#i'm holding off posting this to ao3 even though it's long bc i might rewrite the entire thing oops

[meme-streets]

dollars event warmup activity 3 crossover: once upon a time in the west (inspired by the story about how the trio were almost hired to play those three gunmen at the beginning of once upon a time) ---

The man who hired them had pale blue eyes and a twisted-up smile that Blondie didn’t like.  He finds he’s still thinking about it the whole ride over.

“We’re right on time,” Angel Eyes says with satisfaction, glancing at his watch as they tie their horses outside the station.  His voice is low, conspiratorial.  “You two ready?” “Yeah, yeah, we’re ready,” Tuco grouses, rolling his eyes at the question.  “Right, Blondie?” “Sure.”

There’s nothing much inside to be ready for.  The train station–if it can even be called that–is next to deserted when they walk in, save a woman that Angel Eyes sends running into the sunbaked wastes despite the dirty look Blondie gives him and an elderly telegraph operator that Tuco makes quick work of: locked up in the closet.  They poke around a little more, just in case, and find nothing of concern.  Not a word between them.  Then they stake their positions and wait.

Buzz.  Buzz.  Buzz.  A horsefly flits through the harsh summer air.   Tuco’s set up in one of the rocking chairs just outside the central building, leaned back with his hat over his eyes like he’s planning on taking a nap, which takes a level of trust or arrogance or both that the other two of them don’t have.  The fly has other ideas; it seems to have taken an interest in terrorizing him, and consequently he ends up trying to fight it off.  The fly seems to be winning.

Drip.  Drip.  Drip.  There’s a leak in the ceiling. Angel Eyes, for some reason, has picked himself out a spot directly underneath it.  Droplets bounce off the crown of his hat and collect along the brim, but he remains, statue-still, as if he doesn’t even notice.

Squeak.  Squeak.  Squeak.  The weathervane turns in the wind. Leaned at the hip against an old horse trough, Blondie trails a hand idly in the sun-warmed water and squints into the glaring sun down the tracks at nothing.  He turns back to cast his gaze over the desolate station and his two would-be partners.  All things considered, he does prefer shooting at the same target than at each other, just for practicality’s sake.

After a moment he pulls his hand out of the water and wipes it with a certain amount of distaste on his ragged red duster.  They’re all three clad in one, at their blue-eyed employer’s insistence.  Smells like a frame-up job, he had said to Tuco, who’d just shrugged and said it was all the better: couldn’t be traced back to them.  He’d had to concede it was a good point.  Doesn’t mean he has to like it. That’s just one of the things he doesn’t like about this job.  The whole thing is rotten and he’d thought so from the beginning.  Not just the frame-up–though he does, as a rule, hate getting involved in other people’s personal feuds–but the whole premise.  Meet a man at the train station and shoot him.  A fellow he’d never seen before causing trouble, trying to hunt him down, the man who hired them had said (his name was Frank, if Blondie recalls correctly, but he hadn’t liked him enough to care).  He hadn’t believed a word of that.  Of course, Tuco and Angel Eyes hadn’t either; it was a bad lie and hadn’t tried not to be.  But they hadn’t cared as much as he had.  And it had to be three men, he’d been insistent on that. “I didn’t get where I am by being careless,” the blue-eyed man had said, as if this was some profound wisdom they were too foolish to understand, and Blondie had wondered for neither the first nor the last time why he was entertaining this whole addle-headed idea to begin with.

It’d been his luck that Angel Eyes had caught them at the right (or the wrong) time: in a lull, putting the bounty con on hold for a while to let the heat die down, and he had a job for three guys paying good money.  Suspiciously good money, really, which is the other thing he’d pointed out, but Tuco had said not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and it’d be nice to make a buck without a rope around his neck, and the last thing Blondie felt like was another argument about money (they’ve been having a lot of those lately) so he’d just dropped it. Tuco had joined up for the money, of course.  Angel Eyes had made some noise about not forgetting old friends, but neither of them really believed it, not after whatever kind of falling out Tuco had apparently had with him however far back.  Blondie, for his part, had been coaxed into hearing the offer because he and Tuco are partners–even if that technically only applies to the bounty scam–and with no ropes to shoot, he’d had nothing better to do.  But he hadn’t been convinced. Then Angel Eyes, upon hearing his arguments, had turned to Tuco and joked, “I think he’s just afraid of being outdrawn,” and that was the kind of thing that no gunslinger worth his salt could let slide, however stupid it might be, so he’d had to say yes.

