#if i was them i would be scared to have a car skeleton flying above me (some distance behind but still very much there

[marshmellonew]

doyoung — 2 Baddies Commentary Film

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps - Volume 8 “War”

Hello, everyone! Story time.

Yesterday food was delivered for my two idiot dogs (they’re thrilled about it) but, because it was delivered by Fed Ex, shenanigans were bound to ensue. These particular shenanigans involved realizing that the food had not been left at the front door like tracking said it had. Instead, it was down the very long driveway by the mailbox. Specifically, it was on a low wall beside the mailbox, currently inaccessible due to a mound of plowed snow.

Now, how the delivery guy managed to get it there I’ll never know, but given that our postal system is currently killing itself to get us our Amazon orders for Christmas, I shrugged, let it go, and resigned myself to lifting an 18 pound bag plus box over that snow without dying. Which meant that in reality I just dragged it, uncaring what bumps the bag might accumulate along the way. What are the dogs gonna do? Complain about presentation?

Snow successfully circumvented; I was home free!

… until I was lifting the box into the car, hit a patch of black ice, and was suddenly looking up at the sky, my right hip and leg screaming.

I’m fine. Bruised, but fine. It’s 2020. Did I expect to not fall? C’mon, Clyde. Be sensible.

The reason I'm telling you all this is because falling on ice at 10:00pm with an oversized bag of dog food was less painful than watching this episode. 

I jest... but only a little. To be fair to RWBY, it admittedly wasn't painful in any new way. Everything that's a problem this week has been a problem for years now: confusing motivations, changing semblances, unpersuasive character beats, etc. So in some ways this episode — especially as a hiatus episode — is rather underwhelming. I expected RWBY to do something big before taking six weeks off, but this episode simply set the (unstable) stage for what's to come. With the exception of Ren, nothing changed this episode, which makes for a rather "Okay..." note to end on. It's not inherently bad, it's just a bit of a letdown after hyping ourselves up over the expectation that something even crazier than grimm soup will happen. Which, to again be fair, is on us as opposed to the writers. But that feeling of, "If this was last week, what in the world will we get right before an unpredicted hiatus?" was palpable. Turns out the answer was, "A pretty tame episode." 

As always though, let's start at the beginning. This episode is titled "War" — straight to the point — and it's actually a little shorter than our last three episodes, adding to that "Okay..." feeling overall. We open on the outskirts of Atlas, amidst what appears to be a wheat field, or something similar. Upon reflection, it makes sense that the bubbled city would be able to grow things not normally growable in the tundra. This might also explain Cinder's strange beginning. Perhaps her orphanage existed on these rural outskirts and then she was brought into the city proper? We'll probably never know for sure, but at least this is a simpler answer than, "The Madame went off to an entirely different Kingdom to secure her child slave." Occam's Razor and all that.

Ironwood's army has assembled to hold off Salem's army. Wow, aren't we glad Ironwood invested in thousands of trained professionals rather than a handful of independent fighters? Seriously though, this is now a battle of numbers. May says later in the episode that Ironwood's forces are doing their best to assist Atlas, so they should go help Mantle... but that help only exists because years ago he recognized that the tiny class sizes of the Academies, this 

wasn't going to be enough if grimm attacks suddenly increased. Sure enough, now they're in a situation where Ironwood needs even more men to keep up with Salem's creation magic. The fact that he has any at all is crucial to what little hope is left. How do Jaune, Yang, and Ren think they're going to get the time to look for Oscar without everyone dying while they're gone? Because Ironwood's army is keeping the attack at bay. I love how the story keeps angling for the "Military people are evil" message while actively showing us how much a military is needed in this world. If Ironwood had been a generic Good Guy who dismantled his armed forces because others wanted to ignore that they've always been at war against objectively evil creatures — both the grimm and Salem — then there would have been nothing to hold Salem off until small team rescue/bomb plans could be implemented. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. As usual. The army is on the front lines and one guy is scared enough that he's shaking. Can't say I blame him. As always, RWBY functions best when it leans towards horror, with skeletons rising alongside the normal grimm and intense music playing to convey the stakes. Ironwood watches the onslaught and immediately calls for a civilian evacuation into the subway system. Get people below ground, behind a few, defendable entrances, rather than wandering about the city where land or sky grimm can pick them off easy-peasy. Makes sense. Yet I'm already seeing fans make snide comments about how Ironwood is "still running," which just demonstrates how many viewers take the emotions of the show at face value — who is Good and who is Bad — rather than considering the situation and deciding for themselves. What's far more egregious than viewers enjoying a story however they'd like on a Saturday before the holiday though (seriously, my salt aside, no one has to enjoy RWBY any one way) is that RT again tries to paint Ironwood as crazy when he's... just not? Beyond the choice to animate him with scary expressions 

once he gives the order the soldier starts to say, "But sir — " and Ironwood yells for him to obey right now. The scene makes it look like Ironwood is doing something shady again. Here's this goon balking at the order, but we're not told why. What's bad about getting the people to (relative) safety? Why is this order treated like something to question at all? We're not told and, from what we do know, it's not something that would be questioned, so unless we learn something new post-hiatus, that line exists only to make Ironwood look bad. It's a (nonsensical) excuse to have another ally turning against him (slightly) and to give Ironwood the chance to look scary and violent again. Nevermind that his city is under attack and if a subordinate started questioning a completely sensible and time-sensitive order? I might yell too. 

So we're off to a great start. The above looks particularly stupid given that we immediately see the flying grimm arriving in a populated area, terrifying all the civilians there. Everyone bolts for the subway and we cut away from a man trying desperately to reach his daughter, unsure if either of them survive. But people want Ironwood to not use what few resources he has? See, this is why generic messages like, "You have to stand your ground" don't work. Sometimes there are situations where you should run and that doesn't automatically equal being a coward. It means you're smart enough to take the actions necessary to save as many lives as possible. 

Later on we'll have a similar issue with the message, "You have to trust people" when my darling Oscar briefly loses his mind.  

Now though, we see that the "fugitives" Yang, Jaune, and Ren have been taken into custody. Of course they have. Look, when the preview dropped yesterday I saw a number of takes along the lines of, "How dare the Ace Ops do this. They need to put aside their differences until the attack is over!" but no, they really don't, because it's no longer their responsibility to extend trust towards this group. Especially when doing so, to their mind, has a high chance of making a horrific situation that much worse. What are they going to do if, in the middle of a Salem attack, the kids they decided to trust betray them, attack them, and leave them knocked out somewhere while the world burns? 

...Oh wait, they already did that. 

See, the group broke trust first. Numerous times. The Ace Ops listened to Yang admit that she and Blake had betrayed Ironwood days ago. Then they watched Ruby betray him again by alerting the rest of the team, turning them against him. They swore they wouldn't attack, so Team RWBY attacked them first. They learn that Qrow had a hand in murdering their leader. They encounter the group again and Weiss gleefully asks if they want a second defeat. They watch Ruby tell the entire world to dismiss Ironwood because he’s the one who can’t be trusted. Outside of JYR not immediately attacking them when they arrived to help (something I praised them for), this group has never put their trust in the Ace Ops. So why do they — and we — expect the Ace Ops to do so now? Imagine for just a moment that it was reversed. We find out that someone betrayed the group for no good reason, set themselves against them, continued to do so as everything fell apart, told the rest of the world they’re the enemy, and then a close associate is involved in Ruby's murder. How many people would expect the group to just shrug all that off? Would they put their differences aside and embrace these people because blind trust is (supposedly) the right thing to do? Of course not! Yang would punch their lights out and everyone would cheer, but that's because they're the established heroes. Outside of that role, no one else is allowed to mistrust those who have proven themselves untrustworthy and take precautions against getting betrayed again. To say nothing of how these characters don’t have our meta perspective. Meaning, they live in a world where this trio is not a part of a protagonist group destined to remain a part of the plot because that’s how story conventions work. They’re three random teens who were promoted to huntsmen early. They’re three soldiers out of many who can, at any time, be taken out of the fight. No one on the Ace Ops is working under the belief that they “have” to be a part of this fight. From their in-world perspective, you could toss them in jail for the rest of the battle and that’s that. Outside of their fugitive status they are entirely unimportant. 

So yes, Jaune, Ren, and Yang are in handcuffs. They deserve to be. Don't worry though, they get out very soon. 

Yang makes a snide comment about Winter "Still just following orders" and honestly? I've lost the love I used to have for her as a character. Yang is just an exercise in frustration whenever she speaks now. Thus far she's blamed Ruby for everything that's gone wrong (ignoring her own choices there), did a 180 to yell at Ren for acknowledging how bad things are, worried nonsensically about Blake being disappointed in her even though Ruby is the one she fought with, and is now back to the "You just follow orders" shtick. Yang will label anything she personally doesn't like as evil order following, but conveniently ignores how following Ruby's orders helped get them into this mess, and how the one time she went AWOL made things even worse. These characters don't actually have  beliefs they stand behind, they just say whatever is currently necessary to make themselves look good, even if that contradicts previous statements or actions. 

She also gets mad at Vine for saying that grimm don't take prisoners, ignoring that she only found this out a few hours ago. No one in the group is equipped to navigate the emotional minefield that is this war because they can't even take two seconds to put themselves in another’s shoes. Weiss doesn't bother to consider Whitley's situation. Jaune points at the snow and gets frustrated that Harriet doesn't magically know there's grimm soup flowing nearby. Yang snaps at Vine for stating what she also knew to be a basic fact about grimm up until Oscar's kidnapping. It's all framed as, "How can you be this stupid?" rather than, "Oh yeah, these people haven't had the experiences I have. If I was randomly told this I'd doubt it too. I should try to explain this in a way that will make sense to them and increase my chances of being believed." 

This is the group who decided it was a good idea to tell the whole world about Salem and did it just as badly as I suspected they would. The story has shoved a delicate, information-based war into the hands of punch-happy teenagers and refuses to grapple with how that's a bad thing. 

Anyway, Ironwood comes on the radio to say that the whale is pretty indestructible on the outside, but it might be vulnerable from the inside, so let's get a bomb in there. Seems like a good enough plan as any, especially given that the grimm is currently on the very outskirts of the city, away from the civilians if/when it's blown up. What kind of bomb might this be though? 

Could it, perhaps, end up being a now severely damaged android who is based off of Pinocchio? 

Time will tell. For now, the group is quite obviously upset that Ironwood is planning a big BOOM while Oscar (and Ozpin! Tellingly, no one mentions Ozpin...) is still inside. Here's the thing: Both sides are right here. YJR are right to be worried about their friend, while the Ace Ops — who have no emotional ties to Oscar and, as just established, are questioning whether or not a grimm really kidnapped him — are right that they cannot prioritize a single life over the entirety of Atlas. They just can't! And any hero worth their salt is going to recognize this. You cannot knowingly sacrifice thousands of people (if not more) for one (admittedly awesome) farm boy. It would be a different situation if the people of Atlas volunteered to remain in danger to give Oscar a chance at escape, but that obviously isn't the situation here. If someone told me, "Sorry, Clyde, we can't get you out because the place you're in is super dangerous and attempting to extract you would likely cause the rescue party to die. Also, the longer we don't blow this location up the longer lots of other people die" I'd be like, "Fair enough. Have a nice life!" I mean, obviously anyone would be terrified and devastated by the news, but if you're still thinking straight and have even an ounce of compassion for others, you don't trade all those lives for your own. Spock does not open the door to flood the whole Enterprise with radiation!

And notably, neither does Kirk. Oscar isn't given the chance to sacrifice himself — ignoring his choice to try and undermine Salem's forces rather than escaping — so Jaune, Ren, and Yang are deciding that for him. Which, again, makes sense for them emotionally, but it's still a selfish choice. They're prioritizing their family over everyone else's. If someone ever told me they’d risked a whole city for my sake I’d be touched, but also pissed as hell. Because what were you thinking? 

Which is really my biggest issue with this divide. It would have been nice if the show had done more to make me believe these three are that ride and die for Oscar. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that they are and I'll take this characterization over the apathy we had in the past, but let's be real, it kind of came out of nowhere. The group as a whole pretty much ignored Oscar up until the movie invite and two of these characters — Yang and Jaune — have actively hurt him in the name of getting at Ozpin. Now suddenly they're willing to toss aside their huntsmen duties — protect the people — in order to save him? Nice sentiment, it's just that, as always, we have very little development for it, especially given the level of emotion shown. Particularly when it comes to Ren. The prospect of someone sacrificing Nora? I 100% believe that he draws a hard line and this kick-starts a change in his semblance. Ren is shown to be thinking about how he lost his teammate Pyrrha? Totally believe it! Someone is sacrificing the kid I'm not sure he's ever had a conversation with? That's less persuasive. At the very least, it would have been nice to have the trio grapple with whether they can or should prioritize Oscar over everyone else, rather than taking such a black and white stance of, "Of course taking the time to save this one guy while everyone else dies is worth it. You're evil for thinking otherwise." 

We even get a shot of Winter's hand shaking and clenching like Yang's used to, just to hammer home who the correct party is. 

While they begin this argument we cut to Salem who is literally conducting her grimm in their attack against Atlas. 

Very nice. I love when a villain has 

Emerald watches her, clearly freaked out, and then sneaks off to where Oscar is held. In the hallway she encounters one of the jellyfish grimm, so she casually makes it not see her until it has passed. 

Her semblance works on grimm, but not “real girl” androids? Okay. 

We all realize how crazy powerful Emerald is though, right? The stuff that she could do in a fight is staggering and I'll be forever salty that all she managed in the Penny battle was to create a couple different Cinders. Emerald, Marrow, Salem herself... RWBY has a real problem of having the antagonists conveniently not use the power at their disposal when the heroes need to win. 

So Emerald starts listening in on Ozpin's torture. We learn that Hazel was recruited when he tried to kill Salem numerous times and had to watch her keep reforming. Which, if I remember correctly, is a technique she used back when she and Ozma were playing at Gods. It worked and now Hazel believes that they "share a vision. She's going to create a new world order," one without Kingdoms or Huntsmen Academies. No, says Ozpin, she's going to divide humanity past reform, summon the Gods, and hopefully die when they take out all of Remnant. 

...My god, did we finally get Salem's motivations after seven years? 

Seriously though: seven years. It's way too late, especially when we now have so many questions attached to this supposed goal. If Salem always wanted to divide the world irrevocably, why didn't she attack, oh, say, a thousand years ago? Why has she kept to the sidelines until now? None of this answers why she held off until our simple soul was conveniently ready to fight her. We also have the issue of Salem's knowledge, or lack thereof. So she obviously knows about the Relics and that they'll summon the Gods, but not how to work them? How did that come about? Even Ozpin's motivations are murky now. He repeats Salem's curse word-for-word — though notably, minus the "You must learn the importance of life and death. Only then may you rest" part — yet unless Salem told him this herself when they first reunited — and we know they both hid things from the other — Ozpin could have only gotten this line from the lore episode, something he witnessed along with us just a few weeks/months back. So is he only now realizing that this is what Salem wants the Relics for? Might he be wrong? Or did he somehow figure this out lifetimes ago and we're just not told how? If this is the case, why haven’t Salem’s motivations come up before now? 

This sudden, "Oh yeah, she's always wanted to die" feels pretty tacked on. Like RT had Salem arrive last Volume because that's ~cool~ and then suddenly realized that they have to deal with her motivations now, so they hastily cobbled this together. But, as said at the start, this is entirely expected for RWBY nowadays. A problem to be sure, though one we've been putting up with for a couple of years now. 

During all this, Hazel shouts that this is what Ozpin deserves and the first word out of his mouth is, "Yes." 

But Oscar and the rest of Remnant don't deserve it, so make the right choice for them. How did RT think they were going to make this guy an antagonist? Ozpin has so much self-hatred and yet is still trying SO HARD that he makes Ruby Drinking Tea While The World Burns Rose look laughable. 

Oh yeah, we'll be getting to that scene in just a second, but for now I just want us all to appreciate Ozpin as a character, even if the story won't. 

....

.......

..............

...Okay, moment done lol. Sorry, Oz, there's a lot to cover this episode. 

We cut to a semi-conscious Nora who asks Weiss, "Now what am I good for?" So that’s a double serving of oof. That's when Ruby arrives with fine china steaming with tea. Or coffee. Or hot chocolate. Whatever it is these girls are drinking. What comes next is accompanied by a strange kind of vindication for me. I mean, the fandom dragged me so hard for taking issue with their snuggly smiles during Ruby's message, yet now we literally have the girls sitting back in a mansion as everything goes to shit around them. I know the knee jerk reaction to this will be, "They have to watch over Nora" and “They deserve a break” but really? All three of them need to watch her? And a break during the height of the action? Blake says she hopes everyone else is okay, but who is actually out looking for information about the rest of their team? May. Who's going to do something to get Nora help? Whitley. These characters are so good at telling us they're the heroes while rarely ever displaying those traits. They all (somehow) saw the attack on Atlas and have the ability to get out there and defend people — the job they wanted — yet Ruby looks out the window and asks, "What can we even do?" while taking a long sip of tea. The people of Mantle are (supposedly) freezing to death, yet one of the few with aura, Weiss, sits by a roaring fire going, "Do we just wait for someone to come? If they even come.” I'm sorry, you didn't consider this before you told the whole world about Salem? No one questioned whether asking for potentially non-existent help was worth the risk and what they'd do if it never came? Or even just what they’d do in the meantime? I’m not saying the girls can’t have basic necessities like drinks, or that it can’t be done in style when that’s conveniently available. I’m saying them enjoying the food, warmth, and relative safety of the Schnee household (built on racism) while casually talking about what, if anything, they should do for the people dying outside looks a bit Not Good. "Should we wait for the fire department?" Asks the character as their kitchen burns, sitting beside a number of water buckets that could help slow things down. "If they even come," they sigh, taking another sip of tea. This is ridiculous! The city is currently under attack by the series' Big Bad and half our heroes are just sitting around, watching the evil lightning, wondering if they should try to do anything about it. 

"How did it all get like this?" Ruby asks her cup, ignoring the many steps she took to make things this bad. It continually boggles my mind that Ironwood is out here trying to keep people safe in the subway, coming up with a plan to blow up this whale, sending out an army to kill countless grimm... yet "What can we even do?" Ruby is supposed to be the hero here. You know, the one who has silver eyes and could one-shot huge numbers of Salem's army if she actually went out there and tried to help.  

Ironwood is taking action... and so is May. As said, she's the one out looking for info on their teammates and when she returns says that they should all get back down to Mantle. Why? Because, as mentioned earlier, Atlas at least has an army to help with things. Mantle only has them. 

Yet suddenly, Weiss doesn't want to leave. 

Where did this come from? They succeeded in their preferred plan of telling the world what's going on over Ren and Yang's plan of helping what people they could, and now they're looking for something to do. Why wouldn't they head back to help? (Especially now that the shields are down.) Weiss yells that there are people dying in Atlas too but, as established, Atlas has the army. And where was this concern when they refused to let Atlas leave? After a Volume and a half of pro-Mantle content, this seems to come out of nowhere. Worse, Weiss tries to guilt May by asking if she has family in Atlas, which leads to the reveal that she's trans. Her family rejected their daughter. 

I want to be clear that I'm very happy RT made this canon. For what she is — a side character we know incredibly little about — I really like May and the fact that they were clear in her identity rather than keeping it to twitter deserves recognition. Yet I'm not going to pretend that the reveal didn't leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, simply because we have this incredibly privileged cis girl, who knows a great deal about shitty families, hearing how horrible May's was and still trying to tell her she needs to suck it up and help Atlas over Mantle. When May angrily asks whose side she's on, Blake makes a comment about hearing that before, comparing her to Ironwood. May is painted as the misguided one here, but can you imagine if someone told Weiss to go help Jacques over her found family, Team RWBY, regardless of what he's done to her? The fandom would explode, and rightly so. There's something to be said for realism here, showing us Weiss and Blake's inability to see where May is coming from... but it doesn't feel like a commentary on that. It feels like another Penny situation: May is put in her place for being inconsiderate, even though this time it's her choosing to help people who are ALSO in danger over the people who represent family she's broken with. 

I wanted conflict this Volume and I absolutely got it, but damn if it isn’t badly thought out at times. 

