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teaforten · 4 years

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Rabbit and the Monkey Cups - (Part 1/2)

Did you need AIW fanfic? Here is AIW fanfic.

I haven’t written in a long time for this show, but it was Rachel’s birthday and I decided to turn a little thing into a big thing. But didn’t finish it, so this is part one of two.

Here’s a preview, and the rest is under cut. Tumblr wanted to put a bunch of spaces in between every paragraph and frankly I don’t have the energy to take them all out, so sorry about that.

Preview:

Wondermart was having a huge clearance sale on Halloween stuff, so Hatter and Hare were promptly there on a crisp November afternoon, to hit two birds with one stone. You see, Rabbit’s birthday was at the end of the week. How did they know? Alice had just told them. She was tagging along right behind them, actually, mentioning it in a timid fashion, because she herself was unsure what to get the bunny, or any bunny really, let alone one of his age.

“Ahhh, there’s got to be something here,” Hatter said to the other two confidently.

“You think he might want a new cape?” Hare wondered, patting at some leftover Dracula capes at the end of a costume rack.

“It’s possible. How about a skull? You think he needs one of these?” By now, Alice was squinting as Hatter plucked up a funky glow-in-the-dark skull from a shelf of cheap yard decorations.

“No, let’s get him this candy bowl,” Hare suggested, though just as he indicated it, the plastic skeleton’s hands guarding its mouth closed around his hand and gave him a serious jolt.

“You guys...” Alice started.

“I want that for myself,” Hatter told Hare.

“Hell if you’re keeping that in your kitchen!”

“It’ll be great for my cookies!” Hatter insisted, with a scowl. “Lord knows you’re not keeping me away from them!”

“You GUYS.”

“Huh?” They both turned to her obliviously, holding each side of the bowl as the skeleton hands slapped open and closed.

“I don’t think Rabbit wants leftover Halloween stuff for his birthday,” she tried to tell them, in what was the most neutral voice she could manage.

“Are you sure?” Hatter wondered. She just rolled her eyes.

“Why don’t we try, uh, some plants at the nursery, or, or a sleep mask? Some fuzzy slippers?”

Her two companions looked to each other and shrugged like she might have a point.

So off to the Wonderland nursery they went, where Alice was plucking up pots of pansies and tulips and flashing them at Hatter and Hare, who seemed not at all impressed. “I mean they’re fine if you just want something to take up space in your window sill,” Hare told her with his eyes half closed. Alice was silent, as she really didn’t see a problem with this. “Alice. Alice Alice Alice~~” Hare drawled, looking around the nursery like he was embarrassed to have to explain this to her. “When my Grandpa December was around the Rabbit’s age, he was going through his very last existential crisis, and the last thing he needed was to fill up his window sills.”

Hatter nodded emphatically. “Mhm. Mhm. That’s a mid-life crisis kind of present.”

“What we need to get the Rabbit is something that reminds him that he’s in control of his life again.”

“Right! Something that says twilight can be just as exciting as any sunrise,” Hatter chipped in, swooping his hand into the air.

“I don’t know where you’re going with this,” Alice told them.

“Well obviously--” Hatter started... then he turned to Hare, looking for some help. “Where are we going with this?”

Hare was all shifty-eyed by now. “Come. Come, my children,” he said.

In no time, they were being led to the “restricted” section of the nursery… a shady little greenhouse shack thingy-mabob… covered with vines and thorns. And the woman helping customers there looked awfully witchy. Her wiry salt and pepper hair was stacked onto her head in a bun, almost all of her fingers had a ring, and she was walking around with a hunch. It gave Alice the creeps. Hatter, too. He was trying to hide behind her, actually, and it wasn’t working out very well.

“Do you have a membership card?” She asked Hare, also looking very shifty-eyed. Hare took out his wallet and flashed the goods. Then she jerked up her chin like a bouncer who had recognized one of their own, as if to say “a’iiiight, ya’ll’s cool to go in”...

In a very interesting turn of events, it was Hatter clutching Hare’s arm and nibbling his knuckles, and Alice trailing behind them, using his coat-tails as some kind of safety leash.

“Poisonous… carnivorous…” Alice read the signs hesitantly as they passed them.

“Cadaverous… smelly?!” Hatter screeched.

“Oh, the smelliest!” Hare flapped his hands and kept walking.

“I don’t think the Rabbit is going to want a smelly plant, Mr. Hare. After all, he’ll have to keep it at the palace, and if the Queen doesn’t like it…” Alice started.

“Well then I know! We’ll get him a guard plant!” Hare concluded. Hatter seemed both extremely terrified and extremely excited about seeing which selections of guard plant this place had.

“There are plants that can guard palaces?” Alice wondered incredulously.

“Shhh, everyone be quiet,” Hare told them. They weren’t far from an enclosure where a deep crimson light was shining on a beastly looking growth in the corner of the greenhouse. At its base was an array of spikey pads clustering around even spikier shoots and bulbs -- all more or less foaming at the mouths, or whatever it had.

“What? It can’t hear us--” Alice tried to say before Hatter’s hand fell over her mouth.

“You don’t know that,” he stage-whispered without looking at her. She almost had the nerve to bite him. Evidently, Hare had immediately forgotten to show any caution once he realized what was in the enclosure because he was bursting at the seams and hopping in place like a cheerleader without pom-poms.

“Oh, WOW. They said they were going to order it in, but I HONESTLY DIDN’T BELIEVE THEM. Look you guys, it’s a GIANT CATAPULTING FLYPAPER TRAP! And no wonder they’ve got these bars: someone could fall right into that thing and they’d be a GONER,” Hare told them, tenting his fingers and grinning from ear to ear, with every possible dimple in his face showing.

“Geez, Mr. Hare. I never realized you were so, well, morbid.” Hare looked mildly surprised for a second, then just shrugged.

“Anyway, Rabbit could never handle something like this. And look at the price. Oof!” They watched Hare take out a neon green notepad from his pocket and scribble down a note. “Reminder to myself to break open the ole piggy bank when I get home. I just might have enough!”

It was Hatter’s turn to lay down the line:

“Hell if you’re keeping that in your garden!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t put it in my garden. I’d put it in my dungeon,” Hare told him matter-of-factly.

“Ohhhhh. Well in that case… just remember to show it who’s boss.” A whole lotta eyebrow wiggling and elbow jabbing took place before Alice could no longer sit with this image. She pointed at the first thing she saw.

“Uhh, what about this? This looks exciting enough. What is it?” She asked Hare, who was even blushing by now. He cleared his throat.

“Oh, those are… I think I remember… oh yes! Monkey cups!”

“Monkey cups? That doesn’t sound too scary.”

Hatter and Hare shrugged. Their minds had clearly moved on to other things. “Nahhhh, guess not! It’d probably be perfect for Rabbit - he can feed it bugs and stuff when he’s having a bad day. Hahahahhaha!” Alice frowned just as soon as he winked at her. “What? We all know he has a sadistic side.”

@ @ @

As cool as the plant was, Alice wasn’t particularly sold on the idea that Rabbit would be satisfied with just that kind of gift on his birthday, so she begged and pleaded for them to come with her to hit the nearest convenience store. They were being absolute drama kings about it as if they were in some kind of black and white purgatory hell as she perused the greeting card section for just the right one.

“Come on, Alice. How is this watercolor pastel painting of flowers any different from the other ten that you looked at?” Hatter wondered with his eyes rolled back into his head and his giant purple body slumped up against one of the flimsy card racks. A clerk nearby could now see how precarious this situation looked and was watching them carefully.

“And they all say happy birthday!” Hare chimed in as he wandered up to Alice’s side. As he did so, she noticed that he was holding the pot of monkey cups off to one side of his chest, almost as if he had been breastfeeding them or something. He also randomly had a hiccup blanket over his shoulder. She scrunched up her face for a second before she had a response prepared.

“Yes, but they just don’t have that… oomf!” Alice told them, making sort of a “glitter exploding” gesture with her hand.

The both of them repeated the word several times to each other, also imitating the gesture.

“You know. A certain... je ne sais quoi?” She emphasized, even getting on her tippy toes. Hatter tilted his head and mimed the phrase in confusion while Hare tried to pronounce it. He even handed Hatter the plant so he could sort of pop his booty out and tip his toe, while still butchering the phrase spectacularly. Alice smiled and rolled her eyes. “It’s French. I learned it from my penpal, Yvette. It means. Well, it means that you don’t know what it means. But it’s something special.”

Hatter frowned.

“Alice, do you even know why we’re here?” He asked.

“Because we’ve been trying to figure it out for the past eternity.”

“We’ve been here for five or ten minutes tops. And yes, I know why I’m-- DUM!” She hopped when she saw a familiar face pass the glass from the outside. The Tweedles were on their way to the front doors. Hatter and Hare cranked their necks as the bell on the door jingled, while Alice went to greet the twins without a moment’s hesitation, as if they were rescuing her. It would seem they might have also been whispering their hellos and other exchanges, which was just plain rude, in Hatter’s opinion, based on the way he squished up his lips. He looked Hare in the eye and nothing further needed to be said.

Just as the Tweedles were heading back with Alice to the card section, they passed Hatter and Hare, who were on their way to the door. “Oh hey, you two!” Dee greeted, followed by some timid waving by Dum. “Hey guys, uh, we’re just gonna be going,” Hare told them, jutting his thumb out with a crooked smile. “It’s these poor little guys’ nap time.”

“Uhh yeah, and we’d hate to be a 4th and 5th wheel,” Hatter muttered, sort of coddling the monkey cups and shielding them from the Tweedles’ view. Hare was equally concerned about this and hovered around him, trying to put the hiccup blanket, which had a soft little cartoon cactus print, around Hatter’s arm and over the plant, going “sh sh sh…”

Dee cocked his brow and didn’t say a thing until they were gone.

Then, once they were:

“Why are they going around babying a patch of bright green dangling plant dicks?” Just as soon as he said it, Dum was seized by cackles… and more or less so was Alice. But hearing“Mr. Dee” talk like that was highly unusual.

She wanted to speak but couldn’t stop laughing and started sinking into herself. Dum had to pull her up before she hit the floor. “What?! What is it, Alice?! XD” He kept asking her.

“They’re not plant weeners!” She peeped into his ear, still trying to properly breathe again. “They’re m-monkey cups! They’re for the Rabbit! For his birthday!”

This started a whole new round of reeling between the Tweedles, which garnered the attention of the store clerk, who still wasn’t happy about Hatter leaning on all the card racks.

“Excuse me… do you three plan on buying anything?” He asked. He was old, uptight, and easy to dismiss.

“Oh yeah, sure,” Dee told him, swishing his hands before he let them fall on Dum and Alice’s shoulders. On their way to the cards, Alice tried to explain the meandering logic that had led her and her eccentric companions to and from the nursery today, with such an odd purchase.

“Well just make sure the Hare keeps the receipt, is all I’ve got to say!” Dum told her, earning a high-five from Dee.

“You guys wanna help me find something else?” She wondered, quite relieved just to be hearing sensible sentiments again. Dee thought about if he had any plans for the day.

“I’m game.”

“Yeah, so am I,” Dum said.

“A’ight. Let’s find something with some real je ne sais quoi around here and then hit that sleep store across from Just Add Sugar!” Dee turned up his nose with a smug smile like he knew exactly what he was doing. And he probably did.

@ @ @

It was five-thirty in the afternoon and Hatter and Hare were tipped back in their chairs with their bellies full of crumpets, cookies, and jam. And tea, of course. Lots and lots of tea. Beside the Hare was one of those bouncy baby seats that he periodically tipped with his foot. And inside of the baby seat was the pot of monkey cups, wrapped up in the cactus blanket. Several crumpet crumbs were surrounding it. “Do you think it liked the crumpets?” Hatter was busy scraping food out of his teeth and was probably in a food coma when he answered:

“I mean, it ate them, didn’t it?”

“I think so.”

Just then, they saw the Tweedles and Alice frolicking by, flailing shopping bags and sipping slurpees. It was an immediate outrage. Then they slam-dumped the empty cups into Hatter’s trash-can outside the gate. “Oh hi, Hatter and Hare!” Dum shrieked cheerily in a blur.

“Bye, Hatter and Hare!” Dee shouted, just as they were opening their mouths. Alice apparently didn’t even notice where they were or whose house they were passing. It just looked like she had been having the time of her life, or something.

“You know, sometimes, Hare… I don’t know about that girl.”

@ @ @

The day of Rabbit’s birthday, Hare was simply a sobbing mess, and Hatter was having to do a lot of bedraggled consoling that frankly he was not prepared for, in order to make this visit to the palace even possible.

“Come on, Hare,” he told him, trying to pry the plant from his needy little fingers. It was not unlike trying to pry a fly from a venus fly trap. Except this fly trap was worried about the fly and was sure that keeping it in its mouth forever was the only way to keep it safe. Just as it popped free from Hare’s desperate clasp, his arms collapsed in his chest and his knees hit the ground as he wailed:

“We shouldn’t have bought them so early in the week! Now they think I’m their ma, and they’ll miss me terribly!”

