#nonetheless the show wasn’t what the executives expected though I bet

[bumblebeeappletree]

In this video I talk about the genesis of Batman Beyond, how Warner Brothers wanted a new, all ages, kid-friendly cartoon that would appeal to all audiences. What they got was frequently one of the most disturbing shows Warner Brothers has ever made.

Join me in celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Batman Beyond by looking at all the ways this show defied expectations and went on to become a beloved fan favourite show.

#batman #batmanbeyond #dcau #batmanbeyond25

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

01:30 The Origins of Batman Beyond

03:03 Rebirth

04:12 Spellbinder

05:12 Bane

05:47 Blight

07:06 Mature Themes

08:26 Body Horror

09:34 Earth Mover

11:27 Return of the Joker

12:12 Closing Remarks

12:31 Promo Time

13:11 Next Time!

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/ @serumlake

Music by @Katt Strike - listen to the whole track here: https://youtu.be/VKdA2lCjtashttps://y...

[jamiiviper]

The Jamil Essay

this is a reupload of a post i made a couple of weeks ago - previously it was an external link to a google doc, so it never showed up in any of the twst tags, but i worked so hard on this and i would really love it if more people read it, so i’m reuploading directly to tumblr.

to put it simply, this is a 3.7k word character analysis purely about jamil. and even with a word count like that i wasn’t quite able to cover everything i wanted to say, so who knows, maybe there��ll be a part 2 one day. i’ve also decided i do want to write a kalim version, so i’ll probably start working on that sometime soon! stay tuned!

trigger warnings: mentions of child abuse

jamil is the vice dorm leader of scarabia, who’s been kalim’s caretaker practically since birth. he puts on a facade of not standing out, preferring to remain completely average, and plans his life around kalim’s antics. as we learned in chapter 4, however, his true feelings are that he bears a lot of resentment towards kalim, and that he wants to stand out - he just wasn’t allowed to, as he can never surpass kalim.

in this essay i want to cover not just my personal interpretation of jamil, but also some common misconceptions that people tend to have about him. twitter doesn’t have this problem as much, but with tumblr i’ve found that there are very few jamil stans, especially in the theory and writing communities - meaning it’s quite common for people to misunderstand his character. in the fandom as a whole, it’s common for people to only acknowledge him insofar as “gay for kalim”. 

firstly, jamil’s character development in the main story - i would say he’s arguably the best-developed character in twst, since yana now has enough chapters available to flesh out characters after their main story arc ended. jamil holds very deep-seated resentment against kalim, to the point that he plotted to betray him for probably several years. he plotted to have kalim not just thrown out of nrc, but thoroughly ruin his reputation in the process. after his overblot, those feelings did not magically vanish - far from it. i think earlier twst chapters suffered from arcs being wrapped up a little too neatly post-overblot, but pomefiore’s arc has already proved itself to be the exception and thoroughly covers not just jamil’s continued dislike for kalim, but also the wider consequences for what he did.

since the twst school year begins in september, we know jamil is about 9 months older than kalim. from literally the day kalim was born, jamil’s life has been dedicated to kalim. possibly since the day jamil was born, and he was always fated to be kalim’s caretaker. it may even have been the reason he was born at all. either way, it’s not like he remembers those 9 months. all jamil has ever known is that his sole purpose must be to serve kalim. he must not have desires of his own, he must not do anything for himself - from childhood he was expected to be ready to give up his life for kalim at a moment’s notice. he can’t be good at anything - kalim must always be better (i’ll cover this in more depth in a later paragraph, this philosophy is key to his character). his own parents drilled this into him, even going to the extent of hitting him if he didn’t comply. it seems he has a normal relationship with his family despite this - he bickers with his sister like regular siblings, and pre-overblot he indicated that his desire to be free from servitude wasn’t just about him, he wanted to free his family. nonetheless, the psychological damage his childhood caused him is severe. is it any wonder his unique magic is mind control, when he’s never had an ounce of control over his own life?

moving onto his early teen years, we know both jamil and kalim were severely poisoned at one point, both falling into comas for around two weeks. although we don’t have a timeframe for jamil’s coma, we know kalim’s was when they were around 13 years old. if jamil’s was around this age too - probably a short while afterwards - i think it’s plain to see why jamil’s resentment began to build. he’d have been around the age where he first started to question why his life has to revolve around kalim. why should he be expected to die for someone he doesn’t even like, who’s spoiled and doesn’t realise how much jamil does for him? kalim takes everything for granted: status, friendships, freedom, and jamil is meanwhile left in the shadows with nothing. then one day kalim gets poisoned so badly he falls into a coma - how much do you want to bet jamil was blamed for that, at the age of 13? after that he’s expected to taste-test anything kalim eats beforehand, and eventually starts making all his meals for him because the risk of poison is so high otherwise. then one day he slips up, or it’s an undetectable poison, and jamil is the one to fall into a coma. is anyone blamed for that? does anyone pity jamil outside of his immediate family + kalim? no, probably not. after all, he’s just doing his duty, right? it’s truly… no wonder jamil’s resentment became so intense. he finally has proof that his life truly does not matter. although kalim certainly cares about him, he doesn’t understand jamil’s position. he sees jamil as a friend, an equal; jamil knows this can never be the case, and he also knows kalim is too privileged to ever hope to understand. 

fast forward on a couple of years to jamil receiving his nrc acceptance letter. he thinks that finally, finally he’s going to be free. four years of freedom - and who knows, maybe after that he can be free forever! he can finally excel at his classes and be his true self, without fear of upstaging kalim! 

and then kalim gets accepted a month late. for no reason other than his surname. 

and then kalim gets sorted into his dorm.

it’s a miracle he didn’t just overblot on the spot - but that’s his nature as a scarabia student. careful foresight and planning. this moment was, undoubtedly, the moment he started planning his betrayal. he had his one month of freedom ripped away, just like that. 

oh, don’t forget the fact that not long after, kalim was made dorm leader not because he notably embodies scarabia values at all, but because of nepotism. (side note: most scarabia stans agree kalim does actually reflect scarabia values, just not as obviously as jamil does, but either way jamil himself wouldn’t see it this way. this is a jamil essay so i won’t go in depth about this unless asked to!)

under kalim’s watch, scarabia - known for its intelligence and cunning - is turned into “the party dorm”. this seems to be the fandom’s perception of them too - i mean, just ask any non-scarabia stan what goes on in scarabia, that’s probably the answer they’ll give you. jamil would have probably loved the original scarabia; although we don’t know much about it, we know scarabia students are on a par with octavinelle when it comes to intelligence (paralleling azul’s constant interest in jamil). yet by winter break, scarabia is doing so badly in those same exams that they didn’t even place in the rankings…? without meaning to, kalim clearly harmed scarabia. instead of getting chance to study magic and show off, jamil is now essentially an unpaid, full-time party planner by the time his second year starts.

a few months later, winter break finally arrives, and jamil executes his plan to dethrone kalim. i may have just spent the last two pages defending jamil’s grudge, but his actions themselves are still indefensible. there’s evidence to suggest kalim knew what was occurring on some level - refusing to answer jade’s question about who was hypnotising him proved that 1) he probably had some idea deep down that jamil was betraying him 2) he doesn’t want jamil to get in trouble for it. nonetheless, this does not make what jamil did okay in the slightest, even if kalim allowed it to happen. jamil is, undoubtedly, the bad guy in this situation, no matter how sympathetic his childhood makes you feel. i could go into detail about why kalim acted the way he did, but again, this is jamil-focused.

i’ll skip talking about his overblot, because i covered his hatred for kalim in a lot of depth already and i want to talk about the general aspects of his personality like his desire for praise later on. so moving onto the end of chapter 4, we see jamil’s true self: a snarky, heavily opinionated boy who honestly just wants to be free to be himself.

but just like his freedom, that side of jamil once again only lasts for a brief moment. jamil almost loses everything after his overblot. practically every scarabia student hates him and wants him thrown out of the dorm - even kalim, his sole defender, can’t call him a good person. he’s a traitor. he says he trusts the scarabia students to work out that it’s better for them if he stays, but that day won’t come any time soon, and until then he’s keeping his distance from them all, because their hatred is that strong. if azul truly had been streaming to more people than just jade, his life would have been ruined beyond repair. so what does jamil do? he goes back to serving kalim. as a scarabia student, his foresight is good enough that he knows the option he hates the most is the only one that’ll be good for him in the end. for jamil, being himself is nothing short of a death sentence.

now i’ve talked for far too long about the timeline of his character arc, i can finally get to the good stuff: jamil’s personality, and how it’s changed throughout the stories we’ve seen so far.

the first thing that springs to mind when you think of jamil, other than “snake”, is probably “tired”. or “he’s going to snap”. something along those lines. which... yes, we know he is. he did snap. after chapter 4, this doesn’t seem to have changed too much, but i do get the impression that he’s somewhat less stressed out by kalim. his resentment has dissipated, for the most part (he does still openly insult him, though), so while he does grumble at kalim there’s no suppressed fury behind it. what replaced that fury?

guilt.

in 5-10, jamil tells azul that he intends to continue to obediently follow kalim around in order to restore his reputation, both inside and outside of scarabia. this does of course make him sound pretty selfish (as per usual), and in classic jamil fashion he doesn’t let his true emotions show, so it’s easy to take this at face value and assume he just doesn’t really care. i think in this case, we need to look more at his actions that we see throughout chapter 5. namely, the way it’s being emphasised how he’s silently watching kalim from afar - something he’s always done, yes, but yana seems to be really making a point of it in chapter 5. it’s not just kalim he’s distancing himself from, either. he’s staying away from the rest of the scarabia students too, as mentioned earlier. he never had any friends at all to rely on, even before his overblot. so by doing this, he’s effectively completely isolating himself. he clearly has a lot of thoughts about everything that he’s not sharing with anyone - just listen to the way he sighs at the end of the flashback in 5-10, how annoyed and frustrated he seems. if jamil was telling the truth about just wanting to restore his reputation, he’d probably appreciate kalim’s efforts, even if he dislikes kalim himself. he shouldn’t be upset by kalim persuading the scarabia students to give him another chance. not if he truly just wants to get back to normal. i think on some level, jamil feels incredibly guilty over his actions. he might not have even admitted to himself yet that he feels this way, and by saying things like “i just want to restore my reputation” he’s just trying to convince himself. after all, that’s something he has a history of doing.

ever since jamil’s first introduction, we’ve known jamil lives his life by the philosophy of “not standing out is the best way to succeed”. he hates standing out or receiving any kind of positive attention at all, because he thinks that it’ll only attract trouble. or so we thought, because as we learned from his overblot, jamil desperately wants to stand out. he’s powerful and intelligent, and he wants people to acknowledge that. he wants the praise and recognition he knows he deserves. this means that whenever he said he didn’t want to stand out, he was lying through his teeth - he probably constantly tried and failed to convince himself of this throughout his childhood. during his lab SR story, he even repeats it to himself in his thoughts, like a mantra - “I want to avoid standing out. I can’t be satisfied with this. I cannot be too good, nor fall behind, and neither should I get satisfactory grades or fail. This is the best shortcut to success.”. much like his feelings of guilt, jamil refused to acknowledge how much he truly wanted to show off, even in his own thoughts. he is awful at being honest to himself.

post-ch5, we find out that despite everything, jamil does still hold this philosophy, to some extent. he of course shows off his singing and dancing skills enough to be chosen as a main vocalist, and he says he wants to make a name for himself and show various people just how talented he truly is: kalim, his family, the asims and MC, to name a few. yet in the chapter before that, when kalim compliments his singing and dancing, he’s like “i don’t really want to stand out, but…”. which is honestly a little confusing at first because he does want to. i’d probably interpret it as something along the lines of he wants to show off to the people he cares about, but he still wants to keep his head down in general. so i think that to some extent, maybe he actually has internalised that philosophy now. the one time he truly expressed his desire to stand out, it ended in catastrophe for him. he has this tiny seed of doubt within him now, telling him his parents were right all along. but... he’s working past it, and applying himself as and when he’s comfortable doing so.

going back to him being bad at being honest, jamil’s a pretty big tsundere. there’s one person he does regularly receive praise from: kalim. yet despite desperately wanting to be praised, he often gets annoyed at kalim and tells him something like “this isn’t about me right now” or “what does that have to do with anything?”. plus when the praise is coming from kalim, it’s often in the context of kalim praising him to other people - as a servant, he can’t be seen accepting all these compliments, right? he can never be better than kalim. so he has to reject kalim’s praise. when it’s just the two of them alone, though, is when jamil gets embarrassed to the point he has to hide his blush under his hood. given his childhood, chances are that he doesn’t really know how to process being praised. he knows he wants people’s approval, but when he actually gets it, he just short-circuits. it was the same at his birthday celebration; although he wants to be the centre of attention, when it actually happens, he gets all embarrassed and tsun. i was trying not to let my own personal feelings spill in this but oh my god he’s so cute i can’t

next... this isn’t really linked to any previous topic, but i want to talk about jamil’s cooking! jamil cooks all of kalim’s meals, and regularly cooks entire feasts for kalim’s parties, too (as well as being in charge of getting any animals kalim wants to show off, decorating the dorm, making sure everything runs smoothly… you get the idea). his cooking is very good, and he has a lot of technical knowledge about cooking too - azul, whose parents run a restaurant, didn’t know about emulsification, but jamil was able to explain it to him. despite being so good, though, according to his dorm SSR homescreen lines he doesn’t actually like cooking very much. he says the fact that he cooks so much is “just how things turned out”. of course, he could just be being a tsun, but i do feel like he’s being honest with this - what reason does he have to seriously enjoy something he was forced into doing his entire life? However there is evidence that he might enjoy it after all; he’s particularly good at alchemy because of his cooking knowledge, and according to magical archives he’s completely neutral in motivation for both flying and history lessons, but has slightly higher motivation levels for alchemy, indicating that he can’t stop himself from putting a little bit extra effort into that class. i think it can be interpreted either way with the canon info we have currently, but regardless i would not say he’s the cooking fanatic people often depict him as. 

also, when jamil cooks, although his cooking is good, visually it’s usually very boring, to the point he and his sister would bicker over it. he has the technical skills to cook good food, but no idea how to present it. similarly, in his fairy gala SR he was told that although he perfectly memorised the dance, it was boring to watch - it looked like he was just executing the routine without any passion behind it. jamil is so emotionally repressed that he has no idea how to express his individuality. even in his bedroom, the only truly personal items he owns are a first aid kit (related to his servant position, not him as a human being) and a stereo + headphones set for dancing. he doesn’t have any other hobbies or interests - he doesn’t even know what people his age do for fun, because he’s never been allowed to think about such things. 

dancing is all jamil has that’s not directly related to serving kalim, really - but even that ties into his servant status. although he genuinely enjoys it nowadays and dances by himself for fun, he only picked it up as a hobby because kalim wanted to go to dance practice, and of course jamil had to accompany him. when his flashback after his overblot talks about him deliberately losing to kalim, the story focuses specifically on a dancing competition. which is why it’s honestly so important to jamil’s character that chapter 5 focuses on a singing and dancing competition. jamil finally has the chance not just to show off his skills in general, but his skills at the one thing he’s been allowed to love throughout his life. the one thing where losing to kalim at it hurt so much that it was such a prominent memory for him. when jamil was chosen as a main vocalist, he instinctively tries to say kalim would be better suited for the position, but stops himself and accepts it. it clearly means so much to him that he was chosen for this.

okay i started to scare people with how long this was getting when it was only 50% finished, i think if i write anymore people will actually be concerned for my health so i’ll leave it here. if you read all of this, thank you so much for putting up with my anime boy brainrot for over six full pages! i really.. really like jamil. again, i most certainly do not think his actions should be defended, but god if they’re not fascinating to read about. and i hope i covered the other sides to him well enough, the things that you’d never ordinarily pick up on because so few people talk about him outside of him and kalim as a pair (both platonic scarabia + romantic jamikali, i mean). he has so much depth to him that people don’t see and god i could easily have gone on for another few pages if i wasn’t forcing myself to stop. but please please talk to me if you want to hear more...

yana has treated him so well, jamil stans get too much food if anything but i’m absolutely thriving off it as you can see! thank you for allowing him to exist, yana-sensei!

having said that, i couldn’t stop myself from adding some extra facts about him below. please enjoy.

some fun jamil facts for your soul:

his sister used to bake him cookies on his birthday - specifically, these!

when jamil and kalim went to eat at the cafeteria with ruggie and leona, leona took one look at jamil and went “you look like you’d kill kalim in his sleep”

sebek and jamil find each other’s positions enviable. sebek wishes he could have been by malleus’ side from birth as jamil was with kalim, and jamil just… wishes he served someone he respected as deeply as sebek respects malleus (but he does think sebek is too enthusiastic)

jamil hates surprises with a burning passion, and despite being with kalim for 17 years is still not used to them. for his previous birthday, kalim held a huge surprise party, and i think he still hasn’t recovered from the shock

i think a lot of people already know that in his birthday SSR story he said he wanted a parrot after graduation so he could teach it to call him master, but it goes a bit further than that? it was actually first mentioned during his lesson chats, when kalim gets a parrot. jamil has to research how to care for it, and ended up wanting one of his own afterwards (but got too tsundere to admit it at the time).

also, he heard that the sorcerer of the sands’ parrot (iago) could speak as fluently as a human, and he got excited and watched a bunch of parrot videos on magicam, but was of course disappointed to find out that this was not the case.

he frequently uses flattery to try and get his way, like when he attempts to flatter vil during his SSR story - unfortunately he misjudged vil, as vil’s actually the type of person who hates meaningless flattery. because he does this so frequently, when he genuinely does give compliments people don’t always believe him.

according to the halloween event, jamil is surprisingly environmentally conscious, and insists on holding a sustainable halloween theme. after organising so many parties and seeing the waste they probably produce, i think there’s no wonder he’s so concerned about it.

[ironmandeficiency]

13 x 7 = 28

pairing: no pairing (no reader mentioned)

word count: 1907

summary: naturally is in deep shit. he got in over his head during sabaac with a member of the five-oh-first and now owes the man in blue more credits than he’s ever had at once. luckily, his ori’vod have his back.

a/n: apparently a sequel to “who’s my commander” was something ppl wanted, and i was all too eager to write something with my darling twenty-fifth boys. heads up, this is a dialogue-heavy piece. tagging @boba-thot​, & @morganas-pendragons​ . please ask me abt my oc boys!! i have so many of them, i would love to share them with y’all!!!

“jort! ba! wait up!” the men in question slow down upon hearing their names being frantically shouted. if there was something bad happening that pertained to combat or one of the carnivorous felucian plants, they wouldn’t be the ones sought out. so they realized that it must be something of a personal nature and that allowed their heart rates to slow back down as they turned to identify the vod calling for them.

naturally was in deep shit. he had made the poor decision to join a few members of the five-oh-first in a game of sabaac and now owed them ninety-one credits, which was more than he’s ever had at once. the credits he had now only added up to half of that and knew that if he didn’t think of something, he’d be stuck on sanitation to pay off his debt to the cog-headed man.

jort would not admit that his mood softened a little upon identifying the distressed man as naturally. ba, however, knew that the man beside him was indeed sympathetic (sometimes too much for his own good) and that jort was now planning his evening around the needs of the frantic kih’vod in front of them.

“naturally, what’s wrong?”

“i was playing sabaac with the five-oh-first and got in over my head! i owe jesse more credits than i’ve had since i left kamino and i-“

the rookie was almost trembling and that was it, the older troopers were done for. naturally was now officially under the protection of him and jort, jesse be damned.

a metaphorical lightbulb lit up over jort’s head. ba could see said lightbulb the way he always does when his batchmate has an idea. the lightbulb hasn’t been able to distinguish good ideas from bad ones yet, but there was hope for jort yet.

“ninety-one, you say?”

“yeah, ninety-one credits.”

“well nat’ika, i’ve got just the trick to help you out.”

the youngest was almost too busy preening at the term of endearment to realize that his ori’vod was indeed going to help him. ba helped snap him back to reality as jort found a stick, beginning his lesson in the felucian mud.

ba had to admit that this plan was not only kriffing insane, but extremely world-tilting if executed right. it was jedi-level insanity and he didn’t doubt for a second that his batchmate learned the trick from the general.

after running naturally through the trick two more times, he felt that his training was paying off. ba had made the point of jesse knowing if naturally was lying about the credits he had on him and they both nodded their agreement. the youngest pulled his credits from his pouch and counted out twenty-eight, dropping the rest of them into ba’s hand.

jort takes this as a cue to continue. “now remember, you have to let him work some of it out himself towards the end. if you did it right from the start, he’ll be thinkin’ like you the longer it goes on and he’ll fall right into your trap.” naturally is soaking in the information like a sanitation duty sponge, part of him still reeling from the fact he’s being given such attention by a superior.

“does this trick help you a lot?”

jort smiles at the question. “only when the total i’m weaseling out of is ninety-one.”

ba rolls his eyes and butts in, “you say that as if you don’t try your damndest to make the total ninety-one as much as possible.” jort playfully scoffs at the insinuation as ba turns to naturally and grins like a loth-cat, enjoying the laugh he earns almost a tad too much.

this kid was making him soft.

to be truthful, ba would have taken the rookie under his wing the same as jort was currently doing if given the chance to do so in his own time. they’ve discussed as much with fortune, who led oracle company, about snagging a company transfer for the bright-eyed brother. fortune was on board with the idea because he saw how the newer medic worked, the way vode lost the panic in their eyes while being treated by him. it was a valuable trait to have as a medic and even more valuable to the men who fell under his care.

footsteps were heard around them and jort quickly went to mess up the numbers written in the mud. he didn’t want his information being spread where he didn’t want it, and judging by the look on his vod’ika’s face, the man approaching was indeed jesse.

“you think you can do it?”

“i know i can.”

“good man! find me when you’re done!”

ba and jort departed as jesse neared, and naturally was on his own.

“hey, naturally! you owe me for that game!”

naturally moved a hand to his pouch and made a show of getting every credit out. he let them clink together in the outstretched palm of the man in blue. “here’s twenty-eight credits, i’ll see you later-“

“alright, i- wait just a minute! there were seven rounds, and you bet thirteen each time. that’s way more than a measly twenty-eight!”

“that comes out to twenty-eight, vod.”

jesse’s wondering whether this guy’s tube was cracked. this rookie medic owes him ninety-one credits! on what planet does thirteen times seven equal twenty-eight? “did you get dropped on your head as a cadet?”

naturally suppressed a grin. “not that i can recall.”

“do you mean to tell me that you can prove that thirteen times seven is twenty-eight?”

“it’s gotta be, i owe you twenty-right credits.”

“tell you what: if you can prove it, you can keep the credits. if you can’t, you’ll owe me double.”

naturally stiffens a little at the prospect of having to owe one hundred and eighty-two credits to the cogged man who doesn’t seem to be the type to forget things like this. but he has faith in himself and the trick jort taught him, so he agrees to the deal and grabs the stick from earlier and begins the trick.

“seven into twenty-eight’s gonna come out to thirteen, watch.”

naturally draws a large seven in the dirt, followed by a significantly smaller twenty-eight separated by a slash, then another slash on the other side of the twenty-eight.

“can seven go into two?”

“no it will not.”

“that’s a giant seven to fit into that little bitty two.”

“... yes it is.”

“but we’re not gonna hurt the little two, so i want you to hold onto it for me.”

naturally “grabbed” the two from where he drew it in the dirt and “placed” it into jesse’s outstretched palm. that was simple enough so far, but there was still so much farther he had to go before getting out of this mess.

jesse was going with it only because he wanted his credits. that’s the only reason he was entertaining the bullshit of this rookie medic.

“can seven go into eight?”

“once.”

“right, so i’m gonna put the one over here,” naturally drew a one next to the second slash. 

“now we’re gonna carry the seven, because it’s a big seven and it’s getting kinda heavy, and we’re gonna drop it down here below the eight.” as naturally speaks, jesse nods and follows along intently. “and seven from eight is?”

“one.” come on, jesse thought, i’m not that kriffin’ stupid.

“alright, now you’ve had that two long enough, give it here.” naturally holds his hand out for jesse to give him the two, and the older trooper isn’t sure as to why he’s playing into the little game this rookie’s got going but he “drops” the two into his palm nonetheless.

“you see that twenty-one? how many times can seven go into it?”

“three times.”

“so the three goes over here,” naturally continues as he draws a three into the dirt next to the one, “and look at that, thirteen.”

sure enough, there was now a thirteen drawn into the dirt next to the twenty-eight. jesse didn’t completely believe what he was looking at, much less the fact it made sense! he had to get more evidence, surely this wasn’t right.

“nah man, you’ve gotta prove it better than that if you expect me to believe that your math checks out.”

“alright, certainly.”

“you gotta multiply it.”

apparently there was still more to say and write if he wanted to save his head from being mounted on a five-oh-first bunk. thank the maker for jort’s extensive explanation or else naturally would have been screwed.

so he smeared away the numbers with a gloved hand, not bothering to care as to how it dirtied the leather, and continued on.

“let’s see here,” naturally mumbles to himself as he begins to draw in the dirt once again, tongue poking out between his teeth. a thirteen is now in the dirt with a seven below it, with a line under the seven. “okay. so we’ve got thirteen times seven. three times seven is?”

“twenty-one.”

“exactly, so we bring a twenty-one down. now one times seven is…”

“seven.”

naturally hums in agreement as he draws a seven below the one in twenty-one. “now twenty-one plus seven is-“

“twenty-eight.” jesse seems to be contemplating the lesson very hard, putting it side by side with everything he had been taught prior to then. it looked like it made sense, and his brain said it made sense, but to make him feel better he had to check it one more time.

“but now we gotta add it, just to be sure.”

“of course.”

this is where naturally sees if his hard work paid off, if jort’s lessons paid off. if he did his part good enough, then jesse would follow along and this would be easy peasy. most importantly though, he wouldn’t be bucket deep in debt to the trooper next to him.

smearing the mud one last time, he began to give jesse the final piece of the puzzle. “i’m gonna our down seven thirteens and add ‘em from there, alright?”

“alright.”

he puts the numbers down, one above another, and draws a line below the last. taking his stick, he begins to count by threes when the other man cuts him off halfway through. “no no no, let me do it this time!”

jesse starts to count by threes and ends on twenty-one, like he should, but also jort was sure to tell him that if he didn’t take over now that the plan was doomed to fail.

so in an effort to save his plan, naturally began pointing to the ones with his stick as he counted, “twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight!”

he spoke the numbers with confidence as he wrote the twenty-eight into the dirt, turning to give a dignified smirk to the cornflower painted trooper next to him.

jesse looked so lost and had no idea as to why this made a lick of sense, but had to concede that the young medic was right. to answer his earlier question, felucia is a planet where thirteen times seven is twenty-eight.

with a grin naturally collected the credits that had still been clutched in the other’s hand, stepping on the numbers casually enough to not raise suspicion as to why he was stepping on them. he was saved from a terrible fate and got to keep his money; it was a good night for naturally.

[beca-mitchell]

life as we know it (1/1)

Summary: After Beca's miscarriage, the road to healing is a long one. Their first night out together in a while proves to be more difficult than expected.

