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tarisilmarwen · 3 years ago

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Whumptober 2021 - “Quickening“

(Prompts used:

No. 10 Oops I Did It Again: Hospital

No. 18 The Doctor Is In: Doctor's Visit

TW: Pregnancy complications, fetal distress and discussion thereof, implied/suggested miscarriage (unrelated to the main pregnancy).

Heeeeeeey so you remember that one terrible headcanon about Ezra being born on Empire Day specifically because he could feel Order 66 happening?

:D)

---

A swish of water and a quick swipe with the cloth and the last dish was cleaned.

Mira shut off the water and placed the porcelain plate in its rack with a small clink! Sighing, she leaned back, drying off her hands with the towel. Pleasant yellow sunlight filtered in through the window. It had been a temperate morning and was starting to warm to a mild afternoon. Perhaps she'd go out later, enjoy the lovely day.

Mira finished drying her hands and leaned over, wiping around the sink, her protruding belly brushing up against the counter. Ezra a lazy little wiggle inside her, and Mira smiled. Their son wasn't due for several more weeks but the anticipation had been steadily building. His room was almost ready; Mira was just finishing up the stitching on his swaddling blanket, a family tradition. It wasn't her best work, she had to admit, but it was soft and fuzzy and would keep the baby very warm in the chilly Lothal winters.

Her comlink chirped on the counter. Mira picked it up and switched it on, and the tired voice of her husband piped through.

"Hey Mir," he said. "I've finished up with the repair depot and I was just going to pick up a few things for dinner. Anything you're craving?"

Mira hung the dishtowel up, smiling lightly. "A meiloorun or two, if they happen to have them in today. Otherwise, some ronto roast will do just fine. I've got some fresh tuber roots and Falva leaves that need to be used up."

"I'll do my best, dear," he promised. "Anything else?"

She wrinkled her mouth. "I would say saffodil soup but... the shortages."

"Yeah," he agreed. With the war still plaguing much of the western Outer Rim, they'd had to go without more often than not. Mira had been taking prenatal supplements gifted to her by a generous local apothecarist, and their friends the Sumars brought them fresh food from their farm as often as they could, despite the drought conditions, but Mira's doctors still constantly fretted about her birth weight and nutritional intake. As if sensing where her thoughts were drifting, Ephraim next asked, "How are you and Ezra doing?"

Mira ran a hand lightly down her belly, turning away from the counter. "Some mild false labor again today. Ezra's settling down for his usual afternoon nap."

A light sigh from the comlink. "All right. Just make sure you—"

"Keep counting," Mira finished. "I know, Ephraim. I will. Love you darling."

"Love you too, Mir."

He signed off, and Mira leaned her hands back on the counter, taking some weight off her feet a moment.

Ezra gave another sleepy rustle inside her. Mira rested for a moment, wondering what she had been intending to do next. It wouldn't come to her for several moments, until an insistent urge in her bladder distracted her.

Grunting, she pushed off the counter and shuffled off towards the refresher, still trying to remember what she had forgotten.

***

After her 'fresher trip, she ran a quick vacclean of the kitchen and living area, and then sat down and picked up her embroidery. She was about half-way through one of the stylized Loth-cat's stripes when she abruptly remembered she had a load of laundry still in the cleaning unit that she'd been thinking to unload.

She stuck the needle into the blanket and set both aside, heaving herself up with some difficulty. Waddling to the utility room she felt her stomach pinch with another small tightening and absently counted the seconds off; one, two, three. It was already fading at ten, no longer or shorter than anything had been the previous few hours, nothing to worry over. She stuck an arm inside the clothes and frowned at how damp they were still. She'd have to speak to Ephraim about maybe getting some repair parts for the cleaning unit. It seemed to be getting less and less effective every time it was turned on. Sighing, she just loaded the clothes back in and sent them going for another round.

She shuffled back to the couch.

The tug and pull of the needle through the fabric, the soft hum of the air as it cycled through the house, even the sporadic pinch and ease of her abdomen, helped lull her into a bit of a trance as she worked. The threadwork Loth-cat slowly took shape.

Mira pulled the blanket a bit more up onto her knees for a better angle, drawing her needle through a particularly stubborn part.

There was a twinge of unease that moved through her, tingling all down her body, and then Ezra gave a sudden sharp twitch inside her belly.

Mira startled a little, then relaxed, ready to dismiss it as her little one moving reflexively in his sleep.

A couple seconds later Ezra jerked again.

