#beany and cecil staring herring | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

cicada-candy · 10 months ago

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SCREAMS ROKHAL THIS IS SO GOOD AHJSDKAG ASHJFA

my brain is Fucking Fried from Class this week ive literally went to reblog this like 6 times and kept getting distracted so Uh Yeah this might make No Sense but anyway

"As Robbie scrubbed the brake cleaner off his hands,"

-Robbie's Nuking Ant-hills, as usual, i see azdsdhawujka

"He had a terrible thought and whispered, “Talk to me. I’m not doing this on purpose but if I know you’re in here I think I can give you your body back.” He stared uncomfortably into his own eyes, but the back of his mind was silent."

Oh. Oh wow. Um.

Fuck, dude.

Just. Straight to blaming himself that's. Brutal.

Ow.

On that note ->

"There was no washed-up mob henchman wriggling in the Charger’s trunk. Robbie found a couple bags of school supplies, a tool box, and a big first-aid kit, nothing sinister, and then in the shadows, oddly, something pink and shiny—one of this Gabe’s collectibles? A Beanie Baby?

A BEANIE BABY? A BEANIE BABY.

“FUCK,” the pink thing bellowed, and then it unspooled and slipped up over the edge of the trunk, hit the ground with a slap, and slithered away."

THE FUCKING VISUAL OF THIS IM WHEEZING. "WITH A SLAP."

" “The Cecil, huh? Good times.”/ “Don’t tell me you killed people there.”/ “I won’t.” "

AHSGSGAJQJEHSHDJAL

Oh Eli you bitchhhhhhhh lmfao

"“Can you not act like my existence is an imposition for two seconds.” /Robbie slammed his fist into the steering wheel. “You exist because you committed human sacrifice.” Eli slithered out of view behind the passenger seat."

Oh nope right back to pain town. You writing Eli and Robbie's Dynamic in any universe is always so fun in like. In a The Jokes In Hamlet way. Like Haha omg they're fighting- oh shit yeah human sacrifice is uh. Oh wow. Kinda way

Good fuckin food 🤌🤌🤌

"The horror on the ceiling reached closer, closer, as black claws unsheathed from half-molded fingers. Then it drew back and tension shuddered through its body; the woman on the bed shuddered in synchrony. Its eyes fixed on the back of Lisa’s neck. It lunged, but Robbie was faster, slicing its wet palm with his knife as he pushed Lisa aside. As it swiped back to retaliate, he instinctively leaned into its path—baiting it with the Rider’s leather skin filled with the Charger’s fire ready to erupt the moment those claws released it to burn his enemy—and screamed as the talons sank into his human shoulder."

like just. all of this. is so good What. God I can fuckin feel that ouaghh rokhal ur writing skills i justn👏👏👏

"Ty glavny, ya tvoy suchok"

giggling like a five year old. 10/10 no notes

"Robbie landed hard on the edge of the bed, bounced, and rolled to his feet. His feet—/ “Point your toes!” Lisa yelled, too late. He tripped over his own ankles and crashed face-first into the bedside table./ Whenever the Rider ate shit like this, he’d sink through his own shadow and reappear in the car like he’d meant to do it—not that he was embarrassed, just that he preferred not to take the time to pick himself up."

CACKLING OH MY GOD

THUNK

"He could tackle Lisa and rip Eli away from her, bash his head into the wall—but she’d never trust him after that. “He’s not safe, he used to be a—”

-“I know you are, but what am I?” Eli interrupted, and Robbie wavered."

OH YOU FUCKIN DICKKK

To quote wazzappp: "you arent even real and I have Problems over you"

Except the Problems are my lack of Fist-meet-face skills avagdvsbanan

“Idi na hui, suka,” Eli corrected her.

Again. Giggling. Like a five year old. Success.

“I got this,” Robbie whispered to himself, stumbling to the nearest wall for balance./ “He can’t even walk!”

Felt lmao

Closing Statments: Holy Shit How Do You Never Miss?

ANGR Magical Girl AU: Wrong Universe

The Robbie I usually write wakes up in the Ghost Rider Magical Girl AU.

