#it’s the angus mcdonald instinct

[captainswan618]

I’m finally starting Mentopolis, and I just want to say, I would die for Conrad Schintz

[theassthatquits]

Blupjeans Week Day 2 - Ghost

Lup Taaco founded the premier science camp for teens - Camp Rocks! - this side of Faerun almost a decade ago. She did it by herself (mostly) and has the awards, articles, and accolades to prove that it’s a success.

So where does Davenport, her investor, get off going behind her back and hiring someone new without consulting her? Sure, enrollment has plateaued in the last couple of years, the main complaint being that they needed to shake up their staffing and curriculum, but she had it handled. She could take care of it herself, this was just a bump in the road. She didn’t need the help of some fancy doctor, this ‘Dr. Hallwinter’ that Davenport worked with at the university.

Lup scoffed while thumbing through his resume and cover letter. Top of his undergrad at Neverwinter U, a triple major in chemistry, astronomy, and physics. A brief stint working at a funeral home - a little weird, but everyone goes through a quarter life crisis, right? Returning to school a couple years later to get his masters and PhD and now taught at the same university while simultaneously doing interplanar research with Davenport. At the bottom of his resume with “related skills” he put ‘huge nerd’, as if that wasn’t obvious enough.

“Well, at least he knows what he’s talking about,” she muttered to herself as she threw the papers aside. There was no use fighting it now, she had spent weeks arguing and it wasn’t getting her anywhere. And it wasn’t like this was a bad idea, it just wasn’t her idea. This was her camp, after all.

---

Okay, maybe this Dr. Hallwinter guy wasn’t such a bad fit. They got off on the wrong foot, having a couple of heated discussions (fights) about things that she could barely remember. But now, she was standing in the corner of the pavilion, watching him give a very animated lecture on stars and planets. Angus McDonald, one of their first campers and the only one who came every single year, kept raising his hand to ask new questions and Hallwinter loved it. The two of them could go back and forth for hours, talking about theories and experiments and life itself. Angus had signed himself up for all of Dr. Hallwinter’s classes for the summer and loved every minute.

And he wasn’t so bad to look at, she supposed.

Lup was snapped out of her reverie by the class laughing very loudly at some Fortnite reference he made. Without realizing it, she smiled too. Dr. Hallwinter looked up at that moment to see her and his grin grew even bigger. With their eyes locked together, he dabbed and the class lost it all over again. When she giggled at that, she could have sworn he was blushing.

---

Every year towards the end of the summer the staff throws a “spooky soiree” to celebrate the end of camp. Everyone dresses up in a science-themed costume, they use the different things they have learned to create gruesome and cool decorations and effects, and they end the night with a ghost story bonfire. It’s easily Lup’s favorite night of camp. She loves amazing all of the younger kids with the cauldrons of “witches brew” (just dry ice in some punch) and grossing them out with the “eyeballs” (peeled grapes). This year she sewed some LEDs into her black vest, creating stars and constellations. Lup glowed in the dark and she fucking loved it.

She was in the middle of a (spooky) explanation of the witch's brew when she caught sight of Dr. Hallwinter walking up to the party. He was wearing a white shirt with lines drawn across it like a measuring cup and a long red robe over it. She was pretty sure he was wearing a graduation cap, too, which would mean…

“Holy shit you’re a graduated cylinder!” Lup shouted at him from across the way.

Immediately squeals of “language, Miss Lup!” began in front of her and she apologized to them as Dr. Hallwinter walked over with a smile on his face.

“Sure, am! This is pretty much my only Halloween costume, but I do love it.”

“Well, it certainly works for you, Dr. Hallwinter.”

He blushed before saying, “Lup, please just call me Barry. We’ve been having this discussion all summer. The only other person who calls me Dr. Hallwinter is Angus.”

As if to prove his point, Taako swooped in at that moment in a chef’s costume with the letters “FE” written on his shirt and yelled, “Excellent costume, Barold! You look even more like a nerd than usual and that’s saying something.”

Barry laughed. “Thank you, Taako, or should I say Iron Chef?”

Taako bowed deeply. “At your service, sir.”

“Dr. Hallwinter, sir!” They saw smoke before they saw Angus and Lup was a little alarmed before she realized that it was part of his costume. The boy had dressed up like a volcano with fake lava and smoke coming out of the top of it. “Look, it works!”

“All right, buddy!” The pair high fived and a weird fuzzy feeling struck Lup while watching the two of them.

“I think they’re about to start the scary stories over by the bonfire, are you coming, sir?”

“Pshh am I coming? Miss Lup asked me if I could host the festivities. Now you go get a good seat and I’ll be right over to start us off.”

Angus saluted him and ran off, eager for the frights ahead.

“Hosting the ghost stories, that’s a big deal Barold. Lup has hosted the bonfire herself for the last - oh, I don’t know, 2 decades?”

Barry turned to Lup, confused. “Is that true? I don’t want to impose or ruin any traditions.”

She waved him off. “Nah, it’s fine. We got off on the wrong foot, think of it as a peace offering.” Stepping closer to him and putting a hand on his shoulder, her voice got quiet. “You’re a member of this family, Barry.”

It was a good thing it was so dark, otherwise she would have seen his face turn a deep red. “You said my name.”

“Yeah, yeah, go get ready to spook some kids, Bluejeans.”

“Bluejeans?”

“You’ve worn the same blue jeans every single day since you started, even when we do activities by the lake. I’m absolutely convinced that you only packed that one pair for the entire summer.”

He sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, you’re not entirely wrong.”

“Barold. My dude. You only packed one pair of jeans, no shorts, no swim trunks, for an entire summer at a camp?”

“There might have been a slight mishap on the way here in which I lost my shorts, swim trunks, and half of my underwear.”

No one moved or said anything for a second before Taako finally said, “Barry, you know we go into town once a week to get food for the camp, right?”

Barry just stared into space, regretting all of his life choices that led up to this moment. Lup busted up laughing, harder than anyone had seen her laugh all summer. As she wiped a tear from her eye, she patted his shoulder and said, “Well, I guess you know for next year, right?”

He raised an eyebrow playfully. “Next year, huh?”

“Well, I guess I shouldn’t make any promises until I see how well you do at our bonfire fright fest. Speaking of which, we should definitely be heading over there. I am a little nervous to see how Magnus has been keeping the kids occupied.”

---

Lup stood in the back of the crowd, letting Barry take over the hosting responsibilities of the bonfire. It was one of her favorite parts of camp, but it felt right to let him do it. He was doing really well, enhancing his performance with shadow puppets from the fire and interspersing the scary parts with science puns to ease the nerves of the younger kids. She found it absolutely adorable.

“I think Barold is giving you a run for your money, Lulu.”

“He’s better than I expected, that’s for sure.”

“I’m glad you gave the guy a chance. He’s a good dude.”

She smiled. “He is, isn’t he?”

Taako took a moment, watching his sister watch Barry. “You have the hots for him, don’t you? Jeezy creezy, I should have seen this coming. Those arguments you two had at the beginning were spicy.”

“What?!” Lup said, a little too loudly, face flushing. “I do not have the hots for Dr. Bluejeans. He’s just funny and good with the kids and very smart and looks good in jeans and oh my god I have the hots for Dr. Bluejeans.” Her eyes got wide and she clutched Taako’s arms. “Taako what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“Lulu, I say this with all the love in my heart: don’t follow your instincts. Right now, your instincts are telling you to let him walk away tomorrow and not say anything, and they are dead wrong.”

“Ughhh but what if he doesn’t feel the same? It ruins the professional relationship we have and then I have to ban him from the camp and then Angus will hate me and we will lose our best customer.”

“Something tells me he also feels the same way.”

“But how do you know that?”

30 minutes earlier

Lup went ahead before the boys to make sure that Magnus hadn’t started a revolution of sorts and that left Barry and Taako to quickly clean up the food before following. Barry’s eyes lingered a little too long on Lup as she was walking away.

“Barold. Are you checking out my sister?”

“What?! No, what makes you think that?”

“I rolled a Nat 20 on perception, Barold. Legally you cannot lie to me. Now tell me: do you have the hots for my sister?”

Barry covered his face with his hands. “Maybe? Yes. Absolutely. Completely. As soon as she called me a poorly-dressed poser on my first day I was done for.”

“Rad. You should do something about that.” Taako started walking towards the bonfire, witch’s brew in hand.

“What, like tell her?”

“Tell her, kiss her, fight her, just something so I get to stop looking at you two making eyes at one another,” Taako yelled back without stopping.

“What - we don’t make eyes at one another, that’s not…she makes eyes at me?”

“Yeah, I think you’re good, my dude.”

The kids started clapping, signaling the end of the story that Magnus was telling.

“All right, thank you Magnus. Very scary, that story about zombie dogs. I think next up we have everyone’s favorite camp director, Miss Lup!”

The kids cheered and Lup had to pull herself together to nail this story that she was definitely going to pull out of her ass because she most certainly hadn't prepared anything.

“Are you kids ready to get the pants scared off of you?”

They screamed enthusiastically.

“All right, this story is about our very own Lake Igneous here at Camp Rocks. Legend has it that there was a woman who used to live in these woods by herself, not letting anyone else get near her. She refused help from anyone that came by, wanting to do everything alone and remain independent. The campers nearby could hear her blowing shit up in the woods and they knew to steer clear. One day, a man stumbled into her home, lost and confused. She lit off several explosions in an attempt to scare him off but he didn’t want to leave.”

As she talked, her eyes found Barry’s.

“He saw how lonely she was and helped her blow shit up. Eventually she grew to really like the man and really enjoyed blowing things up with him.” Barry laughed at that. Lup, suddenly remembering that this was supposed to be a scary story, abruptly tore her eyes away from his.

“They thought it would be a good idea to light some fireworks on the lake, so they took a boat out to the center and created the biggest and most beautiful explosion known to man, taking both of them out. They sacrificed their lives for the dopest light show, and sometimes, on a very clear and quiet night, you can see them in the lake, hand in hand.”

Lup bowed to signal that the story was over and she took her place back next to Taako.

“Lup, that was...pretty rough, not going to lie. Not your best work, that’s for sure.”

“I just got so distracted looking at his dumb face.”

“Yeah, that whole story was glaringly obvious.” She glared at him.

“I just need to get through this night without further making an ass of myself.”

He snorted. “Good luck.”

--

After the bonfire had wrapped up and all the kids were sent to bed, Lup sat at her favorite spot down by the lake to stare at the stars. She always sat here on the final night, reminiscing over the summer.

“Mind if I join you?” Barry’s voice came out of nowhere, but she would be lying if she said she didn’t expect it. Lup didn’t respond, just patted on the ground next to her. “So, your story was -”

“It’s okay, you can say it was shit, because it was. I definitely did not prepare this year like I usually do.”

“-good. I really liked it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Especially the part where they die a fiery but beautiful death.”

She snorted and he took the opportunity to move closer to her, their shoulders touching.

“Thank you for letting me join the team this summer.”

“I would say you’re welcome, but I honestly didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

“I know. Thank you for giving me a shot.”

“Again, not much choice in the matter.” He laughed. “You turned out alright. Better than I was expecting.”

“High praise from Miss Camp Director.”

“Would you be interested in coming back next year?”

“Absolutely. Pretty sure Angus would boycott if I didn’t show up.”

“He would just show up on your doorstep. Expect a lot of emails this year. So I’ll see you next summer, then?” He hesitated. “Unless you already have other commitments, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

“Lup, I’ll definitely be here next summer. I was just hoping that maybe we could see each other a little sooner than that. Like maybe this Saturday, dinner?”

She smirked. “A little forward, aren’t we, Dr. Bluejeans?” His face dropped.

“Oh, God. Did I totally misread this situation? Fuck, I am so sorry, I am going to just walk into this lake and never come back -” Barry started to get up, mortified.

“Barry, stop.” He looked at her, eyes wide in embarrassment. She shifted so her face was directly in front of his. “You didn’t misread this situation.” And then she kissed him.

@blupjeansweek2021

[anistarrose]

Chapter Summary: Barry gets a job offer. Kravitz sees a new side of the moon. Taako has a long-overdue chat with his umbrella.

Characters: Kravitz, Taako, Barry Bluejeans, Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, Noelle | No-3113, The Raven Queen, The Director | Lucretia, misc. BoB cameos, Julia Burnsides, Garyl

Relationships: Taakitz, Angus McDonald & Taako, Barry Bluejeans & Kravitz, Kravitz & Angus McDonald

Lately, I’ve been thinking of this fic as a story told in two acts. They’re not necessarily going to be equal in length, but this chapter is definitely the end of Act One.

***

“That’s basically the whole story, Your Majesty,” Kravitz concluded, after several minutes of talking at speeds that no being who needed to breathe could hope to match. Barry and Noelle stood on either side of him, mustering the most innocent expressions he’d ever seen on the faces of a lich or a robot, respectively. “Not that I’d blame you for having follow-up questions, because… well, holy shit.”

Holy shit, indeed, the Raven Queen agreed. A projected image of her visage was floating above a circle of five perfect raven feathers, having been carefully arranged on the cave floor by Kravitz. Istus said we were approaching unprecedented times, but…

She sighed. Well, I must admit that with the apparent exception of Istus, we gods hardly think about what lies outside our planar system. It’s… inconvenient, uncomfortable, how we hold so much power in this world yet understand so little about what’s beyond it. This threat, this Hunger, is news even to me — but didn’t you already know that, Barry, from all the Celestial Planes you’ve seen invaded before?

Barry nodded. “Yeah. I never saw stuff like that directly, of course, but Merle’s a cleric, so… he had his ways of knowing it was never a pretty picture.”

The Raven Queen let out a sigh, like wind escaping from beneath a whole flock’s wings. Then I have more important things to do than reconcile your undeath with the laws of this world, and you have more important things to do than defend yourself to me. Barry, Noelle, you are free to go at least until the apocalypse is averted — but if we get through that, and only then, I’d like you to start thinking about accepting jobs in the Astral Plane. Whatever state the world is in after the Hunger arrives, Kravitz and I will probably need your help.

Barry went dead silent, while Noelle’s whole display lit up with excitement.

“Are we talking afterlife office jobs,” she asked, “or something more along the lines of what Kravitz does?”

“We’ve got plenty of open positions, honestly,” Kravitz explained. “You could probably pick either.”

“Huh,” Barry finally muttered, so soft that Kravitz could’ve missed it. “I — I appreciate the offer, but — I gotta know one thing before I even consider it. Will I have to — to bring in any of my family? Anyone from the Starblaster?”

I’d like to speak with them all eventually, and I may ask you to facilitate that, the Raven Queen replied, but they won’t be punished.

Barry nodded. “Okay. That’s… that’s something I’m willing to consider, then.”

I hope you find out what happened to Lup. Her location is concealed from even me, but I know she’s never entered my domain, so I believe you’ll find her out there somewhere.

Barry’s eyes flickered, shedding drops of light that ran down his face for a few seconds before they coalesced back together. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

It’s the least I could do. From here, my priority shall be to warn the rest of the pantheon, but we’ll be in touch. The Raven Queen’s visage disappeared with a clap of thunder and a gust of wind that lifted the feathers into the air, carrying them back to Kravitz’s waiting hands as her voice boomed throughout the cave one last time. Good luck, my children.

“That went well, right?” Noelle asked when the echoes faded. “That felt pretty good for a conversation with the death goddess.”

“She’s a lot more reasonable than most gods, I think you’ll find,” Kravitz concurred. “But what’s the plan now? Because other than heading up to the moon, and bringing the boys back down for you to tell them what little you can, I haven’t got a lot of ideas.”

“I dunno either. I don’t like keeping them in the dark either, but it’s very little we can tell them aside from —” Barry paused. “Wait. You can go on the moonbase?”

“Yes? At least, no one’s tried to stop me. I guess I can see why you wouldn’t be allowed up there, but —”

“It’s more than a ban and a wanted poster keeping me off! It’s an anti-undeath ward —” Electricity crackled inside Barry’s silhouette, and he let out a laugh that could’ve woken the not-yet-reanimated dead. “But you, Kravitz, apparently possess enough celestial energy to balance out the undead elements of your soul — which is perfect! It changes everything!”

“Uh,” Kravitz began, reflexively taking a step back, “I think I’m missing some context here —”

“That ward’s the only thing stopping Barry from sneaking onto the moonbase and stealing the ichor he needs to inoculate his family!” Noelle explained, totally unperturbed by Barry’s mad scientist laugh. “I couldn’t steal it for him because the same ward keeps me from leaving my fuse for very long, and this robot body’s not exactly stealthy — but you can decorporealize for as long as you want on the moon, right?”

“I’m not sure I’ve actually tried,” Kravitz replied, rubbing his chin as the puzzle pieces fell into place, “but I’ve never had issues getting through anti-undead wards before, corporeally or otherwise!”

Barry rubbed his hands together, smoke and sparks pouring out from between them — but for the first time, Kravitz was sure he saw a glint of a smile flash on Barry’s face.

“Then what are we waiting for?” Barry asked. “Let’s head back to my place and plan a heist!”

***

“So what do we do now, Fantasy Columbo?” Taako asked, staring at the Umbra Staff in his hands. “I didn’t hear any jingles start playing for solving some sick higher power’s umbrella lich puzzle — how does this help us? What does it change?”

This should have been a revelation, Taako knew. This should have changed everything. But his mind was lagging behind his racing heart, struggling to fit together puzzle pieces that he knew should connect. Struggling to understand why he cared so fiercely about an evil ghost of an evil wizard being trapped in the arcane focus he’d looted her corpse for.

“I… I guess we should try to communicate with her?” Angus suggested. “She’s a Red Robe, so she must have something to do with —” He gestured wildly from his notepad, to Taako’s head, to the incinerated coffee table. “With all of this. Right?”

He removed his glasses, wiping off drops of sweat, and Taako realized that Angus, the smartest person he knew, had ran into an uncomfortable mental wall of his own — and after just a split second of looking at Angus’s pained expression, Taako made a decision.

