’s iconic original soundtrack. Add a few legimately good ideas about the (near and far) future of consumer technology, and this Blade Runner sequel comes out an extremely poignant example of sci-fi entertainment packaged within a rounded, cohesive audio-visual experience. If you were worried the earlier release date of Ghost in the Shell – itself a Blade Runner-inspired franchise – would end up stealing 2049′s stylistic thunder, you can rest easy: this is a whole other level of spectacle.

Narrative-wise, the film moves assuredly on the strength of a solid plot and compelling characters, supported by generally valid performances. Villeneuve and screenwriter Hampton Fancher allow the film a relaxed, contemplative pace – not dissimilarly from its predecessor – but, thanks to a suitably expanded runtime, can devote time enough both to the setting and its atmosphere and to character development. Ryan Gosling’s protagonist – an alternately steely and emotional character reminiscent of his visceral role in 2011′s Drive, aided by a fantastically compelling turn by co-star Ana de Amas – is one we get to know deeply and personally, unlike the original film’s Deckard. Ironically, it’s in 2049 itself that we finally start knowing Harrison Ford’s enigmatic eponymous character as a man, outside of his professional detective persona.

For his part, Ford does his job to satisfying results, topping both his return in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (by roughly a cinematic light year) and his more recent revival in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. There’s something about the fact that these legacy sequels seem to get proportionally better the less screentime Ford gets in them, but I get the feeling that’s something best left unsaid. Meanwhile, Jared Leto and Syliva Hoeks work okay as the film’s eerie antagonists, but their characters’ motivations are, in fairness, the least explored, leading to their coming off as slightly more cartoony and melodramatic than the rest of the cast.

As to complaints, my only gripe would be that 2049 feels a bit like one film and a half, and not just because of its runtime. Clocking in at over 160 minutes, there’s a feeling at some points in its third and final act that the Blade Runner sequel we sat down to watch ended at the two-hour mark, and that the film’s climax is in fact a heavily condensed version of what could’ve just as easily been a third chapter in the franchise. Still, the movie ramps up to a tense and – ultimately – meaningful finale, and most remarkably one that manages to tie into the original’s while resisting the temptation to ape its ever-quotable monologue.

All that should do it for a critique of the film’s substance, but it’s its role in modern cinema that still deserves a fair deal of discussion. To begin with, Blade Runner 2049 is already being talked about as one of the best sequels ever produced, although we probably shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking Hollywood will now know how to get sequels right: 2049 is less a messiah ushering in a new era and more a happy exception to a well-established rule. On the contrary: its mind-bending importance isn’t aimed forwards – despite the fact that everyone attempting a sci-fi thriller from now on will have to hold it as an inescapable measuring stick – but rather backwards, rippling all the way back to the original.

When I first became interested in cinema, Blade Runner was already a piece of film history. After all, Ridley Scott definitely had a sizeable role in shaping the concept of contemporary blockbuster filmmaking between the inception of this very franchise and his debut with Alien a few years prior. 2049 can’t touch that status, no matter how hard it tries; instead, it subtly works to change what its forefather was about, and how the two instalments relate to each other. Amazingly, brazenly bold in their narrative scope, 2049′s plot developments are of such pivotal magnitude in its world’s history that the original Blade Runner’s story becomes positioned as set-up to what we didn’t know was coming.

In more than a way, 2049 eschews the performance anxiety so common among sequels by completely refusing to act as a narrative appendix to its predecessor, instead actively working to turn the first film into a prologue to this new chapter’s much bigger, much more momentous events. Even more than that, it could be argued that 2049 consumes its final act of defiance by treating Blade Runner as somewhat unnecessary viewing, though that’s entirely unintentional. Make no mistakes, this sequel treats its predecessor with nothing but the utmost reverence; it just happens to be assembled so competently that all you need to know about the first film’s role in the latter’s plot is conveyed, with grace and effectiveness, within the sequel itself, with very little need for the viewer to have actually seen the original.

Thus 2049 finds itself in an extremely eccentric position: that of being one of those few fabled sequels that manage to vastly improve upon the original – The Empire Strikes Back, The Godfather Part II, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes being the most readily available examples – but, unlike most direct follow-ups, being so remote from the first film in terms of chronological separation that its status as the superior product can’t be acknowledged without an impressive measure of awkwardness. Blade Runner is simply too iconic to be knocked off its pedestal, and yet 2049 is, plainly speaking, the better product... even if a lot of what’s so great about it owes a vast creative debt to the original’s groundbreaking nature. Like a snake eating its own tail, it’s very likely we’ll never hear the end of this debate in the coming decades of academic film critique.

In conclusion, Blade Runner 2049 is the closest thing to a masterpiece I’ve witnessed in quite a while. As science fiction, as a sequel, and as a film unto itself, it’s a prime example of something done very, very right. Could the minds behind it choose to tempt fate once more and dare to go for a threequel? Who can tell. As I type this, 2049 is headed for what could very well be a way more contained opening-weekend box office than projected, poetically joining its iconic parent film in the ranks of critically-acclaimed commercial failures. Perhaps, in modern Hollywood’s sea of cinematic replicants, the only thing viewers can no longer stomach is a film with a soul.

[Verdict: VERY POSITIVE]

[crimson-legend]

VERY LONG CHARACTER SURVEY.

