#it ranges from straight up murderous feelings to a sort of friendship that is largely one sided

[that-bat]

This is the family dynamic

(Tho to be fair for as much as Miranda pretends to care about Matt and Nate, she isn’t too fond of them either)

[riverdale-retread]

Riverdale S7 E 11 (Chapter 128) Halloween 2

Jughead has found some sort of closure with the death of Rayberry though no answers yet about his potential murder, so he’s back to narrating.  Except - you know how Veronica said that his storytelling had troubling sexual politics (i.e. misogynistic)? Well, he disappointed me by casually using the very unexamined & cliche misogynist phrase “crazy cat lady” about that woman who wanted to know if there was some milk she could borrow.

He is not showing his usual acumen at sussing out the weird.  Because her obsession with filching milk from the associates of a known suicide is very intriguing.  Some questions, such as:  Is  this area some place that is impossible to get milk delivery? Has she ever seen the milkman or is this a place the milk man never came and suddenly showed up for Rayberry?  Is this residence in a food desert where getting basics like milk is difficult? Jughead is usually sympathetic to the underprivileged and yet- 1950s Jughead casual misogyny!  #disappoint.

Anyway, after failing to follow up on that potential lead, he nevertheless goes charging over to Sheriff Keller’s house to bother him in the middle of a not great work month  to tell him he’s doing his job badly.  Unsurprisingly, Keller’s reaction is not amused.  Jughead thinks that the milkman is important - “a killer milkman at large”  he says, even though he doesn’t like saying it. He literally cringes at himself (decade upon decades ahead of his time) in having to say the words A, Killer, Milkman, At, Large.  His hands are up in a very defensive, hands-up pose,  begging Please don’t kick me out and Please don’t think i’m crazy.   Keller is being very courteous.  He says it’s already established that Rayberry suicided - which Jughead vehemently disagrees with. 

It’s very hard to get law enforcement to redo homework they’ve already turned in.  Keller is not at all an exception to this rule. He wants Jughead to produce someone who actually SAW a milkman, before he opens Rayberry’s case again. He tells Jughead to stop being annoying, trying to give him work and such, then segues immediately into exposition for this episode:  Halloween is “not for teenagers looking to make trouble,” so he wants Jughead, a known trouble maker in Keller’s eyes because of his obsession with making Keller do proper policework, to remember “our ban.”

He has Jughead all wrong, does Keller, and always has across all universes.  Like, the narrative shows that Jughead liked, at minimum, and probably adored (for unspecified reasons) Jason Blossom but Keller accused Jughead of somehow obtaining a gun, shooting Jason at point blank range in the forehead and then transporting his body all the way to the river to dump it there.  Jughead for the past several episodes has been entirely isolated from anyone who does anything social in Riverdale right now (Archie, Reggie, Betty, Veronica), is trying to nurture a romantic friendship with Tabitha Tate, and is also revealed to be someone who has milk as part of his nutritionally complete breakfast - he’s as buttoned up and wholesome in his daily habits as anyone can be, in short - but Keller feels compelled to tell him to not get into trouble on Halloween.

We’re at the very fancily done traincar (Seriously, is that ceiling really like that or is that clever trompe l’oeil hollywood magic via Veronica??), where Jughead, who still manages to sleep with his felt crown without crushing it, contemplates a very full bottle of milk like it’s the skull of Yorick before smelling it then pouring it down the drain.

Many questions again - Does Jughead’s *train car* get milk delivery service?  Also he has a drain? It connects to a sewage system somehow?  (I also wonder this all the time about the OG Universe Dilton’s Bunker which has a flush toilet.)   In any case, he just pours what he thinks might be poisoned straight into the sewage system. 

While Drac’s Back (the song) is playing, Veronica is having breakfast at the Babylonium, which has on its marquee “Science Fiction Double Feature.”  I have long black hair and bangs.  Why can’t my hair look like that? How does she do that?   She’s excited because she’s going to wear a whole dominatrix witch outfit to school.  

Veronica’s outfit is EYE POPPING.  Super high heels, large-gauge fishnet stockings, a boudoir chiffon skirt over a gem encrusted bodysuit, bare shoulders and arms, studded collar, an excellent broom prop  and a fantastic witch hat.  Her lipstick is black even.  Everyone is completely agog, then it turns a bit mocking. As she walks down the hall, Veronica realizes these people don’t do Halloween costumes at school.  At all. 

When she enters the student lounge, her appearance is greeted with a record scratch sound.  Betty can’t stop smiling about how hot Veronica looks to her (“You look- [grin grin grin] everything PLUS.”) Everyone’s reactions are so funny.  Dilton is startled but can’t not stare at Veronica’s ass as she walks past him to talk to the people who count.  Betty as I’ve said is very happy.  Veronica glows so hot Reggie can’t actually keep looking directly at her.  Archie is googly eyed with happiness.  Why Betty and Archie look at each other to confirm that Veronica is indeed looking very fetching is the question that should launch much speculation about their respective sexualities. 

In any case, Archie, then Cheryl, then Toni provide some context rules:  Riverdale is uncomfortable about Halloween unlike Greendale which actively celebrates it, to such an extent that teenagers have to observe a sundown curfew.  When Archie explains finally that a bunch of teenagers died in a tragic car accident on Halloween a few years back, Clay also looks intrigued.   Veronica is bereft about not being able to do anything much on Halloween. Also nobody is allowed to say “hell” - Archie says “raising Heck” and Kevin says “raising Cain.”    Reggie won’t even miss it - he’s never celebrated Halloween. 

Veronica gives a little speech about all the ways Halloween can be liberating - for sexual exploration as well as to “honor the dead.”    When Veronica says “back in Los Angeles” and describes what sounds like a normal Hollywood party, Cheryl has a really bad reaction.  Why is Cheryl so enraged every time Veronica talks about Los Angeles?   In any case, Veronica says the Lodges had “a family altar” where they lit candles for the dead.  Im’ curious about the insane amount of Halloween related decorations that are up in this room anyway  - no fewer than five carved Jack O Lanterns, a witch decal, more pumpkins, a couple skulls and ghosts and bats.  

Veronica announces that nothing shall hold her down. She also uses the word “gatekeepers” and I don’t know if that means anything.  Just in time to her saying, “Just when you think this town couldn’t get any kookier” in comes Jughead.   Who immediately starts freaking out about milk.  He starts screaming to NOT DRINK FRESH MILK ANYMORE.  He slaps Dilton’s milk carton right out of his hand.  He advises everyone to Drink Powdered Milk.   Veronica is so tired of his silliness.  I wonder if she’s going to do anything about it, because she is the only who is shown having a reaction. 

We cut to Ethel, on the phone next to a very overbearing Mother Mary statuary AND a crucifix on the wall, telling Jughead she’s OK.  Ethel says she misses Jughead (aww) and she misses school but this all just sails right over his head because he is still in his manic episode about the milkman.  He tells Ethel, incarcerated in an insane asylum for claiming a milkman killed her parents, that he doesn’t want to upset her further but then directly proceeds to tell her his theory that his favorite author (which she knows! Because they’re actually really friends!) was murdered by “a” milkman at the very least.   Then she has a great insight- that it would be useful to talk to whoever wrote the originating Killer Milkman comic.  Just as Jughead is about to exult about this idea, Ethel hurriedly says that she has to go because the nun is giving her the evil eye, ending with a meaningful “hopefully I will see you soon.”  Jughead wonders what she meant.

At the shop class facilities at school, Archie has successfully involved himself in Betty and Reggie’s twosome project to make Bella a usable car.   Reggie and Archie are wearing matchy-matchy his-and-his T shirts smudged just the right amount with gunk (Reggie in white, Archie in green).  The two of them flexing their muscles side by side doing car fiddly things makes Betty, who is dressed like Rosie the Riveter but with a pink paisley bandana that leaves most of her hair free, falls immediately into an erotic fugue.  Her fantasies are really very specific - a threesome when the two others have eyes - and lips - only for her.   Archie wants to give Reggie a “real Halloween” because all he’s ever done is cowtipping.  

Betty defines a real Halloween as 1. trick or treating, 2.  visiting a graveyard and 3. necking in a haunted house.  Archie is familiar with 1 and 2 but she just made up No. 3, I think, because his eyes are bugging out of his head.  He looks over at Reggie to see if he’s into it.  Reggie is all about it.  

Meanwhile, Veronica is flipping through the scrapbook of the Babylonium’s events of the past.  There was in 1942 a Halloween Ghost Show at this theater, where a Phantom Polka Dancer would “appear in person” for “one night only.”    The phantom polka dancer looks a lot like that possessed girl from The Exorcist.   Veronica wants to recreate this ‘Halloween Ghost Show’ but before she can complete her smirk of satisfaction she hears thudding from what should be the empty projection room. 

Very bravely, she goes to investigate.  In it she discovers the gays necking.   Clay pretends he left keys in the room.  Veronica wants to do a 1920s glam themed ghost show for a Halloween night indoor event for the teenyboppers - staying with the letter of the law in order to flout its spirit.   She’s so ambitious - it’s gonna be “monsters, movies, burlesque” ending with a “raising of the dead at midnight.” 

Is Jughead even going to school anymore or does he just pop in and out of the publishing house at lunch time?  In any case, his editor in chief keeps zero track of who has written what, so he doesn’t know who wrote the Milkman comics.  But he does invite Jughead to the staff party for grown ups. 

I guess Betty has completely subdued the school principal as well as his child psychologist boyfriend because the sheer amount of school real estate that Veronica’s promotional activities for her business is allowed to take up in its halls is astonishing.  For a town that supposedly has a lot of trauma about four teenagers that died on Halloween, the booth she’s erected is enormous and spectacular.   Clay and Kevin shout things like “There will be mayhem” but there isn’t a single disapproving  adult in sight.   Veronica is brazen. She promises that the four dead Riverdale students will “return from the dead before your very eyes.”

