#but she is needed for my timeline

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 194

Bart is frozen. He’s terrified- his heart is beating faster in his chest than it’s ever done before yet he couldn’t even start to force himself to run, his body practically vibrating in place as he shook. 

There was a familiar feeling in the air, one he’d never thought he’d ever feel again once he’d slipped back in time. He couldn’t breathe, everything felt like it was falling away except for that horrifying fiery aura- 

“Kid, are you okay?” There was a hand on his shoulder, light as a feather (he’d learned that from gramps!) yet grounding. 

He finally managed to suck in a breath, however wheezy, and looked up to answer, the words dying in his throat before they even began. 

“Kid? Holy shit-” Bart didn’t hear anything else as his poor brain fizzled and he fainted. 

Danny blinks down at the barely-teenager who seemed to just have some sort of attack before fainting practically in his arms. He’d say diabetes or something, but he has no way to be sure and is maybe panicking himself. 

“Wow Mum, wha’ you do?” a toddler Dan- he knew what he did but honestly his baby lisp was adorable- snarked from next to him, chewing on his kid leash. Which he wasn’t getting out of until he could both stop floating whenever he saw the stars (yes he knew he used to do the same thing, shush) and walk out into traffic. 

[cawcawwitch]

I need to see 1920s Kelsey, I need to see a young Kelsey excited about voting, taking care of her siblings, just living through the roaring twenties with all the responsibilities and dreams she had for her future. I need to see young woman Kelsey having to face the depression while being unmarried and keeping up with her education and goals.

[thresholdbb]

what's the threshold theory

There was a post about how Tom is the only crew member who isn't really affected by the Borg, and there's a theory that he has so much luck because he saw the past and the future when he crossed the transwarp threshold. He saw the past and the future, all of time and space. There's some subconscious part of him that remembers that experience. In fact, Tom refused to play a part in Chakotay indulging Annorax's temporal incursions, probably because a part of him knew nothing good could come of it.

If we extend that same theory to Janeway, some of her wild luck with time travel and other crack plans starts to make sense. She doesn't verbally hate time travel until after the events of Threshold, since it happens in Time and Again without complaint. Janeway has an uncanny knack for time travel, as evidenced every time she deals with it. She hates time travel, but it might be because part of her knows exactly how to manipulate the timeline. She manages to avoid the "inevitable" temporal explosion in Future's End, saving both Voyager and Braxton. She resets the entire timeline in Year of Hell, and no one else followed her reasoning. She pulled it off flawlessly. In Relativity, she senses the incidents are all related, despite it being just one reading that connects them. By the time she's involved, she has a temporal incursion factor of .0036 and a time travel protocol named after her, even if that may just be Braxton's personal grudge. Then there's Endgame, where she intentionally changes the timeline. Up until this point, she has been dragged into time travel, but for the first time, she jumps in on purpose. How does Admiral Janeway know how to get them home sooner in a way that completely avoids the Temporal Integrity Commission? It's because she has seen all of time, and part of her knows exactly what needs to happen so she can get Voyager home and do it in a way that becomes baked into the prime timeline. Maybe she doesn't consciously remember what happened during her transformation, but the experience lives in her mind somewhere, guiding her decisions.

[sysig]

Strictly professional showering (Patreon)

[sophiebaek]

So Katophie when???

[vigilskeep]

walking into redcliffe castle and saying cutely “you wouldn’t deprive me of my attachés, would you?” while blackwall and cassandra stand behind me bristling with armour

[gwinverarrouz]

A timeline of Bisig!! Since I've decided her birthday was in July, I felt it was time for a little retrospective :>

Thought it'd be fun to see how the way I've drawn her has evolved over the years!

[reverseisekai-richie]

The Queen in White

The Lord in Black

More than rulers, they are the living Black and White itself, unable to ever fully rid themselves of the other.

Wanted to add some more Yog-Sothoth “knows the gate, is the gate, is the key and guardian of the gate” and Azathoth “our reality is his mindless dream” flavor to Wiggly and Webby in my headcanon in a few ways, and also an idea on why gods have a 5-v-1 stalemate. 

