#for my own fic smh

[reineydraws]

i have this fic series i'm still working on where mihawk sort of becomes rayleigh's kid and spends ages 11-17ish on the oro jackson.

shanks and buggy imprint on him (bugs considers him a sort of older brother figure/sparring inspiration and shanks has a crush that eventually turns into full-blown love) and this is how i imagine they're like on the day mihawk sets off on his own haha.

[pixlatedvampire]

You gave those wounds to your god, Enki. Did you think they would heal so easily?

(Uh Oh! Someone gave the priest catholic guilt!)

[brainmuncher]

Okay, so I know we have a handful of reasons we usually revert to when it comes to ‘moving Danny away from Amity for plot reasons’. While I was about to make lunch I thought of this one and now I have to share it before my brain forgets it.

What if the Observants get fed up? Like Danny has done one too many things against them and they are sick of it? He doesn’t respect them or their authority so he is a threat. But Clockwork is refusing to work for them on this. He’s digging his feet in and not letting the Observants use him, stating it's ‘for the good of the timeline’.

So they go another route and start bribing increasingly powerful ghosts to take down Phantom.

Only Danny has noticed a pattern with the new ghosts suddenly coming through the portal. Not only are they ghosts he’s never even heard of, but their only focus is on him. Eventually one of the ghosts that are hired or maybe even one that Danny has befriended in the past that has heard down the grapevine, tells Danny what the Observanats are doing.

And instead of grouping with his friends to figure out how to either take down (preferably) or calm down (Ugh do we have to?) the Observants, Danny in his ultimate wisdom… leaves. The ghosts that the Observants are sending are after him, right? So long as he isn’t near someone else nobody has to get hurt!

And so, without telling anyone why or maybe even completely bulldozing over his friend's reasons to stay, Danny leaves Amity to protect the town.

This idea could just stay as Danny exploring the world but not in freedom like Dani, but in an attempt to escape the Observants. Maybe he even bumps into her at some point and she is surprised and tries to ask ‘Hey, why are you in Hawaii?’ but watches in shock as he runs away from her. Maybe in these adventures, he inadvertently discovers another ancient artifact that he could use against the Observants but the information is threaded throughout the world. So he continues to travel and force himself to be amongst people so that he can gather more information.

Or this could open up some neat ideas for crossovers!

One idea is Danny becoming an omen of sorts that something terrible is about to happen. If you see Danny Phantom, you know that a really bad rouge attack is about to happen in your area. And the worst part is, Danny is happy to see that everyone is avoiding him. Not because he likes to be feared, but because it's for the better. And to his horror rouges are trying to hire him to terrorize certain areas. He's accidentally become a villain because of the constant ghosts trying to take him down.

Another idea is another hero catching on that Danny is being essentially hunted and is concerned. Although their attempts to reach out and help are not being accepted. Danny is trying to protect the hero from danger but they don’t know that. They just think he’s being stubborn. So to Danny's dismay, they try even harder to prove to him that they can help.

I dunno, just something different to think about. Please tell me if there are fics or drabbles already using this kind of idea out there! I would love to read it :>

[purpleleafsyt]

From my fic, Inclarity :>

[applepie-enthusiast]

I know that with demons running on and about everywhere every night, plus their duties and responsibilities even on day time, they won't have time for this but

[fumifooms]

You’re the resident chilchuck expert, so I was wondering about it there’s any canon evidence that he did smoke or drink alcohol when the kids were younger. I always thought it was something he picked up due to the strain of long jobs, when the kids were already older, but you seem to think differently and I was wondering if there was anything in canon that made you think that way!

Now that you mention it I guess it’s true there’s no evidence he did. Smoking we literally only know he does at all because of one post-canon panel where he has a pipe, so no, maybe this stick-looking thing in the panel below too though, I’m not familiar with medieval blunts eh. We’ve only gotten one panel of him and his daughters interacting when he was younger so that’s not too insightful on that end, and every time we see him young and freckled it’s in a job context so again not really where we’d expect him to be drinking. The earliest proof (/heavy implication since we don’t see inside his cup I guess) is 3 years before canon when Laios hired him, where he’s at a bar, classily placed in front of all the bottles ✨

Yes alcohol is almost certainly a way through which he copes especially with stress, so if we go with the theory he started around when work got stressful, well… Chilchuck started working as a dungeon diver ~10 years ago so when he was ~19, making Mei, Fler and Puck ~6 and ~4 respectively, so from that draw the ‘stressful enough to start drinking’ line wherever. We don’t know what he did before that with any certainty, and it could be he did odd jobs, lived off mostly mutual aid and community work, or just focused on only raising the girls. Half-foots tend to be poor and I see a lot of that in Chilchuck specifically so I don’t think he could have afforded to not have some paying work though.

Alright, so then why do I think he did drink when the girls were younger?

I give a more complete rundown of the info we do have on his alcoholism & his family with panels and references + all the speculation I make from it here. But the most targeted and objective answer I can give is:

Of course there’s just very very little we know of Chilchuck’s life with his family, and I think that’s by design too. I think the details being up in the air is to allow more nuance of the topic, like, will trying to reconcile go well, is their relationship salvageable? We don’t know, because we don’t know. So the message of giving hope a chance even if it’s a long shot, that things could truly go either way, is more relevant, impactful and meta in that way. How long was he usually away for work travels into dungeons here and there? How did he act with them? All we can really do is "it’s likely that", it’s a game of which way we think it’s more implied. There’s no right and wrong answer, it’s all Marcille-like larping the events out.