Later, Toni approaches Cheryl to show us that she’s back to her old bullshit. Here she is, drawing Cheryl ‘out’ again, to participate in a gay-backup-dancers-only floor show  choreographed by Veronica.  Cheryl isn’t so sure about any of this, and in any case, she has Vixen duties.  After giving Cheryl (and only Cheryl) an inexplicably hard time about race dynamics, now Toni brings up the need for LGBTQ solidarity in order to force Cheryl into doing something that Cheryl isn’t sure about, that will also cause her to renege on an obligation she feels is a “tradition.”  “People like us” is what Toni says.  She is so manipulative. 

At the end of basketball practice, Uncle Fucking Frank wants to make sure that none of his boys is gonna “go out wilding.”   The locker room is also festooned with Halloween paraphernalia.  Who put it up and why?  

Julian starts to immediately make trouble.   He has a little towel draped around  his lower half, and I wonder if he’s in the same erotic fugue about Reggie and Archie, because he unnecessarily spread his legs to put one foot up on the bench to show both of them his junk as he invites the two to go ‘wilding’ with him.  Reggie says no.  Julian starts bark-hooting to get the other boys riled up after announcing that the ‘wilding’ is going to begin in the school parking lot after sundown on Halloween.  Archie disapproves, turning  his back on everyone to open his locker.

WE HAVE A VERY COOL LOCKER TO LOCKER TRANSITION as Archie closes his locker which then turns into Veronica’s locker door in the girls’ locker room, which she opens.  She and Betty are talking about Reggie’s virginity (about Halloween) and how unbelievable that is.  Veronica knows that Betty has the hots for someone, so she asks about it.  Betty confesses that she has the hots for both Reggie and Archie.  She advises Betty to use Halloween night to figure out which one makes her clit tingle more (“figure out which way your love compass is truly pointing”).  Veronica’s skin in this game is that she wants to be told all about it the next day. 

At the Blossom mansion,  Penelope is drinking some red liquor. Her hair is amazingly ridiculous and it looks like a bitch to maintain it so it looks that exact degree of wrong and unflattering. Omg she’s so hot. Anyway.  She thinks that Cheryl is less likely to gayly molest the other cheerleaders if they “decamp” the sleepover to “the grand hall.”   Julian apparently is fully aware of what is being discussed, enough to object to his mother putting images of his sister engaging in “hanky panky” into the dinner conversation. 

Adult supervision finally catches up with Veronica just as she’s putting the final touches on the decorations for her Halloween show.  Alice Cooper appears, bristling with insecurity about the new competition in the Halloween entertainment of Riverdale of which she’s had a monopoly so far (“It’s not going to affect our ratings.”)  Hence the whole Halloween taboo is partially revealed to be not so much about lowering teen mortality nor in honor of the dead.  It’s about ratings & eyeballs on advertisers.   Alice says that she will “allow” the event to proceed, but tells Veronica that she has been “put on notice.”  About what?  That Alice disapproves of Veronica?

After stocking up on Powdered Milk, Jughead hears someone walk directly up to his (very insecure) residence.  He’s immediately terrified. He hides after grabbing some sort of hammer or poker or something.  

It’s Ethel!  She’s all smudged with dirt, wearing a very disheveled inmate uniform.  

Jughead wants to know how she escaped from the asylum.  She says that she’d heard about the escape tunnels, so she spent all her time looking for them.  Having located them, it was her truncated call with Jughead that “gave me the push I needed to make a break for it.”  Because she is alone that absolutely nobody ever calls her (not Betty, not Alice, not Dilton, not Ben) that she clung on to the one slight indication she was entirely forgotten!   The two of them exchange a tender look.  I like them together.    Ethel says her keepers were cruel and abusive, so she just needs to make it a “couple months” until she’s 18.   Jughead wants to invite her to stay with him, but it’s not safe.  He offers Rayberry’s apartment, because Rayberry had the very useful foresight to pay rent through to the end of the year.  

Jughead is just the nicest.  He is concerned that she might be too afraid to stay in a dead man’s apartment, but Ethel is stalwart. He also invites her to a party her first night sprung from jail.

In the bathroom at school, Midge seeks permission to not have to go to the slumber party from Cheryl.  Cheryl responds at first with the party line - the slumber party is “a Vixen tradition” and “the center must hold.” Midge folds immediately. 

Cheryl is, I will note again, incredibly powerful in this timeline.  Archie really, really didn’t know what he was talking about when he said people don’t listen to Cheryl.  He’s simply protected from her wrath by dint of having the ginger gene. 

But then, Cheryl realizes she wants to go to the Veronica-led event, so she comes up with the idea to let Evelyn (“that witchy witch”) to host the slumber party instead, so she and Midge can go to the Babylonium instead.  The two girls (the gay one and the pregnant one) sweetly affirm to each other how discreet each of them are, and promise to reveal a big secret on Halloween night. 

So even though he allowed (or was powerless against) Veronica to do whatever she wanted in terms of her commercial activities, Featherhead and his boyfriend still have hard-ons for giving Jughead Jones a rough time.   Jughead is subjected to questioning by the pair as well as Keller and Sister Woodhouse about the missing Ethel Muggs.   Being a smart boy, Jughead has learned all the right lessons from Rayberry about how to deal with these people’s pressure tactics.   He responds with sarcastic amazement that they’ve essentially ‘lost’ Ethel - that is, he avoids lying but simply neglecting to answer an unstated question.  Then when Keller threatens him with another home invasion, Jughead directly asks him not to ‘trash’ the place with a smile, which he wipes from his face immediately to demonstrate his disdain.  As he takes his leave, a very Halloween ghost cackles for him as part of the soundtrack transition to the next scene. 

At home, Archie and Reggie are putting themselves into the costumes created by Mary Andrews (who can’t stand to be seen now that there are THREE men in the house.)  Reggie and Archie discuss Betty.   The boys boast to each other about “getting vibes” from Betty.  Archie suddenly wonders if Betty might want to “make it” with one of them this night.  Made entirely of cheekbones, pouty lips and pecs, this causes Reggie to very homosexually get super close to Archie to say that it wouldn’t surprise him if Betty had such horny plans, since “she ain’t blind.”  

It’s very ambiguous actually if he means only himself, or Archie, or both of them.  In the mirror, he’s looking at himself frontwise, but he’s also looking at Archie’s sculpted arms and chest and the rest of him in the all american white T and jeans.   Archie either genuinely doesn’t (he is just not smart in this universe) or pretends to think that Reggie meant only himself.  So they stand shoulder to shoulder in the mirror, because that’s a very heterosexual thing to do, while Archie says that “she might wanna get with me, Reg.”   Having been thus rejected,  Reggie walks away from him.  Unholstering his big gun, Reggie suggests that if either of them get the feeling that Betty has chosen either one of them, the unchosen will “vamoose.”   Archie agrees, which leads to the two of them pointing their guns at each other. Twice. 

Ethel and Jughead arrive at the Halloween party.  I wish I knew what they were dressed as.   Jughead is wearing a huge stovepipe hat. Ethel is in the mask that Jughead promised her.  The extraordinarily elaborate costumes that all these comic book industry people are wearing would put a lot of cons to shame.  Bernie screams for Jughead, launching himself into an embrace.   Jughead looks extremely happy to be embracing Bernie.  Bernie says “It’s gonna be a crazy night” so Jughead and Ethel enter the fray.

While her parents are hamming it up on tv, Betty’s three suitors (Reggie, Archie and for some reason Dilton) are waiting for her to appear at their home.   When Archie and Reggie (meanly) imply that Dilton is there as a form of hero worship for the two of them in his role as “the water boy,” Dilton stands up for himself to let them know that Betty invited him in particular to be here. 

When she appears, Betty’s cleavage looks absolutely amazing.  It brings Reggie and Archie  to their feet.   Dilton is so agog that he doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be.  Betty has really thought of everything about this entrance, from the costume to the perfect thing to say.  She’s Goldilocks because “she couldn’t decide on a bed so she tried all three.   Dilton has a really huge pumpkin head as his costume. 

Reggie is having the best time trick or treating. He cocks out a hip and deploys his dimples to maximum effect.   Of course, the good times can’t last.  The four of them witness Julian and others bashing pumpkin decorations with baseball bats as they drive by, hollering.  Of course, the cops are nowhere to be seen when it’s Julian Blossom flouting the rules and causing actual property damage.  Dilton wisely decides he’s had enough, and goes home. 

At Veronica’s event at the Babylonium, things look very “Cabaret” to me, which is 1930s not 20s, but it doesn’t matter.  People look very sexy here.   The costumes for this are eye popping as well - one girl has a whole 3 foot tall headdress and everything.   As soon as Cheryl and Midge enter, Toni is all over Cheryl.   

I was so happy they didn’t make me listen to Fangs singing at his big gig, but Riverdale betrays me by forcing me to listen to him at this party. 

At the Pep Comics party, workaholic artists gonna art, apparently because sketching is going on - with Ethel participating!  Jughead interviews a series of very interestingly wonky-looking people.   One guy in a silk top hat who says he doesn’t know who wrote the Milkman story but is seething with jealousy over it.  Jonah, in smudgy eyeliner, doesn’t think it was that great.  Then Jughead talks to the devil, who tells him that it was “Ted Sullivan, a journeyman writer.”  (Ted Sullivan is on the writing staff at Riverdale, and wrote among others, the “Killing Mr. Honey” episode.)  After saying his name four times, Riverdale drops the bomb that this Ted is dead, died the same way as Rayberry, because he didn’t think he could live up to the masterpiece that was the Milkman Comic.  Then the devil launches into a speech about “the enemy is here, at home” and “we’re the enemies.”  Jughead is very startled.