[arty-cakes]

horribly curious because I've seen lots of different takes on this and I'd like to know what the general consensus is

[codenamethebird]

More Hades 2 rambles from me! Though this time round it's a continuation of a point I made in this post.

Specifically, that I think the final boss of the Surface will be a living human mortal.

A couple people on that post disagreed that it would be a human, mostly just because of boss fight mechanics. Which I do get, but this is my not so little refute of that idea (all in good fun of course, I very well might be wrong! I just have thought a bunch about it since then and wanted to ramble about it).

I'll be getting into later how the game could have a hard mechanically satisfying human final boss later, because first I want to talk about how it would make sense naratively. Not because anyone remotely argued this point, I just think it's interesting haha.

So let's go back for a moment to Hades 1, and it's final boss, Hades himself. On a mechanical sense, it makes total sense, Hades is the god and master of the underworld Zag is trying to escape. He would be the final obstacle. But what really makes Hades work as the final boss, is the story and emotional reason he's there.

The plot of Hades is ultimately about Zag's messy relationship with his dad. And that final boss fight is an ongoing conversation with him. While irl you and your questionable dad constantly fighting to death is not a great way to fix your problems, these are weird bound to underworld greek gods. Death is their weird love language for like half this cast haha. There is a reason Death is one of, if not the main love interest.

Okay now that I've established that, let's look at the one final boss we do know from Hades 2, Chronos. Now it's Grandpa's time to shine. Unlike Hades 1, he fits a lot cleaner into a more traditional villian role. The monster who literally takes over your house and takes your family hostage.

In that way, it is a personal fight for Mel to save her family, but Mel lacks a specific personal connection to Chronos himself. Obviously there's the whole Grandpa thing, but she wasn't like raised by him or anything. He is a convient big bad she can hate simply and wholeheartedly. While he does try to challenge her beliefs at times, Mel will never listen to him because of the whole family kidnapping thing, and Gramps equally doesn't want to engage with her either. He just wants to be a dick to her.

While I'm a firm believer in the "We (the gods) are actually the bad guys" theory, I don't think Chronos is secretly an angel. He did you know eat his kids and that entire scene with Hades and him just reeked of shitty dad vibes. While Chronos might be better for humanity, I think he really is using them as a prop and doesn't genuinely care about them. (This is a derail, but I do think the human army side of things including Prometheus will turn on Chronos at some point. Specifcally that they are already planning to).

But yes, basically, while I adore Chronos as a villain, you get none of the character growth from either party that you got between Zag and Hades in the first game. Obviously, we are still in early access, so there's more dialouge to be had. But from what we have seen, those two are not changing the other. So this is my roundabout way to say that must mean the Surface boss is the one that is going to be all about Melinoe's character growth.

I don't think I need to explain why fighting a human would be a fascinating place for character growth for humanities #1 hater Melinoe. Mel's the Hades equivalent in this game (not the Zag), who will not listen to anyone who disagrees with her. Getting beat up by a human might actually start to get it through her head.

But also I want to dig into why I don't think the final boss will be another Titan. I've seen Atlas thrown around a bunch as a possible final Surface boss. Also Typhon... I'm certain there are others. But I don't know what they would add to the narrative, especially as a final boss? I think there's more evidence for Atlas, so I'll focus on him.

It would make some sense, he was the leader of the titan rebellion and much like Prometheus, in certain versions of the myth he was also freed from his punishment by Heracles! Which considering Heracles suspicious lack of dialouge so far, and the dialouge he does have being a god hater, I do think he's the one who freed Prometheus in this game.

But other than those connections, what does Atlas add to make him an interesting antagonist to Mel? He's not particularly tied to humanity, and while his punishment sucked he did lead a rebellion against the gods (and traditionally the reasons have nothing to do with humans).

Mostly, in my opinion, if the game was going to have a titan also be the final boss for the Surface, it wouldn't be Atlas. It would be Prometheus. He's the powerful titan who has a legitimate gruge against the gods and who can engage with Mel in interesting ways, challenging her stance against the gods. But they have already used Prometheus, I don't know how they could write Atlas (or whatever titan/god) in a way that would be more interesting than Prometheus, and rival the Hades boss fight for thematic weight. Also, it would be 2 titans in a row, which isn't nessisarily a bad thing, but still.