My main reason for thinking he did is that his father died from overdrinking and Chilchuck is very aware of that. He mentions his death casually in the extra about their stance in alcohol and in his Adventurer’s Bible profile, etc. He acts towards the alcohol presumably the same way his father did: with abandon, uncaring for the health effects, probably happily too considering Chil says "dying doing something you love is a good way to go". Very nonchalant. So you see what I’m saying here right, wether he started early or late, his view of alcoholism is very influenced by what he saw of his father growing up, it’s something he’s always been aware of and saw in a mostly positive light, something that was inherited you could say. It’s something that was normalized to him from a young age. Regardless or where it goes from there I do think this part is pretty inarguable. If he views it positively and we know that in the present alcohol is his favorite food that he loveees, why would he have held out on it? Personally that all makes me think he started drinking very young, especially since I don’t think they limited alcohol to age as much as modern standards (and I mean, teen drinking is obviously still a thing). And here you could argue, maybe his father only started being more alcoholic later when Chilchuck moved out, or something! And to that there’s nothing I can say except I think that’s a strained theory, and that Chil might even have largely cut contact with his family after moving out (since he and siblings are listed as almost strangers and he doesn’t seem to have much emotional attachment to his parents, but also we know he rents out his place to "a relative"), but it’s true we have no evidence. "I’ve picked up the same unhealthy substance abuse as my father haha! No big deal right haha" repeated several times to me just reeks of intergenerational trauma, & the alcoholism gene as they call it. Like effortless sliding into drinking as if it’s second nature, it’s natural after all, it’s normal after all, it just makes sense, it makes you feel good and that’s what matters.

BUT from my interpretation then we have a whole other layer: Alcohol is of course not all bad always. I think he’s always liked alcohol and drank it on occasion and it brought him joy etc etc, but I think here the implication in the question is, how much effect did his drinking have on the family relations and how early? And that isn’t so much about when him drinking started but when the alcoholism started. Addiction is defined by a habitual need, that has negative effects from filling that need (physical, psychological, social, etc) and negative effects from withdrawal. If Chilchuck drinks to cope and he can’t not cope without it, that’s addiction, if it affects his relationships, if it’s a need he has, it’s addiction. Addiction can be very insidious or look very casual, and how much people around the person are affected by it is case by case. Cheerful drunks can be sooo annoying and uncomfortable though let me tell you. Drunks are drunks. And this sounds harsh, but even if people around them don’t mind drunks it’ll still have some effects here and there, living with one can be such a challenge, ily drunks good luck with everything much like Chilchuck you deserve good things 🫡　

Ok so with the dad thing and the "ok well maybe he’s always drunk casually but it grew worse with time around when he started working as a dungeon diver" precision made, the other bit of info we have that can inform this is that Chilchuck is on a harsh diet and that alcohol is a hunger suppressant. We know Chilchuck "used to be fine not eating for two days", that literally on screen to quench his hunger so it doesn’t keep him awake he goes to drink water, drinking is his instinct to hunger. Again alcohol is a hunger suppressant and if you want info on that the internet has a lot of research and anecdotes about it. He diets to be light enough to not trigger traps, so it’s something he’d have started after dungeon diving most likely. Between the stress and the diet, yes it’s extremely likely he started going harder on alcohol after he started working in dungeons. There’s arguments on wether two days without eating is less bad for half-foots than humans, but apart from smaller portions there’s nothing that indicates half-foots should get less than 3 meals a day. They need less food but that’s because their bodies are smaller: the need is proportional to the body, not smaller than others’ races, the % of need is similar even if the kg amount of food isn’t. There’s also a popular headcanon with support basis that half-foots run hot and have a faster heartrate and whatnot, and that points towards a faster metabolism rather than a slower one: a bigger need for eating rather than a smaller one. He has the same bmi, 18, as Mickbell, but perhaps because Chil is much taller he’s less intensely visibly underweight with ribs showing than Mick during the bath extra, it’s most apparent when he becomes tallman.

Alcohol is something so important and omnipresent in his character that I have trouble believing it’s something that was part of only a small fraction of his life. It’s his immediate go-to, his no-brainer solution to a good time, I’ve sort of always assumed especially after looking at his family that it’s something he discovered decently young. Like he just acts like someone who’s always had alcohol to fall back on and started young idk. Alcohol is one of his 5 keywords. Alcoholism is very ingrained into his world view and life, his "it doesn’t matter" stance his ‘work hard play hard’ mentality his idea that the world is harsh so you get relief where you can, so it just makes sense to me that it’s always been in his life, if not actively then at least looming.

So yes, in summary, my take: Alcohol was always something he wholly enjoyed to an unwise level, but it could have been considered casual until he started working into dungeons and his need for it on a regular basis intensified. Alcohol has always had positive association to him as far as we see, so when it started being a problem he didn’t see it as such. To quote him, "I drink anytime I get the opportunity to". Why always? Approval of father’s alcoholism. Why alcoholism at all? Diet + stress & coping mechanism & emotional stunting + relationship issues, and she decided she had enough after they went out for drinks.

Conclusion

Chilchuck having drunk from a young age makes sense to me and it’s the strongest narrative angle I see on the table, but that’s objectively a me opinion, yes! There’s no evidence, moreso there’s canon basis and supporting info, but it’s all very left up to interpretation. I’ve made my own interpretations of things from the scraps we see, like everyone else making Chilwife and daughters content. Wether you have a stance on the topic or prefer to leave it vague in your takes, it’ll be a matter of what you think makes most sense, or what you’d rather believe I suppose (which is literally fine)

There’s a lot of subjectivity in even just setting up causal links like you probably noticed during this and I was careful with my word choices, because we’re just extrapolating from what we see and unless Kui states it explicitly from a reliable mouth all we can do is have informed opinions on most things. This particular interpretation is influenced by other details I’ve come to form about my interpretation of Chilchuck too, the more psychological and emotional sides of him and the timeline and how his marriage even happened, unplanned pregnancy imo. Like I hope you see what I mean, this wasn’t supposed to be a speculation post just a quick simple answer but there’s sort of just no other and concise but complete way with the subjectivity nuance to put "maybe it could be yes because of this but maybe it could be no because of this" haha

Edit: Wait the phrasing on this… Interesting. "In recent years"— This does imply that if not just his alcohol consumption increasing then the diversity and quality of it did, so either he indeed did start drinking more (not necessarily meaning he didn’t drink before) assumedly because of his wife leaving, or he started drinking other/more different kinds of alcohol maybe due to the union he formed + his experience gave him greater salary than he had previously (and no wife and family to provide money for), a mix of both perhaps.

