#they grew up somewhere tropical it is just a new experience for them

[runerapier]

Sephiroth summons meteor

[alotsgonnachange]

Fan apprentice Bios

for the alotsgonnachange/the arcana cinematic universe that eye personally believe to be better than the original game...

Name: Isabella Ciccino

Meaning: Promise of God

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She/Her

Height: 5′10

Birthday: October 28th

Star sign: Scorpio

MBTI: ISFJ-T

Patron Arcana: Justice

Sexuality: Lesbian

Favorite Food: Lemon chicken orzo

Drink: White wine (Vinho Verde)

Magical abilities: Plant care/recognition (green witch), Foraging

Ethnicity: A small rocky/mediterranean esque island off the coast of Venterre that would strongly resemble sicily and malta.

Family: Mother, Angela Ciccino (deceased). Younger sister, Annamaria Ciccino (deceased)

Backstory: WIP

Occupation: Seamstress/tailor

Hobbies: Ballet, reading, drinking wine, dancing, tending to plants

Familiar: None (for now i guess??)

Love Interest: Nadia

Description: Isabella is a mysterious and alluring magician. To most people she is kind and charming, but private. She is incredibly helpful and caring to those she is friends with and cares about and will drop what she’s doing to assist. Likes to do quiet introspective work like reading, sewing, knitting and caring for plants. She’s a bit of a homebody in that sense. She comes across as level-headed and assertive in formal settings and does not allow others to talk down to her. With friends, she is a bit more sassy and teasing. She hates answering personal questions and has strict boundaries, which can lead to her being standoffish and stubborn at times.

As a Love Interest: Very loyal and committed, generally very gentle towards whoever she is seeing. You are going to have to get her to open the fuck up though she’s not good at being vulnerable AT ALL. The type of gf who may or may not qualify as a therapist/mother which…yikes. needs to work through her fear of intimacy before she can have a healthy relationship awwww 5/10

___

Name: Danielle Dupont

Meaning: God is my judge

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She/Her

Height: 5′6

Birthday: September 7th

Star sign: Virgo

MBTI: ENFP-A

Patron Arcana: The Sun

Sexuality: Bi

Favorite food: Pain au Chocolat (Chocolatine for my canadians…)

Favorite drink: Espresso or a good wheaty ale

Magical Abilities: Sexual magic, chemistry/potionmaking, candle magic, topical balms/solutions

Ethnicity: Whatever the Arcana equivalent is of like. Western Europe germanic? A country including but not limited to Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland. Who cares really she is white and an Orphan

Family: Orphan!

Backstory: WIP

Occupation: Shop owner who sells potions, balms, candles and various other uhhh items usually of the purpose of sex (literally think a modern day sex shop with dildos and shit but also candles and skincare too)

Hobbies: Socializing, singing, making/testing potions, foraging, baking

Familiar: None, is in fact frightened of several animals due to trauma :(

Love interest: Lucio (Her taste is questionable and that’s okay!), also portia

Description: Danielle is a cunning and animated witch. She’s outgoing, bright and carries herself with confidence. In the past this has made her friends and enemies alike. She’s charming but can be a bit of a trickster. Her demeanor is generally calm and she does not often experience strong anger. She’s very smart and dedicated to her craft, and she is a perfectionist. As a worker, she gives excellent customer service and is a good saleswoman. To her friends, she’s teasing and wild, but loving and encouraging. On her worst days, she has the potential to be a bit more inconsiderate and is not the best at handling huge displays of emotions from others.

As a Love Interest: Girlllll…. first of all she needs to stop being emotionally stunted! My good sis cannot handle open displays of emotion at all and tends to shut down! The physical aspects are all there and excellent and she is going to be sweet, caring and loving but she needs to take things more seriously and be able to talk about feelings!!! 3/10

____

Name: Jia Song

Meaning: In korean it’s “clear” or “good”

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She/her

Height: 5’5”

Birthday: August 5th

Star sign: Leo

MBTI: ENFJ-A

Sexuality: Bi

Favorite Food: Pulled pork or a good seasoned steak

Drink: limeade

Magical Abilities: Potions/herbs and healing

Ethnicity: Her father is from the same country as Ki (in a modern AU, this would be like. Korea.) and her mother is from somewhere uhhhh near nopal or something. Warm tropical nice (in a modern au this would be Brazil), but she grew up in her mother's country.

Family: I don't currently have names but basically, her father, mother, aunt (deceased) and two younger brothers.

Backstory: will be linked coming soon

Occupation: Healer, researcher, linguist

Hobbies: Dancing, reading, adventuring

Familiar: None

Love Interest: Julian

Description: Jia is a bright and curious magician. She’s a bit nerdy and loves reading/learning new disciplines. She is an energetic and altruistic person who is liked by many. She comes off as kind and forthcoming. She is very helpful and if she can’t help directly she will find someone who can with her connections. To her friends, she is loyal and sweet and affectionate, but also has the potential to be grumpy and even a bit negative. She’s very determined in hard situations and won’t back down until things are made right. Despite this, she can potentially overthink and overestimate situations and is incredibly stubborn when she wants to be.

As a romantic partner: loving, but definitely also able to keep independence. Not necessarily a stage 5 clinger but somewhere in the middle. She will love just spending lots of time with a partner and just picking their brain and learning everything she can from them. The type to brag about them to her friends. A wonderful listener but give her a chance to speak too she likes talking a lot as well! 10/10 would recommend

____

Name: Ki (Kiyoung) Kim

Meaning: Debatable but Ki alone means arisen and i’m getting “Vigor and eternal” But i think names differ based on the characters u use i am not korean so take this with a grain of salt

Gender: Nonbinary i think...

Pronouns: He/him or they/them doesn't have a preference

Height: 5′8″ Short king

Birthday: February 27th

Star sign: Pisces

MBTI: INFP-T

Sexuality: Gay

Favorite food: Budae Jjigae or Yongeun jorim

Favorite drink: any alcoholic beverage where you can’t taste the alcohol and strawberry milk

Magical Ability: Divination and mediumship (idk what the proper term is) so he can communicate with spirits/the dead

Ethnicity: Think of a small nation veeeery far away from Vesuvia that's cold for a lot of the year (for reference, think Korea).

Family: a twin sister named Jiyoung, 3 older sisters (Jiwoo, Jeongyeon, Joonhwa), mother and father and paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother who are living.

Backstory: will be linked coming soon

Occupation: Musician - mostly guitar and piano. Enjoys instrument care, arranging and performing in large ensembles, not a soloist by any means. He’s a great singer but he’s shy and singing gives him anxiety

Hobbies: Playing guitar, composing/arranging, reading, writing, shopping

Familiar: a tiny white dragon named Egg. Idc if dragons exist in this world but i feel like they HAVE to..

Love Interest: Asra

Description: Ki is a perceptive and witty magician. To most he comes off as a bit anxious and shy, which he is. Once you get past that, he’s eager, forthcoming and empathetic. He is very kind and likes to believe people have good intentions. He is very helpful and always tries to make sure others are comfortable and happy. He enjoys music and learning musical instruments. He prefers to work more in the background so as to not draw attention to himself. With his friends, he’s actually very talkative, silly and goofy. He’s prone to anxiety and may tense up or feel attacked when put into frightening situations. Unfortunately he has self destructive tendencies and low self esteem and has a hard time due to that.

As a Love Interest: perfect little s/o shut the FUCK UP…. that is if u can deal with low self esteem and anxiety! He really really tries though! He’s also shy with physical affection but will warm up to it eventually with familiarity and trust. Very doting and randomly shows up with delicious food and takes care of u when ur sick. 8/10

____

Name: Mathilde “Tilly” LaRue

Meaning: Mighty In Battle? Lol

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She/her

Height: 5’11

Birthday: January 16

Star Sign: Capricorn

MBTI: INTP-A

Sexuality: Bi

Favorite Food: Lentil soup

Drink: Black coffee

Magical Abilities: Divination, telekinesis, herbs, defensive magic

Ethnicity: From a large urban area with a large population somewhere in an area a bit cooler and rainier than Vesuvia. (think like. England)(in a modern AU think Afro-caribbean)

Family: Mother and Mother and an older sister named Topaz

Backstory: will be linked coming soon

Occupation: Court Magician (but like simply a well rounded witch who goes wherever the money is)

Hobbies: Exploring, foraging, reading

Familiar: A white ferret named Elle

Love Interest: Muriel

Description: Mathilde is a gentle and thoughtful magician. She is soft-spoken and hates raising her voice, and is often making bizarre and thought provoking side comments in most situations. She is curious and intuitive when it comes to magic and often able to use several methods to predict the future for others. She carries herself in a dreamlike/contemplative manner and does not really care what others think - She’s off in her own world. With friends, she has a good source of humor and gives good advice and is a very good listener. She has an affinity for animals and nature, and would generally prefer to be outside. She can tend to be unrealistic and naive and loses hold on her emotions in tough situations (angry crier…) and feels misunderstood by those around her.

As a love interest: Downright adorable. Sweet, will bring you cool items she found and very endearing. She’s also encouraging and surprisingly cheesy. Not outwardly clingy but if you let her she will. but good fucking luck starting to date her! She is extremely pretty and gets asked out almost every day, turning down 99.999999% of applicants because other people do not particularly interest her and her taste is insanely picky! 10/10 but FAT CHANCE

[girlsgonemildblog]

Men Suck No Matter the Nation - Emily in Paris Episode 2 Recap (Spoilers!!)

Poster from IMDB

First of all, where the hell did Emily get this French-teaching rosetta-stone thing she is listening to? It tells her, “my name is Marc” should be “mon nom est Marc,” which, while a direct translation, is not correct French, and if she used it that way, any French person would laugh in her face.

Anyway, the episode starts with her running again (I hate people who run. Get over yourselves.) She quickly stops to fat shame some artwork and then returns to her building where she somehow goes to the wrong apartment again. She’s so stupid, and I hate her. This show is fantastic.