Word count: 2.7k

continuation from this. Part of now i see daylight—an au series that explores beca and chloe’s lives together as if they had been childhood friends.

A/N: this universe is the work-product of hours of hc'ing with @asimplefavors, so just assume all ideas are things we've discussed. <3 in this universe, beca and chloe are high school sweethearts.

Warning for angst and mention/reference to a miscarriage.

read below or on AO3.

——————————

“I never want to be without you again.”

“I never left.”

“I know, but it felt like you did and that’s what hurt the most.”

Blinking at her reflection, Beca murmurs a quiet thanks at both her stylist and her make-up artist as they quietly mill about behind her packing up their things.

It feels odd, as it has for the past while, to be preparing to go out when it still feels like she ought to be grieving. The aches and pains—the physical ones—have long faded and she has been spending more time in the studio, slowly getting her bearings again. Though she is technically on a break from the album she had been working on before and during her pregnancy, she still thinks about the music she had been creating—the music she had anticipated being read just in time for their baby, but—

She inhales deeply.

Music has never felt more soothing or poignant.

Though she still shares her music with Chloe from time to time, there has been a very specific solitude she has received from simply immersing herself in music again.

But more than that—losing herself in the love she feels for Chloe, their life together, and their baby who didn’t make it, but who will forever be so, so loved and cherished. All of that, translated into music and memories to be cherished forever.

Beca attempts a smile at herself in the mirror.

Chloe’s quiet gasp draws Beca out of her musings.

“You look beautiful,” Chloe murmurs, pulling Beca towards her for a quick kiss. Beca finds it amusing that for how much Chloe hadn’t given a second thought about PDA in high school, Chloe is now the more reserved one between the two of them.

It’s charming.

“Wait,” Beca pleads, wanting to feel Chloe’s warmth against her for just a few seconds more. Her stylist can wait a few measly seconds. “There,” she mumbles against Chloe’s mouth, purposefully sliding her hand up Chloe’s back to send a shiver down Chloe’s spine. Pleased with her own ministrations, Beca pulls back, taking care to ensure that Chloe’s lipstick is as pristine as it was before.

“You two,” Beca’s make-up artist says lightly from where she’s packing up her things. “I’m not fixing anything,” she sing-songs.

Beca smiles up at her girifriend who returns the smile with equal energy. “There’s nothing to fix,” she promises, speaking directly to Chloe. “I’m going to have the best-looking woman on my arm.”

Chloe’s smile threatens to turn into a smirk, but she maintains innocence long enough. “Flatterer.”

Though Beca feels light at the moment, an undercurrent of nervous anticipation rushes through her. This is the first event she and Chloe are attending together ever since the miscarriage and though their relationship is pretty much back at where it was before everything nearly fell apart, it wasn’t without hard work and pain. One month after Chloe finally broke down in her arms, clutching at Beca with the desperation of somebody on the brink of total collapse--one month and eight joint therapy sessions later--Beca finally feels like she’s close to whole.

So while flirting with Chloe openly is only a mask to hide her nerves, she still thinks Chloe is the most beautiful woman she has ever laid eyes on. She softens her gaze, allowing herself to sink into the sensation of being so in love with the woman standing in front of her; it is gratefulness and happiness and passion all at once--Chloe, who has been there for everything, will continue to be there (so long as you let me, Chloe had said with tears in her eyes).

“What?” Chloe finally asks when she senses the change in Beca’s demeanor.

“Nothing,” Beca responds. She reaches out to hold Chloe’s hand. “I’m just happy.”

She’s telling the truth.

“Me too,” Chloe says.

Beca knows Chloe is telling the truth as well.

—————————— 

 The event is close-knit enough that Beca doesn’t feel any of the usual anxiety she feels whenever she goes to industry events. She can tell Chloe also feels a small measure of comfort having met many of the attendees as well. It is still surreal to both of them—Chloe more so than Beca—that this is their life now. By virtue of Beca's status as a celebrity and recording artist with a major label, they mingle regularly with celebrities. This event in particular is a moderately-sized event—honouring some of the older, well-respected music industry executives. It means the flashy celebrity turn-out is low to medium at best, which seemed like a fitting way to make a public appearance. Beca barely knows the honorees, but she supposes showing her face can’t hurt every now and then.

Her label’s president immediately swoops in front of her for a quick conversation. Chloe smiles and kisses her cheek, murmuring that she’ll come back with drinks.

In the past few weeks, Beca realizes then that she and Chloe hadn’t really spent too much time apart. It’s the only explanation for the loss she feels so keenly even though Chloe is just across the room.

“—Beca?”

Beca startles back to the present, flicking her eyes guiltily back to Tom who smiles at her knowingly. “Sorry,” she says quickly. “What, um—?”

“Never gets old, huh?” he asks, tipping his wine glass in her direction.

“What doesn’t?”

“Being in love.”

Beca feels the blush spread across her cheeks and down her neck all at once. “Oh, well, I don’t know if—” At his raised eyebrow, she shrugs helplessly and cuts herself off. “I don’t know where I’d be without her.”

“Well, behind every great artist,” he says lightly.

Chloe appears by Beca’s side again. “Is an even greater woman?” she asks with a pleasant lilt to her voice.

Beca grins, accepting the glass. “Took you long enough.”

“Well, I was going to say a great partner,” Tom corrects. He holds his hand out to shake Chloe’s hand. “Tom Mackay. A pleasure to meet you formally. Beca never shuts up about you.”

“He’s the big guy up there,” Beca clarifies for Chloe, talking over Tom.

“Chloe,” Chloe says after nudging Beca lightly with her shoulder. “Nice to meet you, Tom.”

They are soon joined by a couple, Dan Freeman and his wife Robin.

"So, Chloe," Dan begins in a tone that already has Beca rolling her eyes. She’s never particularly enjoyed his company, but he’s such a solid sound engineer that she begrudgingly admires his talent and tolerates him at least half of the time. "This one is always spending time in the studio, especially recently.” He tilts his head towards Beca. “I bet you’ll be glad when she’s finally done with this album.”

Beca clears her throat. “I’m actually taking a break,” she reminds him stiffly. “Remember?” Chloe, for her part, has not tensed up uncomfortably next to Beca, but instead tucks her hand neatly into the crook of Beca’s elbow. A quick glance shows a gentle smile on Chloe’s face as her eyes flicker to Beca’s.

“I’m grateful for Beca all the time,” Chloe says simply.

Robin coos at them and leans into Dan. “Look at them, why can’t we be more like them?”

Beca tries not to smile too smugly at her coworker, but a small measure of self-satisfaction seeps through nonetheless.

“How long have you two been together again?”

“It’ll be seven years next month,” Beca replies, unable to resist smiling at Chloe again who beams back at her.

“I envy you,” Dan says, shaking his head. “You’re so young and you have so many opportunities to attend events like this. Don’t have to worry about staying out too late or finding a sitter for the little ones,” he jokes, nudging his wife with a playful smile.

Tom laughs at that. “I agree. It was impossible for me and Emily to find somebody to look after our rascals, but we did. I’m sure they would have enjoyed this thrilling event though,” he jokes. “Well, the joys of being a recording artist...at least your schedule is king and you can set up whatever you need with no super strict deadlines,” Tom directs at Beca with a wink. “As long as we still get those albums.”

“Stop pressuring them both of you,” Robin chides. “I’m sure you’ll make lovely parents,” Robin says graciously, directing an apologetic smile at both Chloe and Beca. “But I know that’s not always in everybody’s agenda—at least not really early on.”

For a moment, she struggles to breathe. Beca feels some of the air around her grow thick and stagnant. The shift happens in an instant. She tightens her grip around the stem of her glass and wills herself not to crush the fragile material in her fist. Chloe tenses next to her as well and Beca feels the brief tightening of Chloe’s fingers in the crook of her elbow.

——————————

“I think...with our history and everything that we’ve been through together...part of me is afraid that one day I’ll wake up and she won’t be there,” Chloe whispers. She can barely look at Beca while she says so, taking the brief silence as an opportunity to quickly swipe at the tears welling quickly in her eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Beca murmurs, trying to keep her voice steady despite the sharp pain that spreads through her chest. “I would never leave you.”

“But you almost did. We almost broke because of what happened.”

“I felt so guilty,” Beca explains even though the words are increasingly meaningless. So much of the misplaced guilt had been alleviated over the past few weeks. “I still do sometimes, but—”

“Beca, don’t,” Chloe pleads.

“But,” Beca continues, reaching out to hold Chloe’s hands. “It’s mostly because I know that I hurt you and I know that things still hurt, but I can’t imagine doing this whole life thing without you and I can’t believe that it feels like I almost threw it all away.”

“You didn’t,” Chloe promises. “We’re both working on it now and I know you’re trying. I’m trying, too.” Chloe twists her hands so she can hold Beca’s hands properly. “I love you so much.”

Beca sniffles, surprising herself. Laughing hollowly, she reaches up to quickly swipe away a few stray tears before immediately holding Chloe’s hands again. “I love you, too, Chlo.”

For a moment, they both forget that their therapist is sitting across from them.

They’ll get through it. "We'll get through this," Beca promises. "I'm sorry for ever making you think otherwise. Too lost in my own head." 

"Don't apologize for feeling things, Bec. I only ever wished I could take some of that worry away from you."

"We're going to get through this," Bece repeats, with conviction.

Chloe has no choice but to believe the love of her life.

—————————— 

There is a quiet pain in Chloe’s entire posture as she sits silently next to Beca at their designated table. The lights feel increasingly hot and jarring as they bear down on her. Though Chloe never shied away from the spotlight figuratively or literally, she somehow feels more put on the spot than ever.

The sudden reminder of what had happened such a short period of time ago—and the fact that she and Beca hadn’t even had the opportunity to tell anybody about Beca’s pregnancy before the miscarriage—sticks in her chest like a dagger through her heart.

She tries to focus on the food in front of her and the sound of the MC’s voice amid bursts of laughter, but none of that makes sense—it shouldn’t make sense, not when the flash of grief that rushes through her is immediately struck down by other warring emotions all threatening to burst free.

The fear she had felt when she had received the call from Beca—how Beca’s voice had trembled and hitched and wavered. The drive to the hospital and the energy it had taken to not tremble too badly so as to not get into an accident. Tears. Beca profusely apologizing for nothing and everything all at once, like she had any hand in what had happened.

And the distance—the distance that had stretched between them afterwards.

Apologies and declarations of love.

“Chlo,” Beca says softly. “Are you okay?”

Dragged back into the present moment, a rush of noise hits her as Chloe turns to Beca and quickly swipes at the tears that had formed. “Yeah,” she replies. “I think I’m just…” she trails off.

“Yeah, me too,” Beca murmurs. Her eyes reflect a similar pain. She glances around. “Want to...go?”

“Go? Go where?”

“Go home,” Beca says simply with a half shrug.

“Don’t you need to...be here?”

“I’d rather be at home with you.”

Chloe watches her for any trace of emotion that might indicate otherwise before she nods her head.

Together, they leave.

——————————

  “I’m pregnant,” Beca whispers, tears springing to her eyes. “I’m pregnant, oh my God.”

Chloe drops her plate into the sink, hastily wiping her hands off on the closest dishtowel. “Beca, what? What did you just say?”

Beca smiles through a hiccup or a sob. She can’t tell. “It worked,” she tries to explain with a shaky voice. “I’m pregnant.”

“Oh my God,” Chloe exclaims, immediately reaching out to hold Beca’s waist. Beca immediately notices the careful grip Chloe has on her already. “Oh my God, Bec, I—” Poor Chloe, completely overwhelmed, simply begins to cry.

Beca looks incredibly alarmed at the display. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Chloe promises. “I’m just so happy.”

——————————

 “Chlo,” Beca murmurs as they lie together in bed, showered and refreshed.

Chloe hums, tucking her face further against Beca’s neck and holding her close. “What is it?”

“You know what I see in our future?”

Chloe shakes her head, ruffling her hair as it sticks to Beca’s shirt and skin.

“I think I can see us with two kids. A beautiful house with a backyard. Maybe close to the ocean. And every day when we wake up, it’ll be to the sound of them laughing and giggling as they jump on our bed. You get the side of the bed closer to the door because I’m not getting my spleen ruptured by them every morning.” Beca inhales. “And God, I know they’re going to be beautiful. Whether we adopt or whether we figure out another way, they’re going to be such beautiful, beautiful children to call our own and that’ll be because they have you to model themselves after. I am so lucky to have you by my side. I was so sad earlier, thinking about everything and how unfair life can be sometimes, but Chlo, I can’t imagine what life would be like without you and I want you to know how much I love you.”

Chloe thinks she’s crying and laughing by the time Beca finishes, but she doesn’t care because she is pulling Beca in for a slow, deep kiss that quickly becomes messy because Beca is whispering words of love into her mouth and tightly weaving her arms around Chloe’s back to hold her close. It is surreal how this feels—how incredibly close to Beca she feels then. It is then that the memory of their entire shared history (littered with all kinds of memories, both happy and sad) doesn’t feel quite so daunting anymore. Like clouds parting to reveal an incomparable warmth, Chloe envisions such a clear and probable future with Beca. As clearly as Beca has seen it, evidently.

They share the same future.

They’re in this together.

“I know that we’re going to be good parents,” Beca whispers, voice thick with emotion. "Like...the best." She rests her forehead against Chloe’s. “I know I’m going to be a good mom despite my own parents.”

“You are,” Chloe breathes out with the little air she has left in her lungs. “You are so, so—” Beca kisses her, interrupting her. Chloe huffs, placing her hand loosely on Beca's chest. “I wasn’t finished."

“I know. I just had to tell you that you’re going to be an incredible mother too. I’ve known this forever. Ever since we were kids even when I didn’t even understand what I was feeling. I just know because you’re Chloe Beale. Our kids are going to be beautiful because of you,” Beca repeats. “I know it.”

“And you.”

Beca closes her eyes. The silence that follows is heavy, rife with all the emotion shared between them in the past few minutes. “I believe you,” she says finally.

Chloe knows she’s telling the truth.

fin.

[fics-not-tragedies]

In a Week: Chapter 17 🌲

More hurtful moments right around the corner, but I mixed it with some ridiculous humor, so you don’t die of heartbreak.

Words: 2575; Warnings: none; Summary: They try to part their ways for the rest of the day, but both fail at is miserably.

Hozier tag list:

@letoursilencebreaktonight​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​; @angelpeachamber​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​; @sgt-morgan​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​; @julessbrown​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​;

Tuesday, 12:05pm

Andrew had kept his promise to himself that he’d enjoy the four seconds of holding her, held his breath for each one, forgot who he was among the bliss of her perfume and then he had to let her go.

Though he instantly longed to touch her again, it was not a new need, rather one he learned to cope with even though it seemed overwhelming at times. As he pulled out of her touch, the air felt softer and lighter somehow.

“I’m just a little bit worried, em… that’s all…” he grumbled, “I don’t want to mess up again.”

“You didn’t mess anything up” she added, turning back to him, walking backwards down the garishly lit corridor as she spoke. He had a hint of worry in his otherwise perfect features, the way he was carrying himself, his deflated chest, creased eyebrows, and she had to soothe that, “You’ve done nothing wrong and we’re okay.”

Andrew lifted his head a little higher than he had before, nodding at her to show he understood and above all was grateful for this second chance. He hadn’t sketched out a fully formed plan in his head yet about what he was going to do with it, but he was thankful nonetheless. Flo still didn’t quite understand why he was blaming himself at all, wanted to carry the burden equally, knew that the drunken boiling over of tension last night was as much her fault as it was his, but he was too stubborn to hear that.

And even though they were feeling more content than before, they were both still repressing the panic of saying goodbye to each other before the week was up. As she looked at him, Flo considered changing her plans, delaying the inevitable, but had always been the kind of woman to rip the band-aid off and deal with the sudden shock, instead of dramatically prolonging any suffering. And she knew, no matter what would happen between them before she left Andrew to simply end everything, that something about him would always stay with her anyway. She would always have a piece of him right next to her like if they’d be buried together in one grave.

She never met anyone like him, nobody as smart and conscientious, endlessly fascinating and she liked to think some of his better qualities had imprinted on her too. The resounding fact that shocked her was that Andrew had never forced her into anything, instead peeled back the surface layer of who she was just with his charisma and charm and then gave her a firm nudge in the right direction towards the Flo she had locked away for so long.

Even though he was already forming a small for the rest of the upcoming week, it was clear that they needed to take a break from each other, even though it was only until the next morning. So quite naturally, they both decided to part their ways for the rest of the day, but since the world’s so small and the hotel was even smaller, they met again in a hot tub in the small pool area of the hotel.

Tuesday, 5pm

There were plenty of moments in his life that Andrew could recall having made him feel truly flustered because beneath the surface, it really didn’t take much to fluster him. Talking to his musical heroes at fancy parties. Interviews that were awkward and poorly executed. Watching his friends perform their new music. Difficult first dates.

But now here he was, watching Flo Hayes, climb into a hot tub, rosy cheeked and trying her very best not to flash more of her skin than was already on show and Andrew Hozier Byrne was very, very flustered.

Her body disappeared under the water for the most part, her breasts sinking just below the surface, but he could still see the top of them, her obvious cleavage, her collarbone which he ached to press his lips against. Her skin was shiny and fresh looking, the makeup that remained barely visible and he studied her face for a while, trying to learn it so that when it wasn’t there to devote his time to anymore, he’d at least find her in his daydreams.

He envied how radiant she looked no matter the time of day. There was no doubt she took care of herself, probably drank enough water, got enough sleep and he smiled at the thought of her tucked up in bed, wondered if she slept on her side or her back, whether she tied her hair up or if it sprawled across the pillow, amused himself with the imaginary sound of her snores. She tilted her head to him silently.

Suddenly worried she’d notice how blankly he was staring at her, Andrew climbed around and into the hot tub opposite Flo. His moves were precise as he sunk into the seat, trying to avoid her touch, trying to find a place to fit everything without accidentally brushing her beneath the surface. His hair were slicked back and tied into a small bun, only a few strands out of place and his chest was rising and falling uncontrollably with nervousness just from staring at her for so long. Flo rolled her eyes at his beard, his glowy eyes, how he never failed to look gorgeous even with that concentration face he was pulling.

Neither of them having spoken, Flo tried to relax, adjusted her back so it was more comfortable against the wall, spread her arms out a little further. There was plenty of room, but he was still close to her and every time he looked up at her across the bubbling surface, she was worried she’d lose her focus again. She tucked her wet hair behind her ears.

Andrew loved the way it shone under the lights of the small room, how perfectly straight it fell. He decided that she looked like some sort of ethereal goddess or like a siren who would’ve drawn him in if he was a lonely sailor at sea or like the kind of woman who renaissance painters would have dreamed of bringing to life on canvas. He blinked at her a couple of times as she met his eye line almost immediately. Her eyes were always curious, always thinking about the next thing.

“What?”

“I just can’t believe we run onto each other in a jacuzzi” Flo laughed at last, shaking her head. Andrew spread his legs out underwater and rested his arms on the back of the tub, trying to get comfortable himself. He seemed to toy with a response, she could see it bouncing around in his head, the corners of his lip curling as if they were anticipating his words.

“How does it feel?”

“How does what feel?” She sighed, knowing he’d prepared a question she didn’t understand just to evoke that very response, to keep his game of teasing her up. He wanted her to ask.

“Being in jacuzzi with a true music star” he smirked, eyebrows cocked in that way that made Flo want to simultaneously thump him around the head and climb into his lap and kiss him till he moaned against her.

“Oh, shut up.”

Tuesday, 5:15pm

He chuckled for what seemed like a long minute, impressed by the sulk she was pulling as she crossed her arms in front of her and shook her head, mouth cocked slightly open. It was then that Flo decided to test him, see how much information she could work out of him this time. He had nowhere to hide from her now, the room silent except for the sounds coming from the water and he seemed pretty sure of himself.

“Talk to me about it” she uttered after a soft moment of contemplation.

“About what?”

“About ‘being a true music star’…” she replied.

She noticed a small flinch, worried he was retreating into himself already, shoulders tight with tension, nose screwing up with doubt. He licked his lips then answered her.

“What do you want to know, love?”

“What’s it like?” She asked, keeping her response as vague as she could.

“It’s more like a love-hate relationship…” he responded, a little sooner than she’d been expecting, “I feel so lucky that, em, I can compose and perform my music to people who love it, but, em, on the other hand… I’m tired of being recognizable every place I go to.”

“It’s fascinating to me.”

“It’s really crazy. I had no idea that, em, things would get this big.”

He meant his career, had meant performing, but when he looked at her then, he also meant it about her. He truly had had no idea things would get this big with her when he saw it at the hotel bar.

“You get to do what you love and what you’re good at at the same time, that’s the dream, right?”

“Yes… but, sometimes I wonder, em, who I’d be if I wasn’t doing what I do now” he mumbled.

“You think it changed you somehow?” She asked, not having expected that response at all, but still feeling so humbled by the fact he was sharing anything at all.

“Yes, but just a little bit. Sometimes it feels like, em, the world knows more about me than I do” he scratched his head with one of his long fingers, like he was recalling something he’d read about himself that he hadn’t liked then shrugged, bringing his eyes back up, “Shit, sorry. Got a bit existential there…”

“It’s alright” Flo assured him, wishing she was closer to him so that she could use it as an excuse to touch him.

“It just scares me that, em, people can say anything they like about me.”

“Don’t you have a voice? Like an online presence?”

“I do… half owned by me, half by my team. Em, I bet people notice the difference between what I post and what my social media team does” he giggles a little, moving in the tub like he wanted to sink deeper, but he’s too tall to do so.

“As a musician, a person who writes his own songs from start to finish you have the chance to show your voice in your songs.”

“You’re right, em, I try to do it as often as possible…” he mumbled, lost in thought for a second. “Did you go to an university or a college?”

“Yes, did you?”

“Well, I started a college…”

“But you didn’t finished it?“

“But I didn’t” he confirmed, “music got me too busy and I fell into it completely” he lifted his hand from the water to scratch his neck as he spoke. “My Mum was worried at first, but she’s an artist too, em, she paints bloody gorgeous, so she understood that I’m doing what my heart wants.”

“Does she still worry?” Flo pushed.

“My Mum? No, no. Of course she’s stressed every time I’m coming home after a tour and, em, really takes care of me forgetting I’m near my thirties…”

Flo laughed again and tried to picture Andrew in any way domesticated. It was just as jarring for her to picture as being outside of the hotel together had been. She just couldn’t see him doing nothing for days on end.

“I’m kinda proud of myself, not every person has that relationship with their parents…” he swallowed sharply at the realization of how much he’d opened up to her. “What about yours?”

“My parents? They’re dead now…” she sighed.

“Oh, no… I’m- I- so sorry, Flo, I didn’t mean to…”

He nodded in her direction, fighting the urge to simply hold her in his warm embrace.

“You’re such a role model then…” she said, then quickly changing the subject, “I just can’t believe I didn’t make the connection…” she laughed, “…about who you are. I mean, I know the name now and it makes sense, but I have friends who’d be furious with me for not working it out sooner.”

“You gonna look me up later?” He chuckled, “On YouTube?”

“Who’s to say I haven’t already?” She teased, though it had been the last thought on her mind since she found out who he was. It was her golden rule with new people anyway, to work them out without using her phone, make an effort to connect in real life rather than finding out their dog’s name through their Instagram profile. And that golden rule was even more important now, with Andrew.

“No. I know you weren’t stalking me online, because, em, people who did that act differently…”

“Oh, but, I’ve already got you worked out, Andrew” she giggled, tapping her temple as if she had all the answers. He cocked his eyebrow immediately and ran his hand through the front of his hair to keep it in place.

She had such a devilish twinkle in her eye, like she’d been saving this moment for a while and he watched her shift her position slightly, leaning further towards him. His face was slightly pink from the steam that rose from the water surface and her hair was drying now with the slightest hint of frizziness. He was just about to ask her to prove her point when she was speaking again.

“You’re a perfectionist. Went to prom with a pretty girl, but you hated her dress-”

“Wait…” he asked, taken a little off guard by her sudden outburst, “Are you profiling me?”

“Well I always wanted to be a profiler…”

Intrigued, Andrew settled back into position then gave her a firm nod, lifting his hand as if to challenge her. She cleared her throat and continued.

“You send your Mum flowers whenever you feel guilty about not being home. You’re a heavy sleeper. Eat more sugar than you should. Have tried quitting smoking, but as I could see with my own eyes you failed miserably. You’re paranoid about trusting people, because you were let down by too many. You’ve broken a few hearts. Have more records at home than you have storage for. You’ve cried watching at least one Disney film - my money is on… Bambi.” Andrew laughed at that pause, “Good at bullshitting your way through anything. You have a pet - I bet it’s a dog. Worry about any mistake you make for at least two months…” Flo smiled softly before adding her last guess, one she knew was a fact: “And you’re not only big yourself, but you’ve got a big heart too, Andrew, you really care about people.”

There was a beat and Andrew folded his arms as she finished, blinking at her for a while. He tried to recall the ones she got wrong, but had been more focused on her smart mind, mesmerized by the way her thoughts were so clearly plastered across her face as she processed them. He was so impressed by the way she observed him and wanted to congratulate her.

“I know…” she said confidently, snapping him from his daze, “I’m pretty good at this.”

“Don’t you want to know which ones you got right?” He asked, the smirk on his face so full of excitement.

“You don’t know if they all fit until you catch the killer, Andy” she replied cockily, “It’s a profile, not fully fitting description of traits you have.”

“So I am the killer now?”

Yes, Andrew, you killed my heart with that kiss.

[loretranscripts]

Lore Episode 1: They Made a Tonic (Transcript) - 18th March 2015

tw: horror, bodily mutilation, blood, disease, death, vampires, pseudo-cannibalism

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

Hollywood is… obsessed. Sure, we often think of obsessions like sex, violence, gigantic robots and of course, epic battles between good and evil. But another obsession of Hollywood is vampires. You have to admit though, that there’s a lot to love about vampires. Immortality, wealth, power, and superhuman abilities such as flight and strength. Yes, they come with trade-offs, such as incredibly bad sunburns, but every movie I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot, believe me, tends to show vampires that are fairly happy with their lot in life. My exposure to the world of vampires happened in the late 1990s, when I was in college. A friend of mine recommended the Anne Rice novel, Interview with a Vampire. I devoured that and many of the sequels. They’re fun reads! And they certainly set the tone for a decade or more of vampire-centred entertainment. I won’t touch on the vampires of the Twilight books, mostly because I haven’t read them. But I will say this: those books, however lambasted they have been by critics, have shown that popular culture’s love of all things vampire is as undying as the creatures themselves. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

When most people think of vampires, they envision something that is a purely European creature: a foreign accent, Victorian Era dress, and dark manor homes and castles. It’s a common visual language for most of the western world, so I don’t blame bad movies and books for portraying that image, but it’s one small facet of a legend that has hundreds of expressions. The single most prominent historical figure attached to the modern notion of vampires is of course Vlad III of Wallachia, otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler. Vlad was the ruler of a small Eastern European kingdom known as Wallachia. He ruled from 1456 to 1462. He was known as Vlad the Impaler, because he preferred to execute his enemies by impaling them on stakes. The Ottomons called him “Lord Impaler” after entering his kingdom to find forests of impaled victims. Vlad was a violent guy, you see, rather bloodthirsty, you might say. Now he, like his father before him, belonged to something known as the Order of the Dragon, a group established to protect Christian Europe from the invading Ottoman army. Vlad’s father, Vlad II, was known as Vlad Dracul, which meant Vlad the Dragon, from the Order of the Dragon. When Vlad III rose to power he took the hereditary title and was known as Vlad Dracula, the son of the dragon. That name might sound very similar to the most famous vampire story in the world, and that’s because Bram Stoker, when creating his famous creature of the night, used Vlad III as his inspiration. Well, part of it, but we’ll get to that more later.