Hatter frowned, then realized that he was sort of petting one of them. “Hey, what about me?”

Hare shrugged as a tear pooled in his eye. “They’ll sort of miss you too.” Hatter turned to the fourth wall and just stared. “But every plant needs their ma!”

“Then the Rabbit can be their godmother! Their fairy-godmother! Ahhh? He’ll let you visit, I’m sure.” Hatter’s proposal wasn’t all that bad. Still, Hare was caught up in a moment and could only sniffle, so his partner gave him a heavy pat on the shoulder and walked past him. “Now, I’m gonna take these guys out for one last walk, and then we’ll head to the palace. Take a hit off the hookah, if you need.”

@ @ @

The palace courtyard was unusually quiet that day. Hatter and Hare were thinking there’d either be some sort of bash already started, or they’d have to get into an argument with the Queen about letting Rabbit have free time on his birthday. Instead, they found him kicked up on the chaise lounge, being fanned with a giant banana leaf by Alice. Totally oblivious to their presence, as he was wearing a thick cushy sleep mask and slurping up a tropical smoothie with an umbrella, Rabbit had more or less slipped into nirvana, or as close to it as an old servant would ever get. On the nearest table was a catalogue for the sleep store Alice had visited with the Tweedles, there were brand new, fuzzy wuzzy bunny slippers on the floor next to him, and even a gift basket filled with soaps, bath salts, and the most basic bitch teas Hatter had ever seen. Not that he would say anything.

But he had to say something, because poor ole Hare was still waiting for his hit off the hookah to kick in and had red eyes that could be seen from a mile away. He even forgot to stand and face their friends. Hatter grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him in the right direction.

“Rabbbitttttt!” He shouted at the bunny.

“Mmmmmmm...yyyyyesss???” Hold up a moment. The peaceful smile on the Rabbit’s face slowly fell as he realized he had heard the voice of someone he was sure in the past had never helped him achieve any sort of serenity. He snatched off the sleep mask. “Oh, hello... Hatter. Hare.” He was sort of leaning back and away from them now. Luckily, he couldn’t see that Alice was behind him, trying to hold it together.

“A little birdie told us it was your birthday today!”

“A little birdie?” Rabbit scrunched up his face, confused.

“He means me,” Alice said sweetly over his shoulder.

“Oh, but you’aaa~ not a bird!”

“Yeah, but she overhears all kinds of things, like a bird on a tree-branch!” Hatter explained, to which Alice nodded, “and that was the only way we were going to know it was your birthday, you secretive, sly, s-selectively friendly…s-senior citizen--”

“You had better get on with whatever you came here for, Hatta~...” Rabbit muttered, just as Hatter felt a tickle in his throat.

“Ahem! Yes.” He turned to Hare, who had been trying to blot a tear with the cactus blanket without anyone noticing. “Uh, Hare, why don’t you take the blanket off and show Rabbit this wondeeerfulll, spectaccuullar giftttt, ahhhh?” Hatter tried his best to sprinkle all the razzle-dazzle of two people onto the reveal, but no matter of twisting and twirling elicited much of a reaction out of Rabbit once he saw under the blanket. And he only had one thing to say.

“My, those are awfully phallic, aren’t they…”

Alice just bit her lip.

“What’s ‘phallic’?” Hatter questioned, not yet sure if he should feel validated or offended. Alice shrugged, as she didn’t know either. Rabbit immediately regretted that it had ever fallen from his mouth.

“Uhhh… Well what are they, anyway?” He diverted.

The Tweedles, meanwhile, had been oo’ing and ah’ing at all the boring af statues the Queen put up in one of her hallways, like really putting on an oscar worthy performance out of the sincerest desire for Rabbit to have some alone time with his gifts in that chair. When they were back to the courtyard with her majesty, however, they were having a really hard time keeping a straight face while a clueless Hatter and an unreasonably forlorn Hare waved around the bright green plant dicks monkey cups and pitched them like they were going to be Rabbit’s newest obsession.

All they had to do was step into Alice’s vicinity and make eye-contact with her and she was already giggling.

“So you see, Rabbit, this isn’t just some midlife-crisis window-sill filler… set these up at your table on bingo nights and you’ll have all the bunny ladies crowding around, knowing you’re up to something.”

“And what exactly am I up to?” Rabbit cocked his eyebrow, quite distracted by their striking resemblance to, well, cocks.

“Bein’ a plant daddy,” Hatter told him, smiling and nodding like he was very sure of himself, “to a hardcore plant that’ll eat all the bugs in your garden. Even frogs, too!”

“Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!” Was Rabbit’s first reaction. Then he leaned forward and tapped one of the cups before the Queen belted from behind him.

“That’s BARBARIC.” Immediately, Rabbit fell right on his face on the floor beside the lounge, then had to prop himself up and heave a little when he realized she had been so close to him all along. “Why would you get Rabbit a gift like that!”

Hare had recoiled just as much as Hatter, but he looked more defeated than anything else that neither of them were impressed with his gift, especially now that they were his babies that he’d raised for a week. Once again, Hatter had to do the explaining, patting Hare’s hand, which was squeezing his arm, all the while.

“We thought he needed some excitement!”

“He has PLENTY of excitement around here!”

Rabbit darted his eyes around. He wasn’t about to disagree with her, because technically she was right, it’s just… it wasn’t the good kind of excitement. The Tweedles and Alice were feeling even surer about their gifts by now.

“Well then really, this plant can keep up with him, is all we’re saying,” Hatter told her, not even missing a beat. “Oh look, it already likes him!”

For the first time in the last five minutes, Hare had something to say: “It does?”

Hatter gave him a look. “Uhhh, of course it does, Hare. Hand it over. Wouldn’t want to keep these two parted.” Try as he may to sort of direct the pot towards the birthday bunny himself, Hare was sort of squeezing it close and didn’t know how to let go. Rabbit, meanwhile, looked completely flabbergasted as he sat there on the floor beneath those looming plant dongs. The Queen threw up her hands, which just elicited more of the Tweedles’ giggling.

“You have GOT to be kidding me!”

“Uhh, they mean well, Your Majesty!” Alice tried to step in, being the noble child among the group and all that. “I mean if you think about it… it’s just as silly as any other gift they’ve given him…”

“Hmph, you’re right… there’s no way this is a joke,” her Majesty answered back in a deep voice, with her chin tucked into her neck. Then all five of them just kept watching Hatter and Hare fuss over the pot.

“Hare, just let go! One finger at a time. Come on, now.”

“I’m trying!” Hare pouted.

“I highly doubt that!”

“You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother!”

“No, but I know what it’s like to live with one!”

“DON’T shame me for being an empath!” Hare growled through his tears, still with the cactus blanket thrown over his shoulder.

“Alright you two, listen!” Rabbit professed, just before he scurried to his feet and yanked at his vest, then patted a few fuzzballs away. “I’ll keep the plant for a few days and see how it goes, but I want He’a~ on call at all times! He obviously has a grrreener thumb than I~, but I appreciate your thinking of me on my birthdehh~, so I shall try my best. Ehh… provided her Majesty approves.”

They all slowly turned to her in suspense, looking somewhere on a spectrum between apprehensive and hopeful. And then there were the Tweedles, who were just about to whip out their popcorn bowls. The Queen squinted at them for a moment before she decided it was not her circus, not her monkeys. Well, hopefully.

“Fine. But I don’t want to hear a thing about it. Call the Hare if it gives you any trouble, and if he can’t help you, hohohhhh,” her eyes bulged as she cut her hands into the air, “it’s straight back to the nursery.”

“Of course, of course. Ehh… thank you.” Rabbit nodded to the Queen awkwardly before he turned to Hare and opened his hands to receive the plant. Hare just stared at him until Hatter leaned into him.

“Give Rabbit the plant, Hare.”

“Eheheheh! Right,” he said, his arms extending out with a tremble to relinquish his babies to his favorite frenemy. Rabbit took hold of the pot and tried not to cringe as the dongs sweeping over the side brushed his forearm. Try as he may to bring them closer to his chest, Hare came with them. He laughed and gave them a better tug, which prompted Hare to tug them back. Before everyone knew it they were bouncing back and forth. Finally, Hatter took Hare’s shoulders and held him in place, so that Rabbit could pluck the monkey cups out of his motherly smother, and inspect them with none of the same sort of affection.

“Eheheh, loveleh~ loveleh~~...” he trailed. “Well, I’d better- eh, put these somewhere. T-thank you, everyone, for the birthday wishes and gifts… You’re all too kind.”

“OH WAIT, RABBIT,” Hare screeched, wriggling out of Hatter’s grasp and pulling a baby bag out of nowhere.

“This is all of his stuff!” When Rabbit took it from him, his arm plummeted as if he had just taken a bag of bowling balls.

“Gee, thanks, I feel so prepared now~” He said through his teeth to the fourth wall. Then he fluttered his fingers and rolled away. Hare looked at least somewhat reassured as Hatter patted him on the back and he blew his nose.

Part 2 coming soon!...

#adventures in wonderland #fanfiction #fanfic #hatter and hare #rabbit #don't even know how to tag this #I wrote it #lmao #me and my meandering plots #rabbit gets a gift he wasn't prepared for #that is extremely phallic #and ruins the queen's life #PG-13 #hatter mentions a hookah #hatter and hare are definitely secretly a couple

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l-sincline · 4 years

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Cybernetics- Cyberpunk!Sonic AU- Chapter 7

Amy Rose has been working tirelessly at her broken down booth for as long as she can imagine. Ever since Tails left their work to join forces with the revered hero of Mobius, ‘The Blue Blur’, she’s grown lonely and desperate to make her life exciting. A strange customer comes in one day asking her to fix his cyborg arm, what she didn’t know was that he would be the catalyst for a brand new life.

AO3 Tags:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Amy Rose/Shadow the Hedgehog, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Amy Rose (Sonic the Hedgehog), Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles “Tails” Prower, Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik, Rouge the Bat, Whisper the Wolf, Cream the Rabbit, Knuckles the Echidna, Badnik (Sonic the Hedgehog), E-123 Omega, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Angst, Slow Burn, Partners in Crime

AO3 Link

Previous/Next

After resting a while longer, Amy pushed herself up to her feet, wobbling at first as her body screamed at her to sit down again. However, she soon grew accustomed to the ache and slowly made her way over to the hole Shadow stood at, stepping gingerly as to not cause any more discomfort. He didn’t spare her a glance and instead just moved over so she could have more room. She stopped just before the edge and looked out upon the city in ruins. Buildings were either fully demolished or damaged like this one, or they were crumbling on their own. Plants and other animal life had taken over the city once more, pavement was cracked to make room for trees and weeds and grass, and vines grew up the sides of buildings and all over the large chunks of the cement buildings that lay on the ground. She was far off the ground, but she could see a small stream that ran down a sidewalk, coming from somewhere out of her sight. She’d never seen anything like this. Quite frankly, she’d always just assumed the city of Mobius went on forever, that their planet wasn’t that big to begin with, that’s what she had always been told, anyways. But this was stunning, greenery and life contrasted there dull colors and dirt and stone she was used to in the outer ring, and even though what she had seen of the middle ring was beautiful with its neon lights and steely grays, nothing compared to the lush green of the plants and the quiet chirping of wild animals.

“What is this place?” She asked. He finally looked over to her, confused.

“You don’t know?”

“No..” she shook her head with a frown, still mesmerized by the beauty of it all.

“It was part of the outer ring... it got destroyed in the war with Earth. Mobius is reclaiming it.” He said simply.

“No one ever talked about anything being destroyed...” she admitted, “I guess I should’ve known that the war took a toll on our homes but... I never could’ve imagined a whole city. This goes on for miles.”

“Thousands died here, inner ring city military and androids guard the border between the outer ring and these ruins. The people who live so close to the border are already extremely poor, even though there could be resources here for them they aren’t allowed to come near.” Shadow clicked his tongue angrily.

“Why do they guard it? Wouldn’t it be better for them if they let people camp out here and rebuild?”

“No, it’s all about control for them. This is too far for them to reach, they don’t want to have to expend valuable resources to keeping an even bigger outer ring under control. They hardly like doing it with the outer ring as it is, that’s why they let the Robotnik bots stay.”

“There’s never Robotnik bots in the inner ring...” she breathed out quietly to herself. She’d never thought of it like that before. That the government just let the bots stay where they needed them. They were rarely ever in the middle ring either, but there were a few.

“I would bargain to say that the war is what left the government corrupt. The people were so desperate to have officials who could make bold strokes that they didn’t realize the people in charge cared more about themselves.” He spat.

“You really don’t like the government.” She observed.

“It’s hard to even tolerate trash like that.” He said matter of factly before walking away.

Amy stayed put, continuing to take in the sights. She’d never realized that the government had such a strong grip over the rings, but she supposed that’s why talented folks like Whisper would never move any farther inward even if she was paid handsomely. The system was built against her, and anyone like her, that wasn’t born into the inner ring and by extension into wealth. Amy bit the inside of her cheek, she felt as if she’d learned more now than she ever had in her twenty two years of living. Another thing to add to the list of ‘things the government keeps from people in the outer ring’ she supposed. Though she had just started the list, it already seemed to be getting a bit long. She heard some swishing behind her before Shadow spoke again.