Mira grimaced in discomfort, feeling either a foot or an elbow digging into her hip. Ezra kicked, one of his limbs knocking heavily against her diaphragm and in the breathless split-second that followed Mira felt a shard of fear rising up through her, originating from the pit of her belly. Her hands froze as she concentrated on the feeling of the child inside her, his movements frantic and agitated.

He wouldn't settle. Mira's mouth drew into a thin line. This... hadn't happened before.

As she was still processing her upset little one, there came the usual tightening in her stomach. Mira counted it mindlessly at first—one, two, three—but then it drew on past ten—thirteen, fourteen—and towards the end the pressure sharpened painfully.

She gave a gasp, a hand going to her belly. The pain dragged out—nineteen, twenty, twenty-one—before subsiding and fading, the tight feeling under her baby bump loosening.

But now her throat was dry and there was worry coursing through her.

Unable to keep sitting, she rose to her feet and began to pace the length of the living area, now counting the gap in-between, which had been holding fairly steady between twenty and thirty minutes. She waited in nerve-wracking spirals of anxiety, Ezra still thrashing uncontrollably inside her, bumping up against her sides and back.

"Shh, shh..." she whispered, lightly rubbing the top of her tummy, feeling more and more helpless.

Thirty-seven... thirty-eight...

The next tightening came about a minute and a half sooner than she was expecting, moving from back to front with a strong pressure that pinched and pinched and hurt and—

"Ah!" she cried softly, the sharp pain slicing like a neat surgical blade through her middle, lingering for upwards of eight seconds before slowly, slowly, fading back out.

Mira felt dread echoing through her, felt a strange wrongness in the air and fear pinging through her belly and chest and head, certain now that this was not normal.

She stumbled towards the kitchen area, fumbling fingers grabbing for the comlink from off the counter.

She turned it on with shaking fingers, gripping the edge of the counter with her other hand.

"E—Ephraim?" she called, her voice shaking.

"Mira?" His voice rang with immediate concern. "What is it?"

Mira struggled to control her breathing as she counted in her head. "I... I think..." She swallowed thickly, the words tasting like sour bile. "...I think something's wrong with the baby."

She could hear the horror and fright in his voice as he responded. "What happened? Are you all right?" he asked anxiously.

"A little while ago... I don't know what caused it just... Ezra started going crazy. He won't calm down and my contractions are starting to hurt."

Her husband gave a shaky breath over the line. "Okay..." he breathed. "Okay just... try to stay calm. You've got the medcenter bag packed?"

"Except for the blanket and a few toiletries, yes," Mira confirmed, glancing towards the corner of the living area where the canvas backpack with her nightdress and a fresh change of clothes and essential baby supplies lay nestled against the wall, ready to go in case of emergencies.

Like this one, she thought grimly.

"All right, I'm going to call Doctor Tae and let her know what's happening, see if she wants us to come in. Go ahead and finish getting things in the bag in case she tells us we need to go the medcenter immediately."

Mira felt her throat tighten, a wet feeling gathering under her eyes as Ezra gave a particularly hard shove with what was probably his little feet, flinging himself to the other side of what little room remained for him. He felt so frantic and scared. The wetness solidified into tears and her vision blurred and Mira choked out a shaking, "Okay..." back at Ephraim, voice tight with barely held-back sobs.

"I'll call you right back as soon as I hear from her," Ephraim promised.

Mira nodded mutely as the line disconnected.

***

Ephraim commed again about five minutes later, with the expected verdict from Mira's doctor that they needed to go straight to the medcenter.

"I've already picked up the speeder and I'm on my way," he told her. "Can you be waiting outside?"

"Yes," Mira said, inwardly curling with tripled anxiety. It was forty-five minutes from their usual vehicle depot to their house on a good day. Every second already felt like an eternity too long. "I'll be ready," she told Ephraim.

The silence as he hung up was even deeper and lonelier than before but Mira resisted the urge to call him back and beg him stay on the line, just so she could hear his voice and feel a modicum calmer. She couldn't distract him while driving.

So she paced again, back and forth, up and down, from one side of the house to another.

And she counted.

The next contraction came at fifteen minutes, and lasted a full thirty seconds, a slow-rolling rumble of discomfort that blossomed into cramping pain and stayed that way until the last few moments. Mira pressed her lips together, waiting it out with a grimace.

She reset her count, pacing yet again.