She steps in dogshit (which gave me serotonin, not gonna line) and then posts on her social media about it. Somehow, she knows the word “merde” but not “je m’appelle.”  This is where we see she has somehow gone from 230 followers to 1435 followers, all in the time it takes her to get dressed. Also, Emily JUST now notices her interactions, which is unbelievable for an average person, let alone someone who posts as much as she does, and especially not for someone who is supposed to work in social media marketing!!

She then proposes a marketing campaign to her boss, Sylvie, who points out that...uh, exclusivity is the whole point of exclusive brands? Luxuries aren’t luxuries if everyone has them? Sylvie is right a lot, I’m noticing.

At a work-party, Emily gushes about a marketing campaign she did for a vaccine where whenever someone googles “tropical vacation,” “paradise,” or “beach,” her product would come up. First off, that is not how that product would be marketed. Second of all, if that were true, everyone involved was terrible at their jobs; the marketing people for her product, the marketing people for tropical hotels and resorts, heck, even the people in charge of google search results. If you googled a tropical resort, and the first thing that came up was a vaccine for an illness you might get there, that’s not going to make you want to get the vaccine; it’s going to make you want to vacation somewhere else.

Emily then gets approached by one of her company’s clients, Antoine, who sucks. I know Emily is big-dumb, but no woman, in 2020, is THAT oblivious to being sexually harassed. They’re at a work function, and he’s talking to her about lingerie and pleasing men, then tells her she smells like “expensive sex.” I know you can’t necessarily tell a big client to get fucked, but she doesn’t even seem uncomfortable. It feels like the audience is supposed to interpret this as perfectly normal, which makes me quite uncomfortable. Also, not nearly as important, but “the best way to learn a language is in bed” seems like bad advice. I just feel like the vocabulary you would learn would be pretty limited.  

Though Antoine wants Emily on the team for his perfume, Sylvie insists that she would be a better fit for a lubricant for old women, vaja-jeune. And I know that this is because Sylvie is jealous of Antoine giving Emily attention; still, Sylvie is right (AGAIN); this is a better fit for Emily, who has experience in pharmaceuticals. 

Julien then comes over and reveals that Sylvie is Antoine’s mistress, which, like, Sylvie could do so much better.

Emily, carrying the most hideous handbag of all time, meets up with her new friend, Mindy, who explains French affairs to her. There is no way that Emily had no idea about mistresses in France, unless she grew up under a rock. Emily is so naive that it isn’t endearing; it’s annoying. I hate her with a passion. This show is fantastic.

 At this dinner, we learn that Mindy abandoned being rich as fuck to be a nanny, but it’s okay because now she has her “freedom”, whatever the fuck that means. The next discovery is that Emily is a Karen, who thinks she can “teach the chef a thing or two about customer service.” Just when I thought she couldn’t get any worse.

The chef turns out to be the hot guy whose apartment she keeps trying to break into, so she eats her steak without making him recook it. She discovers that she’s wrong and says it’s “surprisingly tender,” and only Emily is dumb enough to be surprised that meat that’s less cooked is more tender.

In the next scene, we see her boyfriend, Doug, who is supposed to get on a plane in the next five minutes, call to tell her he isn’t coming. It feels like he could’ve called maybe a BIT earlier. He tells her that he doesn’t want to explore Paris alone and that she should quit her job and come home because he “doesn’t know how to do long-distance.” Here’s an idea, Doug, you could fucking try?! I mean, this guy SUCKS. I hate him. SO MUCH. I actually hate him to the point that it makes me kind of...like Emily. I know, shocking, right? Emily breaks up with him, thankfully (and obviously).

Then, she posts on her Instagram about the old lady-lube and, apparently, Brigitte Macron tweets about it. You know, Brigitte Macron? The First Lady of France? Who definitely spends her time tweeting links to Instagram posts from accounts with like 5000 followers, referencing her dried out vagina? I’m all for suspension of disbelief, but come on. The episode ends with her coworkers toasting her over this and calling her their “vaga-jeune,” which translates to “young vagina.” Kind of seems inappropriate for her coworkers to call her, but maybe that’s just me.

[imagine-organization-xiii]

can I request the org with a s/o who has never seen snow? They go on a mission to Arendelle and there's snow EVERYWHERE and their s/o is just getting distracted wanting to play in the snow instead? I, like Sora, am an islander and have never seen snow xD

I didn’t really do a mission to Arendelle - it was just their reactions to seeing snow in general, because I thought it would be cute to make it a little different since Vexen can literally make snow and ice out of nothing

Also, I’ve never seen snow before either because I live in the south where it’s pretty hot all year round - BUT WE’VE BEEN HAVING A BIT OF COLD WEATHER SO HALLELUJAH THE WINTER MONTHS ARE HERE

Masterlist 1 - Masterlist 2 - Masterlist 3 - Holiday and Vacation Masterlist

Buy me a coffee here!

oOoOoOoOo

Xemnas - Doesn’t see what the appeal is because it’s cold and wet and ugh, he’d rather be somewhere where it’s warm and cozy, but he can’t deny that there’s something amusing and satisfying at seeing the childlike glee on your face as you pick up a pile of snow in your gloved hands and toss it above you into the air.

Xigbar - “Oh, my God, is that snow?” Tries not to get exasperated with you the moment you disappear from his side and he has to search for you through the snowy forest, but he finds you pretty quickly when a rather powerful snowball hits the back of his head. He isn’t going to take that sitting down, of course, so a mission to Arendelle quickly turns into a snowball fight that neither of you are willing to lose. Later, when you’re warming up back in front of a fire in your own bedroom, you sighed happily and leaned against his shoulder, and he’s glad that he went along with your games instead of rushing you along to get out of the cold.

Xaldin - Has no idea how you went from standing at his side at one moment to flopped face first on the snowy ground the next, and has to resist the urge to haul you up over his shoulder to prevent you from getting frostbite. DOesn’t want to dim your excitement, though, because he knows that seeing snow for the first time is a wonderful experience that not many get to have. He vows to one day drag you on a nice, snowy vacation somewhere, maybe deep in a cabin somewhere in the mountains where the two of you won’t be disturbed.

Vexen - Vexen had no idea what to say when he realized that you had never seen snow. After all, ice and snow were things that were so naturally ingrained into his life, so it didn’t take much energy to make a few snowflakes fall from the ceiling above your head. The wide, almost tearful eyes you gave him made him upset that he never thought to do that for you earlier.

Lexaeus - thinks that there’s nothing cuter than the sight of you curled up in your earmuffs and winter coat, cheeks and nose red from the brisk iciness in the air. Had no idea that you had never seen snow before and he vows to find out anything else that you’ve yet to experience and show it to you.

Zexion - Zexion doesn’t like to go outside no matter what the weather is like, but he’s never really seen snow before, either, so even the novelty of seeing it for the first time makes him let you pull him outside to enjoy the weather. Somehow, you even convince him to make a snowman with you because you insist that it’s something you’ve always wanted to do, and he finds that he doesn’t really mind the cold weather as much as he thought he would.

Saix - Saix is okay with snow, within reason. He’s happy to look at snow through his window while relaxing in his warm bedroom, but he allows you to drag him out into the cold night air to watch you catch snowflakes on your tongue. Besides, he’s the one who gets to warm you up when you decide to go back inside, so he really can’t be mad about it.

Axel - Axel is like… everything that snow isn’t. He’s not a fan of cold things unless that cold thing is ice cream, but you like to have him around in cold weather because he’s basically a furnace. Whenever you want to play in the snow and decide that you’re a little too cold, you press your hands somewhere on his skin and immediately you feel 1000% better. He wishes that the two of you would be doing something else, but he really doesn’t care what you’re doing as long as he gets to spend time with you.

Demyx - would rather be on a beach, but damn if your excitement isn’t completely contagious. You drag him down onto the ground, forcing him to make some snow angels with you. “I’ve never done this before - it’s so much fun!” you exclaim, and he’s super happy to be able to have witnessed this joy on you that no one has ever seen before.

Luxord - Luxord grew up in a place that had consistently cold and wet weather, so he’s fairly used to seeing snow and it’s long since lost its appeal. He knows that you grew up in a place that was fairly tropical all year round, and seeing your bright eyes filled with wonder at the sight of the first snow of the year is one of the greatest things in the world. He has a new love of snow again after seeing you.

Marluxia - There are only a few plants that will grow when it snows, and Marluxia will teach you about them all. There’s something about the smell of the iciness tingling your nose, along with the smell of poinsettias and holly in the air, that makes Christmas feel all the more real with him. He loves seeing you eager to learn more about snowy weather even if he isn’t exactly a fan of this time of year - there’s something about your happiness that makes it all worthwhile.

Larxene - doesn’t see the point but will happily watch in amusement as you run wildly through the snow, cheering and whooping in excitement. She has to rush you on a bit to continue your mission after a while, but promises to let you come back and enjoy yourself later when you both have more time.

Roxas - Roxas may have experienced snow once in his life, but he was too young to remember it, so he’s equally as excited as you to enjoy the cold weather! You both vow to do all the things you’ve always dreamed of - snowball fights, snow angels, building an adorable snowman, and ice skating if the two of you can find a frozen lake (or convince Vexen to freeze the lake outside.)

Xion - good news - this is the first time that Xion is seeing snow, too! So it doesn’t take long for the two of you to glance at each other for a few long seconds before you both run forward and dive almost headfirst into the piles of beautiful, white snow.

[thedisneydoc]

Best Coast: Adventureland

I recently became a fan of the Lost Bros Co’s Oh Boy! The Podcast. I’ve been learning a lot of great things about Walt Disney World (WDW) that I have never heard before, and I am loving the recommendations, tips, and bits of knowledge and nostalgia that they share. Since Disneyland (DL) is my “home park,” it’s always fascinating to learn more about how the other park lives. The Lost Bros also play some pretty entertaining “games” on their show that incorporate their opinions and creative ideas. In one of their first episodes, they play something like West Coast vs. East Coast, aka DL vs. WDW, where they compared the same attractions and rides from each park. To them, DL took the cake on the majority of rides, even though the Lost Bros themselves are WDW locals. After my 2 trips to WDW in 2018, I’ve been comparing the parks myself as well. So as a DL native, “let’s get down to business” and find out what the West Coast thinks as well.

