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justrandomfanfictionskh · 2 years ago

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We Should have Stayed in Gotham ch1

(Almost every Maribat fic I read has the akuma class going to Gotham. But tell me which is more likely, a class touring the city of crime, or a class touring the city of lights? So here it is, the Daminette fic that only I asked for, where Gotham goes to Paris, and the poor students have to grapple with the fact that they have competition for the most dangerous city in the world. I wonder what will happen?)

ao3

The Gotham students stepped out of the airport and immediately had to squint against the sudden bright light of the mid-morning sun. Already the differences between Gotham and Paris were making themselves known causing every single Gothamite to scoff, laugh, and shake their heads at the Parisians' apparently unwarranted paranoia. There was absolutely no way Paris was more dangerous than Gotham. And yet for some strange reason the Parisian administrators of the International Friendship Conference petitioned to have the conference in Gotham? It was pure insanity.

Even the smallest child knew that having over a dozen schools from five different countries gather together in one place was a recipe for disaster in the city where the opening of a new bank could be the precursor for a terrorist attack. And yet Paris was insistent, that Gotham take its turn hosting the celebration, saying that it was “Too dangerous.” Everyone had laughed at that, literally. There was not a single Gothamite who had heard the news and not laughed. Even now driving the buss to their first location, even Damian “Ice Prince” Wayne was fighting an amused smirk and a soft chuckle, as his peers laughed at the naive and clueless Parisians walking the street below.

In Paris, the sun was shining. In Gotham, the sun barely ever broke through the smog and the rain. In Paris, pedestrians chatted amicably while walking at a leisurely pace. In Gotham, if you didn’t rush to your next location with your head down then you were asking to get mugged. In Paris, police directed traffic and waved to children. In Gotham, the police were always running from one armed robbery to another. Damian scoffed. Paris was like Metropolis, shiny and clean. Gotham was dark and dirty.

“It was probably a prank,” one of the Gotham High students said to his fellows. “You know a joke to get on our good side!”

“Ha!” one of the Gotham Academy students scoffed, “They should know that unlike Two-Face we don’t have a good side.” The bus was filled with laughter, and even Damian’s smirk twitched into a brief smile at the words.

It was no secret that the class divide in America's most dangerous city was as wide as the Grand Canyon. In fact, the only reason the students from the public high school were able to afford this trip was because of the Thomas and Martha Wayne Scholarship Foundation, which—among other opportunities, provided money for Gotham High Students to attend international trips with Gotham Academy. Damian could appreciate the elegance of the arrangement. The spoiled brats, that were unfortunately his peers, could jet off to Paris for the weekend whenever they wished and cared little for school functions where they could not display their wealth. But students from lower income families would probably never leave the city. So why not have them tag along on one of the prestigious rich school field trips where half of the students would opt out of going anyway?

Now, usually this meant that the trip was split into two very distinct groups with each side antagonizing the other, while Damian scowled in the middle. But whenever anyone said anything bag against their shared city, the class divide vanished. Suddenly they were one group united against the outsider who dared insinuate that Gotham was anything but superior in every way. So at that moment the bus was filled with rich and poor laughter as another student said,

“Can you imagine what would have happened if these people had actually come to Gotham!”

“They would’ve folded to Condiment King!”

Damian saw that even the chaperones were smiling softly at the front of the bus. They were probably predicting their easiest trip yet, and Damian found himself agreeing with them. He liked Paris. He had gone here on a mission with his mother. It had been one of the more pleasant ones, considering he had not had to kill anyone. And it was a beautiful city full of art, culture, and history, and since the class seemed to be united, Damian predicted a nice relaxing vacation with no troubles whatsoever. He found himself actually a little excited.

Eventually their laughter was cut off by the fact that they had arrived at their destination. Collège et Lycée Françoise Dupont was the host school for the conference, and they had requested that all of the attending schools participate in a brief assembly with their corresponding classes before going to their hotel and seeing the city. Damian’s class filled into a large classroom with teared desks facing a chalkboard with a projector in front of it. Two teachers were waiting for them. One was a stern looking woman with sharp features and sharp eyes, and the other was her exact opposite. One look and every Gothamite silently agreed, the second woman would not last two minutes in their home, while the first might last long enough to run screaming.

Damian found his way to the back of the class and glared at anyone who got too close, but he needn’t have bothered. The GA students knew him too well, and the GH students were subconsciously separating themselves from the “rich kids.” Once everyone settled the soft teacher cleared her throat and spoke in a sickly sweet voice that made all of the Gothamites cringe against the unfamiliarity of such a tone. No one in Gotham spoke with that level of cheer, unless they were brainwashed…or a villain…or a brain washed villain.

“Greetings everyone!” she said in English, “I am Mme. Caline Bustier, and this is Mme. Mendeleiev. We are the French chaperones for this trip. For the next week you will be partnered with our advanced English Class as you tour the sites and participate in other Conference activities. But before we begin, our class representative and her co-representative have prepared a little presentation to ensure that your time in Paris is as safe and as enjoyable as possible.”

The Gothamites snickered quietly as three girls entered the room each carrying a stack of binders which they stacked on the teacher’s desk at the front of the class. Damian narrowed his eyes at the three girls and found them…strange. They were just too different from each other and yet they moved together with familiarity. It didn’t make sense to him. First there was the blonde girl dressed almost entirely in yellow and black. With her perfect posture, designer clothes, and her narrowed eyes looking down her nose at everyone, she could easily fit right in among the Gotham Elite. Damian assumed that she would take the presenters position, but all she did was narrowly examine everyone with too knowing eyes and scoff, before sitting on the teachers desk and pulling out a nail file.

The second girl who entered the room, had all the appearance and attitude of a lacky. The first word that popped into Damian’s head was lapdog. But the demure girl with auburn hair and round glasses simply giggled at the first’s antics and took her position in front of the teachers with a confident yet shy smile.

That left the third girl. However, Damian did not get a good look at her before she glanced around the room, blushed, and promptly tripped over nothing sending all of her binders flying. The Gothamites snickered as the second girl rushed to help the third. Damian internally groaned at the blatant incompetence. But everyone was silenced by a sharp, “Hey!”

Everyone’s attention snapped to the first girl who was now glaring at them with the intensity of Poison Ivy when someone touched one of her plants. “If all you can do is laugh at someone when they fall, then you wont survive two minutes in Paris. Now apologize to my friend, and—”

“Chloe,” the third girl said and despite her flushed face and her nervously darting eyes her voice was clear and calm, and almost commanding despite the fact that it was also soft and melodic. “It’s ok. I’m not hurt, and it wasn’t their fault. It was an accident. Just take a breath, and help Sabrina pass out the binders. Please?”

The rich girl, Chloe, grumbled under her breath but obeyed (even if she slammed the binders in front of the students who had snickered). As this was happening, the clumsy girl brushed herself off and took her place in front and center. Now that Damian could examine her, he found that she was even more different than the other two, and he could not comprehend how she could have possibly commanded this Chloe. She was small, with black hair pulled back in pigtails like a five-year-old. Her bright bluebell eyes and blinding smile screamed innocence and naivety. Every single Gothamite thought the exact same thing,

“She would have died in Gotham.”

But despite her earlier clumsiness and the thoughts of the visitors, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Damian stared in fascination as a change came over the girl. Her posture straightened. Her shoulders squared. She lifted her head, and when she opened her eyes, there was nothing but confidence and clarity in them. Damian huffed in consideration and leaned back in his chair suddenly very interested in what this girl had to say as the other one, Sabrina placed his binder in front of him with a smile.

“Hello,” the girl up front said in near perfect English. “My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng, and I am the class representative for Lycée Françoise Dupont Troisième Class. Or as you would say, sophomore year, same as all of you. This is my co-representative Sabrina Raincomprix.”

“Hello!” Sabrina waved as she took her place at the front of the class. “It’s nice to meat all of you. By the way this is our friend, Chloe Bourgeois. She’s a little overprotective.” Chloe just huffed and retook her seat on top of the desk, electing to ignore everyone else.

“Any way,” Marinette continued with that same blindingly bright smile. “Due to the current state of Paris, we felt it only fair to walk you through a ‘How to Survive Paris Crash Course’ before the conference gets into full swing.” The Gothamites stared at the small Parisian girl in astonishment. She wasn’t serious was she? Didn’t she know who they were? Where they were from?

Apparently she was because she ignored their incredulous stares and pulled up one of the extra binders and presented it to the class. “You were all handed a Paris Survival Guide made by the student council for the conference. In it you will find everything you need to know about our villain, our heroes, and the protocol for surviving their battles, including a map to the akuma shelters near the conference’s various locations, and a list of apps that you will be required to download in order to ensure you and your friends safety. Now if you all open your guides, I will briefly go over the most important information before turning you back over to your teachers.”

“You can’t be serious!” Damian saw Chad, one of the GA students, stand up and stare at the girl in amused disbelief. “All this for a villain? Singular? You know we’re from Gotham right? We can handle whatever cutesy little trouble maker you throw at us. We have the Joker.”

While no one particularly liked Chad, Damian thought he was an idiotic prick, the students couldn’t help but mutter and nod in agreement. But Damian only raised his eyebrow as a change came over every single Parisian in the room. They all stood up straighter, their shoulders tense. They watched the Gothamites with a mixture of fear, frustration, and annoyance. But before any of them could speak, Chloe leapt from the desk and stomped up to Chad.

Everyone fell silent, before the fire in her eyes and the fury in her step. She slammed a hand on his desk forcing him to flinch back in his seat so that she was looming over him in a storm of black and yellow. “Oh, you think you’re so clever, huh? Oh we have the Joker! We can survive anything!” she said mockingly, “Well Monsieur ‘I’m from Gotham,’ I wish we had the Joker. Do you know why? Because—”

“Chloe!” Everyone snapped back to Marinette. Her voice was suddenly as sharp and as cold as her expression as she glared at her friend. Damian unconsciously flinched at how closely this small girl’s ferocity resembled his father’s patented expression. And everyone recognized the quiet command she held, as even those who had continued to snicker at Choe and Chad were silenced into rapt attention.