Ezra's jerking motions inside her did not cease. His head bumped her hip bone, his feet kicked her sides. Raw parental fear reverberated her through her. She grabbed up a datapad. "Fetal distress", "Preterm labor", her fingers tapped in keywords frantically and swiped on the datapad with endless motion. Nothing she looked up on the holonet soothed her concerns, only reinforced the alarms ringing through her head.

She wanted to cry. Her child could be dying. Suffocating. Had his cord wrapped around his little neck? Had he somehow pulled it free from her uterine wall?

She kept pacing even as she felt her abdomen tightening yet again. Eleven. That had been eleven minutes.

Her muscles squeezed and squeezed, feeling like the world's worst period cramps. Mira whimpered a little through her teeth as it began fading.

She kept count and kept moving, endlessly ticking off numbers in her head to distract from Ezra's upset movements and the horrible sense of wrong wrong wrong that permeated the air like a sticky aura.

The next contraction came at twelve minutes. It lasted thirty seconds again.

Where was Ephraim? Mira brought up her datapad and typed quickly. She saw with dismay that the normal route was clogged with traffic from an accident. She thought about calling him but knowing her husband he was already figuring out a way around.

She forced herself to put the datapad down.

Her bladder twinged again. Mira groaned and turned her course to the refresher, cursing her fluid intake from that morning. Two full glasses at breakfast and lunch, as prescribed by Doctor Tae, when the most pressing thing they had to worry about was the narrow amount of amniotic fluid cushioning Ezra.

It seemed so trivial now.

With a startle of panic she realized she hadn't felt the baby move for several minutes. Her body strained, every sense tuned to her womb until she felt a rough kick knock against her ribs.

She sobbed in relief, wringing her hands, trying to remember where her count had left off. Had it been six minutes thirty? Seven minutes?

She gave up and accepted that she'd lost track and just restarted when the next contraction came.

She had two more contractions, each about ten minutes apart and lasting a very long forty seconds, before the comlink chirped again, and a very frantic and apologetic Ephraim spoke up.

"Mira I'm so sorry! I'm almost there, just about ten minutes out!" he told her.

"I know," Mira said around her deep breaths, one hand clutched just underneath her baby bump, riding out the last of her latest contraction. "I saw the traffic report." She straightened slightly with a relieved exhale as the pressure faded. "I'm coming outside now," she let him know.

"See you soon."

Click.

Mira switched off her datapad before setting it on the table, then grabbed her unfinished sewing and went to shove it in their ready pack.

Stifling a groan as Ezra's restless jostling poked her bladder, she stood up and paid a final trip to the 'fresher.

As she washed her hands, she felt the beginning slow crawl of pressure across her abdomen.

Stars, that was only seven minutes, came her worried thought, as she grabbed onto the edges of the counter to brace, inhaling slowly and deeply as Doctor Tae had taught.

There was an odd new sensation with the tightening, a rubbery, stretchy sort of feeling that squeezed and squeezed like a balloon about to—

There was a sudden loosening and a burst. Mira gasped as a rush of water spurted from between her legs, dripping down her skin and soaking her undergarments.

She barely even felt the rest of the contraction in the shock, fresh tingling panic blossoming through her.

She hobbled back out to the living area and almost dropped the comlink in her haste to grab it.

"Mira?"

"My water's broke," she rushed out, panting, the pain moving through her sharper than ever. All she could do for several seconds was gasp. She gripped the comlink almost tight enough to crush it. "Ephraim, hurry!"

***

She didn't know how her husband managed it, but he was pulling up with a screech of repulsorlifts not even a minute later. He leapt from his side and ran around to bustle her quickly into the speeder, his face strained with worry, eyes pinched, lines tight.

The ready bag was tossed into the back and then they were off, her husband swerving around corners and scraping through narrow side streets in an effort to shave off just a few more seconds. He drove quickly, but carefully, hands solid on the yoke and handling the craft with measured control.

Mira moaned softly from the passenger side as every contraction sent more water spurting out of her, soaking the velther-lined seats. She glanced aside at Ephraim with twinging features.

"I'm sorry," she warbled, smiling faintly through her pain.

He reached across and grabbed her hand. "It's all right," he assured her. "It's all right. I'll have Tseebo pick up the speeder while we're in the medcenter and just take it back to the depot."

Mira squeezed his hand gratefully, leaning her head back against the seat, trying to remember to count, count, count.

Seven minutes, fifteen seconds. One minute long.