I’m going to go land by land and space each post out, because if this were just one whole post, you’d be reading a full book at that point.

Adventureland (TL;DR Disneyland wins!)

Adventureland is my favorite (follow up post on “Lands That I Love” to follow). When you first walk into the park and go up Main Street USA, you first hit “the Hub” (with or without grass to sit on, depending on your park) where the road spikes off into different directions and your journey begins depending on which land you run to first. Well, I always veer to the left and begin my day at Adventureland, so I’m going to start here first. 

WDW: The biggest advantage WDW has is space. There’s TONS of it in Florida, unlike in tiny Anaheim, CA. So it’s great that they have more to work with over there. One of the things I do love about WDW’s version is that they have a whole Pirates of the Caribbean dedicated section (Caribbean Plaza) with this AMAZING scavenger hunt quest game that I will cover in a later post. And they have a whole restaurant devoted to the Jungle Cruise and its dad joke puns, which is one of my favorite things ever. That being said, I still think DL is the winner here.

DL: While smaller, it has much more of a jungle adventure vibe with towering, lush tropical plants and trees than WDW, which is much more open and goes with the desert Bazaar feeling instead. I definitely get the feeling that I’m isolated in a mysterious jungle somewhere, and I’m just a sucker for that old-timey, vintage adventurer and tiki aesthetic. That feeling is just missing for me somehow at WDW. Plus we now have one of the best snack spots ever, The Tropical Hideaway! It’s no Jungle Navigation Co. Skipper Canteen, but I can’t complain. Dole Whip is my favorite Disney snack and I’ll admit that I stan that exclusive chile-mango whip real hard. We also have the major advantage of being home to The Indiana Jones Adventure, which I won’t compare with WDW since it doesn’t really have an equivalent ride. But in my opinion, just having Indy alone puts the DL Adventureland wayyyyy in the lead. Now in terms of comparing similar rides and attractions...

The Enchanted Tiki Room: While I have to agree with the Lost Bros Co and say that the inside show is pretty much the same, I have to say that the DL version still surpasses the WDW version because of its pre-show and its new Dole Whip snack service at Tropical Hideaway. At DL the preshow allows you to eat a Dole Whip and sit down while you watch each of the enchanted Polynesian god totems come to life. The totems each share their name and a little backstory about their part in the Polynesian mythology while giving a specific animatronic performance. The fun part, especially for kids, is the scavenger hunt feeling you get when you follow the totems around the preshow area and try to find out which totem is speaking and from where. Plus the detail inside Tropical Hideaway, from magic lamps and carpets to the infamous missing Rosita telling corny Jungle Cruise-worthy jokes, is top notch. In contrast, the WDW world version has you standing in a little amphitheater setting to watch two animatronic birds share their personal story of the Jungle Cruise with you, which is a little more meh for me. And there’s hardly any space for you to sit and enjoy your Dole Whip. 

The Jungle Cruise: This one is a little tough. This is one of my favorite rides ever, not only because it serves me tons of that vintage exploration aesthetic vibe I love, but also because I an unashamedly obsessed with the dad joke script. I’ve ridden this thing so many times, I can recite any version of the script and be your Skipper myself. In fact, if I worked at Disney, one of my dream roles is to be a Jungle Cruise Skipper. I love love love the DL version and its classic scenes, like the ambush from the natives and the piranhas. Plus I’m used to seeing our version of Trader Sam and was shocked to see a completely different guy at the WDW one. According to the Imagineering backstory, they actually ARE 2 different Sam’s! They happen to be cousins who each opened up their own trading business on opposite coasts. There’s also almost never a wait at the DL one, averaging at about 10-15 min whenever I walk by (30-40 min is maybe the most I’ve ever seen). The queue is a little cramped and small, but I love waiting in the 2-story building and looking at all the Jungle Cruise memorabilia on the walls and the cute rooms/scenes set up inside it (reminiscent of Swiss Family Robinson Tree House back when it used to be at DL). It also has a bomb Jungle Cruise logo sign on the front. In contrast, the WDW queue is a more open and airy, allowing those huge, life-saving fans on the ceiling to do their work. There is some interactive element in the line, but less so than many of the other, more entertaining queues at Magic Kingdom (MK). I remember something about a hissing tarantula in a cage near the end of the line, but it was broken when I visited. I also loved the witty menu and accident signs on the dock right before you board your boat. But the wait time always seems outrageously longer than it should be for this ride, and somehow FastPasses distribute quicker than I would have expected. On the ride, I also really liked the temple tunnel at WDW that we don’t have at DL. For those who have never been on it, there’s a decent stretch of river that goes inside the ruins of a temple through an enclosed tunnel. It allowed for some cool effects and scenes in the dark, but cuts off the flow of the Skipper’s script. The Skipper literally has to stop talking because the microphone would echo too much. In addition to the ride, they have claim to a very fun and punny restaurant overflowing with Imagineering secrets and Jungle Cruise memorabilia. Not only is the atmosphere and theming on point, but the menu is DELICIOUS at the Skipper Canteen. Finally, they regularly get a Christmas overhaul for the Jingle Cruise, which is fantastic. I’ve never been to the WDW Jingle Cruise, but they did it only once (maybe twice) at DL that I can remember, and I loved the Christmas decorations both inside and outside the ride. The Christmas puns were also a nice change. But overall, in terms of the ride, I have to give it to DL’s Jungle Cruise for the overall immersive experience and aesthetic, but I might just be biased because that’s the one I grew up with. I also think there’s a richer opportunity for jokes at the DL one.

Treehouse: Ok, when I was a kid, DL is the one who used to have the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse and it was one of my favorite things to explore. I was obsessed with playing house and going adventures as a kid, so I loved seeing how someone could build a home in a tropical tree. Then it became the Tarzan treehouse walkthrough. The theming is very cool and the storytelling is great, but as a child afraid of loud noises and jump scares, that stupid jaguar, Sabor, and his snarl scared the shit out of me and has traumatized me good. I still don’t like him and have to scoot quickly around him with my fingers stuffed in my ears. But otherwise, the treehouse is a good little cardio climb. So, again,  I am a little biased because of a nostalgia factor, and WDW wins since they now have the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. But objectively, I can see how that’s really boring to many people without a history like mine, so I will give DL the point for taking advantage of the already existing treehouse structure and turning it into a self-paced story walkthrough based on one of their popular films (kind of like Sleeping Beauty’s Castle).

While Pirates of the Caribbean lives at Adventureland in WDW, I’m going to leave off comparing that one for when I discuss “America Lands” next time.

So that’s part 1 of many many comparisons to come. Again, take my opinions with a grain of salt since I grew up at DL, but you’ll see that there’s a lot at WDW that I love more than DL too. See ya, pal! 

PC: the.disney.doc

[infjparadox]

Studying Abroad - INFJ

Hey guys. I’m back from my four months in Costa Rica, and I thought I’d share some of the pros and cons of my experience as an INFJ in case any of you were considering study abroad or worldwide travel.

Just some background - I had only ever been outside the US once before for a short trip in Mexico, I’d only taken two high school Spanish classes, this was my last semester of college, and I lived with a host family.

PROS

I’d always known I was independent, but this whole trip showed me just how adaptable and capable I really am when thrown into a foreign place and culture.

I managed to improve my Spanish by living with a host family that spoke absolutely no English. It was very humbling to not sound very...intelligent when I was speaking.

I don’t think it was as eye opening and life changing as advertised, mostly because I like to be aware of world problems, but I have loved coming away with a better understanding of day to day life in Central America and all the curious, quirky cultural differences.

The natural beauty of the tropics is astounding. I grew up in the desert, so I was mesmerized by the green cloud forests and the white sand beaches and all the animals. It felt like I’d walked into a magical world, and as an environmentalist, the biodiversity was breathtaking. Nothing like standing in the middle of a rainforest with not a single person in sight.

I was able to travel almost every weekend. Kind of stressful using public transport and communicating with locals, but after staying in some of the most horrible hostels and getting stranded at a volcano, I honestly feel like I could take on the world.

My host mom was the most precious woman. I wished I could have understood her better. She was extremely generous and kind, and she treated the whole neighborhood as her family. Also, stellar cook.

I met another INFJ down there!! She was my host mom’s niece. 16. I’m 22 and we absolutely hit it off, talking for hours about world problems and people. I had my suspicions of her type, and by the end of the trip I asked her to take the test, and she scored INFJ.

I came away with several good friends. Two of which I will never lose touch with. They’re basically my brothers now. Funny how such new and stressful environments really cause you to latch onto the people you’re with. Now I get how book characters form such quick bonds.

I was ready to come back. Leaving wasn’t too sad to be honest (except when my host mom cried). Now I’m home and I’m happy to move on with my life. Also...everyone was really happy to see me again, and that always feels nice - to know you were missed.

CONS

Not speaking the language could be extremely isolating at times. There were conversations I wanted to have that I couldn’t, and places I was too anxious to go alone. I felt very inarticulate...more than usual. This was really the only thing that made me homesick.

Living with a host family was really weird. I’m used to escaping to my room to recharge, but doing that with everyone in the house always felt kind of rude. They were respectful of my non religious stance, but they weren’t so great at hiding their disappointment lol. I also felt like I was back in high school, because I always had to tell my host mom when I was going somewhere and when I’d be back, and she did my laundry and cleaned up after me, and I was kind of uncomfortable with losing that independence.