The roots of most vampire stories can be traced back to superstitions rooted in ancient cultures all across the world. Western Europe played host to countless stories of reanimated dead known as “revenants”. These were animated corpses which climbed out of the grave to torment the living. The word “revenant” comes from Latin, which means “to come back”. And come back to do what, you might ask? Well, I’m glad you did. At first it was just to terrorise the living, but as the centuries passed the legend became more specific. Revenants were said to return from the grave to torment their living relatives and neighbours. What was key though, was that revenants were specific people, not anonymous zombies of our modern horror genre. These things had a past, and a purpose. Now, in Norse Mythology, we can find stories of creatures known as draugr, “again-walkers”, who would return from the grave and wreak havoc on the living. These creatures possessed superhuman strength, they smelled of decay, and they were reported to be pretty ugly in appearance. They could enter the dreams of the living and while they were doing that, it was said that they left tangible objects near the sleeping victims, so that when they woke up, they would know that their dreams were more real than they feared.

Let’s go back earlier than the Middles Ages though. The legends of some ancient cultures spoke of creatures that, while not immediately similar to the vampires we know today, nonetheless share many core characteristics. First we have the Greek myth of Empusa, who was the daughter of Hekate. Empusa was said to lure young men, at night, and then feast on their blood, before moving on to the main course, their flesh. Another Greek tale involves Lamia, a mistress of Zeus, who becomes cursed by Zeus’ wife Hera, and is doomed to hunt children, devouring them. Stories of undead creatures, or creatures that feed on the blood of the living, seem nearly as common as written language itself. I mean, even on the small, isolated island of Madagascar, there are legends of a creature known as the Ramanga, which was known to attack nobles, drinking their blood and eating their nail clippings. Yeah, I said nail clippings. Deal with it.

Are vampires real? I’ll let you make the final decision on that, but what is clear, is that most of these stories find their genesis in the human need to explain the unexplainable. For instance, early Europeans used the myth as a way of explaining why a corpse wasn’t decomposing at the normal rate that they expected. You can see evidence of this in Bulgaria, where graves dating back over 800 years, have been opened, to reveal iron rods that have been driven through the chest of the skeletons. And in a time when it was very common to bury someone that was thought to be dead, only to find out that they weren’t really dead, you can imagine that stories would quickly circulate that the dead were coming back to life. As a result, Taphophobia, the fear of being buried alive, swept Europe and the United States. Now, of course, when medical science caught up, people got more practical. They built alert systems into graves, just in case the person woke up and, you know, wanted out. Now, I realise that being buried alive sounds like a rare occurrence, but it happened frequently enough that many people were sufficiently paranoid about it to actually spend time looking for a solution.

One of these people happened to be a medical doctor, a man named Adolf Gutsmuth. Now, in 1822, and driven by the fear of being buried alive, he invented a “safety coffin” for his own interment, and then he tested it out himself. Tested it out? You bet! Doctor Gutsmuth allowed himself to be buried underground in his new “safety coffin” for several hours, during which he had meals delivered to him through a feeding tube. He enjoyed a wonderful meal of soup, sausages, and a lovely local beer. Sounds like a great date night destination, doesn’t it? Now, Doctor Timothy Smith of New Haven, Vermont, was another paranoid inventor. He created a grave that can be visited still to this day, if you happen to be passing by Evergreen Cemetery, in Vermont. It was a crypt, buried in the usual manner, but it had a cement tube positioned over the face of the body, and a glass plate was affixed to the top of the tube at ground level. Doctor Smith died a real, natural death, and was buried in his fancy coffin with a view. He never woke up, but early visitors to his grave reported that they had a clear view of his decomposing head, until condensation obscured the glass decades later. Side note: vampires no longer scare me. Waking up inside of a small box buried six feet under the surface of the earth is what true fright looks like to me.

Now, another culprit in humanity’s use of the vampire label, was porphyria. It was a rare blood disorder, but modern science has pretty much closed the case on that one, saying that it’s too far of a stretch to connect the two topics. Rabies, of all conditions, has also been used as an explanation for the rise of the vampire mythology. Surprisingly there are a lot of commonalities between them, such as a sensitivity to light and garlic, as well as altered sleep patterns. But the most recent medical condition with a strong connection to vampire mythology was actually Tuberculosis. Those who suffer from TB had no vampire-like symptoms though, and that’s what makes this one a harder connection to explain. It’s also, incidentally, where one of my favourite New England legends comes into the picture. Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Mercy Brown.

Lena Mercy Brown was a young woman who lived in the latter half of the 19thcentury, in the rural town of Exeter, Rhode Island, and she was a major player in what is now known as the “Great New England Vampire Panic”. Stories like hers can be found repeated all across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, echoed in the lives of others in similar situations. And the results have surprising connections to both the modern idea of vampires, as well as the ancient stories, as we will see. The first person to die in Exeter was Mercy’s mother, Mary Eliza. That was December of 1882, and she fell victim to what was then called “consumption”. Consumption, because, as the disease of Tuberculosis ravaged the body, the person would appear to waste away; consumed, if you will, by the illness. She, of course, was buried, because, well, that’s what you do with a loved one who passes away. The next year though, Mercy’s sister Mary Olive died, at the young age of 20. Same illness, same symptoms, same process. I’m not sure when exactly the people of Exeter, Rhode Island started to wonder if the deaths were connected , but it might have been then, or it might have been a few years later when Mercy’ brother Edwin took ill. Edwin, though, was smart. He packed up and moved across the country to Colorado Springs, which had a great reputation for the healing properties of its dry climate. When he finally returned from the resorts out west, some years later, he was alive, but not doing so well, and in December of 1891, he took a turn for the worst. That was the month that Mercy herself became ill. Her Tuberculosis moved fast. They called it the galloping kind, and it moved through her body quickly, like wildfire. By January, 1892, she was dead, and the people of Exeter were more worried than ever. You see, they suspected something… supernatural.

Now, this was surprising, considering how close Exeter is to Newport. That’s the seaside city known for the summer cottages of the wealthy, folks like the Vanderbilts, the Asters, the Wideners, the Wetmores. It was the pinnacle of educated society, yet just a handful of miles away, one small town that should have known better, was about to do something very, very creepy.

Edwin was still alive, you see, and someone got it in their mind that one of the women who died before him, either his mother or one of his sisters, was somehow draining him of his life from beyond the grave. They were so convinced of this, you see, that they wanted to dig them all up. Yes, all of them. Once they received the father’s permission to do this horrible thing, a group of men gathered in the cemetery on the morning of March 17th, and began to dig up the bodies. Now, what they were looking for was any evidence at all of an unnatural state. So, blood in the heart, blood around the mouth, or other similar signs. The first body, of Mary Eliza, the mother, was satisfactorily decomposed so they ruled her out. But of course she was, you might say, I mean, she had been dead and buried for a decade. Mary Olive was also in a normal state of decomposition. Again, being dead for ten years usually helps convince people that you’re really dead. But when they examined Mercy’s body, a body that had not been buried because she died in the middle of winter, and so had been put inside of a stone building inside the cemetery that was essentially a walk-in freezer, they discovered a remarkable state of preservation. Shocking, I know. So what did they do? Well, these superstitious folk did what they learnt from their ancestors. They cut out Mercy’s heart and liver, within which they found red, clotted blood, they burned them on a nearby stone, which, by the way, is still there if you ever visit the cemetery, and then, mixed the ashes with a tonic. That tonic was then given to Edwin, to drink. Yeah, Edwin drank his own sister’s liver and heart. Did it work? No, of course it didn’t work. Edwin died less than two months later. What it did do, however, was set up Mercy Brown to be known as the first American vampire.

As unusual as an event like this must sound, you might be surprised to learn that it happened quite frequently. In 1817, almost a century before Mercy Brown’s exhumation, a Dartmouth college student named Frederick Ransom died of Tuberculosis. His father was so worried that the young man would leave the grave and attack the family, that he asked that he be dug up. Ransom’s heart was cut out, and burnt on a blacksmith’s forge. Even Henry David Thoreau heard tales of these types of events, and he mentioned one in his personal journal. In September 26th, 1859, he wrote: “The savage in man is never quite eradicated. I have just read of a family in Vermont who, several of its members having died of consumption, just burnt the lungs, heart and liver of the last deceased, in order to prevent any more from having it.” So of course, word spread about what happened to Mercy Brown, as it usually did when a body was dug up and carved into to pieces like that. Mercy’s case, though, actually made it into a newspaper called The New York World, and it made quite an impression on the people who read it. How do we know? Because a clipping from that article was found in the personal papers of a London stage manager after his death. You see, his theatre company had been touring America in 1892. He evidently read the story, found it inspiring, and saved it. Inspiring so much so, that he sat down a few years later, and wrote a book. Who was this man? His name was Bram Stoker. And the book? Oh, I’m sure you’ve already guessed it by now. It was Dracula, published in 1897.

Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mahnke. You can find a transcript of the show, as well as a bibliography of the source material, at our website, lorepodcast.com. If you enjoy scary stories, I happen to write them. You can find a full list of my supernatural thrillers, available in both paperback and ebook formats, at aaronmahnke.com/novels. Thanks for listening.

Transcriber’s Notes:

(These notes a purely from me, the transcriber, and have nothing to do with the official podcast or Aaron Mahnke).

1)     The word draugr does not in fact mean “after-walker” as the podcast seems to state, and actually derives from a Proto-Indo European word meaning “deceive”. There is, however, a related term aptrgangr, which does mean “again-walker”, and is thought to be pretty much synonymous with draugr.

[ittybittywordsmith]

when you kiss me, heaven sighs

Mid-March 2012

If given the option, Odette Starling would not have chosen her current position as Executive Assistant to the Direction of Magical Security. 

When she first applied to MACUSA, she had hoped she would be assigned to a simpler department, like Transportation or Education and Underage Sorcery. Even Magical Disasters and Calamities, for all its title suggested otherwise, probably would have been a less hectic department to spend her days in. But now that she had spent some time here, Odette found that she was warming up to the place. Her boss was fair, the aurors were friendly (mostly – Odette found Dara Ashford was often a touch cold to her, and she wasn’t overly fond of the way Blake Jones sometimes seemed to undress her with his eyes when he looked at her, but she supposed no workplace environment could be perfect), and the work was never dull.

But if she did have a complaint – and she did have complaints, she just kept them to herself because she certainly wasn’t crazy enough to register them when she didn’t even have a year to her name in the department – it was that more often than she’d like, the shifts ran awfully long.

Odette sighed as she glanced at the clock, before starting to clear away her paperwork. It was late, far later than she would have liked to have been in the office, but Director James had stayed an hour or two after his usual departure time, which meant Odette wound up staying an hour or two after that. She supposed by any reasonable standards, it wasn’t required of her – but if there was anything that Odette had learned after her months working for Magical Security, it was that criminals had absolutely no respect for other people’s workloads, and when the paperwork for the big cases all came rushing in at once, it was infinitely easier to handle when the more trivial paperwork was already neatly taken care of.

Still, she was grateful when she could finally stand and slip her purse over one shoulder. Tonight was the last night of her work week, even if it had run a little long, and she was looking forward to spending tomorrow morning in bed. Odette pushed in her chair and made a beeline towards the elevator, but she had hardly made it past the auror’s cubicles before she heard a voice chirp behind her. “Odette! You heading out for the night?” Odette turned and smiled as a head full of vibrant red hair popped out from one of the cubes. “Hold on a sec. I just finished up the paperwork for my last case file, I’ll walk with you.”

Odette liked Sawyer Prewett. She was sweet as candy, and had more energy in her bubbly personality than all the other aurors in the department combined. She was someone that Odette might have expected to meet in any other department aside from this one. For the first month she was here, Odette considering asking her what she was doing in a place like this, but after watching Dupont and Barnett leaving enough training sessions with her rotating sore shoulders and wincing at their newfound bruises, she decided she didn’t really need to know. But she certainly didn’t mind waiting for the redheaded auror to catch up. Odette watched as Sawyer pulled on her jacket as she made her way out of the cubicle and gave a smile as she approached. “Rough night?” she asked sympathetically as she turned back towards the elevator.

“Aren’t they all?” Sawyer replied with a small grin. But she gave a shrug and stuffed her hands in her pockets as she walked. “The case wasn’t so bad – some guy in Nebraska thought it would be funny if he transfigured his neighbor’s pigs to have wings – y’know, ‘if pigs could fly’ or something, I think he was trying to win a bet – but anyways, since his neighbor was a no-maj, Magical Disasters had to be called in, and I swear, they gave me the most incompetent obliviator. I’ve had to redo my paperwork three times tonight because of him,” Sawyer said with a groan. But she followed it with a sigh and a shake of her head. “Ah well. It doesn’t matter, I suppose. It’s done, and tomorrow’s my day off. Hallelujah.”

Odette laughed as they entered the elevator. “I could definitely toast to that,” she replied in amusement. She pressed the button for the ground floor, but no sooner did the door start to close than another voice rang out.

“Hold the elevator!”

“Oh!” Odette jumped forward and jammed her thumb against the open button, and the door slid apart again to reveal a slightly winded Austin Gilmore. He hurried onto the elevator, looking a little frazzled as he tried to stuff paperwork into his messenger bag.

“Thanks, I thought for sure I was going to miss– Odette! Hi!” Odette smiled as Austin fumbled and nearly dropped his papers on the ground. She liked Austin too – he was sweet, although he did seem to be rather clumsy for an auror. Odette wasn’t sure she had ever seen him without something slipping out of his hands, or something almost crashing to the ground because he bumped into it. Maybe he was steadier on his feet when he was out in the field? She had no idea, but she did know that he stopped by her desk more often than anyone else in the office, and seemed to make a point of asking how she was doing – she certainly appreciated that, even if he did knock over her trash can every other time he was there. He shoved his papers into his bag more forcefully and zipped it up before straightening. “I, uh, didn’t realize you were still here.”

Odette shrugged helplessly. “I had some paperwork I wanted to file before the week ended,” she explained, shifting her bag on her shoulder. She gave him a sympathetic smile. “But you know what it’s like, I’m sure.”

“Sure, sure,” Austin agreed quickly. He nodded vigorously, but his hand fidgeted with the zipper of his bag. “I totally understand what that’s like. Absolutely. I stay after hours to do my paperwork all the time. Can’t ever get enough of it, really.”

There was a snicker behind her, and Odette looked curiously back at Sawyer. But the redheaded auror had a hand over her mouth and gave a cough, and after a moment, Odette decided she must have misheard. “Uh, that reminds me,” Sawyer piped up. “I actually think I left a file on my desk that I have to have in on Monday, so if you excuse me –”

Odette blinked in surprise as Sawyer slipped past her, before giving a puzzled frown. “I thought you said you finished all your paperwork?”

“Oh, I did,” Sawyer said hurriedly. “But, y’know, I should probably make sure the obliviator didn’t spell his own name wrong or something, otherwise there’s gonna be hell to pay on Monday. I don’t even know why Sutton hired the guy, honestly, he seems to have the brains of the flobberworm. Anyways, have a nice weekend you two, don’t get too crazy!” And then she was gone, her bright red hair barely clearing the doors before they closed.

Odette’s frown deepened. “Crazy?” she repeated, confused. She looked over at Austin, questions already on the tip of her tongue, but Austin only laughed nervously before avoiding her eye and looking directly ahead of him. For a moment, Odette waited for him to look back at her, but when he didn’t, she, too, directed her gaze at the doors in front of her. A dozen floors passed in awkward silence, each one seeming to take longer than the last, before one of them spoke again.

“So do you have any plans for the weekend?”

Austin’s question came out of the blue, and Odette rather thought he seemed to be talking a little faster than usual. She blinked again and looked at him. He still wasn’t looking at her, and Odette wasn’t really sure where she was supposed to be directing her answer to. She settled for looking back ahead of her and speaking to the general air. “Um, no, not really. Sort of just thought I’d spend the weekend at home and relax a bit, y’know?” At least, that sounded better than ‘all of my friends were busy and I have no boyfriend so I have nothing to do this weekend’, which was probably a bit closer to the truth. Odette looked up at the numbers above the doors. Twenty-five more floors to go. “What about you?”

“Uh – oh, yeah, actually,” Austin replied, and Odette nearly laughed at the surprise he had in his voice. “Yeah, I have to head home this weekend. My sister – she works with the community theater program back home, and I promised her I’d be at the opening show tomorrow night.”

Odette couldn’t help a smile. “That’s so sweet,” she said, turning to face him, and it was with a touch of relief that she saw Austin actually look back at her. “I didn’t realize you had a sister.”

He nodded, looking sheepish but smiling a little nonetheless. “Yeah. Her name’s Phoebe. She’s been in the community theater program since we were kids, but this is the first one they let her direct, and she’s really excited about it. It’s some kind of Shakespearean play – something with fairies in it, I’m pretty sure, because she’s been talking about the artistic interpretation of fairies for a month now. Anyways, she made me promise to go – I think she might have tried to force me into an Unbreakable Vow, if I weren’t an auror.”

This time Odette did laugh, and Austin seemed to ease a little bit. “Well, I suppose you’ve got to appreciate her dedication.” Odette replied lightly, laughter still in her voice. After a moment, she asked curiously, “So where’s home for you, then? Not New York?”

Austin laughed a little at that. Odette had heard him laugh before, talking with the other aurors, but she wasn’t sure she had ever heard him laugh with her. It was sweet. He had a nice laugh, and his cheeks dimpled when he smiled. “Merlin, no. I’m from Kansas. Winfield, actually, if you know the area at all. My family still lives there.”

“Really?” Odette asked in surprise. “I never would have guessed. I’ve never been to Kansas – is it nice?”

Austin looked as though he had to give the matter some thought, before offering a vague, “Well, that depends, I think.”

“On what?”

“On how much you like cows.” 

Odette laughed again. Austin grinned, and for a moment she thought she could detect a hint of pride in his eyes. “Nah, it’s not so bad,” he went on, giving a casual sort of shrug. “It’s just small, really. New York was a hell of an adjustment from home. But what about you? Are you from New York?”

Odette shook her head quickly. “Oh, no, I’m from –” But she was interrupted by the ding! of the elevator, and she realized, with a surprising pang of disappointment, that they had reached the bottom floor. Austin gestured for her to go first, so she stepped past him, waving at the night security guard standing at his post near the door. His name was Carl. Odette rather thought knowing that said something about her work habits. But she waited for Austin to join her, and tried to pick up the thread of conversation as they headed out. “I’m from Vermont. Burlington, specifically. My sisters still live there, but my parents actually moved to Middlebury when they retired. Something about liking the quiet.”

Austin nodded attentively as he held open the door for her. “That sounds nice. I hear Vermont is pretty.” Odette would have liked to tell him that it was, especially now, in the springtime, when the trees were at their greenest and bluebells would be sprouting everywhere, but they had come to the bottom of the stairs in front of the entrance of the Woolworths’ building. By all means, this was the point at which they would be heading their separate ways, and Odette didn’t know how to end the conversation so abruptly. She hesitated for a moment, but when she didn’t say anything, Austin spoke up. “So . . . I guess I should let you be going now,” he said, and Odette thought she heard a similar hesitancy in his voice.

Still, she nodded. “Yeah, I – I should really be getting home,” Odette replied. She paused again, before offering, “I’ll see you on Monday? Have a nice weekend, okay? Enjoy the play.” Austin nodded, and she turned away. She adjusted the strap of her purse against her shoulder again as she walked, her footsteps sounding oddly loud against the sidewalk now that it had gotten so quiet. But she didn’t make it more than a dozen steps before she heard Austin’s concerned voice call out behind her.

“You’re not going to apparate home?”

Odette stopped and turned back to him. “I’m not really a fan of apparation,” she admitted sheepishly. “Weak stomach. But I don’t live too far – it’s an easy walk.”

Austin frowned at her, and Odette realized with a start that she didn’t think she had ever seen him look quite so serious. It made him look older, more like the auror she knew, theoretically, that he was. He glanced around. “It’s pretty late,” he said, looking back at her. “Would you mind if I walked you home?”

Odette blinked. The offer caught her by surprise. Not so much that he wanted to walk her home – she had met a man or two over the years, after all, who considered it the epitome of impoliteness to not walk a lady to her door – but rather, that he had asked her permission, rather than just assuming she would want his company. It was considerate, and Odette felt herself softening under his concerned gaze. She did want his company. “Um, sure,” she agreed self-consciously. “I don’t mind if you don’t mind.”

Austin smiled and hurried to join her. “You don't do a job like mine and then mind walking a pretty girl home at night,” he informed her as he approached. Odette felt her cheeks go warm. Austin seemed to realize what he said a moment later, and he gave an abashed clear of his throat and looked up. “Besides, it's a nice night for a walk, isn't it?”

Odette smiled as she turned and started down the street. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

She had been right, of course – the walk to her apartment from work was an easy one. In the light of day, it was even pretty, sometimes. It was just long enough that on bad weather days, Odette sometimes just sucked it up and apparated to her doorstep, but on a clear spring night like tonight, it made for a pleasant stroll. Austin certainly didn't seem to mind. He followed her lead without complaint, trailing half a step behind her. He was close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off of him, and she found herself drawn to it as she walked. She caught herself straying towards him a time or two and had to remind herself to maintain a courteous amount of distance between them – they were work colleagues, after all, and the last thing she wanted to do was make him uncomfortable.

But in the meantime, Odette learned quite a lot about her work colleague. It hadn't occurred to her that, for all the times Austin Gilmore had paused by her desk on his way to speak with the Director, or coming from the staff lounge with a cup of coffee in his hands, she didn't know anything more substantial about him than that he preferred banana nut, whenever someone laid out complimentary muffins for the aurors. By the time they turned on to her street, though, Odette had learned that he had not only a sister back in Kansas, but a brother too, that his father was a wizard from a pureblooded line tracing back for generations, but his mother was no-maj born, and that he liked old western movies, because his mother had raised him on a steady diet of John Wayne films before he had even learned how to read.

“Actually, I wanted to be a sheriff when I grew up,” Austin admitted, grinning. “But it turns out wizards don't really have those, so I figured being an auror was just going to have to be close enough.”

Odette laughed. It was easy to laugh around Austin, once she had coaxed him out of his shell. Austin was sincere, and earnest, and Odette found herself wondering why she hadn't noticed before. He had always been cute, and endearing, but this was different. This felt . . . more substantial. “You got closer to your childhood dream than I did,” she replied with a shake of her head. “I wanted to be a ballerina. But it turns out I have terrible balance, so now I file paperwork instead.”

Austin shrugged nonchalantly. “If it helps, I think the ballet world really missed out,” he offered, glancing over at her. Odette smiled at gratefully at him, before looking away, her cheeks tinged with pink. The way he kept slipping compliments into the conversation had her feeling bashful, but she couldn't say it was a bad feeling. It was something she thought she could easily get used to – until she looked up and realized she was out of time.

Odette stopped walking. “This is me. Fifth floor,” she said, gesturing to the apartment building in front of them. It wasn't until the words were out of her mouth that she realized she had said them in a sigh. She blinked and shook her head slightly, trying to look less deeply disappointed. He had only offered to walk her home, after all. It was the end of a twenty-minute commitment, not a date. And it wasn't like she wouldn't be seeing him in the office when Monday finally rolled back around anyways, she reminded herself.

Funny, how she had gone from wanting to get out of the office as soon as possible to being impatient to go back in less than an hour.

Austin glanced to the front door of the building. “I, uh, guess you could probably make it across the yard safely enough, huh?” he said with a small, vaguely awkward laugh, and Odette gave a smile. The longer she was around him, the more Odette thought that there was a shyness about Austin Gilmore that she found increasingly sweet. It was a strangely gentle trait for an auror to have, but it suited him. Neither of them said anything for a few moments, until finally Austin rubbed a hand on the back of his head and offered, “I guess I should let you get some sleep? Busy week and all. So . . . good night, then, Odette.”

“Yeah,” Odette agreed with a vague nod. “Good night, Austin. Thank you for walking me home.” Austin smiled at her again before turning away. Odette watched as he took a few steps away from her, and she could tell from his stance that he was about to apparate away. Was he going all the way to Kansas right now? Odette had no idea, but she found the words spilling out of her mouth before she even realized what she was going to do. “Austin?”

Austin nearly tripped over himself mid-spin in his haste to turn back to Odette. He flailed for a moment, looking exceptionally undignified, before he managed to steady himself on the fence. He cleared his throat awkwardly and straightened, looking back at Odette with a slightly embarrassed expression. “Yeah?”

Odette was blushing now, but her brain hadn’t caught up enough with her mouth to understand why. “Um, I was wondering . . . do you want to come in for a little bit, maybe? Have a cup of tea, or coffee or something?” Tea or coffee. That was an entirely reasonable, professional beverage to offer to one’s colleague, wasn’t it? It wasn’t inappropriate at all, surely – even if it was getting rather late, and Odette couldn’t remember the last time she had been bold enough to invite a man up to her apartment under practically any other circumstances.

There was a long moment where Austin just stared at her, and for a beat, Odette wondered if she had done something wrong. Then he broke out into a grin so wide, Odette nearly laughed again, and couldn’t help smiling in return. “Uh. Yeah – yeah, of course, I’d love to,” he answered hurriedly, walking back. “I mean – I don’t usually like tea, to be honest – but I’m sure the tea you make, though, is, um, really good, and I’d love to try it – I’d be honored, actually –” Austin faltered to a stop, like he’d finally heard what he was saying, and closed his eyes with a pained expression. After a moment, he took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and tried again with slower, more careful words. “Actually, I would love a cup of coffee, if you don’t mind making one.”

Odette laughed. “I wouldn’t mind at all,” she told him with a sweet smile, and she could see the embarrassment in his features fade as he smiled back. She turned to unlock the gate, and after a moment it swung open, and she led Austin through easily. “I actually only moved to New York a little before I got the job at DMS,” Odette told him as they made their way across the yard. A handful of brick steps led up to the front door, and Odette dug through her purse to search for the keys. “So I’ve only lived her about a year, really, but I like it. The neighbors are nice, and the view isn’t terri– ah!”

“Hey, whoa!” Austin said quickly as Odette lost her footing on the last step and gave a squeak as she started to tumble backwards. He didn’t so much catch her as provide a solid wall for her to catch herself against, but his hands found her waist on instinct as he tried to steady her, and Odette looked up to find herself gazing into warm, concerned brown eyes. “Are you okay?”

