#its the spiral and the vast for me and yes that probably is as concerning as it sounds

[imabiscuitinthousandworlds]

Getting really into TMA is so funny because I feel like I've just been desensitised to everything. Was scrolling through the Fears to figure out which would probably claim me and like... disturbing but not all that scary, never really scared me too much, got over that, I just picked up a spider with my bare hands it's fine, that's been a constant since I was a kid and first heard about climate change, the scariest thing about this one is the fact that I relate too much and am still not scared, just feeling kinda understood, this one used to terrify me but by now it's morphed into a sort of comfort. I mean of course I still get afraid. But like. Not really like that I don't think. I'm just tired and stressed and not in a crushing Buried kind of way.

[imagine-lcorp]

Written In The Stars (One Shot)

Request

Hi! Can I request something like Lena falling in love with an alien reader?

A/N: Hey guys!!! First one shot of the year!!! Let’s hope we can keep the rhythm this time...also I broke my phone so I’ll probably be less active on the app...the writing is still going tho so yaaay! Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one and as always, let me know what you think! Love ya beautiful people! 

Lena Luthor x Alien!R//Word Count: 2,204 -------------------------------------------------------

When she was younger, Lena Luthor used to look at the night sky with infinite awe. The map of stars that hung above the Earth had been the place where she could find solace and a sense of peace. The stars were never alone, always needing one another to form their constellations. They reminded her she was also not alone even if it seemed like it.

However, as she grew up most of that wonder translated into scientific interest, which started to diminish as she found herself enthralled by more practical sciences. The sky, as vast as it was, was a mystery she recognized she couldn't unravel in her lifetime. She needed to focus on more earthly things, but she was content to be another curious viewer of such canvas of light.

Being a curious viewer, however, was something that changed abruptly when the existence of extraterrestrial life was proven by no other than Superman. Even more when it was known the Earth had been a refuge for many more aliens than it was possible to believe. The stars had reached the Earth, and they came bearing their own cosmic forms of life.

The population had been divided between those that accepted and welcomed the space travelers and those that rejected the idea, defending their right to their land and planet, fearful of an unstoppable invasion, living with the enemy and whatnot. For a while, Lena found the latter to be a matter of great concern. She wanted people to feel safe and believed they had the right to know who among them was or not an alien.

It wasn't until Kara came to knock that idea off, presenting her with an alternative story and reminding her that those aliens too had a right to their own freedom. She opened her eyes to the reality most of them lived. They were mmigrants of desolated planets, seeking shelter from wars and just like Superman, seeking a new home after their planets had been shattered. There were a few bad seeds, yes, but most of them were only looking for a better life. Wasn't that enough to give them a vote of confidence?

Her alien detection device was then transformed into an image inducer, a new gadget that helped aliens conceal their true appearance if they wished to look physically human. It was great to blend with the crowd, and it was a great success in the alien market.

"Miss Luthor, Kara Danvers is waiting for you in the conference room." Jess told her one day as she arrived to the office.

"Kara?" She found herself surprised by the sudden visit of the journalist. "Does she want another interview?"

"No, she has come along with someone else. She said she only needed a few minutes with you."

"Alright." Lena said leaving her purse on her desk and taking a couple of files from Jess to revise them later. "Let's see what it is."

Lena Luthor entered her conference room to find two figures chatting amicably at the room table. One she could recognize immediately, with her golden locks and bright smile, the other she had no idea who it was but as soon as your eyes were on her she was curious to find out.

"Lena!" Kara said rising from her chair, with you following suit. "Thank you for meeting us in such short notice. We promise not to take too much of your time."

"Kara, of course. How can I help?"

"Well, actually, I would like to introduce you to (Y/N) (Y/L/N)." At the mention of your name, you stepped forward, extending your hand to Lena. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Luthor."  

"Lena, please." She said taking your hand.

"Then, please, call me (Y/N)." You said with a firm grip and a kind smile, something rare for Lena to see during those days.

"(Y/N) is the leader of an alien race residing in National City." Kara continued with a proud stance.

"Is that so?" Lena replied with a raised eyebrow and the hint of a smirk on her lips. "Is (Y/N) your real name?"

Lena's words prompted a chuckle from you, and you decided to clarify before there were any misunderstandings.

"It's my chosen Earth name. I don't think you have enough tongues to be able to pronounce the real one." You said with a playful smile. "Also, I wouldn't go that far. I am what you would call a representative, and it is of a small group only. Miss Danvers here is just too kind."

"She is, indeed." Her smile only grew bigger as she saw Kara fail to conceal a little pout.

"Well, you're still a great representative." Kara said.

"But to what do I own the honor of you visit?" Lena said gesturing to you to take your seats again. Kara smiled at you and moved along with you towards your seats.

"Right." You said pulling a small box from your jacket. "I'm here to deliver this."

Lena took the little box from your extended palm, her curiosity growing as she inspected its contents. Inside she found a little black matte icosahedron, nothing extraordinary by the looks of it.

"What is this?" She finally asked.

"The alien community wanted to thank you for creating the image inducer. It has helped a lot of people, especially those of us that don't exactly fit into the human shape." You started to explain as she inspected it.

After the launch of her device, Lena recalled, the company had received countless letters and e-mails, most of them in gratitude for helping the aliens in National City as they were still fighting for acceptance within the human population. It helped them find jobs, housing and places to be without having to worry about their looks or if other people reacted negatively to them. It helped them feel safe.

Only then Lena understood the impact it had on other's peoples lives and how her work had helped them accomplish that.

"So this is a thank you gift." You moved your hand and placed a finger on one side of the icosahedron.

Lena was startled as the other sides of the new device in her hand started to open. Suddenly the room was filled with a clear colorful light, but it was more than that. It was lines and spheres and points and spirals well defined. It took her a moment to realize what it was but Lena found herself looking around the conference room with a fascination she thought she had long lost. As the conversation followed, you explained Lena the device in her hand was a space chart. It contained information about several planetary systems, their galaxies and stars, and common routes to reach them, you said as if it was nothing but a travel guide.

Lena turned her eyes towards you a few seconds later, ready to declare her own gratitude when she noticed your expression. You were staring at a far corner of the room, not with the usual distant look of a daydreamer or that of someone who has lost interest in the present moment. You were looking with intention and, more than that, with longing in your eyes.

"It's wonderful. Thank you." Lena finally said, pulling you out of your thoughts. You blinked a few times before the smile returned to your face.

"If you ever wish to know a bit more about what's out there, you can always consult it and if you need help navigating it, I'll be more than happy to help."

Lena thought about it for a moment more. While she had long ago left her intentions of unraveling the skies, she saw a chance within those stars. This was the opportunity she had been hoping to find in National City. If she could gain the trust of the alien community, she would be able to expand her work and better help not only them but the whole city. To help put the world back together instead of tearing it apart. She was more grateful then to you, for giving her that chance.

Besides, she thought, it was also a chance to fulfill her curiosity about you.

It wasn't long after that meeting that you were back at her office, teaching her how to use the space chart. Her attention bouncing from the lines of stars and planets to understanding the technology behind the device. While her studies on science and astronomy made it easy for her to identify the structure and functioning of the chart, and the several celestial bodies it showed, she still had to learn how to translate that into terms she knew and relearn the names people used to refer to their own planets and stars. You did your best trying to explain how both things worked, which she highly appreciated.

As days passed, Lena took a new liking to your teachings which turned into more personal reunions. You didn't limit yourself to talking just about stars or planets but about the different cultures that inhabited them. Mentions of your home planet became more regular and you even used it to contrast the big differences between Earth and the rest of worlds you had known. Lena was delighted to indulge in such conversations, taking in as much as it was possible.

The way you talked about your home planet, your country, if such concept even applied, your family, your house, everything, was enough for her to look at you with the same awe she used to look at the stars when she was younger. She knew she wouldn't get to know all the stars in the universe but just knowing you, she thought, made up for it all.

"The sunsets there were hours of golden light washing over the citadel, and the nights were, oh, the night was too beautiful with its waves of light across the sky." You told her one day as you both had finished one of your reunions.

You were leaning against Lena's balcony, both of you observing the sun go down behind the city skyline.

"You know, I don't think you have ever showed me where you're from." Lena said, crossing her arms and taking a step towards you, seizing the opportunity. You had showed Lena at least dozens of planets, especially those closest to Earth's solar system but yours, for everything you talked about it, somehow still remained a mystery.

Lena felt a slight pang in her chest as she saw the smile in your face turn sad.

"No, I suppose I haven't." You said and after a moment, where you seemed to ponder a few options, you moved your head, signaling Lena to follow you back inside her office.

You took the space chart from her desk, activating it and moving your hands again until the hologram in the room moved, showing a single planet in the center of the room. You took a few steps back and gestured to Lena to take a closer to look at it.

"Here it is."

The planet, surrounded by seven moons, was a very Jupiter look-a-like. Lena was instantly enthralled by the colors and the stripes, swirls and waves that formed the planet's atmosphere. The hologram displayed a name in a language Lena certainly didn't know and that made her wonder just how many tongues she would need to pronounce it correctly.

"It's beautiful." Lena said, still looking at it.

"It was." You replied, and she turned to look at you with a confused frown and a question clear in her face.  

You moved the chart once more, reducing the image to show the whole system your planet used to be a part of.

Lena saw other nine planets but only one caught her attention as its name was being displayed in an alphabet she actually recognized.

"Krypton." She whispered, eyes widening in shock.

Everyone already knew the story. How the almighty Kryptonians had traveled to Earth when their own planet had been destroyed. But no one, including her, had thought too much about what it had meant for the rest of their own little universe. Lena imagined it then, an explosion setting a chain reaction. Not only one but several worlds shattered, with their people trying to escape the path of destruction.

Lena's eyes landed on you once more, finally understanding the longing she had once seen in your own eyes. She also knew, in some way, what it was to lose your home. So she approached you, slowly taking your hand and muttering an apology, for whatever little comfort it could give you.

"It's alright." You said looking intently at her with a reassuring smile. "I found a new home."

"And I'm glad you found it here."

You made her feel at home, Lena thought and, as she smiled back at you, she thanked the stars for giving you both the chance to find a home along each other, and hopefully, one day, a home for you both.

[twitchesandstitches]

(Commission for @alt-hammer of a fantasy AU where Jade, a talented alchemist, has greated a boob expansion potion and refines it, gradually getting more enormously buxom as she and Dave get closer together.

This is set in, broadly, the same continuity as the godess terezi commission; some liberties were taken so, where there are differences, assume them to take place in their own micro continuities.)

----------

The town was an old one, near a vast forest that lay in the shadow of a temple consecrated to one of the old gods: the teal dragon goddess of mentality, rumored by some to be incarnate in the modern age. The era of magic and gods, though, was long behind them, and simply reverse engineering even a tiny shred of its power was a game-changer, especially for such a minor town.

Jade Harley, alchemist and adventurer, thought she had just about worked it out.

Okay, she thought, peering at a list of ingredients. Body expansion and modification. It used to be so much more common, in the old days. Did I figure it out?

I think I did.

She poured over the ingredient list, checking things off, and she was so busy in her work that she heard the bell over the door go ‘ding’.

“Yo-hoy, Jade?” Came the voice of Dave Strider, her best friend, with big quotation marks around the ‘friend’ bit. She smiled and stood up. Jade was a tall woman… a very tall woman, even bigger than some trolls, which was unusual for a human. She had a curvy frame, packed with power, and lately she had been thinking: not curvy enough.

And then, she’d heard stories about the old days. Ancients who had transformed their bodies in impossible ways, with nothing but their knowledge of magic. And she’d thought; if they did it, why not me?

Dave was waiting there. He was not a particularly tall man, or broad; he had the sort of wiry, vaguely feminine look that was quite popular these days, and paired well against Jade’s more voluptuous frame. She just looked big, especially next to him. Nevertheless, when he stood up, it was with a real sense of genuine strength and power that belied his seemingly frail look.

“You sure you wanna do this whole… thing?”

Jade indicated her chest. It was pretty ample, and again, especially for a human. But Jade had thought about records from the old days, that described people changing themselves to be… bigger. More buxom. And she had thought; if they’d done it, why not her? What was the missing keys to that kind of power?

Besides thousands of years of magical knowledge and infrastructure, she admitted. But they’d been learning, and she thought she might have rediscovered the key.

Jade wanted bigger boobs. She wanted really big boobs. It was a pretty silly thing to want, she would be the first to admit, but when she thought of herself, of the shape that Jade Harley ought to have, it was with boobs so big that they’d have to reshape the doorways when she left the house; pathway-clearing plows of a bustline, big and bouncy boobs so massive you could sit on them.

Or even bigger than that!

The default assumption that most men would have, in helping such a task, would be ‘yes please!’. Dave was surprisingly ambivalent; she had no doubt he’d be pleased by the results, but the actual experimenting was going to be an issue.

He worried a lot. About her in particular.

“I'm sure!” Jade put her hands on her hips. “I just… oh, I’ve been spending years on this, and I’m so close! I can practically taste it!”

“Right, right, cool. Passion project, I get that.” Dave patted her on the shoulder, the gesture completely reflective. He probably didn’t realize how intimate it felt.

Probably? Jade pondered that, for a while.

“Well, I got a map.” Dave laid it on a table; now they were free to plan, since no one came in after these hours. On the map was a chart of the most magically potent parts of the forest outside the town, where the most magically powerful ingredients… and monsters… were likely to be found. “I think these are the places we should start looking.”

“Right!”

For hours, they planned it out. The kinds of things they would need to hunt up, of course. The gear they would need to harvest things effectively, and explore the forest.

And the monsters they were likely to face, the mindless beasts generated by raw magical energies and attacking anything they perceived as intruders. Dave faltered a bit at the thought; not in fear, but he was looking at Jade as if thinking too hard about her getting struck by some beast’s claws.

He swallowed. “You sure you wanna do this? For… to get bigger boobs?”

Jade grinned. When you put it like that, the whole thing sounded silly, and she really didn’t mind that at all.

“Absolutely!” She insisted.

------

After that, Dave came in regularly, when he could.

At least once a week, in his official capacity as a courier. As much as possible when he was off work, or just playing schemes to pretend to be doing things on the clock, goofing off at her work place and racking up paid hours when deliveries slowed instead of doing paperwork. She was pretty sure that he definitely was not allowed to do that; his boss, Mister Slick, was a stickler for the letter of the rules for everyone if not himself, and he in turn answered to the chief courier, the Mendicant.

Jade had to consider that. She didn’t know the chief courier personally, but everyone knew of her; she was married to the mayor, who was something of a gremlin with a chip on his shoulder but a pretty relaxed attitude. The chief courier was a lot more strict, and probably wouldn’t approve of Dave doing that, so of course Jade kept the whole thing secret.

Dave had been scouting out the places they were going to hunt down; slaying a few monsters, scrounging up what he could for Jade to examine. It all worked out for her; monster flesh and bone, fungi and moss and roots all growing in places absolutely drenched in magic… it served her purposes perfectly.

She made her potions; not testing them on herself yet, though Jade tended towards the belief that a TRUE alchemist used themselves as a test subject before anyone else, but that was for a product proven to have the effect she wanted. Until then, she’d taken to quietly giving the uncertain batches to the cattle that grazed just outside her home, pouring it into their food when no one was looking. The cows, she was pleased to see, wound up moving unsteadily with obscenely massive udders so stuffed that they were propped up by them, and the consistency in it satisfied her.

Putting in magically charged milk, she determined, seemed to help. She imagined herself with such massive, swinging breasts and trilled with delight.

And they would need to go to magical places to find ingredients to make into potions; plants, fungi and the parts of monsters, all rich with magical energies. Alchemy was, as she explained it to Dave, the art of melting down magically potent substances and infusing them with arcane ‘aspects’ to effectively make liquid, drinkable spells. The trick was finding things powerful enough to infuse the solution, and for that…

Well, to the old forest, they’d both go.

-------

The days came and went. Experiments went by. Batches, failed and otherwise, were tested; the cows grew bigger and bigger, so much so that Zahhak dairy farming family found something of a glut of their product, and Jade jotted down their boasting or complaints under a list of things to bear in mind for the future batches.

Dave came and went. When he could reasonably swing it, playing off his ingredient hunts for Jade as part of his job; she paid him, at least, which generally satisfied Mister Slick, according to Dave. Jade did see the chief courier, glistening in the sun like a polished ivory statue, studying her shop as if looking for signs of slacking off, and she quietly told Dave the next time she saw him (complete with him bringing several baskets of mushrooms, roots and the occasional monster part) that they would have to probably save this for his free time.

So, in the end, they went together.

Deeper into the forest, where anyone had ever gone. Under the shadow of the ancient temple of the dragon goddess, where its primordial magic seeped into the trees, turning them and the crawling moss into living, teal crystals…

And where the monsters dwelled.

-------

And one day, they came back from there. Both of them bloodied, battered; panting with exhaustion and still trembling; with terror, at least for Jade, tinged with exhilaration. “That was amazing!” Jade said as they stumbled into her shop, her chest heaving and her travel robes hanging over her front like a mobile tent.

Dave put his sword down and flopped down onto a cot Jade kept around, in case he wanted to take a nap whenever he dropped by. “I warned ya, Jade. I warned you about the imps.”

Jade sat down on a chair, and it creaked under her considerable weight. She was simply too thick for most furniture; the legs were bending ominously, as she rocked back giggling to herself in a mix of post-adventure shock and genuine excitement. “The way they came out of nowhere! And the way you just cut them! Swoosh! Slash! That was so cool!”

“Am a little bit concerned with how easy you’re dealing with this.” Dave sat up. “You blasting them was pretty cool…”

Jade turned around. There was a lot of bouncing, possibly on purpose, and green spirals of magical energy swished around her. She’d cast so much magical energy that it was leaking out of, rising out with relatively small gestures, and it make her tingle all over; crackling like her blood was lightning and a sun beating in her chest-

She grabbed Dave and spun him right around, off his seat, and he squealed as she pulled him close to her in a tight not-quite-hug. She was too caught up in the exhilaration to realize it. “Let’s do that again!”

“Ye?” Dave said, lying on the floor now, red-faced and apparently losing the will to move on his own.

Jade was too full of vigor and excitement to stop now. She took one of the bundles of ingredients, plants and fungi and the harvested monster parts they’d been able to secure, and took them up to her work station.

Dave had time to recover, sitting up and recentering himself and not thinking constantly about the feeling of Jade’s body against his own (at least that’s what he would insist, later) as Jade took the things the ingredients they had found and prepared them for distilling. She chopped with knives, she crushed with a motorized pestle, and repeated this until she had a number of small chunks and fine dust. She placed that into a large flask she placed under a burner, but the flames she produced from it were a bright green.

It didn’t burn the chopped and crushed plants, meat and mushrooms. Instead it softened them, until they started dripping through a grate at the bottom of the flash. That became a fluid, propelled onwards through a series of tubes. There, other solutions and mystical fluids were dribbled into it; things to add in mystical formulas and spell-aspects, amplifying other aspects of the potion… negating the flavors and aspects of the substances they originally had been, purifying it into something completely divorced from its origins.

It eventually flowed, much thicker now, into a beaker. Jade poured a hint of something that looked a lot like milk, her magic flowing into it, supercharging it. A bit of milk to give it the right aspect for what she wanted. And a little bit of amplification, mixing with the raw power of the other ingredients...

And under the heat of the magical flame, which burned away solid matter and left behind only magical essence made fluid, Jade waited for it to finish.

She grew quiet, and intense. Dave, recovered by now, had long since learned to pick up on her moods and he knew she was getting very excited.

“I thought you didn’t use spells,” Dave said, to break the silence. “What was with all that… fwoosh?” He wiggled his hands, in the manner of the green fire he remembered Jade shooting all over the place.

“Fwoosh?” Jade said, absently.

“You were shooting attack spells and stuff.”

“Oh! I mean. I know how to do that kind of magic. Not so much in my job, but I know about the theory of magic in general. I couldn’t do alchemy right if I didn’t.”

“And the fire stuff?”

Jade giggled. “I always did wanna put that into practice!”

“Wait, you mean you’ve never fought until today?”

Jade, a woman who had turned a small part of the forest into a crater and probably infuriated the local spirits, looked bashful. “Did it show?!”

“...No. Not really.”

“Huh. Good to hear!” Jade suddenly shut off the flame, stirring it a few times; despite the constant heat, there was no sign that it was particularly hot. “This batch is done!”

Dave stood up. “You sure? I’d thought there’d be… more sparkles.”

“I might put something like that in a consumer batch; people expect sparkles, you know. But this is the testing phase!” Jade examined the potion, studying it. Her magical senses, and eye for detail, picked out things Dave couldn’t possibly have made out. Apparently satisfied, she put it up to her lips and started to tilt it up.

“Whoa!” Dave staggered forward, his stoic exterior cracking just this bit. “Is that safe?! Shouldn’t you test it on, i dunno, the cows?!” He gestured towards a herd visible right through the window, where the shop brushed up against a pasture (as the Zahhaks, as one of the older families, had the authority to simply build their homes into grassy places for the cattle to feed). A cow looked right through the window, hindquarters lifted right off the ground by an obscenely stuffed udder.

Jade lowered the flask, just for a moment. She briefly gave the cow a solemn look, her eyes wide and impatience seething from her; she looked at the cow with an expression all but screamed, to Dave: I want that.

She made a ‘tsk’ing noise, wiggling a finger scoldingly at Dave. “Oh, I’m sick of letting them have all the good stuff! I want that for me!” She grinned, wildly, and Dave knew that there was nothing he could do, short of slapping it out of her hand, to stop her, and he thought that it would be wrong to do that.

“If you’re sure…” Dave said, clearly dubious.

“I’ve never been MORE sure.”

And Jade tilted the potion up, and drained it in a single, powerful swig.

Dave winced, but didn’t argue.

She smiled, though, as her stomach briefly glowed green, the potion taking effect. “It’s nice that you worry, though.” She patted his hand, still upraised in protest, and impulsively, she kissed it.

His hand felt so warm against her lips; a heat flashed there, against her teeth and tongue, and down her neck. It lingered there in her chest, mixing with the magical energies and transformative vibes now swirling inside her. It felt so fine; a gentle euphoria rose inside her, and she couldn’t help but smile through an intense blush.

Green light swirled around her, and especially over her chest. On her breasts, swirling around them and outlining them, supercharging them with magical energies speaking of more and BIGGER, but brightest of all was her heart.

Dave felt the magic flowing from her, before any changes actually happened, and he took a step back; a little awed at what he felt flowing inside her, and maybe stunned by the kiss.

Later, he contemplated how and why he sensed anything. He wasn’t trained in magic; he knew the martial applications, the tricks to make yourself stronger and faster with the spiritual energy inside a person, or the energy around you, but he didn’t know how to use magic itself. Jade’s work was a mystery to him, and he was quietly impressed with people who did know how to bend magic more directly. The actual mechanics of how it was supposed to work was all a bit beyond him.

Nonetheless he felt it, right then. Right there.

Maybe, he theorized later, he’d learned to sense magical energy somewhere, in all the training to harness it. Flex a muscle hard enough, you learned to get a feel for when it was straining. A similar principle could apply, right?

In any case, he stumbled back, more and more, as Jade started to get bigger.

He was far from the only one to notice it, though; there were many people who’d worked out how to manipulate magic all over the town, or those who benefitted from thep precious and rare remaining bits of lore from older days. And some who were something else altogether.

Even people who didn’t live in town felt Jade growing: the professional spellcasters, the priestly high classes, and the hedge-mages learning it all on their own. Even those completely untutored, but sensitive to magic all the same, felt it. And those who knew their stuff felt it happen in intimate detail, like Miss Roxy Lalonde, probably the best student of magical theory in town, and she perked up at the sudden flare from Jade’s shop.

Karkat Vantas, living outside town in the old and long-abandoned manor, felt something even as he slept. His fiance, Terezi Pyrope, sat up and silently eased him back to sleep as she looked up. Her eyes were blind and felt very old, just like the ancient statues in the very temple Jade had walked in the shadows of. There were murals there… that looked just like Terezi Pyrope; as if those ancient sculptors had modeled them after her.

She tilted her head up, head craning and focusing right at the precise location of Jade.

She grinned. “Interesting~!” She said aloud, already making up her mind to pay Jade a visit as soon as she could.

People, intrigued or afraid or obnoxiously curious, gravitated towards Jade’s shop. The market outside her place broke up, the people in it drifting over to see what was going on. So, quite apart from Dave, Jade had an audience.

And in the shop itself, there was no blast of magic. No eye-searing pyrotechnics, as might be associated with a surge of magic so strong it made the cattle outside bounce and gush away in shock, or made Jade squeal with a mixed noise of joy and shock; she staggered back, as if her limbs suddenly were sapped of their strength, or something new flooding it and pushing out the old energy to make way for something fresh, strong and wild…

She gritted her teeth. They seemed longer, sharper; she took a step forward, and her legs kept shaking. No, wait. IT took a moment for Dave to realize, but they weren’t shaking.

They were getting wider.

Jade’s thighs slowly grew, leg muscles gradually bulking up and expanding outwards, a thick and appealing sheath of fat covering them. Not growing much past the knees, making them look surprisingly small past the thighs.

Her hips swayed and wiggled; first Jade just moved in an unconscious groove, and then it was a pattern of growth, and her hips expanded outwards in a smooth swell. Several inches added themselves on, and then about an extra foot of hip growth, to both sides. Jade stumbled as her thighs grew so big their sides were mashing together, and then made an embarrassed noise as her butt suddenly surged out, so bubbly and round that it was making the hem of her skirts rise up!

Her chest was still glowing, the focal point of all this. She dipped forward as they felt very heavy, her hands instinctively cupping her breasts. They wobbled at her touch, all on their own with indifference to gravity, and swelled. Jade made a squeaking noise of surprise, and then it melted into delight; waves of pleasure flooded into her from her chest. Oh! It had felt good, growing like this with her test batches, but nothing like this!

A cup size fluxed out, and then another, pushing at the fabric of her robes. Two more swelled out, pushing her palms down to support them, and they flowed out over her hands. They kept growing; bigger and bigger! The weight of them, rising with each sudden bouncy surge, was making Jade lean forwards, her breasts rising outwards. More than extra cup sizes, now, her breasts were almost doubled from what they’d been.

The magic surged and amplified her body, adding more mass, more flesh, more everything. Her breasts kept expanding, growing outwards, so heavy that she was bent nearly double, her robes straining out and pulling up from the weight. “Yyyeah!” Jade cheered, the delight coursing through her.

And the magic was slowly expended, totally absorbed and transmuted into more Jade. She breathed out as the growth slowed, a couple more inches adding on with each breath, and then it stopped altogether.

The sensation of power and pleasure alike faded from her. Dave gaped as she stood up to her full, imposing height; her breasts were huge, and Jade’s fingers gently traced their expansive outlines, the fabric stretched and almost translucent against her skin now.

Down, down her hands went, feeling her breasts. Much bigger than anticipated. She heard a distinctive sloshing noise, too, when she jiggled enough. Down, all the way past… goodness! Past her ribs, and then when she found the bottom of her breasts, they lay near her navel.

Almost two and a high feet high was each breast, she guessed. She shifted upright, and felt a very pleasurable bounce. Slung out by at least three feet, two, perhaps four!

She breathed in, hissing it out through a grin that was a little bit manic, and she said “Ohh, yes, this is definitely a success.” Now, she panted heavily. “Ooh…” She breathed in and out again, her newly expanded assets heaving with such weight she felt dragged forward. It felt like so much of her was in front of her now… it felt good. “That’s… that’s a fun sensation….”

Impulsively, Jade took Dave’s hand, her fingers squeezing gently around his palm. She smiled just a bit impishly, sharp teeth glinting behind her lips, and she felt Dave’s pulse quicken. His expression didn’t change, not one bit. Not a single muscle even twitched, and his expression was like stone. And Jade knew about stone, and a little bit about geology, and she knew enough that there was always a lot going on beneath mountains that looked all calm and steady, but on the inside?

They were exploding. And Dave could keep his face steady, but he couldn’t do much of anything about the hot blush coloring his cheeks.

Jade leaned in close and gave him a soft, brief kiss on the cheek.

Her breasts, so recently swelled by her potions, pressed against his chest. His body was thin but so firm, so strong; the ideal surface for her bustline to squsih against, and press out, the pulse of her heartbeat passing into his body. Against the plane of his chest, her own chest squashed deep, and she thought in a wild and romantic suddenness that it was like pressing her heart against his own.

She felt their breath twin, for a moment, and then his own stopped. She exhaled, gusting it against his chin, and she kissed him again in the cheek, in the same spot.

And finally Jade pulled away. Her breasts, bouncing freely in their sub-par restraint, wobbled heavily as she moved back, and it was completely on purpose.

Dave’s shades were slipping. The red glow beneath them was nearly visible. “Holy shit,” he said simply.

She realized he was staring, and she grinned, a little sheepishly and a little smugly. Pride welled up in her, at a job well done.

“Hey, I’m freaked out too, but watch the goddamn language,” a laconic voice said from the window.

Both Dave and Jade whirled around; towards the window.

Where what had to be at least a good third of the town was ogling her, and her new ‘features’.

The speaker was Dirk Strider; looking very much like a somewhat older version of Dave, a bit broader overall, his arms crossed over the window. Behind him was the Chief Courier, her porcelain-white shell glittering in the sunlight; she looked, as much as her face could be seen beneath the concealing uniforms she favored, a mix of amused and intrigued. Most people there seemed to have the same vibe.

Terezi was there too, looming over everyone else there, a big dragon-like troll with wings furled around her like a cape, and now she was grinning knowingly.

Jade instinctively covered herself, eyes wide, and she hurriedly thought: ‘What do I do!? What am I supposed to say?! Oh gosh they’re all looking at me!”

And then she thought: ‘Wait.

‘Isn’t this an opportunity?’

She stamped down the embarrassment and frustration at being watched, and declared, with a cheery tone, gesturing at herself, “So! Who might be interested in purchasing the next batch of my beauty elixirs, that’ll give you a body like this!?’

Her mortified feelings felt a bit dimmer at the glee of all the hands shooting straight up.

------

A couple weeks passed, after that.

There was a lot to do: adjust to her new body (oh, how doors were starting to be a problem! And clothes! She had to get them made special, or they’d pinch), going back with Dave to get the ingredients, preparing the next batches of potion for the rush of demand she was suddenly being met with…

Between the constant brewing, hunting down the ingredients from the most magically potent parts of the forests, needing to negotiate with the tailors, and all that, Jade had hardly any time with Dave.

That was a little sad, actually.

--------

But, as fortune would have it, he dropped in not long after that; he didn’t get to witness Jade testing more of her potions on herself, once she was satisfied with consistently bigger growth, and without Dave, she suspected her growth was being slowed. Warm feelings had something to do with it, she was sure.

“Dave!” Jade said, rushing over to him, nearly knocked over a couple people who were milling around her shop. Her breasts alone knocked a few people out of the way, and others quickly moved aside to get out of the way before they were bowled over.

Dave started to speak, but all the wind went right out of him as Jade lifted him clear off the ground, into a powerful and happy hug. “It’s been way too long!” Jade said happily, to some happy but muffled noises from Dave. He was pinned between her boobs, so it wasn’t surprising.

The other people in the shop awkwardly looked away, or giggled, or thought wistfully of envious thoughts for Dave’s position. Jane Crocker, a long-time friend of Jade’s, grinned at the pair, her own table slightly shifting weight from the pressure her potion-expanded breasts put on it; fully one side of it was covered by them, and she’d discreetly adjusted her coat to prevent any wardrobe malfunctions.

“Jade, help, need to breathe,” Dave managed to get out.

“Oops! Sorry!” Jade said. She dropped Dave, with a sheepish smile.

A voice cleared itself from behind her.

Jade turned around; the shop was fairly crowded now. But it had been, ever since she’d brought out her new line of potions. People had come to her all the time in any case; for potions of fertility or physical enhancement to strength and resistance, or giving big claws or aesthetic features like that; the occasional transformation for more height, or shrinking themselves a little bit. The healing potions had been quite popular, too. But her shop wasn’t built to have as many people as it did now waiting around, especially when after taking the potions they tended to hang around for a while, adjusting to their new bodies. Results still varied; some people got only a modest boost, while others grew as big as Jade had after months of careful experimenting and gradual growth (at least up to the first line of her bust enhancement potions, anyway). Jade remembered the kiss to Dave, and the warm feelings in her heart, and how much stronger the magic had felt then.

She was considering advertising them as best with mushy feelings.

The point was, Jade wasn’t very good at picking people out in the shop, since it wasn’t something she’d had to deal with until now. But now she realized that someone had come in with Jade.

Terezi Pyrope grinned; nearly twice as big as even Jade herself, looming over even the tallest people in town, she was a giantess among them, her body scaled in a way no troll normally was. A thick tail curled around her, and a great pair of wings flapped just enough to ensure that people steered clear of her. Jade found herself unconsciously ogling her; Terezi was big, enormously stacked on a scale equal to Jade herself, but somehow she felt… even bigger. The boobs were proportionately about the same as her own, but Terezi herself was so big that Jade could have used her breasts as exercise balls… or even cots!

Karkat was there, as he usually was; it was very rare to see one of them without the other. He hovered around her like an attendant, or a priest from old stories when the gods had walked the world, their clerics in tow. Jade had her own theories about that, given the sheer power radiating from Terezi…

But that was a thought for another time. Now she smiled. “You here on a professional level, or is this a friend visit?”

“A bit of both,” Terezi said. “You, uh, doing okay. You’ve been… going through some changes.”

Jade glanced down, and she felt aware of the eyes of others right on her expanded cleavage. She didn’t mind and laughed, privately cheering at all the attention on her hard work, with a great feeling of pride and confidence. “You could say that! But it was all on purpose so I don’t think it’s anything to be concerned about, you know.”

Terezi chuckled. “Yeah, I figured. See? And Karkat was all worried about it!”

Karkat scoffed. “Someone had to. And Dave wanted someone to say something!”

“Dude, noooo….” DAve said meekly.

Jade turned towards him, head tilted. “Oh? Was someone concerned?” She grinned.

“...Maybe.”

“Oh, you should just hear what he says all the time,” Karkat said loftily, with the air of someone dropping a relationship rock right into a crowded social event. “It’s mortifying.”

Jade giggled. “Oh? I hope you’re saying nice things about me!”

Dave looked about ready to melt. “I dunno what they're talking about,” he said, trying to find refuge in denial.

“It’s so sappy,” Terezi said in a stage whisper.

“Aw!” Jade kissed Dave on the cheek, right in front of everyone. He made a precious ‘Hr-RK!’ noise that made her giggle again.

Terezi giggled as Dave awkwardly shuffled away, finding a desk and trying to recover his dignity. “But, seriously. I was wanting to buy a couple of these potions, maybe.”

That was a surprise to Jade; as the thrill of teasing Dave faded, she looked up and saw just more of Terezi’s massive, vision-filling bustline. They were so big already! As big as her own! “You don’t think you’ve got enough already…?” Jade asked, cautiously.

Terezi snorted. “You can always go bigger. And that’s kinda funny, coming from someone who’s still sampling her own goods.”

“Hmph. I don’t know what THAT means.” Jade tried to cross her arms over her chest but her breasts had gotten too big for her to do so easily. And true to Terezi’s words, they were in fact bigger than they had been during the initial growth, during the public event that had gotten all this attention. They were starting to tip closer to her waistline; it wasn’t too MUCH bigger, a product of Jade carefully watering down the samples as she kept experimenting on herself, and downplayed by her heavy work robes, but it was still a fair point. At least half a foot outwards, if not too much deeper.

“Well, I dunno. Let’s give you a baseline to outdo, hrm?” Terezi grinned. “Say, how much ARE these potions?”

Jade listed a number. It was a comfortable price that wasn’t too expensive, but didn’t diminish the effort it took to get the resources to make them; she viewed peddling them as a public service, in some ways. Terezi tossed some coins her way, and Jade handed her one of the bubbling flasks.