After lighting a truly huge number of candles at the graveyard, Reggie and Bettie are howling at the sky.   Reggie says he knows a lot about wolves because he’s a fellow alpha who grew up with them.  His way of showing off is so cute and so dumb.   “Is that what you think you are? An alpha?” Betty asks in a butter soft voice.

I know they’ll deny it, but Riverdale writing team has read at least some of those werewolf-Serpent fanfics, because this set up - howling together ‘as a joke’ in a graveyard on Halloween then having Reggie and Betty talk  like this is almost a fricking prompt for some Retty/Beggie werewolf AUs to be drafted.

What could be a very interesting alpha-omega discussion between this pair is interrupted by Julian and a couple Bulldogs still whooping it up as they cruise around town being a nuisance.   Seeing Julian breaks the mood between Reggie and Betty, causing her to go seek Archie out.

Of course, Archie is sadly contemplating his father’s gravestone.  Betty starts to apologize immediately.  Even though he clearly isn’t, Archie reassures her that he’s fine and that it’s ok and it’s fine.  Then he demonstrates how haunted he is by this father’s absence -he immediately launches into a memory.  The two used to do a lot of trick or treating together as kids, even doing Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher.   Then I realize that I fell for it - THIS WAS ALL A PLOY.   Archie’s plan was to tug at her heartstrings so he could bring up that he was the OG hotstuff.  Well dang, Archie!

Reggie tries to interrupt but his face already admits defeat.  He asks to be taken to the haunted house.  The three of them go to the murder house.  Betty is not at all spooked, so she wanders further into the house to look for “eleven up.”    

Reggie is really the most honorable, because he takes this time to discreetly tell Archie that he’s going to vamoose as he originally proposed.  Archie is nice too, telling him he doesn’t have to do that, but Reggie is a man’s man (and a genuine ladies’ man) because cock blocking out of spite is just not something he’s willing to do no matter how enticing the girl.   Betty comes back with orange sodas.  Archie grants Reggie a good enough exit, by telling Betty that Reggie was tired.  Betty, despite her earlier threesome fantasy, doesn’t much care which of the pair she gets.  She smiles at Archie.

Veronica so loves giving speeches and hosting events. She looks so happy in her black lipstick, standing in front of four coffins. I still can’t believe that this event is going to go forward in this way.  This is so callous it’s kind of funny.  Anyway, Veronica is going on about the midnight feature, dropping the fact that Boris Karloff is her godfather.  

The music number is from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Which is very timeline busting. So are we doing like a backwards-reverse Back to the Future thing where instead of a fictional white guy taking credit for a real-life black musical invention from his past ( Rock ‘n’ Roll) we have a fictional Latina woman taking credit for a real-life musical written by a white man in her future?   The twisty turny of all this is also breaking my brain because the singing in the actual movie of the real musical (Rocky Horror Picture Show) was very very imperfect except for Tim Curry and Meatloaf, and intentionally so.  The singing in the musical numbers of Riverdale also have this same trait - it’s intentionally imperfect except when Josie and Kevin were singing.  The overall technical quality of the singing is better than in that musical film (Susan Sarandon can barely sing, which places the Cheryl, Betty, Veronica and Archie actors in a higher competence category).  But for some reason (oh fine, because I love Rocky Horror Picture Show) this marmoreal smoothness of the singing by everyone involved is very very horrifying to me.  I’m getting literal shivers of distress.  There’s just too much camp happening.   When it meets the airbrushed camp of Riverdale, the rough-around-the-edges camp of Rocky Horror evaporates, leaving only raunchiness.  Riverdale has highly sexual teens, and always has, but at the same time it gets very coy with how it describes sex, sexuality and sexual activity, so I was a bit startled at Clay belting out “orgasmic rush of lust” like that.

Kevin calling for “mommy” when we’ve never seen her but has caused him to be, well, how he is by calling him fat one time because he actually was and he never got over it, is a lot.  But then they pan away as he sings “what’s this? Let’s see” as he starts to look at his own crotch I REALLY WANT TO KNOW what the choreo was implied to be. Did he look into the contents of his own crotch  pouch? Why is the audience reacting like that??

Cheryl then comes out with the most on the nose bit.  She scream-sings:  I feel released/ Bad times deceased - and so on. Cheryl has ballet training, and again the technical competence which doesn’t at all cover up the extremely clunky nature of the steps she’s being made to do is horrifying.   At the end of her number, she pulls Toni close to kiss her in front of everybody. 

We cut to Veronica doing Frank’n’Furter which is a bit like Nicole Kidman being made to sing Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.  There are certain songs that can never be sung by anyone other than that one singer, and “Don’t Dream It” is really one of those songs.   The topsy turvy un-doing and re-doing continues, because for a woman (and a very cis, very pretty one at that) wanting to be “dressed just the same” as Fay Wray has zero subversive energy compared to Tim Curry as the transsexual alien doing it, so there’s a neutralizing of the power of that song. In order to make up for it, they put Veronica in a Marlene Dietrich tuxedo-for-girls from Morocco (where Dietrich sings a floor show and then kisses a girl on the mouth in front of everyone to general delight and applause).   It’s not fair to pit Veronica’s Riverdalian version of this song (and the screechy belting they make her do given the key choices) against the true blue one by Tim Curry, but it must be said:  There’s nothing sensual about the way Veronica is saying things like “give yourself over to absolute pleasure.” Everything she’s doing  - the volume of the singing, the thinness of the voice, the effortful meaninglessness of the choreography - is the opposite of giving yourself over to anything. 

Into all this, Alice, looking like a bomb has hit her, enters the theater. She reacts with horror. I don’t know if the horror is supposed to be about the nature of the song she’s hearing or it’s from being turned on by Clay dancing gayly in just his shorts.   Kevin articulates her shellshocked reaction with yet more exactly on the nose misappropriation of the lyrics (“It’s beyond me/ Help me Mommy”). 

All the extra give the hardworking main cast of Riverdale a standing ovation.

Elsewhere, Reggie is walking home all lonesome along  the deserted road when very ominously, Julian and two others in death masks stop beside him.   Julian says that Reggie should “join the fun unless you’ve got something better to do” because he is “going across the bridge to Greendale to raise some hell.”

OOOH HE SAID THE FORBIDDEN H- WORD!!  Was - was the strange word choices in Raising Cain and Wilding and all that leading up to this moment? 

Reggie isn’t going to make it with Betty today, so he hops into the car of destruction.  

At the haunted house, Archie finally makes a move to Betty, telling her he wants to kiss her.  She says she feels exactly the same way.  Unfortunately, they are cockblocked by a milkman who peers in on them.   Betty is smart - she isn’t afraid of no ghosts, but a real-life white guy being creepy is very good reason to run the heck away. 

After the event, Clay and Kevin are cleaning up like the good theater people they are.  Veronica wants to do a weekly midnight event at the theater that is “Fun and Campy.”  We are being extraordinarily on the nose today.  Anyway, the gays are worried about Veronica’s homelessness after parental abandonment, leading to her having to live in the movie theater.  Veronica lies about all of it (“everything’s peachy”) because she can’t stand sympathy or pity from others. 

At the Diner, Midge and Fangs have told Cheryl and Toni their big secret (her “honeybun” in the oven).  Midge then remarks on the fact that Cheryl and Toni have effectively come out to all the teenagers who were there at the Babylonium.  Toni is so glad that they’ve all put away their masks.  

I don’t know how loud they were speaking or if Evelyn just has superhuman hearing capacity, but she is there at the diner (somehow? why? how? isn’t she supposed to be hosting the sleepover? Is she there to pick up a midnight snack??)

Archie and Betty are safely back at home.   They tell each other that they had the “best” time ever.  Now, they are cockblocked by Alice, who takes out her distress at finding Clay very hot by yelling at her daughter in front of the whole neighborhood.  

With a quiet moment to herself, Veronica lights a votive candle to… Rudolph Valentino. Why is he on the altar with her grandmother?  Where’s Boris Karloff??  There’s a Jughead amount of candles lit in her small living area she’s made in the movie theater.  Veronica sleeps with a photo of herself with her parents.  Oh the poor baby. She’s very upset.

Jughead has walked Ethel to Rayberry’s apartment. Jughead is not wearing any sort of headgear - no crown, no jokey hat.  I - I feel like he’s en déshabillé.  Unable to resist the hair,

Ethel invites him in, using a tone of voice that sets all my shipping urges tingling.  Except -oh poor Ethel.  This is the universe - THIS IS IT! - the one where she could totally have a thing with Jughead, but there’s Tabitha!  Tabitha the Real is out there saving all of the multiverse and Tabitha of this world is out there on the bus tour against racism.  No dice.  Jughead says he’s tired and that he needs to feed the dog.  Sigh.   Ethel totally reacts like this is a rejection of her invitation to an assignation, but she’s nice about it.  But come on Jughead, live a little!  (Sorry, Tabitha, but Ethel was here - in my heart - first.)

As soon as Ethel enters the Rayberry apartment, dun dun dun, that weird guy in the milkman outfit is totally in there waiting for her.

Jughead is walking out when he gets accosted by that very plot-important lady obsessed with forcing her neighbors to make a milk donation to her cat.  She says, “Oh I thought you were the milkman” because she heard the bottles again.  There’s both a Dutch Angle AND dolly zoom happening as Jughead puts it all together, before rushing back to the Rayberry former residence shouting for Ethel. 