[halsinsnaturepocket]

Sgjkffg my wife saw my incognito tab where I was researching bear mating patterns & behavior and did not believe the classic "IT'S NOT ME ITS FOR A FRIEND" excuse

[natelia-aldelliz]

More werewolf au because I can :

Graves wasn't supposed to know about the werewolves, but Shepherd knew so maybe that's how he got the intel. As he's betraying them, he asks, almost begs, Soap to come with him, to join him against Alejandro and Ghost.

Alejandro because of the 'drug affiliation' thingy and his blatant dislike of Mexicans and Ghost because he's a monster. A beast, not even human. And he wants to protect Soap, believes him to be in danger, doesn't listen to Soap trying to de-escalate the situation, trying to ask him not to do that.

(Because he believes he knows what other people need more than them)

And Soap still has that very primal fear inside of him everytime he's around his the pack, that prey instinct that his predators are there, waiting for him to lower his guard. That's true, he does, he's even too scared to admit he's also not fully human.

But never, ever, has he considered betraying them, going against them in anyway. He wouldn't be a good cat if his fear of bigger predators wasn't overtaken by his very cocky very wrong feeling that he could take them all in a fight if he had to.

His cat-self was scared of their lycanthropic-selves, but he himself had never been scared of them as people. Well. Scared that they'd reject him, that they'd never consider him a member of the pack, yes. But scared that they'd hurt him? Not really.

Graves doesn't appreciate rejection, getting told no. He opens fire, Soap gets a bullet in his shoulder, Ghost begs him to get up and run.

He roams the streets with his head swimming from the blood loss, fighting against his instincts to just turn into a cat, curl up in a hole somewhere and lick his wounds, purring to himself to try and comfort the betrayed-hurt-helpless feeling in his gut.

But he can't, because he's not like the were-people, he's not a werecat, he doesn't heal faster. And his human biology makes surviving a bullet wound easier than the cat biology for some reason. (He tried, it just made him go in shock faster.) The hands keeping the blood from flowing freely definitely help for one. And what if Ghost contacts him and he can't respond and his LT thinks he's dead and leaves him here?

The Shadows are everywhere. The good thing is that his eyes see better in low light than theirs, than even the night vision helmets. His hearing is also better, though not as good as his cat-self's. That means he always knows where they are around him and he can avoid them.

When he's finally reunited with Ghost, the man keeps throwing him weird looks, but doesn't say anything. Soap can't really focus, he needs all his remaining blood doing actually important things and analysing your superior-officer-that-you've-been-lowkey-flirting-with's looks isn't one of these.

They reach Alejandro's safehouse, are reunited with Rudy, then Ghost sees him wobbling in place and drags him in the little medbay to see to his wounds. He gets stitches, incredibly thankful for Ghost's steady hands. As he finishes up though, his hands stay a bit longer on his shoulder, one of them climbs up to his ear and tugs it slightly, his eyes still staring.

Soap knows what he's doing, has seen Price lightly tug Gaz' and Ghost's (through the mask) ears, knows that it's a stand in for nipping them when they're in human form, as a way to say hello, or assert dominance or comfort them. Reserved for pack members.

Has... has he been accepted in the pack? His heart is beating faster, which isn't good with all the blood he's lost and the fact that the adrenaline is running out fast. His head is spinning. He looks up at Ghost with dilated eyes, trying to focus everything on him to try and understand before he passes out.

Ghost is looking straight at him, as usual, his head slowly tilting, his eyebrows furrowing in incomprehension. His peripherals are darkening more and more, darkness seeping in, and his eyes suddenly feel very hot while the rest of his body is getting cold and tingly.

Ghost's hand makes its way to the back of his neck, helping him hold his head up as his vision gets more and more blurry.

"What even are you?" Soap thinks he hears whispered as he finally loses consciousness.

[fortunatelyenchantingtaco]

I am buried by depression and i need to clean my kitchen laundry and study for exams i have barely a week left BUT here is some wip cause i have no time to sit and write down the Big Events of Satoru getting a body but i sure as hell can add snippets of before and after. As a little treat :)

[oddp1ant]

Chapters: 1/4 Fandom: Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jayce/Viktor (League of Legends) Characters: Jayce (League of Legends), Viktor (League of Legends) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Missing Scene, set during act 1 timeskip, First Kiss, First Time, Getting Together, Resolved Sexual Tension, resolved yearning pining etc., Trans Viktor (League of Legends), Trans Male Character, Porn with Feelings, or possibly feelings with porn, Slow Build, Tenderness, Character Study, Tags will update with chapters, explicit rating from chapter 3 Summary:

“Hey.” He nudges Viktor’s side. “If you could be anywhere right now, where would you go?”

Viktor nudges him back playfully. “By foot or by Hexgate?”

“Anywhere, your pick.”

“Home,” Viktor deadpans.

 In the light of their highest achievement yet, Jayce and Viktor discuss dreams, ambitions and desires.

[sualne]

do you have specific intersex headcanons for luffy and kid? i like 46,xx/46,xy trans masc franky :)

kid has genicomastia and i don’t have anything specific for luffy, in stories most of the time i tend to keep things vague since most of the characters tends to be undiagnosed.