Because rather than grappling with these personal motivations, Ruby brushes them aside by yelling, "There are no sides! We want to help everyone." 

Does that extend to Ironwood? Ruby's speeches started falling flat when she betrayed Ozpin, attacked Cordovin, betrayed Ironwood, attacked the Ace Ops... This girl does not want to "help everyone." She wants to help those who agree with her. 

Yet her rock solid optimism generates the question, “So how exactly do we get out of it?” which, as expected, Ruby has no answer to. The story keeps showing us how bad a leader Ruby has become, yet no one is actively responding to that. They kinda disagree about lying to Ironwood, but still go along with it. Yang kinda criticizes her sister, but that's then lost to general worry as they split (on Ruby's end, anyway). They want to know how she'll lead them next and are seemingly fine when Ruby continually says, "I don't know." At this point I'd be like, "Well... you didn't like May's plan of going back to Mantle, but apparently can't come up with a plan yourself... so I'm going to go with her." 

This is the same conflict we had last Volume: Ruby spoke optimistically about saving everyone, yet was unable to come up with a way to do that. Ironwood had a plan that, while horrific, might save a lot of lives. Yet Ruby is presented as the one to back. Now here she is, hours later, still unable to figure out a way to achieve her perfect outcome. Ruby wanting things to be a certain way is not going to make them so and I’m wondering when someone within the group is going to recognize and act on that. 

As Ruby fails to answer this crucial question, we pull back to see Whitley listening in at the door. 

Cutting back to Ozpin and Oscar, Hazel has listened to all this craziness about Gods, immortality, the destruction of Remnant... and literally goes, "Cool story, bro." 

Okay, he says "Nice story" but the emotion is the same. Which I'm really happy about! I mentioned in a recent post that, as far as we know, Hazel hasn't been told anything about the Gods up until now. What Ozpin is telling him sounds like gibberish at worst, incredibly hard to believe craziness at best. Now chuck in Mercury's point that as a tortured prisoner he'll say anything to get free, as well as the fact that this is Ozpin talking to Hazel... and I'm really glad Hazel just ignored his speech (for now at least). It wouldn't make sense otherwise. Granted, this means that the plan literally amounted to, “Let’s info dump a bunch of nonsense-sounding lore on our enemy in the hope that he’ll believe us and betray Salem.” It’s something to try, certainly, and it admittedly is a much better plan than what Oscar is about to cook up. 

So since Hazel won't listen to Ozpin, Oscar wants to try instead. Why did you two switch in the first place? It's really obvious that RT is having the characters do weird things in order to stretch out the plot. 

Either way, our farm boy is in control again. What new strategy will he try? 

"Her name is Jinn." 

This is BEYOND stupid. No, none of this "You have to trust people" nonsense. This is not “people,” this is Hazel. There is a Grand Canyon's width of difference between learning to trust your allies and blindly trusting an active villain who just rejected your "Please defect :(" speech. Even if we remove Hazel from the equation, this is still a monumentally foolish move. I mean, has Oscar considered where he is? This isn't some random warehouse he's been taken to, this is a semi-sentient grimm, a creature creating other creatures out of its ceiling

and whose doors automatically open when people need them to (Mercury). This is a living being created by and connected to Salem herself. How does Oscar know Salem can't hear everything he says? Or that the whale can't relay information to her? That the grimm in the walls won't pop out and run to their master? Or even that a normal person isn't listening in at the door — like Emerald is. If that had been Tyrian instead, that's it. They're done. Game over. 

Someone: "Wow. Salem got the Lamp and managed to ask where the Beacon Relic is. Since the school is still overrun by her army, she snatched it up quick, finished destroying Atlas, and is now on her way to Vacuo. She's nearly completed her plan in days! How did all this happen? 

Oscar: I, um... told her what she wanted to know?

Someone: You what?

Oscar: But not Salem! I just told Hazel! ... and then the information somehow got back to her. 

Someone: "Somehow?" You deliberately told one of Salem's henchmen this crucial piece of information, in a place where there was a good chance you would be overheard by conventional or magical means, and you're surprised that she "somehow" learned it and used that information to doom us all? 

Oscar: ...Yes? 

This is so staggeringly stupid it... well, it could only have been done by a kid. So at least that fits lol. Oscar, I love you, but Ozpin should have been screaming in horror the second those words left your mouth. Generations of precautions undone because a kid wants to believe the best of the guy currently pummeling him. Sweet, but stupid. I’m all for optimistic characters, they just can’t risk the whole world on that optimism. Oscar risking himself on the seemingly doomed plan to turn Hazel is one thing, Oscar risking all of Remnant on the seemingly doomed plan to turn Hazel is another thing entirely. 

Even though you know this is precisely how the story will go. Oscar willingly hands over Jinn's name to Salem's forces, but happily none of the THREE who hear about it will tell her. The story's unwillingness to follow through on consequences doesn't change what a bad move this was. I mean, Oscar himself accused Ironwood of playing into Salem's hands by disagreeing with them about how to not die, yet a few hours later he will willingly give Hazel the one piece of information Salem needs to move closer to world-wide destruction? That's uh... well, that's something. 

They should have just had the poor boy be tortured, spill the beans to make it stop, and start an arc of self-forgiveness. Oscar can be awesome without coming up with world-dooming plans. 

So yeah, Oscar is hoping that Hazel will use the Lamp himself and find out the truth. He wants Hazel to trust him and the man he despises most in the world enough to go against the immortal woman he's terrified of, get the Lamp away from her somehow to use for himself, wasting a once in a generation question to confirm all this, so that Salem will lose a guy with muscle who, to be frank, is absolute insignificant in the grand scheme of her power. Fantastic. 

As said, Emerald overhears all this and immediately runs to Mercury, who is less than convinced by her "Salem wants to destroy the world" talk. Just as he's expressing doubt, Tyrian appears to confirm that this is exactly what she wants to do — and he's loving it. 

“Of course she is! You’re surprised? Salem is destruction incarnate!” 

It's a legit point. Are our villains so dense they never considered that Salem might do something to the world they didn't like? It's like the group not thinking about how Salem is still around if Ozpin has been fighting her for a thousand years. RWBY continually gives the impression that these characters don't think about their situation past what they're doing at any given moment. 

Tyrian maintains his title as best villain though, simply because I understand what he's doing, why he's doing it, and he's so damn good at it. 

Also, can we appreciate Mercury's face here? 

Amazing. This is the kind of humor we should be getting in such a tragedy-laden Volume. 

The two of them, Tyrian and Mercury, head off to Vacuo for the Secret Mission, despite Mercury's newfound hesitation. I quite liked these quiet moments between him and Emerald. It has a very "Do what you've gotta do" vibe while showcasing their care for one another, something we haven't seen in a while. 

Back with the airship group. YJR are still horrified that Ironwood would blow up Oscar (even though he has no idea Oscar is there), begging the Ace Ops to give them "a chance to try to rescue him first.” Ren goes pretty hard on the "no one is replaceable" bit, which is frustrating not being what he’s saying is inaccurate (it’s not), but because that's not the issue here. The writing has Harriet start yelling about Marrow replacing her old teammate and Winter replacing Clover, but the question is not whether you'll just forget a teammate and move on with someone new, but whether you're willing to sacrifice them for the greater good. That's the stance: Should we sacrifice one life to save thousands? Will you, as a protector of the people, put those people before your own found family? Yet what RT has Harriet say is: Oscar is replaceable. Which obviously makes her come across as an ass. Like the random soldier questioning Ironwood — or making Elm about to punch a defenseless Ren in her anger — it exists solely to show how bad these character are... even as they say pretty persuasive things. 

The writing also continues to be confused about whether the Ace Ops are friends or not. Yang certainly didn't think so... up until she asks (rhetorically) whether Marrow would sacrifice himself for Elm, Harriet, and Vine. Since their introduction, the story has loudly insisted that the Ace Ops aren't friends... up until it's revealed ("revealed") that Harriet is actually gutted about Clover. So which is it? Are we supposed to believe that these are cold soldiers who only work together out of duty, or that they're a team who clearly love one another? I'd say that show has shown us the latter, but it doesn't seem to understand what point it's trying to make. Does this look like a soldier who doesn’t care? 

It’s especially weird when Ren again makes the claim that this is why they lost to Team RWBY. Because they're not a team.

...So is this why they did such a fantastic job fighting the geist, demonstrating such perfect teamwork that the group was open-mouthed impressed? Is this why they nearly took down a Maiden together? Is this why Ren, while furious at Yang and Jaune, was still able to work seamlessly with them to try and rescue Oscar? Do we think if Yang was suddenly beside Ruby again that the two would fail spectacularly in a fight because they had a minor disagreement? 

This is now the third time RT has tried to excuse nerfing the Ace Ops with, "They disagree about things and are thus not friends and thus can't fight well together" — despite all evidence to the contrary — and it's getting really old. 

At one point Harriet tells Ren, "I had you pegged as the most level-headed of the bunch, but I guess you’re just as naïve" which, ignoring her then random claim that people are replaceable, is correct. I also pegged Ren as the most level-headed of the bunch considering he was just yelling at Yang for how much damage they've caused, all the mistakes they've made, and that maybe — just maybe — they should have tried harder to work with Ironwood. Yet now here he is, in a position to start that process, and the Ren we got in the snow is simply gone. He's fully Team Yang and Jaune again, facing off against the evil Ace Ops. 

I knew this was going to happen, but it's still disappointing. The story gave Ren a great speech to appease those of us frustrated with the direction the story has taken... and now we’re back to ignoring that. Ren was told off for daring to question how great the group is, apparently thought it over in the snow, and is now of the opinion that yes, they are that great. People are going to die because of us? Who cares about that anymore! We will absolutely, single-handedly rescue Oscar and there's no reason why this might be a questionable choice when an entire city is on the line. Again, emotionally understandable (if we buy into the group suddenly loving Oscar this much), but it rings hollow right after making Ren the one person who was willing to look at the big picture. 

Good news though: Jaune got the braincell this week! He suggests that they go in to try and rescue Oscar/provide intel, but won't stop the Ace Ops from launching the bomb when necessary. 

See, this is heroic. This is what the group should have done during the Mantle conflict: Volunteering to take the personal risk of facing off against Salem while letting Atlas try to escape. Basically, not forcing everyone else to risk their lives for their pipe dream, which is what Ren and Yang want by rejecting the bomb entirely. Jaune recognizes here that they can't prioritize Oscar over an entire city, but also that they may still be able to save him before the bomb is complete and ready to go. So they compromise, with JYR the only ones at risk. 

Good job, Jaune! 

Winter agrees to this plan with a firm, "I outrank you" to Harriet. People are going to love that. 

Oh, but in his anger Ren's semblance suddenly changes. So we're back to the ridiculous. 

Truthfully, I like this direction. Granted, I would have liked some buildup to it, especially since this is the second time this Volume that RWBY has dropped a major semblance change on us, but the idea itself is really cool. Ren can now see emotions! Awesome! And I don't mean that sarcastically. I actually think that’s a neat extension of his original semblance. 

Too bad the story seems to think he's a mind reader. 

Seriously, take a look back at the dialogue. What Ren sees are confetti-like petals floating around a person, their color seeming to determine their emotional state. Red means Harriet is mad, blue is sadness for Marrow, etc. But what Ren ends up saying is a great deal closer to mind reading. Harriet is angry about Clover and is gutted at his loss. Marrow is questioning his place here and wants to leave. These aren't base emotions, they're targeted thoughts and feelings about situations not immediately apparent from the verbal conversation. “In fact, you don’t want to be a part of it at all anymore." How does Ren know that? They just gave him telepathy instead of the cool power with firm limitations that the imagery suggests. 

There are also some, uh... iffy implications in all this. For example, Ren allows Yang privacy by not reading her mind emotional state, but has no qualms about reading every one of the Ace Ops’. So privacy is only for the people you care about, huh? 

We could also say something about RT perpetuating unfortunate racial stereotypes: the two women of color are pure anger, the marginalized man is pure sadness, the Asian coded character is pure calm... and the white woman set to turn against the others gets a mix of all emotions. AKA, human complexity. 

To be clear, I don't think RT is doing this deliberately. Rather, they’re writers who have demonstrated time and time again that they don't have a good handle on depicting the sort of sensitive material that RWBY is infused with, and that extends to the mild, but still unfortunate, implications in scenes like this. Even if we ignore the iffy details — a benefit of the doubt that, at this point, many fans aren’t willing to grant — we're still left with the continuity errors. Visually, we're presented with a woman who is experiencing multiple emotions at once and is, therefore, torn. Yet Ren reads Winter definitively: "I know you [don't want this] either." It's yet another moment that makes me wonder how much communication there is between the writers and the animators, because too often the two seem to be at odds with each other. 

As the group prepares to go into the belly of the beast (literally!) we return to Ruby who is, once again, failing to make me believe she's this super compassionate person. 

“Wait! What about Qrow and Robyn? Maybe if we get them out of wherever they’re held—”

Please tell me I'm not the only one who took issue with this? Ruby doesn't express an ounce of worry for her uncle, not even when she learns he's been arrested, and the one time she brings him up it's in the context of what he can do for them in this fight? Ruby doesn't grapple with whether to rescue her uncle (personal desire), or get the message to the world (her version of the heroic action) and then realize that, now that her duty is done, she can finally turn to the more selfish act of helping her immediate family. Instead, Ruby seems perfectly happy to let Qrow stay in prison up until she's unsure what to do next and thinks that maybe he has the answer. Heaven forbid Ruby think about rescuing him because she loves him.

Sadly, this Ruby is long gone. 

In recent years she's expressed no gratitude for him saving her life, no respect for him as her teacher, demonstrated incredibly little compassion for his own struggles, and outright told him that if he wasn't going to listen to her then he doesn't need to be part of the team. Then he's arrested and she doesn't care until she deems him useful again. Like the fandom wondering where the sisterly bond between Ruby and Yang went, I'm likewise wondering where the bond between Ruby and Qrow went. 

May outright rejects this though, yelling that they still don't get it. “This is not a situation where everyone wins!" 

She tells the trio they have to choose for once: Are you going to help Mantle, or Atlas? 

...which means there's immediately a knock at the door, interrupting the moment where they have to decide. 

See, this is just like Ren. The story keeps giving us moments where characters speak absolute truth, dangling the potential for the group to grow from these realizations... only to pull back before it goes anywhere. Ren is once again aligned with Yang and Jaune in their desire to save Oscar. May's demand is interrupted by the plot. If means nothing to give us these moments unless the story acts on them. 

It's Klein at the door. Whitley called him to help with Nora because I guess he's a doctor now, as well as a butler? Fine. Let’s run with it. Weiss is super pleased to see him and hugs Whitley for the good deed. 

Why so shocked that Whitley would look out for another, Weiss? Could it be because he's had so little reason to be kind when everyone, including you, has treated him horribly? If Klein always had these medical skills — if you’ve grown up with a doctor — why didn’t you talk to your brother and ask if he knew how to contact him? And of course, she apologizes to Klein for her father’s actions, but not to Whitley for her own. Whitley's surprise isn't cute to me. 

Weiss stuck a weapon in his face, insulted him, sent him to his room like a toddler... and now is randomly hugging him because he did something she liked. The context of this scene doesn't paint Weiss in a good light. Like the rest of her friends, she only extends basic respect and kindness towards others when they're assisting her. Whitley was nothing to her until he suddenly proved himself useful. That's not cute sibling love, it's a love that's going to run out the moment Whitley puts a toe out of line, according to Weiss' unspoken list of what behavior keeps him in her good graces. 

I believe that Klein cares for Whitley because he greets him kindly and gives him that shoulder pat on the way up. Whitley didn't need to first prove himself to Klein somehow and Klein didn't start this interaction by shoving a gun in Whitley's face, just in case he wouldn't let him through the door. They feel more like family than this hug does. 

So yeah, Whitley and May have done more good this episode than our entire main cast. How about we just make this story about the side characters instead? 

We then hear a massive boom and the group runs out to find a crater. Penny has landed in front of the manor, which is pretty convenient considering we saw her pass out as she fell. 

She's somehow still in control despite the hack and apologizes to Ruby, then falls unconscious (again). 

And that's where we end! Definitely a cliffhanger, though a rather underwhelming one considering we already knew Penny was in serious trouble. As said at the start, this episode felt rather underwhelming to me, especially as a halfway point before a hiatus, and compared to some of the stuff we've seen previously. It's not bad per-se — especially if we ignore the issues that have been around for an age now, which is most of what this recap deals with — it's just not terribly exciting either. Everything of importance — Salem's attack, Oscar's rescue, Penny's demise, subordinates turning, Nora's condition, etc. — had already been established in previous episodes and very little of it moved forward. Ren's semblance is the only thing the episode gave us that we couldn't have (generically) guessed for ourselves between last Saturday and now. 

So yeah, underwhelmed is the mood of the day, with a hefty dose of salt for everything that continues to be a story-breaking problem in this show. I will say though that, as has become the trend for this Volume, all the establishing shots are gorgeous. RWBY is, at the very least, pretty to look at. 

As a final note, in lieu of the Bingo board (since, again, not a whole happens plot-wise) I want to point out something mentioned by a friend: how absolutely bonkers our timeline is now. We began the second day last episode with the sun rising (recall that Jaune had tried to sleep that night at the outpost. So it’s definitely sunrise as opposed to sunset).

And we re-confirm that it’s sunrise at the start of this episode.

Yet throughout the episode many of our shots take place at night (note the stars behind the trio).

These moments with Ruby can't take place in the past because they're talking about the attack, an attack that only happened after Jaune's group met up with the Ace Ops and the geyser attacked — during early morning. I doubt I'm supposed to believe that it has been another full day of Salem starting an attack, a full day for the group to fly to the whale, a full day for Penny to fall, a full day which would put us at the end of the Volume’s timeline at only the halfway point... so I think RT is just going for the aesthetic of night shots without thinking about what that does to the continuity. It's a mess. 

Not the highest praise to end on, but I’m working with what I’ve got lol. I feel as naïve as Oscar when I say that maybe Part II will be better. 

I will, of course, see you all in six weeks. Until then, I'll do my best to catch up on asks. Another doomed endeavor, but one can try!

A very Happy Holidays to all of you who celebrate and, as always, thanks so much for reading! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

[beyscape]

The Intern - 2

Andy Barber x Reader

Summary: Being Andy’s intern meant you got to spend more time by his side more than anyone. This was fine, however, until feelings got in the way and made things complicated

Word Count: 2.4k (can you tell I get carried away? ‘cause I get carried away)

Warnings: Age gap, technically cheating, swearing and stuff, mention of rape

A/N Contains spoilers from episodes 1-4.

Chapter 1    Chapter 2   Chapter 3    Chapter 4   Chapter 5

 Andrew Stephen Barber was a good man by all means. A good citizen, a good father, an exceptional defense attorney, trying his best to be a good husband, Andy Barber believed he was a good man. Standing in the line to grab a cup of coffee, however, made him question his entire belief system. He had tried to ignore the hushed whispers, the pointed looks, the way whenever he entered a room it would all go very silent for a second; he had told Jake and Laurie to ignore them, that they didn’t know anything. That that’s what people do, gossip. He was now really understanding how hard it was to simply ignore when people were so blatant with their gossiping. With their cold stares.

 He never had friends, not proper ones where he could grab a beer with after work or talk to them about whatever was going on in his mind. He thought he did, but these past couple of weeks proved how much of his supposed friends were mere acquaintances. It never bothered him anyways, he never felt the particular need for that sort of closeness in his life. He was used to being alone, that’s how he had grown up, not needing anyone and learning how to survive on his own. He had his son and his wife, though latter feeling as far away as any stranger would at that point. They simply had stuff to take care of together, Andy could feel that Laurie was itching to finally get away once the dust settled. So, when the inevitable papers arrived finally, Andy would be left to his devices one more time..

But then again, there was you.

His gaze turned to you, watching your movements as you waited in the passenger seat of his car, your head laying against the window. He watched you fiddle with the ends of your hair, clearly lost in thought, and it took everything in him to not smile. Poker faces, Joanne had said to them, they had to keep their cool and not lose their composure, not with so many eyes around them. Waiting to catch a mistake, a single slip of the tongue, the smallest of gestures.