Jughead breaks down the door!  He falls faceforward into the apartment, only to make direct eye contact with the corpse on the floor.  “Jeepers” he says and - seriously, truly, this was wonderful line delivery.  I mean it. 

Ethel is having HER MOMENT.  She’s so super tall to begin with, so she looks totally magnificent, holding a bloody knife, standing victorious over the dead milkman, as she passionately tells Jughead, “I told everyone it was a milkman!”  Jughead looks so scared.

Archie is woken up in the middle of the night by Uncle Frank, who seems very upset.  He says a carful of Bulldogs went over the bridge into the River.  Archie stares upset at Reggie’s very empty bed. 

If they made Reggie die in the racist’s car I will be pitching a FIT.

[ladyyatexel]

I Went On A Manga Binge

So you don't have to

For those of you who have wisely avoided the shreds of it I've left around the blog thus-far, I had some weird notion to go re-experience Yu-Gi-Oh uuuuuh a week ago? We'll go with that. Time is meaningless.

I'd been able to read a good portion of the early manga at the end of highschool, and somewhere in my stacks and stacks of paper is fanart from this dark time, so you know I cared. I also still own a Dark Magician action figure somehow, so. I'd also watched a large portion of the anime with my brother because it had been laced with some kind of crack and we couldn't look away? I remember when we both were just like shit, wait, don't change the channel, I can't stop looking at it. And the next thing we knew we were waiting for new episodes and I was doing research on the Japanese original because I was that kid.

Anyway, unnecessary backstory out of the way, here are some... let's call them Observations and Consequences of having read somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 chapters (and growing) of a manga primarily hinged on card games from a spectrum of sources ranging from boringly lawful to sketchy as fuck.

Surprise actual character that develops in typical shounen fashion being Jounouchi. My limited experiences with the 4Kids dub and only early manga had not painted him in a particularly good light. I don't know if episodes were being aired out of order or if I had just missed the ones that established that he was making shit up as he was going along, but Wow I liked him a lot more going through the manga than I ever did watching the (dubbed, heavily edited and censored and thrown into a slurry machine) anime. I'd managed to come out with the impression that he was just as reasonably experienced with the game as Yugi back in the day. Wild.

I'm now reading every single comic-style post on Tumblr backwards.

Striking inverse to first point, wow, I don't like Seto Kaiba. Though he gets points for his general philosophy of the future, and the line I read in my sketchy online combo of scans and scanlations in which he said, "If God is in your way, you run him down," was Metal As Fuck. I somewhat shame-facedly admit to enjoying him a lot more as an Abridged Series character. (I watched Abridged as it came out back in the day! The experience of watching the anime with my brother had been so fresh that I got all the in jokes about the way things were edited and dubbed, it was great. Series remains influential part of my life to this day, which is hella weird.)

I almost understand how Duel Monsters works now. I don't want this.

That said, wow a lot of the decisions made in the anime made everything a lot more ridiculous than the admittedly already ridiculous original. I got the distinct feeling in the manga that the Duelist Kingdom stuff we were seeing was designed to be used and exploited in ways that don't make sense in an actual cardgame just played on a table like a normal person and this was part of testing everyone to think higher, differently. Maybe this is obvious to everyone already, I don't know. I had always liked that it was very, 'Not so fast, I'm going to blow up the moon to change the tides,' but I'm not really sure the anime gave enough explanation that this was an extra layer added to things for that event? You can see people actively getting used to it in the books, and people who aren't considering the real or 3D nature of it getting owned, but my memory of anime version is everyone just like, 'oh, shucks, fuck me, I forgot to consider the phase of the moon before i played this card, can't believe I forgot.' No one calls Yugi on any of this stuff because it's valid play in that situation. Plus Yami Yugi had mad trickster energy in the beginning and it suited him to think of ways to do things inside these little simulation boxes the way it suited him to set perverts on fire. I imagine the real card game trying to emulate this element as something that would be to its detriment, but I neither know nor particular care haha

Ryou Bakura.

Really, though. I think he became kind of casualty of 'wow, we have a lot of characters who really aren't able to do anything in this story anymore,' despite the fact that his whole inner life could have been as interesting as Yugi's. I always like thinking about the possibilities of stories in which main character falls into magical world and is given magical item and told they're the hero and then they find out they've been the bad guy the whole time. The first several volumes of manga were about the quiet weirdo kid that no one talked to who was always blacking out and turning into a fucked up version of himsef because he was so attached to his ancient Egyptian jewelry, so like, Bakura could have much the same shit going on. I want to know what's happening with him so much. He clearly doesn't love being possessed, but he's also so drawn to the ring. Despite it having stabbed him at least twice and him knowing it's a danger to him and his friends, he keeps being pulled back into it. You see so much more of him being like, 'Oooh, a creepy thing, I love that! :D' in the manga than ever in the anime, which I'm all about. Also more blood. I'm very about that as well. Though my memory of the anime also made it look very much like normal regular daily Bakura was just a weird facade in places before he ever would have been. I think that was it trying to compensate for what people didn't see from the Toei anime, but okay whatever, that I love everything about this guy is not news, I don't need to talk about Bakura excessively here, I'm pretty sure that's gonna show up on my blog by itself

On a related note though, damn, more of these people need to talk to each other. Can we have some existential crisis support clubs or something. Can we get like some apologies or something? "I respect you as a duelist." "Cool, but you literally built a tower designed to specifically assassinate me and my friends? You were supposed to get Better after I retaliated by putting you in a coma, but you kinda didn't." "Why would the coma have made it better" "I just told you it didn't" ---- "Sorry I went along with the plan of your evil parasite stabbing you, misled you, and then also jumped in and took up some real estate in your head too." "I understand, I also have an evil thing inside me that does things while I'm blacked out." "...no, I was conscious for all of that." "Oh." "..." "..." "..." "Do you like Ouija Boards?" "sure okay" ETC. Like damn we are reading shounen manga because no one is talking extensively about their feelings here and I'm tapping my foot angrily.

Holy shit there are so many mythologies happening at once. The ancient family guarding the Egyptian Pharaoh has a surname that's a Mesopotamian goddess. None of the god cards make any Egyptian sense except Ra, and just like. Baaarrrrely. Somewhere either Evil Ring Bakura or Mar/lik makes a reference to cremation and spirits being taken to heaven with smoke which several things, but definitely not Ancient Egyptian. Marik/Malik meanwhile is clearly trying to head Arabic, along with Rishid, but then, hey, our sister is just Isis. Goddess McGoddess. Sometimes they're the same goddess! Her name could be Isis Isis or Ishtar Ishtar. Meanwhile, all the obviously 'occult because Christians think it is freaky' stuff. ~ancient egyptian pentagrams~~~This isn't a complaint, I guess so much as a 'Wow, I can kind of see the cultural spot the author was coming from and where he was aiming' kind of thing.

Wonder where things would have gone if the card games had not been latched onto the way they were.

Managed to forget how gross the pre-cardgames stuff was on the sexual harassment front. I'm glad there was a sort of explanation of everyone drifting away from being dick heads and that that decision was made. It got way more comfortable to read after no one was bringing Yugi p*rn on VHS.

Yugi looks better with a nose, glad we got that upgrade.

Interesting to watch the series style shift as it goes away from being horror to being over the top cardgames and friendship (with blood!). The first picture of Mokuba is fucking Jarring. Also noticed that the nicer a character is, the less their teeth are defined.

Glad manga did not go as completely off the fucking the rails about Marik's face. I never got as far as seeing him back in the day because college occurred, but I remember seeing pictures and stuff and being like, "what in the Fuck happened to that dude, I think the house style has collapsed in on itself"

Things the author Really Likes: motorcycles, belts, SHOES, holy shit the shoes. These are some of the most lovingly rendered sneakers I've ever seen. All the detail on his characters goes straight to their feet and then it's stretched upward until it forms stiff peaks. Gently fold in 3000 years of trauma and bake face down in a crumb coat of scattered mythology. Remove when you roll two zeros.

Where the fuck am I going to put the extremely large omnibus volumes of this comic I purchased in order to balance out how much I would be reading for free on the internet. I should have grasped that a three in one edition would be Thick and yet somehow I was still :O when it arrived. Have I strategically purchased volumes that contain my favorite parts, maybe, what's it to you will i eventually get the whole thing because incomplete book series gnaw on my soul? yes

Wish the transition from "I've murdered several people in delightfully karmic ways" to "all you need is friendship in your heart and cards in your hand" Yami Yugi/Pharaoh had been discussed more/transitioned better. Buddy, where did you get this approved for television high horse? Please go back to strangling people with yo-yos or at least tell me why you stopped.

I still can't tell anything that looks like a big robotic monster apart from any other big robotic monster. My dude, I can't tell cars apart, all these monsters look the same.

Yami Yugi fascinated me way more in highschool? Maybe because it was still super early and the anime was like 'we need to torture you about his origins WeEkLy. Now I'm just like 'wait hold on, can we go back to Bakura and Marik for a minute, there's some extreme unpacking to do here?' Those two are paying so much more in baggage fees here my guy wow

Violently uninterested in any of the spinoff media

[cheshiresense]

For the headcanon thing if I'm not too late. Headcanons for FemIchigo/Kisuke ship?

Lol you didn’t give me an AU? Guess I could throw them in the canon verse but the events wouldn’t be much dif imo. But let’s see how this goes.

Edit: Welp. This got long.

1. Ichigo keeps her hair long because of her mom. Masaki had long hair, and even if it’s not the exact same colour, Ichigo grows her own hair out in her honour, as a reminder of the one time she failed to protect her precious people and just because she’s never met anyone with hair as pretty as her mom’s.

