#anyway yeah tome reminds me a lot of myself mostly how i was when i was younger

[cowardlybean]

Hi! For the Mob Psycho 100 Ask Meme, 1 or 12?

1: What is a scene that really got to you?

A LOT OF THEM. a Lot of them. however I’m gonna talk about Tome because she really got to me especially when reading the Reigen manga!! I don’t have any diagnoses btw. that may or may not be relevant

As someone who grew up with niche interests that I was Really, REALLY into. Tome’s character kinda hit hard. In elementary school I had a huge thing about dragons, making up biology for them and Never. Ever shutting up about them. Even going into 4th grade I would be irrationally upset and sometimes even melt down when someone told me that dragons aren’t real (even though I knew at the time that. well. they arent). Tomes relationship with aliens seems to be a long-term interest like this, especially if you consider the telepathy club has known each other for a good while (minus Saruta who’s a 1st year) .

When someone doesn’t share that same passion, or even understand that passion, it’s Heavily disheartening. Occasionally throughout middle school I’d have extreme passions for certain things (especially as I entered the realm of fandoms) that my friends didn’t share (NO shade to them, it just wasn’t their main interests at the time! some of them had their own interests they were super into as well, love y’all if you’re reading this <3) and sometimes I’d feel as though they were going along with it just to make me happy (ring a bell? think of the alien arc).

Reigen manga however enters a more positive side to it. Tome initially believes her interests are something to keep to herself and eventually ditch as she grew older, then later accepts that she’s not the only one with “silly” interests that run their lives. Here’s where I shoutout the friends I grew up with again!!!! Tome’s growth really reflects my own in this area, especially as I opened to others interests more. I’ve learned about a ton of things I wouldn’t have otherwise because of my buddies and I now feel free to dump my own information on them!!

tl;dr Tome’s like me learning I can be silly and free

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Fully Completely 3

Warnings: non-consent sex and rape (series), violence, mutual irritation, harassment

This is dark!Loki x reader and explicit. 18+ only.  Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Series Synopsis: There’s a new face in Birch and he’s come to haunt your door.

Sister series to Smalltown Bringdown, When the Weight Comes Down, and Little Bones

Note: On to part three. Sorry for being a human disaster.

Thanks to everyone for their patience and feedback. :)

I really hope you enjoy. 💋

<3 Let me know what you think with a like or reblog or reply or an ask! Love ya!

Chapter 3: Or it will move right through me

💀💀💀

Jerome annoyed you as he picked through your tool box and clicked the ratchet noisily. He was excited but impatient and complained that you were taking so long. You told him if he wanted to pay out of pocket for labour, you could finish faster. 

You sat by his bike, parts strewn at your feet, and bent your head to look under the tank. You still had a lot to go and hadn’t yet added anymore of the gross chrome to the frame.

“Do you realise how filthy this is gonna get?” you huffed as you sat up and leaned your elbows on your legs, “not to mention how ridiculous it looks.”

“I like it. It’s just my style,” your brother grinned, “I don’t remember you spending this much time on Bucky’s ride and you and him--”

“He had me replace the tailpipe, you want nothing short of a rebuild,” you scoffed, “and you’re not the boss.”

“Don’t remind me,” he rolled his eyes, “guess it could be worse though. It could be Steve.”

“Thank god it’s not,” you chuckled, “I don’t know how many women had to toss beer in his face before he latched onto that mousy one at the bakery.”

“She’s nice,” Jerome shrugged, “far as I know. She doesn’t talk to anyone but Steve.”

“I wonder why,” you tisked, “he has insecurity written across his forehead.”

The tinny bell rang and the door whooshed open as the wind caught it. Jerome glanced over and dropped the ratchet noisily into the drawer of the tool box. You growled in warning as you spent much of your spare cash on those. He apologised quietly as he squared his shoulders at the man who appeared.

“Hey,” Bucky wiped the flakes from his hair and blew out a shiver.

“Bucky,” Jerome said rigidly.

The other man nodded and stepped further inside the garage. He shoved his hands in his pockets and paced aimlessly around the concrete floor. You watched him as you fiddled with the bolt in your hand.

“You wanna head down to the bar?” It wasn’t a question as Bucky came to face you, “I gotta talk to your sister.”

“Sure,” Jerome replied sharply, “you got it, boss.”

Bucky grumbled and waited for him to leave. He sniffed and kicked his toe into the floor.

“So… what’re you doing here? Been a while so must be urgent,” you sat up on the rolling stool and stretched your back.

“The whole town’s talking about it. You fighting him,” his brows drew together, “I told you I’d take care of him.”

“You didn’t,” you said evenly, “so I did.”

“I talked to him--”

“And said what?” you snorted.

“Look, you don’t understand. You said it yourself, you don’t care about my business. You don’t get what’s going on but what I need from him is bigger than your temper.”

“Excuse me? This is my fault? He broke into my shop, he followed me from that diner and he put his hands on me,” you stood and tossed the bolt away, “what do you want me to do, Buck?”

“First, I want you to remind yourself who I am. We’re not fucking anymore so that mouth isn’t as cute,” he warned, “and I want you to play nice.”

“All you have to do is keep him away from me. How hard is that for a man like you, huh? You’re the big dog.”

“Watch it,” he pointed at you, “I won’t tell you again.”

“He’s here to deal with you, not me,” you insisted, “he grabbed me, I defended myself, and I’ll do it again.”

“This isn’t grade school anymore, you can’t fight the boys,” he sighed.

“What are you saying?”

He was silent as his jaw ticked and his blue eyes strayed to the ceiling. You stepped closer and gripped your hips as you stared him down.

“There’s nothing else I can do for you. Nothing else I will do. He’s your problem.”

He met your glare and you scoffed in disgust, “you’re fucking serious? What do these idiots have on you?”

“It’s not what they have on me, it’s what I want from them. I’m planning for something bigger than Birch, that means there’s gonna be some sacrifices,” he shrugged.

“Sacrifices? Is that what you call it? Well, here’s one for you, the next time you get a little scuff on your tank or your headlight starts to flicker, you can head down to Carl’s,” you scowled.

“Don’t do this,” he gritted through his teeth.

“I can get business without you. I do better work than Carl, you know that. So go, I’ll deal with that asshole on my own, how I see fit.”

He inhaled and lifted his chin. He closed his eyes and thought. 

“Damn it,” he swore, “you can’t make anything fucking easy. What is it with you women and your god damn--” he lifted his hand and stopped himself, “you get in the way of my business, and you won’t be so worried about Loki.”

“Oh yeah? That’s what he said about you,” you mocked, “what’s with you men and your egos?”

His lip curled and he breathed through his teeth. His eyes lit up and he punched his palm as he turned away quickly.

“I hope he has his fun with you. Maybe he can fuck some sense into you,” Bucky growled, “God knows I tried.”

“You weren’t that good,” you snipped.

He kicked the shelf of wipers hung near the front of the shop and grunted. He stormed to the doorway and stopped to look back at you.

“You’ll be wishing it was me…” he hissed.

He waved you off and continued through the front door, slamming it behind him loudly. You stared at the scattered packages of wipers and bit down on your tongue. You wanted to run out and strangle that idiot but you knew how he could be. It was the reason you broke off your little fling; he was too much like you. Hard-headed and volatile.

💀

You weren’t going to change just because the town was overrun by asshole men. You were standing your ground and that meant you were going to finish your club sandwich and enjoy one lunch without interruption. 

The café was busier that day as the snowfall dwindled and the streets were mostly cleared as the plows made their regular rounds. You looked through the window as the school kids stopped by the bakery for hot drinks on their lunch and circled the rim of your mug with your fingertip. You sensed it was only the lull before the storm.

Further down you could see the corner of The Asp and heard a rumbling engine. Your shop remained empty except for Jerome’s bike. Since Bucky’s visit, you were too worked up to concentrate anyway. You wanted to take your wrench and knock every man in town in the head with it.

Nora brought your sandwich as Kimmie didn’t work on the weekends and your side of soup. You would eat both and leave satisfied. You wouldn’t let anyone ruin your day off. Well, not that you had very much to do aside from that.

You dipped your crusts in the tomato soup and stared at the seat across from you. Empty. Perfect.

You scooped the last of the bowl into your mouth and wiped your lips with the napkin. You stood and gulped up your coffee. You left money on the table and headed out. A peaceful, solitary lunch all to yourself.

You skipped the shop and continued down the street. You pushed into the hobby shop you rarely ventured into, more a bookshop if you were honest. You greeted the man at the counter with a smile. When you were a girl, you remembered he ordered you a special set of paints as the ones in his store were all dried up. Lu, you recalled his name.

You went to the shelves of models and looked over the new arrivals. You took the Smokey and the Bandit Trans Am off the shelf and smirked. Your father had one just like it when you were a kid. It wasn’t exactly new. You grabbed a bottle of black paint with it, always running low on the stuff, and headed for the counter.

Lu punched the buttons on his till and you heard a creak. Light footsteps emerged from the basement of used books as you opened your wallet.

“I didn’t take you as bookish,” Loki’s voice made you cringe.

You didn’t answer and counted out the bills for your purchase, “actually, you got any glue? I didn’t see any on the shelf.”

“Hmm, oh,” Lu turned and bent to reach into a box, “haven’t stocked up but these came in just before the storm.”

He added the orange and white tube to your bag and you added another bill. He counted out your change and handed it to you.