He thanked the barista quietly after grabbing the two paper cups of the coffee placed in front of him, pushing the glass doors with his feet as best as he could without sending the cups in his hands flying. No one in the relatively packed coffee shop made a move to help him. He hadn’t expected them to anyways.

His movement grabbed your attention at last as he made his way towards the black car parked towards the back of the lot, a smile spread on your lips then. It was the same one you gave him when he wasn’t looking, that shy, small smile seemingly lighting up your face with adoration. This time it wasn’t when he was unaware though, and even that thought was a whole another thing to make you happy even amidst everything going on. This time Andy couldn’t help it as a smile matching yours very closely appeared on his face as well upon seeing the look you gave him.

Many things in Andy Barber’s life was royally fucked up and it had been for some time now, but a tiny voice in his head quipped up to remind him that not everything was bad, not the young woman smiling up at him. Andy felt a surge of gratefulness fill his chest.

That night at the park he had acted on his impulses, he tried to chalk it up to him being tired, confused, what with everything going on. You were a friendly face he had stumbled upon on a night filled with desperation. His excuses didn’t last however and when he woke up the next morning, Andy knew he had to stop lying to himself. He tried to deny the fact that he had been wanting to kiss you for some time now, to hold you close but he had kept it all locked away in the deepest corner of his heart in the name of being professional. That, and he wanted to protect you. He knew any move on his part could very possibly lead to a mess of problems with his family and even more so with your work. Andy was well aware of how much you loved your job and the career plans you had told him that one night, and he couldn’t dismiss all of that just because he couldn’t keep his feelings under control.

That night at the park however, was the night where he decided he was done with keeping his feelings under control. He could do it in a courtroom in front of a judge, he could do it with the people of his once loved town scrutinizing his every move, he could do it under the cold stare of his wife, but not you. Not anymore.

So, under the dim light of the street lamp above and the shadows covering everywhere the light didn’t touch that one late night, he had kissed you. And even more surprisingly, didn’t regret it one bit. Not the way he thought he would have. If he had known before how easy it was to kiss you time after time in that cold night, Andy was sure he would have done it way earlier.

“Hi.” You said as you carefully grabbed your cup out of his hands, your eyes meeting his while your fingertips slightly grazed each other for a split second. You wished to reach over the seat, to get closer, you had waited enough for this moment, and he was so close, looking at you with that same deep softness in his eyes- you let out a shaky breath.

You had met the next day after the park, knowing damn well there was a lot to discuss. After kissing you, resting his forehead against yours and holding you close for a moment that felt too short, Andy had told you to go home and get some rest. He had insisted on dropping you off at the house you lived with your friend, the ten-minute car drive filled with silence save for the quiet tunes of the radio. He had placed the gentlest of kisses on your lips before giving you a tired smile, and only driving off once he saw you safely go in. It was another restless night with no way of sleep, but for the first time in a while, it was because of something good.

Finding an empty corner of the park was easy, even in the daylight the park didn’t host many visitors during that time of the year. You both were awkward at first, acting like high school lovers unsure of what to do or say to one another. After minutes of hushed conversation and reckless, stolen kisses you had come to a decision about keeping things extremely low-key. You and Andy were well aware that even though whatever this was between you was exciting and new, the top priority was defending Jacob and making sure he got his innocence proven. So, you had to keep things seemingly strictly professional, not allowing space for even the smallest of rumours.

It hadn’t been easy however, both desperate to see each other as soon as possible. Thus, here you were, sitting in his car drinking mediocre coffee, trying to avoid prying eyes.

“Hi yourself.” The twinkle in his eyes seemed to return in the past week, maybe not entirely but he was getting there. You talked about the case for a while, discussing other possible suspects and who could have done such a thing, when the fat droplets of rain started to fall and roll down the front window.

“Y/N, I want to tell you something.” The tone of his voice made you look at him carefully, you noted how his burrows were not furrowed with his lips cursed in a small scowl.

“You know you can tell me anything, Andy.” You replied, meaning every word. He sighed at that, clearly struggling with how to start.

“I never told this to anyone, and only told Laurie and Jacob vert recently because they had to know. My father, you see,” he trailed off, blowing on his still steaming coffee a little before taking a careful sip, doing everything he could do delay what he was about to tell you. He was scared of you hating him or being afraid of him or even worse, pitying him once he revealed his darkest of secrets, but he knew that sooner or later it would come up in the case. He thought at least he could be the first one to let you in on the skeletons he had deep in his closet. He sighed again, his gaze following the rain droplets, he couldn’t bring himself to face you in that moment.

“He wasn’t a good man. When I was about five years old, he raped and murdered a college girl, she was barely nineteen. I, I struggled with that throughout my entire childhood even though I didn’t exactly understand what was going on. And when I was old enough to get it, it didn’t make things easier. It fucked me up and still, after almost forty years, the whole thing still haunts me. Haunts my thoughts, my dreams, and now with Jake’s case it all came rushing back. Like the dam I had built to keep it repressed broke suddenly and all of it just, flooded right in.” There it was. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was afraid of the reaction you would give, Andy wasn’t sure how he would take it if you acted the way Laurie had when she found out. He instantly regretted that he even made that comparison however when he felt your warm hand wrap up his, not quite being able to cover it all. He raised his eyes to yours.

“You are not alone anymore, Andy. Thank you for sharing this with me, and please know that from now on, you’ve got me in your corner. You no longer need to pretend everything’s just great; you have me. Talk to me, and we will get through it, okay? No matter what.” One hand wrapped around his big one, you placed another hand on his thigh, all you could do in that moment to reassure him that everything was fine.

He felt it again, that rush of warmth spreading in him as he stared at you in disbelief. How had you known those were the exact words he was internally dying to hear? His gaze traced your face, your eyes burning bright with determination, your lips, those beautiful lips he craved oh so much giving him a reassuring smile. He ran a ginger hand over the hair falling down your face, barely touching, hesitant to go too far that he couldn’t hold back. Painstakingly he had to remind himself that you were still in a public parking lot, where it was so easy to get caught even with the pouring rain outside of the car as he drew his hand back, resting it on top of yours, hidden completely from the view.

“I have to go see him in prison, and I don’t know if I can do it.” He confided in you, finding it so easy to talk about whatever was bothering him, scaring him… He had never had that kind of a connection before, not even with Laurie.

“Do you want me to come with you?” You didn’t think about the technicalities. You didn’t think about why that was probably a bad idea, there could be press around, how would you get the time off, what if people saw you and many more reasons why you shouldn’t didn’t even cross your mind for all you could focus on at that moment was how small Andy had looked when he uttered those words to you. This man with broad shoulders, well-built physique who commanded whatever room he entered had looked so small in that moment. Your eyes never left his, worried that if you broke the gaze the whole moment would shatter all around you. He nodded once. Twice.

“I would like that.” He looked around, his eyes scanning the surroundings for people, but the rain that had picked up its speed was acting as a curtain drawn between you and the rest of the world.

Satisfied with what he saw, Andy turned back to face you, cupping the sides of your face between his big hands. He leaned in without any hesitation holding him back, he had been waiting for an opportunity like this and heaven knows you were in the same position as him. Your lips met in the middle and immediately sent tingles down your spine, the gentleness of the kiss conveying so many words between. The kiss was different from the heated, passion filled ones at the park that night, and different from the secretive, exciting ones of the day after. No, this kiss was sweeter than them, so sweet you thought you could get drunk off of Andy’s lips, both of his hands still cupping your cheeks.

 It was over in a moment, not satisfying the need as you hoped it would, instead it seemed to make your craving even harder to ignore.

You knew you would have to leave soon, before Neal started questioning why your coffee run had taken so long and Andy would have to go back to his house, trying to fend off the occasional reporters still waiting around his house to get one more statement from him. You both were uncomfortably aware of the pressing issues in your life, almost working together on purpose to keep you apart after a year of pining and dreaming.

“Soon”, Andy reassured you after placing kiss after kiss to your lips, to the corner of your mouth, on top of your nose. “Soon, this whole thing will blow out and we will be free to do whatever we want.”

“Together,” you kissed the palm of his hand still resting on your cheek, not wanting to let go, “we will figure it out together.”

----------------------------------------

I had to get this in writing before sleep so guess who went to bed at 5 a.m? I wanted to wait and watch episode 5 before writing some of the more important scenes, so here have whatever this is. My inbox is open for requests, asks, feedback or just to talk about Chris! 

[celestialvoid-fanfiction]

The Sun and the Moon

Derek is the sun, Stiles is the moon; Derek is forever chasing his love, but is scared of what might happen if they collide.

  For @overthetopobsessed

 insp: ‘Send me The Moon’ by Sara Bareilles

 (You can also read it on AO3, here)

 His mother used to tell him that falling in love was like watching shooting stars fly across the night sky; beautiful, breath-taking, and so fast that if you blink or look away, you’ll miss it. She’d tell him that it’s a brief moment that can last forever if you seize the chance and watch the star, but if you miss your chance, it’s gone forever. His mum would say that love is like the night sky, it’s full of millions of stars, and you’re waiting to find the one that will take your breath away.

But he didn’t want a star, he wanted the moon. He wanted someone who was always there, someone who could light up the night and chase away the darkness.

But in a sea of millions and millions of stars, there was only one moon.

 -----------

  Derek stood on the porch of the old Hale House, the building lying in ruins behind him, the cinder, ashes, and charred woods disappearing into the darkness of the night.

He looked up at the sky, watching as the sparkling stars filled the onyx-black abyss. The full moon hung high above him, the silvery glow of its light illuminating his world. It called to him, its power filling his veins with a familiar warmth that soared through his body.

He drew in a deep breath, letting the cool night air fill his lungs.

He had long forgotten his mother’s stories about falling in love. He’d come to the conclusion that he was the sun, forever chasing his love through the sky.

That was until he met Stiles.

The morning after the full moon, he was there.

He and Scott were walking back and forth through the forest, searching the forest floor that was covered in a blanket of fallen leaves, colouring the woods with shades of orange, red, gold, burgundy and yellow. The decaying skeletal husks crackled under their feet as they bickered about finding Scott’s inhaler.

Derek lingered back, watching them from among the trees.

Stiles glanced up, something in his peripheral vision catching his eye. He turned to see a man standing among the twisted skeletons of the trees.

He tapped Scott’s shoulder, getting his attention.

Scott bolted upright, turning to look at Derek.

Derek stepped forward, his boots stirring the dry leaves as he walked over to them. But he couldn’t take his eyes off Stiles.

He was as beautiful, breath-taking and mysterious as the moon. Moles charted constellations across his skin like stars across the night sky.

Stiles bowed his head and looked away.

“What are you doing here?” Derek demanded, prying his eyes away from Stiles and looking at Scott. “This is private property.”

“I’m sorry, man,” Stiles replied. “We didn’t know.”

“We were just looking for something, but…” Scott ventured, his voice trailing off.

Derek raised his brow.

“Never mind,” Scott said. “We’ll just go.”

Derek pulled his hand out of his pocket, tossing something to Scott.

Scott caught it, blinking in surprise as he glanced down at his hand, unfurling his fingers and looking down at the inhaler.

Derek shoved his hand back into the pocket of his jacket, glancing one more time at Stiles before he turned and walked away. As he did, his mother’s words came back to him: if you miss your chance, it’s gone forever.

  -----------

  Derek was sure he’d lost Stiles after that day, but their paths kept crossing, time and time again.

Derek found himself closer and closer to Stiles.

He would have him pinned back against his bedroom door, his face inches from Stiles’ and yet, he froze. His eyes would glance from Stiles’ citrine eyes to his rosy lips, but he was scared to touch him; scared that if he came to close he’d hurt him—destroy him. He was scared Stiles’ light would fade. So he’d pull away.

Or he’s find himself pulled out of the dark abyss of unconsciousness, looking up at Stiles as a look of relief passed over the young man’s face.

Time and time again.

Stiles was there; he was always there. But Derek was always the first to pull away.

He lingered in the background of Stiles’ life like a ghost, getting close to him but never close enough to touch.

And time and time again, they would go their separate ways, and Derek would think, There goes my chance.

 -----------

  They stood out in the parking lot, the darkness of the night surrounding them and the cool air sending shivers up their spines. The streetlight hung over them, the dull glow of the old lamp fighting off the shadows of the night.

Adrenaline was slowly wearing off, their racing hearts calming as they realised their latest fight was over.

Stiles stood nearby, bathed in the silvery light of the moon. A mischievous smile lit up his face, making his dark eyes sparkle. He raked his fingers through the tousled mess of his hair, pushing it back from his face.

He looked so different from the boy Derek had seen standing in the woods all those years ago, and yet, he was just as beautiful.

The others had left; it was just the two of them in the parking lot.

“You okay?” Derek asked.

“Yeah,” Stiles replied. “You?”

Derek nodded.

“I should get going,” Stiles said, straightening himself. “My dad’s probably wondering where I am.”

Derek nodded again.

“See ya,” Stiles farewelled.

Derek turned slightly, taking a step towards his car.

He stopped, his pace faltering as his mother’s voice filled his mind: ‘If you miss your chance, it’s gone forever.’

Derek shook his head.

I can’t, he thought. I can’t let his go this time.

It was now or never.

He turned around.

“Stiles,” he called out as he stepped over to the young man’s side.

Stiles turned to face him.

Derek took Stiles’ face in his hands and brought their lips together.

Stiles tensed for a moment and Derek expected Stiles to shove him away, but he didn’t.

Stiles’ shoulders dropped as he melted into the kiss, his eyes fluttering shut and his arms looping around Derek’s shoulders and pulling him closer.

They stayed that way until their lungs burnt for air.

Derek slowly drew back from his kiss, breathless.

He drew in a deep breath, and for the first time in forever he felt like he could actually breathe. He drew in a few measured breaths, trying to calm his racing heart as he slowly opened his eyes and looked deep into Stiles’ eyes.

Stiles met his gaze, the dark brown pools of his eyes reflected the twinkling stars above them as he looked up at Derek lovingly.

“I…um, I…” Derek struggled to find his voice, to string words together.

“I like you too,” Stiles whispered, smiling as he closed the distance between them and brought their lips together again.

Stiles was his moon; his constant, his light among the darkness.

Stiles was his.

[lady-divine-writes]

Hey, D :) May I request something sweet, fluffy, and Halloween themed ffor GO? It's been a horrible week.

Hey nonnie! I’m sorry you’re having a horrible week. I feel you there. I hope this helps

Fun House

It’s Halloween, and Crowley decides he wants to take his husband out to celebrate au naturale. (1108 words)

“We shouldn't be doing this!” Aziraphale hisses, but mostly to cover up for the fact that he’s giggling – proof that he’s having a better time than he’s letting on.

“That's what makes doing this such fun!” Crowley pulls Aziraphale along, speeding past the ticket taker, up the stairs, over the tension barrier, and through the ‘employees only’ entrance, plunging them into the pitch-black belly of the hotel-turned haunted mansion.

Aziraphale glances over his shoulder at the people who don’t seem to notice them cut the line and fly by, even with ten-foot tall wings protruding from their backs, and knows his husband has something to do with it. “Crowley! We’re going to get caught! Besides, cutting in line is just plain rude.”

“Aziraphale! It's Halloween! No one's looked at us twice all night, and they’re not gonna! Besides, what do I care about being rude? Remember those little shits that tried to egg my car?”

“After you nearly ran them over!”

“I consider that justice.”

“How? You started it!”

“Yes but they were going to egg someone else now weren’t they? Premeditated! Otherwise why would they be carrying eggs around with them to begin with? If you ask me, I did a good deed there!”

“You duct taped them to a tree!”

“Only some of them! Their friends were there to cut them free. If they work diligently, they should be out before midnight.”

Crowley snickers, completely unrepentant, and as much as he disagrees with his husband’s methods, all Aziraphale can do is roll his eyes. His demon does have a point. Besides, what Crowley did falls along the lines of a prank. The trick portion of trick or treat. He didn’t actually hurt anyone.

Those kids probably won’t see it that way but whatever.

“What are we doing here anyway?” Aziraphale asks, following close behind as Crowley leads him up a winding staircase covered in torn sheets soaked to dripping in fake blood. “We’re running past all the performers. Are we not here to scare or be scared?”

“Nope. We’re here to make out.”

“Don’t you think we're a little old to be messing about like teenagers?”

“Aziraphale, we never even got to be teenagers!”

“And thank Heaven for that!”

“Look, you’ve been around humans as long as I have. Think of all the things we’ve missed out on by not being born mortal!”

“Like puberty and acne and high school and homework. Huge loss there.”

Crowley exits the staircase at the second to the last landing and pushes Aziraphale up against the cleanest of the goop-spattered walls. He’d been searching for this floor specifically – the one with the huge picture window he’d seen from the outside. It overlooked the main thoroughfare, its lights and decorations, with a hawk eye’s view of children in costume begging for candy while their older siblings roll their eyes, swiping sweets from their pillowcases when they’re not looking (which Crowley can’t even claim to have a hand in – teenagers are just mean).

“Angel, I’ve managed to find us the most horrifically romantic spot in all of London to spread our wings and be alone,” Crowley says, brushing his nose against Aziraphale’s cheek, nudging his head to the side so he can reach his neck past his collar and bowtie. “Don’t kill the mood.”

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale whispers, startling when he hears footsteps race by, the whirring of a chainsaw giving chase a little too close for comfort. “I’m, possibly, a bit nervous.”

“Don’t be nervous,” Crowley murmurs, licking circles down Aziraphale’s neck with the tip of his tongue. “It’s just you and me here.”

“And the lovely cast of All-Season Productions.”

“Relax, will ya?”

“I’m trying to, but I …”

Crowley’s mouth on his quiets him down, the press of his demon’s body quelling his trembling … or making it worse. At this point, Aziraphale can’t tell. The whole building seems to be shivering with actors laughing and screaming kids. But that bleeds away when Crowley takes hold of his wrists and pins them at his sides, weaving their fingers together in a gesture that’s more endearment than possessive.

But still possessive – enough to make Aziraphale’s toes curl.

His body relaxes underneath Crowley’s weight and his heat – everything from Aziraphale’s head to his wings to his legs and his feet melting against the wall. The buzz of the chainsaw doesn’t bother him anymore, neither do the bloodcurdling screams. He’s only vaguely aware of footsteps as they race up and down the staircase or barrel down the hall.

The ones that come to a screeching halt a few feet beside them, and the groan that follows soon after? That’s harder to ignore.

“Eww!”

“What!?”

“What is it, Portia!?”

“A zombie?”

“A skeleton?”

“A decapitated body being feasted upon by a rabid werewolf!?”

“No. It’s old people making out!”

“Gross!”

“Are you serious?”

“See for yourself!”

“Yeah, no. That’s not okay!”

“How can they allow that in here? Don’t they know they’re going to scar us for life!?”

“Let’s get outta here! Find that guy with the chainsaw and forget all about this!”

“I don’t think I can! It’s gonna haunt my nightmares!”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale growls, coming to the conclusion that he’s changed his mind.

He’s entirely okay with his husband duct taping obnoxious children to trees.

Crowley can’t answer his husband, snickering into his shoulder while the air echoes with conversation.

“I don’t know, Portia. That guy dressed like an angel was kinda hot.”

“Emily! He looks like my dad!”

“Yeah, and …?”

“…”

“Okay, you’re not allowed over to my house anymore.”

“I thought you said the humans wouldn’t see us!” Aziraphale snaps.

“That’s not what I said! I said they wouldn’t look twice at us!”

“I’d say they looked more than twice, Crowley!”

“But see that? They thought we were part of the show! We fit right in!” Crowley leans in for another taste of his angel’s waiting mouth when his head suddenly pops up with an errant thought. “Wait a minute … they only mentioned you being hot. What about me? Hey, Emily!” Crowley yells down the hall, fighting to be heard above the whine of power tools. “What about …?”

“Sorry, my dear.” Aziraphale grabs Crowley’s chin, tilting his mouth back his way. “Apparently I’m the hot dad in this relationship, and you’re going to have to be okay with that.”