“Take a breath, Chloe,” Marinette said a bit more gently. And Damian watched in amusement as the other girl visibly relaxed as she made her way back to her friends. Once her view was unobstructed, Marinette studied the Gothamites and sighed. She set down her binder and fell into a more relaxed posture as she leaned against the desk. She then turned her gaze on Chad. From his position behind the other boy, Damian saw yet another thing in the girl that threw him into confusion. Exhaustion. “What would you do,” Marinette asked Chad calmly, “If the Joker was robbing a bank and you told a tourist to avoid that street, but they just laughed and continued walking?”

“Um,” Chad said, his eyes searching desperately for support, “I would wish them a speedy death, cause that’s all they deserve for being so stupid.”

The Gothamites chuckled, and Marinette nodded with a soft, understanding smile. “Exactly,” she said. “In your city, you respect you villains and the danger they pose, and you ask everyone to do the same. All we ask is for the same curtesy. Is that too much to ask?”

Damian found himself impressed as he watched his peers silently straighten in their seats, and begin fingering their binders. With one question, she had gained the attention and the consideration of an entire group intent on mocking her. Now she was in complete control, as she nodded and straightened. She turned, opened her binder, and said, “Now, Paris only has one villain and his partner, however, he is probably the worst villain you will ever encounter outside of Gotham. The reason is simple, he enslaves people.”

Everyone jerked up, confusion filling the classroom as Sabrina picked up the thread, “If you will all turn to page one under the section marked ‘Heroes and Villains,’ you will see the latest picture of our villain, Hawkmoth, as well as a list of his powers. On page two you will see a picture of his partner, Mayura. The rest of the chapter is a list of the heroes currently fighting them.”

“Right now Paris is at war,” Marinette said, her calm seriousness perfectly contrasting with Sabrina’s light lecturing. “But the soldiers are not willing henchmen and crooks like in Gotham. They are people, normal people just going about their lives, until Hawkmoth strikes.”

“The magic item he wields allows him to create akumas,” Sabrina said over the sound of pages turning. “Akumas are magic purple butterflies that possess Hawkmoth’s victims transforming them into villains that will do his bidding. But do not be alarmed, in order for Hawkmoth to possess you, certain qualifications must be met.”

“Negative emotion,” Marinette said, her exhaustion seemed to seep into her words as she said it. “Anger, sadness, fear, pain. These are the thoughts and emotions that Hawkmoth uses to possess his victims. Should you at any moment feel any of these emotions then you are at risk of being akumatized. And once that happens you will only care about two things. The first, will be the thing that caused the negative emotions. Be they a person, or an action, you will become obsessed with fulfilling the need the negative emotions created. The second is obeying Hawkmoth’s will without question or choice.”

“Section two in your Paris Survival Guide,” Sabrina said with unwavering cheerful professionalism. “Has a list of the most common akuma, their negative emotion, and the actions that created them. Section three has a list of self-calming techniques, as well as meditation apps, and the number for the Self Care Hotline in case you need immediate assistance. If you do not have a phone, one will be provided for you curtesy of Wayne Enterprises.”

Damian felt all eyes glance at him, but he ignored them as Marinette continued. “Akumas vary from person to person. The only thing they really have in common is bad fashion sense. But you never know how dangerous they are going to be. Some will only cause a traffic jam. Some…some will make you think the world is ending.”

“A complete list of every akuma to ever appear,” Sabrina declared, “Is listed on the website miraculousparis.gov, as well as on the only hero approved blog, SpotsOn.com. On both sites, the akumas are organized by their danger level. The weakest being a level one, the strongest being a level ten. On both sites there is also a list of protocols to survive each akuma, which can also be found in section four of your guides.”

“Your going to want to download the Akuma Alert App,” Marinette said with an almost bored air, “It is the most efficient way to avoid and survive akumas since it will alert you of their location, threat level, and which protocols to follow. Teachers, you are required to have the app, and to report on it whenever one of your students are akumatized.”

“Due to the number of visitors here for the conference, and Hawkmoth’s patterns,” Sabrina said her cheerfulness giving way to something akin to sternness. “It is very likely that we will be experiencing at least one akuma a day. Our calculations have predicted, that at least one of you will be akumatized before the end of the week. All of you will be caught in at least three akuma attacks, and since you’re from Gotham, should any of them be higher than a level six, then at least half, if not all, of you will die.”

All of the Gothamites dropped their jaws on the floor before Marinette continued with a half-amused smile, “Try not to worry too much about dying though. If you look at our main hero, Ladybug, on page three you’ll see that one of her powers is the Miraculous cure. She reverses any damage done during an akuma attack, and yes that includes resurrecting the dead. But still, do try not to die. Dying sucks, and you will remember it. If not when you’re awake, then at least when you sleep, and nobody wants a nightmare akuma, anytime soon. They suck!”

All of the Parisians stared at nothing, as they nodded in unison, before Sabrina continued in her chipper tone, “At the back of your guide there is a list off all of the apps and websites we just mentioned. We recommend you study them thoroughly before you begin your tour of the city this afternoon!”

“But please,” Marinette said almost pleadingly, “Above all else remember this, the people who are akumatized, are not the enemy. They are the victims. They will do terrible things to anyone who get in their way. But they will remember none of it. No matter who they hurt, or what they destroy, they will never remember the things they did while akumatized. It does nothing to blame them except create an opportunity for another akuma. They are not at fault no matter what happens. The enemy is Hawkmoth and Mayura. They are the villains of this city. The only villains. Please keep that in mind, and do your best to be kind and respectful to others. You do not want to be the cause of an akuma.”

“Anything else you need to know is in your guides and on the sights mentioned,” Sabrina said closing her book with a snap.

Let me know if you want to be tagged, or check out this fic on Ao3!!

“Welcome to Paris!” Chloe said with a scoff, and with that, the girls left.

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mythologyolympics · 1 month ago

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Mythology Olympics tournament round 1

Propaganda!

Isis was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was one of the main characters of the Osiris myth, in which she resurrects her slain brother and husband, the divine king Osiris, and produces and protects his heir, Horus. She was believed to help the dead enter the afterlife as she had helped Osiris, and she was considered the divine mother of the pharaoh, who was likened to Horus. Her maternal aid was invoked in healing spells to benefit ordinary people.

In the first millennium BCE, Osiris and Isis became the most widely worshipped Egyptian deities, and Isis absorbed traits from many other goddesses. Rulers in Egypt and its southern neighbor Nubia built temples dedicated primarily to Isis, and her temple at Philae was a religious center for Egyptians and Nubians alike. Her reputed magical power was greater than that of all other gods, and she was said to govern the natural world and wield power over fate itself.

*Dyēus was conceived as a divine personification of the bright sky of the day and the seat of the gods, the *deywṓs. Associated with the vast diurnal sky and with the fertile rains, *Dyēus was often paired with *Dʰéǵʰōm, the Earth Mother, in a relationship of union and contrast.

While its existence is not directly attested by archaeological or written materials, *Dyēus is considered by scholars the most securely reconstructed deity of the Indo-European pantheon, as identical formulas referring to him can be found among the subsequent Indo-European languages and myths of subsequent cultures.

Commentary from the submitter: *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr is a hypothesised prehistoric god - a patriarchal sky god and precursor to figures like Zeus and Tyr - known only from traces in descendent languages/cultures. Everything points to a figure like this having existed, but no direct evidence survives, because he comes from a time before writing was invented. Even his name has to be written with an asterisk to mark it as hypothetical! On one hand, I think it's incredibly cool that we can know that he was (almost certainly) once worshipped, while on the other, I think there's something poetic about a forgotten god around whom the narrative is now defined by our inability to be certain that he ever existed, even in his worshippers' minds and myths.

#tournament poll #polls #wikipedia #mythology #mythology tournament

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the-starry-seas · 2 months ago

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list your 10 favorite characters from 10 different fandoms, then tag 10 people!

tagged by @loverboy-havocboy mwah <3

1) Tech Bad Batch you'll always be famous to me

2) Donnie for every version of TMNT love that dude

3) Ripley from Alien I will never be normal about her

4) Blue from Jurassic World I could pet her

5) Bee from Transformers I think he could fix me

6) Barney Barton from Marvel comics I need to throw him off a roof

7) Kili from The Hobbit deserved so much better...

8) BT FROM TITANFALL LET'S GOOO BEST TITAN 4EVA

9) Zer0 Borderlands I'd let him shoot me but that's maybe a low bar

10) Tsume from Wolf's Rain maybe precursor to my Crosshair interest

tagging @rooksunday @hastalavistabyebye @whiskygoldwings @insertmeaningfulusername @mereelskirata

@corrie-guard-things @cookiemonsterv3 @letshareapapou @adhd-coyote @sofiasfanartcollection

#bestie i was struggling to think of ten fandoms for a minute there #ask game answer

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12pt-times-new-roman · 1 year ago

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c3e66

To Zephrah!

I am reminded that there's another place in the story where we've seen wounds that leak black ichor and refuse to heal by natural or magical means: the wound that Tharizdun left Ioun with.

oh the new Laudna art is gorgeous

Orym got a custom battle maneuver! Zephran Spirit lets him expend a superiority die and add the result to a dexterity save. I'm assuming it's not a dex save specifically caused by wind, because that's ridiculously specific -- it's probably something like dex saves against falling prone, being grappled, forced movement, etc.

First to greet them is Maeve, Orym's sister (in law), with a group of guards.

Keyleth is still wounded, and are multiple Zephran soldiers who made it out of "the Red Center." That battle was an "all to arms" situation, and most of Zephrah's military force was sent there. Lida, another of Orym's systers, was unharmed and is tending to Keyleth's wounds.

In Zephrah, some of the permanent enchantment-based wards are offline, and some of their means of transportation are down.

oh god, Keyleth's spell slots aren't restoring either???

When the malleus key went off, everyone in the crater responded differently. Many were scattered across the continent, and others have been sent after them; and the rest were left behind and continued the fight.

When they arrive, Keyleth is resting. Her wounds haven't closed, and while there is no blood, they look freshly carved, with exposed red flesh that hasn't healed over. "The assassin uses the same toxin that once found its way to our village. It doesn't have a historical precursor we can find, and I barely sustained an injury last time but we all lost much in the shadow of that day. They were able to recover with the use of a... challenging remedy made from the blue perenum flower." Few grow, but those that do are found in cursed landscapes -- places of strife and unfriendly beasts. The ones they collected last time were from the Gray Valley north of Zephrah, and were all used to heal wounds from the last attack -- though notably, it seems that the use of this remedy can only affect a living creature. A party, including one of Orym's sisters, went out to find this flower, but they haven't returned.

