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thanidiel · 6 years ago

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Prompt 11: World Building, First Person What if World of Warcraft took a different turn with its inspiration? What if the game was actually based entirely around science fantasy, particularly cyberpunk? I was a cheesy bitch and did The Modern AU(™). For a long piece, use what skills you’ve learned and practiced to narrate AS your character in this different world.

What would their occupation be? What is the world like? Factions? Races? Conflicts? Try to write about a normal or abnormal day for your character in this world—is their name different too? Write in your character’s perspective, and take on a very in-depth look of a different personality and worldview.

[I was very cheesy and went balls deep into a Modern AU story to exercise a more modern narrative style. Lots of references to others and events from World of Warcraft roleplay or Thanidiel’s background, try to catch them all. alsoimsorrythiswassolong.

Mentions: @jessipalooza @stormandozone @captainswingbeard @azriah @immunologist @kinari ]

“Alright, alright. Just, shut the fuck up for, like, I don’t know, an hour. Ethan, cradle your beer, you’re good at that. Elena… I don’t gotta tell you shit.

Let’s start with… the beginning.

So, let’s just get this shit out of the way. Auberry, up in Fresno County, California. Small-time fucking town. My dad was a new recruit to the police department, there. First-generation son to some Lithuanians that couldn’t read shit for English. My mom is a Mono Indian, from the Big Sandy Rancheria next door.

1990, Dad knocked her up when she was in town. I was the result, that she passed right back to Dad. Grew up happy without her, ran around just fine with myself, my Staffordshire, Ted, and all of the neighborhood backdoors left open. Grandparents were out of the picture by then, and Dad had shit hours, so it was up to the Abuelas and Grandma Sallys. Suited all of us just fine.

One day, Dad gets shot up breaking up a domestic dispute. I was six. And as much as we all want to think about those crazy stories up on Reddit and Facebook, no one fucking walks away from a hunting rifle. His coworkers stopped by, took me to the tribe headquarters in town to figure out what to do with me. Off to Big Sandy they sent my ass. I hear the Grandma next to us took Ted.

As much as I want to say things got more chill from there, it didn’t. See, my mom was half-white, already. Mix that with some straight-out-of-Europe dude, and you get a blue-eyed blonde haired kid running around with the Mono. Mom didn’t want me either, and she made that damned clear to the elders, so I was back to being a community effort on a new Grandma’s sofa.

Bless Grandma, she tried. Fed me. Taught me a handful of Monachi. Taught me how to fucking read and write English. Driving, eventually. Hooked me up with a new dog too when I got there, Tamuapaya, albino-assed thing. All of the good parental shit you’re supposed to do, with everything she had.

I ended up as black of a sheep as it gets, though. Scraped with the other kids whenever we crossed each other, dogs got in on it too. Adults couldn’t fucking stand me outside of Grandma ‘cause I didn’t think they deserved anything but lip. And, let me just say, it’s fucking awkward when you realize you’re a fag, hours out from a real city. I was never really accepted with them outside of cook-outs, but that was when you had to take everyone registered in the tribe.

Eventually, I get old enough to start itching to work. So I start the uphill battle of doing the most shit possible small-jobs for the most shit payout for these folk, and as you two know, I am stubborn as fucking shit about my work. So I did every bit of work they pissed at me, with fucking excellence.

Then that got too small when I was like, fifteen, and wanted some real fucking cash. The other black sheep got me then, and let me know it was easy money running drugs between us, peeps at the Casino, Auberry, and Fresno. Next thing I know, I’m sitting in a truck bed heading to Fres’ at 1 A.M. in the morning to pick up with them.

Didn’t take long for Grandma to figure out I wasn’t running off to catch friends at Auberry. She switched me more times than I can remember to try to beat it out of me. Didn’t work, and she didn’t have any full-on proof to get others in it, either - hid the FUCK out of the cash and what we were distributing.

So, eventually, I’m like… seventeen? And I’m passing crack to this military guy visiting relatives in Auberry and wanted some fun up by the Casino. And when he puts the cash in my hand and I put the bag in his, he doesn’t tell me to fuck off. He gives me a good look, asks how old I am, I tell him, and he asks me what the fuck am I going to do out here for another seventy years. I don’t even get to answer when he tells me I should get the fuck out of here, go talk to a recruiter at Fres’.

That got me thinking, so a year later, I’ve found all of my documents and shit in Grandma’s house. I have a pile of cash. And I want to get the fuck out of this shithole. I stuff it all into my backpack, I go with the boys to Fres’. I dump off all of my shit into Christian’s bag; free myself of it. I take a bus to get my ass right to the opposite end of the city. Spend my night in a homeless shelter with my backpack underneath my shirt and sweater, my arms wrapped around it, sleeping on my stomache, and a switch under the extra jacket I was using a pillow.

Next day, I get a free gym trial. I shower and make myself look as respectable as I need. After that, I open up a Bank of America and drop the eight-k. I had into my first savings. I keep three-hundred on me, I grab some Burger King, and I make my way to the Army recruiter.

Guy helps me get set up because it’s like the third time in my life I’ve done paperwork excluding the bank, which did like… everything, for me. After that, it’s floating between the shelter, gym, and getting odd jobs helping at taquerias and panaderias, with their dishes or pushing garbage and carts around for a month. Taking all of those damned test and then waiting for them to process. Grabbed an iPhone 3G during the wait, that was pretty cool.

Fort Jackson for a year, as it goes. Nothing significant in the grand scheme of things; shit was fresh hell, but nothing I couldn’t handle. For the most part. Met Casey there. My age. Actually graduated H.S., attending community nearby for sports medicine. It would still be another two years before fags could be open in the military, but we… got together. When we could. You could—… it was dating. We started dating when I was in B.C.T. And made it work after that.

After basic, I get hauled off all over the place. Okinawa, Hawaii, Ansbach. Mid-2011, they let us be out and loud in the U.S. military. Bad move for my career, but, first thing I did when I took my leave is fuck Casey and ask her to marry me. No ring or any big romantic gesture, we didn’t work like that. She said, yeah, sure. The process went underway, it’s all done by the time I’m heading back to like, Fort Irwin.

We’re separated for a while, then, like, she graduated, because she was a lot fucking smarter than me. And she started living with me on base. Which is fucking awesome. It’s not what I asked for, because she had all of this potential to work with back at home. But, hey, she wanted to travel too. We had our years, we were fucking twenty-years old. I let her come.

So we fucked around in South Korea, Alaska, Italy, it’s almost a blur after everything. Eventually, I get put out in Camp K.A.I.A. in Afghanistan. She’s back in Kansas, ‘cause, naturally, they’re hesitant on letting me drag a U.S. civy out there of all bases. It’s seven months into my deployment, she wants to visit and I let her.

April 28th, 2014. I took her out, a bit south of the airport in city proper for a meal, in the early morning. We were eating lamb korma with turnips— I still can’t fucking handle smelling and eating lamb. Or any soft fucking food: deuces to mashed potatoes and bolognese. God.

So we were eating—… we were eating that. And there was an airplane with a fucked engine that had been making its way towards the airport. It didn’t get close to the runaway. It veered and dropped, right into the city. The wing went right through our building.

I was sitting northward. She was sitting southward. My mind slowed down time, and I watched the way all of this debris and broken cable and a fucking airplane slammed into her back. She hits the table and it’s shooting off. All I see is blood and curry everywhere, then it hits me, too.

I wake up in the hospital two days later. My head feels like shit because my brain got ping-ponged. A sheet of metal opened up my torso from collar to hip, and a piece of flying drywall smashed my right cheek and orbital socket. They couldn’t save the eye. The ceiling falling after meant some heavy shit landed onto my left hand. They couldn’t save that either. And they couldn’t save Casey. She died on contact.

—I’m fine, by the way. Just pass over the whiskey. I’m not finished.

Cutting that long story of recovery short, I stabilize. They get to Landstuhl in Germany. Eventually, I end up back in the States. Sans eye and hand. A little ugly, now, too. Medical discharge. Sucks, but I’m hooked up with a nice prosthetic, at the least. That all takes about eight months to wrap up - not a lot of interest in keeping an uneducated, handless, soldier around.

And, you know, that’s where you come in, Ethan. I don’t think Elena knows this part about us, so bear with me. Ethan, here, was my Sergeant for a damned while. His ass phased out in ‘13. We always got along great, he kept up with us babies even when he was out. Group texts were a great invention; Snapchat groups even better. Now we both get to see all of the stupid shit the rest of those idiots are doing on deployment.

Ethan is basically like my fucking dad. So when fates aligned and I was in the Brooklyn military hospital, he started driving down from his apartment in the city, seeing me about once a week on his weekends. Then, when I was out, he offered me a place to stay, no costs. Naturally, I fucking took it. The last thing I was going to do now that I was out, was gonna walk my ass back to the Mono in that Cali shithole. Not fucking smart to be alone after the shit that had happened.

And, honestly? It worked really well. I used the time he’d be gone with his job at the nearby library to do… basically all of the adult shit I didn’t do in the military. Got my license, borrowing the car from his coworker and our close friend, Esther (nice girl, did volleyball and track for high-school and college, then decided she liked things quiet). Took the bus to therapy with a guy through the V.A., ‘till I grabbed a beat up 2009 Chevy truck from Craigslist. Eventually, started classes for a G.E.D. too. Collected my military checks, saved it all and got pocket-money with a part-time at some flower hippy’s cafe—and, you know, I never realized how fucking hard it is to make legit money in the ‘real world’ until then. Ethan, you’re a fucking saint. Like, three-hundred or whatever a week? Chump ass change compared to when I bounced with the kids in Fres’.

All of that good shit. Plus, it was nice that we both had a drinking buddy. And we both had a way of navigating each other’s bullshit well. Like, Elena, you just heard my wife-story. And you’ve heard about the fire, too. It’s not the fucking same, but it worked out that we had about an inkling of what to do when the other dude’s fucked up.

Eventually, it’s the day for appointment hell. Check up, physical therapy, actual therapy, then likely, a stop by the pharmacist. It’s like, early ‘16, at this point. And before we even get started, the doctor sits me down. Starts talking about this experimental stem-cell research, for organ implantation. Taylor says it’s not at a complex enough stage to restore my hand, but my eye and facial scars would be within the window of possibility. Gives me a card for a Brianna Lalwani-Jindal if I’m interested in volunteering for it.

I get through the day. I finally catch a meal at Jersey Mike’s, and after me and Ethan talk about it over some Coors, like if I wanna do it and how it feels fucking weird, to like, erase what happened to Casey through this, I say, sure, I’ll call. It’s like, eight P.M. She answers like four seconds before it just shoots to her voicemail. The bitch fucking slurs out like she snorted too much Vico, “—yeah, I know I’m fucking late, I’ll be there, I prooomise.”

So me and Ethan pick our jaws off the floor hearing this shit and I’m like, “Nah, Tony Dawson. Doctor Taylor Woodson at the Brooklyn V.A. Hospital referred me to you, about your research trials with the organ implantation. Lalwani?”

There’s a gasp, a lot of shuffling, and a lot of me and Ethan passing around another beer can between us. Then she really starts spilling and it becomes a game of my fucking brain trying to comprehend this Indian accent mixed with that lightspeed fucking way people from those big cities talk, like “Oh shit, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, you’ve got me. Where do you live? What are you missing? When can I meet you? Tomorrow?”

So I tell her about my fucked-up face, but really, I want to know what the fuck I just got myself into with this chick. I don’t get the chance, she blurts out over me, “Sounds great! EYE will see you later, Tony. Tomorrow. Four P.M., Just… show back at the Hospital. We’ll find a vacant office. Ciao.” Then the fucker hangs up. Eventually, we decide that I should probably text the number back, at least. My ‘See you then.’ gets back a kissy-face and ‘I like coffee.’ Subtle.

A vanilla latte and unsweetened black tea, fifteen minutes of us wandering the Hospital, thirty minutes of her talking my ear off about a bunch of medical-scientific garbage, then five minutes of us filling out all of the paperwork, and I was Bri’s new, shiny, case study.

Skipping over all of the shit she ran my face through, we’ll sum it up as: I need contacts and I fucking hate it, but she did what she set out to do. The meetings themselves, were more interesting. I don’t know if she like, fucking sensed that I’d let her get away with her shit. But I’m going to assume that, since she still has her fucking job.

It got unprofessional, pretty fast. Like, beyond what she already hit me with. I’m not sure what got into me, honestly. I hadn’t even considered another girl since the crash. But I spent our introductions looking at her like a piece of meat whenever her back was turned. First real meeting, she’s prodding me about all of my personal interests and shit in some fucked small talk, starting to get into my dating life. I take a risk and just drop straight out that I dig chicks.

She gets a bit quiet, which doesn’t make much of a difference because it’s clear already that she’s a fucking loudmouth. But she gets curious, and keeps looking at me after that the whole time I’m there. Then the meeting after that, we ended up on some fucking talk about blindfolds for some reason, and let me just say that she got a little too into that before we started talking about how, like, I needed to turn down my drinking.

So the whole time I’m letting her and the other doctors Frankenstein my face, there is sexual tension to cut with at every goddamned interaction to be had. It never gets anywhere, because neither of us are fucking stupid. But, just, Jesus Christ.

Cut to a year later at the end of 2016. My face is put back together. Getting used to fucking contacts, getting used to checking my emails for interview requests out of the wazoo for five-hundred documentaries and news sites, after her team’s paper on me came out. By all accounts, I’m looking good and so is the implant. She’s onto new volunteers, my appointments are getting passed to another doctor on her team and stretched out to semi-annuals. That should be the end of the story.

But, uh, couldn’t get her out of my head, frankly. Not for a lack of trying, either. By now, I was really amping the weights at gym to try to get my energy out. Quit the hippy cafe and lined up a new job in armed security. Did my registration for online classes at the community, for a Statistics program. Eventually, it’s like, I don’t know, two months, after the last time I saw her. Ethan drags me out to a bar. Ethan fucks off. I meet a girl, some rich one, named Valencia. We get to talking, for like, fifteen minutes. Next thing I know, I’m texting Ethan I’ll show up later and I spent the night at her place.

It’s fucking great, Valencia’s fucking great. But I’m texting Bri the next afternoon at Starbucks that I want to see her that goddamned night. She shoots me the address of another bar, says to bring friends. Naturally, that means I tag in Ethan and Esther. We show up, she has good ol’ Elena here.

Everyone clicks just like that. And that’s fucking great. Lots of material to work through, especially when Bri started going on about how she and Elena met; some wild case when she was a med. student and the Roma communities in the whole state were having outbreaks. Apparently Elena helped with her outreach a lot, a sort of guide between worlds. Then the two quiet girls started going on about their herb gardens, not to even mention all of the stupid military stories me and Ethan had. We hung out for a long ass while. Eventually, we’re all back at Bri’s place. And our BOI Ethan, here, finally communicates what’s up to you and Esther. So Esther ‘takes you two out to for fast food’ and out of our hairs.

Shit takes even shorter than Valencia. Bri locks the door, we fuck. Then I wake up in the morning, wake her up for another fuck. We sleep around, get some take-out for a late… brunch… hang out, I end up taking her with me to that huge football party Tim was hosting and meeting up with the whole friend group. Then it’s just straight back to her place for a repeat performance.

So, basically, it went from zero to like we had always been fucking dating. I practically moved in with her after the first two weeks. I know all of my stuff ended up in there by the fourth month. Then we put me on the lease entirely sometime during the seventh month when she was renewing it. It all flowed natural as shit too, I didn’t even know how ‘fast’ we were going ‘till about the third time I was throwing shit I needed into boxes to toss at Bri’s and Ethan called me the fuck out when he asked: I just said it’s convenient with how much closer to work she is.

And I know a lot of people were, and still do, giving me shit about it, or just about the whole relationship in general. Apparently we talk too hard at each other and act too casual for it to be serious. Looks like some sorta fling, especially considering our ‘differences’ as people put it. You know, racist people, or people who think I’m fucking stupid ‘cause I got a gun in the drawer.

But lemme just say that I think it takes some real fucking balls in a person, where the first time she ever woke up to me having a PTSD episode, is to slide her ass out of bed, rummage through my coat for my medication, and slap my benzos in front of me with leftover tea and a Crunch bar. All without a single word. It takes real balls, any other person, after getting that from her, is just a discount bitch.

It’s not all her pampering me, either. I realized quick she’s a ‘talker’ with her research. If she isn’t with one of us, she’s locked in the bedroom with a stack of journal articles and a Macbook talking off Luke’s ears like he can fucking bark back. So I started reading everything she had and really going over her team’s paper on me, plus whatever the fuck else her scholar databases had, and a lot of Dictionary.com. And, one weekend, she’s complaining to me over coffee and tea about her shit, I pop that shit right back at her, her jaw drops, she probably shits herself a little. And, from then on, I’m her new interactive rubber duck. And people think I’m fucking dumb.

I mean, not to mention all of the random shit I pay for that bitch, with all of the money I’ve been getting lately between disability, financial aid, and work.

So, we’re basically to the present now. There isn’t much detail to fill in after that besides that life is pretty fucking great and Bri is pretty fucking great, from then to now, the middle of Year of Our Lord, 2018. Which takes us to the crux of this whole ass speech I’ve been going on.

Now you two know my life-story. What I wanna know, now that we’re all open and drunk here, is your fucking thoughts on if I’d be making the best, or the worst, decision of my life if I asked her to hitch with me. I’ll be fucking real; I don’t fucking know what it’s like to make a good choice besides like, I don’t know, where to buy my graphics cards.”

I watch the two shitfaces in front of me process what the fuck I just said. Elena brightens like the Irish daisy she is, pressing her hands together, abso-fucking-lutely wiggling in her seat. Her purple scarf slides off the back of the chair in the process. Ethan is still stretched out across the whole damned table like he’s gonna pass out, with the dopiest smile stretching across his face, but as usual, he’s the ‘loud’ one of the two and starts to talk over Elena’s vague ‘Oh… oh…!’

“Dude? That’s… that’s great. That’s really fucking great. I… Man. Fucking, just fucking go for—”

“So are we just a homeless shelter now, or like, is this a reverse Alcoholics Anonymous?” The door slams shut, Luke is rushing off of the couch, and all four of us are just JEERING (barking) Bri’s name back at her, like it makes it fucking better that these idiots are still in the apartment.

“I was thinking homeless shelter and giving them the living room.”

“Cool. Maybe the floor’ll delay Ethan breaking his back another day.”

“Hey… hey, man. I ain’t that old.”

“Oh! Don’t say that - what if it does happen?”

Twiddle Gray and Twiddle Orange are both looking at me funny right now, considering what was cut into, and Bri is starting to pick that up as she’s putting her keys and shit away.

“So! What were you all talking about? Are you finally leaving me?”

“Food, actually. We were thinking that Himalayan place you like. They can eat the basic bitch shit, I was gonna grab us fried okra and tandoori.”

“I hope you aren’t expecting me to pick my ass up from the couch, now. That shit, ain’t happening. Long day working with by-the-book dunderfucks.”

The Twiddles give each a look, then, and then Ethan launches in.

“Nah… naaaaah. You know what? You sit there. You hang out. The three of us will walk down, sober up.”

“With how you made my fucking apartment smell, not sure if that’s gonna happen. But ‘kay. Have fun, leave me all alone. After I just came back from work. A l o n e.”

The three of us are already draining our waters and grabbing our jackets and wallets. I push Elena towards the door and Ethan is right after her as I shoot back at her,

“Shut the fuck up, you whiny bitch. Thirty minutes. You’d be spending it ignoring us and doing your shitty Buzzfeed quizzes anyway.”

“I mean - you’re right. But you’re still leaving me alone. Shit friends. Shit girlfriend,” she sighs, “What a shit life.”

Elena is the one pushing me through the door now by my arm, forcing me and Ethan’s fat asses into the hallway as she tries to assure Bri.

“It’ll be fast! I love you!”

“Awh. That’s cute.”

The door slams shut.

#writing #thanidiel #bricini #ithanar #elleynah #veya #taeonthrial #esheyn

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clonerightsagenda · 7 years ago

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So last year before I wrote A Horrible Kind of Nice for Gill’s bday fic I was tossing around other ideas and toyed with an exploration of what SBURB 2.0 might look like. I initially planned to do an ensemble fic and grabbed two random characters out of a lineup for the first scene (in this case Aradia and Roxy) and then things... got away from me, and it ended up being about them? Even though I have never given that dynamic much thought before or since, beyond that they would probably be agents of party chaos if unleashed. If I had recently gotten a new item of clothing I would have assumed it was possessed and that’s why this got written. I wasn’t sure what to *do* with it, but since it’s 4/13 and the cat’s out of the bag about TLC ‘let’s restructure SBURB’, I guess I will toss this out there. I don’t know where it came from or where it was going, but I got some fun pesterlog lines out of it.

It’s a slow morning until Aradia Megido swoops in through your open window.

“Holy shit,” you say, spilling cereal over your sheets. “Where’s the apocalypse?”

“I could use your help,” she says. “Are you busy?”

When have you ever been busy? You whiled away most of your time as a kid hobnobbing with carapaces, making up stories inspired by your mother’s books, or waiting for friends to get online. Your session had been one long wait for the gods to arrive, and your victory so far has felt like marking time until the next disaster that has always been lurking around the corner. So no, you’re not busy. Not like Aradia, who darts in and out of the house so much you’ve barely met her. She’s exploring, checking out Earth’s past and future, identifying good brooding cavern locations on the planet where the matriorb will hatch, and scouting the new universe for signs of the game sneaking through. You’d think she did it to avoid the rest of you, but she’s always friendly when she’s around – friendly enough to invite herself into your room via the window.

“For you I’m willing to snub tea with the Queen of England. What brings you to the Rogue’s windowsill? Need something burgled?”

“I am hoping your class can help me out.” Her wings fan in and out. The opacity setting’s down to let her squeeze inside, and they’re mostly the suggestion of color when the light hits them right. “I’ve been looking for signs of SGRUB that might have slipped past us, but the universe is a big place, even when you have plenty of time. I though the Rogue of Void might have better luck pinpointing what I’m looking for in the middle of so much nothing.”

“So I can’t find a needle in a haystack, but if you launch the needle into space I can latch onto that bad boy right away?” It sounds reasonable. You don’t know much about what your powers can and can’t do. Someone mixed with a game guide – even one for a different Aspect – might have a better perspective. “Why not? If I do any more thumb twiddling they’re gonna fall off. When do we leave?”

“How about now?”

God tiers can breathe in space. You hang just outside the pull of Earth’s gravity and enjoy the sensation of not burning, freezing, suffocating, irradiating, or any of the other metal ways the vacuum of space usually kills people. It’s stuff like this that makes Jade throw up her hands and grumble. Science has a lot of explaining to do.

With your eyes closed, you try to scan through the near infinite blackness. SBURB is part of you. It reconstituted your body out of light and ash. Surely you can pluck its traces out of the biggest void around.

“I think I’ve got something,” you say. “Cute little planet. Good neighborhood. Nice place to raise the kids. I’ll bring us in.”

The surface is sweltering. You push through jungles lusher than the pictures Jake sent you and jump as huge insects buzz and click past your face. There’s no sight of civilization, and Aradia offers to jump you both forward in time. There has to be sentient life here sometime. Otherwise SBURB wouldn’t have landed.

“Nah,” you say, pushing away some ferns and earning your first glimpse of the frog temple ahead. “No point in riling up the locals. Let’s take a look without interruptions.”

When you step inside, Aradia heads right for the carvings. It’s in the reptilian script you recognize from before, and you wish you’d thought to bring along the cipher you all worked out on that last day of the game.

“Sollux is the one who did the translations last time,” she says, running her fingers over the grooves in the stone. They don’t look cut but grown – and they are. No one built this temple. It hatched from a game construct launched from a session that’s paradoxically already underway. “I can’t tell from this whether it’s from the old system or not. We’ll have to take pictures.”