***

There was staff already waiting to take their speeder to the lot when they pulled up to the medcenter emergency entrance.

A petite green Rodian woman came alongside them as Eprhaim helped his wife stumble towards the doors.

"Patient's name?" she inquired, readying a stylus above her datapad.

"Mira. Mira Bridger," Ephraim answered quickly. "I'm her husband Ephraim."

"And how far along?" the Rodian asked.

Ephraim drew a brief blank, straining to remember. "Uh... I think it was thirty-six—"

"Thirty-five," Mira corrected breathlessly, doubling over as she walked.

"—thirty-five weeks," Ephraim quickly amended.

The Rodian nodded, stylus moving quickly across the screen. "Doctor Tae has already informed us what's happening and transmitted your medical file via the secure portal." She gave them a kind smile. "Don't worry, we'll get you right up to Labor and Delivery and have someone load the in-room datapad with all the consent forms. You can fill them out up there."

Mira's hands were shaking as they gripped his arm. "It's too early," she whispered, shaking her head, staring in a daze at the floor. "It's too early, he's... he's so small," she cried.

"Our staff are very good, Mrs. Bridger," the Rodian assured her. "Your baby will be all right." She lifted her head, addressing Ephraim. "Down that hall, past the on-staff Ob-Gyn's offices, first desk next to the turbolifts. Nurse Shay is waiting with a medilift for you."

"Thank you," he told her with genuine gratitude. He curled an arm around Mira's shoulders, guiding her forward, feeling her breath heave in and out.

The waiting room benches outside the Ob-Gyn offices seemed unusually full as he led Mira down the hallway, and there was a horrible caterwauling echoing down to the entrance. In his haste to get Mira to the lifts he didn't have much time to look, just paying brief, darting glances at the other families and couples that lined the hall.

He didn't know most of them, except maybe the family on the very end, a mother and father and three very rambunctious kids playing tag around the bench, Ithorians who sometimes attended the parenting classes he and Mira had been to.

Nurse Shay came up to meet them, pushing the medilift. Ephraim kept a firm hold of Mira's arm as she eased herself down on it, his heart clenching at how her face twisted in pain. He repeated inside his head that he'd done everything he could, gotten her there as fast as was safely possible, she was in the hands of capable medics now, but watching her struggle was heart-wrenching.

He felt helpless.

The nurse turned the medilift around and pressed the button for the waiting turbolift. As they squeezed into it, Ephraim caught sight of another couple he recognized, seated on the nearest bench. A man and woman—moderately pregnant—both in the garb of agriculturalists. The Leonis's? Tepha didn't look particularly in distress, perhaps she was just here for a routine check.

Just before the doors closed he realized the source of the shrill wailing was the child next to them.

Two-year-old Dhara Leonis, standing frozen in place and screaming her head off, inconsolable.

Tepha's efforts to soothe the girl seemed to have no effect, but the doors closed and Ephraim's attention had to return to Mira and their own, as yet unborn, child. He fidgeted on his feet, watching between her and the counter pinging at each floor.

Mira lay back on the medilift, eyes closed, shimmering with sweat, every so often giving a wince.

The lift chimed to signal their arrival.

The doors swished open and a rush of chaotic noise immediately hit Ephraim's ears. He blinked around at the white-lit reception area, the circular counter in the middle home to three very frazzled-looking attendees and open doors branching off all along the sides and continuing on down two long hallways on the left and right.

A woman was shrieking from one of the rooms, clearly in active labor. Heavy breathing echoed from two other rooms off the main spoke, and there was a woman in a thin hospital dress—barefoot and doubled over to hold her large belly—standing outside another door, seemingly waiting to speak to one of the staff, heaving breaths in and out.

The three ladies at the desk blurted quick assurances and apologies as they snapped from station to station, answering multiple transmissions and barking swift directions to the small swarm of nurses and doctors that were hurrying back and forth, moving from room to room in a frenzied fashion.

Ephraim took all of it in in about five seconds, and then Nurse Shay pushed Mira up to the counter and he followed anxiously.

"Where do you want the Bridgers?" Shay asked.

"That's Yura Tae's patient?" The girl she'd addressed pointed her finger with a snap. "Room B."

Shay nodded and nudged the medilift that direction. Dazed, it took Ephraim a moment to follow, and he caught a bit of the conversation from the ladies behind him.

A comm clicked off and one of them gave an exhausted sigh.

"Ambi-drive just picked up another fetal distress case; they're bringing her in the doors now," she explained.