Zephrah lost over 2 dozen people in the crater. That number includes people who were teleported away who may still be alive, though.

"The last thing that I saw, before the light took us... was someone important to me. Someone I lost long ago. And I will do everything in my power to destroy those who did this. Otohan, Ludinus, Liliana -- all of them. I will tear down everything they represent, and I will see that they leave no more pain in their wake."

"We need to rally. Confusion is woven into the design. They have sown confusion for months, in big towns and small... [the Ruby Vanguard] is now emerging publicly, using the confusion and outrage of the public to bolster their efforts." She asks them to track down the group that went missing trying to find the flowers for the cure, and to bring them and the plant back.

"Find this for us, so that we may heal. Then, together, we will rain the fury of every power that Exandria has onto these absolute shitheads." Keyleth gets to swear twice a year, canon

Keyleth regards the gods as heralds of the natural world, and the general religious vibe in Zephrah is that they worship nature and the natural world -- they try to be good neighbors and hope the gods do the same in return.

"Herald" is such an interesting description to me. It paints the gods as entities that usher in, but do not overtly create, the natural world, or that stand as a mediator between the raw power of nature and its actual physical manifestation. It just feels very intentional in its meaning, when Keyleth could've used words like "harbinger," "hierophant," or something similar here.

Oh hey! the airship crashing actually did something! it took out dozens of Ruby Vanguard members and damaged the top of the malleus key.

Both Keyleth and Lida were left in the crater after the white light went off, and they saw that both Ludinus and Liliana had been teleported away. She saw a couple of the reilora come through, and they seemed to be in alliance with the Vanguard; the "nightmarish" entities can bleed. Some were hulking, some were quick, some weren't fully material, but none spoke with words.

The Gray Valley was the site of Drassig's bargain with the demon prince of indulgence, which corrupted the landscape. There are dark spirits and errant demons, but the landscape and creatures grow more dangerous under Ruidus flares (which is interesting considering that Drassig is canonically Ruidusborn).

Ashton asks one of Keyleth's advisors about the Hishari. He gives a different date for the actual event that destroyed the village -- around 20 years ago, according to him -- but otherwise there isn't much new information.

The Bells Hells go to visit Orym's mom. He grew up in a little cottagecore house with flowers everywhere, built for halflings -- so Fearne, Ashton, Laudna, and maybe Imogen all have to stoop down.

Laura: "that fantasy food sounds good IRL right now." Travis, immediately: *picks up phone, orders doordash to the studio*

.....Orym had toys made by Chetney when he was a baby. Chetney got his start in Tal'dorei. Orym never knew his father. "Did you create my childhood, Chetney?" I swear to gods, if one of the mid/endgame reveals ends up being that Chetney is Orym's father--

Ashton and Orym head into town to finally get their new outfits! Orym is looking for new leather armor (possibly enchanted), and it sounds like he wants some bracers of defense. Ashton wants to be his "best self, I want to inspire people, the look of a champion," and he pulls design references from the hole -- anti-hero chique. Legendary hero, but make it fashion. Also, Ashton is described as a "strange hunk."

"Whitestone is for lovers, Zephrah is for fuckers."

Arriving in the Gray Valley, it is a barren, monochrome, grayscale landscape covered in petrified plantlife and the smell of burning fat. They stand in the middle of a forest, but all the trees are blanched, their leaves are white and gray.

Chetney identifies that burning fat, melted wax-type smell as the smell that accompanies fiends when they cross into Exandria.

Also in this area, they find scattered bits of spherical metal that are embedded into the dirt -- helmets with skulls in them, accompanied by the rest of a body. From the dryness and the moss growth, these bodies are quite old.

I know they were singing Tom's Diner, but Centuries sounds so fucking similar--

Aww, FCG casts death ward on Orym, taking a cue from Deanna's book.

Two gloomstalkers (I think) fly over the Bells Hells. For reference, Vox Machina fought gloomstalkers at level 17, the Mighty Nein fought them at level 9, and the Bells Hells are level 10.

Chetney notes that there is an omnipresent smell of volcanic emissions, but it's coming more strongly from an area of the forest in which the trees are darker, charred, and smoking.

For the record, the text of find familiar is vague enough that it comes down to DM discretion as to whether the caster uses their own or their familiar's skill bonuses. But if you absolutely need an answer from the rules as written, then the caster would use their own bonuses, because the spell states that, when looking through their familiar's eyes, the caster gains any senses of the familiar. This implies that when they are looking through their familiar's eyes, the caster uses their own senses except as augmented by the familiar's abilities. But again, this is vague enough that it ends up being up to the DM.

The Bells Hells continue looking for the flowers. Eventually, they find evidence of movement, and as they continue they reach a swampland. This entire area is a forgotten battlefield -- swords reclaimed by nature, pieces of armor buried in the marsh. A layer of ash has coated the entire landscape, but as they continue, they eventually find a little speck of blue.

did....... did Marisha just reference do you love the color of the sky? Is this what y'all mean when you say that Tumblr has breached containment?

Chetney harvests some of the flowers they found, but as he does, two of the armored bodies they'd found rise up and start crawling from the ground. They aren't skeletal and ancient -- they're a little more recent, and they look toward a small, shadowed figure that's been sitting, watching them. Hunched low, they can barely make out clasped hands, with dark purplish skin, golden-orange eyes, horns that curve above their head. As Chetney begins to move away, it stands, and we roll initiative!

As always, there's very little to liveblog during combat, so here's our character level updates section of the liveblog post!

This episode being so close in number to C2E55 is stressing me out--

Undead, but recently deceased, bodies attack Chetney. One is male and one is female, human or half-elven in form -- either could very well be Orym's sister or the missing Ashari.

It appears that there is some kind of humanoid form inside the ribcage of this demonic entity, and it uses the "soul rend" ability to inflict almost 40 points of necrotic damage on a failed save. This is a homebrew ability, as nothing in existing published 5e materials has the "soul rend" ability. It's also worth nothing that a low chuckle accompanies the necrotic damage, heard by everyone who gets hit by it.

"I'm gonna go to my happy place, so I'm gonna rage." Ashton rolls gravity, which causes his own form to become monochromatic like the landscape. But there are a bunch of other things on top. When they attack, they use both reckless attacks and gravity well. Gravity well causes the subject of the attack to make a STR save. Ashton also uses the belt and the ring to add more die rolls to this, but AFAIK this isn't a build update, since we've seen this effect before. But it's a massive amount of damage that clearly has an impact on the creature.

With his passive perception, Orym recognizes the corpse he's fighting as a member of the Air Ashari, but one he barely knew.

Fearne casts aura of life, which is a wildfire druid spell. Usually it's a paladin spell, but it's fucking great for a druid like Fearne.

*Laudna uses hounds of ill omen* Fearne and Imogen, immediately: "I am looking respectfully!"

More of the spectral, demonic figures aparate around them, and Chetney considers putting on Ludinus' fey energy-channeling vest.

Ashton rage build update: While the space build is active, Ashton can use their reaction to gain resistance to an attack (halving the attack's damage), then can force the attacking creature (if it fails its save) to move 30ft in any direction after the attack has resolved.

These creatures are a lot like the chasmes TM9 fought (in, btw, C2E60), in that they reduce their targets' max hit points upon attacking. However, Fearne's aura of life completely shuts this off, since not only does it give creatures in the radius resistance to necrotic damage, but also prevents their HP max from being lowered.

Anyway, I maintain that FCG's spell save is way too low for this level, to the point that it legit feels like Sam is actively sabotaging the party by not increasing FCG's wisdom. FCG's spell save should be 17 or 18 by level 10.

Ashton rage build update: Imogen casts lightning bolt, and could have targeted Ashton's hammer if she wanted. It was implied that Imogen's spell would've been cast from a different space should she have targeted the hammer instead of her actual target with it.

Fearne casts daylight, and none of these undead creatures appreciate it very much. These sound similar to the sorrow-sworn that the Mighty Nein encountered in the Barbed Fields.

With a witch bolt, Imogen dispatches the last creature along with its thralls.

Within the slain figure, Orym finds the trace of a consciousness, an Ashari warrior. It takes the form of a young, elven, female figure who touches her hand to Orym's and smiles before dissipating -- not his sister. The other two are dead beyond contact, but the Bells Hells bury them respectfully.

#critical role #note watches c3 #critical role spoilers #critical role campaign 3 #critical role c3 #critical role liveblog

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sailtomarina · 1 year ago

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It's too late

He watched her from where he sat hidden in the corner in a privacy booth that obscured any sight or sound within. She, in turn, sat at an intimate two-top near the center of the room. Her laugh drifted his direction tinkling with cutlery against plates and the calming plinks of the live pianist.

Theo Nott—old friend, confidant, traitor—beamed at the pleasure of her joy, hand reaching out to intertwine with her own.

It should have been Draco holding her hand and making her laugh. It had been Draco in that exact role not two months ago. He had been the full recipient of her gaze and her touch and her gasps and her sighs. She had been the one to remind him of the warmth in the sun, the sweet smell of morning rain, the power of a fleeting touch of skin against skin. She taught him to live life for the experience of it again, an outlook he had forgotten back in the early days of Hogwarts before the unbearable weight of his name. Her influence on him was slow and steady—one day the world was grey, then the next he looked out at the coastline and appreciated the sunrise for the promise it brought rather than the dread he’d long expected.

And despite everything Hermione had given him, he failed her.

Five years of friendship and more than friendship, and not once did he take the next step. Nobody knew about them, not his friends, not his family. And for what? A fear that she wouldn’t fit in? Wouldn’t understand why he needed his family name and all the power that came with it even after all they had lost?

He turned down her invitations to public dinners, parties, and weddings. He only took her out to muggle locations where nobody would recognize them. He told himself he did this for her, because he didn’t deserve her and didn’t want to ruin her reputation.

The truth was that he was a coward and always had been.

When his mother told him it was time to pick a wife and take on his responsibilities as head of household, he didn’t argue, didn’t tell her about them. He didn’t hesitate to tell Hermione. It hurt, yes. He even cried a bit. But he still went through with the decision and ended their relationship that wasn’t quite a relationship.

She just smiled and wished him well.