“Quite interesting what small towns can hide,” Loki didn’t wait to step up to counter and stood close, his sleeve against yours, “An antique edition of Whitman. One of the only Americans I read.”

You looked down at the worn tome, the edges fraying and the letters faded. It was marked up to a couple hundred. You could appreciate a love for reading but you weren’t entirely sure some old paper was worth all that.

“I’ll need the reading material as my visit has been prolonged,” he mused as you grabbed your bag and headed for the door, “my brother is due to return so I will stay in his place… get to know the town of Birch more intimately.”

You hid your disgust at his words and continued out the door. His exaggerated tones stuck in your head as you passed the window and absently swung your bag. You hated him. You really did. You should have bashed him over the head with that dumb book. 

You thought of that day in the snow and smiled. You knew that shame lingered in him. You would have no problem repeating that scene.

You came up to your shop and stopped short. The burly redhead who arrived with the pestilent man stood at your door, peering in through the window, angling his head as he tried to see around the blinds. You cleared your throat as you neared.

“Something I can help you with?” you asked dully.

“Oh, ah,” he turned and laughed at himself, “I thought… Loki, I thought he’d be here.”

“No. He wouldn’t be,” you said, “he’s down at the book shop.”

“Thanks. He apologise?” He prodded.

“You seem to know him well. You think he did?” you challenged.

“Ah, nah,” he smiled awkwardly, “s’pose he didn’t.”

“S’pose he didn’t,” you echoed, “it would be smart if you kept him away from here.”

“Yeah, uh, should do,” he sidled past you and you listened to his heavy boots clump along the beaten snow.

You took out your key and unlocked the door. You closed it quickly behind you, that man’s presence set you on edge. He hadn’t shown any of the venom of his associate but he was loyal to him. You double checked the locks on all the doors and made certain all windows were closed. 

You went up stairs into your apartment and stripped off your coat and boots. You sat at the small table where you ate those dinners you didn’t forget and unpacked your new model. You sorted the pieces and spread out the instructions. The image of the car on the box brought back nostalgic memories. You wouldn’t know all you did about bikes if it wasn’t for your dad. You missed him every day for the last… too many years.

You lost yourself in the tiny parts. You hunched over the table and carefully dabbed glue onto the plastic. Your eyes began to itch as the windows dimmed and you got up to turn on the lamp. You kept building well after dark and finally left the half-finished car on the table.

You stretched out your limbs as you stripped down to only your loose tee and yawned. You fell into bed and turned on the old tube television. You hit play on the VCR and the loud previews blared from the boxy speakers. You rolled yourself in your comforter and sat through the same movie trailers you’d watched a dozen times.

You were never a romantic but you the movie was another shadow of your childhood. Your grandma used to watch Kathleen Turner whenever you went to her place. She would serve you yogurt and berries and turn on the cheesy action flick and if you slept over, she would put in the sequel right after.

Your rituals kept you sane. You found it was easier to know what to expect and given your temper, it was better not to be surprised. You were always the trouble child and you regretted all those times your dad had to come talk to the principal or walk you home from school. You promised him you would be better.

Still you didn’t regret what you did. He always told you to stand up for yourself. Hell, he taught you how to throw a punch and all your best insults were inherited from him. You smiled as you thought of him and hugged your pillow as the intro played and the credits flicked up one name at a time.

You drifted off in the glow of the television and the sound effects sank into your dreams. You were still in Birch but thick vines had grown around all the buildings and billowing leaves shrouded the skies. The town had turned to jungle and you could hear the growls and grunts of beasts unseen.

You spun as a twig snapped and a snake uncoiled from a branch and fell into the brush at your feet. You stepped back and it slithered towards you. You stumbled and ran away as you could hear its skin smoothly glide through the grass at your feet. You tripped as its long body wrapped around your ankles and you crashed to the ground.

You struggled as the snake constricted your body and wound its neck around to face you. Its green eyes shone as its black scales gleamed. Its tongue flicked against your cheek and you felt its hot breath as it opened its mouth and revealed long, frightening fangs. You screamed as its bite loomed and you woke with a start.

The visions of the wild jungle faded but the heat did not. You blinked as an amber haze took over the room and you fought through your messy blankets and tumbled onto the floor. Your curtains were alight along with much of the wall. You bachelor was blazing with orange flames and you could barely see the door through the smoke.

You coughed and scrambled to your feet. Your eyes streamed and you blindly ran for the door and flew down the stairs. The shop was almost entirely engulfed as you reached the lower landing and you fumbled with the front door as flames licked closer and closer.

You burst out into the frozen night and your feet were numbed by the ice and snow. You retreated from the burning building, your life set aflame, and turned back as you reached the sidewalk. Sirens screamed and made you wince as you crossed your arms and chattered against the cold.

“Pity,” the slither made your skin crawl, “though I suppose it is a blessing you at least saved yourself.”

You glanced at Loki as your vision blurred with the tears of realisation. Everything you had was turning to ash before you. You blinked away the droplet and sneered at him. He smirked and you knew. He smirked and he knew. It wasn’t an accident.

[bigskydreaming]

Garrett is definitely obnoxious enough to where he would have his shadow do pantomime annoyingly. Garrett definitely plays up how dangerous his shadow is, lets rumors spread about how it totally assassinated some rich fuck when really it was Violet. Theo is rubbing his temples because he won't shut up

LOLOLOL. And everyone who really knows Garrett and how his magic works knows that he’s full of shit and Violet’s the real dangerous one of their duo. And Theo’s constantly mumbling to himself, like, arguing the pros and cons of just fucking killing Garrett despite how useful he is. He’s like ugh, if only I could just figure out where the seat of his magic is so I could steal his shadow for myself, and he’s always contemplating like….okay, there has to be someone down in Answers Alley who could tell me how to kill that little asshole in such a way as to let me absorb his magic….I just can’t decide if its worth admitting that I don’t actually know how to do it or how to figure it out for myself, or potentially risk letting someone in on how my own magic works if they don’t already know that.

Plus he’s aware of the possibility that like, even if he did find someone who could give him the right answer there, they might just lie or not tell him because y’know….they don’t like him either.

And some days he’s just like fuck it, I can’t listen to one more word from that little shit, I’m just gonna kill him and be done with it, nothing’s worth this and there are plenty of changelings with like, scrying magic. Only stopped by Tracy pulling him back and pointing out; “Yeah, but you’d have to convince them to work for you first, and that’s easier said than done. I mean, I’m your right hand lieutenant and I’m mostly just meh on you myself.”

Theo, acidly: Thanks ever so much for that.

Tracy: Any time, boss!

Anyway, speaking of Answers Alley, the street sandwiched between Mercy Row and the edge of the Seventh Circle district, with one end of the Alley running all the way up to the Rose’s Garden right at the very heart of Bordertown, and the other end letting out in Shadowsmeet (the roofless warehouse turned ampitheatre that houses Jake the Drake, and where changelings gather for a kind of 24/7 street fair that showcases all kinds of art from the tangible expressions like painting and sculpture to music playing, dancing and storytelling and theater) -

Some of the Changelings found in Answers Alley - Aaron, Melody, Eloise, Rashid, Hiromi aka Compass Rose, and Jackie:

Aaron - an eighteen year old black boy whose body is covered in scrolling gold script from all kinds of different languages, the texts of books, scrolls, and tomes that have been lost to history. The text on his body is always relevant to whatever question he was just asked, information that’s applicable or relevant if not the direct answer itself, but it will vanish and be replaced by new words the second another question is posed to him, and even re-asking the first question isn’t guaranteed to bring back the original text instead of more linked text pulled from other sources. 

Aaron always knows how to read or understand the words on him, even if they’re written in a language that he doesn’t otherwise know, which means that he’s still usually the only one who can give a person the answers they’re seeking (and assuming he even wants to). But just sneaking a peek at his arm isn’t going to help anyone when the words on it are from a dead language that hasn’t been read or understood in millennia. Aaron’s both the answer and the key to understanding it.

Melody - a twenty-two year old, mostly mainstream appearing Latina changeling with brown skin and eyes and dark, curly hair offset by two sharp silvery horns that make a V shape like a kind of stylized tuning fork. Her only other visible change is that her ears have a pointed elfin shape and natural holes in them up and down the cartilage like she has multiple piercings in them and just wears no earrings. But with her, the true change and magic isn’t seen, but heard - its almost never completely silent when she’s around, because the very air around her seems to constantly hum when anyone is speaking in her vicinity at all. How harmonious or not the ambient music her magic produces around her is though, is entirely dependent on whether its truth or lies that are being spoken within her exceptional hearing range. 

Like most changelings, her magic is only fully accessible to her….to everyone else, the song surrounding her might be pleasing or not, but only she has the magical sensitivity needed to detect the slight changes in her song, enough to pinpoint when a lie is spoken or a truth is told. But the real gift of her magic is that its attuned to universal truths rather than just perceived truths….meaning she can detect whether something said to or around her is true or not regardless of whether or not the person who says it believes it to be true…..thus making her a sought-out changeling not just for settling disputes, but for anyone who seeks to know whether something they’ve been told or believe is actually true or not. 

The more specific the question though, the more definitive her answer for them is. She’s not good with settling matters of philosophy or religion, because as she puts it, most everything stemming from those have at least an element of truth to them, and so those kinds of questions usually prompt a veritable symphony around her, with so much harmony and discordance both, that its all but impossible for her to declare anything definitive. But personal truths, especially ones with a finite yes or no answer, she excels at - such as if someone relates a memory to her and asks if they’ve remembered it correctly or if there’s something about what actually happened that eludes them, that sort of thing.