“Hey, kid. I need your arguably expert opinion real quick — Magnus and Merle aren’t smart enough to be memory-wiping masterminds, right?”

“Oh, absolutely not, sir. We both know they’re no good at keeping their lies straight.”

“Could you check in on them for me? And try to bring ‘em back here — but, uh, only if you can do it without Lucretia or Davenport spotting you, and I need you to really focus on looking out for them. I don’t know who else I can trust with this —”

With a huge, determined smile on his face, Angus saluted. “I won’t let you down, sir!” He looked far less pained as he slunk out of the room, and Taako breathed a sigh of relief.

“Okay. Kid’s gonna be alright with his mind off of this, and now we can have some peace and quiet, Lup.” His mouth lingered on the name Lup but his mind didn’t, giving no thought to the affection he instinctively voiced. “So… let’s chat?”

***

Lucretia’s office looked just as Barry had described, and not all that different from the Reclaimer’s dorms in terms of architecture. The sole occupant was not the Director herself, but a mustached gnome man who sat at the oversized desk, focusing intently on a game of solitaire. He didn’t even look up as Kravitz’ soul drifted past, steering clear of the desk and floating right through a heavy, closed door.

Kravitz kept inside the left wall of the corridor — Barry may not have reported any traps in this stretch, but the puzzle that Barry had reported was nowhere to be seen, and Kravitz knew a suspiciously empty-looking hallway when he saw one. He phased through a second door at the end of the chamber, ignoring the computer that looked even more foreign to him than his Stone of Farspeech, and recorporealized inside a second office.

This close to the source of the ward, a spinning disk imbued with radiant energy, Kravitz could finally feel its influence — a faint burn and refreshing cold that coexisted, an antipathy towards his undead body and a resonance with the Raven Queen’s blessing. Tempted as he was to knock down the disk and short-circuit the ward, it wasn’t poised do much besides mildly distract him, and he was making this visit with a much different goal — one that he’d expose, if he ended up dramatically trashing someone else’s holy symbol.

At the far end of the office sat a murky tank, and above that tank, an alarm was ringing. A few feet to the alarm’s left, a needle punched holes in a steadily scrolling paper, recording what Kravitz inferred to be times and intensities — and there was a lot of information to infer from, because the paper output had not just reached the floor, but piled up to almost waist height.

A massive volume of alarms had clearly been accumulating, and someone — presumably Lucretia — was far too busy to check on every message. Ever since he’d died, Kravitz had been notoriously bad at keeping track of dates, but a quick comparison with the dates at the bottom of the pile and the dates of the current output revealed that the alarms had started trickling in last night, before a massive influx took shape only about an hour ago.

This was all very interesting to the part of Kravitz that loved a good mystery, but his pragmatic side won out, knowing this alarm could attract unwelcome attention at any moment. He switched his attention to the contents of the tank — which appeared just like Barry had said it would, but was still plenty fascinating. A jellyfish floated in murky ichor, illuminated from within by a dark purple nebula pattern, and recoiling away from Kravitz as he rested a hand atop the tank.

“Now, now. It’s alright,” Kravitz murmured, in the same tone he might use to calm a distressed soul. “No need to be scared…”

The baby Voidfish hummed two chords, far lower and louder than Kravitz had expected from such a tiny creature — but music, at least, was something Kravitz knew he could work with. He summoned his scythe in the form of a lute, plucking out a peaceful melody he’d been fond of for hundreds of years… and only a few bars in, the Voidfish began to echo him, humming along with increasing volume.

“I’m just here to do my friends a favor,” Kravitz promised. “It won’t take long at all.”

The Voidfish seemed to relax, so Kravitz let go of his lute, allowing it to float at his side with a faint blue aura suspending it in air. He pulled a canteen from beneath his cloak, slowly submerging it in the tank until it was full to the brim with ichor — probably a slight excess, but he’d rather have too much than not enough.

“See? All done,” he whispered, reattaching the canteen’s cap. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

The Voidfish hummed the refrain of his song once more as he reformed his scythe, and as if to say farewell, waved a tentacle in his direction as he stepped through the portal off the moonbase.

Just a moment later, the very second Kravitz’s feet hit solid subterranean ground, Barry was at his side with a barrage of questions. “How did it go? Have you got the ichor? Did anyone see you?”

“Good, yes, and no in that order,” Kravitz replied, handing Barry the canteen. “The only thing I’m worried about is… well, you’ve seen how Lucretia has an alarm system in her office, right? It’s going a little haywire right now — and has been since last night.”

Barry’s relief morphed into frustration mid-relieved sigh. “I was hoping we could avoid that, since the boys haven’t had a run-in with me in a couple days — but I guess someone’s still trying to remember something, and it won’t be long ‘til Lucretia picks up on it. We gotta get a move on.”

“I did talk to Taako about the stars disappearing last night, come to think of it,” Kravitz recalled. “I hope he’s not still hung up on that, but it sounds like he might be.”

“Shoot, that coulda done it. No fault of your own, obviously.” Barry sighed again, picking up a couple of scrolls from his desk and placing them on a much more neatly organized bookshelf. “Sorry for the mess, by the way. You and Noelle have been my only visitors so far this whole decade.”

Kravitz had seen Barry’s home before he left for his heist on the moon, and it had already been pretty respectable as secret lairs went. Aside from the stalactites and the dubiously legal cloning pod, it had looked more like a disheveled academic’s study than a necromancer’s dungeon — but in Kravitz’s absence, Barry had apparently gotten up to some spring cleaning. He’d draped a sheet over the pod, which was still glowing bright green and far from innocuous, and somehow gotten his hands on a decent-quality couch, either from a pocket dimension or a conjuration spell or gods knew what else.

“Before you got involved, my plan never involved the boys coming in here while they could remember me,” Barry admitted. “They’d still be far from seeing me at my worst, but — well, I dunno if I can make this place look welcoming, exactly, but I’d rather not make them worry about me ‘cause of it.”

“If it helps, this is easily the nicest cave I’ve ever seen a lich holed up in,” Kravitz said, which got a quiet laugh out of Barry.

“Yeah, I bet it is.” He opened the canteen, pouring a modest sample of the ichor into a glass vial. “Hard to believe this is happening so suddenly, but… I think now’s the time. Lucretia could catch on at any minute, and I — I’ll be ready by the time you get back, I think.”

“Good luck remodeling,” Kravitz told him with a nod, and tore open a portal back to the moon.

***

“So… let’s chat?” Taako suggested. He didn’t know what kind of reply he was expecting, but he had to admit it stung when the Umbra Staff didn’t move an inch.

“Okay, what you do isn’t exactly chatting. That one’s on me. Can you just give me a sign, a little poltergeisting or something, if you’re listening?”

Still nothing, which continued to hurt more than it should have.

“Are you mad at me? I thought you smacked me in the face today to get my attention! ‘Cause you wanted to talk, but…” He glanced away from the umbrella in his lap. “I guess you really hate Kravitz, don’t you? And I was helping him hunt you, even before we started dating…”

He sighed. “And you’re only here because I stole from your grave! What was I even thinking? Of course you hate me, and maybe I half-deserve it —”

The Umbra Staff twitched in his hands, subtly yet so abruptly that he jumped to his feet with a yelp and dropped it onto the floor. It spun over ninety degrees as it fell, landing to point at the shelf of seldom-used spell components that Taako and Merle shared.

“You… want me to cast something?” Taako knelt on the rug, gently wrapping a hand around the handle but not raising the umbrella from the floor. He didn’t feel even the slightest movement. “Hey, if you’re not mad at me, then… do something. Do anything.”

He thought the handle might’ve trembled slightly, but wasn’t sure — it could’ve just been wishful thinking. “Okay, flip side. Do something if you are mad at me.”

This time, he was certain there was no response. “Okay, I’ve narrowed it down to either ‘you’re not mad’ or ‘you don’t want to talk to me,’ but I don’t get why you’re being so subtle about this. I mean, I’m not asking you to cast Sunbeam on my boyfriend again, but I know you could be giving me more obvious signs than —”

He happened to glace back at the component shelf, noticing the chest of spare wands he’d stockpiled — arcane foci, just like the ones the Umbra Staff consumed — then just like that, it clicked, and there was finally one quirk of his rogue umbrella that Taako had an inkling of an explanation for.

“Unless… you can’t give me a bigger sign because I haven’t beaten a magic user in a while!” he gasped. “You’re not trying to ignore me — you’re running out of power!”

He unlatched the little chest, grabbing two cheap wooden wands and snapping them both — and sure enough, the Umbra Staff inverted with more vigor than Taako had seen from it all day, swallowing them whole.

“Better?” Taako asked, and a tiny pink flame sparked to life at the tip of the umbrella. Lup must’ve summoned it with a variant of Prestidigitation, because it smelled less like smoke and more like comforting home cooking.

“Now I know why you chose me instead of Merle at the cave! You’re an adoring fan of Sizzle it Up!” Taako teased, and the Umbra Staff bonked him on the head. “Okay, fine, maybe not. Gods know that’s not the only thing I’ve got going for me over Merle.”

He glanced around the room, rubbing his chin. “I was going to say you could turn that flame on and off real fast, send me a message in Fantasy Morse Code, but then I remembered I don’t actually know Fantasy Morse that well. Maybe you could, like, burn something into the wall —”

The flame atop the Umbra Staff intensified, excited.

“But I guess we’d run out of space real fast — never mind explaining it to Lucretia, yikes! We’d be toast… just like the walls.”

The flame died down, replaced with a disembodied, glowing red Mage Hand. With an upturned palm, it made a motion that Taako guessed was meant to convey a shrug and a then what?

“Oh, you didn’t tell me you could do Mage Hand from in there too! I can work with that!”

He made a beeline for the dorm kitchen, ripping open a fresh bag of flour and dumping it directly onto the counter. “I really don’t wanna leave written evidence, so you write stuff in this, and I’ll erase it when you’re done. Sound good?”

Lup squeezed his shoulder, then traced four words in the flour.

I’ve never hated you

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Taako muttered, pretending he couldn’t feel his whole chest seizing up. With a bare hand, he wiped the flour flat, and only sent a little flying onto the floor accidentally. “I… I wanna let you out. Because this is a really inconvenient way to talk, but — but also ‘cause I know you didn’t mean to get trapped in there, and living inside your arcane focus sounds like it’s the pits. Is there a way I can free you?”

yes but not right now

“Why not?”

no liches on the moon

“Oh, have they got wards to block you off or something? I guess we wouldn’t be able to talk at all if I freed you, and that… that wouldn’t be great.”

I’d miss you :(

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Taako replied, and he said it before he meant it. The figure of speech slipped out right away, ingrained after years of overwhelmingly insincere conversations, but his emotions caught up to him more slowly — starting with the loneliness and the longing, before they ate away at him and left an emptiness behind, a dread of never being whole again and a temptation to tear the whole world apart, because what would he have left to lose?

It ended with a throbbing skull, with static clouding the peripheries of his vision, with a mind that couldn’t fathom why missing someone would hit so close to a home that should have never existed. The last year notwithstanding, he couldn’t remember a time where he’d be caught dead missing someone’s company… but now all he could think, all he could feel, was I’m not losing you again.

“There’s gotta be a workaround — right, Lup?” he managed. “Like, is there a way I could take the wards down?”

maybe, but

Lucretia would notice

“I’m gonna go out on a limb, and assume… she wouldn’t be too thrilled to know you’re here.”

Lup took longer to reply than usual, erasing the first few letters of her response to start over several times.

it’s so complicated

don’t think I can explain

“Right. Of course. ‘Cause of the Voidfish.” Taako rubbed his cheek, expecting to wipe away stray splotches of flour — but instead, he felt his fingers grow damp with tears that he knew weren’t just from the pain of his headache.

“I — I don’t know what to do, Lup. I want to help you, but Kravitz is probably in danger because of me so I have to make sure he’s okay, and I know he won’t like me helping you — then there’s Angus and Magnus and Merle, too, I have no clue if any of them are in as much trouble as us. And I just… I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to this. That the worst of all the bombshells still hasn’t dropped, and I’m about to lose all you while I still don’t know who I am, or who I can trust besides —”

The fingers of Lup’s Mage Hand interlocked with his, and it was a strange sensation — fuzzy and only about half-tangible, as simple magic constructs were expected to be, but warm like a living hand despite the lack of flesh and blood. Taako couldn’t say how long he was silent, just focusing on just that warmth and the inexplicable nostalgia that accompanied it, before he finally asked: “What do you think I should do?”

Lup withdrew her hand slowly, but didn’t hesitate nor erase as she traced four new words:

find Barry

trust Barry

“…I’m glad I’ve got you, Lup, ‘cause I never woulda come up with that on my own,” Taako muttered, chuckling in spite of himself. He didn’t doubt for a second that Lup’s advice was worth following, but he had to admit it was ridiculous how every time a problem came up in his life, someone insisted it could be solved by tracking down a denim-clad lich. “Do you know any of his favorite hangouts, or —”

As Lup’s Mage Hand zipped back into the Umbra Staff, Taako didn’t quite notice the scythe rending space behind him, but he whirled around at the sound of feet hitting the ground and an incredulous voice speaking up.

“Uh, Taako?”

Kravitz carried himself with considerably less poise than usual, wearing a tattered suit that had presumably once seen better days, but he appeared otherwise unscathed, and Taako’s heart jumped for joy.

“I — I — I’m sorry?” Kravitz’s words sounded less like an apology, and more like a sincere question of whether or not he should be sorry for intruding. “I should’ve just portalled to the hallway and knocked. I didn’t mean to walk in on — on whatever this is —”

Before he could stammer another adorably confused word, Taako rushed in for a hug — never mind how crazy he knew he looked, covered in flour and inexplicably teary-eyed over an umbrella.

“Holy shit, I can’t believe — I was so worried about you. I thought for sure you were in trouble and it was all my fault — it was all because —”

Kravitz slipped a cool, but unusually not cold hand under Taako’s hat, mussing up his hair to match the rest of his appearance. “I won’t lie, Taako — there were moments today where I was worried for me. But it turned out to all be a misunderstanding, which is always a pleasant surprise in my line of work — and even better, if you can believe it, one of my new friends knows what’s up with those deaths you can’t remember!”

Kravitz was beaming, but Taako’s blood ran cold like he was the dead man walking. Just when he’d been so sure, so relieved, that he hadn’t dragged Kravitz into the Voidfish conspiracy after all, it turned out that Kravitz had sleuthed his way right to its very center.

No wonder he gets along so well with Angus, Taako thought wryly. Two constantly endangered nerds of a feather.

“This friend can explain it much better than I can, so we’ll visit him by portal — but Magnus and Merle need to hear the truth, too,” Kravitz went on, still seeing no reason not to be enthusiastic. “Are they available?”

“Oh, those clowns? They’re off playing kickball with Angus or something — should be back soon.” Taako knew how Kravitz thought, and knew that Kravitz believed he was doing the right thing by digging up these secrets. He was fulfilling an oath to his goddess and helping Taako get some closure, which should have been great news as far as Kravitz knew — but now he was on the moon, speaking openly about truths a Voidfish had suppressed…

And Taako was conspiring with a lich, soon to be two liches, behind Kravitz’s back. He wasn’t expecting to like the truth behind his eight deaths, if he could even wrap his mind around it — and he had a feeling that when it came time to be judged by the Raven Queen, Kravitz would like the truth and its consequences even less, regardless of whether Taako could think clearly enough to defend himself.

So he withdrew from the hug, wiping the flour — and the incriminating mention of Barry — off the counter with a swoop of his hand. “Oh, drat! Did not mean to do that, ‘cause now I’ll have to mop the whole floor —”

“Okay, Taako. What’s wrong?” Kravitz asked firmly — and Taako didn’t know why he’d thought he’d be able to stall for time, given how Kravitz knew him pretty well, too. “You’re not in trouble with the Queen — I mean, we’ll probably have to invent and then fill out an entirely new form of paperwork about you and your pals, but I told her everything and she’s not mad, I can say that much. Same goes for Magnus, Merle, and — uh, forgive me, just Magnus and Merle. It’s been a long day.”

“Okay, that’s the second piece of good bird news you’ve dropped on me in like twenty-four hours, and I appreciate that,” Taako sighed. “But — okay, listen. We’ve got to be quiet about this, for both of our safety, but I think — I know I’m dealing with more than just memory loss here. I’ll try jumping through your portal and talking to your friend, but I really don’t think I’ll be able to understand —”

“Oh!” Kravitz gasped. “I think I know what you’re talking about — I ran into it with Angus earlier, and we should definitely have a way around it.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “My, uh, my new friend didn’t know if you could understand that there was a second Voidfish — but you heard that, right? It wasn’t garbled?”

Taako nodded frantically. “Yeah, and we’ve gotta get off the moon. If Lucretia finds out we know, I — I’ve got no idea how far she’ll go to keep this under wraps, and that’s the worst part. She’s already suspicious of me, and I —”

He felt a tug from his umbrella, and he cast Message as quickly and subtly as he could, hoping the Umbra Staff’s propensity to absorb magic like a sinkhole would somehow pull his unspoken words to Lup.

I’m not going to tell him about you. Not until I get more information.

Her reply must’ve hardly escaped from the umbrella, being little more than a distorted whisper — Be careful. Love you — but Taako’s legs almost gave out beneath him when he heard her voice, and Kravitz winced.

“We’ve really got to get you out of here, don’t we?” he murmured, taking Taako’s hand — and Kravitz’s skin was definitely warmer than usual, because of course this frankly adorable development would happen when Taako had a million other things on his mind. “You said the other boys will be back soon?”

“I hope.” Taako led the way into the living room, giving a wide berth to the remains of the coffee table. “I sent Angus to go find —”

On cue, the rattle of a doorknob and the sound of Angus’s voice rang out from the hallway. “Sir? We’re back! Could you unlock the door?”