Squeak.  Squeak.  Squeak. He sighs and shifts position against the trough, starts cracking his knuckles one after the other.  Flexes his fingers when he’s done.  At least it pays well.  And when it’s over and done with, he can take this raggedy old coat off.  Maybe it’s vain of him, but it looks awful with his hat.

Lowly, softly, the tracks begin to rumble. Blondie looks down across the rails again, but there’s nothing yet.  You always hear them before you see them.   Distantly, the whistle howls. He keeps looking, the rumble growing stronger and stronger, the water in the trough trembling with ripples, until finally in the blue-brown distance he sees the gray beginnings of the engine.  Hands on their guns, they wait.

At last, the train screams to a halt and sits before them, huffing smoke like a live thing.  Still, they wait.

A door opens; they all tense, a string drawn tight–but it’s only a mail drop.  The door slides shut.  Nobody gets off.

Blondie doesn’t like this.  It smells like a trap, like a setup, and his instinct with these things has never failed him before; he’d be long dead if it had. He watches Angel Eyes’s fingers twitch against his holster.  Watches Tuco glance between them and then tip his head, once: a signal.  They all three move across to the center of the platform and shake their heads at each other as the train starts to huff and puff out of the station. “Wrong train,” Tuco says simply.  “We’ll go back inside and ask that telegraph operator.” “Alright,” Angel Eyes agrees, and Blondie shrugs.  They start to turn.

From behind them comes the wail of a harmonica, and every last hair on the back of Blondie’s neck stands straight up.

There’s a man standing behind the tracks.  They only see him as the train chugs out of their way, with a pack hanging from one hand and the other raised to his mouth, sliding that harp back and forth as he plays, that godawful noise filling up the empty sky above the station.  Gets into of Blondie’s bones and makes him feel plucked like a wrong chord, the sound thrumming all inside of him.  There’s something horribly wrong, here.  He’s never felt this way in a standoff. “And Frank?” says the man. Angel Eyes shakes his head.  “Frank sent us.” “You bring a horse for me?” The other two glance back at the post where their horses are tied. “Looks like we’re shy one horse,” Angel Eyes says, chuckling.  Tuco laughs too.  Blondie doesn’t.  He can’t shake the feeling they shouldn’t have agreed. The stranger shakes his head, slow, solemn.  “You brought two too many.” They aren’t smiling anymore.

The seconds drag by, stretch out, jute-rope-taught.  The harmonica echoes in his ears.

A volley of gunfire.  Pain explodes in his ribs.  He pulls the trigger, stumbles, and falls.

The weathervane turns.  Squeak.  Squeak.  Squeak.

[cataclysmofthemasses]

*Sees your reply to that Anon asking for an Astroturtle smut fic. Me, who has some explicit headcanons for the pairing* Oh no, please don’t judge me.

Seriously though I enjoy reading your TMS stories. The Astroturtle ones are my favorite. I have to ask, out of curiosity, do you plan on writing more Astroturtle stories? No I don’t mean ones with smut. I assume that’s not your thing.

Also, I’ve noticed that Mallard has become one of your favorites. Does this imply any possible fanfics starring him?

Hi anon! Nice to see ya :D

Future Cata here: this post is long, sorry! I tend to get excited and ramble :')

Not judging, honestly, as long as you don't go "hEY WRITE SOME SEX AND MAKE IT STEAMY" or drop into my inbox with "WatchMojo Top 10 Astroturtle Smut Headcanons" lmao.