Eloise - a dreamy, absent-minded seventeen year old white changeling of French descent, whose ‘shop’ is set back from the rest of the street a little ways, intersecting with one of the many canals that criss-cross Bordertown and allow the aquatic or amphibious residents to come and go between the mainland of it and the undersea neighborhoods that make up Sub Francisco. Her skin tone is a pale pink coral hue, and instead of hair she has a voluminous head of white sea-foam that appears and acts as if its a long, thick tangle of hair. Her shop is a fairly large one story room that’s mostly filled by the waters from the canal with the exception of just enough floor by the front entrance for most visitors to stand on while visiting her, assuming they’re not aquatic Changelings themselves.

Her magic, and the reason for her almost constant daydreaming, is that her magic makes any water she touches a scrying pool that plays out visions of whatever location she pictures. She doesn’t have to have visited herself, she only needs a point of reference for her magic to hone in on…..which can even just be someone’s description of a place they wish to view. Then all it takes is for her to sweep one languid hand through the water around her and the whole surface will shimmer and then show that place and whatever’s happening there, not as a static image but as though watching it on video.

There are a couple of caveats to her magic, same as anyone else’s…..people have to be careful when asking her to show them what’s happening currently in a place, that they describe something about it that’s true of now for her to hone in on…because her magic can just as easily show those places in the past, and if they’re describing from memory, what Eloise shows them might actually be something out of date or no longer relevant. But then again, this also allows her to show specific events that have already happened, as long as someone provides something specific to that point in time for her to hone in on as well as the place. Also, there’s no sound to her moving images, which is why she usually just says something like “people are boring” when asked to hone in on what a particular person is doing right now instead of asking about showing a specific place. Only a few Changelings have figured out that Eloise is a lot sharper than she pretends to be and is perfectly capable of spying on any individual from the safety and privacy of her scrying pool….and does, for the right price or her own personal agendas.

Rashid - a twenty-year old blind Lebanese-American whose change takes the form of glowing beads of orange light that wrap around his arms and all the way up to his neck in double-banded spirals that usually take people a minute or two to place as just vaguely familiar, before the realize that the sight reminds them of a DNA helix.

Just as all Changelings’ magic takes something about who and what they are and just….amplifies that, externalizes it, makes them more of it in some kind of unique magical expression of that, Rashid’s natural scientific curiosity resulted in his magical ability to touch a thing and feel the building blocks that make it what it is, and if he wants to, break things down into those individual components.

There’s a wide array of ways he’s able to use this, beyond just exploring his own personal studies of things…..bring him a bloody weapon, and just by touching an unbloodied part of it he can name where the ore that weapon was made from was mined, as well as name whose blood is on it, and even whose fingerprint, if someone left one and it was handled by gloves afterward. The answers just come to him as names and place names, etc, and they don’t usually have context, so he can’t help beyond that if the names he mentions are unfamiliar to him or the person asking, he can’t tell where they are now….just that these are the basic truths he’s reading off the weapon he was handed, the things that combine to make it what it is now…the blade made of metal from this location, the fingerprint of this person, the blood of this person, etc.

And then on the more physical side of his magic, the breaking things down into their individual building blocks, one example of this is he can kinda distill something down into just what he or someone else wants it to be….like if he touches water that’s been poisoned or drugged, he can split it into just the pure unaltered water and then with the poison or toxin bubbling up to the surface like separating oil and water, easily then filtered out. Or he can touch a complicated piece of machinery or construction of some sort, and make it just tumble down into pieces of its individual components.

As with many other residents of Bordertown though, he’s got his secrets and his true limits are known only to a few. He’s one of the town’s earliest arrivals, back when they were all still fairly few in number and shaping their new society and what roles and degree of influence they would all occupy within it….so only a few remember that he early on established himself as being in the way of certain agendas of Theo’s, and in response, Theo sent one of his most dangerous assassins after him, a Changeling no one ever knew by any name other than the Doppelganger. Unfortunately for the Doppelganger, his own magic required putting his hands on his intended target to activate it…..and that was all Rashid needed to feel the essential building blocks of the Doppelganger and use his own talent first…..to strip the Doppelganger of his magic and leave him separated from it and as he was before his own Change.

Those who were aware of this feat have been careful not to speak of it since, or the reason Theo and his people so carefully avoid Rashid now. Leaving him as he likes it, sought out for his help in reading truths and other aspects of his skills, rather than known as one of the more dangerous Changelings and capable of something no other Changeling has ever managed. But that doesn’t mean nobody knows or remembers - after all, the Doppelganger hasn’t forgotten. And as far as he can tell, that magic that was stripped from him had to go somewhere….and he wants it back. 

A quest that has him give Answers Alley a wide berth, as instead he seeks out Madame Midnight and promises any favor she wants from one of Bordertown’s most dangerous residents, if she can just help him regain his Change and his magic first…..   

Hiromi, aka Compass Rose - a sixteen year old from Chicago originally, and a third generation Japanese-American, she shares a loft in the Aerie with five or so friends with their own flight-capable Changes, and just pops down to the small stall along Answers Alley that’s all she needs. She’s got a sign hanging on the front of it that declares “Don’t bother me unless you’ve already got your own ride back. Round trip service not provided.”

Hiromi’s Change makes her a mish-mash of flora and fauna….she’s got hawk-like eyes and her eyebrows are feathered, and she has short, dark hair that’s crowned by short, branching antlers between which sits her signature rose. From her back sprout two large, bat-like wings whose skeletal frame are actually made of branches rather than bone, and with the material of her wings being more akin to green leaves than feathers. Her wings are the largest thing about her, as she’s fairly tiny except for them, only about five feet tall, and nobody has any idea how they fly aerodynamically, other than well…magic.

But other than the innate magic powering her flight, Hiromi’s actual gift is a form of teleportation with very specific parameters….hence why she sends away anyone who hasn’t first procured the help of some other teleporter or transportation inclined Changeling before seeking her out. Once they do come back with another Changeling willing to help them return later, someone asks for her help finding something….could be a person, an item, or even something ephemeral, like the solution to a problem…..and Hiromi’s magic, a combination of teleportation and dowsing rod, activates upon her command and whips up a tiny miniature whirlwind around the asker and whomever they designate as their company for the trip, like another teleporting Changeling. And when her whirlwind dies down, they’re gone, having been teleported to the location of whatever it was they asked her help in finding. Even if it is something ephemeral like the solution they need to something….her magic can’t spell out for them how its the answer to their problem….just send them to where it is that they’ll find it, as long as they can figure out from there what it is about their surroundings that will help them.

Jackie - a twenty-one year old agender Native American of the Choctaw tribe, originally from Mississippi before coming to Bordertown, Jackie’s magic and Change make them the sum of not just their parts, but all their possible parts. Basically, Jackie’s appearance is like a flipbook, constantly flickering through all possible appearances they might take, making them a somewhat dizzying blur of constant albeit low-intensity motion. Even when they’re sitting totally still, their appearance isn’t, shifting hairstyles, colors, accessories, all without them doing anything at all.

The constant motion of their appearance does slow however, depending on how many aspects of themselves they split off to go accomplish various tasks…usually in pursuit of some knowledge, information or answer. Whenever they want to, they can kinda….shrug off one of the many dizzying possible appearances they have….which splits off to become another Jackie, standing right next to them, but with a steady, static appearance….as they’re only one of the seemingly infinite possible selves contained within Jackie. 

This version of them has the same experiences, knowledge and even priorities of the original Jackie, as they’re all them, the same single person…..the second Jackie is just a specific iteration of the many possible ways they could be….them. And then these other Jackies, however many of them there are, can act independent of the original and go anywhere and do anything the original can. There’s no limit to how far they can range, or limit to how long they can remain separate, and they can fairly easily go about in mainstream public without attracting much attention, as they don’t have a Change of their own….they ARE the Change. 

But then at any point they can and do all eventually return to the main Jackie and add their accumulated knowledge and experiences to the whole, and reshelving their appearance within the flicker-book of possible appearances and selves contained within Jackie.

[godaime-obito]

This is my fill for @kakaobiweek2019 day 3: ANBU; the anbu part featured less than originally intended. It got a bit off track and I barely restrained myself from getting even more carried away lol. It’s on ao3 and under the cut!

It’s been raining for a full week. He’s been traveling along the edges of Ame for almost that whole time and he’s sick of it. Kakashi just wants to get back to the Land of Fire and forget this mission even happened. These Anbu missions have been really wearing him down lately.

Rin has been trying to get him to leave ANBU practically since Minato-Sensei first had him join. After a decade of it he might finally listen to her. Then at least he won’t have so many missions where he can’t even get out Icha Icha for all the book-ruining rain. Hopefully.

He’s jolted from his musings when he realizes there’s an unidentified group heading towards them. This could add days to the trip. Great. He pulls back and signals for his squad to keep a Catious distance. The approaching group of nin only has three members. They seem like Ame nin. At least their headbands say they are, and this close to the boarder it would make sense. They must be returning from a mission. His squad isn’t in the area for anything to do with Ame, so it’s best that they avoid being noticed and alter their route.

He’s just about to give the signal to do just that when he notices something strange about one of the nin. There’s a patch covering his left eye, not particularly odd by itself, but he also has copious scaring down the right side of his face and when he comes into focus his features look familiar. No left eye, scaring on the right, and those familiar Uchiha-like features.