Now here she was, sitting at a table with his childhood friend, a man with just as much responsibility and expectations to his name. It burned Draco to see Theo toss the chains aside as if they weighed nothing, as if there wouldn’t be any repercussions. He dared to look happy. His eyes relayed his feelings openly in a way no proper Pureblood should—he looked at Hermione like she made him the luckiest bloke in the world.

Draco sat at his table long after the couple left, Theo’s arm draped loosely around her waist as if it belonged there. They had ignored the stares and whispers, wholly immersed in each other. He imagined Theo inviting her home for a drink as a precursor to…more. Her hair on his pillow, his body cradled between her legs. Draco imagined it all because he had lived it all.

When he finally walked out past her chair, he noticed a familiar scarf draped across its back. Picking it up, he didn’t even consider handing it to the maitre d’ for her to retrieve later. He walked straight outside with the silver silk he’d gifted her two Christmases past clutched tightly in his hand. He’d take it home with him, a hollow reminder of all he had lost. The scarf smelled just as he remembered her, all warm spices and parchment paper. He felt as forgotten as the flimsy bit of cloth he held.

He disapparated just as Hermione reappeared around the corner and ran forward, his name on her lips a second too late.

“Was that Draco with your scarf?” Theo followed at a casual stroll behind her, hands tucked into his pockets.

“I believe so. I don’t know why he’d take it with him.”

His laugh at her statement caught her attention and she turned an inquiring look his way.

“That’s just Draco. He doesn’t know how to be happy. He’ll keep your scarf, but deny having it or that it belongs to you if anyone asks.”

As much as she hated to hear it, she knew Theo was right. His frank observations were a large part of what drew her to him in the first place. He didn’t hide truths, as uncomfortable as they could often be. More importantly, he didn’t hide her and their burgeoning relationship.

“I just really liked that one,” she sighed.

Theo stepped closer, tugging off his own wool scarf and wrapping it around her shoulders. “You can have mine.”

She buried her nose in the deep blue fabric that matched his eyes and inhaled deeply. “Why does it smell like coffee?”

“I might have spilled some and neglected to clean it,” he replied with a sheepish grin. “Let me scourgify it for you.”

Hermione danced backwards as he made to lift the scarf away. “I happen to like coffee, Theo Nott.” Her eyes sparkled up at him as she looped the wool once more around her neck.

Their backs to the restaurant, they resumed their plans for the evening. For once, Draco Malfoy had guessed right. The two drank, delighted in further conversation, and retired to bed together—silver scarves and eyes thoroughly forgotten.

WC 932 Okay, so I was feeling angsty and a little thirsty for some other Slytherins. Sorry, not sorry!

#dramione prompt #dramione #dhr fanfiction #theomione #hermione x theo #draco malfoy #hermione granger #theo nott #theodore nott

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thefirstknife · 1 year ago

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Something I've been thinking a lot about has been the TFS Collector's Edition book. Yeah, it's not out yet and all, however. On the preview for it on the store, you can see two pages. And the full text is readable if you zoom in and I transcribed it in full and I've been losing my mind about it for a while now.

So first and foremost, there's two books of some kind. I'm not sure what the one with signatures and symbols is: it's called "Collectio Autographorum" which would be a collection of autographs:

That's not the one I want to talk about. I want to talk about the other one, which is given a description on the TFS store page:

As the final confrontation with the Witness draws near, Eido scours the solar system looking for clues, messages, and intel on the origins of the Witness to share with Guardians. During her travels, she finds a gift to honor your service—a Light to accompany the Darkness.

It's a text from Eido! The book is called "Entelechy" and here's the two pages visible on the store:

I'll put the whole transcript under read more, but before that let me describe what the text is about because it's fascinating.

The left page starts mid-text so a lot of the context is lost. It's seemingly a conversation between two unidentified people that are designated only with a random string of letters and numbers: one is "RS6243199" and the other is "HNW047622." Several lines include uncertain translations. The two discuss the concept of the final shape.

The right page, the one in blue, is text from Eido. The first section features footnotes about parts of the text that we can't see. All three footnotes refer to something that's not visible on the preview. It includes Eido's notes about the way these two individuals talk about the final shape, Eido's confusion about what the Consensus is and finally a note about some sort of "computational assistant" that shares a naming pattern with Vex minds.

Eido continues by talking about some sort of "Scribe Archive" that might be referring to the conversation of the two unidentified individuals she's analysing (this archive is also referenced in the first footnote). She says she followed crumbs of data to a databank from a "Rainship" (ship from the House of Rain) that originally crashed on Mercury. Saint and Osiris help her get this information and the trio talks about Mercury; how it used to be a garden world, how the sun never sets there and how Eido is eager for Mercury to be returned from the Witness' grasp so that she may visit.

We don't know the timeline of this of course so we have no clue when this conversation is happening and therefore we can't say what's up with Mercury and its possible return. The only thing I'm mildly sure of is that this conversation is probably taking place around the same time period we're in now; Eido is currently travelling and investigating things in order to help prepare us for the fight in TFS. It's certainly happening after Ahsa's reveal about the Witness because down in the text Eido identifies the individuals in the text as ... members of the Witness's species. Its precursors. It's her speculation and leads her to believe it's the first ever mention of the concept of the final shape, as discussed by the people that would later turn themselves into the Witness.

Very interesting! Most of all what's interesting is the implication that Eido somehow found records of a communication log from literally the most ancient of times and the possibility that this log was being kept on an Eliksni ship that crashed on Mercury (or at least that this ship had some sort of a code to crack this communication's log; it's not very clear because again, we're missing quite a lot of context). It's an interesting possibility! And of course, a really intriguing look into what the Witness' species was like and how they talked before they became the Witness. At least two of them!

Also I have no clue what the images on the left page are. It's incredibly hard to see even if you zoom in. Because of the mention of Vex minds and Mercury, my brain immediately tried to identify it as something Vex, especially because of the colouring as well, but I genuinely don't know. It could be anything.

Something to think about while we wait! I'm super excited to see more of the stuff on the Witness' species and the conversations between these two (perhaps more) individuals in the rest of the book.

Full text below:

Left page:

...Bountiful/Swarm] on their path to their great, fatal error. It did not stop the [Conquerors/Primacy/Sovereign] from using the gifts it granted for subjugation. Are we to accept that these, too, were meant to happen? If you reject the notion that destruction can be a final shape, how are we to accept that the Gardener allowed us to make such grievous mistakes? [RS6243199] Even after all these millennia, there is much we do not understand about the Gardener. Perhaps we will not understand until we have achieved the final shape for ourselves. [HNW047622] And when we have reached the final shape, will it all make sense? Will we all be able to live in a universe where people act, as they have always acter, for the self-evident good? Where evil does not exist because we do not allow it? Where all aligned without suffering or doubt? [RS6243199] This isn't like you, my friend. I am coming to see you. All will be well. TRANSCRIPTION ENDS

Analysis by Eido:

SCRIBE NOTES * The final shape is no longer described with a sensory semantic cluster (c.f. SCRIBE ARCHIVE X1-2-4A), but HNW and RS continue to use that structure to describe other concepts. Potentially reflective of semantic narrowing? ** Given the terminology, this Consensus might have been some sort of governing body, or a source of philosophical guidance. *** From this context, some sort of computational assistant? There appears to be some etymological overlap with the names of Vex Minds. Something to investigate later, perhaps! My cross-check for the identification code in SCRIBE ARCHIVE X1-2-4A proved quite fruitful. The trail of datacrumbs led me to a databank retrieved from a Rainship originally downed on Mercury! The Saint and Osiris were kind enough to share it with me, along with a pot of tea. Our conversation was most illuminating. I understand that Mercury was a scorched wasteland before the Great Machine's arrival. When it had finished, Humans could walk unprotected on its surface. What wonders the Great Machine can work! I can only hope that Mercury will return from the Witness's clutches, released as Titan was, so that I may see it for myself. I hear that, thanks to Sol engulfing its sky, one could study without pause... or at least until exhaustion proved greater than the desire to learn! Perhaps I could catch up on some light reading... In any case, the concept of the final shape has worn many faces. From your encounters with the Disciples of the Witness we know that they all had their own understanding of this concept – that they all saw what they wished to see in it. But this communications log, here, appears to predate all of them. If I am correct, and the parties communicating are among the Witness's precursors, then this may be the concept's original form. We can see in this log that HNW and RS, at least, were preoccupied with the concept of a higher purpose. They sought...

#destiny 2 #the final shape #eido #witness #long post

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champ-wiggle · 30 days ago

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Yellow Silence: Miniature from the Silos Apocalypse (ca. 1100)

A yellow field represents "silence in heaven about the space of half an hour” in this miniature from the twelfth-century Silos Apocalypse (British Library Add MS 11695, fol. 125v)

As the seventh, final seal is opened during the Book of Revelation, unlocking the scroll that John of Patmos envisions in God’s right hand, a silence breaks out in heaven for half an hour. For centuries, artists have avoided depicting this apocalyptic caesura by focusing instead on the action-packed aftermath: thunder and lightning, the seven trumpets, hail and fire mingled with blood. From John Martin’s 1837 mezzotint of cataclysmic crags above turbulent seas back to Albrecht Dürer’s noisy 1511 woodcut of flames engulfing life like tinder, the “silence in heaven about the space of half an hour” is absent, implied only apophatically, as the converse of the chaos that now reigns over, and rains down upon, the earth.

John Martin - The Opening of the Seventh Seal - B1978.43.931 - Yale Center for British Art

This is not the case for a miniature from the twelfth-century Silos Apocalypse (British Library Add MS 11695, fol. 125v), a codex copy of the Tractatus de Apocalipsin, eighth-century Spanish theologian Beatus of Liébana’s commentary on the Book of Revelation. Here sonic absence is visualized, and it is yellow. Just as silence blankets the ears, in this manuscript, a monochromatic rectangle “serves as an effective screen that blocks the beholder’s gaze”, writes art historian Elina Gertsman. Auditory interruption gets transposed onto the textual plane, as the rectangle veils the ruled lines it floats above. “It’s not that yellow as a color ‘stands for’ silence according to medieval symbolic logic”, argues scholar Vincent Debiais, “it’s that the colored area on the page opens a visual moment, a space of silence within the manuscript itself.” The effect becomes all the more palpable when we consider that the manuscript may have been read aloud.