“Are you ready to go?” He asked.

She turned and saw the last moments of him clipping his cloak around his neck and allowing it to drape down to cover his body once more. Unlike how she’d previously seen him though, he kept his hood down, she hadn’t noticed she’d been studying him until he turned swiftly on his heel and picked up her collapsible hammer, gearing up to toss it to her.

“We’ll have to get you some sort of cloak too, but we’ll stay out of popular areas for now.” He tosses the hammer in its bag form to her.

She caught it by the strap and steadied it, popping it open to see just a wrench and a flat head that she had stored in it earlier before the big ‘almost arrested’ moment.

“We can get you more tools too.” He promised as she hung the bag across her chest.

“Where are we going?” She asked.

“My home base. You can meet the rest of the team.”

“There’s more than just you?” She replied, albeit a bit dumbly.

“Yes- one other and... your first project.” He nodded before turning once more and walking towards the door.

“Wait! Wouldn’t it just be easier to do that... teleport-y thingy like you did before...?” She questioned, taking a few steps forward before stopping as he looked over his shoulder.

“I think it did you more harm than good, I’ve only ever done it with inanimate objects and androids before, you’re the first flesh and bones that’s been through that ordeal.” He explained. “It’ll be useful if we ever get in a tough spot, but for now I want to give you a chance to heal.” Shadow shrugged and stepped out the door, turning left with his cape swooshing behind him.

Amy ‘hmm’ed quietly in agreement as she rushed out after him, her legs weren’t happy to be moving this fast, but she couldn’t afford to slow them down. She didn’t know where they were going, but she could bargain it would be easier to get there while it was still light out, and the sun would be going down soon. She could hear Shadow’s metal shoes clunking down the stairs and she quickly followed, just barely seeing him round the corner as he continued down more stairs. This went on for a few more flights, but soon they made it to the bottom and she halted abruptly as to not bump into him as he looked cautiously out the space where she assumed there was once a fire exit leading to the outside.

“They don’t send patrols this deep into the ruins that often, but you can never be too careful.” He explained quietly as he scanned the surroundings slowly.

She imagined his eye was looking for electromagnetic signals or heat signatures among the plants and building, but she didn’t dare break the silence that allowed her to hear the very soft whirring of the camera occasionally zooming in or out. It was quiet, barely noticeable, but it was oh so interesting to her. She’d never seen a cyborg eye before, and she imagined you’d have to have good neurological knowledge as well as mechanical to be able to make one.

“Clear.” He spoke a little louder as he stepped out of the building and into the green waste land, Amy was quick to follow.

She looked up at the buildings and trees in awe, if possible, it was even more amazing from down here. She could now get a close up view of all the flora and fauna that she couldn’t have before.

Shadows feet crunched along the over grown path he was taking, and she stopped her ogling at the area to catch up. Little bugs flitted in front of her face and she swatted them away, if there was one thing here that they had back in the outer ring, it was flies.

“So are we moving towards or away from the city?” She asked quietly as she quickened her stride to walk next to him.

“Away. I found an area that no patrols frequented years ago, it’s been being built up by me and my... teammate since then. It’s nicer than the rubble we were just in now, but it started off pretty bad.”

“Cool.” She said in a hushed breath, well aware that she wouldn’t know if a patrol was coming near them.

“We have a ways to go, but we’ll be there before the sun in completely down.” He reassured before picking up the pace.

Amy nodded silently as she trekked along behind him, her aching muscles not allowing her to go any faster. She hoped they would get there soon, though the shock of her life taking a complete one eighty hadn’t completely set in yet, she felt ready to tackle the new obstacles that had been put in front of her. For a moment, she thought of Tails, and wished she could apologize for officially becoming his enemy.

#sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #Amy Rose #sonic fanfiction #fanfiction #My writing #Shadamy #cyberpunk au

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shinobicyrus · 6 years

Text

Hungry Like the Wulf

@logicalghost requested that their Christmas Truce gift be “Some content of Wulf and Danni together being pals.”Friend, you came to the right place.

Dani spots the ghost-cops first, over a dozen of them flying in formation, armored in riot gear and faces hidden behind visors like the ghosts of police brutalities past. She steers clear, backing into some midnight shadows against a brick wall, but it’s not necessary. They’re completed focused on something else; calling out to each other, harassing and circling and firing beams from their nightsticks at something she can’t see.

This all seems very familiar, somehow.

Whatever, ecto-memory déjà vu is something Dani is used to at this point. She pulls out her phone from her pants - because jumpsuits don’t have pockets and Danny is stupid - to check the time. Sees not only is it late, but she has four unread messages from her clone-bro and six more from Jazz. Probably wondering where she is.

Duh, making great decisions, obviously.

Turning invisible and trailing them cautiously, Dani catches up to them near the warehouse district, because everything great at one in the morning always happens near a bunch of old warehouses. She hears the tail end of a scuffle as she approaches one building painted with tagger handles and ghost graffiti and peeks her head through the wall.

There are definitely less riot-cop ghosts in here than she had spotted in the air- the smears of lightly glowing ectoplasm splattered on the floor and walls are pretty strong evidence what probably happened to them.

Even with only half of them left, it’s still enough to dogpile on the single hulking shape on the floor. The dusty concrete floor is scratched with huge gouges and the thing is all muscles and fur, snarling and struggling to shake off the Ghost-Zone Five-O while they affix glowing, high-tech looking manacles to its wrists.

It snaps out with a wolf-like muzzle full of sharp teeth, growling obscenities in an eerily familiar language that flips a switch in the back of Danielle’s head. Her lips move without her thinking.

“...Wulf?”

No one else in the warehouse seems to hear her, but the pointed ears of the werewolf-looking ghost (Wulf, why does she know his name is Wulf?) twitch before the ghost-cops shove his face into the ground.

One ghost is semi-standing a few feet away overseeing the spectacle, shirtless except for the long, douchey red cape. He’s got an eyepatch and an even douchier goatee. There’s some kind of blaster belted on his hip, but he’s still just standing there watching the other ghosts do all the work, holding up a fist-sized cube that has a warbling, glowing aura coming off of it.

“Walker’s gonna be glad to hear that this little toy ended up doing the job,” Eyepatch tosses it up and down lazily,, savoring the whole situation. “This new mayor’s got a lot more goin’ for him that the last duly-elected meatsuit.”

“Mi eskapis iam antaŭe,” Wulf snarls into the ground. One of the cops prods the sparking end of its baton into his neck and he flitches. “Mi...mi povas fari ĝin denove.”

“Not this time, mutt,” Eyepatch gives the cube another toss. “So long as we’ve got this, you can’t use those claws of yours to cut through the fabric between dimensions and...and...”

About this time he notices that the cube never came down.

“See, I thought this looked like one of dad’s evil doohickeys! Nice to see he’s making friends with someone besides his cat.”

Eyepatch whips around to find Dani floating visibly overhead, turning over the cube and studying at it closely.

(Yep, definitely looks like a box-thingie. Hmm, yes, fascinating)

Eyepatch wastes a few seconds staring at Dani, then back at his empty hand still hanging expectantly open. “Wha- who- where did you- give that back!”

“But I’m looking at it.” She keeps fiddling with it like it’s a stubborn Rubik’s cube. “Is this twisty bit here important? This seems important.”

“I don’t know where the black hells you came from,” Eyepatch raises a two-pronged blaster that charges up with a high-pitched whine. “But you have three seconds to turn over Walker’s property before I-”

Dani licks the cube.

It tastes like metal, ozone, and that buzzy weird taste she’s come to associate with ectoplasm. Like someone put formaldehyde and grave dirt in a blender with old lime jello. Blegh.

The arm holding up the blaster wavers, then lowers as the ghost gapes at her. “Did you- did you just-”

“I licked it it’s mine now,” Dani tells him. “Sorry, I don’t make the rules.”

“That’s NOT a ru-” He grinds his teeth. With a snap of his fingers, the entire posse of ghost-cops rush off of fully chained-up Wulf and flank Eyepatch in a loose cordon. Shields up and batons all pointed at Dani like a firing squad. “I don’t know who you think you are, interfering wi-”

“Dani Phantom.”

“-official poli- wait what?”

“Dani Phantom,” she repeats. “You asked who I am. That’s me.”

“You’re not Danny Phantom.”

“Uh, yeah I am. Look!” She points at the symbol on her hoodie. “See! I have the ‘D’! And I am clearly talking about the logo, not my chest, for the record.”

“You’re not Danny Phantom! We’ve all met Danny Phantom and he’s a-”

“Oh yeah, he’s like my...cousin? Twin brother? We’re related, but it’s like, really complicated.”

A few of the cop-ghosts lift up their helmet visors and exchange puzzled looks.

“You’re both named Danny Phantom?” One of them speaks up.

Eypatch spins around to face him, furious. “Shut up, Gerald!”

Dani says to Gerland, “Yeah, but I’m Dani with an ‘i’.”

“That must get really confusing,” the same ghost-cop nods sympathetically.

“Thank you, yeah it really is! Everyone else is like, ‘oh we can just call you ‘elle’ and yeah Danny had the name first but I still don’t see why I have to change my-”

Eyepatch lifts up his blast and fires, making the upper body of the ghost-cop that spoke up disappear in a rush of ruby energy. What’s left of his lower half loses all consistently and melts into a puddle on the floor.

“Fraternizing with lawbreakers is. Against. The. RULES!” Eyepatch roars at the puddle. The other cops float back a few nervous feet.

Dani’s gasps. “Gerald, no! He was like, my best friend and everything! What the hell, dude?”

“Now imagine what I’m going to do to you, you little punk.” He levels the blaster up at her again. “If you don’t that box over right the fu-”

“Kay.” Dani tosses the cube at him. He actually drops his gun, fumbling with both hands before he finally gets a solid enough hold on it.

“Uh...right. That’s...good.” He looks down at the cube at his hands as if he can’t quite believe that it’s actually there. “Well...don’t think this means we’re going to be lenient on you, especially since you just gave up your only bargaining chip! Heh.”

He chuckles with a grin of crooked teeth and nasty promises. The rest of his crew join in, if a bit more nervously.

Dani flaps her hand. “Meh, it’s okay, I didn’t really need it anyway. I just needed to district you for a bit while the other-me got Wulf outta those chains.”

Eyepatch and the ghost-cops stop laughing.

“....come again.”

“Saluton.”

Warily, they all turn in unison and see Wulf, free and towering over them, teeth bared. Peeking over his shoulder is another Danielle, who waves at them.

Wulf growls out in stilted English: “Run.”

The ghost-cops all scatter in different directions, leaving Eyepatch rooted to the spot, still holding the cube.

Ever-so slowly, Eyepatch lifts up the cube up to Wulf, who plucks it delicately out of his hand with two claws and crushes it in his massive paw.

“I think I’ll just...uh....” Eyepatch cocks his thumb over his shoulder. “I think I’ll just go...now...?”

Wulf’s grimace turns into a grin. “Lasu min helpi vin.”

With one paw, he grabs Eyepatch by the throat and lifts him clear off the ground. The other paw reaches out and slashes at the empty air next to them.

It reminds Dani of a green screen, like he’d ripped away a piece of the fake background and revealed another world beneath it. Through the jagged hole Dani can see the writhing black expanse of the Ghost Zone, but no place she’s ever seen before. Skeletal trees of jagged crystal fractals, pits of crackling ectoplasmic fire, and somewhere- echoing distantly but still incredibly loud- a hungry roar shakes the rusted guts of the warehouse all the way down to Dani’s ribcage.

“Waitwaitwaitwheredoesthatportallead-AGGHHH!”

Wulf throws him through. The air snags and the hole seal itself up with a little pop of air, cutting off Eyepatch’s scream instantly.

“THAT WAS FOR GERALD!” both Danis roar simultaneously.

The warehouse is suddenly very quiet. Wulf’s heavy panting echoes very loudly on hollow concrete. His hoodie is filthy and torn in places and his hackles are raised.

“Hey man, you okay?” Dani asks.

“Yeah, you were kind of in a bad way,” her duplicate adds.

Wulf steadies his breathing. “Mi estas...mi estos bone.”

“Really?” Dani says skeptically. “’Cause you do not look okay.”

He stands up a little straighter, ears perking with interest. “Vi...komprenas min?”

The duplicate Dani (Dupli? Dupli-Dani? Yeah! Dupli-Dani) shrugs. “I mean...more or less? We know a couple of languages including Spanish or Portuguese.”

“So we can get the gist of it,” Dani finishes.

Seeing Wulf’s head dart confused between two different Danis, she floats up to her duplicate and holds out a fist. “Nice work on the chains, Dani.”

“Thanks, Dani!” Dupli-Dani returns the fist bump. “You weren’t so bad of a distraction.”

“Aw, shucks, now you’re making us blush.”

“You know we can’t resist making cute girls blush,” Dupli-Dani winks.

“Mi tre konfuzas nun,” Wulf confesses.