I've also seen people throw around it might he Ares, which I will admit would I would be way more excited for that another titan. Theres some interesting ideas to be had with an Olympian who has betrayed the gods. But we already have dialouge with Athena where she says how Chronos' armies motivations wouldn't line up with Ares'. And I feel like going from a dude only obsessed with war to someone fighting for some kind of higher cause would be a jump in character. Not impossible, but a little weird.

And ultimately, I just think that a Human would serve the purpose better as an antagonist to Mel who would shake her worldview on living mortals in particular. A fight with Ares would mess with her relationship with the gods, but not as clearly with humans.

Okay now that I've talked about themes, how about what people actually had an issue with lol, how would a final boss with a human make sense from a boss fight perspective. I have three main ideas, that don't really contradict each other and could all exist in the fight.

1st idea: multiple enemies. We've heard that there are human armies, the final boss could possibly be a leader of them. We could have hords of enemies, could have select recognizable commanders that have different skill sets, etc. None of the Surface boss fights have multi bosses in them (they have random mobs but none like the sirens or Theseus and Asterius), so I don't think it would be strange to have it. And while stretching the definition of a human boss a bit, these other bosses could be ghosts and other kinds of beings (I just think the main boss should be a breathing human).

2nd idea and tbh my main one. Have them be a Witch! Or some other kind of magic user. I feel like this should be obvious, but a lot of the theming around Hades 2 is witchy/magic stuff and it's wild we don't have a major witch enemy yet (other than obviously Hecate, but for obvious reasons I don't count her).

I'm thinking some kind of High Priestess of Chronos kind of character, we still don't know exactly how Chronos was revived and this could tie in, but there's a bunch of ways you could spin a magic user! I think it would be a prime place to put a narrative foil to Melinoe. A fellow Witch whose family was stolen away by the gods who is looking for justice. Maybe when finally looking into a mirror, some of the stuff Melinoe's been told will finally breach her thick headed skull haha.

I don't think I really need to get into the technical about how a witch fight could be cool. But one idea, tying into my first point, a magic user could have mind powers and compell powerful beings to fight for them. This could be the Zag boss fight of borderline crack theories or even maybe the aforementioned Ares who maybe got captured during his war path. A magic fight doesn't need possessed enemies, but it could be cool.

And finally, my 3rd idea. You might be going, but how could a human be more powerful than Prometheus? Well first point magic, but more seriously, just have them be boosted by Chronos and/or other allies. I mentioned a theory about a high priestess sort of character (the power of God and ani--), but more specifically, if they do go the route of a foil to Melinoe, she has her boons from the gods. Much like Theseus in Hades 1, the final surface boss could gain the boons of Chronos/Prometheus/and the like. Maybe even a Chaos boon, they have already aided Chronos once, and there's a decent chance the humans might betray Chronos at some point so Chaos might be chill with them. This could also be a way to introduce more titan characters and the like without needing to make models for them haha.

But yes, tldr, magic human gives us both the thematic weight of it being a human, witch stuff to parallel Melinoe, and just cool powerful magic fight as a final boss (and it could parallel the Hecate boss fight, the first boss u fight and the last being magic based).

[queenofthursday6599-blog]

You know I don't think Timmy actually ended up sharing Wanda and Cosmo for all that long with Chloe in the grand scheme of things.

I mean there's various points in the show that seem to imply that having Fairy GodParents is a temporary thing. Like extremely temporary for most kids.

As in even being 10, and having gotten Cosmo and Wanda at age 8, Timmy's considered as having been a GodChild for a long time. Even if that's only a couple years.

Like there's a reason why there's multiple episodes about all of Fairy World being interested in whatever Timmy's up to.

Timmy's an outlier case.

He's going to end up aging out of the system (bar any breaking of any major rule that the fairies can't find a way to forgive) and everyone knows it.

They made a whole live action trilogy of bending the rules just for him where he gets to keep his fairies as an adult, and then turns into a fairy at the end of that trilogy.