Crowley gives Aziraphale a peculiar look. “I’m pretty sure nothing in that sentence was correct,” he says, loosening Aziraphale’s tie to make it easier to assault his angel’s neck, particularly that sweet spot above his collarbone that he likes to have nibbled, “but I’m going to roll with it.”

[ethanlivemere]

Half-Life²: Anticitizen - Chapter 1

Note: if you haven’t read the Half-Life²: Anticitizen Prologue yet, go read that first here.

Chapter 1

Now Arriving: City 17

The shrill scream of a train horn makes me jolt up as numbness starts leaving my body. I pant and shiver from the cold air. As my heartbeat calms down I start taking in my surroundings. I am sat on a row of hard plastic chairs that extends along the side of a dilapidated train car. The gentle shaking of the cold surface beneath me and the clattering sound I had been hearing before tell me it’s moving.

“Hey there buddy, calm down. You scared me,” a gentle voice sounds. I turn my head and see a dark-skinned man, probably in his late thirties, sitting in a seat on the other side of the aisle. His eyes are dark and tired and his short beard is trimmed irregularly. His arms are resting on a plain black suitcase in his lap and his clothing consists of blue denim pants and a beige shirt. “Had a bad dream?” he asks.

I rub my head as I turn, taking my feet off the chairs to sit normally. I now notice I am wearing the same, rough fabric clothing as the other passenger. Well, so much for having earned the H.E.V. Suit. At least I still have my glasses.

“I didn’t see you get on,” he continues talking. “Are you being transferred to City 17 as well?”

I take a better look at the interior of the vehicle. The worn down red carpet that stretches from one end of the car to the other is littered with scraps and cigarette butts. About half of the ceiling lights are either dead or flickering. The walls and many of the windows are covered with posters and advertisements, most of them torn off or faded beyond recognition. Here and there, there is an intact, more recent looking poster of an owl-eyed man looking down on the passengers with a solemn expression. All of them have some variation of the same brief message: THE CONSUL SAYS… RELAX. THE CONSUL SAYS… REPORT.

“This is my third transfer this year, you know,” my co-passenger continues, ignoring my continued silence. “I spent my last trimester in City 49, and 45 before that. But no matter how many times I get relocated, I… I never get used to it.” He softly shakes his head and looks down at his fingers, playing with a loose bit of leather that has peeled off his suitcase. “The name’s Samuel, by the way,” he says in a lighter tone, sitting up. “I noticed you don’t have a tag on your uniform.” He brings his hand up to his chest and taps a stitched-on strip of grey fabric with his index finger. It says ‘G-11789RF’. “You’d better do something about that before a Metrocop catches you without one.”

My head spins. The sudden overload of impulses is too much for my still foggy mind. While trying to piece together what is going on I look to my left. There is another passenger sitting some ten feet away from me, his arms crossed and his suitcase on a seat next to him. I spot a third passenger, an Asian-looking woman, at the far end of the car, sitting next to the door. Everyone is wearing the same uniform. None of them look like they want to be on this train.

I suddenly realize that I have been avoiding looking out of the windows. There is a pit in my stomach, a sickening feeling of dread that tells me I already know what I would see. I do it anyway. I shift in my seat, turning my head around to look out of the window behind me. It’s even worse than I expected. Just like in the vision, the landscape is a desolate wasteland. Skeletons of trees crown the small hills that pop up all over the plains. The ground is cracked and there isn’t a stream of water as far as the eye can see, which isn’t all that far. The sky is completely covered in dark, greenish gray clouds that sometimes drift down to envelop the land in a disgusting smog. The sun is nothing more than a slightly brighter spot in the thick carpet, standing low above the horizon. Here and there a silhouette stands out from its surroundings by its jagged, square shape: abandoned buildings that look as if they have been picked up and dropped from a great height. A pipeline runs parallel to the rails, and I see another train track in the distance.

Just when I think the world is completely devoid of life, movement in the periphery of my vision catches my attention. Something is running beside the train, flashing past because of their lower speed. I recognize the green, three-legged creatures. Their piercing, supersonic squeals still echo through my head. Looking further into the distance again, I start noticing more signs of life. I spot a bullsquid, the large amphibian beast with acidic spit that almost cost me my life several times, in a muddy ditch. I am also relieved to see what seem to be normal crows flying to and from some of the trees, but there are some things creeping around that I have never seen before. A flat reptile with a wide mouth and four chimney-like limbs protruding from its sides, with tufts of hair on the end of each of them. Tall, tripedal insects with ambiguous organs dangling between their stalky legs. Somewhere deep inside, the scientist in me is fascinated by the alien sights and wants to study them more closely. But that man died the moment the crystal hit the beam. This Gordon Freeman just wants to avert his eyes and hope never to see anything again that reminds him of how terrifying the universe can be.

A train slides into view on the parallel track. It seems to be freight train, but it’s a model I have never seen before. The locomotive is tall, streamlined and has a sharp nose with a single headlight illuminating its path. I don’t see any windows or other indications of a control room. The thing is made of a dark, obsidian-like metal that also covers the wheels, making it seem like the train is just sliding over the dusty ground. The cars directly behind the locomotive are in the same style, but further to the back there are also some more normal looking cars with containers. I notice Samuel has gotten up from his seat and is looking over my shoulder. “Look!” he says, pointing in the distance. On the path of the other train, a gargantuan shadow looms over its surroundings, hunched over, arms spread as if bracing for impact. Its dark blue exoskeleton and single glowing red eye almost seem to mirror the image of the vehicle speeding towards it. A low, wailing horn sounds from the train as the distance between the two shrinks. The monster doesn’t flinch. It stands its ground, determined, until the train hits. The locomotive doesn’t even slow down. The monster, despite being quite a bit taller than the train, gets violently pushed out of the way and, though it is hard to tell from this distance, quite possibly cut in half by the locomotive.

“Razor Trains, man,” Samuel says with a hint of awe. “I would feel much safer if we were aboard one of those.”

Our view of the other train gets obstructed by a nearby building. There seems to be a sudden increase in the number of ruins near the track, as brick walls suddenly make up all we can see through the window. “Looks like we’re almost there,” Samuel notes. I try to look ahead and see we are heading towards a gigantic wall made of the same dark metal as the Razor Train. Behind it, tall apartment buildings and skyscrapers stand in much better condition than the buildings on this side of the wall – though they, too, show signs of ruin and neglect. “There it is,” Samuel says, “City 17.” He scoffs. “They all look the same from the outside, don’t they?” The wall grows ever nearer, until everything suddenly goes dark as we enter a tunnel, the only source of light now being the few functional lamps on the ceiling. “I heard living conditions are supposed to be much better in 17 than they were in 49, though. The air is much cleaner here since it’s so close to the Air Exchange. I guess that’s why the Consul moved here.”

The other male passenger, who visibly has been growing increasingly bothered with Samuel’s talking, suddenly speaks up: “Yeah, well, there’s also much heavier security, so if you don’t want to get us all into trouble, you’d best quiet down a bit once we’ve arrived.” Samuel looks at the man offendedly. He opens his mouth for a rebuttal, but decides against it and looks the other way, shaking his head.

When we emerge from the tunnel, it barely makes a difference for the amount light streaming in through the windows. The already dim light the sun manages to squeeze through the clouds is now also blocked by the tall buildings. It might as well be nighttime. The view outside is somehow more depressing than the wastelands: near-empty streets lit by slender lampposts, only inhabited by abandoned cars, trash and a lone citizen clutching something against his chest as he makes his way from one patch of light to the next. The railway is elevated a good fourteen feet above the street, and now and then I catch a glimpse of people behind the windows of the second floors we pass by. They fly by too fast to properly see what they are doing, but the rooms in which they reside all seem as bare and featureless as the beige shirts they are all wearing.

The train starts to slow down and I see the female passenger stand up and pick up her suitcase. The man also stands up and grabs onto a metal bar that runs along the ceiling for stability. Shortly after, the train comes to a shrieking halt at an empty platform. Once the carriages have stopped shaking and the train lets out a sigh of relief, the doors on either end of the car open, letting in a cold draft that paces down the aisle and brings life to the scraps dotted around on the once-red carpet. Samuel stands up and arches his back. “Well, end of the line,” he mutters before following the other passengers outside. I stand up on still shaky legs and do the same, stepping down onto the hard ground of the outside world.

The train platform is a desolate concrete slab, flanked on both sides by the steel and plexiglass walls  of trains and cut in half by a row of benches and pillars that support the overhead shelter. At the end are stairs leading into a hole in the ground that hungrily swallows the passengers heading down. I keep following them, heading down into a chilly tunnel that reeks of rotting trash. Our footsteps echo as we walk past branches of the tunnel that have signs with arrows and numbers to guide non-existent travelers to their platforms. As we follow the main flow of the tunnel I start hearing a distant voice from up the large stairs at the end, but by the time I reach the stairs, it has stopped.

We emerge into what must once have been the majestic main terminal hall of the station, but has now been transformed into a twisted version of its original purpose. A roof of translucent glass arches over a gaping abyss that cuts through the hall, leaving only a narrow strip of the original black and white tiled floor around it. The gap is about thirty feet across and has a chain link fence surrounding it. I walk up to the fence and look down. Several train tracks run along or across the ravine at differing heights and angles. Several trains are stationed on the rails, suspended above the seemingly bottomless gorge. All of them are the same model as the train I saw plow through the creature on the wastelands – Razor Trains. The smoke that pours down from the locomotives and the tunnels, combined with the cycloptic headlights on the trains, make for a mesmerizing display of light and shadows.

There’s a walkway across the chasm, accessible through stairs to my left. Seeing no other way forward, I take the stairs up to the walkway, only to see a strange figure standing in the middle of the path, watching over the passengers traversing the room. A man in a black uniform with red markings on the chest and shoulders. His face is enveloped by a white gasmask with lenses that glow a faint yellow. His leather glove is clenched around a baton that he softly taps against his hip as he follows passing civilians with his obscured eyes. I suspect this might be one of the “Metrocops” Samuel mentioned, and I know that whatever he is, it can’t be good news for me if he sees me.

As I’m looking around for another way, my eye falls on a large vertical screen hanging in the center of the largest wall, in front of a circular stained glass window. It displays only a set of strange symbols on a bluish green background, but suddenly a face appears on the screen. I immediately recognize it as the balding, solemn-faced man from the posters on the train. Under the face, a message appears: THE CONSUL SAYS… WELCOME.

“Welcome,” the face starts speaking through unseen speakers, “Welcome to City 17. You have chosen, or been chosen, to relocate to one of our finest remaining urban centers.” His voice is stoic, but strangely comforting. “I thought so much of City 17 that I elected to establish my administration here, in the Citadel so thoughtfully provided by Our Benefactors. I have been proud to call City 17 my home. And so, whether you are here to stay or passing through on your way to parts unknown…” The Consul smiles warmly, “Welcome to City 17. It’s safer here.” The Consul’s face fades away, and the screen goes back to the illegible symbols. I look back to the Metrocop, only to see him looking back at me. I freeze.

“Move along,” a voice sounds from the mask, distorted as if through a walkie-talkie. He gestures with his baton, and I realize it’s in my best interest to just walk past him as if nothing is going on. I have just passed the Metrocop when I make the mistake of looking down, through the metal grating, into the abyss below. I am not usually one to get vertigo – I had gunfights on cliffsides and on rocks floating between dimensions for crying out loud – but the sight makes my head spin, and I have to lean on the railing for a moment. As I’m catching my breath, I hear the low bellow of a Razor Train horn coming from underneath me. I carefully look down again to see another train arrive on a track that runs along the side of the ravine. Judging from the disgusting greenish splats on the locomotive, it might very well be the one I witnessed plow through the monster – or maybe that is something that regularly happens. I then notice something walk to the nose of the train on a steel platform besides the track. From my top-down perspective, it’s hard to tell what it is – but it sure doesn’t seem to be human. I see brown robes, a white, oval head and long, slender arms holding something that resembles a flamethrower. It points the nozzle at the train at starts spraying it with jets of sickly green… gas? Liquid? Fire? Energy? It’s hard to tell, but when the spraying stops and the being walks over to the precarious, narrow platform on the other side of the track to start spraying the other side of the locomotive, it seems to have removed all of the filth from the train’s hull.

The voice of the Consul startles me as he repeats the same welcoming message. I glance over my shoulder and am relieved to see the Metrocop doesn’t seem to be paying attention to me. I decide to get a move on and quicken my pace as I continue traversing the walkway. When I finally reach the other side, I go down another set of stairs and see a doorway leading into another room. The tables that are spread around it and what seem to be the remains of a shuttered counter lead me to believe that this used to be cafeteria. Now it just has a few tired travelers resting their heads on their hands, the only voice heard being the Consul’s coming from another large screen. I make my way between the tables and dilapidated potted plants to another doorway. Passing by, I hear a man at a table quietly mutter to himself: “They’re always departing but they never arrive… and the ones that do arrive, they never leave… you never see them go, they’re always full… no one ever gets on but they’re always…” He keeps muttering, when there’s suddenly screaming on the other side of the room. I see a man struggling against two Metrocops, thrashing around and shouting that he didn’t do anything. One of the Metrocops lifts his baton, which suddenly glows with electricity, before bringing it down on the man’s back, bringing him to his knees. The man doesn’t stop struggling and tries to crawl away. The other Metrocop pulls something from a holster on his belt and points it at him. There’s a loud bang and then a brief silence… “Welcome to City 17. It’s safer here,” the Consul’s ever hollower sounding message echoes. The two Metrocops drag the man away. Everyone goes about their business, and I decide to do the same.

The doorway from the cafeteria leads to a corridor. Posters on the wall catch my attention. They are bigger than the ones I saw on the train, but look just as much like textbook propaganda. They all bear the number 17 in one of the corners. One of them depicts the Consul with the words “It’s great to be part of the greater good”. Another depicts a Metrocop and says “Civil Protection: They’re here for you”. But one particular poster catches my attention: it shows a familiar figure in brown robes holding a flamethrower-like object. I can now more clearly see its head: it’s white, metallic, and shaped like flattened ball. It has two beady, tubular eyes and a third orifice that probably serves as its mouth. “Keep it clean… or he will”.

As I’m walking through the corridor, looking at the posters, I notice a vending machine. “The Consul’s Private Reserve”. It takes me a moment to realize that it dispenses cans of water. For free, it would seem. I’m looking at the buttons on the machine, considering pressing one, when I feel a hand on my shoulder. A bewildered looking man spins me around and grabs me by my shoulders, bringing his face very close to mine.

“Don’t drink the water,” he says. His eyes frantically dart around and his breaths are shaky. “They put something in it, to… to make you forget. I don’t even remember how I got here…” He slowly lets go of me and looks around. “I…” His voice trembles and he walks away, shaking his head. I decide to pass on the water.

The corridor leads me around a corner to a fenced-off waiting line, where citizens cue up to be scanned by a camera-like contraption hanging from the ceiling. Most people are sent straight ahead, but some get taken aside by a Metrocop and are escorted through a gate marked “NOVA PROSPEKT”. I’m not sure what exactly is going on, but I know it is a situation I would rather avoid. I turn around to leave, but am suddenly stopped by a voice: “You, citizen!” I turn back around and see a Metrocop beckoning me from a side door. “Come with me, now!” I look around, weighing up my options. Can I run? No, that’s ridiculous. The scene in the cafeteria proved that Metrocops are ruthless, and without my H.E.V. Suit I don’t stand a chance against multiple armed individuals. I have no choice but to follow him and hope I can overpower him when he’s alone.

I follow the Metrocop into a narrow hallway, past a door behind which I hear a man protesting and trying to defend himself. I get lead into a small office. “Back up,” the Metrocop says with a soft push before closing the door and walking over to an alien looking console with a triptych of monitors above it. I frantically look around the office – a desk, a filing cabinet, another of those ceiling scanners, a chair with leather straps on the armrests and suspicious red stains on the floor around it… Anything I can use as a weapon? Perhaps the desk lamp…

While I am frantically looking around for a way out, the Metrocop pushes some buttons on the console and the scanner disappears into the ceiling. “Yeah, I’m gonna need me some privacy for this,” he says with a chuckle. Before I can make a run for the lamp, he turns around and brings his hands up to the sides of his head. “Now…” There’s a click as the front part of the mask comes loose. When he takes it off, I, for the first time in too long, look into the eyes of a friend. “About that beer I owed ya!”

Chapter 2

________________________________________

So, here is chapter one of Anticitizen! I’m so excited to finally get this out there. I have a couple more things to say, but first, as promised, here are a few images to aid the visualization of some of the things I described. (Don’t take any of the images literally, there might be differences between them and the story)

Wasteland

Wasteland creature 1: Stampeder

Wasteland creature 2: Tripod hopper

Razor Train

Train Station Abyss

Beta Metrocop

Consul

Propaganda posters

__________________________________

So, this first chapter was very descriptive but I had to do a lot of scene-setting. Even if y’all know what a Metrocop looks like, I have to describe them from scratch because (1) I want this story to be readable for people who have never played HL2, (2) I need to make clear to all you HL2 fans what looks the same and what looks different and (2+1) since it’s from Gordon’s perspective I can’t just go “oh look it’s a Metrocop” since it’s his first time seeing one.

Undoubtedly you are now bursting with anticipation for the next chapter. Well, you can probably guess what I’m about to say: it’s gonna take some time. I have started writing it and it’s mapped out and all, but you know, I still have to actually write most of it.

Oh, before I forget, following a suggestion by @perfect-trash-king​ (thanks by the way) I will be posting this story on Ao3 Ao2+1 too, so if you for some reason much prefer that platform over Tumblr I guess you can head over there. Or you could follow it on both platforms. And don’t forget it’s also being uploaded to Fanfiction, so you could follow it there as well. Or don’t. You do you.

Thanks for reading, stay awesome and I’ll see you next time :)

[popculturebuffet]

Prince of Wishful Thinking: A Tom Lucitor Retrospective and Character Study: Part 1: Firey Little Shit

Star Vs the Forces of Evil is a .. complicated subject for me. When it started it was somewhat hit and miss but the premise was intresting: Star Butterfly is a magical princess, having just got her families ancestral wand.. and a few days later, or a jumpcut in the actual episode later materials revealed the actual time span, sets everything on fire and is sent to earth. There she meets best friend and, to my delight that eventually turned into “OH GOD JUST END THIS WILL THEY OR WON’T THEY SHIT ALREADY” I haven’t seen since the likes of Ross and Rachel that warrants it’s own damn article, and gets into various shenanigans while battling a gang of “monsters”, a general term for most non-mewmans  on Mewni, lead by a spoiled king, Ludo, who wants the wand. 

Things got turned on their head quickly, as “Mewnipendance Day’ revealed that the Mewmans (Humans in all but name really) took mewni by force, using magic to cast the monsters into poverty, which as the series and “Magic Book of Spells” would reveal, caused a cycle of death and bloodshed with no defendants. It changed the show for the better, as the plot, while heavy handed is a necessary one given these prejduice filled times we live in and how well it’s crafted. And it’s into the show slowly coming into it’s own a new character was introduced: He had been announced by the crew in the show’s press junket was in the title but took most of season 1 to show up... and he’d end up being one of the sho’ws saving graces as it dived into bullshit and go through one of the most through character arcs of the show. HIs name was Tom Lucitor, Star’s obsessive demon Ex-Boyfriend, and this is his story.

THE MAGIC BOOK OF SPELLS

Before we get there though, we have to take at rip down side material mountain... this time to the Magical Book of Spells. The Book of Spells was a real life verison of a book we’d seen in the show itself that recorded the previous queens of Mewni’s spells and held Glossarcyk, a magical being who assited the queens throughout the decades. The real version was used to tell each of the Queens, even the three we see on screen’s stories.. star included. As such it not only gives us some, if sadly not enough, more of his actual relationship with star pre-series, but also the full background on his kingdom’s relationship with hers. See while the Butterflies control the majority of mewni, their Kingdom isn’t endless and there are half a dozen others, most of which aren’t really that fleshed out. But The Lucitor’s are somewhat of an exception: The Lucitors rule the underworld, basically Mewni’s hell where all sorts of skeletons, demons and ghouls exist. You know funny little ghouls. 

I had to. Anyways the Lucitor kingdom also has Mewmans, due to some demons kidnapping a bunch years ago. Whoops.