I went down there as part of USAC, so there were like 30 other students in the program from different schools. Unfortunately, and predictably, I did not like most of them. To me, this was my last run before graduating so I wasn’t really there to make friends, especially ephemeral friendships with people often acting fake in order to fit into the cliques that formed. Many of them were also so YOUNG, and their immaturity really grated on my nerves. Maybe I should have gone as a sophomore so I would still want to get drunk every night. But I felt like an old woman with a bunch of problematic kids that I couldn’t escape.

I felt pretty safe there, but there were a few robberies and sexual assault encounters regarding other students that made walking at night pretty scary. To get around you really need a taxi, and I was too cheap to call one most of the time, so I just stayed in.

They eat gaillo pinto (beans and rice) for every meal, which at times can get a little boring. My host mom also cooked a lot of eggs and generally unhealthy food, so my body took some hits down there. But it varied between host families. Others got smoothies and veggies galore. I was just too nice and nervous to tell my host mom I preferred healthier options, (I couldn’t even tell her I liked my eggs over hard) so I suffered in silence for four months lol. RIP.

I told myself I wasn’t going to fall for someone down there. I fell for someone down there.

Ticos have a very relaxed attitude, and when I got back, I was hit by the surge in negativity and the way people stress over such insignificant things here in the US. There are much bigger battles to fight. Made me want to get away from my peers even after four months apart.

Oof. This was longer than I intended it to be. Anyway, feel free to message me if you have specific questions. Overall I’m so, so happy I stepped out of my comfort zone and did this, but there were definitely a lot of ups and downs I wish I would have been better prepared to handle.

Pura vida, mae.

[asterinjapan]

the end of a journey

And that wraps up my collection posts for this trip. How time has flown by…

As always, I like to do a final post in which I look back on my travelling, before I close this blog until my next trip. I am going to do that this time as well, but my reflections on Okinawa will be slightly different than expected, as in the early morning of October 31, the main buildings of Shuri Castle were destroyed in a fire. Thankfully there were no human casualties, but the loss of the castle cuts deep for Okinawa, and it would feel odd to just cheerily babble about visiting the castle without touching upon what happened a mere 4 weeks later (to the day, I now realize).

I uh, might have postponed this entry so that I could pretend I didn’t have to close the chapter of this trip, haha. But with my photo album done, all that’s left is my final words.

Now without further ado, the final post for Japan 2019!

  One would think that after eight previous trips, another flight to Japan would feel like routine, but the start was already different since I needed a domestic flight transfer. However, being able to see the islands of Okinawa from the plane awed me, and definitely set the tone for my enjoyment of the main island. I arrived with fairly high expectations, and I got to say that Okinawa more than delivered. Although I confess it was slightly odd to stay along the Kokusaidori main street, as it’s so touristic and feels like a shopping street in Tokyo, but it still has its own Okinawan flavor. And I was so close to the ocean! I couldn’t believe how quickly I reached the shores, and even with a highway road above my head, it was great to trail through the water on my day of arrival.

Visiting Shuri Castle was on the top of my wish list, so I did that right on my first full day. Reading about the beautiful reconstructions and seeing the pictures definitely didn’t hold up to the real thing, and I could only admire the love and dedication that had gone into reconstructing this centuries old castle. It felt so completely different from the other Japanese castles, which it of course is, but I hadn’t expected to feel that so acutely. You could definitely tell how proud the people here were of the castle, and I can only hope that those whose livelihoods depended on the castle can get by now. It still feels surreal to think that the buildings are no longer there. There are logistical problems for rebuilding, although I don’t doubt they will get there in the end. It burnt down before, and rose from the most terrible of ashes. It will likely take decades, but considering how big a symbol this place is, there will definitely be something new. I do confess I kind of skipped war memorials during this trip to Okinawa, but the scars of the Battle of Okinawa was visible everywhere; and yet it was also noticeable how the people have come back from it. I can only hope their spirit will continue from hereon too and that this symbol will rise again.

Of course, I had no idea while I was there what would happen four weeks later, but I’m glad in retrospect that I took my time and uh, took as many pictures as I did. Nearby Tamaudun Mausoleum impressed me deeply as well, although I must confess that was due to the full package: the castle and the history and the mausoleum together, plus the pathway leading up to the building was short but absolutely lovely.

After that, I saw so many sights. I climbed the mountain to find Nakagukusu castle, where I had a blast feeling like I was in some weird limbo between a gothic European castle in ruins with crows flying by and, well, a subtropical island, with beautiful blue seas on both sides. Weirdly, it really looked like only the castle was clouded that day, as the sun was shining on both sea sides, but it just added to the atmosphere.

I went from super touristic but cheerful Okinawa World with its gorgeous caves to the genuine and wonderful museum, teaching me so much more about the islands, explored gorgeous gardens, and to top it all off, I got to spend a day on Tokashiki island, which really was the icing on an already delicious cake. The weather was lovelier than I could have even hoped for, the views were amazing, and I was honestly jealous of myself while I was there. This really was the picture perfect ‘tropical holidays’ right from the travel brochure, and although I think I’d get bored of it if I were to spend a whole week just chilling on the beach, it was an amazing way to end my week down south. Not to mention the submarine ride! I’m really glad I was tenacious and eventually lucked out and got on, because I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s one thing to see coral reefs on tv or in an aquarium, but seeing them in the wild is awe inspiring. Luckily the Kerama Islands (which Tokashiki is the biggest of) are a national park and under protection, and I can only hope that we can all protect amazing sights like these all around the globe.

 After a week of exploring something completely new, it was time to return to an old friend: Fukuoka, which I had stayed in for a week back in 2015. I had fond memories of staying there, and this week didn’t disappoint. The flight was so relaxed I would almost say I got rid of my fear of flying (not entirely, but it definitely diminished from here on), and then it was time to explore the places I had missed out on before! It was my first time seeing a typical conical and active volcano, and Sakurajima definitely didn’t disappoint. Karatsu had caught my eye in recent years, and I’m so happy I went there, because I had a delightful day and I was thoroughly charmed by this city. Beppu was highly touristic, but I had a good time exploring the hells anyway, and I’m easily amused, so getting to say ‘I went to hells and back’ won’t get old soon. The typhoon made me stay in Fukuoka for a day since I didn’t want to risk getting stranded, but I don’t regret it one bit as I finally got to see Kushida shrine in the sun and had a blast in Canal City. It was safe enough to go to Yoshinogari Historical Park next, and wow, there was so much to see and do that I definitely have to go back here sometime. And hey, I got to be crafty and made a mirror! I’m still unreasonably proud.

With the weather continuing to smile down on me, I hit Okayama next, where I finally got to dress up as a princess in the castle (I’m easily pleased) and saw the sights we sadly had to miss out on last year due to floods. Gorgeous sights and castles greeted me as I finally got to see more of Shikoku, and although I am definitely a bit weary of temples now (sorry, Onomichi), the views over the Inland Sea continue to impress. The weather was exceedingly kind to me and gave me blue skies over all castles, and so I happily checked off number 7 on the list of 12 original castle towers still remaining. Past the halfway point! I do love castles, haha.

My luck hadn’t run out yet as on my final day in Okayama, KOKIA was performing in Osaka. It was just an hour away from Okayama, the closest I was to Osaka the entire trip, so that left enough time to visit Universal Studios beforehand. And of course, seeing KOKIA live is always a magical experience (which is a nice bridge from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter I guess, haha). I’ve said it before, but even live recordings and DVDs can’t compare to the live experience, and I feel so privileged and blessed that this is my seventh time (!) getting to see her live. And this was my third time in a row getting to meet her for an autograph! I might get spoiled at this rate, haha. It was wonderful to hear songs from all those years ago as well as some newer favorites.

And although I hadn’t been looking forward to the long trip to Tokyo, this was in fact a very relaxed experience. I had so much leg space that my suitcase in front of me was no big bother, and the seats next to me stayed empty anyway. Getting back to Tokyo, and more specifically Ikebukuro, felt like coming home again, and I enjoyed soaking into the familiar sights (and uh, shopping, I have to admit).

This was the only part of my trip where I actually noticed the typhoons that had blown over or were on their way. Japan has taken quite the battering this year, with typhoons forming very late into the season, being more powerful than ever, with Hagibis being the tragic record. It had given me quite the scares, but all it really meant for me was a few windy days, two days of rain on 4 weeks total, and making it risky to leave Tokyo for the mountainous areas. The people here have suffered far more. I can only hope they recover well from this natural violence and that they can catch a break for a while.

 Anyway, you can easily dump me in Tokyo for months on end and I will still have a great time. This city is so massive and there are plenty of places worth a second (or third, or ninth) visit, so it’s hard to imagine I’d ever get bored here. And since many of the series and games I like hail from Japan, I definitely took the chance to stock up on merchandise and go to cafés to let out my inner fangirl. Look, I grew up on Pokémon, I’m not gonna ignore the chance to have dinner with Pikachu. Rainy days aren’t so bad if you get to spend them in a museum so big that even a full day is barely enough to see everything, and I got to spend some extra days with my friend on top of it.

I have to admit I felt a bit bad about not using my JR pass much in that last week except for the Yamanote line, but that in no way diminished how much fun I had, and I confess to having cried a couple of times in my final days in Tokyo due to my impending return home. Of course, going on holidays is different from living somewhere, but I still feel like a piece of me was left behind in Japan way back in 2010, and so it hurts to part every time. That might sound dramatic, but that metaphor does explain why I feel so strongly about it.

 The flight back gave me one last treat with the Fuji showing up through the clouds, marking the first time in all those flights when I actually got to see it from the plane. Sadly the picture I took on my phone isn’t super crisp, but it’s the best I could do at the moment, and really, there’s something about that mountain you can’t quite catch on camera anyway. The flight was calm and hardly affected my nerves, and though I didn’t sleep much, I managed to get home safe and sound without even falling asleep on the train or bus.