No. That’s ridiculous. It can’t be. But... it looks just like what Obito would look like. Kakashi’s spent a lot of tome imaging it, the could’ve beens, would’ve beens, had he survived, and this man is almost exactly as he’s always pictured him. Except not wearing any orange.

Kakashi can’t resist the urge to investigate. He signals for his men to silently move in on the Ame nin. The mission is taking a short information gathering detour but he’s sure Minato-Sensei will understand that he just had to be certain. It would haunt him otherwise.

His squad follows the trio into Ame, and after a few hours of shadowing them Kakashi decides to risk uncovering his Sharingan. He can’t get close enough without risking being seen to hear them, but with it he can read their lips.

The three don’t talk much, mostly communicating in gestures and what must be Ame’s own hand sign system. But they do talk some. So far, he’s been able to glean that they were in Kiri for something big, and that the man who looks like Obito is likely the squad leader.

He's reaching then end of how long and far he can safely trail them for when he sees it. One of the nin refers to the squad leader as Obito. There’s no way that’s a coincidence. He has to find out what’s going on. He instructs the squad to head back to Konoha. He’s going to report back to the hokage and let Minato-sensei know about Obito. They need to pull something together and find out who that Amen in really is. If he’s Obito.

Yahiko greets the squad personally upon their return from their diplomatic mission in Kiri. Obito is glad the headman has time for them, because he has a lot to say. Not only about the mission, but about the way back. They were being trailed part of the way back. He could see something in the distance when he risked checking with his sharingan and he had a strange feeling from the moment they hit the boarder. A bit of strange double vision too, like he was looking at himself from a distance.

When he finally heads home from the debriefing he feels better, but not by much. Yahiko didn’t seem too concerned about the trail and the double vision. He just gave the same old reminder to steer clear of Konoha nin and said that he would have Konan and Nagato look into it. Obito feels a bit like they’re keeping something from him.

He strips his armor and flops onto his bed as soon as he gets back. He’s tired from the travel and he needs to think. What could they be hiding? Who would follow him? What is the issue with Konoha? Some of those questions have more obvious answers. He reflects on the very first memory he can access. He’s in the medical bay of Ame’s main tower. He has a headwound. Yahiko, Nagato, and Konan are there. They tell him they rescued him from a man in a cave. He’s an Uchiha, from Konoha, but the man was an ally of some awful man named Danzo. He’s in Konoha, so it isn’t safe to just go back. They think the man in the cave called him Obito.

Obito believed them when he first woke up and he’s settled into to Ame since then, but he wonders. He’s looked into Danzo and he does seem bad, but he can’t find the supposed cave and they won’t elaborate. Obito would like to contact the Uchiha, or an Uchiha, just to see if any of them know anything about him, but the trio insists he shouldn’t. To be honest he doesn’t feel any particular draw to the Uchiha anyway, but he does feel one for Konoha in general. There’s something there he needs to go back for, but that leads into the Konoha issue. Yahiko, Nagato, and Konan all hate it. They’ve been happy to elaborate on that. He’s a bit scared at this point to try to sneak around there on his own.

He’s not sure he can put up with living like this much longer. No idea who he really is or where he came from, but too cautious to go check. Obito throws a pillow in frustration and stops off to finally shower the grime of travel off. Maybe in the morning he’ll feel better, or even suddenly remember everything… he can hope, can’t he? Trauma induced amnesia sucks.

“Are you sure?” Minato asks.

“I can’t say I’m 100% sure it was Obito,” Kakashi replies, “but I can say I’m 100% sure I saw an Ame nin that looked like him, was scared and missing an eye like he would be, and was called Obito.”

“Okay,” he sighs, “then you’re sure. I want to look into this, but…”

“But,” Kakashi echoes.

“We don’t have the best relationship with Ame right now,” he grimaced, “So there’s no good, simple way to check.”

“Is there ever?”

“Usually, no,” he admits. “If I send a team do you want to be a part of it? It may not be best, considering how close you are to the issue,” Minato warns.

“You know I have to,” Kakashi says, “Besides, you need to send someone who knew him to be sure, and the only other choice for that is Rin. She wouldn’t be any less compromised and you’d have to tell more people to do it.”

“Always so prepared to defend your bad decisions with logic. I might be convinced if I didn’t know how full of it you are,” he snorts, “but if I don’t send you you’ll probably just cause more problems.”

“Harsh,” he complains.

“I’ll send you out with a squad to investigate things, but only,” he stresses, “after information gathering has been done. I’ll have it looked into, so don’t get impatient.”

“Fine,” Kakashi concedes, “Let me know as soon as you find anything.”

Obito is being followed again. Admittedly it’s been months since he was followed when returning to Ame, but considering this is the first time he’s left the country since then… it’s suspicious. His mokuton can feel them in the nearby trees, otherwise he may not have noticed. They’re good, whoever they are.

He slows his pace as subtly as he can. When the gap between him and his tail narrows he begins to reach out with mokuton. The vines elongate and creep towards them slowly, then when they’re within reach, snap out with great speed. Startled shouts call out as the chakra infused vines restrain the squad and pull them up into the treetops feet first. Obito approaches them carefully. He’s on a solo mission this time, with no backup confronting an entire squad is risky, even if they’re caught in his vines.

One of the men seems particularly familiar. He calls the vines encasing him back down, lowering the man down to him. In one swift movement, he yanks the vines that have wrapped over the lower portion of his face away.

“Who are you and why are you following me?” Obito hisses.

“Do you not remember me?” he asks.

“Remember you? From when you were following me earlier this year?”

“No, from before then. When we were genin. It’s me, Kakashi,” he says. There’s a quite undertone of desperation in his voice, and he’s staring at Obito like he can will him to recall.

“It doesn’t ring any bells, but I don’t particularly remember being a genin at all,” he confesses. “Why, specifically, are you following me?” he adds.

“That is why,” Kakashi says, “because I know you. Because you’ve been missing. Because I thought you were dead. Have you been in Ame the whole time?”

“Ummmm,” he hesitates. Obito isn’t sure how to respond to something like this. “Maybe? Supposedly they found me in a cave. No idea how long I was there,” he offers.

The blood is probably rushing to the Konoha nins’ heads pretty badly by now. He shifts the vines so they’re being held upright. Kakashi seems unsettled by the process.

“Are you doing that? How long have you had mokuton?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Had it when I woke up, for all I know I’ve always had it,” Obito says with a shrug.

“You definitely haven’t always had it. What happened to you in that cave?” Kakashi says quietly. He sounds frustrated, angry at something, Obito doesn’t know what though. It doesn’t seem like Kakashi really knows either. “Come back to Konoha, Obito. We could go to places you’ve been, talk to the Yamanaka. You may be able to remember,” he suggests.

“Just go to Konoha? Yeah, right,” Obito snorts. “I’m going to go back to what I was doing and when I’m a certain distance away the vines will drop you, and then you will all go back where you came from without me,” he instructs, “I don’t know you, so scram.”

He turns on his heal and shunshins away. This just gets weirder and weirder. Obito is curious about Kakashi, about Konoha, but… he doesn’t trust it. Logically, he’s an Uchiha, he must be from there. Some Konoha nin must know him. He can’t help but think about how he was found in a cave, with no allies around. Where was Konoha then? Where have they been all this time? Maybe he doesn’t want to confront it because he feels abandoned by them. Left a drift. Part of Ame but not. His mokuton andsharingan, so intrinsically Konoha. What if he goes to Konoha and doesn’t like it? What if they leave him alone somewhere again?

Obito heads straight back to Yahiko’s office when he finishes his mission. It doesn’t require an in person debrief, but he needs to talk to him about Kakashi. He comes in through the window, without waiting to schedule a proper appointment or go through the normal security.

“Yahiko-sama,” he greets cheerfully, “Please explain some things to me.”

“Obito,” Yahiko replies, standing up from his desk, “What is it? I wasn’t expecting you in today.”

“I ran into some Konoha nin, and had an interesting talk with some Kakashi,” he answers, “I think he may even have been the infamous copynin!”

“Is that so,” he prods, “Why? What did he say?”

“Because he’d been following me, and he mainly seemed enthusiastic just to see me. I wonder why?” Obito says with mocking confusion.

“You’re upset. The encounter unsettled you,” Yahiko states the obvious, “Did he claim to know you?”

Obito nods sharply in response. “I know you’re worried about Danzo and that the situation you found me in was strange, but is it really necessary for me not to go to Konoha at all?” he questions with frustration.

Yahiko looks at him with sympathy; resting a hand on his shoulder and squeezes reassuringly. “I understand that you want to remember, but I say this as both your headman and as someone who cares about you: You most likely did know that man. It doesn’t matter. Do not go back to Konoha. It is a pit of vipers,” he insists.

“Okay,” Obito says with another sharp nod, “I understand, It’s just…” He sighs. “Frustrating, I guess.” He leaves the office to write his official report somberly, and far from done thinking about the encounter.

He manages to lay low for exactly one week before he decides to just fuck it. Obito is going to Konoha. Of course, is he’s too obvious about it they’ll probably try to stop him so he needs to be stealthy about it. That is perhaps not his strangest suit. He’s more of an ‘run in really fast, tear stuff apart, book it out of there really fast’ kind of guy. He takes a mission near the edge of the Land of Fire and then detours. By the time they realize he’s late on getting back he should be back where he’s supposed to be, finishing the actual mission.