He smelled nice, Odette decided in that instant. Like summer grass, or something equally earthy. She almost spent a few seconds trying to figure out what it was, exactly – except she realized after a beat that he was still holding onto her, and he had asked a question that probably required an answer. She blinked. “Uh – yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks,” she slipped out of his grip and straightened up for herself, brushing away imaginary dust from the front of her coat like it would brush away her indignities. She looked back at him sheepishly and added, “Like I said, bad balance.”

Austin smiled at her. “Maybe I was wrong, when I said that I thought you could make it across the yard safely.” Odette gave a nervous laugh and turned away, her cheeks burning red hot. She hurried up the last step and to the front door, unlocking it quickly. Austin followed after her, but Odette couldn’t think of anything to say as they made their way down the hall to elevator. All she could think about was Austin’s solidity when she’d fallen against him, and the depth of his eyes when he’d looked at her. It made her want to blush – and as she stepped into the elevator, it occurred to her that perhaps inviting him to her apartment had been a mistake. It was against the rules, to date within the Department of Magical Security. But then again, she was only an assistant, not an auror herself – maybe that didn’t really count. Was she hoping that it didn’t count?

Odette was so lost in thought that she didn’t even think about reaching for the elevator buttons. The doors closed, and after a moment, Austin looked at her curiously. Finally, he leaned past her to reach for the buttons. “Fifth floor?” he asked, and his voice startled Odette so much that she jumped a little before she nodded. Austin blinked at her reaction, but shrugged and pressed the fifth floor button.

He was still so close to her. Odette found herself leaning forward slightly, wondering if she could catch the scent of fresh grass again, but her movement caught Austin’s attention. He glanced down at her, and she looked up at him – and before she could question whether this was an absolutely atrocious idea, she leaned up and caught his lips in a kiss.

For an instant, it was nice. He had soft lips, but his bearded cheek felt wiry under her fingers. But it was only for an instant – then Odette snatched herself away, looking mortified. “Oh my god,” she whispered, wide eyed and bright red, her fingers on her lips. “That was – I’m so sorry, that was, um, absolutely unprofessional and – and inappropriate and – oh Merlin, I’m so sorry, please don’t tell Director James I did that –“

Austin looked stunned. His hand was still outstretched towards the elevator buttons, and he looked a little like someone had hit him straight on with a Confundus Charm, from the one time Odette had walked down to the training rooms and seen it used.

Odette’s panic faltered for a moment as she watched him, and she nearly asked if he was okay before he finally moved again. Austin lowered his hand slowly, and looked at her in a way that made her heart skip in her chest. Odette’s breath caught in her throat as he took a step closer to her, his hands finding her waist again. He hesitated for half a moment – long enough, Odette thought vaguely, for her to say something, if she didn’t want him to continue – but words were the last thing on her mind, and when Austin leaned down to kiss her again, she responded with such enthusiasm that she thought she caught him entirely off-guard. He pulled away again, and she looked up in disappointment, afraid of what he might say.

“Do you want to go to a play with me this weekend?” Austin asked instead, sounding breathless.

Odette laughed again, and nodded as she pulled Austin back down towards her. A play sounded like an excellent way to fill up the time in her potentially-no-longer-boyfriend-less weekend – but for later. For now, she had a much better idea of how to use the rest of her free time, and she wouldn’t even back on the MACUSA clock until Monday.

[thefinalcinderella]

DIVE!! Book 2 Chapter 1-WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM?

Full list of translations here

Previously on DIVE!!: Something’s going on with Shibuki.

The next day was a boiling-hot midsummer day.

Anyone who received the reflected heat of the unbearable, overhead sun from the asphalt beneath their feet would want to dive into a pool on such a day, especially as they stood beneath the scorching sun. Though, no one would go so far as to say that they wanted to dive from the summit of the diving tower.

A height of ten meters.

A speed of sixty kilometers per hour.

A flight time of one-point-four seconds.

At nine in the morning, the MDC members who were ready to take on this reckless battle gathered together at the Sakuragi High School pool. They trained their bodies until two, then they all got on the wagon bus (1) that Ooshima was driving. The MDC didn’t have its own bus, so usually they used a vehicle from the Mizuki Sports Club to pick and drop members up.

“If we send someone from our club to next year’s Olympics, will Mizuki buy us our own bus as well?” Ryou asked sarcastically amidst the tense pre-competition atmosphere in the bus.

“Well, if we don’t send someone to the Olympics, this time next year we won’t even have a place to practice everyday, much less our own bus.” Kayoko reciprocated Ryou’s snark.

“Stop it,” Ooshima said from the driver’s seat, trying to hold Kayoko back. “You’re putting strange pressure on everyone before an important competition.”

“An important competition, huh. It’s good that someone is aware of that.”

Even more snark bled into Kayoko’s tone. Everyone in the bus knew that she was implicitly criticizing Shibuki. He had the back-row seats all to himself, and was even stretched out across them as he dozed.

Shibuki had been like this since this morning. Although he showed up on time with Ooshima, during practice the only thing he did was to sprawl out on the poolside, and wouldn’t move no matter what Kayoko said to him. When the time finally came to set off, he never even once got onto the diving tower, and he became all the more daring for continuing to sleep on the wagon bus.

And now, one seat ahead of Shibuki, there was a boy who attracted a different kind of attention today.

Sakai Tomoki.

When Tomoki, who had disappeared just two days before the competition, finally returned to practice this morning, his clubmates gave sighs of relief. However, when they watched how he practiced, their feelings of relief turned into feelings of intimidation.

What on earth happened to this boy?

Asaki Kayoko saw potential in Tomoki, and everyone saw how quickly he grew in the past recent months. But today, he had something beyond that.

Even Shibuki, dozing on the poolside, widened his eyes at Tomoki’s sudden change. As he lay on his stomach on the hot concrete like a sea lion, he felt as though something like a mass of burning resolve fell down on him.

“I was so nervous while waiting for this day to come.”

He heard Youichi said when he passed by him with his wet feet.

“The day that he becomes serious—is the day when a sleeping lion awakens.”

Sleeping lion—

Shibuki followed that lion after practice, and caught him in the locker room.

“Are you doing the 3½ today?

Ever since he met Tomoki, who had been going nowhere with the 3½, in that park a month ago, Shibuki had been casually concerned about him. No, he might have already been on his mind ever since he heard Kayoko utter the words “diamond eyes”.

“Yeah, I’m doing the 3½.” Tomoki said immediately.

Hearing him speak with no trace of hesitation, Shibuki unintentionally hit him with a mean-spirited question. “What’s the success rate?”

“There is none.”

“What?”

“There is no rate. I’m just fired up.”

When Tomoki laughed while saying that, for the first time since he came to Tokyo, Shibuki was jealous of someone.

He was jealous that Tomoki didn’t have a burdensome past or circumstances, just a pure white future spreading out before him.

Tomoki could run up those towering steps as many times as possible, not because of a contract with someone, but only for his own feelings, and because he simply loved diving. To be honest, that made Shibuki jealous.

The Tokyo Tatsumi International Swimming Center towered on reclaimed land surrounded by a canal. It was around two when everyone arrived at the stage of their decisive battle, where they were all used to going to it for practice during the winter months.

Today, the girls’ high diving competition was scheduled at eleven in the morning, and the boys’ competition would be at four. The next day will be reversed, with the boys’ springboard diving in the morning, and the girls’ competition in the afternoon. The selection of the training camp members will be based on the results from all of the competitions, but for Shibuki and Tomoki who were only focusing on high diving, it was in no way an exaggeration to say that today’s results were everything.

Nonetheless, it was a little unreliable to have to bet everything on today’s tournament. It was common for diving competitions to have the preliminaries and finals on the same day, but this time, the JASF had decided to cut out the preliminaries in order to reduce time and expenses.

If they were doing the preliminaries, then in order to go ahead with the program that had preliminaries in the morning and finals in the afternoon, even just one event would take up the whole day. Four days would be required to get through the high diving and springboard diving competitions for both boys and girls. Despite being an important competition that would pick out members to go to Beijing from among middle and high school students from across the country, there wasn’t a lot of participants who gathered this time, and in the background, there was also distrust towards the management side for trying to cut down the four days to two.

It’s an ominous story, but just a few months ago, the chairman of the JASF, who always said that “sports are fun”, hurriedly announced his resignation due to bad health. The new chairman who succeeded him was a person of very ill-repute. He was rumored by some to be a medal ghoul, by others someone who would do anything for a medal, and someone who didn’t do anything other than for medals. For this Asia Joint Training Camp, the new chairman had succeeded the former chairman’s idea for it, but in fact did not put any efforts into events like minor diving competitions. He made one wondered if he had any spirit for training an Olympic representative from these training camp members. Such a rumor had been flying between the people concerned.

As a result, there were sixteen middle and high school students participating in the boys’ diving section of today’s tournament. About thirty percent of the strong contenders put off their participation. Rather than participating in the joint training camp, they chose to secure their rankings at the Junior High Championships and Inter-High, which would without doubt remain in their career.

When she had learned of those numbers, Kayoko wondered if she had made a mistake in her judgement for betting on the qualifying trials…and for a moment, her self-confidence wavered. However, on the other hand, it didn’t seem that there was another choice.

Youichi. Shibuki. Tomoki. Reiji. Ryou. Though the MDC members that she led had potential, they were still quite young. They had no careers or records, and were all unknown except for Youichi. In order for them to get the position of Olympic representative, they had no choice but to launch themselves into high-stakes, do-or-die competitions, with full awareness of the risks.

The joint training camp where the top juniors from all over Asia will gather. Regardless of the recent trend of the JASF, if they joined the training camp that was being directed by Coach Sun, the representative of the Chinese diving world, and experienced the level of the world for themselves, they’d definitely get something to take home. In America, Kayoko herself had witnessed some divers who accomplished several months of growth by going to a training camp for just a few weeks.

But, what if they lost that gamble?

Even if they couldn’t participate in this camp, or even if they did participate in it, if they couldn’t seize the representative position for the next Olympics as promised…the Mizuki executives, who saw deficit-riddled MDC as a burden, will force the MDC to shut down. The dream of developing the Japanese diving world, which the former chairman had exhausted so much money and labour in, would scattered, and the club members would subsequently lose the place where they belonged.

In such a critical time, it was not unreasonable at all in Kayoko’s eyes to express her irritation that Shibuki was carefreely sleeping like a log just before the competition.

Shibuki was still yawning as he got off the wagon bus and entered the Tokyo Tatsumi International Swimming Center. Kayoko’s expectation that he would tense up a little if he stood on the stage was shattered by the too-calm atmosphere on the premises, which did not give any feeling of tension to him.

Though they were going to start the fight for their fates from here on out, Tatsumi’s main pool was crowded with people escaping from the overripe summer. JASF only borrowed the diving pool for the competition, so that the very ordinary public could enjoy their very ordinary summer vacations on the other side. Of course, there was no excitement or tension from waiting for the beginning of the competition. The bleachers, which could accommodate three thousand and five hundred people, were only scattered with mothers waiting for their children swimming in the main pool. There was no sign of a cheering party (2) for diving.

“It’s still almost empty now, but I don’t think the stands will get filled up quickly as the start time gets closer.”

When Shibuki sprawled out on the poolside and was looking up at the stands before the competition, he suddenly heard a voice in his ears.

He looked and saw Ooshima sitting cross-legged by his side.

“Diving competitions are like this. If there are no cheering parties or brass bands, then there are no loud cheers or applause. When the occasional sports reporter comes, they’d just take a few pictures and leave. Just the coaches and the families of the divers are watching until the end. If you aren’t happy with that, you can even think of the people in the main pool as the spectators.”

Shibuki laughed scornfully. “So, we’re risking everything to dive in front of these people who just came here to swim for fun, for their hobby, or for making up for their lack of exercise?”

“Nothing wrong with the people who are just having fun, since they’re quiet.” Ooshima replied without laughing.  “It’s really miserable when it falls on the same day as a swimming competition. Though over there they have huge crowds of cheering parties yelling intensely, the stands over here are as silent as a grave. You’re desperately trying to concentrate on one thing, it’s going well, and in the moment that you’re about to take-off…a huge fanfare suddenly breaks out for the best record set for the two-hundred meters freestyle.”

Shibuki’s smile disappeared.

“You’re diving under those conditions?”

“We’re diving through all of that.”

“That’s…”

“Only those who can do it are left. Diving is that kind of sport. We’re not as weak as you think we are.”

“…”

“Well, it’s fine. You’ll understand soon enough.”

Ooshima ruffled Shibuki’s bangs, an announcement from the speakers of the venue told the divers to gather.

Right before his very first competition, Shibuki understood less and less about diving.

“The boys’ high diving competition will start from now.”

It was four p.m. The battle began with a brief address from a JASF executive.

The divers, who had entered the venue in a line, straggled halfway around the poolside, and stopped at a predetermined position. They marched without BGM or keeping time by clapping. The stands were still bare, and even when the divers’ introductions began, there wasn’t a single cheer that could be heard.

The sixteen people who were fighting on this lonely stage were lined up based on order of entry, which was predetermined by a lottery. Youichi was third, making him the first MDC member in line. After him was Ryou in fourth, Reiji in eighth, Tomoki in twelfth, and Shibuki in fifteenth. As the names of the divers were read aloud in this order, this plain opening ceremony was already coming to an end, and twenty minutes of practice time were given to the divers before they compete.

As the divers went up the stairs of the diving tower one by one, even at this last minute, Shibuki was as unmoving as a rock. He did not move his feet, even as he noticed Kayoko’s face in the front row of the stands turning stormier and stormier. His lower back was heavy. His head felt sluggish. The noise from the main pool was too annoying.

“You don’t look so good.” Youichi called out to Shibuki, who was standing by himself. He had already finished practicing several times, and his skin glistened with water droplets.

“Today, Sagittarius will be in bad shape due to the influences of Saturn and Jupiter.”

So leave me alone, Shibuki seemed to say as he turned his back, but Youichi called out to him, as though he was extremely dissatisfied. “You don’t want to admit it, but you have stage fright.”

“Stage fright?”

“Yep.”

“Me?”

“For sure.”

He wasn’t joking!

Shibuki was about to protest almost at same time that Youichi said “look” and lifted his right hand.

Even the nails of his fingertips were slender and beautiful. He pointed at the soaring diving tower before them.

“That’s the concrete dragon.”

Concrete dragon?

“Tomoki often said that when he was little, he thought that it looked like a dragon made of concrete when he saw it. Now that I say it, it really does look like one, doesn’t it? It’s a concrete dragon that always looks down on us as we’re spinning around doing somersaults, trying hard to dive without making splashes, and having the water strike us when we fail. That dragon is also looking awfully cold for today.”

While Youichi smiled, his eyes were welling up with fighting spirit.

“Because even a dragon is like that, it’s not unreasonable for us humans to get stage fright or tremble.”

Indeed, the diving tower that looked down on them from far overhead looked somewhat more formal than usual for today. Though the dragon was just a simple mass of concrete, it changed its expressions frequently depending on the day, looking calm on good days, and severe on bad days. It’s true that it probably sees beings like us as tiny pebbles, Shibuki thought. However…

“Hey, when was I having stage fright and trembling…”

“Okay, okay. Having stage fright is proof that you have potential as a diver. Those who don’t get nervous before a big game don’t have any sensitivity. Those who don’t have any sensitivity cannot do beautiful dives. You passed. Be happy.”

“So…”

“Well, isn’t that good? If you’re nervous, you should undergo that nervousness thoroughly. It’s better to not practice if you’re not feeling well. Coach Asaki looks angry, but if you fail while practicing your diving unwillingly, your crucial performance will be messed up. Plus, it’s still better to learn about the backgrounds of your rivals.”

“Rivals?”

“Come. I will teach you about your rivals today, in order to make you more nervous.”

Of the two second-year high schoolers, even though Shibuki was much bigger in terms of body size, once Youichi opened his mouth, Shibuki was way too easily drawn in by that compelling pace. That skill for reading other people’s minds, and for tempting and pulling them towards himself, was a sort of psychological warfare that was perhaps linked to diving somehow.

Youichi placed his hand on Shibuki’s shoulder, took him to the side of the pool where they were able to take in the practice all at once, and began the introduction of his rivals that he did not ask for.

“The first is Matsuno Kiyotaka of Tokushima.”

The twenty-five square meters diving pool.

The platform that overlooked that blue noise.

Youichi pointed out Matsuno Kiyotaka, who was standing on ten-meter platform, where he could see everything from the stands that were full of empty seats, to the main pool that was filled with the ordinary patrons, to the sub-pool that could be seen behind the glass.

He had stiff, chivalrous features. His body line was firm and solid. As he kicked off from the platform with well-muscled feet, Matsuno traced two circles in the air with his precise form.

“Not bad, right? At last year’s Inter-High, Teramoto Kenichirou swept first place, and I of course was in second place, but Matsuno took third place after me. He has a long career, he’s used to competitions, and his performances are stable and solid. Because’s he’s devoted to the basics, he’s popular with the judges.”

“But,” he added gleefully, “unfortunately Matsuno’s performances aren’t as brilliant as Teramoto’s or mine. It’s precise, but it lacks height and speed. Well, in a word, it’s plain. And the one who was competing for third place with Matsuno at last year’s Inter-High was…”

Next, Youichi pointed at a fair-skinned, delicate-looking boy wearing a shocking pink speedo.

“Pinky Yamada from Ibaraki. His real name is Yamada Atsuhiko. His nickname came from his elementary school days, when he started to wear a pink speedo as his trademark.”

The slender Pinky Yamada leaned forward from the stairs of the diving tower, constantly posing like a bodybuilder. Following his line of sight to see what he was trying to do, they saw three high school girls in a corner of the bleak stands, which was the only place that smelled like a flower garden from all of the perfume. Every time Pinky posed, they squealed and went crazy with lighting up their cameras.

“He’s an idiot, but his talent at diving is okay. Since he took classical ballet lessons, his nerves run from his performance to his fingertips. His sense of rhythm is exceptional. He has excellent muscle strength, flexibility, and proportions. He might have better qualities than me…no, maybe even better than Teramoto Kenichirou. But,” Youichi added happily, “not all gifted people could become gifted divers. Pinky is a perfect example of that. He has lots of potential, but he doesn’t have the power to master it. He hates practicing since he doesn’t know patience. He must be pretty weak mentally as well, since whenever he’s in the middle of a competition he always has to go and dig his own grave.”

“Grave?”

“He always breaks down in the middle of a competition. He can’t concentrate until the end, and he makes big mistakes for no reason at all and out of nothing. He’s at the top after the first half finishes, but by the end of the second half he’s at the bottom, always. In the end, he couldn’t leave any notable records behind, so that flashy speedo is the only thing that remained.”

Next, Youichi’s eyes fell on the seven-meter platform.

“That’s Tsuji Toshihiko from Fukushima. He used to be an artistic gymnast, but when he was in fifth grade he got scouted and moved into the world of diving.”

He had a small and balanced build. He had a pretty face, like an idol’s. Tsuji Toshihiko, who looked like a girl at first glance, made the best of his body to speedily dive from the seven-meter platform.

“Matsuno and Pinky are third-years in high school, but Tsuji is a second-year like us. He can be called a veteran compared to us, and he dives in a calculated, cheap way.”

“Cheap?”

“For example, if you’re doing 2½ somersaults, your flight time will be shortened if you dived from seven meters instead of ten meters. It’ll be even shorter if you dive from five meters. The shorter the flight time, the more difficult it is to finish the rotations. The harder it is, the higher the degree of difficulty will be. The higher the degree of difficulty, the higher the score.”

“Is it better to dive from a lower platform?”

“It depends on the dive, but it’s mostly for 2½ somersaults and above. But, even though everyone knows this, they still go up to the ten-meter. Because the ten-meter is still the tallest, the most exciting, and the coolest. Usually, there’s opposition to the idea of diving more compactly from a lower platform just for earning cheap points, right? But Tsuji can do it without backlash, which is also a kind of talent. But,” Youichi proudly added, “For Tsuji, who keeps on diving so cheaply, there’s a fearsome man who has pulled away from him by a wide margin in any competition. It’s me.”

“…”

Shibuki looked seriously embarrassed at the extremely confident thoroughbred who had former Olympic divers for parents. But, as he was casually trying to get away, Youichi gripped his wrist, and forcibly continued on to introduce the last person.

“That’s Hirayama Jirou of Osaka. Also known as Flaming Jirou.” (3)

Following Youichi’s line of sight, there was a single diver standing still on the poolside, fixated on the shammy (4) beneath his feet. It was image training where you pretend that the blue shammy. with which you wiped off water drops, was the pool.

“Flaming Jirou’s a high school first-year. I’ve met him many times at competitions, but he stood out the most at every one of them. When it comes to standing out, he’s the only one I’ll admit defeat to.”

He was a little on the fat side for a diver. His round face looked more suited for a bread eating contest than diving. He also had suspicious-looking sideburns. Where did Youichi lose to him?

Youichi explained it to the puzzled Shibuki. “Did you see the entry table for the competition? All of the events that Flaming Jirou chose for free-choice diving are all super dives with ridiculously high degrees of difficulty. Forward 3½ somersaults pike. Reverse 3½ somersaults tuck. Forward 2½ somersaults 2 twists free (5)…if he succeeds at all of them, he could aim for the top of the world, much less Japan. But,” Youichi added contentedly, “Jirou had never succeeded.”

“Huh?”

“He had never been successful in any tournament, ever. Even so, he still continues to challenge the super dives with a failure rate of a hundred percent at every competition, and as expected, he fails and gets beaten up by the water hard. Many, many times. And as he continues on with the competition, his body swells up and turns red, like flames.”

“‘Flaming Jirou…’”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

“Really.”

“There’s a bunch of different guys here.”

Indeed, there did seem to be various divers here.

Matsuno Kiyotaka.

Pinky Yamada.

Tsuji Toshihiko.

Flaming Jirou.

They were unusual rivals that were awaiting Shibuki in his first competition. However, he didn’t forget that he wasn’t just competing against those four, but those who were more familiar to him.

MDC’s Tomoki. Ryou. Reiji. And now, including Youichi who was right in front of him, everyone was his rival.

The Asia Joint Training Camp. Only three of them will gain the right to participate at the camp that will connect them to their dream of the Olympics.

“How’s your head feeling right now? Confused?”

He suddenly looked into his eyes, and Shibuki reflexively nodded.

“Great, I succeeded. I’ve already crushed one of my rivals.”

Laughing loudly like Mito Koumon (6), Youichi left.

As Shibuki stared after his retreating back in shock, an announcement came, signalling the end of the practice time.

“Divers, please line up in numerical order.”

Shibuki’s very first competition was about to begin, right now.

Translation Notes

1. Pictures of wagon buses

2. Wasn’t going to put a note here, but since cheering parties (Ouendan) have a Wikipedia page, I thought I’d put it here

3. Jirou’s nickname in Japanese is 炎のジロー (En no Jirou). I spent some time trying to come up with a nickname that sounded nicknamey. I know the subs say “Fire Jiro” but I came up with a nickname way before they did so ha

4. A shammy is a towel used by divers to dry off before dives.

5. Free position is a combination of straight, tuck and pike positions when the dive involves a twist(s).

6. Mito Koumon is a long-running period drama about title character Tokugawa Mitsukuni and co. This is how he laughs so yeah Youichi is being pretty obnoxious here lol

Next time on DIVE!!: A (belated?) diving lesson.

[minijenn]

Universe Falls Chapter 34

Fuuuuck its finally done. Seriously I haven’t spent this long working on a single chapter since... I can’t even remember when. And I’m so fucking tired but whatever. This chapter is a mess because of it but I guess it could always be worse. So anyway, hope you all enjoy!

Previous: http://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/159651353069/universe-falls-chapter-33

Chapter 34: Into the Bunker

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If there was any idle pastime shared between Dipper and Wendy that they enjoyed most, it was watching the old, low-budget movies that were frequently aired on Gravity Falls public television and making fun of their hilariously poor quality all the while. And the pair was doing just that as they relaxed at the foot of the cashier’s bed, sharing a bowl of popcorn as they mockingly laughed along to the utter cheesiness of the zombie movie currently playing.

“What do we do, Chadley?!” the female lead of the movie cried, clinging onto her boyfriend as a horde of blood-thirsty zombies surrounded them. “I thought they were dead!”

“Far worse, Trixandra!” Chadley exclaimed overdramatically. “They’re… Nearly Dead But Not Quite!”

As the protagonist dropped the title, it appeared on the screen for a brief moment before returning to the melodramatic, clearly fake zombie attack. “Man, these movies are a lot less scary when you’ve actually fought regular zombies,” Dipper remarked, rolling his eyes at the movie’s lackluster effects that paled in comparison to how horrifying he knew genuine zombies to be.

“They’re slow!” Wendy shouted at the TV with faux frustration. “Just power-walk away from them!”

“How much you wanna bet that guy dies first?” Dipper asked with a smirk, only for that very thing to happen seconds later.

“Ah! My face is getting eaten a lot!” Chadley screamed as the zombies comically pounced on him, much to Dipper and Wendy’s equal amusement.

“Ha! Chadley ain’t pretty no more,” Wendy said as her and Dipper laughed over the main character’s ridiculous fate. Their levity was interrupted, however, as the cashier’s phone buzzed on the bed nearby. “One sec,” Wendy grabbed her phone, her grin quickly turning into an aggravated scowl upon seeing the latest notification. “Ugh, another text from Robbie!”

“Oh yeah,” Dipper said, though he made sure to phrase his next statement carefully since he didn’t really want to pry too much. “Robbie. So, uh… how… how’s all that going?”

“Ugh, I’m over him, I just wish he was over me!” Wendy huffed in exasperation. “Just look at these texts! Winky frown? What does that even mean?”

Dipper hesitated before saying anything, excitement and anxiety filling him all at once as he realized this could very well finally be his chance. That is, if he didn’t end up getting in his own way again. “A-and you’re not… not, like… seeing any other guys, or…”

“Of course I am,” Wendy replied, not noticing Dipper forcing himself to hide his shocked dismay at this news. “Meet my new boyfriend, dude.” With a joking smirk, the cashier pulled up one of her stuffed animals, much to Dipper’s apt relief.

“Right, right,” he laughed a bit too awkwardly, averting eye contact with his crush as he began to pose the question he had been thoroughly thinking and fretting over for weeks now. “S-so, I was wondering if… If maybe y-you wanted to… You know… Maybe w-we could… I-I wanted to know if you…” Dipper took in a sharp, deep breath, cringing at his own complete inability to just tell Wendy how he felt, something that was so simple as a concept, but nearly impossible in execution. And seeing as how he had already messed up whatever slim chance he might have had, he let out a defeated sigh as he went off on a different tangent entirely. “If you… wanted to join me, Mabel, Steven, and the Gems on a mystery hunt tomorrow? Conspiracy stuff and all that?”

“Yeah, dude,” Wendy immediately agreed with a grin. “I love doing all that junk with friends. Yo, Chadley! Look out!” she laughed as she turned her attention back to the movie playing on TV, even though Dipper couldn’t really do the same.