Untitled Yellow Monochrome, Yves Klein

It can be tempting, despite scholarly reservations, to view this yellow silence as an early precursor to the color field abstractions and monochromatic paintings that preoccupied the mid-twentieth century. Rather than claiming that the Silos Apocalypse prefigures works like Mark Rothko’s Orange and Yellow (1956) or Yves Klein’s “Untitled Yellow Monochrome” (1956), it would be more productive (and interesting) to ask how those modern investigators of the chromosphere approached a type of representation that converged with medieval forms of contemplation. As Debiais writes, “It’s important to challenge the common idea of an almost evolutionary procession, where modernist abstract art is somehow the climax, a new and perfectly original approach to the visual world, absolutely different from all that preceded it.”

A yellow field represents "silence in heaven about the space of half an hour” in this miniature from the twelfth-century Silos Apocalypse (British Library Add MS 11695, fol. 125v)

#art #religious art #yellow #silence

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transgenderer · 10 days ago

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Though there are tantalizing precursors of a doctrine of rebirth in the Brahmanas and even in the Rig Veda, the first explicit discussion of the doctrine of rebirth in Indian literature occurs in the Upanishads. A king asks a young man named Gautama (no relation to the Buddha) if he knows the answer to the following questions:

‘Do you know where created beings go from here?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Do you know how they come back again?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Do you know about the separation between the two paths, the path of the gods and the path of the fathers?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Do you know how the world (of heaven) over there does not get filled up?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Do you know how, in the fifth oblation, water comes to have a human voice?’ ‘No, sir.’

This Socratic routine goes on for some time until, eventually, the king tells the boy the answers:

When the embryo has lain inside the womb for ten months or nine months, or however long, covered with the membrane, then he is born. When he is born, he lives as long as his allotted lifespan. When he has died, they carry him to the appointed place and put him in the fire, for that is where he came from, what he was born from. Those who know this, and those who worship in the forest, concentrating on faith and asceticism, they are born into the flame, and from the flame into the day, and from the day into the fortnight of the waxing moon, and from the fortnight of the waxing moon into the six months during which the sun moves north; from these months, into the year; from the year into the sun; from the sun into the moon, from the moon into lightning. There a Person who is not human leads them to the ultimate reality. This is the path that the gods go on.

But those who worship in the village, concentrating on sacrifices and good works and charity, they are born into the smoke, and from the smoke into the night, and from the night into the other fortnight, and from the other fortnight into the six months when the sun moves south. They do not reach the year. From these months they go to the world of the fathers, and from the world of the fathers to space, and from space to the moon. That is king Soma. That is the food of the gods. The gods eat that.

When they have dwelt there for as long as there is a remnant (of their merit), then they return along that very same road that they came along, back into space; but from space they go to wind, and when one has become wind he becomes smoke, and when he has become smoke he becomes mist; when he has become mist, he becomes a cloud, and when he has become a cloud, he rains. These are then born here as rice, barley, plants, trees, sesame plants and beans. It is difficult to move forth out of this condition; for whoever eats him as food and then emits him as semen, he becomes that creature’s semen and is born. And so those who behave nicely here will, in general, find a nice womb, the womb of a Brahmin or the womb of a Kshatriya or the womb of a Vaishya. But those whose behaviour here is stinking will, in general, find a stinking womb, the womb of a dog or the womb of a pig or the womb of an Untouchable.

Then they become those tiny creatures who go by neither one of these two paths but are constantly returning. ‘Be born and die’— that is the third condition. And because of that, the world (of heaven) over there is not filled up. And one should try to protect oneself from that … Whoever knows this becomes pure, purified, and wins a world of merit, if he really knows this.

-Wendy Doniger, On Hinduism, quoting Chandogya Upanishad, 5.3.1-10

#she actually mentions there's a rigvedic line that OCULD be interpreted as a reference to karma

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solivar · 10 days ago

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Ghost Stories On Route 66

Chapter 14

The sky simply did not look right -- had not, in fact, looked right since that morning, when the sun rose red above the eastern hills, hanging there like a baleful crimson eye glaring doom at the desert and everything living in it. The cloud wrack overhead swallowed it up shortly thereafter, vast, dark lenticulars piled miles into the sky and as far as the eye could see, curling around themselves like some massive, living thing looking for a place to set down its feet. When they parted enough to permit a glimpse of anything but themselves, the arch of heaven was the dangerously pale and sickly yellow that, in summer, was a precursor for heavy weather, hail and flooding rain, lightning and damaging winds, sometimes tornadoes. Now, at the tail end of October, almost November, that color sky and the savage, stifling heat the pressed down on the world beneath those clouds was unseasonal at best, unnatural at worst.

Nathaniel McCree, returning from battening down the animal enclosures, wished quietly that the storm, whatever kind it might be, would break. The waiting was always the worst part and this kind of waiting was particularly bad: every nerve alive and twitching, every sense physical and numinous straining to perceive something, anything. It put him far out of sorts.

A low rumble of thunder riding a hot gust of wind, the first to stir the ground level air since dawn, followed him up onto the ranch house’s back porch, set the wind-chimes hanging from the eaves to either side of the steps ringing with spirit-calling music. Also not a good sign: the chimes wouldn’t call in such a way if there was no need for them to do so. From inside, he heard a chair dragging across the kitchen floor and Yanaba came to the back screen door, stepped outside to join him. “Anything?”

“Nothing lurking around the barns, no.” A second gust, stronger than the first, rolled over them, strong enough to lift his wife’s heavy iron-and-pepper braid off her shoulder, and a louder, closer roll of thunder. “Readings settle down yet?”

“Not a bit.” She held the door open for him and he stepped inside, sliding the internal locks to keep the screen door in place but not yet closing the inner door.

The pieces of her rifle were still spread out across the kitchen table, along with her cleaning kit, a trio of 3D printers chugging away on the kitchen counters to produce her specialized ammunition. A fan of holoscreens, hanging just high enough not to be disrupted by her movements, displaying the current data provided by their web of sensor modules, a sphere of more than three hundred square miles of New Mexico, Arizona, and the multiple borders physical and more-than-physical they shared. The local telluric currents fluctuated violently across their surface, as unsettled as the ocean driven before a hurricane, the storm-surge passing through them and bleeding into the natural world in pulses that were slowly becoming more regular, more closely spaced together.

“Nothing’s opened up yet, but it’s only a matter of time now.” Yana remarked, evenly, as she slid the pieces of her weapon back together.

“So I see.” Nate fetched them both a cup of coffee and sat to help load her magazines once the rounds cooled and hardened enough to allow it, to watch the monitors and wait for whatever was coming to arrive.

When the storm finally broke, it did so with shocking speed and violence. The wind, gusting hotly against the shutters and the sides of the house, rose to a screaming sledgehammer as hot as the exhalations of a blast furnace, carrying with it sand and grit and something that might have been smoke and it took their combined strength to wrestle the inside door shut and bolt it in place against the force of it. Lightning, thus far not much in evidence despite the thunder, arced from cloud to cloud and fell in curtains rather than bolts, hanging suspended between earth and sky, visibly pulsing as they raked across the desert. Thunder literally shook the ground, rattled the windows in their casements and the bones in their bodies as they took cover under the kitchen table, the border wards embedded in the yard fence coming to life in an effort at blunting the storm’s ferocity. Wardfire danced with lightning and wind and the both broke around the house at least enough to keep the photovoltaic roof intact and feeding the power that let their monitors scream dire warning tones of imminent doom from overhead. Yanaba poked her head up and grabbed one.

“It’s close, whatever it is,” She muttered and reached up again, this time for her rifle.

“So I see.” The etheric patterns had coalesced from chaotic cross-sea waves into a single stable vortex that, even as they watched, imploded, sending a secondary shockwave rippling through the world beyond the world.

Outside, the storm itself visibly shuddered , the wind curling in on itself, voice dropping from a roar, the rotation of the clouds stuttering and slowing away from tornadic intensity. A torrential downpour followed, washing the dust and the heat and the taste of lightning out of the air, drumming on the roof and cutting fresh courses through the hard-packed dirt of the yard.

“You think something came through?” Yanaba asked, as she tossed him his ballistic vest and shrugged into her own.

“Only one way to be sure of that, darlin’,” Nate replied, and went to retrieve his medical kit.

The hoverjeep was, predictably, not having any of it so they loaded their gear into the back of the gas-drinker: emergency medical kit, detection and mitigation equipment, the larger of her several weapons, extra ammunition. Yanaba made him strap on his own freshly cleaned and loaded by her hands sidearm before she’d let him get in the vehicle and slid behind the wheel herself, because of the two of them her night vision was better and it was rapidly getting dark. The navigation system was at least not inclined to be pestiferous, interfacing smoothly with the house’s monitors and accepting the guidance data as they pulled out. “Last solid contact was about twenty miles north of here, in the hills near Nakaibito. We can take the 491 almost all the way there.”

The drive into the hills was entertainingly fraught, enlivened by heavy bands of rain lashing out of the entirely natural if unseasonable storms that followed hard on the northerly’s heels and broadside, straight-line winds nearly strong enough to blow them off the road. It grew even more so once they left the 491 for surface roads that hadn’t seen a lick of maintenance since hover technology took the lead in transportation and which were prone to being washed half-away by flash flooding and blocked by downed tree limbs and, ultimately, a pair of fallen trees that forced them to leave their vehicle a mile from their presumed destination and hike the rest of the way in.

Yanaba took point, as was her custom, her rifle slung for the moment in favor of a machete to cut through the leg-attacking ground cover and a hiking stick to brush aside things that didn’t need to be cut. Nate carried their handheld tracking and motion detection monitors, set to ignore their own movements, his own hiking stick that doubled as a heavy shock baton in a crunch, and a neatly organized pack of medical supplies. Even with the lightning arcing overhead, their lights and vision-enhancing gear, it was dark and the hike punishingly hard, the ground underfoot a sandy, boggy mire, the rain only barely starting to slack.

The motion detector sang its little rising-falling alarm tone. “Movement up ahead, ten yards. We’re almost there, darlin’ so --”

Underbrush rustled, far closer than ten yards away and with the passage of something much more solid than falling rain, and Yanaba traded her machete for a machine pistol, flipping on some extra light as she did so. Yellow-green eyes flickered in the darkness and a muzzle covered in wet silver-gray fur, a long, slender body vanishing among the junipers and ground cover in the blink of an eye.