I figured that in Magical Girl AU, Robbie is likely to go to Lisa to ask for help walking in heels (assuming Johnny's tips are less than useful) and Lisa gets so excited at the prospect of Robbie participating in drag and he denies that's what he's doing but refuses to explain so in her desire to be supportive she ends up stalking him so she can cheer for him at his show and ends up finding out that he's a magical girl which somehow makes a lot more sense. She becomes a valuable member of the team because she has social skills. Of a sort.

If anything here contradicts any other ideas anyone else has in the works, MULTIVERSE BAYBEE it's noncanon :) The Sharpie thing is purely a case of Great Minds Think Alike though. I saw that in Moose's fic and was like, twins!

This is way too long 😭

As Robbie scrubbed the brake cleaner off his hands, the axle grease wiped away and so did the black Sharpie he’d hastily scribbled onto his fingernails that morning. His bright pink fingernails. If it was nail polish, the brake cleaner should be taking that off, too; he scrubbed hopefully at his thumbnail but this was as useless as the acetone he’d tried before resorting to Sharpie.

He’d woken up feeling more normal than he had in a long time. The pleasant sensation of a full night’s rest had faded as he’d gotten dressed and made Gabe breakfast. His bad eye was mysteriously back to normal and the scar on his forehead was completely gone, but his goatee was shaved off, he had some kind of jewel embedded in his chest, his fingernails were pink, and. And Gabe wasn’t his Gabe. It was Gabe’s face, and Gabe’s smile, but instead of cartoon and comic book heroes filling his shelves and plastered all over his door, it was sparkly anime girls and Japanese motorcycle riders; he was happier, stronger legs and steadier hands, and he didn’t second-guess Robbie’s every expression and movement or double-check his identity after every time Robbie left his sight. Robbie spent half an hour tossing the bathroom looking for his epilepsy meds before he checked the app on his phone where he tracked expenses and found that this Gabe had been off them for an entire year.

The apartment was mostly the same; same view across Hillrock Lane out the apartment window, same pile of automotive magazines on the coffee table—now with manga mixed in—same thrifted art on the walls. Robbie had wondered if he was still asleep, and dreaming, or better, if the last two years had been a long and vivid nightmare, until he noticed the time and realized that he’d missed Gabe’s bus and was about to be late to work. He’d stuffed a stale tortilla in his mouth and gnawed on it while grabbing a pair of coveralls and helping Gabe into the Charger to get to school. He’d dropped Gabe off and made it all the way to Canelo’s before he realized that he hadn’t heard from Eli all morning.

He stood now under a half-disassembled Chevy Tahoe, scrubbing desperately at his glossy pink fingernails as though with enough solvent and friction he could wipe himself from this world and return to his own body, his own curse, his own Hillrock Heights, his own brother. He simply had no better ideas.

“Reyes!” Canelo barked from across the shop, and he jumped, dropped the can of brake cleaner. “Quit daydreaming!”

Eli would have had a snide comment about how Canelo ought to mind his own fucking business or risk getting disemboweled. Robbie checked the time and added up the hours he was due by the end of the day, for future reference in case Canelo rounded his pay down when it was due next week. If he was still here next week. He couldn’t be stuck here until next week but he didn’t know to do anything but work. Did his other self know anybody here who dealt with interdimensional travel and too-pleasant dreams? He wasn’t a Ghost Rider here, Johnny Blaze wouldn’t have any reason to have met him…

...But he was a something.

What the hell was he now?

He was on the clock, that’s what. He had a job he knew how to do, to provide for a brother he loved, even though neither of them were his, and he would reinstall this truck’s axles and wheel bearings and not get his alternate self fired and then he would, somehow, figure out how to get home. (Dread filled him.) (He hadn’t fantasized about murdering anyone all morning.) (The world felt brighter, his senses more vivid, his flesh and skin snug over his bones, and he could believe for the first time in a long time that he might be safe for others to be around.)

“You alright, son?” Canelo asked from two feet behind him, and Robbie hit his head on the Tahoe’s subframe. It didn’t hurt as much as it probably should have. Canelo was just standing there, frowning a little. “Take five, I’ll get you some ice.”