"Another one?!" one of the others exclaimed in dismay. Ephraim glanced back and saw her shaking her head as she moved to another station. "That's the sixth one this hour, what is going on today?!"

The pregnant woman standing in front of her room gave a soft cry and buckled slightly, a puddle forming underneath her feet, water tinged with red. She clutched her stomach, looking pale.

A curse rang out.

Ephraim winced in sympathy and nurses jumped to assist, one of them taking the patient's arm and gently guiding her back into her room as two others hastened to wipe up the floor.

The moments that followed hazed out for him a bit. Shay settled Mira in their room, his wife almost limp on the bed, hair slicked to her forehead, breathing with long thin exhales. He clasped her hand tightly, keeping up a brave smile for her, whispering reassurances.

It took a while for a doctor to come around and check on them, but when he did he took one look and then buzzed for the labor team.

"Full dilation and the baby's crowning," came the verdict.

A stab of anxiety shot through Ephraim and all he could to was hold on tightly to Mira's hand as the room filled with people, raising her up, crowding around her. Mira sent a tired look at him and he smothered down a surge of panic as he nodded.

"It's okay," he whispered. "It's okay."

Mira swallowed thickly and, at the doctor's direction, curled up and began to push.

***

Jedi were dying.

All across the galaxy the Force was ringing in distress, echoing with fear and pain as its children were ruthlessly cut down, their lifesparks extinguished, blasters turning on them and slicing them through.

The order was carried out with merciless efficiency, darkness shading the minds of the clones and taking over them, raising their hands against their friends and allies.

The Force itself roiled in agony at the massacre, and everywhere in the Republic the reverberations and shockwaves were felt, even by those not normally sensitive to its presence. Beings throughout the known galaxy stopped in unease, feeling ill for a moment, feeling something in the air and atmosphere that said that something horrible was happening.

For those who were sensitive it was nothing short of utter agony.

So much death. So much darkness. Life was sent into Force and the Force shoved out as much life as it could to compensate. Jedi died, and the children of the Force were born in droves, already screaming and mourning for their fallen kindred.

On the planet Kaller, at 03:35 standard Lothal time, as Ephraim and Mira strained with fearful anticipation through the pain and sweat of a premature childbirth, Jedi master Depa Billaba took her last breath.

And Ezra Bridger took his first.

***

Ephraim finished filling out the final consent form and clicked to submit. The message dissolved into a little icon that zipped across the page and disappeared.

He sighed heavily and sat back in the chair. It was just them now, him and Mira and the fragile little bundle his wife was keeping nestled against her heart. The delivery team had long since moved on, attending to other patients.

The medcenter wing was not quiet, however, the air ringing with the cries of multiple infants.

Their little Ezra had been one of them. After two hours of non-stop wailing, he had finally exhausted himself and dropped off to sleep. Even then he was fussy, stirring and giving short little cries. Mira had tried feeding him to no avail, he wouldn't latch, and he was too upset to take a bottle. Finally the nurses had just advised Mira to swaddle and hold him for a bit, and so they'd carefully wrapped his tiny body in the half-embroidered blanket and tucked him next to Mira's chest.

Ephraim looked down at him, feeling his heart clench just a little tighter again, warm with pride and awe. Despite everything, their little one was perfect. A bit small and underweight, but completely healthy.

They'd been lucky. Of the eleven babies delivered on their floor that afternoon, two had been stillborn. The medcenter staff had done their best, but they were simply too early. Three others were in the NICU, encased in sterile transparisteel pods lined with blankets and hooked up to several IVs and tubes. Ephraim shuddered to think that Ezra could have been one of them.

Mira stiffened, pulling her head upright again from where it had been drooping.

"Sorry," she apologized with a tired smile. "I think I nodded off for a moment there."

"It's all right," he told her, patting her shoulder. "You pushed a whole person out of your body today. A small one, granted," he quipped.

Mira gave a chuckle. "I think I might try to sleep for a bit," she told him, smothering a yawn.

Ephraim nodded, knees creaking as he moved to get up. "Go ahead. I was going to see about getting some food anyway."

"Okay."

His joints felt stiff as he wandered out into the hall. There were less nurses running around; the attendants at the counter had dropped to one very exhausted-looking Devaronian woman. Ephraim walked up and cleared his throat lightly.

"Hello, sorry," he preemptively apologized, "do you know where I can get my wife and I some food?"