“Yeah, that’s what we are…” he sighed in disappointment as he discreetly pulled a piece of paper out of his vest while Wendy wasn’t looking. Dipper frowned dejectedly as he glanced over the note he had written (and rewritten at least several times over) that openly confessed his own hopeless crush on the cashier, a note that he refused to ever let her see, lest it cause him untold mortification. “That’s all we’ll ever be…” he muttered glumly, crumpling up the note before putting it away and flopping back onto the bed. “Friends…”

“Dude, you’re lying on my bra,” Wendy informed him with a hint of amusement in her tone. Dipper let out a panicked scream upon glancing over to see that he was indeed on top of one of the cashier’s bras, prompting him to dart upright before the situation could get any more awkward than it already was.

Steven smiled contentedly as he sat on a nearby tree stump as Pearl, Greg, and Stan collaborated on trying to fix the former rock star’s broken-down van outside the shack. The young Gem didn’t pay their muttered conversing much mind, however, as he instead entertained himself with the Crying Breakfast Friends personality quiz on his phone.

“Sniffling Croissant!” Steven exclaimed brightly as he finished the quiz and got his result. “You really know me, internet. Hey, guys!”

“Yeah, Steven?” Greg asked, turning his attention from the engine him and Stan were holding steady for Pearl as she worked on it.

“You guys should take this online quiz I found,” the young Gem quipped, holding his phone up so they could see. “It tells you what character you are from Crying Breakfast Friends!”

“Crying Breakfast-” Stan cut himself off, looking to Steven completely dumbfounded. “Kid, what the heck are you talking about?”

“Oh, it’s a really great cartoon with a huge cast of really interesting, relatable characters!” Steven explained with a smile. “And every single one of them is a result you can get in this quiz! Like I said, you all should totally take it!”

“Uh… why?” Pearl asked with a confused frown.

“It’s just fun to see yourself as a cartoon character,” Steven shrugged, looking back to his phone. “Like Weeping Egg Cup, who’s neurotic and uptight, or Pining Grapefruit, the sensitive older one who wishes he were a better role model, or Grumpy Pancake, who’s ill-tempered but has a hidden heart of gold.”

Pearl, Stan, and Greg all exchanged an aptly bewildered glance upon hearing this, none of them really sure of what to make of the odd characters Steven was detailing to them. “Uh, maybe we can do that thing after we fix the van,” Greg said with a patient smile.

“Yeah, or better yet, never,” Stan muttered, rolling his eyes as he got back to work.

Steven let out a disappointed sigh upon hearing this, but nonetheless, he accepted their answer. “Okay… I’ll just find someone else then!”

“Yo, Steven!” Amethyst called to the young Gem as her and Garnet stood on the fringes of the trail leading into the woods. “You ready to go?”

“Oh yeah! I almost forgot!” Steven jumped to his feet, putting his phone in his pocket as he prepared to head off.

“Oh, are you three going off on that ‘mystery hunt’ you mentioned earlier?” Pearl asked the young Gem before he could get too far.

“Yep!” the young Gem said, walking backwards as he addressed her. “We’re going to meet Dipper, Mabel, and Soos in the woods right now! Aren’t you coming, Pearl?”

“Oh, well, I-” the white Gem was cut off as something inside the van’s chassis suddenly burst, resulting in a thick plume of smoke and a shared exasperated groan from Greg and Stan. “I… think I’m needed more here,” Pearl said with a slightly bemused grin. “But stay safe! And have fun!”

“Oh, we will!” Steven nodded as he joined Amethyst and Garnet. “Especially since I have this quiz to keep us all entertained along the way!”

The white Gem continued to wave her teammates off with a smile, one that faded into her earlier confusion as she turned back to the conman and the former rock star. “Do either of you understand that cartoon show?” she asked pensively.

“I don’t really understand anything anymore,” Greg admitted honestly.

“Ditto,” Stan dryly agreed as they got back to work sorting the van’s struggling engine out.

Meanwhile, Steven cheerfully strode alongside Garnet and Amethyst, the former silent and observant as ever and the latter casually snacking on the messy sandwich she had brought along for the hike. “So where’s this ‘super mysterious’ place Dipper wants us to check out again?” the purple Gem asked somewhat boredly.

“Apparently, its right on the temple hill,” Garnet replied, her attention focused on the path ahead. “The very same place where he supposedly found the journal. So this mission will hopefully give us some answers that are a long time coming. Which means I expect you both to take it seriously.”

“Don’t worry, G,” Amethyst smirked, her mouth full as she munched on her sandwich. “You know me. I’m as serious as they come.”

“Same here!” Steven nodded thoroughly. “Oh! Speaking of serious stuff, you guys gotta take this online quiz: ‘Which Crying Breakfast Friend Are You’?”

“I’ll pass,” Garnet said simply.

“Yeah, same,” Amethyst stuck her tongue out. “That show’s really weird. Who wants to watch a cartoon about people crying?”

“I do!” Steven protested, tears already starting to form in his eyes.

“Ok, ok!” the purple Gem quickly retracted for the sake of appeasing the young Gem. “Uh, what’s the first question?”

Steven quickly perked up as he looked back to his phone and read the question out loud. “Do you ever act without thinking?”

“Nope,” Amethyst shrugged, throwing the remainder of her sandwich into the air before catching most of it in her wide-open mouth.

“Are you afraid of taking risks and trying new things?”

“Terrified,” the purple Gem deadpanned, licking the remains of her sandwich off her face.

“Amethyst, are you taking this seriously?” Steven asked with a frown.

“Of course, I am,” Amethyst rolled her eyes, making it quite clear that she wasn’t. Still, Steven tapped ‘yes’ on his phone under the question he had just asked her before moving onto the next one.

“Are you insecure about your relationships and how you are perceived by other people?”

The purple Gem’s lax expression abruptly shifted into discomfort upon hearing such a prying question, especially as she glanced towards Garnet. The Gem leader herself wasn’t really listening to the conversation as she stoically pressed on ahead, but even so, Amethyst was aptly anxious as she gave Steven an uncertain reply. “…No? Yes? Uh… what’s the right answer?”

“There is no right answer,” Steven said. “You’re just supposed to answer honestly.”

“Eh, I’m bored,” Amethyst quickly returned to her usual casual manner as she quickened her pace to catch up with Garnet.

“Wait!” Steven called as he ran after her. “I still have loads more probing personal questions to ask you!”

“They’ll have to wait till later,” Garnet spoke up, putting her hands on her hips as she came to a stop. “We’re here.”

“Hi, guys!” Mabel greeted the trio brightly as they arrived. Her and Soos were eagerly waiting near a tall, conspicuous tree that Dipper was intently pacing in front of while meticulously leafing through the journal. He stopped short, however, upon noticing that Steven and the Gems had shown up.

“There you guys are!” Dipper said with relieved smile as he closed the journal. “I’m glad you could make it. Thank you all for coming.”

“Hey, when there’s a mystery, you can count on your sister… -ey!” Mabel quipped, somehow making the pun work.

“That’s an amazing rhyme,” Soos chuckled before trying his own. “When you want some… some good… When you need a Soos, you… Oh, gosh, I got nothing.”

“Oh, this is so exciting!” Steven exclaimed with a zealous smile. “What mystery are we gonna solve this time? Why fairies are so small and sparkly? Or how gnomes celebrate president’s day?”

“Neither,” Dipper shook his head. “We’re here to solve the number one mystery in Gravity Falls: who wrote this journal?” He held said journal up, flipping to the torn pastedown that would have otherwise revealed its writer’s identity. “Thirty years ago, the author vanished without a trace, but according to this new clue, we may have found his secret hiding place,” He paused once more to hold a portable backlight up to a page depicting the very same tree they were all standing under. The backlight, however, revealed a winding staircase wrapping underneath the tree, leading the way to a hidden underground dugout.

“Wait, so you’re saying this author guy has been squatting right underneath our temple for the past 30 years?” Amethyst asked incredulously. “All without us knowing about it? That seems kinda, I dunno, impossible?”

“We don’t know who the author is,” Garnet reminded solidly. “But he somehow knew a lot about us. It would have made sense for him to have gotten that information by observing us right behind our backs.”

“Literally!” Steven quipped jokingly.

“I don’t know…” Dipper interjected with a frown as he looked back to the journal. “Based on how the author wrote about you guys, it still doesn’t really seem like he got all this info just from spying on you… But that’s what we’re here to find out. We find that author, we learn the answers to everything. We just need to figure out a way to get down there…”

“Chop it down, dudes!” Wendy called as she pulled up to the group on her bike.

“Wendy!” Mabel and Steven greeted the cashier, pleasantly surprised that she was joining them.

“Oh, hey! You made it!” Dipper exclaimed, also quite excited to see her.

“Dude, I’m so stoked about this!” Wendy remarked, putting her usual hat on as she dismounted her bike. “I’ve been wanting to go adventuring with you guys. Sure beats picking up after my dad at home. So thanks for the invite, man!” She grinned as she passed by Dipper, giving a friendly punch on the arm.

“O-of course!” Dipper called after her with a smile that was far too wide and clearly flustered. “Anytime you wanna… I, uh… We’re always… uh-”

“Uh oh!” Mabel cut in as her and Steven both sent Dipper broad, knowing grins while the Gems and Soos moved on towards the tree themselves. “Inviting Wendy on our mission? Methinks there’s romance afoot!”

“No,” Dipper quickly rejected this notion, even if he was more intent on convincing himself more than either of them. “Look, I’ve thought this through and I’m over Wendy. I’ve looked at it from every angle, and that thing was going nowhere. I know what matters to me now, and that’s finding the author of this journal.”

“Ha! You’re over Wendy?” Mabel smirked with wry disbelief. “Allow me to put on my ‘skepticals’.” Said skeptical were merely just Mabel forming circles around her eyes with her fingers, but even so Dipper was far from amused.

“Dipper, why don’t you just tell Wendy how you feel about her?” Steven asked with a good-natured smile. “It’s gotta be easier than just trying to keep it a secret. I mean, just how great things turned out when Bawling Bacon told Mourning Muffin about his crush on her in Crying Breakfast Friends.”

“Oh, that episode is a classic!” Mabel interjected, still keeping her ‘skepticals’ on.

“…I don’t even know what to say to that,” Dipper said dryly. “But still, I’m not going to tell Wendy anything because there’s nothing to tell. I’ve moved on. You guys should too.”

The pair merely exchanged a tentative glance as Dipper stepped past them, though Mabel made sure to get the final say on the matter. “Skepticals…”

“Hey, guys,” Wendy said as everyone gathered close to the tree. “Is it just me, or does that branch look kinda like a lever?”

“Huh, yeah,” Dipper agreed, looking up at the branch the cashier was referring to before turning away from it to properly pan. “But how do we get up there…? It seems like we’d need a ladder, or like, ladder-shoes. I’ll get Soos to draw up a prototype, maybe go get Pearl and have her help build them…”

“Should we tell him?” Amethyst muttered to Garnet as they watched Wendy use her belt to skillfully scale the tree behind Dipper.

“Eh, he’ll figure it out,” Garnet shrugged.

At the same time, Wendy had reached the lever and pulled the ax out of her belt. With a smooth flick of the wrist, she spun the weapon around and hit the lever with its dull end, easily activating it. “Boosh!” she exclaimed, sending a satisfied smirk down to the amazed group on the ground.

“Whoa! Wendy, dude, that was awesome!” Soos exclaimed with a grin.

“Oh yeah, my dad used to make me compete in these lumberjack games when I was a kid,” Wendy remarked with a humble shrug. “Guess I kinda ruled at it.”

Still, no one had too much time to be impressed as the tree suddenly began to shake violently. Unable to hold on, Wendy fell off of it with a frightened cry, though fortunately, the shrub at the foot of the tree broke her fall. She didn’t really have a chance to breathe a sigh of relief, however, as the ground surrounding the tree began to retract, though thankfully Dipper and Soos were quick enough to pull her away from the emerging opening. The group crowded around the circular hole, watching in stunned awe as a set of stairs started jutting out from the lower half of the tree, stairs that led to a metallic door down below.

“Uh… G?” Amethyst tentatively spoke up, looking to the Gem leader with apt concern. “Am I the only one of us who’s thinking this looks sort of…”

“Familiar…” Garnet finished, her expression unreadable as she looked towards the hidden door and nothing else. “No, you’re not.”

“Wait, have you guys been here before?” Steven asked with immense curiosity.

“I don’t… think so…” the purple Gem frowned, bewildered.

“Still, it feels like we have…” the Gem leader adjusted her shades, her tone slightly unnerved. “It’s… hard to explain…”

“Well maybe going down there and checking it out will help jog your memory!” Mabel suggested encouragingly.

The pair of Gems exchanged a dubious glance, neither of them, not even Garnet, really sure of what they might find underground. Still, as always, Amethyst was the first to return to her usual verve. “Well, what are we waiting for?” she asked with a forced, confident grin. “Let’s crash this creepy joint!”

“Alright, guys, this is it,” Dipper said with bold resolve, making sure the journal was securely tucked into his vest. “Remember, what happens down there, we tell no one.”

The others all responded affirmative to this in different ways: Mabel with a thumbs up, Steven with a solid nod, Garnet with a clenched, determined fist, Soos by turning his hat backwards, Amethyst with a casual salute, and Wendy by zipping her lips. Without the need for any further deliberation on their plans, the group began descending the staircase down to whatever might await them in the depths below.

What did await them behind the door was a rather small, rather cramped room. Its walls were constructed out of firm, sturdy metal, and despite the dust and cobwebs clinging to nearly every surface, there was certainly much to see. A small, decrepit cot sat against one wall, a cabinet used to store weapons against the other, and shelves upon shelves of stock-piled food in boxes labeled by year against another. The group all gasped in muted awe as they wandered into the room, all of them somehow managing to squeeze into the claustrophobic corridor as they began to investigate every detail they could.

“Ok, this is stupidly cool,” Wendy remarked with an impressed grin.

“I know, right?” Steven glanced around the room, his eyes alight with wonder. “Who knew all this stuff was hiding right behind the temple?”

“Hm…” Garnet mused as the young Gem said this, remaining in one spot as she scoped the area out. While her future vision usually was able to give her clear glimpses into what was ahead, it was of no aid in providing her glimpses of what might have been before. And yet, every fiber of her being resonated with the feeling that this place, as cramped and as darkened as it was, was a place she had stepped foot in before, somehow and some when. She knew, even without asking, that Amethyst likely harbored the same feeling, and Pearl would have as well if she was with them. And perhaps, even Rose would have admitted to its familiarity if she was still around to see all of this. Or better yet, fill in the gaps that they seemed to be missing.

“It’s like a fallout shelter or something,” Dipper noted, glancing over at a calendar fixed to the wall that was stuck on the year 1982. “It must have belonged to the author.”

“Yeesh, I feel sorry for the dude if he lived in this dusty old box,” Amethyst said, trying her best to pass off her own uneasiness towards the familiarity of it all. “Still, at least there’s plenty of good cans lying around to snack on.” With a satisfied smirk, the purple Gem grabbed a nearby empty can and downed it whole as Steven and Mabel shared an amused laugh at her odd appetite.

At the same time, Wendy pried a metal sign off the wall that read “Fallout Shelter”, grinning as she blew the dust off of it. “This is going over my bed.”

“Ha!” Mabel chuckled brightly as she pulled her head out of the barrel she had been investigating, not even caring about the countless caterpillars inching across her face. “My face feels fuzzy!”

“Aw, they’re so cute!” Steven quipped, gleefully petting one of the fuzzy creatures.

“This is incredible!” Dipper remarked, fully in his element now as he tried to imagine the mysterious author himself standing in this very room. “It’s like he was preparing for a disaster. But… what kind of disaster would need supplies for over sixty years…?” His smile faded as he looked to the extensive collection of storage boxes sitting on the nearby shelves, all of which were labeled with years dating all the way up to 2070.

“Oh my gosh!” Soos gasped as he opened up the weapons locker and pulled anything but a weapon out. “A Smez dispenser! I remember these things. What’s that?” he paused, holding the dog-shaped dispenser up to his ear with a playful grin. “Why yes, I will have some of your old-timey face food!” The handyman pushed a piece of candy out of the dispenser and ate it, choking a bit over its staleness. “Ew, dusty!” he cringed, before popping another one into his mouth.

“Ha ha! Look, Steven!” Amethyst smirked to the nearby young Gem as she found a gas mask hanging on the wall, one that she jokingly put on. “I’m a pachyderm!” Of course, Steven let out a charmed laugh at this, though his amusement turned into shock as Amethyst pulled a skull, albeit a fake one, out of the mask. “Oh! And there’s a prize inside!”

“Amethyst,” Garnet spoke up, turning to her teammate. “I thought you said you were going to take this mission seriously.”

“Hey, I am being serious,” the purple Gem retorted defensively, quickly tossing the gas mask aside. “Just figured I’d liven this stale old place up a little is all.” Amethyst flashed a hopeful grin at her leader, who, based on her unflinching expression, was anything but impressed by her levity. Still, she made no comment on it, much to the purple Gem’s simultaneous worry and relief.

“Wait, guys!” Dipper interjected as he happened to pick up one of the countless discarded cans off the floor, one that just so happened to be still somewhat full. “I think this can was opened recently…”

“The author still might be alive down here, then!” Soos exclaimed.

“Wait a minute…” Wendy cut in as she glanced over to the far wall, where a large map of Gravity Falls hung. The map itself seemed to be blowing against a mysterious unseen breeze, the source of which was revealed as the cashier pulled it off the wall, uncovering a slightly ajar hatch. “I think I know where he might have gone…” Wendy smirked to the others as they gathered around.

“Then here’s the plan,” Garnet said authoritatively. “We’ll follow this tunnel to wherever it leads. But since this is unknown territory we’re in, Amethyst and I will take the lead and the rest of you follow behind us.”

Everyone nodded in agreement with this safe plan, knowing that the pair of Gems would be their best line of defense in case anything happened to go wrong. Garnet herself went first, crawling through the tight tunnel that led deeper into the darkness, with Amethyst heading after her, followed by the others.

“Oh Garnet,” Steven grinned with admiration as he climbed into the tunnel behind the Gems. “Stern but practical. Just like Spilled Milk.”

“Ugh, you’re not still on about that dumb cartoon, are you?” Amethyst asked, annoyed as she glanced back at the young Gem.

“Oh right, the quiz!” Steven pulled out his phone as he tried to hold it and shimmy through the tunnel the best he could. However, before he could read the next question, Mabel enthusiastically interrupted.

“Oh my gosh, you don’t mean the Crying Breakfast Friends personality quiz, do you?!” she asked excitedly. “I just took that this morning. I got Sad Pear, just like I knew I would!”

“Whoa, Sad Pear is totally you, Mabel!” Steven readily agreed. “I got Sniffling Croissant, and now I’m trying to see which character Amethyst is. So, next question: Do you get defensive when people ask you questions about the feelings you prefer to keep hidden?”

“Pfft, I know someone who does,” Mabel remarked offhand, sending a goading smirk to Dipper.

“Mabel, please,” Dipper huffed in exasperation, though he did briefly glance back at Wendy rather apprehensively, though thankfully she didn’t notice.

Amethyst, on the other hand, was far more alarmed and perturbed upon hearing the podding question the young Gem had just posed. “Don’t get all psyc-o-logical on me, Ste-ven,” she hissed somewhat harshly, glaring back at him.

The young Gem flinched a little at her bitter manner, though still, he wasn’t exactly sure what about his seemingly question had provoked her. “Uh… Sorry?”

“Everyone, watch your step,” Garnet cut through the conversation with a forewarning as the group reached the end of the tunnel. Once again, everyone was rapt with amazement as they emerged into a large, square chamber, its walls, floor, and ceiling all composed of metallic tiles, all of which bore strange, cryptic symbols on them. While purpose of this strange room was far from clear, everyone took the time to stop and scope it out nonetheless, more out of awe than anything else.

“Wow! And I thought that first room was cool!” Steven exclaimed, glancing around with wide eyes. “This one’s even more mysterious!”

“I know, right?” Wendy smirked in agreement. “Was this place built in the past or the future?”

“I dunno, dudes…” Soos muttered apprehensively. “This room is way creepy…”

“Not as creepy as Dipper’s internet history!” Mabel exclaimed with a broad, joking grin. “Heyo!” Despite the aggravated glare Dipper was sending her, Mabel gave him a playful shove nonetheless, which resulted in him stumbling forward onto one of the marked panels on the floor, a panel that just so happened to be a hidden switch. Without any warning, a blaring alarm began to sound as the other symbols on the walls lit up bright red. The hatch the group had just emerged from abruptly slammed shut and locked itself tightly, and while that wouldn’t have been drastically alarming, it suddenly became a very dire fact. The tiles on the walls themselves began to push in towards the group on all sides and from all angles with only one intention: crushing the intruders trapped therein.

“That’s why I told you all to watch your step!” Garnet called over the loud alarm as everyone crowded together fearfully.

Still, the only one among them who wasn’t completely distressed by the impending danger was Mabel, mostly since her face was still covered in caterpillars. “Ha, it’s hard to be scared with caterpillars on your face,” she grinned blithely.

“W-we gotta get out of here!” Steven cried fearfully, gasping in surprise as Garnet summoned her gauntlets and slammed her hands into a nearby block in the hopes of stopping it.

“Way head of you, Ste-man!” Amethyst exclaimed daringly, leaping into action. While the others tried in vain to push the tiles back, the purple Gem went high, using the rapidly moving blocks to give her a boost as she positioned herself between two of them near the ceiling. Amethyst grunted loudly as she shoved her foot against one of them, trying to use her entire body to keep them separated as she looked down at the struggling group below. “Yo, G!” she called to the Gem leader, who was barely paying her any mind as she pushed back against a tile. “Check this—huh?” The purple Gem stopped short as she happened to glance up at the glowing tile right above her head, marked with a symbol that was far too familiar for her, even if she didn’t really know how. The blaring alarm and sense of urgency seemed to dull a bit as Amethyst started up at it, fascinated and somewhat confused. And, with a slow, tentative touch, she gently placed her hand upon it, her eyes lighting up as she pressed down on the apparent switch, turning its symbol from red to blue. “Hey guys!” she shouted, barely even aware of the tiles aggressively pushing against her. “Look what-”

Just as everyone glanced up her way, Amethyst let out a sharp, loud gasp as the blocks finally pressed against her body too tightly. And yet, instead of sustaining any kind of injuries, the purple Gem’s form abruptly disappeared in a bright puff of smoke, leaving nothing but her gemstone behind. Everyone save for Garnet let out a collective gasp of shared horror at this, especially as Amethyst’s gem began to freely fall from her previously high perch. Fortunately, Steven reacted just in time by catching the stone before it could hit the hard ground and shatter entirely, but even so, no one had any time to show anything other than shock to what had just happened, especially since the walls were all still tightly closing in.

“Amethyst was onto something,” Garnet noted as she glanced up to where the purple Gem had been, catching sight of the switch she had activated mere seconds ago.

“Wait, she was!” Dipper exclaimed, holding the black light over a page in the journal that detailed the very room they were in. The hidden text revealed a set of glowing marks in particular, all of which served as the key out of the encroaching death trap. “There are five more of these symbols. Quick! Everybody find one!”

While Garnet worked to hold the tiles back the best she could, the others split up the best that they could, each of them searching for the other five conspicuous tiles that could very well save them. Soos found the first one, and seeing as how this was a life or death situation, he didn’t hesitate to run for it without delay. “One!” he called, pushing the switch in firmly.

“Two!” Wendy shouted as she found the next one, jumping up to give it a solid punch.

“Three!” Steven announced as he used another block to get a boost to reach another switch.

“Four!” Mabel called, high fiving the next symbol.

Dipper paused as he frantically looked around for the final untapped symbol, only to spot it right as another block began to move in front of it. Acting fast, he ran for the switch, hurriedly climbing the blocks leading up to it and fortunately hitting right before it was covered up entirely. “Five!”

With all five of the switches activated, a door revealed itself on the far side of the room as it swung open, finally giving the group a window of escape. Still, it was a rather narrow window, seeing as how the tiles were still pushing in towards them just as quickly as ever.

“Run for it!” Mabel shouted, leading the way through the tight fit towards the door. The others were quick to follow suit, Garnet abandoning her post as she leapt through the opening deftly. Steven made sure that Amethyst’s gem was tightly secured in his grasp before fleeing, and though he was the last to escape, Dipper made it out just in time, even if his vest did happen to get caught between the blocks just as they finally all slammed shut on each other.

“Yes!” Wendy cheered in apt relief as soon as they were all safely on the other side of the security room. “That was nuts! You ruled back there, man!” she exclaimed, sending a congratulatory grin to Dipper.

“Heh, thanks,” he remarked with something of a bashful blush. However, the triumph of the moment was quickly cut short as Steven let out a distressed cry.

“Amethyst!” the young Gem wailed, distraught tears in his eyes as he held the purple gem close.

“W-what happened to her?” Mabel asked, also quite concerned as the others crowded around.

“Is… is she like… gone?” Soos asked with an apprehensive frown.

“No,” Garnet quickly confirmed.

“But… Amethyst got crushed to-” Dipper cut himself off, not entirely sure how to properly phrase it. “Well, I guess being crushed to death wasn’t exactly what happened to her…”

“Whatever did happen to her wasn’t pretty…” Wendy remarked, glancing at Amethyst’s gem with a frown. “I mean, how could she have actually survived something like that?”

“A Gem’s body is a construct of light,” Garnet began to explain, her tone as calm as ever. “Our physical forms are illusions. And sometimes, when we’re badly damaged, we’re forced to release those physical forms and retreat into our gemstones to regenerate.”

“So… so she’ll be ok, then?” Mabel asked, hopeful.

“She’ll be just fine,” Garnet assured with a smile. “This sort of thing happens to Amethyst all the time, believe me.”

“I-it happened to Pearl once too, a few months ago,” Steven sniffled, still hardly consoled. “A-and it took her two whole weeks to come back, and I already miss Amethyst so much!”

“Don’t worry,” the Gem leader encouraged, placing a gentle hand on her sorrowful young ward’s shoulder. “She’ll be back before you know it.”

And, as if right on cue, the purple Gem began to make her rather rushed reappearance. Everyone gasped as Amethyst’s gemstone radiated a practically blinding light, floating freely upwards out of Steven’s grasp. “Literally…” Garnet muttered upon seeing this, her smile fading as she watched her teammate regenerate. A bright silhouette surrounded the stone, shifting subtly before landing on the most familiar form of the purple Gem. Or at least, so it initially seemed.

As the light faded from her, Amethyst landed squarely on the ground, a little out of it, but otherwise completely unharmed. Delighted to see her return so quickly, Steven rushed for her, wrapping her in a tight hug as the others all breathed a shared sigh of relief. “Amethyst’s back! Amethyst’s back!” the young Gem happily proclaimed as he threw his arms around her.

“Ugh…” Amethyst groaned rather tiredly as she gently pushed him away, only to notice something off about her hands. Or rather, lack thereof. “Huh?”