What the hell, Robbie thought, and no one answered.

Canelo did, indeed, return from the break room with an ice pack. No one else at the shop seemed to think this was unusual. Marty winced at Robbie and patted his own head, mouthing, You okay? and even Ramon grunted sympathetically at him. Robbie retreated to the bathroom where he pressed the ice pack to the starting bruise and stared himself down in the mirror. Without his beard, he looked young and delicate—that’s why he’d grown it. But it wasn’t just the beard; his eyes were brighter, his skin was smoother, the scar through his eyebrow had faded—all the scars on his hands were gone, too, the bashed knuckles and burns and scrapes that were inevitable if you worked with cars all day. He looked tender and undamaged. He looked like someone worth protecting.

He had a terrible thought and whispered, “Talk to me. I’m not doing this on purpose but if I know you’re in here I think I can give you your body back.” He stared uncomfortably into his own eyes, but the back of his mind was silent.

He got out his phone—same PIN as usual—and checked his contacts list. Johnny Blaze was on there, but Johnny Blaze had almost killed him and Eli the first time they’d met; how would Johnny react to some strange, murderous version of Robbie wearing the skin of the Robbie he knew? He couldn’t beat Johnny in a fight in the real world. He didn’t know how to explain himself. There was nothing to do but finish the Tahoe.

The day rolled on, he returned the Tahoe to drivable condition and did a couple tune-ups and oil changes, and he snagged a moment to Sharpie his nails black again. He wasn’t afraid of nail polish—he had black nail polish at home somewhere, eyeliner too—but pink was not his style and was liable to attract the wrong kind of attention, especially with how...how he looked, in this world. (What was he? Was he something that could fight, defend itself? There was no fire waiting under his skin to consume his human weakness.)

He was puzzling over a set of trouble codes from a fifteen-year-old Nissan Maxima when his phone buzzed. If this version of himself worked on the same logic, he’d set it up to mute unknown numbers but programmed in all Gabe’s teachers and therapists. He dug into his pocket under his coveralls and checked it. It was Lisa, saved in his contacts list with a photo he didn’t remember taking: familiar bright hair and smile, raising two fingers in a V in front of one eye while her other hand displayed a river rock with a large hole worn through the center, dangling from a pink ribbon.

This was not a conversation he was ready to have. He ended the call. A minute later, she called again. Robbie walked to the time clock and punched out as he answered. “Uh, what’s up.”

Screeching and howling and buzzing in the background. “Omigod where are you?” Lisa demanded. She sounded out of breath.

“Work,” Robbie said, baffled. “What’s going on, are you okay?”

“What do you mean what’s—” Banging, panting. “Where’s Eli?”

A chill unfurled under his skin, his hand grew numb as he gripped his phone case. “What are you talking about.”

“Did you lock him in the freezer again?” Lisa demanded. What. “I know he’s annoying—”

“That’s one word for it,” Robbie muttered, swallowing bile.

“—but he’s an essential member of the team!”

“What team?”

Lisa paused. “The, the team,” she said hesitantly. “The Guardians of Hillrock Heights. Robbie, you. You know what you do helps people, right?”

He was disappointing her somehow—no, worse, letting her down. “Yeah, of course, I, uh.” Eli existed here, but this Lisa knew about him; obviously this version of Robbie had trusted her more. Or she’d just stalked him and figured it out. “What do you need me to do?”

“Get to the Cecil Hotel,” Lisa panted. “Bring Eli. And stay and talk to me after you transform back.”

Transform. Robbie rubbed the hard pink jewel embedded in his sternum. “Right. Okay.”

He left the time clock and approached Canelo’s office, racking his brain for some excuse—a lie about Gabe? A medical appointment? When he opened the door, Canelo met his eyes and sighed. “Again? Well, go on.” Robbie stared at him. He wasn’t even scowling. “What do you want, a hug? Go do your thing.”