The next sound was the telltale thump of a small child being affectionately shoved aside, followed by Magnus exclaiming: “Hey, I’ve got thieves’ tools now! Gimme a shot at picking it!”

Kravitz pursed his lips. “Don’t Magnus and Merle have their own keys?” he muttered under his breath.

“Of course they do,” Taako sighed, and the door swung open with a snap of his fingers and a Knock spell.

“Magnus, look!” Merle cheered. “You did it!”

While Magnus and Merle high-fived, Angus’s eyes lit up at the sight of Kravitz half-alive and well.

“You’re okay! I’m sorry I didn’t end up finding Noelle, but Taako said he was worried about you, so I started worrying too — did you have a nasty fight with a necromancer or something?”

“…Yes and no,” Kravitz responded after a moment of hesitation, “but I can explain that whole incident later. Right now, I need you all to come with me to —”

“A cool skeleton rave!” Taako butted in. “And… there’s also supposed to be skeleton dogs there! So you guys will definitely wanna get in on it!”

“Yes, exactly!” Kravitz corroborated without missing a beat. “It’s one of those, you know, very rare skeleton raves that receives the Raven Queen’s approval. Once in a century opportunity, so you won’t want to miss it!”

Magnus rubbed his chin. “I dunno about this. How do you pet a skeleton dog?”

“Only one way to find out!” Taako told him, then breathed a sigh of relief when it got an approving nod from Magnus.

“Fair enough! I’m sold!”

Angus narrowed his eyes, so Taako grinned and winked, hoping it came across as equal parts conspiratorial and don’t you dare blow this for me. It must’ve worked, because after a few seconds of surely intense mental calculations, Angus plastered on a convincing innocent smile and gave Taako a thumbs-up.

“Thanks for inviting me on this fun diversion, sir! I’m sure you could’ve come up with a more convincing lie if it was a trap or a prank, so I’m all in!”

Smiling awkwardly, Kravitz turned to the the lie’s final mark. “Merle, my bud, how about you?”

“Are we buds now?” Merle grinned. “You know what, sure! Anything for my bud!”

“Then away we go!” Kravitz tore open a rift and immediately stepped through, beckoning for the others to follow with the single arm that remained on their side of the portal. Magnus leapt through almost immediately, Merle hot on his heels, while Angus approached the rift more skeptically.

“Well, sir,” he announced softly once Magnus and Merle disappeared, “you and Kravitz owe me an explanation… but I trust the both of you.” He took Taako’s hand, and the two of them stepped through the portal together, emerging in a cold, dimly lit cave.

And Taako thought he’d been “moving fast” through a lot of things, lately — through worldview-shattering realizations, into a romantic relationship, into unofficially and semi-accidentally adopting a boy detective — but nothing could’ve prepared him for how fast everything moved in the next minute.

Kravitz faced Noelle and a now-familiar disembodied robe, very obviously struggling to suppress a mood-inappropriate laugh. “Can you believe I was planning to lie to Magnus about skeleton dogs, but then Taako interrupted and independently came up with the same fib?”

“That’s love, baby!” Taako exclaimed, in the moment before the absurdity of the situation dawned on him. “Wait. Why’s Barold here?”

As the rift fizzled and disappeared, Magnus drew Railsplitter, only to whirl around on himself with no idea who to aim at or threaten. “Hey, did we just get kidnapped? ‘Cause I’ve gotta say, this is the last combination of people in the world I expected to team up and kidnap us.”

“It’s not a kidnapping,” Kravitz began, “it’s just —”

“Did you kidnap a child, Kravitz?” Barry interrupted, gesturing at Angus. “When was that ever a part of the plan?! We didn’t need to involve —”

“With all due respect, Mister Bluejeans,” Angus butted in, “Kravitz didn’t technically kidnap me! I knew perfectly well that he was bullshitting, but I decided to come along with him anyway, out of my own free will!” He turned to face Kravitz, adjusting his glasses. “That said, he did deceive and therefore truly kidnap Magnus, Merle, and maybe even Taako by the sound of things — so if he could go ahead and explain his presumably very good reason for doing so, that would be just dandy!”

Barry sighed. “Real smartass kid you’ve dragged into the fate of the universe, huh, boys?”

“He was already involved enough in things that he deserves to know. We’re bringing him up to speed too,” Kravitz declared, and Barry shrugged.

“Alright, sure — but why the hell was there a child on the moon in the first place?!”

“He’s the world’s greatest detective,” Noelle spoke up, and Angus beamed. “I told you about him, remember? He’s the one who figured out that you were amnesiac when you were alive —”

“Oh, I do remember that, though I don’t remember you mentioning his age — so I guess it’s my bad, then, for assuming a secret lunar society would give a flying fuck about child labor laws!”

Kravitz ignored them both. “Merle, Magnus — I’m so sorry for the deception, and Taako, I’m sorry for not saying that Barry was my new contact. I didn’t want anyone eavesdropping on us on the moonbase, and I swear, I will explain myself as soon as I physically can —”

“Hey, hey, it’s cool!” Taako’s words were intended not just for Kravitz, but for Lup within the Umbra Staff, which had started trembling at the sound of Barry’s voice. “I would love an explanation, but I needed Barold’s help anyway, sooo… doesn’t this work out pretty great?”

“Needing Barry’s help is a new one, sir,” Angus commented, but no one in the room looked more incredulous than Kravitz and Barry themselves, who both froze in place.

“Um, that’s — that’s news to me too?” Barry stammered. “But if — if you don’t need any convincing, then…”

He floated a little taller, robe a little less ragged, voice a little more hopeful. “Let’s get you inoculated, bud.”

A glass vial appeared in Taako’s hand, and he sipped the dark liquid inside without a second thought, even though he gagged while passing the vial on to an apprehensive Magnus. No memories rushed back to him like he’d braced himself for, but he thought he felt the nature of his headache change — less like the roar of static, and more like the pressure on a dam about to burst.

“You should really sit down for this,” Barry told him, resting a cold hand on Taako’s shoulder. “Take it as slow as possible. You obviously figured out a lot, more than I thought you would, but you still won’t be ready for —”

“Relax, it hasn’t even hit me yet!” Taako interrupted. “So in the meantime, I can catch you up on this whole funny story about… my… umbrella…”

The metaphorical floodgates shattered, and the deluge of memories swept him off his feet.

Growing up bouncing between relative to relative, growing skilled as chefs and wizards on the road. The IPRE entrance exams, the best day ever, the Hanging Arcaneum, “back soon” —

His head burned as the static was expunged from his mind, displaced by visions of days and months and cycles that just kept hitting him. He was dimly aware of someone, two someones, clutching his arms and lowering him to his knees on the cool cave floor —

“Stay with us, Taako!” Kravitz pleaded, holding Taako’s left hand. “Listen to Barry —”

“I’ll walk you through everything,” Barry — the animal kingdom, learning to swim, “what if she’s just gone?” — promised from his right, clinging to the same arm with which Taako held the Umbra Staff. “Just don’t think ahead. I’ve been through this before, and I can get you through it now, as long as —”

“B-but — but Lup!” Taako cried. “How could I forget —”

“I know, bud,” Barry whispered. “I forgot too. I understand —”

“You fucking don’t understand!” Tears fell from his eyes, but his mouth twisted into a cautious, still half-disbelieving smile. “Barry, she’s right here!”

“What?!” The cave was plunged into red and black, blinding lights and impenetrable shadows, as the lich at its center seemed to fall apart and come together all at once. “WHERE?!”

Taako closed his eyes, and with a strength he didn’t know he had, snapped the Umbra Staff over his knee.

[raineydaywrites]

working on from then til now (4/5)

link to part 1 (x), part 2 (x), part 3 (x), ao3 (x)

Taako couldn't explain how, but they got past it. Angus asked for more magic lessons, he hung around with Tres Horny Boys, and he put up with all of their dumb jokes until Taako stopped wanting to flinch every time they spoke.

Taako found himself growing extremely protective of the kid, much to his own dismay. He didn't want to care about this stupid kid. But he kind of already did. He'd cared about him before he'd learned what he'd done, and he'd felt- responsible for him afterward.

He loved this dumb brat, and it was terrifying, and it was amazing.

And then everything changed again.

The deaths at Glamour Springs- they hadn't been his fault at all. Not directly anyway. Not in the way he'd always thought they had been.

It had been Sazed- the fucker- jealous and bitter and taking it out on Taako and his audience.

Taako hadn't done anything wrong. Well, except for everything he did that convinced Sazed to hate him in the first place- but, but that wasn't the same. It wasn't his cooking. It wasn't his magic. It wasn't him.

It was just a dick who went way too far.

Taako wanted to be happy about that, but he couldn't quite bring himself to be. It didn't change anything that had happened, really. The only person that this knowledge benefited was himself, and, like, yeah, it was pretty great to know that he hadn't messed up in that particular way- but was it really all that much better? Still his fault. Still his food. Still his reputation ruined with no way to prove that he hadn't done it.

But he could tell Angus about it. And maybe the kid wouldn't feel so bad about him anymore.

Angus had been really torn up about befriending his parents' supposed killer, Taako knew. Kid was all about justice and fairness, so it was hardly a surprise. He had spent so long wanting to punish the killer, and then suddenly he was trusting him instead. Of course the kid was gonna feel weird about it.

Oh. Wait.

On the other hand, Angus wanted justice. He'd pushed that aside when he'd thought it was Taako, thought it was an accident.

How would he react to knowing that it had been murder after all? What would the kid do about it?

The thought of Angus running headlong after a murderer, especially while emotional and overwrought, sent a spike of fear through Taako's blood. Sazed was a slimy motherfucker that had always known how to act in his own self-interest- how to eliminate loose ends. Taako had appreciated it before, when he hadn't realized that the guy was willing to commit stone cold, premeditated murder. When those talents had been used to his advantage in running the show, and he'd thought Sazed wouldn't do anything worse than skirting some of the less convenient laws.

Sazed had poisoned the food Taako made for a crowd. He had wanted Taako to die in front of an audience, to die painfully and ruin his reputation in the process. Sazed had either not cared about or maybe even hoped for the deaths of the audience members as well. Sazed must have planned it out at least a few days in advance, if not longer, and he had spent that time calmly working with Taako while imagining his death.

Sazed had been the one to suggest running first. Taako knew that he probably would have come to the idea soon enough, but he'd been too frozen in shock in the moment to start moving. The fucker had seen his plan go awry and decided to make Taako look as guilty as possible before ditching him and stealing his shit.

He would have no qualms about killing a kid.

If Angus went after him, he'd be putting himself in danger.

And Angus would go after him. Taako knew him well enough by now to know that. You didn't become a renowned detective by the age of ten by holding back. The kid had no concept of his own limits and a years-long hope for justice.

Taako couldn't let that happen, but he didn't know how he was supposed to protect the kid either. He and the guys could go with him, Taako supposed, but that would still bring Angus into danger by the fact that he would be present with a murderer.

And Taako didn't know enough about Sazed or the situation the guy was currently in to be certain of the threat level. He was sure that he, Merle, and Magnus could take the guy if he was by himself, but what if he had allies? Who even knew where the guy was nowadays?

Taako was going to tell Angus. Of course he would tell Angus, the kid had a right to know.

But he needed to make a plan first. He needed to figure out how to keep Angus safe and still get the justice he so wanted.

-

Taako tried to make a few discreet inquiries, but 'discreet' wasn't exactly the best skill of THB. And Angus McDonald was a very good detective.

Taako was woken by an urgent eyed Davenport, and he immediately knew that something was wrong. He wasn't sure why exactly the worried look on the dude's face prompted an instinctive alarm, but he had learned to trust his instincts.

"What's happening?" he asked, even though he knew he wasn't going to get much of an answer out of the guy.

"Davenport!" was all the guy offered, his hands moving quickly, but Taako didn't understand enough sign language to actually get it.

He did notice the signs for "Director" and "Angus" though, and he was moving instantly.

"Lucretia in her office?" Taako questioned, only pausing long enough for Davenport to nod before he was pulling on his boots and grabbing the Umbra Staff.

As Taako left, he half-noticed Davenport going to Magnus' and Merle's rooms to wake them as well, but he didn't pay it any mind, moving out of the suite and towards the elevators with a single-minded determination.

By the time he got to the elevators, the other three had caught up with him, and Taako tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for Merle and Magnus to get in the damn elevator so they could get a move on.

He said nothing the whole trip to the Director's office, just knowing that something was wrong.

"Taako, there you are," the Director said, voice tight with worry when they got to her office. "When was the last time you spoke with Angus?"

"Yesterday? No, wait, day before," Taako said, stomach sinking with dread. "Why?"

"He left the base very early this morning, telling Avi that he had a family emergency to attend to. Avi had no reason not to believe him or to deny the request, so he sent Angus down planetside. But Angus left me this note-" the Director's voice cut off for a second, and Taako felt his dread increase. "He's in danger, isn't he?"

As the Director handed the note over for them to look at, Taako felt a strange, sickening sense of deja vu. Some part of his mind was screaming that everything was about to go wrong, but he didn't even know why.

The note was longer than Taako had expected, though he supposed it shouldn't be a surprise that the little nerd had babbled on.

Taako read the note as quickly as possible, cursing when he read Sazed's name.

"You two idiots can't keep your fucking mouths shut, huh?" Taako said, glaring between Merle and Magnus, refusing to admit to himself that if Angus had really been listening in for a while, he could have easily heard about it from Taako instead.

"Taako, please, not now," Lucretia said, glancing up from where she had her face buried in hands. She looked tired, and Taako thought about how much she seemed to like the kid and felt a stab of sympathy.

And she was right anyway. Snapping at his friends wasn't going to get them anywhere.

"Fine, whatever. We gotta find Ango," he said, hoping that Magnus and Merle would understand it as the apology it was meant to be. They seemed to.

"Do any of you know who this person is that he's looking for?" the Director asked. "I spoke with him a little while back and he said he was having a personal issue, but he didn't give much detail, and I didn't want to pry. Did he ever say anything to you three? I know he spends a lot of time with you."

Magnus and Merle glanced to Taako, clearly unsure how much he was comfortable revealing.

"Yeah. I know who he's looking for," Taako said. "Where'd Avi send him?"

"Wait- don't you have some way to track him through the bracers? They know where we are right?"

"They don't transmit constantly," the Director said, leaning her head forward in exasperation with herself. "I didn't want to be creepy, spying on my employees, you know?"

"Fuck," Taako said emphatically.

"It was a nice thought, though!" Magnus said, patting the Director on the back comfortingly.

"That could get invasive and weird, yeah, I suppose," Merle mused.

"Yeah, thanks for not being Fantasy Big Sister or whatever, but can we focus?" Taako said. "Where. Did. Avi. Send him?"

"Davenport!" Davenport exclaimed, spreading a map out on the Director's desk and gesturing to it, quickly marking where Avi must have put Angus down.

"Great. We're going," Taako said.

"I've had a team looking for Angus since I discovered that he was missing. They haven't turned up anything yet," Lucretia said. "I'm asking about this individual because I'm hoping that it may offer some insight to where he might be, or where Angus might seek him out."

"Team sweet flips?" Magnus questioned, a bit of excitement entering his voice.

"No, I'm afraid not. As impressive as they may be together, they're not our most- subtle team. I've sent a team of Seekers instead," the Director explained.

Taako stared down at the map, wracking his brain to figure out if he could remember anything useful. He hadn't paid much attention to Sazed, if he was being honest. He didn't know the guy enough to have a clue of where he might be.

But something familiar was whispering at the back of Taako's mind, and he focused, trying to pull it forward.

"There," Taako pointed to a small town a fair but walkable distance from where Avi had sent Angus. "That's Sazed's hometown. That's gotta be where Angus is looking."

The Director didn't question it, instead tapping at her Stone of Farspeech quickly.

"Maya? Have you and your team found anything of note in the town of- Wellspring? I have reason to believe Angus may have sought this individual there," she said.

A voice Taako was unfamiliar with came crackling back. "Yes, we have! I cannot confirm anything, but I'll send you the location information now."

Taako felt a tiny flash of relief, but didn't let it show. This wasn't over yet.

"Great, thank you," the Director said, and Taako saw the same wary hope on her face that he felt in himself.

"Normally, I would send Regulators for a task like this, but I know how much you three care for Angus, and so I ask if you-"

"Yes!" All three Reclaimers spoke before she could even finish speaking.

"Then I wish you good luck," the Director said, smiling softly at them. "Avi is waiting. I'll have Seeker Maya meet with you to explain the situation."

Taako was already leaving, barely taking the time to wave in acknowledgement as he stalked out of the office and toward the transport bay.

As they walked, no one said anything, too furious and worried to feel comfortable goofing too much. This was Angus who was in danger, after all.

The whole way there and into the glass cannon ball, Taako found one thought spiraling around in his head, over and over, somewhat nonsensical all things considered, but unshakeable regardless.

Hold on Angus. I can't lose you too.

part 5 (x)

[zuwritesstuff]

When You Try to Write A Hurt/Comfort Candlenights Story

(Wow, posting? Crazy- Find this story on AO3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22228207)

TW: Blood, injury, gun mention, weapon mention, some slightly suggestive jokes, cussing, its a hurt/comfort story if you can’t tell

Word Count: 3k

A/N- so i got really into TAZ and wrote this for my friend so, uh, enjoy ( @hiding-in-a-corner-reading i forgot to post this here whoops )

Kravtiz Ajal limped down a rusted, creaky fire escape, stumbling his way down the steps. His two compatriots, Barry and Lup Bluejeans-Enno looked at him with worry. Lup was holding him up with one arm, while Kravtiz stemmed the flow of his blood with his other hand, having just been stabbed. Barry, looking out and leading the way, holding his gun at the ready, knocked on the frosted-over window that stood before him as Lup leaned Kravtiz onto the nearby railing, exhausted. 

Kravtiz saw as Takoda Enno, his boyfriend, looked out the window, paused, and rushed over with a concerned look that never passed his features.