The first time she gets into a serious fight with Shinigami, that dick Renji uses it against her. He grabs her hair, and taunts her with it, and in the end, she kicks his ass, but then his dick boss shows up and just about kills her. When she wakes up at the Shouten, she’s half-naked, wrapped in bandages, and her hair’s been sliced ragged, left in uneven strands around her shoulders where before it had reached her waist. Urahara is nice enough to cut and style it for her. He tells her he only knows how to cut it one way because a good friend of his used to wear her hair short. It’s cute enough, and at the end of the day, Ichigo would much rather keep her life than her hair, but she also locks herself in the bathroom later that night and has a good cry about it. It’s stupid, it’s just hair, it’ll grow back, but it still feels a little like losing her mother all over again. She gives herself twenty minutes, and then she gets her shit together because she has to go save Rukia, and Urahara promised to make her strong enough so she needs to get some sleep more than anything else right now. When she gets back to her room though, the rest of the Shouten is still silent but there’s a tray of tea by her futon, still hot, and too sweet to have been made by Tessai. Ichigo doesn’t even like tea, but it’s a surprisingly kind, amusingly awkward gesture from a man who knows too much and tells her too little. She drinks it all, making a face at the taste but appreciating the warmth that spreads all the way to her fingertips, and when she lies back down and closes her eyes, sleep comes easier this time.

2. Kisuke’s the one who carries her back to the Shouten after she defeats Aizen and subsequently collapses in the aftermath. He thinks it would’ve been easier if she’d been born a boy. She’s tall for her age and gender, but she feels more fragile like this, her shoulders narrower than her usual larger-than-life personality would suggest, her frame less sturdy. Even her bones feel more delicate. Then again, she’s still only sixteen and she’s already lost half her soul in a war she should never have had to fight in the first place, and a good chunk of that blame can be laid squarely at Kisuke’s feet, so maybe boy or girl, it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. She’s light enough that Kisuke can carry her without difficulty, but her weight still feels like shackles around his wrists, tied to an anchor at the bottom of the ocean, like the worst of his sins given life, and Kisuke hadn’t ever thought that would be something he’d have trouble bearing until now. But the least he can do is carry her home, so that’s what he does. He takes her back to the Shouten and cleans her up and heals her– it’s a routine he’s uncomfortably familiar with these days. He doesn’t know if she’s ever consciously realized it, but he’s seen her naked enough times to feel like a pervert. He was Onmitsukidou, and he’s seen Yoruichi change in front of him enough times that the female body doesn’t make him blink, but Ichigo’s young - old enough to have developed curves, young enough that his hands shouldn’t be anywhere near her (figuratively or literally) - but there’s nobody else to do it, Yoruichi is always inconveniently away, so Kisuke keeps his eyes and hands well within professional range, runs a bath for her that takes care of most of the dirt and sweat and blood so he only has to make sure she doesn’t drown, and then whisks her off back to bed where he can bandage up what his Kidou can’t heal before settling down to monitor her reiatsu levels.

She remains in a coma for a month. Kisuke is the one who takes care of her, from fresh bedding to sponge baths to IV-fed fluids, even trimming her hair when it starts looking too shaggy (she’s growing it out again, so he doesn’t cut more than what he has to). By the time she opens her eyes, Kisuke’s just relieved she wakes at all, and it doesn’t seem like she’s (physically) much worse for wear so at least his caretaking skills aren’t terrible. All the discomfort in the world can be tolerated if it means Ichigo remains as healthy as she can possibly be.

3. Ichigo doesn’t see or hear from Urahara or any other Shinigami for the next seventeen months, and she tries not to let it get to her. She still sees her human friends at school, even if she’s no longer welcome in a large part of their daily lives, and Shinigami probably don’t think a year and a half is all that long. Besides, at the end of the day, she knew most of her Shinigami acquaintances for a handful of months tops; that’s hardly grounds for eternal friendship. She’s hurt by their absence, but she keeps herself busy with school, with homework, with the part-time job she finds just to fill the hours in-between. She gets good at ignoring the fact that she knows where her friends go after school, knows where her sisters go, and that she can no longer follow them. Urahara doesn’t wear a gigai after all, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask him to. He probably has better things to do too now that the war is over and Ichigo has done her duty.

So it’s been seventeen months of mind-numbing (soul-wrenching) monotony, and then she gains a stalker. She would never have chased that thief down if she had known Ginjou Kuugou was so… greasy. She doesn’t just mean his hair either; everything about him oozes an oily sort of charm that sets off every alarm bell her mom drilled into her head about Stranger Danger, Female Edition, and it becomes clear very quickly that Ginjou is exactly the sort of man who just won’t take no for an answer. He follows her around, flirts like he thinks she finds him attractive, keeps inviting her out for a meal, even tracks her down at work, and Ichigo’s just about had it with him after he “bumps” into her while she’s walking home from doing the grocery-shopping, because she may not be a Shinigami anymore but she sure as hell still knows how to defend herself and kick a creep in the balls when he dares to sling a too-proprietary arm around her waist, as if he has any right.

As it turns out though, she doesn’t have to. Ginjou gets about half a second to touch her, still blathering on about having something interesting to show her if she lets him treat her to some ramen, and then he’s being ripped away from her, abruptly enough to tear a shout from him, and Ichigo spins around just in time to see Urahara twist Ginjou’s arm behind him at a painful-looking angle before slamming him face-first into a nearby wall.

Ichigo doesn’t think she’s ever seen Urahara so… openly violent before. She can’t stop staring for a long moment, because that casual, effortless strength is… not something Ichigo would mind seeing again. If nothing else, it’s clearly effective (and pointedly ignores the voice that says she isn’t staring because it’s effective). The look on his face though is positively serene, if you don’t count the ominous shadow that his hat is somehow casting over his eyes.

“I do believe Kurosaki-san has asked you to stop harassing her,” the shopkeeper says in tones so airily cheerful only an idiot would buy the act. Ginjou doesn’t reply anyway. He can’t. Urahara’s yanked his arm up high enough to let him simultaneously choke the life out of the guy, his hand about as movable as stone as it pins Ginjou’s wrist to the back of his neck and his neck to the brick wall.

“Hey,” Ichigo says, and then stops, because on one hand, this guy probably doesn’t deserve to be straight-up murdered, but also if anyone in Ichigo’s life can kill a human and make the corpse disappear, it would be Urahara.

But Urahara glances at her, then shrugs a little and releases Ginjou, only to knock him over the head with his cane, hard enough to send him crumpling to the ground in an unconscious heap. There’s a moment of silence after that, and then Ichigo remembers to be irritated because she’s no one’s damsel in distress. “I could’ve handled him, you know.”

It comes out sharper than even she intends, but the sight of him reminds her of how long she hasn’t seen him or any of her other Shinigami friends, and it’s hard to remain mature about it when one of them is suddenly right in front of her again. Urahara, because he’s Urahara, just rakes a too-discerning eye over her like he can see right through her annoyance to the root of it. His expression tightens with something Ichigo can’t name, but all he does is incline his head in acknowledgement even as he smiles in a way that makes her want to punch him. “Of course, Kurosaki-san, but what kind of gentleman would I be if I didn’t interfere?”

Ichigo gives him the flat unimpressed look that deserves, Urahara’s smile twitches into something more genuinely amused, and for a second, it almost feels as if no time at all has passed since the last time they’d shared an actual conversation. Then Ginjou groans, Ichigo bristles irritably, and Urahara’s smile fades.

“Kurosaki-san,” He calls out before Ichigo can do more than turn away. “There are some things you need to know. But perhaps we can take this off the streets first? Come back to my Shouten; I will explain everything there.”

Ichigo turns back, scowling suspiciously at the blond, then down at greasy stalker. Great. She should’ve known; of course it would be Shinigami business that actually dragged Urahara out of his shop and into his first interaction with Ichigo after seventeen months of radio silence. But… if Urahara is willing to explain just what greasy stalker wanted to drag her into, Ichigo would be an idiot to turn him down.

“Fine,” She grumbles. “I’m using your fridge though. I’ve got ice-cream in here and it’s gonna melt before I get home at this rate.”

Urahara beams at her and hefts greasy stalker over his shoulder before ushering her to the Shouten. True to his word, he tells her about the Fullbringers who’ve invaded Karakura, and he tells her that the Shinigami have been monitoring the situation, and then he tells her he has a way to return her powers and soul-spirits to her. He shows her the sword, engraved with a bunch of intricate symbols she can’t even begin to decipher, and it thrums with so much power even she can feel it. She has a sudden epiphany that it must’ve taken even a genius like Urahara quite a while to make something like this, because she’d asked around, before she’d lost the ability to see Shinigami, and she knows for a fact that fixing her soul should’ve been impossible. The realization that Urahara must’ve been working on this for the past seventeen months goes a long way to soothing any fair or unfair feelings she had towards him, even if she also thinks he could’ve just told her. But she thinks that, and then she thinks that Urahara probably didn’t because he hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up for nothing. It’s stupid, but so is the way he eases the sword through her chest as gently as possible, as if it makes a difference at all when that first jolt of foreign reiatsu to her system still hurts like a bitch. She thinks she can forgive stupidity though if it’s coming from him. Not that she’ll ever tell him that.

In the aftermath, the Fullbringers disappear one by one, and nobody says anything but an increasingly manically cheerful Urahara gets a lot of wary side-eyes from the Shinigami trooping through Karakura over the next couple of weeks. It’s Rukia (Rukia who never so much as passed on a how-are-you, and Ichigo doesn’t blame her, but she’s never going to forget it either) who tells her later about Urahara kneeling in front of all the Gotei’s captains and lieutenants and begging them to help, who bowed his head through the Captain-Commander’s orders to keep the sword back until a powerless Ichigo has drawn out all the Fullbringers, only to immediately disobey as soon as he got the reiatsu he needed from them.