He's a, probably wouldn't have made it to adulthood without fairies, kind of a case.

That's not the case for most kids who get fairies, or at least it's heavily implied that's not the case for most kids who get fairies.

Take Cosmo and Wanda being Crocker's fairies in 1972, and having already been his fairies for about 2 years by that point, but having had been Billy Gate's fairies in 1970.

We're never even given a hint that Billy lost his fairies traumatically, because he grew up to invent the internet just fine, and we never hear about him beyond that. And it seems like if a kid traumatically loses their fairies before their ready, it ends with them being a screwed up adult.

Which tells me that whatever situation Billy was in to need fairies resolved itself shortly after the time travel thing.

Heck even then, it was heavily implied that Crocker's life, even qualifying for fairies, was better than Timmy's was. Considering the only things mentioned is that he's got a single mom that works multiple jobs, and when she doesn't she tends to focus on her hobbies, and an evil babysitter to deal with.

He's not bullied at that point, he's not struggling academically, the only things wrong with his life (before getting over dosed on magic mindwipe and being disfigured and losing his mind as a result, which turned him into a social outcast) is that he's got a single mom who works a lot and leaves him with a mean babysitter so she can have me time.

That's it, that's what makes him qualify.

And he would have aged out of at least one of those problems before turning 18. He would have been 14 when he would have naturally outgrown needing to have a babysitter (as that's how old Vicky starts babysitting Timmy).

Then by that point he would have also been old enough to get a part time job of his own. Lightening the financial lode on his mother, and possibly freeing up some of her working time to actually spend with her.

Meaning it's possible that both of his fairy qualifying problems would have resolved themselves by age 14 or 15.

But also the kind of miserable it takes to get godparents (at least when that baseline is first established) is temporary for most kids.

I wouldn't be surprised if the typical Fairy GodParent & GodChild relationship typically only lasted like a year or two for most kids.

[And it seems like the majority of kids we meet who have GodParents, get them at age 10.

I'm pretty sure Timmy being 8 and getting his Fairies, is the youngest kid we ever see having Fairies.

Other than de-aged Vicky that one episode, but because it happened in the constraints of one of Timmy's wishes, I'm not going to count it. Especially because when Cosmo and Wanda are reassigned to Vicky, no one comes to erase Timmy's memory of having fairies, so she doesn't have to worry at all about hiding them which all other godkids do.

Also Vicky is just given Cosmo and Wanda and not her own fairy, which I feel heavily implies that all of this is falling under wish logic, and not normal logic.

Crocker is the second youngest, because he had Cosmo and Wanda at 9.]

Especially in cases where the root of the kid's misery is something they have the power to personally confront and change.

Like if a kid gets a fairy because they're being bulled at school to the point it's ruining everything else in their life. [Bully is making it to where they can't complete school or home work, causing grades to drop, meaning no extracurricular stuff, and getting in trouble with parents.]

But that kid manages to reveal what's happening, and gets things to change, and their life goes back to how it was before. Then that kid obviously doesn't need a GodParent anymore to make up for their miserable life.

I could easily see plenty of situations where a kid might only have a GodParent for less than a year.

Like Hazel's situation from A New Wish weirds me out, because all her problems are super temporary problems that resolve in like a few months to a year for most kids who have those problems.

It's missing her older brother who left for collage. Which most kids eventually get over after just getting used to them no longer living in the same house as them.

When the younger sibling gets used to the older siblings absence, a pretty good chunk of them revel in the bizarre experience of being either the new oldest, or an only child for the rest of their own childhood.

It's moving to a new city and having to make all new friends. Which Hazel does over the course of season 1. She's got 3 friends if Dev counts.

Everything causing her to need fairies is all extremely temporary. Which is a large part of the reason why I don't think she'll be one of the kids to age out of the system the way Timmy was.

She's got parents who love her, she's not struggling at school, she doesn't have an abusive babysitter, she's already started making friends at her new school, her brother came home from collage, but even then that's something she'd just grow out of eventually.

So I feel like unless something in her life changes for the worst, she's going to only have Cosmo and Wanda for a few years at most. And lose them around age 14-15.

Sure her problems are a lot more relatable than Timmy's ever were.