“What the fuck did you do-” he asked, opening the window and pulling Kravtiz by hooking his arms under his and pulling with all his might. Kravtiz, having been stabbed, winced at the movement but said nothing of it.

“Hey, Taako, good to see you too my love, light of my life,” Kravtiz said, words slurring. “I might have gotten stabbed a little bit, but just a little, no need to panic or whatever, just gotta rest a bit.” 

“What the actual, complete fuck.”

“We’re real sorry, Taako,” Barry said, taking one of Kravtiz’s arms and leading him to the bathroom in the hallway. “Mission went wrong, really wrong, and you were closer than the safe house, I didn’t know if he could make it further.” Barry helped Kravtiz into the bathroom, putting him down softly into the bathtub. Lup put a hand on Taako’s shoulder as he watched the scene unfold before him.

“He took the knife for me, bastard.” Lup said, shaking her head. “He didn’t have to do that.”

“If he didn’t, you’d be dead, babe,” Barry added, in the process of removing Kravtiz’s shirt to look at the wound better, covering it with Kravtiz’s balled up shirt. “I’m grateful, but this is bad. I’m no doctor, but…” He shrugged, looking at the two of them. “I think we should call Merle, like, now.”

“I got it.” Taako said, turning away quickly from the two of them. He went to his living room, taking a second to collect himself before calling their friend, Dr. Merle Highchurch. 

“Yello, this is Dr. Merle Highchurch, how may I help you?” A cheery voice rang from the other side of the call.

“Cut the shit, Merle, I know you have me in your contacts as, ‘Taako or Lup’, I need some help.”

“Well, is this Taako or Lup?”

“Taako, but I know you don’t know how to change my contact name- whatever, come to my apartment, like now.”

“At this hour?”

“Yeah, uh,” Taako swallowed, biting his lip before taking a deep breath and saying, “Uh, you know that mission the Reapers went on tonight?” Merle hummed in assent. “It went wrong. Kravtiz is...uh, he’s hurt bad Merle.”

Taako waited for a beat before he heard Merle’s more serious voice say, “Of course. Lucretia and Magnus can run the ship for a while, give me ten minutes, alright kiddo?”

“Yeah, thanks, Merle.”

“Talk to you soon, keep pressure on the wound in the meantime, don’t let him lose too much blood.”

Taako clicked off the phone and walked back to the bathroom where Barry and Lup looked at him expectantly. He relayed the information and sighed, leaning on the wall. They, including Merle, Lucretia Austen, Magnus Burnsides, Dave N. Port, Angus McDonald, and several others served B.O.B., aka The Bureau of Benevolence, a secret organization dedicated to taking down organizations that harmed the public but that the federal government couldn’t take down legally. They had been organized into elite groups of three depending on their individual skills. There was Kravtiz, Lup and Barry, affectionately and formally known as the Reaper Squad for their terrifying efficiency and elite jobs, Merle, Magnus, and Taako, affectionately known as Tres Horny Boys, (it was Lup’s idea, after having walked in on literally every single one of them doing unsavory things at very different times), and Lucretia, Dave, and Angus known as the Nerds, (Merle came up with it and he was too excited for anyone to turn it down).

At the moment, however, the Reaper squad and ⅓ of Tres Horny Boys were crammed into Taako’s tiny apartment bathroom, unsure of what to say. Lup had taken over keeping pressure on the wound and Kravtiz was still in the bathtub, eyes locked onto the ceiling, breathing raggedly. 

At last, Taako broke the silence. “W-what happened?”

“The mission was to get in, take out the boss, and get out. That was it.” Lup said, unable to look Taako in the eyes. “But we had bad information- someone told us something wrong and when we got in there were so many more guards, different security measures, doomed from the fucking start.” She scoffed and shook her head. “When I get my hands on that murderous traitor…” She rolled her shoulders and gritted her teeth, a nervous habit. “We just managed to get him out.”

“You guys should go get some sleep.” Taako said, seething quietly. “You can shower in my bedroom and sleep there, I can stay up for Merle.” Taako kneeled next to his sister, taking the balled up, stained cloth from her. Lup looked at Taako, a little nervous.

“T, I really am sorry.”

“Lulu, it wasn’t your fault.” Taako looked at his sister, a ghost of his usual smile reassuring her, kind of. “It’s part of the job, we all know that, and Merle’s on his way.” She sighed and nodded, standing up and walking out of the room with Barry, but not before casting one last, sad look at her friend, bleeding out in the bathtub.

                                                      ~

Merle had come and gone, stitching up and bandaging the wound.

“Now, listen- he’s out cold right now, which is probably the best scenario since he lost a lot of blood.” He said as he washed his hands. “I can’t imagine him being 100% up to speed after he wakes up, but maybe move him from the bathtub as soon as possible.”

Taako nodded and looked over towards the bathroom. “I’ll wait until he gets up. Lup and Barry are also out cold right now, in a good way. Did they tell you about what happened?” 

“Mhm- ran into Barry on his way out of the shower. And, apparently, Lup isn’t taking it very well. Don’t mean to dump that on you too, you’ve got enough to deal with but…” Merle looked away and shrugged. “When she wakes up, I can get Cretia and Barry to try to talk to some sense into her.” Taako looked at him quizzically and Merle sighed, looking up at him. “She’s going back in the morning to finish off the traitor and the boss, supposedly.”

“She can get in line,” Taako muttered, scowling at the floor. “Great minds think alike, I suppose.”

“Taako, kiddo, you can’t.”

“Why not?” Taako fired back. “They almost killed Kravtiz, Merle. Almost killed Lup. You think I can stand by while my boyfriend is bleeding out in my tub and my sister thinks it’s her fault? No, I won’t. I can’t just, ” He waved his hands around helplessly. “Can’t just sit around, you know?”

“I think you can sit long enough for your boyfriend to get better because if he isn’t getting the care he needs, he’s gonna get worse. You know that- I sure as hell know you do. I don’t need to get the finger puppets to explain this, do I?”

“Fuck off, that was one time.”

Merle chuckled and put a hand on Taako’s shoulder, stretching a bit. “I know you get it, son. Cool off a little, I know Barry’ll help. I’ll come back in the morning with the rest of the crew to visit. Kravtiz will be awake by then, promise.” 

“Fine. I trust you Merle, but if we don’t have a plan to take those guys out in 48 hours, I’m doing it myself.” Taako said, smiling down at him a little, his expression not matching his words.

Merle nodded solemnly. “Better get on it then, huh? Maybe I’ll wake everyone up a little earlier than intended...”

                                                       ~

Taako sat on his counter, fidgeting quietly. He sat with his head leaned back onto his mirror, kicking his legs, waiting for Kravtiz to wake. He was peacefully sleeping in Taako’s tub, still, but now with a pillow behind him and blanket wrapping him up. Taako blew a puff of air out, trying to move a stray piece of hair, escaped from his ponytail through all the ruckus. It didn’t move, and he sat there, trying to move this piece of hair for a while as Kravtiz, freshly awake, watched in amusement. 

“Having a good time there, T?” Kravtiz asked, voice raspy from disuse. 

“Having a wonderful time Kravtiz.” Taako said instinctively, then looking up in amazement, he said, “Wait- what the fuck?” He leaped from the counter, rushing over, kneeling to inspect him. Kravtiz struggled to get up, wincing at the wound.

“Morning- night? Afternoon?” He shook his head, closing his eyes. “Hiya, though.” Taako laughed gleefully, leaning over the tub to kiss Kravtiz, cupping his face. Kravtiz, however weak he was, kissed back, one hand in Taako’s hair, the other supporting him. 

“H-how are you feeling? Let me look at the wound, I gotta rewrap the bandages I think?” Taako said, breaking away, looking around. Kravtiz nodded, sinking back into the tub.

“Maybe I can get out of the tub first?”

“After, if any blood gets on my couch I’ll stab you myself.”

“Topical.” Kravtiz said, smiling as he leaned his head back. Taako grabbed the blanket covering him, pulled it away gently, apologizing softly as Kravtiz swore because of the cold. Kravtiz inspected the wound, wincing again as Taako pulled the bandages away.

“Yuck.” Kravtiz said, biting his lip and looking away. 

“Merle did his best at 2 am, with you bleeding out in my one good tub.” Kravtiz hummed in assent, keeping his eyes on the ceiling until Taako was done. He looked down again, before reaching for his shirt, then realizing it was on the floor, covered in his own blood. 

“Super yuck. Was it really that bad?” 

“Yeah…” Taako said, handing him one of his own oversized shirts. “It was pretty bad. Merle said something about,” he hunched over, lowering his voice, “‘narrowly missed a vital organ, could have been super duper bad, whatever will I do with you punks’” he straightened out, “So the usual.” 

“Ah, obviously…” Kravtiz trailed off, arms poised to hoist himself out of the tub, looking at Taako. “A little help please, dear.”

Taako bit his lip, chewing nervously. “You sure? I can get more blankets so you don’t have to move, I don’t, uh…” He looked down, unable to meet Kravtiz’s eyes. “I don’t want you to get more hurt.” 

“Oh, darling, come here- I’m gonna be okay, promise.” He added as Taako trudged over, still not meeting his eyes, sitting cross-legged near the tub. Kravtiz relaxed back into the tub, reaching a hand out towards Taako, who took it silently. They sat in silence a bit, Kravtiz squeezing Taako’s hand comfortingly. 

“Krav, darling, I love you, but when I saw you bleeding out, I-I didn’t know if you were gonna...you know?” Taako said, breaking the silence of the bathroom. Kravtiz looked up at him, eyes soft.

“I just- I needed to protect Lup, you know? It would have killed her, I knew I was gonna be okay.”

“That’s the thing though, love, you didn’t. You didn’t know and if it had killed you, what-what could I have done?” Taako let the question linger in the air before saying, “I’m so, so grateful but god, Kravtiz, what would I have done?”

“You would have been okay, but,” he sighed, looking back up to the ceiling. “I know I would have been a bit disgruntled, that’s for sure.” Taako laughed, scratching the back of his neck and shrugging in assent. “I promise you, Taako, whenever I go on missions, my top priority? You. Coming back to you, that’s all I want, all I need. Someone I can come home to, someone who can be my home.”

Taako, clearly holding back a smile, looked off to the side. “You’re a huge fucking sap, you know that, right?” Kravtiz laughed loudly, wincing slightly as it disturbed his newly stitched skin. Taako was at his side in an instant, worried, hands hovering over the wound. Kravtiz held up a hand, closing his eyes and breathing deeply before nodding to Taako, who very, very carefully helped him up, draping his arm under Kravtiz’s, helping him out into the hallway where they bumped into Barry. Barry locked eyes with Kravtiz, shocked at his appearance so soon. A look of understanding and gratefulness passed between them, before Barry took his other side, helping Kravtiz to the couch, where he, and Taako, slept for the rest of the night.

                                                       ~

“Kravtiz, you absolute dumbass,” Magnus announced after barging into Taako’s apartment, Lucretia, Merle, Angus, and Dave closely behind, who were all clearly trying to keep him from doing so. “I can’t believe you got yourself stabbed- your whole thing is stabbing other people.”

Kravtiz scrunched up his face, sitting up. The four staying at the apartment had all changed and cleaned up, and Taako and Lup were in the kitchen cooking a feast for everyone, Barry sitting with Kravtiz and entertaining him with card games, chess, and whatever else they could get their hands on. At the moment though, he pushed his hair back and rolled his eyes at Magnus.

“Haha, what is it you do again?” Kravtiz smirked up at Magnus who laughed.

“I’m a tank, clearly,” he said, flexing and winking at Kravtiz, who chuckled. Lucretia rolled her eyes and patted Magnus’s shoulder. 

“Sure thing- how’re you feeling Krav?”

“Like I got stabbed, Cretia, how are you?”

‘Get stabbed once and become a comedian, huh?’ Dave signed, sitting next to Barry, looking over the chessboard where Kravtiz was getting thoroughly beaten. 

“Hey! I was a comedian before I got stabbed, thank you very much.” He said to Dave, who was mute- he had been at the B.O.B. pretty much longer than almost everyone there, so they all had to pick up ASL pretty quickly to understand what he was saying. Dave raised an eyebrow pointedly at him.

 “No love, you never were.” Taako said, emerging from the kitchen with an apron that said, “Kiss the Cook” in curly red letters. He greeted all the visitors, fist-bumping Magnus, an elaborate handshake for Angus, (who was very excited for it), a wave for Dave, (which he said out loud), and a hug for Lucretia and Merle, (who was surprised, but seeing as Taako’s hugs towards him were somewhat limited, he hugged back, no questions asked). “Can’t believe it took my boyfriend getting stabbed for everyone to actually come to my apartment.”

“Hey, sir, wait-” Angus started. He came over to the apartment once or twice a week since he was Taako’s apprentice in all the weaponry and sneakery. He was a new recruit at the B.O.B., and when he was first assigned there after trying to go after once of their assignments before they had even figured out who it was, everyone was a little apprehensive at having a literal child, (ish), on the team, but he had grown on them, especially Taako. While Lucretia taught him the more...subtle ways of being a spy and Magnus taught him hand-to-hand combat, Taako taught him how to handle weapons, and then invited him over for dinner, and now he was more like a father to Angus, though he’d never admit it.

“Not you Angus,” Taako said, waving away any thoughts to the contrary, “You’re an angel and I’m thrilled to have you here.”

“Why thank you.”

As this happened, Merle had walked over to Kravtiz, lifting his shirt up and examining the bandages. “Hmm…” he said, rubbing his chin. “Looks good, but I don’t want you moving around too much.” He glanced over at Taako. “Bed rest, alright?”

“Yes, sir,” Taako said, mock saluting. “I will keep him in my bed, thanks.” 

Merle rolled his eyes, pulling down Kravtiz’s shirt. “Have you had anything to eat yet?”

“Some bread and water- I’m waiting for the famous Enno breakfast, hopefully, I can keep that down.”

“‘Scuse me, but I’m an Enno-Bluejeans, thank you very much,” Lup said, brushing her hands on her short black skirt, (it was actually Taako’s, borrowed this morning, so Taako looked very offended), untying another “Kiss the Cook” apron, this time with light blue cursive letters, as Barry beamed with pride at her words, straightening slightly and smiling widely. She blew him a kiss as Taako gagged at their PDA behind her back. She, without looking behind her, flipped him off over her shoulder and said, “Anyway, breakfast is ready, everyone help me bring it out here. Except you, Krav, Jesus-” she added, as Kravtiz made to get up. 

“Damn, I wanted to get away from this game.” He muttered, looking over the board. Barry laughed and patted him on the shoulder. 

“I’m telling you, bud, I was president of the chess club back in high school.”

“Now I know this doesn’t mean much coming from me,” Lucretia said, putting a platter of cut fruit on the table in front of them, which was quickly getting filled with other food, “But you, Barold, are a nerd.” 

“Lu, I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever told me.”

‘You know, I don’t think that’s true’ Dave signed after bringing the last of the food over as Magnus held literally enough chairs for everyone, thinking. ‘Lucretia is a very nice person.’

Lucretia signed thank you to him and sat with the rest of them, digging into the feast the twins prepared. They talked about everything and anything- except last night’s mission of course. There was plenty of other things to talk about, like Angus’s training, gossip from the office, (Carey and Killian finally started dating, how Magnus’s wife, Julia, and her team was doing, the other department’s drama, etc.) and other stuff until there was a comfortable lull in the conversation, filled with the scraping of forks, and content sighs. 

“Uh, sirs? And ma’ams?” Angus said timidly, putting his fork and knife down. Everyone looks up expectantly at him. He took a deep breath and said. “I’ve been thinking about what happened last night, and it has led me to believe that, um, something is up. In the Bureau itself.” They all looked shocked as he continued. “We know you got the information from an informer, who probably works for the Bureau- but what if it wasn’t the informer? What if someone in the Bureau wanted this to go wrong?” 

“Listen, kiddo, I know mysterying it out is your thing but, uh, how do you know?” Merle asked, waving around a piece of waffle.

“Because this is the second time an agent has gotten hurt on an informers tip- but there’s no way the informers were related.” Everyone swiveled to look at Magnus who put his fork down with a clatter. They knew Angus was talking about a recent incident that had left his wife and her father in the hospital. Julia had managed to pull through, though with serious injuries, but her father hadn’t. Magnus looked down at his plate, processing. Then he looked up, jaw clenched, at Angus.

“You think it was the same person?”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry I didn’t detect foul play before.” He said, looking at Magnus and then Kravtiz, slightly guilty. Lucretia put her hand on Angus’s shoulder, reassuring him.

“Alright, kid,” Taako said, putting his fork down too. “Let’s get to work.”

                                        To be continued

[softshelltaakos]

@starrrskeleton​ you have to stop writing tags on my posts because they make me babble i hope you wanted 1k words about this

#also ive been thinking about taako and angus' like... parental/child relationship and how like #imo its kind of a disservice to both of their characters to portray them in the sort of like #Dad Taako TM and Son Angus TM way ?? #like a lot of it goes back to what u say in this post bc like. its just not who they are as characters imo ! 