“Uh, Amethyst?” Dipper spoke up, quite bewildered by the purple Gem’s new appearance. “What happened to your… arms?”

“I think you mean legs, bro-bro,” Mabel quipped, correctly describing what Amethyst’s arms had been replaced with: another set of legs.

“Looks like you… grew a few feet since the last time I saw you!” Steven joked, much to the already confused purple Gem’s annoyance.

“Nice one, dude!” Soos chuckled. “Oh, I got one! Hey, Amethyst, can you lend me a foot? Get it?! C-cause you have-”

“Yeah, Soos, I get it,” Amethyst deadpanned dryly.

“That was fast,” Garnet interrupted, looking down at her teammate with a stoic frown. “Even for you.”

Amethyst was quick to push herself to her feet (her usual ones anyway) upon hearing this, pushing her alarm off as she casually brushed her bangs out of her face. “Eh, it’s no big deal,” she shrugged nonchalantly, smoothly transitioning to stand on her new arm-legs. “I didn’t wanna keep my biggest fan waiting!” She sent a playful smirk Steven’s way, eliciting a laugh from the young Gem that ended when she put one of her regular feet on top of his head. He rolled his eyes as he removed it, chuckling once more and not noticing that Garnet was nowhere near as amused with Amethyst’s antics.

“Let’s just keep moving,” the Gem leader resolved, pressing on ahead. Amethyst huffed an irritated sigh at Garnet’s terse manner, but all the same, she trudged on along with the others as they began exploring their new surroundings.

“Whoa, get a load of this crazy surveillance room,” Wendy remarked, impressed by the observation deck they now found themselves in. The atmosphere here seemed to be much calmer than that of the security room, its walls lined with a wide array of monitors and control panels. A few of the screens still seemed to be showing sparse video feed, though from where, no one really knew. Still, just like the first room, there was plenty of interesting clues and details here worth exploring, which was what the group split up to do.

“Check it out, dudes!” Soos exclaimed as he held a pair of beakers up to his eyes, making them appear comically large.

“Soos, Soos,” Wendy said, her tone serious before she broke out into a grin. “That is hilarious.”

“Hey, Steven,” Amethyst smirked to the young Gem as she remained standing on her arm-legs. “Watch me ‘roll with it’.” At this, the purple Gem proceeded to cartwheel easily using all four of her legs, something that Steven instantly wanted to try, only to fall flat on his face the moment he attempted a handstand. Mabel got a good laugh out of this failed attempt, though she was more than ready to try it herself, only to stop short upon noticing Dipper’s vest still hanging from the edge of the security room.

“Hey, bro, you forgot your vest,” she called over to him, heading over to go retrieve it. However, as she pulled the vest loose, a piece of paper happened to slip out of it, something that instantly garnished Mabel’s attention and interest. “What’s this…?” she muttered before quietly reading whatever her brother had written aloud to herself. “Dear Wendy, I’ve always had a crush on-” She cut herself off with an excited gasp, covering her mouth up with the note in an attempt to stifle it. “Oh my gosh! Steven!”

“What’s-” Before the young Gem could even finish, Mabel shoved the note into his face, an overwhelmingly elated grin on her face.

“Look! Look! Look!” she urged eagerly, handing the note off to Steven. He took a moment to look over it for himself before mirroring her excitement with a gasp of his own.

“Oh my gosh!”

“That’s what I said!” Mabel exclaimed enthusiastically before turning towards her brother with a coy grin. “Hey, Dipper! Look what we found!”

“My vest, I hope,” Dipper deadpanned, grabbing that from her first, only for his eyes to go wide with shock upon seeing his note for Wendy. “W-what?! Where did you—Give me that!”

“I knew it!” Mabel exclaimed triumphantly even as Dipper snatched the note away from Steven. “I knew it! I knew it!”

“We both knew it!” Steven added with a bright chuckle.

“Yeah we did!” Mabel readily agreed. “You’re not over Wendy at all!”

“Oh! Were you gonna tell her today?!” the young Gem asked, hopping to his feet with an invested grin.  

“No,” Dipper quickly protested, quickly glancing over his shoulder to make sure the cashier couldn’t overhear them. “I changed my mind; it’s a bad idea. I’d just embarrass myself and then I’d be another guy she hates, just like Robbie.”

“Dipper, you should just tell her already,” Mabel insisted. “One way or another, you’ll feel better about it afterwards.”

“Mabel’s right,” Steven nodded in agreement. “It’s like Garnet always says: honesty is the key to any relationship. And she would know, since she’s like, the master of romance or something!”

“You bet I am,” Garnet cut in from right behind the trio.

“Garnet!?” Dipper exclaimed in apt surprise. “H-how long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough,” the Gem leader remarked, adjusting her shades.

“Wait a sec, this is perfect!” Mabel quipped. “Garnet, you can just tell Dipper how him confessing his feelings to Wendy is gonna turn out so he can just go and do it instead of being all lame about it!”

“Hey!” Dipper protested, more than ready to argue with Mabel on this point, though once more, Garnet interrupted.

“Actually… I think this is one future Dipper’s going to have to discover for himself…” the Gem leader mused definitively.

“Oh come on, seriously?” Dipper sighed in exasperation, a part of him hoping that Garnet would have been able to provide him with at least some foresight on the matter.

“However,” she continued pointedly. “I will say that Steven was right about my advice. Whether things turn out or not, being honest about your feelings is always better than keeping them buried under the surface. Trust me.”

A sudden crash from the other side of the room cut through the conversation, prompting everyone to turn and see that Amethyst had accidentally dropped a glass beaker thanks to her handless-arms. “Whoops,” she said stiffly, playing the incident off with an awkward laugh. “Foot-hands, ya know? Turns out they don’t make very good… hand-hands…”

“I knew this would happen…” Garnet sighed, already preparing to go take care of the purple Gem, but not before imparting a few more words of wisdom. “Just remember what I said, Dipper. The truth can set you free. Literally.”

“Huh, I wonder what that’s supposed to mean,” Mabel remarked in slight confusion as the Gem leader walked off.

“So was that enough to convince you to go talk to Wendy about how you feel, Dipper?” Steven asked with an encouraging smile.

“Yeah, no,” Dipper replied flatly, still deeply resolved against the very idea.

“Ugh, come on,” Mabel groaned, frustrated. “Why not?”

“You guys just don’t understand,” Dipper said dismissively. “I can’t tell her, no matter how much I want to, ok? So just drop it already.”

Mabel and Steven were both more than ready to argue with this, but before they could, Wendy herself interrupted the conversation. “Dude, Dipper! You gotta check out this weird metal closet!” she called from the open closet she was standing in at the back of the surveillance room. With a small laugh, she jokingly took on a robotic tone to up the effect. “I am a robot, I have a metal closet.”

“Coming!” Dipper called back to her with an anxious laugh before briefly turning back to Mabel and Steven. “This never happened.”

Still, neither of them were anywhere near satisfied as they watched him hurry off, especially upon watching his rather stilted interactions with Wendy. “Aw, man…” Steven said with a worried frown. “Poor Dipper, holding in his feelings like that… That’s gotta be so hard…”

“I know, right?” Mabel huffed in annoyance. “He totally wants to tell her, but he’s just scared! But maybe all he needs is a little push…”

“A push? Like what?”

“Oh, you’ll see, Steven,” Mabel said with something of an ominous smirk. “You’ll see.” Without explaining anything of her impromptu idea, she rushed for her brother, reaching him before he could even make it to Wendy and locking him into a sudden hug from behind. “Brother, whatever happens, I just need you to know something,” Mabel paused, her tone oddly serious as she looked him dead in the eyes. “This is for your own good.”

“What?” Dipper asked, only to get no answer as Mabel abruptly shoved him forward hard, right into the closet. Before he could even realize what had happened, she slammed the doors shut and locked them from the outside, grinning in satisfaction all the while.

“Oh, so that’s what you meant by a push,” Steven surmised thoughtfully as Amethyst let out an amused laugh at what she assumed was merely a prank.

“Nice one, Mabel!” the purple Gem chuckled. “Reminds me of that time I locked Pearl in the bathroom back at the temple. She beat on the door for hours! It was a riot.”

Meanwhile, inside the closet itself, it took Dipper a moment to gather his bearings, but when he did, the first thing he realized was that not only was he trapped inside of the nearly pitch-black closet thanks to Mabel. But he was also trapped in there with Wendy, of all people, a fact that instantly filled him with simultaneous exhilaration and panic, especially given their forced closed proximity to each other. “Mabel!” Dipper quickly shouted, pounding on the door adamantly. “Let us out!”

“Oh, I’ll let you out, Dipper,” Mabel smirked confidently. “As soon as you tell Wendy that thing you’ve been wanting to tell her! You’ll thank me for this later!”

“What’s she talking about?” Wendy asked Dipper, aptly confused.

“N-nothing!” Dipper exclaimed defensively. “Mabel’s just been eating raw sugar packets again!”

“That’s beside the point!” Mabel called from the outside even as she dumped two packets of sugar into her mouth without a care. Her levity dulled a bit, however, upon noticing the somewhat disapproving frown the Gem leader was sending her way. “Aw, come on, Garnet. You said so yourself: Dipper needs to be honest about his feelings!”

“Yes, and I also remember saying that he needs to see how this all turns out for himself,” Garnet countered. “Still, I figured something like this would happen. That’s why I told him the truth would set him free. Because in this case, it apparently will.”

“So are we just gonna like, wait it out then?” Soos asked.

“You better believe we are!” Mabel proclaimed boldly, much to Dipper’s immense displeasure as he overheard this.

“Mabel, let us out now!” he shouted, beyond irritated by this point.

Wendy, on the other hand, was as levelheaded as always, only slightly aggravated by the relative darkness of their cramped surroundings. “Ugh, where are the lights?” she asked, fumbling around a bit until she managed to feel out a chord hanging from above. However, instead of turning a light on, pulling the chord resulted in a sudden spray of water, one that completely soaked and startled both Dipper and Wendy. Still, they were only wet for a brief moment as a strong gust of warm, drying air burst from all four of the surrounding walls, roughly pushing the two of them into each other as a dull red light beamed from a nearby sign that read “Decontamination Complete”. And while Dipper and Wendy were still rather caught off guard by what just happened, they were both more than relieved to see a door finally slide open on the other side of the closet, granting them access to an entirely new part of the bunker altogether.

This area was by far the most spacious yet, built amidst high cavernous walls marred by deep trenches of varying shapes and sizes. The same sort of technology from the surveillance room was apparent here, with pipes, tubes, and monitors all linking towards a series of empty glass pods, many of which showed the same sort of intentional damage the rest of the equipment filling the room did. The sparse overhead lighting flickered warningly as Dipper and Wendy tentatively stepped out of the closet and into this mysterious new space.

“Whoa, a hidden lab!” Dipper exclaimed, amazed and impressed by this intricate setup. “Maybe the author did experiments down here.”

“Hm,” Wendy mused, looking over the hole-strewn wall. “What do you think dug all these tunnels?”

“Let’s hope we don’t find out…” Dipper frowned, his curiosity quickly shifting to outright fear as a low growl, ominous suddenly echoed through the entire lab. Things only got more frightening however, as a large, lumbering shadow draped across the far wall. And from its creeping movements, it was clear that whatever it was, it was getting closer.

“Run?” Wendy asked in a stiff whisper.

“Run!” Dipper exclaimed in clear panic. And the pair did just that, racing for the only other way out they knew of: the closet. “Mabel, open up, for real!” Dipper shouted, pounding hard on the still locked closet door as Wendy did the same. “There’s a monster in here!”

“A monster, huh?” Amethyst perked up, hoping up from her arm feet to her regular feet. “Finally, some action! My feet were starting to fall asleep!”

“Which ones?” Garnet asked dryly.

“Oh no!” Steven cried worriedly. “Mabel, we gotta let them out! They could get hurt!”

“Come on, Steven,” Mabel scoffed, not buying her brother’s claim. “He’s totally overexaggerating. Nice try, Dipper! But the only monsters are your own inner demons!”

“That is so wise,” Soos nodded thoughtfully.

“Dipper, just say whatever Mabel wants you to say so she’ll let us out of here!” Wendy exclaimed, her usual calm all but gone in the face of this unknown danger.

Dipper took in a sharp, apprehensive breath at this, his heart racing with fear that went even beyond that of whatever was lurking in the nearby shadows. It certainly seemed as though this was the literal moment of truth, especially as the cashier looked to him expectantly. “W-Wendy, I… I…” he began just as clumsily as he always did whenever he tried to tell her this. Still, it was either this or—well, Dipper wasn’t entirely sure, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that it was bound to be easier than telling Wendy the awkward truth. “I-I’m gonna find another way out!” he quickly exclaimed, grabbing the cashier’s wrist and pulling her back into the lab.

“Wait, what?” Wendy asked in alarmed confusion as she ran after him into one of the countless wide tunnels. “Dude, where are we going?” Dipper didn’t really give her much of answer, as fueled by fear and adrenaline as he was, but the dead end at the end of the tunnel was enough to stop them both in their tracks. Unfortunately though, it wasn’t enough to stop the unknown creature that eagerly ravenously them. “What do we do?!” Wendy exclaimed, pressing against the nearby all as the shadow of the monster loomed ever closer.

“I-I don’t know!” Dipper admitted, fully regretting his rashness now. However, before the monster could pounce out of the shadows and onto them, someone else miraculously enough pounced onto it. The pair watched in awed relief as the silhouette of a man fiercely tackled the beast, bravely scuffling against it, despite its large size and bloodthirsty demeanor. In the end and with a few heavy punches, the man managed to beat the monster into submission, pulling something away from it and sending it skittering off in the opposite direction.

“Back, you heinous beast!” the man shouted after it, completely unphased by the outraged screech it sent back in his direction. With the threat subdued, the stranger emerged from the shadows, allowing Dipper and Wendy to see him clearly. His goggles, lab coat and gloves certainly gave him the air of a scientist, and while he was clearly on in years, he still stood firm and strong in the aftermath of his skirmish with the creature. “Well, I just pulled out a monster’s tongue,” he announced heroically before throwing said tongue down onto the ground.

For a moment, all either Dipper or Wendy could really do was stare at this mysterious newcomer with shared amazement and confusion, especially since they had no idea where he might have come from. But with that bewilderment in mind, Dipper was quick to remember the very reason why they had come all the way down here in the first place: to find any leads on the author’s whereabouts. And sure enough, it seemed as though they had found something even better: the elusive author himself. “It—it’s you!” Dipper gasped in apt shock, scarcely able to believe that after all this time, they had finally found him.

The author didn’t seem to have heard him, however, as he had already turned away from the stunned pair and began leading the way out of the tunnel. “Hurry now,” he urged insistently, his manner serious yet articulate. “I scared it off, but it’ll regenerate. These Gem monsters always do.” The author paused for a moment, his expression darkening into a scowl that neither of his newfound young companions noticed as he continued. “I wasn’t expecting guests. I’ve been down here for a very long time. Years! Weeks, maybe. I miss orange juice.”

“Y-you don’t understand,” Dipper spoke up, still overwhelmed with excitement. “You’re the guy I’ve been looking for!”

“He’s the guy?” Wendy asked, surprised.

“Wendy, he’s the guy!”

“The guy?” the author interjected, raising a confused eyebrow.

“I’ve got like, a billion questions!” Dipper exclaimed, scarcely able to contain his elation and curiosity. And really, how could he, seeing as how all of the answers he had been looking for all summer were finally within reach? “Why did you write the journals? How do you know the Gems? Who was after you? Why did you build this bunker?”

The author seemed charmed by this barrage of enthusiastic questions, letting out a small, bemused laugh. “My boy, I’d love to discuss all of this in time,” he began as they returned to the main part of the lab. “But for now, we have more pressing matters. It’s one of my experiments, a shape-shifter. Able to flawlessly take the form of anyone or anything it sees! It broke free from its cage of solid steel! I’ve gone half crazy trying to catch the creature alone, but now you’re here!” With a sincere smile, the author knelt down to Dipper’s level, placing a firm hand on his shoulder as he lifted up his goggles. “Will you help me catch it?”

The only way Dipper could even respond to such a question was with an excited gasp and an insistent nod. After all, meeting the author himself was one thing; but working together with him to solve a mystery was something he could have only ever dreamed of. And, against all odds, it certainly seemed as though that was a dream that was destined to come true.

“Very well then! Let’s get started!  Come in! Come in!” the author beckoned as he led Dipper and Wendy through another one of the several tunnels into what seemed to be something of an unkempt living space. “I apologize for the state of things. I don’t get many non-mole people visitors. Now,” he turned to his two young companions, his manner as steadfast as ever. “The beast must have some kind of weakness we can exploit. I just wish I had my research on me! But alas, I lost my journals so many years ago…”

“Did you say journals?” Wendy asked, glancing at Dipper with a knowing grin.

“Dude, I found one of them!” Dipper enthusiastically exclaimed as he pulled the journal out. “That’s how we tracked you down here!”

“What? Could it be?” the author asked in apparent disbelief, eagerly taking the journal to get a better look at it. “My boy, I can’t express my gratitude!” he exclaimed brightly as he began to carefully leaf through the book. “Oh yes… after all these years!” The author grinned almost obsessively as he turned away from the pair once again, his eyes pouring over everything in the journal greedily, almost as if he hadn’t written every word himself. An assumption that perhaps might not have been all too outlandish after all.

Seeing as how they did little else to do, the group in the surveillance room continued exploring it to pass the time. Well, at least that’s what Soos and Mabel were doing as they freely rooted through the abundance of drawers near the control panel for anything interesting. “Sure are taking their time in there,” Soos remarked, casting a brief glance over at the closet before he resumed plundering. “Hey, do I look smarter with this coat and brief case?” he asked Mabel upon pulling on a tightly-fitting lab coat and grabbing an old metal briefcase. “I feel like I look smarter…”

“Oh yeah, you totally look 110% more genius-y, Soos!” Mabel quipped with an approving thumbs up.

“Yes!” the handyman cheered triumphantly.

At the same time, Steven followed close behind Amethyst as she sauntered about the room on all fours, something that was much easier now that all four of her limbs were legs. “Your new form is really interesting,” the young Gem commented with a smile.

“Thanks, Steven,” Amethyst replied rather dryly, blowing a lock of hair out of her face.

“I didn’t even know you could come back this different!”

“Thanks, Steven…”

“So… why’d you come back with four legs?” Steven asked curiously.

“Because I like walking!” the purple Gem huffed in clear aggravation with all of his comments.

“Wow…” the young Gem mused, amazed. “I want four legs too! Oh, or maybe four arms! Either of those would be so cool!”

“No it wouldn’t,” Garnet staunchly interrupted, glancing up from the files she had been pouring over. “Amethyst rushed her regeneration. She should have taken her time.”

“Like Pearl?” Steven asked, not noticing as Amethyst scowled sharply upon hearing this, her back still turned to him.

“Yes,” the Gem leader nodded. “Pearl put a little more… thought into how she came back…”

“Ugh! Pearl, Pearl, Pearl!” Amethyst growled in bitter annoyance. “You know I can hear you, right?!” she asked hotly, pulling her hair aside to reveal an oversized ear. “I’m sorry I’m not like Pearl with her fancy form or her polite, boring personality!”

The purple Gem was clearly completely outraged by this point, angry enough that she landed a brutal kick to the nearby cabinet out of sheer frustration, not even noticing the heavy metal box precariously perched on top of it. That is, until it came plummeting down towards her. “Huh?” Amethyst glanced up, her eyes growing wide with alarm, but she could do little as the box fell squarely on top of her. Once again, her physical form was unable to handle such sudden stress, which was why it was quick to retreat into her gemstone. Fortunately, the stone itself went flying at this, narrowly missing the box landing on the ground and crushing it entirely and instead landing on the ground right in front of Steven.

“Amethyst!” the young Gem cried in horror as Mabel and Soos both let out shocked gasps. Garnet was hardly surprised, however as she instead rested a consoling hand on Steven’s shoulder as he sniffled morosely, clinging onto the purple gemstone gently. “G-Garnet, she… she got poofed again!”

“Man, Amethyst is really having some sucky luck today,” Mabel remarked with a concern frown as her and Soos headed over.

“This is a good opportunity for her,” the Gem leader concluded, unwavering. “Now she can focus on making a better form.” No sooner had Garnet said this, however, then Amethyst’s gem started to radiantly glow once more, a sign that she was already making a hasty regeneration. “Or not…”

The others watched with curious anticipation as the bright silhouette of the purple Gem surrounded her stone, though as the light faded, this time it was clear to see that Amethyst had drastically changed. This time, she had reformed herself to bear quite a striking, if not mocking resemblance to Pearl, complete with a nearly identical outfit and ballet slippers that were far too long for her small feet. Her long hair was now swept up to a point much like the white Gem’s usually was, even though it was immediately apparent to see just how impractical this was the moment she regathered her bearings and turned her head, her new style taking half of the beakers on the nearby shelf with it. “Aw yeah!” Amethyst snickered deviously, looking over her new form. “This is much better! What do you guys think? Aren’t I just Pearl-fect?”

Steven, Mabel, and Soos all laughed at this, greatly and unanimously amused at the purple Gem’s pun and her comical impersonation. “Ha! She’s doing Pearl!” the young Gem chuckled blithely.

“Dudes, just imagine if the real Pearl was here,” Soos interjected with a grin. “It’d be like, impossible to tell the two of them apart!”

The kids shared another laugh over such a humorous, but Garnet was far less amused or impressed by Amethyst’s new appearance. Still, she said nothing of it for the moment, instead heading back to the control panel to continue investigating. She stopped short, however, upon noticing something that distinctively tipped her off, especially given her already uncomfortable vibes with the bunker as a whole. “Everyone,” she called the others out of their levity. “Get over here. There’s something you need to see.”

“What’s up, Garnet?” Steven asked as they all joined the Gem leader.

“Oh, is it those neat tube-y things?” Mabel pointed to the glass tubes visible through one of the working monitors. It wasn’t hard for her to find the button that got one of them working, even if it had a rather eloquent-label that read “Cryogenic Activation”. “Whoa!” she exclaimed in amazement upon pressing the button, which caused the tube to instantly fill with ice. Of course, Mabel didn’t hesitate to hit the button over and over again, smiling with delight as the cryogenic chamber reacted accordingly. “Frozen! Unfrozen! Frozen! Unfrozen!”

“That’s not what I meant,” Garnet spoke up, gently moving Mabel’s hand away from the button. “I was talking about that.” She nodded to a note taped to the far side of the control panel, one that Steven grabbed and read aloud.

“Experiment number 210: the shape shifter,” the young Gem frowned in confusion as he read. “Warning: extremely dangerous! Do not engage! A shapeshifter? Whoa, that’s sort of like you guys!” he exclaimed to Garnet and Amethyst.

The pair of Gems merely exchanged a wide eyed glance upon hearing this, both of them drawing up a complete blank at first. After all, certainly they would have remembered if they had ever encountered a non-Gem shapeshifter before, right? “This ringing any bells for you, G?” the purple Gem muttered, putting her Pearl impersonation off for the moment for the sake of her newfound nervousness.

“I… I’m not sure…” the Gem leader admitted truthfully. “It does sound familiar, but…”

“Uh, dudes?” Soos spoke up, his expression awash with sudden concern. “Didn’t Dipper say there was a monster in there with him and Wendy?”

Mabel gasped fearfully upon being reminded of this, realizing that, despite her good intentions, she may have just put her brother in considerable harm. “I thought he was just joking!”

“You know Dipper’s jokes are terrible!” Soos exclaimed in a panic.

“We gotta go in there and save them!” Steven cried, already leading the way to the lab’s main primary entrance as the others were quick to follow. “Come on!”

While the Gems in particular were more than ready to leap into action against any potential danger as they all burst into the lab, they found no sign of any sort of shape shifter, or even Dipper or Wendy for that matter. The lab itself seemed to be oddly calm, but still, no one really found that to be a very comforting sign.

“Oh man, its so dark!” Soos exclaimed fretfully, trying to see through the dull lighting ahead. “How will we ever find them?”

“Leave that to Mabel!” Mabel exclaimed with a wide grin, pressing the light bulb on her sweater, which caused it to emit a surprisingly strong glow.

“Whoa!” Steven gasped, thoroughly impressed. “Mabel, you think of everything!”

“Seriously, that’s so rad!” Soos enthusiastically agreed. “Although isn’t electric clothing kinda like a fire hazard?”

“No, it’s a fun hazard,” Mabel corrected. “Now let me light the way!”

“We’re coming for you, dudes!” Soos called in the hopes that Dipper and Wendy might somehow hear him.

“And for that shape shifter too…” Garnet added coldly, knowing that if the creature was a threat, then it certainly had to be neutralized.

“Pfft, even if there is a shape shifter down here, it’ll be no match for my shiftin’ skills!” Amethyst quipped, briefly transforming into an appearance that was even more closely identical to Pearl before. Upon seeing Garnet glower at her doing this, however, she reverted back to her relatively new form, muttering crossly to herself as she did so. “And once I take it out, then maybe I’ll finally be good enough for you…”

As the author continued to skim over the journal on his own, his two young guests eagerly awaited to hear whatever conclusion he would soon hopefully reach on defeating the supposed shape shifter. Of course, Dipper was still beside himself with excitement over having met the author at long last, and based on first impressions alone, he was everything he had been expecting: bold, courageous, pragmatic, intelligent, and everything in between. And what was almost just as thrilling to Dipper was the fact that the answers to all of his longtime questions, namely the questions that even the Gems didn’t have answers for, were finally about to be answered by the source of them all himself.

“Wendy, isn’t this amazing?” he whispered to the cashier with a zealous smile. “I still can’t believe we’re actually meeting the real author!”

Wendy was ready to agree with him, though she instead stifled a shocked gasp upon noticing the label on the discarded can lying at her feet. “Dipper!” she whispered sharply, grabbing the can as she eyed the author with sudden fear, though fortunately, he didn’t notice. “Look!”

Dipper did so, looking to the can she was holding out to him with confusion at first, though that confusion instantly turned to dismayed alarm as he made the same realization Wendy had. The aviator shown in the bean can’s logo was distinctively identical to the very author standing but a few feet away from them, something that was far too conspicuous to be a mere coincidence. It was clear that the only logical conclusion to be made about this concerning twist was that the “author” was not all that he appeared to be.

“Uh, y-you know what?” Dipper addressed the “author” tentatively. “We should probably get going. Can I have my journal back?”

The “author” froze at this, looking up from the journal as he made a small, rather eerie hissing sound. All at once, he confirmed he was not only a fake, but inhuman altogether as his head did a full 180, his neck lengthening to accommodate the move and his eyes blinking sideways as he glared at the frightened pair menacingly. “You’re not going anywhere!” he growled, his deeper and much more sinister. Still moving, erratically, the creature dropped to all fours, its form morphing seamlessly as it quickly climbed up the wall, taking the journal with it. By the time the apparent shape shifter had reached the overarching ceiling, it had taken on its true, much more monstrous form. Its body was large and disproportionate, composed of slimy skin that was clear enough to that its white exoskeleton was visible through it. Its right arm was long and very slender, a complete contrast to its shorter, more bulky left arm. Four thin legs kept the creature upright, and its pinkish eyes lacked pupils while its mouth was a wide opening surrounded by sharp fangs and closed off by large teeth. “How do you like my new form?” the shape shifter asked even though Dipper and Wendy were quick to share how they felt about it with a unified scream of terror. “Go on, admit it! You like it!”