RULES. repost; do not reblog! tag 10! good luck!

TAGGED BY: @summoners-path​

TAGGING: I was going to tag my other muse but it turned out the princeling was easier to finish that Auron (who can be such a recalcitrant bastard at times, I swear) - @oshimai, @fallal, and by this point I think most people have done this? If you have not and you’re seeing this, then I’m tagging you, yes, you, whoever you may be. Do the thing!

BASICS.

FULL NAME: Auron ( アーロン ) - no last name. I’m one of those with the opinion that Spirans don’t generally have ‘last’/family names.

NICKNAME/S: Rikku calls him big meanie, and probably sometimes red. Still others might call him Sir.

AGE: 25 (at time of death) - 35 (at time of Sending)

BIRTHDAY: Some point in the mid-Spring. The date wasn’t recorded.

ETHNIC GROUP: Human (Yevonite), Macalanian.

NATIONALITY: Yevonite

LANGUAGE/S: Spiran Common. He knows a few basic words and phrases of Al Bhed but nothing more.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Grey-ace, sex neutral.

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Biromantic, perhaps slightly inclined towards men(?). Intensely monogamous.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: unattached (verse-dependent)

CLASS: Practical: Warrior - 2H Sword (ATK, DEF, tank, debuff) ; Social: variable, depending on the point in his life. He’s gone from low-working-class to mid- then high warrior class, then booted back out into near-poverty, then to Dream Zanarkand where he didn’t fit anywhere.

HOMETOWN / AREA: Bevelle - from age 8 (There was once a small village back in the mountains of Macalania that a young boy called ‘home’. It’s not there any more.)

CURRENT HOME: (verse-dependent) Wandering.

PROFESSION: Originally, a warrior monk in the Church of Yevon, dedicated to the protection of the people against Sin and fiends and heretics and upholding the law of the land. After that, a guardian, dedicated solely to the protection of his Summoner. (After and in-between, he had to find something to do in Dream Zanarkand that wasn’t just babysitting Tidus…)

PHYSICAL.

HAIR: Black, streaked with grey. Long when he was young, kept short when older save for a long queue at the back.

EYES: Amber, appearing mid-brown in low light but bright in full light. After his death, he only has one and developed a light sensitivity in the remaining one. It’s one of the reasons that he wears the sunglasses, along with the added bonus of obscuring his face - they protect his eye from brightness or sudden changes in light intensity. He also has impaired depth perception that he had to learn to work with, relearning even things as basic as how to navigate, much less fight.

NOSE: A fairly average-sized nose with a straight bridge, the tip pointed out slightly more from his face than you’d see in southern Yevonites or Al Bhed.

FACE: Oval face shape, with a gentle taper from cheekbones to jawline, firm jaw leading down to a strong chin. Slightly v-shaped hairline. When he was young he always kept clean-shaven, but as he got older, he has a sort of permastubble going on, as sometimes he bothers to shave and sometimes he doesn’t, but is apparently incapable of managing to grow an actual beard.

LIPS: Somewhat thin, often chapped (this man needs a chapstick, has Zanarkand invented those yet?). Prone to turning up into a smirk when he’s amused, but he doesn’t fully smile very often, much less grin.

COMPLEXION: Pale with yellow undertones, though he’s usually slightly tanned from being outside often. In places like Bikanel or the southern islands, he will burn (and be extremely irritable about it).

BLEMISHES: A massive scar that crosses his face from above his right eyebrow to his jawline, sealing the eye shut, and continues down from his shoulder to just above his right hip. He also has a fair amount of less drastic scarring incurred in battle, but aside from a few larger or more severe wounds, those are relatively minor due to the availability of healing magic and potions.

TATTOOS: None.

HEIGHT: 6’0”, probably 6’0.5”-6’1” in his boots - some people find this surprising, as his presence (most often!) gives him the impression of being an even larger man

WEIGHT: I’m terrible at judging/guessing this tbh - maybe somewhere around 200 lbs?

BUILD: BRICK WALL. Mesomorph, and very fit. He’s extremely solid, with a core like a steel beam from swinging that sword around like he does. Definitely looks like he could toss Braska to safety without a second thought. Nice legs, broad shoulders and hefty arms, a muscular but rather flat ass.

ALLERGIES: Incompetence. Mold and mildew, as well as mild lactose intolerance.

USUAL HAIRSTYLE: Mostly unstyled. Queue bound back with a tie or thin ribbon, the shorter majority he simply runs his fingers through and that’s good enough.

USUAL EXPRESSION: Resting murderface. Ah, stoic. He tends to show his emotions readily on his face but the changes of expression are always very minor, so one has to look close and know him well to see what he’s feeling. The signs are always there to be picked out, though. Everything is thrown out the window when it comes to very strong emotions, though, usually anger, which is obvious for all to see. When he was younger, his expressions were usually more obvious, but that changed over time.

USUAL CLOTHING: Dark, dark grey pants with a lighter grey vertical stripe on the front, back, and sides that tuck into tall black boots, which have a protective plate on top of the foot and a decorative medallion at the top of the boot that helps secure the strapping. A very basic undershirt between skin and a black hardened-leather cuirass with simple yellow-gold detailing. A tall grey cowl with leather strapping attaches to the cuirass itself, and with a pair of oval-lensed sunglasses does a good job of hiding his expression.