Of course, the jetlag was waiting for me with a big ol’ hammer, and it took a while for me to recover. A bit longer than expected, actually, although I suspect part of that was caused by just how much I’ve seen and done over those past 4 weeks. Look at how long this entry is getting, and I barely even touched on some days and impressions! I can’t believe I got to check off my entire list of places to visit until I got to Tokyo. I hadn’t thought my body could handle it, but I was pleasantly surprised, and I definitely feel in a better condition than ever. Seeing all these wonderful sights for sure invigorated me, so I don’t doubt it helped, but the relative ease with which I climbed those mountains also surprised me. Not that I’m complaining!

And that brings me back home. I’ve had two weeks to recover now, and I think my body has adjusted to being back in the Netherlands again. I’ve collected all my reports from this blog (and have apparently done NaNoWRiMo writing challenge a month early, as I surpassed 50,000 words written in a month, oops), my photos have been sorted out, I’ve put together a photo book for the collection, and… well, all that’s left is closing off this blog until the next trip. That won’t be this year anymore, haha, no more last-minute Christmas trips to Tokyo! Although I won’t deny it’s tempting, but I’d rather take the time to plan out my trip for next time.

I don’t know when that will be. Part of me really wants to see the cherry blossoms, but it’s a busy season, so I should be looking into flights and hotels already if I am set on doing so next year. Summer 2020 is out, though. I’d rather avoid the height of summer in Japan if at all possible, and well, with the Olympics and Paralympics next year, I think Japan really doesn’t need any more tourists in the mix, haha. So, who knows! I’ll have to wait and see where next year takes me, although I’d love to return to Japan as soon as possible. I still haven’t visited Hokkaido, after all, and I did plan out a lot of day trips from Tokyo that I didn’t get to do now.

 I keep saying it, but I don’t think I’ll ever be done with Japan. Despite hardships, I am so happy I decided to study its language and culture, over a decade ago now. It really broadened my horizons, allowed me to meet new people, and introduced me to an immensely interesting country. Although I’m far from fluent (I really need to pick up my study books and at least increase my vocabulary, yikes), it still really helped finding my way here and getting in touch with people. Of course, I saw everything through a tourist’s eye, but I do my best to read up on the places I visit and get a better sense of the culture and history through first hand experience. Speaking the language to a degree definitely helps with that.  

And so, I will now close this blog again until my next trip, which hopefully won’t take too long. Whether it’ll be a short hop over to Tokyo or a longer cross-country travel remains to be seen, but I can’t wait to find out!

Thank you for sticking with this blog and for reading all that in case you made it here, and see you soon!

[whatdoyouthinkmyjobis]

Hunters on the Hellmouth

masterlist

first chapter

previous chapter

AN: Inspired by events in BTVS 7.22 “Chosen.” Here’s a cheat sheet for keeping track of the Potentials.

Thank you for coming with me on this journey. If you think this story was worth five years of my life, please reblog any part of it (or every part of it).

Warning: Character death. Gore.

Chapter 43: Awake

Beautiful, Spike thought. No wonder she didn’t want to come back.

He felt warm and light, like he was floating in tropical waters. Beyond his closed lids, he could sense something bright, but he couldn’t will his eyes to open. He was happy. Peaceful. Heaven had to be even better than this; although, he didn’t expect to experience it. Hell was waiting, but it could wait another minute.

No. Spike tried to move. The soft warmth that embraced him held him tighter. It felt reassuring. He wanted to go back to sleep.

He had to get up. He had to go somewhere. Where?

Comfort gripped him. He was light. Floating. Guilt-free. Was this righteousness?

Spike groped around his mind for something solid. A feeling. A memory.

Where was Buffy? That had to be it, didn’t it? Spike tried to picture her face. Her downturned eyes alight with laughter.

His throat grew dry as he dwelled on her. His skin felt like it would crack. If he lost focus for one moment, he slipped back into warmth and security.

The sharp slope of her nose. The alluring angle of her neck. The lilac smell of her skin.

A cry of agony replaced his peace. If felt like a hot wind would tear his skin from bone if it didn’t cook him alive first. Everything felt unbearably hard.

With herculean effort, Spike opened his eyes. He fell to the ground, scraping his palms against the sidewalk, coughing as if he’d been buried in sand. Even the fading sun felt too bright.

Hello, said a voice in his head. I am relieved to see you.

“Me too, Feathers. You weren’t going easy on me, were you?”

No, I did my best to suppress you. We’ve been wandering around Sunnydale for hours.

Hours? He had to get faster at breaking through. Hours was long enough to lose everything.

Spike, we’re not alone.

Spike could feel it behind him. He got up slowly and turned to see a Bringer -- an eyeless spy -- a few paces behind him. “Enjoying the show?”

It drew a blade from its belt.

The glint of a knife failed to stir any emotion. The creature may as well have brandished a toy for all the alarm it raised in Spike. Who was a Bringer to a divine being like him?

The Bringer charged. Spike raised his hand, catching the creature by its head. A second. A cry. A corpse, eyes burned out from a glimpse of the horribly holy.

Spike’s second tussle with Castiel was shorter, though no less draining. As he pushed himself back up off the street, the sun gave one last gasp before giving up to night.

Night in Sunnydale.

Spike looked around to get his bearings. Storefronts, old brick buildings, and -- he let out a sharp laugh when his eyes landed on the ‘67 Impala. “Were you just aching to see your mates?” he asked his angel passenger.

No. As you’ve grown stronger, I’ve found you more and more difficult to steer.

The lights blazing in the Winchesters’ apartment window flipped off. A minute later, the purring of an engine stopped. They were turning off the generator for the night lest it attract vampires and Bringers.

The sound of Spike’s beating heart would attract monsters, too; not that he needed to worry. Rather than have a brawl in the street, he decided to head up the stairs and drop in on the Winchesters.

A few minutes after Spike had knocked, the locks clicked open, and Sam threw open the door, embracing Spike in a bear hug.

“Where were you?” Sam asked before shouting back into the apartment, “Guys, it’s Spike!”

You seem surprised by Sam’s affection, Castiel said.

“Come in. We’re just doing research.” Sam smiled warmly.

Buffy appeared at the end of the short hall, a faint flush on her cheeks, a large grin on her lips. “Thank god, you’re okay! You freaked us out with your disappearing act.”

She cares about you, Castiel said.

Shut up! Spike batted at the better angel in his mind.

Sharing his mind -- his darkest fears and dirtiest secrets -- with any creature was Spike’s least favorite part. He’d rather remember his cruelest kills then have another being picking at his scabs.

Inside, the candle-lit living room looked cozy. Homey. Dean and Bobby gave brief hellos before returning to scour through books Spike himself had studied many times. He knew exactly what they were looking for. “Still trying to find an escape route?” he asked Sam.

Sam nodded somberly. “They’re determined. But I’ve read through all the books we have, and there’s not a single chapter called Sam Gets To Live.”

“Not funny,” Dean grumbled.

Sam looked at Spike and shrugged.

This is where Sam and Dean live? Castiel asked. For some reason, I expected more neon beer signs.

“You want a beer?” Dean asked.

“I’ll get some.” With a downcast look, Sam didn’t even wait for a response. “I don’t feel like looking at books right now.”

Spike sat in an armchair across from Bobby. Buffy had reclaimed her seat on the worn leather couch beside Dean. She looked happier than she had in weeks. It wasn’t a leap to imagine them gathered around a dinner table, Bobby carving a turkey, Dean bouncing a blonde baby on his knee, Buffy -- surrounded by family and friends -- glowing with happiness.

He imagined the scene with Sam, of course. Whenever he tried to imagine Sam gone, sacrificed to the Hellmouth to save them all, it broke the spell. In that scenario, Spike imagined Dean hollow-eyed, sour beer on his breath, looking for a fight every night. He imagined Buffy rescuing Dean over and over, trying to save him from his own depression until it finally swallowed him whole.

Spike couldn’t let that happen.

Buffy’s eyes kept darting to him. Finally, she gave up on her book. “Where did you go? Jo said you got all weird and left.”

“Just needed to think,” Spike said.

Sam returned with an armful of beers. “We’re glad you showed up when you did. We were thinking about sending out another search party.”

“For me?” Spike asked with genuine surprise.

“The whole lot of us went Marco Poloing for you for a few hours.” Buffy’s eyes were soft and glowing. “You’re important to us. Sunnydale at night? Come on.”

You’re important to us. Her words sent a warm ripple through Spike’s body.

You still love her, Castiel observed.

Seriously, I don’t need a highlight reel, Spike shot back. I love her, yes, but I don’t crave her. And she doesn’t need me. Dean will take care of her just fine.

“You missed Castiel’s funeral,” Buffy said.

“Not Cas,” Spike and Dean said in unison. They locked eyes for an awkward second before Dean added, “Jimmy, his vessel.”

“Got an inside look, thanks.” Spike sipped his beer. It was warm, but he didn’t mind.

Was the funeral nice? Castiel asked. Jimmy deserved something nice.

Spike sighed internally. “I’m sure everyone ‘ad a good sniffle.”

Sam nodded. “We weren’t sure about his religion, so Keisha sang some hymns, Rachel recited the Mourner’s Kaddish, and Maya made a flower garland for his remains for good measure.”

That sounds lovely, Castiel said.

Bobby snapped his book shut and tossed it on the pile near where Sam was sitting on the floor. “Where are those new books you brought?”

Sam pointed to a duffel against the wall. “They aren't going to have an answer either.”

“Still worth a look,” Bobby grumbled as he got up.

It didn’t seem fair, not that the world ever had been. Sam was a good man. Kind-hearted, smart, sensitive, self-sacrificing. Why was he Lucifer’s chosen vessel? Spike knew about the demon blood Sam had been fed as a baby. It was one of many revelations he’d made when they’d been captured by Lucifer’s minions months back. But why did the Devil want someone so good?

“I’m glad you made it back,” Spike said, looking at Dean.

“Now we’re just waiting for the Apocalypse.” Sam sipped his beer ruefully.

“Not what I meant,” Spike said.

“We’re not ready, anyway,” Dean said, glaring at his brother.