Despite you know, kidnapping a bunch of their people, the Lucitors and Butterflies ended up close allies. This is thanks to the efforts of Mewni’s ambassador, Jushtin who was supposed to be Mewni’s first King to wield the wand... but his mom was pressured into having a sister. Said sister Solaria, to not mince words, was a genocidal monster who slowly descended into madness and tried to kill all monsters declaring outright war on them, but things were tense at first and they needed allies. So the Lucitors, along with the Cloud Kingdom of the Pony Heads which are exactly what they sound like, helped turn the tide. So things were cool for a few decades, and then we get to the reign of Rhina the Riddled. Rhina, who the book all but says is aromantic and likely asexual as well, was shoved into an arranged marriage with John Roachely, a second cousin who had no impact on the Lucitor side of the Genepool whatsoever and thus Star and Tom aren’t really related at all. I bring this up only because if I don’t tackle the incest allegations, someone will try and use that against me. I’d say i’m being paranoid but i’ve seen the rabid shippers use far less to attack Tom, so no. Rhina, to make things go smoother, cast a spell to make her love him.... it didn’t work longterm and, to get him to leave her, cast a heart break spell on him.. which LITERALLY broke his heart, and thus she was left a widow and the demons were not happy about her you know, whoopsie daisy murdering one of them likely set up with her a bridge between both sides and soured things for a while. Now you may all be asking: “Kay, intresting.. but what’s all this game of thrones but with flying pony heads, so better game of thrones, stuff gotta do with tom?” Well wait no more. Luckily for me, Star has a section in the book, and thus she spills the tea on her first metting with Tom. The two met at the Silver Bell Ball, an annual ball where the royalty of Mewni gather and the princes and princesses all dance once each as a good will gesture. The reason I went through the Rhina stuff is I’m guessing Star, who attended the ball every year according to the book and likely since at least she was old enough to dance, didn’t meet Tom earlier because his parents hadn’t been on good enough terms to bring him till he was 13, and River and Moon, Star’s parents, had succeeded in winning them over. The book nor the series dosen’t outright say this but given what we see later and what we have, it’s what i’m going with. We’ll get more into Tom’s personality when we get to his first in series appearance, but being a charming young man, and the first person her age at the ball Star found remotely attractive, they quickly set up a date for the boardwalk in the underworld for Cornshakes, because Mewni loves corn as much as I love Galarian Meowth. He looks so adorably homeless. But naturally if a snowball can’t last in hell, a shake can’t either, but even melted corn can’t ruin their good time and Tom even buys star a gift. I bring this up because said gift is star’s signiture devil horn headband. (Though Star is quick to announce she isn’t one of those annoying people who comes back from a trip thinking their a local). A real steal too at 14.99 or your second born’s soul. Most demons go for the first born, it’s a classy change of pace. The two eventually end up making it official, and star even gets a helpful pamphelt about Demons’ love of mascera, their anger and their tendency to tell their mom’s everything... the latter two will actually be really important as we go. But due to Tom’s anger as we’ll find out, the two end up breaking up and frustratingly we don’t learn the exacts just star was sad.. and that said depression lead to said kingdom distruction and the rest of the series. And since I covered the premise of the series above we can basically scoot right onto Tom’s first apperance.

BLOOD MOON BALL

Before this ep, Tom made a small cameo in another ep when her magic mirror, basically portrayed as working as a person sized video phone, accidently called him when she said call Mom. As a nice little bit of foreshadowing Tom flew into a rage at her preparing to hang up on him , even though it was a wrong number and they’d been broken up for a few   months at this point. But it’d be an agonizing wait for Tom. I was curious about the character, given not much had been revealed, I missed the episode with his cameo, and the animatic for BMB’s first scene was released months before the episode came out and was really funny and intresting. Said scene has Tom making one hell of an entrance, landing from the sky in a cool carriage with a skeletal horse, floating in and catching eyes and floating up to Star’s desk in class to ask her out with the moon.

Star.. has no interest and shoves tom, hilarious as while they just cut to the front of school, she had to have been mildly shoving him all the way from her class up a hallway, and outside. And passing Jackie, marco’s crush I bring up because why not and Janna, Star’s future close friend who we’ll get to more later, since he did earlier and they now have to go from oggling tom to wondering what the hell their seeing. She also tells him to take his dead horse back, which leads to one of my faviorite gags of the series  as said horse says “Wait, I was dead” and later, mid conversation about her going to said Ball, randomly interjects with “why didn’t you tell me I was dead?” That poor poor horse. You should come live with me. I don’t have a car, I could use a skeletal horse and I would tell you if you were dead man. Hit me up. But Tom tries to convince star he’s changed, he’s got an anger managment bunny, a counselor Brian (voiced by my guy Stephen Root, who you may better know as the voice of Bill Dautrive, the mayor in Amphibia or Bud Gleeful), and he’s doing fine.. then Marco goes and Karate chops his hand off, thinkign he was a danger. Tom gets really angry, to Star’s horror, which tells me she saw this sort of thing a LOT: tom getting this level of pissed at someone and likely leveling either them or everything around them. Thankfully Brian calms him down and Star introduces them and Tom , like the gentleman he is , gives her a bell to take her to the ball and time to think. Star, impressed by him calming down and trying, takes him up on it over Marco’s objections and worries about her safety, including the amasingly radar busting line “Never go with a predator to a second location” and the dance is on. As it turned out, Tom toned things down, ,less death and murder and more prom, to try and impress her and is annoyed when Star turns down his corsage.. which is a live spider. Which i’m generous to her on because spiders scare the shit out of me unless their pokemon. Seriously look at this sweetheart:

Who could be terrified of that face? Such a sweetie. Anyways, Tom is angry about it and his anger only increases when he wants to dunk himself and star in unicorn blood.. because while on earth dumping blood on someone makes them go on a psychic rampage you brought on yourselves, in the underworld is just a teen dance thing. But since one of Star’s best friend is a unicorn, something Tom has no excuse for not knowing as Pony is close to her and a princess in her own right and he had to have met her in his months dating star, and gets pissy over.. and star catches him having to pet his therapy bunny over it and walks off annoyed to get some punch.

And it’s with this Tom’s problems become apparent: He has charm, grace.. but he isn’t really TRYING to change, nor does he see WHY Star hates his anger. Sure he has a counsler, he has coping mechanisms things that would actually HELP him get better.. if he WANTED to. He dosen’t want to control his temper, he dosen’t want to get better he just wants Star back, and that’s why it’s not working: He’s making an effort, but it’s for the wrong reasons and without trying to tackle the root of his issues. He’s just trying to take the easiest way out, which is a problem that will crop up again next time. His second one is easier to illustrate when his plan becomes clear: turns out there’s a magical binding curse thing, it was clarified more in Season 4 but I feel no reason to leave it vauge here, and tom wants to bind his and Star’s souls together forever. He later admits he assumed she knew about that going in.. but it still dosen’t excuse his actions entirely and brings us to that flaw I was building towards: He’s selfish. He changed the ball to impress star, he shoved a corsage on her she didn’t one, got ANGRY, visably angry, at her turning down something he shoudl’ve known just by having dated her before would be a non-starter and worst of all he wanted to bind her to him forever without asking, just assuming she agreed by going. Star can be selfish at this stage too, especially this early on.. but underneath it she cares about people, even if she sometimes goes about it in the same fashion tom does here, she comes from a good place. Really both of this seems to come from them being royalty: both have had privlage their entire life and been insulated from a lot of things.. and Tom being raised in an environment where anger is normal and he gets whatever he wants from two loving parents and an army of servants, probably meant he never HAD to think of anyone else and as the series goes on, never had any friends except a Dog that we never see and probably sadly died. My theroy is Little Lord Fooleroy got ran over by Deatruk, the truck what runs over people, but i’m stupid like that. This winds up costing Tom his soul binding thing as Marco in disguise, being goaded by.. something that’s never remotely explained seriously what exactly the fuck was that creepy deep voice to crash the ball, ends up dancing with her. Shippers squeed, this was probably used in a jillion AMV’s.. and Tom naturally is pissssseeeed and ready to flambe Marco... until star takes him out with zero effort. They go home, Star berates Marco for not trusting her , end of episode.. oh and they speak in unison for a quick gag but i’m sure that won’t be important. As you can probably see her Tom was origianlly supposed to be a recurring pain in the backside for our heroes, showing up to win back Star, pull some “Nice Guy” Crap and then get his ass kicked most likely.. but after the end of Season 1, it was a fairly short season, the writers for whatever reason, and for the better decided to have Tom slowly change a bit.. but since him becoming a better person would be abrubt he has to do one lass dickhole thing first...

MR CANDLE CARES

And now we’ve come to Tom’s worst act, the thing that had he not fixed it the way he had at the end, made him an outright villain. Star and Marco have meetings with the new guidance counselor, who gives eveyrone else great career trajectories but for Star and Marco? Star gets a rather overbearing lecture on how she has to be queen when she grows up and probably shoudln’t date Marco and should be picking a future husband, ewwww, and Marco gets the unitetinonally, given Tom probably knows only about enough about earth to concot this scheme, offensive career path as janitor.. for an honor roll student with a bunch of extracurriculars. Yeah but Tom’s accidental racisim aside, while what he did to Marco was petty , what he’s trying to do to Star is creepy, basically using someone else to gaslight her into trying to get back together with him. But as noted above, Tom is selfish and as I haven’t noted yet he lacks some empathy.. so instead his advice sends Star spiraling not helped by her mother, Moon, basically telling her she has no choice in being queen and being happy dosen’t matter.. because Moon was kind of a dick at this stage. So while star gets a punk makeover and prepares to do something terrible to prevent her miserable future, Marco decides to confront candle and, as I didn’t even try to hide, Tom is behind this. Granted Tom wasn’t great at hiding it either, it’s just star was understandably concerned about her future and too distracted by that to pick up on how weirdly intrested Mr.Candle was in her dating life. But no i’ts Tom who is, and Marco baits him by pretending he and star are “Smooch Buddies”.. something the trailers for Season 2, and this episode was pretty early, used as a bait and switch, but I’m okay with it as most could probably tell something was up by the delivery. Naturally this proves to be a terrible idea, and i’d say it’s the dumbest thing Marco ever did if Season 3 didn’t take a sledgehammer to his character, but that’s an essay for another day, and Tom takes Marco back to his place to murder him... but Marco stands strong and Tom challenges him to a battle to the death, with Marco choosing ping-poing. Tom naturally destroys him.. but Marco uses the game to point some things out: After calling tom out for bascially cheating, since his powers give him the upper hand, Tom talks about Star doing the same, basically making up her own rules as soon as she looses. Marco then uses this to make tom see what a butt he’s been: The ping pong thing is just another example of how Star functions, doing whatever she wants and going her own way. It’s why being forced down the path of queen scares her so much, it’s responsiblity and rules and no fun as far as she can tell with no benifits. It’s why she rebels so much.. she can’t be told what to do.. which Marco makes Tom realize means he can’t control her, nor would he want to, and that he’s made a huge mistake. Tom forgoes killing Marco, and the two rush to star who’s on the edge of cutting of a mermaid’s tail to prevent her from ever being queen.. but just can’t do it. Star can be selfish, the above cheating shows that.. but she’s a good person deep down. Tom admits what he did.. and throughly apologizes for it, agreeing basically to let Star go and stop trying to force her back with him. Star does punch him for good measure, deservedly so, but they part on good terms and Marco reassures Star when she’s Queen she can rule her way, and they hug.. and notably Tom dosen’t get the least bit upset. Mr.Candle Cares is a good second ep. I’ve made no bones about how this is the worst thing Tom did: The controlling stuff at the ball was just selfish, the blood moon thing while not GREAT was asbent minded selfishness. This... it nearly broke star and ruined her future. However it comes from the same place as Blood Moon and his reaction at the end shows he simply didn’t consider star’s feelings.. and likely realize he HADN’T been. it wasn’t Marco’s fault they weren’t together, it was Tom’. While the Apology is a minor thing, it’s still a step in the right direction. As I said had he NOT backed away here he probably never would’ve gotten better or even if he tried, gone so far in trying to get star back he couldn’t walk it back. Here he hit his lowest point.. but thanks to Marco, he had a chance to turn it around before it was too late and grow as a person. This is where Tom gets compelling: he goes from a spoiled selfish douchey rich kid, to someone who clearly WANTS to be better, but has issue, social and otherwise, that make it an uphill battle. And with that we get to tom’s penultimate apperance for Season 2, and his last full one...

Friendenemies:

Tom shows up again and while Star tries to shoo him off before she has to get the shooing broom, Tom reveals he’s not there for Star but Marco. See he feels bad about you know, trying to kill him twice and wants to take Star’s Marco out tonight he’s gonna show him what he’s all about, he’s gonna get jacked up on some cheap champagne and let the good times all roll out. Marco understandably does not want a night out with a guy who was creepy to his best friend and tried murdering him twice, so Tom uses a bribe: tickets to the Mackie Hand, a martial artist that Marco is a huge fan of, film festival that Marco failed to get tickets to. With some encouragment from Star, who while not wanting to date Tom sees he’s genuinely making an effort, Marco agrees They hang out in Tom’s carriage which goes by tardis logic, if only, and to the creator’s credit, just so, and the two soon bond, finding a shared love of both Mackie Hand and the pop band love sentence, and Marco genuinely earns tom’s respect when some shades wearing piles of smug challenge our heroes, which Tom now counts as at this point, to a race, Marco agrees... then has them do nothing while the idiots speed up and get arrested and we get the blessed image above. The good times get interrupted though when it’s time for the marathon but tom locks him inside. And no this isn’t the start of some angry makeouts, as it turns out this was part of tom’s anger management therapy, but once again his propensity for the easy way out means he fails at it and burns up the tickets.. but Marco is more upset that Tom lied to him and pretended to be his friend and like mackie hand, though the love sentence thing was real> The whole thing plays more like a breakup than the end of a blossming friendship, which ties into how this episode got people shipping Marco and Tom with each other.. and rightfully so. While I don’t really ship it myself, I can see why as it has great chemstry and a great dynamic. Tom’s behavior here is part of why I say he has social issues, something I can relate to as a cave troll living in my mother’s basement: Tom dosen’t seem to have any real friends. Oh sure he can charm people, he has servants, two loving parents, and a screeching grandpa whose on the wall of my own personal heroes along with Ric Flair, My Mother, Stan Lee, Peter David, Rebecca Sugar and many more, but he dosen’t have FRIENDS. Star seems to be his first relationship and the first thing resembling a true friend he had, so while his behavior was a tad creepy it makes sense why he clung to her. And that shows here: He tries superfically bonding with marco, faking an intrest, giving him gifts, partying.. but it’s both forming a genunine connection over something, Love Sentence, and just sharing some memories that ended up making them friends. But yeah after Marco sings a sad pop ballad, or part of one. Tom decides to do a three point grand romantic gesture and raises Mackie Hand from the dead, and when Mackie isn’t allowed into his own film festival he fights the ticket guy and tom and marco watch and while they say they hate each other, the two’s friendship is forged. Marco finally has a friend outside of two doofuses and .. does Janna count? I dunno. She’s less of a friend and more of a gremlin who steals his things constantly while being actual friends with his bestie. Before we close out this leg there’s one final episode for season 2 with Tom in it to cover and dive into: Naysaya.

Naysaya comes literally just before the mid-season finale and Tom sadly disappears for the rest of the season, though he’ll be back and in greater numbers  in Season 3. I’m not covering it full because it’s not a full on tom episode, he only has a short cameo, but he is important to it and his one brief bit shows off his  character. In short Marco is finally asking out Jackie Lynn Thomas, his crush and a great character in her own right who sadly all but vanished from the show shortly into season 3 after something we’ll get to in passing next time, but got some great closure and was revealed to be Pansexual, so good for her. Marco had been building up to this for the last two seasons: first realizing thanks to time shenanigans he never made a move, then actually talking to her, and then not only telling her how he felt but realizing he didn’t know her but he’d like to. So now he’s ready to ask her out but every time he tries, written or spoken, it comes out as his most embarrassing secrets before the little neck tumor man comes out up there and does it for him. Thanks to Janna, local roustabout mentioned above, who after teasing Marco as is her usual response to anything with him, uses her knowledge of the spooky oooky to find out what that thing is: a Naysya, a curse born creature that spills it’s target’s most embarrassing secrets at whoever they try to court. Naturally, given Tom was an insanley jealous ball of asshole until a few episodes ago, it’s his fault though showing his slow growth, while he’s entirely suprised Marco asked no one out since the ball, says the guy who did two schemes and a shenanigan trying ot get star back, he’s also sorry and assumed it’d worn off or he would’ve told him sooner, and tells him how: he has to let all his insecurities out> Marco nearly withdraws over this due to being 90% insecurity, but eventually buckles down and tells jackie every embrassing thing about  him and.. it works. Naysaya leaves and he and Jackie go out on a group date. And with that Tom is gone for a while but he, and this retrospective will be back.  I owe a huge debt of grattitude to @jess-the-vampire​, a dear friend, and wish her a happy belated birthday. She was a willing and helpful resource and worth a follow. And if you want more stuff like this, comics reviews, and what have you, feel free to follow or comisson me. Until next time, keep the home fires burning. 

[voodoogryffindor]

Wednesdays were her favorite.

The reveille rang loud for devotion. Definitive loud strikes of an iron rod on the rim of a car tyre by 5:30 every morning. The Christians amongst the girls had to fly out of bed and run out to the devotion ground for prayers. The matron, Mrs. Ajayi never missed the ringing of the reveille even by a minute and five minutes later, she would go around the dorm rooms waking with her switch those the reveille could not.

Ajoke was never a heavy sleeper. Most times, she woke up before the reveille sounded. She would say she was just wired that way but once or twice she had been awakened by the matron's switch.

Today, she was awake before the reveille sounded. She had had a nightmare. A hooded figure had tried to grab her. When it was time for devotion, she went out with the other light sleepers in her room to the devotion ground and sat on one of the pavements on the side of the ground before Mrs. Ajayi would come around with her switch. Her yawn was loud. She had not slept enough. Today was a Wednesday and she couldn't possibly go for Physical Education class feeling tired. She needed a cool bath.

Worship songs were led by two girls from SS2. Ajoke thought their singing was beautiful. Why not? They were both in the school choir. She sang along. Worship songs were the best thing about being a Christian in her opinion. She needed to pee. Her bladder was burning, but she could not bear to leave the singing behind.

The bathroom was dark and eerily quiet. The sound of her urine hitting the floor was like that of a broken tap. Ajoke kept looking downwards, her eyes following the trail of her urine flowing into the hole of the latrine. This kept the dream off her mind for a while. Strangely, she felt like eyes were focused on her neck. She looked up quickly. She saw the hem of a cloak float past the open door of the bathroom. She got up quickly to see whatever it was, but she saw nothing.

Back at the devotion ground, Ajoke was able to catch up with the last of the worship songs. Mrs. Ajayi then climbed the podium to pray. After the prayer, the reveille was struck again to signal that the few Muslim girls and those of other religions who would be through with their morning prayers, could join the others for announcements. All the girls would stand to face her to listen.

Mrs. Ajayi's announcement started with the usual "Girls of Imole Ayo Girls School, welcome to a new day. I hope you have all slept well? Today..."

The matron's voice became mute to Ajoke's ears. She had slapped a mosquito sucking blood from her calf and as she rose back up, she felt the urge to turn and look behind her. In the darkness, Ajoke saw a figure with a cloak that reached down to the ankles and a hood over its head, going into her dorm room. It looked very much like a human being, but she could not be sure.

Ajoke squeezed her way through the gathering and headed to her dorm room. "What could that be?" she said out loud to herself. "Is it the same thing I saw in the toilet?"

She entered the room, the pounding of her scared heart audibly echoing in it. Or was it just to her ears? The hooded figure was gone. Nowhere to be found.

She made the sign of the cross and began to pray. "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil. For thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me..." As she turned to go back to the gathering of the girls, she heard her name. She turned sharply like a springbuck taking a bend to escape a cheetah hunting it. No one was there but she could swear she had heard her name. It was like whoever or whatever had called her name had put it on a zephyr and pushed it past her ear.