He ran out of the shop and threw himself into the Charger. As he sped out of the parking lot, he almost clipped off one of its mirrors against the security gate. He grabbed his phone and started to search for the Cecil Hotel while making a left turn onto Atlantic Boulevard and almost crashed head-on into an F-250; he couldn’t drive and use his phone at the same time anymore. The phone dropped to the floorboards and he pulled hastily to the side of the road, cursing.

His connection to the Charger was different here, too. Still there, but weaker. Possibly just in his head. He tried to stretch out into it anyway, feeling its vibrations, listening to the loping chug of its idle and the continuous hiss of its supercharger, but his consciousness stayed firmly in his human body.

He heard something clank in the trunk.

Atlantic Boulevard was not a good place for a street fight. Robbie found his phone, pulled up a route to the Cecil, took a detour in an alley behind a warehouse. He hit the gas and slammed the brakes a couple times before shutting down the car and sprinting around the back to pop the trunk, confront this alternate version of his uncle, slam the trunk on his neck while he was still dazed, kill him like this alternate Robbie wasn’t yet sullied enough to do.

There was no washed-up mob henchman wriggling in the Charger’s trunk. Robbie found a couple bags of school supplies, a tool box, and a big first-aid kit, nothing sinister, and then in the shadows, oddly, something pink and shiny—one of this Gabe’s collectibles? A Beanie Baby?

“FUCK,” the pink thing bellowed, and then it unspooled and slipped up over the edge of the trunk, hit the ground with a slap, and slithered away, S-curves glittering in the sun as it struggled against the smooth pavement. Robbie gaped, then chased after it. Him. Eli was making slow progress and Robbie caught up quickly, but he turned on a dime; Robbie headed him off away from a nearby dumpster and danced around him for almost a minute before he had the idea to shrug off his jacket and throw it on Eli’s head. Eli backed out from under it but by this time Robbie had him by the neck. “Look. Revenge is, you don’t got the mindset for it? There’s healing in forgiveness. It makes you more stable. Less prone to violent, emotional outbursts. Kid. Kid! We had our differences, but it was the situation, the close quarters, you know? You’d do the same in my position, I just wanted to live, I had unfinished business! And now, heh, you got a body, I got a body, we can go our separate ways. Kid? Hey?”

Eli was a shimmery pink snake about half-again as long as Robbie’s arm. He had round shining eyes in a hundred shades of rose, and the large scale between them was shaped like a heart. His forked tongue sparkled as it scented the air. His voice was exactly the same.

“You, uh. Look different.”

Robbie had a sinking feeling that stomping the snake’s head under his boot wouldn’t be doing this world’s Robbie any favors. He dangled Eli in one fist at arm’s length—an essential member of the team. “You don’t know what’s going on, either.”

“Believe it or not, I’m not the cause of everything that goes wrong in your life.”

“Lisa wants us at the Cecil Hotel,” Robbie said, returning to the Charger and dumping Eli on the passenger seat. “She requested you by name. We’re gonna take care of whatever’s going on and figure it out from there.”

“The Cecil, huh? Good times.”

“Don’t tell me you killed people there.”

“I won’t.” Eli awkwardly pressed his long narrow body against the door, slowly lifting his head toward the window. Robbie took a hard left and Eli slipped sideways between the seat and the side pillar. “Fuck.”

“Apparently you’re important for some reason.”

“Can you not act like my existence is an imposition for two seconds.”

Robbie slammed his fist into the steering wheel. “You exist because you committed human sacrifice.” Eli slithered out of view behind the passenger seat. Robbie took a breath. “You’re a talking pink snake here. You probably have magic powers.”

“Pink?”

“You color-blind, too?”

Eli was silent for the rest of the drive. Robbie hoped he was figuring out what magic powers he had, otherwise they’d just have to wing it.

Hotel Cecil was a trio of brick buildings spanning half a city block and joined by skywalks. The complex had probably been impressive before the invention of reinforced concrete. No longer a failing hotel for people falling down the ladder of society, it was being converted to affordable housing for people crawling back up. Robbie parked across the street and squinted up at it. He was pretty sure the walls weren’t supposed to be covered in gray goo, but there was a ghost tour or something right there on the sidewalk and none of the tourists were taking pictures. Maybe it was a maintenance thing? An art installation?