“Sorry,” they say in unison. Both Danis glow, and then Dupli-Dani’s form wavers like a reflection on water and shifts back into Danielle’s body. “Sorry about that, just unlocked that little trick last week and it takes some getting used to. Is it weird that I always end up hitting on myself when I do that? No reason, asking for a friend.”

Wulf is suddenly in her face- she’s floating only a few feet off the ground, and she almost recoils at such something so huge and toothy in her personal space, but starts giggling when his noises starts sniffling all over her.

“Ahhh! Hahahaha, quit it!” She giggles and squirms when his cold wet nose snuffles over her bare midriff.

“Oh! So-ry,” He rears back, brow scrunching adorably up in confusion. “Amiko Danny?”

“Uh...sorta?”

“Vi odoras kiel li, sed vi estas...malsama.”

“It’s a long story, but...you can call me Danielle, if it helps?”

He thinks about it for a few moments, then shakes his big, furry head. “Ne, vi estas Amiko Dani.”

“Aw, I heard the ‘i’ in there. Thanks big guy.” She rubs the back of her head and looks helplessly around the warehouse. “So uh...were you like...doing anything tonight before the Green Meanies tried to throw you in the slammer?”

“Ne vere,” He shrugs. “Eble vi povas diri al mi vian tre longan rakonto?”

“I’d...I’d like that? Yeah! You hungry?”

Even someone without any understanding of Esperanto couldn’t misinterpret the sudden lolling tongue. “Ĉiam.“

Wulf glances nervously up and down the street. This late there aren’t even buses or a stray car going down the road. Nothing but the traditional creatures of the night: ghostwolves, half-ghosts, goths, and service industry workers on the skeleton shift.

The shop window next to them was dark. Wulf adjusts his baseball cap in the reflection of the glass. “Ĉi tio estas stulta.”

“Is not.” Thinking it would be unfair that he’d be the only visible ghost in the place, Dani stayed in her ghost form as well. When she stood next to him, she could see both of their eyes glowing back at them in the window.

“Ĝi ne funkcios.”

“It’ll totally work, trust me.”

“Bone. Sed estos via kulpo, se ili panikos.”

“Midnight breakfast or a coffee shop full of panicking goths. I’m fine with either one.”

She walks across the street towards the diner, completely undisguised save the her spare hoodie covering her noticeable costume.

Perfect. No one will suspect at thing.

Wulf sighs loudly before following her.

They elected to take the long route there, Dani flying along Wulf while he loped on all fours across rooftops. She doesn’t think he can actually fly, which is weird because the only other ghost she’s met that doesn’t is Sidney, and he claims it’s because he gets vertigo when he floats.

Still, at least Wulf has the claw-portal thing. That’s pretty cool.

At the door, Wulf hunches low, ears flat against his head while he wrings his giant paw-hands nervously.

“Relax, Duran-Druan,” Dani reaches up and pats his arm. “I have it on good authority that freaking out over a ghost is an instant loss in goth-cred. It’ll be fine.”

He only nods quietly and hunches lower, trying to appear as small as possible.

The diner is exactly like she remembers: skulls everywhere, memorabilia of vintage movie monsters, some occult imagery that would make Sam’s mom faint, a wall turned into a crowded collage of dozens of punk-rockers from unknown local bands to Violent Pacifist and Dumpty Humpty.

“Hi there!” Dani walks up to a bored looking waitress whose dark mascara is hiding the tired bags under her eyes pretty well. She’s cute, all piercings, short pink hair, and a skirt that is mostly impractical buckles.

“Hey,” she returns, bored and sleep deprived.

“Can we get a table for three, please?”

“Three? But there’s only tw-” she freezes, finally noticing the seven foot tall shaggy wolfman ghost behind what she’d probably originally assumed to be a white-haired goth girl.

Dani smiles pleasantly at her, fully aware that her eyes are glowy ghostly bright. “I think he counts as two on his own, yanno?”

Wulf waves at her shyly.

“Uh. Right. Yeah. Sure.” She actually recovers admirably, blinking a few extra times at Wulf like she’s trying to reset her eyes before gathering up two menus. “This way, please.”

She leads them through the diner, past couples, trios, and small booths of various goths, punks, the occasional emo, and a few ghost-groupies in Ember merchandise.

Most look at Wulf for no more than few seconds before returning to their black coffees, phones, and conversations.

Dani elbows Wulf and stage-whispers. “Told ya.”

The waitress sits them down at a corner table next to a rainbow flag that’s decorated with spooky bats. It’s a bit of work with the tail, but Wulf manages to situate himself on the study metal chair without any problems.

“Can I uh...start you off with anything?” She asks.

“Kafo, bonvolu.”

“Two coffees, please,” Dani translates.

“Got it,” her black sneakers make next to no sound as she goes to fetch the pot.

“Bone, vi estis korekta,” Wulf admits. He looks around all the diner, tail thumping against the legs of his chair as he takes in the atmosphere. ”Ĉu vi multe venas ĉi tien?”

“Yep, come here all the time after patrol. It used to be just goths but after a while it kinda became this...safe-spot for anyone that was out late at night that needed someplace safe. Plus, the coffee’s not bad.”

As if to prove her point, the waitress returns with a fresh pot and fills their cups to the brim.

“Dankon, sinjorino.” Wulf says, still reading the menu. The menu looks cartoonishly small in his paws.

“No prob. You two want anything to eat?”

Dani looks up from her menu. “Oven still on?”

“‘course.”

“I’ll have the Black Dahlia.”

“Tri...’March of Pigs,’” Wulf manages.

“You want three whole-” She looks at him again. “Uh, sure yeah, okay. Take about half an hour.”

“That works,” Danny hands back her menu. Wulf carefully does the same.

The waitress (the name tag on her chest says Abigail, Danielle finally notices) hesitates a moment at the sight of Wulf’s claws, but just as carefully takes the menu and says, “Just holler if you need anything,” before she leaves again.

Neither Dani or Wulf say anything. Somewhere, old speakers static out deceptively cheery Voltaire songs to serenade the witching-hour crowd with.

“Do..” Wulf starts awkwardly. “Vi diris ke vi havas longan rakonto-”

“I’m a clone.”

Wulf’s mouth snaps shut.

Dani noisily sips her coffee.

Thing is, Danny, Sam, and Tuck already knew. Danny had told Jazz, Valerie had found out in the worse way possible, and when the time came to finally out himself - and her- to Maddie and Jack, he’d done most of the talking while she sat next to him on the couch, squeezing Jazz’s hand hard.

She’s never actually said it. Especially not the ‘C’ word.

“I mean, I know I said it was a long story and it definitely is but when you boil it down that’s sort of the major part. We call each other ‘cousins’ to make it less weird but technically Danny’s more like my twin brother and the guy who made me was evil and couldn’t decide whether to throw me away or dissect me for evil science and it’s not like I can like, go to a therapist or a non-Jazz professional about this 'cause I think being the unwanted byproduct of an evil plot to replace a deranged billionaire’s teenaged archnemesis because I was a girl and had health problems from botched cloning techniques might have given me a few...issues.”

Wulf never once takes his eyes off of her. He blinks at her slow, gaze steady and pupil-less, but strangely not at all unnerving. His big wolf ears are perked and attentive.

“Also I can’t be 100% sure but I think I’m gay.”

Holding up the coffee cup with precise, dainty care in his claw, Wulf took a polite sip with a big, slooping green tongue, then set it down with a clink.

Finally, clearing his throat, Wulf says, slow and heavily accented: “That iz ruff, buddy.”

Dani stares at him.

He nods at her sagely, a giant, furry philosopher wearing a filthy hoodie and a stolen ‘Axion Labs’ baseball cap. Then, with a twinkle in his eyes, he grins at her.

Dani can’t hold it in anymore and bursts out laughing, keeling over and slapping the table as her sides start to ache.

When Abigail comes back to their table with two trays loaded with food, she’s even more confused than she had been before.

#Truce18 #Christmas Truce 2018 #Wulf #Dani Phantom #Danny Phantom #Merry Christmas #logicalghost #I had fun with this #I don't know when it happened #but I love the idea of these two generally forgotten side-characters being really weird pals #with Danielle insisting on taking the giant scary wolfman ghost to places he CLEARLY shouldn't be able to go to #but somehow Dani barrels through like nothing is weird and confuses all the normal people into submission #plus Dani's practically a half-feral ghost kid anyway she and Wulf would get along great #R.I.P. Gerald we hardly knew you

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apparitionism · 7 years

Text

Sugar 2

Aaaaand now I’d like to wish @baeringandwells a very happy New Year! Tracy Bering, longing, and fluff: in the first part of this sweet tale, those boxes were all checked, and here in part two, they are still check, check, and checkity-check-plus-check. This concluding part got a little long... what a surprise, right? You know that once these loons get to yammering, I’m loath (or for those of you across the pond, loth) to shut them up. So it’s lengthy. And lordy is it sweet. I mean, I think so; you might not... check your pancreatic function, anyhow, just to be safe. (P.S.: ENORMOUS thanks to @kla1991 for running the holiday show this year!) (P.P.S. To anon: I do indeed have an AO3 account. I’m apparitionism there, too.) (P.P.P.S. To ants-in-Finland anon: I’m laughing, but also, thank you. Sincerely.)

Sugar 2

An enormous fir tree indeed dominated the space into which Myka and the others had been transported, or which had replaced their normal surroundings, or whatever kind of non-natural thing had happened to turn a vaguely normal Christmas Eve into... no. No, no, no.

But then Myka saw Helena. She wore a uniform of some kind, a swallowtail red coat featuring gold buttons and braid and epaulets, while on her head perched a tall black-and-gold top hat/crown thing. Her face displayed unnaturally heavy makeup that elongated her jaw in a way that seemed designed to suggest...

“No, no, no,” Myka said aloud, but she was afraid it could no longer be denied. “Somebody tell me this isn’t what it looks like.”

“What does it look like?” Helena asked. “A Christmas scene, orchestrally accompanied, in which one finds dancing toys, including toy soldiers, and... mice? And you seem to be wearing a nightgown. Charming, but not generally how I picture your sleepwear. Not that I have pictured it. Of course not. There would be no circumstance in which—” She cleared her throat. “In any case, as for myself...” She looked down at her arms, at the gold-buttoned front of her coat. Raised her hands to her head and touched her hat. “Fascinating.”

“That’s one word for it,” Pete said.

Claudia said, “I wouldn’t be pointing fingers, man. What’s with the ears and the tail?”

That made Pete whip his head around to regard his rear end, to which a tail seemed to have been tied; his ears, too, sported attachments that made them look bigger. More animal.

“Best guess,” Myka said, “given that there’s also a crown? He’s the Mouse King.”

Pete reached up, took off his crown, and held it up in front of them all. “Lookit that! Royalty! Good for me! But how do you know I’m a mouse?”

“Because,” Myka said, and she briefly entertained the idea that if she didn’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t be true.. but she of all people knew that never worked. She sighed and gave up: “Helena’s the Nutcracker.”

Pete snickered. “Appropriate.”

“You should be happy that I am not in actuality such an implement,” Helena said, “given the effectivity I believe I mentioned earlier. You should also be happy that you do not have seven heads.”

Pete had nodded enthusiastically at her first statement, but in response to the second, he cocked his head in question. “Kind of a random thing to put on my ‘thrilled-about’ list.”

“The Mouse King has seven heads in the Hoffmann,” Helena informed him. “I concede that would be a difficult effect to achieve in a ballet, which I presume, given the music and the abject horror on Myka’s face, this is.” She turned to Myka and said, “My most sincere condolences.”

Claudia said, “Waitaminute. Who am I supposed to be?” She fluttered the edges of the cape that draped her shoulders.

“I think you’re Drosselmeyer,” Myka told her. “He’s Clara’s—or, I guess my—godfather. He’s the one who made all the dancing toys, and the Nutcracker too, as Clara’s Christmas present. He’s a little creepy.”

“Goals. What about Tracy? Nothing’s different about her outfit.”

Tracy stood at the side of the... was it a stage? The side of the space, whatever it was, and she said, with a hint of a pout, “No costume? I’ve got to be somebody who isn’t in the ballet.” She perked up. “Maybe I’m Balanchine! Or Tchaikovsky!” But then she pouted again. “Probably just the narrator, though. Helps the kids in the audience follow the story... because a lot of them want to, unlike Myka, who was always too busy being traumatized.”

No kidding I was traumatized, Myka thought, and then: Tracy. Oh god. “Okay,” she began, but she could barely speak; her breathing thinned and shallowed and she thought she might pass out, because what explanation would she give for this? “Tracy,” she tried, “this is a really vivid dream you’re having. You fell asleep, and that is what this is. Okay? That’s all this is.”

Tracy shrugged. “Sure. Whatever you say. But I’m going to assume that that’s about as true as your unconvincing story of how a tornado destroyed my nursery.”

Pete said, “But also, your pregnancy hormones made you not remember the tornado. That was an important part of the unconvincing story.”