The gate is much easier to sneak past than he thought the gate to a major village would be. A bit of genjutsu and he’s through with no problem. Obito suddenly realizes he may not have planned this out as much as he should have. Where is he and where is he planning on going? Maybe if he just walks around he’ll find that Kakashi guy? He might stick out. An unfamiliar face with a lot of scars, but it’s a big village with a lot people. If he stays in crowded areas he may still blend in.

Obito catches sight of something familiar in the corner of his eye. Pushing through the crowded dirt street he moves closer to it. A fan symbol on a wall. This must be the edge of the Uchiha compound. It’s familiar, yet not, like there’s something just out of his reach. The same feeling of forgetting the word you were going to use, knowing it’s on the tip of your tongue, that you should know this, but coming up blank.  He considers going it to the compound, wondering in search of where he must have lived in the hopes that will trigger a memory. Not even Obito’s that reckless though, he’d definitely be noticed wandering around in a closed of compound.

He turns abruptly the other way and storms off in frustration. Where is the academy? Surely, he went there if he was a Konoha nin; maybe it will help. Obito moves along with the crowd down the main street. There’s a reman stand that seems familiar. Smell is supposed to be most closely tied to memory. If he used to eat there the smell may jog something and besides, he’s hungry.

Maybe the part about his memory is just an excuse to have ramen. Who could resist a steaming bowl of pork ramen? He should try to remember at the dango shop he passed earlier next. Half way through his bowl he turns left to speak and… there’s no one there? He isn’t sure who he expected to see, but there’s an impression of red in his memory. A woman’s hair, a loud voice, sitting here with him. There’s other people there, but when he tries to focus on any of their faces the memory goes fuzzy. Just out of reach again.

He returns to the walking the street after words. Coming so close and still getting basically nothing is awful and frustrating. This trip hardly seems worth it. Obito’s half-stomping as he passes close to the hospital. A woman with purple marks across her cheeks immerges from the hospital and joins the tide of people.

Obito can’t move. People press around him as he stands in the middle of the street. He knows her. She is far out of sight already but he can still see her in his mind. He remembers… he remembers, something, being a child. The images are vague, but the feelings are clear and she was there. She must have been. He’s supposed to be here, in Konoha, isn’t he?

He tenses with a jolt as a hand grabs his shoulder, pulling him from his commiserating. Obito turns his head just enough to look over his shoulder. It looks like he doesn’t need to worry about tracking down Kakashi, because he’s found Obito.

“Kakashi,” he says, “I was actually hoping to talk to you!” He attempts to smile but is certain from the look he’s given that he’s failed.

“Maa,” Kakashi drawls, “That’s good because I’ve been hoping to talk to you a long time.”

“Right,” Obito quips, “Why don’t we go somewhere less crowded first? I’d offer my place, but I don’t know where it is and I don’t think I have one anymore either way.”

Kakashi looks forlorn or at least the one eye of his does. “Come on,” he directs, “My place is this way.” He shits his hand from Obito’s shoulder to his back and guides him through the streets. Compared to Ame, with its bad weather and lower population, this place is ridiculously full.

Kakashi apparently lives in an apartment. This doesn’t feel quite right. Obito’s brows scrunch in bewildered consideration. “Did you live in a house, farther away from the main drag?” he wonders.

“A long time ago,” Kakashi says tersely. “Do you remember it?” he adds hopefully.

“Not really,” Obito sighs,’ “It was just a feeling.”

“A feeling is better than nothing. Have you had any other ‘feelings’ while poking around?”

“I was at a ramen stand, Ichiraku’s, and I thought I remembered a redhead? And then at the hospital I saw a woman I definitely knew.”

“You saw Rin?” Kakashi guesses.

“Yeah, but she was so old,” Obito says without thinking, “or it must have been, I didn’t think I remembered her name. She had purple markings on her cheeks.”

“It was her then,” he replies, “and she’s only as old as we are. You just haven’t seen her in years.”

“Of course. Silly me.” They’re just standing in the entrance of Kakashi’s apartment. It’s a bit awkward, but Kakashi doesn’t seem like he plans to move them farther in.

“Since you seem to think you know me so well,” Obito ventures, “then what’s my favorite food?”

“Dango.”

“Lucky guess,” he says flatly. He may as well skip ahead to the important questions. “How about you tell me how I ended up alone in that cave?”

“There’s been a war going on, it likely still was going on when they found you,” he starts, “We were on a sabotage mission, Rin and you and me.” Kakashi halts, weighed down by the memories. “It was supposed to simple albeit classified, but Iwa nin discovered us,” he continues, “Rin was captured and you went after her. I went after you, and in the end your right side was crushes by a cave in helping me. Saving me. We all were sure you were dying. That’s when the eye thing happened.”

Kakashi gestures at his covered eye as he finishes speaking. Obito knows there’s a sharingan there, it is in the bingo book, but he’d never considered where he’d gotten it from. Never connected it to his own missing left eye. There are plenty of Uchiha in Konoha; it could have come from any of them.

“Is that my eye?” he asks, “I gave it to you. I did. I think I remember…” He knows, logically, that a dōjutsu user giving someone an eye must be big, but he also feels it. It’s overwhelming; the memory of dying, of wanting Kakashi to remember him, wanting to still help his team somehow. How good it felt when Kakashi came after him, like he finally cared about Obito, noticed him. “I do. I remember that. I remember Kanabi Bridge,” he chokes out.

There’s a hand on his scarred cheek. “Still a crybaby,” Kakashi accuses lightly, “even after all these years away.” He wipes away Obito’s tears with his hand. He hadn’t realized he’d begun crying till Kakashi touched them.

“Bakashi,” he huffs, but there’s no heat in it. He hasn’t remembered everything, but even just one mission is a start. Is something. Maybe coming to Konoha was worth it after all. “The redhead woman, she likes ramen…K…”

“Kushina,” he offers.

“Yes,” Obito brightens, “That’s it! Where is she?”

“Probably with our old sensei, the current hokage,” Kakashi answers, “Minato-sensei and Kushina got married right after the war ended.” They’re probably at home right now.” He pauses, then seems to have a realization. Perking up he continues, “We should go see them. Let the hokage know you’re here and check in with people you knew all at once.”

“The hokage? I don’t know…” Obito wavers. Yahiko - or, well, Konan - will be upset enough with him for doing this much.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Obito complains. He glares at the door to an unassuming home.

“Just come in,” Kakashi insists, “you won’t regret it, I swear.”

“I owe me for this.”

“Fine,” he concedes, “just come on. We’ve been standing here five minutes. They’ve definitely noticed we’re here anyway.”

“Probably,” Obito admits reluctantly. His life has just been a series of one bad poorly thought out decision after another anyway, he might as well just do it. “Let’s go!” He shoves past Kakashi and flings the door open with artificial eagerness.

He barely makes it a meter in before he’s tackled under a sudden ambush. His vision is blocked by red hair going everywhere as they collapse on the floor.

“Kushina!” a man yells, “I told you to take it easy while we reintroduced ourselves.” The hokage hovers in the background worriedly. Despite his reprimand he doesn’t move to pull her back.

“He’s a decade late,” she says, “This is taking it easy.” She jerks her head to glare at Obito in a one-eighty from her enthusiastic greeting. “Where have you been? We had an entire child while you were gone, that’s how long it’s been!”

He glances at Kakashi desperately, hoping for some help. He just continues to stand silently and gives him a one of his eye-crinkling grins. Useless troll. “I got trapped in a cave and waylaid in Ame, and just, lost on the road of life I guess,” Obito says sheepishly. “A child?”

“Naruto,” she replies, “he’s almost eight. Pretty boy may not always be the brightest-”

“Hey!”

“- but he helped make a really cute kid. You’ll love him,” she insists.

“Minato-sensei must be smart about something if he’s hokage,” Obito feels the urge to defend.

“Yeah,” Kushina drawls, “but that stuff is rarely the stuff that matters.”

“Touché. Is Naruto here?”

“Nah,” she says, “he’s over at a friend’s.” Kushina decides to let him go then, standing back up and off of him. Obito pushes himself back up as well, and Minato guides them all into the dining room to sit down. Now that Obito’s paying attention he’s wearing a pink apron. Was he cooking?

“Obito, I am overjoyed to see you well,” Minto assures him. “However, I do have questions about Ame and about your plans. I hope you’ll be returning to Konoha,” he adds.

“Ah,” Obito wavers for a moment, before recalling his realization that his life was already a disaster of bad choices anyway. Maybe if he goes against his instincts he’ll make a good choice for once. “Yeah, I’ll stay.” Sorry Yahiko, Nagato, and scary Konan.

Obito and Kushina hit the ground in a great thump for a second time.

Kakashi and Obito are at the dango shop he’d been eyeing his first day back in Konoha. Apparently, it was his favorite as a kid.

“How is your memory?” Kakashi asks, “Has being in your old house or hanging out with Rin helped any?”

“Some,” Obito sighs, “About as much as hanging out with you.” He nibbles on his dango forlornly.

“I’m sure your first appointment with the Yamanaka this weekend will help,” he offers.

“I hope so,” he replies, “It’s just frustrating.” Obito stabs his second, empty, skewer into the table.

“Let’s not get all damaging-public-property-angsty-”

“You’re one to talk about angst,” he huffs.

“-I promise I’ll help you settle in. Do whatever I can to help your memory. I’m sure you’ll be given some mental exercises or something at your appointment,” Kakashi continues without pausing.

“How sweet. Keep getting gooey on me and I might think these outings you keep taking me on are dates,” Obito says.