Ichigo asks, of course, just once, why. True to form, Urahara doesn’t give her a straight answer, he shrugs and lies instead, “Well it isn’t as if there’s anything else they can do to little old me in exile, is there?” But for just a moment, he also looks directly at Ichigo, his gaze steady and calm and unyielding, like there was never anything else he could’ve done, like choosing Ichigo over the Gotei was a decision made as easily as he breathed.

Much, much later, looking back, Ichigo thinks maybe that was the moment she first fell just a little bit in love.

4. Somewhere between the Quincy War and Yoruichi and Tessai moving back to Soul Society and the kids deciding they want to experience high school and normal life at the Kurosaki household, Kisuke wakes up one morning to Ichigo cooking breakfast in his kitchen and realizes he’s sharing a house with a twenty-year-old college student whose Gargantas make for the easiest commute to and from school in the history of public transportation. He stands in the doorway for a long minute, just watching her go through the motions that have become routine at the Shouten for… months now. Ever since he survived the war by the skin of his teeth and ended up half-blind because Benihime is only a quick, crude fix when Kisuke doesn’t know the exact makeup of whatever he’s restructuring. He’d had to study that, and then get some hands-on practice, before finally re-restructuring his eyes one more time. Ichigo had been a big help. Kisuke had had difficulties reading, along with dizzy spells and crippling headaches, so even though she didn’t understand everything, she also spent long hours with him, reading out loud and taking down notes for him, cooking for him and keeping his house clean and even manning the shopfront for him when Tessai was busy with the Kidou Corps. And then, once he was better… well, apparently she’d just never moved back out, and Kisuke had liked the company (has always liked her company) that he’d obliviously taken her presence here for granted.

She turns around now, probably sensing him. Her hair’s almost as long as it used to be back when they’d first met, but she’s tied it up into a messy bun. She’s still in pajama pants and one of his shirts because she likes the larger size and she keeps stealing them and Kisuke doesn’t mind, he has more than enough.

Maybe he should’ve minded.

“Hey,” Ichigo greets around a stifled yawn. “Food’s almost done. Could you set the table?”

Kisuke makes an agreeable noise and starts pulling down tableware from the cupboards. The coffee’s also done so he pours a mug, and then prepares the tea with the water that’s just finished boiling. Five minutes later, they’re seated around the table, Ichigo grumbling memorized literature quotes into her coffee because she has finals next week, and Kisuke just… watches her. They’ve thrown the porch doors open because it’s summer and the morning breeze is nice. Ichigo has her back to it, and the sunrise that frames her head like a halo gilds her bright hair gold. When she finally sets her coffee down, she looks up and catches his eye, and even as her eyebrows go up in an unspoken question, the smile that blooms across her face at the same time is as much a reflex as it is genuine, like the mere sight of him is something to be happy about, and Kisuke is helpless to do anything but smile back.

Shit, he thinks, far too late. I’m definitely going to hell.

5. “I’m definitely going to hell,” he moans into the table. Yoruichi, because she is first and foremost a terrible best friend, is too busy laughing at him to console him. At least she came prepared with the sake when he called her in a panic once Ichigo had left for class.

“Took you long enough,” Yoruichi chortles, like this isn’t a Big Problem. “Tessai thought for sure you’d realize she’s practically your wife-” Kisuke winces. “-when she went off to college and still went back to the Shouten every night. But I’ve known you longer so I figured it would take you a while before it clicked.”

“We are roommates,” He hisses vehemently, downing another cup of alcohol before pouring himself some more. “I’ve never- Yoruichi-san, I would never- I wouldn’t-”

“Well that was obvious too,” Yoruichi snorts, but her gold eyes are suddenly a lot less amused a lot more focused, acute and unblinking on his face. “But you know, if she’s old enough to kill for you, then she’s old enough to fuck.”

Kisuke freezes, and then straightens, and he has never looked at Yoruichi the way he does now, but there’s ice in his veins and a knot of flash-fire rage and black-fanged guilt clawing up his gut, and he couldn’t stop the crass words if he wanted to, “She was old enough to kill for me at fifteen; was she old enough to fuck then too?”

Yoruichi doesn’t even flinch, just pins him with a burning look sharp enough to cut. “Well you didn’t wanna fuck her then, did you? But she’s an adult now, and she can make her own choices, and I know you suck at human-ing so I’m gonna go ahead and give you a piece of advice in advance and hopefully save everyone a lot of needless drama - in general, people don’t like it when you make decisions for them because you think you know better. So before you panic even more and start pushing her away ‘for her own good’ but really actually because you freaked out about having feelings, maybe, just maybe, ask her what she wants.” She grins like a tiger that has its prey cornered. “Ichigo’s not stupid. Even I don’t know if she knows about your gigantic crush yet, she’s surprisingly closed off about personal issues, but let me just remind you, Kisuke - she didn’t sit at my bedside, or Shinji’s, or even Rukia’s, after the war, and you know full we were all laid out for days, if not from injuries then exhaustion.” She leans forward and snags the front of his Shihakushou to give him a hard shake. “Are you listening to me, Kisuke? She cares about you, and you care about her, and I have not seen you this happy in a very, very long time.” She glares at him, daring him to argue. “Even if nothing comes from this, even if you just stay friends, don’t you dare fuck this up for yourself. You’ve got a good thing here. She’s good for you, and she makes you happy. And it’s not a crime to be happy, Kisuke.”

She lets him go. Kisuke doesn’t move for a long minute, and this time, Yoruichi waits him out. “…What if I’m not good for her though?”

Yoruichi clicks her tongue and reaches for her own sake again, limbs going feline-languid once more. “That’s for her to decide. She’s got a decent head on her shoulders, Kisuke; if you really were poison for her like you seem to think you are every damn turn of the moon, she would’ve dropped you a long time ago.” She pauses to take a swig, and then she kicks him under the table hard enough to make him yelp. “Now quit being a coward, drink your damn sake, and then go home and be disgustingly domestic with your roommate when she gets back. And if after all this crap you put me through, you still end up hurting her, I’m gonna tell Kuukaku, and she’ll make you wish you were just dead.”

Kisuke thinks about that for a moment, remembers some of the antics Kuukaku used to get up to with Yoruichi, and internally cringes. “Right,” he sighs. Yoruichi rolls her eyes at him, and he sighs again. Well, he supposes he should’ve known better than to get any sympathy from Yoruichi. He also mulls over what she’s said though, and… well. If nothing else, Ichigo’s choices are her own. Kisuke’s manipulated her into a war once already. He can’t - he won’t - do it to her again, for anything.

He downs the last of his alcohol and this time dares to hope.

6. They never actually sit down and lay all their cards on the table and talk about it. It’s not in either of their natures; Ichigo prefers actions, and ninety percent of Kisuke’s words have always been used to deflect and manipulate. But, for Ichigo, the Shouten becomes home. She never moves out (and yes, she knew what she was doing when she packed up most of her belongings and carted them over to the shop), and at first, it was just to help because Kisuke was so badly injured from the war, but the longer she stayed, the harder it was to think about leaving again for good. When Kisuke hadn’t said anything even after he’d fully recovered, she took it as permission to stay, and of course that didn’t do anything to make her like him less. She enjoys his company, likes reading in his labs while he fiddles with his experiments, likes surprising him with new recipes, likes being surprised when he modifies or creates yet another Kidou spell for her monstrous levels of reiatsu so that it won’t blow up when she tries it. She likes that he always tucks her into bed if she falls asleep at her desk studying, and she likes that he trusts her enough to walk around without wearing his hat all the time. She likes that between her strength and adaptability and his creativity and cunning, they’re more or less evenly matched in a spar, and the harder she pushes him, the more thrilled he gets at having to work for his victories. She likes that he comes home one day with something both new and still familiar in his eyes when he looks at her, and a month later, on her birthday, he takes her halfway across the world to a rare book convention with a focus on Shakespeare, and halfway through that, his hand swings out to tangle her fingers with his own.

They never really talk about it, but Ichigo migrates into his bedroom one night and never sleeps in her own room again. They take things slow, honestly more for Kisuke’s benefit than her own, but she doesn’t mind because mostly, she just likes having Kisuke there, with her. He still treats her like glass sometimes, like something priceless he’s afraid to smudge just by touching it. Those days, Ichigo sprawls across him with all her weight and stays there until he wraps himself more firmly around her, usually dozing off while Ichigo works on a draft of her first book.

They don’t talk about it. But they don’t have to, to know what they mean to each other.

[friendshipcampaign]

Sanctuary

Sometimes you’re a DM and you think, “Hm! I’m having a lot of emotions about a conversation between two NPCs that none of my player characters would be around for! Perhaps I shall write a short drabble!” and then then next thing you know you’re well over 4k words deep into your OCs Talking About Their Feelings. Well: here are those words.

NPC downtime between Demonology Prevention League agents Creed and Thodri, set during the street festival in Veritas the day after the Friendship Campaign party banished the demons from the city.

The streets of Veritas were filled with the sounds of reveling. Bonfires crackled and the foods roasting on them sizzled and dripped. Stallkeepers hawked and haggled and called out to each other. Music drifted through the square, accompanied by the stomping and shouting of the dancers. Every few moments, someone decided to raise a tankard in a cheer, which would echo through the crowd before getting lost in the tumult. Everything was loud and bright and everyone was celebrating.

Thodri didn’t trust it for a minute.

