#someone i knew that did nurses training. it mostly went well! sucks to be refused by multiple hospitals because they ��”dont know“” what todo

[syncrovoid-presents]

I return for a bit and then the shadow realm calls me back. I am packing all my stuff up and moving!! Yesterday I got to hang out with the friend I'll be roommates with and it's all very exciting!!

This is also hmmmmmm... the 5th(?) time I have relocated myself in the past year. Part of it was staying elsewhere for surgery healing (i heavily advise you all not to do at home surgery if you can avoid it!! It is a very long story why I had to haha) and general finding a place to live. BUT I have avoided the threat of homelessness AND gotten away from some Not Very Kind persons so this is a big

YIPPEE

moment!!

I am. Not dead. BUT will be gone for a like a day or few because the stuff at work did not! want! to! work!

Which I'd another way of saying that I finally was able to get free after working 34 consecutive hours in a row. The day prior I got 1 hour of sleep and that is all after 5 days of 10 or 11 hour work days.

I am so sleepy. I am taking tomorrow off and probably going to sleep right through it. Anywho cheers everyone!! I am going to go to the shadow realm now @:P

[bosstoaster]

Oooo, fun! How about a scooby doo/mystery gang au? ~sleepyhunk

Teddy, I love you.

0) It’s not a one-to-one

In one universe, there four teenagers and their dog.  In another, there’s five teenagers-ish.  And-

Look, most of all, no one is anyone.  Shiro’s not Freddy - he has the closest thing to his position, maybe, has his tendency to play the hero of the story.  Shiro’s never cast himself in that role, though, merely stepped into it out of duty, plays leader mostly by gritting his teeth and refusing to let anything else through.  Pidge has shades of Velma - small, wears glasses, the main brains of the group.  But she’s never had Velma’s shy streak, was never anything but loud and proud, even when it hurt.  And anyone who bumped into her wouldn’t leave her on her knees, but punching back.

It falls apart even more for the rest.  

They don’t fit those roles.  They fit their own.  They wouldn’t have it any other way.

(read more below)

I) It’s Keith’s van, but Pidge’s idea

Keith got the van from his dad.  It was part of the inheritance he got when he was 18, along with the middle-of-nowhere shack and the abandonment issues.

Having a van makes him ‘the friend with a car’, no matter how much Keith protests it.  No one else has one at the university.  Shiro was a city kid who still isn’t used to not being able to catch public transit wherever he wants to go, so he’s never bothered.  Lance had a car (his parents had a car, more like), but it went to into trust for his next-youngest nephew when he went to school, so he didn’t bring it.  Hunk has a car, but he honestly hates driving anyway, and he lives too far away not to fly (though he hates that too), and his isn’t available.   Pidge is a freshman, and therefore not allowed to have a car on campus anyway, and-

Look, there’s just no one else with a car.  And it sucks, because it means everyone needs a ride and Keith feels obligated to give it.

So when Pidge has her bright idea, Keith has no choice.

“Just look at the news report!” She cries, eyes bright and nearly feverish.  “Have you not seen any of it?  There’s already memes.  Pictures of a ghost attack, Keith!  From less than an hour away!”

Keith stares down at her laptop, then sighs deeply.  “Seriously?  You know this is going to be like- that balloon boy or whatever.”

Staring up at him, Pidge’s eyes go very big and her bottom lip juts out.  Because she’s evil.  “Keith, this could be history.  Do you really want to miss it?”

Dammit all.

“Okay, but we’re bringing Shiro.”  Keith doesn’t want to do it at all, but Shiro is at least capable of wrangling Pidge at her worst.  When he’s ready to go, Shiro will oblige.

Pidge nods immediately, grinning like the sun.  “Awesome!  Lance and Hunk already said they’d come too.”

Great.

II)  The ghost is fake.  But the thrill isn’t.

“A man in a mask,” Lance cackles, piling into the back of the van.  Keith’s actually not sure that the weird side-facing seats back there are actually legal.  He knows the way Lance and Pidge have been flopping around on the mattress during the drive is definitely illegal.

(He really needs to get rid of that thing, or at least replace it, because gross)

Hunk presses his forehead to the window, snickering too.  “I know!  I can’t believe someone actually did that!  For, for- some stupid land rights?  ‘Well, guess this place is haunted, I’ll sell after all’.  Yeah right!”

Grinning, Shiro climbs into the driver’s seat, because he likes night driving in the van more than Keith.  Both his natural hands grip the steering wheel tight to counter the adrenaline tremor.   “Might have worked before the internet.  Ah, well.”

“Still!”  Lance enthusiastically punches the air, just barely missing making a dent in the ceiling.  “I can’t believe you tackled that guy!”

“He startled me,” is Shiro’s mild response, but his shark’s grin is anything but polite.

