#but i guess it would be better if they made him less humanoid and more like a abstract brawler?

[chewysgummies]

All these mother fucker need to stop bullying Meeple, dude.

[copperpipes]

I spec bio'ed Ultraman from Ultraman:Rising for fun (part 1)

the actual file I've written (and still writing) is now far over 2k words, so I desided to break it down to a series of posts so that it would be easier to digest, but if you don't want to wait for me to get them one by one out you can just go and read that long ass file yourself/lh

I understand that the film wasn't meant to be looked into on this level, at the end of the day this is just fan speculative biology, not an official theory, nor is it law, if you find a scientific inaccuracy i'll gladly hear you out in the comments to this post. but essentially what i'm doing here is having fun in my own silly little way :]

I've done some research into ultra physiology and some things didn't make sense to me, partially because there are more than one iteration all with their own worldbuilding, but I'll do my best to try and piece them all together without losing the source material too much.

[updated ultra Kenji design]

(The rest under cut) vvv

fact no.1

ultras are aliens and before they were ultras they were humans (or humanoids, or human-like, i'd like to believe so and i will do you one better).

not going to spoil much but something happened, and they were forced to build this thing called the ultra-spark to keep their civilization going, and the ultra-spark turned them all into giants, ultras.

fact no.2

the weapons ultraman uses (those buzzsaws thingies, shields, beams and glowing fists) are made out of something called spacium energy, positive running through the right side of ultraman’s body and negative running through the left, with the spacium beam appearing when he connects those energies by crossing his arms.

fact no.3

Ultraman himself is made of spacium energy and its presence is vital for him to exist. the ultra-spark is what gave and gives the ultra species spacium energy, ultras can also produce it on their own using other types of energy (solar energy on earth for example) but are not as efficient as the source material, hence why on earth ultraman’s energy runs out quicker then it would for example in space where energy is more abundant.

What is spacium wasn't completely clear to me, what I understood was that Ultraman has it (I think it was his skin that was made out of spacium?) and uses it to convert solar energy into spacium energy. 

I think spacium is meant to be an original element. and from what a mutual kindly told me (thank you @bazookaboi!!) its atomic number is 133. very very unstable in natural environments and extremely radioactive, so with all due respect allow me to ignore that entirely and let it remain a mystery for everyone’s sake.

fact no.4

ultras as a culture have a very strong sense of justice and moral code. (and I guess very emotionally intelligent? empathetic? but i'm not sure about this part ;-;)

Now let us finally start with the Ultra spec bio:

i'll start from the less obvious half for my own sake, you may skip this part if you're here just for Kenji’s human part (which i won't blame you for the designers cooked with this one) but just so you know there would be parts you won't be able to understand.

general ultra spec bio: physiology and body structure (my favorite part):

Do ultras breathe? was my first question and my answer would be, i don't think so.

down to the cellular level cells use oxygen in order to generate chemical energy that comes in the form of ATP, out of glucose and oxygen with ATP and CO2 as the outcome. (The difference between animal and plant cells is how they get their glucose.)

Now ultras don't seem to eat, and why would they? and breathing is not necessary since they already get the energy they need from spacium converting outside energy into spacium energy, on the outside there’s the spacium, and on the inside there’s the spacium energy just running around. it can be let out in certain areas of the body, but essentially this energy is all held together by the ultra’s skin (also probably why ultras have no openings on their body, so there wouldn't be a leakage of their life soup).

An ultra's internal structure is unknown, or at least I haven't been able to find anything on the matter, but in the movie both Kenji and his dad get injured, which means that there is something to be damaged.

i really like how the film handles injury actually, it shows explicitly the consequences of a serious injury and how it can sometimes be a life changing thing. It has a blatant effect long or short term and I need someone to analyze it more in depth. I know someone will eventually.

part 1

All the people who wanted this, i call thee.

next, part 2

@wtf-a-psychoanalysis @fantasma-espacial @spuuks-s @theviewer @whimsicalloser @m1lf-hunter-69

[euclydtwins]

Euclydian Twins AU: Chapter 1

I will post the first chapter here since it's fairly short, hope you enjoy!

“Mr Cipher?”

A call came from the door behind him, one of the axolotl guards, no doubt taking him to his weekly wellbeing meeting. He ignored them for a moment, continuing to try and cut triangles out of paper with his kids craft scissors, the cheap junk made it impossible to cut.

Bill threw the scissors and paper down, frustrated, and turned to face the guard. Guard was a strong word, they’d probably tackle you if you got too out of line, but other than that they just stood around, looking at you with an annoyingly happy face.

Bill scowled and stomped behind the guard as they took him down the hallways, to the axolotl’s office, like he did every week. They’d check up on him, see if he was doing any better. The answer was always no, and if not that, it would just be silence.

After his embarrassing defeat, the Axolotl had taken pity on him, scooping him up from the verge of death. They fixed him up and sent him here, some interdimensional rehab, with all of the axolotl’s pet projects. While it wasn’t prison, they couldn’t leave. They had a large focus on therapy and expressing yourself, mostly through art, Bill found he actually enjoyed art, scrapbooking, painting, making puppets, he would just shut off his brain for a bit and have as much fun as he could muster.

The guard stood to the side of the door, not looking down at Bill. He sighed and pushed the door open, walking over and struggling to climb up the chair leg.

The Axolotl sat at the desk, their fingers clasped together, this was a form they took, sort of humanoid, considering every other demon and monster in this place was more or less bipedal it was probably to make them more comfortable. It made Bill wary though, why the humanoid shape? Why not stay the weird four-legged blob fish they’re supposed to be?

“Mr Cipher, I’m glad you could stop by, how have you been?”

“Please, Mr Cipher was my father, call me Bill” he joked, glaring at them.

Their blank, smiley expression stayed, they both sat in silence for a minute before the axolotl restated their question.

“How have you been, Bill?”

“Fine I guess, as fine as I can be.”

“So, no more disturbing visions or nightmares?” Bill had been having dreams and odd flashbacks ever since he came here, but he could never quite place what happened in them, it’s like after the fact they all burnt up and blurred.

He looked down, folding his arms.

“Not as often”

“Glad to hear it, it seems you’re on the right track to recovering.”

“Mhmm, can I go now? I have puppet making next and I don’t want to miss it.”

The axolotl stood up, not quickly and not in a threatening way, just, slowly, placing their four fingered hands together.

“I actually had a sort of proposal for you.”

Bill looked up at them properly, his eye squinted sceptically.

“About what?”

The axolotl walked slowly around the table, standing next to Bill on his chair.

“Well, your behaviour has been well lately, we have less concerns about you rehabilitation” Bill nodded along, only half listening now.

“And I think a good step in your journey would be a social life, friends and family to interact with.”

Bill scoffed.

“Hey, I interact with my fellow prisoners plenty, just before I told Gribley that I liked his painting in art, I mean it actually sucked but I was trying to get an extra sticker from the guards.”

They blinked once, staring down at the triangle with their unreadable expression.

“Well, recently two young children have come into my orbit, they’re recently orphaned, and I was thinking- “

“Babysitting? No way, why would you want ME to babysit some kids? I’m not exactly the fatherly type, or motherly- “

“Because they’re Euclydian, Bill.”

Cipher stopped yammering and froze, dead cold, like stone. His head started screaming at him, but there were no intelligible words that were said.

“I- Euclydian? You mean they- “

“No, they’re not from your dimension, but there were similar ones in the universe.”

He stopped, slumping down the chair, staring blankly at the desk Infront of him. Then he got up, standing on the chair and trying to look as tall as possible, he still didn’t reach the axolotl’s height.

“You mean to say, there were other universes where my dimension still existed, and you failed to tell me this before?!” The axolotl held a claw out before he could continue, it somehow silenced Bill, preventing him from going off on his tirade.

“Not anymore.”

That hurt, that hurt really bad. He sunk back down into the seat and stared blankly at the desk again. The Axolotl stood silently for a minute, before kneeling down besides the small chair, coming face to face with the triangle.

“That’s why these kids need you, would you want them to feel how you did?”

He didn’t have the energy to respond properly, they sat there in complete silence, Bill’s thoughts crashing around in his head like a tidal wave slamming into every side until it hurt.

“I’d like to go to bed early” he managed to mutter.

“But you haven’t even had dinner yet.”

“I’d like to go to sleep.”

The axolotl just nodded and stood up, a sadness now overcoming their expressionless face. Almost like they’d been summoned, two guards walked into the room, Bill hopped off his chair, staring at the floor, and walked to them.

“Take him to his room, he’s sleeping early tonight,” the two guards nodded and followed Bill as he slowly walked out of the room. But before the door closed, the axolotl called out.

“Please think about it.”

Bill lay awake in his bed. He didn’t actually need to sleep, or eat, or any of that, but the axolotl said getting into a schedule is good for him, and he’d grown to kinda like sleeping. Not having to think for a while, the only other times he’d really fallen asleep were when he used to take over Ford’s body, he’d pass out, and it would make even Bill tired. He’d never understand why humans didn’t sleep if they needed it so badly.

He caught himself before he kept thinking about it, Ford wasn’t what he should be focusing on, he should focus on sleeping. Unfortunately, the bed was really uncomfortable, if only he could float still, but all of his powers had been taken away.

His mind wandered to what the axolotl said, how would he even look after two kids in here?

He bolted upright.

They wouldn’t just let young kids in here, it was full of dangerous criminals from across the universe, would they let him go? Could he be free?

Where would he even go if he was given freedom? His mind dragged him to Gravity falls, the only other place he was really familiar with was the mindscape, and he didn’t really want to stay there.

He laughed at himself.

“What? You think Ford would take you in? Maybe you are delusional” he talked aloud, just sort of muttering to himself, realising that he sounded insane, but still not stopping. He stayed up so long that he was awake for actual curfew, all the odd creatures, monsters, and demons shuffled into their rooms.

Bill turned and looked at his wall, a line of photos hung up, he’d gotten them in a “memory photography class,” they had to take photos of stuff from their memory, whatever their mind subconsciously thought was important.

Half of them were him and Ford, a few were him hanging out with smart guys throughout history, and the rest he had burned. He just stared blankly at the wall, a wave of something overcoming him, some strong emotion he’d forgotten a long time ago.

He dug his face into the pillow and willed himself to sleep.

***

He had had a week to ruminate on the offer, thinking over the possibilities. When they took his powers, they took his precognition, so he couldn’t see the future anymore, but he still liked thinking over the outcomes of everything, he’d gotten good at it, he knew that anything could happen.

He yet again was cutting out triangles absentmindedly when a guard walked up to the door, he went through the motions, walking ahead of the guard towards the office.

The Axolotl sat at their desk, again with a blank smile on their face.

He climbed eagerly onto the chair.

“How have you been Bill- “

“Yeah okay, cut it with the bullshit, jump back to your proposal.”

“My proposal? From last week”

“I don’t think you’re cutting me any other deals” Bill leaned over to hold on to the side of the desk, but the chair was so far away, and his arms were small, so his legs fell off the seat. He ended up climbing onto the desk, standing at the edge of it.

“Did you have questions?”

“Yeah! What’s in it for me?”

The Axolotl pushed their hands together again, then leaned into one of the draws, grabbing paper and a pen. They started writing stuff down, not looking at Bill as he tried to lean over and see what was on the paper.

It was a list.

“You would look after these kids, and in return, we’d grant you partial freedom, at least until you prove to be better.”

“Partial freedom? What does that entail?”

“When we place you all, you’ll be able to do whatever you please, we will even give you back some of your powers.”

Bill started shaking.

“You wouldn’t be able to use it entirely, we’d set a limit to make sure you didn’t get too out of hand.”

It was the nice way of saying ‘we don’t trust you’ but Bill would take it. He nodded, acting like he was thinking, as if he hadn’t already made a decision.

“And where would I- we go?”

“I think Earth would be a good spot, considering how familiar you are with it, we would get you accommodations wherever you wanted.”

Bill was practically drooling, this was the offer of a lifetime, he’d be even more insane to NOT take it.

“In return for all of this, you would foster these kids, it would be beneficial for them to be with somebody similar.”

Similar? Even though the kids were the same species as him, there’s no way they could be anything like him, that’s what made him Bill Cipher, that’s what lead him to all of this.

Axolotl forgive any kid that could be like him.

“You’d be surprised” the axolotl replied to his thought, startling him, he’d forgotten they can hear when he ‘prays’ to them. Bill nodded again, as if he hadn’t just spaced out for a solid 5 minutes.

“So, it’s a deal then?” Bill said, holding out his hand and holding back a giggle.

“No, none of that, if you… or them, acted out at any time, you’d be bought back.”

Adding the kids to the statement sounded odd, what problems would they cause?

“Fine, I’ll accept it.”

The Axolotl genuinely smiled, standing up and walked past the desk, Bill hopped off and followed behind them.

He was allowed to grab his things that were in storage, change out of his fucking prison clothes, he felt like himself again, he was giddy, holding back giggles.

What suckers they would be, letting him free, he knew exactly what he’d do, he knew where he wanted to go, and if everything went according to plan, he’d hardly even need to look after those kids, he’d be a free man, or… triangle.

The Axolotl changed out of their humanoid form, back to the giant four-legged blob, it wasn’t their full size, but to Bill they were like a whale. He was led to a different building, it wasn’t a part of the rehab centre, it was somewhere new, they’d teleported at some point and he hadn’t even noticed.

The door they stopped at creaked open, some telepathic force from the axolotl. Bill walked inside, only just in the doorway when he stopped.

It was a kids’ playroom, and in the middle were two moving shapes, obviously Euclydian. But it wasn’t that that bothered him.

Hope you liked it! and if you want to continue reading this au, you can check out my ao3 where i will be posting the rest of the chapters

[fallingyams]

A twisted wonderland fic??? From me???? Shocking. Oddly enough, I haven't written for this fandom even though I adore it, so I guess this is my first. Pardon any odd characterisation and all that.

*Spoilers for twst Book 6: Watchman of the Underworld*

-----

What it Means to Live

-----

Having a heart is... less than optimal.

It had been a lot easier back then, before any of this happened.

All he had to do was follow the programming that was built into him. It told him how to act and how to feel and how to best be Ortho Shroud, Idia's little brother.

Before the Island of Woe, there had been no room for questioning. No room for doubt.

No room for the odd bubble of illogical guilt wedged in his chest as he watched his brother work on his latest stroke of technomantic brilliance.

The silhouette of his brother's back teased at memories; memories that were and weren't his superimposed on each other until he couldn't tell where one ended and the next began.

Even with the wealth of databases and manuals and the world's most advanced AI system at his disposal, Ortho felt unequipped to make sense of his newfound emotions.

"Nii-san..." he didn't quite know how to broach the topic at all.

"Hmm? What is it, Ortho?" Sharply looking up, his eyes fell on Ortho sequestered in a corner of the room.

Ortho hadn't even been able to bring himself to fly over where he'd normally be eagerly peeking over his shoulder to watch his brother at work.

"Do you..." his logical systems were surely failing him, unable to find the words that he needed. "Do you ever wish that Ortho had come back instead of me?"

Because while he had been created in Ortho's stead, Idia had always made sure that he was set apart from his real brother.

He may have been given Ortho's memories and mannerisms, but it had never slipped his notice that he'd been programmed to call him "nii-san". A small detail, but surely a difference enough that Idia could always remember that it wasn't the real Ortho before him.

A technomantic humanoid; a mechanical replacement -

One who had accidentally grown a heart and soul.

And surely that stings; knowing that his brother could never return, having failed him again when he lost his chance to bring his brother back, and yet his robotic replacement had somehow gained a sentient soul.

He wonders if Idia resents the fact that Ortho's newfound life had come at the cost of his brother's soul?

"Huh? Whatd'ya mean by that, Ortho?"

They called it a miracle of technomantic engineering that he'd broken free of his programming.

But now, this change to his circuitry; this permanent bug in his system means that he'll never be able to be Idia's Ortho ever again.

He may look like Ortho Shroud, from his voice to his recreated wisps of hair, and he may possess some of Ortho's memories, but he's his own person now.

And he can't help but wonder if it would have been better if he could have had somehow switched places with the real Ortho so that his brother wouldn't have to be stuck with his replacement.

He hears Idia's question, but he has no idea how to articulate any of these thoughts swirling in his mind. (For someone with the most up-to-date language databases in the world, you'd think he'd be more eloquent than this.)

Idia's still looking at him with that puzzled tilt to his head, trying to figure out what he's trying to get at. And then like a plug snapping into a socket, his face lights up with understanding and a heart-wrenchingly soft grin worms its way onto his brother's face.

"Ortho did come back."

It's a smile reserved for the days when it's just the two of them. When they stay up late into the night waiting on a new game release together, when Idia collapses in bed after a week of all-nighters working on a new piece of technology and Ortho crawls in after him, or when they crack their heads trying to write an excuse for why Idia can't return for that family event that would involve him socialising with other big shots in the field of magical research.

It's a smile with soft eyes and sharp teeth that mirror the features on Ortho's face.

He may be built in Ortho's image, but... some of the memories with Idia are his too. His very own.

And when Idia awkwardly shuffles over to pat him on the head, the warmth of his brother's fingers seem to make him forget whatever it was that was plaguing him in the first place.

Maybe it doesn't matter whether he is or isn't Ortho Shroud.

Past or present, he's always been Idia's little brother.

"You came back, Ortho."

And maybe that's good enough.

Thank u for dropping by agsjdhdk I rly have no idea where this came from but I hope you enjoyed it?? I just couldn't help thinking that having non-programmed emotions and newfound sentience would come with the problem of like... learning to make sense of them idk

kthxbye.

[incorrect-skylanders-quotes]

My (kinda disjointed) thoughts on some Skylanders ships (part 1)

Trying something new today! It's gonna be hard to write an opinion on Skylander ships, considering the fact that most of them are crackships and half the characters have really basic personalities, but I'll try my best. I'm starting with the dragon Skylanders, but I'll eventually cover other Skylander pairings in the future.

Spyro x Cynder: 9/10. Pretty basic, all things considered. It's the ship people choose because they were hardcore Legend of Spyro fans and shipped Spynder back then. I do think they have a good dynamic; Cynder's evil past is ripe with angst and hurt/comfort potential, and Spyro being the one to save her naturally makes him a perfect candidate to provide the "comfort" part. At the same time though, I understand the appeal of having them remain platonic since as of 2023, Skylanders is the only Spyro media to have both appear without any hint of romance between them.

Spyro x Sunburn: 6/10. It's mostly an ironic ship I thought of as a joke during the early days back when I only did incorrect quotes exclusively about the dragon Skylanders. I don't think Sunburn and Spyro would really have a whole lot of interesting interactions.

Spyro x Whirlwind: 1/10. I don't see the appeal. To me, they're just friends or coworkers. Nothing more than that. The only reason anyone ships this is that they hate Cynder or Spynder, but they also don't want to ship Spyro with the humanoid girls or Sonic Boom because "interspecies romance yucky"

Whirlwind x Cynder: 9/10. The opposite of Spywind. These two have a great dynamic, Whirlwind being ostracized for her mixed heritage, while Cynder's distrusted for her past as a servant of Malefor. The two could find a lot of comfort in each other due to their shared experiences. The only reason it's not a complete 10/10 is because I prefer pairing the two with other characters.

Whirlwind x Sunburn: 8/10. It's aight. I guess the way their backstories contrast is interesting, Whirlwind used to be hated for being a dragon hybrid while Sunburn was coveted for the same reason.

Whirlwind x Camo: 7/10. No strong opinions.

Sunburn x Camo: 8/10. I can see why it has appeal. Two pranksters goofin' off together is always nice.

Whirlwind x Sunburn x Camo: 9/10. Whirlwind and her two supportive bfs, who are also dating each other. I think overall I prefer polyshipping these three over their separate ships, but the reasons why are based entirely on fanon I made up regarding the three.