“You!” Dipper exclaimed, trying his best to be bold in the face of such a grotesque, intimidating monster. “What did you do to the real author?!”

“You’ll likely never find out,” the shape shifter said with cold triumph. “That six-fingered nerd hasn’t been himself in thirty years! But I thank you for bringing me this journal. He used to write it while I was in my cage. So many wonderful forms to take!” The creature laughed twistedly as it began to flip through the journal, seamlessly taking on the forms of many of the entries within it, from the Gremloblin, to a gnome, to the Centipeedle, to the slinker, all in quick succession and all completely flawless in accuracy.

Needless to say, Dipper and Wendy were equally alarmed at the shape shifter’s admittedly impressive transformative prowess. And certainly, with something like the journal in its possession, it would essentially have a complete menu of deadly monsters and creatures at its disposal, to use in whatever no doubt treacherous way it saw fit. “We gotta get that journal back!” Dipper whispered to Wendy while the shape shifter was still distracted with the book. Fortunately though, the cashier had an impromptu plan in mind.

“Hey, body snatcher!” she shouted at the shape shifter, picking up a discarded can from earlier. “Snatch this!” She threw the can hard at the creature, who side stepped out of the projectile’s path as it turned into a lumbering, frog-like monster. The shifter lashed its new long tongue out at the pair, though Wendy managed to shield them both from it using a nearby piece of scrap metal, which the creature only succeeding in pulling back towards itself. As the metal pelted the shifter squarely in the face, it was startled enough to loosen its grip on the journal, and as the book fell to the floor, Dipper didn’t hesitate to hurry and reclaim it.

“Run! Run! Run!” he shouted frantically as they both did just that, retreating back out of the dead end they were in. Of course, the moment it regathered its bearings, the shape shifter gave chase after them, clearly willing to take on whatever form it had to in order to claim the coveted journal for itself.

“So Garnet,” Amethyst began as the group pressed on through one of the tunnels to being their search. “What do you think of my new look? I’m more like Pearl now! Isn’t it wonderful? Why, I feel,” she cut herself off, preforming an elegant spin, not noticing as her long, quaffed hair hit Steven and Mabel. “Absolutely amazing!”

“We need to focus on listening for that creature,” Garnet reminded staunchly, not even bothering to spare a glance at the purple Gem. “Or for Dipper or Wendy.”

“Oh, but I simply can’t focus!” Amethyst exclaimed dramatically, still clearly mimicking Pearl. “All these holes are different sizes! We’ll have to organize them by shape and color. Didn’t anyone tell nature how I want it to look?!”

Of course, this performance got a good laugh out of Steven, Mabel, and Soos, but Garnet was quick to show her muted disapproval of it. “Don’t encourage her,” she said somewhat crossly, moving on ahead.

“But I need encouragement, Garnet!” Amethyst begged in faux fretfulness. “I need everyone’s constant approval! I need to loquaciously converse so I can show off how smart I am…” the purple Gem’s mocking tone turned to annoyance as she finished, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms as she thought of the white Gem.

“Uh, you can converse with us,” Steven offered, pulling out his phone. “Let’s finish this quiz! Do you need to plan ahead before you act?”

“Oh, thoroughly!”

“Do you obsess over little details?”

“Completely entirely!”

“Ow wow!” the young Gem exclaimed, amazed at her imitation. “You’re so method! Next time, could you come back as me?”

“No, me!” Mabel insisted. “Oh! Or both of us at once! That would be super impressive!”

“Sure, why not?” Amethyst shrugged casually. “You guys know me. I’m a Gem of trades.”

Garnet finally stopped upon hearing this and slightly turned to face her teammate, unable to hold her pressing frustration towards the purple Gem’s callous behavior in any longer. “This is not a good choice for your form.”

“Lighten up, Garnet,” Amethyst scoffed. “Can’t you take a joke?”

“It’s not funny,” the Gem leader replied coldly. “You made yourself ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?!” the purple Gem shouted, offended.

“Keep your voice down,” Garnet hissed in a sharp whisper. “The shape shifter-”

“You wanted me to be more like Pearl!” Amethyst interrupted hotly, her hands curled into tight fists. “And now I am!”

“Pearl would have taken her regeneration seriously!” Garnet chastised, still trying to be quiet, lest the shape shifter find them before they found it.

“What do you care?! My form is my business!”

“It’s my business when it affects the strength of the team!”

“So what?!” Amethyst spat, not even noticing as the others were all watching this ongoing argument with wide, worried eyes. “I’m not strong enough?!”

Garnet didn’t get a chance to answer this as a pair of very familiar frightened screams came from one of the connecting tunnels nearby. “Dipper! Wendy!” Soos exclaimed in alarm, recognizing the cries instantly.

“They’re this way!” Mabel pointed to the tunnel the screams had come from. “Come on!”

Everyone was quick to rush for the tunnel in the hopes of finally meeting up with the pair, though Amethyst lingered back a bit, still caught up in her own immense anger with the Gem leader. “Were you saying I was weak!?” she shouted after Garnet fiercely, trailing behind them all.

“Amethyst! Now is not the time for this!” the Gem leader retorted firmly, making it clear she would hear nothing more on the matter at the moment.

“Why not?!” the purple Gem yelled. “Why can’t you just accept me the way I am?!”

A large part of Garnet wanted to give Amethyst an immediate answer for this, but with the dangerous circumstances they were currently in, such things would simply have to wait. “Amethyst,” the Gem leader said, her tone uncharacteristically shaken as she glanced back at her teammate for just a brief moment. “Enough.”

The purple Gem took in a deep breath but said no more, at least for the moment. It was obvious she had no intentions of dropping the issue at all, but for now she could only do as Garnet had said and put this tension aside. Even if it still bothered her immensely all the while.

At the same time, Dipper and Wendy were still trying to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the persistent shape shifter. While the creature made good use of its transformative abilities in chasing after them, they eventually managed to shake it by cleverly tricking it into taking the wrong tunnel. Still, the shifter wouldn’t be distracted with this ruse for too long, which was why the pair continued to rush through the maze of tunnels in the hopes of finding a way out. Though instead of that, they found the rest of the group instead. Or rather, quite literally ran into them.

The moment everyone realized they were all relatively safe and sound, a round of rushed, yet happy greetings were exchanged, though the relief was very short lived. “Wait!” Dipper interjected, sending a suspicious glance to Mabel, Steven, Soos, and the Gems. “How do we know they’re not the shape shifter?”

“Whoa, maybe I am!” Soos gasped. “Mabel, inspect my shape!” he exclaimed, pulling up his shirt and allowing Mabel to give playful poke to his stomach, much to the handyman’s amusement. “Do that again!” he laughed, and this time Steven complied by giving him another poke. “Even better the second time!”

“It’s definitely them,” Dipper concluded dryly, though he let out a horrified gasp upon noticing the rather sizable cut torn across Wendy’s knee. “Oh my gosh, Wendy, you’re bleeding!”

“It’s cool, its cool,” Wendy reassured, her tone calm yet firm. “It’s just blood, man. Don’t freak out.”

“What happened?” Mabel asked worriedly.

“We got attacked by the shape shifter,” the cashier began to explain, taking her over shirt off. She tore a swath of cloth off of the sleeve and tied it around her injured knee as a temporary bandage before wrapping the rest of it around her waist. “He broke out of his cage, pretended to be the author, and he wants Dipper’s journal.”

“No way!” Steven exclaimed, his eyes wide. “You guys actually saw that thing?”

“We need to track it down and subdue it,” Garnet said, resolved. “If we don’t, then there could be severe consequences.”

“Imagine if it escapes into town!” Dipper exclaimed fretfully. “It can transform into anything! We could never trust anyone ever again!”

“So what do we do?” Mabel asked apprehensively, though before anyone else could try to provide an answer to this, Amethyst was quick to cut in.

“Please,” she scoffed with little concern. “I totally got this covered, you guys. Just sic me on that shifty creep and I’ll make it wish it had never crawled out of which ever one of these holes it came from.”

“Normally I’d agree with a plan like that, but you’ve been acting irrationally all day, Amethyst,” Garnet remarked stoically. “This is an unknown, dangerous creature we’ve up against and we can’t afford to send a loose cannon after it.”

“Oh, so now I’m a loose cannon?!” Amethyst asked bitterly. “If you don’t think I’m strong enough to do something like this, why don’t you just tell me to my face instead of sugar-coating it, huh?!”

“Amethyst, I’m not-”

“Yeah, you are! But I guess you wouldn’t have to deal with telling me the truth if Pearl was here instead of me!”

“Guys, cut it out!” Steven quickly interjected with a worried frown. “Fighting’s not gonna help us find that shape shifter!”

“Steven’s right,” Wendy spoke up staunchly, a look of solid determination on her face. “That thing took us into his home, tricked us, and tried to destroy us. I say we return the favor.”

Seeing as how it had lost Dipper and Wendy back in the tunnels, the shape shifter had taken to returning to the main part of the lab, its form constantly in flux until it settled back to its “author” appearance. “Dipper, my boy!” the disguised creature called with faux amicability, though in its unkempt fury, it did temporarily lose its form. “Come out! I must speak with you!” The already ill-mannered shape shifter had grown quite impatient over being denied what it wanted, to the point that it let out a fierce roar while taking on another nightmarishly monstrous appearance. “Reveal yourself, you single-formed human weakling!” The brutally creature pounded the ground out of rage and frustration, giving up all guises of calmness or friendliness without a second thought.

What the shape shifter was unaware of, however, was the pair of Gems waiting in the wings for the kids to carry out their part of the plan. In the meantime though, they let the creature continue lurking about, as much as Amethyst wanted to emerge and engage it in a head-on assault. Still, neither of them Gems could deny that, upon seeing the shape shifter for themselves in its original form, that it was remarkable familiar. So familiar in fact, that their attempt to defeat and restrain it almost seemed… redundant somehow.

Yet all the same, Garnet and Amethyst remained in their places, pushing such unsettling thoughts out of their minds as the twins entered the room to put their plan in motion. “Oh boy, Dipper,” Mabel began with a rather conspicuous smile. “That book sure is full of some great monsters!”

The shape shifter spun around upon noticing the twins’ presence, reverting back to its true form as it towered over them with eager satisfaction. “There you are!” the creature snarled twistedly. “Oh, and a new one! Should I be one…?” The shape shifter smirked deviously as it easily morphed into Mabel. “Or the other?” The creature kept its manic grin up as it turned into Dipper next. “How about both?!” The real twins watched with growing horror as the shifter twisted its form into a nightmarish amalgamation of them both. Its body was raised on six legs, its upper half vaguely resembling Dipper while its bottom half looked like Mabel. Both halves were equally as monstrous however, with empty white eyes and two mouths filled with sharp, deadly teeth.

Needless to say that the twins were aptly terrified by this grotesque imitation of themselves, and as the shape shifter towered over them with a savage roar, they didn’t hesitate to flee from it before it could strike. Of course, the shifter gave chase, intent on getting the journal back, but the Gems took this as their cue to emerge and strike.

As the twins escaped, Amethyst and Garnet took their place in opposing the shape shifter, dropping down from above with their weapons already poised to attack. The purple Gem had resorted to shapeshifting back into her usual form herself, knowing that, even despite her frustration, this would be a much easier fight for The creature stopped dead in its tracks upon seeing them, letting out an intrigued hiss as it shifted back into its original form to size them up. “Well, well, well…” the shifter began, clear distain in its tone. “After all these years… Finally, you Gems come crawling back down here… Oh, but it seems that we’re two short. Tell me, where’s that tall, skinny one? Or better yet, that meddling Rose Quartz? What I wouldn’t give to rip her to shreds for helping him trap be down here in this subterranean hell all those years ago!”

The pair of Gems paused upon hearing all this, exchanging a look of bewildered confusion. “Uh, what are you talking about, dude?” Amethyst asked, raising an eyebrow as she kept her hold on her whip.

“You mean you don’t remember?!” the shape shifter asked, both apparently offended and curious. “How could you not!? You were both there! All four of you Gems played a hand in what happened here over thirty years ago!”

“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” Garnet said evenly, her gauntlets clenched into tight fists. “But if we really did have a hand in subduing you all those years ago, then we’ll gladly do it again.”

“Ha! So you think…” the shape shifter goaded, arching up high. “But whether you fools remember me or not, I’ll take immense pleasure in shattering you two once and getting that journal once and for all!” With another roar, the creature bore down on both of them, morphing its upper half into a monster with a wide, toothy maw meant to devour them both. The Gems easily leapt out of the way, but before Garnet could go in for the first strike, Amethyst hastily intervened by coiling her whip around its mouth.

“You can just sit this one out, G!” the purple Gem called, pulling back in her whip and dragging the shape shifter towards her. “I got this one covered.”

“Amethyst, you’re not going to-” Garnet tried to refute, but Amethyst wasn’t hearing it. With a daring grin, she started using the shape shifter’s own element against it by turning herself into Purple Puma as she landed a solid blow to the creature’s face after pulling it towards her. The shifter screeched in pain, transforming into a bird and taking off in order to escape any further hits. As soon as it had put some distances between itself and her, the shifter returned to its true form, sending the purple Gem a hostile glare as she they started circling each other.

“Ah yes…” the shifter hissed coldly. “I remember you. You’re the little loudmouthed one who always thought your meager shapeshifting could outdo mine. It must really burn you up that even all these years later, I’m still far more superior at it than you’ll ever be.”

“That’s some pretty big talk for something that looks like a gross, oversized milk sack,” Amethyst retorted confidently. Of course, this comment easily set the shape shifter off as it lunged towards the purple Gem, turning into a large, long snake-like creature as it did so. Amethyst met this assault as squarely as she could, making her form as broad and bulky as she could in order to do so. But even as she tried her best to hold its snapping maw back, the shifter still managed to sink its teeth deep into her arm, eliciting a loud cry of pain from the purple Gem.

“Amethyst!” Garnet shouted, aptly concerned as she began to rush to her teammate’s rescue. Amethyst, however, would have none of that.

“I said stay out of this!” she yelled hotly, using her free arm to lash her whip out at one of the nearby broken cryogenic chambers. With a labored shout, the purple Gem lifted the tube up and hurled it hard at her teammate, temporarily blocking her from the fight and allowing Amethyst to duke it out with the shape shifter solo.

“You should have let her stay,” the shifter taunted, drawing the claws it had formed for itself close to Amethyst’s gemstone. “You’re going to need someone to pick up all the broken pieces of that gem of yours once I’m through with you!”

The creature pushed hard at her once again, forcing the purple Gem up against the wall as her energy and altered arms began to waver. Still, she wasn’t about to back down now. Especially not with Garnet still watching the fight from the other side of the cryogenic tube. “Shut up!” Amethyst growled, unable to think of any witty comeback as she finally pushed the shifter away from her. Embodying all of her raw fury, the purple game shapeshifted into a large bull and charged at the creature, which was quick to morph into an ever larger, several-armed monster retaliation. As Amethyst madly charged at it, the shifter easily caught her by the horns and tossed her aside hard. The purple Gem returned to her usual appearance as brutally she crashed into a storage cabinet before falling to the ground, quite battered and beaten. Yet even so, she shakily tried to pick herself up, clutching her injured arm and weakly summoning another whip as the shape shifter steadily approached her.

“Persistent little thing, aren’t you?” it asked mockingly, its true form standing tall and largely uninjured over her. “No matter. I know something that’ll get you to stay down. Or rather someone…”

Amethyst let out a shocked gasp, her eyes growing wide with alarm as the shape shifter took on another new form, however this one was far from monstrous or even really intimidating. Instead, this form was one that was far from mistakable for the purple Gem, one that brought back far too many bittersweet memories.

“R-Rose…” Amethyst choked, her whip dissipating into thin air as she looked up to the shape shifter’s imitation of the pink Gem. And indeed, it was spot on, from Rose’s curly pink locks, to her lovely white gown, to her soft, graceful features. The only thing off about the shifter’s performance was the cold, sinister smirk on its face, something that would have been so uncharacteristic on the real Rose Quartz.

“What’s wrong, Amethyst?” the shifter asked, perfectly replicating the pink Gem’s gentle voice as well. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

The purple Gem took in a sharp breath, taking an anxious step back as she stared at this alarmingly accurate replication of her now-deceased leader. “I… You… you’re not-” she stammered, shaking her head all the while.

“Oh come now,” the shifter tried to rationalize with a more inviting smile. The false Rose Quartz held a calming hand out to the shaken purple Gem, its other hand held conspicuously behind its back. “I’m not going to hurt you… After all, I’m still your lovely, beloved leader, aren’t it?”

Amethyst was far too stunned by what was happened to even respond at this point, unable to take her eyes off of the imitation of Rose to see what the shifter was doing with its concealed arm. Garnet, however, did take notice of it, but even as she beat against the cryogenic tube’s glass in an attempt to catch the purple Gem’s attention, the shifter continued speaking. “Look at you, so small and innocent…” the creature remarked, still using Rose’s voice as it gently placed a hand under Amethyst’s chin. “You’re missing something, something more than just memories… But what is it?” It paused, mulling over its own question for a moment, before its lips curled into a sadistic smile. “Oh. I know.”

Before Amethyst could even realize what was happening, the shifter’s elongated arm suddenly coiled itself tightly around her, lifting her up and strangling her all the while, even despite her panicked struggling. “You’re missing her,” the creature whispered hauntingly, its voice shifting from Rose’s to its own. Tears has barely started to fill the purple Gem’s eyes, but they never had a chance to fall as the shifter suddenly tightened its grip around her body hard. Hard enough to send her already injured form right back into her gem for the third time today.

“Amethyst!” Garnet shouted with immense worry, her first finally flying through the seemingly impenetrable glass and granting her access back into the lab. Startled, the shifter spun around to face her, morphing back to its true form as it lunged for her with a feral hiss. The Gem leader paid the creature no mind however as she deftly vaulted over it, caring for nothing else than for claiming Amethyst’s fallen Gem, which she successfully managed to do. Tucking the purple gemstone under her arm, Garnet raced past the outraged shifter, knowing that their initial plan had failed. Which meant that the only option they had left was plan B.

The kids all heaved a shared sigh of relief as Garnet rushed into the tunnel they had been hiding in, even if they knew the shapeshifter wasn’t too far behind her. Still, Steven was quite concerned upon noticing that only one of his two present guardians had managed to return safely. “A-Amethyst?” he wondered apprehensively, glancing to the Gem leader. Garnet’s already intense expression darkened, but even so, she gently deposited the purple gemstone into her young ward’s hands. Steven let out a small whimper upon seeing Amethyst reduced to nothing but her gem once again, but this time, no tears came. “Is it weird I’m getting numb to this?” he asked with a disheartened frown.

Still, no one had any time to worry over the purple Gem again as the shape shifter’s fierce roar signaled its soon-coming arrival. “Guys, it’s coming!” Dipper warned anxiously as the shifter came into view. “Do it now!”

Soos and Wendy complied as they both began pulling on the nearby water valve in the hopes that it would release the water within the pipes running throughout the bunker. However, seeing as how the valve hadn’t been touched in decades, the rusted wheel wouldn’t so much as budge. “It’s not working, dude!” Soos cried fretfully, right as the shifter finally caught up to them.

Upon seeing the entire group all together in one place, the shifter didn’t hesitate to lash out, specifically at Dipper in a violent attempt to get the journal. The creature flung its long tongue out, somehow coiling around the journal, even though Dipper did his best to try and fight to keep possession of it. “Hey! Let go!” he shouted, still struggling to keep his quickly loosening grip on the book.

“You leave him alone!” Wendy shouted, rushing to Dipper’s rescue with her ax in hand. The cashier used the weapon to easily cleave through the shifter’s outstretched tongue, but even then, it was hardly finished. The creature quickly reformed its tongue at shot it out at Wendy this time, but instead of cutting it, she used it as a boost to jump on the shifter itself to launch a more direct offensive. She was more than ready to use her ax to land a finishing blow on the disgruntled shifter’s head, but mere seconds before she could, Soos and Garnet managed to finally turn the closed water valve. And as a result, the floodgates were quite literally opened.

With hardly any warning, a heavy stream of water suddenly burst from the nearby pipe. The initial flux of water hit the shape shifter and Wendy first, easily knocking them back into the tunnel as the shifter let out a high pitched cry all the while. It didn’t take long for everyone else to get caught up in the uncontrollable flow, sweeping them all off their feet and pushing them all down the tunnel like a rushing river would. In the abrupt chaos of it all, not only did Amethyst’s gem accidently fly out of Steven’s grip, but Dipper lost the journal and Wendy collided hard with a rock, effectively knocking her into semi-consciousness. Fortunately, the tunnel system had a surprisingly efficient drainage system, so the flood didn’t last too long before subsiding, leaving everyone soaked and scattered about throughout the tunnel.

With the water gone, it still took the group a good while to regather their bearings and regain lost air. Dipper was the first to fully do so, more out of surprise and worry than anything else as he noticed Wendy’s ax lying discarded on the ground in front of him, the cashier herself nowhere in sight. “Wendy!” he cried, cold fear filling him as he stumbled to his feet and grabbed the ax. The others didn’t notice as he ran off down the tunnel in an attempt to find her, but Steven did realize that another member of the group was missing upon pulling himself up to a sitting position.

“A-Amethyst?” the young Gem wondered nervously, looking around to see that the purple gemstone was gone. He looked to Garnet with apt concern as she put a comforting hand on his shoulder, and fortunately, the Gem leader remained as levelheaded as always, even despite her own worry.

“Her gem is this way,” Garnet stood, nodding in the opposite direction and prompting the others to follow her. “Let’s go.”

After their initial inspect of the nearby tunnels, the group decided on splitting up, with Mabel and Soos going one way and Steven and Garnet going another, in order to find the purple gem before the shape shifter could. The latter pair, despite the Gem leader’s guidance, were having an admittedly difficult time finding the purple Gem in the labyrinthine tunnels. Ironically though, it didn’t take too long for her to find them.

Of course, Amethyst did make her reappearance as dramatic as possible, with her shadow against the wall being the first thing that her teammates saw as she approached. However, seeing as how that looked nothing like her, Garnet made sure to place a protective hand on Steven’s shoulder in the event that the shape shifter was preparing to beset them instead. When the purple Gem did come into view however, both of them were quite surprised and bewildered by the newest form she had decided to take.

“Okay, you know I wasn’t feeling this at first…” Amethyst began with a grin as she awkwardly stumbled towards the pair. Her body was completely disproportionate, her left leg and right arm appearing normal while her other two appendages where unnaturally huge, muscular and bulky. Her hair was an unkempt mess, and it was clear that every lumbering, uneven step was a struggle for her, but even so, she came to stand before Garnet and Steven with clear pride in how she had made herself look. “But I think I might be coming around! Yo, Steven! My seems straight?”

The young Gem could only look at Amethyst with apt concern over her misshapen appearance as he clung onto Garnet’s leg rather fretfully. “Does that new form… hurt you?” he asked anxiously, hoping that this wasn’t the case.

The purple Gem jolted a bit upon hearing this, but she was quick to shrug it off. “No,” she scoffed before returning to her usual daring grin. “Hey Garnet, how’d you like to mix it up with this!?” she laughed, flexing her new muscles. “Just a little something I put together, ya know.”

“This form isn’t sustainable, Amethyst,” Garnet admonished, shaking her head in disapproval.

“B-but…” Amethyst blushed, her shame and anger finally reaching their boiling point as she let them both out. “You’re the one who said I needed to be stronger!” The purple Gem threw her massive fist down in fury while Garnet shielded Steven from the rubble that came flying up from the blow. “You know what?! Fine! I’ll take that dumb old shape shifter out myself! Then maybe you’ll finally see that I’m not weak!”

Before either Garnet or Steven could hope to talk her out of such a risky plan, Amethyst stormed off, punching any and all obstacles in her path away as she began her aggressive search for the creature. “Amethyst, wait!” the young Gem called after her worriedly, but as he began to run after her, Garnet quickly took the lead.

“Stay behind me,” the Gem leader cautioned firmly, charging after the purple Gem in the hopes of stopping her from doing something reckless. Steven staunchly did as she said, even if he was unable to shake the fear that Amethyst might not get off as easy as merely being poofed for a fourth time.

At the same time, Dipper continued his search, hurrying down the narrow tunnel with Wendy’s ax still tightly held in his grip as he looked for any sign of her. When he did manage to finally spot her though, he couldn’t hold back a gasp of shock and panic. The cashier lay, seemingly unconscious, at the foot of a short drop in the tunnel, her clothes still soaking wet, her hair disheveled and her entire form askew.

“Wendy!” Dipper shouted, not hesitating to hurry down to her, his heart pounding with adrenaline and worry and dead and hope all at once. “No, no, no!” he muttered fretfully upon reaching her, kneeling down beside her to check over her various cuts and bruises. Fortunately, none of them looked to be too bad, but even so, Dipper knew he could hardly use that as a gauge to tell if the cashier was really alright or not, especially given the fact that she was still completely listless. “Can you hear me!? Please be ok!” be practically begged, already starting to tear up with the very thought that Wendy might not wake up after all.

Desperate for any signs of consciousness, Dipper lightly shook her, only for her head to loll to the side, her breathing shallow to the point of it barely being present at all. He let out a shaky breath as he gently put her down, his warm, grief-fueled tears finally falling. “W-Wendy… I… you can’t be…” he trailed off, shaking his head in disbelief at the idea that his longtime crush could so easily be gone forever. “T-this is all my fault! If I had just told you when we were in the closet, we wouldn’t be in this mess! But I was too scared and now you could be hurt or worse, and I never even got to tell you that I’m like—in love with you Wendy!” The confession came out far easier this time than any other time Dipper had practiced it before, but given the terrible circumstances, he was hardly happy about that fact. Instead, all he could feel was guilt and despair as he let out a small, tight sob, grimly coming to terms with the fact that the unthinkable had happened.

Except it hadn’t.

“Uh… Dipper?” Wendy spoke up with an uncomfortable frown as she stood a few feet behind him, having just arrived with the journal in hand.

Dipper gasped in complete shock as he leapt to his feet and spun around to face her, simultaneously relieved, confused, and embarrassed upon seeing the cashier safe and sound. “W-wha—Wendy?! Wait, then who’s-”

Before he even finished asking the question, the other Wendy, clearly the shape shifter in disguise, quickly picked itself up off the ground and growled ferally. The creature roughly pushed Dipper aside as it instead launched itself at the real Wendy, outraged over how she had foiled its nearly perfect plan. The moment the two cashiers collided, it became effectively impossible to tell the two of them apart, especially as they began intensely grappling with each other for the coveted book.

“Give me back that journal!” one of the Wendys shouted, pulling the book hard but still not prying it away from the other one.