“Whatever that was, it didn’t register on the motion detector but it did cause an etheric ripple.” Nate observed, mildly, and moved to his wife’s shoulder.

“So not actually a coyote, then.” The safety on her gun clicked firmly off. “Stay close.”

They set off in the direction the not-coyote had vanished, the sound of water roaring down a no-longer-dry arroyo rising loud enough to drown out the rain beating on the thirsty ground and the thunder still echoing among the canyons. Another sound joined it, as they came within a short stone’s throw of their destination: high and thin, a wordless wail of cold and tired and hungry .

Yanaba froze and he had to check his stride to avoid walking into her. “You heard that, right?”

“Yes, I did. Came from over thataway.” He showed her the motion detector, where a single pulsing contact glittered like a star they were probably going to have to shoot.

They proceeded carefully, Nate automatically moving to flanking position, Yanaba snapping her tactical visor into place to aid targeting in the somewhat less than optimal firing conditions. A second cry rose, closer, and it was by virtue of his place behind and off to the side that he saw its source before she did -- a huddled bundle on the edge of the arroyo, inches from the rushing water gnawing steadily away at the muddy bank. “Darlin’, it’s over here.”

The bundle shivered slightly, and he turned a targeting beam directly on it: a ratty towel, either dark to begin with or darkened with blood and mud and wet, wrapped around something small, moving weakly. A third cry, even thinner and more tired than the first too, rose from up, along with an audible gurgle and cough. Nate crossed to it and knelt, lifted the edge of the towel and dropped it back, hurriedly pulling down his own visor and activating its physical and psychic defense structures; they helped wash the afterimages of what he just saw out of his brain before they could take hold. “Leave your visor on, defense mode active. It’s...I’m not sure what it is, but it’s tiny.”

“Nate, what are you --” Yanaba came through the brush at his back and froze as he opened the towel completely, exposing the thing it was wrapped around to merciless light and enhanced vision gear.

“It’s a baby. ” Nate finally managed, after a moment of stunned silence. “Umbilicus is still attached -- still some blood in it, even. Fresh out of the wrapper. How the --”

“Nathaniel McCree, step away from that thing now. ” Yanaba’s voice was low and tight.

He shrugged out of his backpack. “Just a minute, darlin’. Gotta find something to wrap --”

“ Nate. ” Her voice somehow managed to tighten another notch. “ Get back.”

He glanced over his shoulder and found the muzzle of her rifle leveled with the bundle, her mouth an expressionless line beneath her visor. “Yanaba -- it’s a baby. ” He checked again. “ He’s a baby. Can’t be more than a few hours old. Whatever happened -- however he came to be here -- he didn’t do it himself. He’s not the threat here.”

“That is an infant naayéé , Nate. It’s only innocent now , because it can’t bite you in half yet. ” The tightness was giving way to exasperation. “Step away. I promise I won’t let it suffer.”

“He. Not it. He .” Very deliberately he opened his pack and very deliberately removed an emergency support bubble which he very deliberately inflated and began running the internal readiness diagnostics and very deliberately removed the little bundle of squirm and too many limbs and a head that wasn’t shaped quite right from his ratty old towel and placed him in said bubble, which immediately began scanning to determine his medical intervention needs. “And he’s human enough that I’m getting readings here and indicators that he’s suffering from exposure and dehydration and borderline hypothermia. So it’s possible that he’s been out here since he was born.”

“The mother probably abandoned it when she saw what it was.” Yanaba said, after a long, uncomfortably silent moment broken only by the emergency support bubble’s assorted diagnostic tones. She lowered her weapon and flipped on the safety. “It’s a monster , Nate.”

“A baby monster.” He looked up from the diagnostic panel. “You see any tracks coming in?”

Yanaba snorted. “In this mess? Fuck no, are you kidding? ”

“Not even coyote tracks.” Nate replied, and initiated the processes that would provide hydration and nutrients and bring the little bundle of squirm back to a safe and healthy core body temperature.

Yanaba was silent for a moment. Then, ungrudgingly, “It did lead us here. Not that that doesn’t mean that some one or some thing isn’t elaborately fucking with us.”

“Point.” He tucked the towel into a biohazard bag and vacuum sealed it. “That’s something we can figure out once we get back to civilization, don’t you think?” He tried it and, to his surprise, the bubble’s internal antigrav units were willing to work; it lifted off the ground to easy physical guidance range.

“Nate…” She sighed. “Don’t get attached. All I ask. Please. ”

“I’ll try, darlin’.” He reached out for her hand, and she gave it to him. “I think we should call him Jesse. He looks like a Jesse.”

He was pretty glad her other hand was too full of rifle to hit him.

Hanzo attempted to arrange is face into an expression that wasn’t unadulterated horror and felt himself failing completely. “You -- your parents --”

“Yeah.” The ranger’s smile was small and sad and the pain behind it lodged in Hanzo’s throat; he found himself unable to swallow or speak past it. “My mother, at least, and I can’t really say I blame her -- I’ve seen the pictures of what I looked like back then. Screamin’ and runnin’ is probably the least of what I’d do.”

“That...that is not funny , Jesse.” Hanzo’s voice sounded strangled in his own ears.

“C’mon now, darlin’ -- it’s a little funny.” Another small, sad smile.

“ No. ” He wished, at that moment, that he had more limbs of his own to hold him with. “What happened -- well, I know what happened, your grandmother must have --”

“Nana McCree was pretty hardcore, I’ll admit. Came from a long and illustrious line of monster-hunters on her mama’s side of the family and, bein’ the only daughter of her parents, took the responsibilities pretty seriously. She and Pop Pop tried to have kids of their own, but it never took, so she ended up training two of her nieces to continue the family business. We...don’t really get along that well.” The smile vanished so completely it was like it had never been. “By the time they found me, Nana was past childbearing -- past sixty, both of them, even though they were pretty spry and still doing the work of helping patrol and protect their chunk of the desert around where they lived. They owned a little ranch outside Gallup, which is a ways to the west of here, near the Arizona border. But, no matter how spry they were, nobody was going to believe Nana gave birth to me, so grandparents it was. They also knew pretty quick that they were going to need some help, so they called a couple old friends before the week was out…”

Gabe and Jack arrived under cover of darkness within a couple days of the call, rolling in on a moonless midnight driving a vehicle with all its transponder signals carefully spoofed and using a pair of their more load-bearing alternate identities to travel under. Nate appreciated both the speed and the discretion, if not being woken up by Gabriel ghosting through a crack in the defenses and poking him in the ribs barely an hour after he laid his head on the pillow.

“Boo.” Gabe had more eyes open than should be allowed by law and was wearing his widest, fangiest grin, which was a version of him only his husband really enjoyed waking up to. “How’s it hanging, old man? Jack and I understand that you’ve got gremlin issues.”

“You made good time.” Nate glanced over his shoulder at Yanaba, sleeping undisturbed, and decided to leave it that way -- it was technically his duty rotation, after all. “Where’s your man?”

“Waiting out on the porch with our gear.” Gabe stepped back and Nate rolled out of bed, slipping into his robe and slippers and padding downstairs to open the door.

As promised, Jack was waiting surrounded by duffle bags and equipment cases, his visor and implants engaged to give him a reasonable approximation of vision, back to the door and gazing out over the yard and the surrounding outbuildings. He turned as the door opened, and grinned that tight-lipped grin of his, and let himself be pulled into an embrace. “Good to see you, too, Nate. Gimme a hand with this?”

“Surely.” They schlepped all the gear into a corner of the sitting room, got them settled there for the nonce, and Nate fetched coffee for himself and Jack, who appeared to need it at least as much as he did. “Thank you for coming -- I know it was short notice but Yana and I could really use an extra couple hands and brains right now.”

“We got that impression from all the screaming, yeah.” Gabriel replied, and waved off an offer of something stronger.

Jack drank deeply and then set his cup aside. “So...what happened?”

Nate took a deep breath and told them. They started exchanging speaking glances about halfway through his recitation and by the time he was done, Jack was regarding him with naked concern. “Why didn’t Yanaba just shoot it?”

“Nate wouldn’t let me.” Yanaba answered that question for herself, padding down the stairs in her own nightclothes and stepping into a hug from Gabriel. “I’m glad you’re here. Maybe you can figure out how to feed it.”

“It hasn’t eaten in a week?” Gabriel asked, a faint hint of alarm in his tone.

“He’s sleepin’ in a support bubble -- it’s keeping him hydrated and feedin’ him liquid nutrients but that’s not makin’ in him very happy. ” Nate replied tiredly. “Mostly he’s like any other infant and spends most of his time sleepin’ and eatin’ and makin’ diapers but when he’s awake? Y’all will know it.”

It was almost on cue. From upstairs there came a high, thin, shivery wail, a sound that crossed a multitude of borders, and the wards built into the walls and foundation and the fence outside came to life in order to contain its force. Gabriel’s whole shape shimmered for a moment in response, swirling shadows and dark owl wings and too many eyes, before it stabilized back into something mostly human. He took the stairs two at a time as he went up and left the rest of them scrambling in his wake, a not uncommon occurrence, and by the time they caught up he was leaning over the support bubble, hands pressed flat and spread across the plassteel hood, gazing down at its contents. The contents were kicking and flailing assorted limbs but not crying any more, which was a welcome thing after so many days.

“Be careful.” Yanaba said sharply as Gabriel reached down and unlocked the hood, sliding it back.

“Always am.” Gabriel cooed, the tone clearly meant for the bundle of squirm. “Hey, bebé , look at you . Look at all those toes -- that’s a lot of toes. So many toes. We’re going to have to do something about that but for now…?”

He reached down and picked the bundle of squirm -- whom Nate was trying very hard not to call Jesse in Yanaba’s hearing -- and cuddled him against his chest. There wasn’t a onesie on Earth meant to accommodate that shape, not even a sleep sack, but they’d managed to jury-rig an effective diaper and procured a soft lambswool blanket to wrap him in. He kicked a little against Gabe’s chest, and an appendage that was far too bonelessly flexible and weirdly jointed to be properly described as a hand wrapped itself around his fingers as he stroked the baby’s face gently and dragged them into his mouth.

“ Wow , that’s a lot of teeth , too.” Gabe pressed a kiss to the baby’s approximation of a forehead. “A lot of teeth. What do you need so many sharp teeth for, bebé? ”

“Traditionally, the naayéé consume human flesh and blood.” Yanaba deadpanned. “And from a fairly early age at that.”