I'm... well, see, on one hand I'm soooorta trying to figure out how to branch out into explicit stuff? Because a good author should be able to cover just about all major themes and topics? But also I'm definitely not taking requests for it (ever, do not ask @/people who think they can get away with it), I'm probably never going to publish it because I uniformly suck at it, and definitely not before I turn 18. So we can generalize and say "not my thing", it's not really my cup of tea so :').

(What is my cup of tea? Screaming into a Keep Notes draft and stacking as much trauma as I can on all my favorite characters to try to work through massive internalized homophobia/transphobia... Yeah, I've realized I have a "type", at least recently. Please give me good fluff fic ideas so I can write happy things again...)

Anyways, on to your questions!

Fun fact! I started an Astroturtle long fic draft like, after Season 3. It's been rotting in my works, maybe 1/3-1/4 complete, for over a year now, and I can't see myself getting back to it. A friend and I had planned it out together; now that we've fallen out massively, it further buried my already low desire to work on the fic. I could post what I have, but it feels disingenuous to pass it off as completely my own, and I don't want to stir up shit again with my former friend. Besides, it's not my best work (at least imo).

As for future Astroturtle fics, I do want to get back into writing them! But I also have a couple of other fics I'm working on. Hold on, lemme grab them. Not all are TMS though... Most aren't actually :')

- DSMP rewrite fic (Lies the Rebels Told Us, being updated as I write chapters which is HELLA slow but I definitely wanna get back into it. It's on Ao3 under my alt aphotic-serendipity. Fair warning, it's Schlatt-centric - I know a lot of people are not okay with him even as a character, so...)

- Definitely-never-gonna-be-canon oneshot of two of my favorite characters in a sorta-fringe game that people don't really write about. (King's Raid. It's so much fun, I love it, if you play I'll love you and give you tips and obsess over it indeterminately.)

- Backstory fic for my favorite RP character rn. (Probably never leaving that RP group tho bc I wouldn't have an audience, but I adore Shiloh, even if he'd hate me irl.)

- TMS Season 5 "Danganronpa"-esque fic. (Danganronpa in quotes because it is definitely not Danganronpa enough to qualify - you'll be able to tell I have never played the games. Saw another TMSxDangan fic and got inspired because - oh! one of my first followers (on my main, @tmsincorrectquotes ) writes some super cool Danganronpa stuff! tagging @mewmewchann here so you can check her out bc I adore reading Hope's Chains!! - so yea I saw what she's been up to and I thought "hey lemme try that but make it TMS!" haha.)

- One or two vague ideas that might or might not gain traction.

- And I can answer that Mallard question, because guess what? I WROTE A MALLARD ONESHOT A FEW DAYS AGO! It's my first real writing in a while so I'm stupidly proud of myself, bear with me. I'm either going to publish it today or tomorrow, depending on when I force myself to do it and if anyone reads it haha. And I think I have another idea in the works :D

As for Astroturtle... Outside of the aborted fic, I really don't have ideas for them rn - at least, not any I'd see myself writing. I'm always open to good ideas though! I'll definitely think a little more about them in the future and see if I can't get something to snowball :)

I tend to write oneshots in literally one shot, mostly from 11 PM to 2 AM, which does not mesh well with waking up at 4 AM for school (in New Jersey but remote learning at a Swiss university). In addition, life's been kicking me in the ass recently and I have a lot of assignments to do - off the top of my head, I have at least three, if not four, 1000+ word essays and a speech to do for/by next week. That's not saying I'm never going to write again, mind you, but don't expect miracles :')

Also, endnote - I'm so happy people still read my stuff!!! Like, I've had people who tell me over a year later that "oh my god I adored Double Stake or Split and it's made me ship Piquet and look at these headcanons" and I ALWAYS die a little inside from sheer joy. Btw, for anyone who might be so inclined: You can ALWAYS write inspired works from my stuff or draw stuff from it or design things or even animate them if you're that much of a god! Just please tag me (and credit please) so I can see them and simp massively. I love you all, really.

Okay, I've rambled enough. Cata out! o7