“Huh,” Eli said, finally squirming his way up onto the dashboard to take a look.

Robbie texted Lisa: Here.

Her reply was immediate. Fourth floor front building room 73

No emojis. That couldn’t be good. “Any ideas on how to get inside?” Robbie asked.

“Put on your spare coveralls and act pissy.”

Robbie could have thought of that himself, but he had no better ideas. He stomped through the graffitoed doors of the unassuming entryway and through the unexpectedly grand marble halls of the lobby floor, scowling like he’d been called in on his day off to fix a plumbing catastrophe that could have been prevented by routine maintenance the previous week, and glancing up now and again at the pulsing tangle of veins the color of neglected differential fluid that wormed between the ceiling lights and which no one else seemed to notice. Eli wrapped himself around Robbie’s neck like a scarf; uncomfortably close, but better, at least logically, than having him ride along in his thoughts like usual.

“Art nouveau,” Eli commented, peering up an angular gold-and-green wall sconce beside a statue in an alcove whose opening was carved to look like palm leaves and Egyptian columns. “Classy place full of staff who don’t ask stupid questions.”

“Shut up,” Robbie hissed. They reached the pair of elevators that served this part of the complex: just two, and one was out of order. A big brass dial on the top indicated that the elevator was on the eighth floor, and going up. Robbie stabbed the button irritably, then gave up and ran for the stairs.

On the fourth floor, the gray veins were so thick that the ceiling looked a foot lower than it should have been, and the light sconces were mostly covered. Somehow, the light escaped anyway, leaving the carpet brightly lit and the air at shoulder-height and above dim like twilight. Robbie watched a tall man in a business suit strolling down the hall, his entire head vanishing into the pulsing fleshy mass. “Keep your head down, there’s gray magical crap on the ceiling,” Eli informed him.

Robbie felt a moment of glee that Eli couldn’t just look out through his eyes anymore. “I noticed.”

“Try touching it. Left hand.”

Robbie poked one of the ceiling tentacles with his left pinkie finger as he advanced down the hall toward room 73, and cringed as the rock in his chest seemed to shudder in protest. The gray flesh was clammy and yielding, leaving his finger numb as he pulled away. Even if it was invisible, how did anyone walk around with their whole head swimming in this stuff without noticing? What was it doing to the people it enveloped?

He passed room fifty, and noticed that the higher the numbers progressed, the thicker the veins overhead pulsed and the lower they sagged, growing to fill more of the narrow space even as he watched. He crouched low and broke into a run. Room 73 was nearly overtaken; limbs as thick as ventilation ducts sprouted through the walls, heaving and pulsing and moaning, ozone and rot thick in the air. He had to kneel beside the door as he knocked. “Lisa! It’s Robbie. I’m outside.”

“Get in here!” Lisa yelled from within.

“They ain’t changed this lock since ‘98. You can shim it with a credit card.”

Robbie bypassed the latch and shoved the door inward against the mass of shifting tendrils packed against the ceiling. There was barely room to crouch inside; the rust-red carpet shone in the light of fixtures completely swallowed by the strange rot overtaking the hotel. He ducked as a gray coil twisted past his face.“Can you get to the door?”

“Kinda busy!” Lisa grunted. Someone else screamed, inhumanly long and somehow muted, the volume too soft for the cracks of agony in the voice. Robbie leaned down and spotted what looked like a clear space around the hotel bed. He army-crawled toward it. There was something wet and sticky on the floor—not blood, it smelled like solvent. White spray-paint, circling the bed. He dragged himself over the painted lines and got his first look at what Lisa was busy with.

There was a body on top of the blankets, a middle-aged white woman with hollow cheeks and loose skin rising in narrow folds where gray tendrils sank into her from above. Lisa had a broken bottle in one hand and was sawing at the thickest of the tendrils just above where it sank between the motionless woman’s eyes. With another, she held a flat rock with a hole in the center, scowling through it like a lens. From the nest of gray veins on the ceiling, a human figure sagged down, joined to the woman joint by joint with those tendrils. Its mouth was a formless hole, its eyes cold wet pits, its flesh the same sludgy substance as the rest of the hotel’s infestation. Robbie swallowed. “Is she alive?”