Whirlwind x Zap: 5/10 ...Eh? Nothing wrong with it, but I don't really see the appeal either. It's better than Spywind because the entire basis for the ship isn't just "a hetero dragon ship for Spyro that isn't Cynder"

Side note: Damn, Whirlwind has a lot of ships. Why is that?

Drobot x Camo: 8/10. I think it's really funny. Drobot the serious, intelligent, and logical-minded, while Camo is a jokester who makes fruit explode for shits and giggles. The contrast between serious and silly always makes for a fun dynamic, and I think if the two ever got meaningful interactions, Camo would be the guy who'd get Drobot to loosen up.

Bash x Flashwing: 8/10. This pairing actually has ground to stand on since it's one of the only ships that have actual potential for being canon. Bash falling in love with Flashwing is literally half of her backstory, and it's a standout trait for Bash and Skylanders in general. It's rare for Skylanders characters to actually have romantic feelings for anyone, much less each other, which is what makes this ship so appealing, it's potential for exploring this idea. Sadly, canon has not seen that potential. There's been no actual exploration of the pairing in Skylanders media, not even the comics or Skylanders Academy, which literally exist to flesh out the goddamn Skylanders. The closest we get is apparently from a book called "Skylanders Universe: The Complete Collection, page 39" which states Flashwing canonically likes Bash back, though she won't admit it out loud (don't quote me on this, I got it from the wiki). That's it. That's all we get. If the pairing actually got explored in official Skylanders material, then it'd be a 9 or a 10.

[spin-attaxx]

4 8 19 25 29

4. Fav character/subject that’s a bitch to draw

I love Charn, some days I'm surprised I made him, but I won't lie, his elaborate design is why I don't draw him as often as I'd like. Every time I draw him, I question how his lapels should look, or how his eyes would look at varying angles. This isn't to mention the more robotic/mecha-influenced parts of him that I haven't shown off yet.

For subjects, probably action scenes; I admittedly don't draw them a lot, because when I do, I usually find myself dissatisfied for one reason or another. "This pose is too stiff" or "that effect looks bad" or "that background could have been better", etc.

The weapon art for Make a Good Mega Man Level is a bit of both; I try to keep Mega Man accurate to the official Capcom weapon art, but also give each one a distinct pose or angle. Lot of time goes into those, trying to get the lineart, colours etc. just right.

8. What’s an old project idea that you’ve lost interest in

OK this is a bit of a cheat since it's something that was once part of something I very much have not lost interest in, but it's something I still remember even almost 10 years on. Back when I first came up with what would become The Sorceress of the Stars, my overambitious 15 year old self envisioned a game like Sonic 3 & Knuckles, with three different playable characters with their own stories and their own supporting cast. These were a kooky old scientist, a robot he made that would gradually become more humanoid over its story, and his grumpy magic-using granddaughter. That last one was just a funny afterthought.

(Incidentally this is how Charn became what he is; he was supposed to embody each of the trio's main aspects.)

I made some old comics with the three; however, after some time I realised that I was struggling for a title, what I was planning was very much unfeasible for one person, and I cared very much about the magic granddaughter's story, the robot's less so, and the scientist's even less than that. So I decided to cut those two and focus entirely on Jessica instead. Perhaps the robot at least may get revived in the future, as part of TSOTS or their own thing.

19. Favorite inanimate objects to draw (food, nature, etc.)

This is a tricky question; I'm not sure I draw a lot of inanimate objects, and the ones I do tend to be stuff I don't think about much (or outright not like drawing). I guess maybe something like clothing and starry night skies count? Let's go with that.

25. Something your art has been compared to that you were NOT inspired by

Many people both online and IRL have told me my art reminds them of Dragon Ball Z. For the longest time, I didn't actually follow it; the most influence I drew from it was basing Jessica's boots on Android 18's. These days I have an appreciation for Toriyama's art (particularly his style around the Piccolo and Saiyan arcs), but it's still not something I consciously try to imitate.

29. Media you love, but doesn’t inspire you artistically

I think the most prominent example that comes to mind might be Seasons 1 and 2 of Star vs the Forces of Evil. I'm typically not a fan of overly-cartoony movement or expressions etc., but that first season somehow managed to make it work, and it was never dull to watch. It's honestly a crying shame that by the final season, the animation, character design, and backgrounds became so flat, stiff, dully coloured and lifeless (I swear every episode the characters do the same Family Guy-esque "bottom eyelids up, hands outstretched" pose).

[smnthncl]

See, this damn fic idea keeps circling in my head, so I’m putting it here because I need to do something with it until I have time to write the full thing.

It’s basically Tav and Astarion working through both of their sexual trauma, Tav’s pisspoor ability to ask for help, and Astarion’s tendencies to hid behind a mask of drama, wit, sass, and humor to cover his fears wrapped in a neat little adventure to get our sad vampire boy into the sun both physically and emotionally.

//TW//: Sexual Assault, Abuse, Slight Gore, Connon-Typical Violence. Both Astarion and Ginger (Tav) have sexually abusive and violent back stories that are relevant to their emotional connection and the plot. They are referenced multiple times. If you can’t handle that, this isn’t for you.

Relavant Context: Non-Ascended Astarion, romanced, almost had the 5-some with Halsin and the drow twins but backed out for Astarion’s sake despite him saying he was down, chose the “let’s find a way for you to see the sun again” ending, pretty much All companions got their best ending (read: emotionally healthiest ending I could get them) (still kinda want a better ending for Karlach, but what can you do 🤷🏽‍♀️, next fic and play through with the new patch, I guess). I saved the grove and got Halsin and Jahira, not Minthara. Friends with the Myconid Colony by completing all their missions and killing Glut.

Time: A little over a year after the end of the game. I think the game happens during early/mid summer (Astarion mentions that there’s a difference between a warm summer’s day and the full power of the fucking sun if you drop the Temple of Lathander on the party and you say you though the tadpole would protect him), so it’s the beginning of fall. The days are getting shorter, and it’s getting colder.

Where: Beginning in BG, a chapter in the Underdark, half a chapter on the road, but mostly takes place in a different, home brew city I made for my actual D&D game called Whitry.

Power level: Roughly equivalent to level 15 for D&D nerds. Astarion is full Arcane Trickster Rogue and Tav is full Hunter Ranger. I min-max enough in real life D&D, this particular BG3 play through was about the story.

Tav: Ginger; Urchin Tiefling Hunter Ranger (28 during the game, 29 during the fic). She’s primarily a ranged fighter but is still damn good up close, heavy on the foraging and taking anything not nailed down. A little neurotic, probably has ADHD, prefers animals to humanoids 90% of the time, is about long-term self-preservation first and foremost, and loves hugs and cuddles. (Voice 6, V C for those curious.)

*see below; Alt Text is available* (It is cannon that she’s the spitting image of her mother except she has her dad’s eye and hair color exactly. Her mom has black hair and gray eyes. Her dad is pale like Dammon and his horns are longer.) (It is also D&D cannon that tieflings have a lifespan of roughly 180 years on average, maturing at the same age as humans. So being 28/29 is a bit more equivalent to a 24 year old human.)

WARNING: LONG BACKSTORY THAT IS RELEVANT TO THE PLOT BUT IS STILL VERY LONG

Backstory: more or less an orphan because her parents were enslaved by Zariel in Elterel but sent her off to live in Baldur’s Gate when she was ~11 to escape. It was a good idea because she escaped Zariel, but she ended up poor and on the streets of the Outer City. She foraged and hunted in the wilderness to feed herself and learned herbalism to make home remedies because she couldn’t afford a doctor (Explains the in-game potion making skills that I abused to hell and back (literally had a stash of 65 health potions at one point) and why cure wounds, good berry, speak with animals, and hunters mark are her most used spells). She did nearly anything for a coin to survive…

//TW//: Mentions of Teen SA and AGAIN Slight Gore, Canon-typical violence

Early on in the winter before her 16th birthday (late spring - think early/mid May), she wasn’t making much money from foraging. Hunting and selling furs wasn’t keeping her afloat anymore, and she got desperate* enough to turn to sex work despite her age.

*I don’t have have a problem with sex work. The issue is her age. She is aware that the people pursuing her are pedos and are likely very dangerous, hence calling the choice desperate.

It, unfortunately, paid well enough to help her rent a small shack of her own closer to the Upper City. The novelty of being a tiefling that looked fairly elven besides the obvious deviations (horns, tail, fangs, and ridges under her skin) brought a lot of interest from richer people. For the better part of the next year and a half, she financed her life this way - unhappily and disgusted with herself but otherwise comfortable.

That is until one of her richer clients, a knight named Ser Karreed Tange (human man, late 30s/early 40s, tan-ish, cropped blond hair, blue eyes - think the fake Paladin of Tyr hunting Karlach in Act 1 but older) became obsessed with her. It got to the point where he threatened her other clients to scare them off so he could schedule more of her time. He even got himself restationed to the keep nearest to her neighbor to see her more frequently. He was also a fan of more violent kinks that she did not enjoy, but couldn’t say no to as she needed the money (as was the case with many of her clients, but his were particularly demeaning and added greatly to her self-loathing about the whole experience).

When she rejected his offer to marry her (she’s still a few weeks shy of 17 at this point) and effectively keep her as a personal sex slave, he attacked her and r*ped her. Further, he cut her face to ‘ruin her beauty’ (that’s how she got the deep scar over her right eye; the smaller one on the left side of her chin she got from trying to fight back before the assault.).

She tried to report him to his captain, but none of them believed the kind knight they worked with would do such a thing, so nothing happened to him. She tried for the better part of a year to move on. She stopped seeing clients all together as many had stopped coming due to her injuries. She returned to hunting, moved back to her old place in the far east of BG, shaved her head, got her tattoo (the one that looks like smoke and goes around her left eye and wraps around the left side of her head and neck), and kept a low profile.

This worked until the next winter when Ser Tange was being dispatched east to Wakeen’s Rest. The staging ground for the march east was in her neighborhood, and he made himself known by sending a fucked up gift to her house. After having the panic attack from hell, she followed him from a bar and killed him, hiding his body in the woods she had been foraging in for half a decade, and she was never caught. She took everything on him she could sell or use including his heavy crossbow which became her favorite kind of weapon (The crossbow that banes people became her top weapon for most of the play through). A close friend, Rory (half elven trans man around her age, maybe a half year older, relevant later in the story) was her alibi and helped hide and eventually fence his armor and more conspicuous equipment.

She lived life as a bit of a vigilante for hire (hence her comfort with killing and looting people’s bodies) until the game starts, killing any known abusers in her community for a small fee. It took her a long time to be comfortable with sex again, but she is pansexual and most comfortable as closed polyamorous* or monogamous.

*closed poly meaning a defined group of people with no open dating outside of the defined group. (Halsin, for example, wouldn’t fit because he’s open to anyone that strikes his fancy; he’s open polyamorous.)

Their Dynamic: Ginger and Astarion haven’t really had sex since grave yard (The almost 5-some happened after that). Ginger has, beyond just being a morally sound person, an issue with feeling like she’s even potentially forcing someone to be intimate with her, so she doesn’t initiate with Astarion for his comfort. Astarion hasn’t really initiated anything because he has a hard time combining actual love and intimacy with sex. They are a very affectionate couple still, as both of them are heavily touch starved, especially in the context of non-sexual intimacy. They both want to have sex but are waiting for the other to say something about it because they don’t want to make the other uncomfortable. They are very openly in love with each other, but also mutually pining.

THE ACTUAL STORY EXPLANATION STARTS HERE:

This is my idea, please don’t take it. I want to share because I don’t have time to write it all right now, but I will on Ao3 eventually.

Basically, it’s been a year since the destruction of the Elder Brain, and Astarion and Ginger have made some progress on their mission but no permanent solutions. The best they have when the fic begins is a potion Ginger makes from the oil of a specific mushroom from the Underdark that grows from dead drow, duegar, and deep gnomes when the Myconids take over their bodies. Obviously not easy to get as those are sentient being. Thankfully due to the good relationship, they kindly gave them some spores to propagate a small patch. It’s still not enough to make sun walking an everyday occasion, though. The potion works for about 24 hours and needs to be applied to any part of his body that sees the sun, hair included, which he hates. It smells nice - woodsy pine and jasmine - but he doesn’t like feeling that greasy. The massages are great, though.

They have a lead on a witch that’s a friend of Gale’s. She rarely visits Waterdeep or Baldur’s Gate, but she’ll be in BG for a few days to visit her parents’ graves (personal reasons that will get mentioned later). Laurelle (Lore - ELLE) Jin (half siren/half half-elven (high elf) transmutation wizard and a touch of druid for reasons. She looks low key Jamaican mixed with Korean in the sketch I did of her, hence the name) is a potion maker and enchanter that used to be Tara’s hook up for items to feed Gale. Given how powerful she is and her half-century “friend”ship (read: situationship) with a hybrid werewolf-vampire, she seems like their best hope to finding a solution.

They meet Laurelle not long after she gets into town, and she immediately likes Ginger as a fellow potion maker (I have an adorable nerd-out over her vampire-grade SPF 9001 interaction that Astarion has to interrupt with a, “ahem, sorry to interrupt this deeply fascinating conversation, but we have a task to complete, my love” scene idea).

They inform her of the item they would like her to enchant, AND SHE CAN MAKE IT! (Into a nice ring, too!) But there are a few issues:

1. She needs moonstone, adamantine, and some of Ginger’s Underdark mushrooms to make the ring.

2. And the bigger issue, Astarion needs to be a full vampire, not a spawn, to use the item as the magic would overwhelm having the opposite effect - sunlight would incinerate him even faster, and he even would develop a sensitivity to moonlight - if he’s not strong enough. This obviously has its own subset of issues:

He needs Cazador’s blood to complete the transformation. His body has just been decaying in his abandoned Palace for a year+, so he’s all dried out. Also, it’s fucking Cazador’s palace.

The vampire transformation will corrupt his mind and make him more evil, paranoid, and power hungry (literally a D&D thing; the transformation changes the creature’s alignment). Laurelle mentions that Astarion would have already undergone some personality changes when he became a spawn, but that it wasn’t strong enough to totally override his actual personality yet. (Literally the only reason we could talk him down in the game is because the real person was still in there)

Post completing the transformation, he’s going to be hungry as all fuck, and will need to drain a full person, maybe two or three given how powerful Cazador was. A snack on Ginger to hold him over until he can hunt isn’t likely won’t cut it. He’ll be ravenous and probably won’t be able to stop once he starts. On top of it, animal blood won’t satisfy him enough despite filling his stomach.

The first issue is easily fixed with a day trip to the Underdark, so that’s not all that concerning.

The second and all it’s sub-issues are where the plot kicks in.

The first sub-issue is actually already solved, as Ginger had taken a potion bottle of Cazador’s blood the night after Astarion killed him. She had left him in their rooms at the inn to decompress in a hot herbal bath and secretly took Halsin, Gale, and Shadowheart back to the Palace and taken some with their help. This revelation earns her a look from Astarion that is clearly the beginning of him spiraling internally, but he stays uncharacteristically quiet as Ginger continues to strategize with Laurelle to circumvent the remaining issues.

There already exists an item that protects someone from mental corruption (read: alignment changes) during transformations like this. The Netherese magic that protected them from the tadpoles is basically it. Ginger questions if it would have protected Astarion during the Ascension. The answer is no, because the magic wasn’t focused on protecting him; it was encapsulating the tadpole (Laurelle is horrified when Ginger and Astarion explain the full details of both the Ascension pact and the tadpoles). However, Laurelle knows where to get the item, and it also lead into the solution she has for the last issue.

In her home town of Whitry, there is a shifty merchant who trades in stolen and fake artifacts. Many are made in his secret sweatshops where he forces the more monstrous races (orcs, bugbears, ogres etc.) to work for next to nothing is shitty conditions. One of the few real items he owns is on display in his home, and he’s having an end of summer gala - to which she has an open invite to - in a little less than 2 weeks. Laurelle suggests kidnapping him right after the gala and stealing the artifact then to cover their own tracks, since he’s otherwise rather reclusive when he’s not selling or posturing to the public pretending to be an adventurer.

As for the potential two extra bodies that Astarion will need, there are two criminals in Whitry that Laurelle’s “friend”, Daniel (human open hand Monk/thief Rogue Bounty Hunter werewolf/vampire hybrid; he’s Asian in appearance; bulky Seo Changbin or Bang Chan from Stray Kidz but just a little taller, has a deep as voice like Song Mingi from ATEEZ, face like Dori Sakurada) had been hunting down for a little while, and he wouldn’t mind a hand capturing and dealing with them.

One is luring people from bars, and they’re never seen again. The other serial r*pist and murderer with a thing for fem-presenting tieflings that’s recently started emerging in the last few weeks.

The mention of the first’s MO leaves a familiar, sour taste in Astarion’s mouth. The mention of the second, for reasons Astarion is unaware of (he knows about her sex work days, doesn’t know about her age at the time or the knight. He thinks she stopped because she got hurt hunting. She hates talking about it, and he doesn’t make her.), causes Ginger to internally freak the fuck out.

I will stop to note that both of them have damn good poker faces, so Laurelle isn’t really aware of the two of them having internal breakdowns, but Ginger and Astarion know each other well enough to know when The Mask™️ slips on.

With a clear enough plan, Ginger and Astarion plan to set off to the Underdark right away, portal back to BG to resupply for the day-and-a-half trip south, set out, and then meet Laurelle in Whitry in a few days.

This is chapter 1.

During the trip to the Underdark, while in the Sêlunite Temple looking for the shard of the shattered moonstone, Astarion asks Ginger why she took the blood and why she never told him. His tone is accusatory.

Because she’s never been all that good at explaining herself (not really a skill you need when you raised yourself from the age of 11 and you’ve been pretty much alone for the last 2 decades), she says “I was scared that I would lose you, so I just wanted all options present.”

Astarion immediately imagines the worst even if he knows it’s irrational. He spirals thinking if she would use the blood to make him subservient to her so he couldn’t leave her. He tries to bury that idea, but the next idea springs to mind: does she think he’s weak? Was not as strong as the other companions? Did she not trust his ability to fight the Elder Brain? Another train of thought: does she pity him? Is that why she’s stayed? Does she feel sorry for making him cower from the sun? Has all her ‘love’ been a show to keep him on the line until she can “fix” him? Is he a project to her? Is that why she hasn’t slept with him in a year? He tells himself he would deserve that considering how he had pursued her under false pretenses initially, how he had only laid with her once out of true love in the graveyard. Had she done that out of pity as well?

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asks darkly, abandoning the search.

Ginger doesn’t get the question, “Exactly what I said. I didn’t want to lose you.” She didn’t understand that he meant for her to explain how she feared losing him. She didn’t realized he wasn’t making her same leaps in logic.

She didn’t say it was because she feared he would resent her for convincing him to give up that power and leave her. She didn’t say it was because she rightly feared than none of her companions were strong enough to fight the Elder Brain. She didn’t say she feared that his siblings would get power hungry first, get Cazador’s blood, and try to control him, so she drained him of enough blood for Astarion to complete the transformation, had Halsin incinerate the body, Shadowheart consecrate the ashes so he could never be resurrected, and had Gale magically hide them away forever so no one could find them to try. She didn’t say that she was going to bring it up during the exact conversation where he thanked her for not letting him ascend because she felt horrible for doing all of that and not telling him let alone getting his input. She didn’t say it when he took her to the grave yard to see his head stone. She didn’t say it because she’d finally been made love to for the first time and she was scared he would hate her for making all of those decisions for him.

Astarion starts ranting, questioning her down the whole spiral of his thoughts. He’s accusatory because he’s hurt and sacred himself.