Terezi immediately popped the cork off. “Oooh,” Karkat said, eyes wide and amazed, realizing what she meant. Terezi lolled her massive tongue out and picked up the flask with her tongue, popping it into her mouth and draining the whole elixir down her throat in a single, heavy draught. Her thick tongue probed the flask, looking for every drop.

“You might wanna get closer to Terezi,” Jade quietly told Karkat. “It, uh, helps the change.”

Karkat hugged Terezi’s thigh, his arms squeezing deep into her ample flesh. “What do you mean-” He started to say.

“Eep!” Terezi exclaimed, magic radiating from her body, tinged with that special flavor of affection; her hand drifted right towards Karkat, and Jade knew that was just the right thing. “That’s the key!’ she thought. ‘That’s how to get big!’

And perhaps just to prove her point, Terezi grew. A little bit taller, but not much; a few inches, maybe. Just as well, given she was already a giant. Her hips swelled out, packing on a few extra inches; perhaps a finger span wider on both sides, and she was already so massively curvy that there might have not been that much to grow. Her clothes creaked heavily, especially as her big butt filled out even more, a few people behind her making awed noises at the wealth of butt they must have seen pushing up from the fabric enclosure. Her tail swelled, getting a little rounder, a little bit more like an eel’s tail…

Her breasts, though, erupted. In a single fluid motion, they swelled outwards, fluxing out like a cup being filled with water. They billowed, the teardrop shape growing more pronounced; from her gut, down to her waist. Her breasts expanded, and sideways too, swelling out so much that Terezi’s broad shoulders couldn’t even be seen. Most of her formidable body shape, in fact, was obscured; just her big hips, her huge thighs, the tail and wings, and those massive boobs.

Fabric tore. Her gut forced her boobs apart as it settled down, her stomach rising through the cleavage, and her shirt started to fray under the impact.

It was the quickest growth, and a particularly dramatic one; it was over almost immediately, and Jade gawked when she just had to acknowledge the reality of Terezi’s bustiness.

“Hah!” Terezi thrust her breasts out, openly delighted. “Beat that!”

Jade huffed. “Oh, I will!”

Karkat goggled. “Okay oh wow that is BIG.

From the side, Terezi’s breasts stuck out at least several additional feet; she probably couldn’t gather them up even if she stuck her arms out and pulled as much of her boobs in as possible. And given how big she was, they were big enough to use as exercise balls, or to sleep with. And from Karkat’s size… they must have looked so massive.

Terezi was probably thinking about that. Still smiling, she picked up Karkat, ignoring his usual token protests at being manhandled, and stuffed him right into her cleavage. His head popped out, expression suddenly completely calm, and then she pushed him down, completely contained.

Her face looked so peaceful. “Ooh yeah. That’s the stuff.” She grinned at Dave and Jade, gawking at her. “Hope this gives you ideas, Jade. Buh-bye!” With that, she walked off, Karkat encased in her cleavage.

Dave watched her go. Even her back was hypnotic, butt swelling up like a pair of wagons attached to her. “Sure did a number on her,” he said weekly. “What do you think she meant by that, anyway?”

“I dunno,” Jade lied. She thought about being so big she could do that to Dave.. stuffing him so close to her…

Her shirt felt tighter. Her breasts wobbled all on their own, and suddenly surged  a few sizes bigger. Dave saw the growth. “Did-did you just grow? Without taking any potion?!”

“Ooh, that’s… new!” She wasn’t really thinking about it, though. She was still watching Terezi strut off, all sexy and big.

“You’re not worried? Huh. Neat, I guess.”

She wasn’t really listening, either. Privately, Jade felt a surge of… envy, she supposed. Not that wasn’t quite it. It wasn’t that she wanted what Terezi had now.

She wanted more than what Terezi had now; it was like a competition, in some way. Terezi had outdone her, for now. But… her eyes narrowed. She wouldn’t let herself stay outdone!

She glanced up at Terezi’s mammoth body, where Karkat peacefully resting between her breasts, and she thought that maybe she DID envy Terezi having a boyfriend she could fit into her boobs. She then looked at Dave with an appraising look that made him feel strangely snuggly.

------

It had been quite some time since Chahut and Konyyl had been in town. The pair of them spent a great deal of time traveling abroad, to the other scattered townships and city-states, trading where they could and gathering things to sell back home. To be honest, and they’d had to correct others on this point (Konyyl irritably, and Chahut with a gentleness belying the terrible violence she could perform), they didn’t do the actual trading. They were hired muscle, protecting the merchants from bandits, overly strict travel policies, and sometimes shaking down someone trying to weasel out of paying on a deal.

They enjoyed their work; the traveling, and the hitting things. Still, while they’d been very well paid for what they did, staying on constant work wasn’t as appealing as the thought of going home until the next trade season rolled around.

Chahut was a very tall woman, even among trolls, who were generally bigger than humans or carapacians. Konyyl was a big woman too, and the two of them had similar thick-set body types; Konyyl with more obvious musculature, but given that Chahut was nearly twice her size, she looked bigger in every way. The two of them normally had no trouble clearing the way, with size and dark charisma and sheer force of ‘don’t mess with me’.

‘Normally’ being the keyword.

“I don’t, uh, recall everyone being this big,” Konyyl said as they walked past a crowd. She stood head and shoulders over most others, her own head somewhere around Chahut’s elbow, but that wasn’t the kind of big she was concerned about. Two carapacians, a few trolls and a human tottering behind them all went past them, diverting around them like water around a stone, and each of them had breasts as big as prize-winning pumpkins; the smallest had breasts as big as their heads, and the largest… their torsos, and some of their stomachs, couldn’t even be seen behind a wall of cleavage.

In fact, just about everyone they saw was sporting a bustline that dwarfed the pair of them. Konyyl crossed her muscular arms over her chest self-consciously. It was making her feel… small.

“Me neither,” Chahut said eventually. She sounded diffident, calm. But then… was she? Her voice had a slight tone of uncertainty. She glanced down at herself. Chahut wasn’t exactly a proud beauty, and Konyyl supposed that Chahut had never regarded her amplitude as anything except a minor facet of her physical form, but still. This was concerning.

“Something must have happened while we were gone,” Konyyl said, looking very off-balanced. “Some kind of weird magical event… maybe a weather thing, loaded up with magic?”

“A boob-storm?” Chahut’s tone dripped with amusement. “Now there’s a weird image.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Like to see you explain what’s going on here!”

Chahut turned. Their latest employer was hurrying over to them, and she noticed something else that way. “A potion that makes boobs bigger got real popular, maybe?”

“Well, maybe.”

“Look, little beefy.” Chahut pointed, and Konyyl turned. Down that way, there was a small advert board; freshly painted, from the smell. It displayed a grinning Jade Harley (a familiar figure to the both of them, though they didn’t know her closely, but everyone bought from Jade; they’d spent a lot of time at her shop, taking deliveries for a trading run), her face squeezed into a corner. The rest of it was taken up by her breasts, flooding over the entire billboard; absurdly massive, they were, extending out by at least five feet! The style of the ad was fairly cutesy, as fit her tastes in artwork, but they looked big enough to dip to her thighs, so big she could sleep on them.

ON the ad, between the art-drawn Jade, there was a bottled potion. “Want a bustline like mine? Come down to Jade’s Alchemical Esoterica for all your bust expansion needs!” the ad’s text said, in a cheery green font.

“Konyyl! Chahut!” said their employer, a human, and pointed at the ad. “Did you see!?”

“Kind of hard not to,” Konyyl quipped. Chahut nodded gravely.

“Not that! I mean… whoa, that’s a hell of an eyecatcher… but no! I mean, Jade’s shop is that way! Have you seen her yet!?”

“No?” Konyyl tilted her head. “Why?”

“I just… look, I gotta get a group together. We’ll need to find a demonstrator, and a caravan equipped to transport potion goods… gods, we’ll make so much money! But, ah!” The human fretted, trying to balance too many things at once in the mind, and thrust two large pouches heavy with coinage at them. “Here! So I don’t forget! Your pay for this trip. I gotta go, just… you might wanna drop in at Jade’s?”

And then, the human ran off, so full of excitement that there was a little bit of hopping and dancing. The two troll women watched him go. “Well,” Konyyl said. “I don’t have anything else going on. Azdaja’s got a while before he meets up with me. What about you?”

“Eh, same here. Not the bit about Azdaja,” Chahut replied, with a wry tusk-filled grin. “Let’s check it out, eh?”

The two of them followed the path to Jade’s shop. As they went, they were struck that navigating the marketplace was a more tricky affair than they remembered it being; almost every woman there was obscenely buxom, occupying at least a couple of feet in front of them with enough boobage to produce scandals in some of the more prim places they’d been. Both trolls moved very carefully to avoid bumping into someone’s breasts, and considering how much of that there was, it was very hard going.

It seemed demand for whatever Jade was selling was dropping; there weren’t that many people there, though all of them tended towards the same buxom frame. The few exceptions were doing their best to fix that; as they entered, they heard Jade’s cheery voice: “And try to drain it down in a single gulp! It won’t do any good to save some for later, it’ll transform you just the same. Be sure to drink lots of water and have plenty of food, you’re gonna be hungry!”

There was Jade, standing in her shop, her back turned to the entrance. Konyyl and Chahut were momentarily stunned. Jade looked so… thick. Even more than she used to be, even more than Konyyl! (Though at least, Konyyl reflected, Jade didn’t quite have the muscle.) A fairly slim dress as vibrantly green as her namesake jewel, clinging tightly to a body that seemed to be a waterfall of slowly expanding curves; a broad and huggable torso, an expanding waistline straining the limits of a dress, with hips so broad that it must have been hard to get through a doorway. At least a couple feet across!

Her butt, plump and round enough that a very small caparacian could have sat on it with room to kick up their legs, waggled back and forth as she spoke. Quite a lot of her big, unbelievably wide thighs must have been taken up with that butt. Konyyl felt her mouth go a bit dry, just at the sight of it. Even Chahut seemed impressed.

Though she did seem to have other things on her mind. “What’s that she’s got in front of her?” She wondered, squinting.

“Not sure,” Konyyl said. Two objects spread out in front of Jade from their angle, taking up a lot of space directly in front of her. She shrugged. “Let’s go in and get some answers.” They both stepped in, the bell atop the door ringing. A few people saw them and greeted them; at the door, sitting on a chair and off-duty, was Dave, waving to the both of them.]

“Sup,” He said pleasantly. “Try not to let her mow ya down.”

He sounded like he was talking from experience. He grinned a little saying it, so it wasn't a bad experience, either. Konyyl didn’t get a chance to ask about it; Jade had started turning around when she heard the doorbell, and the prospective potion buyer had already left with their purchase, and both Konyyl and Chahut stopped cold, mouths open and thoughts empty, when they saw Jade from the front.

The advertisement had not exaggerated, in the slightest. Completely obscuring the front of Jade’s body was the biggest… widest… roundest…

Konyyl’s brain shut down, a little bit. Jade approached. The shutting down got worse. There was just so much… bouncing. And that dress! The cleavage deep enough for her to sink into! Over four feet deep! Cut down to the belly, rounder and firmer, and it was making her look so curvy, just like a fertility icon of the Dragon Goddess…

(Distantly, Terezi had a vague feeling that someone was referring to her, or at least her true nature. She shrugged and got on with what she was doing, which was beating Karkat in a game of strategy despite not even knowing the rules.)

It had been a while since Terezi’s big transformation. Jade had taken her challenge to heart; she’d been growing periodically on her own, but she’d boosted the effects with regular intakes of potion, and spending lots of time with Dave, whenever possible, and the effects were definitely knocking the two trolls about.

Even Chahut was completely lost for words. Well, most words. She managed to get out: “...Hi, Jade?”

“WHAT THE HECK,” Konyyl demanded. She flung her beefy arms out, gesturing at Jade. “We leave for like a few months and you’re all… all… everyone is all…” She inhaled. She let it out with a cry of “Big! WHY.”

Jade swept both trolls, taller than her, into a powerful hug. The both of them, by no means frail, made squeaking noises as Jade’s surprising strength shoved the remaining air right out, or perhaps that was the full weight of her monstrously huge boobs shoving into them. From throat to Jade’s legs they spanned her body, probably weighing more than she did. It had to be her own enormous strength that prevented them from being a physical hindrance, or some kind of wacky magic?

Jade parted from them, the pair still stunned. “So!” She said, a flirty tone in her words. Dave watched, grinning expectantly. “How do I look~?”

“You look… good,” Konyyl said weakly.

“Big,” Chahut agreed, and it was so very surreal to see her look so shaken.

Jade grinned. “You guys haven’t been in town a while. I bet everyone’s looking a little bigger than they used to, eh?”

Konyyl made the connection; the advertisement, Jade’s potions, Jade’s own size… “Was it… did you do a magic thing?”

Jade pulled out a basketful of potions that could have fit into her cleavage with ease. Given that she did a little twirl before bringing it out, it was entirely possible she’d been hiding it in her cleavage for such a dramatic moment. “I might have come up with a potion that does some boob embiggening, yeah!” She grinned wickedly, dangling one in front of them. Both women stared at it, sense of intrigue naked on their expressions. “What do you think? Might you be interested?”

“I might,” Chahut said.

Konyyl tugged out her coin purse. “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY, SEDUCTRESS!”

Jade giggled and passed their purchases as Chahut and Konyyl got a couple each. “Be sure to take them when you’re with someone that you’re close to, or at least makes you feel happy. Like a friend, or something romantic.” She looked at Dave for a moment, across the shop, and absently tapped a massive breast, as if to say ‘he is responsible for this’. “It, um. Seems to help make bigger growth.”

Chahut and Konyyl glanced at him, and then Jade. Chahut made a heart-shape with her fingers. Konyyl said, “You and him…? Is that a thing?”

Jade fluished. “Well, I dunno. Um.” Her confidence, so recently ironclad and as abundant as her bustline, faltered. “It might be?”

The two women chuckled at that, with the tone of someone who had suspected it was a thing for quite a while, and left. Well, Jade thought, People were going to assume it was a thing, the way they liked to talk!

She didn’t really mind the thought, though.

It felt… official.

-------

And then, a few weeks onward, and word spread: even faster and wider than Jade’s bustline, or the average growth rate in town. Word of Jade’s marvelous bust-enhancing potions, and the increases many people had reported in their physical strength.

Caravans had already left, loaded up with bust potion, to peddle them to distant lands. Already, people who’d heard of it from travelers bearing incredibly massive breasts had come there, and left with potions and mighty busts of their own. And they’d told people, who came and told others when they got back…

And word had spread, of this town with its genius alchemist who’d captured a little bit of the past and its faculty for body modification elixirs for fun and profit.

Now, people were coming to town every day, caravans of them, traders zeroing in on the town, and not just for the potion, but for the other goods the town offered.

So, feeling rather dazed, Jade found herself being handed a big trophy, and a hearty handshake from the mayor.

A small, impish figure (so similar to the imps that lurked outside town, in fact, that Jade felt bad when her excursions required fighting them), his black shell glistening in the light like a little playing piece in the kind of games Terezi liked to play. Jade felt enormously self conscious and smiled awkwardly as what must have been a good portion of the town sat expectedly in the auditorium, listening to his speech. Or what bits they could understand; the Mayor spoke exclusively in the private language of the carapacian people, and the Chief Courier translated hurriedly, as best she could. Judging from her winces and split-second word swaps, the Mayor’s actual words were probably fairly profane and coarse at best.

“...And so, for your breakthrough in aesthetic transfigurations bringing such trade to us, we have prospered as we never have before!” The chief courier said. “Food, valuable minerals, magical substances of every kind, and livestock are flooding in, and we are doing better than we ever had!’”

“I didn’t mean to start an economic revolution,” Jade said meekly. “I just thought people would find my invention cool…”

“Well, we’re getting filthy stinking rich,’” the courier said, her expression implying this was the nice translation. “‘So all’s good! In my book! Now, go on, take your… um… yeah, I can’t translate that.” The mayor scowled at her, and waved a hand at Jade.

Jade took the award, a heavy gold thing that would look very nice on a necklace, though it’d probably sink into her cleavage. “Oh, very well… thank you so much! I’m glad to be of service!”

She bowed to the enriched crowd as they applauded, but she tried not to bow too much. Her boobs had continued to grow and grow, and her experiments had finally died down a little in efficacy; regardless of what she put in them, she was only getting a little bit of growth, and she figured she had reached the peak of what her potion could reasonably do, for the present. Her breasts had reached the biggest size she could manage for now.

But what a size it was! Most of Jade’s body mass was now in her breasts, she wasn’t any skinnier or less thick (indeed, her hips had continued to grow, so much so that doorways were too skinny for her now; four feet across, and counting, with a butt sticking three feet out and just the right shape for Dave to sit on it), but if her weight was to be counted, so much of it was in her breasts that she thought of them as the core of herself now.

She wasn’t sure of the actual weight. The scales kept busting. But they were so large that their bottoms dipped down, down, all the way past her knees! Each breast was four feet height, and over eight feet across, obscuring almost her entire body when seen from a front, a size proportionately equaled by no one. The weight of them moving, when she did, was so divine; she felt such pleasure at every bounce and wiggle, a micro-burst of euphoria whenever it surged forward and dragged her along with it.

She glanced at the crowd; she saw Terezi, looming over it, grinning and wiggling her claws at her, and Karkat on her head like an excitable crown, mirroring her friendly gesture. Near them was Chahut and Konyyl, their own breasts as big as the most abundantly fertile gourds; at least down to the naval, and she felt proud in making such big and beautiful women even larger.

Again she thought: No one is as big as me! She felt proud, and more than the award she held, her own body felt like a testament to her willingness to experiment.

She glanced at Dave. He’d helped. Not just the stuff he’d gathered; just being there for her, and the feelings he brought out in her. That was part of it, she was sure. Every time she’d started to grow really big, he’d been there, making her feel big. A feeling in her heart, expanding out and her body growing to match…

It was wonderfully, obnoxiously sappy. She had to love it.

The Mayor followed her gaze, and misunderstanding her thoughts, spoke at length. “The mayor would like to thank Mister Dave Strider for his tireless efforts in helping Miss Harley… despite it being on work hours,” The chief courier added in a stern tone. The mayor nudged her as if to say ‘get on with it!’. “Oh, right. Anyway. Please step up to the podium?”

“What?” Dave stepped over, looking surprised. “What? Oh, come on. This is all Jade!”

“I couldn’t have done it without your help,” Jade said sincerely, gazing down at him, eyes half-lidded and warm.

He flustered in the light. “Don’t be sappy, come onnnn….”

“I mean it!” She thought of a way to convince him that, yes, she really was saying it to be honest, and a wild idea came in front of her. In front of all these people, though? Part of her qualed at the thought…

But another part of her, proud and reveling in having such a massive, buxom bustline, retorted: ‘If we’re gonna be shy now, what’s even the point of having such magnificent boobs!?”

Jade thus leaned forward, her breasts clearing the floor, and encircling Dave’s whole body; he was caught up in boob-age, enwrapped and captured, and he managed a squeak of alarm as Jade tilted her body up, bouncing him even deeper into her cleavage, his whole body imprisoned and his face closer to her own-

And she moved her face to his own, and kissed him firm, softly, right on the mouth.

Lip to lip, the kiss deepened, like a promise she hadn’t realized she’d made

Dave initially didn’t respond, in his shock. And then, to her delight, he deepened the kiss on his own, sincere and honest as she knew he really was afraid to be. She didn’t think about it being in front of so many people, but later she thought: this was the best way to do it. To prove she was serious, showing it on her big moment.

The mayor, blushing, said something like “oh my!” The chief courier goggled for a moment, and she glanced at the mayor, and considered buying a few potions from Jade later, on the quiet.

“What’s going on?!” Terezi asked impatiently, her senses not able to compensate for her blindness this once.

“Dave and Jade are hooking up, I think,” Karkat said laconically on her head. “She’s doing the kinda thing to him that you like to do to me.”

“Boob sandwich?!”

“Yep.”

“Hah! I knew she’d do that!”

Chahut whistled, very much impressed. Konyyl nudged Azdaja by boob-bumping him; as it was, he’d been sitting down in front of her, his horns and height just right for her to rest her new bustline on top of his head. “This give you any ideas, eh?” She asked, grinning wildly.

“Yeah but I think you beat me to them,” He replied calmly.

The kiss kept going on, as the audience took it in. Dave and Jade, together? The overall vibe was less surprise, or shock or scandal (the town being a fairly amiable place, after all), and more ‘oh so that finally happened’. Not surprising, given the general opinion of the pair.

“All right, all right!” The chief courier said, shushing the smooching pair. “That’s enough! On your own time, you two!”

Jade allowed her breasts to settle, and down Dave went. He gracefully slid through her cleavage and back onto the floor, and awkwardly stepped away. He remembered the heat of her body, blushing intensely. He rarely showed clear emotion, or expressed himself too openly…

But now, he was smiling.

Dirk and Hal, in the crowd, both cracked their own smiles at the sight. “There ya go, little bro,” Dirk said softly.

“You owe me money now,” Hal said gleefully. “And here you bet it’d be another half-year before they hooked up!”

Dirk rolled his eyes and passed the construct some coins. “It was a safe bet. Took them this long to hook up!”

The ceremony ended soon enough, after that. People filed out, one after another, some of them pausing to congratulate Jade again. Others went to congratulate Dave.

But soon enough, the two of them were alone. Dave had some trouble marshalling his thoughts, the feeling of Jade’s warmth everywhere around him so beguiling that it was easier to just lose himself in the memory, not in the now....

He did his best, though. “Hey, Jade?” Dave asked.

Jade, thinking about the lovely feeling of Dave’s whole body in her cleavage, pinned and safe there, his heart beating into her whole-breast pulse, made a soft murmuring sound. “Mm?”

“What do you think about, eh… going on a walk or something. When things quiet down, I mean.”

She smiled sweetly. “I’d like that.” She leaned to the side and kissed him again.

It was the kind of kiss a lover gives.

[robbyrobinson]

OWL HOUSE X CTHULHU MYTHOS: GOD AWAKEN (PT. XII)

The gang waited patiently for Hypnos to return with the Blight child. While waiting, Luz decided to relay the others on their plan.  

“Alright, so Amity and I will go to Earth in our astral bodies and when we find out where the book is, Eda will use this bell and bring us back.”  

Eda held the bell in her hand and rang it. “Why did you need Amity in particular to travel with you?”  

“I knew that Willow and Gus would be attending Hexside tomorrow, and I couldn’t bring them into this kind of situation,” Luz explained, “besides, if they notice I am gone, I am hoping that they’d protect our bodies when we are gone.”  

“I am still somewhat unsure about what we are trying to accomplish,” Lilith said, “Hypnos said that you needed to take these...drugs. How are we going to get them?”  

Eda flicked her hand. “Don’t worry, sis, I have the solution.”  

Eda walked out of the room and loud shuffling was heard. Some potion jars were dropped on the floor and exploded upon impact. The floor began to transform into different objects and shapes when Eda returned carrying a bottle in her hands.  

“Sister, that isn’t what I think it is,” Lilith started.

Eda grinned. “Yes, indeed, Lilith; apple blood from 40 years ago!”  

“Eda, why in the Titan’s name would you keep that bottle around for 40 years?” King asked.

“Pipe down, dog, I was actually considering saving this brew for Luz when she graduated Hexside, buuuut we could use this to help her travel.”  

Luz gagged on reflex. “I don’t know, Eda; what if that’s dangerous?”  

“Luz, how I see it, one of two things could happen: either this apple blood will send your soul out of your body so you can jump dimensions, or it could kill you.”  

Luz frowned. “Both options sound too risky.”  

“Maybe we can use a guinea pig for this experiment,” King suggested. “Hey, Hooty!”  

Hooty’s tube head popped into the room, startling Lilith. “Hoot! Hoot! Hey guys!!”  

King grimaced at the annoying voice coming from the house demon. “How would you like to play a game?”  

Hooty’s black eyes bulged excitedly. “Ooo, a game! What are we playing? Charades? Chess! Ooo, maybe we can see who can put the most worms in their mouths without swallowing!! Hoot! Hoot!!”  

“Shut up!” King yelled, his head throbbing, “we need you to drink this.”  

He took a mug and poured the apple blood into it. A dark red liquid dripped out of the bottle with a sickly nauseating plop. He placed the mug at Hooty’s invisible feet and waited his eyes growing more intense. Hooty shifted his tube body to smell the concoction. His feathers ruffled in disgust.

“That smells like a goblin soaked his socks in it for months!!”  

King nodded. “I know it smells bad, but we need you to drink it.”  

“Mmm...what’s in it for me?” Hooty asked.  

King scratched the boney part of his head for a moment. “If you do this, then...”  

Luz interjected. “We’ll listen to your stories for a whole week!”  

King turned to look at Luz with a hint of frustration on his face as if to criticize her for the suggestion. He turned back towards Hooty and forced his head to nod. “Eh...sure.”  

Hooty smiled. “A WHOLE WEEK!? You guys hardly ever listen to my stories; finally, I will have some acknowledgment, hoot! Hoot!”  

“Ugh, fine, whatever,” King said, “just drink it.”  

Hooty knelt his body down to look at the liquid in the mug. Along with the red tint that gave the beverage its name, there appeared to be green moss growing in it. “Ew...do I have to?”  

King flicked his fingers. Hooty sighed and closed his eyes so at the least he did not see what he was about to drink. The tip of his beak formed into a circular shape and he took a long swig of the concoction. King and the others felt their cheeks turning green.

“He’s...really doing it,” King observed, “I was kind of half-kidding when I said that we should test it on him.”  

Hooty finished the mug and looked up again at the others. He didn’t say anything to them.

“Uh...Hooty?” Luz said, “are you okay??”  

Hooty’s eyes widened and glimmered from seemingly glaring into the universe itself. Before they could say anything additional, Hooty fell to his side.  

“Oh cramity, I think we killed Hooty!” Luz said.  

Eda knelt down and placed two fingers close to Hooty’s mouth. “Naw, he’s still warm.”  

“If only he was dead,” King complained.

“Then that means the astral travel had worked?” Lilith asked.  

“Mmm...looks like it had.” Eda answered. “He’s probably already going down one of those wacko dimensions as we speak.”  

King poked Hooty with a stick. “He was the security system, though; are you sure we can handle things while he is gone?”  

“Of course, it’s just that we have to watch two girls’ bodies while they are traveling through the vastness of space.” Eda shrugged her shoulders. “It’s not that complicated.”  

Luz looked at the unconscious tube bird and then at the apple blood. “Well, Hooty’s a house demon, and I’m a human.”  

“Oh, that is true,” Eda said, “some drinks in our world might do unspeakably malicious things on your system.”  

“Knock, knock.”  

Hypnos came in carrying Amity on his back. “I got the girl!”  

“Amity!” Luz screamed.

Amity immediately blushed from hearing Luz’s voice.  

“Oh, Luz! Fancy meeting you here!”  

“I live here,” Luz pointed out.  

“Oh, right, you live here,” Amity giggled anxiously. “And I came here to see you.”  

Amity tensed up from Luz’s stare. “I spoke to much!”  

Hypnos rolled his eyes and sat Amity down. “You can have your infatuation moment later on.”  

“Amity, we need your help,” Luz said.  

Amity slammed her fist into her open palm. “Yes, who do I have to kill?”  

She scanned the room for a moment and saw that Lilith was sitting on the couch. “You wanted me to kill her?”  

Lilith held her hand out. “Woah, woah, I know it looks bad, but-”  

Without much prompt, Amity conjured up her Abomination and it towered over the older witch. “Abomination, kill!”  

Amity’s Abomination grabbed Lilith with his right hand and started to compress her with its large fingers. Lilith squirmed underneath the grip of the blobby monster to no avail.  

“Amity, wait, please!” Lilith yelled.  

“That’s what you get when you tried to kill my girl!” Amity yelled. She turned to look at Luz only now realizing what she had just said. “I-I mean my friend! No one tries to kill my friend.”  

Eda stood up and grabbed onto Amity’s hand. “As much as I can understand your anger, this isn’t why we called you.”  

Amity’s cheeks were red again this time from embarrassment. “Oh...sorry Lilith.”  

The Abomination dropped a traumatized Lilith on the couch. “So, why am I here?”  

They explained to Amity everything from Nyarlathotep’s return to the Boiling Isles, and how Emperor Belos was working alongside the dark god to enact the Day of Unity. Amity sat on the couch and quietly listened. Each passing moment, Amity felt a sense of dread overtake her. She looked down at her hands.

“All the times I used magic; you mean to tell me I was actually profiting off the sacrifices of different witches?”  

Luz nodded sadly. “I am sorry that you had to learn about the darker side of the Isles’ history.”  

“But if what you are saying is true, wouldn’t it make more sense to infiltrate the Emperor’s Coven and steal the portal door from Belos under his nose?” Amity asked.  

Hypnos wagged his finger. “Belos is far too powerful to take on at your state.” He walked over to a wall of the house. “You all would get slaughtered the moment you step foot in his kingdom.”  

“I guess that makes sense,” Amity said, “but...drinking this potent apple blood. Would it be too dangerous?”  

King pointed at Hooty’s lifeless body. “It worked for Hooty.”  

Amity frowned. “He looks dead.”  

“No, he’s not dead,” King assured her, “he still has a pulse, see?”  

He grabbed Hooty’s head and shook it in his hands. Amity’s fears were not comforted in the slightest. King tired himself out from shaking Hooty and unceremoniously dropped the head carelessly on the ground.  

“There is no other way,” Luz said, “there is only one portal key, and that is what Belos currently has in his possession.”  

“True, but...I am still worried,” Amity noted.  

Luz clutched her hand tenderly. “Don’t worry; I’ll be doing it with you.”  

Amity’s heart galloped quickly behind her ribs. Oh, sweet Titan, she was holding the hand of her crush. It was...soft, silky smooth like a baby’s bottom. Even though it was a mundane gesture, Amity felt that she was committing a grave sin. Her thoughts were spiraling out of control she couldn’t stand it. Dear Titan, give her strength.  

“Amity, are you okay?” Luz asked in concern.  

Amity quickly broke out of cloud nine still as red as ever. “I-I’m fine, Amity.”  

“But you’re Amity,” Luz pointed out.  

Sweat rolled down Amity’s forehead in beads along with some sweat accumulating onto Luz’s hand. “Oh, right, I am, aren’t I?”  

She giggled nervously hoping to at least get the others laughing to feel less awkward. When she was met with the dead eyes of the others, she stopped laughing. “Let’s just do it.”  

Outside of the owl house, the spy quietly listened and turned to return to Belos to report on what he had heard. As morning encroached on the Blight family, Odalia was already in the kitchen, having woken up earlier than the other members of her family.  

“And this time, serve us something that we’d actually want to eat,” Odalia said sternly to her maid.  

“As you wish, ma’am,” the maid groaned.  

Odalia withdrew one of her favorite mugs from the cabinet and started to prepare some apple blood for herself. While gathering the ingredients, she heard a slight knock at the front door. Odalia groaned in annoyance. “Who can that be at this hour?”  

She yelled for the maid to stop what she was doing and go to the door. She waited around a few minutes, but the same droning of the door echoed through the house. “Come on, what am I paying you for?”  

Odalia rubbed her chin. Oh, right, she wasn’t paying her in snails. She thought about waking up her husband, but she couldn’t remember hearing him snore or let alone hear him move around in his bed. Maybe the twins, but they would probably do something mischievous as they often do. Amity? She was still somewhat upset at her daughter’s scathing opposition of her demands so she was likely to continue to be on her rebel streak.

The knock at the door only further annoyed the Blight matriarch. “Alright, fine, I will do it.”  

She exited the kitchen and walked to the front door. “Yes, I am here; stop with your petulant, infernal knocking!”  

She opened the door and was surprised with what she was seeing. There stood one of the imperial guards of the Emperor. Odalia rubbed the tiredness out of her eyes out of fear of hallucinating the event. But it was very real. In the guard’s hand was a scroll.  

“Pray tell, why are you here at my house at this hour?”  

The imperial guard didn’t speak. Instead, the guard rolled out the scroll in front of her and read what was on it. “Miss Odalia Blight, the Emperor has requested an audience with you.”  

Odalia stepped back. “With...with me? Emperor Belos?”  

“Aye; now please come with me.”  

Emperor Belos was once again on his throne, passively waiting. His spy stood by the throne on the right side of it.  

“Yes, my lord,” the spy replied, “the human girl is planning on arriving to the Earth before you can claim the book.”  

Emperor Belos chuckled. He tentatively touched the scar on his mask that he received from his last encounter with the girl. “She is a very resourceful young lady, isn’t she?”  

“As you say, my lord; what is the purpose of the book if you do not mind me asking?”  

“It is an ancient book that was written thousands of years before I arrived to the Boiling Isles; it records many secrets and accesses to the dark arts. The book documents beings like the Titan and where they trekked and from where they will once again walk.”  

The spy was about to say something else, but he was interrupted by Kikimora.  

“We’ve retrieved her.”  

Emperor Belos nodded and held his staff in his hand bidding the spy to leave. The spy understood and began to walk out. Down the corridors, he caught a glimpse of Odalia. Both of their eyes locked on each other. Before Odalia could say something about the peculiar stranger, the spy turned away and fastened his pace. Odalia shrugged and subsequently shook out any iota of suspicion from her mind. Belos stood from his throne to glance at Nyarlathotep.  

“The deed is done, Master,” Belos said solemnly.  

“Very good indeed,” the Crawling Chaos replied. “Leave us.”  

As Belos turned to walk away, Nyarlathotep held out his staff. “I pray ask is your devotion still towards me?”  

Belos lightly pushed the staff aside. “Yes, Master; I would never betray you.”  

Nyarlathotep directly stared into Belos’ blue eyes for a few seconds and withdrew the staff. “Very well.”  

Belos left through the back of his throne, relieved that Nyarlathotep didn’t suspect the spear he had locked away. Nyarlathotep sat down in the place of the Emperor and waited.  

“Lord Belos, I’m he-”  

Odalia stumbled on her words. Instead of Belos, she was instead in the presence of some...swarthy man. And yet, something about the dark-skinned man was oddly enthralling. His chiseled appearance; the intensity of his eyes; he had colored strips of linen on his head. From what Odalia could speculate, he was without a doubt of royalty.  

“Welcome, Odalia, matriarch of the Blight family,” Nyarlathotep replied.  

He had a smooth-way of speaking, sometimes even deliberately prolonging the last letter of his words to burrow into Odalia’s mind.  

“Who are you?” Odalia finally asked.

“I am Nyarlathotep,” he replied, “I have risen from the blackness of twenty-seven centuries to deliver a message.”  

“What is it that you want with me?” Odalia inquired.  

“Why to join the Emperor’s Coven of course!” Nyarlathotep said extatically whilst raising his toned arms.  

Odalia couldn’t believe it. Joining the coven was always a lifelong dream of hers, but due to forces outside of her own, she was forced to leave it as it was: a dream. This was the exact reason she wanted Amity to try for the Emperor’s Coven when she became of age. But with Amity speaking a lot of insolence lately, Odalia realized that she could not live through her daughter, even if she forced her to dye her hair to match her own.  

“Well?” Nyarlathotep asked.  

Odalia fidgeted with her fingers. “It is a great honor, my lord, but I feel that my chances of officially joining it are slim.”  

Nyarlathotep tilted his head. “I am a representative of the Titan that you revere.”  

Odalia raised an eyebrow. “You are?”  

“The Titan has informed me that the Day of Unity is at hand: the gods have declared that there would come a new birth for the Boiling Isles, one where the weak are suppressed and extinguished from this land. The strong will rule this land and will never grow weary. Your lineage will be exalted above the heights of the clouds and will be a force to reckon with.”  