“For now,” Lisa said, scraping furiously at the tendril. Robbie noticed with horror that two other tendrils had descended from the ceiling to sink into Lisa’s shoulders; he lunged forward and ripped them away. The rock in his chest shuddered as his hand went numb. “Was it on me?” She turned around and looked at him for the first time. “Omigod, why aren’t you changed?”

Robbie took a deep breath and stared up at the vacant eyes of the abomination on the ceiling. He pulled out the blade on his multitool and joined in cutting the woman free; the gray stuff yielded like flesh to expose a tough stringy black core. “We can wrap her in the blanket and drag her out.” The human shape began to drag one of its hands down toward them, struggling against an unseen force.

Lisa grabbed his wrist. “Robbie, she needs an exorcism. You have to change.” He stared at the river rock that dangled from a long pink ribbon on her neck as she tried to meet his eyes. “She’s got kids who miss her, she’s turning her life around, you gotta help! Come on!”

“I don’t remember what you’re talking about,” Robbie blurted.

“Omigod are you cursed or something?”

The horror on the ceiling reached closer, closer, as black claws unsheathed from half-molded fingers. Then it drew back and tension shuddered through its body; the woman on the bed shuddered in synchrony. Its eyes fixed on the back of Lisa’s neck. It lunged, but Robbie was faster, slicing its wet palm with his knife as he pushed Lisa aside. As it swiped back to retaliate, he instinctively leaned into its path—baiting it with the Rider’s leather skin filled with the Charger’s fire ready to erupt the moment those claws released it to burn his enemy—and screamed as the talons sank into his human shoulder. He could barely feel the wounds through the hollow ache the creature’s touch carried, but the worst pain was the furious hum from the stone in his sternum, rocking and jerking like an engine that had snapped its mounts; he thought his chest would crack open from the force. His hand went limp and the knife dropped and stabbed blade-first into the bed. He punched ineffectually with his good hand as the creature lifted him. New tendrils sprouted from its body, seeking to plug into his own. He was as frightened and angry and frustrated as he’d ever been in his life, and though he was suppressing none of it since this Lisa was already enmeshed in his supernatural bullshit, the transformation wasn’t happening.

Eli slithered down his coveralls and escaped out his pant leg as he struggled. Lisa stared in horror through her river rock. “Eli! Help him!”

“Eh, sure,” Eli said, watching Robbie from the bedcovers while Robbie’s leg went cold and dead. “Rake its eyes! Behind your left shoulder!” Robbie flailed blindly with his working arm, hoping Eli hadn’t gotten his left and right confused.

Lisa stood up and grabbed Robbie by the waist, trying to pull him down. Blood from his shoulder soaked her hair. “What’s wrong with you two? Say the words!”

“What words?”

Lisa groped his chest until her palm pressed against his pink troll-doll gem. “Oh, thank God. Say it: Tie cloth nee, ya toys or chalk!”

“What?!”

“Say it! Tie cloth—”

“Ty glavny, ya tvoy suchok,” Eli interrupted. “Five words, you can do it.”

“Die glovny, a twoy sujock,” Robbie gritted out just before the ceiling monster’s limbs closed around his throat. For an instant, all he knew was aching cold and darkness. Then the stone in his chest sparked and a shockwave erupted through his body, driving away the clammy gray tentacles in a blast of warm pink light. It doesn’t hurt, he thought, shocked. Changing into the Rider in his own world was a cathartic blast of agony as his body cremated itself from within, but this, this was nice. He was weightless in a void of dancing blue-green lights. The pain of talons crushing his shoulder was gone, and so were the low-grade headache he always got about halfway through the work day and the tension in his spine and the knot on his head from banging it into the Tahoe that morning; he tingled all over with the contentment of an hour-long hot shower where he wouldn’t have to pay the heating bill. He stretched out, luxuriating in the feeling, and realized with horror that his body wasn’t there.