“On it.” Unlike in the Medium, you don’t have a connection everywhere, but you snap a picture and hope you remember to send it to him when you get home. “It’s too bad there’s not a release date stamped somewhere. Sburb 2.0, patched and modded by the alphabet soup session. No need to thank us for the continued health and safety of your civilization. We’re just that dedicated to a good gaming experience.”

“Maybe it says something like that somewhere! I can read the pictograms; it’s the code that’s throwing me.” Her voice trails off as she moves down the wall.

A pebble clatters somewhere behind you, and without thinking you wrap shadows around yourself and flicker back to the doorway. Aradia looks up.

“Thought I heard something,” you say, your face heating up. You totally bailed on her. By about five feet, but that doesn’t matter. Some brave adventurer you are. She’ll never ask for your help again.

“Temples can be spooky sometimes.”

“I wasn’t scared. I’m just on high alert. Can’t let the team anthropologist get carried off by a bunch of bloodthirsty natives. Of course all those stereotypes are pretty racist, since it’s more likely a bunch of natives will get carried off by bloodthirsty anthropologists.” Great, you’re babbling. “Point is, gotta keep on your toes. Look, maybe I should keep in touch, in case something happens and I have to zap us both home. It’ll look bad if I show up in the kitchen and then remember I ditched you a zillion light years away.”

“I can take care of myself, but if it makes you feel better, go ahead.”

You reach to grab her elbow and immediately drop it. “Whoa. You’re running hot. I thought DS and Hal were bad with the overloaded computer thing they had going on.”

She shrugs. “I’m low on the hemospectrum. I think you guys are a little chilly, actually!”

“Color-coded and temperature-controlled for your convenience.” You whistle. “You trolls really have bio-organization down pat.” You take her sleeve, loosely.

The two of you walk deeper into the temple. You’d have been in and out by now, but Aradia takes her time and you’re stuck keeping pace with her. It’s not that bad, though. She catches things you wouldn’t, stopping to coo over a butterfly fanning its wings or a patch of emerald moss growing over the stones. She’s also the one who contemplates a statue of good old Bilious Slick for a moment before pressing down on its left eye. There’s a groan of shifting rock, and a passageway opens up at your feet.

“Coming?” she asks, and pulls you down the stairs two at a time.

You leave what was left of the daylight behind you, and you’re debating draining the battery of your phone using it as a flashlight when you hit the bottom. There’s no treasure chest or pit of skeletons, like you might expect at the end of a secret temple passage, but what you do find makes your heart race nonetheless. Two circular platforms. One purple, one gold.

You look at each other. Then, together, you step onto the Derse transportalizer.

And here you are again. The darkness of the Medium spreads out in a sheet of black that looks false with its absence of stars. The purple spires of Derse reach up overhead, and it’s almost like you never left at all.

Without meaning to, you’ve let go. You rise into the air toward a tower that dwarfs most of the other structures on the moon. It’s one of six. When you reach the window, you take a breath and peer in. You’re almost expecting to see a dreamer curled up inside, maybe an evolved form of one of the planet’s insects rolling over and fluttering its wings, but the bed is empty. Of course it is. Any players for this session are a long way from being born.

Your surroundings look hazy. From the corners of your eyes, you can almost see through the Gothic architecture. You get the sense that if you turned your head too fast, huge chunks of the world might not have loaded in. “This is a potential future,” Aradia says when you touch down at her side. “It isn’t certain it’s going to happen yet.”

“I didn’t think it worked that way.”

“It didn’t before. But we’re in a new world order.”

Footsteps ring out in the street, and you see two Dersites coming your way. The halberds they’re bearing look very real. They stop a wary distance from you and gesture in your direction with deliberate motions of their hands. You’re used to this – the carapaces living near your home didn’t speak much either – so it’s your turn to translate. “They want to take us to their queen. I’m not really feeling it. You?”

She shakes her head. “If the layout’s the same, I know the nearest telepad to Prospit. Race you!”

You come in a close second, and the transportalizer spits you out on a planet of blinding gold. You take a moment to catch your breath, but as soon as you look up you lose it again. Because Skaia isn’t there.

Maybe it’s because you were a Derse dreamer, but you never liked Skaia. Its light was too harsh, like a fluorescent bulb without a dimming fixture. You’d felt it on the back of your neck with an illumination that had weight.

The light at the center of this session is softer, and it’s filled with colors. Streamers and patches of vivid light flow in undulating patterns through its depths. The chessboard tier one Battlefield isn’t visible through the haze, but you’re reminded of silk curtains drawn around a stage, all color and delicate flow.

“Aradia,” you say, with rainbow lights dancing over your skin, “I think this one’s ours.”

-- tipsyGnostalgic opened memo on board Operation Skaiasurp –

CTG: guys

CTG: we found a session we made

CTG: n im pleased 2 announce that its SUPER GAY

A system develops. You locate SBURB artifacts scattered throughout the universe and drop temporary transportalizers on site somewhere no wildlife is likely to stumble into. Then Aradia takes her crack team of amateur archaeologists/ruins pillagers to check it out and bring back the information Sollux needs to make a call. If there's access to a potential session, Rose expands her walkthrough with scraps of lore and information from agents willing to talk. She suggested bringing the sprites for their game guide insight, but Hal hasn't taken her up on it yet, and Davesprite refused in terms that another mother might wash his mouth out for.

Aradia doesn't need to tag along on your location jobs, but she does usually. You're grateful - it's nice to have the company. There's not much lonelier than outer space.

You need to be somewhere quiet and separate to focus, but floating in a void gets boring, which has led you to your favorite surveillance spot.

The Mare Cognitum stretches out before you in an expanse of dust and blasted rock. The surface beneath you should burn you (or freeze you? You're not sure of the details - maybe it's both) but being a literal goddess has its perks.

"You know, footprints here don't fade," you say, drawing a smiley face in the dust. "There's gonna be a really confused rover rolling around here someday, trying to figure out who's been walkin on the moon with converse. And poor NASA's still trying to explain the stars."

Aradia nods, eyes fixed on the Earth. Your home planet looks fragile as a dreambubble in the distance. The sight hasn't gotten old yet. It makes the trip worth it, even if you have to get a full brush-down when you return. Jade freaked when you bragged about hanging on the Moon ("There's no erosion there - the dust particles are nightmares on a molecular level! You can't bring that back here for people to breathe in”) and now you have to pass inspection before being released into the general population. Still, it's worth it, you think, as you tap your feet and send clouds of dust rising in your own localized atmosphere, each mote beautiful and invisibly deadly.

“It’s quiet here,” Aradia says.

“Well, yeah. We’re the only people in thousands of miles. There are radio waves bouncing around, though.” You put a hand to your ear. “How delayed are those? Think we could catch the Beatles?”

“That too. But I meant no one’s died here.”

“I forgot you heard dead people. Is that all the time?”

“No. And Earth is better than Alternia. There was a lot of violence there. We sent adults off planet, which cut back on the death count, but it also meant most of them were children. That made it harder to reason with them.” She points toward Earth. “Have you seen that house a block down from us with the yellow window shades? There’s a spirit there. An old woman died peacefully in bed. She’s staying around to watch over her descendants. She hasn’t moved on yet, but she’s happy. I’ve never seen that before.”

A whole planet, and not one person who died in peace. “I can’t decide if you’d love or hate museums,” you say out loud.

“Museums?”

“They’re like… whole buildings full of old shit. Art, or dinosaur bones, or whatever. You can go look at them and read about where they came from.”

Her eyes light up. “A catalogue of the past?”

“Sort of. I’ve never been to one myself, obviously. Unless you count my house.” You’d felt like you lived in a museum sometimes. Everything was an exhibit of a world that no longer existed. Sometimes, especially after talking to Jane, you felt more like you were living in a crime scene, surrounded by pieces of evidence you could use to piece together a narrative of your mother’s last years. You weren’t trying to identify the culprit – you knew who’d done it. The person you searched for scraps of information on was the victim.

She jumps to her feet. “We should go! I’d love to see it.”

“Can’t you look at Earth’s past by going there?”

“Yes, but seeing how people interpret it in the present is just as interesting.”

“If you say so.” You get up and dust yourself off as best you can. Jade will do the final scan. “We’ll do a group trip. I think everyone will be glad to get out of the house.”

It takes some coaxing, but eventually everyone agrees. You see stirring the group up as one of your sworn duties. Jane got on your case for being the team's party girl. In the bowels of a planet shaking itself apart, she'd accused you of never taking anything seriously. But sometimes people need levity. During SBURB, the sheer shittiness of your situation hadn't had a chance to fully hit you, not when you needed to stay alive. After the game, the weight finally landed, and you all dealt with it in different, terrible ways. The worst is past, but it's better to keep people occupied. The problems start when they have time on their hands. Your enthusiasm isn’t faked, either – you’ve never been to a place like this before.

Even with your more notable members incognito, a horde of teenagers entering the museum raises eyebrows. You’re not their main age bracket. Before the guards can decide to follow you around, you spread out. Terezi trails behind, stubbornly trying to read the Braille labels. She’s been teaching herself, since plain black text is harder for her to sniff out than the color coded kind. She has to keep smacking Dave away, who pretends to read the labels and makes up ridiculous stories instead while Karkat mutters along to the audio guide. Kanaya sits down in the Impressionist gallery like she’ll never move again.

You leave Rose locked in a staring contest with an extremely creepy statue of a tiny man and drag Aradia off to the museum’s one mummy. You figure if anything’s going to be haunted, it’s that.

“Nothing,” she says.

“Really?”

“Nope!”

“Man, the guy’s gonna want his money back. Some afterlife he got. It would’ve been sweet to get to visit all the world’s museums, even if you do have to deal with a bunch of class tours rubbing their noses on the glass.”

“This is how some of your cultures sent off the dead?” She bends down to look at the peeling hieroglyphics. “It’s fascinating. They knew how to throw a corpse party.”

“Biggest damn corpse party around.”

You follow her through room after room (John and Jane challenged each other to find the grossest baby Jesus and almost crash into you while racing through the Medieval section) and she stops in front of an oil painting. “Is that haunted?” you ask. “Will the eyes start following us around Scooby Doo style?”

“It’s not haunted, but…” She peers closer. “The creator left a little bit of themselves behind, and I can feel it. They must have loved their work very much.”

The painting is from four hundred years ago. You try to imagine making something with so much love someone can still feel it, that much later.

Your path takes you out to a main courtyard, and Aradia sinks down on the edge of a fountain. "This is incredible," she says. "I wish we'd had something like it on Alternia. Some highbloods collected memorabilia, but it wasn't organized like this, and we couldn't come visit whenever we wanted."

"Maybe that can be a career goal, now that we're all cogs in the capitalist machinery again. Can't keep living off Jane's inheritance forever."

"Career?"

"You know, job?” You wave a hand vaguely. Real World Twenty-First Century TM shenanigans are something you’ve only studied in the abstract. “What you do when you grow up so you can pay for shit. Of course that involves going to school usually, which would be an accomplishment for most of us."

"This can be a job?"

"Someone has to do it. What did you guys do on your planet?"

"Lowbloods like me would get assigned menial tasks in support of the Empire’s basic functions. If we showed useful skills we'd be conscripted into the Empress's forces to conquer new worlds. With my powers, I'm sure they'd want me." She shivers and dips her fingers into the water. "They'd want Sollux too."

"What, there's a demand for tech skills there too?"

"Something like that. So you can choose here? What would you pick?" she asks, a little too brightly.

You shrug. "Growing up in the future there weren't many career options except fisherwoman and apocalypse gear model. Now... I dunno. I kinda liked messing around with the frog's DNA back on our last day in the game, making all those tiny little changes that made huge differences. I know it's not like that in real life, but genetics might be cool. Making something besides mutant kitties. Maybe I could cure non-universe cancer."

“That sounds neat.”

It does. You hadn’t voiced it before, but now that you have, you wonder why it hadn’t occurred to you. There are lots of ways to make the world a better place. Sometimes you change the way the whole multiverse system works, but sometimes you can work a little closer to home.

A few weeks later, you visit Calliope while she’s touching up the latest comics pages she and Jake have drawn. Almost everyone has been a guest artist for them; who can say no to that face? Someday soon your Catwoman expy will bust out of prison again. Her colors are more muted and smudgy than usual. Still lifes and landscapes were her favorites at the museum, but she liked Impressionism too.

"I wanted to ask you," she says. "Next time you go to one of those sessions that belongs to us, can I come?"

"They're kinda boring," you say. It kills you knowing you're in a universe where Calliope will grow up bullied and alone and time has tied your hands. All your instincts say not to let her near another game session.

She frowns – she can tell when you’re babying her, and she always puts her foot down. "You all helped, but I made it in the end. I want to know I did it right."

In the end, you cave, like you always do. (Jane got talked into letting her buy a whole tub of edible glitter on the last shopping trip.) The first session you located is only a transportalizer hop away. You don’t let go of Calliope’s hand the whole time. If anything goes wrong, she’s not getting left behind. When she sees the replacement Skaia up above you, she gasps, and you tighten your grip on her fingers.

“Can you… talk to it?” you ask after she’s been staring, rapt, for a few minutes. “Is it you?”

She blinks, jarred out of whatever trance she was in. “Oh! No. It’s not like that. It’s not a person. Skaia wasn’t the other me either, exactly. It was more… a way of thought that had been installed. Closer to an AI, although nothing as advanced as Hal of course. It doesn’t have a soul. It’s the same thing here.” She floats upward, and you bob along after her. “I can see what influences I left behind, but it’s chosen its own way to develop. It looks like painting water.” Before you have time to worry about the consequences, she dips her hand into the lights. The colors swirl around her fingers and form the suggestion of shapes. It looks like two people standing on a foreign landscape, but before you can make out the details the image breaks apart again.

“Not as high def as the clouds,” you say.

“It’s not fixed.” She pulls her hand out, and you almost expect her fingers to be streaked with color. Of course, they’re clean. “It *is* like paints – there’s the base materials, but you can make different pictures yourself.”

“Possibilities.”

Calliope sinks downward to stand on the gold brick walkway, and you settle next to her. “That’s what we fought for.”

You squeeze her hand. “You did good."

“You found this place with Aradia?” she asks.

“Yup.”

She nods, eyes tracking the swirls overhead. “Hmm.”

“Hmm what?”

Calliope shrugs. “Nothing!”

“Bullshit. You said that hmm intentionally. But two can play at that game.” You turn your head. “I’m ignoring you.”

“I am a chronicler, Roxy. I like to know what’s going on so I can take good notes.”

“You mean you want to stick your nose into all our biz. Well, I’m not having it.”

She keeps her expression professional. “Is there what you would refer to as “biz”?”

Is there? You hadn’t thought about it. You guess… you don’t mind hanging out with her. Any day when she shows up asking if you want to check out a new planet is a good one. She’s got a nice laugh. But beyond that… You’ve had so many false starts it’s hard to distinguish between genuine attraction and your latest desperate crush. You’d committed to taking it easy for a while to “find yourself” or some shit instead of chasing after people just because you don’t want to be alone. How do you tell when that process is over? Does a little light go on; does the oven ‘ding’ and say Roxy’s ready? The problem with self-development is that there’s no progress bar, and no one hands you an achievement badge. You have to gauge those kinds of things on your own.

The pause has been dragging on too long. This calls for drastic action. “Oh no, the gravity on this planet is way too high,” you say, collapsing on her shoulder. “I can’t stand up.”

Calliope is sturdy despite her slight frame. Your weight doesn’t make her stumble. “I’ll take this as a no comment, then.”

“Damn straight.” You slouch a little more for good measure and then stand up. “If there ends up being something solid to comment on, which at the moment there is not, you’ll get the scoop from me. But until then, no sensational tabloid journalism, ok ma’am? You have ethics to consider.”

“Cross my hearts,” she says solemnly.

“Double the protection. I dig it.” You shake your head. Now that Calliope’s introduced the idea, you can’t seem to knock it loose. “Let’s get out of here before some chess people think we belong in jail.”

TG: hey jane

TG: wut activities might u recommend for introducing an eligible alien bachelorette to the wide world of humanity

TG: i ask bc uve appointed urself seeing eye human 2 ur own space invader

TG: evn tho i swear she gets around better than most of us ffs

GG: Still sour about her getting the last cupcake? :B

TG: that cupcake had my name on it and u kno it

GG: You snooze, you lose!

GG: We watched your future torrent of Broadchurch last night.

TG: ok ur translation thing is totes adorbs but a

TG: thats not rly introducing her to the WORLD

TG: and b

TG: i dont need competition from david tennants face

GG: What about Jodie Whittaker?

TG: she was p hot as the 13th doctor ngl fashion choices aside but shes 2 woeful in that one 4 my tastes

GG: Wait, what??

TG: WHOOPS

TG: pretend i didnt say anything bc SPOILERS :X

GG: :/ GG: Just to make sure I’m not off base, we’re talking about Aradia here, right? TG: mayb GG: So you two are an item now? TG: no

TG: i mean TG: not rly

TG: weve been hanging out

TG: n then callie IMPLIED there might be something goin on and I thought welllll TG: u kno

TG: shes cute + fun + im super single

TG: so why not give it a shot rite

GG: Why not indeed.

GG: As for a grand tour of humanity, I don't know.

GG: What does she like?

TG: shes down 4 everything thats the problem

TG: if i set her loose shed probably come back having joined the circus

TG: or the mob

TG: anything fuckin goes

GG: You've been out beyond the solar system so much, I doubt there's anything that exciting to see here.

GG: Maybe you should just treat her to... a regular day out!

GG: Show her what you two have been missing gallivanting around in outer space.

TG: hm

TG: mayb

TG: btw when r u gonna make ur """"thing"""" official n stop wanderin around the perimeter tryin not 2 set the proximity lights off

GG: I don't know!

GG: When are you going to admit you're angling for tips on a date?!

TG: hey now

GG: How does that old rhyme go?

GG: Roxy and Aradia, sitting on the moon.

GG: K-I-S

TG: H-A-V-I-N-G personal + emotional conversations that r none of ur damn business n shouldnt b construed from

TG: u big buffoon <- rhyme scheme bitches

TG: but like

TG: in strict confidence

TG: comin from someone who walked u thru the BISIS and so deserves some fuckin respect here

TG: were u gettin vibes of any sort off her

TG: by any chance

GG: Roxy, she's spent maybe a month tops on the planet!

TG: uh huh

TG: and ur gettin vibes off ME bc im the desperate loser who tried to mack on john 2 seconds after meeting him

GG: I can't believe you've set your sights on every possible interpretation of my father figures.

TG: lol i do it JUST 2 annoy u

GG: And I wasn't going to say that! I just haven't seen the two of you interacting that much, is all.

GG: The problem before was that you felt lonely, right?

GG: That's what you told John, that you were looking for a relationship so there would be someone for you.

GG: Do you still feel lonely?

TG: nah

GG: I should hope not! We're bursting at the seams here.

GG: You spent all of yesterday holed up with Dirk and Jade working on those transportalizers.

TG: it wouldve gone faster if sollux had helped instead of complaining about how i beat him @ mario kart

TG: 'this game looks like it was programmed by a wiggler smearing its own droppings on its hiveblock walls' my ass i won fair and square

GG: Oh, is THAT why I saw him playing that game at 2 am this morning?

GG: Karkat was his competitor, but I don't think it was much of a contest.

TG: trainin 4 a rematch huh

TG: he can try

TG: earths champion will remain unquestioned

TG: damn tho 2 am is like peak wildlife sighting time in the living room

GG: They haven't quite shaken being nocturnal!

GG: Anyway if you're not feeling lonely, maybe this is authentic.

GG: Maybe you really do like her.

GG: You wouldn't be the first among us to seek out an extraterrestrial paramour!

TG: no i would not ;) ;)

TG: (wonking intensifies)

GG: Hush, you!

GG: How come we haven’t had to watch you go through one of these “bi crises”?

GG: If I recall, you spent most of your time singing the praises of the menfolk earlier in our adventure.

TG: the menfolk

TG: u did it jane u singlehandedly got rid of any attraction i had 2 them good job

TG: no no jk jk

TG: like

TG: idk

TG: part of it was i didnt want to weird u out

GG: Ah yes, dear sweet Jane who can’t handle the truth again.

TG: look u barely grasped the concept of bisexuality!!!

TG: i didnt want u treatin me weird ok???

GG: I would never have done that to you.

TG: not INTENTIONALLY

TG: but r u SURE u wouldn’t be like ‘w8 r u hittin on me then’ or some shit

GG: …

GG: Maybe. I could cram my foot in my mouth with the best of them sometimes.

GG: So it was all a ruse for my benefit?

TG: not entirely

TG: u kno I was tryin so hard 2 b what the empress didn’t want me 2 b

TG: + part of that was embracing the conventional 21st century girl routine

TG: which is also unfortunately super het most of the time

TG: dunno y i was tryin 2 prove myself 2 an evil alien witch + loads of dead peeps but there u go

TG: let her wall me in2 a corner there unfortunately

TG: but evn if i wasnt as DIRECT about it

TG: i always knew

TG: ppl r hot janey

TG: loads of ppl r so hot n im not gonna discriminate there

GG: Aradia does have some charm.

GG: It can’t hurt to try it out.

GG: Have a day planetside! See the sights.

TG: mayb ur right

TG: doin something NORMAL might sort some shit out

TG: c if she actually likes hangin w/ me or is comin out just 2 b polite

GG: Good luck.

GG: And Roxy?

TG: ye

GG: I think anyone should be happy to hang with you. :)

TG: <3

It’s hard to decide what to show as examples of “daily life” when it’s all strange to you too. In the end, you elect to wander. The two of you stroll downtown, drifting toward storefronts or flowerbeds whenever something catches your interest. It’s too bad malls died out. They’d be perfect for this kind of activity.

You're still not used to big crowds, but you breathe deep, straighten your spine, and remind yourself you're a god. Aradia, on the other hand, loves it. She strikes a pose mimicking a mannequin and exclaims over a set of tiny measuring cups. Watching her, something inside you unspools. You're not a god, or an outsider; you're just two girls checking out some stores. For all anyone knows, you’re on a shopping trip.

“Hey,” you say, reaching for something familiar. “Want to stop by a makeup counter?”

It’s different actually sitting down at one of these things instead of nabbing what looks good with your appearifier. You don’t know which sample to try out first. Luckily there’s a self-service option with a bunch of temporary applicators. You don’t want some sales person messing with your face. “Hey,” you say, grabbing a tube of lipstick. “I bet this would look great on you.”

Aradia takes it, and her eyebrows rise. “Gold? That’s a high caste marker. If I wear cosmetics, I’m supposed to wear my colors. Or my moirail’s, if I had one.”

“They regulated makeup? Truly a sign of a dystopia.” You pick through the available samples to see if you can find any of your favorites. “Normally I wouldn’t recommend gold with gray, but you’ve got warm enough undertones. Now Terezi? No way.”

She uncaps the lipstick and eyes it. "You're good at this."

"Learned by watching old Youtube tutorials and ganking samples from makeup counters in the past. Callie liked it too, so we bonded a lot. Of course I didn't know then she was covering up the whole skull alien thing. I just thought she was insecure. Who wouldn't be, with her jerkass bro calling her ugly all the time?"

She doesn't need to know all the details. Only Dirk and Calliope know everything, although you've kinda sorta mentioned it to Jake and Jane, not that you think they fully understood. You hadn’t aspired to Platonic girldom only to rub it in the Empress’s face. It's funny how applying the trappings of femininity from a dead civilization could still ease your dysphoria a little, even though it's not like a bunch of judges from Ladies Weekly were watching and nodding in approval. You're in a God Tier body now, every cell fresh baked and new. No clerk is going to steer you away from the women's section.

“How does it look?” Aradia asks, jolting you out of your thoughts. She’s found some sort of glittery eyeshadow too and managed to get it on perfectly. It looks great on her.

“You’re pretty,” you say out loud, and then regret it. You didn’t mean to sound surprised. It’s just that Aradia has always been Aradia. She hits you with her personality first, and that overpowers everything else.

She doesn’t get offended, but she sure gets even. “You’re prettier than I thought at first too.”

Your smile drops. “Gee, thanks.”