Odalia tapped her chin with her fingers. That sounded like a good deal; join the Emperor’s Coven and she would reap the benefits of it. “If I do this, I will make the Blight family name the greatest in the world?”  

Nyarlathotep sneered. “All of creation will know your name from the furthest parts of the galaxy to the fabric of reality itself.”  

“You have yourself a deal, Nyarlathotep,” Odalia smiled.  

Nyarlathotep took his finger and drew a circle. From the small portal, a book fell. The book opened itself up to reveal an empty page. Nyarlathotep took the pen fashioned from bone and motioned for Odalia to take it.  

“Your blood, please.”  

Odalia hesitated at first out of disgust that she would have to prick her finger and write her name in her own blood on some crummy old paper, but the promises that the Crawling Chaos promised her proved too powerful. She jabbed her finger with the bone with enough force that even Nyarlathotep was slightly taken aback by her decision. Her blood dripped through the page and onto the other pages.  

“Excellent work, Odalia,” Nyarlathotep proclaimed, “for enlisting, I will bestow you with this.”  

He produced a staff and placed it in her hand. “A staff.”  

Odalia looked at the staff with curiosity. “But I already have one at home.”  

“I know; but this staff, in particular, can collect magic, not just from your magic bile, but from any other source.”  

“Hm, that would be useful,” Odalia thought, “what shall you have me do?”  

Nyarlathotep turned her back into the hands of Emperor Belos and they walked down the empire. Through the doors, Belos stopped and talked to Odalia.  

“It is great that you are assisting in our cause; The Day of Unity is upon us.”  

They came upon a door that was locked away from the other rooms. Belos, with staff in hand, placed the tip of it on a sensor button. The door opened to allow the two in. Through the doors, Odalia saw more of the Emperor’s imperial guards walking to and fro on the stairways carrying heavy boxes. What struck her the most was the large machine in the middle of the bizarre laboratory.  

“What is that, my lord?” Odalia asked.  

“A gateway to other worlds,” Belos passively explained, “when the human girl came to rescue the Owl Lady, she tried to destroy the door that led to the Earth.”  

“So, you managed to salvage what was left of it?”  

“Very observative, Odalia,” Belos stated, “as we speak, the human and your daughter are going to go to Earth to acquire a book that I am after.”  

“Daughter?” Odalia repeated.  

The twins were still at home. She hadn’t heard anything from Amity when she had her talk with her which meant....her eyes doubled in size from the rationalization.  

“I told Amity to not associate with that rat,” Odalia lamented, “I apologize for her; if she did something treasonous...the family line then....”  

Belos held his hand out to silence her. “The Titan has told me that to stop the foolish human girl, you will lead a righteous crusade on the Earth.”  

Odalia bowed her head. “It is an honor to work with you in the name of the Titan.”  

Belos led her deeper into the laboratory. “As you know, the cost of treason against our way of life is petrification.”  

Odalia gulped deeply as a sign of her comprehending the cost of treason.  

“But you may not be aware of what becomes of the soul of the traitor, I assume?”  

He opened another door in the laboratory. The imperial guards were painstakingly melding together red scraps of metal to form rows of armor. A conveyor belt carried the scraps of metal to assemble them. At the top of the conveyor belt was a large vat. It contained a scorching hot, melted down liquid and tipped itself into tubes. The hot liquid flowed through a series of pipes to a slab of metal. The slabs of metal slammed together with great pressure.

The substance sizzled and cooled remaining that way for thirty seconds until the slabs drew themselves away. In the middle were more of the scraps of metal. Odalia’s eyes twinkled.  

“Armor? For what?”  

“For the crusade,” Belos explained, “but does something strike you as peculiar about the metal?”  

Odalia looked closely at the suits of armor unsure of what to expect. It soon became clear: armor that was being hammered into place moved about sluggishly. Each piece of metal that was hammered on made the armor jolt in excruciating pain. It was becoming crystal clear what Belos implicated with the armor: the armor was alive, and reacting in distress. The imperial guards picked and prodded at the armor suits forcing them into open boxes with their staffs laced with electrical wires.

Belos stood in front of one of the suits of armor and struck it.  

“When these former witches committed treason, their bodies were left behind, but as for their souls...they were incapable of escaping their fates. So...after giving it some consideration, I had tasked my servants with collecting pieces of the stone statues and mixing them with metal native to the Isles to create a sturdier metal.”  

“Then that means,” Odalia started.

“That is right; the souls of the executed witches were melted down to create the perfect metal for the perfect suits of armor.”  

The armor moved around in a method similar to how Abominations are maneuvered. However, it was apparent that they still retained enough of their senses to feel pain. Shrill screams seeped out from the helmets of the metal in forced fits of air. They wobbled on their feet yet could not go one minute without falling over. Black paste oozed out through cracks of the armor making it more unsightly. And yet the imperial guards cared not one bit about the suffering of the souls and resumed work on them. Any of the armor suits that failed to be fully operational were picked up by pulleys and dropped back into the vat to be melted down again so the process could start anew.

“And you need me to lead these...things?” Odalia asked Emperor Belos once again.

“Of course! But when your daughter goes to Earth, you won’t be able to see her without this.”  

One of his servants had a necklace on a small cushion. Belos thanked him for it and placed it around Odalia’s neck. “The necklace was crafted from a special type of salt that will make Amity and the human girl visible.”  

Odalia took the necklace in her hand and looked at it. “Very well; and how will I lead the armor?”  

“With the staff my master granted you, of course,” Belos responded, “you must collect enough magic in order to keep them under control.”  

More magic she thought. It could take forever to collect as much magic as she could, and the Day of Unity might already be over. While pondering, she shook her head deeply to Belos and turned to walk away. She was hoping for Nyarlathotep to give her advice on what she had to do, but he mysteriously disappeared without a trace.  

She returned home this time hearing someone else stir awake. Odalia tensed up instinctively and hid in the kitchen underneath the table. She held her breath hoping that she wouldn’t be found with the device. The staff glowed ominously sensing that magic was near.  

“Mom, is that you?”  

Odalia could recognize that voice as belonging to none other than her son Edric. It made some considerable sense because he would typically wake up at the time of day before his twin sister. Odalia was about to respond to him, but she saw that the staff was glowing a deeper shade. The thought crossed her mind: in order for her to control the armor suits, she needed magic. And lots of it. She did live in a house with four other residents...Belos didn’t say anything about where it had to come from.  

Odalia got up from the bottom of the table and tapped the top of the staff on its flat surface. “Yes, Edric, come in here.”  

Edric came in, hair disheveled and yawning deeply. He stretched his arms until there was a small, audible popping sound. “What’s going on?” He rubbed the tiredness from his eyes and caught a glimpse of the staff. “Oh, cool staff! Where did you get it?”  

Odalia did not respond to her son’s inquiries. Instead, she walked closer to him with the staff. Edric felt uncomfortable and tried to step back. This did not deter his mom, however. She held the staff’s head above Edric’s head. The spear glowed crimson red and began to “feed.”  

A vapor slipped out of the orifices of Edric’s face. They came together to create one green, thick puff of an amorphous, shapeless mass and was absorbed into the spear. Edric gagged and wobbled the more that the staff drew from him. He grabbed onto one of the chairs at the table to hold himself up whilst grasping at his throat with his other hand. The color in his skin began to fade away until nothing more than a paper-thin hue remained.  

“Mom, what are you doing?”  

He tried to reach towards his mother, but Odalia continued to hold the staff without issue. She stops draining Edric once he fell on the ground.  

“That might be enough for now,” Odalia said, “but to be sure, I will have to take you with me.”  

[mr-entj]

Hi Mr ENTJ, How do you deal with doubt? That gripping feeling that you're just not enough and you should be better? How do you look for answers from the inside rather than just patch in on from the outside? Thanks.

Related answers:

Can you talk about the quality(ies) or trait(s) that contributed most to your success?

What do you think is required from a person to succeed ?

Dealing with failure and overcoming adversity

You’re referring specifically to self-doubt. This is a great question that took me a long time to properly articulate a response because I didn’t want to dismiss it with a stereotypical: “I don’t feel self-doubt. I just fix the problem, power through it, and move on!” like every other ExTJ out there. I want to properly explain why this is the case so let me try:

I don’t often experience self-doubt or the gripping feeling that I’m not good enough, not because I’m a perfect human being (far from it-- here’s a greatest hits collection of some of my biggest failures), but because of my general approach to life that’s shaped by a few key beliefs.

1. I know where the world ends and where I begin

This means that I know where the line exists between what I want and what the world wants, between who I am and who other people want me to be, and between my expectations for my life and other people’s expectations of me. I see this boundary crystal clear and I enforce it. I set my own goals and I hold myself accountable to them.

This helps fight self-doubt because I don’t attach my self-esteem and self-worth to externally defined goals or assessments, I don’t accept unwanted input into my personal life from people who don’t matter, and I don’t compare myself to other people in destructive ways. If I compare myself to other people, it’s for the purposes of data gathering and not validation.

For example, the knowledge that most students graduate college in 4 years tells me that 4 years is the average amount of time. My key takeaway is that 3 years is above average speed and 4+ years is below average speed so I should aim to get my degree in approximately 4 years. My key takeaway is not that I’m a disastrous failure if I don’t graduate college in 4 years. And FYI, I ended up graduating in 6 years because I dropped out for 2 years and I still turned out fine.

Self-defined and self-enforced goals are critical to combating self-doubt because they mute all the outside noise; pushy parents, nosy friends, aggressive colleagues, and fickle societal standards. Life is very difficult by itself without the added complexity of multiple people pulling you in different directions that you don’t even want to go. Set clear boundaries and take the time to self-reflect what’s important to you so that you can be happy with the results of your efforts even if they don’t yield acknowledgement from anyone else.

tl;dr:

Find peace with the life you create for yourself because it’s you that has to live it.

2. I keep the big picture in mind, always

This means perspective. In the grand scheme of things, small losses here and there don’t amount to much because life is a marathon and not a sprint. This means that if you screw up today, there’s a high chance you can fix it tomorrow. If not, then know the world isn’t going to end because of it. The sun will still rise, babies will still be born, puppies will still be cute, your family will still love you, Tumblr will still be toxic, and the earth will still spin on its axis. I have failed classes, almost got held back in school, screwed up at work, infuriated important people, been rejected from 100+ jobs, lost important scholarships, and things still worked out because those failures didn’t matter in the long run even if they felt enormous at the time I was experiencing them. I know mistakes can be fixed, they’re not permanent, and they don’t sabotage the grand vision I have for my life. It makes the times I fall on my ass less painful which consequently makes me less fearful of trying to fly over and over again until I get it right.

This helps fight self-doubt because I attach failure to individual outcomes (actions) but I do not attach failure to me personally (identity).

For example, if I applied to Harvard University but got rejected, my interpretation of that outcome is this: “I failed to get into Harvard.” Yes, I failed to get into Harvard (action) but no, I am not a failure (identity).

The failure starts and stops at the end of an outcome, I don’t let it escape its container and infect other parts of my life by internalizing this kind of garbage: “I failed to get into Harvard so I’m dumb, I’m unworthy, and I suck.” This prevents self-doubt because I know failure is an isolated incident and I don’t take it personally. I don’t absorb failure as a personal identity-- I attach it to the specific event, action, or outcome and then store it in my vast library of knowledge as a lesson learned.

tl;dr:

Life is long and screwing up is part of the journey. Remember that you can fail at things (action) without being a failure (identity).

3. I accept that life is a game of probability

This means that I view life as a statistics game with events on a sliding scale between low probability of success and high probability of success. Probability of success is influenced by many variables such as my preparation, my natural abilities, the economy, my competition, timing, etc. I adjust the probability of success based on those variables to make better predictions:

I know that if my goal is to join the National Basketball Association (NBA), my probability of success is lower because my basketball skills and physical traits are below the average of a typical professional basketball player.

I know that if my goal is to get accepted to one of the best universities in the world, my probability of success is higher because my grades, test scores, and academic profile are above the average of a typical applicant.

Low probability of success doesn’t mean low effort. I don’t half-ass things that are unlikely to happen, I put high effort in all my endeavors if I really care about them and an obvious example of that is my life. Everything I’ve achieved in my life has been statistically improbable because I come from an underprivileged background where it was highly unlikely for me to have the life I have now. I beat the odds and achieved my goals anyway because I maximized my chances of success.

This perspective influences how I interpret success and failure:

Low probability of success that results in failure: “This outcome is what I expected so I’m not surprised, but at least I tried, gave it my best shot, and I know the answer. I’ll learn where I can improve and take that knowledge forward into the future.”

Low probability of success that results in success: “This outcome is not what I expected but I’m pleased it went my way. I understand this was an exception to the norm and I’m grateful it leaned in my favor.”

High probability of success that results in success: “This outcome is what I expected and I’m pleased it went my way. I need to continue doing the things that worked well and keep that knowledge for future reference.”

High probability of success that results in failure: “This outcome is not what I expected so I’m disappointed. I need to evaluate why I failed, understand how I can improve, and try again until I get it right.”

This helps fight self-doubt because it does one very crucial thing for me: it makes it impossible for me to lose.

I tell people all the time: “I’m undefeated because I’m still standing and I’m still going.” I can’t lose, I can only learn. It enables me to set realistic goals, have realistic expectations about my chances to achieve them, understand why I failed, and feel grateful when I succeed. Success is never guaranteed and failure is always accounted for in my calculations so I’m never blindsided. I know that I can be “perfect” and still fail, but I also know that I can be “imperfect” and still succeed. If I’ve done everything within my power and it’s still not going my way, then I’m not plagued with self-doubt because I can accept it was beyond my control and that it’s time to try something else.

tl;dr:

Many things in life are out of your control but try your best so you have peace of mind that you’re not quitting-- you’re moving on.

I’m not invincible, but for these reasons, it’s rare for me to feel self-doubt because I don’t view life as a game of “am I good enough or not?” I view life as a game of “what’s the best way to get what I want and did it work?” My two options are then: 1) Succeed, learn, and move on or 2) Fail, learn, and move on. There’s no third option to spiral into uncertainty and crippling self-doubt. I focus my energy on identifying the problem, the variables I can control, and the learnings from my outcomes.

In the rare times I do feel self-doubt, I go through a rigorous self-reflection exercise to identify the cause whether that’s concerns about personal decisions I’ve made, thoughts on my professional trajectory, or the state of my relationships. I identify the outcome that I want, gather information on how to secure that outcome, and give it my best shot. The result of that effort provides knowledge, wisdom, and opportunities to either 1) continue on the same path or 2) stop and try something else.

Ultimately, I always feel like there’s something wonderful in life waiting for me just around the corner and agonizing over past failures or self-doubt-- instead of getting up and trying again-- only delays me getting it.

[thebestestboyo]

How Remus Started Working For Patton: Part Four

Tw: Remus being Remus/Swearing/mention of snakes but only for a moment

Masterpost

"Wow, I expected an old warehouse, or perhaps even a shady bar. This is... hilarious." The remark didn't come from Remus, no, this time it came from Virgil.

The group had stopped outside of a quaint-looking bakery, the shimmery blue and yellow sign reading 'Down With The Pastryarchy.' Virg was right though, it didn't seem to fit the vibe of 'gangster.' At least not to Remus. It was cute though! As in how a poison dart frog was cute before you realized it could kill you!

"First of all, warehouse?? Who would set up there? That's just irresponsible! How would you even heat such a large area?? Secondly, have you been inside one? Its just so loud!" Dee stepped inside, letting the others follow.

"For your information, I have been inside a bar. Probably for different reasons than you, ya overgrown garden snake."

"Excuse me! I'm not always up to no good!"

"The news would say differently."

"Society has never portrayed those who work outside its crippling boundaries as good. As you probably don't know Mr. Gloom Sky."

Pat butted into the tussle, wagging a finger at both of the men. "Now now, there's no need to be throwing names around. Its not very sweet of you two."

Those in question turned to look at him, this bubble of sunshine, and at least had some decency to look ashamed. Virgil could at least understand why Demetrius had warned that Patton was a force to be reckoned with.

Remus in the meantime, was laughing. Wait. Why was he laughing???

"That was a good pun. You know, considering the setting?"

Smiling up at him, Pat squeezed his cheek playfully. "I didn't think you'd catch that!"

"Well, I had to cake a chance! It clearly paid off," God Patton was cute. Remus was about to rattle off several more puns before Virgil elbowed his side, cutting him off.

"Less flirting, more getting to the point."

Blushing furiously, Remus swatted at Virgil, both for elbowing him and eluding to potential romantic feelings between him and Patton. Seriously, not everything he said to Pat was flirting!

Ok he was kinda flirting.

Just a little though! He wasn't about to rush anything! Especially when he hadn't asked Patton how he felt on the anatomies of several creatures, and the different ways in which you could steal someone's eye! How would he know if Patton was good for him until then?

For the umpteenth time that morning, Remus's thoughts were cut off, this particular time by Dee. Butts on a fish, he needed to chose a different time for his internal monologues.

"Come then if you're so desperate to find out. The entrance is this way."

Opening a door labeled 'employees only,' he seemed to...descend? Wait what?

A sudden grip on his arm was the only warning before Pat pulled him and Virgil in after, giggling. "You guys will love it! We worked so hard on it!"

"I find that hard to believe..."

This time it was Remus who elbowed Virgil, afraid of him upsetting Patton. "I'm sure it will be great Pat Pie!"

Virg groaned at yet another pun, but let the two of them be dragged down the stairs. It was surprising how they managed to fit this spiral staircase so seamlessly into the bakery, no surprise why someone hadn't found out their base yet. It was hiding in plain sight as far as anyone could tell.

Dee, further up ahead, called back to them, his voice echoing from the tall ceiling needed to fit in the staircase. "Pat, remember the trick step. They don't know about it."

"Oh! Right. Guys, hop over this next one ok?"

"Why would we need to-" Virgil made his mistake of not heeding Dee's warning, being thrown back by the step sliding out from beneath him. "Motherfu-"

"-By the sounds of idiocy I assume he didn't listen." Dee turned back to them, clearly hiding a smile as Remus supported Virgil, only to have the step beneath HIM slide into the wall as well. Before Virgil could snap back at him, all the steps were pushed back into the wall, resulting in all three of them falling the short distance to the ground.

"Oh I like this." Chuckling, Remus helped Patton to his feet with a flourish, before pulling up Virgil as well.

"This is some tomb raider bullshit, I'm calling it out right now."

His smirk all too clear on his face, Dee gestured to a lever right next to where the stairs had been. "No, tomb raider bullshit as you so eloquently call it, would be this lever sending you into a pit of snakes."

Eyes wide, Remus could hardly contain his delight at the prospect. "Does it send us into a pit of snakes??"

"Unfortunately, no. Just into a pit. Snakes wouldn't live well down there, there's no source of food or heat for them to thermoregulate their body temperatures."

Patton turned to face him, voice full of concern as he reached for Remus's hand again. "Plus, what if we fell on them! The poor snakes might get hurt!"

"You are right...but think about how cool it would be!"

"But snakes!"

"Ok, what about...a tank full of jellyfish? They'd have water and the water would stop the jellyfish from getting hurt!" Remus was surprised that Patton so easily took his hand, but it made him feel all fuzzy inside, the good kind. It was very unlike when you got a mouth full of raccoon fur.

Don't...don't ask.

As the two debated the moral complications of jellyfish compared to snakes and eventually to electric eels, Virgil deadlocked his gaze on Demetrius. If glaring could kill, he would have been dead where he stood. Unluckily for Virgil, he just smirked back at him in turn, continuing to lead the group to wherever they seemed to be going. At this point, he couldn't tell.

God what he would do to wipe that stupid look off of his face. It was unfair. He couldn't be hot AND evil! That was just cruel!

And he still had his stupid jacket off, showing his stupid muscular arms, and his stupid face with it's stupid grin was just making the situation worse, and it was all STUPID.

"Take a picture punk. It'll last longer."

"I'm just waiting for you to finally show us this place you've been droning of for the past thirty minutes. It feels like I've been forced to follow you for hours already."

"Don't worry Dark and Stormy, we're already here."

With that, he opened a door into one of the biggest rooms they'd ever seen. Wasn't this underground?? How did it have such a high ceiling?

And it was filled with people who Virgil would normally avoid. They all had that look about them, like if you looked at them wrong, they'd fuck you up. These were the king of people Remus tended to piss off when he was drunk and made everyone in the nearby vicinity regret him doing so.

"We're back you punks!" Dee called out to the group, smiling? Of course he was smiling. He was a gangster.

"Hey welcome back boss! And hello Patton!"

"Who are these two?"

"Where ya been? Normally you're not out so early!"

"These guys new members?"

Honestly it was kinda a lot for Virgil. Remus on the other hand was thrilled about this. They all had something chaotic about them! One of them had a sword??? Who the fuck fights with a sword!? Another was carrying what looked like a jar of live bees? Remus didn't know!!!

"These are visitors. Don't rough them up too much. Patty likes them."

"Dee!" Pat's cheeks tinted pink, clearly embarrassed at being called out. He didn't let go of Remus's hand though like he thought he would, instead tucking himself into Ree's side. Holy fuck. He was using Remus to hide in?? That was a first for him.

"Sorry, this is Patton's...friend, and the friend of Patton's friend." Cheekily, he and Pat exchanged a glance that Ree was too slow to interpret. But it made Pat's face turn even more red, so Remus assumed it was an inside joke or something.

Virgil in the meantime seemed thrown off by how domestic the inside of the base seemed, and being honest, he couldn't blame him. They both assumed it was much less...pleasant? Was that the word? No, there had to be more more suitable for this odd situation....

Calm! It was calm. God Patton was making him feel dizzy from all the sudden affection or something, usually he was better at this!

Remus looked down at the smaller man now cuddling into his side, sighing softly and unclasping their hands to set the overcoat he had brought with him around his shoulders. "You cold or something Pat?" He was ignoring Dee's comment from before, as it clearly was rubbing Patton the wrong way.

"Oh! Um, yes, a little! Thank you." Both of them played into the white lie, brushing it off to make him feel more comfortable. But perhaps Patton wasn't hiding in Remus just from the embarrassment...

Virgil cleared his throat from behind them, reminding the two that Dee had been waiting for them still.

Pat still kept the coat around his shoulders nevertheless, as they all packed into Dee's office.

"So. Remus."

"And me." Virgil interjected, sitting on the arm of couch that faced Dee's desk.

"And Virgil. You're probably confused as to why I made Remus a member of the gang."

"Uh yeah dimwit, you really had to drag us this far just to tell us this?"

Pat frowned at him, going over to sit on the desk near Dee. "That's not particularly nice of you to say."

"Sorry Patton. But I'm serious. This could have gone a lot faster." Virg couldn't believe himself. He was apologizing to the co-leader of a gang?? Just because he gave off disappointed dad vibes did not mean that he was completely trustworthy.

"I thought it best to reveal my hand, so to speak. You do know that telling the authorities about us would be unwise, due to the vast amount of resources we have. It would be a pain to have to move locations and change identities after we've set up shop here."

"So...this is a threat."

"Not necessarily. It's an invitation. For Remus specifically. He doesn't have to participate in our business, I just thought he'd appreciate being able to freely talk with Patton, and being part of our association helps with that."

Remus was...a tad shocked at this news. He was put into a gang...to be able to flirt cause havoc with Patton?

As if he could read his thoughts, Dee waved a hand dismissively. "While normally this doesn't happen, I decided to make it an exception. Originally, you, Virgil, weren't a part of the plan, but as you are Remus's roommate, I wanted to cover my bases."

"Don't tell me you're gonna pierce my ear as well."

"I doubt I could even try without losing a finger. The only reason I did it to Remus was because I was in a hurry."

Pat swung his legs gently as they talked, looking over at Ree for his reaction. It was, intrigued to say the least, Remus seemed to be pretty open to most things. Was that a strength or a downfall of his? Patton couldn't tell. But he did enjoy the coat around his shoulders, smiling to himself as he tucked into it.

Maybe this one would work?

And maybe he'd make a new friend as well! Virgil seemed nice, if not a bit guarded. He supposed that was to be expected, it's not every day that you get told your friend (best friend?) is now a member of a gang that controls half the city.

The words between his brother and Virgil grew muddled, as Patton daydreamed what this meant. It was a little shocking for him to find Remus calling his attention, snapping his fingers from the spot he had taken next to Virgil.

It was enough to get Patton back into reality, and to hear that Dee was asking him a question. "Pat were you listening? I asked what you thought about Virgil being allowed in as well."

"Oh! Sorry Dee Dee, just caught up in some thoughts! Sure Virgil can come in, maybe he can try some of your baked goods!"

Pat had seen the way his brother kept looking at Virg, so he thought he'd...well, help him out a little. Even if it resulted currently in an embarrassed Dee in the meantime. Sorry!

"Wait were you the one to come up with the idea of having your super bad gang cover being a pastry shop??" Virgil grinned mischievously at this new information, and Patton could tell that it lessened the stigma about Dee, at least a little bit.

"Not completely! I just thought it might be a good cover, and Pat had already come up with the name! What was I supposed to do???"

"That's rich! The snake in the grass bakes?"

"Wha- no!!!"

Glancing back over to Remus, Pat was delighted to find him cackling at the chaos Pat had created.

Perhaps this would become their new normal? If it did, Pat definitely wouldn't mind.

-Just an author's note-

Sorry it took so long to finally get to this point! I wasn't expecting the buildup to last four chapters 😅There will certainly be more backstory and action as I write this, so I apologise for how slow it is

Thanks for sticking around through it though! I really appreciate it

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG172!

- I didn’t truly believe that we would encounter a Web domain so soon, since somehow I still pictured it as the very last thing standing between Jon&Martin and the Panopticon. It means that the domains that I was expecting to be the most “heavy” on the boys, the Lonely and the Web, are already behind us (we’re down to Hunt, Vast, Dark, Spiral, and Eye).

- The “thanks Alex” Fun™ Fact of the episode was that he used the sounds of spider mating calls in this one. Alex, why.

- With MAG170, this was amongst the most “empathetic” episodes of the season so far? Or at least as far as the Fears domains are concerned? It was closer to the way older statements were framed: it really felt like someone’s story, someone’s personal struggles and life, the horrible things happening to them. I’m a bit less fond of statements this season, overall, because they feel too voyeuristic (I know, that’s the point!), because it’s decontextualised people reduced to their fears and nothing more… but Francis’s story really felt heart-wrenching.

And it was an incredibly harsh episode, dealing with codifications, scripted situations, stage&audience conspiring against the “puppet” (the audience laughing at Francis’s misery), down to the audience call excluding the non-binary protagonist (“Ladies and gentlemen”), physical cruelty (the hooks, the spiders). I like how Francis’s “act” worked, both by highlighting that they had absolutely no chance of ever winning the play on their terms, since the Spider was deploying everything against them (physical restrains, pain, psychological torture and the voices of close ones for more pressure and impacts)… and yet, that we saw them still fiercely trying to reject what the Spider wanted, still able to tell that this was not what they wanted. It was also a good move that, in this one, Francis was a victim from start to finish: not pitted against others; the addiction wasn’t making them a danger for anyone else, it was first and foremost about them, what they wanted for themselves, how others’ casual cruelty was in the way and isolated them further, leaving them at the mercy of the Spider and its hooks. If there was someone “winning”, it was the Spider (managing to give birth to many others); all of this was solely for its benefit.

It seems to be part of The Web’s game to allow some resistance, to revel in internal conflicts, but it doesn’t remove the fact that Francis had been tortured for 48068 acts, and that they were still trying to reject it.

- We got a few interesting formats so far: The Stranger's poem (MAG165), The End’s Coroner’s report (MAG168), The Flesh’s botanical book (MAG171), and now The Web’s play (MAG172)… which was awful(ly clever), with the puppet/puppeteer’s dynamic.

Nothing new about The Web preying on vulnerable/isolated people, and especially people dealing with addiction, it’s been a reoccurring thing: Raymond Fielding had taken in kids that the system didn’t know how to handle (and nobody was suspecting anything when, as “legal adults”, they were disappearing); a Spider person had tried to get Trevor off her back by making old needs resurface; Annabelle’s first encounter with The Web, if she were to be believed, was through a victim who had suffered with drug addiction; there is a huge proportions of smoker characters in Web-related statements, and there is still Jon’s lighter and Jon starting to smoke again after he got it.

Same thing: nothing new about The Web having a knack for stories and the entertainment arts! We had two statements dealing with movies, Annabelle taunting Jon about having possibly lied during her own statements, Annabelle’s website searching for stories…

- WOW, did this domain come for Jon’s throat as the ~Apocalypse-bringer~

(MAG172) THE SPIDER: Oh, Francis… It’s such a shame, but I couldn’t do such a thing even if I wanted to! The man in the audience saw to that! [CHUCKLES] I am no more free than you are, little puppet. Ah! If only you could see the strings that bind me, that wind together as they pull me along my own path…! Perhaps then, you would not blame me so. But they are not the tripping threads that we are here to watch – no. So sit, Francis. It’s time…!

That gaslighting and self-victimisation from the monster who was pulling the strings and doing a show to generate more of itself (both fears and spiders). First time one directly referred to Jon’s presence, of course it would be a Web one, uh…

- There was an awful parallel between Francis’s story, the Spider forcing the consumption on them, and Jon… for the first time, getting stuck in a loop of stories as the next act was beginning. Is Jon reacting to the domain’s logic (since this one works on the long term, the accumulation, the fact that Francis knew that their torture would keep going and happen again and again)? Was it The Web purposefully trying to trap Jon here? Was Jon more susceptible to this domain given his own experience with The Web and his relying on statements? Would Jon even have been able to leave if Martin hadn’t been there to stop it…?

(Jon had already been vulnerable to the cabin, as he discovered in MAG162: the domains and the new reality can affect him. Jon had pointed out that The Eye didn’t want Jon to stay there; it’s not surprising, but incredibly bold to see that a Web domain tried to trap Beholding’s precious little Archivist…)

- Second time that Martin had to forcefully interrupt Jon mid-statement:

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: The photos on the wall of her family–”MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon! [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: “–whose faces seem indistinct but she knows–” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon! ARCHIVIST: “–that she loves, begin to blacken, as the glass–” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon! [COUGHS] ARCHIVIST: “–pops out of the frame.” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon, she’s here! ARCHIVIST: “Her home is being eaten alive by–” MARTIN: [CLOSER] Please come back! ARCHIVIST: “–this devouring Desolation–” MARTIN: JON! ARCHIVIST: “–and she–” [RESOUNDING SLAP] [STATIC FADES] MARTIN: She’s here! [COUGHS]

(MAG172) AUDIENCE (BACKGROUND): [LOUD CLAPS AND CHEERING] [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: “The tragedy of Francis. A comic puppet show in all acts. Act 48068.” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon? ARCHIVIST: “A stage that is a room that remains a stage.” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon, one is enough. ARCHIVIST: “The audien–” [RESOUNDING SLAP] [STATIC FADES] AUDIENCE (BACKGROUND): [CONSTANT MUFFLED LAUGHTERS] ARCHIVIST: Oh… Oh, wh–what? MARTIN: … Sorry. You were starting another and, I didn’t want to wait. We should get going.

And the trick definitely seems to be not being in Jon’s presence while he settles into statement-mode, or it prevents anyone from being able to interrupt? Martin wasn’t able to stop him during MAG167 (but that statement had been sneaky about its start), and he didn’t when they were in Jared’s garden either…

* Daisy listened to Jon reading two statements during season 4 (MAG133 and MAG136) and, although it was part of their deal that she would not interrupt, I wonder if she could have, back then? Jon had gotten interrupted a lot during season 1 and 2, but it was by people walking into his office while he had begun reading alone.

* … I’m still not sure that Basira could have stopped Jon in MAG141, when he forced Floyd to give his statement? Jon told her that she could have but hadn’t because she wanted to know too, but he was also, quite frankly, full of shit and trying to avoid his own responsibility with regards to his victims, back then.

* It’s interesting that Jon’s “statement bubble” is now constantly showing to muffle sounds from the exterior (/from an extra-diegetic level) when he’s giving the statement. The tape recorder only catches Martin’s voice muffled, far, as if behind another layer. But once Martin broke Jon out of it, the cheers, laughs and claps from the audience, which used to be very distinct and present, were the ones suddenly sounding far away (while Martin was on the same level as Jon). We’ve been told, again and again, that the tape recorders are not neutral, but I find quite interesting the fact that they’re “translating” the different levels around Jon in this way?

- On first listen, I had failed to understand that Martin was actually meant to stay around Jon – like in MAG171, and like he had done in MAG163 when they discovered Jon’s new need to pour out about the domains:

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: You probably want to wait outside. MARTIN: … Hum, no?! ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Well… Put your fingers in your ears then, I, I suppose. […] Martin…? [DRIP] Martin? [DRIP] Martin, I hate your tea, and wish you made coffee instead…! [DRIP] … Alright, then. […] End recording…! [CLEARS THROAT] [SHUFFLING] MARTIN: Mm? All done? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Yes. [EXHALE] MARTIN: Good.

(MAG164) ARCHIVIST: We’re fine. MARTIN: A–are we? I mean, that place is– … I don’t, I don’t feel fine, okay, and you were there a long time doing your… y–you–your guidebook, which, you know, I get it, but that place is… I–it’s–it’s infectious, and, I don’t–

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: You, uh… [SHUFFLING] You might want to take a bit of a walk. This… feels like a strange one… [LOUDER SCREAMS IN THE DISTANCE] MARTIN: What does “strange” mean, with something like this? ARCHIVIST: Don’t think you want to know…! MARTIN: Good point. Hum, o–kay, well, uh… Good luck, I’ll be… uh, o–over there! [BAG JOSTLING] [DEPARTING FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] … Right.

(MAG166) MARTIN: Do you need anything? ARCHIVIST: No. MARTIN: Fine, I’ll just… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] Ye–yeah, right. [BAG JOSTLING] [DEPARTING FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE]

(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: Now, if you’re quite done inciting me to murder? MARTIN: Not “murder”! Smiting. ARCHIVIST: [FOND SIGH] MARTIN: Right, yes, yes, of course. You… [INHALE] You vomit your horrors. [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: [REVULSED SOUND] Uh! I’m… not sure I like that metaphor…! MARTIN: “Puke your terrors”? ARCHIVIST: … Just go. MARTIN: Alright. Fine, I’m going. [BAG JOSTLING] [DEPARTING FOOTSTEPS]

(MAG170) MARTIN: Why am I here? I… I, I fell behind. I was, I was too slow, and, and, and the fog caught up, I was… I was following, al–always following, never leading; never leading. Why did he leave me behind? Di–did he? […] I thought you’d left me behind…! Gone on without me. ARCHIVIST: No, never…! N–never, I–I just… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] I, I didn’t want to… look too ha–, I–I–I promised I wouldn’t… know you, and, and with the fog in all–all the rooms, I’ll, I just, I lost y–, I… I–I’m sorry.

(MAG171) JARED: [LONG MEATY INHALE, EXHALE] Cheers for that! ARCHIVIST: … Don’t. MARTIN: Jon, are you… alright? ARCHIVIST: Yeah, hum… Sorry. MARTIN: No, it, it’s alright.

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: If you’re bored, you could always… take in a show. MARTIN: That’s… That’s not funny, Jon. ARCHIVIST: If you say so…! MARTIN: Just… [INHALE] Just give me a shout when you’re done, alright? [BAG JOSTLING] [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] ARCHIVIST: … Good. Right. […] MARTIN: … Sorry. You were starting another and, I didn’t want to wait. We should get going. ARCHIVIST: Y–you were listening, I… I–I–I thought that you– MARTIN: No, I… Not for most of it. I just thought I heard… something. Whatever. I went exploring, alright? I don’t know why; I shouldn’t have. […] Can we just go, please? ARCHIVIST: Of course, but… You were safe here. And after everything that’s already happened, I… I–I just don’t understand why you would– MARTIN: [SHAKEY] Me neither, okay! ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: I mean, that’s it, isn’t it?! I don’t know! I don’t know why I went exploring!