“Right,” Tracy said, poker-faced. “I’m just saying that if this were actually a dream, I don’t think any of you would care so much about trying to figure anything out. Because I, as the one having the dream, would already know.”

Helena laughed. “Tracy, I find you to be not unlike your sister, in some rather salient respects.”

Myka said, and as she spoke she realized Tracy was saying the exact same thing with the exact same intonation, “Is that good or bad?”

Helena pronounced, “And upon this evidence, my lord, I rest my case.” Said to a presumably nonexistent judge, but Myka wasn’t feeling entirely safe about any presumptions at this point.

“The Case of the Similar Siblings,” Claudia offered.

“Hey, why are we never in an episode of Perry Mason? That’s a great show,” Pete said.

Clearly, being rodent royalty did nothing to tamp down his ability to be annoying. “What a great idea, Pete,” Myka fake-enthused. “Start throwing out suggestions of new ways to crazy up our lives. I mean, why not ask why we’re never on the Pequod trying to kill Moby-Dick?”

“Because I don’t want to be on the Pequod trying to kill Moby-Dick. You wouldn’t want it either. You wrote a check to some ‘save the whales’ group two weeks ago; we all saw you do it.”

“My point was that nobody wants to be in anything.”

“That’s so untrue. This time of year, I’d kill to be in Die Hard. Besides, you were pretty happy to be in that detective-noir-thingy, weren’t you? Or maybe you changed your mind, because it turned out not to be a love story after all?”

He’d moved closer, practically in her face. Why was he being so confrontational? For that matter, why was she herself being so confrontational instead of trying to figure out how to get them all out of this?

Myka opened her mouth to ask, but Helena preempted her with, “I have a different question, one that may be slightly more pertinent: am I indeed expected to lead the dancing soldiers into battle against the dancing mice? The troops seem to be looking to me for choreographical guidance.” It was true; small soldiers shuffled their tiny toy feet as they turned hopeful little faces toward their Nutcracker commander. Helena spread her palms helplessly at them, then looked to Myka and Tracy.

Tracy said, “I don’t know how ‘my’ dream is supposed to work. I’m guessing that you people are way more experienced with things like this, and tornadoes. But it does seem like a good idea to follow the plot, doesn’t it?”

“Very well,” Helena said. “Be advised, however: I cannot dance.” She proceeded to prove that. Myka wasn’t sure how she felt about dancing being the one thing Helena Wells wasn’t able to do with preternatural skill... Helena seemed to be performing some unholy cross between hopscotch and a waltz, though the hopping was mostly a product of her attempts to avoid stepping on the soldiers and mice, none of whom stayed in formation. That in turn, of course, was the fault of their respective leaders, and Myka hadn’t expected to discover, not on Christmas Eve, that neither Helena nor Pete, who now marched with the mice, was capable of guiding an army of tiny creatures in terpsichorean combat. You really did learn something new, or several somethings new, every day.

Claudia had her arms crossed, watching the mayhem. “I have a really boring part in this show,” she announced.

Myka said, “I’m wearing a nightgown.”

“I give,” Claudia said. “Your part’s worse.” Her expression changed from grumpy to thoughtful. “I really feel like this is not what was supposed to happen. Or maybe it was, but I wonder why so trippy?”

“Supposed to happen? You did this?”

“I didn’t do this. At least, I didn’t think this was what I was doing.”

Myka could not imagine that a more frustrating group of people existed. Anywhere. “Not. For. Personal. Gain. Why aren’t we all required to have that tattooed somewhere visible?”

“It isn’t for personal gain! It’s for general Warehousical gain! Well, maybe a little bit of personal gain, just as a byproduct, but I swear to you, artifact usage is not involved here.”

Pete shouted, from the battlefield, “But why would you do anything at Christmas? You know how Christmas makes the Warehouse—whoops, hey Tracy, I mean ‘some storage facility’—lose its mind.”

“The thing I did, I didn’t do it at Christmas,” Claudia said. “And I didn’t even really do it. Plus there wasn’t really a single ‘it’ that was done. By me or by anybody—I mean, anything—else.”

Tracy said, “I’m sorry to interrupt all this clearly very important dream exposition, but Pete, you need to attack Helena.”

“I what now?”

“You’re the Mouse King,” Tracy told him. “You fight the Nutcracker, and you do it now, given the music.”

He brandished the sword he was holding. “Okay by me. H.G., you game?”

“I... suppose? En garde?”

Under other circumstances, Myka would have found Helena’s puzzled regard of her sword adorable. As it was, though, she was holding the blade completely wrong, so Myka went to her and moved her arm into a slightly more appropriate position. She asked Tracy, “Why couldn’t I be one of the ones with a weapon? I’m the only one who can actually fence.”

Tracy said, “You sort of do have a weapon, and you get to use it, but you have to let go of Helena first.” Myka dropped her guilty hands. Tracy went on, “Now you hit Pete with your shoe. To distract him.”

“Well, it’s no epée, but: with pleasure.” She took off her shoe—a dainty little ballet slipper that she probably couldn’t have taken a decent fencing stance in anyway—and whacked him over the head.

“That all you got?” Pete taunted, but now he seemed more silly than annoying.

“Now, Helena, the sword!” Tracy urged.

Helena squinted at the sword again. “I would say ‘with pleasure’ as well, but I don’t actually want to hurt him. Today.”

“We’ll do the thing where you ‘stab’ between my arm and my body,” Pete suggested, “and then I can finally do the death scene that wins me the Oscar.”

“Dance it. You have to dance it,” Tracy said.

Pete looked even more excited. “Dance it? Yes ma’am. You can all thank me later for the colossal moves I’m about to bust. Best Christmas present you’ll ever get.”

The moves Pete busted were “dance moves” under only the broadest definition of the phrase, in that he was moving, and the music continued to play. He spun; he shimmied; he sashayed; he struck poses. When he started in with what Myka was pretty sure was intended to be breakdancing, Claudia groaned, “My eyes. My sad, sorry eyes.”

Helena remarked, “The Nutcracker, having done this murderous deed, would feel such remorse that he, or rather I, would naturally turn his, or rather my, eyes away. Don’t you think?”

“Coward,” Myka said. “Look on his Works, ye Mighty, and despair. I know I am.”

“You don’t appreciate anything old school,” Pete grunted out, while attempting to hop on one hand. He fell over with a crash.

“She appreciates everything old school,” Tracy corrected him.

Myka wanted to say, “Definitely one thing—one person—who is very old school.” That one person who was very old school had accepted Myka’s challenge to keep watching Pete, and Myka let herself spend a moment enjoying Helena’s face as she worked to hold back what had to be either nausea or laughter. At last Helena gave up, and once she had allowed herself several low chuckles, she caught Myka’s eye and said, “He’d have been perfectly justified to laugh at me as well. And he does at least have great enthusiasm.” Myka had to agree: Pete did always commit. No matter what...

His commitment ended with him stretched out on the “stage,” twitching to show that the last of his mousy life, or maybe the horrified spirit of Terpsichore, was leaving his body.

Tracy said, “Pete, that’s enough. Next step: Myka and Helena, get in that bed over there.”

“Tracy!” Myka yelped

“Don’t be a prude. It’s in the ballet.”

Myka said, “I’m not being a prude.” And she wasn’t, not a prude, just a person who couldn’t stand the thought of getting something she wanted but not really getting it...

“You’re always being a prude,” Tracy said. “Get in the bed. It’s totally innocent: Clara’s just sleeping with the Nutcracker.”

Pete said, “That doesn’t sound innocent. That sounds like this ballet’s about to get all—”

“Pete!” Tracy interrupted. “You are not helping.”

Claudia remarked, “It’s weird how often people named Bering say that.”

Myka heard them, but hearing was her least important sense right then; far more worthy of her attention were sight and smell and touch—and taste, she wanted that too, but she couldn’t be that bold. She settled for resting her head on Helena’s epauletted shoulder, feeling the warmth of her skin through the stiff-collared neck of the coat. She sighed.

She might have imagined it, but she thought she felt Helena’s chest rise, fall; heard a heavy exhalation: was Helena sighing too? And then she didn’t care, for a red-sleeved arm found its way around her shoulders.

“In bed with you.” The words left Myka’s mouth of their own accord.

****

“In bed with you,” Helena breathed in response to Myka’s words.

Helena closed her eyes, let the strange, wonderful sensation of bodily peace have its way with her. Oh, Myka, don’t move; don’t ever, ever move, she thought, but then: Or, better, move only to be closer to me; move only to put your mouth on mine... she felt such thoughts might become speech, might already have become speech, here in this unreal realm...

Then, though, she had a sensation of awakening... but Myka’s head was still on her shoulder... and Helena knew, then, that that sensation was perfect. The caress of her hair, the warmth of her breath. If Helena should turn her head, and if doing so should join their lips, how surprised Myka might be—but how soft her mouth. How soft and warm and wanted... and if Helena were very lucky, how wanting. Because each moment of this dream, no matter its dreamer, was leading Helena to stronger hope. If her eyes could remain closed, if she could continue holding Myka to her, perhaps she could maintain that hope—

“I can’t see,” she heard Pete complain. “Why’d it get dark?”

Tracy said, “First act curtain.”

“What happens next?” Claudia asked.

“Myka’s favorite part,” Tracy said, and in her voice was a note that reminded Helena greatly of Myka, but only at her most playful...

“Oh god,” Myka said, removing herself from Helena’s embrace, and she sounded not at all playful, “it’s the—”

“Land of Sweets!” Tracy crowed. “Is it wrong of me to be really entertained by this?”

“It’s your dream. Knock yourself out,” Myka said. She let herself fall back against Helena’s shoulder, and Helena rejoiced. Then, tragically, Myka sat up. At that point, Helena opened her eyes, just in time to see Myka stand up.

Helena reluctantly followed suit... and thus they were no longer in bed together.

“I’m in a different outfit,” Myka said.

“So you are,” Helena said, for Myka was indeed wearing not the modest, girlish nightgown of the previous act, but a more traditional ballet costume, with a silvery, bejeweled bodice and a skirt of pale pink gauze. Then Helena realized: “So am I.” Hers, too, was more obviously ballet-suitable: a rather princely doublet and breeches, all white.

“I sort of miss the uniform. You looked dashing,” Myka said.

“Do you think so?”

“I haven’t ever seen you in a uniform before. Also the hat. It really worked for you.” She turned her eyes away, as if sudden self-consciousness were the price of such statements of appreciation.

That made Helena, in turn, bold. “I shall never again go hatless,” she said, but instead of declaring it, she whispered it. Into Myka’s ear, which pinked.

Tracy said, “Interesting. Doubling the parts.” They all, Helena included, looked at her in question, and she went on, “Small companies sometimes do that.”

“I guess we’re a pretty small company,” Claudia said.

Tracy crossed her arms and regarded the new setting. “Although I’m not sure why we need anybody playing any parts, here in this dream I’m having, if mice and toy soldiers and cookies actually can dance. Those are real pieces of chocolate jumping around to the Spanish Dance, aren’t they? Maybe you crazy people are right; maybe this is a dream.”

“It. Is. A. Nightmare,” Myka said, and Helena did believe that from Myka’s perspective, that was absolutely true: candies of many sorts danced before them—some seemed a bit disappointed at the less-than-enthusiastic response they were receiving from the small Warehouse “company”—and sugar saturated the air, from which the occasional powdery granule seemed to spontaneously precipitate. Pete stuck his tongue out in an attempt to catch some as the rest of them continued to regard the dancing confections.

Claudia said, “Dream, nightmare; I think it’s none of the above. I think we’ve been put on hold, in some cosmic sense. I have never been so bored. It’s all just dancy-dance-dance.”

“Now, now.” Helena admonished. “Even if you have no appreciation for Tchaikovsky, consider the poor marzipan’s feelings.”

Pete gave up trying to catch sugar in his mouth. He complained, “What about my feelings? All I feel is hungry. Particularly since my super-aerobic dance of death. I should make workout videos.”

“I should get an insulin shot,” Myka said.

Claudia nodded. “No lie. I feel like I’ve got sugar in my hair. Gross. Here’s hoping maple syrup shampoo never becomes a thing.”

Myka said, to her sister, “See, Claudia understands.”

Tracy was listening to the music, her head cocked. “Myka, I really hate to break this to you, but...”

“But what?” Myka asked, in the tone of one who feared that Tracy did not in fact hate the news she was about to break.

And indeed, Tracy began to laugh. “You, sister of mine, are the Sugarplum Fairy. Merry Christmas, sweetie.”

Myka began muttering, “I think you really are dreaming, and I think it’s some kind of revenge fantasy thing where you get back at me for that time I hid your toe shoes, which I apologized for, twenty-five years ago, and yet here you are, still holding it over my—”

“But in what might come as positive news,” Tracy said, in a conciliatory tone, “Helena seems to be your Cavalier.”

“That’s awesome news!” Claudia enthused. “Probably.”

“They’re going to dance a pas de deux here in a bit,” Tracy told her.

“Even. Awesomer. Again, probably. One question: is it, you know, all romantical?”

Tracy nodded. “Basically the only really romantic thing in the show.”