She frowns. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Not if that’s what you meant to say.”

“I try to say what I mean. It’s good to be honest.” Her gilded lips twist into the closest you’ve ever seen to a frown from her. “But sometimes people don’t seem to like it. You humans look so different. It took getting used to. I mean, your hair’s light, and you’re not even old. Once you get over that, though, it makes for a nice picture.”

“Do you wanna frame me?”

She hesitates. “Did I mess up again?”

“Nah, I’m messin with you. It’s ok if you’re blunt, god knows Jake’s noshing on his foot all the time and we still love him, toenail breath and all. Our gang could use a lil more plain speaking. Just go easy on my self esteems, ok?”

“Ok…” She drops her latest applicator into the used cup and clears her throat. “Is there a mirror?”

You find one for her, and she giggles at her reflection. “I look like I’m pretending to be an Heiress.”

“Come on, your fishy highness,” you say. “Let’s check out the park.”

A rack of city bikes for rent stands near the entrance to the park, and she rushes over. “Two wheeled transportation devices! I haven’t used one of these since I was a wiggler.”

Jane’s been busy practicing to get her license, but John has coached you on a few wobbly laps around the neighborhood. How hard can it be? You’re a god, for fuck’s sake. “I’ve got some change. Want to try them out?”

It takes a circuit of the park before you’re moving smoothly, but your confidence grows with every minute. Even if Aradia learned on another planet, she hasn’t forgotten. She careens past you, laughing maniacally, and you pedal faster to catch up. "Watch out for the curve!" you yell, but it's too late. She skids off into the grass, leans so hard to the left you think she's going to flip over, and then crashes into a pond, sending a flock of ducks flapping for safety.

She's God Tier just like you, but you still turn an ankle jumping off and running over. "Are you ok?"

She's still laughing, sitting down in the water with her knees green with pond slime and her hair hanging in dark tangles around her shoulders. The gold lipstick, against all odds, has hung on. Damn good product design. "That was GREAT."

"No rainbow sparklies, so I guess you got off easy."

"I've taken much harder knocks than this." She stands up, dripping muddy water. "I'd better rescue the bike, though."

You're both wheeling them back onto the path when you see the orange vests of park security. "Uh oh." Maybe you should stay and explain yourselves, but years of dodging drones has made you suspicious of law enforcement, and you don't want humans asking Aradia too many questions. Hell, you don't know if you could answer all that many. You're practically an alien temporally. If you woke up from a faint to someone asking you who the president was, you’d have no fuckin idea. "Want to run for it?"

Aradia doesn't answer, just drops her bike and sprints for the trees.

You follow, and you're both laughing hysterically between breaths. Aradia keeps gasping "They're after us" with the glee of a kid running into a toy store. The security officers don't bother following you - you see them stop to collect your bikes - but neither of you stop running until you collapse against a mossy boulder deeper into the woods. You press your hands against your thighs and catch your breath, while Aradia's giggles slowly die down.

"Now that was more like Alternia," she says. "They wouldn't cull us if they caught us here, would they?"

"What? No, no way." Is that why she'd run so fast? "They might check to see if we were drunk and kick us out. We don't kill people for existing here." Then again... John told you about being followed by the clerk the last time he went to a gas station for a soda. Rose holds Kanaya’s hand in public like a challenge. "It's not as obvious as the hemospectrum," you say at last. "It's not supposed to work that way. Sometimes it does, though." Is that better? At least Alternia was up front about listing off who got protection and who got killed. Here, they pretend things don't work that way, but kids end up dead all the same. "It's not paradise."

"Nowhere is."

You run your fingers over the boulder. Someone, sometime, has scratched their initials into it. "Maybe once I've lived here longer I'll want to keep looking for something better. But I guess it hasn't lost its shine yet. Like, maybe people suck, but you know what sucks more? Being one of the only people on the planet.”

Her gaze snaps over to you. “Do you think that’s why I leave so often?”

You hadn’t meant it that way. Once she’s brought it up, though... she does bail pretty regularly. “I don’t know. Almost as soon as we got here you were zooming off to the past or the future or other planets. Did you get sick of us that quickly?”

“No, not at all!” She tucks a waterlogged strand of hair behind her ear. “But there’s so much to see, even if I have all the time in the world. I got excited.”

“You’d think you’d seen a lot already. You were bumping around in everyone’s memories, right?”

“I guess so. But the dream bubbles aren’t real, exactly, and in SGRUB I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to appreciate the sights. Back on Alternia I was a peasant class. I had to be careful exploring because I might risk being attacked. Traveling isn’t safe for the lower castes. Now…” she spreads her arms. “I have a chance.”

“I spent my whole life staring at the same bit of ocean. So I get wanting to see something else. But I’m worried if I leave for too long, they’ll keep making friends without me, and I won’t be able to catch up, you know?”

It’s easy to feel that way when for so long your only presence in your friends’ lives was a flashing icon on a computer screen. If they didn’t want to talk they could click you away. In the session, you’d felt worthy of your Aspect, fading into the background while everyone spiraled around the Jake English event horizon. Being technically doomed makes it worse. You know they won’t turn you away, but you can’t help worrying the timeline will suddenly catch on and expel you, or you’ll come back from a trip to space and they’ll have forgotten you after all.

“My friends and I have spent a long time together,” Aradia says, snapping you out of morbid daydreams. “Not those versions, exactly, but almost every other. Actually, it’s nice to spend time with someone new.”

“I can see where you’re coming from. I mean, I don’t have five billion friend memories, but we’ve got baggage. Hells of baggage. Imagine one of those movie timeskips with all the spinning headlines.” Those exist, too. The Derse tabloids had started out writing nasty rumors about Jake and Jane, but they labeled you and Dirk traitors soon enough. “Drama, drama. But it’s not enough that I ever wanted to run away, or at least not for long.”

“I’m not running away!”

“I meant for me,” you say, although it sounds like you’ve touched a nerve.

Aradia leans against the boulder and shifts away from you. "When I visit other places, I'm not passing judgment on your planet, or on you,” she says. “Maybe we just have different priorities."

The comment sounds like a rebuke, and it stings. Why would you be a priority to this girl from outer space, anyway? You only met a few months ago. And yet… admit it or not, she’s becoming a priority to you.

Chalk one more up to the not interested column, you think. Out loud, you say, “Wanna get home? The security people might remember to do their jobs and track us down.”

“Ok.” Aradia looks back at you and smiles, but in your eyes at least, it looks forced. “Thanks for showing me around. It was nice.”

“Anytime,” you say. What you don’t say is, if you stay.

-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] started pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] --

TG: hey mom lil help here

TT: I'm the mother today?

TG: yup bc i need guidance

TT: Ok, let me put on my required string of pearls.

TT: Mental, emotional, or spiritual?

TG: do i gotta pick

TT: Generic guidance it is.

TG: hows dating an alien goin

TT: Swimmingly.

TT: I've leveled up to being able to unironically express affection without my face heating to the boiling point.

TT: It's my part to slow global climate change.

TG: im proud of u

TT: Thank you.

TG: so i was wonderin if the 2 of u evr have misunderstandings

TG: u kno communication probs that come from like

TG: CULTURAL HIJINKS

TT: Ceaselessly.

TT: At least the two of us didn't have to work through the "murder as a competitive sport" cognitive dissonance.

TT: To put it in her words, Kanaya is "The Weak Bitch Who Is Only Down With Murder When Absolutely Necessary And Even Then I Prefer Not To Get My Clothes Dirty"

TG: of all of us arent u the bitch most down with murder

TG: evn if technically jade n jane got u beat

TT: I may in fact be that bitch.

TT: Or I'm all talk. Hard to say.

TG: yeah i think janes had 2 have the whole murder as a cultural value talk but i was thinkin more like

TG: idk

TG: priorities

TG: r they not super social

TG: do they not grasp the concept of TALKING or HAVING FUN

TT: Allegedly trolls are not a social race.

TT: There tends to be a lot of infighting. There used to be twelve of them, remember?

TG: ye we hung out w/ their corpses

TT: It can make them struggle with interaction.

TT: Something we of course excel at.

TG: totes

TT: Kanaya was worried making me talk about my feelings would push us in the wrong quadrant.

TT: Part of that was her personal history, though. It’s complicated.

TT: We all have our neuroses.

TG: ok ok now sidenote TG: this isnt rly important xcept for like TG: my personal self esteems

TG: did kanaya evr think u looked weird

TG: u kno since ur not a troll

TT: Hang on, let me text her.

TT: She says, "You Looked Strange At First But I Got Used To It".

TG: harsh

TT: The betrayal.

TT: The heartbreak.

TT: Etc.

TT: Does that answer your question?

TG: i guess????

TG: idk aradia was kinda super blunt but im not sure she meant it that way???

TG: she seemed surprised i got touchy about it so i guess i was overreactin

TT: You realize they have different personalities too, right?

TT: Although bluntness does seem to be common.

TG: shouldnt xpect were poster hotties for another species

TG: maybe alternia didnt have a devoted cadre of monsterfuckers just waitin 4 their chance

TT: Their depravity knows some bounds.

TT: Also,

TT: Dave says if you shack up with an alien he's disowning you.

TG: tu or tg

TT: Which do you think?

TG: ily kiddo but maybe well gang up on u and disown U instead

TG: how do u like them apples

TT: i hate this family

TG: b a good son and give rose her keyboard back

TT: I'm on my phone, actually.

TG: what is he evn doing there

TT: The five of us are playing Scrabble.

TT: John just deployed the Q on a triple letter score. Things are getting heated.

TG: and uve got me on speaker

TT: No, I think he caught a glimpse of my screen while trying to spy on which letters I have.

TT: I'm not actually spelling out your personal business on the board.

TT: Jade wants to know if you had fun on your date, by the way.

TG: for FUCKS sake

TT: This household keeps no secrets.

TG: it was FINE EVERYTHINGS FINE TG: weifjsdlk

TG: heres a bunch of letters for ur scrabble game im out

Not long after your "date", Aradia fucks off into nowhere again. You've been spending a lot of time out in space yourself, so you try to distract yourself by hanging out with everyone else. Can't afford to miss out on whatever in-jokes have sprung up lately. There's nothing worse than being left out of the latest household meme.

It goes alright. Jade's been teaching you to read music. Calliope wants help brainstorming her Halloween costume. Davesprite trashes Alternians for your benefit until you tell him to knock it off. But when you find yourself at loose ends, you get testy. Being alone isn't a value marker. You know that. At least, you hope you do. But it's oh so easy to feel like it's a judgment made by everybody else.

You’re not sure why you’re sulking so much. You’ve been rejected before. Of course, John was a crush born of one shared, terrible experience, and he’s a good friend now. Deep down you’d always known Dirk was off limits. Maybe it hurts this time because you thought you might have a chance, that someone might actually like you, and then they left the whole planet to get away. Serves you right for hoping.

-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] started pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

TG: hey wanna hang out

TT: I'd love to, but I'm on dinner duty tonight.

TT: I've got like twenty recipe websites open now, and I think my internal monologue has been replaced by a middle aged white woman who's losing interest in her marriage.

TT: Then I have to get Jane to drive me to the store before she coaches me through things like boiling water.

TT: Didn't you remember? You're usually first in line to watch me humiliate myself in the kitchen.

TG: idk

TG: guess i thought maybe SOMEONE in this house of like TWENTY FUCKIN PEOPLE might be free 2 spend time w/ me

TT: Uh.

TT: Wait, seriously, is everyone else gone?

TG: i dunno

TG: feels like it

TG: or mayb im just used 2 getting ditched lately

TG: like the last stick of gum in the package chucked out the car window n oozing pink goo all over in the gutter

TT: This Aradia thing has really gotten to you, huh?

TG: no its fine im over it

TG: i dont know how srs i even was it was prolly another of my stupid infatuations bc some1 looked at me

TG: and shes not interested so wutevr

TG: im just bored

TT: Trust me, I don’t prioritize you over this fucking recipe odyssey.

TT: However, I also would rather not get eaten alive by a bunch of people asking where their dinner is.

TT: I’m minimizing the tab, though. You’ve got my full attention.

TT: Do you want me to come upstairs?

TG: no not if its gonna be some psychoanalysis session

TG: thats the LAST thing i want

TT: I haven’t been treating you like that, have I?

TG: no!!

TG: its not ur fault its just TG: shed rather be zippin around in space than here with us n when i brought it up she basically said i wasnt a priority 2 her

TT: Just like that?

TG: i mean

TG: MORE OR LESS

TT: Lest I talk about myself, this sounds a little like the problem I had with Jake.

TG: which 1

TT: Jesus.

TT: When he started getting distant, I assumed it was something I'd done.

TT: And then I overreacted by clinging tighter like a shellshocked ball python, because I was terrified of him slipping away.

TT: If I'd asked him why he was backing off, and he'd told me he needed some space, maybe we could've skipped some of the resulting interpersonal bloodbath.

TG: whoa whoa slow down

TG: r u

TG: dirk MOTHERfuckin strider

TG: tryin 2 give me relationship advice

TT: It's not from me.

TT: I'm paraphrasing a demiurge who looked down upon me from his golden snake-throne and in the hissing language of Heart itself said,

TT: "Talk to your ex, you piece of shit."

TG: lmao is that rly what he said

TT: There was more poetry involved.

TG: quote it to me xactly i wanna hear this

TT: I didn't write it down.

TT: The exact words were lost in the overall sentiment of the moment.

TG: which was pants shitting terror

TT: Actually by that point I was more annoyed that one more fucking game construct was passing judgment on my life choices.

TG: 2 pissed 2 b afraid

TG: ur natural defense mechanism

TT: Whatever works.

TT: He was right, though.

TT: We weren't holding hands and prancing through a field of daisies after talking it out, but it did make things better.

TG: i mean

TG: u were KINDA holdin hands

TG: if only 2 not die

TT: I don't think that counts.

TG: the fact remains

TG: so ur sayin

TG: i should ask her y shes avoidin me + the planet earth

TG: evn tho last time i broached the subject she flipped out

TT: Yeah, maybe.

TT: If it’s important to you to try to see if this thing can work.

TG: and if she says 'its specifically 2 avoid u' what then

TT: I don't think that's likely.

TT: But if she does, then it's her fucking loss.

TT: You're amazing, Roxy.

TT: Anyone would be lucky to have you.

TG: aw shucks

TT: I'm serious.

TT: Remember when we had the whole group bonding thing in the heart of a self-destructing planet?

TT: It kind of rubbed off on me, I think I've learned how to be motivational.

TG: the old dirk wouldve built a 'how 2 date' robot and unleashed it rite

TT: And then the robot would steal your girl, and I would be in the shit again.

TT: I've learned my lesson.

TG: thx

TG: ill give it a try 4 u ok

TG: and if u want my input i vote pick the recipe w/ the cutest baby pictures in the anecdote

You must draft a hundred opening lines. Maybe you even would have sent one of them eventually, but Aradia beats you to it, showing up on the front porch one day without bothering to tell anyone she was coming home. You’re alone in the living room watching My Cat From Hell, so you’re the first one to see her.

“Hi Roxy!” she says, and you nearly throw the remote across the room.

“Oh. Hey.” You fumble with the buttons until you find mute. This isn’t what you planned for. You’d kinda assumed when you worked up the guts to talk to her it’d be through chat. Face to face is more vulnerable. She’ll be able to see what your expression does instead of what you choose to reveal with carefully selected typography. You can’t even DO a :/ in real life that easily.

“Did I miss anything?” She takes off her goofy Indiana Jones hat and tosses it discus-style onto an armchair.

“Nothing much.” You’d come up with something witty but, uh, comeback machine broke. Now there’s a meme you can’t use without getting blank stares.

She nods. “I found another new world with the game. Want to check it out?”

She’s acting like nothing’s changed. That rankles you. “If you found it already, you don’t need me.”

“I don’t need you, but it’s not as fun on my own. I thought you might like to come.”

You point toward the armchair. “You put your hat down. You’re not going to stay at all? In and out, just like that?”

“Are you upset?”

“No. I… You still… want to hang out?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Her wings flutter. That’s a tic you’ve noticed with DS – he tucks and untucks them when he’s nervous, an adaptation of Dave interlacing his fingers. Is she on edge?

“Well, you kinda bailed. And we’d just…” Argued? Split? “I thought it might be my fault.”

“Of course not.” Her wings are really jittery now. A lock of hair is blown forward, and she reaches up to tuck it back. “It gets a little much down here sometimes.”

“Guess a crash course in human life was too much for any of us.”

“It was kind of overwhelming.” She smiles. “But it was fun too. I’d like to do it again sometime.”

Wait, what? “Like, in general, or you mean with me?”

“You did an excellent job as tour guide last time. I’m sure you can find more to show me.”

Is she flirting? She delivers every line so on the level it’s impossible to tell. “Uh, well, name the date,” you say. “There’s a whole damn world and I haven’t seen most of it either.”

“I’ll be in touch.” Her wings finally settle and fade into nothing. “Now I’d better see whether Sollux has converted my room into a file cabinet again.”

It’s only once she’s gone that you realize you didn’t do any of the things Dirk suggested. You still don’t know why she keeps leaving. You told her you weren’t upset. Sheesh. Maybe you need to visit Nix again so your own personal snake goddess can tell you how much you suck.

Time passes. You’ve learned to recognize the first few bars of Never Gonna Give You Up on a treble staff. Jane snags her license. Calliope’s Halloween costume is a hit. You don’t know what you and Aradia are. She still comes and goes without warning. When she’s around, you’ve taken her a few places – to an arcade, to the zoo. The outings are fun, but you’ve never even taken her hand for anything but transportation purposes. What’s the point of getting close to someone who might not be there tomorrow? The last time, she’d said, “I had fun!” and you’d said, “Yeah, me too” and shoved your hands into your pockets. She’d looked almost disappointed, but what was she expecting? Sollux has been giving you dirty looks. You give him dirtier ones right back. If he thinks you’re toying with his bffsy’s heart, he can take it up with her.

December 21 is drawing near. Some crackpots with a big following insist the Mayan's calendar ends here and, rather than considering it might work like the modern kind, have assumed the world is ending. You don't remember which of you suggested an apocalypse survivors party as a joke, but it caught on, and at some point as the concept snowballed it gained sincerity. It's 2012. The world already ended, although only you and a few friends know. The world was gone, and it came back, and you're still here. You're all still here.

Plus, it gets rid of the problem of picking which cultural holiday to celebrate all together.

You stay close to home to help with preparations, and Aradia sets a personal record staying put for over two weeks straight. John insists on showing the trolls every holiday movie he can get his hands on for cultural immersion, and you and Jake now have to put up with choruses of “You’ll shoot your eye out”. Rose and Dave are having a truly horrendous ugly sweater competition. The 21st rolls around, and while a bunch of tinfoil hat enthusiasts are expecting the world go up in flames, you party. Jade has strewn greenery yanked from the woods everywhere. Kanaya found some ornate candlesticks at a thrift shop that elevate the table’s style, even if a few people have already almost set their sleeves on fire. Karkat gets weepy giving an impromptu speech, and you all cheer to cover your own watery eyes. You made it. You really did.

Calliope breaks the tension by unveiling an actual physical scrapbook she’s been putting together out of pictures copied from phones and snapped in secret. There are green cherub thumbs in a few corners, but that adds to their charm. The group spends a few minutes flipping through the pages documenting the last eight months. There’s Jake posing on one of the statues in the museum’s sculpture garden (directly before near-apprehension by museum security). There’s Dirk and Dave in their matching fake college hoodies, which spurred a flurry of copycat orders. There’s Jane sweating bullets behind the wheel for the first time while her dad gives her an encouraging fatherly thumbs up. It’s your lives for the past nine months, flat on paper with decorative paper framing. After your first sixteen years, it’s amazing that a life can be so full.

Most people clear out of the dining room after that, although at some point Jade will strongarm people into tag teaming the dishes. Jake is trying to convince John that Pacific Rim is the perfect film for the season, even if it won't officially come out for another year. Davesprite keeps ambushing people with a camera.

You pick up your glass (sparkling cider, of course; you cleared the local grocery store out of their selection) and slip outside. The bright lights from inside stream out into the shadowy backyard. You tilt the glass and let the last few carbonated drops trickle into the dead grass. "Happy apocalypse day," you mutter.

"Same to you."

You jump, and the glass tinkles to the ground. "Shit, you scared me."

Aradia's smile fades. She's leaning up against the side of the house, her dark hair merging into the shadows. "I thought you knew I was here. Who were you talking to?"

You shrug and bend down to pick up the glass. There's a chip in the rim. "It's stupid."

"Doubt it."

"It is."

"Dare you to tell me."

"I was talking to the other Roxy. Dead Roxy." You look up at the sky with its strange new stars. "She'd hate to miss a party like this."

Aradia walks over to join you in contemplation of the heavens. This close, her body heat chases off the chill. "I like to think the dead go somewhere happy. It makes up for some of the unhappiness here."

"Are you unhappy?"

"No, I can't complain."

You try to remember when she slipped out here. After dinner? She'd had a ball with the party blowers and hit Sollux a few times on the nose. "Why are you out here?"

"I was thinking about leaving. I've been here for a few weeks."

"But it's holiday season!"

"There's so much left to see. Lots and lots of planets, and the past and future of all of them. They're waiting for me."

"Let them wait."

Aradia folds her arms over her chest. It’s cold out – the warmth from the party is leaching off your skin. With her body temperature, does she feel it?

"Why do you keep running away?" you ask. “You said you like to tell the truth. And I want to understand. See, Jake was always running away, because we were putting so much pressure on him and he didn’t know how to deal. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to hang with us, he was just getting the social version of a DDOS attack. So if it’s really because you like it better out there than down here, I can live with that. I’ll stop bothering you. But if it’s something I can change… I’d like to help. I’d like to see you stay.”

Aradia sighs. Her breath streams out in a puff of white. "No one told me to guide the dead,” she says. “It's something I decided to do, and I was good at it. The furthest ring is strange at first, but heroes of our Aspects master it quickly. I mastered my friends too. I knew exactly what they need and what to say to them. I don't anymore.” She glances behind you, where silhouettes move behind the sliding glass door. “This... all this, even them, it's new. I'm not sure I'm good at it."

Living together means sometimes you overhear conversations you shouldn’t. A month or so ago, one of your pictures toppled off the windowsill, and you’d gone rooting around behind the bushes looking for it when you heard Aradia and Terezi walking by. Terezi snapped, “I didn’t ask to be part of another of your handholding therapy sessions.”

You sunk deeper into the bushes and cloaked yourself in void. This sounded like a bad time for Terezi to sniff you out. “I thought it might help,” Aradia replied.

“I don’t need help. I know all that stuff about guilt and responsibility. I just need to be sad for a while. Remember sad? You used to brood all the time in our session when you weren’t breaking things as destruction therapy.” Shit, this was definitely something you shouldn’t be overhearing.

“I’m sorry.” Aradia’s tone stayed level. “Other versions of you were happy to hear what I had to say.”

“I bet they were.” Terezi groaned, and you could imagine her pressing her fingers to her forehead. “I know you want to be nice. After the last few sweeps it’s sweet someone does. I was in a bad place, and I would have appreciated this then, but now I need a chance to get over it on my own. We’re not the dreamers you spent so much time with. The same solutions won’t work with us. I appreciate it, but it’s frustrating when you’re treating me like a machine that you can punch the right combination of platitudes into and a happy ending will pop out.” She’d paused, and when Aradia stayed silent, said, “That sounded mean, didn’t it? I’m not very good at being nice. I’m sure you picked that up.”

“You’ve given me things to think about,” Aradia said. She didn’t sound angry. She never has.

“Yeah, and I’ll think about what you’ve said too, but mostly I need time. The kind even you heroes can’t give me.”

“If I can ever help –”

Terezi nodded. “I know where to find you. Well, sometimes.”

After she went inside, Aradia stayed in the backyard long enough for your back to ache. Then she spread her wings and took off. You didn’t see her again for weeks.