[queercodedvillains]

Wake up babes, new chapter of mallrats just dropped <3

Mallrats (23114 words) by QueerCodedVillains Chapters: 3/9 Fandom: Naruto, Naruto (Anime & Manga) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Deidara/Sasori (Naruto), background kakuzu/hidan Characters: Sasori (Naruto), Deidara (Naruto), Hidan (Naruto), Kakuzu (Naruto) Additional Tags: SasoDei Week 2023 (Naruto), 90'S, Akatsuki - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Claire's AU, Mafia AU, If You Squint - Freeform, we are taking liberties translating the akatsuki into a modern setting here, Drug Use, Drug Dealing, Blood and Violence, POV Alternating, Bottom Deidara (Naruto), Top Sasori, BDSM, Impact Play, Praise Kink, Edging, Orgasm Control, Overstimulation, Sasori is still a puppet master but only in the loosest terms, if you catch my drift, Shibari, Suspension, Fucking Machines, Porn With Plot, Hurt/Comfort, Bratting, brat taming, Dom/sub Series: Part 1 of Mallrats Cinematic Universe Summary: In which the Akatsuki are 90's mallrats by day, crime syndicate by night. All the best criminals have a day job to launder their rent money, but the real fun only starts once they're off the clock.

[justablah56]

Since you seem to be having a bad day, I threw together a little ficlet for you. Read/respond at your leisure (whether that's in 3 minutes or not until next year)

It had been a long fucking day.

It was a full day of teaching for Terry Jr, with a bad cold wiping out the entire drama department of San Dimas High (which had only been two teachers and a tech in the first place). There was screaming, and snotty noses, and one or two kids bursting into tears, and by the time the school bell rang, he was just about ready to collapse. And, of course, that was clearly asking too much, because it was drama club that day. 2 whole hours of dealing with kids who are meant to be off book two weeks ago, and still hadn't learnt half their lines. It was a fucking nightmare.

Now, dear reader, don't misunderstand. Terry absolutely adored his job and the kids he worked with. But today was one of those days where you just want to roll over and hide back under the covers.

The train had been cramped and noisy, even if the journey had been mercifully free from the kids usual loud arguments. (Why they insisted on riding back with Terry Jr, he had no idea. It was baffling though that Scary waited for him, and they were going to the same house. Although, somehow, her friends always seemed to stay over longer than expected.) Honestly, it was a relief to lock the door behind them all, the kids rushing off to the garden for soccer practice - mostly moral support to be honest.

Terry wearily pulled off his shoes, before turning to Scary.

"Hey, kiddo, I'm gonna go have a lie down. Let your mom know, okay?"

Scary, for once, didn't seem to protest either the request or the nickname. She just nodded, frowning.

"Yeah, sure. Go have a nap or whatever." He ruffled her hair a little (this did elcit an irritated groan. He may not be her dad, but she was still his kid and it was his duty to embarrass her in front of her friends after all) and headed upstairs.

Terry didn't bother to turn on the lights as he collapsed down into the bed, just letting himself he enveloped by the darkness and the comfy sheets. He felt bad about breaking his normal routine of kissing Veronica when they both got home, but honestly he just couldn't handle doing anything other than laying down right now.

He lay there with his head burried in the pillow for maybe a minute, maybe an hour, when he felt the bed dip.

"Hey, Tear-Bear. Bad day?"

There was his amazing wife, the light of his life. Her hair was flying loose from her bun, and even in the dark Terry could see that her office clothes were slightly rumpled.

She was stunning.

"You know, you gotta stop picking up Nicky's pet names. He has far too many." Terry mumbled as he grabbed her hand, tiredly bringing it up to his lips.

"Ah, but that would mean I don't get to hang out with your wife as much. Darling." A familiar weight draped itself over him, tail curling round his leg. "Dropping round unexpectedly and hanging out with V without you is half the fun."

Nicky's voice was a soothing rumble against his chest. Somehow, just having his two partners here made it easier to relax. Even if Nicky had definitely not announced that he'd be coming over. Veronica kicked her feet up and slung an arm over Terry's shoulder, pulling him closer.

"Come on, time for you to rest, TJ."

okokok I've hoarded this fic long enough , ive probably reread this AT LEAST 5 times now xnsnmsms anyways it means *so very much* to me that you decided to write an adorable little ficlet for me bcs i was not feeling good <3333 this lil fic is literally *so* cute i don't know how to properly convey to you how much i love this but icy i love this so much . thank you <33333

[tinylilvalery]

i bet the people that download fics are reeeeeal chuffed rn

[plantwriting]

Rereading your own fics really is just such a fun experience of “wow this author agrees with all of my headcanons and knows exactly what i want from the story this is great” mixed with “he would not fucking say that this is the most ooc thing i’ve ever read also that’s the wrong ‘there’”

[sage-nebula]

STH — Beyond Oblivion, ch.1

Notes: Six days ago I made this post, wherein I talked about being inspired by @chaoxfix's works (specifically "build away and away and away", which is fantastic and you all should read it) to think of a world where Sonic didn't exist, and so Eggman raised Tails instead. I couldn't stop thinking of the idea, and so here we are, the first proper fic I've written in a while. Thank you, Chaofix, for the inspiration; it feels nice to really write something after so long.

This is still rough; I'll probably clean it up later before putting it on AO3. But until then, here's chapter one. Fic title comes from this song from the Neo: TWEWY soundtrack.

Summary: After an accident with what is believed to be a fragment of the Phantom Ruby, Sonic is catapulted into a world where he never existed, leaving Tails to be raised by the one person who should never be put in charge of children.

— — —

“Wow. That’s the biggest chunk of ugly red rock we’ve found yet. Think it’s real?”

“Not sure. I’m scanning its composite signature now so we can compare it to that of the real ruby. We should know in a few minutes.”

“Gotcha. Thanks, li’l bro.”

“No prob—hey, did you see something move over there?”

“Huh? Where?”

“On the other side of the—isn’t that Shadow’s chao?”

“Shadow’s chao? What’s that doing her—hey, stop!”

“Is it trying to take the ruby?!”

“Not if I have anything to say about—”

“Sonic, don’t—!”

Sonic’s eyes shot open.