SO!!!!!!! as i mentioned in that spiderverse post i like taako-and-angus as parent-and-child family-unit kind of deal, But, i don’t think that’s actually the core of the relationship the way a lot of people think it is. i wrote about this a while ago in the context of not enjoying magnus-as-ango’s-dad content, but i can’t find the post, so to rehash: the core is mentor/protege relationship, and any familial feelings grow out of that.

which is what taz is all about! it’s about learning family. it’s about merle learning to be there for his kids; it’s about taako and lup loving each other and learning to let themselves love other people, too; it’s about magnus missing his wife but learning that there are still people to live for. and i think angus is a really interesting person in taako’s journey! and to a lesser extent, if only because we see less of it from angus’s pov, taako in angus’s journey, too.

we talk a lot about how it’s a found family story, and it is! but i think we forget that families come in a LOT of different forms, especially when it’s a family you choose. relationships are jumbled and complicated and tested and proved and again, that’s what the show is. so when we look at angus & taako in that light, to simplify them to Dad Taako(tm) and Son Angus(tm) is a real big disservice to both of them.

i love messy taako, but i think people also discredit that he’s a very protective and even sometimes, like, responsible person. jd @keplercryptids​ posted this the other day about taako-as-older-twin, and this post isn’t about the twins, but that post has some interesting examples of Taako As Protector that i think position him as a more nurturing person than people give him credit for. dad taako isn’t a grill dad or a soccer mom or anything like that, because he’s still taako: he’s still aloof and teasing and kind of a jackass! and when he takes ango on, he’s not looking for a son; he’s apologizing to an obnoxious kid by taking him on as a protege. at least on the surface.

and likewise, angus mcdonald isn’t, like... the kid who’s desperate for his mentor/father’s approval, he’s not the kid who does what his mentor/father says all the time, etc. i think we see too much of the former in parent-taako-kid-ango content. we see angus come onto the scene competent, confident, and in control of a train murder investigation at the age of ten. so. he doesn’t need a baby-sitter, he doesn’t need looked after, he doesn’t need a dad! except... maybe he kind of does?

because on the other end of the spectrum, i think we have two incredibly lonely people. taako is obvious so i won’t dwell, but... who the FUCK is angus mcdonald? he has a grandfather who’s name he doesn’t know. he’s painstakingly polite most of the time. he seems to have some anxiety issues. he’s hyperfocused on his incredibly dangerous career. he attaches so quickly to tres fuckin’ horny boys, like... he’s lonely, i think!!! and he likes the camaraderie that they share! and i think sometimes he likes that they treat him like a kid, bc hey. he’s a kid! and i don’t know how much he’s let himself feel like one. boyland having a huge family and going to the moon is a noble sacrifice. angus having very little family and going to the moon as a fuckin’ pre-teen is... sad. right? it’s sad.

so he finds a mentor. and the mentor is a dickhead, but he’s there: he pays attention to angus, he directs him, he teases him, and he shares more with angus than he does with any other character in the podcast during the bureau days except maybe kravitz. immediately that positions angus on a much more intimate level to taako than just mentor/protege, but, that intimacy is not the core of the relationship. it’s a side effect. it’s a bonus.

and taako, on the other hand, gets someone to take care of. he gets someone to teach, first and foremost, but he also gets someone to watch over and be proud of. he gets a beautiful magical boy!! and i think that again, even though that intimacy isn’t the core of the relationship, even though it’s not the starting point of it, it’s there.

so where does that leave us? two lonely people, a mentor and a protege. that doesn’t inherently mean family. but this is a story about family, and angus mcdonald is the only person that taako trusts in story & song, and taako is the one with an interlude with angus and an epilogue scene with him. that goes to show, in my opinion at least, that their relationship has gone from purely professional to a personal one. they care about each other! and i think it follows naturally that angus looks to taako as a protector and a confidante and that taako looks to angus as a charge and a confidante. i know that’s not exactly the relationship a lot of us have with our fathers, and like i said earlier: relationships, families, are messy, and this podcast is not an exception. at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter much if taako is angus’s dad or his brother or his uncle or his mentor, because the title doesn’t matter, in the end: it’s who they are to each other, and that doesn’t need a title at all.

i like to think of taako as a father figure for ango, cooking him meals and keeping a room open for him in his elaborate mansion; and i like to think of angus as an adoptive kid for taako, keeping him warm and grounded and caring when it’s incredibly hard for him to be those things. but... it’s not a Dad(tm) and a Son(tm).

i like the idea of angus calling taako “dad” because it adds weight to things: it makes it so it’s harder for taako to disavow the affection and fondness he has for angus, and by extension, makes it harder for him to not care about the world at large. angus mcdonald is proof that not everyone is dust, and he knows it. he’s too smart not to. and i like the idea of taako, even if privately, thinking of angus as a son, because it’s him accepting that weight and letting himself act on instincts that he typically stifles. not a Dad(tm) and a Son(tm), but... a dad and his son, a little bit.

[chucktaylorupset]

a lot of people cite petals to the metal as their metaphorical “you’re going to be amazing moment” but for me the ball really started indiana jonesing for me in Murder On the Rockport Limited because for one, and I don’t think we talk about enough about this, Murder On is a really fucking well written murder mystery.  

Everything, the introduction of the characters, establishing rules for the magic and the train, the time limit and confines to a single location???  Angus McDonald’s presence to ensure that no matter how dumb the boys were it was going to get solved.  Making a Murder Mystery that still works when one of your fucking charaters has a truth spell????

i cannot think of a single other fantasy murder mystery that uses melds the rules of the mystery and the rules of magic as well as this one did

and the reveal! the fucking jenkins reveal! this arc showcases the power of actual plays to tell stories that wouldn’t get told otherwise. listen i’m a pretty well read dude and I had no inkling of suspicion for jenkins because his death was so good!

 like if jenkins is dead it’s a punishment for these assholes for being mean to him, and also “beleaguered customer service industry person” is primo murder victim material and meh murderer material.  So i never questioned it because a story with no improvisation wouldn’t have the protagonists treat the murdere like that, and i thought this instinctively even though I knew this was an improvised show and there was no reason for the horny boys to treat anyone like anything unless they chose to.

jenkins is a literal fucking magic butler and i didn’t suspect him for shit because improvised podcasts don’t adhere to the rules of narrative because the person planning the narrative literally can’t control the characters!!!

anyway griffin mcelroy is a writing god and Murder On the Rockport Limited is my favorite arc thank you graffic novel for reminding me

[emjs-good-out-here]

Shout-out to The Adventure Zone for managing to get me, a woman who has never really had any kind of maternal instincts in my life, to form a deep attachment to Angus McDonald, Boy Detective. Like, he might be fictional, but I want to adopt him as my son & never let any harm come to him.

Me, any time someone mentions Angus McDonald:

[internationalhouseofblupjeans]

An Eighth Bird, Born Out of the Storm - Chapter 22

Based loosely on the Luume'irma headcanon from @interstellarvagabond

Eighth Bird AU.

We're all caught up now.

Angus reconnects. Lup gets her body back. Taako has two hands.

They all live happily every after.

Thank you to Calcu from the writer’s chat for Beta'ing!!

Also on AO3 (link in the source)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9  Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 below

Dearest Angus Bluejeans-Mcdonald,

Thank you for your wonderful letter, however I must return the admiration as I have become quite the fan of you and your family! Your work as a detective is, of course, admirable and would make Caleb Cleveland very proud. The story of your family and how they fought for a century is amazing, of course, but your story is brilliant as well.

Would you mind if I adapted some of the stories of your cases into the next few Caleb Cleveland novels? We can work out the details later, perhaps over tea with you and your family?

Sincerely, D. M. Gryphon

The first weeks were a whirlwind for Angus.

Rebuilding had to be done on all of Faerun, but people had put aside their differences to work together. Angus had seen elves, orcs, humans … all of them working together. It was as if the principles of the Bureau of Balance (now the Bureau of Benevolence) had infected the world, at least for a little bit.

His family, his giant, extended family, was helping. Was making sure that the world they had saved stayed that way.

And they were also starting to split apart.

Not in a negative way. Not really. It was just odd for Angus to see Merle suddenly deciding to live on the beach or Magnus returning to Raven’s Roost.

Lucretia stayed on the moon and Davenport … well, he couldn’t stay put. Not anymore.

Angus was relieved when Lup and Barry insisted that Taako live with them. It was at least a little bit of normalcy for the boy. Their home in Neverwinter was still being completed so they stayed in housing that Artemis Sterling had set aside for them. It was nice, even if it was temporary.

He didn’t know what he would have done if Taako had turned them down (though, having only truly known his mother for a little while, Angus was pretty sure that that would have been impossible). He was happy though. He still had some semblance of family. Something that was stable.

Most mornings, he was awakened by his mother’s spectral form hovering nearby, the lich smiling (he thought) as she greeted him and told him that breakfast was ready. Some mornings, he would find himself sitting between Barry and Taako, Taako discussing his plans for a proper school while Barry simply hummed into his coffee. Sometimes, Taako and Lup would squabble over something mundane, the argument being more entertaining than anything else.

And some days, Angus would follow his mom to the basement of their temporary home as she hovered in front of the glowing green tank that was growing her new body. She would sometimes notice him and try to ruffle his hair in a comforting way.

Angus was excited and nervous.

~

Lup missed sleep.

She hovered near Barry, watching as he slept, and sighed. She wasn’t sure how many more months it would be but she was getting antsy.

Back when she had known that they would just reset in a year, she could easily pass the time as Barry slept if she was a lich for a cycle while Barry was still corporeal.

But now, knowing that this was it, it made the months tick by horribly slowly.

She had missed sleeping in Barry’s arms, had missed eating, had missed so much.

And in realizing what she missed about being alive, she realized just how much she had actually missed.

She’d missed Taako, missed being there for him when he had been wandering Faerun alone. Had missed getting her revenge on Sazed (prison was too good for him). She had missed helping Magnus, meeting his wife (though now with her new job, she probably could). She had missed Barry and felt absolutely gutted that she couldn’t have been alongside him during that decade alone.

She missed so many firsts with her son.

First words, first steps … First case.

She regretted it but at the same time, this was so much better. It would not have been fair to Angus to have him have to go through everything again. To have to wait to be born. To have to wait to exist.

She left her and Barry’s room and hovered down the hallway. She drifted into Taako’s room where he was sound asleep, plans and blueprints underneath him. She wished she could tuck him in. He would be sore in the morning from the position he was sleeping in.

Kravitz needed to move in. As uncomfortable as living with a reaper while she was a lich was, he was good for Taako. He’d been such a positive influence on him. He’d brought him almost back to being the Taako that Lup remembered.

She smiled and drifted out, making her way to Angus’ room.

She paused at the doorway, looking at the boy as he gripped his sheets tightly, his eyes screwed shut and his ears pressed flat against his head.

A nightmare. He was having a nightmare.

She settled down next to him and gently stroked his hair, as much as she could, and sang to him, hoping to calm him down. She watched his breathing slow and his eyes relax and smiled.

She was about to leave when she heard his tiny voice.

“Mom?” he asked.

She drifted over to him.

“Hey Ango … Are you alright? You were having a nightmare …”

“Yeah … I … I had them a lot,” he started. “They were mostly abstract which … I guess makes sense because of that century but …”

He sniffled and looked up at her.

“You were gone,” he started. “Taako broke the Umbra Staff and nothing came out and then the Hunger took him and took Barry and the Davenport left and … And you were gone …”

Lup instinctively wrapped herself around him, channeling as much energy as she could just so she could hold her son as he cried. It broke her heart to be unable to do more for him.

“Th-thanks mom,” he started. “I … I’m glad that you’re here … even if it took so long …”

Lup smiled and kissed his forehead.

“I’m glad too, Ango … We … we waited so long and you are everything we ever wanted.”

They sat there together until the sun rose, Angus calming down enough that he could start to doze.

~

Merle and Magnus had both come to visit, Magnus offering to help build the Taako-Lup-Bluejeans house (and really, they didn’t trust anyone else to do it after the last foreman quit). Merle sat, watching Magnus work, when he heard a quiet voice behind him.

“Erm … hello sir … Uncle? I guess?”

Merle paled.

He had been dreading this moment for weeks now. The moment he had realized who Angus was, he had decided that maybe he should try to avoid being around the twins. He knew that Lup had seen how he had treated her child and had realized that there was probably some resentment there. He’d felt so much regret because he had once been so excited and now …

“Oh, uh … Hey, Angus …” He started. “Sorry about all .. all of that. I kinda wasn’t myself,” he chuckled, nervously.

“Oh, it’s ok, sir,” Angus started. “I mean, I don’t know why you were like that but I just sort of figured … You know … Here comes this kid and everyone’s going to pay attention to that kid and …”

“God, you’re perceptive,” Merle laughed. “You must get that from your dad.”

Angus laughed nervously.

“I’m just … God, please don’t tell your mom that I threatened to kill you,” he started. “‘Cause you saw what she did to the Hunger. I don’t get to reset this time if she blasts me.”

“Oh, I’m sure she understands,” Angus laughed. “In fact … I kind of wanted to talk to you about that …”

Merle sighed and sat up a little straighter.

“Kid … I’m really sorry-”

“Like I said, it’s ok. I understand. In fact … I kind of … I don’t want things to really change,” Angus started. “Like, there was a whole dynamic and honestly, I got used to it? Like … I knew you didn’t hate me and … I guess I thought it was just done out of love?”

Merle chuckled.

“Well, at the time, I was threatened,” Merle laughed. “You know, threatened by a ten year old because you are actually competent and I … Well, for ten years I was a pretty shitty cleric and here comes this half elf kid who’s good at everything he does and well … I guess I was a bit of an ass.”

“Yeah,” Angus started. “But it’s ok. And if you did suddenly start acting like you cared about me, then everyone would think my mom did threaten you,” he laughed. “So … I guess it can be our secret that you actually care?”

Merle laughed.

“Sure kiddo.”

~

Magnus watched Taako and Kravitz and tried to not let the jealousy sting him.

He’d had Julia. He’d had someone who he loved so deeply but there was still that tug in his heart when he saw Taako smile. Saw him holding Kravitz’ hand.

Saw them kiss.

He knew, of course, that their relationship on the Starblaster had never actually been defined. Had never been anything permanent.

But he could wish.

He was about to leave for the evening when Kravitz approached him. Magnus tensed up, knowing that Kravtiz knew. He knew everything that had happened, knew of Taako’s relationship with him …

And he was the fucking Grim Reaper.

“Hey, uh … So, I wanted to talk with you,” Kravitz started. “I … God, I know that you and Taako had a history and … I don’t want to come between it,” he continued. “I know that Taako has been nervous too and … I’m sorry. If you two decide that you want to start over, it’s alright. I won’t be hurt.”

Magnus froze. He hadn’t expected this at all.

“Kravitz … it’s alright. You and Taako, you have a history now too and if Taako’s happy, then I’m happy. I got my chance at love on this world and it would be selfish of me to-”

The wrapping of a hand around his waist and the sudden intrusion of the elf in question interrupted the pair.

“My ears were burning,” Taako grinned, his arms wrapped around both men’s waists. “Were you two discussing me?”

“Erm …” Kravitz started, nervously.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it and there’s honestly more than enough Taako to go around,” he purred “And you two are literally the only people I would even be ok being this close to so I bet we could make this work,” he grinned between the two.

Magnus looked at Kravitz for any sort of protestations. To be honest, this had been the best option but …

“Come on, you two,” Taako grinned, taking them both by the hand and into their temporary home. “Taako’s got two hands.”

~

Lup had hovered over Taako as he traced the last few runes. She had tried to tell him it was alright, that she could wait for him to do the transmutation needed to make her comfortable in her own skin again after she came out, but Taako insisted.

“Only the best for my sister.”

She smiled, watching him cast the spell as her body changed. She would be able to be corporeal again soon. Able to touch and hold people again.

The excitement was nearly electrifying. She knew, of course, that as soon as she had her body, she would need to get ready to start work for the Raven Queen, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t wait any longer.

It was only a few days later, everyone gathered around to greet her, and Lup was nearly crackling with excitement.

“Now, be careful that you don’t trip,” Barry chuckled. “And I have a robe ready for you when you come out.”

“Thanks, Bare-bear,” she smiled, pressing her spectral form to him one more time before hovering into the tank.

Her family watched, holding a collective breath, as she disappeared into her body. The tank split open and Lup staggered out, the brackish liquid spilling out around her, pressing her long, brown hair to her face. Barry quickly brought the Robe to her and helped her drape it around herself. She looked up at Barry and smiled.

“I forgot how good I look,” she smiled.

Barry chuckled.

“I’m about to smooch your fucking face, babe,” she grinned, pulling him in for a kiss.

When she pulled away, she looked over at the crew, her family, and looked for Angus. The little boy was staring at her, mouth agape. Barry helped Lup over to him and she stooped down to her knees and pulled Angus in close.

“I’ve wanted to do this for over ten years,” she whispered.

“Me too,” Angus replied, his voice cracking.

The rest of the day, Lup was near her boyfriend and her son as much as possible, enjoying actually being able to hold them, to actually be able to comfort Angus when he needed reassurance. It was everything she had wanted for ten years.

She and Barry retired early that night, needing to catch up on ten years and six months of waiting. It was slow and clumsy at points, but they didn’t care. They finally had this closeness, this intimacy once again. As they fell asleep later in the night, Barry held onto Lup as if she would disappear if he looked away, kissing the top of her head and the tips of her ears as she purred into his chest, pressing herself as close to him as possible.

~

It had been a year since the day of Story and Song. A year since everyone remembered.

Angus had been at school (Lucas’ school, much to Taako’s chagrin), but he still sent letters. And Lup had been able to visit and be the proud, protective mother she had wanted to be (Lucas couldn’t keep her away and often would find her in his office, scythe in hand).

And now, the crew of the IPRE and the members of the Bureau of Benevolence were watching as Carey and Killian exchanged their vows.

Lup looked over to see Taako in between Kravitz and Magnus, his hands holding both of theirs. Having Taako going on a vacation into the astral plane would be … odd, but at least she knew he would be back.

She looked back at Barry who was grinning from ear to ear. She gently set her head on his shoulder and sighed happily.

The reception was exciting, with dancing and drinks and good food. Mavis had pulled Angus on the dance floor, much to his protestations. Lup chuckled, watching him. He would have to learn how to dance, eventually.

Then the bouquets were tossed, Lup being dragged onto the dance floor by Taako who had a mischievous glint in his eyes.

She totally noticed when one of the bouquets just gently floated into her hands. She shot daggers at Taako before looking at Barry who was about to die of nervousness. She flicked her ears a little, a soft smile spreading across her face as she hoped he got the message.