Is that what this is about? Is that why she keeps leaving? Because she doesn’t know how to act, and she’s afraid of messing up? You think back to the few times you’d made it clear she’d hit a wrong note, the way she’d tensed up and got uncertain. Can you forget what it’s like to live in realtime, without cheatcodes at the ready and the ability to reverse and try again? It’s kind of like when John had taken the training wheels off your bike, and you’d crashed more trying to be extra careful. What you have to do is go faster to keep your balance.

"I'm not good at any of this either,” you say. “I spent the first few weeks of our victory lap getting the shakes from booze withdrawal again. I get nightmares most nights - not deep meaningful coherent shit, I don’t even remember most of it, but I wake up freaked out. My kids are here and they're people who are messed up too and I want to help them but god, I'm not a therapist, I can't even help myself. And who the FUCK knows how a checkbook works." You flick the rim of the glass and it chimes. "It's been months and I still kinda want a drink."

"I've never met another you," she says. "I don't know what to say."

"None of us have done this before. We're all... fucking up for the first time. Out there you were like... replaying the same levels of a game over and over because you knew all the tricks, but sometime you have to move on and click a dialog option without knowing what it'll do. Sure, sometimes you'll make a mortal enemy or fail a quest, but sometimes you won't." You scuff your foot over the damp patch in the dirt that's all that's left of your libation. "We can't keep thinking about dead people all the time. And tracking down the game… it’s important, but this here matters too.” This is turning out cheesier than the party platter you ordered for tonight’s party, but it’s too late to back down now. “You… matter to me. Maybe I don’t know you that well, or know what makes you happy in a million universes or tidbits like that, but I’d like to. I’d like you to stay. The dead are dead, and the future’s coming. No one can stop it. But the present’s here. And it’s the holidays. That’s the best time for presents.”

That gets you a little smile. “Time puns are my weakness.”

“I’ve got an endless supply of dumb jokes, I promise.” You reach out and put a hand on her shoulder. Shit, she’s warm. “We have forever, but we’re only gonna be sixteen once. Do you want to spend all of it in outer space missing dead people?”

" I'm done with dying," she says.

"Wanna give living a try?"

Both of you are hit with a bright flash of light that leaves you jerking away and blinking stars out of your vision.

"Hope that turns out," Davesprite says. "I alchemized a fuckin nova flash. I call it the retinablaster 5000 and it's a leading cause in early onset vision loss."

"Don't make me sorry I birthed you," you say, rubbing your eyes. You hadn’t even heard the sliding door open. As a professional sneak, you’re falling down on the job. Rogues shouldn’t get taken by surprise.

"You didn't. John birthed us all out of slime and I bet he regrets it every single day of his life. Jake won the arm wrestling contest and Terezi says using Hope powers isn’t cheating because of course she favors being underhanded, so he’s putting in your future-pirated movie. We’re saving you seats, unless you guys want to stay out here freezing your asses off."

“We were having a moment,” you say, with as much haughtiness as you can muster.

“Oh, one of those. Well, we’re not holding off on pressing play, so finish it up.” He slides the glass door closed, and the noise from inside dies down. The lights from the kitchen still spill out onto the dead grass, painting it gold. It’s the kind of little detail Aradia likes. She looks at it quietly.

“You can’t miss Pacific Rim,” you say. “It’s a must-see.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s about friendship and science and cancelling the apocalypse, which are all part of the reason for the season. Plus there’s robots with sickass swords, and what else do you need from a feature film?”

“Someone to watch it with.”

“That helps,” you agree, and hold out your hand. “Come in and stay a while?”

She grabs it, and her warmth chases the winter chill away. "I think I will."

#I am bemused about everyone's characterization in this don't @ me #kat writes fic #*regular brain* write fic that appeals to a broad audience #*galaxy brain* write something catering only to your personal interests #*universe brain* write something that doesn't even match your own interests

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scheduledfor1fall · 7 years ago

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NXT Takeover Review Series: NXT Arrival

Hello, everyone, and welcome to a special new series I’m starting, beginning with this review. NXT recently celebrated 5 years under its current format, having previously been utilized as a Tuesday evening TV show showcasing select FCW stars. In its past format, NXT saw the main roster debut of such stars as Daniel Bryan, Wade Barrett, Ryback, AJ Lee, and Bray Wyatt. Since replacing FCW as the developmental territory of WWE, however, NXT has turned out a large amount of stars. A cursory look of both Raw and Smackdown’s rosters yields a great number of wrestlers who spent time in NXT. In addition, NXT has developed a reputation of being an attractive place for wrestlers to work, with a chance at making it to the main roster luring in such big indy names as ReDRagon, Adam Cole, Roderick Strong, Tommy End, and many others. And that’s just within the last year or so. NXT has truly come into its own since launching in 2012, and one can probably point to the launch of the WWE Network and subsequent live NXT Special just days after launching. Today, I’ll be going back and reviewing that very show, thus kicking off a series where I’ll be reviewing every NXT Takeover special ever done. So, without further ado, let’s get into the review!

We get a crazy little opening with the lights dimmed and mood music playing, as Triple H asks if we’re ready. He says “This is NXT,” and the show gets underway. We’re live from Full Sail University, and the fans are already hot for the show. Triple H says the next generation has arrived, as we get our opening video package. After that, it’s Sami Zayn out first for opening match. I gotta say, it’s jarring seeing him come out to something that’s not his current theme. We’re welcomed by our commentators for tonight, Byron Saxton, William Regal, and Tom Phillips with a goofy haircut. Out next is Cesaro, and we’ve got our opening match.

CESARO DEF. SAMI ZAYN BY PINFALL VIA NEUTRALIZER:

Great, great match. Cesaro was incredible as the powerhouse heel, and Sami Zayn played the role of the injured, yet determined underdog as good as anybody else. Just a fantastic match, and one where Zayn is just as well off by losing as he would by winning. **** 1/4.

Post-match, Cesaro exits the ring as Sami reflects on his loss. Halfway up the ramp, Cesaro stops, goes back into the ring, and approaches Zayn. They exchange glances for a bit, before Cesaro lifts Sami to his feet, and pulls him in for a hug. The two embrace in a show of respect, as the crowd gives their approval. Cesaro leaves, as the crowd give Sami a standing ovation and chants “Ole.” Excellent way to start off the show.

We get a vignette for future Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal winner Mojo Rawley. Out comes CJ Parker, who has recently found success in New Japan Pro Wrestling as Juice Robinson. Out next is the Hype Man himself, as we get ready for our second match:

MOJO RAWLEY DEF. CJ PARKER BY PINFALL VIA HYPERDRIVE:

Too short to really amount to much. Rawley’s probably best in small doses, anyhow. Parker actually looked pretty decent as a heel. * 1/4.

We get a vignette for Emma, and I have no idea what her gimmick is. She dances? She’s weird? She plays with bubbles? Jesus, and people call Bayley a female Eugene. We get another vignette, this one for the NXT Tag Team Champions The Ascension. Wow, those were the days. Out they come for an open challenge for their titles. Who should answer it but Scotty 2 Hotty and Grandmaster Sexay. Too Cool! I’m a little saddened that they’re using “Turn it Up,” which I consider to be the inferior Too Cool theme, but what can you do? Also, Scotty 2 Hotty’s bald, which is also kind of a dampener. It’s just not the same without his McDonald’s fries-looking hair:

THE ASCENSION DEF. TOO COOL BY PINFALL VIA FALL OF MAN TO RETAIN THE NXT TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS:

One-sided affair here, which basically served to showcase The Ascension. Not a lot to speak of, to be honest. * 1/4.

We see Paige backstage, before getting a vignette for here. Wow, to think this was only three years ago. How things have changed. She talks about being the opposite of the prototypical Diva, and what it means to be champion. I would make a joke about the Women’s Title Belt, but I’d like to think this blog is a little more dignified. We then see Ric Flair and Charlotte taking in the show from ringside, when out comes Stephanie McMahon. If a woman in WWE makes history and Stephanie McMahon isn’t there to attach herself to it, did it ever really happen? The fans chant “you still got it,” presumably towards her figure, and she proclaims she never lost it. Gag. She talks about how they’re making history by being part of the first live program on the WWE Network, and does the spiel of how she’s proud of the women’s division for showing women can do what men can do, but better. I’m all for feminism and everything, but I think it would be a little more meaningful if we got to hear Paige or Emma say this kind of thing. Oh, well. She introduces the two competitors as the next generation of WWE Divas, and Emma comes out to her awful, awful theme. She got this opportunity in a “dance battle,” which kind of reflects poorly on how the women are being regarded. William Regal is seen dancing to her music, and they mention she’s beaten two former Divas since becoming #1 Contender. To think she’d be released just 5 months later for stealing an IPad case. I mean, they brought her back, but she’s really done a whole lot of nothing the last three years. Out next is the champion, Paige. Stephanie shakes the hands of both competitors, as this match gets underway:

PAIGE DEF. EMMA BY SUBMISSION VIA SCORPION CROSSLOCK TO RETAIN THE NXT WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP:

OK Women’s match that at least had the crowd’s attention the whole time. I personally found this to be largely dull, with Emma dominating a good portion of the match. There were some cool moments, such as Emma hitting a Powerbomb on Paige, or Paige breaking out the Scorpion Crosslock for the win, but it falls below most NXT Women’s Title match standards, and probably some of AJ Lee’s title matches on the main roster, as well. **.

Post-match, the two briefly hug it out, as Paige celebrates her successful title defense. We cut backstage to Adrian Neville preparing for the main event, a ladder match for the NXT Championship held by Bo Dallas. What a time that was. We get a video package around Neville, and I really have to commend them for going out of their way to introduce newer viewers to the stars of NXT, a must with the launch of the WWE Network. It’s no wonder NXT caught on the way it did after it was given a platform like this.

After a commercial for the NXT TV show, the camera cuts to Pat Patterson and Dusty Rhodes watching in the crowd. The “Somebody Call My Momma” music plays, as Xavier Woods comes out. That used to be his theme?! Out next is Tyler Breeze, as I guess we’re getting a cooldown match before the main event:

TYLER BREEZE VS. XAVIER WOODS WENT TO A NO CONTEST WHEN ALEXANDER RUSEV INTERFERED:

Well, so much for that. Rusev comes out, beats the shit out of both guys, and puts Woods in the Accolade, as Lana puts Rusev over. Her accent definitely improved over time. Rusev then gets on the mic and cuts a promo in Bulgarian and poses as his music hits.

We then see Bo Dallas backstage preparing for the main event. They play a video package for Dallas, and, say what you will about him, the man has a great sense of humor. I’ve even enjoyed seeing him as part of the Miztourage. Cut back to the audience as we see Larry Zbyszko and Steve Keirn watching from ringside. The star power’s sort of hitting a point of diminishing returns right now. We then get a video package for how the ladder match came to be, before cutting back to the ring, lights dimmed and ladders all over the place. Out comes Shawn Michaels, NXT Title belt in hand, as he heads to the ring. Michaels cuts a promo saying he’s proud to be here tonight, as the fans chant stuff like “one more match” and “H-B-Shizzle.” I don’t even know. Michaels finally has to ask them to stop, as he talks about his history with ladder matches, as he plugs his Mr. Wrestlemania DVD and talks about how he has to put his kids through college. Michaels finally gets serious, as he puts over both men in the main event, and says only one of them will walk out with the title and step into greatness. Adrian Neville’s music hits, and out comes the challenger to a nice ovation. Out next is Bo Dallas, as we get formal introductions. As the title is raised both men stare each other down, as our main event is underway:

ADRIAN NEVILLE DEF. BO DALLAS IN A LADDER MATCH TO WIN THE NXT CHAMPIONSHIP:

Very fun, well-paced work between these two. I’ve never seen Bo work quite the way he did in this match, as he did everything he could to wear Neville down and stop him from getting to the title above the ring. This match didn’t really have a whole lot that you’ve never seen in a Ladder Match before, but it served as an entertaining, satisfying main event match. *** 1/2.

Post-match, Neville celebrates atop the ladder with the title, as steam comes down from the ceiling. He continues to celebrate, as John Cena is shown in the crowd, giving Neville a standing ovation. Arrival goes off the air, as the announcers tell us this is a new beginning for NXT.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:

I’m really not sure how to precisely describe this show. As someone who’s seen most of the Takeover specials over the last few years, this felt a bit different from how those feel. The pacing wasn’t all there. Not every match felt like it was one of consequence. Obviously, the talent pool shifted to one that featured more experienced wrestlers from across the world. As a first taste of NXT, however, this wasn’t all that bad. Both the opener and main event delivered in their own ways, and I would actually recommend going out of your way to watch the opener, by all means. Everything else in between ranges from passable to skippable. Overall, I’d give it a mild recommendation, with a strong suggestion to watch the opener, main event, and perhaps the Women’s match as well. Everything else is better off being passed over.

Well, that’s the first installment of what I hope will be a very rewarding series. In addition to reviewing more NXT specials, I’m also looking at a few other ideas for posts, so I’ll probably put something up within the next week or so detailing exactly what I intend to review over the next few months. Until then, stay tuned for more updates, and enjoy.

#nxt #wwe #2014

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tandembicycles · 7 years ago

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friends and I made an atla si verse for ourselves during the stream because we’re like that so this is going under a readmore for posterity and information gathering lmfao

@ukitakejuushiro/danie- water bender and healer @endangeredtreealligator/gator- air bender with sound sensation and bending @eraserheacl/isaac- firebender and emo @shishiduck/lucian- earth bender specializing in metal bending ME/tandem- born earth bender (avatar by everyone else’s decision??) @d-lynx/ti- earth bender specializing in crystal and lava bending @kawaiijohn/amber- water bender

PERSONALITY/BENDING/STORY QUIRKS

Gator

Hovers a lot due to being insecure about height

Soundbending connects with synesthesia

Only airbender in city and had to keep it a secret due to stigma

Can befriend nearly any small animal and child? it’s wild

flies around and gets hyper at night, confusing the piss out of us when we all wake up

fights defensively and evasively

bad at sleeping and naps at weird places by getting distracted

easily overwhelmed and hides a bit

Danie

Very oblivious to danger and things going on around

Doesn’t try hard to be funny but is

LOVES snow and uses it as much as possible

always cold though and is constantly in layers/bundled up

Isaac

Catches on fire when embarrassed

Emo

“Hello. Isaac here.”

Blows fire when sneezing

Lucian

Makes bad jokes

Loves shiny things and picks them up all the time

Moves metal bracelets/rings in hands to fidgit

has a cat

Gets a tattoo for the element symbol once mastered (already have earth symbol)

Flirts badly with everyone

Clumsy and anxious

Freckles glow in avatar state

blue crystals are their signature thing

gets overwhelmed easily/has periods of intense self isolation so they build a little isolation tent for themselves out of crystals or obsidian because it's smooth and quiet and dark and alone.

crystal is their normal fighting element, lava happens when they're angry or very serious.

few burn marks arms and legs from the first time they crated lava

normally really quiet and sorta stays in the background and is really protective

pet rock snake

Amber

collects cool necklaces

fights using kicks and feet a lot/balancing and quick water moves

specializes in boiling hot water and steam maneuvers

when agitated, steam comes out of their mouth like a dragon lol cute

okay so it starts out with us meeting each other, of course, idk what the poltpoint is necessarily is or what the kickass mission is but HERE it’s goofy but funny hopefully

SO AMBS is starting out and traveled to the earth kingdom. Comes from a family of multibenders, with deep ancestry to the South Pole making them a water bender. They’re very good and charming, and they have this habit of forming stories with the water (forming it fluidly in the air, taking a lot of dedication and concentration) for fun, but like they gonna kick your ass also for fun. SO they travel cause they wanna see the world, and they go to an earth kingdom and they’re like “o damn.” Queue meeting Ti and Ti is like “wat the fuck is up, I’m an earth bender” and Amber is :O and Ti is like “Oh I know, I specialize with crystals and lava” and Amber continues to be like :O so they spend some time there just gabbing with Ti and they become good friends but then Ambs is like “kay I wanna keep travelling” and Ti is like “hey hey hey, I would also love to travel” so Ambs is like “come be my friend and copilot” and Ti is like “oh fuck yes” and Amber is like “but I don’t know where to go to next” and Ti is like “hey hey hey… you know the avatar…?” and Amber is like “I know of the avatar, certainly” and Ti is like “well they’re in that other earth kingdom you know” and Amber is like “WE MOVIN”

They go to the other earth kingdom and they’re like “oh wow the avatar I wanna meet the avatar the avatar would be really cool” and then they meet the avatar and it’s me and I’m like “these powers don’t let me meet pretty girls so what’s the fucking point” and they’re like oh wow the avatar is Not As Cool as previously determined and then I’m like “hey hey y’all are cute tho” and I shimmy over but fall on my way over which continues the trend of Not Cool but I’m like “however this is my Very Cool friend also from the earth kingdom” and here comes Lucian fuckin spidermanning over on some metal fabric and is like “sup I’m Lucian” and then instant friendship, because who wouldn’t want to be friends with spiderman and so they pal around with us and then friendship and I’m like “hey would any of you three, perhaps, be a water, fire, and/or air bender” to which there is a response of “I am a water bender” from amber and I go “please teach me wise one, I’ve already learned earth and metal from this extravagant beast here” and Lucian flexes and then Ti comes up like “I specialize in lava and crystal” and I go “holy butts teach me that as well” and Ti goes “oh certainly” so the avatar not only adds the ability to water, lava, and crystal bend but also the power of friendship and they do a sick four-way high five and travel into the sunset

Continued

Amber is like “hey there is a city on over here” and we are like god DAMN IT Amber you are a FANTASTIC traveler and a wonderful friend and also so beautiful and we so very much love you please take us to this city and so they do and we love them more SO. Here comes Gator who is super shy and chill and they technically avoided us a lot but then we saw them with a bunch of cute lil animals around them as they fed them and they were just So cute and we all fell in love and went “we must protect this darling creature” and so we all looked each other in the eye, nodded, and the adoption process was underway. Gator was kind of like “holy shit this is intimidating whom the fuck?” and we were like “hey, uh, hey, we love you?” and Gator was like “well what a coincidence I love love” and we were like “[beep] yes (shouldn’t curse with the youngins)” and so Gator is like “I WILL TEACH YOU AIR BENDING and these cool magic tricks and also how to create tornados and shit… if u want…” and I was like “oh my God Im going to feed you so much good food also YOU’RE AN AIR BENDER” and Gator was like “yeah I’m the only one in the city but she it’s a secret” and we were all wowed because tat’s AMAZING and it means they’re self taught so they’re fucking smart and we were just like HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT and they’re strong because secret secret, they got a secret, and we started weeping openly and Gator was like “what” and we all just went “what” and so we all nodded and hugged Gator and Gator was a lil overwhelmed but they loved it so we all left, but this time on Gator’s flying bison and with several other new pets

Moving on

We travel and it turns out Gator gets even more delightful when they warm up to people and whenever they talk about their special interests their eyes sparkle and we love this air bending gator and we ask them to do tricks all the time because they’re so?? Cool?? And they oblige and Ti shows us cool as hell crystals and starts fires for us out of Lava and Lucian is like “I’M HARD CORE LIKE METAL” and we laugh and Amber is just so chill and lovely and it’s wonderful totally amazing we have a wonderful time on our travels and everyone teaches me stuff and it’s so cool, everyone is excellent teachers

But suddenly, when on an unhabituated island

Someone runs out of a forest and into our camp and we’re like “hey who the fuck” and danie is like “I- I THE FUCK, THERE’S A BIG ANIMAL BIG BIG ANIMAL BYE” and they just keep runnin and we’re like “surely it cannot be that big”

However

It was.

SO JUST BASED OFF INSTINCT WE START BOLTING FROM THIS CREATURE and everyone was like “hey uh ur the avatar and you’re at least somewhat trained in three elements so what the fuck” and I was like “okay but I’m having performance issues due to anxiety” and they were like “oh no oh fuck no get ur shit together” and then suddenly we were like oh yeah team work, teamwork works, so we all like. Subdued the beast and it was chill and danie was like “oh hello, avatar you say” and I was like “oh my god finally a pretty lady holy shit” and I waltz on over like “hey… sup… how you doin…. It’s me, the avatar… big deal, you know… me… the avatar…” and I go to lean on a tree but miss but she digs it and I’m like “oh fuck yes finally” So she joins our camp and chills with us and is like “yea I’m a water healer but I ran away from home because Depression Session” to which amber and danie immediately bond over the water thing but Amber is like NO WE MUST MAKE YOU HAPPY FOUND FAMILY TROPE YOU’RE PART OF IT NOW and I’m like “hey teach me healing too” and then I flirt but that’s embarrassing and Ti is like “I lava you all” and Lucian is like “spiderman” and sleeps in a nearby tree and Gator Is like “I love my new found family” and Amber, the wise one, is like “okay but hey it’s cool that you are going to learn healing, that is a very good thing to learn,” and we all looked at one another and went “truly” because we forgot Our Kickass Mission that may kill us (which is what some of us want but I digress) so Amber is like “we have to get a firemaster and a REALLY good one like REALLY good” and I pipe up like “yes, exactly, yes” and our search continues for the final piece of the puzzle

So like we were like “okay so we gotta find a cool ass firebender” everyone nodded and said “tru” but then Amber, yet again the wise one, said “ah but you know what would also be a good idea” to which someone said “loving you” and they said “yes, but also. There’s a sacred scroll within a fire nation city that we should steal that has all the dates of historical missions and also the cycles of solstices and shit like it’s smart shit I feel like we should have” and we were like “god damn it yes but we gotta do thisand be sneaky” and Gator was like “okay we need to blend in with the people, when in rome, and then we’ll sneak in”

So costume change, we all look great, it’s amazing, but I gotta hide the tattoos, but it’s great we’re all fabulous obviously. And as we go along we stumble across a guy lamenting by himself against a wall, moving fire in his hands. I squint. “Look at that emo looking fuck.” “Yes, he’s quite emo,” Lucian responds. Ti agrees, “okay but the mission” and I go “no that’s the firebender we want” and everyone was confused and I was like “1. He’s cute. 2. The more emo a firebender looks, the better they are a firebender, this is like? Common knowledge guys. 3. He’s cute.” And then everyone was like “oh yeah that’s true.”

So.

We stroll on up and he is like, “Hello. Isaac here.” And we’re like “oh hello Isaac” and he’s like “hello. Isaac here.” And danie is like “hey can you keep a secret” and Isaac is like “I can keep a secret and many others yes, but you’re really going to tell a stranger a secret” and we’re all like “we’re very loving and trusting people you seem like a good egg” and Isaac is like “well I can’t argue with that” and we’re like “hey this is the avatar and we need a firemaster to teach her” and he’s like “oh hey I’m a firemaster that can teach her also the avatar? Cool fuck this place *hair flip* smh let me train you.” And we’re like YES but we gotta steal some shit and he’s like “cool fuck this place *hair flip* smh let me steal shit with you.”

So we all have a team and we steal the scroll with some atla/mission impossible type shit and it’s wonderful and Isaac becomes the new emo firemaster And the adventure for the found family continues.