Over top, a long, ankle-length heavy red coat evocative of a haori, with a thick collar/front edging of blue edged with white. A pair of buckled straps at the end of each sleeve allows the wide sleeve to be pulled closed not unlike the standard yoroi hitatare worn under armor. His right forearm is bound from the wrist halfway up and covered over the back of his forearm with a bracer made of three plates, his right hand gloved with black leather. On his left shoulder is a pauldron of hardened brown leather, finely tooled and decorated.

The coat is held closed with a wide belt of scaled grey-green under double straps of brown leather, which is covered on the sides and back with a protective layer of steel detailing and blue lamellar plates. At his belt he carries a large jug, held with braided leather straps and a cord of decorative beading.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR/S: failure, letting others down, enclosed spaces, losing himself to becoming a fiend

ASPIRATION/S: When he was younger, he was far more idealistic in some ways - he wanted to help people, to protect, and he did. The main ideal of that aspiration didn’t change as he got older, but the scope did. It became not so much an aspiration as a hope, a desperate goal to frantically grasp at even as it slipped through his fingers.

POSITIVE TRAITS: Determined, protective, intelligent, enduring, loyal, forthright (younger).

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Bossy. Prideful. Stubborn. Acerbic. Secretive. Can and will walk right over you if you stand between him and his goal.

MBTI: ISTJ - The Logistician

ENNEAGRAM: Type 8 - The Challenger

ZODIAC: Aries (sun) - Virgo (moon)

TAROT: Justice (young), Death (in-game)

TEMPERAMENT: Choleric

SOUL TYPE/S: Hunter (with Thinker/Helper/Leader all tied for second place)

ANIMAL: well the test was terribly wrong for him but the closest thing there was Rhino, though that one underestimates his mental capabilities (many thanks to B-chan for helping me scour the choices)

VICE/S: This man can hold grudges. Usually big ones, but sometimes he can get in a snit and be very petty (see: the stop at the Macalania Travel Agency where Tidus calls him ‘old’ and Auron stops talking, turns away with a hrmf and a snide remark and then won’t even look at Tidus for the remainder of the stay). After his death, self-loathing is a serious vice as well, one that wasn’t present before (or at least until the very end of his life).

FAITH: Once, he believed in Yevon. Now, that couldn’t be further from the case. What faith he once had was thoroughly crushed.

GHOSTS?: As an Unsent, he himself is one, after a fashion. Even if he wasn’t, fiends would fit the definition well enough. In Spira, ghosts are not so much a matter of superstition as they are a natural part of the world; it is why summoners are needed to Send souls to the farplane, and the existence of fiends and unsent are abject proof.

AFTERLIFE?: Yes. As with ghosts, this is not so much a matter of faith as it is natural and evident. While one can debate whether the images the living see of their loved ones on the Farplane are a projection or truly their souls, that does not deny the truth that one can visit the Farplane itself.

REINCARNATION?: Yes, though mostly in the less comforting knowledge that one can become a fiend after death. A truly new life… he’s less certain of the possibility, though he’d like to believe.

ALIENS?: He’s been to and lived in a world created from dreams and set foot on the alternate plane of the afterlife. He’s inclined to think that anything is possible. There are so many stars out there, of course some other worlds with people on them are out there too. It just doesn’t have any bearing on his world here and now.

POLITICAL ALIGNMENT: For much of his life, Lawful Neutral/Good and a supporter as well as part of the reigning religious oligarchy/theocracy. Later and near the end of his life, as well as his unlife, Neutral Good/True Neutral and in (at first) subtle opposition to the established Church and then actively attempting its complete overthrow.

ECONOMIC PREFERENCE: He never really had much of a need or want for material goods. He always had a few treasured possessions, but between his personality and his lifestyle he never accumulated many ‘things’. After he dies, he has even less to his name, but he’s content with remaining that way. He travels, feeling out of place, and so keeps his pack light rather than gathering and keeping objects. As he doesn’t spend much, he doesn’t particularly want for money.

SOCIOPOLITICAL POSITION: He’s… famous, being the (a) Legendary Guardian, but that doesn’t really afford him anything other than awe, and occasionally a free room. He stays out of politics once Yevon is brought low. It’s up to the people who will live for the future to determine it, after all.

EDUCATION LEVEL: Once he was dedicated to the Church of Yevon at 8 years old, he was granted good schooling along with all the other child-acolytes and training to enter the ranks of the warrior monks. Before that, he didn’t have anything in the way of formal schooling and was illiterate, though he’d been learning practical skills for some time. He was of an age that he was starting to try his hand at trades and would have chosen one to apprentice to had circumstances not changed his fate.

FAMILY.

FATHER: (deceased)

MOTHER: (deceased)

EXTENDED FAMILY: brother (Feron - deceased)

SIGNIFICANT OTHER(S): none (verse-dependent)

NAME MEANING/S: high mountain/mountain of strength (Hebrew); gold (aur) - a divine ending/death (on) (Old Celtic/Welsh); gold (aurum - Latin) gilded/gilt/noble (aureus - Latin); dawn (Áron - Quenya)

HISTORICAL CONNECTION: What familial history he may once have had is lost. The Church broke its ties with him, and he with it. What connection he has to history is his part in the story of Braska’s and Yuna’s Pilgrimages, until those stories are told no more.