He didn’t need to do this now. He didn’t even need to do it tonight.

She had waited for sixty-four years. She could wait until he was ready.

The reception continued well into the night, long after Carey and Killian had left for their honeymoon, and Barry pulled Lup aside to dance in a more secluded area. She rested her head on his shoulder as they bobbed back and forth to the music. Barry finally pulled away and smiled at her, cupping her face in his hand.

“Lup … I … It’s been so long and I know that we’re, you know, a thing. But … I still want to make this official … And … Taako wanted me to do this earlier but I was so nervous and I didn’t want to steal anyone’s moment and …”

Lup cupped Barry’s face in her own hand and smiled.

“Barry, it’s ok. I’m not quite the attention seeker that Taako is and honestly, I like it better this way,” she smiled.

Barry breathed a sigh of relief and dug in his pocket before kneeling.

“Magnus carved it. And I’m sure they want to see but … Yeah, they’re probably all drunk off their asses anyway,” he laughed, nervously. “But, Lup … I want to spend eternity with you. And I mean, I know that we will spend eternity together but I want everyone to know that I love you and that I’m yours for as long as you’ll have me … Will … Will you marry me?”

Lup beamed at him, her grin burning brighter than the sun as she threw her arms around him, kissing him and whispering “Yes” over and over in his ear.

If they had been watched, no one had said anything. They had this private moment that they could savor.

They had an eternity together and it was time to begin.

~

Lup stood outside the doorway to Angus’ room. She bit her lip, looking down at the doorknob before knocking quietly.

Convincing Kravitz has been the easy part. That was the thing about the twins. It was already impossible to say no to either of them and after saving reality, the Raven Queen owned some favors.

But she needed Angus’ input too.

And she needed to know.

“Hey sweetie. Can I come in?” she asked.

“Sure mom!” Angus chirped on the other side of the door.

Lup smiled and opened the door, seeing Angus sitting on his bed, books and scrolls laid out on front of him.

“Uncle Taako gave me a pretty good offer, but I'm seeing if I can maybe learn and get a little bit more out of him,” Angus grinned mischievously, looking at his mother. His ears twitched when he saw the nervous look on her face. “Is … Is everything ok, mom?”

“Uh … yeah, kiddo,” Lup started. “I just … I wanted to talk to you about something. To ask you if … If it would be alright or even a good idea if I -” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I just … I wish I had been around and I still feel bad about it, sweetie. And … I was wondering if you would be alright if I went and thanked … Grandpa?”

Angus’ ears twitched again.

“Why wouldn’t it be alright?” Angus asked.

“Because … Because I was gone. I wasn’t in your life and who knows how he thought of the mother of the child who he took care of and … God, what if he hates me?”

Angus crawled off of the bed and ran to Lup, wrapping his arms around her waist.

“Mom, he would never hate you. And even without the story and the song, he still talked about your … well your case. He talked about how brave my mother must have been, protecting her son with the last of her strength. He never said anything bad, I promise. And if he did now then … well, I know that you love me and that you always have.”

Lup hugged Angus close.

“Thanks sweetie,” she whispered. “Do you want to -”

“Wouldn’t Uncle Kravitz say it was against the rules?” Angus asked.

“He took Taako over for a weekend. I’m sure a quick visit to your Grandpa won’t be an issue,” Lup laughed, ruffling Angus’ hair.

It was decided then, and on the weekend before Candlenights, Lup, Barry, and Angus went through the portal to the Astral Plane. Angus had bundled up, knowing that the air would be chillier, even in the Astral Plane, and he tried not to show how nervous he was. He hadn’t seen his grandpa in over two years now.

They walked over to an island, set up with a small cottage - a far cry from the mansion that Angus remembered growing up in. They walked to the door, Barry knocking on it sheepishly.

The door opened and Angus grinned.

There was his grandpa.

Just as he had always wanted to remember him.

He still had the kind smile that Angus remembered, but he was younger. He was as he had been in Angus’ earliest memories.

“Wow, you’ve sure grown a lot, Angus,” Grandpa McDonald smiled.

“Thank you, Grandpa!” Angus beamed.

Grandpa McDonald’s eyes met with Lup and Barry’s. Lup smiled, weakly, her heart hammering in her chest.

She had been preparing herself for this day, but even now, even with the encouragement from Barry and Angus, she worried. She worried that he resented her. She worried that, even though he was being polite, he still thought poorly of her.

It was why she nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt two strong arms wrap around her as Grandpa McDonald pulled her in for a tight hug.

“Your son brightened my life so much,” he whispered. “Thank you for making sure I got to meet him.”

Lup felt tears pricking her eyes as the embrace ended. Then Grandpa McDonald turned to Barry.

“So, you’re the BB that was giving him the birthday presents each year?” he smiled.

“Heh, yeah,” Barry started. “When I was in my body it was like I had holes in my brain, but after I ran into Angus one day and well … remembered after dying yet again, I made sure I could at least give him something every year. Even if I wasn’t sure he was my son at the time.”

Grandpa McDonald smiled and beckoned them into the cottage.

“Come on in! I am sure that you want to hear stories about him and maybe see some of the portraits? Sure you can’t take everything with you, but Kravitz and I go back a ways, so he allowed this for now. Now let me tell you about Angus’ first words …”

We pan out as they walk into the cottage on the island that rises out of the glittering sea of souls,  Barry placing a hand on Lup’s back while Lup pulls a slightly embarrassed Angus in close. We fade out as they step over the threshold as a family.

[dungeonsanddragonsfifthedition]

tazchat: Lucretia Was Right

MAGNUS: let’s go lesbians let’s go LETS GO LESBIANS LETS GO here we go lesbians.. here we go lesbians C'mon! LET’S GO LESBIANS!! oh my god lesbians…. oh my god lesbians- move outta my way ROUNDING THE MOON WITH A BUNCH OF LESBIANS HERE WE ARE CAN YOU HANDLE IT?!

have you been paying attention?

i went into this ep originally just straight up dreading the canonization of the lup theory and. look at me now, Gay For Lup

now, it’s dos lonely boys.

“my god, i’m so—i’m so sorry—“

“she speaks eight languages!”

genuinely happy to see you, anxious about the Fate Of The World. she’s heartbroken about magnus.

“a memorial service for maggie.”

“I’M NOT LAUGHING IN GAME!!!!” justin says in TEARS

“our good friend, magnus.”

“ah, barry, what a douche.”

She Was Eighteen!!!! EIGHTEEN!!! That’s My Age!!!!!!!! i’m not gonna fuckin make a decision in the trolley problem now!!!!!

“...barold?”

“you have veered off sentence, and are hurtling toward paragraph, my man,” jeez i love that! good words justin

“i feel like i trust you.”

magnus just gettin his bangles

sorry i was thinkin about the various deaths of the boys and i remembered that merle’s final death count after her (naturally) passes will be 69. so good. also magnus’ is my lucky number (33) so that’s fun!

Fish Time

“my dexterity’s actually pretty good as a mannequin!”

they’re singing!!! (i do stand by the hc that they sometimes sing D A D @ mags or johann lol :’))

johann is voiced by owen wilson, canonically

“...we’re unemployed, after this. so let’s do this.”

“i didn’t SIGN anything!”

a kick-proof door.

luke is so. good. i love her.

she made a dumbass puzzle with orbs that barry figured out VERY QUICKLY all of which is to say that she is so predictable.

“is the room lit?” / “dude it’s lit as fuck dude.”

i know that this is a real 5e spell bc i had luke use it in the roleswap fic but i’m blanking on its name—the fear trap spell???

merle is afraid of abandonment and the failure of nature, taako is afraid of being alone — isolation, but he sort of instinctively knows: he’s never alone. OH BOY.

okay the spell was either FEAR (lvl 3) or WEIRD (lvl 9)

“start talking. i need to know what you know!”

magnus fixes the harp :’)

parlay w/ fisher!

the fish gives magnus a hug and now that he doesn’t need to breathe he can accept the hug!!! yay!!!

baby mags, in his jacket, arm outstretched!

he brings the whole fam to meet his fish friend

he just fuckin brings the fish food like different food every day.

“you mean julia? aw, yeah, that’s all real.”

Flesh Magnus’ hand twitches

Fish Buppy

i do love the dynamic of the Space Kids like “lucretia it’s like a DOG” / “magnus you’re my brother and i love you but this is an eldritch alien beast that consumes art” / “yes, and it’s our DOG”

also do love the total disregard by fans of the regular wearing of uniform on the ship, though like i feel dav WOULD try and enforce it for the first decade at least

The Hunger Is Here

the seven of you managed to hide for a really long time, but it was all for nothing.

how dare this be a mfd episode that means it’s hard to skip ads!!! damn!!!

reunion tour the song is a jam and a half

LITTLE BOY!!! casting cleric/bard spells like a good lil magic prince

barry’s claustrophobic

“i am a holy man... so let’s kill him!”

“i rolled an eighteen, do not try to control my fuckin’ shit”

“i trust angus mcdonald implictly.”

“i love the director. she gave me a home!”

“THE ONE’S LOOKIN’ FOR THE TRUTH, WELL, THEY’RE NEVER THE BAD GUYS.” (mag: god, i love angus : taa: precious)

seven spaces. i assumed until ttazz that it was one for the first initial of each bird lol but also fuckin weird that homeworld didn’t even have 10 million people on it. i guess that’s why they hired two TEENAGERS for their SPACE MISSION???

NAT 20 AXE HIT!!! MY MAN

rip travworld npcs...

JOHANN :’(

“don’t let them erase me.”

lucretia’s a very neat person.

two empty journals.

lucretia canonically has a coexist bumper sticker. i love her.

oh my god the fucking comedy of errors that is lucretia and barry’s assumption of each other for the twelve years. i love it. just TALK, idiots.

live menos!

live NO más!

magnus befriends baby voidfish.

“boys, don’t try to remember—“

his magic done ran out

BUT WHO WILL HEAL US!

“don’t put up a fight.”

Here She Is But First Let’s Check On Magnus

he just throws away the mannequin sheet!

Baby Boy Cannot Remember Shit And He Gets Stabbed

magnus tits out burnsides with a giant flaming sword thanks

magnus socks first tits out burnsides

LET’S GO LESBIANS LET’S GO!!! LET’S GOOO RUNNING DOWN THE MOON WITH A PACK OF WILD LESBIANS

carey just lizards the FUCK out thank u lizard lesbian

and she just punches him in the fucking face. thanks queen.

“hail and well met,” he says, and she rolls a 22 on punch friend.

“YOU TOOK THE BIG HIT, DIDN’T YOU BUD!”

lucretia voice: i can’t believe you’ve done this.

she’s already bubbled... queen of orbs

remember the thralled!luc theory? shit was good

there were seven of us.

scientists (five adults) and explorers (two CHILDREN!!!)

“we DAMNED this world the moment we landed.”

i found you, the three of you.

a grand story.

“you did... so well!”

i can build a home that all of us can be safe in together

you remember lup, of course! how could you forget lup?

outcast! but! never! alone!

“Lucretia, what have you done?”

fuckin’ love the image of just, like, everyone’s crying, and taako’s straight up about to murder luc and davenport is fucking talking and magnus and the lesbians just mosey on in like “hey guys what did we miss?”

SEEING HIM ALIVE, SHE GASPS, NOT OUT OF SHOCK, BUT OF... HAPPINESS.

it’s the end of the world... again.

we see the portrait, seven people:

lup, with her arm around barry, smiling, taako cheezing it, merle and dav next to each other and flexin, magnus, behind them, kinda goofy, and—lucretia, soft smiles. a rare moment of peace and happiness.

ok next few episodes, guys? It’s_Lucretia’s_Time.mp3

[fourteenacross]

lup/barry fake dating!!

There is no actual fake dating in this excerpt!

“You’re…a kid,” Barry says doubtfully. “No offense. I’m just. Uh. Surprised?”

“He’s a little fucking genius is what he is,” Lup says, ruffling the boy’s hair.

“I find that ‘genius’ is a hard to define term,” the boy–Ango?–says. “But, my name is Angus McDonald and I’m the world’s greatest detective.”

“Uh….huh,” Barry says. He glances at Lup, but she’s still just beaming at the kid and he circles back around to wondering if this isn’t an elaborate joke the Raven Queen’s retinue is playing on him as punishment for his interest in necromancy. “And you’re…how old?”

“Ten, sir!” Angus says proudly. “I’m studying wizardly magics!”

“And he kicks ass,” Lup says. “He gets that from our side of the family.”

“Actually, scientists and arcanists now think that genetics has very little to do with magical abilities!” the boy says. “Not that I share any actual genetics with you to begin with–I know you were just joshing.”

“Uh, who got you kicked out of primary school for using a second level spell on school grounds when you were eight?” Lup asks, tugging his ear lightly.

“If I recall correctly, all three of you had a hand in it,” Angus says. He sticks his tongue out at her and she sticks her tongue out back at him.

Once again, Barry feels as if the conversation is outpacing him. “Wait a second, did you say you cast a level two spell when you were eight?”

“We had a bet to see who could teach him a second level spell the fastest,” Lup says. “Krav technically won, but it was a ‘Scorching Ray’ that got him expelled, so I’m pretty sure, at the end of the day, I’m really the winner.”

“You were all integral to my magical education!” he says brightly. Then adds, “But if Taako asks, I always tell him he won.”

“Good self-preservation instincts, kid,” Lup says.

[taztaas]

Forms, ch. 4/?

aka What if Kravitz has other forms besides handsome and skeleton? Previous: #1 giant raven / #2 hellhound / #3 the raven queen also on ao3

for @taakitzweek day 6

Angus McDonald woke up at 6:45 on the dot, on a Monday morning. He sat up in bed and grabbed his glasses from his bedside table where they were neatly folded, in the same spot as always. He let out a little yawn as he reached over to grab his wand and turn off his alarm spell so that it wouldn’t ring and wake up Taako, who was the living definition of “not a morning person”, in case the wizard was still sleeping in the next room.

Usually, he was up before Angus tough, making breakfast and fixing him a lunchbox to take to school, grumbling and complaining all the while.

Angus himself always woke up before his alarm sounded but he wanted to make sure he wouldn't sleep in and miss school!

He got up and stepped into his bunny slippers. He made his bed and pulled the comforter over it, even though Taako had scoffed and told him a hundred times that he didn’t need to. But he liked his room neat!

After a quick stop to the bathroom down the hall to brush his teeth and whatnot, he returned to his room to get dressed. He ignored the pile of colorful, mismatched clothing that Taako had picked out for him, hoping to tempt Angus into wearing something outside of his comfort zone.

Taako meant well but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, instead opting to smuggle his clothing suggestions into Angus’ room in secret, as if he would somehow wear some of them by accident. Angus stuck out his tongue at the clothes, childish as it was, but there was no one to see him anyway. He dug through his dresser for the pieces of his usual outfit and put them on. He stepped in front of the full body mirror to see how he looked. He scrunched his nose a bit at the sight of his messy hair but it was untamable so there was nothing to be done about it.

Angus grabbed the book he was in the middle of reading and slipped it into his backpack so that he would have something to do before class. He threw his wand in too before he shouldered the bag and trodded happily down the stairs to get some breakfast.

Angus entered the kitchen, setting his bag down on the floor near the doorway. There was already toast, orange juice and other assorted breakfast items laid out on the table, all of them simple and easy to make, which was a bit surprising but not that unusual. And as expected, Taako was in the kitchen, standing in front of the stove making some scrambled eggs. But there was something… off about him. Angus squinted, trying to figure out what was wrong.

Taako looked… stiff, somehow. His posture was straighter than usual and his movements less fluid. He also seemed to be wide awake, unbelievably enough and he was wearing actual clothing instead of pajamas despite the early hour.

Angus took a few hesitant steps forward, unsure if it was safe to approach since something fishy was definitely going on. Taako’s ear flicked and he turned to face Angus with a gentle smile on his face. “Good morning, Angus.”

Angus gaped openly before he caught himself. “Uh, good morning, sir.”

Taako’s smile widened a fraction in response and then he turned his attention back to the food. Angus eyed the elf warily as he made his way to the table and took a seat. He grabbed a piece of toast and spread some butter on it, before starting to munch on it idly, his mind working to make sense of what was going on.

Over at the stove, Taako started humming. Almost singing under his breath actually. Out loud. Angus dropped his toast in shock. Thankfully it landed on his plate because of course, it fell with the buttered side down. Angus knew this song, had heard it played on the piano in the living room a dozen times.

“K-Kravitz?” He squeaked, and Taako turned to look at him.

“Hmm?”

“Wha- uh- what’s going on? Why are you- how are you-?” Angus struggled to find the right words and waved his hand at the elf, indicating the whole… Taako situation.

“Ah, well,” Kravitz said, transferring the eggs from the pan to plate. “Taako was being lazy and-- was not! -- he refused to get up this morning and he begged me to-- did not! ” Kravitz frowned and Angus blinked. “Stop interrupting me darling,” Kravitz said to himself and brought the plate over to the table and set it in front of Angus before taking a seat himself.

“Taako wouldn’t get up so I got him up and made you breakfast.”

“Uh, how? And why?”

“Possession. And because I’m not too good at-- because I suck at -- because I’m not too good at cooking.” He finished forcefully, gritting his teeth before grinning sheepishly. The expression looked so out of place on Taako’s face that Angus couldn’t help but stare.

“Sorry,” Kravitz said. “Taako keeps talking over me. But as I was saying, I possessed his body because even if he was asleep, his instincts and muscle memory would ensure that breakfast would turn out at least somewhat edible.”

“You can do that?” Angus asked, in awe. He really should take the time and ask Kravitz about his abilities so that he could write them down. It was all very fascinating!

“Well, yes. If the person getting possessed agrees. I can’t force it. But basically I revert to my soul form, and--”

Kravitz was interrupted by a tearing sound coming from their living room and a yell of “Breakfast!” followed by Lup rushing into the kitchen a couple seconds later.