“Sparkly.” Claudia looked to the heavens and pressed her hands together, as if in prayer.

Helena said, “I myself am not finding fault with the situation. But is there some reason you are having such an excessively positive reaction?”

Claudia pointed her pressed hands at Helena. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve sussed out what’s happening.”

“You have determined that your function is Riemann-integrable,” Helena tried.

Tracy remarked, “And here I thought it was me, having a dream. A revenge dream.”

“It is,” Myka said, with no cheer. “And in your dream, Claudia has sussed out what’s happening and Helena’s doing a callback to something that wasn’t funny the first time. And now everybody can wake up so I can get out of this Sugarplum outfit and brush my teeth.”

“I don’t think we can wake up yet,” Claudia said. “Because here’s how I think we get out of this: you dance that dance that’s the only romantic thing in the show. And you mean it.”

“What do you mean, ‘mean it’?” Myka asked.

“What do you think ‘mean it’ means? It means mean it!”

Mean it, Helena thought, and she said, “Ah. Ha. Really?” She fought to keep her face from revealing her eagerness for that romantic dance—she would mean it; she could not help but mean it; and the extent to which she would mean it would be so readily apparent—

“H.G., you look like you’re gonna throw up,” Pete announced. “And hey, so does Myka.”

Helena noted that Myka’s face did seem to be fighting with itself, much as Helena’s own must... and she should not hope it might be for the same reason, but she did hope it all the same...

Tracy said, “That is not what Myka looks like when she’s about to throw up.”

“It’s what Myka looks like when...?” Claudia prompted.

“When it’s Christmas morning and she’s unreasonably terrified that she might get what she wants. She’s good with anticipation. Terrible with actual attainment.”

“Tracy, you should do it,” Myka said. She looked down at her body, touched the gossamer skirt. “I can’t dance. You can dance, and I can’t.”

Helena regarded that hand, resting on that skirt: it was shaking. She wanted to take it, raise it to her mouth, and kiss it. Instead, she said, “Perhaps in a dream you can.”

“But what if I can’t? What if it’s important to be able to?”

Helena tried to keep her tone light. “If that is the case, Pete and I have doomed us.”

“I don’t want to be doomed at all,” Myka said, and her voice gathered strength as she went on, “but in particular, I don’t want to be doomed by doing a dance about sugar in a ballet version of a fairy tale I don’t even like. That’s literally adding insult to injury.”

“I think you’d be doing a dance as sugar,” Tracy told her.

“Indignity to insult to injury. I really think you should do it instead.”

“There is no production of this ballet in which the narrator dances the pas de deux,” said Tracy. She could sound quite starchy when she wished to... Helena imagined that Myka must historically have responded rather poorly to that. But then Tracy’s voice softened. “Besides. There’s no reason for me to dance with Helena.”

“There’s no reason for me to either!”

“Isn’t there?” Tracy asked, and the starch was back.

“There shouldn’t be!” Now Myka’s eyes were wide, and her body seemed poised on the edge of movement, as if she might take off running, just to get away.

If only we could have stayed in bed together, Helena thought. Then she might have been able to maintain a belief that that was what they both wanted, that it was not anything from which Myka felt she needed to escape. “Perhaps there should be such a reason; perhaps there should not,” she said, then looked to Claudia. “I may be mistaken, but I believe it is time for you to make some statements that are about what they are about.”

Claudia swallowed, and possibly she was the one experiencing nausea now. “Are you sure?”

“As mentioned, I may be mistaken. So of course not,” Helena said.

“Good point.” Claudia sighed. “Okay, see, one of the things that the Caretaker’s supposed to, uh, do, which I personally did not know, prior to, you know, Caretaker Bootcamp, is to make sure that the agents... you know.” She fluttered her fingers.

“I don’t know,” Pete said, and Helena was certain that for once, he was speaking for them all.

“You know,” Claudia insisted. “Make sure they... get along. In the ways that would be best for them to... get along. But the thing about Mrs. F is, she kind of had... let’s say, some old-fashioned ideas. About who would. Or should. In what ways. And she and the... storage facility, they spent a lot of time and energy engineering... an outcome. But that was a major oops, because general wrongness. So anyhow, after some conversations about what’s what, which let me tell you I never expected to have to be the one explaining, some things got... put back. But then obviously there was, you know, another thing that needed to be addressed. So here we are.”

Myka shook her head. “That was... incomprehensible.”

Claudia shrugged. “So much for subtlety. Mrs. F thought you and Pete, right? And so she and the storage facility set up dominoes to maneuver that into happening. But obviously, big no on that, so we fixed it. But just as obviously, another... uh. Situation. Needed to. Let’s say develop? And that was my job.”

“You’ve been trying to get Myka and H.G. together,” Pete said.

“Right.”

But why take such a long way round?, Helena wondered. She did not have to ask aloud, however, for Pete saved her the trouble. He scratched his head in puzzlement and said, “In the weirdest way possible? Was that part of the bootcamp? ‘Whatever you do, do it weird’?”

Waving her hands at him, Claudia shouted, “If the whole thing happened to be entirely up to me, I’d just hang some mistletoe and say ‘Now smooch!’ Actually I wouldn’t even bother with the mistletoe, because why wait? But I’m pretty sure you know just as well as I do, bootcamp aside, that if it’s the storage facility running the show, it’s going to be a lot more complicated than just turn around three times and spit. Also I might not have full control of the dominoes yet, okay? Do you have any idea the kind of inbox situation I’m dealing with here?” Her gestures had escalated in intensity throughout this recitation, leaving her panting as she finished.

“But what if this is wrong,” Myka said, and Helena ached to think that she did believe it to be wrong. “It was wrong with Pete; I knew it was wrong.”

Claudia said, “I told you, Mrs. F blew that one. It was wrong.”

That did nothing to lessen Myka’s evident despair. Helena could not stand to let her think that Helena herself harbored any reservations, regardless, so she said, “I don’t want anyone, least of all myself, forced into anything. Having already been placed into many circumstances not of my choosing. But—”

“See?” Myka said.

“But I don’t care. I do want you.”

“And I want you, but—”

“You do?” Helena could scarce believe her ears; if that were true, then why the despair?

“Of course I do. Wait—you want me?”

“Of course I do.” She had never said anything more true.

“But what if this isn’t even what we want? What if it’s just what the Warehouse wants us to want?”

“I could not possibly care less,” Helena said, and she meant it. “What I do care about are the fascinating ways in which articulating the words ‘what’ and ‘want’ make your mouth move.”

“Don’t charm me. I don’t know what to do when you charm me. And I told you, I can’t dance. I can’t.”

Helena said, “Then don’t think of it as dancing. Tracy, tell us what narrative purpose this interlude serves in this ballet.”

“The Sugarplum Fairy and her Cavalier... it’s generally thought of as a way of modeling romance for the young Clara, or if the same ballerina’s dancing both parts, letting her experience romance in its most perfect form. An ideal representation.”

Helena turned to Myka. She said, as gently as she could, “Providing an ideal representation of romance—that, we can do. Can’t we?”

Myka didn’t immediately answer.

And now Helena did not intend to sound desperate, but she knew she would... “Please say yes. I don’t care about the Warehouse and what it does or doesn’t want. Please say yes.”

Myka did not say yes. But she did take a step toward Helena, and Helena’s heart leapt. But then: “I don’t know what to do,” Myka said.

“You might swoon for me,” Helena suggested lightly.

“I’m not much of a swooner,” Myka said back, not quite as lightly.

“It’s true that your spine and shoulders are somewhat rigid.” Helena put her hands on those rigid shoulders, as if to test them. But instead she let her warm hands rest on Myka’s nearly bare, yet incongruously warm, skin.

Myka gave a small shrug to her shoulders, and Helena tensed; did Myka want to shake her hands away? But Myka said, “Then again you could swoon for me.” And she moved her own hands to Helena’s waist, seemingly to support her, should her body indeed collapse.

“I fear it would seem overly theatrical,” Helena said, as a tease.

Myka smiled. “We’re in the middle of a fake Warehouse-contrived ballet, and you’re worried about seeming overly theatrical.”

This smile was one more of play than of joy, but Helena found it transporting all the same. She leaned close to Myka, so close, such that she was once again speaking directly into her ear. “What about this,” she said. “I want to kiss down and up again the length of that straight, strong spine.”

Myka’s hands tightened on Helena’s body. “You win. That might make me swoon.”

“And then breathe against the nape of your neck,” Helena said, for good measure.

And now into Helena’s ear, so close as to make Helena’s very skin vibrate, Myka said, “If we were not in the presence of witnesses, so help me god.”

Helena said, after a throat-clear, “And yet I have heard that you are always a prude.”

Myka shrugged again under Helena’s hands. “Tracy and I did grow up together, and she does know some things about me. But she doesn’t know everything.”

“No one knows everything,” Helena said, with an intentionally casual answering shrug. “So it should be hardly surprising that we two extremely intelligent, well-educated women might not be able to execute a perfect pas de deux. But... shall we make some attempt?” And now she did remove her hands from Myka’s shoulders and instead raised her arms, offering them as if to lead one of the partnered dances her parents had insisted she at least attempt to learn as a girl: right hand at waist level, left hand raised to receive the lady’s right. The gentleman’s role had seemed so much more compelling then, and was doubly so now, as Myka, despite her protests that she knew nothing, moved into the hold as if she, too, had been subjected to such lessons. “All I can remember, even vaguely, are the waltz and the polka,” Helena said. “Is this a waltz?”

“It’s probably not a polka, and I know in a waltz you count to three. Let’s give it a try.”

Surprisingly, then, they began to waltz. Their slow three-count had nothing to do with the music, as far as Helena could tell, but that could not matter. Mean it, Claudia had said. An ideal representation of romance, Tracy had said. At this moment, Helena had never meant anything like she meant her heartfelt hold of Myka’s body, and she could think of no model for romance more perfect than herself and Myka, counting to three in unison, trying unsuccessfully to avoid stepping on each other’s toes, looking down at their feet, looking back up again into each other’s eyes, smiling, looking away...

Helena heard Claudia say, “They really can’t dance.”

“Not at all,” Tracy agreed. “And yet...”

Helena did not dare break her count, or her concentration, but she suspected Claudia was nodding her own agreement with Tracy’s implication.

Myka was the one to break, though, for she said, “Did you hear Claudia? She said we can’t dance. I told you—”

“Then stop trying, and kiss me instead.” Helena had thought to say that as a tease. An absurdity: of course Myka would not kiss her, not here, not now.

But Myka did not hear it that way, and the way Myka heard it? That was how Helena had indeed meant it, and she understood Myka’s anxious words in response: “I thought we were supposed to dance. Besides, this shouldn’t be how we—our first—”

“First doesn’t matter.” So now, now, let the first be now... “No one kiss will matter—all of them will.”

“All of them...”

“Yes,” Helena said, with conviction. “All of them. The entire... what should the collective noun be? An osculation, perhaps?” She could do this, could give Myka a moment to think, to consider, to decide—to remember—that any first need not, and in the case of their own interactions, had not, set the tone and tenor of all that would come after.

Myka took that moment. Then she smiled and said, “A canoodle.”

Helena countered with, “A prurience.”

“That’s a little too lascivious. And don’t say ‘a lascivity,’” Myka added quickly. Then she tried, “An amatorium?”

Helena considered. “Not quite. I propose that we continue these attempts presently. At which time, I will emerge victorious.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself. What if I come up with the winner?”

Tracy asked, seemingly of no one in particular, “Is this part of their representation of ideal romance? Or are they like this all the time?”

Pete said, “They do not know how to shut up about this kind of thing. Never have. Storage facility didn’t maneuver ’em into that. Then again that’s probably what they think romance is.”

“I don’t have to bother figuring out what a storage facility called ‘the Warehouse’ has to do with anything, do I, because at some point I’ll ‘wake up,’” Tracy said. “Right?”

“Or something about hormones,” Pete assured her.

“Fantastic. Look, just tell me Helena isn’t going to hurt my sister.”

Helena tensed, waiting for Pete’s response. Pete took his time in answering, but he finally said, “I don’t think I can tell you that. I mean, she did before.”

Points for honesty, at least. Helena looked to Tracy, Pete, and Claudia and said, “Never again. I swear, never again.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Tracy warned, and Helena did not doubt her intent.

“Hey,” Myka said, “I think that should be my line. But I’ve got a revised version: don’t make promises if you don’t intend to keep them. I know there’s no knowing what will happen.”

Helena said, “There is indeed no knowing. For I would have wished—but would not have dared—to consider a Christmas Eve on which I would be dancing with you.”

“We’re not even dancing,” Myka said, and it was, as far as it went, the truth. They were no longer moving, and Helena’s arms around Myka were no longer positioned with any formality.

But as far as it went, it did not go far enough. Helena said, “It is the oldest dance imaginable. And we are beginning it.” She paused. “Are we not?”

Myka said, simply, “Yes. We are.”

The kiss was surely no revolution in the art: their mouths moved together with a gentle yet intensifying pressure, and what innovation could she and Myka bring to such an old, simple action? Well, one at least, for what other perfect match of lovers could lay claim to having been separated by a century—then, after closing that gap, having waited still more years for the match to be made?