#jr rambles #post: text #dnt rb /#unless you're on of the people in this wacky thing lmfao #long post /#if on mobile sorry aaaaaaaa #atla sis #amber #ti #gc #danie #isaac #lucian #me

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burndownthehousetonight · 8 years ago

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((I’m guessing these RPs with @oxidethehedgehog are much stranger when you acually know who these bands are and what these evens were, and you think of it as real people with sonics instead of just vague band names with vague members. But this time, we left some things unresolved, since we’re probably gonna come back to this string anyways :P))

It wasn't that the Amphetamines didn't want to do a US tour. But circumstances kept piling up. Jason's parents not allowing him to go on tour that far away, ticket fares being too high for the band to afford, and trying to set club dates and such was near impossible for them. But most of all, Manic insisted they all stayed around to help Scourge out. And as winter turned to spring, and later to summer, Scourge was finally starting to make progress. Manic, Scourge and Oxide were all sitting around in the van Scourge lived out of, Scourge practicing the same few chords on his guitar over and over again. They'd taken a driving break from one of their mindless, aimless road trips in the parking lot of some gas station on the middle of the highway. "Don't know," Scourge said, fumbling between switching chords as Manic tried to move his fingers for him. "Gives me somethin' to do." "You need to hold the A string tighter," Manic said, pushing his fingers down. "I mean, you said you aren't doing AS much, right? That's good, you're getting somewhere." "Dude, with him, not doing as much is basically him doing enough for 2 people. Then again I shouldn't be talking now, should I?" He laughed, slurping down a drink he got from the gas station. Oxi was thinking about the US tour, Jason was now 18, so he could just tell his parents to fuck off and Napalm is now 17. Oxi himself was 19 at this point. "Fuck it, let's rob a place, take a trip to America, no gigs planned and offer to play when we find gigs," Oxi said. They had had a record out too, some were sold in America while most were sold in Europe. Scourge just grunted. The drugs were a weak point, and his damage with Oxide ran too deep to be cleared up with a road trip. "You know I'm weird with that stuff," Manic admitted. "I wanna be straight when we're paying for the band... I'm still a thief, ain't I?" He smiled and laughed, taking his hands off Scourge's and letting him take control of the chord practice. "I guess I'm down. We probably shouldn't rob from someplace in town if we're jetting, go for somewhere outta the city instead. Somewhere far away..." His attention turned to the gas station... and back again. "Nah, this place can't afford a working sign. Let's go for something more fancy. That sound good, Scourge?" "Sounds good to me," he admitted. "Damnit, how do you play this crap at any speed..." He said vaguely to Oxide, more just expression frustration at himself for fumbling a basic D chord. "You just gotta take alot of it, and when your boyfriend kicks you off that you turn to cocaine and beer" He said, cracking open another can after saying that. Next thing they knew, they were running as fast as they could back to Manic's van. Scourge and Oxi had stolen from a pretty wealthy individual so they made quite the killing. "GOGOGO GOGOGO!!!" Oxide screeched. He threw the bag of money and jewels into the back seat before jumping into the trunk. "We're going, we're going!" Scourge shouted from the driver's seat, already revving the engine. Manic looked behind the three at whoever they'd just robbed. Why was a woman in torn jeans and a cheap jacket just walking around some small with an expensive handbag full of cash and small jewelry? It didn't even look like it was all expensive, some of it looked like cheap metals and glass stones. Even the bills were in wildly different amounts... ... "I think we robbed another thief." Manic took off one of the trio's thieving masks and jumped into the front seat of the van, which was already starting to move. They sped down the street of some small city off the first highway exit they found. And as they went, they noticed police surrounding a jewelry store with both front window displays busted in with what appeared to be large rocks. "Smash and grab?" Scourge scoffed at the sight. "Amateur..." "Yah, Smash, kill, destroy, grab then burn is so much better." Oxi laughed, taking off a pig mask as they ended up slowing down so that way the police didn't start chasing them for speeding. They weren't far out, but they felt the need to drive back home. Their thievery masks were shoved back into the hiding space of the van, for whenever they'd next need them. They got to the practise space and dumped out the jewels, money and everything else the women had. "Yah she was definitely a thief." Oxi said, pulling out a map of Manchester with circles drawn everywhere, some had X's through them. "How much do you think this is worth?" Oxi asked, looking at Scourge then Manic "Yeah, how much is a fifty pound note worth again?" Manic asked, pulling one of the many bills out of the pile. Scourge just chuckled and the three got to sorting. "Alright, about 460 in bills down here," Scourge said. "What's that worth?" "All this crap," Manic said, patting one pile of rings and small bracelets, "is worthless. They're kids jewelry. It's useless. This mess?" Manic patted another pile, visibly shinier and glistening more. "Nothing spectacular in there, but we can probably pawn it off for... 200, 250?" "But this..." Manic reached over and picked up the map from Oxide's hands, marked with various theft locations all helpfully mapped out. "This is priceless..." Oxi smirked. "Well, looks like we could maybe get this tour underway sooner than we thought." Then, Napalm came walking in. "Hey guys, my parents are taking me to America, I'll be gone for a month, I could find us some places to play. We'll be going to New York, Boston, and Washington DC, then we'll go to Texas, then to California." Napalm said. "I'll make sure to go from club to club and get their numbers so we can call 'em up." Napalm continued "That sounds fucking awesome." "Rad!" Manic added. Napalm seemed absolutely unsurprised to see the three handling what was very obviously stolen goods. This was just normal for them. "How about you take some tapes and you play 'em for club owners, see what-" Manic cut himself short as he realized the implications. "Wait, a whole month? Uh... We're gonna need a new bass player." "I'm here, ain't I?" Manic just grinned at Scourge's comment. "Dude, you're learning fast, but we play faster. And you're not learning bass. Though I guess we could stop playing local for a little while... I dunno, what're you thinking, Oxi?" "Dude, even Scourge can play bass, let him play bass, besides, no one can ever hear it anyway." Oxi snickered. "When are you leaving?" Oxi asked, looking at Napalm. "Now. Bye guys, see yah in a month...." He went over, took a couple of tapes with him and left the building. Oxi went over and handed Napalm's bass over to Scourge. Scourge initially seemed smug as he was handed the bass. Then he realized just how many strings there were. He attempted to strum a chord built for guitar, and ended up with some discordant mess of sound. "Shit..." "I didn't mean I don't want him to learn," Manic said. "I mean, he won't be playing fast enough in a month. He just isn't that good." Manic winked at Oxide, to let him in on his little scheme. "Besides, even if we're crappy, we're crappy very fast. I don't know if you could handle playing at those speeds." "Yah man, maybe we should just make him play but with the amp unplugged, or cut off all the strings and have him mime while playing to a backing track." Oxide laughed, this was fun, making Scourge feel pressured into learning. "What, one bad chord means all that?" Scourge growled out, his grip on the guitar neck tightening. "I'll show you 'not that good.'" Scourge stood back, and looked around the room. He was starting to get used to the way to hold a normal guitar, a bass didn't feel too different. Among the various homemade or purchased posters, random clippings, and graffiti Manic and Oxide had plastered on the wall were a few helpful guides, including a page of bass chords Napalm used. Scourge stood back, skipping the steps of learning to hold the guitar correctly and getting accustomed to the strings, and started out with basic chords. "What're you up to?" Manic said as though he didn't already know. "Gimme a month, then tell me I ain't fast enough." Scourge said, intently focused on the chords and his fingers. Manic silently turned to Oxide with a smug glare, as if to say, 'it totally worked, mate.' "Dude, you don't play chords, you play the root note, which is basically just the note that the chord starts with." Oxi said. "If I play a 3 bar power chord, you play the string my index finger is on." He picked up his guitar and showed him how to play to his guitar. "Yeah man, you can't jump in without learning basics." Manic added. Manic just leaned against the wall in the practice space and watched as Scourge and Oxide shot back and forth with basic guitar skills. "Like this?... ...'N what about... ...Lemme retune..." and similar were mumbled by Scourge regularly. Rehabilitation had taught him some patience... if not a lot. "...Yeah, it's pretty much just a normal guitar without the B and E strings," Manic would bring up at one point later in the practice. "I dunno," he smirked at Oxide, making his mischief more obvious. "You think he's actually gonna be able to do this?" "Fuck yeah, I am." Scourge said like it was a flirt. Another attempt at a basic B chord. Nowhere near as crisp as Napalm was, but for a beginner, perfectly acceptable. For hours, both Oxi and Scourge played back an forth. Scourge was slowly getting it and Oxi was surprised. Though he couldn't play nearly as fast as Napalm, and if he did try, it was nowhere near as crisp. Another few hours go by and Scourge and Oxi could finally play a single song at the proper speed with Scourge fucking up. But practice took time. A lot of time. Scourge was determined to prove their jabs wrong, and he was starting to play fast. Even if he absolutely shouldn't have been at his experience level, and even if he was fumbling, he was getting somewhere as all that time passed. "Oh my god, it's eight." Manic realized how late it had gotten far too late in the game. Manic had made several runs to get food or drinks, mostly to make sure the two were eating rather than for himself, but he didn't realize how much time was passing. "Crap... How're you playing as a newbie without messing up your fingers?" "Hm?" Scourge looked at his hand, most of his fingers covered in small cuts and splashing small amounts of blood on the guitar. "Fuck, didn't notice." "Christ oh mighty. Does it hurt?" Oxi asked, looking at the bloodstained strings and fret board, then back to Scourge, who didn't look to worried, just kinda 'oh, that happened.' "Smarts," He said, putting down the guitar and scrubbing up some of the blood with the bottom of his shirt. "I've had worse." He turned around and lifted his shirt. They'd seen him without it before, but this was the first time they'd been allowed to look at the three nasty gashes across his chest. "Got in a fight with a friend. These ones're from him clawing my chest open." He said, pointing to the topmost two. "I was driving when he cut me, bloody psycho... Swerved into a lorry. That's how this third one happened." He pulled the shirt down, and looked at his fingers. "I mean, I know we're teasing you, but you really have to get your fingers to calice before playing like that," Manic added. "Hasn't this orange punk bled on stage?" Scourge added, pointing lazily at Oxide. "Ain't that part of the show?" "Kinda." Oxi said "I would play till my fingers bled when I was playing guitar at age 10. Isn't scourge like 30? I think he'll be alright." Oxi shrugged it off, though those scars made Scourge look pretty hot. He liked the dangerous kind of look that Scourge gave off, plus he wasn't bone thin anymore. "HEY." Scourge barked, almost offended. "Only 21 over here. Do I look like the kinda guy to buy beer underage?" His anger shifted towards humor as he spoke, even laughing as he finished. Few things could cheer up Scourge as much as his own humor. Manic seemed in thought while Scourge made his usual jokes. "Do you think Jason already knows where Napes is going? We should probably tell him we're teaching Scourge." There was a beat, before Manic perked up again. "Right, you gonna camp out behind here again, dude?" "Nah, gonna try to talk to Fiona again." He said simply. He still wasn't over her, it seemed. Manic just looked over at Oxide, and shrugged. Fiona would break up and get together with Scourge time and time again. But Fiona hadn't made any moves to get together with Scourge. Whatever happened between them, it was massive. "Is Sonic still with Fiona, or is he now fucking Amy now? Cause I saw him with her a week ago. No Fiona in sight, and they were holdin' hands." Oxide looked over at Manic. "You kidding me, he was with Sally a few days ago." Manic shrugged. "I think he's open, I dunno. I think he talked about Fiona-" "Fiona ain't with him," Scourge interrupted. "And if she is, I'm crushing Sonic's face in." Scourge stormed out, leaving Manic and Oxide alone with their gossip. "He's delusional," Manic started. "Fiona HATES him now. I don't know what he did to her, but they aren't getting back together." "Scourge needs to let go of the past. And I dunno. I also saw him with Blaze too. They were kissing in an alleyway while I was picking up a pack of beer," he said as he cracked open another can of the sauce. "I think he's turning into a bit of a player, or he's just a bachelor." Oxi shrugged, chugging the beer and cracking open another. "They probably all know," Manic said, reaching for a drink himself. "He's pretty much a good guy, he's not gonna cheat on anyone." The two were sitting against the wall of the practice space now, the purse with the stolen goods and the beer they had in reaching distance. As he drank, he reached over and relaxed one arm around Oxide's shoulder. "Besides, why's he need to date four people?" Manic said, taking a small drink. "Though I guess he's not getting someone as perfect as you~" Oxi chuckled, giving him a kiss. "Thanks babe~" He smiled at him, resting an arm around his shoulder as well as they relaxed. The next day. Scourge came back in. "Hey Scourge, smash Sonic's head in?" Oxi asked, looking at him. Scourge gave an annoyed, almost defeated grunt to match his annoyed glare and defeated stance. A clear no. "So what happened, dude?" Manic said, putting down his sticks. "She hurled a rock at me," Scourge scowled, impatient to talk to Oxide. "You got any kinda uppers? Hangover's killing me..." Oxide passed him a bag of cocaine. "Put your face in and inhale through the nose dude...." He said, grabbing another bag of cocaine and stuffing his nose in it, inhaling before pulling out. Scourge laid out a small amount on one of the back prep tables, and snorted it deftly. He brushed his hand under his nose and seemed to perk up almost immediately. "Thanks, kid." He said, closing the back and chucking it towards Oxide. The effects came into play quickly for him. "Alright, but really, dude." Manic added as Scourge went to pick up Napalm's bass. "What happened? I thought you and Fiona ran away together, what did you do to her?" Scourge said nothing, tuning the guitar and leaving the silence to linger. "That's none of your business," he finally said. "Where're we starting?" Oxi put down the bag of cocaine and picked up his guitar. "Here." He started playing 'Killing (people for fun)' with it's rapid fire downstrokes for the entire song. He could tell Scourge was having trouble constantly downstroking. "Just go up down up down if you find it difficult to go down down down down" Oxide said. "Looks better playing like this," Scourge grunted out, intently focused. Despite how little he was saying, it was clear he was enjoying playing. Something about the energy, the volume, it was exciting to him. Practice didn't feel like practice just yet. "Hey, guys, I'm gonna talk with Sonic for a bit," Manic said, motioning towards the door. "I'll be back eventually." Scourge nodded and Manic was off... but not to Sonic. He drove away from his house, actually, towards a more familiar house a little over a mile away. By the time the door opened, Manic had it all prepared. "Hey, Jason." Manic said, talking to his band mate at his front door. "Uh, can you help me with something? I'm trying to learn some things about Fiona, but she'd probably kill me if she saw me in person. She doesn't hate you, think you can ask some questions for me?" "Fine" He then walked past Manic and down the road. Meanwhile at the practise space. Oxi and Scourge were sitting next to each other, doing blow and drinking. Oxi got on his hands and knee and threw up everywhere. After cleaning his system, he cracked open another and chugged. "You ain't got a limit on you, do you?" Scourge shot back, smiling. "Least it wasn't on my jacket this time." Scourge was amped up enough. He put down his baggie and went back to his drink. There was a tinge of concern- No, they're couldn't have been. Scourge wasn't a soft guy, he wasn't gonna be concerned cause someone threw up. ...Right? Manic, on the other hand, was very open about being concerned. Jason could have seen that from a mile away. They were parked outside of a small brick house Manic knew very well, just out of sight of the front door. "Okay, if it's Sonic, tell him you wanna talk to Fiona, right?" Manic instructed him. "Just tell her you heard Scourge was cheating on her, she'll probably spill. Got it?" "Ok....." Jason said, getting out of the car and walked up to the door, knocking on it as he waited for an answer. Back at the space, Oxide and Scourge had their amps cranked and Scourge was showing signs of improving, that is, until Scourge's bass amp when 'PHOOM!' and that was it. It didn't create any other noise, it was dead. It was turned on, but the speakers were fucked. "Ah shit...." "Did I fuck up?" Scourge said, looking over the guitar. But Oxide's gaze was on the amp. "We've got the money for a new amp," Scourge added, motioning for the bag they'd stolen. He took out some of the bills, and stuffed them in his pocket. "Wanna go for a ride?" Scourge said, pulling out his car key. Scourge lead Oxide towards the van, the two sitting in the front seat. "You know anything else that'll calm me down?" Scourge asked as they pulled out of the alley and started driving towards a cheap music store they weren't banned from. "Staying calm keeps me off crack, and I'm getting bored of drinking all the time." Manic wanted to rip off his face in frustration, not being able to hear a thing Jason and Sonic were talking about. But he couldn't blow his cover. "I need to talk to Fiona." Jason said. "Why?" Sonic asked, leaning against the door frame. Jason just pushed Sonic out of the way and went into Sonic's room, their lied Fiona. Reading in the bed. Oxi pulled out a joint, and a couple of acid blotters. "This should help." He said, giving him the joint while he took 2 hits of acid. "You ain't takin' acid while drivin', I don't want this trip to be my last. Both literally and figuratively." Scourge took a pull from the joint, letting the calm vibes take over. He didn't want to say thank you to Oxide, but they were starting to tolerate each other. Their driving slowed down, and they found themselves comfortable cruising along at legal speeds for once. They were in and out of the store quickly, but Scourge pulled over the van on some back road and re-lit the joint. "Feels good," he said simply, letting them both lay back and relax. Fiona threw down the magazine. "Who are you?" She shot at Jason, clearly not recognizing him. "Sonic didn't say he had any friends with him." "Fiona, Scourge is cheating on you, saw him with some guy, in drag too. They were fucking in Scourge's van." He said to Fiona, that seemed like a truthful enough thing that Scourge would do. "I know right? I can feel the acid taking over dude...." he said, sitting back in the car seat as he stared into the void. Letting the hallucinations take over his vision and put him on a psychedelic rollar coaster from universe to universe. Scourge didn't even use a full blotter, just enough to test the waters. His vision was going hazy, but he could feel the effects taking over. Him and Oxide were relaxing more and more on some path of dirt no one would ever drive down. "Fuck... how'd you find this stuff?" He said with a strangely happy smile. He reclined his seat back and smiled, stretching his arms across the headrests. His arm crossed Oxide's shoulder, but the two were too relaxed to care. It seemed the haze had made them forget about their normal disdain. They were just two guys, doing whatever they wanted and relaxing... ... Fiona just scoffed while Sonic snuck up behind Jason. "You think I'm bothering with Scourge?" She said, laughing off the thought. "I'm not gonna hang out with some asshole addict." Sonic hopped on the chance to insult scourge. "He's a violent narcissist, kid, don't hang out with him. And don't break into my house. "A violent, cheating asshole with drug issues," Fiona added. "Of course he fucked some guy in drag, he fucks whoever he wants, hon. He doesn't care about if they're taken or not..." And that was still true that day. The effects of the drugs were starting to wear off, and Oxide and Scourge realized exactly what they'd done while high. For a little while, a drug-induced stupor made them forget their issues in the backseat of Scourge's van... "I ain't telling Manic," Scourge promised, zipping up his pants and awkwardly looking away. "Come on, let's just forget about this..." Oxi pulled him back towards him, kissing him. Scourge squirmed a little, but it seemed not all of his strength was back as Oxi managed to keep him in the tight hug. He pulled away, a saliva string forming as he did. "I ain't forgettin' about this. To be honest, I wouldn't mind a 3 way relationship. Plus, the benefits of those can be very rewarding~" Scourge looked down at Oxide with surprise. "I don't care if you're cute," Scourge growled. "You saw me suffering from addiction and didn't do shit. I'm worth more than that." It was a blunt, fierce line, but he didn't seem to want to fight Oxide. He crept forward and slowly kissed him again, taking in the moment. He loved physical attention, he couldn't deny it. "Come on, we're jetting." Scourge said, crawling into the front seat of the van, not even waiting for Oxide to move up front before revving the engine. Manic and Jason were hanging out in Manic's place, practicing their instruments. Some cracked old towel had been left over the vomit Oxide had left. "He said their relationship was open!" Manic reiterated while taking a chance to adjust his seat. "Honestly, I don't buy it. Fiona's hiding something." "Idk, and I don't care...." Jason said, tuning his guitar, seeing the E string snap. "Fuck...." Oxide laid in the back of the van, sleeping peacefully as Scourge drove all over the place Scourge was driving mindlessly, thinking about what had just happened. Damnit...! Of everyone he could have- No, he till had to show him up. HE still had to learn Bass guitar in an insane time frame. But he was starting to get the basics, and if he didn't practice, he wasn't gonna get better. So he drove back to the practice space, noting not to mess with those drugs with Oxide around. "Yeah... Yeah, why DO I care?" Manic said, almost laughing it off. "It's her life! Besides, Scourge is a thief, can't get much worse than that already." The sound of the van pulling into the alley alerted Manic. "Oh yeah, uh, since Napalm's on vacation, Scourge wanted to try and learn bass to fill in. He's kinda got a long way to go, but he's getting... somewhere. That cool with you?" "Yah sure, oh by the way we got a show at that burger place, lets get there now. Exploited and the UK subs are waiting. Lets haul ass over there...." Jason said. Just then, Scourge and Oxi came in. But then found themselves back in the van, driving to the club. Scourge knew how to play most of their songs, just not very well. "Woulda been nice to know before," Scourge said, mildly concerned about making a fool of himself. "Alright, here's what we're gonna do." Manic said, as though he had this all planned. "Scourge, you're playing quieter than us. Don't bother with all that down strumming showy stuff, just play. Up, down, like a normal guitarist. We're turning everyone else's amps all the way up. Just pretend you're killing it." Scourge nodded in agreement, quietly thankful no one knew about his little mistake. Flaming Onions had set up a more permanent small stage, and slightly altered appearances. A slightly more rough joint, but with the same food, and nothing that wasn't still family friendly. Simply something to fit the normal punk crowd more. Scourge followed the band members in as though he belonged... though with as many shows of theirs as he saw, he might as well have been a permanent member anyways. "So, what, how's set up work? What's sound check, what's all that crap?" "Just haul your amp onstage, and we'll play through a song. When the soundguy tells you to play something, you play, alright?" Oxide told Scourge as he hauled the guitar amp onto the stage. They played soundcheck and then hung around the restaurant. Eating, drinking, and doing coke in the bathroom. For once, Scourge was staying away from Oxide completely, meaning he wasn't gonna be coked up for the performance. Though with how lucky he was going to need to be to not make a fool of himself, not being high was probably a better idea. "You nervous, dude?" Manic said, sitting around and nibbling on fries as they waited for their set to start. "We'll be fine, don't worry." Scourge was still looking away. "Don't get angry at me." He said, surprisingly humbly for something out of his mouth. "Me an' Oxide went to pick up an amp, and..." "Took acid and smoked alotta pot, too!" Oxi came into the picture, coked outta his lil' punker head. "Come on guys, UK subs are about to go on. Lets go...." Oxi said, going over to the dance area. Scourge took it as a sign. "Kid knows a lot of things about drugs. Knows how to keep things fun, I'll give him that." He added, watching Oxide as he went to the dance area. "Let him tell his side, dude." Manic added. "He's an awesome guy when you get to know him." Scourge grunted in response, impatient to get their set started. Manic just huffed, and followed Oxide's steps. The slam still hadn't been invented yet, a lot of people still pogo'd, though it was a little more chaotic as people would bump into each other. Next were The Exploited, then it was the Amphetamines turn. "We are the amphetamines and we're here to make you think about death and killing yourself you fucking faggots!" Oxide screamed into the mic, beginning to play. Halfway through the first song, 2 strings broke on Oxides guitar, the E and the A. He put down his guitar and just sang The immediate response was confusion, even a little laughter from the audience as they kept playing. The immediate response from the band was terror. Scourge was barely passable enough to play quietly behind the three of them, how was he supposed to play not that anyone could hear them?! They needed to get Oxide a new guitar to play, but they couldn't motion for anyone to grab one in the middle of their set. They just needed Scourge to be competent for long enough to get a new one. And so far, he was dealing. Seemed that the one-man sound crew was already off into the back room to find a guitar. Scourge wasn't playing half as much for show as Manic and Jason were, but he was at least playing the right notes so far. Scourge just needed to be like Sid Vicious, jump around alot and use that to hide the fact that hes playing the bass as well as someone who has no fingers. "Gun drawn, they all run bullets fire, time is up the civs, they're gunned down with the cop standing proud The cops will hunt you down Spot you, in the crowd They'll cuff you, thrown into the cell welcome, to your living hell Police with their batons they then draw their guns They're all having fun Shooting at the civs that run" Oxides vocals were, as usual, growling, no bullshit, and loud. And they were very audible, he didn't mumble through them like alot of early Hardcore punk vocalists, he could ennunciate them quite well. Manic's drumming went more complex out of the blue, Jason's playing following in suit. At least the crowds didn't seem to notice Scourge was sub-par yet. At least. At the very minimum. This 'wall of sound' approach had more perks than they thought. The girl who ran soundcheck returned from the storage area with a borrowed guitar, tuned by some of the other bands hanging around after their sets. She plugged it in and delivered it to Oxide like a guardian angel who was looking after an entire punk band for no good reason. Manic would have breathed a sigh of relief, but he just had to hope it was tuned up proper... and it was going to sound good compared to how his other guitar played. Oxide began playing, that's when the guitar went out. "What the fuck?" He played the guitar for 10 seconds and 'whoops, sorry, i'm dead now'. Like what the shit is going on? Oxi turned off his amp, unplugged and gave it back to the lady. No more guitar for him, it was just singing now. The three other band members looked between themselves. Manic and Jason knew they'd be carrying the sound, and Scourge looked confused about what to say. Manic took the last moment before their song started to shout something at Scourge. "You're a performer! PERFORM! Ham it up!" Their next song started similarly, with Jason and Manic fancying up their playing styles to keep the focus on their playing. Scourge started with his usual playing, but those words stuck with him. So he started closing his eyes a little more, moving around a little more. And that devilish smirk soon came back to him as he realized just how much more fun it was to focus on the performance than his playing. Manic and Jason may have been controlling the instrumentation, but Oxide and Scourge were in charge of the show. "These assholes fuck with my head These assholes I want them dead These assholes they don't care These assholes won't get outta my hair" Oxide was constantly moving, his hair waving about, jacket was off. No shirted and chain used as a belt. The crowd was going all over the place, not slamming, just jumping about. The show ended after 45 minutes of mayhem, 2 guitars not working 13 minutes into the set and Manics cymbals kept falling down. But they managed to pull it off, even if they just barely did so. "That was amateur," Manic said, exhausted physically and mentally. "Like, I know we're amateurs, but that was amateur." Manic wasn't relaxing as much as the rest of the band. He kept looking over his cymbals. They were just as sturdy as before. He couldn't see anything wrong, at least. Maybe he was just unlucky? Scourge wasn't half as exhausted. It seemed midway through the show, he'd found a love for showing off on stage, even if he didn't have many skills to show off. He was grinning widely and putting back on the jacket he through off during his little performance. "Speak for yourself," Scourge said. "That was perfect." "Yah, for someone that sucks at bass." Oxi laughed, he had a can of