The woman pulled her face up from the desk, giving a tired smile. "The kitchen is sending up meals for everyone in about seven minutes or so," she told him.

"Thank you," he said. "And," he added, "thank you all for your hard work. Today was an odd one."

She snorted, but grinned. "You can say that again."

Ephraim leaned back off the counter but was reluctant to return to the room just yet—even with the doctors gone it still felt cramped—so he decided to walk around for a bit.

He didn't go far, mostly just paced around the reception area, and didn't see very many others, just another mother walking the floor with her colicky baby. He passed her twice before stopping to take a look at the little boy, who by this point was hiccuping between his wailing breaths, and help his mother adjust the bottle she was trying to poke between his lips.

After several frustrating seconds, the baby glommed onto the nub and began suckling, merciful silence falling.

"Quite a pair of lungs on him," Ephraim commented, in what he hoped was a complimentary tone. "What's his name?"

The frazzled mother beamed a little. She looked awfully young, Ephraim thought, maybe no more than nineteen or twenty, already with lined and tired features.

"I was thinking of calling him Jai, after my grandfather," she told him.

"Your first?"

She nodded. "Mm-hmm."

"Ours too." He scratched at something on his arm. "We almost didn't make it in."

"It was frightening, wasn't it?" she said, her voice low. "I didn't know what was happening, all of a sudden it was like he couldn't keep still."

Ephraim frowned, something Mira had said tugging at his memory.

The turbolift chimed, and both of them glanced over to see an orderly wheel in a cart stacked with covered plates.

Putting whatever he had been thinking to the side, Ephraim nodded politely at the young mother. "It was nice to meet you Miss...?"

"Kell," she replied.

"Miss Kell. Good luck with the little one."

"Thank you," she laughed gratefully.

Ephraim returned to the room, and the orderly pushed his cart in through the door momentarily. Mira raised herself upright, stirring from her light doze, taking care not to jostle Ezra too much.

They had just accepted the tray, were setting the covered plates down on the attached bedtable, when there was a commotion out in the reception room. The tramping footsteps of a nurse darted from the lifts to the counter. Ephraim glimpsed her through the open door.

"Turn on the holonet!" she said quickly. "Something's happening, I think the Chancellor is declaring an end to the war!"

"What?" the Devaronian nurse blurted. She fumbled for a moment at her console before flipping the switch.

The projectors on the ceiling and inside the corners of every room sprang to life with some kind of official broadcast, a view from the Senate chamber on Coruscant it looked like, the camera fixed on a figure in the center.

"—scarred and deformed, but I assure you my resolve has never been stronger."

A chorus of wails rose up and drowned out the man's voice; Ezra started awake and immediately began shrieking again, his voice joining the cries of... every infant in the wing it sounded like, all of them simultaneously bellowing their little lungs out. The orderly startled; frantic shushing ensued as mothers held and bounced their babies, straining to hear the announcement.

"The war is over. The Separatists have been defeated, and the Jedi rebellion has been foiled. We stand on the threshold of a new beginning. In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society—”

Out at the desk the nurses looked at each other incredulously.

"A—a what?!"

"An Empire?"

More staff were coming out to see now, whispering, concern etched in their features.

"Can... can he just... do that?"

Ephraim felt a twinge of something that felt like dread in the pit of his stomach. Glancing over at Mira, he saw from her wide eyes and pinched mouth that she felt it too.

An uneasy portent. A vague... chill. Like the air was wrong. Like something... dark... had crept in.

Mira hugged their screaming son a little tighter, her hand creeping across for his.

And as their fingers clutched, they had a horrible sense that whatever hell they had just survived today, they had fallen into a new one now beginning.

---

So this is only... slightly exaggerated from my birth experience for Niblet #2, minus the whole psychic-freaking-out-in-the-womb thing.

I ignored the Leonis’s canon backstory to enable Dhara’s cameo, sue me.

#whumptober2021 #whump #star wars #star wars rebels #ezra bridger #fanfiction #prompt fics

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love-takes-work · 7 years ago

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Keep Beach City Weird! Outline & Review

The Keep Beach City Weird! book is a little paperback full of Ronaldo's revelations. It's about what you'd expect, with the nuggets of truth that we may not recognize as truth until after the fact!

This volume is a keeper for any Steven Universe fan, but not much about it will be a surprise for anyone who's paid close attention to the show. It's fun, as usual, to watch Ronaldo loudly congratulate himself for uncovering THE TRUTH (you can "hear" his voice throughout, of course), and a bunch of the references are great fun to anyone who knows what he's referring to even if the context isn't spelled out.