Such an old, simple action, and yet it carried such meaning, serving as both a culmination and a beginning... once begun, though, they did not stop, until they had kissed again, and again, and again, and once more. Helena drew back a bit and breathed out, “Five.”

That made Myka draw back slightly too. Puzzled: “That’s not a very creative collective noun.”

“But it is more than four.” Helena did not intend to brag, but it was objectively the case that five was more than four.

Myka laughed a small laugh, one that said she understood. “Okay. Six,” she said, and made it true.

“Seven,” Helena sighed, after she had made that true as well.

They were engaged in eight when Helena heard Pete say, “I think it’s working. Are we waking up?”

A veil fell again, a slow darkening followed by a slow brightening. And there they all were again, back in their old familiar living room, but in a newly familiar position: Helena’s arms were still around Myka, and Myka’s mouth had just left hers, and Helena tried to tell herself that waking up would be all right, that they would make the best of whatever happened; but she could not now imagine being satisfied to return to that stasis that had been not quite enough.

The floodgates had failed.

****

Should I move? Myka asked herself. She and Helena were locked in an embrace, and Myka felt her pulse in her suddenly lonely lips, felt it as a beat that wanted to push her forward to meet Helena’s mouth again. But they were in the real world now, and what if waking up again, here, meant that nothing had changed?

Tracy, as if she had read Myka’s thoughts, said, “It is all a dream of course.”

Myka stepped away from Helena’s arms. She didn’t look at Helena’s face. “Of course,” she said. “Of course it is. I mean, I’m so glad you think so.”

“I mean in the ballet, you idiot,” Tracy said. “That whole second part, about the Land of Sweets: Clara dreams it.”

Now Myka did look at Helena. Bleak, soft, sad: her eyes reminded Myka of her haunted hologram gaze, that gaze that knew so deeply how punitive her unreal body was. A constant “look but don’t touch” taunt... and Myka did not know if Helena understood that Myka, too, had felt it as punishment.

But a real body stood here now. “Then I don’t see why she—I mean I—would ever want to wake up,” Myka said. She took Helena’s right hand in both of hers, raised it to her mouth, and kissed it.

Helena made a small noise—disbelief?—but she put an arm around Myka’s hips and looked a question at her. Myka nodded. Helena said, “Then you should not have to. Wake up, that is.”

“Even though it’s too sweet for you?” Tracy asked, and her skeptical tone was clear. “In all the ways, I would’ve thought. Based on your... history.”

Helena, obviously emboldened by the location of her arm, exclaimed, “Tracy Bering, are you attempting to talk your sister out of this? Or are you simply making certain?”

“Trying to make certain. I’m getting that it’s important. I’d like things to work out the way they should, because I’m betting that if they do, I get to go home and everything will turn out okay. It’s like with Dad and that haunted book or whatever it was.”

Myka blanched. “How do you know about that?”

Tracy rolled her eyes and said, “Because I talk to our parents, Myka. You should try it sometime when nobody’s about to die.” Her tone became nonchalant. “You might want to try it sometime soon, in fact, because I bet you’d prefer to be the one to tell them about Helena... and you know bad I am at keeping a secret...”

Helena, exclaiming again: “Tracy Bering, are you now attempting to blackmail your sister into visiting your parents?”

“I’m just making statements that are true. What Myka does with them is up to her.”

And now Helena was laughing. “Tracy Bering. You are a Christmas gift I did not expect.”

“Hey! What am I exactly?” Myka said, and she hadn’t expected to be possessive, but: she put her own arm around Helena. And pulled her close.

Helena’s smile turned incandescent, but her voice was familiarly sly as she said, “If recent events are to be believed, you are my sugarplum. And/or fairy.”

Claudia spoke for the first time, as if she were trying out her voice to make sure it still worked. “H.G.,” she said, and coughed, “if you don’t make the dingy-ding-ding part of that song your ringtone for her, I will lose all respect for you.”

Pete chimed in with, “We all should have that as our Myka ringtone. ‘Is the Sugarplum Fairy calling you, Pete?’ ‘Yes. Yes she is.’”

“I’m strangely comforted by all of this,” Myka said.

“Are you really?” asked Helena.

“Well. It pretty much shows that nothing’s going to change.”

“Nothing?” Sly again.

“One thing. A very important thing.” She leaned her head against Helena’s neck.

“Two things,” Tracy said. “Don’t forget about Helena meeting the parents.”

“The parents of Myka and Tracy Bering,” Helena said, and her tone was one of “what manner of creatures are these.” “Hm. These parents, who named their older child Myka Ophelia Bering, and their younger, Tracy... Desdemona Bering?”

Tracy laughed. “Oh, good guess. But no.”

“Portia?” Helena tried, and Tracy shook her head. “Bianca?” Another negative. Helena twisted her lips one way, then the other. “Surely it couldn’t be Cleopatra.”

“I wish,” Tracy said.

“Why couldn’t mine be Cleopatra?” Myka griped. “Do you know how many times people have told me ‘get thee to a nunnery’?”

“Please don’t,” Helena said. “For I would be obliged now to come and liberate you from it, and I really don’t need to add to my offenses against religion. And the religious.” She turned back to Tracy. “It certainly can’t be Helena.”

“No, but you’re getting warm,” Tracy said.

“Hermia?”

“Still warm...” Tracy said, and she winked at Myka.

“Here it comes,” Myka agreed.

Helena pounced. “Ha! In the fairy realm, one Bering a sugarplum, the other a queen: Tracy Titania Bering. Observe you.”

“H.G.,” Claudia said, “it’s ‘look at you.’ Or ‘get you.’ ‘Observe you’ sounds weird.”

Tracy said, “I like her version. In fact I like her.”

“So the Wells mojo works on all the Berings,” Pete said, but he didn’t sound completely like himself. Myka put a mental post-it flag on that so she would not just not forget it, but also come back to it.

“If there is any such thing as Wells mojo, I would much prefer it work only on one particular Bering.” Helena emphasized her point by kissing Myka’s cheek. Myka reciprocated. It was ridiculously satisfying.

“That’s okay by me,” Tracy said. “If I’m lucky, Kevin will remember that he likes one particular Bering too.”

That made Claudia say, quickly, “I’m sorry, Tracy.” She put her hands in her jeans pockets and hunched her shoulders; she might as well have been captioned “embarrassment.” “The whole thing, all the straight-up lunatic reasons for it all... I’m also sorry that I’m technically not supposed to explain why I’m sorry, but I’m really really sorry. If it helps, I think if you’re not mad at your husband anymore, he might not have much of an idea that you ever were.”

Tracy waved the apology away. “Myka’s involved, so the reasons can’t help but be lunatic, and it’s not like I’ve never been furious at Kevin before today. But no matter how my little not-exactly-breakup works out, it does bring up one thing that our ideal lovebirds over there need to remember: the honeymoon ends.”

Claudia said, “I guess not today, though. Gotta say I’m a little surprised how strong the ‘mean it’ mojo carried over.”

Helena had been nosing against Myka’s neck, but now she raised her head and asked, “And how are you finding this part, Claudia? That is, if I have interpreted your previous metaphor correctly.”

“Don’t get yourself carbonite-frozen, is all I ask,” Claudia said.

“I have had enough of enforced immobility, thank you.”

Tracy said, “Then I think you should try movement instead.”

Myka was not particularly proud of how quickly her mind took that and went south—and then she was further flustered by Helena’s saying “What?” with a level of startlement that suggested she’d had the same thought.

Tracy started laughing. “Good god, your faces. I meant you should take a dance class.”

****

The entire rest of the evening, Myka let go of Helena only once: she went to the kitchen, where Pete was hunting through the refrigerator for food he hadn’t yet introduced himself to. She said, “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” he asked, his head still inside the appliance.

“Don’t play dumb.”

“Mrs. F should apologize. We were both bystanders.”

“Not innocent, though,” she said, to the back of his head. “You committed. I didn’t.”

He didn’t turn around, and he didn’t speak.

“You’re going to freeze your face,” she told him.

“I’m not in the freezer,” he said, but he did stand up and close the door. “I’m sorry too.”

“What for?”

“I committed. You didn’t. Should’ve told me something, right?”

“I don’t know what should’ve told either of us anything.”

He turned to face her then. “You and H.G.” He puffed out a breath. “You look good together. I don’t just mean you’re both pretty—I mean you are—but you look good together. You look right. Sound right, too. You did, even before. That should’ve told everybody everything they needed to know.”

“Nobody here seems very good at paying attention,” Myka said.

“Well, Claudia is. Mostly. And Steve. Abigail too.” He sighed. “The newbies. Maybe the rest of us have been here too long.”

“‘The rest of us’? We just spent Christmas Eve in a ballet because ‘the rest of us’ apparently can’t be trusted to run our own lives,” she told him, and he huffed the start of a laugh. That seemed like a good sign, so she went on, “What I’m really saying is, you better stick around, because I need your help.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, and he turned back to the refrigerator.

“No, I mean I need your help right now. Helena and Claudia are explaining to each other why the Warehouse database should be made out of blockchain. Or something. And if they run off to the storage facility tonight to make that dream a reality, I’m holding you responsible.”

“You got some other plans?” he asked. And then he waggled his eyebrows.

It was all going to be all right. They’d probably still have a hiccup or two or several, but it was all going to be all right. “I didn’t spend Christmas Eve in some stupid ballet for no payoff, Lattimer.”

****

A year ago, Helena would not have imagined this Christmas Eve this way.

Pete and Claudia were still engaged in their video-game duel, although at considerably reduced volume... Tracy Bering had retired to the guest room after a long telephone conversation with her husband, whom she still loved, and who still loved her...

As for herself and Myka: alone now, in a darkened room, in a bed, continuing their dance...

There was no suggestion, on either of their parts, that they “take it slow”; no angst-ridden worries as to what the morning would bring; no hesitation at all—and if that was due to holiday disinhibition or the knowledge that there truly was no time like the present or even just the flat simplicity of two eager, tender adults willing and able to indulge their bodies with what was wanted, Helena could not have said.

What she did say, in a dark quiet moment right as Christmas Eve was becoming Christmas morning, came in response to Myka’s whispered, post-indulgence question, “And we’re sure this is real?”

“I hope so,” she said. Then, “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. I don’t expect an act curtain to fall, but your sister is right, of course: the honeymoon does end.”

Myka stretched her straight, strong spine—the length down and up of which Helena had indeed kissed. She said, “If it does, then we’ll just have to have a second one.”

“I had no idea you would be so romantic,” Helena told her. For Myka had indeed been romantic—she had said unabashed words of love, and of want, and Helena had answered them in rapturous kind.

“I didn’t either. Maybe it’s some aftereffect—excessive sweetness. It’ll probably wear off.”

“I suspect we’re likely to have more problems if it doesn’t wear off than if it does. As you’ve no doubt noted, I’m not especially sweet myself.”

Myka said, “I beg to differ,” and she kissed Helena again and again and again, as if she had found a secret fount of edulcoration, as if she could not get enough of all that her mouth encountered...

Much later, Helena murmured, “Torturous journey,” as she let her fingers trace an easier, smoother one across Myka’s collarbones.

“And we didn’t even know it was one. Not while we were on it.”

Helena sighed. “Blame the storage facility.” She paused. “Not a sentence one expects to utter.”

“Do you care? If we’ve been... nudged? Pushed?” Myka’s hands had been moving too, over Helena’s back, sliding over scapulae, then moving to Helena’s shoulders, down her arms. Now they stilled, waiting.

Helena sighed again. “Nudged, pushed. Flung? Away from each other, now toward each other. I care only that it took so long for the storage facility to get it right. I don’t appreciate the detours.”

“For my sanity, I’m just going to pretend that the storage facility isn’t as influential in everyone’s business as it apparently is. But I have to say, I think my parents are going to wake up tomorrow morning pretty confused about why they booked themselves on a cruise.”

“And yet they might enjoy it. Opinions can change, in the event. For example, how do you feel about The Nutcracker now?”

“I don’t want to tell you.” She shifted a bit, abruptly awkward under Helena’s weight. “You’ll take it the wrong way.”

Helena slid fully off of Myka’s body, turned on her side, and propped herself on her elbow. “You continue to find it your worst nightmare,” she guessed, though it seemed more a certainty.

“I can’t help it. I still can’t stand it—and I don’t understand why the storage facility had to stick us in that sugary horror show anyway.”

“Hm,” Helena said.

Myka said, with apology, “You’re thinking the honeymoon’s over right about now, aren’t you?”

“That is not at all what I am thinking. I am considering two questions. First, which of us, you or myself, has no objection, philosophical or otherwise, to the consumption of sweets?”

“You...” Myka said, but now with suspicion.

Helena chuckled. “And second, which of us was cast as the Sugarplum Fairy... the one who, we might say, is made of sugar?”

Myka closed her eyes. She made the same hand-to-forehead gesture she had, so much earlier in the evening, with Pete: as if she were attempting to ensure that her brain remained in place.