Above him was a dismal grey sky thick with clouds, a stark contrast from the clear blue of before. Under his back was dying, yellowed grass, scratchy against his quills and so different from the sweeping green plains he and Tails had found the Phantom Ruby chunk in moments before. When he closed his eyes, Sonic could see the chunk of ruby glistening in the dirt, the tiny black paws of Shadow’s chao reaching for it. Sonic could see his own hand reaching out, pushing the chao back . . . and his knuckles swiping across the gleaming, glowing stone.

Sonic snorted as he opened his eyes again.

Well, that answered the question of whether the ruby chunk was real or not.

He sat up, and rolled his shoulders to work the stiffness out of them. It felt like only a second had passed, but the throbbing through his body suggested otherwise. There wasn’t much around him; a parched plain stretched for miles in any direction he could see, barren trees dotting the landscape here or there and what looked like a rocky mountain range in the distance. It was . . . wrong. Sonic didn’t know where he was, but he knew that it was wrong. The grass, the trees—they shouldn’t look like this. And the wind, growing stronger by the second, stank of exhaust even though there weren’t any cities around for—

Sonic jolted to his feet as a foghorn blared, setting his every quill on edge. For a half second, he had no idea where it came from; but as the rank aware gusted around him in a cyclone, he finally turned his eyes back up to the dismal sky, and felt both recognition and revulsion at once.

“Huh,” Sonic muttered. “Didn’t realize he put it back in commission.”

Eggman’s airship—the Flying Battery.

A gargantuan mass of steel and gunpowder, the Flying Battery was, at one time, the military flagship of Eggman’s would-be empire. Boasting more cannons than badniks, the Flying Battery was meant to rain unrelenting missile fire onto the world below, and smog into the sky above. Not that it had much of a chance, of course; Sonic had wasted no time (but had plenty of fun) ripping it apart from the inside out before he sent it careening to a fiery demise.

Yet here it was again, leisurely wading through the clouds as it trailed smog and—Sonic realized, the ground pulsing beneath his feet—bad music behind it. Because the throbbing he had felt before wasn’t coming from inside him, but from inside the ship above his head; a pulsing beat radiating over the empty plain.

Sonic frowned, and tapped his foot.

He didn’t know where he was. He was only vaguely sure of how he got there. And one look his wrist communicator, which flashed a dead signal message back at him, told him he wasn’t going to be able to call Tails for a lift back home any time soon. But no matter where he was, there was never a bad time to bring down a megalomaniac’s prized warship.

Sonic grinned, and sped off after it.

- - -

Hitching a ride on the Flying Battery was as easy as it ever was, if a bit slow for his tastes. All he had to do was wait for it to pass by the mountain peak where he waited, and then take a flying leap. Easy as pie, none of the security sensors so much as twitched a cannon in his direction.

If he was honest with himself, Sonic would say he was a little disappointed.

The Flying Battery was much as it had been before, albeit with a few more clucks guarding the corridors than he remembered. The curious thing Sonic noticed as he smashed each and every one to bits was that not a single one had an animal powering it. As yet another technosqueak broke apart against the wall, not a single flicky or ricky scampered out. And they weren’t concussed, either, as sometimes happen when a bot bash was particularly rough; Sonic took care to pick through the pieces of broken machinery, and found not a strand of fur or loose feather for his efforts.

Weird. But not unwelcome.

The badniks were sparse, anyway. It was how it had been in the past, too; the Flying Battery boasted traps and cannons, with badniks being put to use as shock troops and foot soldiers down on solid ground. It was for this reason that Sonic was able to make his way to the engine room pretty quickly, even for him, leaving a trail of smashed cannons and broken badniks in his wake. He roughly remembered where it was from the last time he was on the ship, but even if he hadn’t, it wasn’t hard to find; the thumping bass audible from the earth below only got louder the deeper into the ship he went, and outside the engine room door it was so powerful it rattled his ribcage from the inside out.

Sonic grimaced. His ears were going to hate him for this later.

The second the door to the engine room slid open, the pounding bass transformed into blaring EDM. On instinct to protect his hearing, Sonic clapped his hands over his ears and scanned the room. The engine room didn’t look much different from how he remembered it. The engine itself was situated dead center, taking up most of the available space, and the music was blasting from a speaker in the upper right corner of the room. But as much as his first instinct was to throw a couple quills through the center of the speaker to shut the noise off, what caught his attention in a lightning-fast vice grip wasn’t the music at all, but instead the fluffy orange fox tails poking out from behind the engine.

Sonic slowly lowered his hands from his ears. “Tails? Is that you?”

The tails—Tails’ tails—twitched, but otherwise there was no movement from behind the engine. Before Sonic could call out to him again, though, the music’s volume jumped up another few decibels. Sonic’s eyes widened, his jaw dropped a little in indignation.

Did Tails seriously just turn up the music to drown him out?

Sonic scanned the room, but there was nothing immediately available that suggested a control for the speaker. That being the case, he settled for the next best thing; in two bounds he cleared the room and up the wall, and with one solid yank he pulled the cords connecting the speaker to the wall loose. The music cut out instantly with nothing but a sputtering crackle for its efforts, and in the newfound silence in the room (and ringing in his ears), Sonic heard metal clang to the floor behind the engine.

“Ugh, are you serious?” Tails—and that was definitely Tails, Sonic would recognize his voice anywhere—snapped. Sonic hopped back down to the floor as Tails, lying horizontal on a metal scooter, slid out from behind the engine. “I swear, there better be an emergency for you to—”

Tails’ voice died in his throat as he sat up and looked in Sonic’s direction, and Sonic didn’t need to see the eyes behind the welding goggles to recognize Tails’ shock. He grinned, and raised his hand in a wave. “Hey buddy.”

Tails said nothing. He moved his welding goggles up to the top of his head, and continued to stare at Sonic for a moment, his expression uncomprehending. Then, before Sonic could do or say anything to break Tails from his stupor, Tails frowned and bounded up off his scooter, circling Sonic with a look of intense concentration.