"Ajoke". She heard her name again. This time around, it was louder than the first and she could swear the voice came from her corner of the room. She walked quickly towards her bed and saw a person seated on her bed. The cloak on the person seemed like it was floating and the hood was floating too but it covered the person's face completely.

"Excuse me please", She said with uncertainty in her voice. The figure turned to face her but there was no face under the hood. Where there was supposed to be a face, there was an empty pitch black space like a moonless midnight sky. It did not talk, it did not move anymore, the hooded cloak on it kept rippling on it's human shaped body like it had its own wind around it. From beneath the hood shone two bright lights the size of human eyeballs, in the place where eyes should have been.

Her roommates returned to the room noisily. Startled by their chatter, Ajoke turned to see her classmates come in. When she turned back to face her bed, the figure was gone. Where had it gone to? What was it? Had anyone else seen it? Why did it vanish when others came into the room?

* * * *

Ajoke wore her sport wear shirt while gyrating her hips and singing along to Angelique Kidjo's "Agolo" with her roommates on top of her voice. Her red and silver sport wear complemented her espresso brown skin perfectly. Her head was clear. Music was her best medicine.

She was always the last to leave the room. She was the room head and had the key in her possession so she had to leave last in order to lock the door.

At 7:25, she was the only remaining person in the room. Ajoke sat on one of the beds in the center of the room to tie the lace of her sneakers. As she bent to stretch her fingers to the laces, from thin air appeared ten mangled skeleton fingers which grabbed them before she could. She was jolted by the sudden appearance and when she looked up, it was the figure again.

"Let me help you with this" it said in a most terrible voice. It tied the laces into a knot and two loops, exactly the way Ajoke tied her laces into bows. She could not place its voice. It sounded like a man or a woman, more like both and then neither at once. It was terrifying.

Ajoke drew back with a loud exhale. The thing she had seen in her dream, the thing in the bathroom, the thing on her bed, there it was right in front of her.

She stood up and the figure straightened up from its bent position. It looked a little over seven feet tall and the cloak and hood it wore rippled around it gently. Its feet were not touching the floor, they were floating three inches above it and when Ajoke looked closely, she saw mangled skeleton feet where flesh was supposed to be. It still had the pitch black space under the hood and two bright dots she assumed were its eyes.

It hovered in front of her like an helicopter performing a drop off of soldiers. She tried to speak but the words seized in her chest, held up by invisible hands. Her mind was swirling and working as fast as it could to try to understand what was going on. "What is this thing? Why have I been seeing it?" she asked in her mind, which seemed like the only place at the moment where her voice could function. Her throat was dry and itchy and no matter how much she tried, no sound came forth from it.

"I get that most times" said the figure to her. Her face looked even more bewildered to hear the unplaceable voice once again. "Yes that look on your face, I always get that wherever I go. I guess the Creator made me like this to highlight the situation of my appearance". Ajoke's mystified face deepened and her eyes began to water from the effort to force her throat to create sound. "Oh! Your voice. I can handle that".

The figure raised its hand up making its cloak to drop to its elbow. Where there would have been an arm, she saw bones wearing oddly grey and badly decayed flesh which kept falling off from the bones. The skin however fell off but hovered close to the bones, then reattached itself back and continued the cycle. It stretched the decaying hand which surprisingly had no smell at all, towards her throat and gave a gentle wave.

Ajoke felt a rush of wind leave her chest through her throat, forcibly escaping through her open mouth. Her chest was hot and she felt steam flowing up through her throat. She coughed as though to test her vocality and sound finally came forth loud and clear.

"What are you?" she asked. It was the first question she could find after vigorously searching her brain.

"It is a question of what or who" it said, making one of the dots beneath its hood seem to go a little bit higher and grow slightly bigger than the other. She had the feeling that this thing, whatever it was, had raised its eyebrow to her - if it had any.

"Who are you?" she then asked.

"I am a personification. I am what people of your tribe call Iku. I am the personification of death."

Ajoke's eyes rolled furiously in their sockets. She felt like her brain was short circuiting at hearing such an incredulous claim. She had read myths and legends of various cultures and loved them all. From reading these myths, she had come across several mythical beings in whose existence she believed and marveled about. But why was a figure that matched the description of the creature that she had read of called the grim reaper - except that this one did not have a scythe, a face and smooth bare bones under its cloak - doing in her dorm room?

She drew back from the figure once more and this time, it did not bother to close the gap. She looked at it and saw that the place where a head would have been was slighty bent to the side like that of a person having deep thoughts. She tried to think of what this thing in her presence could possibly be thinking of - if it had a mind at all.

"Have a seat, Ajoke Ojokogun Oluwadamida" the figure said, gently and with the voice of a lover whispering entreaties to his lover. Ajoke sat on the bed closest to her and stared intently at the figure floating towards her. It floated closer and then bent to sit on the bed opposite hers. It however did not touch the bed, but appeared to be in a sitting position, still hovering.

Ajoke opened her mouth to speak, but "I know you have questions. It's almost time so now is the only opportunity you have to ask" the figure said before she could produce sound. Its voice was soft and friendly and had a great effect on Ajoke's tense body, making her to become calm even if she was unwilling.

She drew a deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. "Tell me the truth of whom or what you are. Who are you?"

"I am death. The personification of the entire idea of death you humans hold in fearful sentiment. " It said in its still still voice, unmoved.

"But how? How are you that?"

"Ajoke why do I taste fear and a little disbelief in your voice? How have you believed the myths and legends of this world and now try hard to disbelief when the truth has appeared before you?"

"No. I just... But I..." she struggled to answer.

"You do not have to answer Ajoke. Your fear, your fight or flight response to try to disbelief, it is all part of your being human. You humans believe in the unbelievable to find escape, but when faced with the truth and you find the truth scary and hard, you try so hard to forget that you believe. I do not blame you Ajoke". It said in a reassuring voice, surprisingly even more gentle than how it had been speaking.

"I just can't bring myself to believe that you are real, that this, this is real. It's unnerving."

"I understand Ajoke, I do."

"What exactly are you even? A man? A woman? Just a soulless being?" She asked, feeling surprisingly freer as the minutes passed.

"I am without a soul, both a man and a woman and neither of both. Even I cannot explain how this works to you. Only the Creator can. He made me."

"So the Creator, when you say Creator do you mean God?"

"Yes! The Creator is the God and maker of this universe. He made me, you, and all things here, therein and without."

"So you are a being without a soul, made by the Creator and given form to what? Harvest souls? Announce date dates? Transport the dead to the hereafter?"

"Well, that sums it up when you say it like that."

She wiped her now sweating forehead with the back of her hand. This information she was getting was too much for her to take in. Why would death come to visit her now? She was just sixteen, she had not lived a life yet, she had had sex only about five times. Why now? Why this early? Life was not supposed to be this cruel. Was this why her mother named her Ojokogun; the day is not long?

"What are you thinking?" the figure's genteel voice spoke and snapped her from her thought.

"Let me ask you this straight. You are here to take me aren't you?" she asked in a voice that sounded calm but still showed obvious signs of terrible fear and disappointment.

"Yes."

"Is that why my family named me Ojokogun? They knew I wouldn't last long?"

"Yes. Ojokogun, meaning the day is not long. It was a very brave thing for your parents to do. At your birth there was a speculation that you would die when you are sixteen and they accepted their fate and gave you that name. Very brave people i tell you, even if they secretly hope that it won't stand."

"And you are here now for me?"

"Yes."

"But I could almost swear that you sound disappointed to take me. The way you talk about how brave my parents have been, your gentle disposition, do you really want to take me?"

"This is the hardest part of my being; taking the young. It's never easy taking a child's soul. They haven't had a life yet and their time is already up. I may be death in person but taking the life of children, children who haven't even lived life at all is hard."

Ajoke thought she heard pain in its voice. The heat in her chest cooled down almost immediately. It didn't mean to come for her. It wasn't its choice. It had come because it had to. Because fate, nature and the creator had made it so. She would die at sixteen, die without having lived a life, die a child.

There was no turning back. Except by some heavenly intervention, her time was up. She had to accept this. Had her parents not accepted her fate from the beginning? Nothing could be done. Not now. This was how it had been written that she'd go. Visited by death and told straight to her face 'you die now'. The only thing that could be done now was to accept. To go without resistance.

She drew a long deep breath and closed her eyes. "So, I die now. I die today. Will it at least be painless? Will it be quick?"

"Yours will be like a long long sleep. You would not even notice."

"I feel at peace. Am I already dead?"

"Not yet, but soon."

"Alright then."

* * * *

She was laid on a bed, white and soft like fresh bread from the oven. The window was slighty open and the curtain fluttered noiselessly on the wall. The sun had risen and a few rays fell on her face through the window. If this was the afterlife, it seemed peaceful enough. Dying was not too bad after all.

"How is she now Nurse Chisom?"

That was unmistakably Matron Ajayi's voice. What was she doing here too? Had she been visited by death and brought to the afterlife too? And did the afterlife need matrons to watch over the younger dead?

"She'll be fine. She has stopped muttering incoherently in her sleep for now at least. She should be up any moment from now. But we should give her time" She heard Nurse Chisom say and then heard feet leaving the room or wherever it was that she was.

What was happening? That was the school nurse, Nurse Chisom's voice. What was she also doing here? Dead too? How would the school handle three deaths in a single day? But she had heard Nurse Chisom say she was muttering in her sleep. Sleep? She can't have been sleeping. She was dead. Visited by death and...

Wait! What had happened after her conversation with Death? Everything went black and she didn't feel a thing. It had promised her that dying would be painless and she wouldn't even notice. But she truly didn't notice anything from the moment their conversation ended. It felt strange. The afterlife felt strange.

"Look she's stirring. I think she's awake." It was Nurse Chisom's voice still saying she was sleeping. Didn't she not know the difference between sleeping and death?

"Hello Ajoke, how are you? How are you feeling?" Nurse Chisom who now appeared beside her bed, asked gently.

Ajoke turned to look at the face speaking to her. It was Nurse Chisom's face she was looking at. Strange. Beyond the face was the exact replica of the school clinic; neatly laid beds, the smell of disinfectant, various charts on the walls, a cabinet that held medications, three chairs and a desk.

"Where am I? Is this the afterlife?" Ajoke asked dreamily.

"The afterlife? What are you talking about? This is the school clinic my love, not the afterlife. Why would you think it's the afterlife?" Nurse Chisom asked perplexed.

"How did I get here?"

"Your roommates rushed you here immediately after devotion this morning. Apparently you screamed words they couldn't understand just before you fell to the floor and fainted. On getting here you were very still, lifeless even. If it wasn't for a steady thumping of your heart in your chest, you could have passed for a dead person. Your skin later became hot like something on fire and you kept muttering incomprehensibly in your sleep. But you're fine now. I need to go and inform the matron, she has been very worried."

The nurse left the clinic and shut the door behind her. Ajoke was alone in the room. This all felt wrong. If the nurse was correct, she had fainted after seeing the figure on her bed and was interrupted by her returning roommates. But she had seen the figure again, talked to it even. It was real. It felt real without doubt. It had said she'd die today. But if this wasn't the afterlife what did it all mean?

She rose up to sit. As she straightened up and faced the opposite side of the bed, her heart almost failed her as shock engulfed her entire body, crippling her with fear where she sat. There it was, the figure was hovering by the bed opposite hers and the two bright dots under its hood stared at her intently. She knew it. She was dead and this was just a confirmation. The nurse was wrong.

"Hello again Ajoke."

"Hello. It is you again. Is this the afterlife?"

"No it isn't Ajoke. This is your school clinic and no place different."

"How is that possible?" she asked, forehead furrowed and truly confused. "We had a talk. You said I'd die, that my time was up. How come I am still here? Did I die?"

"You will die Ajoke, just not today anymore. A day will come inevitable and irrevocable when you will surely die but for today, you are not dead and will not die." It spoke in a reassuring voice.

"But you sounded sure about it before. You were sure you had come for me."

"Ajoke, the ways of the Creator is that of never ending surprises. He does what He wants, when He wants, because He can. And today, He doesn't want you to die no more. You will have a life and die at a different time. Just not today."

Ajoke's body relaxed. The fear was gone. She wasn't dead. The air she breathed in seemed to taste like pineapples at the back of her throat. Someone had increased the quality of her vision in that she saw everything around her more clearly, in higher resolution. She gripped the bed and her finger sunk into its softeness like a knife sliding into butter. Being alive was sweet and she was truly glad to be alive.

"So I was dreaming when we had that conversation?" she asked, breaking the silence.

"You were here and there; the in-between. You were not dreaming. You were in the space between here and the hereafter." it said matter-of-factly.

"So I get to live a life?"

"Yes, you do."

"I'd see you later then." She said in a thankful tone.

"Yes, we will see later."

It floated closer to her and stretched its hand towards her. The terrible motion of falling and reattaching dead skin on its bones was still happening but she wasn't scared this time. It put its hand on her head and ran its hand through her braids like one would do a child. Her eyes were closed while it ran its hand through her hair. It was soothing.

"I'll see you later Ajoke."

She felt its hand leave her head and when she opened her eyes, it was gone. She felt good. The world around her was brighter. She would die but not today. She had a chance to live a life. She would start it by changing that strange name her parents had given her. This day would be a long one. Her day would be long and full.

The rays of the sun were even more soothing now. She could hear the ringing of the bell for assembly from a distance. The smile on her face was as full as a clear star studded midnight sky. This life was her gift and she'd live it fully.

[lake-lyn]

EW’s exclusive excerpt of The Tyrant’s Tomb by Rick Riordan (2/2)

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Dude, this isn’t cool

Dude just tried to eat my dude

That’s my dead dude, dude

I like flying cars. I prefer it when the car is actually capable of flight, however.

As the hearse achieved zero gravity, I had a few microseconds to appreciate the scenery below—a lovely little lake edged with eucalyptus trees and walking trails, a small beach on the far shore, where a cluster of evening picnickers relaxed on blankets.

Oh, good, some small part of my brain thought. Maybe we’ll at least land in the water.

Then we dropped—not toward the lake, but toward the trees.

A sound like Luciano Pavarotti’s high C in Don Giovanni issued from my throat. My hands glued themselves to the wheel.

As we plunged into the eucalypti, the ghoul disappeared from our roof—almost as if the tree branches had purposefully swatted him away. Other branches seemed to bend around the hearse, slowing our fall, dropping us from one leafy cough-drop-scented bough to another, until we hit the ground on all four wheels with a jarring thud. Too late to do any good, the airbags deployed, shoving my head against the backrest.

Yellow amoebas danced in my eyes. The taste of blood stung my throat. I clawed for the door handle, squeezed my way out between the airbag and the seat, and tumbled onto a bed of cool soft grass.

“Blergh,” I said.

I heard Meg retching somewhere nearby. At least that meant she was still alive. About ten feet to my left, water lapped at the shore of the lake. Directly above me, near the top of the largest eucalyptus tree, our ghoulish blueblack friend was snarling and writhing, trapped in a cage of branches.

I struggled to sit up. My nose throbbed. My sinuses felt like they were packed with menthol rub. “Meg?”

She staggered into view around the front of the hearse. Ring-shaped bruises were forming around her eyes—no doubt courtesy of the passenger-side airbag. Her glasses were intact but askew. “You suck at swerving.”

“Oh, my gods!” I protested. “You ordered me to—” My brain faltered. “Wait. How are we alive? Was that you who bent the tree branches?”

“Duh.” She flicked her hands, and her twin golden scimitars flashed into existence. Meg used them like ski poles to steady herself. “They won’t hold that monster much longer. Get ready.”

“What?” I yelped. “Wait. No. Not ready!”

I pulled myself to my feet with the driver’s-side door.

Across the lake, the picnickers had risen from their blankets. I suppose a hearse falling from the sky had gotten their attention. My vision was blurry, but something seemed odd about the group. . . . Was one of them wearing armor? Did another have goat legs?

Even if they were friendly, they were much too far away to help.

I limped to the hearse and yanked open the backseat door. Jason’s coffin appeared safe and secure in the rear bay. I grabbed my bow and quiver. My ukulele had vanished somewhere underneath the inflated airbags. I would have to do without it.

Above, the creature howled, thrashing in its branch cage.

Meg stumbled. Her forehead was beaded with sweat. Then the ghoul broke free and hurtled downward, landing only a few yards away. I hoped the creature’s legs might have broken on impact, but no such luck. It took a few steps, its feet punching wet craters in the grass, before it straightened and snarled, its pointy white teeth like tiny mirror-image picket fences.

“KILL AND EAT!” it screamed.

What a lovely singing voice. The ghoul could’ve fronted any number of Norwegian death metal groups.

“Wait!” My voice was shrill. “I—I know you.” I wagged my finger, as if that might crank-start my memory. Clutched in my other hand, my bow shook. The arrows rattled in my quiver. “H-hold on, it’ll come to me!”

The ghoul hesitated. I’ve always believed that most sentient creatures like to be recognized. Whether we are gods, people, or slavering ghouls in vulture-feather loincloths, we enjoy others knowing who we are, speaking our names, appreciating that we exist.

Of course, I was just trying to buy time. I hoped Meg would catch her breath, charge the creature, and slice it into putrid ghoul pappardelle. At the moment, though, it didn’t seem that she was capable of using her swords for anything but crutches. I supposed controlling gigantic trees could be tiring, but honestly, couldn’t she have waited to run out of steam until after she killed Vulture Diaper?

Wait. Vulture diaper . . . I took another look at the ghoul: its strange mottled blue-and-black hide, its milky eyes, its oversize mouth and tiny nostril slits. It smelled of rancid meat. It wore the feathers of a carrion eater . . .

“I do know you,” I realized. “You’re a eurynomos.”

I dare you to try saying you’re a eurynomos when your tongue is leaden, your body is shaking from terror, and you’ve just been punched in the face by a hearse’s airbag.

The ghoul’s lips curled. Silvery strands of saliva dripped from his chin. “YES! FOOD SAID MY NAME!”

“B-but you’re a corpse-eater!” I protested. “You’re supposed to be in the Underworld, working for Hades!”

The ghoul tilted its head as if trying to remember the words Underworld and Hades. It didn’t seem to like them as much as kill and eat.

“HADES GAVE ME OLD DEAD!” it shouted. “THE MASTER GIVES ME FRESH!”

“The master?”

“THE MASTER!”

I really wished Vulture Diaper wouldn’t scream. It didn’t have any visible ears, so perhaps it had poor volume control. Or maybe it just wanted to spray that gross saliva over as large a radius as possible.

“If you mean Caligula,” I ventured, “I’m sure he’s made you all sorts of promises, but I can tell you, Caligula is not—”

“HA! STUPID FOOD! CALIGULA IS NOT THE MASTER!”

“Not the master?”

“NOT THE MASTER!”

“MEG!” I shouted. Ugh. Now I was doing it.

“Yeah?” Meg wheezed. She looked fierce and warlike as she granny-walked toward me with her sword-crutches. “Gimme. Minute.”

It was clear she would not be taking the lead in this particular fight. If I let Vulture Diaper anywhere near her, it would kill her, and I found that idea 95 percent unacceptable.

“Well, eurynomos,” I said, “whoever your master is, you’re not killing and eating anyone today!”

I whipped an arrow from my quiver. I nocked it in my bow and took aim, as I had done literally millions of times before, but it wasn’t quite as impressive with my hands shaking and my knees wobbling.

Why do mortals tremble when they’re scared, anyway? It seems so counterproductive. If I had created humans, I would have given them steely determination and superhuman strength during moments of terror.

The ghoul hissed, spraying spit.

“SOON THE MASTER’S ARMIES WILL RISE AGAIN!” it bellowed. “WE WILL FINISH THE JOB! I WILL SHRED FOOD TO THE BONE, AND FOOD

WILL JOIN US!”

Food will join us? My stomach experienced a sudden loss of cabin pressure. I remembered why Hades loved these eurynomoi so much. The slightest cut from their claws caused a wasting disease in mortals. And when those mortals died, they rose again as what the Greeks called vrykolakas—or, in TV parlance, zombies.