pepsi, which was hiding the fact that there was beer in it. "But seriously though, I'm surprised you didn't shit yourself there" He said as he chugged the pepsi, before filling another pepsi under the table with beer. Manic didn't notice all of the beer he was drinking. Hell, he was still trying to figure out what was wrong with his cymbals. "I don't suck at bass, I suck with style." Scourge said as though he was proud of that fact. "It's gonna take more than two busted guitars to make me give up." "Yeah, speaking of guitars," Manic said, standing up and looking at the three, "you sure your guitar's alright? I mean, two strings broke thirty seconds in? You sure they weren't, like, messed with or something?" "I don't fuckin' know man. All I know is I'm gonna re string my guitar when we get back home. And Scourge, if you said 'you suck with style'.....I don't think any of us would doubt that~" He burst into laughter, others got in on the joke and laughed as well. Scourge didn't seem shaken. "Like you'd ever know," he shot back without hesitation. "Girls, you're both pretty," Manic said to Oxide and Scourge, not wanting to put up with more of Scourge's bickering. "Come on, that disaster's over, and we're alive. Somehow." He leaned up against Oxide, reaching for his cup of some crappy fountain drink. "We can forget tonight ever happened, and we'll make Scourge a less crappy musician." "I'll make myself less crappy," Scourge said. "I don't need any help with that." "Dude, you need all the help you can get," Manic responded. Scourge just glowered at him, before nodding his head and realizing what he said was entirely true. "We should go down to a liquor store, rob it for as much alcohol as we can get our hands on, and get absolutely wasted~" Oxi said with glee, finishing his 'Pepsi' before getting up to take a leak. They then found themselves running back into the van after breaking into a liquor store at 2AM and driving away back to the practise space. "ALCOHOL!" Oxide screamed as they sped down the road. Scourge was once again behind the wheel, Manic sitting in the backseat with Oxide and laughing as he looked at that map the trio had stolen a few days before. "Oh man, I TOLD you to trust me!" Manic said to Scourge. "We'd be just as good at the store down by the laundry place," Scourge said as he focused on driving as fast as possible. "Eh, it's local. This place was on the other side of the city! And who drives across the city to rob a cheap liquor store?!" Manic said with a slowly growing grin. He leaned over and gave their screaming partner a kiss right on the cheek, sharing his excitement. "You never get sick of doing that crap, do you?" Even scourge was grinning more and more, as he realized just how far they had to go to get home... and what a chance he had to drive at his favorite insane speeds through the city. It didn't take long before all three were energized and happy from the outcome of their sudden theft. Oxi got out of the van. Running into the practice space and putting all the alcohol onto the nearby table. "Holy shit we're gonna get so fuckin' wasted man," Oxi laughed, all energized from all the cocaine he'd had after the show. After all the alcohol was put onto the table, they looked at the table that was covered with bottle and cans. You couldn't even see the table, there was so much alcohol that they had to move some to the ground. "Holy shit......" Oxi said, looking at the sauce. "God damn..." Manic laughed loudly. "We ain't going back there. Cheers, guys!" Manic instinctively reached for a bottle of something fruity and sweet, Scourge more randomly going for the first thing his hands touched. A can of some kind of stout, it ended up being. Manic threw himself towards one of the few folding metal chairs they'd had rusting away in here for only a few weeks, and popped the cap off. "MmmMMPH!" Scourge said, almost spitting out the beer he tried. "Ah man, that's so rough- God damn, that's terrible!" He laughed, taking a smaller sip and not really caring. Manic just smirked at his failure and opened up his own bottle of whatever the hell and leaning up against Oxide again. "Man, you know, we're real good thieves," he said, clearly plotting something. "We could totally pull off a string of thefts if we wanted... we'd just need some locations... maybe some helpfully marked locations on a stolen map... But that can wait for when we aren't getting plastered." Manic was a bit of a lightweight, but he drank slowly enough he wouldn't get drunk TOO quickly. Oxide was not holding back AT ALL! He was slamming bottles and cans back. Shotgunning cans and chugging. He was gonna get fuckin' shit faced. He went to take a leak like 7 times in 2 hours with how much he was drinking. How was his body keeping up with that? He was drunk off his ass yet he was still drinking. That is until he got to the point where he spilt more beer than he did drink, and ended up throwing up everywhere. "MmmmMMM, fuccck," Manic would be grumbling out at this point, holding down the much more inebriated Oxide with a silly smile. "You've gottta stooop, dude, don't think you'd survive anotherrr~" Scourge wasn't the kind of happy, social drunk Manic was. He simply looked more relaxed, leaning back and letting the calm feelings take over. "I'mma go up stairs and get a... get some kinda food." Manic's stumble up the stairs was slow and janky, leaving Oxide alone with a laughing and smiling Scourge. He didn't seem half as abrasive as he usually did in this state. Oxi couldn't help take his eyes off Scourge, he was so damn hot, how could he? Wasn't a crackhead, had actual muscle, and just looked really sexy all together. It would be so hot if the 3 of them stripped down and fu- "HURK! *Splatter*" Oxi threw up again, washing the perverted thoughts out of his mind as he focused more on not falling into his vomit as he bent over to upchuck all the alcohol he was having. "You little... Heh...!" Scourge mumbled out, struggling to his feet at the sight and trying not to step in the vomit. "You're such an ass... you got it all over that stupid shirt." Scourge couldnt'e ven read the shirt, he was too inebriated. "Lemme grab you something from my van." He was struggling to his feet and stumbling towards the door. "Come on, help me pick somethin' out." "S-Sure....." He stumbled his way to the outside, only to end up tripping over a crack and faceplant. "Aw fuck....." He slowly picked himself up and leaned against the wall, upchucking more vomit. "If I don't take a leak now I'm gonna burst, be right back." He then went into the alleyway. He came back out and went to the van. "A....Allllright man.....whaaa.....what do you want.....me to.......to.......pick out?" He asked, looking at Scourge. Jesus christ they were hammered, though Oxi was way drunker due to him drinking so much, and for being smaller in size when compared to Scourge. Scourge had opened the back of his van. Scourge had a much larger pile of clothes in his van than previously, part of his effort to not be as crappy. His t-shirt pile was mostly shirts from small bands that had played around the city, not to mention one for the Amphetamines, of course. But there were a lot of names to sift through, and Oxide had barely heard of most of them, if at all. Seemed the punk subculture had made it so he wasn't listening to different types of rock. But they were too plastered to think about that. Especially Scourge, whose inebriation was starting to take over again. He felt up Oxide in a moment of drunken weakness. "Hey... hey, punk, you wanna... How about you go without a shirt?" Oxi, due to his drunkeness, took off his shirt. He was too wasted to take into consideration what he was doing at the moment. He threw it to the ground and sat on the edge of the van, trying to focus. "Fuuuuuuck i'm sooooooo waaaaaasteeeeeed........" He groaned, holding his head and looked up at Scourge. "You're sooo cuuuute," Scourge fflirted mimicing Oxide's slur as he looked down at him. The alcohol had taken over, and the parts of his brain that normally would have gone into overdrive telling him not to like anything about Oxide were dulled. Besides, he loved someone who knew how to drink and have fun... ... ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ The doors to the van were closed. Scourge and Oxide were too hungover to want to move much after waking up. And they both knew why their clothes were gone. "Fuck you," Scourge grumbled through his headache as he held his head in his hand. "Stop trying to get with me, punk." "Your the one telling me to take my clothes off......" Oxi grumbled, not letting go of his grip on Scourge though. "I was too drunk to think properly...." Seems he didn't mind the cuddling. He did mind the wicked hangover he had though, which caused him to move a hand up to his head. "Fuuuuuuck why did I drink so muuuuuuch?" he whined. Burying his face into Scourge's chest. "Get offa me, kid." Scourge demanded, but didn't make the move himself. He did like the attention, just not who it was coming from. He didn't want to move and push Oxide off, he just didn't want to move in general. "Fuck, I know... ...Besides, you were doin' coke like crazy again." Scourge and Oxide just laid where they were against Scourge's pile of shirt, and tried to wait off their hangovers. It clearly wasn't working. "I'd call for Manic, but..." Scourge thought for a moment. "You told him we fucked, right?" "No, why do you ask?" Oxi looked at Scourge, still clinging to him. Oxi laid there for a good while, not wanting to let go of his big green teddy bear. "He's your boyfriend- You guy's aren't open, right?" Scourge said, brushing back his quills. "He always said you ain't in an open relationship! Ah fuck, did he change and not tell me?!" "I don't think he would mind to be honest....But....just incase....let's hide it for now, let's try and ask Manic if he's up for an open relationship." Oxi said, giving Scourge a kiss before putting his pants on and stepping out of the van. Only to be met with.... "I heard you guys last night." Manic was standing there, arms crossed and completely pissed off. "Manic, I was plastered, an'-" "I'm not just angry at you, Scourge." Manic said, turning to look at Oxide. "It's one thing if you wanna screw him, but why didn't you tell me?! I promised Scourge, and I still asked you before letting him touch me! What the hell, man?!" "I was just as fucking wasted mate. I could barely fucking speak let alone say 'Hey dear, can I go fuck Scourge in the van?'" Oxi shot back. After that, no one said anything......it was just silence that followed. Manic begrudgingly realized the situation, and sighed loudly, although he was still clearly annoyed. "Fine... Fine, whatever, guys. Look, there's something up with my drums and your guitar and-" He took a long, deep breath. "I'm stressed out, alright? We'll stop talking about it, just grab your clothes and get in here. Napalm's already over, don't flash him." Manic hurried back into the practice space, leaving them both to get dressed. "Dude....are you sure you're not talking about Jason? Cause Napalm's in america...." Oxi looked at Manic funny, chuckling a bit and making a goofy face. "Christ, you still drunk as well?" He asked, walking in wearing a pair of pants and nothing else. "A lot's happening, alright?!" Manic said, huffing again. Sure enough, Jason was there, seemingly concerned. Scourge followed the two in, grabbing his jacket and pants. "Look at this mess," Manic said, running his fingers over Oxide's guitar and the four intact strings. "Right here, there's like- there's a nick in the wire?" Oxide felt over where Manic was touching the guitar. There was some kind of a cut across all four strings in the same place. "And my guitar's missing one of the, uh... The floor things, that gives it stability?" "So what? It's four strings and a piece of rubber." Scourge delivered. "The point is, someone messed with our equipment," Manic said sadly. "Last night wasn't an accident." Oxi was still dealing with a hangover. "We'll get them fixed. Are there any guitar shops we AREN'T banned from?" Oxi asked, looking around the room. "I can take it in and see if it can get fixed....." Jason said, in the corner of the room as he tuned his guitar. "See, that's why it's awesome to have you around, dude." Manic said, patting Jason on the back. "You aren't wanted for breaking every law." Manic was still a little hungover himself, but he'd at least drunk some water. Scourge and Oxide didn't have that luxury yet. "Who the hell'd want to sabotage our instruments? We're just some dumb band no one knows about, right?" "I don't know, maybe it's a bunch of 40 year old assholes wanting to fuck with a bunch of kids. Both literally and figuratively." Oxi shrugged, drinking some water before passing it to Scourge. "Guh," Scourge grunted in response before grabbing the bottle and chugging the water greedily. Manic sighed. "Whatever, we'll worry about that when we aren't hungover. And tired. And-" Manic smiled and looked down at himself. "And being pissy for no reason," he said, only really talking about himself. He could see Jason looking over the many, many bottles still on the back table. Sure, many of the cans were gone, but almost none of the actual bottles were touched. "Look, we're REALLY hungover right now, alright?" "Yah I can see...." He said, opening a bottle of vodka and chugging the entire thing. "............Jesus christ..." Oxi said under his breath, watching Jason down the entire bottle before passing out. "Oh for fucks sakes!" Oxi nearly yelled out. Manic just snorted and smile through his mild headache. Scourge grinned, but didn't dare laugh. He knew it would just make his head hurt even worse than it already did. "Alright, we're dragging him upstairs." Manic said, picking him up by his arms. "Oxide, grab his legs, I ain't doing this alone." He was curled up on top of the mattress Manic usually slept on, left to wake up whenever he wanted after his stupid stunt. "Alright." Manic said simply, bringing back some of his annoyance. "Dude... Dude, if you wanna sleep around, that's cool, but I do wanna know that stuff." He wasn't angry anymore, more annoyed at himself for his outburst. "Just lemme know if you're not already drunk." They were interrupted by some basic chords. By the sounds of it, Scourge was already in the practice space, intent on making himself a better bass guitarist after their mocking. "Alright babe. I'm sorry..." he said, pulling him into a passionate kiss, staying there for a while before they went back downstairs, hand in hand. "Hey Scourge, trying not to suck at bass?" Oxi asked, walking over to him. "Trying to play off this hangover," Scourge said, focusing on some more basic chords. Mostly the same ones he'd been shown the previous days, but with another one or two that were closely related. Now that he was getting the hang of the guitar, he realized just how similar it was to a normal guitar. Almost too simple, but the transition came easier for him than he expected. That wasn't to say he was able to play at a professional level just yet, but he was getting somewhere. "Have you ever played off a hangover before?" Manic was curious to this odd new method of brushing hangovers off. "Nope," Scourge said, "but I ain't got nothing better to do." "Hes got a point." Oxi shrugged, looking over his guitar. "It seems like it's only the strings that got fucked up....the rest should be alright...." He said, looking down the fret board. "Yah....looks like it...." He kept inspecting it though, just in case, cause it could be something else. "I mean, me and Jason didn't see anything." Manic admitted, walking over to his drums. "And my drums are working fine. They're probably just really crappy at screwing with instruments." Manic picked up his sticks and played some simple patterns. Nothing anywhere near as fast as they played in concert, more the music that would be expected from a couple of practicing amateur musicians. Bass parts written to help teach chords and similar, simple drum patterns more about flowing across the drum set. Down tempo, but still challenging in their own ways. And just from how long their practice carried on, well after his hangover cleared up, Scourge made it clear he wasn't taking those mild jabs lightly. He was determined to learn to play perfectly. Even when they cracked dumb jokes during practice, Scourge stayed dead focused on his fingers. Manic was instead focused on the number of times Oxide was leaving to take coke. Even for him, this wasn't normal. Oxi soon just kept a bag of coke with him. Along with a 6 pack. It didn't seem to affect his playing, or affect his looks either. He seemed healthy enough, maybe his body was getting used to taking incredible amounts of drugs. "Fucking facists March through the streets the men in blue, baton in hand they are your rulers, they aren't your friend March through the city, they rule the land! Facist! Facist! Ones in control Facist! Facist! March down the road Facist! Facist! Cave in your head Facist! Facist! All hope is dead!" And it seemed to be helping with Oxi's song writing as well. He always seemed to have new lyrics and guitar parts as well. Of course, these were Oxide's guitar parts for Oxide. The band would sometimes build songs around intentional harmonies, but for the most part, they were being made up as practice went along. Manic made this seem easy. Scourge did no. The lyrics were repeated time and time again, sometimes not even sung as they focused on some kind of a bass line. Eventually, by some chance of fate, Scourge had stumbled something together. It was a strange blend of not wanting to be hackneyed, but not having the talent to do anything complex. Anyone listening would know the chords were simple, but it was... interesting. Not nessecarily good or bad, but certainly an interesting string of notes. "Needs a better beat to it..." Scourge said to himself. "I dunno, I'm kinda digging it." Manic shot back. "Damn, Oxi, you keep pumping out new sets of lyrics. Where's all this coming from?" "LSD, cocaine and pot man." He smirked, putting his nose in the baggie of coke and taking an LSD blotter. "Be right back, gonna write like 10 songs worth of lyrics." He said before running upstairs. Skip ahead 2 hours and he had way more than 10 songs worth of lyrics. "Fuck, I hate the comedown of Cocaine, an hour long high and 2 hours worth of bleh and headache...." He whined. Putting the lyrics onto the table. "LSD was the last thing to keep me up there, but its starting to wear off...." He cracked open a beer and chugged it, crushing it in his hand and tossing it over his shoulder. "Alright, lets practice some more...." "You wanna keep your high, then don't drink a beer!" Manic laughed, picking up the sticks again. "That'll just make you tired, dude! Scourge, you practicing along this time?" Scourge was practicing hitting two simple notes one after the other, more to figure out getting more precise quick motions. The same two notes, again and again, mostly keeping time but faltering slightly. "Can't get these bloody notes right." He said without breaking patterns. How was he paying for all this stuff? Manic had no idea, but he wasn't taking the band's money or getting hurt, so it wasn't his business. Scourge stayed unplugged as Oxide screamed out some of his newer lyrics and Manic wailed along with him. Scourge just stayed to the side at the metaphoric kid's table, trying to get something much more basic correct. There was an anger fueling in his mind forcing him to be better. Even if they weren't master musicians, seeing people this good at their craft was only fueling his anger and need to get better... "Your fingers are bleeding again." Practice stopped as Scourge kept playing through his thin trickles of blood. "Don't care," he growled, only using the comment to fuel his need to play. "Man, good thing you aren't on cocaine, or else you'd be bleedin' twice as fast." He said, looking over to him and seeing the blood hit the floor, realising that he may have been doing cocaine. ".....Oooooook then....." He looked down at the small pools of blood. ".....Uuhhhhh......maybe we should take a break......" Oxi then looked over at Manic, wanting his opinion on this scene. "Yeah, dude." Manic stood up and went for the makeshift first aid kit they kept in the back area of the practice space. He came back with a roll of some old gauze tape. "Seriously, at least cover that up if you wanna keep playing, that's Napalm's guitar." "Don't tell me how to practice!" Scourge snarled out at them, splittle coming out at the initial yell. "Keep your fucking hand offa me!" "Okay, are you trying to piss me off, dude?!" Manic said. "You sleep with my boyfriend and yell at me for NOT wanting your blood everywhere? I live here!" "What're you gonna do?" Manic just stared back for a moment. "You can grab your own bass and come back when you realize you're being a dick." Manic said, leading Oxide out by his arm. "Don't bother showing up to practice." The moment him and Oxide were in the van, he flopped down on the old mattress in the back of the van, and exhaled deeply. "Sorry you saw that," Manic mumbled. "Dude needs to get over himself." "Looks pretty angry over us trying to help him." Oxi said, pulling Manic down with him onto the bed and pulling the covers over the 2 of them. "If he's gonna steal a bass, lets hope he doesn't get caught...." He snuggled up to Manic, kissing his cheek before closing his eyes so he could fall asleep. Daylight was still shining a little, but Manic wasn't too surprised. He was losing a high and drinking booze at the same time, not to talk about their practice. Manic didn't fall asleep, only pretending when Scourge stormed out and silently watching his van pull away from the building. Manic sighed and turned back to Oxide. What an odd guy. What an exciting, odd guy. Oxide would eventually come to in the middle of the night, Manic hurriedly shaking him awake. "Dude, remember saying you hoped Scourge wouldn't get caught?" he said, panicked. "I heard a music store got robbed on the radio, they said cops are in pursuit of a suspect. It's gotta be him, right?" "Oh for fucks sakes....We gotta help him don't we?......Shit....." Oxide grumbled, getting up and putting a shirt on as well as his shoes. "Come on Manic, can't lose our backup bassist, and I am using the term 'Back up bassist' pretty damn loosely." After Manic got in, they sped off to find, and help the ex crackhead they call their back up bassist. "Did it say what street he was going down?" He asked Manic, looking back for for a brief second before looking back at the road. Manic was fiddling with the radio, looking for any new information. "Said the car was rushing down fourteenth towards the-" Manic hushed immediately as he got the news station he'd been searching for. "...anyone in the Blackfriar area should be wary, as the suspect is believed-" "I know where he's headed," Manic said simply. "Let's go, we're saving his ass and chewing him out." Manic criss-crossed through alleyways and strange back roads to ship entire streets, until the areas of the city got grittier and grittier, and the chorus of police sirens was beginning to get louder. Manic quietly parked their van and turned off the lights in front of a nondescript building, a forgettable car in a row of forgettable cars. The two waited at the entrance to an alley... The moment they saw headlights, Manic rushed into the road and furiously pointed the car towards the alley the two were hiding out in. The headlights were off and the swerve was professional as Scourge's van quietly hid in wait for the police cars to pass. Just one problem. This clearly wasn't Scourge's car. The bat woman who stepped out was visibly pissed at them. She was dressed a bit tarty, but Manic didn't dare say anything, as the daggers she shot into them told them they'd somehow wronger her. As though they had... ... "So, boys," the woman said with plenty of sass. "Do you think I'll forget you both stealing my purse? I need that map back, too." "Aren't you Rouge the bat? Since when did you start selling your body~?" Seems like these 2 have a little bit of history behind them. "To answer your question, fuck you, we don't have it." Oxi shot back, flipping her off. "Charming." Rouge said, glowering back at him. "Now where's the map?" She definitely hadn't bought it. "We were just trying to help some guy we thought was- Why were you robbing a MUSIC store? Weren't all those circles jewelry stores, or auction houses, or something?" "So you have the map?" "So you have an answer?" Manic retorted? "For once, I'm not guilty, hun." She said, watching the last of the straggling police vehicles as they sped in pursuit of a car that wasn't out anymore. "A green hedgehog was running from the building. He told me to follow him, and... he lead me into a trap." "Green hedgehog? That's gotta be Scourge, right?" He noticed those sidelong glares Oxide kept giving Rouge. "Okay, wait. What's up with you two? You two know each other?" "She stole my pop tarts when I was 8........." Really Oxi? Jesus christ. Oxi had the most derpy face when he pointed to Rouge. As if he was still 8. Manic and Rouge both looked back at him in disbelief. Rouge shifted her posture, not taking off her sassy glare. "He stole my juice box," she growled back, no more over it than Oxide seemed to be. "You broke off the handle bars off my cousins bike, he ended up beating me up." What were they, 8? Oxi was a total child Oxi and Rouge bickered about past experiences for quite a while. But it seemed like they seen each other since grade school. "Okay, shut your faces!" Manic shouted all of a sudden. They stopped bickering for long enough for him to get a word in. "So Scourge is fine?" "Can't say for certain, but he's not the one in chase." Rouge said. "Now, about my bag-" "We saved you from the cops, ain't that repayment enough?" "No." She said simply. "Am I getting my jewels back or not?" "Come on, we're planning a tour, we need that cash!" Manic pleaded, but Rouge wasn't budging. ".......I got a better idea." Oxi said. He grabbed a baggie of cocaine and a sheet of acid. "This is worth about 100 pounds in total. That enough?" Oxi asked. "Do I look like an addict?" Rouge shot back, seemingly offended at the offer. "LOOK." Manic commanded. "You're dressed fancy, you're driving a fancy car, you clearly don't need the money right now. We do need the money right now. Just treat it like cash, alright? We saved you from the cops and gave you a hundred bucks, just take it and go, lady. Wouldn't want the cops getting tipped off about the thief, eh?" Rouge glared back, and snatched the drugs from Oxide's hands before storming to her car without another word. "Do you just have a pocket for huge amounts of drugs, or something?" MAnic asked on eh walk back to their van. "Like, you always have so much with you." "I have a secret stash in the band van. It was for the tour. But it can work as a pretty good bribe too I guess. And also, a lot of it is bunk coke, meaning it doesn't do shit. I can make money off of selling shit cocaine. I just gave her a bag of the shit cocaine." He said as he closed the door and held Manic's hand, giving him a kiss. "Let's hope she doesn't find out it's bad 'til we're in the US," Manic said, amused at the kiss and responding by giving Oxide one of his own. "Scourge doesn't know crap about guitars. How crappy do you think the one he stole's gonna be?" "He probably bought some Chinese made knock off of a Fender. Now, they aren't bad, but they don't last, and the necks warp really easily." Oxi said, resting his head on Manic's shoulder. "Now off we go, I wanna cuddle with you in bed...." the tired little hedgie ordered. "Maybe he'll just bring back a plank with two pieces of string glued to it?" Manic joked as Oxide leaned on him. "Yeah, sorry about that. Come on, let's get to the practice space... ..." ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ "I'm sorry." Scourge grumbled at the back entrance to the practice space. Night had come and gone, and early rays of run were shining low in the sky. "And why should I let you in?" Manic said, milking Scourge's sudden apology for his own amusement. "Oxide's still upstairs, and he wants to cuddle." "He always wants to cuddle." "Well, I wanna cuddle him, too!" The bickering carried on and ended up waking up his partner with the sounds of a begrudging yet still slightly genuine apology. "Yeah, I get you were just helping." He could hear Scourge say. "You are you letting me play with you guys or not?!" Oxi walked down stairs, in nothing but his boxer shorts. He walked up to Manic and brought his arms around them. "Let Scourge in. We gotta practice don't we?" Oxi said to Manic, gnawing on his shoulder sleepily. Scourge pretended to act casual, but there was still a relief to his posture. He hadn't screwed up enough that he wouldn't get to see Manic or Oxide again. Yet he was still fine with looking away while the two groggy hedgehogs nuzzled against each other. The two stood comfortably against each other while Scourge's new strings was slowly plucked and tuned. "Didn't know any of the brands, so I grabbed the one with the highest price." Scourge delivered. It was at least a pretty guitar, metallic red with a black pickguard. But the brand was some strange foreign brand that sounded on the better end of okay... but just okay. Hell, it fit the look, at least. "So you're really wearing that to practice?" Manic joked as Oxide kept walking into the practice space. "You're shameless." He sat down at his usual place in front of his drums, clearly not bothered by how little he was wearing. "What, think I'm wearing to much?" He asked, grabbing onto the elastic band of his boxers, about to pull them down as he looked at Manic with a very seductive face on him. Even going as far as to move his eye brows up and down. Manic snorted at the waggling eyebrows. "Surprised you're even wearing that, dude." He chuckled. "Wear what you want, ain't like we haven't seen you... ..." Manic didn't finish the sentence, slightly struck by what he was saying. Yeah, they'd all seen him without clothes. Everyone in that small space had seen each other without clothes. The realization struck Manic with something bizarre, something changing. He actually started to blush a little, but not from Oxide's comment. "Hey, uh- I guess we've all slept with each other, haven't we?" He was laughing nervously now. He wasn't sure if he should have been comfortable with that. Scourge stayed awkwardly quiet. Oxi took his guitar off and walked over to Manic. Giving him a smooch on the cheek. "Stop being so embarrassed about it, we've been doing this since 1978, at this point its normal~." He wanted to comfort Manic, though whether it was or not was a different story. "Come on now, lets practice, then we can be gay later and not feel embarrassed about it." The line did help. Just a little. Just enough for Manic to get back a genuine smirk. "You're practicing in your boxers. Ain't like we ain't already being gay and unashamed." Manic said, twirling his drumsticks in his hand. "Come on, guys, let's get this mess on the road." The sound of the new bass was a bit smoother than they may have preferred, but it didn't mesh poorly with the style. Actually, it added a strange contrast to the rough, raw playing style Oxide was using. That wasn't to say Scourge's playing wasn't rough, it simply came with a strange tinge to the sound that at least didn't take away from their sound. But they were more focused on just embracing the gay. And Jason would realize that when he would show up to practice, and find all three of them getting a laugh out of practicing down to their underwear.