Sonic raised his eyebrows, bemused, as Tails poked one of his quills. “Uh, bud—”

“What are you?” Tails asked, and before Sonic had a chance to laugh at the ridiculousness of the question, he continued, “You’re definitely not a robot, or at least not one of the Doctor’s models. You don’t look like one of Dr Starline’s either, unless . . .” Tails, now standing in front of Sonic again, frowned as he met Sonic’s eyes. “Are you a cyborg? But no, that doesn’t make sense. There’s no way his experiments have progressed to the prototype stage yet, especially since I’m supposed to be—”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down.” Sonic held his hands up, and Tails, still frowning, took a step back. “I’m not a robot, and I’m definitely not a cyborg. I’m 100% pure hedgehog.” As Tails’ dubious frown deepened, Sonic patted his hand over his heart. “Tails, it’s me. Sonic. Don’t you recognize me?”

The moment the name Tails left Sonic’s mouth, Tails scowled, his hackles raising slightly over his teeth. “I’ve never seen you before in my life. And you’ve obviously never met me, otherwise you’d know my name is Miles.”

“Well, yeah, your first name is, but . . .” Sonic frowned as Tails turned back toward the engine. “Wait, what are you talking about, you’ve never seen me before? I’m your best friend.”

Tails scoffed. “I don’t have friends, much less a best one. You’re thinking of someone else.”

Sonic opened his mouth to point out how ridiculous that was, but closed it a second later. Now that he got a better look at Tails, something was definitely wrong (and that was an understatement considering Tails had been working on the engine of one of Eggman’s warships, but besides that). He was Tails, unmistakably, but with differences, like he was one of those “spot the differences” picture puzzles. His fur was orange, but grimier and matted in a few different places, such as clumps behind his knees and around his elbows. His eyes were blue, but the right one had a strange, glassy look to it, and caught the light oddly depending on how Tails tilted his head. More alarming was the chunk that was missing from the outer edge of his left ear, as though something had jammed straight through it and ripped a piece off. His gloves were black with red trim, and instead of sneakers he had donned a pair of work boots. Which, whatever, if he was working instead of running—but Sonic had never seen him wear boots like that once in his entire life. And considering Sonic himself had practically raised him, that was saying something. This was Tails, but it wasn’t Tails. Which meant—what? Had the Phantom Ruby sent him to another dimension? But couldn’t it only do that when used with the Chaos Emeralds? And it wasn’t even the whole ruby, so why—

Tails groaned, breaking Sonic from his thoughts, and rubbed his forehead between two fingers. “I have a headache. And what did you do to the speaker?” Before Sonic could answer, he looked up in its direction, scowling at the dangling wires. “Did you just rip them out?”

“Yup,” Sonic said, and popped his lips on the “p”. Tails turned his indignant stare on him; Sonic stared unrepentantly back. “And it’s a good thing I did, since the ear-shattering volume you had it on is probably why you have a headache.”

Tails rolled his eyes. “No, I just haven’t had a chance to eat today. And now that I have to fix the speaker on top of the modifications to the engine, I won’t be able to eat until even later. So thanks.”

“The speaker and the engine can wait. Food comes first, always.” Sonic put out a hand to stop Tails from making it to the toolkit open beside the engine, but Tails batted his hand away.

“Maybe wherever you come from, but not here.” Tails paused, and scrunched his nose as he looked back up at Sonic. “Where did you come form, anyway? How did you get up here? If you're not a robot or a cyborg, there’s no way you made it up here. Am I hallucinating?”

“Do I look like a hallucination?” Sonic asked, and before Tails could answer, he poked Tails’ cheek. Tails swatted his hand away again. “Nah, I just jumped on when you passed by those mountains down there. Easy-peasy.”

“‘Easy-peasy,’” Tails repeated flatly. Sonic nodded, grinning, and Tails shook his head as he knelt down beside his toolkit. “Well, go jump back down onto the mountain, or wherever else you can go that’s not here. I’m busy.”

“And leave you here? Yeah, no dice,” Sonic said. Because Tails might not have been his Tails, but there was no reality Sonic could think of where he’d just leave Tails by himself on an Eggman warship. “What are you doing here, anyway? And what happened to your ear?”

“I work here,” Tails said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. His left ear twitched when Sonic mentioned it, but he otherwise ignored the question as he pulled a pair of wire cutters out of his toolbox.

“For Eggman?” Sonic barked a laugh. “Come on, get real.”

Tails shot Sonic a weird look before he spun his tails to gain altitude, hovering up near the broken speaker. “Who’s Eggman?”

“Uh, the megalomaniac who owns this warship?” Sonic said, and when Tails gave him another strange look, spread his arms wide. “Big guy. Bald head. Orange mustache. Makes a lot of ugly robots and tries to take over the world with them.”

“Oh, you mean Dr Robotnik.” Tails used the wire cutters to clip away one of the broken cords of the speaker, and tossed it onto the floor. “Why’d you call him ‘Eggman’?”

“Beeecause that’s his name?”

“No it’s not.”

“Well, it is where I’m from.” Sonic crossed his arms and tapped his foot as Tails dropped another clipped wire to the floor. “But whatever, doesn’t matter. You can’t seriously be telling me you work for that guy.”

“I can and am, because I do. Have since I was like, four.” Tails scowled at the back of the speaker. “Could you have done a worse job on this? You tore part of the connector off halfway. This is going to be so annoying to fix.”

“That’s the least of my concerns right now,” Sonic said, as Tails dropped back down to the floor. He reached out a hand to steady Tails as Tails stumbled, but once more Tails ducked under his hand and made his way to the toolkit. “What do you mean, you’ve worked for him since you were four? Where was I?”

“I don’t know, where were you?” Tails quipped, as he dropped the wire cutters back into the box. Sonic fought the urge to roll his eyes, and channeled his energy into tapping his foot instead.

“Look, Tails—”

Tails whipped back around to look at him, gaze burning. “Miles.”