Kakashi stares at him blankly. “They are.”

“What.”

“They are dates. Why do you think I keep holding you hand?” he wonders.

“I thought you were trying to keep me from getting lost!” Obito defends. He rapidly starts going red; has he been going on dates with Kakashi all week and was to dense to notice? “Are you fucking with me?” he asks.

“No Obito,” Kakashi sighs, “I am happy you are back. You mean a lot to me. I wanted to take you out. I thought it had been going well. Apparently not, because you hadn’t even noticed.”

“Wait a second,” he says, “Just because I hadn’t noticed yet doesn’t mean it wasn’t going well.”

“Is that so? No need to humor me.”

“I’m not humoring you,” he insists, “I like you.” Kakashi hums disbelievingly. “Do you need convinced this is a date now?” Obito adds. He can do that. He’ll prove it right now.

He yanks Kakashi forward and slips down his mask, smashing their lips together with more force than strictly necessary.

“Maa,” Kakashi says when they finally pull apart, “Well, I suppose I can’t argue with that.” He yanks his mask back up. Despite having it down for what felt like a long time it seems no one looked their way the entire time it was off.

“Wait,” Obito says slowly, “were you baiting me?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You were. You just wanted me to kiss you.”

“Certainly not.”

Despite the wide range of dumb and/or risky decisions Obito has made this month, he’s pretty sure getting fooled by a trick like that is the dumbest. He can’t believe he likes this troll. He’s going to be stuck with him forever, isn’t he? What a real welcome back to Konoha.

[benfriday-blog1]

That One Time... In Hell!

Part One: Ben’s Inferno

Growing up, my mother used to worry that the games I was playing would inspire me to worship the Devil. That one night me and my buddies would be sitting around the table in my basement and one of us would say “Hey guys, did you read that passage in the Dungeon Master’s Guide about how to serve the Devil through human sacrifice?” and that would be it; our souls condemned forever.  We’d be in Hell before the Cheeto dust had time to settle on our adolescent fingers. As it turns out, she wasn’t far off.

No, Dungeons and Dragons did not lead me to worship the Devil. I don’t actually worship anything, which was just as bad in the eyes of my Roman Catholic mother. Still, if I’m being honest, it was probably the fantasy games and novels that I used to obsess over that sparked my interest in magic, and magic would eventually lead me to Hell. Just not in the way my mother expected.

It was 2008. I was 23 years old, mom was dead, and I was living on my own for the first time in her run-down house on North Mulberry Street in the dilapidated town of Muncie, Indiana. I wasn’t working, I was in a punk band, and magic was paying the bills.

If you’re reading this sometime in the future and don’t know what “punk” was, it was a type of music that went out of style shortly before I was born. Not that it had ever been in style; that would have defeated the point... Wait. Was there a point?

Anyway, I was still very much an amateur then; I had only started taking the Arts seriously a few years earlier mostly to impress a girl. At the time I was experimenting with teleportation. No one calls it that by the way; No traditional Occult Magicians, your Aleister Crowleys and August Santanas (you know, the ones who take themselves seriously) always come up with shit like "translocation" or "matter displacement" but it’s teleportation. You start in one place and end up somewhere else by traveling through space but not time. It’s fucking Star Trek baby.

In my case, I was trying to find a way to travel from point to point on this plane by moving through another. I got the idea from Dreams in the Witch House by Howard Philip Lovecraft. Yeah, I know I’m well-read as shit. In the book, our protagonist believes that through a combination of arcane knowledge and higher mathematics it might be possible to step out of our world and into another, then with another step, return to our world at a point of our choosing. For me, this point was Las Vegas where I was planning to use the gift of clairvoyance to cheat at cards.

I won’t bore you with the details of how I came to solve this metaphysical puzzle because, for the most part, the details were just that boring. Most magic is boring, at least when you’re first trying to figure it out. You decide what you want to do, or rather what you want magic to do for you via rewriting the laws that govern the universe; Then it’s a lot of equations, a lot of poring over musty old tomes, a lot of ordering components off of the Internet and then looking for a way off of the government watch list you inevitably wind up on. It’s a good thing I did eventually master teleportation because I'm never going to be allowed on another plane for as long as I live.

The day of my big experiment, I found myself back in the basement where my friends and I used to spend our Saturday nights before we learned how to talk to girls. I moved the old table to one side of the room, folded up the metal chairs we’d stolen from Sunday school, and started to open my mind to the universe. No wards to protect me from what might be out there, no groundings to hold me to this world, I let my sigils and equations do their work. They ran through my subconscious the way a program might run in the background on your computer. The spell began loosening my grip on the reality.

I closed my eyes and I saw it, a spark, a flicker of light in the darkness like a match being struck out in space. It was the light of another dimension, one parallel to my own. All I needed to do was walk towards it and I would leave this place behind.

The most disturbing thing about magic is when it actually works. Most of the time it doesn’t, but when it does-- when you successfully throw back the curtain-- it almost always leaves you feeling a little smaller. You think you’d feel bigger, more powerful, having just made reality your bitch, but you don’t. Instead, you’re simply reminded of how much you don’t know about the universe. How much you’ll never understand.

Take teleportation for example. I was twenty-three when I successfully moved from one world into another. That means that for the first twenty-three years of my life I didn’t know you could do that. For seventeen of those years, I didn't even believe that other dimensions existed; not really. On that cold, autumn day in the basement of the house where I grew up, my universe got a little bit bigger. Turns out old H.P. was right.

I moved towards the light. With one step, I left Muncie, Indiana behind and with another I was in Hell.

Seriously, it was the actual Hell.

Like I said, I’m not religious but I had been raised Catholic. I know what Hell is supposed to look like.

Presently, I was standing on a precipice overlooking a lake of fire. Not lava mind you, just fire. Rolling orange flames were dancing across the surface of a great pit as men and women writhed in agony amongst its waves.

Oh yeah, there were people, too. In the lake of fire.

At first, all I could do was stare. There was something wrong with this picture. I mean, aside from the fact that I was watching people burning in a lake of fire. No, not burning. That was the problem. They were in a state of perpetual agony, but otherwise, they looked fine. Their skin wasn’t blackening or boiling or peeling off. That’s what sold it for me that this was Hell-- the fire that burned but did not consume.

Ok, so I was in Hell. Not what I expected, but also not a problem. My spell had worked. One more step and I’d be back on Earth, on the Las Vegas Strip. Probably drinking heavily. I closed my eyes, let my mind drift back into “the zone”. I looked for the light of my own world, I took a step. Nothing. I was still in Hell.

Fuck.

I didn’t have to open my eyes to know my spell had failed. I could tell from the heat and the smell. God, the smell! The rotten egg smell I would have expected; that’s just brimstone. What got me was the smell of rot-- that pungent, wet decay that permeated the place, and something else too, like piss and wet animal hair.

Imagine you’re going to visit your uncle, whom you haven’t seen or heard from in months. Now, imagine you walked into his trailer to find that he had died. Next, imagine that his body had been eaten by his twelve or so cats, all of which lived with him in his small trailer with only one litter box. Finally, imagine that in the weeks that followed, the cats had also died. Oh, and the trailer is on fire. That’s what Hell smells like.

I opened my eyes. “Shit.” I closed them again. Took another step. Opened my eyes. “Shit!” Closed my eyes, stepped, opened them. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”  I was still in Hell! This was bad, like really bad. As far as I knew, this was the worst and last fuck up of my life. I was wrong on both accounts.

Still, it had half worked. I was probably the first living human to have ever set foot here. I took solace in that thought even though I was pretty sure I was going to be the first to die here as well. Where would I go? I mean, Hell exists and I dabbled in the dark arts so… I may have bet on the wrong horse.  

I started to look around, trying to take in my surroundings. If I was going to get out of this mess, I would have to start by getting my bearings and coming up with a plan. Or, failing that, I’d have to pull something out of my ass.

I was still standing on the edge of Lake Friday. Yeah, I named a lake after myself. I’m a pio-fucking-neer. I could just make out the other side-- a barren, rocky coast led to a dark wall of obsidian that surrounded the perfectly round lake. Beyond the wall, I couldn’t see anything, just empty space on the horizon. That’s when I made the mistake of looking up.

Just beyond the horizon, there was another land mass. It was huge and just kind of floating there in space-- a massive ring of black Earth so big I couldn’t make out all of it. I had the feeling it was at least twice the size of where I was now. Beyond it, I could just make out the edge of another floating mass. It was like all of Hell was one big funnel in space made up of multiple rings… No, not rings-- circles. Like I said, I couldn’t make out all of it, but I had a feeling there were nine of them. Nine circles, and I was at the bottom.  Bens fucking inferno.

So, Hell was real and made up of roughly the same geography described by the poet Dante. not exactly the same (I'm pretty sure the bottom was supposed to be frozen and where I was standing was hot as balls) but it was close enough to make me wonder if inferno had in fact been a work of fiction. what made the whole situation worse was that I could see the ceiling. Yeah, instead of black space or stars or whatever I saw a rocky ceiling, like the roof of a cave where stalagmites hung down like fangs in the mouth of the beast. Hell, maybe they were.

What did it mean? Was Hell in a cave? Was I actually under the Earth? If I dug straight up would I be in Jerusalem like in Inferno? No, that couldn’t be right. My spell had half worked; I had separated myself from the material plane. This was another dimension, and aside from the books I had read and the stuff I was told in Sunday school, I really had no frame of reference from which to try and understand the place. No way to wrap my head around another world where none of the rules of my own applied.