Fans will also be treated to some new artwork! The picture of Ronaldo imagining himself in the hand of the Temple Fusion's animated form as a trusted sidekick is particularly interesting.

And since Ronaldo is one of those broken clocks that's right twice a day, fans who know his schtick can't help but wonder what conveniently hidden bits are actually Ronaldo straight-up telling us the future.

The book opens with an intro from Ronaldo Fryman, who declares himself as the weirdest thing in Beach City. (The Gems are a close second, he says.) He shares his frustration over not having been able to sell his book to mainstream publishers (which has led him to self-publish it), and warns you that ads for the family fry shop will be interspersed with the content because his dad helped fund it.

He then goes right into a "Monsters" section (decorated with art of him in his horror movie outfit and Peedee in a version of the Snerson costume).

The list includes Centipeetle, a Giant Bird, the Worm Monster, the Puffer Fish, "Giant Women from the Sea," the Watermelon Stevens, the Fusion Experiments, the Great North monsters, and the Crab Monster.

Most of these are not creatures he should have seen, and he shouldn't have pictures, but whatever, I digress. Ronaldo theorizes that the Centipeetles could be humans bitten by a radioactive centipede or centipedes bitten by a radioactive human. He discusses the story of William Dewey being saved by a giant woman whose image bears a resemblance to the Crystal Gems' temple, and then concludes, "Probably no connection." He mentions having seen Sugilite wreck the beach gym.

He brings up reports of the horrible Fusion Experiments and concludes they are zombies. He suggests the Great North monsters are a function of global warming and praises his own bravery in filming the Crab Monster for a documentary. And he also brings up his debunked "Sneeple" theory, which has been swapped for the Rock People theory. Those dang Rock People who want to kidnap Earth and bring it to the Mud Galaxy.

Ronaldo then goes into weirdness from space, detailing the Red Eye ("Vampire Spaceship"), the Rock People Space Program (based on Pearl's failed ship from "Space Race") the Plug Robonoids (which he thinks are an attempt to play space pinball), the Hand Ship (which he knew exactly what that was), the shirt that hit him in the head from "Shirt Club," and crop circles (like in "Joy Ride").

And then Ronaldo covers "Local Weirdness," starting with a double page about the Crystal Gems and then moving on to outline the Cat Fingers incident (with speculation on what causes "Cat Finger Fever"), the Frybo incident (was it all Ronaldo's fault for exploring tuber-based witchcraft?), the Oldest Man in the World incident (from "So Many Birthdays"), Lion sightings, Lars's fire breath, Guacola, and . . . Onion.

Next, Ronaldo gives you a tour of all the Weird Places, beginning with Funland Arcade (with a handy guide of moves you can use if you play "Teens of Rage"!), and taking you around to Race Mountain, the Abandoned Warehouse, Brooding Hill (with an included guide of things to brood about), the many-holed cliff (which he calls a Gnome City), and the Lighthouse.

And then, the "Times It Got Really Weird" section details the flowers from Rose's moss in "Lars and the Cool Kids" (did you know they were produced by cloud seeding?), the mountain of duplicated G.U.Y.S. from "Onion Trade," the disappearing ocean from "Mirror Gem" and "Ocean Gem," the blackout incident from "Political Power," Peridot's interrupting broadcast, the Great Diamond Authority, and Cluster Quakes.

And he closes everything with a "Weirdilogue" and encourages you to keep your own town weird.

Some gems:

"Like most bad stories, this one started at a farmer's market."

"I guess that's the danger of genetically engineered food: It might punch you in the face."

"Beach Citywalk Fries. We promise to NEVER bring out that Frybo costume again."

"What's scarier than a beach ball? Well, I guess a lot of things. . . ."

Ronaldo discussing an experience that was either food poisoning or accidentally eating deep-fried wood.

The Zombie Apocalypse Flow Chart which always leads to "Lock myself in lighthouse and prepare to watch the world I know crumble before me."

Ronaldo pointing out that the shirt that hit him in the head from an extraterrestrial source should be a size extra large next time, not youth medium.

"They have a cool home base in an ancient magical temple. My base is a lighthouse that I'm not legally allowed to occupy."

After an entire paragraph outlining how gross Guacola is, Ronaldo heartily encourages you to pick up a can of it while visiting Beach City.