So they’ve truly learned from the Lonely house: Martin had to stay in MAG163 when they discovered Jon’s new predicament; then starting MAG164, Martin began to leave Jon alone for his statements, not keen to listen to them. In MAG170, they lost sight of each other in the house – since then, Martin has gone back to staying around Jon, trying to not listen (except, precisely, that Martin went wandering off in MAG172, which he wasn’t supposed to do, and came back… just in time when Jon was beginning a new cycle). Trials and errors.

- MMMMM, so this is the second time Martin did something, wasn’t exactly able to explain why he had done it, was questioned about it, and the matter was ultimately left hanging:

(MAG134) PETER: What does puzzle me, though, and I mean that genuinely, is… why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin, while Jon was in there. [PAUSE] It’s a question, Martin, it’s– it’s not an accusation. MARTIN: I don’t know. And I just… felt like it might help. He’s always recording, I thought… it–it might help him… find his way out. PETER: Interesting. Were you compelled? MARTIN: [SULLEN] … I don’t know. … M–maybe? I–I, I definitely wanted to do it… PETER: But? MARTIN: I’m… I’m not sure where the idea came from. PETER: You should watch out for that. Could be something dangerous. MARTIN: Sure.

(MAG172) MARTIN: No, I… Not for most of it. I just thought I heard… something. Whatever. I went exploring, alright? I don’t know why; I shouldn’t have. […] Can we just go, please? ARCHIVIST: Of course, but… You were safe here. And after everything that’s already happened, I… I–I just don’t understand why you would– MARTIN: [SHAKEY] Me neither, okay! ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: I mean, that’s it, isn’t it?! I don’t know! I don’t know why I went exploring! ARCHIVIST: Are you saying you were… compelled? MARTIN: I’m saying I don’t know, do I? I thought I was just curious, it felt like curiosity, but… given where we are, and with The Web everywhere, and Annabelle Cane still out there playing mind games with payphones, I just… [SIGH] I mean, how do you even know if it’s your motivation, you know? Being here… [SIGH] I–it just makes me second-guess all of it, and I… I don’t like it, it… really scares me.

Regarding Martin putting the tape recorders on the Coffin: Jonah didn’t claim it to be his doing in MAG160 (I thiiink that Peter was suspicious of Elias influencing Martin then, since he also checked that Elias wasn’t overstepping in MAG158…), so probs wasn’t him. Annabelle pointed out to Jon that she had sometimes helped “to keep you safe” in MAG147, I still feel like it was most likely her doing?

Two things were interesting here: that Martin began exploring, and that he came back just in time to stop Jon. The first one left Jon vulnerable, allowing him to potentially get trapped in the cycle of Francis’s Acts; the second one… allowed Martin to make him snap out of it just in time. Or the wandering may have “protected” Martin from being trapped in Jon’s statement, too, because he could have accidentally begun listening if he’d hung around?

(A bit afraid about the fact that, twice, it was shown that as long as Martin didn’t slap Jon out of a statement, he wouldn’t stop: it makes Jon and Martin both vulnerable to their surroundings if they’re not together. Jon gets trapped in the statement, while Martin’s main protection is still Jon… That sounds a bit like a weakness that could get used against them at some point? ;;)

- SOB about Martin mentioning he was (probably) motivated by “curiosity”, since it has been hammered in that… it isn’t a good thing for Beholding-touched people to indulge themselves too much, tends to cause their downfall, and has even allowed The Spider to sneak in and weave its Web:

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “When Gertrude was appointed to the role, there was a single survivor left in the Archives: a woman by the name of Fiona Law. Fiona was the most fascinating combination of curiosity and cowardice, pushing forward and forward into the unknown, until the very first moment of threat… crystallised. […] She had never got deep enough into the mysteries that plagued her to slake that burning curiosity. And she never would. […] But Emma had a sickness. As much as she might have despised the ageing Fiona, it was the same one that plagued her: curiosity. That desperate, grasping need to know. […] There was a fire to Sarah Carpenter, perhaps the one which led to Gertrude hiring her, and Emma’s curiosity ignited once again, this time keen to find out exactly what it would take to break this brave investigator of the unknown.”

No wonder Martin Is Feeling So Threatened Right Now, after having learned about Emma (Beholding assistant taken over by The Web… and become a master at deceiving her Archivist).

- Martin rejected the Lonely house, so does it mean that other domains will be trying to seduce him, now? It’s interesting that he reacted to the theatre in a way that was very similar to the house, which was supposed to be “his” (but wasn’t “anymore”):

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: We all have a domain here, Martin. The place that feeds us. MARTIN: Oh. [PAUSE] Where’s yours? ARCHIVIST: [MIRTHLESS CHUCKLE] I mean, we’re… traveling towards it. MARTIN: Oh! Right, obviously. [CHUCKLING] Duh. Hum… What about me? ARCHIVIST: … Would you… like me to… ? MARTIN: No, no. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.

(MAG170) MARTIN: Do I have a home? This, this place feels like it’s all… for me, I think, but I don’t… [CREAKING OF A DOOR] I don’t like it here. […] I feel like there’s somewhere I need to be, but… But no, no; this is my house, [CHUCKLE] where else would I need to be? […] You, you are Martin Blackwood; yes. You–you didn’t choose to be here. Jon is coming. I am Martin Blackwood, and I am not lonely anymore, I am not lonely anymore! […] Jon, it’s… okay. I promise it’s okay. This place tried, it really did, and honestly I… I wanted to believe it. But I didn’t. ARCHIVIST: This… “place”, i–it… [STATIC] My God…! MARTIN: Yeah… [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: M–Martin, if you… did; i–if you wanted to forget… a–all of it, stay here and just… escape. I… I would understand. […] I, I just… I wanted to make sure that you knew what this place was. MARTIN: It’s The Lonely, Jon. It’s me. ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Not anymore. MARTIN: Hm! No. [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] No…! Not anymore.

(MAG172) MARTIN: No, I… Not for most of it. I just thought I heard… something. Whatever. I went exploring, alright? I don’t know why; I shouldn’t have. […] ARCHIVIST: Are you saying you were… compelled? MARTIN: I’m saying I don’t know, do I? I thought I was just curious, it felt like curiosity, but… given where we are, and with The Web everywhere, and Annabelle Cane still out there playing mind games with payphones, I just… […] ARCHIVIST: Would you like to leave now? [BAG JOSTLING] AUDIENCE (BACKGROUND): [LAUGHS] MARTIN: … Yeah, screw this place. Never liked theatre anyway.

Interesting, too, that there are a few parallels right now with the situation in which Martin had initially encountered Peter in MAG108: while reading a theatre-related statement, isolated and scared. Even Jon’s way of describing The Lonely’s “seductiveness” was quite reminiscent of The Web (especially in Francis’s story):

(MAG150) ARCHIVIST: The Lonely is… possibly the most insidious of the powers, I believe. Certainly it is the one that… most delights in having you do its work for it. Even the Spiders seem to have a hard time matching it for sheer seductiveness. [HUFF] “Time to yourself”, “self-care”, “putting yourself forward”… “not being a burden on those you care about”… [PAUSE] It doesn’t even need to tell you any lies; just waits for the lies you tell yourself.

So… a few similarities in the way The Lonely and The Web are shown trying to seduce Martin? Martin seemed to reject the theatre, but it could do a Peter with him and go… persistent.

(So obligatory “this is how Web!Martin can still win”, and it’s never not a good time to remind myself of:

(MAG138) MARTIN: I think he wants me to join The Lonely. ELIAS: Then it sounds like you have a decision to make. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … What? [HUFF] That’s it? No, no monologue, no mindgames? You love manipulating people! ELIAS: That makes two of us. MARTIN: [HUFF]

(MAG158) MARTIN: Oh, I’m getting there, but if this is the final test or something? Then bad luck. The answer’s still “no”. [FOOTSTEPS] PETER: … No. No! This isn’t fair, do you have any idea what you’ve done? You knew, he must have– MARTIN: Elias– … Jonah had nothing to do with it. PETER: No! That’s not– You can’t– ELIAS: You’ve lost, Peter. Admit it. [CHUCKLE] He played you like a… like a cheap whistle. PETER: No! Shut up!

Because gnnnnnnnnnnniiiiiiiiiih.)

- It was a bit of a (pleasant) surprise that Jon&Martin didn’t meet Annabelle in the obligatory Web domain of their journey! But it makes us go back to the usual question: where is she, why is she not showing herself directly, what does she want, why can’t Jon see where she is?

(MAG172) MARTIN: Jon, what does The Web want? It’s… I mean, we know it’s got a plan, can’t you just… see what it is? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] “Knowing”, “seeing”… i–it’s not the same thing as… understanding. Every time I try to know what The Web’s plan is, if it can even be called a plan, I see… a hundred thousand events and causes and links, an impossibly intricate pattern of consequences and subtle nudges, but I–I can’t…! … I can’t hold them all in my head at the same time. There’s no way to see the “whole”, the, the point of it all. I can see all the details, but it doesn’t… provide… context or… intention. I suppose The Web doesn’t work in knowledge, not in the same way. MARTIN: … Oh. Right. [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: Sorry. MARTIN: … And Annabelle? ARCHIVIST: Still can’t see her. If it wasn’t for the phone call, I’d have said she was probably already dead…! MARTIN: Yeah… [SIGH]

Jon had trouble seeing when inside of Hill Top Road, back in MAG147 (though he blamed it on having recently encountered The Dark). Could she be there? On the other side of the crack? Waiting inside of the Panopticon/Institute? On the back of Jon’s head? Being many many spiders, as an avatar, and thus impossible to locate because she’s plural? Technically dead already, but having planned and foreseen how the phone call with Martin would go, leaving a pre-recorded message that would play exactly as needed? That makes a lot of people that Jon has trouble seeing in the new world, with Georgie&Melanie, Jonah…

- I’m still laughing a lot that the beginning of the episode felt very much like Jon asking for a bathroom break:

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: Ah… Hold up, I–I need to, uh… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] MARTIN: Now, seriously? We’re almost out of here. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I’m sorry…! Not really up to me…! MARTIN: Fine. [SIGH]

Martin: When are we getting to the Panopticon!! Can’t we take another direction or a shortcut? I don’t like these places. Jon: Can we stop for a bit? I really need a break!! Right now!!

Awful kids, do not go on vacation with them.

- Eeeeeeh that Jon&Martin’s tastes in media are so different!

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: Hm. Neil Lagorio… You ever see any of his work? DAISY: No. Not really into films. ARCHIVIST: Oh, they were… Well, let’s just say that it’s not a complete shock there was something unnatural to them. Didn’t know we had copies in the Institute, though; let alone original cuts. [CHUCKLE] Records indicate they [PAPERS RUSTLING] ended up in… Artefact Storage. DAISY: Probably best that they stay there. ARCHIVIST: … Yeah. Yes, of course.

(MAG165) MARTIN: Was it a good poem? ARCHIVIST: I don’t know! “No”? You’re the poetry expert, Martin, not me…! […] Then I don’t know what you mean, Martin, I’m not a poetry person, I don’t… “get it”. I never have. MARTIN: That’s… That’s fine, I understand…! ARCHIVIST: Look. I’m better than I was; I used to think all poetry was bad. MARTIN: Sorry, what?! ARCHIVIST: I mean, I just thought of… [SIGH] I sort of thought it was pointless! Just… write some prose and stop… wasting everyone’s time! MARTIN: Hm! What changed? ARCHIVIST: I don’t know, I just… mellowed on it, I suppose. MARTIN: That’s… kind of weird. ARCHIVIST: In my defence, there is a lot of bad poetry out there.

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: … Methinks the Spider doth protest too much…! [BAG JOSTLING] MARTIN: Jon. ARCHIVIST: Joking! Just joking.

(MAG172) MARTIN: … Yeah, screw this place. Never liked theatre anyway.

I hope that Theatre Kid Jon felt personally offended by that last one. (I’m really waiting for Martin to learn that Jon has been listening to The Archers.)

- It had been highlighted in season 3 that Martin didn’t really get Jon’s sense of humour. The archival staff overall had a general tendency to resort to dark/insensitive humour to cope with their situation, but ;; I side with Martin on how right now, it doesn’t feel relieving or reassuring that Jon makes small jokes about the horror befalling people:

(MAG171) ARCHIVIST: It takes a skilled gardener to get them to grow like this. The curling, cascading intricacies of collagen and marrow… it takes devotion. MARTIN: Jon. [FOOTSTEPS STOP] [WHIMPERS IN THE BACKGROUND] ARCHIVIST: … S–sorry. MARTIN: You sound like you think they’re beautiful. [FOOTSTEPS RESUME] ARCHIVIST: Don’t you? [SILENCE]

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: If you’re bored, you could always… take in a show. MARTIN: That’s… That’s not funny, Jon. ARCHIVIST: If you say so…! […] Ticket for one, then, I suppose.

… because we don’t really know if Jon wants to make them stop?

(“Ticket for one”, tho, was INCREDIBLE and very “jON.”)

- … When Jon told Martin to try to not focus too much on which part of his actions/decisions could be due to The Web:

(MAG172) MARTIN: I’m saying I don’t know, do I? I thought I was just curious, it felt like curiosity, but… given where we are, and with The Web everywhere, and Annabelle Cane still out there playing mind games with payphones, I just… [SIGH] I mean, how do you even know if it’s your motivation, you know? Being here… [SIGH] I–it just makes me second-guess all of it, and I… I don’t like it, it… really scares me. ARCHIVIST: I, uh… MARTIN: Oh, don’t say that’s what it wants, I know. ARCHIVIST: I, I wasn’t going to. […] Don’t do this to yourself, Martin. This is what it wants, the, the paranoia. [SIGH] Trust me, I, I know. MARTIN: … Fair.

… he indeed reaaaally knew from experience. MAG147 had visible effects on him, to the point that Melanie directly addressed it and Annabelle became a regular potential culprit in Jon’s mind alongside Peter and Elias:

(MAG147) ARCHIVIST: I’m sure the flares will work fine. … I mean, un–unless it’s all some… elaborate… plot… to have us… burn this place down again. BASIRA: So what if it is? ARCHIVIST: I don’t follow…? BASIRA: I mean. Anything we do could be part of the “Grand Master Plan”. So – what, we do nothing? Just… sit on our hands, and hope that’s not what the spiders want? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH]

(MAG150) ARCHIVIST: Melanie, could you… could you describe your therapist for me? MELANIE: [CHUCKLING] What? You think I wouldn’t notice if she had cobwebs down her face? ARCHIVIST: … No? […] It’s just… The Web can be subtle, you understand? MELANIE: And? For all you know, its plan is to paralyse you with indecision…! ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] MELANIE: Leaving you… sitting here, terrified that… everything you do is somehow all part of its Grand Plan… And who do you think that fear is gonna feed? ARCHIVIST: Yes, well. [INHALE] You are… not the first, to make that point.

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] This… tape was left on my desk. I don’t know by who, but to my mind there are… three options. Martin has left it here, to let me know that… whatever the situation is with Peter Lukas, it is entering its final act and he needs my help. Alternatively, Peter may have left it here to… goad me into action? Or just to gloat, to highlight my helplessness and everything. [SIGH] Or Annabelle Cane is trying to manipulate me into thinking it’s one of the other scenarios. Previously, the Spiders have made their presence clear when they’ve sent me… “hints”, but I can’t take that for granted. I don’t know what to do…!

(MAG158) ARCHIVIST: And I don’t keep any of them with the key to the tunnels. It’s been left for me. DAISY: And it says “Play me.” Kind of suspicious. BASIRA: So Elias left it? ARCHIVIST: Or Martin. O–or Peter, or… Annabelle!

(And we still don’t know who had left the tapes and Adelard’s last statement. Peter and Martin didn’t mention them, nor did Elias, which indeed leaves The Web for these ones…)

I love that since season 4, Martin’s answer tends to be “screw it, I hate this, bye”: with Peter and Elias’s live-divorce, with the Lonely house, now with The Web doing… something to him. Trying to call to him? To make him hear “the music”, as Simon’s allegory had described it?

- So Jon has trouble seeing ~the big picture~ of The Web:

(MAG172) MARTIN: Jon, what does The Web want? It’s… I mean, we know it’s got a plan, can’t you just… see what it is? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] “Knowing”, “seeing”… i–it’s not the same thing as… understanding. Every time I try to know what The Web’s plan is, if it can even be called a plan, I see… a hundred thousand events and causes and links, an impossibly intricate pattern of consequences and subtle nudges, but I–I can’t…! … I can’t hold them all in my head at the same time. There’s no way to see the “whole”, the, the point of it all. I can see all the details, but it doesn’t… provide… context or… intention. I suppose The Web doesn’t work in knowledge, not in the same way.

And how ~convenient~ that the Vast grandpa wasn’t dead by the time of season 4, and is probably Enjoying Sky Blue in a domain of his own:

(MAG151) SIMON: Peter, however, seems to think that it will upset the balance that we all have an awful lot invested in. And he’s not at all certain the world as we understand will come out the other side. MARTIN: And let me guess – you think he can’t see the “big picture”? SIMON: [INHALE] I see why he likes you! MARTIN: [SIGH] SIMON: It’s all a matter of perspective, you see. My patron has gifted me with… quite frankly, an absurdly long life. An appropriate gift, and one that serves to provide a certain distance from things. Of course, a paltry few centuries is nothing, really, but it’s more than most get. And even in that brief time, I’ve seen all sorts of ebbs and flows to balance off things.

We’ve yet to cross a Vast domain, Jon said he REALLY didn’t want to meet Simon ever, Simon was incredibly smitten with Martin… there is still hope for Meeting-Simon-in-the-Vast-domain.

(- Sounds like Jon remembers Helen’s point about “knowing” and “understanding” being two different things (with Jon adding “seeing”):

(MAG164) HELEN: And please: my name is “Helen”. ARCHIVIST: Like you said, I can know everything now. Including how much of a lie that really is. HELEN: Don’t mistake “complication” for “falsehood”, dear Archivist. ARCHIVIST: [AGGRAVATED EXHALE] HELEN: And remember, that knowledge is not the same thing as understanding.

And now I’m remembering that The Distortion used to be curious about the house on Hill Top Road, but not really able to tell what The Spider was doing there… Did Helen get her answers in season 4?)

- Oufft re: Martin&Jon’s discussion:

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: I was going to suggest that… I could… maybe… “know”. I could look. Just a quick peek, to, to see if it was just curiosity, or… something else. … Well? MARTIN: I don’t… If you look, and I was… “influenced”, then how can I trust anything else? How can I believe any of my thoughts and feelings are really mine? ARCHIVIST: U–uh, well… I–I–I’ll still be here to check, I–I’m not leaving you. MARTIN: Sure, but you’d be looking through the details of everything that ever crosses my mind? I don’t want that! Y–you know I don’t want that. ARCHIVIST: … I know. […] So… Do you want me to? To, to tell you if…? MARTIN: No. [SIGH] No, I’ll just have to live with it, I guess. Hardly the worst thing I’ll have gone through since– … I, hum. I–it’s fine. [SIGH]

I really liked how it absolutely didn’t feel like an argument (and wasn’t one!): Martin has objections, has the power to make a decision, and gets the last word… since it primarily involves himself. I appreciate that Martin was able to tell the main flaw of Jon’s offer – knowing what is happening could provide a temporary relief… but wouldn’t offer a sustainable existence for him (if The Web isn’t trying to manipulate Martin now, it doesn’t mean that it won’t try later, which means that Jon would have to check regularly; and if Martin is under influence… indeed, Martin couldn’t trust himself anymore, and depending on Jon’s power to check everything would turn Martin’s existence into a half-life. And it would still feed The Web in the process). Kudos to Jon for his restraint, too, because given his insistence, he’s probably curious/afraid about it, but he hasn’t broken his promise of avoiding to “know” about Martin and he laid out Martin’s options, leaving the decision to him. On that front, they’re doing fine!

  Title for MAG173 very much screams “Dark, duh?!” but it feels very easy, so is it a trap. I could see the link if it were Vast or Hunt, too, but really, it just screams Dark. … And it could work for a character death episode, but I feel like every title can read like a character death episode one way or another. (Worried about Daisyyyy…)

[summahsunlight]

This Way Became My Journey, CH. 15

Two weeks after Voyager is taken from the Alpha Quadrant...

Tom Paris stumbled on his way out of the holodeck thanks to a horribly placed vending cart in Rome circa 1920. Things hadn't gone according to plan, hell they never seemed to go according to plan for him. Perhaps he should have told Harry the truth from the beginning, but Harry wouldn't have ventured down to the holodeck if he had told him the truth. So he had told a little white lie, what was the harm in that?

Apparently a lot because Harry was stalking off down the corridor to the turbolift. "Harry, wait up!"

Harry Kim shook his head. "No way, Tom. "

"Aw, come on Harry, I've been smoothing out the details for this date for days now! You can't leave me in the dust like this!"

"Oh yes I can," Harry snapped, pressing the button to call for the lift.

Tom caught up with him as the lift opened and pressed the button to send it on its way before Harry could step inside. His friend turned to glare at him. "It's the Delaney sisters, Harry, they come as a package. It's a double date or no date, Harry."

"I never agreed to a date of any kind."

"Sure you did," Tom replied. "Last night."

A blank expression passed over Harry's face. He couldn't recall ever have such a conversation. Of course, he was so tired last night he probably would have agreed to jumping out of an airlock. "I never agreed to any date last night. We ate dinner with Lieutenant Barrett, who told me to enjoy some recreational time while she was away to quell my homesickness. There was never anything about a date in that conversation Tom."

Tom grinned mercelessly. "Well, dates are recreational. You're following counselor's orders."

"She didn't order me. She suggested recreational activities," Harry fumed. "Why am I arguing with you on this? I have a girlfriend back home, I don't need to go on any dates."

"Harry, Harry, Harry, you honestly think she's going to wait for you?"

"Yes!" He exclaimed quickly.

"That's rather selfish of you, don't you think?"

"Look who's telling me about being selfish," Harry hissed. "It was rather selfish of you to think I'd go on this date so you can get with Meghan Delaney."

Tom shrugged his shoulders. "Alright, it was rather selfish of me, but you are my best friend Harry, who else would I ask to go on a double date with me?" He looked innocently at his friend. Harry rolled his eyes doing his best imitation of Sarah Barrett when Tom got this way. "Can I help it if I thought I was helping my best friend out?"

Harry grunted. "Helping me out with what?"

"Moving on!"

"Tom, we've only been out here two weeks, you think Libby's moved on that quickly?"

"Well of course not," Tom retorted, "but she's going to, eventually, Harry. You know it."

He did know it but he didn't want to acknowledge it. He wasn't ready to accept that Libby was going to move on without him, that she was going to think that he was dead. It seemed rather unfair to be so far away from home and going out on a double date with Tom when Libby was probably grieving for his loss back on Earth. Why should he be happy when he knew that his loved ones were not? Tom on the other hand didn't have this dilemma. He could care less about his family and had no girlfriend back home. Girlfriends just weren't Tom Paris' style. Harry wondered how long the chase of the Delaney sister's was going to last. He opened his mouth to speak, but no word came out.

Tom grabbed him by the arm. "Now come on, they're waiting for us and I only have forty five minutes left of holodeck time saved up."

Harry allowed Tom to pull him all the way back to holodeck, the whole time awestruck that he had every intent on not going back there but Paris found some way to drag him along. Every time, he thought as they entered the holodeck, he gets me every time with the moving on and selfish of me to think she'll wait bit. But even as he was dragged towards the candlelit table, with a very smiling Jenny Delaney, he wondered just how much trouble Tom had really gotten him into. It's going to be a long night.

The constant thrumming of the engines was soothing to him as the tiny shuttlecraft cruised along to the home world of the Karvaians. Voyager had made first contact with one of their scout ships two days before and the Captain wanted to immediately send out a diplomatic party to speak with them. The first officer had been given the mission, taken a shuttle, and departed from Voyager. Chakotay had always found that piloting a ship manually was a good source of therapy and relaxation, better than sitting in a chair and talking to a psychologist for hours on end. Maybe that was why he was having trouble getting to know Sarah Barrett.

It wasn't that he didn't like her; she was a bright young woman with a strong personality. However, she was a psychologist and whenever he opened his mouth to speak he wondered if she was taking silent notes about his mental state. It was this reason, that he was uncomfortable around her, that he believed Captain Janeway had sent them on the mission together. She was hoping that the time alone would help them work up a little bit of a rapport aside from the first officer/counselor relationship. Well, it was proving to be hard to do just that since Barrett was barely speaking to him. She had helped him with preflight and everything else that Starfleet protocol demanded of her, but once they were well on their way she had barricaded her self so to speak in the aft cabin of the shuttle, reading over PADDs.

Her eyes were narrowed, reading over the material vigorously, as if she felt that she didn't have enough time to read through it all. He recalled her concern for Neelix not being allowed on this mission, but Janeway had not felt comfortable allowing the Talaxian on another away mission just yet, not after what had happened on Ocampa with Neelix deceiving them to help rescue Kes. So, instead, Sarah had been handed stacks of PADDs on the data that Neelix had on the Karvaians right before they left.

He had been trying to get her to talk about what she was working on, to break the ice, but she had responded coldly that once she had a better grasp on Karvarian culture she would let him know, and the discussion had ended there.

But despite the lack of communication on this trip, he could see why Janeway liked the young woman so much. She could switch from hard and calculating, to soft and caring when the situation presented itself. And, he admitted, she had a wry sense of humor. But other than her personality, he didn't know much about her, except what her service record had indicated, and even then that didn't go into depth. He did know that she had a dark past, one that she was trying to turn her life around from. Like so many other people on this journey, he thought with sudden realization, as he made a course correction.

He had also tried asking her about her time at the Academy, perhaps make a connection between the two of them there. She had remarked, perhaps another time.

Looking at his panel he concluded that had been over two hours ago, just after they had cleared Voyager and been on their way to Karva. They would be reaching the planet in about thirty minutes. "Captain Janeway tells me you were a part of a team that studied the Borg," he spoke up, hoping to get something from her. It seemed that if they didn't have the integration of the Maquis into Voyager's crew to talk about, then they had nothing to talk about. And he didn't know why, but that bothered him.

"I was the head psychologist on a research vessel that composed of some of Starfleet's top engineers, science officers, and doctors," came her subdued reply. "Our mission was to collect as much information about the Borg as we could, such as their psyche and their technology and bring it back to Starfleet in the hopes that a better defense against the Borg could be made and spare us from another disaster like Wolf 359."

"Really? What made you want to study the Borg?" Chakotay asked her, brown eyes peering up for only a few seconds. "They aren't exactly the warmest species in the galaxy to be hanging around with."

"My mother was killed at Wolf 359," Barrett replied, a bit of pain etched in her voice. "I guess I wanted to justify the reason they had killed her."

Her answer had deadpanned the conversation, just when he felt like he was getting somewhere with her. The console blared suddenly and the ship lurched to the left. Perplexed, Chakotay corrected their course thinking that they had run into some form of spatial distortion; another blare and an even more violent lurch.

"A ship just appeared off of our port nacelle. They're firing on us," Barrett announced. She had jumped up from her seat in the aft cabin and into the one besides Chakotay. Her fingers were running over the console. "I don't understand why sensors didn't pick them up coming in!"

"I've never seen this type of ship before, it's not Karvaian," Chakotay said. "I'm going to try out running them. Try hailing them on all frequencies."

"No response," Sarah replied as the shuttle was hit again, this time causing sparks to emit from the conduits.

The shuttle craft in reality was no match for the alien ship. The readings were showing them that they were up against a ship that had vast technological advances, superior to their own, but perhaps, if they could get in communications range of Karva, their new friends could assist them. But with the next hit, the port nacelle caught fire, sending the shuttle into a downward spiral. Chakotay tried to right the shuttle with the only engine he had, as smoke filled the cabin. Barrett was screaming that the aliens were trying to take out their engines, causing the hull to breach around the nacelle, in affect, ripping it off the tiny ship. They were hurtling towards the surface of a small planetoid.

"Can we land?" Chakotay asked her.

"Land?" Barrett repeated. "We're going to crash before we do that!"

"Is the atmosphere compatible for us?"

"It's a Class L atmosphere," Barrett replied, sapphire eyes roaming the readings the computer was giving her. "The surface consists mostly of mountains and rock, not a lot of water; high concentrations of carbon dioxide. Can we survive down there? Yes, but that's only if we survive the crash first."

Chakotay shook his head, looking at the controls determinedly. "We're not going to crash."

Sarah looked up him skeptically. "How can you say that?" Her body lurched about violently as the tiny ship entered the atmosphere. "We only have one engine and those aliens are doing everything they can to take the other one out! Commander, if we hit the rock at this speed it will tear the ship apart and us with it!"

"Not if I can help it!"

"Commander! Even if we survive the crash or landing as you put it, we don't know if those aliens will come after us," Barrett pointed out. They had only been in this part of space for a couple of weeks, but already they had learned that most of the species in this quadrant weren't friendly, the Kazon, for example, were not to be trifled with and they hadn't gotten off on the best of terms with them.

"We're going to make it look like we've been destroyed. On my command I want you to vent the plasma," Chakotay instructed her, eyes running over his console, trying to find a good place to put the shuttle down. They were coming in fast towards a very rocky region. It was not going to be a smooth landing. "Hang on!" he cried out as the aliens fired across their bow. Sparks emitted from the aft cabin and he could see Barrett gripping the console, however she held a calm expression. No doubt it was something that she had learned while studying the Borg. Who knew that experience was going to come in handy now?

"Chakotay, we're going in too fast," the Counselor rasped out, anxiously.

"Unidentified ship, surrender."

Chakotay slapped at the comline. He didn't want to hear them implore surrender. They weren't out of tricks just yet. If they were lucky the alien ship wouldn't follow them into the atmosphere. The shuttle began to quake violently as it entered the upper atmosphere. "Vent the plasma, Sarah, and target phasers on it. Fire when I tell you too."

"But that would ignite the plasma," Sarah said, even as she followed through with his orders.

"I know, I want them to believe that we've burnt up in the atmosphere."

"I hope you know what you're doing," Sarah replied.

Me too, Chakotay thought as the shuttle hurtled faster and faster towards the surface. "Fire now!"

Phasers burst forth from the shuttle craft, igniting the plasma into a fireball behind them. The alien ship backed off, whether or not they believed that the shuttle had indeed exploded and were avoiding exploding themselves, the two officers couldn't be sure. They had other problems. Chakotay noticed on his fading sensors that the alien ship was reversing course. For the time being the threat had been eliminated, but now they were spiraling out of control towards a rocky planet. "Dispatch an automated distress signal to Voyager!"

Sarah moved about so she could record a message and send it to Voyager. It was brief, seeing how they didn't have much time before the ship hit the surface, but she hoped that it was effective. Turning back towards the Commander she only had a few moments to grip the console as he cried out to brace for impact.

Despite Chakotay's best efforts, and even though he managed to slow the ship's descent, the shuttle hit the rocky soil hard and both officers felt their bodies being thrown about against the panels and controls as the shuttle tore a path through the rock. It swayed back and forth, first the port nacelle was sheared off, and then the starboard nacelle came ripping off as well, exploding in a ball of flame that sent both Chakotay and Sarah flying from their seats as the shuttle slammed into a solid rock wall. In a blinding flash of light, both officers were knocked unconscious, the shuttle coming finally to a stop, crumpled against a mountain side.

He awoke with the taste of blood in his mouth and smoke in his eyes. Chakotay blinked, trying to take in his surroundings. The lights were flickering on and off, the consoles as well, and the memories began to return to his jostled mind. Rising up on to his elbows he peered out the view port. The shuttle was in shambles, but lucky for them, the shields had held long enough to protect them from the fires and explosions of the nacelles. Now, they were rested against a solid bed of rock. It hadn't been his best landing, but at least they had managed to get down in one piece.

They. He suddenly realized that he had no idea where Sarah was. Turning about, which sent a shooting pain up his right leg, he tried to locate her. She was a few feet from him, plasma burns covering a part of her face and hands. There was a huge gash across her cheek and she did not appear to be breathing. Grabbing the emergency medical kit he pulled out the tricorder and ran the hand scanner over her body. She was breathing and alive, but she had not faired as well as he had when it came to the crash landing.

She had several broken ribs, one had punctured a lung. The burns on her face and hands were second degree plasma burns that he could easily treat with a deremial regenerator, but that was the least of his concerns, she had suffered massive internal bleeding as well. If Voyager did not find them and find them soon, the young woman was going to die. Her eyes opened then and she looked at him, confused.

"We made it?"

"We made it," Chakotay replied, helping her sit up slightly. She winced in pain. "You were injured in the crash."

"How bad?" Sarah asked, trying to grit her teeth and bear the pain.

"Nothing too serious," he lied to her, reaching in the medical kit for a hypospray.

"You're a terrible liar; didn't they teach how to lie with the Maquis?"

He laughed, giving her a warm smile. "Should have known I couldn't fool you," he whispered, pressing the hypospray to her neck. "Here this will help with the pain. I'm afraid that's all I can do for now, besides treat your burns. You need surgery."

She nodded her head as the pain began to dull. "What about Voyager?"

Chakotay shook his head. "I'm not sure our message was received and I'm not sure I can send another one. It looks like our systems took heavy damage." He wiped some sweat from his brow and glanced around the cabin. He wasn't sure how they were going to get out of this one. Pulling himself up to his feet he moved towards the communication panel and saw that it was burnt out, probably where Sarah had received the burns from. So much for trying to send another message out to Voyager; he realized that even if he were able to get another message out, the aliens that had attacked them may pick the transmission up and come back to finish them off. Then they'd be in more trouble then they were now.

It was best to try and survive on this planet and wait for Voyager to find them. Glancing at Sarah he wondered how much time she could hold out. He wasn't a doctor, knew some basic first aid, but even he knew that she didn't have time on her side. One thing was for sure, they were going to need something to keep them warm and water. They had enough emergency rations to last them a few days, but a quick glance at the systems told him that the replicator was down and so weren't environmental controls. Once they lost the sunlight, it was going to get cold in that tiny shuttle. He grabbed a tricorder and a phaser. "I'm going to go look for water and something to start a fire with."

"You really think we'll be here that long?"

"There's no telling how long we'll be here," Chakotay responded, opening the hatch. Before he left he turned about and offered her a smile. "Don't go anywhere while I'm away."

A small, pain filled smile spread across her face. "Don't worry, Commander, I won't."

[rainbowserenity]

@hoperaievent Day Five - Sun

basically a direct continuation to the really long mermaid fic

The first time Hope put his head underwater after his mother had drowned at sea, his initial panic had given way to the utter silence.

He'd been at a pool party for some old college friend – he couldn't remember their name anymore – and while he'd been reluctant to go, Noel had convinced him to just come and hang out. It'd been nice at first, but then some jerk started pulling unsuspecting people into the pool and he'd been foolish enough to be sitting on the edge.

Even though there were a ton of people there, Hope remembered nothing but the whoosh of water past his ears. The muffled screams and chatter of everyone above him seemed farther away than he could ever imagine. It was peaceful, in its own weird way.

Maybe that was how Nora had felt when she went overboard – enveloped in a blissful silence. If a pool was so quiet, he could only imagine the ocean was as well, especially in its vastness.

But now that everything was different, Hope wondered how he could have possibly thought the sea carried silence. Everything was a song, tiny parts that all came together to be part of something much bigger.

And now he was a part of the long song.

He made a content sound in the back of his throat. A beautiful rose-haired woman glanced up from her task when she heard, offering him a little smile before she went back to making herself a weapon.

Lightning was his miracle, the reason he was here at all.

Although when he thought about it, they'd really saved each other. That was how she preferred it – she'd spent so long owing a debt that she couldn't bear to owe anything more, especially to the man she loved. They were equals.