She made a beeline towards Angus, reaching down to mess up his hair affectionately. “How’s my favorite nephew this morning?”

“I’m your only nephew, miss Lup,” Angus said with a smile, trying to smooth his hair back down.

“Good morning, Lup,” Kravitz said, and Lup turned to look at her brother, sitting at the table all proper, spine straight and a serene smile on his face at the ass-crack of dawn on a Monday morning.

“Who the fuck are you and what did you do with my brother.” She said, deadpan, and Angus snorted before he could stop himself, covering his mouth with his palm.

“Um, apparently Taako refused to get up this morning so Kravitz took over.” He explained to her. “Huh,” Lup said and stared intently at Kravitz who squirmed silently under her scrutiny. Taako, even if it wasn’t actually him, looking openly uncomfortable was a sight to behold and Lup and Angus stared shamelessly at the elf in front of them until they decided that Kravitz had suffered enough.

“What the hell,” she muttered. “This is some fantasy Twilight Zone shit huh.” She turned to look at Angus, who nodded vehemently, agreeing.

“It’s not that weird,” Kravitz said defensively with a concerned frown that looked extremely off on Taako’s face.

“It is though,” Angus and Lup said in unison. The turned to grin at each other and Kravitz stood up with a huff and went to grab himself a cup of coffee.

He managed to pour coffee into a mug but as he was bringing up to his lips his hand slammed the mug back down on the counter. “Taako,” Kravitz groaned, “Let me-- NO -- but-- you are not putting that disgusting bean juice into my body -- do you want your body back or what?” Kravitz finished, sounding irritated, and after a couple of seconds of nothing he tried to lift the mug again only to be thwarted again. “Taako!”

Lup and Angus watched Kravitz bicker with himself with unconcealed amusement. Lup sat down and grabbed some food for herself. She raised an eyebrow at Angus, who giggled before digging into his eggs. Kravitz continued to fight Taako for the control of his body in the background and Angus briefly wondered at the way how unusual had become his new normal. He didn’t mind a bit though, he thought as Kravitz spilled coffee on Taako’s clothes with a yelp and Lup burst out laughing.

[ao3feed-taakitz]

Fire and the Flood

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2BNozw7

by Scarlet_Gryphon

The Voidfish can hide many things, but elves are creatures of instinct when it comes to family, and Taako's got a funny feeling about the young half-elf he meets on the Rockport Limited...

(In which Taako all but adopts Angus from the get-go, the others are confused, and the Director panics quietly)

Words: 1337, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M, Gen, M/M

Characters: Taako (The Adventure Zone), Barry Bluejeans, Lup (The Adventure Zone), Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, The Director | Lucretia, Merle Highchurch, Davenport (The Adventure Zone), Kravitz (The Adventure Zone), Everyone else in TAZ: Balance (probably)

Relationships: Barry Bluejeans/Lup, Angus McDonald & Taako, Angus McDonald & Everyone, Kravitz/Taako (The Adventure Zone), The Director | Lucretia & Everyone

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Lup and Barry are Angus' parents, Present Tense, Taako is a good uncle, eighth bird Angus, In which I indulge in all my favorite tropes in this fandom, And then add some of my own, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, Canon Trans Character, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2BNozw7

[anistarrose]

Fear The Reaper A Lot, Actually - Chapter 4

AO3

Chapter Summary: An unlikely friendship springs from a book club, while secrecy becomes more important than ever for Tres Horny Boys. Kravitz receives a summons. Angus does a hit.

Characters: Kravitz, Taako, Barry Bluejeans, Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, Noelle | No-3113, The Raven Queen, The Director | Lucretia, misc. BoB cameos

Relationships: Taakitz, Angus McDonald & Taako, Barry Bluejeans & Kravitz, Kravitz & Angus McDonald

Don't let the Lunar Interlude-esque setting confuse you — this update's a long boi! If you can't already tell how much I love Angus McDonald, then the next few thousand words should make it pretty clear.

***

Some days, Kravitz found paperwork relaxing. Today was not such a day.

The Raven Queen was almost always receptive to his suggestions about how to restructure the forms, and happy to do what she could to minimize the bureaucracy and tedium inherent to almost any other office job. But today, Kravitz’s unbeating heart just wasn’t in his work — just like yesterday, after he’d returned from Wave Echo Cave.

So it was simultaneously a relief and a surprise when a blue glow flashed in his peripheral vision, and he felt the telltale tug of a summons from the Material Plane, specifically…

“The moon?” he muttered out loud. “What is with these people and ridiculous floating secret bases?”

The pull of the summoning spell was designedly weak, and easy for Kravitz to shrug off if needed — but he wasn’t going to pass up an excuse to get out of the office, and try to part ways with Taako on a better note this time. Maybe he could ask around, find out if anyone knew what Lucas and Noelle were up to…

In a cozy bedroom on the moon, a hissing plume of smoke emanated from a sapphire arrowhead, embedded in the soil of a potted plant. As the smoke solidified, Kravitz’s human form took shape, and instinctively scanned his new surroundings for dangers or necromantic abominations.

Two floor-two-ceiling bookshelves were stuffed with novels and encyclopedias, and glow-in-the-dark stars covered the ceiling. The bed was neatly made, but was so small it couldn’t have accommodated anyone larger than a gnome, or a halfling… or a human child.

“Hello again, Mister Grim Reaper,” said Angus. He sat on a tiny wooden chair, pen in hand and notebook open to a fresh page. “I’ve got a number of questions for you.”

Kravitz plucked the arrow from the potted plant, and the electric blue glow of the sapphire faded. “Does Taako know you have this?”

“Nope. But if he did, he’d probably endorse me breaking the spirit of the law, if not the letter — after all, you never said that only Taako could summon you this way.”

Kravitz holds up his hands. “I didn’t mean to sound accusatory. I was just… expecting to meet with Taako today, so this surprised me. But I’d be happy to answer your questions — provided they don’t take more than an hour or so.”

Angus narrowed his eyes. “Will you answer me honestly?”

Seeing no reason to lie to even the most precocious of ten-year-olds, Kravitz declared: “I swear to answer truthfully upon my oath to the Raven Queen.”

“Then tell me — why are you so nice?”

“Pardon?”

Angus glared at him. “You know exactly what I mean — why are you so helpful? You tried to reap my friends’ souls, and told them they that could only save themselves by accomplishing an impossible task! But then, you — you saved them yesterday, and even healed them! What are you playing at?!”

Immensely grateful that he’d set the terms on his own honesty oath, Kravitz told the truth with a few details omitted. “I helped them because they seemed like nicer people than most of the bounties I hunt — and in that strange sort of ‘begrudging respect’ way, I guess I’m growing fond of them.” Taako even moreso than the others.

“If you were really fond of them, you wouldn’t be trying to kill them in the first place,” Angus muttered, lowering his gaze.

“I’m sorry,” Kravitz told him, and that too was the truth. “It’s just what my job demands —”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have gotten into this line of business!” Angus screamed, wiping tears from his eyes. “In two months, I’m gonna lose three of the closest people I have to family, and it’ll all be because I’m just a kid detective who can’t track down a couple of liches — but it’ll also be because of you! I hate you, and I hate everything you stand for!”

Angus’s fist sunk harmlessly into Kravitz’s raven-feather cloak, but he staggered backwards like he’d punched a brick wall, falling to his knees and taking off his glasses to sob — but against his better judgement, Kravitz kneeled down at Angus’s side.

“Don’t count out Taako and the others just yet,” he whispered. “I’ve seen them do miraculous things — escaping from me in the laboratory, for one thing, and banishing Legion, for another. If they can defeat thousands of unruly undead souls in combat like that, then they might just be worthy opponents for even the most crafty and powerful of liches.”

“You’re sure they’ll be okay?” Angus sniffed.

“No,” Kravitz admitted. “I’m not sure. I wish I could be, because I really don’t want to send them to the Astral Plane. But they’ve got help — not just your smarts, but my scythe as well, because I don’t intend to just stand idly by without giving them a fighting chance. I… truthfully, Angus, when I offered them the deal, I wanted to bring an end to the headache they’d given me by any means necessary. But they’ve earned my respect since then, and though the deal can’t be undone, there’s no rule stopping me from aiding them. I don’t want to reap their souls if there’s any way I can avoid it, any excuse or loophole.”

Angus rubbed his nose. “Do you — do you normally like reaping people’s souls?”

Kravitz took a moment to think about his answer. “I was a human like you, once. Alive, and precocious, and always getting in over my head. When I died, and started serving the Raven Queen as a reaper, I felt like I had discovered my life’s purpose, even though it ironically required becoming undead as a prerequisite. My duty is to keep the balance of the universe — to save lives by stopping liches, necromancers, and their foul servants from upsetting that balance — but I remember what it felt like to be mortal, to have mortal loved ones. So… I don’t enjoy watching people grieve, because it feels all too familiar.”

He sat down, and crossed his legs. “I don’t tell a lot of people about this, but in a way, if I’d come to terms with death and grieved more quietly when I was alive… well, let’s just say I probably wouldn’t be a reaper today.”

Angus managed a smile. “You know, you’re nothing like the Grim Reaper in the Caleb Cleveland, Kid Cop books.”

“Oh? I know there are… a variety of misconceptions about me floating around in the world, but I haven’t read that series. Are they detective stories?”

“They’re the world’s greatest detective stories,” Angus declared, “and I own every installment!” For the first time since his ill-fated attempt to punch Kravitz, he stood up, and selected a book from his bookshelf. “This is the first one that you — well, not really you — show up in.”

Kravitz took a look at the cover illustration, which featured a child in a deerstalker hat standing back to back with a deathly pale man, dressed in tattered gray robes and wielding an iron scythe. The title read Caleb Cleveland and the Mask of Death.

“Not much of a resemblance, is there?” Kravitz mused. “I guess can’t fault them for the iron scythe, because that’s what everyone seems to expect, but iron and celestial magic don’t always get along — better than iron and fae magic for sure, but still not especially well.”

“His personality isn’t a whole lot like yours either, sir,” Angus sheepishly admitted. “This is the start of the five-book Grim Reaper arc, which starts off with the reaper helping Caleb solve murder mysteries until Caleb’s previously-struggling private detective agency — which he started after his schism with the corrupt police establishment in the last book — is renowned throughout the country. But then Caleb realizes that the reaper is just trying to bring about an era of prosperity and increased population density, so that he can kill the maximum number of people possible while poisoning the water supply! And of course Caleb disavows his partnership with Death, but the reaper spends the next four installments of the arc committing more murders as revenge — which initially felt like a little bit of a motivation downgrade, if I’m being honest, but it also led to some great continuity between books as well as some really well-written horror that unsettles without pulling on cheap shock value! So they turned out to be some of my favorite books in the series, and… I’m sorry if I judged you a little hastily because of them. You’re a whole lot nicer than the Grim Reaper I expected.”

“You don’t have to apologize. You’re hardly the first person to misjudge me for my line of work, and I don’t expect you to be the last.” Kravitz flipped through the book, which was full of underlined words and fan theories neatly written in the margins. “Actually, do you mind if I borrow this? I’ve always loved mystery novels.”

“You really want to read it?” Angus’s eyes lit up. “Uh, well, I should probably start by giving you the first book in the series, otherwise a lot of callbacks to previous adventures won’t make sense. But I guess I did kind of just spoil the whole plot of Books 21 through —”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kravitz assured him with a smile. “And I think I will take Book 1 to start out, please.”

“Alrighty, then!” Angus selected a well-worn book from his shelf and handed it to Kravitz. “Could you, um… let me know what you think of it when you finish reading?”

“I absolutely can. Oh, and Angus?”

“Yes?”

“You sound like a marvelous detective. If anyone can crack the case of these liches, I believe it’ll be you — but don’t beat yourself up if you can’t, alright? That’s a lot of pressure to put on someone, and you’re a growing kid — you need your rest.”

Angus nodded. “I’ll try to remember that, sir.”

***

Angus gave directions to the three Reclaimers’ shared dorm, but didn’t specify which individual room was Taako’s, so on a hunch, Kravitz knocked on the door of the room that smelled the most like baked goods. Sure enough, he heard Taako shout “It’s unlocked!” over the banging of bowls and cookie sheets.

“You need to look after your arrows better,” Kravitz warned him as he entered. “If someone with more malicious intentions than Angus were to steal one, then they could easily lure me into a trap.”

Taako blinked. “Whoa, what happened to your accent? I thought you were a stranger and almost chucked a bowl of gingersnap dough at your head!”

Kravitz narrowed his eyes. “Did you really? You look like you’ve got a pretty firm grip on it, there.”

“No, you called my bluff. I’m too good of a chef to just go chucking perfectly good food whenever someone spooks me — the point is, what is up with your voice, my dude?”

“It’s, um… a work accent,” Kravitz explained. “My normal voice isn’t that intimidating. As you can tell, heh.”

“Still wouldn’t want you to slice me up with a scythe, though. You gotta give yourself more credit.” Taako rolled a small handful of gingersnap dough into a ball, dusting it with sugar and placing it in the corner of a fresh cookie sheet. “And to answer your complaint earlier, Angus wasn’t as slick as he thought he was when he swiped that arrow, but I let him get away with it ‘cause I knew neither of you two dorks would try to fight each other or anything like that.”

“He actually did want to fight me for a minute or two,” Kravitz replied, “but we worked it out and now we’re apparently… book club buddies? I’m not sure, I’m no good with kids — or maybe I’m better with kids than I’m consciously aware of?”

Taako snorted. “I didn’t endear myself to little Ango at first either, but now I guess I’m his hero, and his teacher, and maybe even his emotionally adopted uncle or something? There’s just something magical about that kid.”

“Absolutely, but… he seemed stressed.” Kravitz sighed, and Taako’s expression softened. “I suppose this is partly my fault, but there’s an awful lot of pressure on him.”

“Yeah, he — he doesn’t find it so funny when me an’ the boys joke about death, I’ve been noticing. I’ll make sure he takes some time off the case to relax — you think that would help him?”

“I think that would be a good place to start.” Kravitz nodded, glancing over the sheets of oatmeal cookies cooling on the adjacent counter. “You look like you’ve been keeping busy yourself.”

“Yeah, the Director was so thrilled with my Candlenights macarons that she requested a couple batches of oatmeal-white chocolate and some gingersnaps. Guess she read my cookbook or something — ‘cause my whole cookie portfolio is choice, don’t get me wrong, but those are a couple of my top-tier baked goods after the macarons.”

“They smell heavenly — and I should know, working in the Astral Plane! Do you mind if I try one?”

“Wait!” Taako pushed Kravitz’s hand away from the tray. “I didn’t check them for — hang on, you’re already dead, right? You know what, go for it. Sorry about that.” Under his breath, he added: “It’ll be fine. Perfectly fine.”

Confused and a little concerned, but too polite to decline Taako’s offer, Kravitz took a bite of an oatmeal cookie. It was still slightly warm, and the white chocolate melted in his mouth, but he couldn’t imagine it being any less of a delight after having cooled, either.

“So, how many of these does your boss actually want,” asked Kravitz, “and how many can I take back home? They’re just as good as they smell!”

“Course they are,” Taako snickered. “Gimme a few minutes here, and I’ll make you a little gift baggie.”

“Speaking of gifts, that reminds me —” From an inside pocket of his cloak, Kravitz procured four new summoning arrows. “I spoke with the Raven Queen, and was able to arrange an exception to that… company policy, the one about summoning me for business only.”

Taako didn’t look away from his cookie sheet, but his ears immediately perked up.

“You can use them outside of emergency situations — within reason, of course,” Kravitz continued. “I don’t want to manifest in the middle of, I don’t know, a heated debate about moon bylaws, or whatever it is that you people vote on up here.”

“Actually, it turns out moon society is kinda authoritarian.” Taako finished filling the first sheet with gingersnap dough, and began work on a second. “But be honest — how much of this was actually premediated on your part, and how much is just a spur of the moment decision now that you know I’ll give you free baked goods?”

“It was premediated, but make no mistake, the baked goods are a bonus,” Kravitz chuckled. He neglected to mention that there had been no company policy in the first place, nor had there been a conversation with the Raven Queen. Part of him just wanted to give Taako his Stone of Farspeech number like he had with Angus, and bid farewell to the archaic summoning rituals altogether, but it would still be handing over personal information to an active bounty, and there were some lines even Kravitz didn’t dare cross — at least, not yet. “But as good as it is to be able to keep in touch with you, there’s something I should probably warn you about sooner rather than later.”

“Fire away.”

“I assume you were looking for Lup in Wave Echo Cave the other day. But that didn’t unveil many clues to you, did it?”

“Unveil? No matter you and Angus are starting a book club, you speak in the same detective mambo-jumbo. But you’re right, we found zilch.”

“Are you going to start looking for Barry Bluejeans next, by any chance?”

Taako made a funny expression. “Yeah, I guess that’s the plan. But, well, we also agreed that the plan should be to stay on the moon to rest and train for a couple days — ‘cause Magnus has been a bad influence, and we all rushed into the cave expedition just a day after we almost died averting the crystal apocalypse. You saw how that worked out for us.”

Kravitz nodded. “Today is the first day I’ve actually seen you without bags under your eyes. It suits you.” The last part slipped out without Kravitz thinking it through, but it prompted a wink from Taako, which Kravitz considered among the better possible outcomes of impromptu flirting.

“But getting back on topic,” he continued, “I wanted to warn you about Barry. I’ve encountered him a number of times, and he’s not exactly a normal lich.”

Taako sat down on a stool and crossed his legs. “Well, you dunno what my reference point is for liches. He could be a totally regular, run-of-the-mill lich by my standards — maybe a little spooky, but nothin’ to write home about, you know?”

“Then you’d be consorting with some pretty strange liches, because Barry is a very confusing one. Most liches are either antisocial or obsessed with grim monologues, but Barry has held a handful of coherent brief conversations with me — all of which started out weirdly normal, until he started rambling nonsense about the planar system with a genuinely unsettling amount of conviction.”