Which is understandable considering Timmy was a kid who had literally everything going wrong in his life, except he wasn't living in poverty.

From neglectful parents, being bullied as school, an abusive babysitter, being specifically targeted by a teacher for harassment, being the target of a girl's stalker crush on him, being canonically considered an idiot even without Crocker targeting him (even though I'm pretty sure he just has ADHD). And that's just the major stuff he starts off with.

That's not even getting into like the magical enemies he makes over the course of the show. Who are out to get him from then on.

And the fact that his parents weren't actively malicious towards him, just forgetful and oblivious.

But Hazel's problems are also all a lot more temporary than Timmy's ever were.

And that's like, the big thing that makes them different and give me the feeling that, while Timmy definitely aged out and had fairies until the last possible moment, kids like Chloe and Hazel probably only had fairies for a few years at most.

That's most likely why Wanda and Cosmo still refer to Timmy as their last godchild before retiring. Even though they were assigned Chloe years after they were assigned to Timmy.

Chloe's issues probably resolved at some point and Timmy returned to being a singular GodChild from that point on.

[I'm guessing she grew a backbone at some point, lets her parents know all the pressure they put on her was making her miserable, and stopped being a complete doormat for literally everyone. Because those were her big problems that caused her to qualify for Fairies.]

Which was probably extremely awkward for Timmy in the aftermath of Chloe having her memories purged of fairies, considering they only spent time together because they were made to share fairies.

Sure Timmy had seen kids lose their fairies before, like with Remy, but he'd never cared then because he hardly spent any time with Remy, and no one would call him and Remy friends.

But it had to be weird when it inevitably happened with Chloe, because by the end there, she basically lived in the Turner house.

Heck of the two kids who get fairies in A New Wish, I'd say that Dev is the kid more likely to be an age out case than Hazel. If he ever regains godparents.

Considering having a single parent, who literally loves business and money more than he'll ever love his own kid, is a bit more of a permanent misery than "I moved to a new town and have no friends, and my brother went off to collage" is.

Just to be honest.

Like maybe it's different rules because Hazel is a post-retirement passion project for Cosmo and Wanda, and they can stay with her until she'd age out because they're not on official rotation or whatever.

But no one will be able to convince me that she'd actually need fairies the entire rest of her childhood unless something horrible happens to her in season 2.

Like baby girl those are some temporary issues that tend to resolve themselves within a year, how are you going to keep qualifying for fairy godparentship the rest of this series?

[vounoura]

↳ ꜱ ɪ ɴ ꜱ ᴏ ꜰ ᴛ ʜ ᴇ ꜰ ᴀ ᴛ ʜ ᴇ ʀ — ᴛɪᴍᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰɪɴᴀʟ ᴀᴄᴛ. ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴛʀᴀɢᴇᴅʏ ʜᴀꜱ ʙᴇᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴍᴀɴᴋɪɴᴅ'ꜱ.

[waywardsoul-s]

I watched the remedial chaos theory episode of community for the first time and I'll never get over abeds and annies friendship.

[pineapple-cheese-bread]

Me: *Talking to my Coworker about Fractured Timeline and how I'm excited to write it*

Them: Oh can I read it when you finish writting it?

Me: *Not really thinking about it* Yeah!

a few weeks later

Me: *Staring at the google doc for the double life section as I write the finale few deaths of the game, * He, Maybe I should have thought about my answer a bit more.

[doom-dreaming]

High Flakes Combat

“Blue Lead,” Linda’s whisper cuts across TEAMCOM, crisp and several degrees colder than the icy landscape. “Hostiles approaching your position.”

Fred, tucked behind the trunk of a towering pine tree, exhales a slow, measured breath. Waiting. Listening. Without his motion tracker, only the crunch of footsteps in the snow—and Linda—could tell him when their opponents were closing in.

There. Fifteen meters out. He motions to John, positioned behind an adjacent tree. On my signal.

…ten meters…

Cover me. Go high.

…five meters…

John nods. Fred tightens his grip on his weapon.

Now.

As one, they pivot, breaching cover. Fred drops to a knee, attacking swiftly, before their adversary has a chance to retaliate.