She scanned the crowds around her as she and Creed made their way to the watch-house the DPL had commandeered as a temporary headquarters, looking for—she didn’t know. A familiar face that shouldn’t be there? A demon that had somehow escaped the Banishment? Some magical trap left untriggered in the previous day’s battle—or a freshly placed one?

Creed, strolling along beside her, didn’t seem to have any such worries.

“You wouldn’t believe the kind of decorations they have upstairs! Y’know, a lot of houses like that, they  put the most impressive stuff out where they can show it off to everyone who comes in, but that place just gets more opulent the farther you go!”

Thodri grunted, pretending that she’d been listening to her companion’s non-stop chatter about the Zisisvoynis’ decór. She supposed it was easier to appreciate its opulence when your first visit there wasn’t for a party where your tentative allies had decided to attempt to trap a bunch of murderous cultists. With a dragon. It was probably also easier if you were Creed, who had much more of a taste for extravagance than she ever would.

“It’s nothing like the main hoard, of course, and the location of that is one of those if-I-tell-you-then-I’d-have-to-kill-you secrets—”

Thodri flinched. Focus. She needed to focus. The square was too large to keep all of it in her sights and they were drawing near the middle now, the crowd pressing close on all sides. She didn’t like the feeling of so many strangers at her back.

“—But I did get a few stories about some of the artifacts. Not just gold—apparently Oktojnotviš has an ongoing feud with some other dragons over these historical Draconic texts that they each have one section of. They’re all trying to get the complete collection, but since they’re written on twenty-foot-high slabs of stone that were cut from an ancient cave wall there’s been a wee bit of trouble with that.”

The bonfire burning behind the skeletal remnants of the elephant-demon cast flickering shadows over the bones that looked just enough like movement when caught from the corner of her eye that Thodri kept snapping her head around to look. No. The bones were still. Dead. Parts of them were still tethered to the ground by long pieces of jagged wire.

“Hey.”

Creed lowered his arms, which he’d been waving as he spoke in his customary sweeping gestures. Thodri always joked that he could never visit her home caverns under the mountains because with the way he walked he’d end up bruising his hands—and his head—black and blue in the dwarf-sized tunnels.

“You doing all right, Footnotes?”

“I’m fine,” Thodri retorted, continuing to wind her way through the square so that despite his long legs, Creed had to half-skip a few steps to catch up to her.

“Well, something must be wrong because I was just telling you about some extremely old and interesting writings and you didn’t even bat an eye.”

“There’s a lot to do.” More shouts rang out from behind them, and Thodri whirled just in time to see a burly woman with a barrel of ale on her shoulder raise up her hand in a cheer. All right. No threat. She turned back to Creed.

“. . . And now you’re sounding like Aurelia.”

“I am not—” Thodri snapped, before catching herself and letting out a long, tense sigh. “I’m . . . worried. That’s all.”

“About?”

Thodri threw up her hands. “I don’t know! Everything? Somebody has to be since you’re acting like you don’t have a care in the world!”

She glared out into the crowd again. She couldn’t lose focus. Couldn’t miss anything. She could hear Creed’s footsteps beside her as the two of them walked in silence for a moment, making it out to where the crowd was thinner. She felt nervous about leaving the square unwatched, but they had to get on to where Aurelia was waiting and see what information they could get out of yesterday’s captives. If there was some other plot yet to be sprung . . .

“Are you . . . mad at me?” Creed asked. She could tell he had his head cocked in confusion but she didn’t look up to meet his eyes.

“No! Maybe! I don’t know!”

“Well, that’s quite the spectrum, certainly. I appreciate you didn’t go straight to ‘yes,’ but—”

“I thought you were dead!” she blurted out.

Creed stopped in his tracks and blinked at her. He looked almost as surprised at her outburst as she was. She stared back at him, wide-eyed, with her hand clapped over her mouth.

“What . . . last night? I didn’t—”

“No!” The blood was rushing in Thodri’s ears and she she could feel the terror she’d been trying to push down all day building within her. She’d lowered her hand to let out the interjection and now without that barrier in place more words were trying to flood out in a torrent she couldn’t control. “You were missing and I thought you were dead and it was my fault and I couldn’t even remember what had happened, and Aurelia kept trying to be so nice to me that I thought I would scream, and the rest of them just stopped talking about you after Ráalu used the past tense once and I had to run out of the room during an interrogation and—”

“Hey.” She felt Creed’s hands settle gently on her shoulders. “Hey, it’s all right. You got me back, didn’t you?”

“I-I know,” Thodri stammered. “We got you back and I thought maybe I could be less afraid, but I got complacent and let my guard down and that thing that was pretending to be Kasia got me and then I wasn’t—”

She shivered for a moment as she remembered the sensation of mindlessness, of her eyes and ears being as sharp as ever but not being able to make sense of anything she saw and heard, of being stripped of her words and her thoughts and her understanding in a way that made her blanch with fear to recall, but that at the time she hadn’t even been able to comprehend enough to be horrified. That might have been the worst part. That she hadn’t known—hadn’t been able to know—what had happened to her. That once the others had left her curled up with Creed in their pocket dimension she’d felt . . . safe. She’d felt happy.

Creed’s fingernails dug into the back of her shoulders. A few streets over, the musicians finished a song and a distant cheer went up. Thodri’s voice was getting higher and louder and people were probably staring but she couldn’t make herself stop.

“—I wasn’t there and I couldn’t help you and Palava had to call on so much power from his god to get me back and I couldn’t even get any omens—”

She was aware that Creed was speaking, but it felt almost the way speech had when her mind was shattered. The sounds were there but there was no sense to them. She let him push her, gently, back out of the way of the crowd until there was stone at her back and the sounds of the celebration were muffled.

“—and then the creature showed up and I thought—I thought, this is it, this is the thing that’s going to kill us, and it almost felt better because at least I wasn’t wondering anymore, but then Kriv defeated it and we didn’t die and it—it’s over, it’s gone, all the demons are gone and everyone’s celebrating but I don’t . . . I don’t know how to stop being afraid!”

She looked at Creed, helplessly, through burning eyes. He loomed over her, his head cocked to one side and the crystal growths on his left horn glinting in the light.

“It feels like every time I relax something worse happens. And then last night I was trying so hard to feel like we were all safe; I was trying to relax and enjoy myself and be happy, and then you took one look at the most dangerous thing in the room and decided to throw yourself at it and it . . .” she trailed off, the river of words drying up as she wondered how she could convey the sudden, absurd spike of fear that had gripped her, that still thrummed under her skin even though Creed was fine, she was fine, everything was . . .

“It . . . made me afraid again,” she finished lamely.

As the silence stretched out between them, Thodri let her head drop and took in a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m . . . sorry. I know it’s ridiculous and I know you were probably going to be fine and I need to learn how to pull myself together, and I certainly didn’t mean to go quite so . . . babbly. About everything.”

“Hey.” Creed crouched down so their faces were almost level, still holding her by the shoulders. She’d been expecting him to look  . . . frustrated, at least, the sort of expression he wore when Aurelia was being particularly obtuse, and she was ready to flinch away from it, but she could see nothing but concern in his lavender eyes.

Then one corner of his mouth turned up in a smile which Thodri found herself instinctively but tentatively mirroring, and he said, “All right, more than a few points of contention with all that. First things first, I don’t think it’s fair to say I ‘threw myself’ at him, and I’ll have you know I took several looks before I made any decisions.”

Thodri let out a bark of surprised laughter, which she suspected from the way he beamed at her had been Creed’s plan in the first place. He straightened up and pointed towards one of the little green parks behind them.

“Shall we sit down?”

Thodri bit her lip. “I don’t want to keep Aurelia waiting too long . . .”

“Well that does it!” Creed clapped her on the back. “I definitely want to keep Aurelia waiting. She needs the rest. Come on!”

Thodri let Creed lead her around the groups of pedestrians heading to and from the festival and out onto the grass. He found a stone bench—an old one, Thodri noted, but of decent workmanship—and sprawled across one end of it, gesturing for Thodri to join him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were having . . . such a hard time.”

Thodri laughed again, a brittle edge to it.

“I don’t think I did either, honestly. I didn’t realize a lot of it until . . . now, really. I thought I was just being stupid and I could joke about it and I’d calm down. I—I even thought it was working; I had a nice time with Kriv and his goat, but then I tried to go to sleep and I couldn’t stop . . . thinking about all of it. Of being afraid that it was only a matter of time until something worse happened. That—that if I let myself get complacent it would all fall apart.”

“Listen.” Creed stretched an arm along the back of the bench in a clear invitation, but he didn’t touch her. With a sigh, Thodri leaned into him and pulled his arm down around her shoulders. “Of course you’re afraid. It makes sense to be afraid. This city was overrun with demons until just a little before this time yesterday. That’s a lot for anyone to handle, and for weeks of it you didn’t even have me around to help you with my worldly experience and sparkling wit!”

“I . . . I know,” said Thodri. “Again, I’m sorry—”

“Thodri.” Creed loosened the grip of his arm just enough that he could look directly into Thodri’s face. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, love.”

“But I could—”

“We walked into a trap, Thodri. Both of us. I think it was . . .” Creed’s fingers wandered to his symbol of Tymora and began to spin it absently back and forth. “. . . Lucky that I was the one they caught.”

In response to Thodri’s disbelieving snort he continued, “One of us was useful to them. Fuel for the mine. They had reasons to want to keep me alive. Horrifying reasons, I’ll grant you! But reasons nonetheless. If you’d been the one who was trapped . . .”

They sat in silence for a brief moment, and then Creed let go of his holy symbol and smacked the heel of his hand into his forehead.

“Real encouraging talk, this is! Here I was going to try to calm you down and instead I start blabbing about even more things that could have killed you!”