“Oh, those liches,” Taako muttered, nodding along. “Always saying the darndest things.”

“I feel like you’re not taking this as seriously as you could.” Kravitz narrowed his eyes. “To be fair, I’ve never seen Barry hurt innocent mortals, which is another way he differs from essentially all other liches — but that doesn’t mean that he’s not a threat, especially if you’re hunting him down. After all, there’s a reason I’ve spoken to him several times, but never successfully captured him.”

Kravitz thought back to one of his first and most troubling encounters with Barry, about a year after the end of the Relic Wars. They’d crossed paths by accident, in a seaside town recently demolished by a serpent of the Oculus’s creation, and Barry had exploited the shambles of the port to his advantage, hurling fishing nets and tattered sails at Kravitz as he made his escape.

“You can’t run from justice forever, Bluejeans!” Kravitz had shouted, slicing through a weighted net with his scythe. “Your kind all wind up in the Eternal Stockade eventually!”

“I’ve spent decades bracing myself for the end of apparent eternity and the exhaustion of apparent infinity,” Barry had replied matter-of-factly. “If your prison could really stay intact until the end of time, then I’d be happy to hunker down there with everyone I love and wait for this storm to blow over.”

With a flick of a spectral hand, he’d flung a half-dozen crates of rotten fish at Kravitz’s head. “But you don’t see me handing my soul over without a fight, so… I guess that should tell you everything I think about your so-called ‘eternal’ stockade.”

Kravitz had easily dodged the crates, but stepped right into the epicenter of the geyser that erupted from beneath the dock a moment later, launching him into the air. By the time he’d flown back down to sea level, Barry had been long gone.

“You know, if he still seems pretty chill for a lich,” Taako mused, dragging Kravitz back to the present, “and he’s harmless except for when you try to capture him, then… why are you still trying to capture him? Why not just let him do his thing?”

Kravitz sighed. “That’s a good question, and I’m honestly curious… why do you think I haven’t given up on him?”

“Well… ‘cause liches are illegal, right? Is this a trick question?”

“That’s the answer I was expecting, and you’re not wrong — but that’s not the entire story, either,” Kravitz told him. “I also don’t want to leave Barry to ‘do his thing,’ as you put it, because I don’t know what ‘his thing’ entails. I’ve heard him allude to needing something specific out of undeath, but I don’t know what that is — if it’s immortality, or power, or something else altogether. I don’t know if he’s just putting on a harmless facade while he waits for me to let my guard down.”

Taako nodded. “You think he’s planning something.”

“I know he’s planning something. Most liches, they’re unpredictable because the combination of undeath and their hunger for power has eroded their sense of logic and driven them insane. And at first, I thought this was the one thing Barry had in common with them — with his nonsensical grim warnings, and haphazard pattern of popping up in the last places I expect — but over the past decade of hunting him, I’ve gradually realized he isn’t insane at all. He just bases his decisions off of information that no one else in the universe seems to possess, and constructs plans that no one else in the world understands. He’s unpredictable, but not irrational — and coming from a spellcaster as powerful as he is, that honestly terrifies me.”

Taako whistled. “Guess we’ve really got our work cut out for us, then.”

“I’ll leave you with this: please, if you track Barry Bluejeans down but he seems civil, and reasonable, and harmless, you still cannot and should not trust him, no matter what he tells you. With liches, even abnormal ones, you can’t risk anything less than constant vigilance. Take it from someone who learned it the hard way centuries ago, and has been significantly better at his job ever since.”

“Aww, you’re worried about us,” Taako snickered as he placed the gingersnaps in the oven. “But I read you loud and clear — you don’t need to worry about me falling for a lich’s tricks, of course, but I’ll remind the other two goofuses to be careful.”

He frowned, closing the oven door. “Although, now that I think about it… what does Barry even look like as a lich? I don’t actually know what we should be searching for, but I’m assuming it’s not a normal-ass dude in jeans.”

“Oh, you can’t miss him. Most necromancers spring for black or gray robes, but his is bright red.”

Taako’s eyes went wide. “You know those grim warnings you mentioned him giving? Would they happen to be about, uh, the hunger of all living things?”

“You’ve met his lich form, too?” Kravitz slapped his forehead. “Were you also the best man at his wedding? Do you golf with him on Saturdays?”

“Man,” Taako muttered, “I am so glad we decided not to tell the Director about this.”

***

Angus found Noelle in the Bureau’s gym, dumping a cooler of water on her teammates as they finished an intense workout. On the other side of the room, Avi was thoroughly demolishing Brad Bradson at an impromptu game of half-court basketball, and a small but rowdy crowd had gathered to watch.

“Not gonna lie, I’d kill to be a tireless cyborg like you, Noelle,” Carey groaned, overdramatically collapsing into Killian’s arms. “I’m exhausted.”

“I dunno. If training didn’t make my arms ache, then I don’t think it would be half as satisfying,” Killian replied, wiping her brow. “Although some laser eyes to pair with my crossbow might be pretty kickass.”

“I’m enjoying the whole swappable body parts thing more than I thought I would,” Noelle said. “At first I was worried I’d accidentally fry a whole bunch of people with my arm cannon, but it turns out I can just take it off for non-violent occasions!”

“Hey, Angus!” Carey called out, waving to him. “Got any strong opinions about cyborgs and integrating technology into our bodies?”

“Um, I was actually just here to ask Noelle a few questions. Is this not a good time?”

Noelle shrugged. “Well, we just finished training for the day, so I don’t see why not.”

Angus beamed. “Great! But do you mind if we conduct the interview somewhere… a little quieter than this gym?”

Noelle raised an arm, shielding Angus from a stray basketball. “Sounds like a plan.”

Upon arriving in Noelle’s as-of-yet sparsely furnished dorm, Angus sat cross-legged on the floor and opened to a fresh page in his notebook.

“So, Magnus told me that you had a run-in with Barry Bluejeans shortly before his death in Phandalin. I’d never want to force you to think back to traumatic memories, but if there are any details you recall about him off the top of your head, that could be vital to our investigation.”

“I appreciate the concern, but it’ll be alright,” Noelle assured him. “I’ve already been thinkin’ back to that encounter a lot, ever since I learned Barry was a lich — ‘cause he really, really didn’t act like how I was always told liches would behave. See, he… he almost took a blast of fire to the chest while he was shepherding us into that stockroom, and even then, he told us to stay in there while he risked his life trying to lead the dwarf away. He was so brave, and he even got that dwarf out of the bar… but still not far enough away, I guess.”

“Was he using any spells? Magically redirecting fire? Did he try to teleport you to safety?”

“No, no spells that I saw. He threw a chair across the room to distract the dwarf at one point, but that was with his own two arms and I imagine a whole lot of adrenaline, not any sorta spectral mage hands or whatever it is that wizards use.”

“Hmm.” Angus clicked his pen. “I hate to say it, but if he didn’t cast a single spell, then it sounds like he really wasn’t trying that hard to save the town…”

“No, that’s not it. I’m sure of it. He told us not to be afraid, but he was… he was scared. Did a real good job of hiding it, but he was shaking as he closed that door to that stockroom and went back into the bar to face the fire. I sincerely believe he was doin’ everything he could to save us from the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet, and it just… wasn’t enough.”

“I wonder if Lich Barry has — or rather, had a kinder but more incompetent twin brother,” Angus mused, jotting down the thought in his notes. “It would make more sense than — wait. What did you just say about the gauntlet?”

“That Barry tried to save us from it? I guess I didn’t know what it was called back then, not until after I died and I remembered the Relic Wars —”

“Exactly! Noelle, you’re a genius!” Angus sprung to his feet. “We need to go talk to Johann!”

Noelle floated after him as he raced out of the room and towards the nearest elevator. “About what? The Voidfish?”

“Right! Maybe Barry didn’t cast any spells when he was alive because he didn’t remember that he could!”

“So when he died, the memories would’ve all rushed back to him, and he could go back to his lich-y business!” Noelle finished. “But why would the Bureau have erased information about Barry, of all people?”

“I don’t know,” Angus admitted as they stepped into the elevator and it began to descend. “Maybe he used to work with them, and went rogue? I’d ask the Director, but…”

“She’s not in on the lich-hunting secret, right. But you’ll probably have to tell her eventually, won’t you? Y’all can’t keep sneaking out forever.”

“Oh, I know. But the Reclaimers are going to be the ones to break the news to her, not me. They were the ones who lied about it in the first place, after all.” The elevator doors opened, and Angus sprinted out at full speed towards Johann’s office. “Johann, I have a question! Is there a way to check what people the Voidfish has erased?”

Johann gingerly set down his violin, and tapped his head. “You’re looking at it. I’ve been in charge of feeding info to the Voidfish basically since the Bureau got started, and lucky for you, I’ve got a pretty good memory for who and what gets erased from the rest of the world.”

He sighed. “I kinda… I feel like the least I can do is remember them when no one else will, you know? ‘Cause it’s what I hope someone will do for me when I’m gone, and… well, that got real depressing real fast. You probably don’t want to hear that, kid — so just tell me, who do you need to know about?”

“I realize now that I’m forming the question in my head that this might sound like a goof,” Angus admitted, “but have you ever erased information about someone named Barry Bluejeans?”

Johann laughed. “You’re right, that does sound like a goof! I can’t remember hearing about him before, never mind erasing him — and I’d definitely remember a name like that, trust me.”

“Oh.” Angus’s face fell. “I was so sure…”

Noelle drifted over to the Voidfish’s tank, watching the swirling galaxy patterns drift by. “Don’t give up, Angus. You might still be onto something — maybe the info could’ve gotten erased before Johann was in charge here, or maybe before the Bureau even found the Voidfish.”

Johann nodded. “Yeah, maybe. You want me to ask the Director about it?”

“No!” Angus and Noelle shouted in unison.

“Not yet,” Angus added hurriedly. “Maybe eventually. I’ll need to talk to Taako and the others about it first.”

“Okay, whatever,” Johann shrugged. “I don’t really understand what’s going on here, but you do you.”

As Noelle rode the elevator back to the roof with Angus, she asked: “So, what’s our next move?”

“I guess we should go tell the Reclaimers about the break in the case, or lack thereof. And maybe make an argument for coming clean to the Director, while we’re there.”

They made their way back to the Reclaimers’ dorm, but upon opening the door, every one of the room’s occupants jumped out of their seats in shock.

“Oh, it’s just you two,” Taako sighed, lowering his Umbra Staff. “Try and knock next time! I thought you were Lucretia coming to bust our secret meeting!”

The living room looked exactly how Angus would expect the site of an impromptu clandestine gathering to look, with dozens of papers scattered about and a corkboard lying on the coffee table. Red and blue strings connected dozens of thumbtacks, and the center of the board was occupied by a red crayon drawing of a disembodied robe.

Merle chuckled, elbowing Magnus. “You know, if you’d really wanted to keep our meeting secret, then we woulda made sure our ‘security guard’ actually locked the goddamn door —”

“That’s not important right now,” Magnus interrupted, closing the door and motioning for Noelle and Angus to join the circle around the coffee table. “What’s important is that you two haven’t let anything slip to Lucretia since the last time we talked!”

“Um, we haven’t, but…” Angus frowned. “We were actually thinking it might be better to let her in on the secret. I have a lot of questions that only she can help us answer —”

“Then they’ll just have to go unhelped!” Taako declared, magically silencing Angus’s Stone of Farspeech. “If you tell her our lives depend on arresting one of the Red Robes, she’ll go ballistic!”

Angus blinked. “I think I’m missing a lot of context here, sir.”

“I think I’m missing even more,” Noelle added.

Magnus pointed at the drawing of the Red Robe. “See this? This is Barry’s true form, according to Kravitz. And according to Lucretia, the Red Robes are all super duper evil, so she’s not too keen on us talking to them. Or interacting with them any more than we have to, really.”

“Well, what’s supposedly so evil about them?” Noelle asked. “Are they all liches?”

“No! Well, actually, they might be,” Merle admitted. “I dunno the states of all their souls, but we do know they made the Grand Relics!”

“What?” Noelle gasped.

“You know, like the Philosopher’s Stone?” Magnus added. “And the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet?”

“No, I know what the Grand Relics are, but there’s gotta be some mistake,” Noelle replied. “Barry was trying to stop the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet from going off and incinerating the whole town — and even if he was amnesiac when I met him, I just can’t imagine him ever creating something like that. It just doesn’t make sense —”

“Nothing about Barry Bluejeans makes sense,” Angus agreed. “There must be something we’re missing…”

“I’m sure there is, but one way or another, I’m pretty sure Barry did help make the Relics,” Magnus told them. “He’s popped up near almost every one of them, except for the Oculus —”

“Yeah, remember when you sensed a lich in the Cosmoscope, Noelle?” Taako chimed in. “That was Barry. He rooted through Lucas’s trash and said some ominous shit about billions of lives getting devoured. Doesn’t that sound like a guy who could be the evil mastermind behind the Relic Wars?”

“Well, why don’t we just ask him?” Merle spoke up. “I mean, it’s not like we have any trouble finding the guy even when we’re not looking for him, ha! — so next time we run into him, how about I cast Zone of Truth, and ask what he has to do with the Grand Relics?”

“That’s a great idea, sir!” Angus exclaimed, but his face fell after just a moment. “But if Barry usually just shows up around the Relics, and we have no idea where the last three are, then how will we know where to look for him? We don’t have the time to wait for another to surface randomly like the Philosopher’s Stone and Gaia Sash did.”

“Kid’s got a point, Merle,” Taako admitted, rubbing his chin. “But as long as we don’t have any other leads… I can think of at least once place it wouldn’t hurt to check, and maybe even grace with a séance!”

“Phandalin?” Noelle asked, and Taako nodded.

“Exactly! Sure, the last time we revisited an old stomping grounds didn’t go so well, but Phandalin’s just a flat circle where you can see danger coming from any direction. What could go wrong?”

***

End notes:

Some miscellaneous headcanons about the stuff in Angus’s room: Magnus made the bookshelves and chair, Lucretia provided the bed and helped Angus attach the stars to the ceiling, and the books are almost all Angus’s own. It took a while to bring them all up to the moon, but Lucretia was happy to help, and she and Taako both gave Angus a few more novels to add to his collection.

Next chapter has some exciting stuff happening, including an appearance from a certain lich that the boys may or may not be hunting, so stay tuned! I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to hold the every-other-Tuesday update schedule after Chapter 5, because long story short:

I got a part-time job that doesn’t take up that much time, but does occupy the part of the day when I’m usually in the mood to write.

I had mild insomnia for like a solid 4 nights, which I have since recovered from but not before it threw a wrench in my writing process, so that burnt through a “buffer” pre-written chapter or two.

I’m by no means abandoning this fic, but if updates slow down to more of a monthly pace after Chapter 5, this is why! Just wanted to give you all a heads-up.

[terezis]

secret: neither have i. my brains instinct was tomimagine angus mcdonald in a pinstripe suit smoking a cigar. i don’t know why that happened but it was just so fucking powerful that i had to share

i see this and raise you: angus mcdonald in a tiny pinstripe suit, pretending to smoke a candy cigarette. he’s the world’s greatest criminal but he’s still a little boy! he doesn’t want to stunt his growth, sirs!

[lexiconofdreams]

TAZ Postmortem Thoughts

“The Adventure Zone” spoilers ahead.

I think when the writer of an in progress piece of fiction, like podcasts or video series or fan fic, finds out that their audience has figured out a twist, there is a very natural urge to quickly change the script to keep it fresh. Like when an author just goes and says “this character dies? Well now their sister dies!” or 

That’s why that style of writing sets off a red flag for me. It seems emblematic of a deep seated insecurity in your own abilities as an artist. You have to hold that urge up to the same scrutiny you hold any other writing instinct, you have to say “whoa now, this doesn’t contradict everything written so far, does it?” Because in those cases where it does, it really shows. Character development arcs are suddenly forgotten or reversed. Dramatic reveals lose important grandiose build up. The whole story rings hollow, and you can hear it in every rushed explanatory paragraph and silently pleading “eh? eehhh?” “I know this doesn’t make sense, but I did this for you? That means it’s good, right???”

Going into the campaign’s post-mortem, I was weirdly anxious. But when I found out that Griffin had so many particulars planned basically from the get go, it became obvious to me why TAZ is so resonant.

Magnus has always been the designated fightboy, and he gets to be a dog trainer through his retirement. Because that was really important.

Merle’s faith is only shaken because it was truly for a Pan who was eaten but the hunger, and he’s always had it in him to be a good father. Because that was really honestly important.

Taako’s first joke and his “purpose for creation,” was always reliant on meeting Jaoquin. That was more important than I thought.

Lup has always been Taako’s forgotten sister, and she has always been trans. That was so so so important.

Barry, who in any other work would have been a stupid one off character, was always coming back, was always The Lover. Because that was really important to me.

Lucretia wasn’t ever the Bad Guy™. She was their family, and she was trying so hard to save everything. God, that was so important it makes me choke up.

Davenport wasn’t just a wink to a friend from mbmbam, he had a heartbreaking backstory that made rethink the entire podcast up until that point. That was so important it probably made every one of these thoughts possible.

There are countless tiny moments throughout TAZ that only work because they feel so honest to the narrative, and that the narrative is so empathetic and honest works so well because of this. They communicate the boundless joy in each new discovery, and let us feel all the fun and excitement of playing D&D with a family that you love, and that loves you. Griffin cared in each and every moment, even when he stumbled, even the ones that were hard. So did Justin. So did Travis. And so did Clint, especially Clint. (Especially Clint, Mr. Merlegarita-ville and K-12 Quest Fighters Summer Camp.) They put so much earnestness and kindness and creative joy in their work that it can’t help but be infectious. And when I listen to The Adventure Zone, I can’t help but feel like I’m warm, at home, with friends. 

Also, Boy Detective Angus McDonald is my hero and I want to be him when I grow up.