“Sure we are.” Sam returned the stare. “We have the key to the cage. We have a location to open it. We even have get away cars all ready for the girls. All we need is Michael.”

Michael will be here soon. I can feel him.

“And a way to save you,” Buffy said quietly for Dean who was a mix of clenched teeth and red eyes.

“What if,” Spike asked tentatively, “Michael comes soon. Tonight, maybe?”

Dean turned to him with unmasked alarm. “Why tonight?”

Spike shrugged. “I figure if the equivalent of Heaven’s bell’op can bring you two through, there’s no way the reigning angel can’t find a way through with ‘is vessel.”

I am not a bellhop. I’m a warrior class. Heaven doesn't even have bellhops.

“Then I say yes, and we end it,” Sam said firmly.

“No,” Dean said, quietly.

“What’s the point of opening the cage if we can’t get Lucifer in?”

“Goddamnit, I will push the asshole in myself before I let him possess you!” Dean snapped.

“You ain’t strong enough to hold the Devil, anyhow,” Bobby said calmly, resuming his study in the old plaid armchair.

“Then I’ll get ready!” Sam countered, weakly.

“Ready?” Spike asked.

Sam sighed. He seemed more and more beaten as the conversation continued. “To strengthen my body for an angel as strong as Lucifer, well, I’d,” he scanned the group and dropped his eyes to his hands, “I’d have to drink a bunch of demon blood.”

“How much?” Spike asked, aware that wasn’t the comforting response.

Sam shrugged. “A whole demon, maybe?”

Spike took a long final pull of his beer then stood up. “Right. I’m going to leave you all to family business. I need to see if Jo taped Passions for me.”

What’s Passions? Castiel asked.

Everyone in the room looked at him just as quizzically as Castiel sounded.

“It’s dark out there, boy,” Bobby noted.

“I’ll drive you.” Sam quickly popped up and grabbed the car keys from a tray.

Spike bit back his urge to protest. It would have looked too suspicious.

They care about you, Castiel said.

Stop, please, Spike begged.

I just think that you should be fully informed before committing to this decision. People will miss you.

They’ll miss Sam more, Spike shot back as he and Sam descended the stairs. Anymore heart-warming details you feel like sharing?

I think Jo might be interested in you. Romantically.

Thanks.

“Thanks for the offer, Sam, but I’ll walk back,” Spike said once they reached the bottom of the stairs.

“That’s insane, Spike. The town is crawling with vampires and Bringers.”

That was his hope. “Look, I can’t explain it to you, but I’ll be fine. Just stand in the stairwell for a while and pretend you drove me.”

The determination on Sam’s face was clear. “You’re my friend, Spike. I don’t want you to get killed.”

Spike patted Sam’s shoulder and smiled. “As my friend, could you just trust me?”

After a moment, Sam nodded.

“Thanks, and Sam? Don’t say yes. No matter what.” With that warning, Spike turned away into the night.

“Watch out boy she'll chew you up / (Oh here she comes) / She's a maneater,” Jo sang along with the music as she flipped through a stack of CDs. The best part of crashing in this stranger’s home was the owner's extensive collection of 80s music, some of it even on vinyl.

Not long after the Harvelles arrived in Sunnydale, they, Andrew, and several Potentials had moved out of Buffy’s house and into an unoccupied brick ranch two doors down. Her mom, she’d noticed, spent her days fussing over all the girls and baking. So much baking. Jo knew this was a stress tick, but she wasn’t going to argue about fresh cornbread muffins.

Jo split her time putting on a brave face for the girls and quietly sobbing into a beer in her bedroom. She’d been given a second lease on life only to have it jerked away again. The painful memory of having her guts ripped open by a Hellhound was still hot and putrid, and the idea of going into another situation like that with the burning knowledge of what could happen made her newly healed stomach turn.

For the first time in her life, Jo Harvelle wanted to turn tail and run. Thankfully, that wasn't a problem for today. They were in a stalemate until the Winchesters found a way to spare Sam, or until Michael arrived.

She leaned back on her elbows and looked at the Potentials she’d been charged with. The youngest, fifteen-year-old Rachel, danced carefree to the Hall and Oates song currently blasting through the stereo. Like Jo, Rachel had lost her father at a young age, and she’d already seen her share of bodies here in Sunnydale. She’d survived the battle at the winery, yet she still danced.

How could Jo turn her back on a girl like Rachel?

Jo got up to dance with her until the stereo shuffled to the next song -- “Purple Rain.” Betje and Lara -- two of the strongest, most experienced girls who had both witnessed the murders of their Watchers -- stood looking out of the big picture window.

“Vot do you think they are doing?” Lara asked, arms crossed protectively. She was not one to express much other than rage.

Betje combed her fingers through her short blue hair. “No idea.”

Jo joined them peering out into the street. In the moonlight, she could made out dozens of figures looking back at her house, at Xander’s, at Buffy’s. At every occupied home remaining in Sunnydale. At this point, they were used to vampire spies, but this was the first time she had seen the creepy robed Bringers.

Jo shivered slightly. “They can’t get us in here,” she said for herself as much as for the girls.

“This isn’t our house.” Betje was all business.

“But it’s warded,” Jo reminded them. “Let them look. They can’t get in.”

The cd player shuffled again and belted out the first chords of “Bad Reputation.”

A cunning grin spread across Betje’s face. “Let’s give them something to watch.” She jumped into the middle of the room, dancing with Rachel who played air guitar. Betje sang along at the top of her lungs, for the moment, carefree.

Willow felt confident the Potentials would not destroy the house. Well, not her Potentials anyway. Ever since That Day (Buffy’s possession followed by the angels’ visit and Hecate’s appearance tended to be referred to only in whispers and ambiguities), Willow had been teaching her quartet of magically-inclined Potentials how to cast a protective shield spell. None of them were top tier fighters, but shielding the others could prove useful.

They’d started by trying to keep a paper crane still while Willow blew magical gusts of air at it. The cranes had flown all around the room. After weeks of practice, not only were Ella, Alma, Ju and Eva able to keep the cranes still, but they could also work together to cast a shield the size of a car; with Willow’s help, the size of a house.

A warm cup of tea in her hands, Willow left her mini coven as they tried to teach Margo -- who showed no magical skills at all -- how to levitate a pencil. This was the perfect night for turning in early with a book.

For a moment after she opened her bedroom door and saw Dawn making up a cot, Willow was surprised. Ever since the Potentials had arrived, Dawn had bunked with Willow and left her room to Giles. In the three weeks since That Day, Dawn had been staying with her sister at the Winchester’s apartment.

But now the boys were back in town.

“Hey, Dawnie! Just like old times, huh?” Willow said, sweetly.

Dawn groaned and flopped onto her cot.

“Oh, sweetie! Bummed about being left behind?”

“Not really. This is way better than crashing in Jada’s apartment.” Dawn propped herself up on her elbow. “It’s just -- Did you ever find a shirt that you used to wear when you were a little kid, and you couldn’t believe you were ever that small? That’s how the house feels.”

Willow sat on the edge of her bed. Pajamas and books would have to wait. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there aren’t any old times. I feel like this whole Apocalypse thing, especially That Day, sort of ripped time into before and after.” She added quietly, “Like when Mom died.”

“Things will settle down again, you’ll see. This is what? Our seventh Apocalypse? Things get rumbly, we knock them down, things chill out for a bit. It’s the circle of Sunnydale. Once the Potentials go back home, everything will feel normal again.”

Dawn shook her head but said nothing.

“You know, no one’s wanted to claim Buffy’s room if you want a big bed all to yourself,” Willow said with a pleasant smile.

“Nah, I’d rather crash with you if it’s okay.”

Unzipping her bag, Dawn pulled out a familiar pair of sushi pajamas and Mr. Gordo. She hugged the plush pig to her chest. “Assuming we all live through this, do you think Buffy and Dean are going to get married?”

That question threw Willow for a loop. She still hadn’t processed Buffy’s pregnancy revelation -- something she was sure Dawn was in the dark about. Married? “Where does that fall on the scale of not normal?”

Still playing with the pig, Dawn grinned. “Not all change is bad. So if we’re in a before/after situation, it’d be cool if one of those events was actually, you know, nice. Besides, a proposal after the adrenaline rush of saving the world would be super romantic.”

“Pretty sure Buffy would prefer a nice dinner. Minimal fighting.”

“I guess. That sounds like her, too.” Dawn set Mr. Gordo on her pillow. “Was there a line for the bathroom?”

Dean stripped before quickly dashing under his covers. “Ahhhh!” He’d missed the feel of his flannel sheets against his skin. His pillow that smelled faintly of Buffy’s shampoo. His bed. His home.

Returning to the road life after months in Sunnydale felt like ripping open a scab. Every little thing he used to think of as a quirk of the life -- the stale smell of cigarettes in the room, bad coffee, bumpy mattresses, scuzzy gas station bathrooms -- got under his skin. Needling reminders that he was far from home. Far from Buffy.

Apparently, he didn’t hide his irritation well. At one point, Sam had popped in Dean’s favorite Led Zeppelin tape and suggested they not speak until the state line.

But now he was home (for a little while at least) and waiting for the woman of his dreams to come to bed.

He could feel his length stiffen the moment she stepped into the room. Her hair was clipped up, exposing her long neck. Wearing only one of his t-shirts, she shivered slightly as she climbed into bed.

“Is it warm enough to have the windows open?” She scrunched up her nose disapprovingly at the small crack letting in the night air.

“We could get warm.” He grinned boyishly and removed the clip from her hair. Her tousled waves cascaded over her shoulders. “I never get tired of that.”

She bit her lip thoughtfully. “You know, I dreamed of you every night you were gone.”

He’d dreamed of her too. It was their wedding day. With Sam riding shotgun, Dean was trying to get to the church; only they kept stopping to save people. With each turn, another monster. Another innocent. Eventually, Dean’s tux was splattered with blood. He wasn’t sure if he ever made it to the altar, but he knew it was the first time in his life he’d dreamed of getting married.