“No, it . . . it’s okay.” Thodri nestled further into his shoulder. “It does make me feel better, actually, in a strange way. I thought Tymora had abandoned you, but maybe she was looking out for both of us after all.”

“Aye.” Creed wrapped his arm tighter around her. “Or maybe she did whiff it and it worked out regardless; that happens too.”

Thodri chuckled. “I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to your irreverance.”

“Oh, she loves it! Your sort of devotion would be terribly boring to a luck goddess. Can’t show off her powers unless her followers are the sort of people to take big risks.”

Thodri looked up, tracing the dappled outlines of the leaves on the branches above them. She’d been away from the mountains for years, but the trees and the open sky still felt strange to her. They were never as comforting as the darkness of her home had been. She closed her eyes.

“Is that what last night was about, then? Big and completely unnecessary risks?”

She felt Creed shrug. “I suppose. Although I will say that most of the appeal there was being free to take a big risk that wasn’t likely to get me killed if I got it wrong.”

Thodri could feel her heart beginning to pound again, the drumbeat of not-safe-not-safe-not-safe that had haunted her since the night she and Creed had walked into a trap and she alone had come out of it. She let it beat, forcing herself not to hitch her breath to it. It was dark and safe behind her eyelids, and Creed’s arm was warm around her.

“I think . . . after everything being so dangerous for so long, it’s hard to feel like anything might not be a matter of deadly peril.” She contemplated for a moment. “Also you didn’t see him at the last party, where he was . . . very distinctly terrifying.”

Creed’s chin bumped against the top of her head as he nodded. “No, that’s fair, that’s fair. If it makes you feel any better, the first thing he did once we got to his chambers was sit me down to talk about boundaries and expectations for like half an hour, so . . .”

Thodri snorted. “That does make me feel better, yes! He’s . . . certainly full of surprises.”

“The first half of it was about how I shouldn’t expect anything long-term to come of it since his heart and soul are still undyingly bound to his wife, whose virtues he extolled at some length.”

Thodri drew her feet up on the bench and leaned back, watching the sunlight tint her vision red.

“See, that part doesn’t surprise me at all.”

“His body, on the other hand—”

Creed squawked as Thodri smacked a hand at his free arm.

“Nope,” she said firmly. “If you want to share any more details, you can go talk to Amaranth.”

“Fair enough.” Creed leaned his head over to rest it on top of Thodri’s, carefully maneuvering his horn so it wouldn’t catch in her hair. Tymora’s symbol bumped against her shoulder. A breeze sprang up, rustling the leaves of the tree above them.

“. . . So,” said Creed after a moment. “Aurelia was nice to you?”

Thodri groaned. “I hated it! She’s supposed to be all gruff and angry and disapproving but she kept trying to be . . . gentle with me.”

Aurelia had been the first member of the DPL to arrive after Thodri dragged herself up out of the tunnels, showing up out of breath and already starting to yell. “Where’s the idiot?” she had snapped when she first saw Thodri. And Thodri had been expecting something like that, so she only trembled a little as she explained about the tip and the tunnel and the trap and how Creed had pushed her back to safety when the walls came tumbling in. And she’d been expecting Aurelia to demand to see the collapse, so she led the way back down with her conjured light hardly flickering and waited while the woman shouted and kicked at the falling rocks. But then she’d expected Aurelia to shout at her too, to demand what they’d been thinking and why they’d been so stupid and why Thodri hadn’t made Creed follow the protocol and tell the rest of them where they were going, why Thodri hadn’t found some way to stop it—and so when, instead, Aurelia had turned away from the collapsed tunnel with a curse and seen Thodri standing there and simply muttered, “Damn it. I’m sorry, kid,” when Aurelia had moved in to try, inexpertly, to hug her . . . Thodri had completely fallen apart.

“Sounds awful,” said Creed.

“Yeah. The yelling is better.”

And the yelling had come, just not at her. Thodri found that Aurelia’s view of her had shifted from an errant recruit that she needed to keep away from bad influences (meaning Creed), to some kind of broken child too fragile to discipline and too foolish to listen to. With everyone else Aurelia had gotten harsher, but she would shoo Thodri out of the room before tearing into her coworkers and make her stand back when they went to investigate demonic incidents.

“If she’s not going to listen to me,” Thodri continued, “I’d rather she be angry than just . . . patronizing.”

“Well,” said Creed, “Stick with me and I doubt that’ll be your problem for long! She’s had no trouble being angry with yours truly, even after I mysteriously returned from the presumed-dead.”

“She cried about you,” said Thodri, remembering what else she’d seen when she’d brought Aurelia into the tunnel. “Just a little, but . . .”

She opened her eyes just in time to catch the delighted, devilish grin spreading across Creed’s face. “Oh, Footnotes,” he said. “Your knowledge, as always, is a treasure.”

“Don’t be too hard on her for it,” Thodri said. “Or at least wait until she really deserves it.”

“Noted.” Creed looked up at the sky. “However the rest of them treated you, it looks to me like you handled yourself pretty well while I was gone.”

“Oh, I . . . don’t know about that.” Thodri laughed nervously and let out a hissing breath between her teeth. “I went behind everyone’s backs and contacted a group of people I hardly knew who were wanted for fraternizing with demons and blowing up a building because I had a hunch, and then I met up with them alone at night without telling anyone where I’d gone. I shared classified DPL data; I used my badge for extremely unauthorized investigation; I ignored my actual assignments to go running on a wild goose chase after you . . .”

Creed wrapped his tail tight around her waist. “And you found me. And your gambles paid off, so either you’re smarter than you give yourself credit for or Tymora was keeping an eye out for you until I could get back and do it myself. Or maybe both! Anyway, I’m hardly going to scold you for going behind Aurelia’s back. I’m impressed that you managed to take so many of my lessons to heart!”

“You are the worst influence,” said Thodri, and then laughed and pushed him away when he brought up the tufted end of his tail to tickle her nose.

“And proud of it!” He turned towards her and his smile softened into something less playful. “And I’m proud of you.”

Thodri didn’t know what to say. She wished she was as quick with her jokes as he was and could come up with something to deflect the uncharacteristic earnestness in his face.

“I’m sorry you had to deal with so much of this on your own,” Creed continued. “When you joined I promised I’d look after you, and I haven’t exactly done the best job of it.”

“Creed.” Thodri took one of his hands in hers. “Sometimes you really are an idiot. You were captured by devil worshipers who put you to work in a hell mine. As far as excuses for not being around to look after me go, I think that’s a pretty solid one.”

Creed quirked his head to the side in a half-shrug. “Aye. But then you and your friends broke us out, and on my very first day back I . . . nearly lost you. Doesn’t make me feel particularly confident in my abilities.”

His grip on her hand was almost uncomfortably tight, and it reminded Thodri of the way he’d held her when she was under the Feeblemind, that same stubborn refusal to let go.

“And then Palava got me back,” she said.

Creed sighed. “He did. Y’know, I think I need to have a bit of a chat with Tymora about gaining mastery of that particular ritual. It’s not a great look having her shown up by some elf god.”

“It’s not a competition, Creed.”

“Eh, to some of ‘em it is. And he won’t always be around, but I . . . well. I’ll do my best to be.”

Thodri let go of Creed’s hand and wrapped her arms around him, drawing him into a tight hug.

“I’ll do my best too. I . . . know you’ll watch my back.”

He nodded and squeezed her. “And you’ll watch mine.”

After a moment he added, “And, much as I like to think we can handle things on our own, it’s nice to know some other people was can call in if things get rough who are better at dealing with all of this than, y’know, Aurelia.”

Thodri nodded vigorously. “It’s very good. Yes. Although, speaking of Aurelia . . .”

“Nooooo,” wailed Creed quietly, and Thodri laughed.

“We really ought to get back to her, and to our jobs. Come on! You’ve exerted your bad influence and made us both terribly late, so now it’s my turn to be the good influence and ensure we turn up for work at all.”

Creed flopped back dramatically over the bench, an arm draped over his forehead. “How could you?” he cried, although he didn’t protest further as Thodri pulled him to his feet and began to set off towards the new address. Behind them, the musicians in the square began another song.

“Hey Creed?”

“What is it, Footnotes?”

Thodri opened and shut her mouth once or twice, trying to pin down what it was she wanted to ask.

“Do you really think things are safe now?”

Creed took a step towards her and caught her up in a sideways hug, squeezing her tight before the difference in their strides meant he had to either let go or be pulled to the ground.

“Listen,” he said. “You signed up for a job that’s mostly boring interviews and paperwork with occasional terrifying interludes of charging ill-prepared into deadly situations. Safe isn’t exactly in the job description.”

“Comforting.”

“But, as I was going to say if you’d let me finish, despite all that . . . yes. I think the demons are really gone. I think we’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do, and I think we’ll have to keep our eyes open for some of those non-demonic entities who are probably not very happy with us right now. But compared to yesterday, Thodri? Compared to every other day we’ve spent in this city? I think it’s fair to say that it’s much, much safer. And I think it’s okay to be happy about that, at least until the next deadly situation comes up.”

“And embrace the boring paperwork instead?”

“Thodri, no . . .”

“You know how much I love boring paperwork!”

Creed shook his head. “I absolutely do not and never will understand you.”

“Well, Dumathoin will be very happy about that. He’s an enigma and as his cleric I have a duty to share in this aspect.”

“An enigma who likes paperwork!”

Thodri laughed as they rounded the next corner and Seeker’s Square, with its dancing and bonfires and celebrations, faded from view behind them. She spared herself one last glance backwards and, for the first time that day, allowed herself to truly enjoy the sight.

Then she turned and hurried after Creed. The city had been saved, and they had work to do.