“Well, that’s not going to work, now is it?” Gabriel nuzzled the little critter again and made no move to pull his fingers away from teeth that were, while tiny, multitudinous, needle-sharp, and entirely capable of reaching the bones of the unwary; Nate had spent some time with his hand under a biotic field emitter as testimony to that fact. “You don’t need to eat people, you know? There’s lots of other nice things to eat. You can have those teeth later if you need them but for now can we try something else, little one? Come on, I know you can do it. Let me see you --”

A fruity little giggle rose out of the bundle in Gabriel’s arms, a sound so perfectly sweet and pure and human that even Yanaba peeked in when he carried the bundle over to them. He still had too many limbs and that head with its enormous sealed-shut eyes and weird shape was still the sort of thing that would induce nightmares in the unprepared but now, instead of a mouthful of meat-eater teeth, it had rosy gums and drool and lips stretched into a wide, sweet smile.

“He’s probably going to need something more substantial than just formula.” Gabriel said, and let him have his fingers to gnaw on again.

“We’ve got goat milk that hasn’t become cheese yet.” Yanaba suggested, and looked astonished at herself.

“If you’ve got any fresh red meat to puree for enrichment, that might be a good idea, too. He’s pretty hungry.” Gabriel looked up, a little smile settled on his face. “What’re you calling him?”

“We’re not,” said Yanaba at the same moment Nate said, “Jesse.”

“Jesse. Jessito. Yeah, I can see that.” Gabriel cooed again and was rewarded with another sweet monster-baby giggle. “He even looks like a Jesse. Jack, I think we’re going to have to stay awhile.”

“Yeah, I saw that one coming.” Jack gave Yanaba a look comprised of equal parts resignation and amusement. “I think we’re outnumbered and outflanked here, Yana.”

“ Obviously. ” Yanaba sighed, and went downstairs to liquify a steak.

“Gabe was convinced from the start that at least one of my parents was human, because he got my teeth to go away that night just by askin’ nicely.” Jesse was steadfastly refusing to meet his eyes. “It took him the best part of three months to get me into a totally human shape and he’s been kinda smug about that ever since because the smart money said it wasn’t possible at all. Most of the old-time naayéé weren’t real human-lookin’ no matter who their mothers were, with a few exceptions, and they were...really pretty special exceptions. But Gabe’s nothin’ if not stubborn and he wasn’t willing to give up on the point, because it probably would have become a matter of life and death eventually.”

“Your grandmother,” Hanzo said, his mouth dry, the question not quite willing to form on his tongue. “She wouldn’t have...”

“Nana? Nah. For all her telling Pop Pop not to get attached, she took hold pretty hard herself. Used to say that I grew on her like saddle mold.” An amused little snort. “The rest of the local family wasn’t so keen, particularly when it became clear I was human on the outside only and that was pretty early.”

“That isn’t true.” Hanzo said, and silently willed him to meet his eyes, a signal he clearly did not receive.

“True enough for government work.” Dryly. “It became clear because I killed things without even trying hard. Or meaning to.”

Hanzo opened his mouth and closed it again without any of the possible sounds trying to crowd their way up his throat making it past his lips. Jesse, mercifully, didn’t notice.

“It was little things at first -- bugs, mostly. Scorpions are pests, y’know, and finding them all shriveled up just meant they could be swept out instead of squished. Spiders. I hated spiders when I was little. I think I might’a had a bit of a complex about things with too many legs. I’d just...look at ‘em hard and they’d keel over. I was too little to make the logical connection and it happened too fast for anyone else to see it for the longest time.” His eyes dropped closed. “One day when I was five, almost ready to go to school, one of the goats I was playin’ King of the Hill with butted me off the side of a rock with a bit more enthusiasm than usual and...it hurt. Skinned knee, bloodied lip, I was scared and mad and it came pourin’ out of me and before I could stop it everything for a hundred feet around me just...died. Everything -- the goats, the plants in the field, birds fell out of the sky. Gabe came running when he heard me screaming and caught it with both barrels -- he’s not particularly killable but I still hurt him badly enough that it took him the best part of two days to reform. Nana tranqed me from range and they bound me up in wards until they could figure out what it was and how to control it.” A tiny, humorless smile. “That was mostly Jack and Nana -- control and precision were the gifts they gave me.”

“You were so young -- you must have been so frightened .” At five, he had been aware of the interest Uncle Toshiro had in him, but was still too young to fully appreciate what it meant beyond the specialness of it.

“More scared that I was going to hurt someone else.” His voice was rough and when he opened his eyes there was a hint of moisture around their rims that had not been there before. “I told Nana and Pop Pop I didn’t want to go to school and they agreed that it was probably a good idea for me to stay away from other kids until I was old enough to keep my emotions under control.” A pause. “Y’know, this is the furthest I’ve ever gotten with this conversation? Normally by the time I get to the whole baby monster cured by my terrifying smoke Dad bit, it’s all over.”

Which confirmed at least one suspicion. Hanzo’s heart ached and he said, quietly, “We don’t have to continue if you don’t want to -- I can see how much this pains you.”

“It’s almost a good kinda hurt, darlin’.” One of the ranger’s hands found his and squeezed tightly. “Of course, the rest of the family found out. And there was a blow-up between Nana and the eldest of her nieces, Maritza, who lived on the Rez and was one of the local hunter-protectors. A bunch of hard words were said and they never did reconcile, which was a problem in the long run.” Finally, finally, those dark eyes turned to him. “Gabe and Jack stayed with us until I was ten, which was longer than they’d stayed in any one place for years, and probably about two years longer than was technically safe for any of us.”

“How did they know each other? Your grandparents and Gabe and Jack?” The question came out before he could stop it.

“They served together in an international unit under the auspices of the United Nations. Ana and Rein and a handful of others, too. Technically it was an all-volunteer outfit, it’s just that all the volunteers had particularly refined and unusual skill sets that allowed them to meet the parameters of their mission -- which was, actually, keepin’ things from Beyond out of this world or, if they managed to wiggle their way in, evictin’ them again with extreme prejudice.” Again, the smile that crossed his face had little in the way of humor in it. “Gabe and Jack got into their current condition in the line of duty and, while it took a long time, the DoD finally got around to acknowledging that fact, which is why they get to stay here unmolested now. For a while that wasn’t true, and they had to keep movin’ in order to stay ahead of the people assigned to determine exactly how hard to kill they really were. Lingerin’ as long as they did, even in the geographical ass-end of nowhere, was a huge risk for them t’take and I’ve never --” He stopped, swallowed hard, continued on. “I’ve never quite felt that I deserved it. Gabe hates that, but it’s true.”

Two days after his tenth birthday, Jesse sat on top of the ranch house roof and watched the men he called Papi and Jack drive away -- waited, point in fact, until there was nothing left to see of their vehicle, even with the running lights on, and there was no real reason left to stay. When he climbed back down, he dug out the wards that they made for him and which he hadn’t needed at all for going on two years and put them back on. Nate was proud of the maturity and self-knowledge that took, and also worried enough that, when he went into town for the next few weeks, he made sure there were enough chores available to keep Jesse busy. Fortunately, none of the MiBs who’d been sniffing around came to the ranch while he wasn’t home and, a few weeks later, they faded away entirely, chasing other leads.

When Jesse turned eleven, he also started to grow. He’d always been on the lean and lanky side, all knees and elbows and feet just big enough to trip over if he wasn’t being careful, but now, seemingly overnight, he shot up ten inches and outgrew almost all his clothes, his shoes, and his bed. He took a positively unholy joy in being taller than Yanaba for the first time ever, a fact about which she grumbled and smiled, because it was something that made him demonstrably happy , a thing he’d had in short supply for quite some time. The spring between eleven and twelve, he decided he’d like to try going to school in town again and so they enrolled him and requested that his records be transferred over from the online academy where he’d studied his academics thus far.

By twelve, he was starting to fill out in across the shoulders and chest, a good two inches taller than Nate, and more alone than he’d ever been, for all that he was now going into town every day and spending most of it with kids his own age. Maritza’s children lived there with her ex and they had been warned, in general terms, not to mix with their not-cousin because he wasn’t right -- a warning they helpfully shared with the peers they’d known all their lives, and the precise dimensions of the not-right-ness grew in the telling as it passed among them. Jesse put his head down and held his tongue and put the wards back on and concentrated on his studies: he was the sort of student every teacher loved, the kind that didn’t have to be nagged to do the reading or turn in his homework on time, and while he was never going to love math for its own sake, he at least tolerated it for its relationship to science (which he enjoyed) and music (which he was good at and enjoyed). The librarian was his best friend that year, feeding his appetite for books, for worlds he could escape into that were at least different than the one he presently occupied, and he made her a lovely thank you card that he handed back with the last of them at the end of the year. After that, he saw no reason to return, not so dedicated to the idea of having friends that he was willing to suffer the slings and arrows of adolescent cruelty to search them out. Loneliness was a grief he was used to, after all, and he could learn just as well at his terminal in the study.

In the winter between thirteen and fourteen, Nate began to feel his age -- not that he hadn’t been feeling it before but those long, dark months were colder and wetter than most and his joints let him know about it at length. Jesse effortlessly picked up his slack, for which he was eternally grateful, rising early to tend the animals and put on the coffee, walking miles of fence to check and maintain the integrity of the physical and numinous barriers, moving his terminal into the living room so he could run errands in the house and do his schoolwork at the same time. Yanaba fussed over him to excess, which he tolerated to the best of his abilities, and so did the boy, which gave them time together on a daily basis that they used to improve his emergency medical skills, to work on the little handicrafts that they both favored when they were too tired to think, to read their way through each others’ lists of favorite novels. They were, in fact, halfway through Lonesome Dove , one of Nate’s all-time favorites, the afternoon he started to feel a touch dyspeptic and then a little nauseous, and then a lot tired. The last thing he saw, as the world started going light around him, was Jesse reaching for him, and the look on his face.