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he said.

The first flaming bottle crashed through the window.

Screaming wrenched Willow from her sleep. Before she could dash downstairs, a molotov cocktail smashed her window, breaking on the frame and catching fire. She yanked the flaming curtains from the wall and smothered the fire with her quilt.

Dozens of Bringers and vampires gathered on the lawn. In the middle of the crowd stood Buffy.

Willow’s vision went white.

Sam and Bobby met on the landing where the old hunter handed him an axe. “Guess Spike was right.”

“We don't know if Michael's here,” Sam said, but he knew in his gut this was the end. They had to get to Sunnydale High. He should have plenty of demons to drink there.

“Dean?” Bobby asked.

“On his way.”

“Good thing we were ready,” said Bobby.

Sam adjusted the bag of books on his shoulder. They hadn’t unpacked after arriving home. Instead, Sam and Dean had packed up their few mementos -- photographs, cards, Dad’s journal, even a few of Buffy’s things -- knowing that their time in the apartment would be limited.

They hadn’t expected it to be this limited.

Two duffels landed with a thud just outside the Winchesters’ door quickly followed by Dean and Buffy.

Buffy snapped her cell phone shut. “Dawn said it's cocktail hour over there, too.” She readied her glistening bow. “Dawn's with Giles,” she said to no one.

Smoke began pouring out of the apartment. They hurried down the stairs, away from the fire and towards the monsters.

Something heavy and snarling hit the street door.

“Ready?” Sam asked.

Dean mouthed one, two, three. He kicked the front door open and fired into the monstrous crowd.

They had barely doused the last fire when a second volley of bottles assailed the house. One crashed against a Potential’s skull, bathing her in accelerant and flame, sending the girl to the floor screaming while others tossed wet blankets on her in vain. The blankets sizzled and smoked.

The stink of charred hair still hung in the air when the third assault began.

Beyond the broken window, Giles could see Potentials streaming from the other houses. Better to fight than to burn. “Everyone grab weapons!” he shouted, shoving a sword in someone’s hands. "And shoes!"

Immediately, girls gathered at the door. The best fighters first, followed by the girls whom Willow had taught a protection spell, then everyone else. Robin had parked a school bus on the block, and Bobby had hot-wired dozens of cars in the last few weeks. They just needed to get in the vehicles and rush to the school.

This was the simple part of the night.

“Giles, we have a problem,” said Dawn, rushing down the stairs.

He passed out weapons in a flurry -- crossbow, stake, bo staff. “Bit of an understatement.”

“What’s our Plan B for if Willow goes all Hec-a-no?” She pointed outside.

Moving closer to the window, Giles saw Willow, phasing between three forms, screaming at and floating over Buffy. “I take it that isn’t your sister.”

“Nope. She called. She’s on her way to the school with the Winchesters and Bobby.”

“Lucifer still doesn't have a vessel, so at least Hecate isn’t fighting It. I suppose, if it comes down to it, we can tie Willow to the bus like a balloon.” Giles turned back to the girls waiting for his signal. “The plan hasn’t changed. Everyone go!”

Flame licked up the curtains and jumped to the ceiling. The heat in the packed house squeezed their lungs.

“We can’t fight them!” said Ju. Usually flippantly cool, now she was trembling. The vampire bite she got at the vineyard still blazed, two angry pink dots, on her neck.

Grabbing her by the shoulders, Giles looked into her eyes. “Ju, you can do this. You can save yourself. You can save others.”

“But I’m not a Slayer!”

He slipped an axe into her unsteady hands and closed her fingers firmly around it. “You will be.”

Betje burst from the front door, slicing through two Bringers in one stroke. She rolled to her left, cutting a swath through the crowd.

Keisha and Lara stepped forward with aerosol hairspray and lighters, setting four vampires on fire. Other girls streamed out from behind them, plunging their stakes in the in vampire’s hearts, hacking off the heads of other monsters.

“Go! Go! Go!” Karen blocked for some of the greener girls as she fought her way to her car. She swung open the back door, shoving three girls inside with one push. “Come on!” she screamed, cursing for those left behind. She tossed Rachel and Mio in the crowded backseat and slammed the door closed.

Before Karen could shove anyone up front, something grabbed her ankles. She dropped to the driveway, air knocked from her lungs, where she saw a vampire under her car. It hissed, bared its fangs, and bit her leg. Gritting her teeth, Karen plunged a stake into the monster’s eye before scrambling into her driver’s seat. She backed up, the front wheels thumping over the vampire. For good measure, she drove over it again before throwing open the passenger door and collecting three more Potentials.

A light, the same icy blue that kept cracking through Castiel’s skin, flashed in her rearview mirror. Bodies flew threw the air. Karen gunned it.

From the across the street, Spike watched the Impala pull up to the high school and spill out its heroes -- three divine vessels and Bobby Singer. Wedged between the Winchesters, Buffy and her golden bow seemed impossibly small. The rag-tag family crept into the school, prepared to follow through with Sam’s suicide mission.

Spike lit a cigarette and took a long drag. The smoke burned his new lungs, but he kept the cough down. He’d missed smoking. “Lucifer, we need to talk.”

He waited.

“Lucifer?”

At his right hand, the image of Buffy appeared, a mixture of surprise and pleasure on her face.

“You don’t need much ceremony, do you?” Spike said.

“You’re an old friend, Spike,” she replied. “Although, you did disappoint me.” She pouted at him playfully. It struck Spike that the real Buffy would never do this. Lucifer had had access to so much of Buffy inside of Spike’s mind, but the archangel still didn’t understand her.

He still underestimated her.

Spike sucked on the inside of his cheeks. “You wanted me to hurt her.”

She grinned. “And now I don’t need you to hurt her.”

“‘Bout that.” Spike hoped the fallen archangel couldn’t sense what had been in him. “There’s no chance of winning here, is there?”

Buffy, or the cold and capricious idea of Buffy born of his broken heart and shattered mind, shook her head.

A few vampires entered the school. He wondered how many it would take to open the Hellmouth and what horrors lay beneath.

He tossed his cigarette on the grass and ground it out with his toe. “Then you can use me.”

“What?”

“Yes, the answer’s yes.” Spike held his arms wide in surrender. “I’ll be your vessel thing for the end of the bloody world.”

The-First-as-Buffy cocked her head to the side, inspecting him for cracks, for schemes. “Why? Why now?”

“Like I said. End of the world. I don’t want to see how it ends.”

“But I want you to,” she said with syrupy slowness. Stretching on her toes, she whispered into his ear, “I want you to watch her burn.”

“A fine and dandy thing for the Devil to want,” Spike shoved his hand through her chest, “but you’re still short a body. Unless you think darlin’ Sammy’s going to change his mind. Your big brother’s coming, isn’t ‘e? Pick a pony or you’ll lose the race.”

Right and left, tires squealed as carloads of kids took off for the school. Ellen, Karen, Jo, Anya, Xander, Dawn ticked them off as they escaped. She shouted at remaining pajama-clad army to get on the bus, in the safety of the shield Willow’s small coven of Potentials had put up.

“I think we’ve routed most of them,” Ella, one of the witches-in-training said, optimistically.

Dawn played along. “It’s a good thinning. Monster pattern baldness. Now we have to get in and go.”

Out of nowhere, a spear pinned Ella to the bus. Blood trickled from her mouth as she tried to pull it out.

The shield collapsed.

Before she could scream, something yanked Dawn down by her hair. She scraped her palms against the asphalt. A vampire dropped on top of her, laughing.

Dawn yanked a cross from her pocket and slapped it against his cheek.

The vampire howled but did not move.

Her stake was underneath her, grinding into her back. She felt around her for anything and came up with a rock. She bashed it into the monster’s face, snapping a fang.

Another vampire ran over and tugged on her assailant. “We gotta go, bro!”

Blood oozing from the burn and the bash, he snarled at his friend. “Not until she’s dinner!”

But there was a nervous urgency in the other vampire’s eyes. The vampire punched Dawn in the jaw before running off.

Then, Lucifer-as-Buffy disappeared, and Willow-sans-goddess fell to the earth. The sudden lack of vampire snarls and Hecate’s chorus of shouting cast an eerie quiet.

Giles rushed to where Willow lay prone on the lawn and scooped her into his arms.

Dawn stumbled onto the bus.

“Dawn! God!” Robin eased her into a seat.

The bus stank of sweat and blood. Ella hung limp on the spear just outside Dawn’s window. And beyond that. “What? Noooo! No reinforcements! Not for the bad guys!” Dawn whined.

Robin peered out the window. “Cover your face.” Using the butt of the gun, he broke the window, then raised his shotgun loaded with Bobby’s modified bullets, to his shoulder, and shot at a pair of Turok-Han that had appeared down the street.

Click. Click. BOOM!

Robin leaned out of the bus window shouting, “ON THE BUS NOW! MOVE!”

Before the monstrous vampires, stinging from the bullets, could make it down the block, the sky lit up with a blue streak of lightning, touching down where the uber-vampires stood. In their place stood a young man, tall and thin. He would have looked handsome if the sight of him wasn’t so terrifying.

“Did he just fall from the fooking sky?!” Kate shouted.

Someone shushed her. The hair on Dawn’s arms prickled. She felt the shush in her soul. Don’t draw attention to us. He. Is. Dangerous.

The remaining Potentials bolted for the bus. Giles followed, crashing into girls, Willow slipping from his arms. Their bodies jerked as Robin threw the bus in reverse.

“Who is that?” Wook asked quietly. Her close-cropped hair was matted down with glossy blood. It looked like the blood now soaking her shirt would never stop.

“I believe,” said Giles as he checked Wook’s head for the wound, “Michael has arrived.”

Blue lightning arcing from his back, the young man down the block raised his hands, sending all of the Bringers and remaining vampires into the air. With a clap of his hands, the monsters turned to mist.