Pidge gave a low sigh.  “It’s disappointing.  He faked it pretty well.  I honestly thought-”

“Ghosts aren’t real,” Keith repeats, for probably the hundredth time that night.

Crossing his arm, Lance snorts.  “That’s what you think.  Just ‘cause this one is fake-”

Pidge points to him, head bobbing.  “Right! Here, there’s another place down the hallway with all these reports-”

“Is there?” Shiro asked, eyes flashing and grin still too wide.  “On the way?”

Picking his head up, Hunk considers them all.  “Are you really thinking… it’s like two AM.”

Keith glances over the group, then clips himself into the passenger side seat. “We don’t have class tomorrow.”

“True,” Pidge agrees, her smile just as vicious as Shiro’s.  “It’d only be an extra hour, tops.”

They don’t get back to school until Monday morning.

They make the paper, and they actually make a little money from the grateful theater owner.

III) It just grows from there.

Shiro is the first to graduate.  He’s also the one with the most credibility (and money, though he’s shady about that part).  He doesn’t go out solving any mysteries without them, but he does trademark a couple of names and get the van repainted.  They don’t go out unless they can pick him up somewhere else.

Keith is next.  He thinks about the courses he took, about the aeronautics degree he just spent so much money to get.  He thinks about the mix of reviews from his professors, ‘brilliant and driven’ in the same breath as ‘frustratingly stubborn’.

He throws all of it away without a second thought.  He and Shiro start doing research on the side, learn to fix up the ancient van (finally replacing that mattress), while working side jobs.

Lance, Hunk and Pidge graduate together, with Pidge taking summer classes to catch up.

Then, they’re not just a bunch of random college kids running out at night.

They’re Mystery Paladins Incorporated.

IV) Mystery solving doesn’t pay the bills.  But the internet does.

“Get that camera out of my face,” Keith snaps, shoving his palm over the lens.

Lance yelps and pulls it back.   Pulling out the cleaning cloth, he rubs over it, scowling right back.  “Dude, don’t smudge it.  You’ll ruin our footage.”

Ignoring that, Keith steps closer to Shiro, watching Pidge through the corner of his eyes.  This was the closet they’d been able to coordinate some weird reports to an actual location, and Pidge had been nearly bouncing to check it out for weeks.

Besides him, Shiro is alert, flashlight in one hand, the other hold over his gun holster.  He has his preferences, and wandering around the woods in the middle of the night isn’t it.  Shiro likes the weird ones, the killer clowns in abandoned amusement parks, giant lobster monsters attacking port towns.  Creepy weirdos in the woods?  Too likely to be something mundane and dangerous.

Keith relates.

“Guys?” Hunk called.  He holds a microphone in one hand, the other pressing one side his headphones harder onto his ear.  “I think I hear voices ahead.”

Immediately, Lance grins and bounds ahead, surprisingly quiet.

Cursing under his breath, Shiro darts after.

There’s a crack in the distance, and a scream of pain.

Keith knows it’s Shiro.

V) Sometimes, the mysteries are people. Bad people.  And Mystery Hunting is dangerous.

Keith leans back in his chair, rubbing his eyes.  The tiny hospital room is full with the five of them.  Hunk takes up one chair, head back as he breathes deeply and slowly.  Pidge his crashed mostly in his lap, her legs danging over one of the arm rests and her head on Hunk’s shoulder.  From here, he can’t tell if she’s asleep or just has her eyes cracked.

On Shiro’s other side, Lance is gripping the sheets of Shiro’s bed, eyes roaming over his face again.

Now he has a much shorter haircut, with white streaked through what’s left of his bangs.  The wound over his nose is finally healing, but when the nurses change the bandages, Keith knows it’ll scar.

And his arm is gone.

“Hey,” Keith murmurs gently.  “You okay?”

Lance looks up at him and swallows.  The he shakes his head.  “He’s going to be so mad when he wakes up,” he managed, voice small and surprisingly young.

“No he’s not,” Keith shoots back, because it’s true.  It’s Shiro.  “He knew what he was doing.”

Shaking his head, Lance screws his eyes shut.  “If I hadn’t been so focused on that camera-”

It’s a useless train of thought.  Taking a pen off the counter, Keith throws it.  It hits Lance in the forehead and bounces off. “Yeah, the shot that pays for gas and food.  You were doing your job.  Shiro’s not going to be mad.”

Lance doesn’t seem to be certain of that, but he finally nods, rubbing his forehead.  “What now?”  He asks.

Keith doesn’t know.

But when Shiro wakes up, he does.

VI) They’re Mystery Paladins Incorporated.  Then and After.

Bonus) Aliens are Real and So Can You.

“Holy shit,” Lance breathes, shining on the woman climbing out of the ship.  The light catches on the pink markings on her face and the earrings dangling from her long, pointed ears.

Pidge whoops.  “Finally!  One of them is real!”

“Well,” Keith mutters.  “I’ll be damned.”