I’m hallucinating, he told himself. It was hard to think through the nice bubbly feeling, but he remembered that Lisa was right there trying to stop him from getting eaten, and there was a woman on the bed below who was dying, and he couldn’t see or feel anything but the bright pink gem illuminating the hollow space where his body was supposed to be. He thrashed, but it was like trying to fight the wind with a puff of smoke. He was nothing but thought, and he couldn’t even panic properly.

Solidity returned in jolts and starts: cool fabric twisting around his body and snugging him into shape. Protective gloves, leather boots long enough to save his knees from road rash, body armor, something to guard his forehead. The familiar handles of a pair of body hammers filled his palms, and the world snapped back into place. No time at all seemed to have passed; he was still suspended above the bed by the ceiling monster.

He was not the Rider, but he knew what the Rider would do. He jammed one hand into the mouth of the humanoid sludge stalactite and stabbed the spike of a body hammer through its skull. It moaned, and he stabbed again, flipped himself around, gripped its leg between his knees to anchor himself, and struck for the heart, the throat, all the vital targets that he’d trained himself to avoid whenever he gave in to the urge to beat down local thugs in Hillrock Heights. Black blood spattered into his eyes and trickled up his nose, reeking of mold. Its touch no longer chilled him; his touch seemed to burn it. He beat the creature until it melted away and retreated back into the ceiling, all the veins and coils and tree-root limbs draining away after it. Robbie landed hard on the edge of the bed, bounced, and rolled to his feet. His feet—

“Point your toes!” Lisa yelled, too late. He tripped over his own ankles and crashed face-first into the bedside table.

Whenever the Rider ate shit like this, he’d sink through his own shadow and reappear in the car like he’d meant to do it—not that he was embarrassed, just that he preferred not to take the time to pick himself up. Robbie pried himself up off the floor when he realized that his powers in this world did not include the ability to dissolve into the room’s nicotine-stained carpet. He was wet, disappointingly fleshy, and entirely alone in his head. His protective gloves were doing a poor job, already soaked through with disgustingly organic black slime, and his feet—

He looked down at himself for the first time. He wasn’t wearing protective gloves or work boots or body armor. He had the kind of delicate white cotton gloves that women wore with ballgowns in old movies, and thigh-high go-go boots over tights, and what looked like a women’s ice-dancing costume. The ankles of the high-heeled boots were decorated with pink rhinestones, and so were his white-painted hammers. The worst part was that under the pink satin bow where the gem from his chest had migrated, the black leotard bore the same staple-shaped white stripe as his favorite jacket. This was his ice-dancing costume.

He tried to get his feet under him to stand, but the heels were in the way. Whatever force had undressed him seemed to have a grudge against the stock geometry of the human foot; the boots were so stiff he could barely bend his ankles. When he yanked at them, they didn’t budge. He couldn’t find any fasteners. He was about to grab one of his spiked hammers and try ripping through the leather when he noticed Lisa looking down at him from the bed, holding Eli twined around her forearms like a pet corn snake.

“Get the fuck away from her,” Robbie snarled, lunging on his knees.

Lisa jerked back, carrying Eli with her. “Okay, what is your deal today? I thought you had amnesia, but the way you bashed up that genius loci—are you, like, possessed by your alternate universe evil twin with a goatee?”

“Basically,” Robbie said, retrieving one hammer from under the bed. “Put him down.”

“Hey, looks like we’re friends in this universe, too.” Eli rested his head in the crook of Lisa’s elbow and flicked his tongue at Robbie.

“Rrrrrrrr,” Robbie growled. It sounded ridiculous without the rumble of the Charger’s engine filtering through his throat. He could tackle Lisa and rip Eli away from her, bash his head into the wall—but she’d never trust him after that. “He’s not safe, he used to be a—”

“I know you are, but what am I?” Eli interrupted, and Robbie wavered.

Lisa passed him the box of tissues from the bedside table. “Wipe your face and exorcise Mrs. Sanchez so we can get her out of here.”