Normally level-headed, Ginger feels backed into a corner. He’s honestly the first person she’s ever loved romantically. Beyond that, he’s also one of her first truly close friends, Karlach and Shadowheart being her closest friends outside of him (wine girlies for life). So instead of seeing his hurt, she gets defensive and angry as well, taking particular offense to being compared to Cazador when he asks about her cooking up a potion to make herself his master.

“Where the fuck did you get all of that from? When did I ever say anything remotely close to any of that?”

“What else is ‘all options present’ supposed mean then?” he snaps. He gets even angrier as she has not only not abandoned the moonstone search but has now also started collecting mushrooms growing on rotting burlap sacs to her alchemy pouch, instead of facing him.

“Gods above and below, damn it all! Will you stop being a pack rat that will do anything for a coin for five fucking seconds and look at me!” He snaps louder, fully yelling at her, voice a booming echo across the stone work.

The sudden command and unintentionally jab at her past pissed her off, and she wheeled on him, “First of all, fuck you-”

He’s in her face but hasn’t touched her. She hadn’t even hear him approach, damned rogue.

Something about the distant brasier light, barely embers, hits just wrong enough, and Ginger is back to that night. The anger turns to panic. The urge fight makes her body tense, coiling like a spring. She cool darkness of the temple suddenly feels oppressive. She can barely breathe. It takes every fiber of her being to recognize that Astarion isn’t Karreed and that she doesn’t need to lash out.

Astarion sees the change, literally watching her entire body go from the lithe, practiced grace of a skilled hunter to stone-still. Everything from the animated way she speaks with her hands to the casual sway of her tail - though it had been sharper when she was angry - comes to a dead halt. Her arms pull to her side. The only movement is the obvious urge to reach for her rapier that she’s fighting.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t know that she’s not actually afraid of him. He doesn’t know that the panic he sees in her eyes isn’t because she thinks he would actually hurt her. The spiral in his mind clouds him from seeing her try to reconcile her reality with something else.

All sees is more evidence that Cazador’s blood was going to be used to control him somehow. Only now he doesn’t think it’s because she was potentially evil and vindictive like Cazador. He thinks it’s because she scared of being hurt by him. That he’d hurt her, maybe not even on purpose, or maybe he’d lose his mind and become power hungry like Cazador again, and she’d have to kill him. That’s how she thinks she’d lose him. She loves him so much she’d rather control him than kill him. She probably wouldn’t even use the potion to control him unless she absolutely had to. It’d probably only be after she exhausted every other avenue. She knows how much he values his freedom. She wouldn’t unless there was no other option.

He softens immediately, “My love, my angel…” he reaches out to embrace her, not knowing how to apologize for giving her the idea that he would harm her.

Ginger, still steeped in panic with anger simmering just underneath it, is too consumed by her inner turmoil to notice the change in demeanor and flinches away. The tiniest voices of reason in her mind and heart chastise her immediately for it, screaming at her that he’d never, but she not of present enough mind to say more than, “Please don’t touch me, Astarion.”

Astarion’s world goes cold, bone achingly cold. He had spent a year alone in a crypt, and this was colder. Never once since they had decided to pursue something real together had they denied each other affection.

Further, Astarion couldn’t remember the last time Ginger had used his name plainly. He couldn’t remember the last time he used hers. If either had, it was followed up with some sort of pet name. Their favorites had been the more ironic ones. She called him her star despite his sunlight affliction, and he called her his angle despite her infernal heritage.

Now, he is being hit with the loss of both at once, and he’s sure he’d rather take the full blast of a cone of cold head on than feel like this.

All he can do is acquises, “Alright…”

She won’t even look him in the eye. She’s gone almost totally internal; all the walls he thought had broken down in his presence reveal themselves to be fully in tact. After few moments like this, the hard determined exterior that he had encountered for most of his first days with her had returned.

In a forced, quiet tone, she speaks, “Let’s just finish getting what we came for,” then turns away, returning to her gathering.

Ginger spends the rest of the chapter quiet and specifically not ‘being a pack rat’ despite Astarion clearly seeing her eyes clock chasm creepers and timmask spores she’d recently learned to weaponize into laughing bombs. If he didn’t know he lacked the harvesting skills she had, he’d have made an attempt, but blowing them up doesn’t feel like a great idea, so he sticks with collecting the chasm creepers, sneaking them into her pouch.

When they run through the forge to find some spare adamantine, she only speaks once to warn him a grate she stopped on didn’t feel stable anymore. And during the boat ride back to the Myconids, she only occasionally mumbles to herself as she organizes their packs while he steers.

Astarion spent the remaining trip dumbfounded by her. He scared her, he thought, and yet she was still loving to him. He’d made a half-assed comment about something and her behavior changed immediately, though he didn’t really care about her pack rat tendencies, and he hopes his stealthy gathering on her behalf corrected that misconception. He actually finds them rather endearing and useful (plenty of his gear was financed by them). She still organized his pack for him just the way he liked, adding more of the potions and tinctures she made with impressive speed - especially on a boat - as she went. Hells, she’s still actively pursuing the materials for his daylight ring.

All of it makes him feel particularly undeserving of her, and little does he know, she feels the exact same way about him.

They take the ascent to the surface through the entrance the hide out in Wakeen’s Rest. Killing the traders and leaving the cavern in tact had been useful after all. Gale’s portals (my way of explaining the waypoints) were fun and all, but Ginger likes walking. It gives her time to think. It is unfortunately mid afternoon when they resurface, so they camp out in the storage house above the hide out until dark.

That’s Chapter 2.

They spend the next 7-10 chapters painstaking slowly resolving this misunderstanding, getting better at communication, and completing their mission with a satisfying second and third dose of revenge on a former abuser. Also, they make new friends, find a nice place to settle down, and find jobs that don’t require them to risk their lives 24/7 (but there is an adventure to be had sometimes). I also intend to leave an ambiguous thread open for them to find a way to pursue a form of non-vampiric immortality for Ginger on the side with Laurelle’s help. Also, potential for Dhampire Babies!?

Tentative name: For Her Star

The sequel about finding immortality for her being: For His Angel

low key very obsessed with sex-adverse Astarion. like he's The Thirst Companion. The fucking Only Fangs joke. All the smut fan content. And then it does a total 180 and he's like "actually my sexual identity was weaponized against me and i was forced to use it to lead hundreds of people to their deaths". It's just such a compelling and interesting twist on his character. I love it.

[the-silly-urge]

Listened to The Fear Song by Amanda Palmer and thought it reminded me of the Dark Urge, started thinking about it through the lens of Kilvir (my full Bad Choices Kill As Many People As Possible Durge)

Thinking about Kilvir helping Astarion ascend not because he wants power for either of them, not necessarily out of care, but because he would be the perfect thing to be scared of. They will both be objectifying each other until their eventual murder-suicide (or other "one dies and the other follows" situation)

More + some lyrics interpretations I Guess idk!!

I'd honestly make a little animatic to this song if drawing humanoids wasn't so taxing to me LOL Anyways-

"I've seen how people work I've watched them all these years They are not driven by ambition All their motors run on fear" Kilvir letting his slight infatuation and preconceived notions make him believe that Astarion is less scared than he is, less moved by fear than the mortals they travel with.

"Each one afraid of aging, dying Being lonely, getting caught" I was thinking of who Kilvir would be referring to with each of these- I'm not sure who would fit aging, Astarion seems pretty chuffed about being eternally young, but re: my last point, couldn't really be him. Minthara fits for dying, as she hates her own mortality. First that I thought of for lonely was Shadowheart, say what you want, I feel like she's pretty desperate for genuine connections. Karlach could be getting caught- Caught by Zariel. I also thought of Wyll but it would be more metaphorical considered Mizora 100% knows where he is at all times.

"They're terrified of moving on But scared of staying here" For these I thought of Gortash and Orin. Kilvir wouldn't know about this per se, but I feel like Gortash doesn't feel as sure of himself, carrying on with out Durge, "moving on" without them, so to speak. Even though his relationship with Kilvir specifically was far from pretty or... Traditionally loving, he was still important to him. He helped him come up with all this, and now he's meant to just replace him with Orin? Rule the world, yes, but not with the one he made all these plans with? For? Orin being "scared of staying here" is way more out there. It's more so "staying here" in terms of remaining at her station, not being Bhaal's Chosen, not receiving the adoration- or at least appreciation- her sloppy slaughter-sibling gets. She wants her Father's love, to douse the world in blood for him, better than Durge ever could. I'm not that knowledgeable on Orin's character but I know there is some fear in her- Like when she's turned into the Slayer against her will, I believe, it is specifically noted that she is scared and betrayed.

"I wish I was afraid because [...] If you're not scared, you're not in love" Watching Astarion as his spawn-consort, he gives him control to compel him and ignore his free will, a vampire, someone meant to be naturally fickle and vicious- just like him. And what is scarier than that? No mortal love could make his heart race the way the fear of losing himself could.

[yellowocaballero]

Jon's Trapped in Temporal Time-Out: A TMA Time Travelling Tale

Sasha was tipping some whiskey from her secret flask into her tea when Tim poked his head into the breakroom and announced that he had found a corpse.

Sasha and Martin, hunched over their paltry lunches and pathetic lives situated upon a rickety metal breakroom table and equally rickety metal chairs, stared at him. 

“Like,” Sasha said finally, “a human one?”

Tim shrugged. “Humanoid? I didn’t want to poke it and see if it was fleshy, so I guess the jury’s out.”

Hm. Sasha put her flask away. The day was no longer boring, so it was unnecessary. 

The most relevant questions ought to be asked first. “Should we tell Jon?”

“He might throw a bitch fit about how corpses are unhygienic, so no?”

Martin drained his tea and stood up from the rickety metal chair, resigned. “I’ll get the broom.”

I kept on bitching about how much I dislike the beginning scenes of TMA time travelling AUs so my friend @lazuliquetzal​ (who wrote the best TMA time travelling fic in the fandom) told me to put my money where my mouth is. It’s nowhere near her level, but in my defense it’s probably even stupider than Reflection. 10K of stupid under the cut. 

Sasha was tipping some whiskey from her secret flask into her tea when Tim poked his head into the breakroom and announced that he had found a corpse.

Sasha and Martin, hunched over their paltry lunches and pathetic lives situated upon a rickety metal breakroom table and equally rickety metal chairs, stared at him. 

“Like,” Sasha said finally, “a human one?”

Tim shrugged. “Humanoid? I didn’t want to poke it and see if it was fleshy, so I guess the jury’s out.”

Hm. Sasha put her flask away. The day was no longer boring, so it was unnecessary. 

The most relevant questions ought to be asked first. “Should we tell Jon?”

“He might throw a bitch fit about how corpses are unhygienic, so no?”

Martin drained his tea and stood up from the rickety metal chair, resigned. “I’ll get the broom.”

****

There was, indeed, a corpse in the Archives.

More specifically, in the stacks. The worst place to die, or least be dumped. Sasha had to admit the logic of it: it was the darkest depths of the library that Martin had informed her was ‘somewhat creepy’ and ‘kind of ominous’ so ‘please stop sleeping there you’re going to give me a heart attack’. After Martin flipped on a few lights that were never flipped on (apparently Elias was a cheapskate, which explained the breakroom) they could all gawk at the corpse to their heart’s content. 

Very kindly and thoughtfully, Tim asked Martin if he wanted to stay out of the library and maybe to ‘tell someone’ or something. Both Sasha and Tim had mutually and silently agreed that Martin seemed the type to have a delicate constitution. Granted, he hadn’t seemed the type to win Magnus Anarchist every month by breaking into abandoned buildings with absolutely no shame, so maybe he was the kind that surprised you. 

But Martin had just looked a little unimpressed. “Do you seriously think this is my first corpse? I went to university.”

That somewhat intimidated Sasha, who abruptly worried that she had missed out on an essential university experience again. “Is that a typical university experience?”

Martin paused a beat. 

“Uh,” he said, “yeah, sure, of course. Hazing, you know.”

“Is that what hazing…?”

“Fraternities.”

Tim, from where he had been standing at the entrance to the stacks snapping on the sterile gloves he had liberated from the cleaning supply closet, looked delighted. “You were in a frat too, Martin? What kind of hardcore frat had corpse hazings? Was it the Sigma Gammas? My frat always thought they were way too crazy, but we were a business one -”

“You know what,” Martin said, “let’s just worry about the corpse.”

After Sasha tied her hair in a ponytail and Martin snapped on his own gloves, they awkwardly approached the aisle where Tim had been trying to find a reference book for Jon. Sasha was worried that they would have to hunt for it a little, or that there would be a bad jump scare, but when they found it she saw that it wasn’t subtle at all.

It was sprawled on the ground, face mashed into the cheap and somewhat gross carpet. Sasha approached it with absolutely no hesitation, which Tim and Martin gladly let her do, and squatted down to get a better look at the figure. 

She definitely needed to make a coroner’s report. She was the objective expert in coroner’s reports. 

 “Tim, can you run back and get one of Jon’s silly little tape recorders for my coroner’s report?”

“Did you just see that on the telly?” Tim asked skeptically. “Because if you did -”

“Oh, here one is. That’s really convenient!” Martin grabbed one off the shelf and pressed play, letting the tape roll. “Good idea, Sasha. We need proof to Jon that we were researching.”

Probably...not what Jon meant for them to be researching, but Sasha liked to believe that it was the intent that mattered. She pulled a pencil out of her pencil skirt pocket, poking the figure thoughtfully. “Report by Sasha James, Archival Assistant.” There, now it was work. “At 1:30pm today, Tim Stoker discovered a corpse in the Archives, thereby referred to as John Doe -”

“Do we have to call it John Doe?” Tim complained, standing next ot her and crossing his arms. “Then we have too many Johns, it’ll get confusing.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sasha said dismissively. “Ours is Jon, this guy’s John. Completely different.”

“Sasha, I’m not sure that’s how words work.”

“What are you, an English major?”

“Yes! I was an editor for a living!”

“Sorry if I don’t listen to guys who were fired from book editing school -”

“Uh,” Martin said, “have we checked to see if he’s actually dead?”

Sasha and Tim fell silent. Sasha looked at Tim. Tim shook his head. 

“Seriously, mate?” Sasha asked, unimpressed. 

“I didn’t want to touch the corpse!” Tim cried. “So sue me! It’s not as if he’s moving!”

Pussy. Sasha gently reached out and pushed aside a little of the corpse’s very long and pretty curly hair. What was that, 3C? Jesus, that had to be work. Sasha was 3A and the amount of hair care products she owned was insane.

She waved her hand at the boys for silence and put her thumb against his pulse, concentrating hard. Martin quietly walked over and crouched down too, eyeing his chest. 

“I don’t feel a pulse,” Sasha said finally. 

“Also, uh, I’m not a doctor,” Martin said, “but he’s definitely not breathing.”

“I told you,” Tim said defensively. “You just look at the thing, and you go - yep, that’s a corpse!”

“Corpse appears to be an ethnically ambiguous adult man with very nice hair,” Sasha said loudly. Martin helpfully held out the recorder to catch her voice better. “Maybe 190cm. Incredibly skinny - potential cause of death. He’s dressed in...some very ratty clothing. Potentially homeless.”

“It definitely smells,” Tim said, pinching his nose. Sasha didn’t blame him - the clothing was an overlarge green hoodie, ratty and threadbare, and his jeans weren’t any better. His boots were worn and soft leather. “Maybe he’s a homeless guy who snuck in and died?”

“That’s so sad,” Martin said softly. “Also a little gross.”

“Have some respect for the dead, guys,” Sasha said, as she poked the dead guy with a pencil. “Tim, go flip him over.”

Tim held his hands up, stepping away. “I couldn’t possibly. Martin loves flipping people over.”

“This again?” Martin asked, frustrated. “This is just like when you made me handle the Rawlings case because you’re scared of the suburbs!”

“They have too many eyes, Martin!”

“I am surrounded by cowards,” Sasha noted for the recorder. Nothing for it, then. Sasha carefully straightened, wobbling on her heels, before solidly wiggling her hands underneath the corpse’s chest. He was cold - dead a while. 

It was surprisingly difficult to flip over a limp adult man. Sasha was strong, but the corpse’s flesh was weak, and he was all floppy. Eventually Tim got over himself long enough to help her, making a very disgusted face the entire time, and they were able to finally get a good look at the man’s face.

Abruptly, upon seeing it, they all quieted. 

There was something about seeing a man splayed out on the ground that was a little funny, if you worked for the Magnus Institute and had probably encountered a Leitener two years ago and lost all empathy. No more impediments in the search for science. But there was something very different about looking at a person, who had a nose and lips and a very ratty hoodie, and knowing that it was no longer a person. Just a lot of cloth and meat and blood and organs and nice hair that once was a person, back when things were easier and the world was a little less harsh.

But maybe Sasha was caught by sentimentality: after all, the corpse looked a little like Jon.

Judging from the stunned faces of her compatriots as they all bent around the figure, they all thought the same thing. Tim’s jaw was open, and Martin’s hand was covering his mouth in shock. 

“Man,” Tim said. ���This sucks. And it’s really creepy.”

“He must have been really gorgeous,” Martin said. “That’s so sad.” 

Actually, Sasha tilted her head and took another look. He had sharp and severe features, elegant and striking. A large and thin, sharp nose, and equally sharp lips. His face was just as sharp and gaunt, as emancipated as the rest of him. He had strange scars trailing up his neck and curving around his jaw, but it just kind of accentuated the intense atmosphere. 

It was probably a pretty stupid thing to focus on, but in her defense it wasn’t really the face of a homeless guy. Well, maybe. Hot homeless people existed.

Sasha frowned. She’s only met one other person this hot. 

“Hey,” she said, “doesn’t he look like Jon?”

Both the men titled their heads. 

Finally, Tim said, “Nah, he’s hotter.”

“Agreed,” Sasha said. “I think the scars really do it.” 

“Uh, guys,” Martin said. 

Sasha grabbed her tape recorder out of Martin’s hands, resuming her coroner’s report. “Subject appears to be in his thirties. Weirdly attractive, but that’s probably not as important as we feel it is.” She looked down at his hands, carefully using her pencil to push up the sleeve. “What looks like an aged and badly healed burn scar on his right hand. Supports homeless guy evidence.”

“Knife scar over his throat,” Tim quietly observed. “Someone tried to kill this guy.”

“Guys,” Martin said. 

“Well, I guess this is the point where we worry about body disposal,” Sasha said, straightening. “I think Elias could handle this discreetly and professionally, but that might involve letting Jon know. And I don’t think any of us want that kind of stress in our lives.”

“So, are we not even pretending to want to call the cops, or…?”

“Listen to me!”

Both Tim and Sasha shut up, somewhat guiltily. Martin had straightened too, fists balled, looking firm and determined and resolute - everything that Martin wasn’t, really. Martin lived unsure of himself, never expressing his own feelings or ending every opinion with an “I don’t know, maybe, that’s just my thoughts, what do you think?”. 

So Tim and Sasha paid attention, and when Sasha nodded encouragingly at him he seemed to find further courage. Solemnly, with the air of a wise man by the side of the road, Martin said, “This guy isn’t hotter than Jon.”

Christ. Sasha takes it all back.

 Tim propped a hand on his hip supportively as Sasha rolled her eyes. “Look, mate,” Tim said, “I know that you think Jon’s the hottest person in existence, and maybe objectively he’s fine as hell, but once you know him for longer than three months he loses all attractiveness. It would be like being into the DMV clerk. The really pretentious cousin at all of your family reunions who tries to explain your own job to you. The dude in your English class who thinks he invented feminism.”

“That was you,” Sasha said. 

“I am the objective expert in Jon,” Martin said firmly, shutting down the dissent. “He’s, like, my muse, okay? And can I say, as I have spent so many long hours memorizing the curve of his jaw - that’s the same jaw.”