Sonic returned his stare in kind. “Look, Miles. I don’t know what’s going on here. Frankly, I’m not even from here and from the looks of things so far I don’t wanna be—”

“Then leave.”

“—but this whole situation?” Sonic gestured to Tails, and then the engine room at large. “Is messed up. And I’m not leaving here without you.”

“Then I guess you’re not leaving, because I’m stationed on the Flying Battery at least until it docks tonight, and probably even later if I don’t finish the engine modifications by then.” Tails dug a few black cables from among the loose parts in the bottom of the toolkit. “But you should know that Dr Robotnik is going to be waiting at the dock so he can check over my work, and if you’re here he’s not going to be happy since I’m the only sentient thing authorized to be on the ship right now. So it’d really be better for both of us if you got out now, or at least within the next hour.”

“‘Sentient thing?’ I think the word you’re looking for is ‘person,’” Sonic said, but Tails ignored him, still rummaging through the toolkit. “But sure, I’d be happy to leave. I finished just about everything I wanted to do before I came in here anyway. So once you’re ready to go, just say the word.”

“Everything you wanted to do?” Tails furrowed his brow, and then sat back on his haunches as he looked up at Sonic. “What do you mean? Why are you up here, anyway?”

“Oh, you know,” Sonic said vaguely, and he folded his arms behind his head as he grinned. “Seeing the sights, trashing the place. The usual.”

Tails snorted, and turned back to his toolkit. “Yeah, okay. Good joke.”

“I’m not joking,” Sonic said, and when Tails made another disbelieving sound in the back of his throat, added, “I smashed every cannon and badnik on the ship before I made my way back here. I went through every room. You can go see for yourself if you’d like.” And then, as soon as he was in the open air, Sonic would grab him and jump ship. Not that Tails needed to know that, of course.

“Yeah, sure. And then you can get a good laugh while I waste even more of my time looking at a perfectly in-tact warship.” Tails peered at another pair of cables before evidently deciding they weren’t good enough and dropping them back in the box. “No thanks.”

Sonic couldn’t help it; he laughed. “I’m not—”

“Look, I don’t know you. And I know you don’t know me.” Tails finally stood up from the toolkit and looked back at Sonic, who once again felt an uneasy swoop through his stomach at the odd way the light glinted off his right eye. It was almost as if it wasn’t— “But I’ve been a sysadmin of the Robotnik Empire since I was four, and chief mechanic for almost as long. I’d know if something was going wrong on this ship. I installed all the sensors and alarms myself.”

“Then you might want to double-check ‘em, because either they didn’t work or your music drowned them out,” Sonic said flatly, fighting against the bristle in his quills at Tails’ stated life story. “Because I’m telling you, I trashed the whole ship on my way here, and had a good time doing it, too.”

Tails rolled his eyes. “You’re lying—”

“I’m not,” Sonic interrupted. “I would never lie to you.”

Tails watched him for a second before he sighed, and shook his head. “Okay,” he said, and gestured for Sonic to follow him as he looped around the front of the engine. “Come here, then.”

Sonic followed, and watched as Tails brushed his fingers along the metal countertop jutting out of the left wall. Instantly, the steel paneling in the wall flared to life, revealing itself to not be paneling at all, but a wall of computer monitors, ten in total. The countertop gleamed with a luminescent keyboard, across which Tails’ fingers skipped as he entered in a username and password.

“This is the central processing mainframe of the entire ship. All of its artillery, security systems, and defenses are controlled through here,” Tails explained. He didn’t once look back at Sonic as he did so. “And if something happened to damage any component of the ship, not only would I be able to see it from here, but alarm would have . . . been . . . trigg . . .”

All ten monitors connected to a different security camera around the Flying Battery, and while each one focused on a different area of the ship, each one showed a similar level of carnage. Pieces of badniks were strewn across the corridors. Cannons smoked feebly where they had been destroyed. Lights were shattered and dangling from the ceiling by half-torn cords.

“This . . . this can’t . . .” Tails switched the feed on a few of them, tapping into different cameras around the ship. More than one of them returned nothing but static to their feed. Sonic examined his fingernails.

“Told ya,” he said, as Tails frantically opened another program on the computer. “I’m very thorough.”

“I didn’t hear it,” Tails whispered, staring in horror at the list of ignored warnings and alerts his security program now displayed. “The security system did go off, it did alert me, but I . . . I didn’t hear it, I didn’t notice.”

“See, that’s what happens when you play your music too loud.” Sonic tsked his tongue. “I’ve told you before, buddy, you’re gonna blow your ears out one of these days. Music is just as enjoyable at a normal volume. Maybe even more so.”

Tails wasn’t listening. He splayed both hands next to his keyboard, leaning forward with his head bowed. “It’s gone. It’s all gone. Everything, destroyed. The whole ship is destroyed. I haven’t finished modifying the input-output ratio of the engine, but that doesn’t even matter because the artillery and defense systems and everything on the entire ship has been destroyed and I—I just let it happen, I didn’t even notice, someone infiltrated the ship and destroyed it and I didn’t even notice—”

Sonic frowned. Tails’ breathing was shallow and quick, tremors starting to wrack through his body. “Whoa, Tails—”

“And now it’s wrecked, and—and—and destroyed, and in pieces and we dock in an hour, in less than an hour and I have nothing—I have a—have worse than nothing to show for it, because at least if I had nothing it would be at the—at the baseline, sa-same as it was before, and that wouldn’t be great but it would be better than having less than nothing because everything is destroyed and broken and ruined and this isn’t possible or acceptable and he’s gonna be furious—!”