Robbie hated that this “change” had left him with a human face to wipe. He struggled to his feet, gripping the mattress for balance. The woman on the bed hadn’t moved; she stared vacantly at the ceiling, black veins spreading from the points on her body where the ceiling-monster’s roots had anchored. She was breathing, at least. Her lips were an unhealthy gray-purple. “Any idea how I do that?” he asked, glaring at Eli.

“Search me, I dunno what trigger words alternate-me picked.”

“You make a cross with your hammers,” Lisa said, demonstrating with her empty fists, “and say something like, eej an owie, sucker?”

“Idi na hui, suka,” Eli corrected her.

Robbie had a bad feeling that all his powers were activated by Russian vulgarities. He took careful crouching steps as he retrieved his other hammer, keeping one hand on the bed or on the wall as much as possible, then crossed his hammers like a priest in a vampire movie and did his best to parrot Eli’s words. There was a rush of wind that set his hair fluttering along with the skirt and pink bows of his leotard, and a fountain of pink sparks erupted from the hammers, right at the comatose woman’s bare face and the flammable-looking bedclothes. He had to separate the hammers, to turn off the power or at least point it in a safer direction, but his body wouldn’t obey him: his spine straightened and his shoulders drew back and his legs stepped wide into a power-stance despite the boots pinning his feet at an unnatural angle; he was spraying hot sparks at a defenseless innocent person and he was posing like he was proud of himself.

The seizure ended and he dropped the hammers and stumbled to the edge of the bed, ready to smother fires with his thin cotton gloves, brush off any burning embers from the woman’s hair. Lisa caught him by the shoulder. “Hey! Hey, look, you did it,” she said, examining the woman through her river rock.

There were no fires or burns. The infected gray-black marks were retreating up from her skin and trickling away into inert slime. “What did I do,” Robbie panted.

“You saved the day!” Lisa said brightly. She lifted her rock to check the ceiling; fresh veins had begun to ripple over the paint in a human outline that mirrored Mrs. Sanchez. “You saved...two thirds of the day. Eli, so your thing.”

Robbie hated that he knew Eli well enough to read from the tension in his sigmoid posture that he was taken aback. “My thing.”

“Bite her!” Lisa said impatiently, watching the ceiling.

“What?”

“His bites heal people.”

“Puta madre.” Eli stared at the woman in...probably disgust. “This is…” He cut himself off, looking up at Lisa. “Just what I’ve always wanted.”

“You are so full of shit,” Robbie hissed. Lisa glared at him, and Robbie glared back. “He is!”

“We don’t have time for this,” Lisa said to Eli, making a strange gripping gesture beside his head. “Hurry up or I’ll do it for you. Manually.”

Eli grudgingly fit his mouth around Mrs. Sanchez’ wrist and wriggled his lips and teeth around with disturbingly more mobility than Robbie had expected a snake to be capable of. Robbie clenched his fists as translucent pink fangs flicked into view before sinking into her wasted skin. Eli’s body glowed, and pink sparks shimmered along her veins, circled over her heart, and flashed twice before vanishing. Mrs. Sanchez opened her eyes and sat bolt upright, staring at Robbie.

“Uh,” Robbie said.

“Oh thank God you’re okay!” Lisa squealed, throwing herself between them and gripping Mrs. Sanchez by the torso. “Ma’am, you just survived a carbon monoxide leak, it’s absolutely imperative that we get you to fresh air, you may still be experiencing visual disturbances, first responders have been called, come on, let’s get you out, don’t worry about your belongings, let’s go. Go. Go.” She half-led, half-wrestled the confused woman out the door. Robbie took two steps after them before his ankles did a death-wobble and dumped him to his knees. “We’ll figure out your amnesia-whatever when I get back,” Lisa assured him. “If the hotel wakes up again…” She mimed bashing something with a hammer. “You got this!”

“I got this,” Robbie whispered to himself, stumbling to the nearest wall for balance.

“He can’t even walk!”

#(makes cheesy magical girl designs as a joke) you and moose: writes fucking bangers. Wazzappp: creates extensive lore.#im having. so much fun.#have literally not been able to think about anything else all day im So Serious #all my MG au wips r kicking my ass atm for some reason but. soon 👁👁#fic rec

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