Helena, greatly satisfied, continued, “Thus I am thinking that the storage facility stuck us in that sugary horror show in order to indicate that I should—”

The hand that had been at Myka’s forehead moved swiftly to cover Helena’s mouth... but Myka smiled.

****

No, a year ago, even a day ago, Helena would not have imagined this Christmas Eve–become–Christmas morning this way. Even if she had, she would have told herself that such satiety could never be more than the stuff of fantasy... the stuff of sweet dreams.

But even the sweetest of dreams sometimes come true.

END

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Sugar #B&W Holiday Gift Exchange #part 2 #I would apologize for the joking around at the end #but I swear to you I tried to land the piece at least six different ways #and they all refused to avoid going there #so I felt I had no choice #blame the storage facility #anyway hiya 2018 #let's see whatcha got #I know there'll be some Bering and Wells #certainly from me #and I hope from everybody else too #here's to sugary dreams #for them and for us

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voidcrow · 7 years

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The Involuntary Blood-pumping Muscle of the Cards - Day 97

Sarola had taught him the rules. He had built a deck of his own, using cards none of the others had snapped up for themselves. He had won a few games with it.

And now, Shaaghun was ready to ascend.

Some time after being crowned the Summoners' Showdown King, Rupmat had withdrawn from Voidcrow Spire's living room, taking a few fellow imps and his wooden "throne" with him, to make a palace out of some other room in the tower. At first they'd tried settling in Laciel's bedroom, but they’d walked in on Sarola being her usual indecent self, so their search had continued.

But at last, King Rupmat and his royal entourage had found the perfect spot for him to hold court—the boiler room, whose namesake furnace would keep them warm. And now, his deck in one hand and the Axe of the Mammoth Rider in the other, the felguard descended the stairs which led to there.

Multiple imps were found in the rather stark room, idly sitting around and exchanging cards with each other. Rupmat's own card collection was piled on a table, which sat in front of his throne. There—wearing a "cape" made by cutting a small square out of one of Laciel's nicer-looking blankets—the so-called King slouched. "Who approacheth mine throne?" he asked in his best attempt at a posh Gilnean accent.

Shaaghun responded by throwing his axe across the room to split Rupmat's table in two, catapulting his cards into the air.

Most of the imps simply laughed, but Rupmat screeched in horror, standing straight up atop the chair and recoiling, whilst his cards fluttered down to the floor. "Look, whatever's hacked you off, it was prob'ly Vaadeus' fault! Go bother him!"

Holding up his deck, Shaaghun looked Rupmat in the eye. "You. Me. For the title."

A silence went by.

Rupmat smiled. "Oh, is that all?"

<> <> <>

Back in the living room, Shaaghun and Rupmat sat at Laciel's chess table before onlookers such as Vaadeus and the two observers.

“Let’s mix things up a little, eh?” Rupmat set his deck on the table, but then placed a single separate card face-down off to the side. “We’ll play with a locked environment—meanin’, we both have to skip environment phases for the whole game, but this environment here stays in play from start to finish, no matter what.” He flipped the proposed environment over:

[ENVIRONMENT] Heathen Ritual Temple As long as this environment is in play, each player can acquire souls during the Spells and Summons phase of their turn by discarding familiars directly from their hand. One familiar yields one soul as usual.

“Alright, I like it.” Shaaghun nodded. “Auch minas. Let’s do this.”

Once the imp and felguard finished drawing their starting hands, Rupmat flipped a silver coin into the air.

"Heads!" called Shaaghun. But it landed on tails, prompting the mo'arg to mutter a cuss word.

With the first turn being his, Rupmat took the top card from his deck, adding it to his hand. He grinned. "And already, opportunity comes knockin’." Rupmat put a card in his hand straight into his discard pile, and a little orb of light appeared above his deck, in accordance with the environment’s effect. "I'll spend that soul to summon this thing." He put a card down on his side of the field:

[FAMILIAR] Goblinius Major [COST 1] [ATT. POW. 600] [STAM.600] [PERSISTENT]: As long as Goblinius Major is in play, activating a trap will cost your opponent one soul each.

The card projected an image of a malformed creature clad in crude armor and carrying a morning star.

Rupmat then placed another card onto his front row, keeping it face-down, before looking up at Shaaghun. "I'll have Goblinius here attack you directly." The familiar projection ran up to bash the immaterial wall in front of Shaaghun, cracking its surface. The number projected at the top of said wall depleted to 7400.

"Alright, your turn," said Rupmat. "Let's see how a lowly peasant does against the king."

Shaaghun drew a card, and couldn't help smiling at his luck. The strength of Rupmat's initial play would be outdone by it. "First," said the felguard, "I'll harvest the souls of these four critters." So he discarded four cards from his hand, causing four little orbs to appear over his deck.

"Which lets me bring out my big friend..." Shaaghun then set down the card he'd just drawn:

[FAMILIAR] Warrior of Fate [COST 4] [ATT. POW. 0] [STAM. 1700] [ON SUMMON]: Spend any amount of your life (in integers of 100) to set the Warrior of Fate's attack power to the amount given. The attack power increase lasts for as long as the Warrior of Fate remains in play.

"Wha—huh?" Rupmat put on a worried grimace.

"I figure spending 4000 life to set his attack power oughta be enough to put you on the ropes, Your Majesty." Shaaghun's life counter depleted to 3400, but the Warrior of Fate's projection beefed up. "Also, I'll cast this," continued the felguard, revealing the last card in his hand to be a spell:

[SPELL] Snipe Your weakest familiar in terms of attack power may now strike your opponent's life directly. The same familiar can still attack as usual upon your turn's attack phase.

While the Warrior of Fate proceeded to bypass Rupmat's two familiars and smash into the wall representing his life, the imp's eyes bugged out. "Oh sweet salty gods!" His life depleted to 4000.

Shaaghun discarded the spell and smirked. "And now that the actual attack phase has come up, let's just have the Warrior of Fate kill off your Goblinius Major there." With that, Shaaghun's familiar struck down Goblinius Major in one blow, and the goblin’s card floated to the imp's discard pile. "Your turn, Rup, but FYI: I've got two more of those Snipe thingies in my deck. It don't matter what critters you throw between yourself and my Warrior of Fate; I draw one more Snipe, and you're toast."

But Rupmat cackled as he drew a card to open his next turn. "You just about clinched the game, but didn't think to kill my face-down familiar when you had the chance! You're a right proper doofus, you are." Rupmat flipped up the remaining card in his front row:

[FAMILIAR] Reeorgh the Mole [COST 0] [ATT. POW. 120] [STAM. 200] [ON FLIP]: You and your opponent's life are set to 8000 and available souls set to zero. You and your opponent are to shuffle all familiars and traps in the field and all the cards in their hands and discard piles back into their respective decks. You and your opponent then draw five cards.

The card briefly projected an image of an angry-looking mammal in miner's gear... shortly before it and the Warrior of Fate both disappeared. Shaaghun looked confused as all his cards floated over to rejoin his deck, which then shuffled itself, while a grinning Rupmat watched the same happen to his. The cracks in their life-walls faded away.

"Wha...?" Shaaghun scowled. "You have a card that lets you reset the game if it doesn't go your way?!" Five cards floated from the top of Shaaghun's deck into his hand.

Rupmat similarly drew five. "Yeah, I bet it pisses you off."

"My turn yet?"

"You wish; we're still on my summon an’ spells phase! And just look what I've got here in my new starting hand." He threw down two cards, which were two copies of the same one:

[SPELL] Kingly Avarice Draw two cards.

"I am the King, after all." Rupmat discarded them both and proceeded to draw an additional four cards. Now he had seven cards in his hand, and he seemed almost psychotically delighted to see them. "Oh, can you believe this luck? Seven familiars, an’ one of ‘em costs six souls to summon."

Shaaghun's whole upper body trembled with firey exasperation. "Are you shitting me?!"

Rupmat laughed to the tune of "Ring-Around-a-Rosies" while discarding six of the cards in his hand, harvesting a soul from each, and proceeded to set down his hand's remaining card face-up:

[FAMILIAR] Mauve-Eyes Periwinkle Dragon [COST 6] [ATT. POW. 5000] [STAM. 5500] [WHEN DESTROYED]: Mauve-Eyes Periwinkle Dragon is put back into play. This particular effect cannot be used more than once per game.

"Oh, and he attacks you," says Rupmat, which was the projected dragon's cue to spit a combustive energy ball at Shaaghun's life-wall, cracking it badly and depleting his recently-restored life back down to 3000. "Your turn, peasant!"

A grumbling Shaaghun drew a card. He had but a single weak familiar in his hand, two spells, and four maddeningly unhelpful traps. But the mo'arg looked to his deck for a moment... and smiled.

{Background music, “Kiryuu Ga Kill”, begins.}

"Well, let's start by summoning this fella," said Shaaghun, placing the aforementioned familiar down:

[FAMILIAR] Self-Loathing Courier [COST 0] [ATT. POW. 300] [STAM. 150] [ON SUMMON]: You may destroy the Self-Loathing Courier in exchange for summoning two familiars of your choice from your deck at no soul cost. This does not count as a sacrifice and yields no soul. Shuffle your deck afterward.

"And I'll use its effect." The image of a letter carrier projected by this card didn't stick around for long before the card itself floated to Shaaghun's discard pile. The felguard picked up his deck and filed through it until he found the ones he was looking for. "I pick these two," he said, setting down two of the same card:

[FAMILIAR] Mosh Pit Warrior [COST 1] [ATT. POW. 300] [STAM. 150] [PERSISTENT]: Every Warrior-type familiar you have in play has its attack power increased by 500.

These cards each projected an image of a long-haired fellow wearing a bandana. These "Warriors" proceeded to bang their heads up and down and hold up their right hands in a corna gesture.

Shaaghun set his deck back down where it was, and it shuffled itself. "That attack power increase stacks, I oughta point out. That means each of the two Mosh Pit Warriors has 1300 attack power."

"Big deal," scoffed Rupmat, "That's not enough to kill my Dragon once over, and you'll have to do it twice just to take it outta the picture."

"Sorry; did I say my spell and summon phase was over, you lil' scamp? No, I didn't. Next, I'll cast this," declared Shaaghun, revealing one of the cards in his hand to be a spell:

[SPELL] Reborn the Familiar Select a single familiar from your discard pile and summon it. Soul costs still apply.

"So let's just put the Self-Loathing Courier back in play..." The felguard took said familiar from his discard pile, and placed it face-up. "...and use his on-summon effect again." He discarded the Courier and dug through his deck again. "And I'll summon this guy from my deck," he said, putting a new familiar on the table:

[FAMILIAR] Northman Warrior [COST 2] [ATT. POW. 800] [STAM. 1100] [WHEN DESTROYED]: If the Northman Warrior is equipped when he would normally be sent to the discard pile, discard his equipment instead and turn him face-down.

This card projected an image of what basically amounted to a vrykul, horned helmet and all.

"Also, I have a third Mosh Pit Warrior," said Shaaghun, taking just that familiar out of his deck to set face-up before letting the deck shuffle itself. "So now I have three stacking Mosh Pit Warrior summon effects going. The Moshers have 1800 attack power apiece. The Northman's a Warrior-type too, so he has 2300."

“And this changes anything how?” scoffed Rupmat.

{“Kiryuu Ga Kill” reaches 1:22 and pauses.}

"That ain't all, Your Highness," continued Shaaghun. "I've got one more spell." The felguard proceeded to show it to Rupmat:

[SPELL] Mobilize Until the end of your turn, every Warrior-type familiar you have in play gains 1000 additional attack power, multiplied by the number of Warrior-type familiars you have in play.

{“Kiryuu Ga Kill” skips to 3:39 and resumes playing.}

Shaaghun did a bit of counting with the fingers on his free hand. "That brings each of my Moshers up to 5800 attack power, and the Northman to 6300."

"That is so cheap!" shouted Rupmat.

"So one of the Mosh Pit Warriors will attack your Dragon, for starters." One of the three headbanging thugs' projections ran up to uppercut Rupmat's Mauve-Eyes Periwinkle Dragon square in the jaw, killing it. The Dragon's card flipped over twice, projecting a new image of the same Dragon; it had used its one-time effect to resurrect itself.

Shaaghun went on. "Then another Mosh Pit Warrior's gonna kill it for real." Another of the Moshers ran up and uppercutted the Dragon, this time sending its card to the panicking imp's discard pile.

"The last Mosh Pit man will attack you directly." The last of the headbanging trio ran up to dropkick the wall in front of Rupmat, covering its surface in cracks. The imp's life depleted to 2200.

"And my Northman Warrior will put you away!" Shaaghun half-laughed. The tall, horned-helmet-clad brute threw his axe; its 6300 damage shattered Rupmat's life wall, after which all projections vanished and both players' cards started making their way back into their decks.

{“Kiryuu Ga Kill” reaches its end.}

The felguard then put on a grin and gave Rupmat a pair of matching obscene gestures.

"Fine; I didn't want to be the King anymore anyway," grumbled the imp.

#Story #Warcraft #Non-Canon

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