Jason opened the door and saw everyone in their underwear. ".......Why didn't you guys tell me you all wanted to fuck, coulda given you guys some space....." Jason sighed, closing the door and set everything up. "Alright....Oxi?" Everyone turned to Oxi. "Right.... ONETWOTHREEFOUR!!!!" Practicing with the full band and the new bass sound helped them get a better picture of how the new sound was affecting their overall style. It have just a tiny bit more grounding than they usually had. Enough to keep the normal chaos of everyone else's playing more down to earth. Of course, grounded was relative for their style. VERY relative. Most of them still noticed the small change, even through Scourge's sub-par playing that was getting slightly less sub-par by the day. Jason was the only one that didn't notice the changes immediately, still seemingly skeeved by the shamelessness of the three. "Alright, guys, I think princess wants us to get dressed." Manic said, reaching down and grabbing his vest. "I'll put on one clothes, but that's it!" "Nice English Manic, soon you'll be able to pass kindergarten and move up to grade 1~" Oxi teased, putting on a pair of pants before strapping his guitar back on. Once everyone was clothed, it was back to practising. Oxi with his harsh guitar style and his harsher vocals. Scourge with his harsh-on-the-ears-in-the-way-that-hes-worst-than-the-rest-of-the-band bass playing, and the rest of the equally harsh but slightly better than Scourge playing styles. It passed slowly for Manic. Very, very slowly. He wanted the time to just be gone, but practice was always dragging out more and more. Maybe Scourge needed to practice a certain chord progression before getting back into normal speeds, or Oxide wanted to test out some new lyrics, or Jason wanted to beg Oxide to wear more clothes. Either way, there were constant distractions that drew it out for Manic. By the time practice was over, Manic leaned back and let out a drawn out, impatient sigh, happy to get his chance to talk. "I ain't that bad a player," Scourge joked in response. "You're getting somewhat better~" Oxi teased, going over to Manic and whispering something into his ear, that something was Oxide asking if he could kiss Scourge, and maybe cuddle. "Hey, actually, Oxi- Jason, we've gotta talk about something kinda serious. You mind if we get a little space?" When Jason has left, Manic sighed. "Kinda coincidental, man. Uh, I guess I've been thinking. You know, those times I slept with Scourge weren't just for him. And you know we've been through hell together. Maybe we should, uh..." Manic was jolted by feeling Scourge's arm around his waist. "You wanna have to boyfriends. Hell, Oxi had the same idea... and I ain't against it~" "I'm up for that~" Oxi said, wrapping his arms around Manic and Scourge, looking at the 2. Manic looked between the two guys with arms wrapped around him for a moment, slightly in disbelief. "Thanks, babe..." Manic said, leaning over and giving Oxide a kiss on the lips as thanks. "That the best you can do?" Scourge said to Manic when he pulled away. "Here's how you give a real kiss~" In a second, Manic found himself slammed against the wall, and even from a distance, it was clear Scourge's tongue was completely dominating Manic's. "Now come here, Oxi." Scourge said with a grin, motioning for the orange hedgehog. "Lemme see what you're made of~" Oxi smirked, walking over to Scourge. He tried to do what he did to Manic, but Scourge was way bigger than Oxi. So he just settled for letting his tongue dominate Scourge's. "MmmmMMM!" Scourge grunted, pulling away. "Damn, that ain't easy to do... maybe I'm not going hard enough on you." Manic clutched Scourge from his side, leaning his mouth close to Scourge's face. "You said you could dominate any guy... but now you've got two guys to worry about." "Oxi, what was that you wanted to do?" Manic offered, wrapping his right arm around Oxide's side. "Go upstairs and cuddle?" Oxi nodded his head up and down in an almost comical way. "Yep, you wanna join in?" He asked. Wrapping both arms around the 2 again. "Like he'd wanna say no," Scourge added. The three were already on their way up the small back stairwell into Oxide and Manic's living space. They knew just from the walk upstairs it was going to be awkward to find a middle ground for all three in any regard. Manic and Oxide had been dating for so long, and Scourge was now a last minute crush for them both. But Scourge had the personality to pull off being a third wheel. This was apparent even as they sat cuddling against one another on the mattress, where Scourge managed to have both of his lovers cuddling up to him at once. "This is so weird, I kinda love it..." Manic said. One arm was huddling him close to Scourge's chest, the other holding Oxide's waist as they kissed in front of Scourge. "I love it too, I love both of you~" Oxi smiled, after making out with Manic, Oxi turned over and started domming Scourges tongue with his own. And that's how they passed the early afternoon. Someone would leave to change the music on the radio, or grab some food, or other menial things, but they were never leaving their partner waiting. Just three guys, loving each other and enjoying the shamelessness of it all. "Damn, did you really leave just to drink?!" Manic said after Oxide had returned from a brief leave, pulling away and laughing after tasting the alcohol on Oxide's breath. "Yah, why do you ask?" Oxi asked sheepishly, knowing he had beer breath. The cuddling went on till the next day. Practising, playing shows and cuddling, that's what they did till Napalm got back, when they had to ask Scourge to leave the band. Even if they didn't do much, didn't go on many adventures the three were growing close. Music drove their relationship, and when all three played music together, there was a kind of connection they couldn't get anywhere else. But the three were growing too close to their temporary bassist... "What?" Was all Scourge could say when he saw Napalm around Jason's shoulder and heard the news. "But I've learned. I've learned an instrument for you guys and- You're gonna kick me out like none of that happened?!" "Scourge, you knew you were a temp!" Manic said back. "We needed a bassist when he was in the US, you know this! It ain't anything personal, babe-" "I don't- I thought I was your boyfriend. I thought I was your boyfriend, too! Why the fuck are you gettin' me to leave?!" "You agreed to be a temporary member, you can stay here, you just can't stay in the band, unless the time calls for it." Oxi tried to explain, but this hog wasn't getting it through his thick skull that just cause he learned how to play bass didn't mean he could stay in the band. Scourge wanted to fight back, but he couldn't think of the words. Manic had just the right words for him, though. "You're still our boyfriend, dude. We can still practice with you, and we'll still play with you sometimes. But Napalm's been with us since we started. And I mean... he knows the genre a little better than us." The point finally seemed to be getting through to Scourge. "Shit... Shit!" He kicked the leg of one of the metal tables in the back, angry at himself more than anyone else. Napalm just seemed mildly confused at everything. "Me and Oxide are kind of dating him," Manic explained quietly to Napalm as Scourge controlled his emotions. "It's been... complicated." "I see....well....lets get practicing....and then get to America..." He laid down a sheet of paper onto the table. "We gotta leave in like 2 weeks, I've set up gigs in New York, Boston, New Hampshire, Washington DC Florida, Texas, Indianapolis, California and one in Oregon....." He then set down a map, he had marked the roads to take and the circled the places to play. The others looked over the map, Manic visibly surprised. "Woah! ...I mean, America's pretty big, ain't it? So like, a whole bunch on both coasts, a few in this giant place in the middle, and... How're we getting around, anyways? Like, are we leaving on a boat, or renting a van, or something? We can't-" He shrugged. "Plane tickets are expensive." "We're getting on a boat, taking the van, and doing 15 dates in 20 days...." Napalm said, even he knew it was kinda ridiculous, trying to do that. But hey, they had to try right? "Lets practice our asses off and keep playing at the local places too, though I've heard the Roxy is shut down now, the 100 club is still around though..." "Alright, let's figure out when we've gotta leave, and we'll get tickets. We've got the cash to pay for it." Manic started walking towards the drawers in the club, opening up the one that was filled with jewelry and bills they'd gotten from Rouge. Well, was filled. The bills were left in the drawers, but the jewelry was all gone. A single note was left. "Now we're even~" It read, marked with a lipstick kiss in the same color Rouge always wore. Manic seemed almost terrified at this note, and kept digging through the drawer, ignoring all the bills that were still in there. It was all gone. All of it. Oxi walked over to Manic, who seemed to be trembling. "Rouge took the jewels, didn't she?........Fuckin hell mate...." Oxi cussed, kicking a chair over. "Fuck. fine, I'll think of something....." It was 3 AM and Oxi came running into the practise space and up the stairs. "Alright we can do this..." He said out of breath. "Hm...?" Manic and Scourge both seemed equally tired. Scourge stayed asleep as Manic barely woke up to the sound. "Oxi, what's up, where've you been all night..." "Robbed another liquor store, mugged some rich guy and broke into a rich guy's house. We got money, let's do this shit...." Oxi said, placing the bags onto the ground. It was just money. "Since it would be kinda suspicious for punks to have anything over 100 dollars besides their instruments, I just stole money...." Oxi explained, before crashing on top of the 2 sleepy hedgehogs. Scourge barely grumphed in his sleep, subconsciously shifting and giving Oxide space to lay on his chest. "You think it ain't gonna be suspicious... to have a sack of cash?" Manic joked, moving aside so Oxide could lay down more comfortably. "Next time, lemme come along for the fun. But thanks, Oxi." Manic gave him a sleepy kiss, and wrapped both arms around Oxide. "You're welcome...." Skip ahead a couple of weeks, the band was on the boat, their van on the car deck and they were on the upper, looking out into the ocean. "This things fucking huge, it's like the god damn titanic, lets hope it doesn't crash into an iceberg" He laughed, looking at the very blue view. It certainly wasn't a cruise liner by any means. It was meant to take it's passengers across the ocean, not much more. Sub par ships were still nicer surroundings than the band members were used to, and they were certainly fine with the lack of accommodations. But Manic wasn't with Scourge or Oxide enjoying the view. He was in the room Napalm and Jason were staying in, speaking to them both. "...I asked Scourge, he said he was fine with it," Manic said to the two. "But I mean, that was... it was real money. I wanted to buy him an engagement ring honestly, but... I dunno." He sighed loudly. "And I tried talking with Scourge seriously, but him and Oxide are just... they're getting worse again. It's just always coke or booze or whatever with them, and they aren't listening. I kinda feel like you and Jason are the only guys who really listen right now." "As long as he doesn't kill himself, land in jail, or start taking from the band, then I'm fine with it...." Napalm said, Jason nodded. "You shouldn't worry about it, he's been eating normally, he's making sure he doesn't skip a meal just so he can spend money on blow." Napalm continued, in all honesty, he couldn't care less. Maybe he was the stingy one. Maybe he was the only one really concerned about this. He didn't know drugs, maybe these were some of the better ones. Maybe he was just losing it. "Yeah, I know." Manic said, putting on his smile again. "I'm just being crazy, ain't I? Thanks for listening, guys. Really." He started to walk towards the door, but not before asking one more question. "Promise you won't tell Oxi about the ring, alright?" "Don't worry, we won't....." Jason assured him. Oxi and Scourge were on the passenger deck, Oxi hugging the big huggable teddy bear. Scourge seemed a bit bashful about having someone hug him in public, but he wasn't complaining. "This place is shit," Scourge admitted. Not the boat itself, but the passangers all seemed so bland. They were clearly the odd ones out among all manner of ugly fashions and bland people. "Hope the tour's gonna be more exciting than this dump." "Same here. This place is really boring to be honest...." Oxi said tiredly, looking around the boat, before going back to burying his face into Scourge's chest. "Enjoying the view?" Scourge teased as he looked at Oxide buried in his chest. Sure, they'd been dating for a little over a month, but there were still bits of doubt in his mind about dating someone like him. Not a punk, but after everything that had happened when he was still addicted. Could he really trust Oxide if he got into a shitty place again? Not that he wasn't in a shitty place already with their current habits, but he wouldn't admit that to himself. The music over the speakers was some terrible cod reggae. "How bout we go to our room and grab some coke, eh?" He offered. "Make this shitty trip more tolerable." "I'm guessing you don't like reggae?" Oxi asked, holding his hand as they walked back to the room. About 15 minutes later, Oxi and Scourge were on he bed, madly making out. High on coke and LSD. If nothing else, drugs and alcohol put them in such a frenzied state they couldn't help but make out with each other. As soon as their problems were aside, there was nothing stopping the two of them. Odd. They hadn't seen Manic since they'd boarded the boat. There was some banging on the cabin to their side. They didn't bother stopping. If Scourge wasn't gonna enjoy the boat, he was gonna make sure none of the other passengers did, either. "Let's fuck and moan really loudly and piss them off~" Oxi smirked, looking at Scourge who seemed to like that idea. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Oxi walked out, doing up the zipper on his jeans as he went looking for Manic. Manic wasn't anywhere Oxide expected him to be. Not the lounge, the decks, with Napalm or Jason or the van... did he just miss him? Maybe a second look would help find him. But he was one place that he normally wouldn't have searched. In the kitchen of the ship, of all placed, scrubbing dishes. "Nah, but the kitchen head said I could work for the cruise," Manic admitted to one of his temporary co-workers. "Just- every cent counts or something, y'know?" It didn't matter what it took, he was getting a ring for Oxide honestly. Even if he had to get an actual job to buy it. And he worked religiously, day after day. There were entire days where none of the band members would even see him until nighttime. Jason and Napalm and Scourge would find out, but Oxide would just have to wait for whenever Manic would deign to appear. After a week, they finally got to New York. They drove out and into the city, looking for this place called CBGBs. They went into an area known as the Bowery, Oxi saw a poster for their show. "Hey wait guys, slow down!" He said, getting out of the van to check it out. "Alright, it said that 2 bands are opening for us, ones called Bad Brains, the others called Suicide...." Oxi told them, cracking open a pepsi instead of his usual beer. Manic seemed happy with this change for Oxide, even if it was just one moment. "Alright, sweet. This should have an address, right..." He scanned over the sign for a moment, before zoning in on the small print in the corner. They were off just as quickly as they stopped. "And how much did you get?" Scourge asked under his breath, to make sure Oxide wouldn't hear. "About 120," Manic said in a hushed tone. "I don't think that's enough, neither. You talk to Oxi about his drinking for me...?" The real reason he wasn't drinking was cause of the age limit in America, it's 21. Luckily the club owners have all agreed to allow them to play as long as they don't drink. "Hey Oxi....about the amount you've been drinking lately...." Scourge started, even though he really had no say in this since he drank a lot as well. "Dude....shut up, you drink much more than me don't give me the talk." Oxi said, laughing a little, he did seem stoned. "Wasn't saying it like that," Scourge lied. "Ain't a lot for you. What, drinking any different in the US?" "It's not legal here, dude. Not 'til you're twenty one." Manic added. "Like bein' underage stopped us before," Scourge grumbled. The five were already getting close to their destination, now that they finally had an address. "So we've got fifteen sets across the country," Manic said, parking in the lot behind the building. "You guys ready for this?" "Yah...." Oxi grumbled, opening the van doors as he hauled his equipment out the door, bringing it through. "Hello gentlemen, I'm guessing you're the band 'The Amphetamines'?" He asked, he was a yellow hedgehog with a scraggly greying afro and beard. "Yep." Oxi nodded, pushing the equipment to the stage. "Yeah, this is our first tour stop," Manic added as he started work on moving his drums. "Any of the other acts arrived yet?" The sound of some of the others playing their instruments somewhere backstage was enough to give them their answer. Manic waited impatiently through soundcheck for those last few hours before the set started, when they had time to breathe and spend to themselves. He went searching for that yellow hedgehog again, alone. "Hey, dude," Manic started. "I'm really hard up for cash right now. Are there any like, tables that need to be waited or some kinda employees that need a shift picked up? I need money badly." "I can get you to work till 11PM, that's when you guys will be going on." Hilly, the owner said. "I don't have any outfits, though I do have an apron. Throw that on and serve these people drinks behind the counter and I'll pay you 4.44 an hour." He continued before handing Manic an apron. Manic was genuinely surprised to get a gig like this. He had to beg for much longer to get a real job on the ship, and he'd burnt enough bridges back home that finding any kind of a job was nigh on impossible. "Really, thanks, mate." Manic said, instantly tying up the apron and patting the owner on the shoulder. "It helps a hell of a lot." Of course, he didn't know the first thing about bartending, but he could probably bluff his way through this. He knew basic cocktails, and there was another bartender. Hopefully, he wouldn't be too much of a pain. And hopefully, Oxide would keep true on his promise and not bother with the bar. No one, except for crossdressers and gays, ordered fancy shmancy drinks. Just the regular whisky, vodka, alcohol + soda combinations, stuff like that. Suicide were 2 guys, one singing, the other on a keyboard, while there was a drum machine playing in the background. The lead singer had an 8 foot long Bike chain, he would whip it at the crowd and at the walls, scaring the hell outta everyone. Bad brains were an all dark furred punk band, an early predecessor of hardcore. They were insane, the lead singer was doing back flips, jumping onto people and singing ontop of them, going 1000 miles an hour the entire time. Manic was happy to watch the shows from the bar. Sure, it didn't have the same thrill as being right up against the stage, and he was working, but watching from a distance helped him appreciate just how much went into the showmanship. Manic was almost scared when he watched the second act play. Not because he thought they were doing to hurt themselves, but because he was worried Oxide was gonna want to steal some of that showmanship for his own energized play style. 10:56. Manic finally had a chance. He threw off the apron and hopped the counter, careful to get backstage... and surprised to find Scourge standing at the door to the exit. "Oxide was wondering where you were," he said, "Wanted to make sure he didn't see you." "Thanks," he said, running past towards Napalm and Jason lounging near the stage. "Come on, what're we waiting for? Let's show 'em what we're made of." Oxi got onstage, along with the rest of the band. Seemed like Hilly must've copied the tape because people seemed genuinely excited to see them. "We are the amphetamines, we're here to sell out and play 100000 seat stadiums cause we're a bunch of faggots who can't play but HAVE LOTS OF MONEY! ONETWOTHREEFOUR!" Oxi strained himself on what he just said, mainly because he didn't breathe once for that entire sentence he just spoke. Their first American show shouldn't have felt any different from any of their normal shows, but there was nothing familiar here. The accents, the money, the food. Even the tiny details of how people acted seemed different, but if there was one familiar thing, it was the music. Their music was just as loud and exciting across the pond, and the crowds seemed to love it just as much. For once, they were back in familiar territory. And Scourge's jealousy seemed to have died down. He watched from the stage entrance, getting a personal view of every move and motion every band member performed. As though he wasn't in special standing with them already. Oxi didn't steal from the previous acts stage performance, he just made his crazier in his own way. He had a tough time playing with how he just went fucking everywhere onstage. Luckily the only different thing the lead guitarist had to do was solo. Oxi calmed down and let Jason have the spotlight for that, which allowed him to play properly at this point. Just from those two bands, Manic knew that this tour was gonna show him so many new ideas for performances and shows, not to mention new angles to the punk sound, and he was thrilled. New ways to expand on how their band performed... Manic knew he was gonna have some fun exploring how they could change their performances after everything they'd see in the US. The band had gotten their pay and Manic his bartending wages on top of that before meeting up to help the rest of the band with moving their equipment into the van. He was almost to his goal already. Maybe it wasn't a ton, but he wasn't paying bills with it. He just had to get one nice luxury item. And one that would mean the world to Oxide... "...and that chain-! That was such a cool idea, but I ain't trusting any of you with a bike chain. Especially not Scourge." Manic said, quite serious. "God, that was just the first show... I'm pumped!" "Yah, now lets haul ass to Boston!" Oxi cheered, case of beer in his cluches as he shared it with Scourge. Seems like Napalm and Jason wern't all too big on beer, they just liked to smoke pot, and be gay. At the next venue, there was a place called The Rat. They were playing with a band called The Freeze. They had released a single, which Oxi and the band listened to while at the club. It was pretty decent. "Awesome, can't wait to hear the rest of their songs." Oxi smirked, waiting for them to go on. Once again, Manic was nowhere to be seen. This time, pleading with the owner and failing to find any kind of a small job that needed to be filled. So for once, Manic would come around and hang out with Scourge and Oxide before their set. Scourge leaned with one arm around Manic, who didn't even bother coming up with an excuse for where he'd been. In fact, he'd been impossible to find for longer than he'd been with the band in some regard, outside of traveling from place to place. "Alright, so I'm thinking..." Manic started, not sure if it'd be a good thing to say. "But this is an insane tour schedule, right? So what if... we get Scourge to play some of the sets? He's coming along, and I mean, Napalm got all these sets for us. He should get all the breaks he wants, you get me?" "Hey, I still like playing shows, I don't want a break unless I'm dead or passing out, and even then i'm still gonna wanna play." Napalm protested, besides, Scourge would probably fuck something up anyway. "Scourge can play guitar, I'll teach him in the van how to." Oxi said, hanging out behind the venue with the others. The freeze were hanging out there as well. "Alright, just a thought, forget I said it." Manic responded. "I was-" Scourge wasn't sure what to make of Oxide's comment. "I'm supposed to learn guitar in less time?" "You already know the basics, and you learned bass quickly, right?" Manic added. "I mean, you had most of the basics down for bass guitar, too, but still." "You'll be fine, plus guitar strings are easier on the fingers," Oxi said, raising his arm and wiggling his fingers. Then again, he had been playing guitar for quite a while, so his fingers had toughened up. The freeze went on and they were pretty great, a lanky, 19 year old looking kid with curly black hair was onstage. Singing his ass off, they were like the only actual punk band in Boston. Of course, they weren't. Not since the Amphetamines had rolled in, anyways. Punk bands could appreciate punk bands, even if they were high or... gone. Manic was gone yet again, not giving anyone a word of where he was going. Scourge was back at the van probably getting high again, and Napalm and Jason were nowhere to be seen. Seemed like Oxide was left alone again. And like their last show and their boat over, Manic wasn't going to show up until minutes before their set actually began, without explanation or anything. Oxi just danced with the rest of the crowd. The show was awesome. Now it was time for them to play Oxi and the band went on, but where was Manic? Oxi gave him a few minutes before he started calling out for him. "Manic......Manic?.......MANIC WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?!?!" He