“Never!” the other cashier protested, even as she was pushed down to the ground, still clinging onto the book tightly. “Get off of me!” she yelled, kicking her double hard in the stomach. Neither of them relinquished their hold on the journal as they stood once more, effectively playing a match of tug of war with it, one that had no apparent winner. As this duel continued on, all Dipper could really do was stand on the sidelines and watch with apt fear and confusion as the two Wendys, completely indistinguishable from each other, fiercely scuffle with each other. Still, he did have enough wits about him to pick up the fallen ax from nearby, knowing that it would easily be his best bet and putting this brawl to an end and stopping the shape shifter dead in its tracks.

If he could only tell which one of them actually was the shapeshifter, that is.

“Give it back!” one Wendy shouted aggressively.

“You give it back!” the other Wendy retorted, equally as incensed.

“It belongs to Dipper!”

“Yeah it does! Hit her with the ax!” one of the cashiers yelled to Dipper himself quite intensely.

“Don’t listen to her, Dipper!”

“She’s the shape shifter!”

“No, she is!”

“Uh… I… um…” Dipper stammered nervously, clutching the ax tightly as he looked between the two Wendys with complete uncertainty. “I-I don’t know who’s who! Give me a sign or something!”

Both of them proceeded to comply, all while still grappling for the journal. One sent him an almost flirtatious smile and wink, but the other one merely gave him a cold, serious expression as she zipped her lips and threw away the key. And for Dipper, that was more than enough to cue him in on which Wendy was the real one, and which one was the fake.

With bold confidence in his decision, Dipper flung the ax at the imposter, watching with relieved satisfaction as the shape shifter roared in pain and reverted back to its true form. Fortunately enough, they were all quite close to one of the few still working cryogenic chambers, and even more serendipitous was the fact that Steven and Garnet just so happened to run into the room at that exact moment.

“You guys!” the young Gem gasped in alarm, especially upon seeing the outraged shape shifter rip the ax out of its injured stomach. Garnet didn’t hesitate to summon her gauntlets, their search for Amethyst momentarily forgotten in the heat of this intense moment.

“Quick! Push him in!” Dipper exclaimed, pointing to the ready cryogenic chamber. They all hurried to do so, yet before any of them could even strike the shape shifter, someone else did instead.

“Not so fast, you shifty creep!” Amethyst yelled as she dropped down from above onto the creature. Everyone gasped in surprise as she used her thicker arm to put it into a tight headlock, holding it steady even as it started struggling against her. “Ha! Not so much fun being all tied up, is it?”

“Amethyst, what are you doing!?” Dipper asked in apt alarm.

“Oh, you know,” the purple Gem grunted as casually as she could, even as the shifter angrily roared over her. “Just handling your monster problem for ya! After all, the only shape shifter we need around here is me!”

“Amethyst, let it go!” Garnet ordered hotly, especially as the shifter formed a large hand to grab Amethyst by the head with. “Now!”

“No!” the purple Gem shouted back, clearly struggling to maintain her slipping advantage as the shifter began to pull her down. “You wanted me to be stronger and I’m doing it! I’m being what you want!”

“I don’t want this!” the Gem leader tried to appeal, concern leaking into her usually authoritative tone.

Amethyst let out a strained shout as she tried to shove the shifter towards the cryogenic chamber, only to be shoved that way herself. “Then what do you want?!” she asked Garnet almost desperately. “Just tell me and I’ll do that!”

“I can’t tell you, Amethyst!” Garnet exclaimed amidst the purple Gem’s scream of pain as the shifter finally thrust her to the ground hard. “You have to figure this out for yourself!”

“She can’t!” Steven suddenly gasped in stark realization as the others all turned to him in confusion. “She doesn’t want to think about herself!”

A look of complete shock washed over Amethyst’s face upon hearing this, her struggling against the creature coming to a halt as she looked to her teammates with wide eyes. “What?” was all she had time to say before the shape shifter pushed down on her hard, resulting in her poofing once again.

The shape shifter merely laughed coldly over this victory as it picked the purple gemstone up, holding it up for the rest of the startled group to see. “What a weak, pathetic fool!” it mocked triumphantly. “You all are for thinking you ever defeat a master of forms like me! Now, prepare to meet the same-” The creature was abruptly cut off as Garnet landed a brutal punch to its face, causing it to not only stumble back with a cry of pain, but also forcing it to release Amethyst’s gem. Fortunately, Steven was quick to safely claim it before it could hit the ground and shatter.

“Good catch,” Garnet quickly congratulated her young ward before turning to Dipper and Wendy. “Now’s the time!”

The pair quickly complied, charging for the shifter along with Steven and Garnet as they all worked together to shove the stunned, yet still struggling shape shifter fully into the cryogenic tube. The creature had no chance to overpower them and escape, however, as it found itself abruptly locked inside of the tube. While the others had no idea how such a fortuitous event was unfolding, Mabel and Soos simply high fived as they watched everything unfold from the surveillance room. Mabel was the one to fully seal the deal, as well as the shape shifter’s fate, by pressing the tube’s activation button with a wide, victorious smile.

“Frozen!” she proclaimed brightly.

“Boosh!” Soos exclaimed as the two of them fist-bumbed over their success before hurrying to join the others in the lab.

As the cryogenic chamber began to freeze over, the shape shifter did everything in its power to escape its incoming icy fate. “No! Let me out” it cried desperately, beating against the heavy glass as it morphed into several forms, from a rock monster, to a flame beast, to its ‘author’ guise, to even Rose Quartz, before finally going back to its true form just as the glass misted over with ice, covering it entirely.

A beat of unsteady silence filled the lab in the midst of the shape shifter’s apparent defeat. For a long moment, everyone continued staring at the cryogenic chamber, fearing that the shifter might somehow break out of it, but thankfully it never did. “Is… is it over?” Steven asked tentatively, breaking the silence.

“It would seem so,” Garnet responded, adjusting her shades as her gauntlets dissipated.

“Let’s get out of here, dudes,” Soos concluded, already turning to head back the way they came as the others followed.

Yet, before any of them could even leave the room, the shape shifter’s low, ominous laughter reached them from the cryogenic chamber. Surprised to see that it was even still cognizant, the group turned around with a collective gasp to see the creature press up against the glass one more time. “And so once again, you Crystal Gems think you’ve bested me…” it began speaking to Garnet in particular, its tone as cold as the ice encompassing it. “That ‘future vision’ of yours may grant you glimpses of what’s to come, but it can’t fill in the gaps of your past, can it? He must have done something to you three, something that made you forget about all of this… Still, I can’t help but wonder if Rose herself ever had those gaps at all…”

Garnet offered no response to this mysterious, brazen taunt, but even so, her hands were clenched into tight fists at her sides as she sent the shifter a fierce scowl. But even so, the creature wasn’t finished quite yet.

“And as for you, Dipper…” the shifter said, sending the boy a piercing glare. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you? But you have no idea what you’re up against. You’ll never find the author. If you keep digging, you’ll meet a fate worse than you can imagine. And this will be the last form you’ll ever take!” Just as the cryogenic tube finally froze over entirely, the shifter turned into Dipper, letting out a panicked scream that would be forever preserved as it at last frozen completely. This scare tactic, as underhanded as it was, was more than enough to aptly frighten the real Dipper, who could only stare at his now-frozen double with a look of stunned horror.

“Heh,” Soos suddenly chuckled, trying to make the rather dark mood lighter. “Good luck sleeping tonight!”

Needless to say that after such a traumatic experience, no one was too keen on staying in the bunker any longer. And so the group emerged from it in relative solemn silence, letting the tree that led to it return to its normal, inconspicuous appearance. Apparently, they had been in the bunker all day, as the sun had set and dusk had fallen, painting the forest a warm shade of violet as fireflies gently flittered about. It was a comforting sight for everyone, especially when compared to the dark, dank, twisted corridors of the bunker.

“Dude, I think I’m kind of adventured out for a little while,” Soos spoke up once everyone was back on level ground. “My face hurts from doing this all day,” he pulled a shocked, screaming face, one that Mabel couldn’t help but chuckle at upon seeing.

“Yeah, but you gotta admit we’re all total heroes!” she remarked with a satisfied smirk.

“Hey, who wants to get some heroes breakfast, huh?” Soos asked with a grin as he tousled Mabel’s hair.

“Syrup on cereal!” she cheered, hoping up onto the handyman’s shoulders.

“Mabel, you’re a visionary!” he exclaimed, impressed as he began to tote her away. “Steven, aren’t you coming?”

“In a minute!” Steven called halfheartedly, sighing remorsefully as he looked down at Amethyst’s gemstone in his hands.

“Don’t worry,” Garnet encouraged, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Like I said before, she’ll be fine.”

“B-but she’s usually back by now!” the young Gem protested fretfully. “Do you think something’s wrong?”

Garnet paused, looking to the gemstone herself as her smile faded. “I…” she began, her tone almost uncertain, though she quickly recovered from it. “No. Nothing’s wrong. She’ll be back soon, I promise.”

Steven finally smiled upon hearing this, fully believing this promise as Garnet began to lead him back towards the temple. As they left, Dipper was quick to realize that him and Wendy were the only ones left around, which meant that now was likely as good a time as any to address his awkward confession. “Look, Wendy,” he began, averting eye contact with the cashier. “About earlier… In the heat of the moment, I might have said some… dumb things. So can we just pretend that none of that ever happened? Please?”

“Dude, dude, its ok,” Wendy reassured, putting a hand on his shoulder as she knelt down to his level. “I always kinda knew…”

“Wait, you did?!” Dipper asked, his eyes wide with complete surprise.

The cashier let out a small, good-natured chuckle at this as she rose to stand. “Yeah, man. You think I can’t hear that stuff you’re constantly whispering under your breath?”

“Oh, man…” Dipper groaned in absolute embarrassment, face palming as he plopped down onto a nearby log.

“Listen, Dipper,” Wendy said as she sat down beside him. “I’m like, super flattered, but… I’m too old for you. I mean, you know that, right?”

“Ugh…” Dipper sighed, still not meeting the cashier’s gaze. “Mabel, Steven, and even Garnet said that confessing would make me feel better.”

“Well, how do you feel?”

“Anxious… and scared… and kinda itchy.”

“Don’t be itchy, man,” Wendy laughed warmly. “Let me tell you something. This summer was super boring before you showed up. I have more fun with you than practically anyone else. And if you ever stopped being my friend, I would, like, throw myself into the Bottomless Pit!”

This finally elicited a small laugh from Dipper, even if it was still only a halfhearted one. “So… things won’t be too awkward now?”

“I just wrestled myself, dude,” the cashier remarked with a smirk. “That was awkward. If you can handle that monster, you can handle a little awkwardness.”

“So, friends?” Dipper asked, hopeful.

“Yeah, dude!” Wendy instantly agreed, playfully shoving him off the log. “Friends.”

Both of them shared another laugh as Wendy stood and pulled Dipper back onto the log before she began to take her leave. “Oh, and hey, Dipper?” she turned back to him once more as she reached her bike. “See you for movie night later. Your place this time, ok?”

Dipper only nodded as he watched the cashier ride off, a bittersweet smile on his face that quickly faded once she was out of view. A small part of him had always figured that things would turn out like this if he ever did end up revealing his feelings to Wendy, and yet he had still dared to hope that things could have been different. Still, now that everything was out in the open, he found himself somehow strangely accepting it. After all, Wendy had promised that nothing would really change between them, something that was certainly a relief. But no matter how things would be in the future, Dipper knew that another part of him would always still always have feelings for Wendy, as unrequited as they were. And while it would take some time to heal from her gentle rejection, at least he could take solace in the fact that their close, playful friendship would remain. And that would certainly be good enough for him.

Still, Dipper didn’t get too much time to mull over everything that had happened, especially as Mabel popped out of the bushes right behind him. “Sooo… how’d it go?” she asked, overwhelmed with curiosity.

“How—what did you hear?!” Dipper asked, surprised at his sister’s eavesdropping.

“Everything, all the time,” Mabel quipped coyly.

“Yeah, we totally heard everything,” Steven admitted with a grin as he emerged from the bushes himself.

“I’m not here!” Soos called, still hiding in the shrubbery.

“But I am,” Garnet said casually as she revealed herself, stepping out from behind a tree.

While Dipper normally would have questioned the fact that all of them had been spying on him, he wasn’t exactly up for it as he instead looked down with a heavy sigh. “You guys, how can everything be so amazing and so terrible at the same time?”

“Mm, I’m sorry for being so pushy, Dipper,” Mabel said with sincere sympathy and guilt.

“Same here,” Steven concurred, still holding onto Amethyst’s gem with his free hand. “But hey, look at the bright side! At least you don’t have to feel awkward around Wendy anymore!”

“Somehow I kind of doubt that…” Dipper remarked with a frown.

“Dipper, there’s no reason for you to feel ashamed over what happened,” Garnet spoke up with a small, reassuring smile. “It’s true that sometimes these things simply just… don’t work out. But that doesn’t mean that this was your only chance at finding love. That special someone is out there for you, trust me.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know who that special someone is, would you?” Dipper asked glumly, hoping that the Gem leader could give him some kind of absolute reassurance over the matter.

But instead, Garnet softly chuckled, adjusting her shades and shaking her head. “Even if I did tell you, you’d never believe me.”

“Aw, cheer up, bro-bro!” Mabel encouraged, wrapping an arm around her brother’s shoulder. “Maybe that special someone is on the list of potential rebound crushes I’m making for you!”

“Thanks, Mabel,” Dipper chuckled a bit at this, though the moment of levity was cut off as Soos sat on the other end of the log, his sudden weight tossing the kids up a bit.

“I’m still bummed that we’re no closer to finding the author guy,” the handyman sighed in disappointment. “Oh well. At least I got his sciencey coat and briefcase.” Soos held said metal ‘briefcase’ up, only for it to flop open and reveal a dusty screen and computer keys inside, as well as a label that read “Property of F”. “Whoa! What the-?”

“Soos, that’s not a briefcase!” Dipper exclaimed in apt surprise. “That’s a laptop!”

“And a really busted up one too,” Mabel added, noting how ragged and rundown the tech was.

“Wow! It’s so old and cool!” Steven quipped with a wide smile. “I wish Amethyst were here to see this! Well, technically she is here…” he paused, casting a brief glance down at her gemstone. “But still.”

“I bet I could get this thing fixed up in a few days,” Soos mused, looking over the laptop. “It’s gonna take a lot of duct tape…”

“This could be our next clue!” Dipper grinned with newfound excitement over this find. “But… will it actually tell us anything?” he asked, turning to Garnet for answers once again.

“Hm… it’s definitely worth looking into…” the Gem leader mused. “I do recommend being careful in how you go about it, but still. I feel like there’s a good chance that it’ll be able to get at least a few answers out of it… But as always, its all about looking in the right places…”

Since everyone was rather tired from the eventful day they had, they all decided to spend the evening relaxing at the Mystery Shack, Steven and the Gems included. Pearl was already there, having just finished fixing the van with Greg and Stan, and needless to say she had a multitude of questions, especially upon seeing Amethyst’s solitary gemstone. But all the same, the kids took the much needed opportunity to relax, as Dipper and Wendy got their movie night started, having put pretty much everything they had discussed earlier behind them. Soos and Mabel had made their syrup on cereal concoction and were enjoying it as they played cards with Stan. Steven was the only one who didn’t really feel like joining in on any of the fun as he instead remained stationary near Amethyst’s gem, keeping a close eye on for any sign that the purple Gem was coming back. And as he kept up this vigil, Garnet and Pearl discussed everything that had happened in the bunker quietly enough that no one managed to overhear their anxious whispers.

“So that shape shifting creature claimed to know us?” the white Gem asked worriedly. “And Rose?”

“Yes,” the Gem leader nodded tersely. “It said we knew the author too.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Pearl shook her head. “Until a few weeks ago, we had never even seen that journal before! How in the world would we have-”

“Something isn’t adding up,” Garnet interrupted, her arms crossed as she glanced down. “Everything down in that bunker felt so… familiar… I don’t know how to explain it. But it was the same feeling I got when I saw that journal for the first time.”

“S-so… what should we do?” the white Gem asked, wringing her hands apprehensively.

The Gem leader didn’t answer right away, but when she did, all traces of uncertainty in her tone were replaced with resolve instead. “We keep looking for the truth. And we don’t stop until we find it.”

Pearl’s expression was still awash with worry upon hearing this, but even so she nodded, knowing not to question her leader’s decision. And so, instead of addressing the matter any further, she decided to move onto another pressing issue. “So…” she said, walking over to Steven and placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “How long has it been?”

“Four hours…” the young Gem replied, his voice a concerned mutter as he lay sprawled on the floor.

“Four hours?!” the white Gem exclaimed in genuine surprise. “She’s never taken so long! What do you think she’s doing in there?”

“I’m not sure,” Garnet answered truthfully. “I was too hard on her…”

“So what happened to her this time anyway?” Stan spoke up with dry curiosity. “She didn’t throw herself off another cliff or anything again, did she?”

Everyone who had been to the bunker exchanged a stark glance at this, all of them remembering their vow to keep what happened down there a secret. And while Garnet had discreetly detailed some of the earlier events to Pearl, she calmly made sure not to do the same for Stan. “She got hit playing chicken with a train.”

“Again?” the conman cracked up a bit upon hearing this succinct lie. “That’s like, the third time she bit it to a train, isn’t it? Sheesh, Amethyst will never learn, will she?”

“Actually…” the Gem leader smiled as she turned towards Amethyst’s gem as it finally started to glow. “I think she will this time…”

“Oh! Oh! She’s back!” Steven cried excitedly, backing up to give the purple gemstone some space as it lifted up into the air. “Alright, everyone, be supportive.”

The others all nodded in agreement as they watched the silhouette of light form around the stone, shifting and remolding at various intervals before finally remaining fixed. As the light faded, Amethyst appeared, not with bulging muscles or an imitation of Pearl or even legs for arms, but as her natural self once more. But even then, not without a few modest changes. The colors of the purple Gem’s top and leggings had reversed, her tank top now nearly black and lacking her usual fallen shoulder strap, while her leggings were lavender with neat black stars cut into the knees. But aside from those alterations, Amethyst was largely the same, a fact that she seemed quite comfortable with as she landed and casually stretched out.

“What?” she asked, noticing the surprised looks everyone was giving her.

“Aw, you barely changed!” Steven pouted in disappointment.

“Steven!” Pearl quickly chastised for his insensitivity.

“Well I think you look great, Amethyst!” Mabel complimented with an excited smile. “Seriously, black is so your color!”

“Yeah, lookin’ good,” Stan remarked with a wry smirk. “But you better still be able to pull off Revenge Trips in that new getup of yours.”

“Heh, you know it,” Amethyst chuckled, though her smile quickly faded as Garnet stepped up to her. A moment of awkward silence passed between the two Gems, the purple one glancing away from her leader bashfully, especially in light of what had transpired between them in the bunker. But in the end, Garnet was the first one to break it with a sincere, gentle smile.

“It’s perfect,” she said with full approval in her tone.

“Eh, whatevs,” Amethyst shrugged, suppressing a light blush as she rubbed her arm. “It’s just what feels right.”

“That’s why it’s perfect,” Garnet nodded, finally getting the purple Gem to blush fully. Regardless of what had happened underground or anything that the sinister shape shifter might have said, the Gem leader was glad to see that Amethyst finally realized that perhaps she didn’t have to be the biggest or the best. She only had to be herself. And with this subtle new form, that was a lesson she had fully embraced.

“It’s a marked improvement!” Pearl remarked, clasping her hands together with a delighted smile. “You finally fixed that shoulder strap that’s always bugged me!”

“Welcome back!” Steven exclaimed happily, wrapping the purple Gem in a sudden, tight hug.

“Well done, Amethyst!” Pearl did the same, gently joining the embrace right before Garnet did.

“Oh boy! Group hug!” Mabel exclaimed excitedly, hopping out of her chair and pulling Stan out of his. “Come on, Grunkle Stan!”

“Hold it, kid. I don’t do group hu-” the conman tried to protest, but he was no match for his niece’s unbridled enthusiasm.

Likewise, Soos, Dipper, and Wendy gladly joined the large collective embrace, all of which was centered around the very flustered purple Gem. “Guys, cut it out!” Amethyst exclaimed, annoyed. “Do we really have to do this?!”

“Yes,” Steven solidly affirmed, hugging the purple Gem just a bit tighter. “It’s hug time!

“Ugh, this is so dumb!” Amethyst groaned, rolling her eyes. Still, even she couldn’t hold back an infectious, satisfied smile as she soaked all of the affection going around in. Hugs weren’t exactly a rare thing for either the Gems or the Pines, but still, both groups joining together for such a thing was an amazing feat that even Amethyst, despite all of her pretend protests against it, could say no to.

 Next:

[deadlyxkingsley-blog]

A Sense of Purpose || Self Para

Word Count: 1,502 Mentions: Hypoxia, Helix, Halogen Place: The Hamptons, NY Time: March 12th, 2013

More than three years had passed since Nina had been sent on her first mission and yet the memory still played itself in black and white through the assassin’s mind like the event had only taken place yesterday. She often found herself reminiscing the moment when she was alone and today just so happened to be one of those times.

“You ready?” Nathan asked as he greeted her, to which she answered with a confident nod. Carrying her rifle case in one hand, she walked to her chopper face down to avoid having her hair blown into a bird nest by the strong wind. The instruction for the mission was plain and simple: eliminate Dr. Emilia McCain – but Nina knew there would not be anything easy about the execution. The target was someone she had spoken to in person in more occasions that she’d like to admit. Mistress McCain had been among her father’s clients, back when Kingsley Medical had still belonged to its righteous owners, and according to her experience, the woman had always been a decent person – always paid the bill on time, helped provide their company with an extended network, and most importantly, never violated their terms and agreement. Why the agency assigned her to this mission, she could never know for sure, for asking questions was simply not in her nature, but the girl had her guess: they wanted her to show just how far she was willing to give up on her past to prove both her loyalty and capability – and you bet if that was really the case, she’d give them exactly what they were asking for.

The whole flight to their destination, Nina was reviewing the layout of the map over and over again. She would be stationed in an abandoned building a few blocks away from McCain’s resort in the Hamptons and it was up to her to pick which floor she believed would have the best line of sight to the target’s place. It was a solo mission and she had been told not to worry about making it look like anything but an assassination. Still, it went without saying that any sign of her existence where she mounted her weapon could be traced back to the agency and thus, assuming everything was going as planned, Nina would make sure she had taken all the necessary precautions before leaving.

Once she jumped out of the chopper, the doctor wasted no time to find the perfect spot to install her equipment. She had 20 minutes to get the job done until her ride came back – anything beyond that would result in desertion. During the briefing, Nina had been informed that the target had a plan to host a cocktail party in her backyard this evening. McCain would’ve made this too easy had she required everyone to stay outside, but unfortunately, knowing the nature of such events, it was very likely that she would need to go back and forth between greeting her guests at the venue and inside the resort, instead. Besides, the presence of crowd posed its own challenge for it meant Nina only got one shot that had to be very accurate in order to prevent any unwanted casualty and there was only a short window for her to pack things up before her location got compromised.

“Ready to open fire,” she whispered to her mic, reporting her progress to her pilot. It was her debut, after all, and anyone with more experience who was sent to keep an eye on her had all the reasons in the world to worry about her performance and want her to keep them updated. That being said, Nina didn’t plan to fail those who had faith in her. She was calm as usual, both arms embracing her first-ever rifle ­– which she later named after her mother – in a steady grip. Ten minutes had passed and even though people had begun to gather in the balcony, the target herself had not yet been seen. Thirteen minutes had passed and Nina started to be a little nervous, but then she heard Nathan whispering back, “Eleven o’clock, near the bar.” And there she spotted the other doctor walking through the crowd, speaking to other billionaires and yet, never stopped moving for more than a few seconds – just like Nina, Mrs. McCain looked somehow hurried.

It wasn’t until the woman stepped onto the small stage to the far east of the venue for reasons the assassin didn’t give two shits about that the agent found her opening. Gently touching the pad of her right index finger on her trigger, she realized she realized there was less than five minutes left. It appeared that her target was merely giving a welcoming speech, so unless Nina shot now, there probably wouldn’t be a second chance. Funny thing was, her only concern all this time had been whether or not the way she executed her mission would fulfil the agency’s expectation. She strangely felt no remorse when her bullet cracked her target’s skull open, destroying the beauty that had once been familiar to her. Although she was aware that this wasn’t how people should feel when they spilled blood for the first time, let alone that of someone they had interacted in person, Nina had been raised to get things done, so getting things done was the one thing that actually gave her the highest satisfaction in life, even if it meant she would have to get her hands dirty. That was the day when she once again found a sense of purpose, one she’d never thought would come in the form of something that was completely different than her old values as a doctor – something that was not, by any means, innocent called killing.

Securing Audrey back where it belonged, she was waiting for her exfiltration behind the wall she’d used as her cover when she saw something moved past her shoulder before eventually crashing into the metal door across of her, leaving a small round-shaped crack on its surface. In both panic and surprise, Nina’s reflex was to draw her rifle out again and stand up as she turned around to aim at whoever it was that had dared to startle her. Considering the bullet had come from a higher place, there was no way the shooter was among the party guests as the location of the resort itself was lower than Nina’s spot. It was only when another ammo was fired and scraped her right cheek that she saw her attacker, a person standing on top of a skyscraper two blocks from where she was. Further investigation through her scope revealed that they were wearing a black catsuit similar to her own whereas their face, too, was covered in a black balaclava. She’d heard about this rival organization called Valkyrie before, but could that be them? Nina couldn’t risk standing still for another peek as she saw her ride coming, the agent jumping for her life and screaming at Nathan, practically begging him to take her away from the battlefield as soon as possible.

A week had passed since the incident and surprisingly, the suits had yet expressed their dissatisfaction regarding her performance despite the mess she’d left behind. The brunette still found herself questioning why until Halogen showed up at the lab to bring her the answer. “You forgot this,” the older woman calmly broke the silence as she passed on this tiny velvet bag to which Nina responded with a confused frown. She said nothing, nonetheless, and simply followed through by opening the container. It was the bullet that had wounded her face – which, thanks to Macey’s stitching skill, would later heal without any marks left. “I was sent to retrieve it because the damn thing was covered in your blood. You would be surprised just how much information your DNA could spill to our enemies,” Nina stayed silent as Halogen highlighted her points, “Just try to be more careful next time.”

Piqued by curiosity, the researcher in her quickly made her way to the nearest electron microscope to inspect the clip as soon as her guest was out of sight. Unfortunately, any unique physical markings to identify where it came from had somehow been destroyed – probably a measure taken by whoever had been targeting her to make it untraceable. Further ballistic analysis didn’t provide any useful information either since the bullet turned out to be quite widely used among firearm enthusiasts. To this day, Nina still kept it as a memento in a small velvet blue box hidden in the drawer of her rifle rack. Anytime she needed to remind herself just how far she’d gone since that day, she would take it with her to the rooftop to smile at while she wondered how different her life would’ve been without the agency. She probably could never get a perfect closure, but she did hope that would be the last time she’d ever made a rookie mistake as grave as not paying enough attention to her surrounding.