If Sasha had a retort to that, or if Tim wanted to judge Martin for his taste in men further, neither of them had a chance. There wasn't an opportunity to say anything more, because the corpse opened its eyes. 

Sasha’s first thought was this: wow, what green eyes. 

Sasha’s second thought was: the fuck?

His eyes didn’t focus on her, or snap anywhere. They drifted a little lazily, fixed on the right, but the man was undoubtedly aware. His fingers twitched, he tilted his head from left to right, and his left hand - doubtlessly the hand that still felt texture - clenched the thin and cheap rug. The man’s jaw slackened a little, as if in surprise. 

For their part, the Assistants frantically looked at each other, all conveying the exact same thought - you said he was dead!

Sasha froze to her spot, petrified. She could handle corpses, or coroner’s reports, or mysteries. Sasha was intelligent, unkind, firm, socially incompetent, and a Libra. She could handle the dead, but the living? Sasha had no idea what to do with alive people.

But Tim did. He hesitated two moments, reeling back in shock, before he abruptly composed himself. He crouched down to the guy, and modulated his voice to sound calming and firm. “Hey, don’t strain yourself. Are you alright? Do you hurt anywhere?”

The man turned his head in Tim's direction, hiding his expression from Sasha, but she saw Tim’s eyes widen. Martin, standing closer to his feet, wrung his hands - clearly torn on what to do, uncertain how to help. Martin always hated being uncertain how to help the most. Which was pretty unfortunate, because Martin always wanted to help, and Martin was always uncertain. 

“Can you speak?” Tim asked gently. “If you can’t speak, go ahead and knock on the floor for me, okay?”

“If we pack him into your car, we can say that we found him on the street,” Sasha piped up. As much as she distrusted NHS, and as much as the NHS refused to touch anybody who had ever stepped foot inside the Institute, they could hardly refuse somebody if they just lied their ass off about it. “They’ll have to treat him then, right?”

“We could make it so much worse if we move him,” Martin said quickly, just as strangely firm. “We need to take our chances with 999.”

“We don’t even know if he’s injured,” Sasha pointed out, somewhat optimistically. “Maybe this whole thing can just, like, not be a problem.”

Yeah, Sasha definitely preferred corpses. 

The man was opening and closing his mouth, before he coughed wetly. Sasha clinically noted that it was the first time she had seen his chest move. As Tim reached forward, murmuring gently, and helped the man sit up, she saw that his chest didn’t move at all.

“Alright, let’s try to get you up.” Tim helped the man shift so he was leaning against the bookcase - uncomfortable, but a better position if he started coughing up blood. “We should fetch you some water - Martin, I don’t think he has any injury like that, he just seems out of it. His eyes aren’t focusing on me at all.”

Strangely, the man scoffed at that. The sound made him cough again, but the derision was unmistakable.

The derision was extremely familiar. 

When Sasha looked at Martin his eyes were wide behind his glasses, and she knew that he had heard the same thing that she did. 

Finally, with a raspy and hoarse voice, the man said, “Well, isn’t this fucking fun.”

Everybody stared at him. His voice...different, definitely, with a less posh accent and strained vocal cords scratching his tones. But when Sasha glanced at Tim, she just knew that he was remembering when Jon had insisted on coming into work with a terrible cold and Martin had to bully him home. He had sounded eerily like…

“Is this your idea of a joke?” the man said. 

Tim, from where he was crouched next to the guy, turned his attention back to him. “I’m a funny guy, but last time I checked head injuries aren’t a joke.” He tracked his finger across the man’s eyes, frowning when they didn’t follow. “You definitely have a concussion, mate. If you can walk, we need to -”

“Lord, alright, I get it.” The man raised his burned hand and clumsily rubbed his eyes. “You’re mad at me, I’m sleeping on the couch, whatever. Is all of this really necessary?”

“Uh,” Tim said intelligently. “Mate, I’m not your boyfriend.”

The man waved his other hand in Tim’s direction as he pressed his fingers into his eyes in exhaustion. “I’m hardly speaking to you.” Tim’s jaw dropped in shock as the man angled his face upwards, the crown of his head jamming uncomfortably against the metal shelving. “In my defense, I was doing the best I could with the resources you gave me. It’s water under the bridge. I’ve forgotten about it already! So let’s just get back to our eldritch hellscape.”

Everybody stared at each other. 

“We should move this into the break room,” Martin said. “There’s tea there.”

“Oh, don’t be rude,” Jon said, “making Martin into a caricature of himself. You like Martin, you told me so.”

“Counterpoint,” Sasha said weakly, “the bullpen has Jon. And I really don’t want to explain this to Jon.”

“I don’t even know who this one is,” the man said. “What? Not going to tell me?”

“Okay, like, fucking rude, but whatever.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking to,” Tim said firmly, reaching out and putting a firm hand on the man’s arm. The man didn’t recoil or jerk away, just looking down in vague surprise. “But they aren’t here right now. You’re in the basement of the Magnus Institute, alright? I’m Tim Stoker, at your service, and these are my coworkers. I think you have a brain injury. If you can walk, we need to get you -”

“I can’t eat here,” the man said, but he made no effort to remove Tim’s arm. He moved his other hand, pressing it against Tim’s own, as if they were friends. “Cutting me off from my Knowledge -” it was capitalized, Sasha could hear it “ - chaining me to my desk, for - what? You’re not even answering me? Come on!” The man’s voice raised, and for the first time Sasha could hear something ragged in it. “Don’t give me the silent treatment!”

“Jon.”

It was Martin, standing at a distance from the man - from all of them. He was wringing his hands again, shoulders hunched and tense, but his expression was caught in that same mysterious firmness. 

The man didn't react. Not in surprise, not in shock, not in unrecognition. He just scowled a little, ignoring all of them. 

“Jon,” Martin said, louder. “This isn’t solving anything. Don’t be stubborn.”

“I’m not the one being stubborn, Martin,” Jon - Jon?! - muttered, folding his arms. Like an infant. Like, hypothetically, something Jon would do. “I just don’t think omniscient fear gods should be petty.”

Everybody looked at each other. 

“This needs tea,” Martin proclaimed finally, and everybody nodded in silent agreement.

Every nodded in agreement - even, strangely enough, Jonathan Sims himself. 

****

This plan had a few complexities. 

The first complexity was dealing with Jon - their Boss - himself. In an act of cunning psychological warfare, Martin had gone ahead of them and used his endless and infinite subtle acts of manipulation to guarantee that Jon wouldn’t interrupt them. This situation was already Quite A Bit, nobody wanted to babysit their boss. 

Who Sasha frequently felt as if she babysat a bit. Having the youngest person in the office be the very rigid and authoritarian boss was objectively a little funny. But you know what’s not funny? Transphobia. 

Eventually Martin came back and waved them forward, and Tim gently yet firmly dragged the man upwards and put a hand on his back. 

“Do you mind if I touch you?” Tim asked. He sounded resigned about it - barely expecting Jon to respond. “Let me know how you want me to guide you.”

“Oh, it’s whatever. If you’re going to play it this way.” Jon easily looped his arm through Tim’s, who didn’t bother to mask his shock. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Sasha went ahead of them, watching Tim walk Jon down the aisle - hah! - with his arm looped through his elbow and a hand on his back. It was exactly the kind of care and meticulousness that Sasha always saw in him when it came to others. He literally walked grannies across the street. It was horrendous. She got second-hand embarrassed whenever she saw it.

Tim was loudly, extremely, messily kind. He was a person who adopted lost causes, like young men too grumpy to make real friends and women who only knew academia and never people. Sasha told him that once he got his teeth into something he never let go. It would get him into trouble one day. Maybe it already had. 

Sure enough, when Sasha opened the library door for them and peeked her head into the hallway, she saw that Jon’s office door was very firmly shut and locked. Even more incriminatingly, she heard his cute little theater drama monologues starting. Tim had found Jon’s theater aspirations very adorable and he had tried recording them to put on his Snapchat and maybe get him discovered by an agent, but unfortunately the videos made Tim’s phone bleed. They had given Martin ten pounds to taste the blood. Man would do anything for ten pounds, but seeing as they all worked this job that probably applied to all them. 

A workplace made out of people who always picked ‘dare’ in truth or dare. It was kind of a miracle they were still alive. Sasha was a little uncertain how she had survived to thirty five, actually. 

Once Sasha gave the all clear, Tim was able to bring Jon (Neo-Jon? Nega-Jon? Dark Jon? Mean Jon? No, that was just Jon) into the bullpen. Softly narrating what he was doing, he pulled out a chair and lowered Jon into it. 

Homeless Jon hasn’t been blind for very long, Sasha noted clinically. Long enough that he seemed more mildly irritated by it than anything else, but instead of orienting himself or testing out where he was he just kind of slumped in his chair. 

“Jon - uh, the Boss is taken care of?” Tim asked Martin, who was rapidly bustling into the bullpen with four cups of tea that he seemed to be under the impression would help. Tim had sat Homeless Jon in Martin’s chair, which seemed to fluster Martin a bit. 

“Uh, yeah. Gave him a normal statement to get his guard down, then five of the - you know, weird - statements and said that he has to go through all of them today. He’ll be in there for an hour at least.” 

Sasha frowned. “After two he gets a headache and gets bitchy.”

“Three o’clock exactly,” Tim said solemnly.

“Oh, leave off,” Homeless Jon said, “it wasn’t that bad.”

Everybody double taked and looked at each other significantly - which was quickly becoming their predominant mode of communication in a ruthless act of ableism. But Martin just held out a cup of tea, faltering as he clearly stopped to wonder the easiest way to give it to him. 

“Can you hold out your hands, Jon? I have some tea for you. It’s hot, so be careful, okay?”

“If the tea’s spiders I’m going to take it out on Annabelle,” Weird Jon said, but he held out his hands anyway and let Martin put the mug in them. He sniffed it cautiously, checking for spiders, before taking a cautious sip. 

To Sasha and Tim, Martin said, “I know, he’s going to fall asleep after two. I mean, it might be because I drugged his tea a little -”

Weird Jon spat out his tea back into the mug. 

“ - so we shouldn’t be interrupted,” Martin said brightly, clapping his hands. “Now! I think it’s time for explanations, don’t you?” He turned his mighty gaze upon Thankfully Blind Jon, who was occupied carefully holding the tea away from himself. “Drink your tea, Jon.”

Jon drank his tea. His expression twisted. “It tastes just like his.”

Everybody looked at each other. Tim mouthed the word ‘time traveller’ very clearly. Both Sasha and Martin nodded. It was the obvious explanation. 

“An explanation now, please,” Martin said pleasantly. “If you’re a time traveller, you can tell us. This is a safe space.”

Jon-from-the-future’s expression harshened in creases. He hadn’t once relaxed, expression permanently tightened in annoyance and disgruntlement. It was ridiculously Jon. 

Definitely a time traveller. You didn’t work at the Magnus Institute without secretly spending your life deeply hoping you run into a time traveller. Every researcher upstairs secretly prayed to discover the majesty. Everyone in Artifact Storage eagerly gathered around mysterious clocks and dared each other to touch them. Sasha, Queen of Truth-or-Dare, was the undisputed expert in making other people touch weird clocks and recording their reactions.

“Fine,” Super Time Traveller Jon said. “I know this is what you want. Statement of a stupid punishment by the pettiest little color in the evil crayon box. Recorded by the Archivist, in situ. Statement begins.”

Wow, Jon still had his job in the future? That’s a surprise. 

Martin was mouthing the word ‘evil crayon box’ to himself, looking increasingly concerned. The forgotten tape recorder, clenched in Sasha’s fist without her even realizing it, clicked and whirred. 

Then the Archivist began to speak. 

***

In the hazy amber of a memory, there exists an office.

You can see it clearly in your mind’s Eye, even now. You could likely navigate all of it blindfolded - which you now see that your god has the intention to test. Every corner of it is known to you, in the most subtle and mundane of ways. There’s a dust bunny in that corner, never tidied. A mysterious stain on the far right ceiling. The faint smell of blood, just under the vents. The hot waft of tea; your hands wrapped around a mug. 

Through these lonely offices, ghosts roam. They cling to desks and chairs; lingering in favorite mugs or in forgotten hair ties. A metal file cabinet holding neat rows of clothing, blood-stained jackets abandoned. A whiteboard with stubborn flakes of dried marker, forgotten handwriting clinging to life. These imprints no longer evoke terror or grief or pain. They are as familiar as the bloodstains and tea. Even death, eventually, is familiar. After long enough in a nightmare, it becomes indistinguishable from reality. 

There is nothing unfamiliar in the Magnus Institute.

Nothing save these voices, emerging from nothing. Every one of your six million senses have been cut off - your hundred eyes reduced to none. You are cognizant only of two familiar voices, and one unfamiliar one. A firm hand, with calloused fingers from leafing through aged paper. A creaky desk chair - Martin’s, undoubtedly, always squeaking as he fidgeted in distraction. The air tastes the same as it used to back then, before the AC broke and no repairman would step inside to repair it. Daisy did, eventually. Three familiar voices, rendered unfamiliar by the harsh tides of wind and cruel plastic hands. 

You are afraid of very little, these days. In this world that you’ve built, there is nothing that can harm you. The twisted little puppet strung up in his tower has been long since been disposed of, and the awful and terrifying future has settled into a gentle present. The apocalypse grows tedious after a while, and the buffet of fears start tasting a little samey.

But if anything could frighten you, this would. If anything would petrify you, it would be Tim’s kind smile, which died a year before Tim did. If anything could freeze you to your chair, it would be the sight of Sasha with red-rimmed eyes asking why you never even noticed that she was gone. 

The sanctuary of memory corrupted. A mental place of safety infiltrated. A mind turned inside out, exposing its vulnerable flesh to the world. 

There is nothing else this could be but your own personal hell. 

Your loyal servant crouches on bended knee, giving this final prayer to you. He asks, humbly and with great reverence, one simple question:

Why couldn’t this have waited until after I got my milk?

***

The spell ruptured.

It was almost tangible, like a change in air pressure making your ears pop. Sasha blinked harshly, rubbing at her ears and trying to soothe strange ringing. Tim exhaled heavily and Martin screwed his eyes open and shut harshly, as if he was seeing spots. 

The only person unaffected was Weirdly Christian Jon, who was slumped in Martin’s chair with his arms folded over his chest. He was still looking at the ceiling - speaking to whoever he had been addressing this entire time. 

“Just one day,” Jon was saying. “Just one day! It was going to be a nice day! We had decided to take a day trip to the Flesh garden and have a picnic! My darling and beautiful husband was going to make us a cake! ‘Walk down to the Hell corner store’, my husband says. ‘Pick us up some Eldritch milk’, he says. ‘Why do I have to do it’, I says, ‘I’m in the middle of something’. ‘We need cake for bridge night with the girls and I’ll divorce you if you don’t do it’, he says. I didn’t even change out of my nightmare pyjamas! What did I ever do to you? How are you still upset about the eye thing?”

Sasha and the Assistants, still digesting the extremely disturbing monologue, let him talk. Sasha was caught up in how it felt exactly like Jon’s little drama monologues. Granted, he had obviously gotten a lot more practice - guy could go to Broadway - but the weird lilting and falling sing-songyness was just the same. And he only ever did that for the very weird ones. The ones that they were pretty certain were actually true. 

So that probably meant at one point in the future, if Jon was speaking about the Archives as if they had worked there for years. Probably during the apocalypse. Which was happening. Which Jon had...built? Like, as a personal thing, or in a metaphor for capitalism and the human race? Definitely the capitalism thing - Jon was prone to flights of filing-induced passion that sometimes accidentally resulted in a stapler flying and punching a hole through the wall, but she couldn’t even imagine him even purposefully punching someone, much less being the Antichrist. Unless it was one of those things that just happened to you, like a rare genetic defect. 

“Seriously. What was the alternative here? Endless horrorterrors, everybody screaming all the time? It was boring. You eat one Statement about somebody standing in line at a slaughterhouse conveyor belt and you’ve eaten them all. I didn’t do it because I didn’t like you, although for the record I don’t. But you have to admit that having Eldritch Lidls are much more practical than just having a bunch of people lying around screaming all the time. It’s not as if I don’t have other eyes, I hardly miss them. There’s no chocolate cakes in the swirling vortex of mankind’s worst nightmares!”

Okay. They had to find a way to engage with this guy. He was completely ignoring them, probably because he thought that they were mean ghosts. Sasha was only one of those things, and it was hurting her feelings. Judging from the expression on Tim’s face he was thinking the same thing. 

Or - wait, Sasha knew that eyebrow. That was the ‘please please please tell the apocalypse has zombies’ eyebrow. Great. 

But Martin was just looking thoughtful again. Sasha was pretty proud of him - it was probably very difficult for the poor man to remain coherent in the face of the crazy time-traveller who was definitely hotter than their already objectively unfairly hot boss. 

“Jon,” Martin said, cutting Jon’s tired rant about how eggs benedict were much better these days, “Uh, I have an idea? Maybe you can’t get out of the - nightmare by bargaining with it. Do you know how to normally escape these things?”

Jon angled his head down and frowned in Martin’s direction. So far Martin seemed to be the only person who could shut Jon up, which was a hilarious turnaround from normal life. Sasha hadn’t heard anything about Martin being a sad little ghost, but it was hard to believe that Martin was a survivor in the zombie apocalypse. 

“You go through the statement and you walk through it,” Jon said, in a very ‘duh’ kind of way. “Give the statement, highfive corpses, whatever.”

“Right, right.” Martin wrung his hands, biting at his lip. “So maybe it’s like that. Maybe instead of asking to be let out - you just have to walk through it. Like - like it’s a maze. Does that make sense? I’m not sure, it’s just an idea.”

Jon pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing. “Right as always, Martin.” Everybody’s jaw dropped, and Martin squeaked. “Fine, fine. Let’s...interact with the evil ghosts.” Jon gestured out with his arms, in a very ‘come at me bro’ gesture. “Go ahead and shoot. Hit me with how much you hate me and how disappointed you are that I never amounted to anything and started the apocalypse.”

Finally! Interrogation time! 

But before Sasha could finally find out if global warming had killed the world, Tim jumped in. “Are there zombies in the apocalypse?!” Tim cried, way too excited. “Is it like the Walking Dead? Or is it more Last of Us?”

Jon squinted in Tim’s direction. “Define zombie.”

“...hunger for human flesh, shambling, gross looking?” Tim rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me you still haven’t seen any zombie movies.”

“I’m omniscient, I’ve seen every zombie movie,” Jon lied blatantly. “I just think that you’re - you know, stereotyping. Sometimes people are the undead and eat humans and they’re - they’re very normal people.”

“Yeah, Tim, be sensitive,” Sasha said gleefully. She put the tape recorder on Martin’s desk, deciding that she would definitely need a transcript of this interview later. Also maybe ask more questions about that omniscient thing, but she was sure Jon was just exaggerating. If you asked Jon today if he was the smartest person on Earth he’d probably say yes. Jon wasn’t even the smartest person in the room.

For good measure, she drew out her little notebook from her pencil skirt pocket, flipping through it looking for a clean page. “The Archives have never gotten a time traveller before. This is unprecedented in its history.” Well, she really didn’t know what Gertrude had gotten up to, but she dearly hoped it wasn’t this. “Do you have any warnings? Desperate messages from a ruined world, that kind of thing?”

“I’m not a time traveller,” Jon said flatly, “so no.”

Everybody stared at him in abject pity.

“Mate,” Tim said sympathetically, “it’s 2015. You’re a time traveller.”

“No, I’m in a pocket hell dimension in a period beyond time and space,” Jon corrected arrogantly. “Time travel doesn’t exist.”