The snowball hits Ash directly in the center of his chestplate. Active camouflage flickers briefly, then recalibrates, as the young Spartan crashes dramatically to his knees before sprawling backward, motionless.

Fred doesn’t let the theatrics distract him. The other two had to be nearby and the round wasn’t over until— A snowball whizzes past his head, followed by a sharp curse—out loud, close. He catches a shimmer of white on white as Olivia leaps to find cover and “reload,” but John is faster.

The snowball hits her thigh before she can complete her maneuver and she slides to a dejected halt in a snowbank. “Dammit! Mark!” she calls out. “You’re on your own!”

Fred doesn’t hear a verbal response. He knows he won’t, Mark’s too good to give away his position— Thwap. Fred’s vision goes fuzzy and white as Mark’s snowball connects with his visor, splattering on impact. Fred groans and flashes a red status light across his team’s HUDs. He’d be out until the next round.

“He’s on the move!” Linda barks over the comms.

Fred folds himself cross-legged into the snow and wipes his visor clean just in time to see Kelly bounding over a nearby ridge, clutching a snowball in each fist.

“I’ve got him!” She goes streaking across the snow toward a barely-visible figure—also sprinting.

Mark wouldn’t be able to outrun Kelly—a fact Fred knew the S-III was well aware of—but he was certainly trying his best.

Kelly nails Mark with both snowballs, one in the shoulder, the other in the back. He stumbles just enough that Kelly’s momentum sends her into him at full force. The clack of their colliding armor echoes like a shot as both Spartans go tumbling to the ground, sending up a minor flurry in their wake.

“Aaaaaaaand match!” Roland’s voice rings out over the simulation deck, followed by a buzzer. “Blue Team takes the win!”

“Again,” Olivia grumbles, pushing to her feet and dusting snow off her armor.

“It’s three against four,” Ash reminds her, still lying on his back a few feet from Fred.

Olivia crunches her way over and offers him a hand. “Can we make Kelly sit out the next round?”

“If you’re not having fun, leave,” John quips.

“Or maybe you should switch Kelly to our team and see how it feels,” Livi bites back, helping Ash haul himself to his feet.

“Fighting over me?” Kelly rejoins the group with Mark close behind. “I’m flattered.”

Fred chuckles. It was good to see Olivia trading barbs with John. The Gammas had warmed up to him quickly—and he to them—and it wasn’t hard to understand why. Fred was sure the S-IIIs had given him some new streaks of gray hair, but at the same time, they made him feel younger. He hoped they were having the same effect on John.

“So…” drawls a familiar voice, raised just loud enough to carry, “this is the reason my fireteams can't train today? A snowball fight.”

Every Spartan in the simulated snowscape whips toward the entrance. Commander Palmer stands at the far edge of the scene, arms crossed. She looks odd and out of place, a lone figure in a techsuit against the stark white surroundings, but no less intense than usual.

“Thought we’d try something different from the typical drills, ma’am,” Fred coughs. He’s not sure why he feels guilty; they’d requested the time and blocked out the schedule and followed protocol…even if they hadn’t said precisely what they’d be doing…

Before anyone else has a chance to speak, a snowball goes sailing over Fred’s shoulder, on a collision course for Palmer. She’s too far away to hit, but the aim is dead-accurate and it lands with a wet plap several yards directly in front of her.

Even at this distance, Fred sees her eyes narrow. The vague guilt solidifying in his gut crystallizes into ice. He knows who threw that and he’s already, reflexively, preparing for the necessary damage control—and for Linda, no less. Kelly he was used to, but Linda?

Palmer shifts her weight and fixes the seven of them with a hard stare that lasts long past the point of being uncomfortable. “Don’t go anywhere,” she eventually orders, leveling a finger in their direction. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.” Without leaving any opportunity for rebuttal, she turns on her heel and swiftly disappears from the deck.

Immediately, Linda’s status light starts blinking rapid-fire green across Blue Team’s HUDs. Kelly follows suit.

“Really?” Fred grumps over TEAMCOM.

“Can you blame her if it worked?” Kelly retorts.