Not that he'd ever thought himself above anyone, but there were so many rules and unspoken social norms he'd had to let go of. True, things would probably change once they finally found Serah, but for now…

“Do I get one?” Hope asked after watching Lightning a little while longer. She was making herself a weapon that looked like a weird combination of a sword and a spear.

“You'll need one eventually,” she agreed. “Though maybe something smaller.”

“Hey!” He wasn't pouting. He wasn't. “I'll have to learn to hunt eventually, right? I want to pull my weight when we find the rest of the pod.”

“You're good at foraging,” she pointed out. “Almost as good as Serah when she sings.”

“I guess that's okay. For now.” Hope moved a bit closer, brushing some of her hair aside before planting a sweet kiss on her lips. “I still want to learn, though. I want to learn everything. I feel like I could be here for thousands of years and still not know it all.”

Lightning hummed, sliding her fingers against his, a shiver going down his spine when the webbing between them touched. “You have plenty of time.” She pressed her forehead to his. “We have each other.”

He smiled slowly, his tail instinctively curling around hers. His green-gray scales glimmered in some unseen light. “Always?”

She flicked her fin against his. “Always.”

–

Becoming what was essentially a mermaid – merman, in his case – changed him, but not in ways he'd expected. Obviously, he was physically different – one flick of his powerful tail proved that. His skin was hard like stone, cast with a shimmery greenish tint, and there will gills on his neck and webbing between his fingers. He looked nothing like the human that dove into the sea that fateful day when Lightning was nearly taken from him.

But beyond that, he just felt different. It was as though now his true self could really come out in a way it hadn't been able to when he'd been human. His mind, body, and soul were just...free.

Not to mention that now his entire world had expanded in ways that people could only ever hope to dream of.

Maybe that was silly to think – after all, he hadn't done much traveling on land and had hardly seen everything there was to see. Up there, though, there was this burden, something he'd never quite been able to put his finger on until he was here in the sea.

Lightning had once told him that the sea was alive in its own right and he was definitely inclined to agree. It wasn't so much the waves or all the hundreds and thousands of creatures that shared the space with them, but a sort of life that constantly pulsed in every drop around him. Whether it was because he lived here or something else, he didn't know. It was magic in itself.

All of this had instantly settled in his heart, like this was where he was always meant to be. Of course, he was a sap who felt like he was always meant to be where Lightning was, but even so, he took to his newfound place in life more easily than anything he'd ever experienced in his human life – even though, this was, of course, one of the most life-changing experiences someone could ever think to have.

There was, however, one thing he missed.

Hope didn't even realize he was even slightly lacking in anything for a long time. He'd lost count of the days, weeks, months since his transformation. Time wasn't measured the same way in the sea as it was on land – here, they went by the moonlight. The shine from even the dullest full moon was enough to pierce the waves. He wondered if it had something to do with the moon affecting the tides or if it was more inexplicable magic at work. Maybe both.

Either way, he didn't keep careful track of the passage of time. Lightning seemed slightly more concerned about it, possibly because every moment that passed was keeping her further and further from her sister. The pod – Lightning’s community, soon to be his as well – had already started migrating before they’d both been brought here. Despite their constant traveling, they hadn’t been able to catch up or find them yet.

Not that he knew what to look for. Despite all of these newfound instincts, Hope knew little in the ways of the culture of his new people. Even though he’d gotten along with Serah the few times he’d met her back when he’d been human, he was a little nervous about the others would treat him.

Therefore, he didn’t mind all of this traveling alone with Lightning at all. As long as they were together, he could handle these endless moons that awaited them, surrounded by nothing but other creatures of the sea.

Except...

“What is it?”

Hope glanced at her, fumbling with the mussels in his hands. “What?”

Lightning cocked her head a bit, her hair floating in a very inviting fashion. “You looked lost in thought.”

“I guess so.” He wrapped the mussels in kelp, just like she’d taught him.

“Is something the matter?”

“Not really.”

She gave him that look, the exasperated expression he’d always lovingly associated with her practically since they’d met. “Don’t give me that. You know you can tell me anything.”

“I know.” And he did. Until they found the pod, Lightning was all he had...not that things had been better on land, which was why he was so hesitant to mention this. “...Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

He glanced upwards, mentally calculating those long, long miles to the surface. “Do you ever get to feel the sun?”

Lightning widened her eyes, clearly surprised by his question. The hesitance in her eyes immediately made him regret asking it and he shook his head, busying himself with the mussels again. “Never mind, I didn’t - ”

“Do you want to go back?”

Her words made him snap his head up to meet her gaze. “What? No! How could you think such a thing?”

“Because here…” She took a stick, drawing a couple of spirals in the soft ground near them. “Sunlight is associated with land. The surface reaps the heat and light, whereas the ocean gets its life from the moonlight.”

“That makes sense.” After all, they lived deep below the sea and were equipped to handle the conditions. He covered her free hand with his. “This is why you asked if I wanted to go back?”

She nodded a little. “None of my people would ever dare to seek out the light meant for the land. We’re not made for it.”

“I’d imagine not.” He slid their fingers together, bubbles streaming out of his gills in relief when she squeezed his hand. “I do wish, though...that I could see it one more time.”

“Why?”

“I remember watching the sunrise with my mother a lot as a kid.” Hope smiled at the memories. “It was usually when my dad was away. We’d wake up early and she’d make our favorite breakfast. We’d eat outside and watch the sky light up with dawn.”

How was it that speaking of Nora came so easily when he was talking to Lightning? When they’d both been on the surface, he’d said more about his mother to her than he had in the decade after he’d lost her. And now here he was, sharing precious memories without an ounce of hesitance.

Maybe Lightning could tell that sharing these memories wasn’t a common feat, because after a long beat of silence, she offered a solution. “We could go to the surface.”

The surprise that shuddered through his fins was so primal that it took him a beat to realize that her suggestion was odd. “What? But – what about - ”

“We haven’t found the pod yet, so it’s not like they’d find out.” Lightning let go of his hand and started gathering the food they’d collected. “We could break the water after the moonlight fades. That’s sunrise, right?”

“Y-Yes,” he replied, still flabbergasted. “Are you sure? I mean – that’s not grounds for punishment from the sea...?”

They were both thinking of Lightning’s sin, the one that had tossed her on land in the first place. Thankfully, she shook her head. “That’s not worthy of punishment. The ocean doesn’t scold for curiosity.”

“But the pod would?”

“Yes.” She bit off a piece of mussel, eating it before she added, “It’s for our own safety, after all. You never know when humans will show up. Besides, most of us don’t have any interest in the surface.” She smiled. “But then again, none of them are you.”

He grinned. “None of them are you, either.”

She rolled her eyes, another trait he lovingly associated with her. “Had I not met you, I would be much happier forgetting my time as a human. As it is...”

Luckily, he was prepared when she swam to him, indulging in the kiss she offered. Their arms were full of their food and supplies, so he couldn’t hold her, but this was enough.

They were both smiling when she pulled away. “I can look back on it with some fondness now,” she said. “I can only imagine it’s different for you since you were born human.”

“It is.” He wondered if there would ever come a time when those human memories were a mere afterthought.

“So I can do this for you.” Lightning glanced upwards. “I can bring you to the surface for a bit. It can be a memory between us now.”

“...Yeah.” He looked up as well. “That sounds perfect.”

–

They spent the night looking for a good place to store everything they’d gathered. Apparently there were usually members of the pod who were in charge of carrying things in contraptions made of seaweed and coral when they migrated, but considering it was just the two of them, they’d opted for a different approach. Lightning didn’t want things to weigh them down for their journey up to the surface, though. Briefly, Hope wondered about that – if his new body was faster in deeper depths and if they’d become sluggish closer to land. Maybe it was a reason their people didn’t like to break the surface – more chances of potentially getting caught.

But he put those thoughts aside when they finally found a large, hollow rock just as the moonlight began to fade. Quickly, they stored everything inside. Lightning then turned to him, grasping his hand with a slight smile.

“Are ready?”

His answer was true, now and forever. “Always with you.”

Her smiled fully formed and without pause, she glanced upwards, tugging him as they began to swim. Their flukes would occasionally brush as they made the journey, always a reassurance that they were together.

How long they swam, he couldn’t really say, but the last of the moon faded just as he felt a change in pressure. It wasn’t a particularly threatening sensation, but it seemed his theory was correct – every kick of their tails took more and more effort the further they got from the deep.

They didn’t say much as they swam, although Lightning kept glancing at him, her brow furrowed. He wondered if she was afraid he would change his mind about wanting to stay with her.

As though that would ever happen.

Before he could reassure her, she stopped and looked up. He followed her gaze, gasping out loud at the sight that beheld him.

They were mere feet from the surface. There was a gentle lap of the waves above their heads, and it seemed lighter somehow, compared to how dense things were far below. The sea was so clear that he could see bubbles of foam form and break, drifting into a graceful nothingness.

When the sea began to glitter from the beginning of the sun’s rays, their eyes met.

“Are you ready?” Lightning asked, echoing her earlier question.

His answer was the same. “Always with you.”

Their hands joined as they slowly kicked, and Hope had the weirdest sensation he needed to hold his breath before leaving the sea, but instead took it all as it came when both of they broke the surface with a splash.

All he could see for miles and miles was the ocean.

It seemed almost impossible to him that there could be so much of nothing and everything all at once. He knew was was under the horizon, but had a human been privy to this view, it wouldn’t have been a stretch to imagine that they were the only one left in the entire world.

Lightning was glancing around, her expression unreadable until her tail flicked at Hope’s underwater. “Look.”

He obeyed and was greeted with the sun.

It was rising slowly, almost as slowly as they’d swam just now. There were a few clouds in the sky that slowly grew pink and orange from the rays. Everything felt soft and new, and he could scarcely breathe for it.

Though he never felt cold in the sea anymore, the sun warmed him like nothing else could. He felt it even through his hard skin that shimmered in the light, and from the way Lightning’s shoulders relaxed, he could tell she felt it too. He couldn’t ever remember feeling so much while watching a sunrise with his mother; not like this.

Then again, things were different now.

Much different.

As dawn continued to rise, Hope realized the real reason he’d wanted to see the sun. Instead of saying as much, though, the primal ways took over and it came in the form of a song.

No humans could hear it. It was for him and Lightning alone, something she instantly realized, because her song eventually joined as well.

His was a goodbye. He’d been torn so quickly from his human life that it was a wonder that he truly had no regrets. No, he’d trade all of this for nothing.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t say farewell.

Lightning’s song was of acceptance – for herself and the mistakes she’d made, yes, but also acceptance of him, and thanking the sea for bringing them together, however horrifying and unthinkable the circumstances had been.

His song trailed into thankfulness as well. How could he do anything but?

When their voices stilled, he felt a sense of peace he hadn’t in a very long time. Lightning was quiet beside him and he knew she felt the same. A sunrise had that effect, he knew, but like so much in life, it was so much more.

The sky eventually grew bright and he knew they had to leave. Maybe this was the last time he’d feel the sun warming his shoulders and toasting his hair, but that was more than okay. The surface was for someone he no longer was – but it would never be forgotten. It was a part of the long song, one so odd he wondered if there would be stories of it years down the line.

Eventually, he looked at Lightning, brushing her hair aside to capture her lips. Like his song, it was thankful – more than that, though, it was love.

That same love was sparkling in her eyes when they pulled away and he knew he never wanted to be anywhere else.

“Come on, Light.” He turned from the sun and instead faced the dark, endless depths of the sea. “Let’s go home.”

[svubloods]

Imagine being High School Sweethearts with Jamie

(A/N: Happy new year everyone. Sorry, the first imagine of new year sucks so badly and is so messy. Wrote it over three weeks to be honest so like I apologise but I hope you find something enjoyable)

Imagine being High School Sweethearts with Jamie

Staten Island, New York, Sixteen Years Ago

You played nervously with the hem of your dress, biting your lip as you looked up and down both ways of the street, the bright lights of the movie theatre illuminating it on this particular dark winter evening. Tapping your foot impatiently with gritted teeth as you wrapped your arms around yourself in an attempt to battle the harsh breeze.

Were you early or was he late you thought to yourself, you hadn’t been worried about tonight until that moment, in fact, you had been excited but now you couldn’t ignore the creeping feeling of worry that seemed to be pooling in the pit of your stomach. Maybe he had only been joking, maybe he had a change of heart, maybe… You were being crazy, he’d be here soon. You had been fine all day, in fact, you’d been excited all day, basically unable to do anything but watch the clock, waiting for tonight. As embarrassing as it was to admit you had been waiting for tonight for so long and now after believing for so long that it wouldn’t happen, it was happening.

“Wow,” A voice behind you breathed, snapping you out of your thought and causing to whirl around in its direction so fast that your hair and skirt flew with you.

Once you did, you found Jamie standing there, a large smile spread across your face. He seemed to relax once you did, returning it shyly as he shoved his hands and his pockets.  He was wearing dark skinny jeans with a matching thin blazer, with a checkered shirt and loose skinny black tie. You gulped at the sight of him so dressed up as it rarely happened but you always loved when it did. He always did look better when he was wearing anything other than his usual football gear or jerseys, though you couldn't really blame him for that, considering he was apart of the of the football team…tipped to be captain when the current one graduates…

“Y/N?”

“Hmm?” You responded, looking up to meet Jamie’s slightly confused gaze as once again you were pulled from your spiralling thoughts back to reality.

“I said you looked amazing,” He repeated, a helpless but easy grin on his as he took you in once again.

You rolled your eyes purposely at him in an effort to look relaxed, brushing off his compliment as a wave of insecurity flooded your senses. Remembering how you had hardly given a second thought to what you were wearing, you had just pulled on the off the shoulder, fitted, green skater dress that your mom had bought for you one time but you hadn’t ever worn it till today. And you had paired it with black sneakers without thinking. But you hadn't been nervous then as it seemed to be a good idea but now you were questioning it. You must have looked like an idiot, you wear heels with a dress like this not sneakers. If only you could walk in them properly.

The conversation between you and Jamie flowed as you discussed the movie you were going to see and your dinner plans for after as you had both mutually decided after he asked you out that you would do a movie and then dinner instead of dinner and a movie. For no reason other than you wanted to see what it would be like.

Why were you so nervous all of sudden, you thought to yourself. You weren’t a nervous person normally, sure you got butterflies occasionally but never liked this. If you weren’t so controlled and focused on acting normal you probably would have been shaking.

It was just Jamie. Just normal ordinary Jamie…your Jamie. You had never ever been nervous around him, it was always the opposite. He put you at ease, made you feel that you could be yourself.

Even now, he was still so cool and easy going. You should tell he was slightly nervous himself but excited. He was his normal self, friendly, engaging but cautious and reserved with his air of silent confidence clearly apparent. While you felt like you had to pretend to act like yourself or he would know you were nervous or think something was wrong. But nothing was wrong, it was the best it had ever been.

You hadn't been nervous when you met, became friends even when he finally asked you out. You were excited when he did. You had been waiting for it for so long.

And it now it was here, finally.

Your first date…and you were terrified.

Manhattan, New York, Modern Day

“I don’t know why we’re talking about this right now, J,” You sighed, rubbing your temples in an exaggerated manner.

“Well, it’s the only other time I could think of when you were nervous,” He admitted, a cautious smile on his face as he watched over you, his concern evident.

“So you think that you can ease my anxiety by reminding me of the other time I was so nervous that I wanted to throw up,” You countered, sinking lower in your seated position, utterly confused by what his plan was with this.

“Were you really that nervous on our first date?” He questioned, raising an inquiring eyebrow at you as he sat comfortably in his own chair.

You let out a breath and shook his head at him but you couldn't help but smile as you did before glancing back up at him, “Yes, couldn’t you tell?”

He leaned forward and made a point to look directly at you while clasping his hands while surely saying, “No.”

“No?”

“No,” He repeated, “To be honest up until we talked about it last time and you told me that you were nervous I thought I was the nervous wreck,”

“Well, you usually are,” You commented, teasingly.

“Anyway,” He insisted unamused, rolling his eyes before continuing, “My point was to get you to think what you did to stop being nervous then,”

“That’s not going to help,” You pouted, “Sure, I was nervous but I was only nervous for around five minutes before I realised that even if it was our first date we were still just Y/N and Jamie we just happened to be on our first date. Plus, I was so excited to watch that movie,”

“Really?” He asked.

“Really,”

“Well, I was definitely nervous that day,” Jamie admitted.

“Oh, I know,” You chuckled.

“No, it was different, you know?” He elaborated, “The whole night all I could think about was when to make the right, making sure that you enjoying yourself and that I wasn't pushing you too far because part of me worried that you didn't like me as much as I liked you,” 

“God, you were a wreck,” You giggled, “You weren’t that obvious though,”

“I wasn’t?” He inquired, intrigued.

“I knew something was up with you but I didn't guess it was that,” You confessed, “Were you like that on all the first dates you’d been on,”

“Honestly?”

You nodded.

“No,” He admitted.

“Really?” You questioned, unconvinced.

He nodded, “I only had two other first dates before you and sure I was nervous but it wasn't the same. With you I was an absolute mess, my Dad and Grandpa had to give me a speech to calm me down saying that I was only nervous because it was you,”

“Because I’m just terrifying, right?” You commented.

“No,” He corrected, “Because I knew it would be my last ever first date,”

Your rolled your eyes and flopped heavily and uncomfortably back into your seat, “I hate it when you do that,”

“Do what?” He demanded, taken aback.

“Be all romantic like that, it gets annoying,” You elaborated, crossing your arms and glaring.

“You love it, really,” He winked, from his seated position opposite you.

You stuck your tongue out in response and continued to rub circles into the side of your temples as you both continued to wait, your anxiety rising with every passing moment.

Staten Island, New York, Sixteen Years Ago

Your eyes flickered to Jamie, who was sitting beside you. You furrowed your eyebrows as you watched him silently shift in his seat and you could see this despite the darkness of the movie theatre. You looked back at the vast screen, in front of you both. You knew Jamie hated horror movies but the current scene wasn't even scary. So why does he look so uncomfortable, you thought to yourself.

“Jamie,” You whispered, keeping your voice low by bowing your head and leaning even closer in his direction.

“Hmm?” He responded, jerkily, looking back at you instead of staring blankly at the space in front of him or the big screen infant of you both.

“You all right J?” You whispered, still watching him carefully trying to figure out what was going on with him and why he was acting so nervous.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” He tried to reassure but you saw straight through his quick flash smile and false promise.

You continued to analyse him, your narrow eyes filled with scrutiny. Glancing down at the armrests you noticed his hand fidgeting beside yours. You frowned and looked back up at him, his eyes had gone back to staring at the screen but he didn't seem to be watching. You were instantly filled with guilt.

“I’m sorry, Jamie,” You whispered, leaning in even closer this time, keeping your voice hushed, your lips only a few inches from his ear, “I shouldn't have suggested agreed to see this movie. I knew you hated horror films but I said yes anyway,”

“Why are you apologising?” He countered, pulling back slightly so he could turn to face you directly, “I suggested this movie,” 
 “But you only did it because I love horror movies,” You insisted, grabbing his hand and giving it tight squeeze.

You noted how sweaty and tense his hand felt, which you knew it often did when he was nervous, it made you feel even worse so you clung on tightly to reassure him. Strangely enough, as you laced your fingers together there seemed to be instantaneous ease. His palm seemed to clasp yours perfectly and Jamie’s shoulders eased.

A genuine smile appeared on his face, his eyes flickering from your hands back to your face, “Don’t worry about it, Y/N/N. I wanted you to enjoy yourself,”

“Still,” You sighed, “We don’t have to stay,”

You felt his grasp on your hand tighten, “I don’t want to be anywhere else,”

You both grinned at each other sheepishly, you were thankful that the darkened theatre hid the redness you could feel spreading across your cheeks. You could feel that initial giddiness you had felt earlier in the evening as you settled back into your seat and looked back at the screen.

Everything seemed to settle to how they had been moments ago but your hands remained interlocked, a comfortable silence falling over you both only to be interrupted by the axe-wheeling killer appearing on the screen. Jamie jumped before scrambling to compose himself but you still caught it. You chuckled at him, unfazed by it yourself. He glared at you, unamused, his eyes still dilated by the shock as he quickly snapped his head in your direction. It seemed like he was about to say something but he stopped himself, his eyes falling to your lips as you both realised how close you really were.

You smiled before quickly kissing his cheek.

“I’ll protect you,” You promised teasingly, so close to his ear that you felt him shiver after you spoke.

He nudged you playfully, before rolling his eyes and leaning over to steal your popcorn. You swotted his hand but he continued to take a huge handful. Popping some into his mouth before sticking his tongue at you. He looked much more relaxed and content as the movie continued to play and you continued to hold each other's hand comfortably in the darkness.

Manhattan, New York, Modern Day

“Just relax, Y/N,” Jamie soothed, still sitting opposite you, genuine concern fixed onto his features. 

“…I don’t think I can,” You confessed, as the time had continued to pass, and the deadline was approaching steadfast and as it did the more nervous you got.

The light-hearted atmosphere Jamie had tried to maintain disappeared almost immediately after that. The combination of the look in your eye, the expression on your face and his knowledge of you after seventeen years of knowing each other, tipped him off. You weren't worried anymore, you were terrified. And you don't think you’d ever been this bad before.

“Hey…hey…” Jamie began, jumping out of his seat and walking over to yours.

He clasped your hands in his as he kneeled in front of you. You blinked away tears, not looking at him in the eye as he continued to watch you worriedly. A tense silence passed between the two of you.

“Do you remember when we first met?” He suddenly asked, looking up at you.

“This isn't the time, Jamie!” You snapped, reluctant to go on another trip down memory lane, your mind was preoccupied enough.

“Do you trust me?” He asked.

You sucked in an long irritated breath, unsure of what he was doing, still, but you had to admit, “Yes,”

“Then trust me,” He chuckled.

You glared at him evidently, “Fine,”

“So do you remember?” He probed.

“Which one?” You smirked, easing up ever so slightly.

“You know which one,” He stated pointedly, “All I did was make eye contact with you the first time as I walked passed,”

“And yet it was so memorable that you recognised me later on,” You reminded.

He rolled his eyes before squeezing your hand, “Humor me,”

“My Grandma and I had just moved Staten Island in the middle of Freshman year. You were a Sophomore and one of the most poplar guys in school. And of course the first thing I did when I started that first day was join the Newspaper.” You began to retell, giving in and reminiscing.

“But?” He prompted.

“The editor at the time was an ass who didn't want to take on a newbie freshman so he said he’d take me only if I wrote an article about the Football teams rising star yours truly and get it to him by the end of the day,” You continued, “Only problem was that it was still my first day and I didn't know where to find you. By the time I did it was almost the end of the day and you were in the middle of practise. I tried to get your attention but you were distracted so I decided to make you listen and answer my question,” 
 “And how did you do that?” He asked, obviously already knowing the answer, but amusement lit up his features all the same.

“I tackled you,” You chuckled, finally breaking out into a smile as you remembered that day.

Staten Island, New York, Seventeen Years Ago

“What the…?” Jamie spluttered as you both landed hard on the grass, though he broke most of you fall.

“Hi!” You said, brightly, lifting your head up, your face inches away from your own.

“It’s you,” He responded, his eyes flickering in recognition as he registered your face.

“Have we already met?” You questioned, thinking back through all the people you had met and had been introduced to that day but you failed to remember meeting him.

“No, I saw you this morning on my way to school,” He clarified.

“Oh,” You nodded, “Well anyway I’m Y/N Y/L/N,”

“I’m Jamie Reagan but I have a feeling you already knew that,” He chuckled, his eyes not wavering from yours.

“I did but it’s nice to know I tackled the right person,” You commented.

“About that…why did you tackle me exactly?” He questioned, both of you forgetting the compromising position you were in, lying on top of him and the crowd that was starting to form around you both.

“I was wondering if you could answer some questions for the school newspaper?” You confessed.

“Right now?”

“I’m sort of on a deadline,” You shrugged, “I asked the coach if I could borrow you for a bit but he said after practice so I decided to end practice early,”

“You really need to interview me?” He asked.

“My place on the paper sort of depends on it,” You admitted.

“I’m guessing that’s important to you,”  He figured, raising an eyebrow.

“Important enough to tackle a complete stranger in public in front of what the whole school on the first day,” You reiterated.

“Speaking of tackling…We should probably get up,” He reminded.

You suddenly blushed as you remembered how close your faces were and the fact that your bodies were pressed together. You quickly stood up and dusted yourself as Jamie seemed to disperse the crowd around you with a simple look. And though you weren't embarrassed you did it as you needed that spot on the paper you continued to blush up until his gaze fell back to you. Then you tried to control yourself and remain professional, flashing him a nervous smile.

He looked down at you, still sweaty from the game, his eyes bright in the dimming sunlight of the late afternoon. And for the first time, you experience his radiance of friendless and his ability to make people at ease just by being there. You were captivated, to say the least, and if you hadn't been so preoccupied with getting your assignment done perhaps you would have been even more overwhelmed in your first meeting with the man who you now had no doubt was your soulmate.

“Alright, I’ll do it,” He agreed finally ending the silence between the two of you, “On one condition though,”

“Yeah, what’s that?” You inquired, folding your arms in intrigue as you both began to walk to the bleachers for some more privacy after Jamie began leading the way.

“For every question, you ask me. I get to ask you a question,” He responded, watching you carefully, waiting for a response.

“Easy. Done.” You agreed straight away, without thinking, sticking your hand for a handshake.

“It’s a deal then,” He laughed, grasping your hand.

“Deal,” You concurred, shaking his hand before tugging it and asking, “But can I ask why?”

“Only if I get my question after,” He teased before responding to your inquiry, “I don’t know. I just get the feeling that’s more to you than meets the eye,”

“I get the same feeling,” You confessed truthfully.

“Then shall we get started?” He winked before stepping aside to let you sit on the bleachers.

You spent the next hour exchanging questions jumping from Jamie and the school football team to you and your recent move to Staten Island and more specifically to the house a couple doors down from his with your Grandma from Los Angeles where your parents were based. You learned a lot about each other and you got the impression that it would have lasted longer if you didn't have to leave to actually write the article before your deadline.

After that, you began seeing Jamie on your way to school. In fact, it seemed that whenever you were about to leave the house to head to school, Jamie would be walking by and you walk together. He was in the grade above you so walking to and from school was the only time you saw him alone. But as your friendship grew and became stronger you started to hang out in school as well whenever you weren't with your other groups of friends that you had made. Jamie had definitely made settling in easier. Like you said he could put anyone at ease and everyone seemed to like him. He got along with everyone but what was happening between the two of you was definitely different.

You quickly became best friends much to the whole school's speculation. Before you got together there were always rumours about the two of you, it was a popular topic due to Jamie’s status as the star of the football team and overall golden boy. But until you figured out how you really felt about him, you only ever saw him as your best friend. It had surprised you how quickly you had trust Jamie and your friendship had formed. You’d always been guarded with yourself but outwardly fearless and effortless confident particularly when it came to your dream by being a reporter. The only thing you had ever wanted to do. But when you were together you realised there was more to life than achieving your goal. There was this middle part, the journey there, and you were allowed to enjoy it. You pushed each other's boundaries, challenged each other as you came from drastically different backgrounds family-wise, but you had similar interests, both crazy smart and ambitious.

It was about six months after your first meeting that you realised you liked him and saw him as more than your best friend. And it was six months after that he had asked you out on a date and confessed that he saw you in the same way. Jamie liked to say you were born without shame and that their was nothing you would never try once which was true for most things. But you knew that if he hadn't asked you out first than you might never had told him.

Because even though now he was the worrier in the relationship. You had overthought everything and you were afraid to take the plunge, as you were afraid to loose it all. So Jamie had to do it and when he did. It always ended up okay.

Manhattan, New York, Modern Day

“That was a good day,” You sighed, grinning helplessly at the memory, “Still don't understand why we’re talking about right now though,”

“Because,” You began to explain, “That day we first met shows that when it comes to what you want you have no hesitation. You tackled me because you needed to get a story to get that place on the School Newspaper because you knew it would help you get you to where you wanted to go. From the day I met you, all you’ve wanted to be a respected reporter and that’s who you became. No hesitation. No fear. Just determination. Just drive. And today you need that because five minutes your dream is going to come true. You’ve arrived and yeah it’s scary but you haven't been afraid so why start now?”

“You’re right,” You nodded with a new found determination, standing up and dusting yourself, “I am ready for this. I always have been. I’m going to present my story on national TV and I’m going to kill it!”

“Hell you are!” Jamie cheered, pulling you in for fierce kiss, grabbing you by the face and cupping your cheeks.

You pulled away resting against each others forehead, still grinning the same nervous smiles from back when you were teens.

“Hey,” You breathed.

“Hmm,” Jamie panted, breathless, biting his lip as his eyes still gazed at yours.

“Do you remember our first kiss?” You asked.

“After our first date. On your porch after we walked home form the restaurant. You had to kiss me because I was too nervous to kiss you first,” He recalled.

Staten Island, New York, Sixteen Years Ago

Are we going to kiss? You thought to yourself as you made your way up your path towards your front door, still holding hands in a comfortable silence.

Since the movie and as the night progressed you both more comfortable grabbing the others hand and holding hands. It was the only gesture that was different from all your other trips to movies together perviously and the only the thing that made it feel like a date bar the unease and the nervousness that had seemingly consumed the two of you.

“I guess this is me,” You said as you both stopped at your front door.

“Yeah,” Jamie nodded, clearly nervous, shoving his hands deep inside his pockets as he continued to avoid your gaze directly.

“So…”

“So…”

“I had a lot of fun tonight…” You began. 

“Did you really?” Jamie questioned, interrupting, clearly worried about it, “I thought you may have found it weird or uncomfortable and thought we might be better off as friends,”

“No, no,no,” You reassured, “I had fun and tonight felt…right,”

“Yeah, it did,” Jamie agreed, easing up as you locked eyes, “Maybe we should do it again?”

“I’d love that,” You smiled, stepping forward to take his hand and give it a reassuring squeeze.

“Good,” He breathed, though his breath seemingly got caught in his throat as the distance between you lessened.

It was a hesitant as you both began to lean in ever so slightly. Neither of you breathing, as you continued to wait for the other to take the lead.

“I should go, our curfew is in a few minutes,” Jamie let out shakily, though he made no effort to move, still staring at your lips, holding himself back reluctantly as if he was waiting for a sign that you were okay.

“Before you go,” You sighed and grabbed his face and pulled him closer, mustering up all your courage and disregarding any worries to do so, you kissed him.

Closing the gap. The pressure was hesitant at first but you both soon let up, the kiss deepening as he wrapped his arms around you and your hands raked through his chair. It was neither of yours first ever kiss but it was the only one that mattered and in that moment it was so exciting that it might as well been. Your first kiss made the world disappear as it was only the two of you, a feeling that hadn’t faded, even sixteen years later.

“That’s enough kids!” A voice called from the street, causing you both to spring apart.

You both looked at the street to see Danny and Linda obviously coming back from a date of their own. They were both giggling as you and Jamie blushed a deep red.

“What the hell Danny?” Jamie shouted back.

“What we’re here to pick you up. It’s midnight after all,” Danny excused, knowing pull well you both had to be home for twelve.

“We live two doors down!”

Manhattan, New York, Modern Day

“As fearless as ever,” Jamie commented.

You were about to respond when you were interrupted.

“Miss Y/L/N. We’re ready for you,” The PA announced opening the door to speak and holding it open indicating for you to follow.

“This is it,” You breathed, a fearless calm overcoming you as you took one final breath before flashing an award winning not to mention television worthy smile.

“Knock em dead, babe,” Jamie winked, pressing one final encouraging kiss to your lips.

“With you by my side or in my dressing room, how can I not?” You beamed.

“I love you Y/N, ever since you tackled me on that football field,” Jamie promised as you began to walk out.

“I love you too, J ever since…” You began only to be cut off by the PA’s dragging you away.

“We’ll figure it out after,” Jamie called after you, lightheadedly as you got ready to step on stage and be fearless. 

[echoeternally]

Fanfic Gift! (Smash): A Spirited Story

Haha, what, you expected just the one thing being late? It’s totally on time.

This is a double gift! Or, rather, a gift for two people: my friends @mrnerdling and @matsutzu, who talked with me a bunch about various things a lot last year and probably definitely longer. And absolutely does not double as missed birthday and holiday gifts, no sir.

They both like Fox and Wolf, they both like Smash, so I thought, “Hey, why not mash those two things together?” Because that’s a dumb brilliant idea, that’s why. So, yes.

It serves as another thank you gift for my friends, and shameless took the Smash Ultimate universe to bend to my lunacy creative thought process.

And it holds many, many gays within it. Because one pairing just wouldn’t cut it for me, like, ever.

Anyway! A fanfic below for you and anyone else looking to read. Please enjoy! 

Along a wide, sunset bathed cliffside location, two hands drifted across the sky, hovering over a gathering of numerous creatures of different backgrounds.

 An orderly hand pointed out with its finger, slowly flowing around the cast herd below, as it neared one.

 “Fox!” An omnipotent voice thundered from the skies.

 “Another fight, then.” Fox smirked and readied his blaster. A red coin flashed below his feet. “So be it. Let’s go!”

 “No.”

 “Wait, what?”

 Drifting away, the hand floated off, and the red circle beneath Fox had vanished.

 “…What was the point of that?” The pilot folded his arms and watched as the hand flew off. “…Pikachu, come on. Wasn’t that weird?”

 “Pika pi.”

 “Oh, don’t give me that.” Fox’s ears lowered as the yellow mouse beside him chuckled.

 “Sorry, it’s too fun.” He scratched his ear and twitched his tail. “You’d think that it would make more sense for someone like me to talk, considering that you and your friends can.”

 “Friend.” Fox rolled his eyes. “Falco is my friend, Wolf is not.”

 “…I meant those other animal people.” Pikachu lifted his paw and counted. “If I have their names correct, that includes Peppy, Slippy, uh…Krystal, and—”

 “Ok, ok, you got me there.” Fox shrugged. “Still, I don’t get why those hands can be so indecisive. I mean, the guy’s called ‘Master Hand,’ shouldn’t he be more of a master of his own fate kind of being?”

 “Come to think of it, should we even be addressing him and the crazy one as males?” Pikachu tilted his head, watching the other hand circle through the sky, waving its fingers about wildly. “Just because they have masculine voices, that doesn’t really confirm if we’re meant to address them as such.”

 “They want to be addressed that way, last I heard.” Fox rubbed behind his head. “I know they’re just floating hands with supreme powers in this realm, but they are alive in their own sense, so…” Fox sighed. “This is a complete separate conversation from what I wanted to talk about.”

 “Ridley!”

 “Ah, is this the part where we all yell out, ‘Ridley confirmed!’” Pikachu smirked as a crowd some distance from him and Fox did just that. “Ah…that never gets old.”

 “Samus kind of hates that.” Fox glanced over as the armored warrior seethed. “A lot.”

 “Yeah…and I have some memory of fighting him too, now that you mention it.” Pikachu shrugged. “But hey, he’s oddly good with Pichu.”

 “So is that big cat guy from your universe!” Fox blinked. “…Is he a guy cat?”

 “The one with us today happens to be, yes.” Pikachu chuckled. “Got your head spinning a bit, huh?”

 “Ugh, honestly.”

 “King K. Rool!”

 “And there’s Donkey Kong’s most hated,” pointed out Fox, as a blue light burst from under a large crocodile with a crown.

 “Sure…his, uh, ‘most hated,’ let’s go with that.”

 “They’re enemies, from what I was told.” Fox raised an eyebrow. “Did I miss something?”

 “Uh…someone else should explain it to you.”

 “Duck Hunt! Duck Hunt! Duck Hunt!”

 “What the hell is he doing now?”

 “Probably trying to make that sound ridiculous if he can mash it quickly enough.” Pikachu snickered. “If you’re fast enough, it sounds like—”

 “Something really immature.”

 “Um…well…” Pikachu puffed out his cheek. “Buzzkill, dude.”