FAVORITES.

BOOK: He likes histories and tales, whether fiction or not - a good story. The ending of it does not matter so much as what happens during the book.

MOVIE: He’s not much of a movie person, actually, but as with books, he’d prefer one with solid characters and a good story to it over anything else.

DEITY: He’s not fond of gods these days, self-proclaimed or otherwise.

MONTH: October

SEASON: Autumn

PLACE: Somewhere not the South. He prefers cooler climes and does terribly in hot weather, growing irritable the longer he has to deal with it.

WEATHER: Sun out but clouds in the sky, with a crisp breeze blowing.

SOUND: Gentle rainfall, the crunch of leaves and evergreen needles under boots, soft humming.

SCENT/S: Cedar wood, pine, stone in the forest slightly grown over with moss, the brightness of a mountain stream’s spray.

TASTE/S: Seasoned game meats, fish; will steal your berry tarts.

FEEL/S: Wood and tree bark, slightly textured paper, braided fabric, simple glazed pottery.

ANIMAL/S: Auron is most definitely a dog person. He’s also fond of flying creatures, and you’ll often see me associate him with the red-tailed hawk.

NUMBER: Three. It is a good, solid number, is it not?

COLOR: He likes red, favouring it enough to choose the colour for his coat, and in general likes autumn and winter tones.

EXTRA.

TALENTS: planning, combat, snarky commentary

BAD AT: Magic. White, Black, Blue, Time, it doesn’t matter. Absolute shit at it. I have a headcanon that he doesn’t even have the capability for it, backed by the fact that the abilities in his grid is essentially all physical - the debuff-abilities can be explained as ki-type physical energies rather than magic. He’d like to be able to cast even as little as a simple Cure, but it’s beyond him. Also bad at empathising.

TURN-ONS: Entirely dependent on the person, and pretty much null in general unless he’s romantically attracted to or involved with that person.

TURN-OFFS: Arrogance, superiority, degradation, arguments, pain, excessive testing of his patience (a little is fine but don’t push it too far-), et al.

HOBBIES: He doesn’t really have much in the way of hobbies. There’s almost always been something to keep him busy, and so he never had much time to develop fun down-time things. He does whittle, if there’s dead time and he’s feeling inclined. It’s an easy enough thing that keeps his hands busy, and he can just pick up wood wherever he’s settling down to camp and discard whatever he makes if he doesn’t care to keep it, so materials are never really an issue save for keeping his knife sharp.

TROPES: BFS; Dead All Along; Determinator; The Atoner; The Stoic/Not So Stoic; Taking the Bullet; Tall, Dark, and Snarky, I Gave My Word

AESTHETIC TAGS: I actually don’t have a dedicated aesthetic tag for him and I really should. Hmm. I’ll get on that…

[illumynare]

Destiny Fic: The Songs of Lady Skorri

Summary: In days to come, they'll say that the Lady Skorri rose from the dead with a song on her lips.

Warnings: Violence, not graphic but there IS dismemberment.

Pairings: None.

Notes: Posting my Yuletide fic, whoohoo! Huge thanks to @hokuton-punch​ for her lovely prompt.

 Also available on AO3.

A Song for Skorri's Rising

In days to come, they'll say that the Lady Skorri rose from the dead with a song on her lips.

Some will say it reverently, rapt with admiration for the bard of the Iron Lords. Others will roll their eyes, scorn in their voices for the rhymester who must make iambs out of every victory, dactyls from every defeat.

They will all be wrong. 

Skorri will correct none of them, because it's an excellent turn to the tale, bracketing her life with song like a chorus—

But the truth is this: she wakes gasping for breath, ribs aching. She is half-buried under a fall of rocks, and the first few moments of her Rising are spent desperately clawing her way out. 

The first thing she says is, "Wait. If I'm dead, then why are you the Ghost?"

She does hum to herself, that first day as she wanders through the ruins, trying to find a memory among the skeletons and crumbled walls and blackberry bushes. A soft, aimless hum without tune or measure. (Her Ghost asks her to stop, and that's when she realizes she'd been doing it.)

But that isn't how she begins to sing.

Warrant, that's what the people call their town, nestled in the crook of two long hills.

"Warrant for what?" Skorri asks the blacksmith who'd offered her food in exchange for a day's labor chopping and hauling wood.

He shrugs. "Just a name," he says, and rips off another huge mouthful of bread.

The smith is less talkative than most, but none of the people in Warrant are curious about the world beyond their town. When travelers come up the east road—there aren't many—they will trade with them readily enough. But they have no use for their tales; they hardly even care that Skorri has risen from the dead, and has a Ghost floating at her side. They might have seen someone like her, ten years back, or twenty. A man passing through. He didn't make trouble and he didn't say, so what was he to the people of Warrant?

In a week, Skorri is sick of them.

On the eighth day, the Fallen come.

Skorri is one of the first to die, a Fallen Captain's sword rammed down her throat, slicing her spine in two. The world is choas and screams around her, and then it is dark.

When her Ghost raises her again, it is silent. Pale dawn light smears the eastern sky.

Around her, the ruins of Warrant smolder.

The smell settles into Skorri's hair and skin as she searches through the town, dragging out the bodies. Anyone who escaped, hasn't stayed. But she can name most of the faces she finds slack and dead. She doesn't think any have escaped.