“The apocalypse exists but time travel doesn’t exist?” Martin cried. “That’s so unfair! Like, give us something, you know?”

“Your life is very hard,” the extratemporal reject said. 

Typical Jon. A classic case of time travel and here he was denying it. Sasha crossed her arms, upset that they were wasting time debating temporal physics when they could be talking about zombies. She was a historian and had priorities. “Your denial ain’t cute, mate. You’re just wasting all of our time.” Jon opened his mouth, but Sasha steamrolled over him. “You want evidence, right? Do you need to, like, touch my face? Make sure that I’m not a sexy ghost?”

“That’s a stereotype that nobody actually does,” Jon said. 

“Insensitive as always, Sasha,” Martin condemned. 

“How else are we going to prove it to him?” Sasha said, somewhat defensively. “It’s not as if we have any evidence that we’re not sexy ghosts.”

With utmost care and incredible gentleness, Tim reached out an open hand and gently smooshed it into Jon’s face.

Jon slumped in his seat, arms folded, unimpressed. 

“No mortal who is not my darling husband has dared to touch me since I became the Antichrist,” Jon said.

“I don’t know,” Tim said, withdrawing his hand and looking at Sasha. “What’s more unbelievable: Jon as the Antichrist or Jon with a husband?”

“Jon’s gay?” Martin cried, face beet red. “Gay Jon? Gay Jon real?”

“So, like, how do you get the Antichrist gig?” Sasha asked as she silently passed Tim a fiver. Her queerdar had never been so wrong. “Is it like an adventurer quest you can do or would you call it more of a rare genetic disorder thing?”

“Definitely rare genetic disorder.”

“Then does that mean that our Jon also has the Antichrist gene?” Tim asked, alarmed. “You’d never think so just looking at him! It’s always the quiet ones.”

“No, this makes sense,” Martin said.

Tim stared at him. “So, is that, like, a negative for you, or a positive…?”

Martin’s silence was incriminating. 

“It’s a positive,” Jon said helpfully, startling everyone. They had conveniently forgotten not to talk about one very horny man’s very horny crush in front of sad grumpy time travelling crush. “He’s into it.”

“Wow, Jon,” Tim said, “what would your husband say?”

In a completely pointless show of sass, Jon rolled his eyes. “My useless husband is likely much more concerned with how I managed to get trapped in a nightmare dimension on my way back from the Hell corner store.” He waved a hand absently. “So, if we can hurry this up? Get started on the whole torturing me thing? Right now you’re just on track to annoying me to death.”

“We annoy you to death now!” Tim exclaimed, as Martin’s eyes boggled. “Isn’t that more proof for the time traveller theory?”

“It wasn’t annoying,” Jon said curtly. “I secretly enjoyed it. I always felt a little bad that I wasn’t included. Or wouldn’t let myself be included.”

That, abruptly, made everyone feel a little bad. Not guilty, seeing as Jon neither wanted nor deserved their affection, but just kind of bad. Future Jon didn’t seem any happier than regular Jon. Sasha liked to imagine that if she was trapped in an indeterminate period in time and space in a post-apoc hellscape, she’d at least be having fun.

Everybody looked at each other, equally a little uncomfortable. Tim was the one who finally took control of the situation, as the self-appointed Jon & Everyone Else mediator. He had taken up the mantle years ago and worse it with pride, and occasional exhaustion. 

“Look,” Tim said, as reasonably as possible. “Let’s just say, hypothetically, this was super cool and awesome time travel. Let’s also say maybe this was completely baller and you’re from a post apoc future where everyone wears leather.”

“That’s just Melanie.”

“Put it down as one person who wears leather in the future!” Tim cried, and Sasha obediently jotted it down.”But let’s just put all of this in a hypothetical situation where you aren’t...uh, in a bad dream? So would there, hypothetically, be a way to stop the apocalypse or something?”

Jesus christ. What a try-hard. 

Sasha crossed her arms, glaring at Tim. From next to her, Martin looked just as peeved. “Seriously, dude? Like we can just up and stop capitalism?”

“I don’t want responsibility for stopping the apocalypse,” Martin protested. “I can barely navigate the bus system. What if the Terminator comes after my mother or something?”

“You’ll be a bit better off, frankly,” Jon said. Martin nodded, conceding the point, before looking faintly disturbed. 

“But he said that he caused it,” Tim protested. “Maybe the power of friendship can fix this? I mean, the apocalypse is cool, but I feel like this is the part where we’re all badasses and we fight evil or something.” Tim’s eyes widened. “That’s what the Magnus Institute is for. To stop the apocalypse!”

“Every day I feel a slight sense of emptiness due to my internalized guilt about your death, but you are usually wrong about things,” Jon said flatly, which seemed to both perk Tim up and depress him slightly. “And no. There’s nothing you can do. There’s no one event that precipitated the apocalypse; no rules of engagement. You are puppets on strings, indulging in the fantasy of free will. Yes, Sasha, the apocalypse is capitalism.”

Everybody stood in slightly depressed silence over this. Sasha, personally, was a little relieved. She really didn’t have to deal with the whole ‘preventing the apocalypse’ thing. She’d rather spend the finals days of the world in hedonism, frankly. 

Really, the unique providence of the millennial was to live your entire life half-way convinced you were in the twilight years of the world. This hedonism and apathy was second nature. Or maybe the apathy was a Leitner - Sasha had lost track of that too. 

“Aw, man,” Martin said, summarizing the abstract and complex feelings deftly and succinctly. “This sucks.”

“Yeah, this blows,” Tim agreed. “So should I buy my muscle car now, or later, or what?”

Then Martin and Tim started arguing over fuel efficiency in the apocalypse, and Jon royally checked out of the conversation. Sasha imagined that he was internally having a bit of a Saving Private Ryan moment where flashbacks of bombshells exploded behind his eyelids or whatever the fuck. The important thing is that everyone was distracted, and Sasha could finally check up on their most important gambit of the day: making sure Jon wasn’t bothering them. 

Sasha listened carefully for the sounds of Jon’s little theater monologues, and caught only faint hints of sound. She slipped past everyone into the hallway and approached Jon’s office door, pressing her ear against the cheap wood. But she didn’t need to worry: he was still reciting away, oblivious to the actual interesting shit that was happening outside his door. Jon was a delicate plant, you couldn’t stress him out too much or he would die. Hopefully Martin’s drugged tea would kick in soon -

But Antichrist Jon’s head jerked towards her, directly behind him, and Sasha saw his unfocused green eyes fixate directly on her. No, not on her - on the door, or something beyond it. For just a second, his eyes flared a sharp and toxic green. 

“There you are,” Creepy Jon hissed. 

Well, sorry for leaving rooms without telling him, but she hadn’t thought that he even noticed, much less got resentful about it. But Weird Jon was standing up with no hesitation, and effortlessly swerved around Martin’s desk and stalked into the hallway. For the first time, his expression looked a little dangerous. It was bizarre and off putting, like seeing a ragged yet murderous two meter kitten. 

He reached out an arm and let it trail across the wall, stopping short when he felt it hit wood instead of plaster. Tim and Martin surged forward to stop him, yelling warnings, but Sasha quickly stepped back. She never impeded the timeless march of science and progress. Sasha had done far worse in Artifact Storage for knowledge. 

Jon brushed his hand down the door until it hit the doorknob and angrily twisted it, heaving the door open with unnecessary force. Tim and Martin spilled into the hallway as Angry Jon stalked inside, and Sasha eagerly hung in the door frame for a front row seat into the drama. 

“This is your fault,” Jon intoned dangerously, directly in the face of a deathly affronted Jon. 

In the spirit of the First Directive, Sasha heroically stretched out an arm and prevented Tim and Martin from spilling into the office. It was the right call. Jon stalked forward into the office, hair whipping in a nonexistent wind, expression obscured but undoubtedly thunderous, advancing on the terrified Archivist, as -

He tripped over a chair left carelessly in the center of the office, rocketing forward to land flatly on his face. 

Beside her, Martin went white as a sheet. “Oh no.”

Simultaneously, in complete and total unison, Jon and the Archivist yelled, “Martin!”

****

Jon and the Archivist sat across from each other, exuding waves of pure mutual hatred.

Tim had quickly helped the Archivist up, moving the chair forward and getting him situated there. The Archivist’s mood was not improved by any of this. Which was difficult enough to handle by itself, if manageable. Sasha knew how to manage grumpy time travelling blind Antichrists who had gotten lost on their way to the corner store.

She even knew how to handle their boss, who was extremely grumpy about being harassed by a random homeless person with nice hair. Jon hated statement givers at the best of times, much less seemingly homeless ex-corpses. Or, well, Sasha didn’t know if he was an ex-corpse, but he was certainly an animate one. 

They were both being so annoying about it Sasha was trying to determine if she should change their nicknames to something more derogatory. Thing 1 and Thing 2? Too long. 

Both of them were very grumpy about the fact that Martin had pushed aside the chair for guests in front of Jon’s desks when he deposited the drugged tea, accidentally moving it close to the center of the office. Jon had known this because he saw it happen. The Archivist had known this because he, apparently, knew Martin very well. 

Today had really been a bonding experience with Sasha, Martin, and Tim. Their skill at silent communication had reached borderline telepathy. They all looked at each other significantly as the Jons were caught in their mutual dyad of hatred, silently commiserating over the fact that their one goal had been spoiled by the greatest wildcard of all. Sasha privately liked to consider herself somewhat of a wildcard, but she was depressingly aware that the entire Archive team was composed of wildcards. Maybe that’s why half of them didn’t survive the apocalypse. 

It was a little unlikely that Jon was a survivor/instigator in the zombie apocalypse, actually. Dude definitely would have bit it if he wasn’t cheating with Antichrist powers. Now, if Sasha had Antichrist powers, this whole game would be looking very different -

“Boss, this is a statement giver,” Tim hinted desperately, hands clenched so hard on the back of the Archivist’s chair that his knuckles were turning white. “Remember what Elias said about statement givers? About how we can’t harass them?”

“I was in the middle of a recording and this man was unnecessarily confrontational,” Jon said crisply. Sasha caught her eye jumping frantically back and forth between the two, trying to reconcile them. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Martin’s horny surety, she wouldn’t have realized that they were the same person at all. The Archivist’s most defining attribute was his big and fluffy hair, and Jon was sadly lacking in the nice hair department. That fade and twists were the shackle around his ankle. So was the sweater vest, baggy tweed jacket, and ill-fitting.“He’s lucky I’m not throwing him out.”

Martin, who looked as if he was having his tenth gay crisis of the morning, didn’t seem to hold the same opinion, but he was king of bad taste anyway. 

“Remember what Elias said about harassing confused, blind statement givers? Remember that? Boss?”

Jon looked confused. “He didn’t specify the community of people with disabilities.”

“It was implied? Jon?”

“The optics would be terrible,” Sasha said, before snickering. Martin stomped on her foot. She stomped on his back, which definitely hurt a lot more. “Look, Jon, sorry about all of this. He was just - uh - really insistent that he talk to you -”

“I think if our visitor hassles Jon then maybe, objectively, you can say that Jon brought it on himself,” Martin said, in a daring show of anti-Jon sentiment.

This act of subtle rebellion was the first thing that broke the Archivist out of his cycle of hatred. He threw out a hand, bowling over Jon’s desktop cup of pens and sending them tumbling over the desk. Sasha saw him specifically orient his hand to do so. “Thank you, Martin! Your understanding of paraphysics is always immaculate.”

“Wow, really?”

“Stop complimenting my assistants,” Jon hissed, frantically diving to save his pens. “And stop - gesticulating over my desk! You did that on purpose!”

“Harassing the blind, Jon!”

“You don’t even need to tearfully blame me for how I ruined your life,” the Archivist said flatly. “You existing in my vicinity is torment enough.”

“That’s what I keep saying,” Sasha said, before pausing a beat. “I meant the first part, ha ha ha, obviously -”

“This man is a very normal statement giver who will be leaving any minute now,” Martin jumped in, “so there’s really no reason for us all to fight, when you think about it -”

“If you all don’t get out of my office, you are all fired -”

“You are listening.”

Everybody stopped talking at once, staring at the Archivist. He was still staring intently ahead, straight into his counterpart. Jon was hiding it, quite badly, but he was unsettled. He hadn’t even acknowledged that he and the man looked alike - the thought undoubtedly running through his brain and soundly dismissed - but it was clearly rattling him. But there was something else that was scaring him too - maybe the Archivist’s green eyes, so foreign from his own brown? His intense and furious expression, like cut glass? The particularly strange and heavy feeling in the air, prickling down the back of Sasha’s neck?

He hadn’t even stopped the recorder. 

“You are here,” the Archivist continued calmly. “You were listening in. Why you were listening in on him, and his regurgitated aftertaste of Statements, I do not know. I felt you, and I came to you. We cannot forsake each other. Do not hide yourself from me.”

The effect was immediate. 

The Archivist’s neck snapped forward, so harshly he cracked his head on Jon’s desk. Strangely enough, Jon screamed too, holding a hand to his temple as if he was suddenly pierced by a blinding headache. Tim immediately bent down to check on Archivist, making sure that he hadn’t hurt himself, as Martin bustled around the desk to check on Jon. Jon batted his hands away, scowling, so he was just fine. But the Archivist didn’t groan, or stir, or moan. He just lay there, still and limp, and when Tim shook him he didn’t even tense. 

The air was heavy, a tang of metal in her mouth like the crackle before a storm, and Sasha couldn’t fight a shiver. But she couldn’t take her eyes off Jon, either: the way he stared at the Archivist, hand on his forehead, eyes wide and growing wider. 

“Dad…?”

When the Archivist stirred, the spell was broken, and Jon’s mouth snapped shut so quickly it was as if he had never spoken at all. He turned his head and moaned, eyes opening uselessly. They were back to their usual toxic green, no flaring or flashing. 

“Mar’in? Where…”

“I’m here,” Martin said quickly, and ducked around the desk to grab the Archivist’s hand and squeeze. For just a second, Jon looked a little jealous. Sasha had the sense that Jon had never been mothered than anyone other than Martin and Tim, and the prospect confused and frightened him so much he reacted aggressively to it. “Everything alright? You hit your head.”

“How many eyes?” the Archivist asked weakly. 

“...physically, or functionally?”

But the Archivist just ran his burned hand over his smooth hand, kneading it and feeling the skin. “Still gone. Damn it.” He straightened, grimacing and spitting out a stray tendril of hair out of his mouth. “So it’s true…”

“So what’s true?” Tim asked urgently. “Do you finally believe us about the time travel thing? Because man, I have so many questions -”

He didn’t get the opportunity to say anything. The Archivist reached out a hand, fingers brushing against his shirt, and the Archivist’s hand abruptly clenched on the fabric. Tightly, roughly, the Archivist pulled him down and extended his other arm, and caught Tim in an awkward and lopsided hug. 

Tim carefully straightened him and returned the hug, gracing the Archivist with the patented Perfect Stoker Hug, and the Archivist buried his face in Tim’s shoulder. His chest didn’t heave, and his breath didn’t catch, but the element of desperation was pungent and unmistakable. 

“You were right,” Jon whispered. “We messed it all up.”

“Sure, yeah, totally!” Tim said, clapping the Archivist on the back in a masculine, yet sensitive way. “So, does this mean the zombie apocalypse is totally a-go, or…”

“Sasha,” the Archivist said, and Sasha chose to ignore her own personal distaste for hugs and being touched so she could step forward and hug him too. 

He clutched onto her just as tightly as he had Tim, which surprised her a little. Jon and Tim had probably been best friends in the future, and Sasha couldn’t imagine her and Jon ever truly being close. He respected her as a colleague, but that was probably because Sasha purposefully left her manuscripts around the office and aggressively used as many big words in front of him as possible. Jon had always been an obstacle to her - innocently stupid at best, malicious at worst. To think that he would grip her so tightly…

With meticulous care, the Archivist separated from her. His expression was crumpled, and for the first time Sasha saw something over than aggravation or impatience in Jon’s face. Relaxed and soft, he looked like a different man. No - he was a different man, it was just apparent. The change softened his sharp lines into something a little friendlier; his striking exterior melting into something pretty instead of imposing. 

Slowly, he raised his hand a little to tangle it in her hair. He frowned a little, gently tugging at it and feeling it spring back into place. “So it was curly…like mine…”

A lot of little hints snowballed into one strange and foreign realization. “Do you not remember me?”

“Dolls stole your identity,” the Archivist said apologetically. 

“Like credit card fraud, or -”

“Metaphysically.” He paused guiltily. “I mourned you as an abstract concept?”

“Like I’m every woman in Hollywood?” Sasha screeched, outraged. This was not trans rights. “Alright, royally fuck that. Feel my hair, mister. Full permission to touch it. Feel that? You call that abstract?” The Archivist shook his head, eyes wide, and Sasha gently moved his hand to rest on the top of her head. “Taller than you in eight cm heels, remember? You asked me how I walked in them, and I said -”

“ - Barbie’s Princess Charm School,” the Archivist said automatically, eyes widening. “I do remember.”

Martin clearly waited around to be tenderly embraced, and was disappointed. 

The Archivist stepped away from Sasha, expression creased in furious thought. “So it’s real. So far as anything’s real, I suppose. But I don’t understand how -” the Archivist’s eyes widened, and he snapped his fingers in realization. “The manhole!”

Everybody stared at him. 

“I’m sorry,” Jon said pleasantly, “what is going on -”

“I was walking down the street, and I remember hearing city work!” the Archivist said brightly. “They were doing their monthly ‘clearing the gators out of the sewer pipes’ maintenance! And the Beholding told me that there was an open manhole, and I said oh it’ll be fine, I’m a demigod on Earth, I don’t fall down manholes - and then -”

The door to Jon’s office dramatically crashed open, and everybody jumped straight in the air. Jon, whose office had seen two more incredibly theatrical entrances than usual today, immediately bristled and opened his mouth to earn them all another harassment complaint, before he abruptly shut his mouth. 

It was Elias, their miniature and unspeakably boring boss extraordinaire. He stood in the doorway, one hand clutching the doorframe, suit jacket askew and chest heaving. Had he ran down here?

“Is someone here?” the Archivist asked. 

“Uh, yeah,” Tim said, stepping forward cautiously. “It’s our boss, Mr. Bouchard. Elias, we’re taking a statement, can we help - ?”

“How did that get here?” Elias asked, voice strangely tense and coiled. “How did you - not even I could -”

“That makes sense!” Martin cried, thumping a fist on his open palm. “Elias wants to time travel just as much as everyone else in the Institute!”

“I’m sorry,” Jon said, pathetically behind, “time travel -”

“Did the time traveller sensor alarms in the basement go off?” Sasha asked, surprised. “I thought only Artifact Storage had those.”

“Uh, Mr. Statement Giver, are you okay?” Tim asked, but it was already too late.

The Archivist had turned to face Elias, expression unreadable. Sasha felt that crackle again, weighing down the air, and she saw the Archivist’s hair puff and frizz slightly with a green crackle. His neon green pupils shone again and spun, like an infernal wheel. 

“What’s wrong, Elias?” the Archivist mocked, as energy coursed through him. “Upset that Mama has a new favorite?”

And Sasha saw in that moment that the Archivist, who possessed the most inhuman green eyes she had ever seen, had eyes the same shade as Elias. 

“Oh, man,” Sasha said, “is Elias a time traveller too?”

“Only in the most mundane way. Can’t even get a little bit of special attention, Elias? Sad!” It was second-hand thrilling to watch someone mock their boss, living the dreams of everyone in the room. Even if it was a little weird how much Jon seemed to hate this guy - nobody hated Elias, just like nobody liked him, and nobody had any strong feelings at all besides unpromoted women.

 At the door, Elias’ expression was slack in - amazement? Was amazement the right word? He was staring at Jon as if...words didn’t even describe it. At least in any way that Sasha wanted to think about. 