 “I’m just saying.”

 “Yeah, you’re right, I guess.”

 “Shulk!”

 “Pit!”

 “Ice Climbers!”

 “Team Battle!”

 “Time!”

 “Stamina!”

 “Time!”

 “Huh.” Pikachu scratched his nose. “Guess they’re swapping rules along with us.”

 “This is the first time I haven’t heard them yell ‘Stock’ in ages.” Fox clutched his head. “It’s almost always the case.”

 “Pretty much.”

 “Ready to Fight!”

 Disks of earth erupted from the ground, carrying off the six selected fighters. A massive portal opened up, carrying them off to a spacious field with a train rushing through the area.

 “Ooh…that’s going to suck for them.” Pikachu winced. “Spirit Train gets a little crowded, you know?”

 “It’s not exactly my first choice either,” admitted Fox. “Though…it’s nice to feel the rush of the wind on a moving vehicle.”

 “You would enjoy that.” Pikachu shook his head and ambled away. “Ah well. Let’s get going.”

 “Going?”

 “Yeah.” Pikachu turned back and blinked. “What, you’re not going to just sit here and wait for them to drag us off in who knows how long that fight’s going for, are you?”

 “Well, I…I just figured…”

 “Oh my gosh, you were.”

 “Hey, come on!” Fox folded his arms. “What else are we supposed to do?”

 “Literally anything else.” Pikachu rolled his eyes. “They don’t even need us exactly to stand here. We’re two of…how many versions of us exist here again?”

 “Point taken, but—”

 “But nothing.” Pikachu motioned for Fox to follow him. “Palutena is going to have a bunch of us at her temple.”

 “To do what?”

 “I don’t know, socialize?” Pikachu continued walking. “Look, you can stand here and wait in your numbered spot, if you want. But, I’d rather relax and play with my friends than just…sit here.”

 Glancing back at the barren sky, Fox spun around as another portal opened in the sky. A goddess with flowing green hair rose up.

 “How is it you mortals start these sort of things?” Palutena tapped her cheek, and then shrugged. “Ah, whatever. Come on, let’s party!”

 Bewildered, Fox shook his head and walked behind Pikachu, as they both followed the massive crowd through the portal.

 Entering a vast structure in the heavens above, Fox and Pikachu stepped onto a grassy cliff. A smaller mouse scurried over to them and excited grabbed at Pikachu.

 “Pikachu, Pikachu!” The tiny mouse bounced around. “Come on, come on! Kirby’s going to play with me and Jigglypuff! And he’s bringing Meta Knight too!”

 “Aw, that’s really cute, Pichu…wait, Meta Knight?” Pikachu grinned. “This, I’ve got to see.” He turned back to Fox. “See you later, Number 7.”

 “Later, Number 8.”

 “Maybe that trainer will let the other Pokemon play with us too!”

 “As long as he’s not stuffing us in balls, sounds good.”

 Fox waved as the Pokemon hurried across the bridge. They bumped a black-winged angel off, who flapped his wings and floated back onto the wooden planks.

 “Hey! Watch it!”

 “Aw, don’t be so angry, Pittoo.” Palutena floated to him, spiraling her staff around. “Come on, relax, enjoy yourself instead of brooding for once.”

 “It’s not brooding, it’s thinking quietly.”

 “Sure, right.”

 “Don’t you have an angel of your own to annoy?”

 “He got selected to battle, or didn’t you hear those other god hands choose him?” Palutena laughed. “That means I get to boss you around in his place!”

 “Not happening.”

 “You’re not refusing a goddess, are you, Pittoo?”

 “My name is Dark Pit!”

 “…That really, really doesn’t sound much better.”

 Fox stifled a laugh and hopped from the cliff, down to the next, and walked over to a flat platform between it and another grassy cliff. He gazed out at the golden clouds and smiled before turning and sitting by the water’s edge, listening to the cascading waterfall flow down below him.

 “Yo, Fox!”

 Glancing up, Fox watched as a blue bird flipped backwards off of a cloud, leaping down and landing on the grass below. He popped back up, waved his wing with a wink, and walked over.

 “Falco, hey.” Fox waved, and then pointed past him. “You do know there was a ladder that you could’ve taken, right?”

 “Yeah, but wasn’t that way more stylish?” Falco rubbed a wing over his beak. “That’s much more my speed, you know?”

 “If you want to break your feet some day, sure.” Fox chuckled as Falco sat beside him. “So, what are you up to around here?”

 “Nothing much, just enjoying a nice perch.”

 “Leave to Falco to find a high spot to hang from,” teased Fox.

 “What can I say?” Falco smirked. “I do prefer the air.”

 “Oh, not that again.”

 “Come on, it’s a great line!” Falco puffed out his chest. “It’s really…me, you know?”

 “Uh-huh.”

 “Don’t be jealous because I’m the one with more personality,” mocked Falco. “That’s why a lot of people get into this place, you know. Go ask that spunky princess, the blonde fighter guy, or that blue vested vampire guy.”

 “Vampire killer, I think.”

 “Whatever, they hang out with a vampire either way.”

 “True.” Fox blinked. “Speaking of, have you seen Krystal?”

 “Nope.”

 “…You…don’t sound all that concerned about her.”

 “Why should I?” Falco shrugged. “She’s not really the same as us, you know?”

 “Hey, she can fight just the same—”

 “As in from the same point in our universe, Fox.”

 “Ah. Well…wait, what do you mean?”

 “You know, that whole, uh…how did the others put it…?” Falco waved his wings around. “The chronology thing! How she’s from this set era based on a time that we never existed in. It’s not really hers either, but it’s from that adventure.”

 “An adventure of ours that we’ve never been on?”

 “There, that!” Falco grinned, as Fox tilted his head. “…Don’t look at me like that. You remember going to the dinosaur planet, Sauria?”

 “No, but…I don’t remember a lot of things that I’m supposed to around here.” Fox rubbed his head. “Something about space alien species known as Aparoids, Andross having a grandson, it’s all…I don’t know, foreign?”

 “Includes Krystal,” reminded Falco.

 “Look, just because we don’t really recognize her and she doesn’t really understand why we’re different doesn’t mean that we should treat her like she doesn’t belong with us.” Fox lowered his eyes as Falco folded his arms. “Come on, don’t be like that.”

 “She’s weird, just admit it.”

 “Different, not weird,” corrected Fox.

 “Call it what you want.” Falco shrugged. “Anywho, that’s neither here nor there. At least she has herself around here. Peppy being a big handsome penguin with a bunny headband is weird.”

 “Yeah, you’ve got…wait, what?”

 “I mean, I know it’s not really him, but—”

 “Whoa, whoa, back it up.” Fox pointed at Falco. “Did you just utter ‘handsome’ about that big penguin guy?”

 “…No?”

 “Pretty sure my hearing is one of the best around here.”

 “Pretty sure you’re crazy.”

 “Falco.”

 “Ok, maybe I did!” Falco hopped up from Fox’s side. “So what?”

 “Are you into him?”

 “Into who?”

 “That penguin.” Fox tapped at his chin. “I think he’s…Dedede?”

 “King Dedede.”

 “Holy crap, you do have a crush on him.”

 “Do not!” Falco blushed and twisted away. “It’s not like it’s that big of a deal.”

 “Are you so offended by me knowing?”

 “Knowing what?!”

 “That you like the king.”

 “Which?” Falco snapped his beak shut and twisted back, eyes widened. “Uh…what?!”

 “…You like more than one of them?”

 “No!” Falco twisted back and placed his hands on his hips. “Where do you even get off with those ideas?”

 “Well, the only red spots of your feathers are around your eyes, not your cheeks.” Fox pointed at Falco’s brightened face. “Also, I think even your beak is glowing a bit from—”

 “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

 “Aw, that’s so cute.” Fox blinked. “Hang on, did you like Peppy before—?”

 “Ew, no!” Falco fumed. “Enough, Fox!”

 “So…if King Dedede is one…” Fox snapped his fingers. “Oh, that King K. Rool guy, he’s another one, huh?”

 “Gross, no way!” Falco stomped his foot. “Come off it, Fox!”

 “Wow, you are.” Fox smirked. “The penguin I get, birds of a feather and all that. But the crocodile?”

 “What?! What’s wrong with him?!” Falco shifted his eyes back and forth wildly. “Uh, not that I care.”

 “Hmm.” Fox’s grin broadened. “Do you have a thing for big guys, Falco? I didn’t think you had a particular type.”

 “I don’t!”

 “You sure?”

 “Shut up, Fox!”

 “Hey, do you like that Wario guy too?”

 “Are you serious?!” Falco scooped Fox up by his jacket. “Ooh, I could clobber you myself, here and now!”

 “Think that role is reserved for me.”

 Both pilots spiraled around as a third stood on the cliffs above them, smirking a toothy grin.

 “Wolf!”

 “Saved by the rival.” Falco sighed, and blinked, releasing Fox. “Not…not that I needed that.”

 “Good, because I’m not here to rescue you from your embarrassing heavy guy crushes,” mocked Wolf.

 “Oh, come on!”

 “What the hell do you want, Wolf?!”

 “Just keeping tabs on you, same as always, Fox.” Wolf spun away. “Carry on, you two, gossiping like those psychic kids and villagers about silly crushes.”

 Running off, Wolf cackled as he hurried away. Tightening his hands to fists, Fox jerked up from the ground.

 “Fox, he’s absolutely baiting you,” cautioned Falco. “What for is beyond me, but that’s definitely bait.”

 “Maybe so, but I’m not just going to let him go around causing trouble whenever or wherever he wants.” Fox jumped up to the cliff. “If anyone can stop him, it’s me!”

 “You get him, Fox!” Falco rubbed behind his head as Fox twisted around, shooting his teammate an inquisitive look. “Uh…what?”

 “You’re not coming?”

 “Um…you, uh, you want me to?”

 “…You’re waiting for that penguin, aren’t you?”

 “No!”

 “Whatever, I can handle Wolf on my own.”

 “Hey, Fox!”

 Running across the bridge, Fox charged after Wolf, who disappeared past the fountain. Hopping down from a ledge as three princesses giggled and whispered with one another near an actual temple, he surged past them, swinging down past another ledge.

 “Hey, watch where you’re going, tough guy!” The princess in yellow and orange placed her hands on her hips, glaring after him. “My girlfriends and I don’t appreciate you just running amuck, got it?”

 “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt the gal pals.”

 “Girlfriends.”

 “Right, that’s what—” Wolf clasped his mouth shut. “Oh. …Huh. My mistake. Carry on and enjoy, ladies.”

 Grinning, he hopped down to a pit below, falling past a hall and down to a cavern dungeon. A blue frog and a red tiger were chattering together there.

 “Ok, so the cave was a less, uh…intimate than I imagined,” admitted the tiger. “That’s my bad.”

 “It’s double your bad, Incineroar, because I told you this place wasn’t a nice spot,” grumbled the frog. “I’ve been here before, you haven’t.”

 “Sorry, for the third time already, Greninja!” Incineroar folded his arms. “Look, I just thought somewhere darker might be cozier for us than…” He shuddered. “…Cozier than anywhere near the waterfalls.”

 “Or the fountain,” insisted Greninja. “Those were nicer spots!”

 “Boy oh boy, I do love interrupting couples today.” Both jerked around and glared at Wolf, who grinned and waved at them. “Hello, fellow evildoers.”

 “In our world, ‘evil’ is a description of mysterious types that people don’t understand, including our own kind,” snapped the frog. “It’s not the same as in yours at all.”

 “Right, sure.”

 “What do you want, Wolf?”

 “Ooh, you know me!” Wolf placed his hand over his chest. “I’m touched, kitty-cat.”

 “It’s Incineroar,” snapped Greninja. “Quit being condescending.”

 “So defensive of your partner,” teased Wolf. “How sweet.”

 “If you don’t want me to pound you out of the stratosphere, you’ll choose your next words carefully.” Incineroar growled.

 “Come on, we all know you’re a big softie.”

 “I’m not,” warned Greninja.

 “No, you…you’re rougher.” Wolf grinned. “Like me.”

 “What?”

 “You two and I should team up once in a while,” offered Wolf. “After all, I’ve got an assassin on my team back where I’m from, like you, froggie.” Wolf beamed as Greninja rolled his eyes. “And you, well…apparently, I have worked with a big cat before. Maybe not as meaty, and maybe not to my recollection, but—”

 “Not interested.” Incineroar smirked. “Like you called it, I’m the big softie. Folks may like me fooling around with the bad guys for show, but I’m not about to roll with one like you outside of one.”

 “…Huh. First time that one backfired on me.”

 “Wolf!”

 Twisting back with a jump, Wolf lowered his eyes as Fox growled at him from above.

 “Sorry, boys, looks like I’ve got to run.” He grinned back to them. “Enjoy your date. Offer’s open whenever you like.”

 “It’ll stay open,” both Pokemon fired back simultaneously.

 Hopping up onto an orange spring, Wolf flew up and past Fox, bouncing onto another spring and upwards again.

 “Get back here!”

 Jumping onto the spring, Fox chased after him. Incineroar and Greninja blinked athe two disappearing pilots and glanced back to each other.

 “Fountain of Dreams would have been a much nicer spot to be right now,” insisted Greninja. “We could have had a relaxing evening there.”

 “Oh, here we go.” Incineroar sighed and rolled his eyes. “Babe, what part of ‘Fire Type’ don’t you get?”

 Fox carried on after Wolf, but stopped short as he climbed up to the fountain. A monkey in a cap and shirt walked past him.

 “Oh, hey! Uh…Diddy Kong!” Fox hurried to the monkey. “Listen, can you help me catch Wolf? I need to—”

 “Wolf?! He’s here, in this place?!”

 Jerking back, Fox blinked at the monkey. His eyes were lowered and he grinned darkly.

 “Star Fox, I’m certainly not about to help you over my, ah…leader.”

 “…So…you not wearing red…is because…?” Fox blinked. “Are you ok, Diddy?”

 “It’s Andrew, Fox!”

 “…Ah.” Fox nodded. “In that case…”

 Grabbing the monkey by the shirt, Fox flung him out past the bridge and spiraling away from the skies, as the chimp screamed out and fell away.

 “You’re lucky that doesn’t kill you,” called Fox with a wave. Twisting back, he gazed past the fountain. “Now…after Wolf.”

 Clawing his way up platforms past the temple, Wolf leapt up and to the shrine that hovered above the smaller temple. He rushed to the altar, where Palutena talked with a blue haired woman.

 “So then, I rushed back through time to go help my father, and put a stop to the fell dragon once and for all.” The woman blinked, and unsheathed her sword. “Lady Palutena! Be wary. A beast approaches.”

 “What?” Palutena turned around. “Oh, you.” She smiled. “Wolf, wasn’t it?”

 “That’s right.” Wolf rested his hands on his knees. “I’m going to need your help, ah, Lady Palutena.”

 “Excuse me?”

 “You heard right.” He picked himself back up. “Come on, get me a portal that goes to the other big crowd, off at that cave.”

 “The one below? I think there’s only a couple down there.”

 “The other cave, not even here.” Wolf paused and waved a fist up and down. “You know, where that, uh…that penguin comes from.”

 “Oh, the Great Cave.” Palutena nodded, and turned back to the woman. “Sorry, where were you with the story, Lucina?”

 “Hey, I introduced you to her! The whole ‘mortal above the rest like Link,’ wasn’t it? They’re the two that catch your eye the most.” Wolf folded his arms. “You owe me.”

 “I believe you’ve forgotten that I’m goddess,” reminded Palutena, maintaining her smile as she whipped back to Wolf. “I don’t owe you anything.”

 “But don’t you want to help out a poor, troubled creature like me?”

 “You have me confused with the other goddess who takes in nature’s strays.”

 “Come on, I need to get somewhere where I can get lost with a partner of mine.”

 “Oh, him.” Palutena giggled. “That much I could arrange. Just give me a moment to get the Hands’ attention and permission.”

 “…Don’t you use your own powers here?”

 “Not quite. This place isn’t the same as my home.” Palutena tapped at the altar. “I can use some magic here, but the Hands are the ones in control.” She turned and raised her staff. “Ok, we should be good.”

 “Wait, that quick?”

 “I may be limited here, but I am a goddess.”

 A portal opened across the sky and Wolf gazed in at the castle and grass structures over lava. He smirked as he heard someone groan and crawl up the shrine.

 “Wolf!”

 “Thanks a bundle, then, goddess!” Wolf rushed through the portal. “Don’t keep me waiting, Fox!”

 “Get back here!”

 Running after Wolf, Fox disappeared through the portal as it sealed away from the heavenly skies. Palutena sighed and flipped her hair.

 “My apologies, Lucina.” The swordswoman gawked at her as she leaned against the altar. “Now, you went through time to catch up with Chrom, right? I think he’s with Robin past the tower now, if you want to go see those men…well, you know their bonds, I’m sure.”

 Jumping out of the portal over the castle and landing on the platform over the lava, Fox whirled around, spotting Wolf as he flipped down from a ledge past the palm trees.

 “Catch me if you can, McCloud!”

 “Damn it, Wolf!”

 Flipping past women with guns, with one blowing a kiss to the other, Fox and Wolf descended across the platforms, jumping down deeper into the cave.

 “Mind the mine carts, Fox,” cautioned Wolf.

 “What do you care?!”

 “A lot.”

 “What?!”

 “Come on, let’s—”

 “No, enough of this!”

 Tackling Wolf, the two canine pilots dropped past a burning wall and crashed down onto a tile ramp. Eying the track that ascended past the cannon, Wolf exhaled, and grunted as Fox pinned him to the floor.

 “Start talking, Wolf!” Fox growled. “What are you up to?”

 “Never thought you’d end up on top between us,” teased Wolf.

 “Wuh…what?!”

 “Lighten up, Fox.” Wolf pushed Fox from atop him. “Come on, let’s go somewhere else.”

 “Oh no, I didn’t chase you from one stage to another to just…talk!”

 “Hey, I’m the one that wanted to come here to do just that.”

 “…Come again?”

 “Nuh-uh.” Wolf wagged his finger. “Come on, follow me. Before we get run over…”

 Ambling down the ramp, Wolf beckoned Fox to follow. Raising an eyebrow, glancing back for the cart, Fox shook his head and followed Wolf down the ramp. Ahead of them, past the platforms before the castle, stood a boy in an orange tunic.

 “Oh, isn’t that one of the Links?” Fox waved to him.

 “Fox, hold on—”

 “Hello there, Link!”

 Twisting around, the boy grinned happily. He plucked a bomb out and hopped forward at Wolf and Fox.

 “…Does he normally do that?”

 “No!”

 “Didn’t think so.”

 Jumping out, Wolf kicked the boy back, knocking his bomb away. Grinning still, the boy hopped up, and bounced away along the ramp of railway tracks.

 “Kids with bombs are scary, but that was outright terrifying,” murmured Wolf. “You good, Fox?”

 “What was wrong with him?!”

 “That wasn’t actually a Link, Fox.” Wolf scratched his head. “Aren’t you used to this world, yet?”

 “You say that like you are!”

 “Kind of am.”

 “How?!”

 “We’re Spirits, Fox. It’s not like we’re actually who we are.”

 “…Come again?”

 “Look, I’m not explaining this on the tracks.” Wolf jumped down and past the buried castle walls. “Let’s go this way.”

 Raising an eyebrow, Fox followed Wolf along, and they walked past the castle’s pillars. Ahead, beyond the platform, were a man and monster.

 “Isn’t that Bowser and Mario?” Fox pointed at the two.

 “Don’t try greeting them,” warned Wolf. He glanced at the pair and exhaled, brushing his head. “Well, at least they’re the usual two.”

 “Huh?”

 “Just shut up and listen.”

 Blinking, Fox looked from Wolf and back to the duo. Mario watched as Bowser took his hand, and guided him to the tiled platforms below the lava ceiling.

 “Come on, just look at that!” Bowser grinned to Mario. “That’s such a look for my castle, and it’d be perfect!”

 “While I admit that a lava infested castle sounds like it should belong to you, I’m pretty happy that it’s not yours.”

 “Mario, come on.” Bowser lifted his arms and flopped them down. “This place should be mine, not Dedede’s or Kirby’s or whoever.”

 “Meta Knight’s?”

 “Sure, him. Though he owns a whole battleship, so he doesn’t care about this place.”

 “I’m not sure if any of them do, really.”

 “All the more reason it should have been my castle!”

 “You did get a few places that look like it,” reminded Mario. He guided Bowser back by the hand, and pointed at the castle walls. “Besides, look at the windows of…are those stained glass or something else?”

 “They look like clay.”

 “Weird.” Mario shook his head. “Anyway! This place isn’t really the best location, is it? It’s so hard to find anyone around here, it’s too spacious, and would you really want your castle to be so marred by tons of lava spots where touching them could practically kill you?”

 “…That literally sounds like my castle, so, yes.”

 “Ugh, Bowser…” Mario brushed a hand over his head. “Ok, look, I admit that you should have a better place to call your home—”

 “Thank you!”

 “But, you and I can share nicer spots around the Mushroom Kingdom stages.” Mario took both of Bowser’s hands into his own. “Isn’t that be nicer than, I don’t know, a huge mess like this place?”

 “Maybe.” Bowser sighed. “I just don’t like sharing them with…let’s see, three princesses, one of my plants, each of the seven Koopalings, the alternate reality version of you as a doctor—”

 “Ok, it’s strange, I know, but we have a lot of places that feel like home for all of us,” reasoned Mario. “Out of those places, you and I can always find somewhere that’s just right for, well, us.”

 “…And Junior, and your brother—”

 “Bowser.”

 “Yeah, those two I don’t mind as much.” He chuckled as Mario nudged his stomach. “Sorry, sorry. You’re right, I just don’t like admitting it.” He shrugged. “So, you want to get out of here?”

 “We need to wait for someone to get us out of here.” Mario scratched behind his head. “Besides, you said you wanted me to model some of the new costumes for you?”

 “Ooh, can you bring those out from here?” Bowser clapped his hands together. “Your wedding tuxedo is a lot hotter than I like admitting to.”

 “Wait, what?!”

 Mario and Bowser spiraled around as Wolf groaned, pushing Fox down from their sight.

 “These places have no privacy at all,” muttered Bowser. Louder, he grumbled out, “What do you want, Wolf?”

 “Nothing from you, Bowser.” He sheepishly grinned. “Just admiring you and yours.”

 “Super. Admire us another time and give us our minute alone, will you?”

 “Sure thing, buddy.”

 “We’re not buddies.”

 “We’re definitely buddies.”

 “Get lost, already.”

 Chuckling, Wolf slid down from the pillar and pulled Fox away. Tugging his arm free, Fox pointed back in the couple’s direction.

 “I have several questions.”

 “Spirits, Fox.” Wolf rolled his visible eye, and ambled away from the buried castle walls. “That literally answers everything.”

 “It does not!”

 “We’re Spirits that are based on the lot of our different universes and all mashed together here to fight and mingle otherwise, while also preventing the fabric of reality from being disrupted and causing a calamity across all of our homes from our joining.” Wolf’s shoulders slumped as Fox’s mouth parted open. “How does that not make sense to you?”

 “You sounded smart.”

 “Ouch. Thanks.”

 Spotting the Young Link in orange ride a mine cart down holding a bomb, Wolf grabbed Fox again, and dragged him across the platforms in front of the castle. They waited as the mine cart crashed on the platform above them, rattled off past, and crashed into the walls behind them.

 “Is he going to be—?”

 “He’s fine.” Wolf tugged Fox on again. “Quit acting like you don’t know how this place works, Fox. Didn’t you lob a monkey off the bridge earlier?”

 “You saw that?”

 “Hey, you were supposed to be chasing me.” Wolf chuckled. “Had to know why you stopped.”

 “He was acting like Oikonny from home.”

 “Ah.” Wolf shook his head. “I don’t know why multiple versions of me ever even recruited him. I get that it was mostly Andross’s meddling, but—”

 “Speaking of, we’re through, by the way.” Fox pulled from Wolf again. “You helped them with killing my father, and you’re still my enemy.”

 “Based on him, not him,” reiterated Wolf. “Is it that hard to get?”

 “Doesn’t matter to me.” Fox shook his head. “You’re a Wolf through and through after all.”

 “A Wolf that has memories of multiple lives and origins, Fox.” He chased after Fox, as the two hopped past a platform near blue and purple crystals. “There’s a world, a galaxy, where you and I have allied with one another. Multiple times.”

 “That’s got to be a lie.”

 “It’s not!” Fox turned back as Wolf paused. “It…it’s not. You know about that…uh, that alternate version of the Lylat that Krystal yammers about?”

 “You know her name?”

 “She’s one of us!” Wolf shuddered. “Even if I do find that creepy to admit out loud.”

 “Go on.”

 “Huh? Oh.” Wolf cleared his throat. “That place, the one with the, um…the Aparoids.” Wolf took Fox’s hand. “You and I were side-by-side in that place.”

 “And…you remember that?”

 “Well…no.”

 “So much for multiple memories—”

 “Look, Fox.” Wolf watched as Fox jumped down by the bottom section of crystal shards, and hopped after him. “Please, I’m trying to—”

 “Trying what, Wolf?!” Fox spiraled around. “What do you even want?”

 “This version of me holds the memories of a Wolf that held some kind of basis on that Wolf.” Wolf dragged his claw over his face. “That sounded so much better in my head.”

 “Did it?”

 “Fox, the Wolf that was a Trophy, from this universe…” Wolf paused and straightened his posture. “You know how we’re all assigned numbers and we’re meant to be based on fighters that were previously from this place, right?”

 “What, like how I’m Number 7 out of…however many we are again?”

 “Yes, yes, that!” Wolf grinned, more genuinely than his usual kind. “You’re Number 7, and I’m Number 44. We’re the basis of fighters that the Master Hand has had clash before in this place. And I don’t get that very much, but I know of the Wolf that was a Trophy before me, one that was lost years ago.”

 “They lost a few before, and only some were found during the last gathering of everyone,” recalled Fox. Wolf raised an eyebrow to him, and Fox turned away. “I paid attention to the stories, I just…don’t really understand them that well. Or the ones that keep calling me one of the Original 8, like that should mean something to me.”

 “It does in this universe, Fox.” Wolf grabbed his hand again. “And that’s the weird thing, because I know you have some of those memories instilled into you, just like I do.”

 “Uh…well, I sort of—”

 “You do! I already know you do!” Wolf pointed back. “That’s why you can pick up on so many names and recognize faces quickly. Mario’s like an old friend even though he looks nothing like us, right?”

 “He…feels that way, sure, but—”

 “But nothing!” Wolf shook Fox’s hands again. “This is what I mean. These versions of us, we’re…we are, but we’re not who we are.” He smiled again. “That means we have the freedom to pursue what we want when we’re not part of the battles, not part of the show.” His lips curled up further. “Why do you think we’ve hurried past so many pairs earlier?”

 “What? Those princesses, Mario with Bowser—?”

 “Even Falco crushing on some weird type interest he developed.” Wolf nodded. “That’s all part of the freedoms we do have here, the will to choose how we go forward from who we’re supposed to shadow, and who we want to be.”

 “That’s a really weird concept.”

 “Is it, though?” Wolf folded his arms. “Come on, don’t act like you feel entirely comfortable around even Falco.”

 “He’s my good friend and teammate,” defended Fox. “We belong together.”

 “There’s nothing about him that seems odd?” Wolf snorted. “Besides the crushes.”

 “Well…not weird enough—”

 “But there are differences to what you think you know about him!” Wolf pointed at Fox. “And, and, he has those weird lines that he brings up that he swears up and down—”

 “That he’s used countless times before,” finished Fox. He blinked and gazed at the shards. “…Like it’s something we’ve talked about plenty of times already, but I don’t even remember him saying them.”

 “Exactly!”

 “Still…” Fox folded his arms. “I don’t think…I mean, we are like that, but…Falco—”

 “No, no, Falco’s served his purpose for my point, leave him to his one-sided lusting.” Fox opened his mouth, but Wolf covered it. “He barely knows any of them, and I know for a fact that King K. Rool has eyes more for Ridley and Donkey Kong over Falco, so that’s definitely a lost cause.” Wolf dropped his hand away. “Us so-called villains tend to get lumped together, even though you’ve already seen that I’m not exactly the best of friends with them.”

 “Bowser likes you.”

 “No he doesn’t.”

 “He could’ve been a lot angrier at us before.” Fox smirked. “I think he does like you.”

 “And again, you feel like you know him, don’t you?” Wolf placed his hands on his hips as Fox’s arms fell, and he slowly nodded. “It’s because your Spirit is imbued with the memories of the Fox, or the Foxes, that came before you.”

 “It really doesn’t sound any more normal the more you repeat that,” deadpanned Fox.

 “Fine, sorry.” Wolf shrugged. “Anyway, my point is that, when we’re not being forced to face off against each other…why don’t you and I…get to know one another better, as we are here?”

 “…You have no friends.”

 “Not really where I was going with that.”

 “You want stable friends that are more familiar to you than your villain buddies.”

 “Sort of on the right track, yes.” Wolf sighed. “Fox, whether we like to admit it or not, we’re close, and connected.” Fox opened his mouth. “Yes we are, don’t argue it.” Fox shut his mouth. “Look, can we just…try something different?”

 “For what? For us, or for…for who Fox and Wolf are supposed to be?”

 “Uh…both?” Wolf scratched his cheek and nodded. “Both, let’s go with both.”

 “So…what do you want to be?” Fox huffed and rolled his eyes. “Like Mario and Bowser back there?”

 “Why not?”

 “Because we’re not a couple!”

 “Why not?”

 “Because we’re…we’re…”

 “Not enemies.” Wolf held up his finger and wagged it. “We’re supposed to be, especially when we’re on display. But who we are…who we want to be…we don’t have to follow that design set for us.”

 “So, what, you want to be boyfriends?” Fox shot up an eyebrow. “What, am I supposed to believe that you’ve been attracted to me all this time?”

 “…Well—”

 “Oh, come on.”

 “You’ve got really pretty eyes. Emeralds.”

 “Wolf.”

 “A really nice figure all around too—”

 “Wolf!”

 “What? I’m catching you up to speed.”

 “But…but we’re not…” Fox’s cheeks fired up. “…You really like my eyes?”

 “Sure, the eyes are the compliment you liked.”

 “Wolf!”

 “Yes, ok?!” Wolf laughed and placed a claw on Fox’s shoulder. “…Yes.” He sighed. “I can’t get rid of this…this gnawing feeling in my mind. I want to be with you, and for some reason…I don’t know, being at your side feels…right.”

 “…Which Wolf is that one based on?”

 “I don’t know.” Wolf shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s the past Wolf’s thoughts, the current Wolf’s thoughts, some foreign iteration of me, or…or if it’s what I came up with myself.” Wolf sighed. “I just…I feel some weird sense of peace with you. Familiarity. Nostalgia. I don’t know what it is, but it calms me.” He sighed, brushing his arm over his reddened face. “You ever get that?”

 “…Usually with Falco, honestly, but…” Fox rubbed behind his neck. “I’d be lying if I denied having those feelings around you too.”

 “…So…”

 “…This is absolutely insane, but…”

 “Is Fox McCloud thinking about a life with me?”

 “Thinking about it.” Fox groaned as Wolf beamed. “Don’t make me regret that.”

 “You won’t, promise.”

 Wolf kissed Fox’s cheek, to which Fox jumped. He backed away as Wolf tilted his head at him.

 “What? Boyfriends kiss.”

 “We’re not boyfriends!”

 “Not yet.”

 “…Yet…”

 “Fox?”

 “…Somehow…this feels…”

 “…Familiar?”

 “Yeah.” Fox frowned. “Why?”

 “I don’t know.” Wolf touched his chest. “My heart pounds harder around you than anyone else, but that feels somehow like it’s supposed to be that way.”

 “When I’m with you, I just thought that my fur standing on edge was because we’re supposed to be enemies.” Fox gazed down. “But it feels that way now, and I don’t feel like fighting with you, so…that’s not the case, is it?”

 “Maybe it is. And maybe we’re perverting who we’re meant to be after all.”

 “But then why should we do it?”

 “Because it’s our choice.” Wolf closed the distance between them. “Maybe you don’t want to be with me, Fox, and that’s fine. But I like this, because we get to pick that we want to be together. And nothing feels like a greater middle finger to what destiny dictates us to be than to being with someone who’s meant to be your enemy.”

 “…Where the hell did you pull all of that from?”

 “Ah, well, I, uh…I might have listened to Chrom and Robin talking about their feelings and stories and…I don’t know, how their big romance started.” Wolf shrugged. “Everyone thought Chrom could only feel that way about the woman Robin, but he acted like that around the man Robin as well, or one form of him did, so…the two of them are why a lot of us questioned who we can be.”

 “…So Robin and Chrom’s relationship spawned all of this?”

 “No, not quite…but it did help a lot of us wonder.” Wolf cleared his throat. “At least, I did happen to pick up on it from them, and then went around, you know, observing—”

 “Spying.”

 “Not really…ok, fine, yes, I spied on others.” Wolf shrugged. “Sue me. It helped me come up with all of these thoughts.”

 “…How many others?”

 “Not that many.”

 “All of the other villains?”

 “Well, a lot of them, namely Bowser and K. Rool, but not all of them.” Wolf groaned. “Can we just get back to what we want to do?” Wolf rested his arms on Fox’s shoulders. “Tell me: do you want to try this, whatever we have…do you want to be with me?”

 “That’s…oddly polite of you.”

 “I’m a jerk, but I’ve got a little bit of heart.” Wolf chuckled. “It’s just buried away.”

 “Like this castle?”

 “Um…sure.”

 “Ok then.” Fox slowly exhaled. “Then…maybe I can…unearth it?”

 They paused for a moment. Then, Wolf cracked a smile and snorted.

 “Don’t—”

 “What?”

 “You’re ruining my only moment.”

 “That was cute.”

 “Oh, shut up.”

 “Make me.”

 “Gladly.”

 Grabbing Wolf’s cheeks, Fox hesitated, and the two gazed at one another. Slowly, he guided his face into Wolf’s, as they closed their eyes, and pressed their lips together. Wolf wrapped his arms around Fox’s back, as Fox’s hands slid down Wolf’s face and around his shoulders. Gently, they broke apart, and opened their eyes, staring into one another again, and slightly smiling.

 “Finally.”

 Both pilots jerked forward and whirled around, glancing at the cliff above them. A white and purple cat rolled its eyes while a black and blue jackal lightly clapped his paws together.

 “That only took, what, an hour?”

 “Mewtwo, hush.”

 “How…how long were you listening?” Fox poked his head past Wolf’s, as the larger canine faced away from their interlopers. “And why are you still?”

 “You interrupted our date,” deadpanned Mewtwo. “The least Lucario and I could do was intrude on yours.”

 “Hush.” Lucario smiled to the pair below. “I thought the whole thing was really adorable. A great confession sequence, and a true proclamation of love! Your auras were dancing with such a delight when you finally came together—”

 “Quit overselling it, their minds were messes.”

 “It was sweet and sincere, Mewtwo.”

 “It was a disaster that was barely averted.”

 “Uh…thank…you?” Fox tilted his head. “…Are you two just going to stay up there, or…?”

 “No, we’re leaving.”

 “What?!”

 “Lucario, we’re leaving. You got to see them kiss, they’re a couple, we’re going somewhere else now.”

 “But…but we could do more cute things too!” Lucario tugged at his partner as Mewtwo drifted away. “Double date! Wouldn’t that be nice?”

 “If we get Incineroar and Greninja with us, we can.”

 “Ok, then a triple date!”

 “No, Lucario.”

 “But it’s creative! You like creative things!”

 “Not like that.”

 “But it uses imagination and your mind! Mewtwo, wait up! Can’t we talk a little more about this? Hey, wait for me!”

 Fox waited and listened as the two disappeared up the cave. He sighed and chuckled, returning his attention to Wolf.