"I feel like there's something I should remember to do," she says when she has finished digging the grave. The sun is high overhead now, blazing down on her neck. "Now. For the dead."

Her Ghost swirls. "I'm afraid . . . I don't know many human customs."

Skorri looks at the bodies she has rolled into the pit. She can name almost all of them. Perhaps no one else left alive can.

There is nobody but her to remember the annoying way Ulf cleared his throat every time he spoke, and the delicious brown bread that Ulf's wife baked, the way their son growled at the other children but always had a spare scrap for the family cat—

Skorri had wanted to leave them, and now her voice cracks as she begins to sing their names.

A Song for Efrideet's Glory

In days to come, they'll sing of Efrideet blazing with anger as she strikes down her foes.

Skorri knows this for a fact, because she's going to write the songs that make sure of it.

She isn't thinking of Efrideet's songs when it happens. She is, in fact, thinking of Melig: the Risen warrior that Warlord Rience sent to face Jolder in single combat.

Melig is monstrously tall. There's a good rhythm in that: Melig the Monstrous, he that adorns / His arms and his legs with Ahamkara horns. He's ghastly pale as he lunges towards Jolder, more bone than man—if the Ahamkara whispers haven't eaten his mind out yet, they will soon. 

Jolder dodges, the glitter of her cuirass blinding in the sunlight, and laughs as she throws a grenade that forces Melig back. Glorious, fits-into-iambic Jolder. Skorri's written songs about her just of the use of her name, and her now her mind flits through ways to describe Jolder's part in this battle—

It's barely visible, the dart that flies from the ranks of Rience's forces.

But everyone sees when its magnetic tip locks into Jolder's Ghost and sends out a crackling wave of red energy.

Jolder convulses, falls to her knees—By Rience betrayed, / By treachery made / To kneel before—

That's the nice thing about songs: when your head is wrapped up in linked words, when your mind is chaining more together, there's room for little else. Sure, there's white-hot anger—that Traveller-damned Rience used a neurojammer on Jolder's Ghost—but Skorri doesn't panic. She rhymes and she draws her rifle and she's really quite calm as Melig roars in triumph, his axe crashing down into Jolder's helm.

Efrideet's answering battle-cry is a wild, inhuman thing.

The newest Iron Lord is small, but when the battle-madness takes her, she's one of the strongest. And she doesn't waste time. Her feet land in Melig's chest, send him crashing backward. Skorri's already firing into Rience's forces, so it's only from the edges of her vision that she sees Efrideet rip Melig's head from his body and fling it at the enemy line.

Skorri thinks, Well, that's a sight worse than her usual. 

But of course, usually there's never any doubt that Jolder would survive a fight. 

Then there's no more time for thinking, as Skorri summons Radiance and rains the fury of the sun on their enemies. 

The songs come after, while Jolder is healing. She's alive because Saladin got to her side while Melig was still twitching, and wrenched the dart out of her Ghost, thought it tore his hands bloody. Even so, she nearly didn't make it: her Ghost couldn't manage to raise her again until sundown, which was pushing the known limit for any Ghost to bring one a slain Risen back to life.

Now Jolder is recovering, her Ghost bobbing shakily at her side, Saladin never far away. To Skorri's silent surprise, Efrideet is there too. She's always shy after the battle-madness takes her, and usually she disappears into the wilds, makes peace with herself away from the rest of the Iron Lords. Comes back with a smile and a tilt of her head that dare them to mention it.

This time, though, Efrideet hovers at the far ends of corridors, not speaking to anyone, but not letting herself get far away from where Jolder is staying. Skorri wonders at it, but it's hardly her business: she's writing a song for Efrideet now, but they've never been close.

One afternoon, though, she goes to looking for Jolder and finds her sitting on the side of her bed. Sunlight streams through the window, turning her red hair into fire; Efrideet sits at her feet, shoulders resting against her knees.

Jolder is braiding her hair. She seems to be making six plaits; three are already done. As Skorri watches, Jolder combs her fingers through the loose hair, and pulls out strands for a fourth braid. Efrideet makes a small, catlike noise of contentment.

It's no way to end a song of glory in war, and Skorri leaves the moment out of her verses. But she thinks of it again, in the days after Efrideet disappears.

A Song for Jolder's Tomb

In days to come, they'll sing of the Iron Lords battling SIVA.

Skorri doubts that now.

Songs are passed from mouth to mouth—like kisses, but with a lot less jealousy when you share them around—and there's no one coming out of here alive.

The swarms of SIVA mites swirl overhead in streams, like flocks of angry crimson birds. Gunshots rattle and boom; explosions flash in the distance. Skorri can hear the shouts of the Iron Lords still fighting. But there's no more fight left in Skorri; her legs aren't working at all, and she can only faintly twitch her hands. It's probably something to do with the red tendrils clinging to her robes, writhing at the edges of her vision. She's not sure if her Ghost is still ~consume enhance replicate~

~consume enhance replicate~

~consume enhance replicate~

It's a short and boring chorus. No bard worth a pinch of salt would write it. SIVA doesn't deserve to defeat them if it can't outsing them.