“Mr. Bouchard, I swear I can explain,” Sasha, who could not explain, said hurriedly. “We found this corpse and we were going to tell you, but -”

But the Archivist cut her off, as if nothing was less important than explaining himself to Elias. “Did you want to know how to stop the apocalypse, Sasha?”

Sasha froze. Martin and Tim did too. Jon, who nobody had actually bothered to brief since he was kind of the fifth most important person in the room, dropped his pen. “Uh,” Sasha said, sweating. For the first time she understood the possible upsides of not knowing something. “I mean, if I have to, but you said that it was inevitable -”

“Oh, yes. But, just once every one or two centuries, a man comes along who fancies himself fate.” The Archivist raised a hand, eyes spinning and spinning, as Elias stood frozen in the doorframe. “I’ll be honest, Jonah. This isn’t to save the world. That’s so last year. I just really fucking hate you.” Something cracked in the air. “Ceaseless watcher, smite this -”

The door slammed shut. Sasha heard Elias lock it behind him. They all stood around as footsteps quickly echoed through the Archives, and another door slammed. Which was probably being locked too. 

They stood in silence, the Archivist having clearly heard the slams. He let his hand fall, but the energy didn’t cease crackling around him. He didn’t look resentful or disappointed - just thoughtful. 

“Everything in due time, I suppose. I guess it is pretty unfair to get to smite that man twice,” the Archivist said thoughtfully. “I’ll give someone else a turn.” His mouth twitched wryly. “You know, Sasha, there’s one other way to prevent the apocalypse.”

“Is it work?” Sasha asked tiredly. 

“You may kill the man who arranged the dominos,” the Archivist intoned, before hanging his head towards a petrified Jon. “Or you may kill the man who toppled them over.”

Sasha stared at Jon. Jon stared back, frozen like a deer in headlights.

Martin silently passed Sasha a penknife from Jon’s desk. 

“I’m very qualified for this job,” Jon protested weakly.

“Queen of feminism, I very much support you,” Tim said quickly, putting himself in between Sasha and Jon in a heroic display of stupidity, “but, maybe, killing your boss to take his job, is perhaps, maybe not that much of a great idea, just a thought?”

“The job’s being the Antichrist,” the Archivist pointed out, crossing his arms. 

“The direct action against sexism, xenophobia, and transphobia is very admirable,” Tim said, eyes held up as if he was placating a tiger, “but think of it this way - if you kill the Antichrist, then you become the Antichrist, like in - uh -”

“Pokemon,” Martin volunteered. 

Tim snapped his fingers. “Pokemon! So you shouldn’t -” He halted, turning back to Martin. “Pokemon? Seriously? That’s becoming champion -”

“A - alright, alright! Everybody stop!” Jon shakily stood up, brushing aside the empty tea mug right next to him. “That’s enough of all of this! I may not know what’s going on, or who this man is, or why he looks like me -”

“Hm,” Martin said, eyeing the empty tea mug. 

“ - why he looks like a homeless person, why he barged into my office and insulted me, why you are all defending this atrocious behavior, why you are calling it the work of time travel, which does not exist and you have no proof for it anyway -”

“Jon,” Martin said, watching Jon’s arm tremble, “maybe you should -”

“Shut up, Martin!”

“Don’t be rude to him!” the Archivist snapped. 

“You’ve been rude to him twice today!”

“I’m allowed to be rude to him! He’s even ruder to me! I’m the nice one!”

“ - and you were glowing in my office, which is just frankly rude,” Jon continued viciously, steamrolling over the Archivist. “You gave me a terrible headache, you hugged my assistants very inappropriately for the workplace, you made my boss walk in before trying to smite him, you encourage violence against my own person in revenge for a job that I definitely deserve -”

Both of Jon’s arms were shaking, and Tim’s eyebrows were slowly raising. “Boss, you should sit down, I think -”

“ - I want an explanation!” Jon yelled, slamming the desk. “And I’m not going to stop until you tell me what’s going on!”

Then Jon passed out. 

Everybody watched it happen. Everybody, save perhaps the Archivist, had noticed that it was about to happen: at first a tremor, then a shake, and then a final collapse. Like a marionette with his strings cut, Jon slumped over and crumpled solidly on the floor. 

Everybody stood in disaffected silence. Martin carefully stepped over and prodded Jon with his foot. “Out cold.” He shot a considering gaze at the empty tea mug. “Sorry, guys. Looks like I accidentally used the delayed action sedative.”

"It’s alright,” Tim said magnanimously. “At least that problem is solved now. Maybe we can convince him this was a bad dream when he wakes up.”

“If he insists it was real, we’ll just ask him for evidence and refuse to believe him without it,” Sasha suggested. 

“Isn’t that kinda gaslighting?” Martin asked. “Isn’t that, you know, a little morally dubious -”

“You did drug him,” Tim pointed out.

“I mean, hardly the first time?”

“Maybe Martin should be the Antichrist,” Sasha said thoughtfully.

The Archivist’s face was doing something extremely interesting, yet inscrutable.

“I really don’t want to be Antichrist, though,” Martin said apologetically. “Does it even pay?”

“Jon did say it was a job…” Sasha said, already considering herself in the role. “Do you guys think I’d be sexier as the Antichrist? Be honest.”

“Yes and completely,” Tim said immediately, before realizing that he said that too quickly. “I mean. I’d never objectify you. I respect women. But -”

“Oh, I see how it is,” Martin said, throwing up his hands. “When you think being the Antichrist is kind of hot it’s normal and M/F of you. But when I do it, then it’s ‘gross’ and ‘get that away from me’. Great double standards, guys.”

“It’s not the fact that it’s a guy,” Tim protested, “it’s the fact that it’s Jon -”

“Oh, when you think being the Antichrist is kind of hot then it’s normal and cis of you,” Sasha said heatedly, “but when Tim respects trans women, then it’s ‘gross’ and -”

“I respect all women,” Tim said, equally heatedly, “but I do want to acknowledge the systematic marginalization of trans women within the community, especially trans women of color like yourself -”

A hoarse wheeze echoed through the office.

Everyone froze, terrified by the haunted sound, but after a second Sasha realized it was the Archivist - Jon - who was laughing. 

They had never heard him laugh before. He was practically wheezing with it, bent over with his hands on his knees, with a strained cackle that fizzed with static around the corners. He was smiling broadly, his grin splitting his cheeks, for the first time that Sasha had ever seen. 

He straightened and threw his head back and laughed too, a greater belly-laugh that was so hysterical and fragile and free that it struck something strange and raw in Sasha’s heart. He rubbed his face with his hand, still laughing, and eventually broke into coughs. 

“I understand now,” Jon said, when he stopped coughing. “I thought that you had deposited me here in revenge. You had sensed that I was happy - that the green skies were beautiful, that your large eye seemed kind that day - and that you found it a waste of emotion. But that wasn’t true, was it? It must have been an accident. I’ve never been happier to hear these idiots arguing, and you’ve lost me like a toy behind a bookshelf. The strange stupidity of it! I’m enchanted.” He sombered a little, expression falling from hysterical glee into a soft and resigned happiness. He held up his hand, feeling the crackle of electricity run across his palms. “But you See me now. The foolish man brought you down upon us, and I intercepted your lightning bolt. His eyes, mundane and paltry, are closed, and you feel my consciousness in replacement of him. I can feel you already - my Eyes opening, the Reality that we built together calling me back. When your infinite grace re-aligns with every one of my atoms, forming the fabric of my world, I’ll snap back.”

Just like that?

Sasha had thought that there would be an...adventure, or quest, or something. At least a research binge. Some kind of heroic group effort. But the Archivist was a stretched rubber band, held tightly and out of position, and after long enough straining against its center it had to snap back. A telly flickering in and out, blaring the song of a dead channel. 

“Do we have time to group hug or something?” Tim offered weakly, undoubtedly thinking the same thing as she was. “Last goodbyes? Anything?”

“Howl’s Moving Castle moment?” Martin asked urgently. “I’ll find you in the future, right? We’re still together there, right?”

“Martin,” Jon said, strangely fond, “we were never apart.”

Martin turned a unique shade of red. 

But it was Sasha who Jon turned to, face angled to the sound of her voice. His expression was still distantly fond, but there was something strange in it too - a wry recognition, a subtle knowledge, a faint recollection of a joke that only he knew. 

“Sasha,” Jon said, “so long as you’re brave, and buy ten fire extinguishers and hide them around the office, things will be just fine. Buy twelve fire extinguishers, just to be safe. And don’t ever go inside Artifact Storage again. Not even for Alicia’s birthday party. If it’s a choice between worms and Artifact Storage then choose worms, the scars add a certain appeal. I cannot stress enough, not even if you lose your jacket in Artifact Storage -”

“Are you sure you don’t have anything to say to me?” Martin asked desperately, almost crying. Sasha, personally, wanted to circle back around to the worm thing. “Sad goodbyes? Waving a handkerchief? I thought you said I was alive? Don’t you have anything?”

Jon rolled his eyes. “Goodness, Martin, if you insist. There is something I’ve been meaning to tell you. In fact, I do believe it’s about time.” 

Martin’s mind clearly projected very loudly ‘I’ve been in love with you this entire time’ in blatant wish-fulfillment. Everybody held their breaths. 

Jon drew himself up to his full, imposing height, and sternly looked at all of them. “I’m tired of holding my tongue about this, Martin,” Jon said finally, and Martin qualified. “For the last time, I don’t load the dishwasher wrong. I load the dishwasher correctly. It’s you who’s always insisting that the cups go on the bottom. It’s a freakish way to live your life, and I’ll never forgive you for -”

Static blared in Sasha’s ears and overwrote her mind, and she screamed. The sensation was a pickaxe driven into her ears, an unforgivable rip and tear, and she heard her screams echoed in concert. 

Then the pain abated, and was gone. 

Sasha, Tim, and Martin were left standing in an empty office, accompanied only by the unconscious figure of their boss. There was nothing left of the Archivist, nor any suggestion that he had ever been here - just a drained mug, some scattered pens, and a lingering sense of malaise and confusion. 

Everybody looked at each other, feeling strangely and uniquely connected. It was hardly Sasha’s strangest Magnus Institute experience, but maybe it was the funnest. 

“Well,” Tim said finally, “at least one day this week wasn’t boring.”

“Yeah, I didn’t even have to get drunk today.” Sasha sighed. “We definitely have to gaslight Jon about this.”

Martin was already carefully lugging Jon onto his chair, arranging him so his arms were folded on the desk with his cheek resting on his forearm. “We’ll pretend it was just a weird dream.” He propped his hands on his hips, satisfied. “Hopefully this convinces him he needs more sleep.” Martin gasped in sudden realization. “Maybe he becomes the Antichrist because he needs more sleep! Guys, I have a great twenty step plan for saving the world.”

“Oh, come on, we said that was too much work.” Tim shrugged and opened the office door, holding it open and gesturing for them all to come out. “I think if we just friendship Jon to death, all of our problems will be solved.”

Martin just shrugged, following him out. They really did have paperwork that they needed to get back to. “Both are vital components. But...hey, it’s not weird to put the mugs on the bottom rack, is it? There’s not really that much of a difference, right?”

“Mate, you’re a fucking freak.” Tim looked backwards at Sasha, who was still standing in the office, dazed. “Sash, you coming? Let’s go day-drinking.”

“Yeah,” Sasha said, “in a sec.”

He shrugged and left the door propped open, and Sasha heard their bickering fade slowly as they walked down the hallway. 

But she couldn’t help staring at Jon sleeping at his desk, chest falling in and out, inhaling and exhaling slowly through his nose. His short, carefully maintained hair and meticulous fade. His baggy tweed and ill-fitting slacks. The subtle and shameful kind of earnestness, the desire mixed with fear mixed with hope mixed with genuine desire for a better future. He just wanted to be happy, to not be afraid anymore. He seemed weirdly human, when compared with his inhuman self. Or maybe it was the other way around. 

The tape recorder on Jon’s desk was still running. Sasha squinted at it, taking a second to listen to the staticy hiss. It was familiar, in the strangest possible way. It felt familiar -

Sasha reached out and grabbed the tape recorder, stuffing it in her pencil skirt pocket. “Just remember,” Sasha whispered, “I’d make a great candidate for Antichrist.”

She ran to go catch up with her coworkers, shutting the door behind them and leaving Jon sleeping contentedly in his office, head pillowed on his arms, dreaming strange and comforting dreams.

[izayoichan]

Hayle: Hey Emil - he looked at the tiny familiar.- come on in, I guess you're looking for someone?

He held the door open so he could fly in if he wanted to. His husband was at work, as was Vy, while Hayden was in his room working on shelter things while the kids were in school. Emil had done quite the travel. First, they had made sure Flynn had indeed gone to his class, watching from the window as the boy for his test. Then took a detour through the kid's schools. Watching as both Eltanin and Arlene had stayed out of gym class as their current conditions made the class difficult for them. Then went through the hospital, finding Vy doing an appointment, who felt them immediately and growled in warning to them. Emil flew away and now headed home. They were yet to check on the other four and pets. They had seen Hayden through the window on their computer. Once they saw the open door they came in.

Hayle: Flynn has his first big test today right?

The familiar took humanoid form, landing down and stretching, feeling quite stiff. The shift between dragon, human and familiar form was becoming easier the more they used it, but it was no less painful. They looked at Hayle.

Emil: Yes. They were quite stressed and... they panicked. They were scared about all of you... I didn't know how to help, so I promised to check on the family. Make sure you are all alright. I am yet to check on the older mage and the reaper... -they looked around trying to see if they could spot Chris around- It was the only way I know how to help... Hayle: Chris is at work, so he is fine. -he smiles at Emil, motioning for him to come inside.-  River is at the shelter and I was just finishing making some cookies for the kids when they come home. 

He went over to the oven to take out the first tray and then set in the second. It was calming for him to bake as well when everyone was out and about and he was home alone. 

Hayle: Scared for all of us? -he looked at Emil- Nightmares?

He guessed, since he knew both Eltanin and Arlene struggled with them as well, it was only natural to assume the same would be true for Flynn, even if he perhaps hid it a lot better. Emil nodded and sighed, following Hayle and watching as he placed the second batch of cookies. With curiosity, they stared at a cookie, and once Hayle turned his back on them they pocketed a few to take for Flynn.

Beginning - Previous - Next

[xarrixii]

obligatory explanation:

I was a big "Gacha" kid. Really into watching and making the Gacha Club/Gacha Life characters (ended up falling out of interest because I fell out of watching love stories and also began to scrutinize the inner workings of a story). While looking for something else entirely, I ended up finding the oldest "designs" of Silan (placeholder #2) built in the dress-up platform still downloaded on my phone.

Silan is a humanoid with wings similar to that of a starling's. And I can't draw, so, like several other characters, I've been making him in Gacha Club for a few years now.

It's like looking through a timelapse:

Really big head. Super polite looking.

Okay, head still big, but now we're edgier and actually holding our weapon. Also, wing shape change and new haircut.

Generally similar vibe as before but with a wardrobe change. I guess this was supposed to be his "cloak" thing, except it's not actually covering his wings so it's pretty useless.

Head is smaller now. Way more formal, strikes way more as the knight that he canonically becomes super early on in the story's plotline. The wings have changed color now to reflect more of a dark green-blue iridescence.

This was the design I had for a bit longer than the others.

I think this Silan has been around for the longest. He got another haircut and clothing change. Now he has gear to protect his eyes from flying if he wants--cool! Wings are far bigger, more realistic to the actual size I picture. Now that I think about it, I don't think a "cloak" would really cover crap. So looks like I'll need to come up with something. Nice spear, by the way.

This is Silan today. The one I just made, today. I made his wings more colorful, I changed his hair again, changed his outfit to include less white (he lives in a incredibly rural place, why was he wearing white?), and gave him his signature weapon combo.

That's huge. That's huge improvement, in just a couple of years. With creative hiatus in this department.

Go make shit. Come back and tell me everything cool about it. Show yourself that you've gotten better at the things you like to do.

To anyone and everyone who will see this:

Go back in time. Go look at something you made one year, two years, three years ago. Look at it. Seriously look at it. Look at how much you've improved in that time.

Guess what? You'll do that again.

Keep doing your thing, even if you think it's bad. It gets better.

[omegasmileyface]

Not in the Job Description

heres a silly lil Danny Phantom concept based entirely off a half-awake sleep-vision that made me laugh :) my subconscious brain is a genius at coming up with things that make just enough sense to be worth writing

summary: Danny's job at a local restaurant is surprisingly fulfilling, even after being crowned Ghost King. Speaking of that job, however, there are some intricacies to it that are hard to keep in mind during everyday life.

warnings: descriptions of nausea and mild sickness

words: 2180

AO3 link

===

Honestly, life was going pretty well at the moment for Danny Fenton. He wasn't even worried that it was a false security or a calm before a storm, because this kind of semi-serenity had been going on for more than a year. It was a long-term stability brought about by adaptation and putting in effort to get help and accommodation. Jazz would be proud!

Sometime at the beginning of Junior year, the Observants had chased him down and crowned him High Ghost King (much to the chagrin of both involved parties). It certainly added responsibility to Danny's plate, along with some new sensations and a series of crises (what didn't these days?), but a little political discussion with some of the more powerful ghosts ended with Danny deciding that, at least at the moment, the position didn't require him to do much more than he normally did. More ghosts would seek him out for help and he would do his best, and some "paperwork" (though there was very little paper involved and it was a lot of talking and oaths and rituals and such) happened about monthly. Otherwise, though, the Zone didn't need much more help than that, having survived off an absent King for centuries. Well, and the ambient purpose of the King as a sort of core for the Zone, but Danny didn't have to put in time or conscious effort for that.

Eventually that settled into normalcy, and Danny was back to worrying about the balance of schoolwork, self-care, and fighting. He still hadn't given up on the prospect of someday becoming an astronaut, and he was determined to have the grades for it. Don't get him wrong, he'd gotten way better about that! He'd formed a practiced, if not entirely stable, system that kept his grades at a solid B- / C+, while getting a solid 5-ish hours of sleep most nights and not bottling things up too much. It was about halfway through Junior year that he realized, with some help from his friends, that his ghosts fights were honestly pretty civil, at least against the regulars. Civil enough that he knew they had some respect for him, and was willing to risk asking for help. So a few weeks and awkward but not bad conversations later, and he had agreements with almost all his regular "foes" not to cause trouble within Amity from 11pm to 7am, 3pm on weekdays. It was more than half the day off-limits on school days, and plenty of ghosts made up for it to a degree by making themselves more common during the "permitted" hours, but it greatly increased Danny's well-being and school performance anyway. "Rivals" like Skulker and Technus had enough respect for Danny and his Lair to abide, and plenty even cared that he was taking care of himself, even between frequent sparring. Maybe a few were really just in fear of his new crown, but he chose to cautiously pretend that wasn't a possibility.

After graduation — he made Senior year with all As and Bs! — Danny's parents had encouraged him to get a part-time job over the summer. He had been interning at FentonWorks (paid! His parents might not be the most attentive but they certainly weren't unfair) since he had accidentally revealed himself a few years back, and they had been thrilled to hear that he still intended to go into NASA if possible, and had done whatever they could to help. They recommended the job because, as good as a paid scientific internship was on a resume, it would help to have a variety of activity and the opportunity to get recommendations from employers who weren't liable to nepotism. After searching local businesses, Danny found a small sandwich shop founded by a middle-aged couple who had moved in and set up shop just before the ghost attacks began. Being close to the school but not far from the commercial sector and offering small portable food (no one wants to sit down for a meal when a spirit could come crashing through the window at any moment), the place got good enough business to pay the employees a proper living wage. Better yet, they were allowed to take home unsold food! Not to mention the owners were both very kind women who held smiling conversation with employees and customers alike. Danny was more than lucky to land such a nice job, even if it meant he had to get up at 7 five days a week.