“Yes! You’re making an assumption and setting a bad example.” He switches to his helmet’s speakers. “Gammas, don’t throw things at your commanding officers.”

“Unless you’re sleeping with them,” Kelly adds, with enough tact to keep the comment on Blue Team’s private channel.

Another green light from Linda.

Fred willfully ignores both of them.

“...we’re not in trouble, are we?” Ash removes his helmet and shakes out his hair. “To be honest…I don’t know what just happened.”

Kelly seats herself on a tree stump, legs akimbo, smugness oozing from every seam of her armor. “Palmer’s getting suited up to come play with us.”

Ash seems unconvinced but Mark shrugs. “She’ll balance the numbers. We might even start winning.”

Only Blue Team can see—and appreciate—the red light John flashes in silent response.

**********

As threatened, Palmer returns exactly ten minutes later, fully armored aside from the helmet tucked into the crook of her arm. “Okay, here’s the official story.” She strides up to the group. “We’re running an unorthodox but fully sanctioned training exercise all day.”

“I’ve cleared the schedule and put out an open invitation,” Roland chimes in. “As requested.”

Palmer nods her approval. “Figured I’d let you have your fun on the condition that the rest of us could get in on it too.” She raises an eyebrow. “Sound fair?”

“Fair enough,” Fred answers, echoing the array of green lights on his HUD. “Alright. Ground rules—we’re running blind for this, Commander. No motion trackers.”

She looks pleased. “I like a challenge.”

“If you get hit, you’re out for the round,” he continues. “Once you’re out, you can’t help anyone still standing. Round ends when a whole team goes down.” Fred nods toward the ceiling. “Roland’s keeping score.”

“Huh,” Palmer hums. “So you knew about this, too, Roland?”

“I…was informed the exercise would require a scorekeeper instead of a handler,” the AI answers, somehow managing to achieve the verbal equivalent of tip-toeing. “And I volunteered a mere fraction of my copious attention to the task.”

Palmer just rolls her eyes.

Ash clears his throat and steps forward. “If you wouldn’t mind, ma’am, we’d greatly appreciate it if you joined our team.”

“They’ve been wiping the floor with us,” Olivia adds, somewhat ruefully.

Palmer looks back and forth between Blue Team and the Gammas with a hint of a smirk. “Well.” She slips her helmet on. “Allow me to level the playing field.”

**********

And indeed, the tide began to turn. Quickly. It wasn’t that the Gammas couldn’t hold their own, but Palmer was a different flavor of ruthless and even numbers did make a difference.

Kelly, as Blue Team’s sole survivor, was in the midst of a valiant stand, but she was up against Palmer and Olivia and they were going in for the kill. Up to this point, Kelly had been relying on her speed to evade them, but Fred doubted that would be able to carry her any further.

Palmer and Livi split around the back of the snowbank Kelly had hidden behind, falling into synchronized step with each other, timing their paces perfectly. Palmer’s boots fall heavier and louder, covering Olivia’s near-silent glide around the other side.

The strategy is obvious, at least from Fred’s position of passive observation—Palmer would draw Kelly’s attention, Olivia would come up on her flank and take her out. And it would work, too…on anyone less observant than Kelly. Fred has a feeling she’ll see right through it. But one of them was going to hit her either way, so it didn’t really matter as far as the outcome was concerned.

Surprisingly, a third option presents itself. Fred realizes after a few seconds that he’s been holding his breath, expecting Kelly to explode out of the snow and make a run for it, but…she doesn’t.

Palmer reaches the other side of the snowdrift and slows, confusion evident in her body language. She paces around the area, making sure not to stay still for too long, obviously reluctant to let her guard down completely. Fred can see the hazy mirage of Olivia’s SPI suit still moving in with careful deliberation.

There was no way Kelly could have moved. She hadn’t had enough time. More importantly, she would’ve been spotted if she’d tried to flee, so why couldn’t—

Palmer disappears. One second, she’s standing on the other side of the snowbank, visible from the waist up, and the next second she’s gone. Fred can’t see much of anything, but there are sounds of a scuffle and the blur of camouflaged armor as Livi sweeps in to assist with whatever the hell had just happened.