But Skorri can't sing anything at all now. She tries, but her tongue is a dry, dead weight in her mouth, and every time she tries to link words together, they turn into ~consume enhance replicate~

Jolder lies sprawled beside her, helmet cracked. But as Skorri watches, she shudders and wakes. She pulls the ruined helmet from her head and staggers to her feet, hefting a machine gun with stubborn courage.

There will be no songs of it.

Skorri knows this. Because she's dead. And there aren't any songs left in her head.

Haha, a rhyme!

But she wishes there were. She wishes she could sing, and have the world hear the song of Jolder as she looks around the bunker, sees the last, desperate battle—so many dead already—and knows what to do. As she readies the charges.

Skorri hums, a soft, broken noise deep in her throat. She remembers sunlight glistening off Jolder's red hair as she braided Efrideet's. That moment had never been put in a song either. If only she'd found a rhyme for it. If only Efrideet had come back. If only they could have seen the sunlight again. 

If only.

The explosion is searing light and utter silence.

Reprise

A Titan and a Warlock sit together in the late afternoon sunshine, guns in their laps, a pile of half-dead SIVA parts lying between them. It's a grisly business, upgrading their weapons with the things they have killed, but it's what Guardians do. The Warlock thinks it's appropriate: as the Traveller plundered their dead souls to make warriors, they plunder their dead enemies to make weapons. The Titan thinks she'll strap any dead thing to her gun, if it lets her strike harder against the Dark.

"What's that you're humming?" the Titan asks.

"Was I?" asks the Warlock, startled. She pauses, then softly hums another few notes.

"A bit mournful," says the Titan, peering down the sights of her scout rifle.

"I don't know where I heard it," says the Warlock. "But since the Iron Tomb . . . I can't seem to get it out of my head."

Lore note: in the Iron Tomb mission, Saladin says that until SIVA, he hadn't known anyone with the Traveller's light could die. But the Lord Felwinter Grimoire card shows Felwinter intentionally permakilling a warlord by shooting his Ghost. It's also implied as a known danger in the Lady Jolder card. So I've decided to assume that Saladin was speaking more loosely, and just meant he hadn't really believed his friends would die. 

There is no reason to believe Efrideet was a berserker besides Jolder's remark that "she fights better when she's angry" and the story about Efrideet using Saladin as a javelin. Which is not evidence at all; I just thought it was an interesting direction to explore. 

 In conclusion: I <3 Skorri.

[suzanneshannon]

How I’ve Improved as a Web Developer (and a Person) in 2019

We’re sliding into the roaring twenties of the twenty-first century (cue Jazz music 🎷). It’s important that you and I, as responsible people, follow the tradition of looking back on the past year and reflect on the things that went right and wrong in the hopes of becoming the best version of ourselves in the year ahead.

I never do New Year’s resolutions, except for when I was ten years old and wanted to open a local self-run detective agency by the end of the following year (Scooby Doo was in vogue those days.) But I do reflect on the past this time of year, perhaps as an instinctive response.

Over the years, I’ve improved as a web developer, on my own terms and on my own pace, while learning, unlearning, interpreting and executing what the web technology offers. This post is a reflection of my personal experiences from 2019 and the years before that. I’ll share things I’ve learned that might make us all better web developers heading into 2020. Personal experiences aren’t universal, of course, but it’s sometimes neat to get a look into the things other people are processing and learn vicariously through them.

So here we go.

I spent a lot of time in other people’s code

It was unavoidable because my very first professional project involved updating and upgrading an old application. It was only after some time that I realized I gained wisdom from navigating through code written by others, and also, I developed the guts to voluntarily read others' code and really pay attention to what it’s doing.

It’s not unlike practicing good listening skills. Reading and understanding code written by someone else requires active attention and fighting the temptation to either zone out or inject your own opinion.

What you can try: GitHub is a great place to see a lot of projects. There are so many open source projects out there and they're all readily available to look at and digest. I think many of us have experienced times when we simply grab a project or a tool without really getting under the hood and understanding what it’s actually doing or how it fits into our own work. Taking the time up front is an excellent way to not only learn new things, but to make better decisions in our day-to-day work as well. Don’t understand something? Open an issue in the repo and ask away!

I’d be remiss not to mention CodePen here. Not only can you search for just about any pattern, feature, or function, but it also offers collections of Pens and even topics, both of which are excellent for seeing how different people tackle similar ideas.

I tried new web standards even if I thought I’d never use them

It’s just my curiosity, but I think it has made me feel more comfortable in learning something new. That might be variable fonts, serverless, JAMstack, prefers-color-scheme , prefers-reduced-motion , and subgrid, among many others. Geez, we’ve seen a lot of new things in the last year or two, haven’t we?

What you can try: I think you’re already ahead of this by following sites like CSS-Tricks. There are many technical blogs and writers out there who share with their readers what’s new. Check out the list of people who have contributed to this blog — many of them have personal sites where they’re frequently sharing new things. A Book Apart is also a great resource for standards, especially for those of you who might enjoy a break from the screen. You can find so many gems there, from Expressive Web Design to The New CSS Layout.

I created an archive of my favorite code snippets

There were times when I’d think that I’d remember the oh-so-simple syntax of new code I tried... but it turns out simple things are easier to forget. So I decided to keep them neatly in a digital folder, like in the good ol’ times. This has allowed me to go back and reference code when questions or ideas pop up. Otherwise, I’d have to go back and research all over again.