I needed to get out of the open. I turned and surveyed my immediate surroundings. Behind me was about a hundred feet of rocky coastline that ended at an obsidian wall that wrapped around the circle. Set into the wall was an archway, beyond which I could see only blackness.

I approached the archway. I had no idea what was on the other side, but I also had nowhere else to go. Even after I was right in front of it, I couldn’t see inside; It was just too damn dark. I reached out a hand to make sure it wasn’t just part of the wall. Sure enough, my hand moved into open space.

As much as I needed to get out of the open, I wasn’t willing to stumble blindly into the mouth of the beast. I dug in my pocket for my keys. On my keychain was a red plastic lightsaber I had pulled out of a cereal box. I took the saber off of the keychain and snapped off the blade, underneath was a tiny light bulb. I pressed the button on the side and a pencil-thin beam of light shot from the end of the toy. Not much of a torch, but it would have to do.

I aimed the beam through the archway. The light struck the darkness and vanished. It didn’t even begin to illuminate that space; in fact, I’m pretty sure it got darker. It was like the light was just being swallowed up by shadow.

“Fuck that,” I said a little louder then I should have. There was no force on Earth or heaven that would get me into that… Hell cave.

I turned back towards the lake, not really sure where to go next. That was when I saw my first demon. It was big-- like really big, fucking humongous. It had a broad, muscular body covered in red scales, goat-like legs, and a bull’s head with 3 foot long horns and shaggy black hair. It was flying over the lake on a set of massive, membranous wings like those of a giant bat.

I stood there dumbfounded; I was too scared to run, too fascinated to look away. I watched as the demon swooped over Lake Friday, scanning the writhing masses. There was something familiar about it. A moment later it was joined by two more bull-faced bat-fuckers which swooped down from the circle above.

The first dropped into the fire and came up holding a human woman in his claws. She was shrieking as he tossed her into the air over the lake where she was caught by one of the new arrivals. It held her by one arm, allowing her to dangle over the pit. She screamed and squirmed as he held her there for the others in the fire to see.

I suddenly realized that these creatures weren’t just tormenting this one human; they were using her to instill fear in the others. It wasn’t enough that they were burning forever, they also had to know that things could still get worse. They had to have that constant anxiety hanging over their heads. Fear-- it was like the icing on the Devil’s birthday cake. Finally, the other newcomer swooped in and grabbed the woman by the other arm.

I knew what was coming and I didn’t want to see it. I squeezed my eyes shut, but I could still hear it. There was a scream, then a pop, followed by a wet, sloshing sound like a water balloon to the ear. When I opened my eyes, the woman was gone and two of the demons were flying back towards the other circle. The third was staring down at me.

I turned and ran for the archway. I said there was no force on Earth or heaven that could get me into that cave; turns out there are a few forces in Hell that could. I barreled headlong into the blackness and…

“What the fuck? “

I found myself standing in what I could only describe as… a break room. Like, a really shitty break room. The floors were made from rusted metal grates, the walls were stained and moldy but otherwise, it was a definitely a break room. There were plastic-topped tables surrounded by metal folding chairs, a couple of vending machines and a counter with a sink and a coffee maker.

I looked down. I was standing on a glowing, white tile marked with a pentagram. I had seen this before. Not in dreams or visions, not in the pages of some unholy grimoire, or during a dark rite, but in Doom. The video game. I swear to God, it was one of the teleporters from Doom! I must have played that game a million times. Speaking of games, I suddenly realized why I recognized that demon. It was Pit Fiend- Lord of Devils and Servant of Asmodeus from Dungeons and Dragons. Holy shit, it looked like it had been pulled right from the pages of the Monster Manual. What the literal Hell was going on here?

No sooner had I stepped off of the teleporter than the door to my left (the door marked with a little picture of a horned demon with the word ‘men’s room’ written under it) opened and another demon stepped out. It was massive, with green scaly legs and a muscular body covered in thick brown hair. Its arms ended in two sets of writhing tentacles and most disturbing of all were its two baboon-like heads.

“Demogorgon!?” I asked aloud before I could stop myself. The bi-cranial ape turned to face me.

“What? Wait…Who the fuck are you?”

I turned to run back to the teleport only to be stopped dead in my tracks. Pit Fiend had followed me, and was now standing on the pad staring down at me and wearing a dumbfounded expression on its face.

“Yo, Phil,” called Demogorgon. “You seeing this shit?”

“I… I think so,” replied the unholy terror apparently called Phil. “Is that… a human? Like, a live one?”

I think it is… Oh God, how did it even get in here?”

“I don’t know. I saw It near the Stygian Pit. At first, I thought one of the damned had managed to claw their way out but It's wearing clothes and It has a heartbeat. Oh God! What are we going to do!?”

Phil took a couple of nervous steps back. Away from me. Like he was scared.

“Calm down, Phil! It’s ok… It’s going to be ok. I’m going to try and talk to It.”

Demogorgon then turned his attention back to me. He swallowed hard, cleared his throat.

“Uh, Hello… human. I am Trevor the Tormenter. I’m uh… Assistant Manager of General Torment here on the eighth circle. Oh, and this is Phil. He’s on the Disembowelment Board. Say Hello, Phil.”

“He-he-Hello… human.”

They were afraid, and once more, it seemed I was the thing they were afraid of. The demons… were afraid of me. What was it they called me? Not just human, but living human. Was it possible that these horrors only had power over the dead? I decided that maybe it was time I took control of the situation.

“Hey, guys. I’m Ben Friday. Nice to meet you.”

“Uh… yeah,” said Trevor, seeming to relax a little. “Nice to meet you, too. Always nice to meet a… living human.”

“You seem a little nervous there, Trevor. you ok?”

“What? Nervous? No… No, I’m not… I’m cool, man. I’m good.”

“I’m not!” Exclaimed Phil, who was actually shaking. “I’m fucking terrified! How… how did you get here? What do you want?  What are you going to do to us?”

“Shut up, Phil!” Trevor shouted with some urgency.

“Do to you? Phil, come on. You’re a big, scary demon. What could a little human like me possibly do to you?”

“Don’t… Don’t give me that.” Phil stammered. “I work with the damned souls of humans every day. I’ve read your files; I know the shit you people get up to when you’re alive.”

Suddenly it all made sense. These guys spend their entire lives managing the worst of the worst that humanity has to offer. Guys like Hitler, Dahmer, and Manson. If they thought we were all just like those guys, then, of course, the last thing they would want is to see one of us running loose in their backyard.

“Just today,” Phil continued, “I was tormenting the soul of Queen Mary.”

“You mean Bloody Mary?” Trevor cut in. “Man, that chick burned more people at the stake than I have.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Ok, but you guys do torture people.”

The demons were silent for several moments. Finally, Trevor spoke up.

“Well… yeah. I suppose we do.”

"You suppose you torture people?”

“Ok, yes, we do. But at least when we torment the souls of the damned, we do it because it’s our job!”

“Your Job?!”

“Well yeah,” started Phil, getting back into the conversation. “I mean, it’s not like we enjoy this sort of thing. Not the way you humans do. It’s just our job, it’s why we were created. Why I even find the whole business rather dull and tedious most of the time. Real nine-to-five slog, you know? Especially after you’ve been at it for a few thousand years.”

“You humans though!" continued Trevor. "the things you do to each other, usually just because you can… It makes my skin crawl."

“You have got to be kidding me. I just watched you pluck a woman out of a fire and dismember her.”

“Yeah, I did do that; it’s part of my routine. But you guys, what you do to each other can be way worse than anything we could think up.”

“Ok. Ok.” I said, putting up my hands. The two demons took a hesitant step back as though they expected me to start biting. “What we have here is a classic example of what we Earthlings call a sampling error.”

“A what, now?”

“A sampling error. Look, it’s like how on my world, in my country, a lot of people are afraid of immigrants right now. They turn on their TVs, and they see Fox News talking about all these different cases of immigrants committing violent crimes. Suddenly, they start thinking that all immigrants are violent criminals.”

“Makes sense.”

“Yeah, except it’s all bullshit meant to push an agenda. People think immigrants are criminals because they aren’t seeing all the immigrants that aren’t criminals. In fact, immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than the people who are born in the country, but you’d never know that by watching the news. Because “immigrants are coming to steal our jobs and rape our women” makes for a better headline than “some people just suck”.”

“So, you’re saying that humans aren’t so bad. That we only think they are because we only see the really bad ones.”

“Exactly. See, Phil gets it.”

“Yeah, ok, hu… I mean Ben,” said Trevor. “Maybe not all humans are as bad as the ones we have here. Honestly, I wouldn’t know. All I know about the souls I manage is what I read off of their rap sheets. Could be the rest of you are all saints, but that’s not what I’m worried about right now. I’m worried about you. Who you are, why you’re here, and what you plan to do.”

“Well, guys, that’s kind of a long story. Basically, I’m here by accident. I’m kind of a magician, you see. I cast a spell that was supposed to take me to Las Vegas and I wound up here instead. Now I’m just trying to get back home.”

“Oh,” said Trevor, letting out a sigh of relief. “That’s not so bad. I thought maybe this was some sort of invasion or coup.” The big demon chuckled. “But you say you didn’t even mean to be here?”

“No, and I’d kind of like to get back so… There a way out of here?”

“None that I know of. We’re more about keeping things in than letting things out. No, we’ll have to take you to see Lu. He’ll know how to handle this.”