 “So, uh…how’d it feel to have your favorite role reversed?”

 “I’m an asshole.”

 “It’s not that bad.”

 “Fox, you don’t get it.” Wolf buried his head into Fox’s shoulder. “Oh, I’ve done that so many times, and now…how could I have been such a foul, rotten—?”

 “You’re not going to change, are you?”

 “Nope, interloping is fun.” Wolf picked his head up and grinned. “That’s how I got you after me, isn’t it?”

 “That’s not…oh, forget it.” Fox tugged Wolf along. “Come on, let’s move up the cave and look for a nicer spot near the crystal shards.”

 “Isn’t this one good?”

 “Not with those giant spikes hanging off the wall, no.”

 “Giant…?” Wolf turned and his ears twitched. “Oh yeah, those.”

 “We should make like those other two and head somewhere else.” Fox pulled Wolf along. “Let’s go.”

 “Ha.” Wolf followed him along. “Lead the way, Fox.”

 Both smirked at one another as they climbed up the Great Cave, searching for a spot to settle for a little while. They held one another’s hands all the while, and remained together throughout the night.

Ha. Haha. Ahahahahaha! I...I never want to write the Smash universe again. Good lord, is this how Sakurai feels every time?

But yeah, I thought it would be fun to analyze Ultimate’s interpretation on the characters, use my past one-shots of the fighters being reflections of their actual basis characters, and came up with this! ...Please don’t look at me like that, I kind of tried, ok?

It’s not always easy to pair off enemies, especially when the canon gets rewritten to screw you over ones that people love to see clash, but I thought I’d take the bait and go for it. Besides, at least I tried putting a little bit of logic as to how and why Fox/Wolf could be a thing besides them being cute together.

Please don’t hate me, I really, really tried.

Anyway, it was fun pulling that one out for Smash. And I think it featured a good number of pairs that @mrnerdling and @matsutzu would like and/or appreciate to some capacity, as well as another to satisfy myself, and another to barely reference something I made for another friend! One that probably won’t read this unless I literally tell them about it, oops.

So...trivia nonsense time!

Stages used:

That first one? That’s the stupid cliffside that keeps popping up since Smash 4 decided that this was a place where things happen. Or since Brawl’s ending, I guess? I’m not sure which one to blame, but Ultimate decided to bring it back, so I decided to use it! Bonus points: it’s also the living incarnation of the character select screen, because yes.

Palutena’s Temple. Because let’s be real, a goddess like her would totally have a party in her temple, which is just called Angel Land in Japan, I think, and that explains why there’s only one actual temple there. The more you know. Anyway! It’s one of my favorite giant map stages, and I used it previously, but I figured, screw it, it didn’t involve the whole map last time. So, clearly, I decided to one-up myself. Like an idiot amazing writer.

The Great Cave Offensive. That other mega map stage that...honestly, do people like playing this stage? I love Kirby to bits and pieces, but...it’s really a tacky servicing to both the mode from Super Star Ultra, a mess to play on, and just kind of...I don’t know, not great all around. Still, I figured I could try using it, since Bowser’s Castle isn’t available because of this hellhole it’s unique and a worthwhile challenge to include in a writing piece as a possible intimate locale. Plus, I have a very fond place in my heart for crystal shards. You know the ones.

Characters/Ships:

Obviously, the main pairing is Fox/Wolf. Because that’s what both of my friends like and it’s doable pairing without breaking my brain over crossovers really making too difficult of leaps in terms of sensibility. It’s not my top pick from the Star Fox universe, but mine are trashy, and this one is a fandom favorite that also is in Smash, so of course, a clear winner.

Falco and his embarrassing, one-sided crushes on big boys. Why that? You know, I thought early on with this, “Gee whiz, what’s Falco gonna do while Fox and Wolf run around with each other? He’s like the only bird in the game.” And then I remembered King Dedede existed. And then somewhere along the way, a wire in my brain snapped and I came up with, “Hurr durr, Falco/Dedede is a doable ship because blue birds, Smash makes it happen.” After that, another wire snapped, and I somehow came up with Falco liking big dudes. No, I can’t explain that one. You thought I had something clever for it, and I might have at one point, but it’s lost to me as of writing. And you think I know what I’m doing. No you don’t, no one does.

Greninja/Incineroar, a cute pairing that I’ve developed an obsessive interest in thanks to Incineroar’s Classic campaign. They’re actually pretty cute, both starters, both part-Dark, and both clearly not given enough attention together, so, screw it! I paired them off. I think this is the...you know what? I don’t know how manieth pairing. It’s number I lost track of how many people I put with Greninja. He’s flexible, sue me. I also like ninjas, but that has nothing to do with it. Ever. He’s just a really cute, quiet boyfriend for the equally cute, louder and showier Incineroar. They’re perfect. Why don’t people enjoy these two together? It’s because of Lucario, isn’t it? Lucario literally gets everyone in the Pokemon universe, the shipped king of the franchise, everyone’s favorite...

Palutena/Lucina, a fan-preferred pair that I didn’t get to give enough attention like I wanted to, because I really, really enjoyed writing Palutena’s sass, and Lucina just didn’t really fit into that. Lucina is a good girl, with a wholesome heart that acted to help save her dad, his friends, her friends, their kingdom, and all the world from an evil dragon. Palutena lives to drag Pit, Dark Pit, Medusa, Hades, Viridi, and literally everyone she meets down to the ground. This is her truest self, and that’s the reason we all love her. At least, that’s how I lie to myself about people liking her. Bonus points: crossover ship!

Peach/Daisy/Rosalina, the threesome pairing of the story that I barely touched on. And...no, I don’t have an excuse here. Daisy made it into Smash after years of being a palette swap. Like, she deserved that so much. And her girlfriends would be so happy to have her. And yeah, there was a part of my brain that said, “Daisy’s the kind of girl to use the word ‘girlfriends’ referring to her friends.” And then I did it again, but then made it so that girlfriends were more than just gal pals. You’re welcome.

Ridley/King K. Rool, a pair that I mentioned via Wolf, because they’re a duo that people have wanted in Smash for years, and, let’s be real, they’d probably be friends that might notice there’s something more blossoming, and not just because K. Rool reminds Ridley of his buddy Kraid, but because there’s a magical, special feeling between them, and it really needs to be addressed by the fandom at large, because I feel they could really make great things...

Bowser/Mario, my flagship pairing that I have been waiting to stuff into another story for the past three years at minimum. No, there is no logic behind this. But you know what? Bowser’s Classic clear congratulations screen has him kidnap Mario. In his wedding tux. Away from Peach. So, checkmate everybody, someone on the Smash team absolutely read my fanfic, and they convinced Sakurai to add that in. That is absolutely a thing. You all get to deal with a version of Bowsario being canon. You’re freaking welcome. Also, both of my friends like this pair too, so up yours, I get triple bonus points for that, because I’m the one that reminds them it exists every day. Every. Day.

Mewtwo/Lucario, that pair at the end that vaguely references my other Smash gift if you squint really hard. Ok, no, it doesn’t. I just wanted to shamelessly add in another pair of Pokemon. Because I love Pokemon, and I love that they have the most fighters on the roster. Cry about it all you want, haters. Pokemon wins. They always win. They are tripping with representation, and you all know it. Also, this pair shuts down people that hated on Lucario back during Brawl days, so it gives me special pleasure to consistently include it.

Robin/Chrom, the mostly-mentioned-only gay pair that helped me come up with, “Screw what destiny says, we’re gay” as a general story theme. I could have made it straight Chrobin. I could have, but, that goes so very hard against my ethics of...of...screw it, I like gay Chrobin better, their supports were cuter together, and there was a gay Fire Emblem Awakening hack that made their pairing so fulfilling to me. Chrom most definitely deserved to be in Smash, his daughter and husband needed him, so you haters can go away! ...They’re a beautiful couple, ok? I have like one friend who endlessly supports them elsewhere, and that’s good.

Bayonetta/Zero Suit Samus, as the blink-and-you’ll-miss-them pairing that you all most definitely glanced over because I only addressed them as women with guns. And it was definitely not Bayonetta who blew the kiss, because Samus is the one who...ok, fine, it was Bayo, shove off. And it was another attempt at a crossover ship, which I didn’t have nearly enough of. And I would’ve added more too, if it weren’t for that meddling clock ticking away and reminding me that I don’t have eternity to mix and match the Smash cast!

Pikachu, the character who no one would’ve expected to talk if Deadpool wasn’t making a movie about it. I firmly believe that only Deadpool could pull that off. No, not the actor. Deadpool literally came to life and managed to get Detective Pikachu off the ground. Anyway, it has nothing to do with me liking Pokemon a whole lot.

Pichu, another Pokemon that appeared and had nothing to do with me liking Pokemon a whole lot, and isn’t just the most adorable thing to appear and I’m so happy he’s back, you guys, I’m just...so...so happy.

Andrew Oikonny, a Spirit that embodied Diddy Kong and gave us the rare opportunity to see Fox display his top tier dominance in action. I mean, his violent side. Yes, that.

Poppy Bros. Jr., a Spirit that took form as Young Link and probably left a lot of you scratching your heads. It has nothing to do with me liking Young Link, his return, and/or wanting to add a lunatic bomb-thrower. It absolutely has nothing to do with me really, really wishing Bomberman was a playable character on the roster. If Hudson still existed, he...ok, he was never likely to make it, and I’m honestly amazed that Konami agreed to have him as an Assist Trophy character.

Samus, you know, with the armor, because I think I mentioned her for like two seconds with Pikachu and Fox’s segment. Like, physically being there. And separate from Zero Suit Samus. They’re totally different characters by the way. Metroid.

Master Hand, the godly being that I decided runs Smash Bros., probably like literally everyone else who writes Smash fanfic. Because, come on, the Hands absolutely run the show, right? Who else could? They don’t even get to be full villains anymore, because they’re always manipulated and because they’re our connection to the franchise as a whole. Master Hand represents the...get ready for this...spirit of Smash Bros. Boom, there it is! Look at that, I’m awesome.

Crazy Hand, that awkward kid twin for Master Hand that pretty much everyone goes out of their way to include, because honestly, we all love and relate to the crazy one.

Krystal, a frequently mentioned character that didn’t actually appear, but I decided to list her name individually since...she...you know, influenced some things. Like...multiverse. And...uh...that’s really it.

Mentioned: Kirby, Meta Knight, Shulk, Pit, Duck Hunt (the other bird of the roster is here!!), Link, you could make an argument for Toon Link, Wario, Bowser Jr. and the Koopalings lumped together, Luigi, and probably a handful more. Hell no, I did not even try to cram in the full roster, and yes, I absolutely wanted to try. And yes, I didn’t even include a bunch of my favorites, though I got a lot of them.

Items:

Haha, you’re hilarious. No, I wasn’t anywhere near including items. We didn’t watch actual fights. I don’t hate myself enough for that.

Music:

Probably something from youtube that I listened to and did not include in the story. Probably also from Smash. You’re welcome.

Good lord, is there always a huge credits list for things related to Smash? How do people honestly torment themselves by asking for more things to be added into a game franchise armed to the teeth with literally I can’t handle how much content? It’s wild.

Also, this is the best Smash game, we’re never going to top it, because they’ll probably cut back the roster after this, and I only ever wanted literally everyone in the series added in one Smash game.

Anyway! If you’re somehow still reading this, thank you very much, you’re a trooper! Especially @matsutzu and @mrnerdling, who I tagged multiple times to basically force them into reading all of this. You’re both welcome. And thank you very much for listening to me!

...That’s it. There’s no more here.

...Stop looking for after-credits shenanigans and go play Smash for yourselves.

[idthellyeah-blog]

“Quiltheads” by Bill Latham

(In May 2017 my good friend Bill  Latham passed away. It knocked me on my ass and put me in a spiral for a few years. Bill was a legend, in every way possible. We'd been friends since playing in bands together at The Cog Factory and had some wild misadventures later in life. He was the dude I would call when things were grim. He headbutted a bro dude at a bar once and rode another dude down a flight of stairs like a sled. Legend. I hate that we grew apart, but that's what happens with most friends. I was left with messages between each other trying to eventually meet up in Austin and a very old email of a sketch idea Bill wrote. Here it is in its entirety. I hope to someday make it a real thing. Miss you Bill.)

QUILTHEADS

A script

by Bill Latham

[Scene 1]

[Camera fades in on a dusty, country 2 lane highway.  The sky is red with the dawn of early morning. The trees along the road are green and full]

["Sugar Magnolia" by the Grateful Dead fades into the scene as a beat up VW Microbus rolls down the road.]

[The camera hovers over the VW Microbus as it rolls down the country road past farm houses.]

[Slowly the camera passes over the bus and the shot cuts to a front view directly facing the driver and front seat passenger.  The people are both quite visibly old hippies with long hair, beards, beads, rose tinted shades, and buckskins.]

[The camera cuts to an inside view of the van.  The driver [GRIZZLY] is smoking a joint and tapping with one hand on the steering wheel.  The woman in the passenger seat [HALO] is cross stitching something.]

["Sugar Magnolia" fades out slowly]

[The camera cuts between side shots of GRIZZLY and HALO as though the camera were looking from the listener's point of view in the conversation.]

GRIZZLY

We need to stop for gas, babe.

HALO

How much do we have left?

GRIZZLY

Less than a quarter tank.

[HALO begins to put her cross stitch work into a tote bag.]

HALO

I'll check the map and see what town's next.

[HALO unfolds a well worn map.  She studies it very quietly for a moment.  GRIZZLY hands her the joint and she takes deep toke off of it, holds her breath, exhales, passes it back to him, and resumes looking over the map.]

HALO

Where are we anyway, man?

GRIZZLY

In the van, babe. In the van.

[They camera cuts to a view of a green road sign showing several different towns and distances.]

HALO

Looks like we have five miles 'til Arbor Junction.

[GRIZZLY inhales the last bit of the joint and places the roach in the Microbus' ashtray along with several others.]

GRIZZLY

Arbor Junction it is, babe.

[Grizzly scratches his beard and thinks to himself for a bit.]

GRIZZLY

Where are we catching the Quilt at again?

[The camera cuts to an outside view of the VW Microbus as it continues down the road.]

[The Highway scene fades out.]

[End scene]

[Queue the Jimi Hendrix version of "All Along the Watchtower"]

[Title sequence and credits for the movie begin as "QUILTHEADS" fades into the shot]

[credits, etc.]

[Scene 2]

[The camera cuts into a very tidy and orderly looking office.]

[Text appears on screen: Grand Forks, North Dakota]

[The camera pans around the room revealing several bookshelves full of encyclopedic looking books, potted plants, and a large embroidered, psychedelic square on the wall in black matted frame.]

[The camera pans to a door and a man in a blazer, slacks, with a well trimmed beard enters the room.]

[Text appears on screen: John Naughton, Professor of Historical Studies, University of North Dakota]

[PROFESSOR NAUGHTON reaches toward the camera and shakes the hand of the off screen INTERVIEWER.]

INTERVIEWER

Thank you for meeting with us today Professor Naughton.

[The camera maintains a focus on PROFESSOR NAUGHTON at all times and never shows the INTERVIEWER.]

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

It's my pleasure.  Now what can I do for you?

INTERVIEWER

Well, as I said on the telephone yesterday, I was looking for someone to give us some background on the AIDS quilt and the people who follow it around the country.

[PROFESSOR NAUGHTON looks outwardly, very stern, but manages an amused smile.]

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

Oh you mean the Quiltheads?

INTERVIEWER

Yes, the Quiltheads.

[PROFESSOR NAUGHTON chuckles to himself a little bit and regains his composure.]

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

We'd better have a seat then.

[PROFESSOR NAUGHTON walks towards his desk and takes a seat.   He clears some papers aside and places them in a drawer.  He reaches under the desk and pulls out a bottle of Wild Turkey Whiskey and sets it down in view of the camera.  He picks up the telephone at his desk and hits a number.]

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

Send in two glasses of ice, Irene.  Thank you.

[The camera stays focused on PROFESSOR NAUGHTON as he sits and waits without saying anything.  The interviewer is silent as well.]

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

I'm sorry for the delay.

[There is a knock on the office door and the camera pans towards it.  IRENE the secretary enters the room with two glasses full of ice and the camera follows her as she sets them down on PROFESSOR NAUGHTON's desk.]

[The camera pans back to PROFESSOR NAUGHTON]

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

Thank you, Irene.

[The camera follows Irene as she leaves the room and closes the door and then pans back to PROFESSOR NAUGHTON who is now pouring the Wild Turkey into the two glasses.  He hands one to the INTERVIEWER and they clink glasses.]

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

Ah, Kentucky...now where were we?

[PROFESSOR NAUGHTON sips on his whiskey as the interview begins.]

INTERVIEWER

First off, what can you tell us about the AIDS quilt.

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

The AIDS quilt is a memorial for people who have died of AIDS related causes.  It began in 1987 and has continued for over 20 years now.  It's the largest community art project in the entire world.  The panels in the quilt are sized at 3 by 6 feet, to represent the standard size of a human grave. The panels are grouped into 12 by 12 feet sections called Blocks.  Usually there about 8 panels in one block.

INTERVIEWER

And why is this?

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

Well, when the project began, many funeral homes would not handle the bodies of deceased AIDS patients and many were cremated rather than buried.  The project represents a graveyard in the form of a patchwork quilt, but without the morbidity of a graveyard as it is a celebration of the lives of people who have died from AIDS.  Currently there are 44,000 reported panels.  The quilt itself weighs over 54 tons.

INTERVIEWER

That's fascinating.  Now, what subcultural groups have been involved with the quilt in the past?

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

Well, there have always been a wide variety of folks involved with this project.  I mean, what else can you really expect from a disease that can affect every human being regardless of race, gender, economic status, or sexual preference?  Honestly, when you have a disease that affects everyone, you see a sampling of literally everyone represented.

INTERVIEWER

So, why Quiltheads?  What makes the Quiltheads different?

[PROFESSOR NAUGHTON has a deeply concerned looking stare.]

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

I'm trying to find a polite way to say this...

INTERVIEWER

Feel free to take your time.

[PROFESSOR NAUGHTON scratches his chin]

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

It's clearly a sensitive issue and I don't want to appear callous and I don't wish to generalize...

INTERVIEWER

...but?

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

Well, Quiltheads tend not to, well...

[PROFESSOR NAUGHTON struggles for the words and sips his whiskey.]

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

...it's just, they don't...

[PROFESSOR NAUGHTON stares above and sort of beyond the frame of the camera.]

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

...they usually don't have AIDS or much association with anyone who does.  They aren't coming out to see the AIDS quilt in support of anything.  In fact, many of them that I have met may not even be aware what AIDS actually even is.  This may be for the best as they would probably describe it as "a bummer" or "harshing their mellow".

[PROFESSOR NAUGHTON finishes the whiskey glass in a gulp and begins to pour another.]

INTERVIEWER

[long pause]...How can they have missed out on that information?

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

Well, as I understand it, up until 1995 the vast majority of Quiltheads spent their summers following the Grateful Dead around on tour as many of them had been doing since the 1960's.  As you can imagine, these people have consumed massive- and I say that in the way that the universe is massive- massive amounts of lysergic acid diethylamide.  I mean, they've been dosing themselves for years with LSD.  That's bound to effect perception of reality quite a bit.  Now, I understand that was exactly what many of them were going for, but there comes a point where everything has become so disconnected from reality for these people- the disconnect is so great- they're utterly divorced from reality... they...they...oh Christ...I can't believe I'm even letting you interview me about this.

[PROFESSOR NAUGHTON takes a giant gulp from the whiskey glass.]

INTERVIEWER

And I thank you very much for doing so, sir.  Your assistance has been greatly appreciated.

PROFESSOR NAUGHTON

What I'm trying to say is that the Quiltheads are an anomaly unto themselves.  In 1995 Jerry Garcia died and these people were left with a large gap in their lives.  Many of them began asking themselves who or what they would follow around from city to city next?  Some of them happened across a viewing of the AIDS quilt while loaded on acid and then found out it was a touring exhibition.  Suddenly, they had a new purpose in life.  They had a new experience.  They had something else to follow around the country that would allow them to peddle shoddily made Hippy crap in the parking lots of every civic center and arena from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  And ever since they've continued to grow.

INTERVIEWER

Thank you very much Professor Naughton.

[Professor Naughton nods and begins to pour another drink.]

[Scene ends and fades to black]

[Scene 3]

[Segue to "Teach Your Children Well" by Crosby, Stills, & Nash]

[Camera fades in at a mom and pop diner in dusty little country town.  GRIZZLY and HALO's VW Microbus is parked outside.]

[The camera zooms in towards the door and follows it's way past diners, waitresses, and tables to the dining couple.]

[The camera frames GRIZZLY and HALO from a side view allowing us to see them as they face each other.]

[They munch away on plates of food without saying anything.]

[The camera time lapses while they eat.  A waitress walks in and out of the frame.  Several diners walk past them.  Finally they pay the waiter and get up and leave.  The shot fades to black and the music goes silent.]

[end scene]

[Scene 4]

[Camera fades in at a craft table in a crowded parking lot.]

[Queue "Gimme Shelter" by the Rolling Stones]

[The camera pans across the tables' wares revealing hackey sacks, dream catchers, small glass marijuana pipers, beanies, and hemp necklaces.]

[The camera cuts across different scenes in the parking lot: hippies playing hackey sack, families walking together towards the civic center, elderly folks, gay rights banners, extremist christian protesters, etc.]

[The camera cuts back to the craft table in the parking lot where a man is standing at work]

[Text appears on screen: Denver, Colorado]

[The camera pans up to the man selling the products, an old acidhead Hippy with a scraggly beard, wearing a dye tyed  t-shirt.]

[Text appears on screen: Benjamin "Wolfy" Johnson, Salesman]

[The camera zooms in on a sale that WOLFY is making. An old woman hands him a twenty dollar bill and he passes her back a hemp necklace.]

WOLFY

Peace, man.

[Wolfy flashes her a peace sign.]

[The old woman smiles and walks out of frame.]

["Gimme Shelter" fades out.]

INTERVIEWER

We're here in Denver, Colorado with a peddler of small trinkets that calls himself Wolfy outside of an AIDS Quilt viewing.  Wolfy sells handmade items in the parking lot at these displays and follows the AIDS Quilt all over the country.  Wolfy, when did you first discover the Quilt?

[Camera zooms in on WOLFY. His eyes are very glassy and his pupils very dilated.  He looks stoned out of his mind.]

WOLFY

It musta been about...I dunno...'96, '97... everything was kind of a blur after Jerry died, man. I was wanderin' around DC one afternoon and I'd just taken a few hits of this Batman blotter acid...I'm from Baltimore originally and I was hanging out in DC a lot in those days...

[The camera stays focused on WOLFY who is not particularly focused on much of anything.  His eyes wander when he isn't speaking and he plays with his hands and fidgets like a scared child.]

INTERVIEWER

In 1996, Washington, DC hosted the largest display of the AIDS Quilt on record at the Capitol Mall.  Is this the display you saw Wolfy?

[WOLFY's attention returns to the camera and he looks directly into the shot.]

 WOLFY

Whoa?! Far out! I was at the biggest display?

[WOLFY is once again distracted.]

INTERVIEWER

Well, I can't necessarily say for certain, Wolfy...

[WOLFY resumes his stare into the camera.]

WOLFY

Duuuuude... yeah, it was outside.  I remember seeing the Washington Monument and thought I needed to stop and worship it...I was pretty zonked dude...I'd taken a few hits of this Batman blotter acid...and see, I'm from Baltimore originally, but I was hanging around in DC a lot in those days...

[WOLFY is still staring at the camera and talking as he interrupted.]

INTERVIEWER

Uh, yes- you already told us that, Wolfy.  Now, about the Quilt-

[WOLFY holds his stare into the camera and looks visibly excited.]

WOLFY

Well, dude, the Quilt totally blew my mind.  I still don't even really understand what it's all about.  But if I drop a few hits of acid or eat a fistful of mushrooms, I can walk around staring at it all day long.  Sometimes you see the most fucked up things and sometimes you see things that make you feel so sappy you want to cry because your heart feels so moved.  It's insane dude!!!  Ever since that afternoon I understood that I was meant to follow the Quilt around.  I started selling merch in the parking lots for gas money & food to keep up with it.  I've been on the road following the Quilt now since '98.

[WOLFY begins to stare off camera again.

INTERVIEWER

And you have friends who do this too, correct?

WOLFY

Oh yeah, man.  We live for the Quilt.  The Quilt is like God for us, man.  When we look into the Quilt we see things that we never thought we'd see in our entire lives.  It's a really positive experience over all, man.  I love the Quilt.

INTERVIEWER

Wolfy, do you know what the Quilt represents?

WOLFY

It represents a lot of things man.  Each one of those panels is different.

INTERVIEWER

Well, yes, that's true, but what I was asking about- just a little more specifically was "do you know what the Quilt is a memorial for?"

WOLFY

Well...I'd say people.  Yeah, it's definitely about people, man.

INTERVIEWER

...And there's something that all of those people have in common, right Wolfy?

WOLFY

Everybody's got something in common, man.  I heard Keith Richards say once that "blood is red and bones is white".

INTERVIEWER

...And while I agree that's an interesting point, Wolfy, I'm kind of asking you what we reporters call a "leading question"...

WOLFY

You lead and I'll follow, man.  I think I get it.

INTERVIEWER

[with growing agitation in his voice]

What kind of people are being memorialized, Wolfy?

WOLFY

It seems to be about everybody, man.  I can dig that.

INTERVIEWER

[Explosively]

Do you even know what a Memorial is for??!

WOLFY

For remembering, man.  For remembering.

[Camera follows WOLFY back to his craft table as someone hands him money.]

[The camera pans from the view of the table to a view of the grass as though the camera man has tossed it in a fit of irritation.]

INTERVIEWER

Goddamnit!

[The shot fades to black.]

[End scene]

[Queue "Brokedown Palace" by the Grateful Dead]

[The camera fades in on the side of the two lane highway that we have been following HALO and GRIZZLY down.]

[Their VW microbus is pulled over on the side of the road and the front driver side tire is clearly flat.  There is a jack propping the vehicle up.  GRIZZLY is busily working at the lugnuts with a tire iron while HALO sort of dances to a song that no one else can hear.]

[The camera zooms in on GRIZZLY who continues to turn away on a lugnut.]

[He stops turning the tire iron for a moment and looks over to HALO.]

GRIZZLY

Hey, babe, it's "righty-tighty-lefty-loosey" right?

[The camera pans to HALO who turns to him still sort of dancing.]

HALO

Yeah, man.  "Righty-tighty-lefty-loosey" it is.

[The camera cuts back to GRIZZLY.]

GRIZZLY

Oh good.  I was gettin' worried there for a minute.

[GRIZZLY successfully removes one lug nut and holds it up in front of his face a little bit and then peers through the hole in the center.  He sets the tire iron down and stands up.  He stretches his arms out and opens the driver side door of the microbus. Seconds later he emerges from the microbus with a joint and sparks it up.  He holds the lugnut back up towards his eye and looks through it and then takes another toke.

[The camera pans to HALO.]

[HALO dances over towards GRIZZLY and the camera follows. She takes the joint away from him and takes a couple of puffs herself.]

HALO

Hey man, you've only gotten one of those lugnuts off that tire!  You still got 3 more to go and then you gotta put all of 'em back on before it's time to party!

[GRIZZLY smiles sheepishly.]

[He gets back down on the ground, picks the tire iron up and gets back to work.]

[Halo sits down beside him on the road and continues to smoke the joint.]

HALO

What do you think the Quilt's gonna be like tomorrow?

[GRIZZLY removes another lugnut.  He sets it down on the side of the road next to the first one.  He begins to remove a third.]

GRIZZLY

We haven't caught it in a couple weeks, Babe.  I expect it to be pretty intense.  Where are we catching it at anyway?

[HALO thinks for a moment and her stare is intense.  A smile creeps across her face as she remembers.]

HALO

Omaha, Nebraska, man.  At some auditorium.

[GRIZZLY continues to unfasten the lugnut.]

GRIZZLY

Far out, man!  I wonder if Omaha's ready for us?

[HALO holds the joint in front of GRIZZLY's mouth so he can take a drag too.]

HALO

I think it's the same place we saw the Dead in '78, man.

[GRIZZLY stops.  He drops the tire iron.  His eyes are wide with excitement.]

GRIZZLY

WHOOOOOOOA! Far out, babe!  It'll be like...what's that word...synchronicity!

[nihlisticfireball]

The Graviton Lance

Wielding the Lance is like handling a stick through thick mud, he knows this, but he watches her use it anyway, arms jerking as she visibly drags the gun upwards to kill targets. A hot purple line leaks from the barrel, bright neon void splattered in a dash through Cabal carcasses or zapped into the sickly green Ioan ground where the Taken spiraled back into their void. He knows she carries another gun, a better gun, a gift from some scavenger back on Earth that punches with fierce accuracy and tears through gunmetal like paper. It has a scope which looks to the horizon and back and uses standard issue ammunition, whereas the Lance’s sights are heavy and short and Void charges sometimes burn your fingers numb and leave cold voices in your head; he knows this.

He knows his already thin patience is being run even thinner every time he hears Nebula call out warnings to her Guardian as she falls in, thoughtless and catastrophic, among the Vex.

“I remain perplexed,” he snaps out over the comms, “as to why you do not alternate your weaponry accordingly.” There is the three-burst sound of the Lance firing and the hard kick of the final shell, followed by the warbled scream of a dying minotaur. “Just use a different gun!”

“But, Asher,” she coos back on the line, her voice a high falsetto of compassion, “I wouldn’t dream of changing this gun, because you gave it to me!”

His sneer is thick and dark and compulsive. He knows she is being facetious, and kicks the tiny voice wishing she wasn’t into a dark corner to die in. “Yes, well,” he sniffs, “far be it from me to endeavor to keep you breathing. Perhaps with you dead I could finally accomplish something in peace!”

“Aw, you’d miss me if I was gone,” she gloats (he bites back the urge to snap he knows that, because he does, he knows it all) her voice a bright grin that makes his head ache. “‘Sides, I’m like an old bad penny. I just keep comin’ back.” A thunderous roar of Cabal gunfire, the thrush of a Sparrow, and he knows she’s speeding up the Giant’s Scar under a hail of Centurion ion crossbolts and Vex linerifle streaks.

He busies himself at his terminal in order to disregard the concern for her wellbeing that trickles up through him like the Light once did, even entombed within the Pyramidion; he reorganizes datasets he’s situated a thousand times over, sifting through numbers unchanged across ages. His Ghost, ever silent, gives a nervous twitch, maybe hums a note, but he buries that underneath duty and fear, along with the nanotech he can’t feel crawling in his right hand, and his nervous feelings for the woman— a girl, really— who is probably (definitely) kicking in the door of the Red Legion firebase screaming “HEEEEERE’S DECIE!” at the top of her lungs.

He queues up Ikora’s frequency. “Your ‘paragon’,” he growls, his voice dripping almost indecent with scorn, “is a buffoon.”

“She keeps me young,” is the only response he’s dignified with, in the stolid tone he knows is her laughing. He cuts the line halfway through his grumbling, goes back to monitoring the data of Decima’s encounters. A spike of concern cuts through him, because the data starts to hint at Taken— Taken on the planet, in his vicinity, that’s what he’s worried about, he convinces himself. Not that they’re miles away, manifesting directly around a very specific signal already buried deep in enemy territory. He relays his warning over the line, in a perfectly sensible and understandable fashion.

“He means watch out for Taken,” Ikora Rey says. “You should hire a translator, Asher.”

He does not deign to waste breathe on a response because the comment was insipid and unnecessary, and not because the air has gone out of him with worry. The first force was the lack of a cackled response, something frivolous and crude along the lines of how do you manage such big words with so many dicks in your mouth, Asher; the second being the change in sound from the Graviton Lance’s triplicate shot to a scout rifle’s thick notches, and the sound of charging feet and panting breath. She’s running headfirst into the enemy, he knows, and not away from them because she is a stupendously deranged idiot, and he hates it, he hates how simple she can be and yet still produce results, he hates how fearless she is in the face of pain and death, how her fears manifest in objects she can go careening into while he has to sit twitching and tweaking in the Rupture, ruminating uselessly amongst the curving bones and dry, dead ammonites; and he hates, he hates, most of all he hates, the pitched sound in Nebula’s voice as she calls “Phalanx! PHALANX!” and there’s a whoosh of air as the spectre activates its shield, and the sickening crunch of a body hitting a hard unforgiving surface.

Asher Mir has been boiled down to a creature of logic, and fear, and hate— but the silence over that line fills him with dread.

It is a catch-22, an inconceivable, infuriating paradox, to be of a mind to love hypotheticals and yet exist in terrible fear of them; to be a logically driven system which must rely almost solely on faith. He cannot denounce her incensing recklessness without applauding her bravery, and he cannot commend his own intelligence without announcing his awareness of the situation. He cannot say he knows and also say he does not know. He cannot acknowledge Decima’s death without saying he worries.

So he says nothing, and instead pushes through a new series of equations that he knows will result in impossible answers. He seeks the comfort of numbers and knowledge to take his mind off the deadness of the line. Some part of him, deep down, twists with the desire to cry out, perhaps with a sense of impudent anger, more along the lines of his own character, that Ikora Rey says nothing. Her beloved disciple, the Guardian she lauds and extols, broken in a dark corner of some Cabal facility, and the esteemed Warlock Vanguard utters not a sound. But then, this is a testament to her faith, how she knows the Light will draw her exemplar back to life. To Asher, it is only a testament of his self-control.

He chocks up the squeeze in his chest to almost catching a beneficial change in the data, and not to the line crackling back to life. “All-fucking-right!” She crows, voice echoing, the click-clack of a clip sliding into place. The sound jumps with the telltale pattern of sprinting feet, and she’s— she’s just— she’s just sprinting back into the fray, and his right hand clenches and sparks with frustration and he cuts the signal just after Nebula’s dull exclamation of “Ugh, Decima—,” and even though he knows they can’t hear him he turns his head away to growl in frustration because he just does not understand. And this, in itself, is a problem, a terrifying conundrum, beyond even her boneheaded battle tactics and her apparent deep-routed disrespect for anyone better than her, because the last thing he did not understand cursed him and killed his soul.

His soul in question gives him a trembling, but obvious, look.

He reactivates the connection in time to catch the warping, gut-dropping effect of a surge of Void energy. When the feedback clears, he says, “You are aware of the saying, ‘the definition of insanity is constant repetition of the same actions while expecting different results’, yes?”

“Why, Asher,” Ikora Rey comes through melodiously on the line, “I never knew you as one to speak in idioms. Especially not incorrect ones.” If he’d had a bluff, she’s called it. But he doesn’t!

“Hush, you,” he growls, “I am merely attempting to convey a point: careening in headfirst is an asinine strategy!”

“It almost sounds as though you are concerned.”

He hopes the feed didn’t pick up the catch in his breath. “Concerned for the accuracy of my data and the conclusion of the mission, yes, very much so; especially in the ‘capable hands’ you, Ikora Rey, claim to have left us in!” His rambling has canted downwards from ‘gloating’ to ‘defensive’. He knows Ikora knows it.

“The only accuracy you need to be concerned with, old man, is how awesome I am,” Decima oozes over the comms. “Which, spoiler alert, is is pretty damn awesome.”

Nebula is laughing (“Des, that makes no sense!”) and it takes all of his faculties to not let his eyes slide to his Ghost, to search his (vast and impressive) memory for the last time she laughed with him, at him, ever, at all. He swallows bitterness at Decima’s ease, her life, her Light, and finds himself face-to-face with another catch doubledeuce: he cannot be concerned about the jeopardy of the mission and also angry with her progress. Ah, logic, you terrible, terrible thing.

The static slide of a door opening is broken by Decima wondering, “So, is this Warmind we’re going to see, is it Rasputin? ‘Cause, last I checked, he was not real happy with us.”