What you can try: I personally don’t use tools, just save them in a file. That said, Gist is always a nice place to keep snippets. And, hey, CodePen lets you create your own collections as well!

Another idea is to leverage your browser’s bookmarks. Save links liberally. Organize them into logical groupings so they’re easy to find later.

I created an archive of my notes, flow diagrams, and other stuff I scribble on paper

I have a standard paper notepad at my office that I use to jot down everything from ideas for a project I’m working on, layout sketches and notes from things I read. It’s also the place where I often start work, much like the way Chris writes “pseudo code” heading into a code editor.

I have a habit of working out the visual aspects of a web application, and often, even the source code on paper. So, I keep those papers safe for when I might have to refer back. It has helped me out in a pinch.

What you can try: I would be a hypocrite if I recommend any of the online note taking tools, because I’ve never found them convenient, ironically. There are lots of physical notebook options out there. Moleskine is a popular one. Sarah Drasner recommended one when she wrote her own post on learning how to learn.

I recognized when someone’s teaching and I need to be a student

I used to have a bad habit: if someone’s explaining something about code that I might already be familiar with, I would process and interpret what they were saying based on my own personal experiences, way before I learned what they had to say first.

It could be a millennial thing or it could be an industry thing, but I’ve always found that people package everything as something that’s being shared, that somehow I’m sitting in a round table with them and we are dissecting things over a box of pizza. 🍕

I appreciate that people make their content inclusive because we’re all adults here. But it also has stopped me from genuinely learning what they were trying to teach. I skimmed through useful information, but never really cared about the context. On my worst days, I missed the point completely, all because my brain’s resources were divided trying to learn and analyze at the same time.

Active listening and learning has provided a bunch of benefits for me this past year. For example:

I hear what people are saying more clearly.

I retain what people share with me more easily.

It makes the people I’m interacting with feel at ease with me.

It opens my mind to new ideas and possibilities I may not have considered.

What you can try: When you want to learn from something, whether it’s an article, a tweet, a podcast episode, a documentation or something else, save it and use it. I learned to grow out of my bad habit this year and have found this to be my flow for learning and retaining from others:

I learn something.

I save it for later (in my archive!).

I try it out when I have the time.

I play around with it more and try improving on it, if needed.

I eat my pizza.

I trusted my own judgement more

This might sound like the exact opposite of what I just said about active listening, but it’s more of a counter-balance to being overly reliant on others. Active listening doesn’t mean we can’t have our own opinions or even continue holding onto them. It simply means we hear and retain information that can inform our own opinions.

A good professional opinion could be such a blessing, but good or bad, the moment I found myself giving too much weight to other people’s opinions, like I’d read a blog post on someone’s development environment and think I have to do the same thing, or worse, that the way I do things is wrong, that’s a terrible feeling (hello Imposter Syndrome) and who needs more stress?

What you can try: Instead of automatically believing that anything you read is the golden standard, try putting up a little guard. In other words, instead of thinking, “This is how I should be doing it,” perhaps say, “Oh, so this is how this person does that.”

I started seeking others' experiences that validates my own

I feel happy when I read or hear fellow web developers share their work experiences and find something that resonates with me on a personal level:

“I know! I couldn’t set it up the first time, too!”

“Yes, that framework made things slower for me, too!”

“No way! I tried to center a floating element, too!”

Seeing that I’m not the only one who makes mistakes or struggles in certain areas makes me feel okay for where my skills are at instead of seeing myself as an unskilled developer who’s prone to mistakes. Chris recently shared his thought process working with flexbox elements — that’s exactly the sort of thing I think we can all relate to.

What you can try: We all bear some responsibility here. Let’s make people feel good when asking questions, even if they seem obvious to us. Share your own mistakes and struggles. The web is a vast and constantly evolving space and we’re all starting from different places.

I made myself the only one who decides what to make on my off-work coding marathons

Like all of you, my learning curve involves coding during my non-working hours. It could be just a new code I’m trying out or a full on side-project.

Seeing others share their side projects inspires me... at least that’s what I want them to do. That hasn't always been the case. They used to make me think I wasn't doing enough. Not enough GitHub repos. Not enough open source contributions. Not enough self-imposed challenges. Not enough WordPress plugins. And, sorry Chris, not enough CodePen demos.

With experience, however, I’ve realized there’s only one human soul that can optimally select what I should be working on, based on my skills, my preferences, my necessities and my circadian rhythm – the ghost under my bed.

Once I understood that, every single awesome and crazy side project people share online truly inspires me — or at least makes me smile, which is even better.

What you can try: Be intentional with your personal time. Prioritize what you want to learn and decide the best way for you to learn it. This post by Jason Rodriguez outlines how he planned to level up his JavaScript skills. Chris shared a mountain of ideas for learning CSS. Sarah also has great tips on prioritizing your personal and professional time.

I stopped drinking coffee

This is not up for discussion, my dear reader. 😀

What you can try: Masala Chai.

I started prioritizing my health

Here’s a very silly story. I sprained my wrists thrice in a month. I think it was a voodoo spell. The point is: it was getting harder for me to work.