screamed in the mic, hoping that would get his attention. Uh-oh. Manic could hear the screaming from the back of the club. He was still trying to plead his way into some minimum wage temporary position, he didn't even notice how much time was passing. Manic awkwardly flung himself through the employee entrance and dashed through the crowd, most of the club goers stepping aside to make a path. He climbed on stage and jumped behind the drums, putting on his energized playing face. "Let's get this mess GOING!" "Finally! IT'S TIME TO SEARCH AND DESTROY! ONE TWO THREE FOUR!" The band started off. They started off with a cover of 'Search and destroy' by Iggy and the Stooges. "I'm a street walkin cheetah with a heart full of Napalm I'm a runaway sun of the nuclear A-bomb! I am the world's forgotten boy The one who searches to destroy. Baby gotta help me please! Somebody gotta save my soul, Baby detonate for MeeeeeEEEEAAAHHH!!!!" Oxide's scream always resonated through Manic's body with that strange intensity, but he'd grown past being shocked by it. He'd come to embrace it fully, riding those loud vibrations through every screeched note. A few covers and plenty of original songs, their usual set list. And as was going to be normal for them at this point, piling into the van shortly after getting paid and letting someone take the front seat and let the others rest as they drove to their next destination. Only instead of huddling together in the back, Scourge and Oxide were sitting down and fiddlign with the guitar. "I took the time to learn bass, I ain't- This ain't gonna work," Scourge said, not deterred by that fact or his seeming tiredness. He reached for the case of beer in the back and flipped a tab. "Where're we starting?" "He, try playing this." He said, chunking away at 3 chords, moving from one to the other every 4 beats. Strumming at at a rapid speed as he played them over and over again until Scourge got it right and could follow him. It was good for Manic that they were practicing guitar, since he was exhausted but trying not to fall asleep behind the wheel. Not so much for Napalm and Jason, who were cuddling in the backseat and trying to desperately fall asleep somehow. "Yeah, I know that chord... diminished fourth... basic structures..." Scourge and Oxide weren't stopping anytime soon. Scourge was good enough to perform bass on stage, or at least good enough for his band. This wasn't anywhere close for guitar, and he was never going to learn before the tour ended, but that didn't stop him. Hell, if he had two instruments under his belt, he could be much more of an asset. Manic just rode those harsh waves to keep himself moving while the other two grumbled in their half-conscious state to the loud noise. They entered New Hampshire. This show was was a house party. Playing with them was a band called GG Allin and the jabbers, who went on first. They were pretty good, with the lead singer singing his lungs out, very lewd, nihilistic songs were played from the band. "How'd you get us a gig at a HOUSE party?" Manic joked to Napalm, but they were able to drink and have fun, so he wasn't going to mock him. Maybe he'd just known the band? Oxide certainly seemed to be enjoying the band. That kind of language and content was exactly what he would expect from Oxide's lyrics. Manic didn't want to take some kind of drug to keep him high, but he was getting a bit delirious from how long he'd been staying awake. He didn't even touch the beer, it would make him too inebriated to play. All he could do was wait for their set, and hope that he'd get some kind of new energy along the way. Soon, it was their time to lay now. 2 songs into the set, the show was shut down by the cops. Along the way, Oxi was beaten with a billy club and his guitar was stolen from the cops. "You want it back? Come to the police station and pay it off, punk!" The cop said to Oxide before spitting on him and walking off. There were things that Manic would have been angry with. The show being shut down by anyone. Oxide losing his instrument. Things happened. But seeing Oxi beaten and robbed by a cop pushed him to anger he'd almost never felt before. Exhaustion was pushed to the back of Manic's mind. He tried to rush the cops, but they were driving down the street. Scourge knew exactly what was coming at this point, and by the time Manic had rushed back to check on Oxide, the instruments had been moved to their van. "Come on, baby." Manic lifted Oxide in his arms and carried him over to the car, running on adrenaline and pure fury. "We're getting that guitar back." Scourge was in the driver seat, but he wasn't driving in his normal insane style. The van lights were off and they quietly followed the cops from a distance, as Manic checked over Oxide's body. "Looks like you're gonna get all bruised up," Manic growled. "You wait in the car when we get there. I'll make you feel better later, but we've gotta fuck those guys up." "Are you fuckin' kidding me? Fuck that, we can't risk getting arrested! We got shows to play! Let's wait till tomorrow, get the guitar back and haul ass to Washington!" Oxi ordered. he wasn't going to risk getting arrested over this. "They fucked you up, we're fucking THEM up." Manic was clearly engulfed with rage. Even Scourge seemed surprised at this, and he was following them. "I figured we were just waiting for 'em to stop and lifting it," Scourge admitted. "Beating up a cop?!" There was visible anger in Manic's eyes as he wiped off Oxide's face. "Babe, they spat on you, we've gotta do something!" He pleaded with his boyfriend, fear in his voice. "WE AREN'T GETTING ARRESTED OVER SOMETHING SO PETTY!!!" Oxide screamed right in Manic's face, clearly getting pissed off himself. "STOP THIS FUCKING CAR NOW!!!" Oxi ordered, he looked frightening, like he was gonna kill someone. Scourge followed instructions, Manic alone in his sentiments. Manic just stared down at Oxide. It wasn't at all petty in his mind, it was Oxide. But he could do something Oxide didn't want and say he did it for him. Those vocals were one of the first times in a while his screaming had actually shocked Manic. He stared down at his lover through the stew of emotions. "God damn, I love it when you scream," he growled. He took all the energy and adrenaline and forced it into a rough kiss for Oxide for a few long moment. Scourge just grumphed to himself, mildly amused. "You got beat up, I just flipped." Manic apologized. "You sure those bruises ain't gonna hurt?" "They aren't gonna hurt, I'm fine," Oxi said, wiping his mouth with a smirk. They parked in some abandoned lot, not too far from the police station, but it was in an area were they wouldn't bother the sleeping hedgehogs. The sun rose and Oxi was at the police station, trying to get his guitar back. "That'll cost 200 dollars sir...." The lady at the desk said. "You can shove that 200 dollars up your ass, you cunt," Oxi said before flipping her off and walking out. "200 dollars? Are you fucking kidding me?" Jason asked in disbelief. "I know, might as well just get a new guitar!" Oxi shrugged. "Come on, how much have we got for a guitar?" Manic said. "I mean, we've got a lot for band stuff, but that's like for gas and food and... I think we've got like, fifty bucks spare, tops." None of them mentions the money Manic had been earning just yet. Oxide was still in the dark. "So what, you don't wanna rob a store over here, right? Or you got some other way to make money?" "I'll just play without a guitar till I can get a new one, simple as that. Now let's get to Washington, we've been wasting too much time already." Oxi said. They just barely manages to get to the show on time. The opening bands were all playing their first shows. There were 3 bands, Teen idols, The Untouchables and Red C. Teen idles played, they had had to stop and borrow someone's bass since their bassist's string broke, the E string. Untouchables went on, the lead singer was 15 years old, not a single member over 18. Red C went on and they were very different, with unique beats. They didn't play blindly fast the entire time. Of course, the nonsense was shared a bit more this time around. They let the first band borrow their bass, they let the Amphetamines borrow their guitar for their set. Easy, simple, clean. And Manic had thankfully found a job that night. Maybe it was just three or four hours of some kind of janitorial work, but he did his job well enough. And after their last show, he was smart enough to finish up BEFORE two minutes before the set started. Scourge was out at the van, practicing his own bass in private. "You sure you're good to play?" He asked Oxide, half joking. "Even you don't usually take that much~" "I'm alright. Let's fucking do this..." He said as he downed a beer, snorted a line and went on stage to create a huge mess like they always did. But this mess was a bit messier than usual. Oxide was higher than normal. This usually would have hjelped him play fast, and this was no exception, he was certainly wailing away quickly. Too quickly. Napalm and Jason tried to keep up with the unexpected tempo, mostly succeeding. But Manic was struggling behind from how little sleep he'd been getting. He didn't give the show his usual performances or extra flourishes, instead just trying to keep up with an already fast beat that felt even faster than it normally would have. They kept on beat, but it was easy to see from the audience that Oxide was strung out and the others were trying to run with it. The crowd however, loved it, they ended up chanting for more. The band ended up playing 6 extra songs more. Oxi loaded the equipment into the van. And Oxi drove this time, allowing Manic to sleep. He drove 3 days, with very little sleep, to Florida. He was on cocaine the entire time. Hours before the show, he decided to sleep so he could be rested enough to not end up passing out from not sleeping, cocaine could only keep him awake for so long. And again, as soon as the soundcheck was finished, Manic went searching for work again. But Oxide was completely out of it, so he wasn't concerned about waking him up in any way. One fifty. US currency was worth less than pounds, but one fifty was stellar. He just had to get a chance to run off, but given that they had one show that night and two the next, he wasn't gonna get that chance soon. So he gave himself a chance to relax for once. "Hey, mate." Manic woke up Oxide by petting his head and cooing to him in the backseat. "Sorry, your eyes are so nice, I just had to see 'em." He kissed Oxide on the lips gently, smiling down at his lover. "Show's in an hour. Thanks for driving... that last show was a disaster~" "Whaever.....th' seem t' lie it...." Oxide couldn't even seem to be bothered to fully articulate his words properly, he was so tired. He got up, put on a sex pistols shirt and walked out of the van. An hour later, they got onstage, they were the only act playing. Florida hadn't gotten any punk acts yet. The crowd seemed to not like them, judging by the fact that after 2 songs, there were 5 people left. By the end of the set, it was an empty room. Manic just smiled and laughed as they looked over the empty room. "Wow, that was... we aren't THAT bad. I hope." The only people left in the club were the few people on staff that didn't seem too amused, either. They weren't paid much for such a bad show, and the five regrouped back at the van. "That was insane. Like... should we even bother with these next two shows?" Manic was sitting with his legs dangling from the back doors of the van. "We've gotta travel to... Texas, right? We've gotta get to Texas next, and we probably ain't making money on these next shows." "Hey, the Sex Pistols drew pretty large crowds there, even if a lot of them were protesters, there were still a lot of punks there. We'll be alright." Oxi smiled, pushing the gear to the van. This time it was Oxide's turn to sleep for a while, until that is when they pulled into Texas. When they got to the venue, they saw there were protesters at this gig. On the bill was a band called The Stains. They played first, and they were good. Oxi's favourite song they played was called 'John Wayne was a Nazi'. And once more, Manic was gone. But this time, his stops were a little different. "Your girlfriend is going to love it," the clerk told Manic as she put the ring in a tiny velvet box. "What's her name?" "Oxide," Manic said simply. "We play in this band together. I'm drums, he's guitar, and-" "He?" The realization dropped on them both at the same time. ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ By the time the van trundled up to the club again, they were late for their set. The otehr act was nice enough to perform a few extra songs for the crowd as they waited for Manic to get back. Although when he got out of the van, they weren't expecting a massive bloody gash on his forehead. "Forget about it," Manic said simply, "we've gotta get playing, like, now!" "Manic....tell us what happened." Oxide said, blocking the entrance so Manic couldn't get in. The band then surrounded him, they weren't gonna let him leave without an answer. He was clearly impatient to keep moving. "Look, it slipped I'm dating a dude, and someone just got real pissy at me. It doesn't matter, I'm late for the set, we've gotta start playing!" He calmed down his pleading for a few moments to speak seriously. "Really, don't worry, we're probably just gonna have a few more protesters than this." "Alright Manic, lets do this...." Oxi said as they walked onstage. The crowd was filled with rednecks and punks. Not the best combination. For the entire show, there was fighting going on in the crowd, rednecks vs punks. Oxi ended up throwing a bottle into the crowd, and Jason got dragged into the fights, but he managed to get out. After their set, they got the fuck outta there and hauled ass to Cali. "God, how big IS America, anyways?!" They were expecting driving. They weren't expecting as many days of driving as they had. The vague idea that America was big wasn't enough to prepare Manic for the trip. But he also wasn't prepared for how Oxide's state had degenerated over the trip. And at one of their few rest stops, as soon as Oxide was out of site, Manic sighed heavily and turned to Jason. "You notice he's just constantly high or drunk?" Manic said quietly. "I get that's just how he is, but this is like that to the extreme. He's just drinking so much. Are you sure this isn't hurting him?" "I've stopped caring." Seemed like this was wearing thin on everybody. The long ass road trips, endless problems. But the shows made up for it, which is why Oxide wasn't just walking off into the distance and not stopping. Oxide came into the van, with food. At least he was eating properly. "Come on, lets go, or else we're gonna be late...." Scourge had taken the wheel. The moment Oxide was in the car, they were already off. Scourge's insane driving was pretty much the only thing that could get them to their destination on time. They would kiss or cuddle or lay down sometimes, but couldn't go too far without anyone calling them out. They couldn't practice for too long without driving someone crazy. So it was no wonder the others were staying high for most of their drives. "Okay, that's four shows on the east, two we skipped... We've got eight in California and on in that state above it." Manic said exhausted, cuddling up with Oxide in the back of the van. Crumbs from some sub-par vending machine pastry were scattered over the both of them. "So when we get there, we'll pretty much be done with all this driving garbage... ..." Oxide was drinking heavily, but it didn't seem to be damaging his health. They drove and drove and drove and drove and drove and fucking drove till they were ready to kill one another till they got to Cali. All the shows that they were playing there were with a band called Black Flag. The first step was to get soundcheck finished at their first club location. Their second move was to run away from one another for a few hours and just embrace having time where they weren't all cramped together. It didn't matter where, they were just away from each other for long enough to stay sane. Manic strolled across some local shops, since they were spending the night in the town. They weren't going to get the three hundred dollar minimum for a new guitar any time soon, but Manic was too exhausted to want to steal. Clearly, the punks in the area were influencing the shops, as he was seeing a lot of leather and black clothes on display in the small area. At least they'd have more steady crowds here. Manic would run into Oxide back at the club, after his headache had gone and he'd gotten relaxed. "Oh man, you still don't wanna see anyone, or you good now?" "I'm good, I wonder what Black Flag sounds like." Oxide said, then he heard the first chords to the song 'Nervous breakdown' before the lead singer screamed through the vocals, seems like he was on speed and coke. Soon it was The Amphetamines time to play, Oxi and the band got onstage. The crowd waited to see what this band sounded like, and why they're head lining. They soon saw why. They didn't take their anger as a hindrance to their performance. Instead, they took every shred of anger and annoyance and any bitter feeling they felt and poured it right into their performance. It would have cheered them up anyways to play a show like this. The mix of playing a show like this and venting all of their anger felt like massive weights were being lifted off of their backs. Oxide wailed on his borrowed guitar to the tune of the throbbing anger. And after their last couple of disasters, they managed a good show with a good crowd. "Holy hell, it went perfectly." Manic said to himself while they looked at the crowd after their performance ended. After that show, there were 7 more shows in Cali with the last show at; Pollywog park. A band called the tourists went on, then it was Black flag, who ended up making a lot of families scoop up their kids and nope the fuck outta there Then there were the Amphetamines, and ho boy..... It got violent. Families who stuck it out to see the next band (Who were billed as a top 40s cover act) started screaming and cussing, throwing even more things at the band, full beer cans, sandwiches. Oxide started collecting a lot of the food that was being thrown onto the stage. "Hey assholes, thanks for the free food you fucking cocksuckers!" At the end of the show, while still onstage, Oxide grabbed Manic, brought him to the front of the stage, and passionately kissed him. People went berserk. The chaos was so strong, it was almost tangible. Manic turned to the band with a wicked smile. The band knew what he was planning, but didn't stop him. Manic tapped the mic three times. "Guys, guys, we're REALLY sorry," Manic said, sounding as sincere as he could manage. All a part of his plan. "We'll make up for it, promise. Hope you don't mind if I just ask one little thing..." He faced Oxide while talking into the mike. "I've been skipping out on seeing you 'cause I've been finding jobs everywhere, Oxi. I've been saving up for this whole tour, and I've finally gotta show you something..." Manic was determined to make as much drama as he could. One hand was placed right on Oxide's ass, pulling him closer as he reached into his vest pocket. He pulled out a tiny velvet box, containing a men's engagement ring. A deep black gold with a row of five small, perfectly clear diamonds. "How about we get married? And how about you screw me senseless for the rest of my life?" There was nothing that could have stopped Manic from enjoying the sudden intense burst of chaos he'd caused. Not even the bottle that immediately smacked him straight in the head and sent him hurtling to the floor before he could get his answer. He only came to in the van some time later. It was well into nighttime, and he was nursing a massive headache, but he knew he'd ruined everything in the best possible way to end their tour. So while he sat up and held his head, he kept wearing that massive, smug grin. As Oxide watched as the bottle smacked Manic in the head, he looked down at the ground and smiled. "I do." Back at the van, when Manic woke up, Oxi pulled him in and began to kiss him, passionately making out with him as they began to strip each other of clothes. Manic didn't care about shame anymore, these people were used to them getting close. And besides, he had a husband now! They couldn't get married legally, but they didn't need it to be official. He wanted to just stay with Oxide as long as he lived. The ring was a hard find. The gems pointed up into small spikes, and the black band was a simple minimal design. The most punk rock thing he could find. Manic wasn't concerned about getting him to wear more, he was concerned about padding out Oxide's impatience for just long enough to finish his surprise. "Hey, before we consummate the marriage..." Manic started, motioning for Napalm. He opened up one of the hatches in the bottom of the van. "I wanted you to have a ring I bought with money I really earned, but we also needed this, so I picked something up for you a bit less legally~" That something was a new guitar, and one of those expensive foreign brands Oxide could get passionate about. "Do you like it, babe?" "I fucking love it~!" He cooed happily, his voice becoming a tad higher in pitch. They drove to their last stop, Oregon. They did soundcheck, they were the only band on the bill. "Alright, we're the amphetamines, and we're a bunch of gay faggots who like to suck cock and fuck each other, 1234!" The last show wasn't fueled with the same annoyance or anger, it was fuel with sheer ecstatic joy from the lead and Manic. They were as married as they were gonna get. And for them, being 'married' in spite of it being illegal was even more appropriate than a legal binding. Manic was thrilled to be playing with his husband... and Scourge didn't seem to mind one bit. He wasn't looking for commitment, just a fun time. And if Oxide and Manic were happy, he was happy. Manic didn't perform with his usual dour face, but with a cheeky grin. He couldn't help it, he just loved watching Oxide perform. Oxide was jumping all around the stage, going absolutely ham on his guitar. Seems like he had done some coke again. But then again, he hasn't played a show sober in a long time. After the show. They soon found themselves driving across America, all the way back to New York and on a boat again. But with no rushes on getting to locations or to whatever boat they'd end up sailing back on, this drive was a lot more tolerable. People got chances to sleep, they got to take more frequest rest stops, and they were able to stop and have one or two proper meals that didn't come from a vending machine. And this time, it wasn't Scourge with Oxide on the deck of the ship. The day was gloomy and looked like it was going to rain at any moment, so they had the small deck they stood on all to themselves. Manic's hand was wrenched around Oxide's toying with that new wedding band of his. "I'd say it changes everything, but we already live together pretty much," Manic said with a smile. "So what, was this tour our honeymoon? Or you gonna be up for another adventure after this?" "Another adventure~ I always wanna go on another adventure with you babe," He said, nuzzling his face in Manic's chest. "I just got a question though. Is this still a 3 way thing? Or is Scourge out of the picture now?" Oxi asked, throwing both arms around Manic's body, hugging him. "Do whatever you want with Scourge, mate." Manic happily accepted the hug and let Oxide bury his face in Manic's chest. "I know you love me, you know I love you. He's not gonna change that." The first few raindrops were starting to fall as they got further onto the ocean, but Manic didn't move. "I don't know what I did to deserve to meet you... I don't know what I did to deserve to marry you. Thank you for everything." He held Oxide tighter and smiled as the rain starting dampening the two lovers. "The band and meeting your friends and all that, it's changed me. I'm so much happier and I feel healthier and- and-" There were too many things Manic wanted to say, but he was getting too mushy for his tastes. As the rain poured over the two, Manic pulled in Oxide for another rough kiss and sat down with him on a deck chair, just wanting the moment to last. Oxi returned the kiss, hand going under his shirt as he began to rub his chest. Though he wasn't built like Scourge, he still liked to feel up Manic's body. They felt one another up as the rain grew heavier outside, but Manic couldn't wait another moment. Wordlessly, he grabbed Oxide by the arm, and started dragging him through the ship halls, straight back to their cabin. They were too young and stupid to want to do anything other than get out of their clothes and keep showing each other how much they loved each other. They didn't care about any of the other passengers, the crew, anyone who could have overheard. They didn't care about anything, other than getting to their room. But from next door, three people could hear them. Napalm, Jason, and Scourge, who were cracking some jokes and playing cards to pass the time. Scourge was fine with them marrying. Scourge was alright with being a backup bass player. And this was changing with time. Something was slowly creeping through his veins, telling him to be 'jealous', reminding him he was inferior in their eyes somehow. He was getting worse and worse as every single moment sped by, and he realized just how many mistakes he'd been making. The sound of Manic and Oxide loving one another was only going to feed his rampant jealousy...

#oxidethehedgehog #Show's Over #There's A Melody Playing #Strong Language

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