All this is to say that it wasn't as surprising as it could have been that he was having a slow and pleasant day at work.

Both the owners were out for the day on some sort of vacation, so today it was just Danny and a short teenager named Casey manning the place. Most of their orders recently had been online due to an explosion causing road work near the restaurant and it was mid-morning, leaving work slow enough that they could afford to just have the two until lunch shift started. Danny was on cashier duty today, but unless the door bell sounded, he was helping Casey in the kitchen.

"Aw, man, we're almost out of tomatoes."

"Really?" Casey looked up to the shelf Danny was inspecting and indeed saw only 3 tomatoes. "Huh, guess they didn't restock yesterday. Well, we probably shouldn't risk needing more before the day's out, do you want me to go get more?"

Danny shook his head. "Nah, I can go. I think I could use the fresh air." He said that a lot, especially as an excuse when his ghost sense went off, but that didn't mean it wasn't true. He never had liked being confined.

Casey checked the monitor to see if they'd gotten any new online orders. Since there was a grocery store just a block away, any time someone needed a quick restock they tended to just walk.

They looked up to see Danny already had his jacket on and was looking them in the eye. "Would you take over my position until I come back?"

"Of course. Ten minutes?"

With a nod and a smile, Danny was out the back door.

===

After a moment of habitually wiping down the counters, Casey went up to the register in case a customer appeared.

It was even quieter than before for a few minutes, so they busied themself with mini restocks and organization. They were in the middle of stacking some paper coffee cups when they started to feel dizzy. There had been this subtle pressure on their chest since Danny left, which they figured was anxiety for working the restaurant alone for the first time, and now it had solidified into a warm nausea that flared whenever they exhaled.

With the disinterested panic that came from having strange things happen for years, they wondered if they had missed their medication this morning. A quick glance at their phone, however, showed the notification for it checked off.

Putting the phone back away, Casey noticed the tips of their fingers were somewhat translucent. Alright then, it was definitely something to do with ghosts. Great! Just excellent. The panic was less disinterested this time.

They weren't familiar with any sort of ghost illness that made humans translucent, so they definitely needed to call someone to make sure nothing bad happened. It would be best to call the Fentons' public number so they could go over and get looked over by then. In the meantime, they should call Danny and ask him to hurry back. He shouldn't be much longer anyway.

Casey didn't even get the chance to act on their plan, however, before a short humanoid ghost appeared in the dining area. They didn't look to be up to anything, but Casey reached for the emergency ectoblaster beneath the register anyway. The nausea was getting worse, along with a new chill, and they couldn't be sure this new ghost wasn't somehow causing whatever they were going through.

The ghost looked at them with an expression that was almost desperate. "Ah! Kind human, thank you for your time." The ghost... bowed? "I am Eurusid, from the Spoken Channels. There has been a dispute which damaged public meeting grounds in the center of the Channels, and both groups refuse to allow the damage to be repaired except by the other group."

Casey's eyes narrowed. It was becoming difficult to stand with the dizziness, and if not the ghost himself, then whatever he was saying was probably a hallucination. They didn't even think about responding beyond a detached "what".

It was then that Danny re-entered the back door with the new tomatoes. Good thing, too. At least with another person there, Casey could confirm whether they were hallucinating.

===

Placing down the grocery bag and shrugging off his jacket in one motion, a skill only gained by years of laziness efficiency, Danny called toward the register. "Back!"

Once he caught sight of the teen, however, all casualness shed itself from his body and he rushed over to hold them. "Man, Casey, you feeling alright? You look really pale." The realization that their form was slightly translucent, despite the firm human heartbeat beneath, was drowned out by him finally noticing the ghost standing a few feet away. The reaction of his ghost sense had been so minor that he had ignored it.

He was surprised to see that he recognized the specter's face, marred as it may have been from worry and confusion aimed directly at Casey. "Eurusid? What's going on?"

As the ghost, still confused but unwilling to act impolitely, gathered his bearings and began to bow toward him, Danny's coworker shuddered under his hands, regaining his full attention. He thought back through the day's events for hints as to the situation, before swearing, cutting off whatever Eurusid was about to say.

Danny backed up and said, voice as clear as he could, "I recall my position."

Casey's reaction was immediate, a gasp of air like they had been kept from breathing and a return of their skin's human opacity. Danny rushed back over and put his hand on their back to steady them as their eyes narrowed and went slightly unfocused.

Figures, doesn't it? One of the many intricacies that had come up at his coronation Junior year that just hadn't come up enough to keep at the front of his mind. One of the defenses of the High Ghost Crown was the ability of the King to temporarily give their duty to someone else. As long as that person accepts, during a specified time they substitute for the King in dealing with political matters, as well as taking over as much as their ability allowed of the King's function to process the energy of the Realms.

Danny had no idea that this ability could be activated with words as vague as "take over my position", let alone that it could be used with a human. That potential had never come up during the ceremony, so for all he knew, a full ghost in his position couldn't substitute with a human. A human certainly shouldn't be able to take over any part of the energy processing, though maybe in Amity Park the average person processed enough environmental ectoplasmic energy to make it possible. Regardless of residence, though, it could not be good for Casey's body, which had no Core to properly process energy and had no human equivalent except perhaps a small emotional center in the brain, to even attempt to filter and manage some of the inherent energy of a dimension.

Their skin was still clammy and their coordination was shot. Ancients, if this is what an accidental substitution did to a human, Danny would have to word things very carefully when asking for help in the future.

"King Phantom?" Danny looked up to see that Eurusid was still floating there awkwardly. Right. He had two people here to help.

"Sorry, Eurusid. One moment, I'll be right with you." He turned back to his coworker, who looked confused and less lucid than ideal, but probably still lucid enough to realize this ghost had just called him "King Phantom". Well, he'd deal with that once it came to it. "Here, Casey, let's get you some water." He helped them walk back into the kitchen and sat them down on a bench by the back door. There was a chair in the register area, but they probably didn't want to feel exposed to the dining area like that, even with nobody but the ghost there.

Once handed the water, Casey sighed and eagerly drank from it, eyes closed. Danny rubbed his hand on their back a bit and promised to be back shortly before walking back out to meet Eurusid. Whatever he was here about was probably worth immediate attention but Danny was sure there'd be at least a solid minute of apologies on both sides before the matter was addressed. Hopefully both the Spoken Channels and Casey would be alright before the next shift came in.

[yandere-sins]

Tough Love

[My Commission Info] | [My Ao3] | [Ko-Fi]

Another lovely anonymous commission, acting as a prequel to this story! Thank you for commissioning me again ♥

Characters: Yandere!Dragon!Shinguji Korekiyo x Boyfriend!Gokuhara Gonta x Reader Words: 3282 Warnings: Yandere, Kidnapping, Threatening, Body distortion

Gently and mindfully closing the door behind him, Korekiyo took a deep breath. Having brought both of his new humans into their respective rooms, it was now time to wait and see what would happen. He didn’t think of himself as too harsh when he grabbed them off the ground, carrying them off to his castle. But even so, the shock and stress might have caused them to blackout. However, even if there were minor injuries, Korekiyo was confident he could treat them by now. Kiyo’s steps echoed through the silent corridors of the castle, his right hand brushing over the doors lined up on the wall. Everything was prepared and ready for them; there was nothing they’d lack while staying in this castle.

It had taken years for him to become so comfortable with what he was doing, his first few tries having ended in disaster. Never again did he want to repeat what happened, even if that meant he had to be more careful, more prepared, and more distant from his subjects. Part of him wished to be closer to them more than ever. Still, year-long experience had shown that humans and dragons could never coexist peacefully. He would never be able to go into a city without fearing getting speared upon sight, even in his humanoid form. To some degree, he could understand their fear. All of their experiences with dragons had been negative. But at the same time, he had never wanted anything more than to learn from the humans and understand them like no one of his kind had before. Compared to him, humans were so fragile and easily withered, like flowers in the winter. And Kiyo was the frost, yearning for sunny days.

Perhaps this time, it would be different, seeing that there were two of them. His previous studies had shown that connections between humans were vital for their well-being. At the same time, his presence as a dragon didn’t seem to have the same influence on them. They wouldn’t accept his companionship or love, no matter how well or bad he treated them. But now that he had the chance to observe what it was like, perhaps he’d be able to use it in the future as well. It would be interesting to see and compare those two to the knowledge he had acquired so far about singular humans, even if it would take time and patience - two things he had plenty of. Nonetheless, he knew he couldn’t be too lenient with them. Too many had opposed him before; he couldn’t risk losing these two because he was growing soft. Tough love, that’s what the humans called it, right? 

It would be exactly what he’d use on them.

Your head was still throbbing when you opened your eyes. It didn’t come as a surprise, but it was awful nonetheless. No one liked waking up feeling like shit. Warm sunlight shone upon you as you turned over in your soft bed, clutching your sides when you felt the sharp pain left on you after being grabbed by a dragon. Had you been rescued? Were you even alive? The images were still vivid in your mind; the chaos, the screams, and Gonta’s hand holding yours as you two were running away.

Gonta!

Sitting up straight, you instantly regretted being hasty. Of course, your body couldn’t keep up with the sudden movements after all that happened, but your mind grew frantic as you thought about your boyfriend. Straining your eyes, you made out the layout of the unfamiliar room you were in, furrowing your brows as the questions in your head multiplied. It was a nice room, probably the nicest one you had ever seen in your life. Finely crafted amenities, vivid colors, and pristine conditions - just like what you’d imagine a fairytale would look like. Where were you? What happened after you blacked out? Was Gonta taken too? Had someone rescued you and put you in this room so you could recover? Looking down at you, you still had your usual clothes on you, even if they were sullied with dirt. Why would someone put you in such a fancy bed this way?

It almost made you feel bad to sit in the clean white sheets with your dirty clothes, but it wasn’t the time to worry about how hard it would be to wash the stains out of the sheets. You lifted your legs off the mattress, trying to stand up, feeling the backlash of being knocked out. Even though it felt weird and a bit painful, you could determine with relief that nothing was broken. Taking weak steps, you made your way towards the exit of your room to call out to someone, ask what was going on. And maybe, find the one person you wanted to be held by most.

The door swung open quickly as you pushed the handle, no pulling or tearing like you were used to from the sometimes stuck doors all around your village. Everything seemed so immaculate. It was almost intimidating. Stepping out, you found yourself in a long hallway filled with doors. Paintings hung from the walls of places you had never seen. Even if you guessed before that this was no small house, you were still amazed by how endless it seemed to be. However, even if there were traces of living - books and plants decorating the hall - you couldn’t see anyone. “H-Hello?” you asked, your voice hoarse from screaming so much when the dragon captured you. 

No response.

Overcome with a weird feeling when no one answered you, you tried again without success. A mansion as big as this should have servants running around, right? Meeting anyone would calm the anxious rumbling in your stomach, but this way, you didn’t know where to go or what to do first. Suddenly, you heard the sound of heavy footsteps approach you from the front, and you noticed the intricately decorated door. Before you could step up to it, it swung open, revealing a very familiar face. The shudder of your name fell of Gonta’s lips before he hugged you tightly, and you sunk into his arms while a heavy stone fell off your shoulders. “I’m so glad you’re alright,” he sighed, relieved, sniffling a little. 

It took a while before you two could let go of each other, but you were so thankful for feeling his warmth, knowing he really was there with you. No matter how strange and scary the situation had seemed at first, knowing you weren’t alone made everything better. “Do you… still remember anything that happened after… you know?” you asked as you separated from him, and Gonta’s expression turned apologetic as he shook his head. “It’s okay,” you whispered, reaching up to caress his cheek. Gonta gave a heavy sigh as he leaned into your affection, and you could feel how relieved he was too. “I thought… I really thought…” he mumbled, his face twitching in pain.

“Shh, it’s okay.” You didn’t want him to think about these things. About the ‘what if’s and the ‘could have been’. Hell, you didn’t even want to think about these things yourself, and you knew that they’d only cause you both suffering. All that mattered was that you were reunited and a little less lonely in your confusion. 

It came as a surprise when a sudden clap interrupted your moment of togetherness, and you looked to where it was coming from alerted. It was strange, and you hadn’t noticed anyone before, but a little down the hallway, the figure of a man was sitting on a delicate white bench, a closed book in hand. He slowly looked up, your eyes crossing. Never before had you seen such a pristine-looking human, very different energy coming from him. Having spent all your life in your village, you found it hard to discern if this was simply the aura of a noble or something else entirely. 

“I am glad to see you woke up,” he spoke as he stood up from the little bench located between two doors. “I was worried about you two.”

“Where- Where are we?” was the first question on your mind, your hand gripping a bit tighter into Gonta’s shirt as the man approached. 

“My castle. Your home,” was the curt answer you received, however, the man didn’t stop walking, eventually passing the both of you who stepped out of the way respectfully. “What do you mean?” you replied, but the man kept walking down the long corridor as if he had heard nothing. 

“You may explore as much as you want. I hope it will be to your liking,” the man stated, finally coming to a halt in front of one of the many doors, opening it before giving a short glance back towards you and Gonta and ultimately disappearing inside what laid behind. You heard the click of a lock as the door closed and looked at Gonta helplessly. “What did he mean?” 

However, Gonta didn’t have an answer for that either. “I’m not sure, but Gonta doesn’t like it…” 

You had to agree with your boyfriend, who seemed to grow more anxious by the second. Taking his hand in yours, you squeezed it reassuringly before suggesting, “Let’s look around, maybe we’ll find a way out,” and he nodded, giving you a squeeze back.

Many doors wouldn’t budge as you tried to open them, but the few rooms you were able to enter didn’t help you two much on your pursuit for a way out. One led to a long banquet hall, only containing a seemingly endless table surrounded by more chairs than you could count. Another one hosted more books than anyone would ever be able to read in a lifetime. As wondrous as it was, all of these rooms didn’t help soothe your own anxiety, much less Gonta’s. It became more evident with every passing chance that something was wrong, even if neither of you wanted to admit it. You just held hands tighter, hoping that the next door would be the key to go outside. 

“Look!” Gonta called out as you searched through the office you two had stumbled upon. Perhaps it was just your own desperation, but you wanted there to be something in here to help, even if it was just a key for one of the locked doors or a map of the layout of the ‘castle’ you were in. But even after skipping through the books, some too hard to read and in questionable languages, there were no clues left behind that would point to your whereabouts. As if this place was isolated from everything. Stepping up to Gonta, he pushed away the curtain for you, big windows being revealed behind them. 

“Oh…” you gasped as you looked outside, seeing how high up you two were. It might not have been an exaggeration after all when the man told you it was his castle, considering there was a tall defense wall surrounding the building and endless fields of gold-shimmering wheat surrounding it. Inside the walls, you could only see the flourishing gardens lying beneath, decorated by colorful flowers and a small river bed winding through it. Just like everything inside the castle, it was astonishingly beautiful with flowers you had never seen before, but it didn’t deter you two from the main point of interest.

“That’s… a big wall,” Gonta mumbled thoughtfully, and you agreed with a shake of your head. Not only was it tall, it also consisted of firm, solid blocks of stone, without even a hint of aging on them. Of course, you couldn’t tell how good the condition of the outside of the wall was, but just from looking at the inside, you figured it would be hard to find a nick in it. “Do you see an exit somewhere?” you asked, stretching your neck to look as far as possible in hopes of seeing a tower or the huge gats you imagined castle walls to have.

“There is none,” a voice rang out from behind, and you turned around, startled to see the same mysterious man from before approach. Neither of you had heard the door open, and yet here he was as if he appeared from nothing. “When my humans kept trying to get out of the castle, I put a boulder in front of the exit. Now, only I can come and leave as I please.”

“Who are you?” you yelled at him, standing protectively in front of Gonta, who flinched when you raised your voice. However, the man’s words rang alarm bells in your head, and the bad feeling you had before intensified. Something about him wasn’t right. Even if it was just a slight difference, he didn’t appear as human as you would have liked him to be. Especially now that you got a better look at him, your gaze clearer than when you had just woken up, he simply felt off to you. 

“I am…” His voice trailed off as he hesitated to finish the sentence, bringing a finger to his lips in contemplation before shaking his head almost as if he was disappointed. “Have you not thought about it yet? Very well, I shall tell you then. I am who brought you here. You may call me Korekiyo.”

“Brought us… here?” you muttered, the sudden grip on your shoulder startling you, and you looked back at Gonta, who was shaking as if he had seen a ghost. Oh, you realized, your eyes widening in shock and surprise as you gasped, “The dragon!” before quickly covering your mouth with your hand.

“What-” you croaked, as you were left speechless momentarily. You felt your pulse quickening, but having Gonta behind you gave you back some strength and composure to not panic. In the very worst case, you two would make a run for it. Even Gonta knew how to act quickly, and his strength would not be useless when trying to get out. The only important thing was that you two stuck together no matter what. You could make it if you were together.

“What do you want from us?!” you yelled accusatory, brushing your hand over Gonta’s on your shoulder in comfort for both of you. “Why did you bring us here?! I- I demand to be let go, right now!”

“Why would I?” was the man’s - dragon’s? - simply answer, and he stepped forward, effectively cornering you two between the window and the office table. “You’re here to keep me company, and I can’t wait-” Holding out his hand, you saw it coming too close to comfort to your face, making you flinch away from it and bringing you and Gonta into a backwards stumble. “-to see how you’ll do,” he finished his speech, leaving you none the wiser. His hand remained in the air for a moment longer before the dragon curled it into a fist, taking another step forward.

“We’ll get out!” you announced. You had no plan and no idea how you’d manage such a deed, but neither would you accept whatever your captor planned for you two so ominously. 

A strange gleam appeared in the dragon’s eyes as you spoke rashly about your plans, and with another step, he was in front of you. Perhaps it was just a trick of your eyes, but you thought to see him change as you looked at him, a wave of shimmering scales erupting from his skin before disappearing again and his face deforming briefly into a much more grotesque form. It left you speechless until you felt both of Gonta’s hands clawing into your shoulders before he pulled you away while another hand wrapped around your chin. 

“Don’t forget at whose mercy you are.”

He was so close now that you could feel his hot breath against your skin, your body instinctively starting to shiver. Even if you pretended to be strong and courageous, your subconscious knew better as to not fear the predator in front of you. Even if his fingers were soft, claws were protruding from his nails, and his grip was merciless. It resembled when he grabbed you and dragged you off as a full-fledged dragon before you lost consciousness, a memory you’d rather not remember. 

Gonta was the one to break you two apart, his arm wrapping around you as he pulled you back and close against him in an effort to protect you. You couldn’t see his face, but with how desperately he was holding on to you, you realized that he was beyond worried after witnessing this exchange. There was only a small gap between you and the dragon now, but his touch did not linger as he looked up at Gonta, who quickly began to stammer an apology. “We- We won’t! So please…” 

It was unclear if this satisfied the dragon, but he let off, crossing his arms behind his back again. “As long as you know how you should behave, it’s fine.”

Way too quickly, the dragon composed himself, not even heaving a heavy sigh despite the displeasure of being confronted by you. The deformities you thought to witness stopped, as well as the shimmering gleam of scales. He was almost back to looking like a ‘normal’ human, despite being the farthest lifeform from it. “You may explore the open rooms and sleep in the ones you woke up. Or share them, I don’t mind. I’m sure you’ll find the amenities quite comfortable and interesting, but do let me know if you need anything.”

Turning on his heel, he seemed unbothered to turn his back to you, even though you were seething with the desire to ram something into his vulnerable body at that moment. Part of you was scared, but the other was angry and confused, wondering what would happen and why you were here in the first place. If only… you hadn’t survived. Maybe it would have been better that way.