I was a bit embarrassed to tell people I couldn’t work because I was injured, so I continued like nothing happened. Each time, the sprain would eventually go away because of the ointment I applied at home, but would return soon enough because I wasn’t properly resting it. At one point, the pain spread to my arms and I’d to immediately take my hands away from the keyboard and rest them on my lap. It scared me.

The next day, I started wearing a wrist cast (well, two) and informed my colleagues and technical director that I needed to take it slow.

I know this story sounds like a very simple and obvious thing — and it was a very simple thing indeed. But I learned an important lesson: Health comes first.

Our job description doesn’t come with health warning stickers, but there are consequences in reality.

What you can try: Take care of your health first. Physical or mental, chronic or acute, mild or severe, internal or external, when your health problems go away, it improves the quality of your life, personally and professionally. If you’re lucky enough to have good health insurance, use it. Schedule an annual physical exam. Listen to your body when it says it’s hungry, thirsty, or simply needs a rest.

I know, easier said than done. But it’s important nonetheless and something worth striving for.

I’ve started sharing my knowledge with others

Not in a way you might assume. I know the consensus is that we learn when we teach but I haven’t personally experienced that. I don’t learn while I teach. Instead, what I've done is focus on how someone I’m teaching could or should learn a particular thing.

“Start with the basics.”

“Read the documentation.”

“Try the demo then proceed to so and so.”

These are some of the statements I found myself repeating to those I’ve mentored.

Those same sentences echo back to me when I've to learn something new. When I teach, I pay attention to how it’s learned. And learning is the one skill that never goes out of date, especially in our line of work.

What you can try: I think you’ll probably have to wait a while before you could do this if you’re just starting out as a web developer, but if you’re even somewhat experienced and meet a wide-eyed newbie, don’t miss your chance to teach. Don't be part of the dark matter. You can teach in a variety of ways, from blogging to making demos. That said, I’ve found real life person-to-person teachable moments to be the most effective.

I realized I can’t read a code once and understand it all. So I use comments.

Here’s my comment about comments: Take them seriously.

Sometimes I can’t even decipher the code that I’ve typed with my two bare hands.

Condensation is a key element of programming languages in addition to something that causes rain. We don’t write, “add one more sheep to the herd.” Instead, we write, i++. Expecting myself to remember and understand everything in one glance simply isn’t practical.

Using well-thought comments cuts back the time it takes me to know what’s happening in the code. This is why I’ve consciously paid attention to using comments this past year. There’s no cost to using them, so go nuts!

What you can try: Take time to go through your code and leave some useful comments each time you’ve coded a module or a feature that works, especially before moving onto what’s next.

I’m not taking working code for granted

I was told margin:auto would center an element. I was told to add return(0) to an onclick event handler. I was also told to use GUID for foreign keys.

I didn’t ask why or how those things worked at the time. I simply did as they said.

I, now, however, know how they work and why I had to use those code.

When I know the basics of a piece of code, it helps me to use the same code or the same logic in scenarios other than the one I learned about it in.

What you can try: Make a quick mental, physical, or digital reminder when you come across a code that you want to know more about. Then remember to go through that list first in your free time. Don’t be afraid to ask someone why code is used a certain way.

I try to mimic extroverted web developers

* takes a deep breath *

I’m an introvert.

My introversion is not so bad that people feel uncomfortable around me. I mean, everybody likes talking to introverts because they mostly listen, right?

Although most of my work is typing in front of a computer I inevitably have to meet people, like clients, users and team members.

Communication is important. And not just the bare minimum.

When you develop a really good relationship with who you work with, your workplace becomes fun. When you develop a good relationship with your users, your work becomes successful; and when you develop a good relationship with your clients, you get more work.

I found there’s no way around it: I had to talk from time to time. I had to put myself out there.

I look at my fellow web developers who are more extroverted for communication pointers. They talk beyond about work. They give their suggestions. They encourage feedback. They drink coffee. And I try to practice that.

What you can try: If you’re an extrovert, I’ve got nothing for you. If you’re an introvert, all I can say is try. And keep trying. And that’s all you ever need to do. We can’t change our personalities, but with some practice and time we’ll learn to manage them better. In fact, it might be worth getting a better understanding of your personality type. Susan Cain’s book Quiet is an interesting (and dense) take on introversion.

I take breaks

I hate this to be true, but I turn into a Shaman soon after I start coding. An unwilling Shaman who gets possessed. The spirit that takes over me likes to only code. It doesn’t like to eat, sleep, talk to people or check Instagram. It’s a very mean spirit.

That’s why I exorcise it regularly to not cloister myself from the world. I pay attention to someone calling me. I leave the desk for tea breaks. I let my laptop’s battery die so I won’t go near it during vacation. I even have a hobby.

I don’t know if taking breaks has improved my performance or not, because I don’t think the mean spirit lacks in performance. I just think it’s good for me to not be always possessed.

What you can try: For those of you with 9-5 job, I would recommend tea breaks at 11AM and 4PM (wow, that came out very specific) And for when you work at home, I suppose you’ll have more things to do, so choose for yourself when you want the break. I like to watch TV, that would be like my ideal break time.

And... that’s it. That’s all the spookiness I could fit into this post. I shared as much of my experience as I could, as well as suggestions you might find helpful. Hope you take something good from it. This might be my final post of the year, so I don’t want to miss this chance to wish you LOTS of good luck as you go into 2020. 🍀

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