“Tails!” Sonic grabbed Tails’ shoulders, in an effort to ground him, to steady him, but Tails flinched and yanked himself out of Sonic’s grasp, stumbling back against the countertop. “Stop, okay? Breathe. You’re gonna be—”

“I can—!” Tails’ voice broke off in a squeak, and then violent coughs; he doubled over, and wrapped his arms around himself as choked over gulps of air. Once more Sonic reached out to steady him, and once more Tails stumbled back, away from his touch. “I can’t—I can’t—I ha-have to—”

“Breathe,” Sonic said, and when Tails’ eyes flicked to him, he took a slow, deep breath, and then exhaled it just as slowly. “Just like that. In, and out. Nice, slow, and—”

Tails screwed his eyes shut, and yanked his ears down against his head, squeezing them tight. “Don’t—don’t tell me what to do! This is your fault! You did this! You—you broke everything, and wrecked it, and we dock in an hour and Dr Robotnik is going to see it and I—”

“You aren’t going to be here,” Sonic said firmly, even as Tails shook his head, releasing his grips on his ears to tug one of his tails around him instead. His grip on it was like iron. “Egghead can think whatever he wants, but he can think it far away from you. We’re leaving.”

“No.” Tails continued to twist his tail in his fist, in a way that honestly looked like it would be painful to Sonic, and chewed hard on the fingers of his other hand, his eyes darting around the room. His breathing was still quick, and Sonic noticed punctures in Tails’ glove now that looked like they’d been made with his own teeth. “No, no, I can—if I work now, and have a boost, then I can—I can fix it, or at least most of it, at least the actual structural damage to the ship before we land, and then he never has to know that I screwed up and ruined anything and that I’m not useful anymore—”

“Tails—”

“—and—and everything will be, it’ll be, I can do it, I can, I can—” Tails flew the short distance back over to his toolkit, and unceremoniously dumped it over, spilling tools and loose parts over the grated floor. A peal of frantic giggles escaped him as he picked a vial of glowing magenta liquid off the floor, and tossed the toolbox over his shoulder. A shiver raced up Sonic’s spine. “Yes, yes, this can work, it can—I can—”

“Wait, Tails—stop a minute, okay?” Sonic grabbed Tails’ wrist, and as if on instinct Tails threw his entire body weight to the floor, twisting to get out of Sonic’s grasp. Sonic didn’t let go. “Just—stop. What is that you have? It looks like the junk from Eggman’s chemical plant.”

Tails gave Sonic a baleful stare. “It’s a performance enhancement serum developed by Dr Starline. If ingested orally or intravenously, it shuts down pain receptors, heightens muscle strength and elasticity, and enhances adrenaline output to—hey, what—what are you doing?!”

Tails’ voice broke off in a shriek as Sonic swiped the vial from his hand and threw it hard against the opposite wall. The glass shattered, and its contents oozed down the wall and onto the floor.

“Nothing made by Starline has any business being anywhere near you,” Sonic said, fighting to control his own temper as Tails stared in horror at the ooze on the wall. “Shutting down pain receptors? Enhancing whatever? Were you listening to yourself?”

“It’s the only way I can fix anything,” Tails said in a tiny voice. Sonic’s anger started to fade as he felt Tails shaking in his grasp. “It’s the only chance I have and—and you—you broke that, too—”

Sonic sighed. “Nothing here needs to be fixed, aside from the fact that you’re still here when you really shouldn’t be. Come on, we’re bailing.”

“No.” Tails threw his weight hard against Sonic’s grip as Sonic tried to pull him up from the floor. Sonic gritted his teeth, and swallowed down any guilt that started to well up at the tears that started to pool in Tails’ left eye. “No, you’re not—you’ve done enough, stop, stop trying to make things even worse—”

“I’m not making things worse, I’m trying to help—”

“You’ve destroyed and ruined everything—!”

“I haven’t—”

“Just stop and let me go, let me go, let go, let go, let—!”

“No, I—ow, Tails—!”

Tails kicked Sonic hard, the sole of his boot connecting with Sonic’s knee hard enough to make him stumble and loosen his grip. Tails didn’t waste a second; he twisted free of Sonic’s hold and dodged around him, sprinting for the door.

“Oh no you don’t!”

Tails barely cleared the doorway before Sonic was on him. Sonic wrapped his arms around Tails in a bear hug, and in an instant Tails thrashed in his hold, kicking both feet back against Sonic’s legs and twisting around as hard as he could manage it.

“Damn it, Tails, just listen—”

“No, let me go!”

“So you can try hiding in an air duct or something? Not likely. We’re leaving.”

“No! You can’t make me!”

It was so childish Sonic might have laughed, were it not for the way Tails was digging his elbow into Sonic’s ribs. “Wanna bet?”

A wordless, furious growl escaped Tails instead of an articulate response, and for just a moment, he slowed his struggling. Sonic loosened his grip a tad, hoping that maybe Tails had tired himself out and was going to see reason—only for Tails to twist around and sink his teeth into Sonic’s arm.

He bit him. He actually bit him!

Sonic yelped and released Tails, who dropped to the floor in an undignified heap. But he once again wasted no time; he scrambled to his feet and took off down the hall, tails whirling to boost his speed.

Oh, that was it. Sonic’s patience was officially gone.

He tore down the corridor after Tails, who—despite using his tails to increase his speed—only managed to make it around one corner and halfway up to an air vent in the ceiling by the time Sonic found him. Sonic snorted. Predictable. Tails whipped around as Sonic neared, and held the vent cover between them like a shield.

“For what it’s worth,” Sonic said, “I really don’t want to do this. And I’m sorry in advance.”

Tails narrowed his eyes. “Don’t want to do wha—?”

Before he had time to finish his sentence, Sonic zipped under and behind him. And before Tails had a chance to turn, Sonic skirted up the wall and knocked his elbow into the pressure point at the base of Tails’ neck, near the top of his spine. The vent cover clattered to the floor as Tails went limp, and Sonic caught Tails in a bridal carry just before he hit the floor.

“Sorry, bud. But this is for your own good.” Sonic shifted Tails into a more comfortable position in his arms, and after a millisecond of consideration, placed a quick kiss to his little brother’s forehead. Then he set off to find a parachute, so they could leave the Flying Battery behind them.