But you couldn’t think like this. Not when there was another person who needed you.

Supported by Gonta’s arms, you tried to stand on your wobbly feet alone when the dragon suddenly turned around to you again to add something to his words, making you flinch as his piercing gaze fell on you especially again. “Make sure you come when I call,” he spoke demandingly, with no room to argue. This was an absolute order, one you wished you could ignore, but it only amplified the fear inside you.

When the door finally closed behind Korekiyo, you collapsed, unable to keep your composure as tears of shock filled your eyes. Gonta sunk to the ground with you. The only comfort he could offer was holding you tightly in his embrace, his head dropping on top of yours. At least for a little bit, you could hide inside his arms, but a million questions kept coming while you tried to calm down. You wished you could just go to bed and sleep, the nightmare finally being over when you opened your eyes again. But Gonta’s warmth reminded you this was no dream, only making you more agitated.

“What do we do now,” Gonta muttered into your hair, and you were so desperate to give him a positive answer, for a moment, you managed to lie to yourself.

“We’ll find a way. Maybe… maybe he’ll just let us go after a bit.”

It was the best you could do, but a lie nonetheless. You didn’t know what would happen, but the only thing you have in this situation was hope. 

Hope that it wouldn’t be as bad as the scenarios playing in your head.

[the-broken-truth]

The Strings That Bind Us ~ The Reunion

Summary: A Male Foreigner is found and captured on the outskirts of the village & brought before Mother Miranda & The Four House Lords. Upon waking - the male comes face to face with Angie - Donna's Living Puppet - and instantly recognizes her before calling out for Donna herself. Just who is this male and who does he know Donna?

Pairing: Donna Beneviento x Male OC (Vulcan)

[Unknown Place - Unknown Time]

He didn't remember where he was. He doesn't remember how he got here. All he does remember was that he traveled to Romania to search for something precious that he lost years ago. He happened to stumble upon a rather destroyed-looking village that basked in the shadow of an enormous castle; the village itself looked as if its residents all rose at once and abandoned it and all their possessions.

The man walked through the frozen dirt streets of the village with a black, hooded cloak upon his shoulders & the hood upon his head; revealing only his chin and his mouth to the elements - occasionally, his breath with leave his lips and freeze in the cold winter air. He continued to walk around until he stood in the middle of a multi-crossroads, unsure of which way to go. He stood still until he lifted his right hand - revealing a ring on his finger but this ring was different.

The ring was not made of gold or silver - nor was it made of titanium or brass - this ring was more fragile than that for the ring was made of porcelain. Its smooth white surface shined even in the low sunlight. He brought the ring to his lips and kissed the cold surface of it as he tried to keep himself from crying as the memories came back.

'I'll find you and I promise I'm going to protect you - both of you.'

His thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of twigs breaking and snarling - he looked around and saw a creature unlike anything he ever saw before - it was humanoid but its skin was grey, it has a mouth full of sharp teeth, and it the noises it made - it was almost wolf-like. He wanted it to say it was a Lycan but it looked nothing like what a Lycan would look like. There were more and more snarls - he looked to see he was now surrounded by these Lycan Rejects. That's when his 'Fight or Flight' instincts kicked in but he's never been one to flee - he never ran from a fight when he sensed something he cared about was in danger. His ring was in danger of being shattered if those things got a hold of him and he would be damned if he let anything shatter his ring. He reached behind his back - under his cloak - with both hands and withdrew two daggers with black blades and silver handles.

"Bring it." He snarled as he dashed into the line of creatures and began to slaughter them left and right until they all laid dead at his feet and his blades were soaked in blood - still dripping from the curve.

"Well - that was an interesting show to watch. I didn't think you could slaughter my lycans with knives like that and still be standing. You're strong as hell, my friend." A voice called out from behind him. He turned to see a tall man wearing a hat with a green coat - he had grey hair that was complete with a beard and circle glasses. He held a massive hammer constructed out of gears and other metals - speaking of metals, the metal that surrounded him on the ground began to levitate around him with each step he took. The stranger took a puff of the cigar he was smoking.

"You call those 'Lycans'? Please, don't make me laugh. Also - who the hell are you?" The cloaked man asked.

"Oh - you're not a local! That's even better." The hammer-wielder smiled as he pointed at the cloaked man - sending a pole flying at him at high speeds until it stabbed through his cloak and into his shoulder, making him grunt and drop one of his daggers; which then got pulled into the strange man's magnetic field.

"Mother Miranda's gonna love you." The man smirked as more metal began to encompassing the cloaked man, trapping him in a metal cocoon of some kind. Before the metal fully took him, his armed hand covered the ring to prevent it from facing the impact of the metal. Soon - began to slip into unconsciousness.

[Unknown Amount Of Time Later]

"I'm telling you - this bastard slaughter my entire squad with these daggers." A familiar voice called out.

"Well - it's obvious your little 'game' would be more of a 'hunting game' to him. I think I can find a better use for him." An elegant feminine voice called out as a response.

"Oh, and what use is that? Using him to make the next brood for your bloodline? Please - he's a hunter so he goes with other hunters and if it takes to him better then he can be the alpha I was looking for." The familiar voice said again.

The unconscious man began to stir awake & opened his eyes to see...wait...It couldn't be her. The familiar large head and thin body with thin limbs, downed in a wedding dress-like attire complete with a veil. He looked at the doll - not in familiar - but astonishment and...was that hope that she saw in his eyes.

"He's awake!" The doll called out as she looked at the other people in the room.

To the left, seated in a chair - a rather tall woman dressed in the look of a royal lady. If he was to guess, she was the owner of the large castle he saw when he first come here.

Across from her was the man who trapped him - his hammer resting by his legs as he saw on a pue of some kind.

To the left of him, more tucked away in the shadows was a small figure, cloaked in fabrics as if to hide his appearance.

Across from him, seating in a chair was a figure downed in black attire, wearing a dark veil over their head, the only part of their body was their hands - by the look of those hands, that person was female.

'I've seen those hands before.' More hope filled his heart.

In the center of it all was a woman - she must have been the leader of it all.

They were talking about something - but the man couldn't care less, when he saw the doll walk away he hurried to his knees but couldn't get all the way up because of the binds but he could use his voice.

"W...Wait...Angie...Angie, is that you?" The man asked.

This caused everyone to stop talking and looked in his direction - including the doll, who was completely confused.

"How do you know my name? Have we met before?" Angie asked as she slowly moved closer to the bound male, who shook the hood off his head to reveal his looks.

His skin was tan but it was a bit paler due to being in the snow for so long. He had short black hair that was wild and free, his eyes...they were amber - burning bright with an unknown emotion.

"Yes, we have; decades ago but you were...alive like this..." His eyes widened as he began looking around. "If you're here then...Donna? Is Donna here too?! Donna?!" He began calling out - almost like a worried spouse looking for their other half.

Everyone looked at the man before looking at the veiled figure sitting to the left of the leader.

"Do you know him, Donna Dear?" the raven-masked woman spoke.

The man's breath caught as he heard her words and looked at the veiled figure who rose from her seat; Angie ran back to her and stood by her side, clenching her dress in her hands like a child holding their mother.

"Donna..." The man spoke softly - tears began to build in his eyes as he tried to rise to his feet - only to be stopped by the binds and cuffs that kept him down. He glared at the restraints and began pulling on them.

"Good luck with that. You're cuffed up ti-"

*CLANK!*

Everyone's eyes widened as the binds holding the captive were shattered, allowing him to stand at his full height.

The Hammer-Wielder jumped to his feet and summoned his hammer to his left hand as if he was getting ready to strike him but the man didn't care - he kept his eyes on Donna, who looked in his direction.

"Donna...I...I found you. After all this time, I finally found you." The man's voice cracked as he spoke with tears in his eyes and a smile on his face.

"Just who are you? How do you know us?" Angie spoke from her place. The man smiled at the doll.

"It's been decades, Angie. It's only natural you don't remember me...after all - you weren't as alive as you are now when we met. My name is Vulcan and I've been searching for you and Donna since the day you guys disappeared." The man - Vulcan - smiled at Donna, who still said nothing, and slowly raised his hand - revealing the porcelain ring on his finger; Donna and Angie gasped at the sight of it.

"I kept it, Donna. I kept this ring just as I kept my promise." Vulcan slowly staggered towards Donna and Angie - completely ignoring the looks the Noble Lady and the Hammer-Wielder were giving him. He took the single step in his way and was now standing before them. He blinked - letting the tears fall from his eyes as he reached out and took Donna in his arms; hugging her as he rested the tip of his nose on her head.

"I'm here, Donna...I won't leave you, I promise." Vulcan sobbed.

Donna - who was silent for the most part - slowly reached her hands up and returned to hug as she clenched his cloak as if he would disappear - as if this was all a dream.

"Vulcan." She spoke as she nuzzled her head into his broad chest with a weak sob of her own.

[End]

[nat-20s]

what’s poppin everyone please have this fun lil writing warmup/short story inspired by me thinking “Dancing in the Moonlight” was definitely 100% about werewolves

~*~

“So, this your first transformation?”

The counselor? Leader? Tour guide? Asked this with a perfectly jovial tone, as if the typical social mores surrounding, ugh, lycanthropy, didn’t apply to her. They didn’t know what exact title to call her, and her name tag just said “Luna”, which, reflecting on it, either was a joke on her part or a reflection of her parents’ sense of humor.

Picking at the scabs from last month, they cringed and replied, “No. Uh. Second.”

Luna lets out a low whistle. “Oof. That sucks. Guessing you got bitten rather than inherited the ol’ wolfman gene?”

“That’s...kind of personal?”

Unlocking the front door of the log cabin that served as King Harvest’s Headquarters, Luna shrugs and says, “Shit, sorry. Forgot the whole weird stigma around your source of the once monthly nightmare, as if it fuckin matters. Also, I know, I know, ass out of you and me. Hey, you got any dietary restrictions? Gluten, peanut allergies, the like?”

Voice flat, they tell her, “I’m vegetarian,” and waits for the obvious response.

As they wander through the cabin towards the kitchen, Luna flipping on the light switches, generic club music starts to filter in. Instead of the obvious response, Luna asks, “You like veggie burgers? Or maybe pasta? I’d offer salad, but that’s really not gonna cut it for tonight.”

“I ate before I came.”

With a snort, she tells them, “Oh yeah? Did you have about 4000 calories?”

“No? Why would I have?”

Sweeping out her arm, she gestures at the food laying out on the counter and tells them, “Then eat up! 4000 is really a minimum for the night if you don’t want to feel like someone physically beat out all of your energy in the morning. 6000 is more the target area, but we got, hmm, about 15 minutes before things get uncomfortable, and half an hour max before things get dire.”

They glance down to the food, and, admittedly, the broccoli alfredo does look pretty appealing. Still, they have to ask, “Is this a cult?”

Luna lets out a bark of a laugh that has nothing to do with her (maybe) being a werewolf. “Okay, first of all, what kind of cult is like ‘fuck yeah, we’re a cult’? Secondly, despite the first thing, I can say that we’re not a cult. I know how “King Harvest: Center for Movement Therapy” sounds, both clinical and vague enough to be suspicious as hell, but I didn’t come up with the title, blame my long deceased dad for that one. Plus, ‘King Harvest: Bitchin’ Wolf Dance House’ probably wouldn’t look good on the grant applications.”

“Grants?”

“Oh yeah. This bad boy’s been publicly funded since its opening in 1972. Hence no membership fees.”

“Is that why animal control is giving out your business card? Are they one of your sponsors?”

“Nah, that’s just Jack. Me ‘n’ him go way back, hell, to his park ranger days.  I mean, yeah, I think he’ll campaign for us, but mostly I think he just hates capturing a wolf in the night only to have a naked, trembling human in the morning, and he knows that our program significantly reduces the odds of that happening, at least in this neck of the woods.”

They let out a hum, then glance back down to the food. As appealing as it down look, they’re still about..30% convinced this is an elaborate organ harvesting operation. Or sketchy sex thing.

Apparently sensing their hesitation, Luna says, “You got a favorite chip?”

“Salt and vinegar.”

Grabbing a sealed family sized bag from the overhead cabinets, Luna tosses it to them. “If you come back next full moon, either eat enough in advance or have a real meal here. That being said, excuse the turn of phrase, you should wolf that down. It’s sure as hell better than nothing.”

They catch it, and the bag opens with a puff of air that speaks to a reassuring lack of tampering. As they toss a chip into their mouth, Luna grabs a water bottle from the fridge and places it down next to them. “So? Any questions for me? We’ve still got about ten minutes before we have to go out there.”

Rolling their eyes, they tell her, “No. None at all.”

“Great! Soon as you’re done eating we’ll get you started.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“Yeah, no shit, smart-ass. Seriously, what are your, we haven’t got much time.”

“I don’t know? The whole..thing? I mean, how is it supposed to..work? Like? At all?”

“You ever see Amok Time?”

“Is that relevant?”

“It’s a yes or no question babe.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then the explanation is going to be a lot more technical and take a lot longer, ultimately to likely make less sense.”

“...I’ve seen it.”

“Great! So, Pon Farr is basically this chemical blood imbalance that results in fuck or die disorder, yeah? But then Spock neither fucks nor dies, and eventually the vulcans get their shit together and find out that an intense fight can serve the same function, and the blood fever chills out. Lycanthropy operates on a similar enough basis for comparison. You’re compelled to act out on energetically heavy base instincts, returning to the ways of the wolf or whatever. Traditionally, that’s done through running and hunting, which has, historically, been a crapshoot at best. Theoretically, sex can also get the job done, but I’m sure you can imagine how that gets extremely dicey extremely quickly. Either restraints or isolation has been implemented for a while, but, c’mon, they’re bandaid solutions, and they’re far from foolproof. Luckily for us all, my grandmother decided to connect back with her ancestors, and there was a handful of stories having huge festivals to deal with ‘moon violence’. She tried it out, and, yeah, dancing works.”

“That sounds…”

They don’t know how that sounds. Made up, mostly.

“Like a bunch of hippie bullshit? Yeah, it kind of is, Grandma Josephine was a huge hippie, but it’s hippie bullshit that works. In fact, let’s go see the others, it almost always makes things clearer.”

Figuring that whatever they’re about to see can’t be worse than their transformation last month. They head through the sliding glass door out the back, the thump of the music suddenly loud enough to be felt in their chest. The sight that awaits them makes them drop their chips and let out a gasp. Barely able to speak, they exhale out, “None of them...they’re not wolves. How..how??”

Indeed, the roughly forty people jumping to the pulse of whatever they’re listening to (some to the in house DJ, some, apparently, to what’s playing over the large headphones they have adorned), resemble the image of a wolfman much more accurately. They bare claws, fangs, elongated snouts, upright ears, and  serious amounts of hair, but they’re on two legs, and moving like humans. Some of them are even singing along to the lyrics, which really shouldn’t be possible.

Luna grins, making it obvious that she’s used to this level of shell shocks. “Ultimately, you do have to give into some damn rigorous instincts. But dancing is a human instinct, not a canine one, so you end up, well, humanoid. Pretty nifty, huh?”

“And they all..they all keep their minds? I didn’t...they don’t blackout?”

“Not since we banned alcohol in the 90s! Here, watch this.”

Luna nods her head at the DJ, and the DJ, obligingly, turns down the music for a moment. The members of the crowd not listening to their own music pause, then look towards the door. She cries out, “Hey gang! HOW WE ALL DOIN’ TONIGHT?”, and gets a mix between a howl and “WOO!” cried back. The DJ then turns the music back up, and the general movement of the crowd resumes.

They should be more skeptical. They want to be more skeptical, they were just minutes before, but it’s hard to disagree with something right in front of you. “This will work for me? I just..have to dance?”

“Well, it’s not guaranteed. Few things are. But we have yet to have someone turn violent on us. If you start to fell yourself slipping from consciousness, though, I do ask that you start heading further into the woods, as to not hurt other guest. If you find yourself just getting tired, there’s beds inside, and a fair amount of pillows around the edge of the quote unquote dance floor, if you end up in more of a nesting mood. Also, I recommend taking off your shoes before you start.”

“What? Why?”

Luna gives a pointed glance at the dancers’ feet, which, ah. They’re about twice as large as normal and at least twice as sharp. The converse on their feet would be no match. “Ah.”

“Ready?”

They shove off their shoes and place the remainder of their chips aside. “As I’ll ever be.”

Good thing, too, as they’re starting to feel an uncomfortable pressure in their chest that was the prelude to disaster last month.

Luna strides to the center of the dance floor, which is really a plush lawn surrounded by forest. The crowd naturally moves around her, and she yells out, “Aiyana! Play my song!”

Aiyana gives a nod, and the opening notes of “Dancing in the Moonlight” start to sound out. “Seriously?”

Luna shrugs, grinning like a fool, and says, “It’s a classic!”

“It’s cliché at best.”

Luna shrugs, and then begins dancing. She’s hardly elegant, but she is dazzlingly joyful in her uncoordinated movements. As the song reaches the first chorus, she gives a twirl, and in the split second it takes, she’s transformed. They blink in shock, not knowing you could transform that seamlessly, that quickly, that painlessly. Luna in half wolf form is just as expressive as the human Luna, and she gives a nod over her shoulder as if to say Come on.

Feeling somewhat foolish, they start to bop their head to the tune. Luna lets out a huff and grabs their hands, spinning them around and forcing them to get moving. At first, it’s them indulging Luna, but as they let themselves get lost in rhythm, they feel a stretching sensation in their face and limbs. It’s not unpleasant, more like when you wake up and work out the tension in your spine. They open their eyes and look down at their hands, now covered in fur in and made for slashing. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt, and they’re still themselves, and they had no idea that full moons could be like this, maybe for the rest of their lives.

They turn their head to the night sky, and their body can’t help but continue to dance. Despite all their fear, all their dread, “movement therapy” worked, and they can admit, at least to themselves, that they feel warm and bright.

[thefinalcinderella]

Thoughts so far on ep 6

And there’s Genshin 2.1 tomorrow...

- So how did mc get back to the dorm???

- As expected, we can only rely on mabu in this world

- Grim’s voice during the battle scared me when I first heard it (apparently it’s the same as the tutorial monster?); also Ortho could really destroy NRC if he wanted to do

- I feel like the Neige backstory part might be a response to some of the backlash he got from ep 5 (he’s a controversial character in jp fandom at least). I like that it confirms that yes, Neige may seem almost creepily cheerful and happy, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have his own stuff going on as well. Although I feel like this made Vil seem (even more?) petty in hindsight since he, a famous and rich influencer with a loving and supportive father and a wealthy background, was going after a kid who seems to have a lot less than he does (we don’t know what his family situation is like, but I assume he has the Snow White backstory). I guess this really does make Vil the Evil Queen then???

- But I do like Vil a lot because even though he’s really pushy and tyrannical, he does have a sense of honor and acknowledge his mistakes

- Also Rook how long have you been stalking Neige

- the Shroud family better pay for Ramshackle Dorm’s renovations

- Leona saw the Charons several times at the Sunset Savannah palace...what is going on there

- Idia has parents! Also Ortho is called a “magical humanoid ORTHO” by the Charons

- Also it’s pretty funny how Azul didn’t know Idia’s rich and wish he had sucked up to him more (edit: wait i remembered it wrong azul actually says he wished he got idia to owe him more favors lol)

- the Greek Mythology nerd in me is eating up the references

- When are we going to get a joseimuke based around Greek Mythology, please I would play that so hard 

- So the Shroud family is a branch family of the Jupiter Conglomerate (not official name) which runs the Olympus Corporation (I think) but Idia is offered an internship with them through email...do they not know who he is even though he is seemingly an important part of the family??

- How long is this ep anyways...I hope for the Ignihyde fans’ sake that it’s very long