"[M]y favorite – Teens of Rage. Probably because I am a teen who is full of rage at a world that doesn't know how to pronounce 'manga.'"

"Race Mountain, AKA the Devil's Backbone, AKA the Devil's Laundry Chute, AKA the Devil's Poorly Planned Highway, AKA Old Man Carwreck's Road, AKA Municipal Maintenance Route 64!!!!"

"I took a picture of it, which Lars really did not want published. Check it out."

Ronaldo speculates that maybe the moon has its own moon.

And here are the things I found notable for fans!

1. The book is dedicated "For Jane, My Ohimesama." I sure hope they're on speaking terms again after what happened in "Restaurant Wars."

2. Ronaldo gives the Crystal Gems his own names, referring to them as Square Head, Princess Nose, and Purple Girl.

3. When covering the fire breath incident from "Joking Victim," Ronaldo refers to Lars as "Local sarcasm dispenser Lars Barriga." This was the first place where Lars's last name was dropped.

4. The page about Onion's weirdness details an interaction that did not happen in the show but explains one that did: The ketchup packets that he famously ran over with his scooter in "Onion Trade" were begged from Ronaldo one day. Onion offered a photo of Ronaldo in third grade in exchange. (???)

5. Funland was apparently established over a century ago under the name Frederick Ulysses Neptune's Land of Mechanical Oddities and Entertainment. The entry also mentions that it contained a future-telling robot, a reference to "Future Boy Zoltron."

6. An apparent contradiction: Ronaldo, while discussing the video game Teens of Rage, identifies with the game because he is a teen who has rage. This would make him at the oldest nineteen if he is a teen. But in the section on the Lighthouse, he refers to the Beach City Explorer Club he had in his childhood with Lars, and claims that "fifteen years later" they had an incident there with the Lighthouse Gem. If it was fifteen years later but he's no older than nineteen, that happened when he was four, and that's impossible; he was far older than four in the flashback scene with Lars.

7. In a note to cover his butt from the Labor Department, Ronaldo suggests his brother is just a really short eighteen-year-old to distract from the fact that the family business is most likely exploiting him in child labor.

8. In his bit about "Teens of Rage," Ronaldo tells you about special moves for his favorite character, Gary Sunglasses. I think this is a contradiction to the episode "Arcade Mania" because while Steven is trying to teach Garnet how to play the game, he narrates that he thinks she's "a Joe Rock kinda gal," and the same character is pictured on the choosing screen.

9. Ronaldo refers to Stevonnie as "the mysterious Racer S." while discussing the greatest race he ever saw at Race Mountain. Not sure where he got "S." from, especially since he appears to have been in attendance at Stevonnie's first appearance at the rave in "Alone Together" and presumably witnessed their unfusion.

10. Other wrestlers besides those shown in the wrestling episodes are introduced in a promo flyer. We now have After School Champion Assistant Principal Gene McCormick, Culinary Tag Team Champions Baste Face and the Iron Saucier, Women's Caped Crusader Champion Tina "Ten Fingers" Gonzales, X-Treme League Champion Presented by Guacola The Ocean Town Kid, Interdimensional Champion of the Multiverse Glossy Wayne, and Old Timey Senior League Tag Team Champions Sarsparilla Frank and the Colonial Terror.

11. When talking about how to brood properly, Ronaldo refers to his hair as his "frylocks." Ha.

12. The lighthouse was apparently constructed two hundred years ago to keep people away from Beach City, not to help the ships be guided in. This might be one of the true things in the book. Who knows?

13. In "explaining" Peridot's broadcast that happened during "Cry For Help," Ronaldo comments that Peridot called herself Peridot, but that it is actually pronounced "Peridot." (It isn't discussed exactly what he means here, but he's surely making reference to the fact that the more common pronunciation of "peridot" does not have the T pronounced, even though the show uses the version where the T IS pronounced.)

14. Ronaldo, while explaining the Great Diamond Authority to us, assigns the Diamonds' underlings into a strict hierarchical society made up of the classes Chalk, Slate & Granite, Rock Candy, and Clods.

15. Ronaldo terms the earthquakes from the beginning of Season 3 to be "Cluster Quakes" because they came in clusters. Fans will know that they actually did come from a giant mutant Gem Fusion buried in the Earth which is called the Cluster.

The book has some new art that isn't just screencaps from the show, and it's a fun ride. I recommend it, and it's cheap!

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]

#steven universe #steven universe books #keep beach city weird #long post #ronaldo #myblog

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