“Lu?”

“Yeah, he’s kind of the boss.”

“Ok, so is he like the General Manager of Torment? “

“Oh no. That’s Larry; this is way above his pay grade. No, we’re taking you to the big boss, Lucifer Morningstar. He kind of runs the show down here.”    

Just like that, just when I felt like I had a handle on things, my blood ran cold. “The Devil. You’re taking me to meet the Devil.”

“The one and only.” Phil winked.

Trevor made a show of ushering me toward the door. “Right this way…Human.”

[queen-scribbles]

The Basics

Have the distraction fic that reared its head and reminded me of a headcanon while I was trying to write BAMF Battle Couple Tavi/Aloth fic. :3 Set between The White March parts I and II, but there aren’t really any spoilers, I don’t think.

She approached him the first night they made camp free of the mountain’s chill. They’d gotten settled in; armor discarded, Sagani and Keya were working on dinner, a generally relaxed air lay over the lot of them. Aloth was studying one of the grimoires they’d picked up in the mountains, looking for any new spells he could learn, when Tavi walked up.

She set the point of the dagger she carried against the stump he was using as a table and gave the weapon a spin. “You know how to use blades, right, city slicker?”

Aloth looked up from his tome, not the least bit thrown(anymore) by her lack of preamble. He glanced from her to the rapier hilt still poking out from among his things. “No, I just carry one for show, to intimidate those who aren’t afraid of you or one of our other... fine companions.”

Rather than smirk and roll her eyes at his sarcasm, as he’d expected, Tavi plunked down cross-legged and met his gaze, her brown eyes dead serious. “No, Aloth, I’m... you do, right?”

“The basics, yes,” he replied, setting aside the grimoire to give her his full attention. “I tend to rely more on my spells.”

“I want you to have this.” Tavi pushed the dagger far enough into the stump it didn’t topple when she let go.

Aloth reached over and pulled it free. The hilt was still warm from her hand, the blade almost long enough to be considered a short sword. “Why?”

“It’s probably better than your rapier, and after the Forge, I... I wanna be sure you’re safe. Y’know, when I’m not there to protect you,” Tavi tried to joke, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. 

“Ah.” So that’s what this was about. “Tavi, I’m fine. There was no lasting damage, I promise.”

“I know, I just...” She sighed, ran one hand through her hair. “I guess with how long I’ve spent  on the run, sometimes completely dependent on my blades to survive, I trust physical weapons more than anything for protection.”

Aloth bit back the first comment that came to mind, gaze flicking briefly to the scar poking over the open collar of her shirt. They did a right good job protecting you there. “I take your meaning,” he nodded instead.

“Good.” Tavi’s shoulders slumped a little in relief. A spark of mischief filtered back into her eyes. “Now, when you say you know the basics...”

“I can take care of myself,” he assured her, wary of that mischievous spark.

“Show me.” She pushed to her feet and started pulling her hair back in a ponytail.

“What?!” He almost dropped the dagger, voice rife with skepticism. Nether of them were wearing armor, Tavi’s shirt didn’t even have sleeves(a fact he’d been trying very hard to ignore, with limited success).

“Show me,” Tavi repeated, grinning as she brushed back tendrils of hair not long enough to reach the ponytail. “Set my mind at ease, Corfiser.”

There was just enough of a challenge in her voice Aloth could tell she wasn’t going to let this go. “You are aware most of the spells I know are just as dangerous in close quarters, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why bother with this?” he asked as he reluctantly got to his feet as well.

“Because.” Tavi shrugged and bent to pick up one of her sabres. “I want you to show me.”

He eyed her as she stood there, in the deceptively, dangerously relaxed posture he’d seen her take when talking to brigands, knaves, and various other ne’er-do-wells, and forced back a smile. It was easy to see how people might assume they could catch her off-guard. But he’d fought alongside her too long to take the bait.

“You know,” Aloth began, feeling the dagger’s enchantments hum as he tightened his grip. “If this is supposed to be me showing how well I can defend myself, wouldn’t the first move be yours?”

She grinned. “Touche.” And just like that, she was moving forward, slowly, like a wild cat sizing up prey.

He moved as she did, keeping just out of reach. “Tavi, this is ridiculous-”

She lunged. It was an easy enough move to dodge. Which he did; a simple spin on one heel, using the dagger to ensure her sabre came nowhere near him. She made a couple more similar attacks and feints, which he sidestepped and ignored accordingly.

“I know you’re much better than this,” Aloth commented, running his fingers through his hair.

“I’m takin’ it easy on you,” Tavi retorted. “Case we have different definitions of the basics.”

“I see.” From the look on her face, he’d bet money that wasn’t the only reason.

Tavi stared at him for another minute, looking vaguely frustrated. Finally, she sighed as if in resignation, dug the point of her sabre into the ground, and approached him, loosening a short length of leather cord from around her wrist. “Hold still.” With quick--yet surprisingly gentle--movements, she pulled his hair up in a  ponytail as well. “It’s a distraction.”

“Tavi, I fight with my hair loose all the time,” Aloth felt obligated to point out. “I do fine.”

“I didn’t say it was a distraction for you,” she muttered, face red from more than exertion.

He couldn’t help a quiet, wry chuckle as he brushed the back of his hand against her arm. “That makes us even, then.”

Tavi grinned and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before stepping back to retrieve her sabre. “This mean you want me to stop takiin’ it easy on ya, city slicker?”

Aloth answered the teasing jibe with a smirk. “Not entirely, but you could try a little harder.”

“Alright, then.” Tavi grinned dangerously and shifted her grip on her sabre as she charged in again.

This time was definitely more of a challenge; two strikes in quick succession at different angles. He actually had to step back as he blocked them, well aware she was likely trying to back him up against one of the trees a few yards behind him.

“I have a question,” he said, sidestepping and feeling her blade nick the rolled-up cuff of his sleeve. “Are you simply interested in testing what swordsmanship I have, or do you want me to react as I typically would in such a situation?”

“Considerin’ I know the latter would mean me gettin’ a face full of fire spell right about now, let’s stick with swordsmanship,” Tavi said with a knowing smirk. “I know you can handle yourself with spells, anyway.”

And so back and forth they went, occasionally trading sarcastic comments along with strikes, until both of them were breathing hard and Tavi was grinning in satisfaction. She’d only managed to back him into a--figurative--corner once, neither of them had drawn blood, and Aloth had thoroughly proven he could handle himself, were he to wind up in a situation where his only recourse was a blade.

“Alright,” Tavi panted, dropping with a complete lack of grace to lay on the ground. “We’re good.”

Aloth smirked a little bit as he sat next to her. “Seen enough to convince you?”

“Uh-huh,” she nodded, grinning up at him. “I’m satisfied you know the basics.”

“Good. Wouldn’t want you worrying about me,” he said, faint note of teasing in his voice, as he fiddled with the rip she’d put in his sleeve.

“Never said that was gonna stop,” she shot back, still grinning. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked pointedly at his sleeve. “Want me to fix that for ya?”

Aloth raised an eyebrow. “You?”

“S’only fair,” Tavi shrugged. “I’m the one that did it.”

“No, I mean... you know how to sew?”

She stuck her tongue out at him for his skepticism. “I know the basics. Who’dya think mended my fuckin’ tent? Or hemmed this when I... unburdened it of its sleeves?” She plucked at the front of her (slightly sweaty)shirt. “I may not be gold standard for tailors or anything, but I can do a straight fuckin’ line.”

“I take your point,” Aloth said, bracing one elbow against his knee and resting his chin on his palm. “Not often I’m the one getting under your skin,” he commented, amused. “Usually the other way around.”

“I must be rubbin’ off on you,” Tavi said gleefully, sitting up and dusting dirt and dead grass from what remained of her ponytail as she mirrored his pose.

“Why couldn’t it have been the other way around?” he deadpanned, eyes twinkling as he flicked back loose wisps of hair.

“I’m wounded, Corfiser,” Tavi declared, hands clasped over her heart. “I thought you’d noticed how good of an influence you’ve been on me.”

Aloth raised an eyebrow again, blatant skepticism writ across his face.

“Every time I talk to an opponent first--’specially the really irritatin’ ones--rather’n just runnin’ ‘em through, is me showin’ restraint. Learned that from you, city slicker. And I leaned a buncha new curses from Iselmyr.” If she was honest, that last was tacked on just to watch him sputter. She scooched closer as she enjoyed that victory and tweaked the end of his ponytail. “You’re cute when you get all red in the face like that.”

Aloth glared at her, but it was (almost) completely lacking heat. “I’m glad we’ve both been of service to you.”

“Oh, don’t be like that, city slicker,” Tavi laughed. “You know I like you way better. I’m just teasin’.” She curled her fingers around the collar of his shirt and tugged him into a kiss. “It’s part of my charm. You’ve been travelin’ with me long enough, you should know basics like that by now.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Aloth said softly, nodding slightly before kissing her back.

“Course I am,” Tavi said cheerfully, shooting him a playful wink as she sat back. “Now, outta that shirt. So I can fix it for you,” she clarified, shaking her hair completely free of the mostly-destroyed ponytail.

Aloth sighed as he pulled his shirt over his head. That pause had been deliberate, he knew it. She was in a teasing mood, probably amplified by the adrenaline of their practice bout. Just another part of the basics, he thought wryly as he handed over the shirt and stood to dig a fresh one out of his pack. He couldn’t complain too much, though. After all, the basics were what made him fall in love with her.