He chuckles before he can mute himself. “You managed to irritate one of the most powerful artificial intelligences in the known universe? Why am I not shocked.”

“Dunno, maybe ‘cause you’re too busy having an artificially intelligent stick up your ass?”

His outraged spluttering is cut with a sharp, “Decima, I told you to stop antagonizing him.”

“He asked a question!”

“IT WAS RHETORICAL!” But even at the highest volume his injured ego can produce, he finds himself drowned out by her obnoxious (charming) laughter. She is absolutely breathless with it.

“I—I’m sorry, Ikora, I—,” a splutter of intelligible wheezing static, “Okay, I’m not sorry, but— oh, my god. I’m gonna throw up.”

The silence on the line turns colder than a Vex’s radiolaria output chute on Pluto.

“You,” Ikora finally announces, “are worse than Cayde.” And the line goes dead, and he’s left with his own fuming, fist-clenching insult, and Decima’s unseemly squeaking.

“Could—,” she can’t speak through all the spluttering, “could you try— maybe— being a lit-lit-little less, even— fuck, my chest— even an iota, less, adorable?”

He freezes so suddenly he’s almost sure it’s audible. All he can feel is the heat in his face and the twitching of his right fingertips as they jump in millimeters.

When he finally gets himself under control, he finds his words spewed with a fire that is not entirely anger: “I am not adorable,” he growls. “I am intelligent, and I am vindictive, and I am eagerly looking forward to seeing how you make it through the rest of this Cabal base entirely unaided. Good luck, assistant.” And he mutes— doesn’t kill, mutes— the line.

The last thing he hears on the opposite end are her snickers as she mutes it, too. She knows he would never leave her hanging, not entirely, by virtue of his desire to achieve a practical result, a difficult end to arrive at when your means keeps ending up shattered on shields and blown to bits by rifle fire. She knows he is still with her, and he knows she knows.

He thinks— hopes— she is comforted by it.

[hesouttahere]

Don't chase the rabbit" Your writing is great~

Send me “Don’t chase the rabbit” and your muse will be shown a random memory from my muse’s past. (Accepting!)

He knew that the time was coming. It was simply a matter of “when.” The heat boiling within his belly told him that the time was now, and he only had a little bit of time before he’d have to begin anew from the still-warm ashes of his old body. It felt as though the was a bubbling volcano churning within his stomach; for others this would have been met with unbearable pain, though for him it was simply added heat to his already warm body. Mildly uncomfortable at best.

His bones creaked with every movement, some slowed or even halted by the growing arthritis in his joints. His fur was dusty, his paws ached, and he didn’t bother to shake the golden coins that clung to his skin. Age had caught up to the old dragon despite his valiant efforts to keep as much distance between himself and it for so long, and now that it had caught him, the race was over and it was time to retire for a short time.

Mind pounding as he pondered his life before this moment, he groaned loudly while he forced himself to move, sliding down the pile of coins and gems he had taken to sleeping upon. The glittering treasure covered the floor entirely, piled high from wall to wall and filled with treasures so old he could hardly remember where he had gotten them, or why he still guarded them so valiantly. Some were tarnished, most were dusty. Numerous trinkets were buried so deep he couldn’t even recall that he still had them within his vast hoard. The sound of clinking coin and jingling treasure was still music to his ears, but…

In all of his years, in every life he lead, this ever-increasing treasure never gave him true satisfaction. His hoard filled with each passing year and yet he himself still felt as empty as ever. It made him happy for a moment, but that feeling soon faded as the gold aged and the gems became scratched. With each new breath of life he was given, he tried the same things. Collect more treasure. Hide deeper from greedy poaching hands. Count the near endless supply of coin. Keep himself farther and father away from contact with others. Collect more, collect more, collect more. Make sure his race didn’t go completely extinct by protecting himself and hiding. Steal, lie, kill, cheat. Do whatever it took to get whatever treasure made his four eyes sparkle the most.

As his bones grew weary, so did his spirit. He knew that unless there was a significant change, the cycle would simply repeat itself and he’d be in the same position hundreds of years from now, just with a fuller den and an emptier heart. He didn’t want that. He wanted to experience happiness, true happiness. For the first time, and he was determined to do so. If he didn’t act now, that opportunity would slip from his fingers like a spring chicken.

Flames escaped his maw as he lumbered through and over is treasure, his heavy paws making the coins spill this way and that, causing each step to be more difficult than the last. He lowered his snout to the pile beneath him when he reached what he hoped was his destination, his nose twitching as he hunted for a specific scent–that of oil. He couldn’t remember where he had put it, but he thought it was right around here. It took some time, but he eventually caught whiff of it and started to dig with his front paws. He continued to spit fire over his arms and onto the coins, though at this point there was little he could do to stop that.

After what felt like an eternity of digging, he found what he was searching for: a golden lamp lined with an intricate engraving and adorned with glistening rubies. The magical nature of the lamp allowed it to remain in its pristine condition, even after all of these years of being buried beneath pounds of gold.

Plopping down in the coin, the dragon studied the lamp with careful eyes, scratching at his memory to try and recall if he had wasted his wishes prior to now… Though no such memory came. Without another moment wasted, he used his elbow to rub the side of the lamp.

There was a sudden surge of heat, and the treasure seemed to leap right out of the dragon’s paws on its own volition. Brilliant blue flames surged from the lamp’s lip, cascading warmth and the thick scent of oil throughout the den. The flames quickly faded, leaving behind pale purple smoke which slowly took a humanoid form. The shape danced about throwing its arms into the air in an elegant fashion and spinning about the piles of treasure that surrounded it. 

The genie turned to face the dragon, bearing a benign smile upon its face. It spoke with a smooth feminine voice. She gave a sweeping bow, “Thank you for freeing me,” her voice echoed throughout the den in a mystical way, “For this I shall grant you three wishes.” her very presence was powerful and had a strange aura about it, one that filled the room with a magical power that the dragon hadn’t felt in years.

“Yes…” the dragon finally spoke. He pulled himself into a better position, “I have but one wish, genie: when I am reborn, I wish to live a new life. One completely separate from this; one where I will find happiness in life. True joy, that doesn’t need the hollow filling of gold to sustain.” his four eyes stared the genie down with great intent.

Placing a graceful hand to her wispy face, the genie pondered the wish, “Surely it can be done,” she started, “However would you not rather wish for your youth to be returned? For your life to be extended? Surely that would be preferred over reincarnation.”

The dragon chuckled lowly, “No, that would be redundant,” he explained, “Much like a phoenix, this body will soon burn away, and I’ll emerge again from the ashes with new life as a child.” he shook his head, taking a moment to pause as flames spilled wildly from his mouth. His limbs were growing hot and he couldn’t hold the flames within his belly any longer. Smoke started to trail from underneath his ragged fur. He didn’t have much more time, “Though I start with a new body, I don’t start as a blank slate. I recall my previous life, and I continue on as I did before.”

The genie hummed distantly as she absorbed this information, “I see. So you wish to wipe the slate clean. Cast away this old life in hopes to improve yourself without the overbearing shadow of your past. In essence, when you are born again in this moment, you wish for your memories to be wiped clean.” the dragon nodded, his breathing growing heavy, “So it shall be done.” she hummed with a smile. 

With a sweeping motion of her arms blue flames were summoned from thin air, connected by either hand like a long silk scarf. The genie began to dance again, using the flames to create a dazzling light show as she spun them around her body like ribbons. Once the dance was complete, she bowed her head and the flames vanished.

The dragon was starting to look worse for wear now as cinders began to rise from his body. The genie, though usually distant from her masters, couldn’t help but feel a strike of concern through her body.

“You will be alright, yes?”

“Of course,” the dragon sighed. He rubbed at his face, “I’ve be-been through this d-dozens of t-times before…” embers leaked from between his teeth with each word, “It’s m-merely…. Merely tiring…”

“I understand,” the genie continued, “What of your other two wishes?”

The dragon shook his head, heaving a sigh that sent flames spiraling upwards, “I d-don’t n-n-need them,” he breathed, “D-do with th-them… As you please.”

“You do not wish to keep them for your new life?” when the dragon shook his head, the genie merely smiled. Her face seemed to light up at the proposition, and she took those as the words that freed her from her binding contract, “Thank you. Best of luck to you in your new life.” and without another word, she and the lamp vanished from the lair.

When the genie was gone, the dragon heaved a great sigh. Finally letting go he allowed the flames to overtake him.

Ashes, ashes. When did these ashes end! Clawing and pawing, a tiny orange creature popped from out of the dusty pile, his fur completely caked with the stuff. He shook his head briskly and opened his four eyes to take in his surroundings, blinking rapidly as he had to adjust to the glistening sight. Everything was so gold…! What a lovely color!

With a squeak of delight the tiny dragon wiggled himself free from the ashes and started to hop around the golden piles on all fours, admiring himself as he passed by anything that was remotely reflective. He was tiny with a rounded face, orange fur sticking out this way and that all along his body. He had a tail with a weird point at the end, and tiny black horns starting to grow from his forehead. He was pretty handsome, wasn’t he!

 He bounced his way and that like a newborn lamb, climbing the piles and rolling down he steep hills like a child in the snow. He had no idea how he had gotten here or why, but this place sure was pretty! He almost felt as though all of this was his! But… How?

He realized in that moment that the treasure probably did belong to someone, and that someone wasn’t him. He lifted his little nose to the air and started to sniff, though with ashes still clinging to his body that only made him sneeze once, twice, three times. Shaking himself off, he rubbed at his face roughly with his front paws. Gosh, those ashes sure stick to you! Why was he in them, anyhow?

But now was the time to go looking for that owner. He could smell fire, old cinders and ashes in the air… The scent of oil and metal, and a smell that was oddly familiar to him. It almost smelled like himself! Maybe the owner hadn’t been here in a long time… But how did he get here, then…? The little dragon let out a loud squeak, attempting to make a roar to get the owner’s attention of they were around. His ears twitched slightly as he listened closely for a response, but none came. 

He sat himself in the coins, pawing at them aimlessly. Well if it didn’t belong to anyone, maybe it was his now! The idea was exciting to him. All of this treasure sure was neat… But what was he supposed to do with it? He narrowed his eyes as he thought about it, though no ideas came to him. There was only so much play time one could get out of a bunch of metal.

Suddenly his stomach let out a mighty growl. Wow was he hungry! Back on all fours, he started to trot around the den to find some sort of exit, or perhaps some food. As he rose his nose to the air again, he couldn’t pick up the scent of anything remotely resembling something he could eat, so… He supposed he would have to go out and find some himself. After a lot of searching and sniffing, he eventually found where the sea of coins ended, and a dark tunnel began.

The dark didn’t bother him, so with nowhere else to go he started down it. Other smells started to fall upon his nose… Sweet grass, cool night air… His paws went faster and he soon came upon a large rock blocking the path. Though much to his delight there was a space at the corner of the boulder that was just big enough for him to squeeze through.

He found himself surrounded by trees, there was grass beneath his feet, and the moon could be seen winking through the swaying branches above. The little dragon cooed with joy at the sight, his tail wagging this way and that. For a moment he almost forgot that he was very hungry! His tummy took no hesitation to remind him why he decided to leave the treasure filled den, however.

On the move again, his nose worked its hardest to find something that he could eat. He could pick up the smell of grass, bark, leaves, bugs, fire, and… Food! Ears perking, he started to dart in the direction of the smell.

It didn’t take long for voices to fall upon his ears. He fell low to the ground, and his instincts were screaming at him to make a run for it, but curiosity kept his paws in place. Voices meant danger. But why? He could smell food… And he wanted that food. He could smell two individuals. One was male, the other female. Something about their smell made indignation boil within his chest, but he decided to ignore that for now. How could he be so upset at someone he didn’t know?

“Boy, that sure was a fight, wasn’t it?” that sounded like a man. 

There was a sigh, “Sure was. Coulda gone a lot worse.” that one sounded like a woman.

“Ya were great though, Nancy!” the man spoke up again. The dragon crawled into some nearby bushes, peeking through the leaves. He could see the fire and their legs.

The woman chuckled and gave him a gentle push, “Only doin’ my best,” she replied, “How ‘bout you though? I mean, ya DID get the last blow on that ol’ demon, didn’tcha?”

“Yeah,” the man shifted a little, moving towards the fire to get something off of it, “But ya did most’ve the work. Widdled ‘im down enough that I could get that blade in his chest!”

“True,” Nancy mused, “Guess ya wouldn’t be able to do much without me, would’ja Percy!” she teased.

“Ya are my better half, after all!”

The two of them seemed to get along swimmingly. They sat close to one another and it sounded as though they liked each other a lot. Suddenly the dragon was a little jealous, though he didn’t know why. The sound of cutlery against plastic plates could be heard. Seemed as though they were eating now… Maybe they were distracted enough that the dragon could snatch a bite or two from whatever they had on the fire. 

Taking a chance the started to slink out of the bushes, but the moment his face popped from between the leaves, Nancy let out a cry of shock. He pressed himself against the ground in shock, his eyes wide. He wanted to flee, but his legs wouldn’t move…!

“Oh!” she was suddenly on her feet, her food discarded in favor of a brilliant silver sword, “What is that?!”

Percy was a little slower to act, setting his plate aside neatly instead of dropping it. He rose to his feet, “I don’t know? Ain’t never seen a creature like that before…”

There was a brief pause. Silence hung in the air so heavily that it felt palpable.

“Think it’s a demon o’ some kind?” Nancy muttered.

“… Dunno. Ain’t like no demon I ever seen.” Percy whispered in return.

The dragon’s eyes darted between the two of them, his entire body trembling with fear. Why couldn’t he move, why couldn’t he run?! They looked ready to kill him!

Nancy took in a breath, “It seems scared,” she noted. Sheathing her sword, she held up her hands, “Hey li’l guy,” she spoke in a gentle tone, “What’cha doin’ here?”

Squeaking in reply, he merely curled up defensively. He wrapped his tail around his body for security and didn’t remove his eyes from the duo for even a second.

“Maybe it’s hungry,” Percy suggested, “Seemed like it was goin’ for the fire.”

“… Ya could be right, hun.” Nancy stole a glance at the plate she had dropped. Lowering herself to one knee, she kept watch on the trembling creature as she reached for the strip of meat that was now on the ground. Once she had it, she tossed it to the little beast.

Flinching, he stared at it long and hard before daring himself to sniff at it. Oh, it smelled so good…! It may have had a little bit of dirt on it, but his hunger didn’t care as he dug into it with great gusto.

Nancy smiled and slowly took her seat once more, folding her hands in her lap, “Kinda cute, ain’t it?”

Percy sat back down himself, “Yeah, guess so!” he chuckled, “What dy’a suppose we do with it? We hardly even know what it is, or if it’ll cause trouble…”

The woman was silent as she contemplated this, twiddling her thumbs in a pensive manner, “Dunno,” she remarked, “Think we should just keep it out here? Hard tellin’ if it’s got parents.”

“If it’s outta its nest this late at night, I doubt that it does. Someone else prolly got to ‘em… Or maybe… D’ya think that demon we killed was its parent?”

“Hm… Don’t really look like it, though? They look nothin’ alike.”

The dragon had finished the bit of meat. Licking his chops he glanced back at Nancy, putting on his cutest face to beg for more food. Giving in, she tossed some grilled asparagus his way, which he was hesitant to eat at first… But after a lick or two he took it in his mouth, then padded over to the woman with a springy gait. He climbed over her arms and legs and curled himself up in her lap before digging into the vegetable.

Unable to take the sudden surge of cuteness, Nancy let out a sympathetic moan, looking to her husband.

“No.”

“Oh, but…”

“No!”

“If we raise him, we’ll KNOW he won’t cause trouble!”

“Nancy, we already got four kids!”

“But he’s almost like a pet, ain’t he? The girls’ve been askin’ for a pet, anyhow!”

“Nancy…”

She scratched at the little creature’s ears, and he immediately started to purr in a content way. He settled himself in her lap, pressing himself against her torso and closing his eyes. 

“Oh, Percy…!”

The man heaved a sigh. After a few incredibly long minutes he finally nodded, “Alright,” he sighed once more, “We’ll take ‘im in. But if he causes too much trouble, we can’t keep ‘im. Ain’t no way to explain a weird thing like this causin’ a mess in our neighborhood…”

Nancy’s face lit up. She rubbed the little creature’s cheek, giggling softly to herself, “So, li’l guy,” she hummed, “D’ya wanna come stay with us?”

Perking his head back up, the dragon squeaked, “Yeah!”

Percy and Nancy blinked in unison, their eyes as wide as saucers. This thing could talk?! Suddenly the two realized that they had bitten off a little more than they had expected…

[rudderless-in-an-ocean-of-stars]

in your eyes (i find my salvation), chapter three

Find it on Ao3 here:

http://archiveofourown.org/works/11225808/chapters/25137660

Of all the people who have shown up to her office unannounced, the woman who introduces herself as Lucy Lane is, by far, the most effortlessly intimidating.

“Lane?” Lena echoes, because she’s all-too familiar with the surname she’s seen plastered across the byline of almost every major story out of that damned newspaper in Metropolis, the Daily Planet. “Are you, by any chance, related to Lois Lane?”

“She’s my sister,” she replies tersely, and Lena knows she’s hit a sore spot by the way the other woman’s shoulders tense at the mention of the reporter.

“Ah.” Lena narrows her eyes- Lucy, aside from her petite stature, appears to have little in common with her sibling in terms of looks. Lois is red-haired and paler than milk, while Lucy sports a healthy tan and dark hair to match her cat-like eyes.

“Different mothers,” she explains, having caught on to Lena’s train of thought with the ease of someone used to the weight of an unasked question hanging in the air.

“What can I do for you today, Miss Lane?”

“I’m here about Kara zor-El.” She pauses, and a look of pure, unadulterated anger flashes across her face for a moment before she visibly calms, apparently burying her rage beneath a smooth, business-like demeanor. “And what your mother did to her.”

Lena’s blood runs cold in her veins, ice slowly spreading through her chest, spiraling outward from her heart.

“M-my mother?” She asks this a little thickly, tongue suddenly heavy in her mouth.

“Yes. She trespassed onto CatCo property this morning, and made her way into Kara zor-El’s office, where she harassed Miss zor-El until our boss, Cat Grant, intervened.” Lucy’s lips twitch upwards at this, a hint of a smile playing at the edges of her mouth. “Were you aware of this encounter?”

She shakes her head, not trusting her voice enough to speak.

“Well, as Cat Grant’s counsel, I really shouldn’t be meeting with you. After all,” she suddenly smirks, and Lena doesn’t think she’s seen anyone look quite so satisfied outside of a bedroom, “-my employer did leave your mother with quite the bruise. Lillian was trespassing, so we at CatCo aren’t really concerned with the legal ramifications, as I’m sure you understand. After all, Cat was defending her employee from an intruder on company grounds.” Lena swallows with no small measure of difficulty as she moves across the room to fetch herself a glass of something stronger than water.

“If that’s the case, Miss Lane,” she says, after a long sip of scotch, “I have to ask- why are you here?”

“I’m here as Kara’s family,” Lucy snaps, and the ferocity that forms an almost tangible aura of protectiveness around her suddenly makes the family resemblance between the Lane sisters strikingly clear.

“Is she alright?”

“Depends on your definition of the word. Physically, she’s unharmed, of course.”

“Yes, well,” Lena can’t help the small, sad parody of a smile that her mouth twists into as her stomach churns at the thought of what her mother might have said. “Simple violence was never my mother’s favorite method of intimidation.”

The sharpness of Lucy’s glare softens marginally at the implications behind Lena’s words.

“The last time I saw Kara, her hands were shaking so badly that she couldn’t even hold a pen.” Lucy’s hands curl into fists at her sides. “Miss Grant sent her home for the rest of the day after what happened. I came here to tell you to stay away. Kara doesn’t need a reminder of what happened today.”

“Oh.”

It’s the only sound she can coax out of her throat, soft and small and utterly broken.

Something shifts in the other woman’s eyes, and her fierce demeanor melts away like snow under the sun.

“Not forever,” she quickly amends, shifting her weight between her feet like she isn’t sure if she should take a step forward or back. “Just for now. Until Kara’s better.”

Lucy Lane’s two steps past the threshold of her office door when she turns back and gives Lena a look that she can’t quite decipher.

She figures it’s the closest thing to an apology that Lucy will give her, and accepts it with a nod and the closest thing to a genuine smile as she can manage.

“You’re good for her,” she says, just a bit gruffly but loaded with a grudging respect all the same, before spinning back around and resuming her brisk stride down the hall.

You’re good for her.

The phrase echoes in her ears as she presses down on the intercom and summons her secretary into the room.

“Jess, please cancel the rest of today’s appointments and set up a meeting with my mother.”

The secretary’s eyes widen ever so slightly at the request, fully aware of the strained relationship between the C.E.O. and her mother, but she doesn’t hesitate, and Lena makes a mental note to give her a raise.

“Of course, Miss Luthor.” She’s already lifting a hand to activate the Bluetooth earpiece clipped under the fall of her hair as she moves back towards the door. “Thank you, Jess.”

You’re good for her.

Lena desperately hopes she won’t make a liar out of Lucy Lane as she steels herself to see the woman she’s spent years of her life trying to escape.

She makes her way to the couch on wobbly legs, lies back against the plush cushions, and thinks of the words she wished she’d had the time to say to Lucy Lane before she’d slipped out of reach.

‘Good’ is the one thing I’m not.

But for her- for Kara- I’ll try.

Alex Danvers virtually materializes out of thin air in Cat’s office, dressed in an all-black outfit and equipped with her usual trademark glare.

How the other woman manages to move so silently, Cat resigns herself to the probability that she’ll never know.

A lesser person might have screamed at the sight of the federal agent now occupying her office, who cuts a strikingly imposing figure in spite of her doe eyes and tiny build, but Cat only pushes forward the bowl of M&Ms on her desk and gestures for her to take a seat.

“How’s the hand?”

Alex Danvers was never one to beat around the bush- a trait that Cat has developed a fond admiration for over the years.

She smirks at the question, pushes her glasses up to rest on the top of her head, and shrugs. “A little sore, but I know how to throw a punch.”

“Damn straight.” A twinkle of pride glimmers in her brown eyes. “Thank you.”

“How’s Kara?”

“Sleeping, when I left, but that was a few hours ago.”

“Did she- was she-?” Cat’s usually not one to stutter, but her concern for Kara has her tripping over her words.

“She held it together until she got back to our place, then she was down for about half an hour.” Alex tosses a handful of M&Ms into her mouth and bites down so furiously that Cat finds it a miracle she doesn’t choke.

“Drink, Miss Danvers?”

Alex rolls her eyes, and Cat stands to fetch them both a glass of some ridiculously expensive bourbon that some political big-shot had sent her in the hopes of persuading her to use her considerable influence to make him the golden boy of the masses.

She has no intention of using her power to do anything of the sort, but she’s also not the type to turn down the gifts she’s offered by idiots who don’t know better than to try and bribe the queen of all media.

Alex likes Cat Grant.

She never expected to, but she does.

They’ve got enough differences between them to start a civil war, but what little they do have in common triumphs over everything else with ease.

Kara, of course, is the strongest thing that ties them together.

Toss in serious self-esteem issues courtesy of over-bearing mothers and it turns out that she and Cat Grant are much more alike than she’d initially thought.

She doesn’t stay for long- now that her shift’s over and there’s one less alien on the streets plotting world domination, every atom of her being is screaming for her to go home, to see Kara and make sure she’s alright.

So she does, waving away Cat’s offer to have her driven home with a laugh and another roll of her eyes.

It’s cold outside, even colder than it should be now that night has fallen, but Alex doesn’t mind.

Her breath mists out in puffs of white as she breaks into a light jog back to the apartment. It doesn’t take her long to reach the building, but she lingers outside for several moments just to stare up at the stars.

Glittering harmlessly against the vast expanse of inky sky, always out of reach but so rarely out of sight, the stars have always been a minor fascination for Alex Danvers.

She drinks in the sight of their light, faint in comparison to the brilliance of the sun but no less beautiful, no less radiant, and allows herself a small, satisfied smile.

Then she walks into the building lobby, raises a hand to greet the familiar face of the night watchman, and heads upstairs to check on the woman whose smile was like a sun of its own.

Lucy Lane gets herself well and truly hammered before she even considers heading home.

She stumbles through the door and doesn’t give a fuck where her purse lands when she flings it in the direction of the living room.

James is waiting for her in the kitchen, sitting at the island in the middle with an expression that borders on the wrong edge of pity, and it pisses her off.

“What?” She growls out, slinking towards the cabinets to pull out a glass she fills with water from the fridge. “I’m fine.”

“I didn’t say anything, Luce.” His tone is perfectly calm, perfectly even, and the simple practiced neutrality of his gaze makes her veins itch.

“You didn’t have to.”

“Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you or not?” He levels a sharp look in her direction, and she mentally curses him for knowing her so well, for not rising to the bait, for not picking the fight she’s so carefully laying out, for everything, everything-

Especially for being ridiculously patient and forgiving and putting up with her, of all people.

Lucy Lane knows full well just how much she doesn’t deserve James Olsen.

It’s one of the last things her sister had told her, shouted at her, during their last screaming match before Lucy had packed her bags and disappeared, shrouded herself in the weight of words like ‘duty’, ‘honor’, and ‘service’, and emerged after four years of radio silence with shiny-new shrapnel scars and gold leaf insignia on her shoulders.

“Just because he’s your boyfriend’s best friend doesn’t mean you can tell either of us what to do!”

They’re both yelling at this point, and Lois’ cheeks are bright red with exertion as she rages back at her sister. By some stroke of luck, this argument started after-hours, otherwise the employees of the Daily Planet would be getting front-row seats to the latest installment of the Lane sisters’ grudge match.

“Jimmy Olsen is a good man! I don’t want to see him get hurt!”

There it is, the righteous indignation that Lucy’s been choking on her whole life, practically oozing from her sister’s pores. It makes something in the pit of her stomach burn hotter, pouring lighter fluid on a fire that’s already burning viciously.

“His name is James, Lois! He’s not a kid anymore!”

“Neither are you!”

Lucy freezes for a second, a flicker of hurt briefly overtaking the anger in her eyes before a carefully cultivated mask of pure fury slides down over her face, locking away all other emotion somewhere far below the surface, way out of reach for anyone to touch without getting burned by the flames that obscure it from view.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”

“You’re going to break his heart and you know it.” Lois shakes her head, a mournful expression crossing her features as she regards Lucy with her pretty, jewel-like eyes. They fairly glow with the same unwavering stare that she uses like knives against warlords in feuding countries and drug kingpins right here in the city. “You don’t deserve someone like him.”

Lucy had ended up taken her sister’s words to heart that night.

She’d stormed home, stuffed the bare essentials into a backpack, and vanished into the familiar rhythm of the army’s inner workings without a word of warning to anyone, least of all James.

He was the last person she expected to see on her doorstep after the end of her latest tour, but he’d still shown up, still looked at her with those warm, dark eyes, still said her name in the same breathless, reverent whisper-

And she’d found herself unable to turn him away.

Like it? Love it? Want to see more?

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[notapaladin]

So...”balancing on the blade’s edge” grew another chapter. Oops. Aethas returns to Rommath with news, which the Grand Magister takes much better than Aethas was honestly expecting. This chapter starts the mentions of background Rommath/Aethas. Read it here, too!

Rommath’s study was unlocked, as it normally was when he was in residence and expecting work to arrive at his door. Aethas still hesitated before knocking, unsure of the reception he’d get. Surely Rommath knew he’d arrived, and was well within his rights to throw him back out again without a hearing. It would be just like him, too.

“Come in.”

That was some progress, at least, and he made himself hold his head high as he strode in; even though he’d gone straight from Icecrown to Dalaran to Silvermoon and his injuries stabbed at him with every step, he would not let Rommath see his weakness. The room beyond was vast and well-lit, designed to make petitioners feel small. Remembering the last time he'd been here, with the man hoisting him up on the desk to fuck him until it had been a real struggle to bite back his cries of pleasure, did not help. It didn't erase the chilly silence that had existed between them ever since he'd told him he was going to Dalaran again, and which was somehow even worse than the argument which had preceded it.

(Granted, that had been bad enough. Rommath had called him a self-serving imbecile and worse, and Aethas had thought he might have struck him if there hadn’t been a table between them and an audience in the room—an audience which Rommath ought to have been thankful for, because Lor’themar’s gaze on them had been the only thing stopping Aethas from responding with magic.)

Rommath was frowning at the papers on his desk but straightened up as Aethas entered, eyes turning cold as he slipped off his reading glasses. “So, I see you’ve returned alive.” His voice was as flat and unimpressed as it would have been if he’d stepped out for errands, instead of a highly dangerous mission in search of a sword that might not even still be in one piece. Aethas hadn’t expected anything less.

(Maybe part of him had, but—“If you are captured again, I will not come to your aid.” That had been Rommath’s parting shot, cold as winter in Icecrown, and he’d only been able to respond with silence.)

(If I fail now, I won’t deserve it.)

“I did.” Let him ask.

“And the sword? Did you find it?” Rommath looked almost eager, ears twitching slightly in a way that, he told himself sternly, should not make him want to nibble on them.

He nodded, letting his pride seep into his expression. “I did. In Icecrown, as I saw.” And you thought I was wrong. Hah!

Rommath’s ears lay back flat against his skull as he fixed Aethas with a gaze that might have made lesser men quail. “Well? Where is it now?”

He couldn’t help but smile. “In safe hands. I have decided to grant it and its power to Magistrix Verrinde, for the betterment of Quel’thalas.” She’d made a noise like a startled hawkstrider and then clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger, but it had been absolutely worth it.

It would have been suicide, but the expressions passing across Rommath’s face made him long for a camera. Given the circumstances, he was impressed by the restraint in the Grand Magister’s tone when he found his voice. “It might have served you better in the hands of one of your Sunreavers, if not in your own. And I believe I am still supposed to be in charge of outfitting my Seeker of Wisdom.” He paused, and his voice grew edges. “I am surprised you didn’t turn and hand it right over to Modera.”

His ears trembled, but he made them stiffen into a perfectly neutral position; he could recognize bait when it was lobbed at him with great force, and Rommath hadn’t even tried for his usual subtlety. Still, it stung; he hadn’t expected such a low blow so soon. “Magistrix Verrinde is the only one with the skills and the chance to use the sword in battle as it was meant for.” His gaze swept the desk with its stacks of paperwork before returning to Rommath’s face, noting the way his expression shifted as he added, “And I did tell you, did I not, that I meant to aid our people? With Dalaran opened again, I can bring you an army.”

Rommath settled back in his seat, raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Your Sunreavers are barely enough troops to fill our audience hall.”

“Not my Sunreavers.” The idea was audacious. More than that, it was personal—but if anyone could see the true scope of what he had to offer, even through their own hatred, it would be Rommath. You’ve always insulted my methods, but never my craft. Let’s see how you feel about the pinnacle of my research. He took a breath, ignoring the way it made scrapes sting along his ribs. “I…may I open a portal here? It will be easier to show you.”

Sharp green eyes narrowed warily, but then Rommath was getting to his feet. “…Very well.”

Before he could second-guess himself, he turned and pulled open a portal to his study in Dalaran. He’d cleaned up as best he could before leaving, so it was probably fit for company. Not that it mattered if Rommath was impressed by anything beyond his research, of course.

--

Rommath had never been in Aethas’ quarters before, and certainly not the ones in Dalaran. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from a space claimed by Sunreaver—a complete mess seemed likely—but he hadn’t thought it would be so small. The study they’d stepped out into was barely half the size of his own; books colonized every surface and served as makeshift tables for various crystalline shards. Frozen orbs had been pressed into service as paperweights for stacks of vellum, glowing slightly with the magic inside of them. All the windows had been thrown open, but there was still a faint, lingering smell that made him wrinkle his nose. “Has something died?”

Aethas’ ears turned very slightly pink as he turned away, picking up a few densely inscribed scrolls. “The Kirin Tor did not exactly give me a chance to empty out the icebox before they arrested me. I won’t be able to live here for quite some time while it’s all cleaned up, but soon enough I’ll be spending most of my time far out of your way. Rejoice.”

I should. He found himself watching Aethas’ gloved hands, noticing the way they trembled slightly. This was the closest they’d been in weeks.

(In retrospect, perhaps he’d been cruel, but in the heat of that moment all he’d been able to think was it would be such a waste if you died and I will not allow it.)

Now, he found his gaze sharpening a bit more than he’d intended. “I think not, unless you’d prefer I appoint Astalor to your position in the golem division.”

Those freckled ears pinned back as Aethas glowered at him. “I did not say I would be spending all my time here—and I am certainly not going to let anyone else apply my research to my golems.” Roughly, he smacked a scroll down onto the desk next to Rommath’s hand. “Here; this is somewhat out of date—they all are—but I’m sure you’ll find it useful in that area.”

He unrolled it, belatedly wishing he’d brought his reading glasses. It was too late to go back for them now, however, so he settled for holding it slightly farther away from his face and hoping Aethas didn’t feel the need to comment on his squinting. For a long moment, the twisting spirals and sharp, sudden angles of the spell inked on the page didn’t make sense, and he felt the beginnings of a snarl build up behind his tongue—then he tilted his head a bit farther back, and all the pieces fell into place.

There, those runes would channel the arcane energy safely, and the curls he’d thought were useless frippery would be fine anchor points for a trainee mage to focus on—or to hook onto the spell matrices Aethas had developed to program the anima golems. The spell wove from the top of the scroll in a lazy curve all the way down to the bottom, where it terminated in a glyph that would have been deceptively simple if he couldn’t just make out that it was made up of dozens of smaller ones interlaced with each other. I see what he was saying about the army. With our golems outfitted like this… “Hrm. This is…impressive. Are there more?”

Aethas had taken up a position leaning against his desk, hip cocked in a way that gave him the same lazy curve as his spellwork. Eyes gleaming triumphantly, he gestured around the room. “Within a week, these will all be boxed, copied, and on your desk, Grand Magister. I swear it.”

It was almost unnoticeable, but Rommath caught sight of a wince as Aethas moved; as he finally took in the tattered state of his armor, he found himself frowning and drawing closer. “…At some point during this week, I order you to show yourself to the healers. Preferably before you start working.”

Aethas frowned up at him, face wary. “Why, Rommath. It almost sounds like you’re concerned about me.”

He stopped, suddenly very aware that he’d been about to reach for him and—what? Pull him into my arms? Yes, because that would go over well. To his relief, his voice came out evenly. “You are the one who has so graciously provided Quel’thalas with the equipment that will help us win the war against the Legion. It would be a true shame if you died before you could see that day come to pass.”

This close, he could feel the heat from the younger mage’s body as he leaned in; the still-respectable distance between them was shrinking imperceptibly, and a familiar light was sparking in Aethas’s eyes. Heated, but by now he’d known him long enough to know that desire and challenge were very nearly the same. “Oh? You’re sure you’re not just enraptured by my research?”

And really, that face was unfair—bold as brass, with the beginnings of a smirk that said he was thinking of certain nights during which, in Rommath’s defense, he really had intended to talk about work at some point. The sensible course of action was to retreat, and so accordingly he averted his gaze. “Your methods are unconventional, but I am intrigued by the possibilities you raise with the results.” I shouldn’t. This is beyond foolish. But… “I’d be interested in discussing your spells further after my meetings. Meet me in my study.”

Surprise flickered across Aethas’ face for a brief moment before it was replaced by a coolly victorious expression, and his eyes gleamed hotly enough that if Rommath wasn’t sure the young mage was hiding injuries he wouldn’t have been at all surprised to be pinned against the desk. His voice, though, was perfectly controlled. “Of course, Grand Magister.”

As he portalled back, he idly wondered if he could get his secretary to cancel his morning meetings the next day. It would throw his schedule into disarray, but it would almost certainly be worth it.