Nate’s will stipulated cremation, which was duly accomplished, and his ashes brought home in a ceramic urn glazed the deep blue of the night sky over the desert mixed with tiny flecks of silver. For the first month after, Jesse and Yanaba drifted around the ranch like ghosts themselves, doing what needed to be done mostly on autopilot, numb and gray with grief. Toward the middle of the second, they began bumping into each others’ edges again, became aware of one another, and came back together to do more than just function. Just you and me now became the fulcrum around which their lives turned and they made the effort to keep it that way, sitting together in front of the fireplace to do coursework assignments and read novels, to watch a new old movie on the holotank, to do the 3D design work for Jesse’s own custom ammunition, built around his strengths and the nature of the power running in his veins. They both knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d be taking up Yanaba’s half of the household’s self-chosen duties, no matter how little Maritza liked it, because there were things abroad in the desert by night and day that would answer to no ordinary bullets.

Yanaba caught a cold at the tail end of spring that nagged her relentlessly all through the summer. It settled in to stay as summer faded into autumn, sapping her strength to the dregs, forcing her to spend more time abed in the mornings than she liked, and finally whole days abed, feverish and too weak to stand. She didn’t want him to call an ambulance, or to go to the hospital, didn’t want to leave him alone on the ranch, not because she didn’t trust him but because she feared what would happen to him if she did. Jesse tended to her with all the skill he’d been taught over the years but there was one thing he lacked: a true healer’s touch that could have chased what troubled her away when even the biotic emitters did nothing but help her hold ground. And that he did not have, and never would, because healing was not his gift. In late October, just after his fourteenth birthday, as his grandmother lay sleeping the feverish, restless sleep of an invalid, he did the one thing he had dreaded more than anything else and called Maritza, to beg for her help. She and her eldest sons, the not-cousins who’d been a year or two ahead of him in school, arrived four hours later and an ambulance from town shortly thereafter. Before she left, as they were loading her onto the litter, she took him by the hand and made him swear his vows to her and sealed the promise he gave with her own. Maritza went with the ambulance, in her own hoverjeep; the not-cousins stayed behind, and after dinner Jesse retreated to his room, ill at ease and not entirely sure why.

He woke, sometime in the dark hours after midnight, to the sound of voices drifting up from downstairs -- quiet but clearly audible, because if the house’s heating system did anything, it carried sound.

“Everything’s ready?” That was Maritza, low and soft and somehow more dangerous for it.

“Yeah.” The Eldest of the not-cousins. “Aunt Yanaba had a lot of the things we needed already in her kit. No real need to go searching for them.”

“That’s because she knew that this would need to be done eventually and prepared to do it.” Crisply, cool, and the calm certainty of it turned the blood to ice in his veins, chased the last traces of sleep from his mind. “What is it, Chase?”

“Mom...are you sure about this? I mean -- if this was what he wanted, if this was his fault , why’d he call for help? All he had to do was wait .” The Younger of the not-cousins, who’d been almost nice to him at dinner and offered to help with the dishes and clearly wanted to talk to him but got glared off by his big brother. “If he were... hurting people it’d be one thing but he’s --”

“ Naayéé , Chase. A monster in human shape like that thing Yanaba called his father.” Her voice cooled and hardened and Jesse was already dressed and pulling on his hiking boots, dragging the bug-out bags that Gabe insisted he have packed and ready to go out of the back of his closet. “That’s all he is and all he can ever really be, no matter what he might look like -- if anything, they helped make him worse because now it’s hidden instead of written on his flesh like it should be. Do you want to wait for him to show it before something’s done about him?”

Silence. Jesse eased his window open, put the first bag on the back porch roof and reached for the second. The warmest of his jackets was downstairs hanging by the door and there was nothing to be done for that, so he pulled on another flannel shirt and the pair of gloves sitting on the chest of drawers.

“No. No, but --”

“No buts. We can’t hesitate in this -- not the way Yanaba did. She died thinking this thing loved her --”

The sound of pain that came out of him was completely involuntary, choked off as quickly as he could, and it was already too late.

“What was that?”

“Not sure -- he’s been upstairs since just after dinner. Sleeping the last time I checked. You want me to…?”

“Yes. Chase, stay here.”

Footsteps on the stairs but Jesse was already sliding off the porch roof after his bags, whispering the charm that Gabe taught him that would call the shadows, make him physically indistinct, mask his trail from even the most determined prying magic or skilled tracking. He thought Chase caught a glimpse of him as he vaulted the yard fence but, if he did, he held his tongue and stayed where he was; it was a small enough thing to be grateful for but Jesse never forgot it and repaid it as best he was able when circumstances allowed. That night, however, he thought of nothing but the best route to take across the desert and into the hills, as far from what remained of his not-really-family as he could get before the sun rose.

“Nana and Pop Pop had a little place up in the hills -- callin’ it a cabin was exceedingly generous but it had cots to sleep on and a wood-burnin’ stove for heat and cooking and a well for water. We went up twice a year to make sure the roof hadn’t caved in and nothing had gotten into the supplies we kept there, so I knew there’d be enough to keep me alive for awhile.” Jesse continued, evidently completely oblivious to the amount of pressure being exerted on his hand and the tiny sounds of distress forcing their way up Hanzo’s throat. “It took me three days to get there by a roundabout route and --”

“Your family was going to kill you.” Hanzo finally managed to grind out, around the equal parts sorrow and fury fighting for control of his tongue.

He was silent for a long moment after that outburst, his shoulders curving inward, head bowed enough that his hair almost completely shielded his face. When he spoke, it was with a weariness that carried the weight of years. “They weren’t my family. Not really. Never were. To them I was just a thing that shouldn’t have been allowed to grow as big as it did.” He looked up, dark eyes tired, and took Hanzo’s hand in both of his own. “To give them the minimal credit they deserve, they thought it was me -- that I’d finally shown my true colors, drank Pop Pop and Nana’s souls for their power, and then tried to cover my tracks by playin’ the lovin’, concerned adopted grandson.”

“I’m not so certain that’s something they deserve.” Hanzo said fiercely. “How could they believe that -- even if they didn’t know you, they should have known your grandparents better than that.”

“My grandparents went soft, and took an unnatural thing under their roof, because it was a baby when they found it. If they’d put one of Nana’s monster-killing rounds through my forehead or strangled me in the cradle, that they’d have understood. Because that’s what they should have done -- a naayéé that’s too small to be much of a danger to deal with is a blessing not to be cast aside.” Dryly. “I don’t blame them for what they wanted to do. It was their responsibility to the world and the people in it, as they saw it.”

I will, Hanzo thought, but did not say, instead reaching out to brush the hair out of his ranger’s face. “It’s good that you know better, at least. That the people who love you know better.”

Jesse was silent for a long moment, his eyes closed and his cheek pressed into Hanzo’s palm. “It’s gettin’ pretty late in the day -- we should probably get you back to the hacienda before sundown.”

“I have no quarrel with that.” Hanzo pushed creakily to his feet, his knees issuing a crackling series of objections over being forced to move after kneeling on cold stone for so long, and offered his ranger a hand up, as well, which he accepted. “It’s been a...very long day.”

Jesse levered himself to his feet, swaying a bit at first, and then a bit more, and then Hanzo stepped into him and put his arms around his waist to help keep him steady and upright. “It’s okay -- I’m alright -- just a little dizzy. Must’a stood up too fast.”

“Hold onto me. Tighter, I’m not so fragile as all that.” Hanzo freed a hand long enough to scoop up his bag, one arm around his ranger, the ranger’s arm around his shoulders. “Walk with me. Have you eaten anything today? How long have you been here?” A thought occurred to him. “You didn’t sleep all the way through last night and then you -- you must be completely exhausted. ”

Binky peered around the gate as they approached it and boofed softly in greeting.

“So that’s how you found me.” Jesse sounded amused, and tired. “I grabbed something before I left the house, yeah.”

“But you haven’t slept again.” For the first time, he regretted stashing his phone so deep in his bag. “Do you think you can make it back walking?”

“My place is closer. We can call you a pick up from there.” Binky, thankfully, both knew the way and took point.

“Just me? Did I snore too much for you?” Hanzo asked, trying for light and landing considerably short.

“Nah. Slept like a rock. Just thought -- I just figured…” His voice drifted off and, once again, he refused to meet Hanzo’s eyes. “This has all been a lot.”

The ranger’s house came into view in the deepening twilight and, for the moment at least, Hanzo chose to let it lie there while he used Jesse’s keys to undo the locks and guide his ranger inside, through the kitchen and down the hall into his bedroom. Once there, his ranger seemed incapable of resisting the gravitational pull of his pillows, sitting down on the edge of the bed and folding to his side with a soft groan. Hanzo hesitated for a moment, then took off his boots and helped him out of his cloak and jacket. Jesse stubbornly held onto the one and Hanzo spread the cloak back over him as an extra blanket, since it seemed to give him such comfort, and went to hang his jacket on the pegs next to the door. And to relock the door, which gave him a ridiculous amount of comfort, almost as much as the sight of Binky stretched his full length on the world’s most comfortable couch, with a pillow under his head and the throw-blankets pulled down over him. “Are you allowed to sleep there? Yes? Okay, I won’t chase you then.”

Genji had sent approximately four hundred texts in the last few hours, none of which he bothered to read before replying with one of his own. Completely safe. Found the ranger. We’re at his house w/Binky right now. Probably best to stay here for the time being? He’s totally exhausted.

His brother responded while he was eating cold leftover eggs and salsa straight from the storage container. Gabe says yes, the ranger’s place is at least as secure as the hacienda. He or somebody or him and more than one somebody will come down to help stand watch shortly. Are you sure you’re okay????

Yes. He paused, considered, continued. Send my tablet and bag along with? I’m expecting some results back from the archive.

Will do. Stay safe, aniki.

Of course.

His ranger was fully asleep by the time he returned to the bedroom, curled around himself on his side, wrapped completely in his cloak. Hanzo drew the rest of the covers over him, debated silently with himself for a moment, then shucked off his own shoes and overshirt, and lay down next to him, not quite touching, close enough to do so if necessary. Jesse stirred slightly and half-woke, eyes dark and drowsy as they met his own. “You don’t have t’do this, y’know?”

“What?” Hanzo asked, puzzled.

“You don’t have to…” His eyes drifted closed again, and his voice drifted away, and Hanzo decided he didn’t really want to know the answer, not when the pain that drove it was so clear. Instead, greatly daring again, he wrapped an arm around his ranger’s waist and counted his breaths until the slow, even rhythm of them lulled him down into sleep, as well.

When he woke, they were no longer alone.

#gsor66 #oh look it's spooky season #repost #written before the cowboy's name change

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