Barely a breath later, Roland announces the end of the match. “And Gammas-Plus-Palmer emerge victorious! …or should I say Olivia, specifically, seeing as she is the last Spartan standing. You know, you really oughta come up with a better name for your team—”

There’s a burst of indignant exclamations and flustered cursing from Palmer. She reappears only to rip her helmet off and kick some snow back in the direction from which she’d escaped.

Olivia removes her own helmet; Fred is surprised to see her laughing. “She got you good!” There’s a giddiness in her voice that Fred’s never heard before, but she seems to remember who she's talking to a moment later. “...ma’am.”

Kelly pops up beyond the ridge. She remains helmeted but Fred knows there’s a shit-eating grin on her face just from her posture alone.

“What happened?” He shouts the question out loud.

“She buried herself in the fucking snow and pulled my legs out from under me,” Palmer growls as she trudges over.

“And then I hit Kelly point-blank in the face!”

Olivia’s gleeful comment is backed by Kelly’s laughter over TEAMCOM. “Worth it.”

“Hey!” A different voice cuts into the conversation, once again pulling everyone’s attention toward the entrance. “Heard there was some kinda free-for-all goin’ on in here?” Gabriel Thorne stands flanked by the rest of Fireteam Majestic, all in full Mjolnir. “Got room for another team?”

Palmer waves them in. “Come on up, Majestic. We’ll get you briefed on the rules.” She sighs and fits her helmet back on. “Hope you’re ready to get your asses kicked.”

**********

An hour later, after Majestic had carved out a few victories of their own, Crimson shows up. Rules are recounted, home bases are realigned, play resumes. Within another two hours, there are four more Spartan fireteams on the field. Alliances are formed, both openly and secretly. Several hours are devoted to building snow forts. Play evolves. Forts are defended and captured, sabotaged and reinforced.

And then Lasky arrives.

“Captain on deck!” Roland bellows.

The silence that blankets the simulation deck is instantaneous and absolute. Nobody moves. If the snowballs already in flight could have frozen in midair, they probably would’ve. Instead, they land in a chorus of muffled thwumps.

Lasky stands there for a few seconds, small and unimposing by the distant doors, sporting his trademark expression of beleaguered amusement—presumably at being called out. “Don’t stop on my account,” he eventually says. “I just wanted to watch. …unless there’s a team looking for a liability,” he jokes with a self-deprecating chuckle.

Everyone on the field exchanges glances and shrugs. A sea of status lights blink across Fred’s HUD—most amber, some green. Finally, someone from Crimson waves Lasky over. “We’ll take you, Captain!”

He seems genuinely surprised by the invitation, but begins the trek across the snow. “Try not to kill me, alright?”

That draws laughs from most of the Spartans, but it’s John who actually banters back. “No promises, sir.”

[h-didanart]

Have any of you guys ever been doodling when suddenly you’re hit by the angstiest idea ever and so you start workshopping that idea into an au as an alternate timeline to see if it would fit with the au only to create an absolutely heartbreaking and depression inducing scenario, only for your brain to decide that’s not enough and end up creating that same scenario in your two other main aus so that you end up with three deeply traumatized versions of the same character?

Anyone?

No?

That’s fair

I call them the heartbroken trio.

We have a post-Everything Goes To Shit arc Scythe, around January ‘24 Bloody, and a post-Second Takeover Harvest. You may notice I called them by their actual names and not by their usual [insert trait here]!BM names, and that’s on purpose.

See, due to various circumstances in each of their respective timelines, their twins died.

They’ve all taken it very harshly, but express it in different ways, Scythe is more reserved yet more ruthless in her anger, Bloody has become extremely disconnected from everything, and Harvest is an anxious wreck. All their reactions are directly correlated to their twins’ death and how they perceived it.

Anyways, yeah.

New au//timeline thing. Yay?

Oh, and for your troubles

The guy who in his canon lost his twin being extremely conflicted about the newcomers. Cuz in one hand they are versions of versions of himself that he knows that he can relate even more to! But on the other hand they are versions of versions of himself that he knows that he can relate even more to.

Yeah :P

Might elaborate on these guys later