That wasn’t the worst of it. If a eurynomos managed to devour the flesh from a corpse, right down to the bones, that skeleton would reanimate as the fiercest, toughest kind of undead warrior. Many of them served as Hades’s elite palace guards, which was a job I did not want to apply for.

“Meg?” I kept my arrow trained on the ghoul’s chest. “Back away. Do not let this thing scratch you.”

“But—”

“Please,” I begged. “For once, trust me.”

Vulture Diaper growled. “FOOD TALKS TOO MUCH! HUNGRY!”

It charged me.

I shot.

The arrow found its mark—the middle of the ghoul’s chest—but it bounced off like a rubber mallet against metal. The Celestial-bronze point must have hurt, at least. The ghoul yelped and stopped in its tracks, a steaming puckered wound on its sternum. But the monster was still very much alive. Perhaps if I managed twenty or thirty shots at that exact same spot, I could do some real damage.

With trembling hands, I nocked another arrow. “Th-that was just a warning!” I bluffed. “The next one will kill!”

Vulture Diaper made a gurgling noise deep in its throat. I hoped it was a delayed death rattle. Then I realized it was only laughing. “WANT ME TO EAT DIFFERENT FOOD FIRST? SAVE YOU FOR DESSERT?”

It uncurled its claws, gesturing toward the hearse.

I didn’t understand. I refused to understand. Did it want to eat the airbags? The upholstery?

Meg got it before I did. She screamed in rage.

The creature was an eater of the dead. We were driving

a hearse.

“NO!” Meg shouted. “Leave him alone!”

She lumbered forward, raising her swords, but she was in no shape to face the ghoul. I shouldered her aside, putting myself between her and the creature, and fired my arrows again and again.

They sparked off the creature’s blue-black hide, leaving steaming, annoyingly nonlethal wounds. Vulture Diaper staggered toward me, snarling in pain, its body twitching from the impact of each hit.

It was five feet away.

Two feet away, its claws splayed to shred my face.

Somewhere behind me, a female voice shouted, “HEY!”

The sound distracted Vulture Diaper just long enough for me to fall courageously on my butt. I scrambled away from the ghoul’s claws.

Vulture Diaper blinked, confused by its new audience. About ten feet away, a ragtag assortment of fauns and dryads, perhaps a dozen total, were all attempting to hide behind one gangly pink-haired young woman in Roman legionnaire armor.

The girl fumbled with some sort of projectile weapon. Oh, dear. A manubalista. A Roman heavy crossbow. Those things were awful. Slow. Powerful. Notoriously unreliable. The bolt was set. She cranked the handle, her hands shaking as badly as mine.

Meanwhile, to my left, Meg groaned in the grass, trying to get back on her feet. “You pushed me,” she complained, by which I’m sure she meant Thank you, Apollo, for saving my life.

The pink-haired girl raised her manubalista. With her long, wobbly legs, she reminded me of a baby giraffe. “G-get away from them,” she ordered the ghoul.

Vulture Diaper treated her to its trademarked hissing and spitting. “MORE FOOD! YOU WILL ALL JOIN THE KING’S DEAD!”

“Dude.” One of the fauns nervously scratched his belly under his PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF BERKELEY T-shirt. “That’s not cool.”

“Not cool,” several of his friends echoed.

“YOU CANNOT OPPOSE ME, ROMAN!” the ghoul snarled. “I HAVE ALREADY TASTED THE FLESH OF YOUR COMRADES! AT THE BLOOD MOON, YOU WILL JOIN THEM—”

THWUNK.

An Imperial gold crossbow bolt materialized in the center of Vulture Diaper’s chest. The ghoul’s milky eyes widened in surprise. The Roman legionnaire looked just as stunned.

“Dude, you hit it,” said one of the fauns, as if this offended his sensibilities.

The ghoul crumbled into dust and vulture feathers. The bolt clunked to the ground.

Meg limped to my side. “See? That’s how you’re supposed to kill it.”

“Oh, shut up,” I grumbled.

We faced our unlikely savior.

The pink-haired girl frowned at the pile of dust, her chin quivering as if she might cry. She muttered, “I hate those things.”

“Y-you’ve fought them before?” I asked.

She looked at me like this was an insultingly stupid question.

One of the fauns nudged her. “Lavinia, dude, ask who these guys are.”

“Um, right.” Lavinia cleared her throat. “Who are you?”

I struggled to my feet, trying to regain some composure. “I am Apollo. This is Meg. Thank you for saving us.”

Lavinia stared. “Apollo, as in—”

“It’s a long story. We’re transporting the body of our friend, Jason Grace, to Camp Jupiter for burial. Can you help us?”

Lavinia’s mouth hung open. “Jason Grace . . . is dead?”

Before I could answer, from somewhere across Highway 24 came a wail of rage and anguish.

“Um, hey,” said one of the fauns, “don’t those ghoul things usually hunt in pairs?”

Lavinia gulped. “Yeah. Let’s get you guys to camp. Then we can talk about”—she gestured uneasily at the hearse—“who is dead, and why.”

[nitewrighter]

For the soundtrack prompt (is that what this is called?): ‘the master switch’ from rogue one a star wars story

Ooh that song’s dramatic—let’s go with the night Zurich Headquarters blew up for that one! I did say I need to fill some gaps in my fic continuity…

—-

Mercy had handed her letter of resignation in to Jack 11 days before. There was no arguing, no bargaining, no promises. She had threatened resignation before and he had managed to convince her otherwise in previous years, but they both knew this wasn’t the Overwatch she had joined anymore, and that there was nothing he could say to make her stay.  He just looked to the letter and looked back up at her with an expression on his face that said, “This might as well happen.” The next week was spent more or less assuring that the science and medical division wouldn’t collapse when she left—showing her replacement the ropes, referring her last patients to new physicians, mountains of correspondence, and so on. The remaining four days were spent unceremoniously cleaning out her lab. Much of her research legally belonged to Overwatch, but she couldn’t trust what they would do with it when she was gone, so she was painstakingly grabbing everything she legally could. She was a ghost in the Watchpoint–people looking at her out of the corner of their eye but not making eye contact as she carried her boxes down the hall.

 There had been a handful of colleagues talking about how they would miss her. Reinhardt took it hard, but Torbjörn was understanding. Genji was long gone, but as Jack had said, he had every right to leave now that the Shimada clan was eliminated. She had been sending him texts regularly, but with no response. That was fair, she supposed, it wasn’t as if Genji had a lot of good memories with Overwatch. McCree had disappeared to god-knows-where and now had a bounty on his head for violating his plea deal with Overwatch. In a way she sort of admired that—McCree had left sooner than she did, even if it meant going against the law. Still, she had come to peace with her own decision well before she handed her letter of resignation in. She had no regrets about it.

She walked a little brisker with the last box–technically she wasn’t supposed to take her caduceus staff, but Overwatch had the blueprints to it, and she had built this one herself. It was her most trusted model, disassembled into three parts and hidden beneath several paper files in the box. 

It was a lonely evening in early autumn the last time she walked out of Zurich Headquarters. She was in the parking lot loading the last box into her car, about a hundred yards from the main building of the headquarters when it exploded. 

She knew the sound better than she would have liked, and for a brief second wondered if the stress of the past few days had suddenly caught up to her and she was flashing back but no, she could feel the earth rumbling beneath her feet and hear the roar behind her, so loud it was disorienting. She only barely glanced over her shoulder to see the rushing flames, the smoke, to feel the shift in the air. She vaulted and slid across the hood of her car to take cover behind it, covering her ears and ducking her face down as the world roared around her and the hot wind swept through, shattering her car’s windows and showering her in glass. For a few brief seconds she was a scared little girl in Thun, the weight of her parents’ bodies on her, and the smell of smoke disorienting her as the ground continued shaking beneath her.

It will pass, she told herself, pressing her hands hard to the side of her head, It will pass then you must act. 

Ashes were already fluttering down in the air and she pulled up her black turtleneck over her nose and mouth to keep out the smoke, which stung her eyes. The emergency vehicles were already pulling up as she was desperately digging through the other boxes in her trunk, pulling out an untested prototype biofeed and re-assembling her caduceus staff. 

“Ma’am—” a swiss policeman hurried up to her, “You need to get out of the area and let the first responders—”

“I am a first responder!” snapped Mercy, putting on the biofeed. She had been playing around with making a biofeed that was also a comm, and the result was a headband-like angled circle. She pushed it against her forehead and strapped her caduceus staff around her back.

“What?” said the policeman. 

She pulled her turtleneck down briefly to show her face and pulled up her ID card. “I’m Angela Ziegler,” she said, “I need you to get me in that building.”

—

They gave her a jacket, helmet, heavy gloves and an oxygen mask, but what she wouldn’t give for her Valkyrie suit in that moment. She had been in burning buildings before with all her rescue work, but it was a whole different experience when it was the Zurich headquarters. She wasn’t running fast enough. The reduced oxygen made the Caduceus staff heavier in her arms, and despite the goggles of her oxygen mask, she could feel tears running down and pooling against the foam seal of the goggles. She had spent so much time mentally distancing herself from this place, and now that it was in flames, the thought popped up like a reflex, “Not here. Not my home.” But it was never her home–but there were still people here she needed to save.

“Survivors through there!” she said, seeing figures lit up green through the walls on her biofeed and pointing. A firefighter bodyslammed through the door and emerged carrying several heavily burned survivors toward the exit. 

PRIORITY TARGET: GABRIEL REYES–CRITICAL HEALTH, blared in her earpiece as a cross symbol appeared in the corner of her vision.

“Oh no…” she said, turning on her heel and rushing down a hall toward the cross symbol. 

“Doctor Ziegler, wait!” said a firefighter, hurrying after her. The hallway opened up into a high walkway in a large hangar where Orcas and jeeps underwent maintenance. Nearly all the vehicles were burnt out skeleton frames now

CRITICAL HEALTH, CRITICAL HEALTH, the biofeed blared in her vision as she looked down to a lone figure sprawled out on the cement floor surrounded by flames, the red and white icon hanging over him.

“Commander Reyes!” Mercy had to stop and remember that she wasn’t wearing the Valkyrie wings to keep from vaulting over the railing of the walkway to fly toward him. No guardian angel, here. She raced to the stairs and hurried down them with the firefighters still struggling to keep up with her. He was in full tactical gear so it was hard to see the full extent of his injuries, but smoke was trailing off of him. She dropped to one knee next to him. “Commander!” she swatted out some of the flames on his uniform. “Gabriel!” she shook his shoulder and his eyes opened blearily. 

“Ange…?” Gabriel’s voice was gravelly from the smoke.

“Just hang on,” said Mercy, activating the biotic stream of her staff as two firefighters finally caught up with her. 

“Thought you quit…” murmured Gabriel.

“I did,” said Mercy, “That doesn’t mean I’m leaving you to die.”

“Shit…” one of the firefighters said as they looked down at the blackwatch commander. Gabriel suddenly flinched and grunted hard as the biotic stream hit him.

“Nngh! Ange–don’t—!”

“It’s okay–the nerve endings react differently to biotics when it’s a burn injury,” said Mercy.

“Get Moira,” said Gabriel, his voice a growl.

“I don’t know where she is—Where’s Jack!?” Mercy suddenly looked around. 

“Gone,” said Gabriel.

“What…?” Mercy’s eyes went wide. Suddenly a loud groan of steel beams buckling lowed down from the ceiling of the hangar as the fires spread and roared around them all.

“This place is coming down!” said one of the firefighters, “We need to get out of here!”

“Help me with him!” said Mercy, bringing her hands up under Gabriel’s arms and struggling to haul him up.

Mercy and the two firefighters managed to haul Gabriel out of the hangar and pulled him a fairly safe distance away onto the headquarters’ tarmac.

“Bring the EMT around to the tarmac! Get us a crash cart!” one of the firefighters barked into their comms as Mercy pulled off Gabriel’s armored vest and shoved up his hoodie to look at the injuries on his torso. She reared back at the sight of a void of black smoke crumbling upward.

“What—what is this–?” she said, her eyes wide.

“You should’ve left, Ange…” mumbled Gabriel.

“No–I’m not leaving you to die,” Mercy’s voice was thick from grief and fear and smoke. She activated the biotic stream but Gabriel only convulsed and groaned in pain under the biotics.

“He’ll crash faster if you keep that stuff on him!” shouted one of the firefighters as Mercy realized the same thing took the stream off of him.

“Moira–We need Moira—” Gabe was mumbling, closing his eyes.

“I don’t know where she is, Gabriel, and if I did there’s no way we could get her here in time!” said Mercy, “What happened here!? What happened to Jack?! Were we attacked?! 

“You can still walk away…” Gabriel said softly

“I’m not doing that!” said Mercy.

CARDIAC ARREST IMMINENT, flashed on Mercy’s biofeed.

“No!” Mercy yanked off her oxygen mask and put it over Gabriel’s face, “Stay with me! Where is that EMT!?” she looked over at the firefighters.

“The west building collapsed, it’s blocking the road!” said one of the firefighters, holding his hand to this comm, “They’re finding a detour–”

“We don’t have that kind of time!” said Mercy.

“You can’t save everyone, Doc…” Gabriel’s eyes rolled back into his head.

“No! Stay with me!” said Mercy.

CRITICAL WARNING: CARDIAC ARREST blipped above Gabriel’s red and white cross icon on the biofeed. 

“No!” Mercy gripped his shoulders, “Defibrillator! I need a defib—”

Gabriel’s red and white cross icon on Mercy’s biofeed blipped into a pale gray-white skull icon.

“No…” Mercy said quietly, “Commander!” she shook him, “Commander Reyes! Gabriel!” Tears streaked down the gray ash now staining her face. She cupped a hand over her mouth and stared at his body.

 Trace Post-Mortem Biotic Energies detected, the biofeed stated, Window of 10 seconds for Biotic Countershock Defibrillation. 7….6…

Mercy’s eyes eyes flicked to the caduceus staff at her side. 

“Wait—” one of the firefighters started, “If it was hurting him before—”

“This is the only chance he has,” said Mercy, picking up the staff, holding it over Gabriel’s body, and setting the biotic output to maximum. “Helden sterben nicht,” she said quietly before holding down the trigger on the staff. Both of them were suddenly encased in columns of yellow light as the flood of biotics burst out from the staff. The yellow light faded and Mercy sat there, still gripping her staff. Gabriel was still on the ground, but he wasn’t registering on Mercy’s biofeed. Was she too late?

“Is he…?” one of the firefighters leaned over Gabriel. 

Gabriel’s chest slowly rose in a shallow, rattling breath.

“Gabriel…?” Mercy spoke his name but her voice was half-muted by the crackle of the flames and the wail of sirens behind her.

Gabriel didn’t breathe out.

Gabriel screamed. He screamed and screamed and screamed and his back arched against the ground as his torso crumbled upward in smoke.

“What’s happening!?” shouted one of the firefighters.

“Gabriel!” Mercy shrieked, flailing out a hand to him but his flesh eroded away before her hand could make contact, like the image of a riverbank collapsing sped up. His screams didn’t sound human. They were throttled, drowning and burning all at once.

 And then, in a plume of black smoke he was gone.

“What…what was that? What was he?” said the other firefighter.

Mercy opened her mouth to speak, then a haze passed over her. Her vision darkened at the peripheries. Zurich Headquarters was burning. Gabriel was gone. Gabriel was dead.

 Gabriel Reyes had died twice. 

The second time was in agony.

The second time was her fault.

“Doctor Ziegler?” one of the firefighters.

The building. Headquarters was burning. She still had people to protect. She would have to grieve later.

“We… we need to find the other survivors before the whole building comes down…” Mercy moved to rise to her feet but her legs turned to jelly beneath her. Her vision went black. She didn’t feel herself hit the ground.

—

Mercy woke up in a stark white hospital room.

“You took off your oxygen mask in a smoke-heavy environment,” a voice spoke, and Angela turned her head over to see a black woman with close-shaved gray hair sitting in a chair next to her hospital bed, “Combine that with the… emotional distress…” she closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead.

“Under-Secretary Adawe,” said Mercy, sitting up in bed, but pressing a hand against her forehead as the blood rushed from her head.

“I’m retired and from what I heard, you resigned,” said Gabrielle Adawe, pushing a glass of water across the bedside table, which Angela took and drank deeply from, “No need for formalities here.” 

“The survivors—” Mercy started, her voice raw from the last gulp of water, “Jack–?”

“Jack Morrison’s DNA was found in the blast site, but no sign of him… it’s… safe to assume that he died in the blast, and his body was destroyed along with the Headquarters,” Gabrielle trailed off, “I’m sorry, Angela.”

Mercy’s mouth drew to a thin line.

“I never thought Overwatch would ever be this successful,” Gabrielle said quietly, “…I never thought it would be this much of a disaster, either.”

“What happened?” said Mercy, “Were we attacked?”

“Reports are adding up to explosions on the interior of the building…” said Gabrielle.

“So infiltrators,” said Mercy, “Moles–Saboteurs—”

Gabrielle was silent.

“Or…” Mercy trailed off, “Or…” She had a sinking feeling in her stomach. Something worse. Something much worse.

“You should’ve left, Ange…” Gabriel Reyes’ gravelly voice echoed in her mind.

“If it was an infiltrator, it speaks to the current state of Overwatch’s incompetence… this is all the UN needed,” said Gabrielle.

“All the UN needed…?” Mercy repeated.

“They’re shutting Overwatch down. All of it. No suspensions. Complete shutdown. The Watchpoints are being mothballed. Anyone acting under what they claim to be Overwatch-sanctioned activities is now a criminal. I suppose you should count yourself lucky that you were already on your way out.”

Mercy pursed her lips. “Lucky…” she said softly.

“That’s not the right word. I apologize…” said Gabrielle, standing up, “I’m… a bit tired myself. I… I have a lot of families to talk to. But if you need—I can stay…”

Mercy shook her head. “I… I should probably rest,” she said, glancing off.

“I understand,” said Gabrielle, getting out of her chair and moving to the door of the hospital room. She paused in the doorway. “You gave so much to this organization, Angela. You deserved better from it than this.” 

“I think we all did,” said Mercy.

Gabrielle huffed. “On that, we can agreee. I wish you the best of luck in whatever you do from here on out,” she said, walking out the door.

“You as well,” said Mercy.

The door clicked shut behind Gabrielle Adawe and Mercy glanced at the small pile of her effects on the bedside table next to the empty water glass. She reached forward and dug into it, pulling out her old Overwatch comm.

“Shutting down Overwatch…” she said, tracing her fingers over the Overwatch insignia on the comm. I suppose there was more than enough reason, she thought, but still her stomach turned slightly at the fact that it would no longer be there. She turned the comm on and it buzzed and she nearly dropped it in surprise. A Message blipped up on the screen of the comm.

14 Missed Calls.

4 messages.

She opened the calls. The name “Genji Shimada” appeared 14 times with the times of the calls listed and various voicemails left. He had been trying to get in contact with her. 

She didn’t have the energy to make a phone call, she turned over to her text messages.

Genji Shimada 22:06: Saw Zurich on news. Are you all right?

Genji Shimada 22:11: Doctor?

Genji Shimada 22: 21: I am fine I am sorry for falling out of contact. I was out of comm range.

Genji Shimada 22:33 Please write back, Doctor.

Mercy wanted to text him. She had to let him know she was all right. But there were a few minutes where she just pressed her comm to her forehead and rolled up in a little ball in her hospital bed. She forced herself to look at her phone screen again. She had to let him know she was alive. Tears were welling in her eyes as her thumb shakily moved across the projected keyboard as if possessed.

It’s all gone, she texted, It’s all burnt down. They’re both dead.

[ayellowbirds]

Keshet Rewatches All of Scooby-Doo, Pt. 26: “The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair”

("The New Scooby-Doo Movies", Season 1 Episode 2. Original Airdate: 9/16/1972)

AKA, "Bat-Milk? BAT-MILK?"

While this episode was broadcast and released on video with the title above, surviving storyboards show that the title was intended to be spelled as “The Dynamic Scooby-Duo Affair”, making the wordplay clearer.

As the episode begins, the Mystery Machine hits a bump in the road and the lights go out. While Fred attempts a repair, Daphne worries about reaching their destination.

Yes, it’s the first formal recognition of the gang as anything more than a bunch of friends who do this on the side. While we don’t see anything of the Mystery Club convention itself, the idea that the kids were headed to one suggests that their amateur sleuthing has gone from something they fall into by accident as a result of running into mysteries wherever they go, and into the realm of a lifelong obsession. They’re not “Mystery Inc” just yet, but they’re close.

While Fred promises he can repair the Mystery Machine without losing time, Scooby and Shaggy hear something frightening... ominous music! No, really, the sound editing in this scene is terrible, and the music that cuts in almost completely drowns out the sound of an approaching airplane, flying so low over the road that it comes within mere feet of the roof of the van.

Investigating reveals that the plane has landed without lights in the middle of the night, and two men drive out of it in a jeep loaded down with an enormous wooden crate. The gang take a shortcut, and find that the crate has been dropped off at an abandoned-looking old house, where it’s been nailed down to the floor with leather straps. In fact, as the gang try to hide from a sudden sound of someone approaching, they find that everything is nailed down.

But they have no reason to fear those who enter the house:

Because it’s the guileless, friendly and gentle-mannered Seventies Batman who enters, along with the Boy Wonder. In spite of the gang’s incredibly suspicious appearance, a bat-shaped transitional wipe is all it takes for Batman to explain that he and Robin were on patrol—bat-patrol—in nearby Gotham City (the location of the Mystery Club convention? It would be appropriate), when they were alerted to the unlit aircraft and suspected smugglers. It’s the second episode in a row to suggest a specific location for the events, placing most of the episode in and near Gotham. 

Just as they’re about to investigate the crate, someone comes out from upstairs.

Attentive viewers will have most of the mystery solved by noticing this suspicious character’s first appearance as a hooded figure, though as she lights her lamp, she’s revealed as a little old lady, Mrs. Baker.

Baker claims to have never seen the crate before—figuring that, like the gang, someone assumed her house was abandoned due to its condition—and even reacts to Batman and Robin like they were ordinary strangers in need of assistance, rather than colorfully costumed crime-fighters. This would be suspicious enough, but like i said, 70s TV Batman is guileless. He suspects nothing and has a kind word for almost everyone.

The contents of the crate are revealed as a stand-up “punch clown”, one of those inflatable bottom-heavy types designed to keep bouncing back as you bop it. Batman hurls the clown away, and then slaps his hands on his waist in a brave and bold pose. “An amusing toy,” he declares. If this show was a bit more clever, I’d say he was covering for freaking out at the sight of a clown.

Scooby plays a bit with the doll, but one particularly solid swing knocks its noggin right off, revealing that it’s not full of air... it’s stuffed with money! Batman picks up a bill. “Just as I suspected,” he declares. “Counterfeit. A masterpiece of duplication, except for one tiny slip-up.”

It’s an artistic error almost as embarrassing as Batman’s hands suddenly having no gloves. And Batman should know. He’s fought alongside Lincoln.

In spite of having faced counterfeiters before, the gang are astonished at the idea of phony money, and join Batman in the search for the culprits as Mrs. Baker tells them that the jeep’s tire tracks must lead back to a nearby auto junkyard—next to the old cemetery, of course. Baker claims people fear that human ghosts haunt the "auto graveyard” as a result.

The problem with this scenario is that they saw the plane leave, and had no reason to suspect that the jeep wasn’t loaded back onto it. Even so, they find it almost right away at the junkyard, and start looking for the driver. As the gang and the Dynamic Duo split up and start looking around, the poor nighttime lighting leads to lots of mistaken identity antics involving a cloaked figure that is quite obviously Mrs. Baker again. Some differences in the design of her cloak and robe don’t obscure that it’s in the same colors as before... 

...which seems to be another error, because Shaggy refers to this “sneaky little” figure as wearing a black hood. Batman winds up saving Shaggy and Scooby from being compacted along with a car, and Fred attempts to wrestle the cloaked figure away from the controls of the crane that dropped them there, but winds up wearing a mask like the one under the hood, and he’s mistaken for the culprit himself.

Now that Fred knows how it feels to have a mask abruptly pulled from one’s head, will he be more understanding and cautious when unmasking "monsters”? Unlikely, considering he eventually winds up pulling a zombie’s head right off its neck.

When the gang go back to check Mrs. Baker’s house, the entire building has vanished. Fred and Velma are certain that they’re looking at the right location, but it’s just an empty field with some trees. Well, that’s what we’re supposed to see, but the view never pans beyond the gang looking at the scene. It’s not until much later that we actually see what this scene was supposed to so dramatically convey. 

Batman, the Dark Knight Detective, has one guess as to what’s happened:

That’s right, Batman’s first guess is that there never was a house, nor a Mrs. Baker. Instead, they were all mesmerized to think they had entered a nonexistent building and interacted with a woman who wasn’t there. The only problem with that notion is that the Batmobile is gone, too. 

Batman quietly retires his hypothesis.

Fortunately, the Batmobile has a tracker! The gang offer to be blindfolded while Batman and Robin drive the Mystery Machine to the Batcave to check the Bat-Computer, and because a trend has been established, Batman offers a hungry Shaggy a snack of Bat-Milk and cookies.

Yes, Bat-Milk.

And cookies.

Scooby eats the whole thing and slurps down Shaggy’s milk when he’s not looking. A loyal canine friend.

The Batmobile is tracked to the Gotham City Amusement Park, stopped right in front of a building dedicated to Batman and Robin. The Dynamic Duo conclude that the thief is disposing of the Batmobile there so it could be mistaken as part of the exhibits, hiding it in plain sight.

The car is just fine, parked right in front of the exhibition building, and Shaggy and Scooby offer to sit and wait—and play at being Batman and Robin themselves—in the car while the others look for clues. Which is fortunate, because it lets them spot the carjackers in the attraction across the way.

Fred figures the punch clown is “practically the Joker’s calling card,” and it seems like the case is solved. It’s now up to just Batman and Robin to take down these dangerous criminals, while the gang wait safely outside. What follows is a series of antics as the two villains manipulate their amusement park Haunted House hideout from its control room, trading quips and barbs with each other. A sampling:

Erase your doubts, my web-footed friend.

Why the raucous outburst of mirth, you babbling buffoon?

My fine feathered friend, I shall achieve my goal with a white-sheeted ghoul.

Now, Pengy-wengy....

...my rakish rogue.

Zoinks it, this episode is making me ship the Joker and the Penguin.

Batman and Robin don’t fall for any of the sound effects ("recorded on tape by talented, professional thespians”, Batman insists) or the Joker’s “ghoul” (“nothing more than an ordinary bed sheet, and a cheap one, at that”), but the Joker manages to bait them into a deep pit simply by broadcasting his voice to make it sound like it came from behind a trap door. When the gang move in to see what’s keeping Batman and Robin, the crooks turn their attention to them, instead.

It’s the second episode in a row with scenes in an amusement park, and shockingly, it’s the first of the two to actually make use of that. Antics ensue, but not before Shaggy has a moment of clarity, wondering how it is that Scooby gets the reward of Scooby Snacks while he has to deal with the spooky situations alongside him, with no compensation.

Scooby has a simple answer, gesturing to his brains.

I’m astonished this didn’t become a meme.

The Hanna-Barbera laugh tracks start to wear really thin during these "funhouse” scenes, often playing in scenes with no apparent joke except “the boys are scared by a legitimately dangerous, scary situation”.

Eventually, the criminals resort to dressing up in skeleton costumes to frighten the gang off. Because, you know, being notorious criminals wanted for violent acts wasn’t enough, they had to put on bargain store Halloween costumes.

Astonishingly ,everyone except Fred buys into it, and the gang flee for a solid few seconds before Scooby abruptly stops, turns around, and starts talking about “DELICIOUS-LOOKING BONES!”

The horrifyingly hungry hound manages to chase the Joker and the Penguin right into the pit where they trapped Batman and Robin, and the crooks are caught. The Joker’s wordplay throughout this is actually decently clever, something you don’t see in later incarnations, and the Penguin has a habit of alliteration that makes his lines pleasing to the ear. They wind up being the most enjoyable villains so far...

But they’re not the final culprits. Someone called them anonymously and arranged for real cash payment in exchange for the punch clowns. They know nothing about the vanishing house, and don’t seem to care who has been funneling counterfeit cash to them.

Batman and Robin open the front door to reveal a pair of Gotham City detectives. “Gentlemen, you may take them away!”

So, the Joker and Penguin start to drag off the detectives.

No wonder this city needs superheroes.

Everyone’s worried about Mrs. Baker, “that poor, sweet old lady”. But the gang and Dynamic Duo realize there’s probably a reason that the house’s contents were nailed to the floor—one that explains its disappearing act, as well as the fact that the house has reappeared when they return to where it was last seen.

Once again, Scooby and Shaggy remain with the cars while the others investigate inside. But when a rabbit darts out from the underbrush, Scooby is spooked up a tree and onto a branch, which judders down under his weight, revealing...

A sequence ensues where the entire house rotates upside-down, revealing an alternate empty field and bringing the building into an enormous cavern, while the boys fuss with the branch-switch to try to get the house upright, and Batman and Robin work an alternate switch to bring it back around again.

In the tunnels of the cave, Batman spots the purple-cloaked crook, and the heroes give chase, finding their way up and out into a crate-filled warehouse loaded with all kinds of toys—tying back into the punching clown gimmick of the counterfeiting operation and allowing for even more chase antics in a gag-filled setting.

At one point, Scooby crashes into a stack of boxes, and the villain pops up out of one—running in place in mid-air before dashing out of view across the screen, without ever landing on the ground. It’s kind of jarring, and makes me realize that that’s the sort of visual gag usually reserved for the good guys. It’s also really poorly timed.

Exactly where this warehouse is located relative to any of the rest of the setting is really unclear. Is it underground? A short distance from Mrs. Baker’s house, previously unseen and perhaps near the auto junkyard?

And how does the villain manage to ride a unicycle at speed while wearing a full-length robe and cloak? 

After a lot of chasing—for once, mostly involving the costumed villain being chased, rather than menacing the gang—Scooby manages to knock the crook into the Dynamic Duo’s hands.

The scene cuts to the field above, the mastermind in Batman and Robin’s grip and the gang ready for this all to end.

“Before the cops come take him away, make him tell us what happened to Mrs. Baker,” Fred demands.

“Yes, that dear, sweet old lady,” Daphne agrees.

Velma opines, “The poor woman was just an innocent bystander in all this. She simply vanished.”

Batman turns, waiting. “Well?”

“You fools, Mrs. Baker didn’t vanish! She’s been here all this time.” the villain growls, ripping off the cloak and mask. To the shock of no-one who can perceive the color purple, it’s Mrs. Baker.

Naturally, the gang, Batman, and Robin are all blown away by this.

YOU.

ARE.

DEFECTIVE DETECTIVES.

Mrs. Baker has been running a counterfeiting operation out of her complex system of a disappearing house and secret tunnel for who-knows how long, with this possibly being just the first time she’s been caught at it.

Yeah, a dear, sweet old lady.

Who tried to crush Scooby and Shaggy in a car compactor near the beginning of the episode, and led the gang into the hands of two of Gotham’s most notorious criminal masterminds.

Scooby is ultimately responsible for capturing all the criminals of this episode, and for once, without fouling up a trap or anything, having boldly given chase and forced the crooks into Batman and Robin’s arms. Now, Batman has no Scooby Snacks to offer this uncharacteristically brave canine...

Boy, yeah, that looks appetizing. You feed Ace those, Bruce?

(like what i’m doing here? It’s not what pays the bills, so i’d really appreciate it if you could send me a bit at my paypal.me or via my ko-fi. Click here to see more entries in this series of posts, or here to go in chronological order)

[spraklecat]

Blackpool Pleasure Beach TR below, it’s pretty long since there’s a lot of interesting stuff there I wanted to talk about. Probably my favorite UK park I did for how unique it is and because it’s a really good value, nearly half the price of the other parks (which are already almost half ths price of comparable US ones) and has a very.. interesting selection of mostly older rides you can’t find much elsewhere, though it’s a shame they’ve killed off a number of them in the last decade or so :(

Also bonus South Pier, because it’s nearby and has an amazing 10-minute Waltzer

BPB TR

I gave myself two days for the park knowing that I’d felt a bit rushed at Thorpe and Alton and this one looked the most attractive in terms of rides and I really wanted to do it all. One day would have probably been fine, but in the end, it’s a whole lot cheaper than the other big parks in England and two days with VIP Plus Speedy Pass was roughly the same as one day at Alton/Thorpe with the equivalent line skipper and I had a great time going at a casual pace and tons of rerides.

The atmosphere of this park is... very interesting. Kind of rusty/run down, but with some nice greenery, random spots of theming, and the train’s animal statues scattered in some of the coaster infields that made me scratch my head at first. I like it, it’s unique and eclectic even if it can be tacky. The whole Blackpool area kind of feels similar with having the vintage trams running around and some older buildings, but also some mysterious art installations by the beach and a random abandoned mini golf course. Food seemed less expensive than other parks I went to, but I mostly just got ice cream. Operatioms weren’t especially great , but not usually too bad either, and according to the Speedy Pass site lines weren’t usually above 20 minutes on Sunday anyways. Though they looked a lot worse on Monday, likely since several rides went down and Infusion was on one train ops. I’ve heard some complaints about the clientele here and yeah, it’s obviously not a very wealthy area, but I never encountered any trouble at the park or walking around the Promenade, even at night. I wasn’t bothered by anyone at Thorpe either, besides people being slow and fussy in the ride stations, so maybe I’m just lucky or oblivious.

Fyi Valhalla was closed all day both days for some reason, which is why I didn’t ride it :( It was also a bummer hearing of Wild Mouse’s sudden demise last year since I had been looking forwards to it as well.

In no particular order, my thoughts on the rides.

Nickelodeon Streak- Not very forceful, but has nice views and isn’t too rough.

Blue Flyer- Adorable little ride, probably the smallest woodie I’ve ridden. Otherwise, similar to Nick Streak in terms of being a gentle ride.

Big Dipper- Decent, but underwhelming given what I’ve heard from others. The layout didn’t flow the best and didn’t have nearly as much air as I had hoped. The laterals on the turn towards the home stretch are great, though. Also, I love the BPB has upholstered couch seats on their wooden coasters, so comfortable even on rough rides like Grand National. I wish padding like that would make a comeback but maintenance is probably a lot higher than standard seats.

Grand National- Probably one of my favorites there, purely for fitting under the old wooden coaster with endless hills, airtime a short line category, which I have a huge soft spot for. Really rough in the back row but again, tolerable due to cushy seats absorbing it a lot, and the air is plentiful and lovely. I mostly rode the left side, which seemed to consistently lose. I rode the right once or twice since it had a slightly longer line, but it felt a little rougher but the air felt a little stronger in spots. The switching stations part at the end definitely feels weird. Easily my favorite wood coaster at the park, I rode this thing so much because I couldn’t get enough of it (similar to how I was with KI racer as a kid).

Revolution- Amazingly smooth for it’s age an being an Arrow. This thing tracks ridiculously well. The drops are a bit janky and absolutely fling your knees up and cracked me up a lot. I also love the feeling of Arrow loops as an element. An enjoyable and pretty hilarious ride overall but all the steps up are pretty annoying. Took advantage of my Speedy Pass to reenter the station and reride without the whole hike. Beautiful truss structure, I thought it was going to look like the other Arrow shuttle loops I’ve seen online that aren’t as attractive but I was very wrong. Guessing they did it so they could fit more rides underneath?

Big One- This thing looks and feels much bigger than its height and has the most stereotypical big scary roller coaster appearance ever. Another beautiful Arrow, and while not the most forceful ride, it’s not too rough, the drop is cool, and there’s a bit of air going into the mcbr. The views are incredible and the ride feels like an adventure with how it goes over and around almost the entire park.

Avalanche- A big surprise. This thing is like a bigger, rougher, and crazier waterslide with some surprising pops of air and I love that, despite the short ride time. Never been on a bobsled coaster before this so can’t compare it to others.

Infusion- Also a big pleasant surprise. SLCs get a lot of crap and I really wanted to try one to see what people mean and this is actually a solid if somewhat janky invert and easily more enjoyable, than some lower tier B&Ms for me, it has some solid forces and pretty good pacing. The roll over is a cool maneuver and it’s a shame it’s not something really done on non-SLC coasters. The sidewinder up the water wall was also great, though I would have preferred an Immelman. Yeah, the corkscrews and transitions could be awkward but I’m good at pushing my neck out to avoid headbanging so they weren’t too bad. I rode in the front, middle, and back and all had good forces, but front is much smoother.

Steeplechase- A weird little ride that can be goofy fun for the novelty factor, but ow, the seatbacks really jab you in the lower back during those turns. It was more comfortable riding in the back seat behind someone else. The minimal restraints are a bit freaky with those sudden turns.

Icon- Definitely a big contrast to the other coasters at the park, being modern and much much smoother. I really enjoyed Maverick and while it’s definitely not as good, the whole short, intense launch coaster genre is one I really enjoy. Front row was pretty weak, but there’s some fantastic air in the back going over the first hill and off the immelman. The immelman is easily the best part, and exemplifies the wonderful variance of pacing and forces this ride has with the slow turnover with a bit of hangtime before being glung over the top. It’s definitely a bit too S-bend heavy though and the restraints got uncomfortably tight, but compared to other hydraulic restraints they’re far more comfortable in that regard since they mainly press on thighs and over a wider area and it’s more just discomfort than pain. I’m team Nemesis for best UK coaster still since that ride’s ridiculous pace and intensity is tough to beat.

Dark Rides:

River Caves- Strange and kinda trippy with the seemingly random changes in setting and time period and I love that. Relaxingand pretty ride with lots of visual variety, with some scenes being more realistic and others stylized.

Ghost Train- A horror-themed ride mostly without cheap jump scares and just full of creepy stuff? Fantastic! Another ride that was wonderfully odd and unexplainable with the seemingly random displays and lack of explanation. Favorite ones were the spoopy skeletons on bikes, the oven, and the train tunnel.

Alice’s Wonderland- A bit hard to read the boards, but a nice ride. I love the cat cars. I liked the others better since the wtf factor of the older ones is great and Wallace and Gromit is technically superior.

Wallace and Gromit- As I’ve said above, the most technically advanced of the dark rides I rode (again, Valhalla was closed the whole time). The order of the scenes seemed a bit scrambled but it was well-done, especially liked the Were-Rabbit animatronic that gave me a good startle.

Misc. Rides

Pleasure Beach Express- Even if they’re just diesel replicas, I like that the engines are shaped like 1920s-30s British ones rather than being the more typical old-timey American-style type with the big chimney and cowcatcher that most other parks have. Anyways, the route takes you under a lot of the coasters for some great photo angles, and through some strange displays of dinos and wild animals and expeditions gone wrong. Like River Caves, it’s so bizarre and I love it.

Sky Force- I love that interactive flats are coming back, even if I could only flip once or twice at best the challenge made it fun and even just wobbling back and forth was enjoyable.

Flying Machines- Pretty relaxing and pleasant, not much else to say.

Derby Racer- I rode the one at CP several years ago and this one feels a lot faster and more thrilling, though the horses don’t race. I like the color scheme and lights of the pavilion, much prettier than CP’s but the horses aren’t painted with much detail.

Grand Prix- Liked the setting, the noise when you didn’t steer the car right stressed me out so I didn’t ride again lol

Bonus: South Pier

Visited because it was close by and I heard the Waltzer was good and it did not disappoint. Almost 10 minute cycle with tons of variation in speed/spin (sometimes gentle rocks, sometimes I couldn’t even keep my neck up from the force) and a very fun and lively op. I rode it twice in a row and somehow didn’t feel remotely nauseous, which was weird, I’m super prone to motion sickness but I usually need a break after several rides and that was much longer in terms of duration. They definitely give you your money’s worth, and I’d say check it out if you’re going to BPB and like spinning flats, it’s easily a favorite of mine. The Breakdance was pretty good and is a Sobema model that’s a bit bigger feels a bit more comfortable when the cars spin than the Fabbri ones I’m used to (never ridden a Huss). Wild Mouse had some wild uncontrolled spinning in the second set of switchbacks, much stronger than the other one I did at a US fair.