Xander held his breath until the bus arrived at the school. Buffy had given him marching orders: pack his car full of Potentials and drive. Do not stop to collect Willow or Dawn or $200.

“Since when do we leave people behind?” he’d asked her.

Tears had rimmed her eyes, but she’d been too determined to let them fall. “This is beyond us. If Heaven and Hell break loose, we won’t have time to stop to look for people. Get the Potentials to the school. Save the world.”

“Dawn, Willow, Giles. Dawn, Willow, Giles,” Xander muttered under his breath. Saving the world was Buffy’s fate. He just wanted his family to be safe. “If we’re cutting deals, I can live with just Dawn and Will.”

A small, familiar hand squeezed his. Xander turned and locked eyes with Anya. “I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out of him without thinking. “I’m sorry for everything.”

Anya pursed her lips. “I’m here, Xander. If I survive, no promises I won’t take off, but for now I’m here.”

“Me too,” said a voice from behind him.

Anya and Xander both turned to look at Andrew, hand over his heart, gazing at them lovingly.

“Oh goody,” Xander deadpanned.

The bus pulled up, blood decorating the side in an ugly smear, and the door sighed open. The girls -- in pajamas, pigtails and retainers -- streamed out, their chatter an equal mix of saddened and excited.

“Did you see--?”

“She didn’t make it.”

“Do we have first aid?”

Finally, his eyes fell on Dawn, scraped and bruised but alive. She cut to the point: “Michael’s here.”

“Isn’t that good,” asked Rona, who’d escaped in his car. “Ain’t he here to put Lucifer in line?”

“It’s good in the ‘Golly, I want to die young as a sacrifice’ way,” said Anya.

Xander patted Anya’s shoulder. “Not helping.”

“Best to not gather outside. Into the school now,” Giles said.

"Oh my God, no!" shouted Anya, pointing at Willow, unconscious, in Robin’s arms.

Xander rushed to his friend's side.

"She wears those on purpose to give me nightmares, doesn't she?" Anya pointed at the offending bunny slippers on Willow's feet.

“She went full goddess, but didn’t bother to fight a single monster,” Robin explained ruefully.

“Why am I always missing this goddess thing?” Xander asked as he checked his friend out for injuries.

Anya shook her head. “No way. Dark Willow, Vampire Willow, and straight Willow are enough alternative Willows for me. I draw a line!”

“We’re at the big game without a QB. Can our B team pick up the slack?” Xander asked.

Giles looked at him quizzically. “Suffice to say, our fate would look rosier if we woke her up.”

Inside the school, the walls were covered in graffiti - of both the dumb kid and the occult varieties. A trashcan fire blazed in the hallway. Reddish-brown smears and flecks peppered the walls and floor. One streak had the distinct look of hands being dragged. An undisturbed layer of dust coated the floor. Five Bringers lay dead or dying by the office door where two more were trying to break in. Jo shot one in the head. Maya gutted the other.

Behind the door, someone moved a barricade of furniture before finally snapping the lock open. Sam peeked out of the office, grinning at them with his boyish dimples. “About time you got here.”

Buffy rushed to Dawn, sweeping her up in a tight hug. When they finally released, Buffy looked at her sister from head to toe. “Are those my pajamas?”

“Is that Dean’s shirt?” Dawn tugged on the large tee Buffy had knotted just above her jeans.

“Where are zee vampires?” asked wide-eyed Eva, visibly shaking.

Bobby, holding up the intercom, waved from inside the room.

“Exorcised,” Dean said. “They didn’t have souls, so poof.”

Robin nodded his approval. “Do you think that will work on Turok-Han?”

No one knew, so they didn’t lay odds.

Buffy took Willow in her arms and sat on the floor cradling her. “How long has she been out?” she asked quietly.

“How long was the drive?” Robin replied.

“We need her.”

“Understatement.”

Suddenly, Xander knew how to help. He leaned over and clapped his hands by Willow’s head. “Hey, Will! Time for the Algebra test!”

Willow sat up, surprised. “But I haven’t studied!” She quickly patted her body. “Okay. Dressed. Not that nightmare.”

“Different nightmare. More fangs.” Xander extended a hand to help her up.

"Speaking of nightmares--"

Giles cut Anya off. "Timing. Apocalypse."

With Buffy, the trio of old friends pressed passed the cubicles to Robin’s old office. Everything they needed to summon Hecate was laid out on his desk -- sand, candles, honey, and Artemis’ bow and arrows.

“Should be a cake walk, Will.” Xander clapped her on the shoulder. “I hear your goddess has already given a good tongue lashing tonight.”

“Cake.” Willow traced her fingers over the curve of the bow. “Mercurial, powerful cake that could swallow me. Oh! I need anchors.”

The Slayer snapped into leader mode. “Bobby, Xander, Dawn, help Will. Giles, Anya, Robin, take the north hall. Andrew, Ellen, Jo, take the south. I don’t know what the Hellmouth holds, but I’m betting it’s not a BOGO sale on shoes. We have to keep it in. Dean, Sam, girls, you’re with me.”

“Where’s Spike?” Kate asked, looking around eagerly.

“Spike took off this afternoon,” Jo said.

“He what?” cried several voices.

“No, it’s okay,” Sam said. “We saw him tonight. In fact, I saw him heading down the hall before you all got here.”

“Alone?!” squealed Rachel.

“He knows what he’s doing,” Buffy said. “Let’s go.”

Candles cast creepy shadows across the principal’s trashed office. Willow and her anchors had cleaned enough space to draw Hecate’s symbol with sand.

Placing Artemis’ weapon in her lap, Willow encouraged everyone to lay their hands on her. “Anchors don’t have to do anything. Just keep my soul from slipping into whatever soul-dimension Hecate is in. ”

“That don’t sound good.”

“It’s okay, Bobby,” said Dawn with a nervous smile. “Willow’s the most powerful witch in the world.”

“That don’t sound good either.”

Willow clutched the bow, focusing on its vibrations. Ka-thump! Ka-Thump! A strong rhythm, like a heartbeat, like a battle march.

Before Hecate’s name had finished falling from Willow’s lips, her world turned black and cold. Above her, pearl moons eclipsed one another -- two, now four, now six.

“Where am I?” Willow twisted and turned in the darkness, floating free.

In the distance, stars flickered to life in the shape of a woman with a series of smaller women in her, a nesting doll of light.

“You are in me as I am in you,” said Hecate’s alto chorus.

Willow tried to refrain from rolling her eyes. She didn’t have time for metaphysics when lives were at stake. “I heard you gave Lucifer the what for of his life. Surprised me. Those whats and fors.”

The stars in the distance flickered into an image of wings that quickly exploded into darkness. “My world is filthy with angels.”

“But you said that didn’t matter.” Willow struggled to keep her voice even. “You said they’d only destroy part of the world, part of humanity. That’s like losing an eyelash, right?”

Suddenly, the inky blackness was alight with a mural of people engaging in every human experience from the banal to the exciting. “I did not create this world, but I have enjoyed caring for it. I have enjoyed letting you humans play with magic that would normally be beyond your reach. I have enjoyed watching you walk and war, fight and feast.”

“Not to be a grammar stickler, but I’m not into your use of past tense. We humans are still alive. Michael just arrived. We can fight them!”

The glittering stars faded. “I tried to block them, to banish them to no avail. The world is infected with angels.”

“If you would just unchain Artemis--”

“No!” The stars flared so brightly, Willow had to close her eyes. “The Huntress betrayed me once. I will not count on her in this hour of need.”

Something in the distance caught Willow’s eye. When Hecate said Huntress, a star twinkled.

Focusing on the star, Willow whispered, “Artemis.” The star blinked again. Unsure how to move in this space, Willow willed herself to the star.

Without warning, something grabbed her, and they flew.

When Buffy and company arrived at the seal in the basement, they found Spike already tossing dead Bringers on it. Piled against the far wall were dozens and dozens of pale bodies.

The hairs on the back of Buffy’s neck stood on end.

“You’re not doing it,” Dean said in a low voice. “You’re not even ready anyway.”

Buffy shot Sam a quick glance. He was eyeing the bloody seal hungrily.

“You’ve been busy,” Buffy said. Something about Spike instinctively made her grip her weapon tighter. Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong.

Spike smiled as he watched the blood spiral out of the Bringer, filling the goat-faced design. He swayed back and forth happily, as if he was listening to music. “Wasn’t sure ‘ow long you’d take.”

“‘Ow long we’d take?” said Kate with a smirk. “Would a been a wee bit faster ‘ad you not gone rogue.”

The small room was getting more crowded by the second as more Potentials pushed in from the hallway. Buffy stood firm across the seal from Spike, but Kate rode the wave of people closer to him.

He looked hungry.

There’s blood on his lip. What was happening dawned on Buffy in a flash of horror, but there was no time for her to cry out.

Spike patted Kate’s cheeks as she gazed at him, happy to have his attention for a moment. “He always liked your spunk and pessimism.”

Then, he snapped her neck.

Dani raised her sword to strike him, and he blasted her against the wall with a sickening crack. She fell to ground limp, leaving a streak of blood and brain behind her.

The other girls, unsure of what was happening, shuffled back toward Buffy.

Spike clapped his hands together and rubbed them gleefully. “‘ow ‘bout we unleash a little Hell?”

The seal exploded.

The school rumbled, shaking loose plaster. Jo choked up on her axe, its weight reassuring her. “So, Andrew, this gate ever opened before?”

He glanced at the ceiling while he chose his words. “I think it skipped its annual eruption last spring.”

“What’s come out of it?” Ellen asked.

“Well, I was kind of focused on surviving graduation, but I think I remember a dragony thing.”

The weight of Jo’s ax no longer reassured her. An army of vampires she could fight, but a dragon? How on earth could she keep that in the school, let alone kill it?

Something snarled behind her. Two dozen yellow-eyed vampires stood at the school’s entrance, grinning at them hungrily.

“Showtime.”

Buffy fell, the rubble of Lucifer-in-Spike’s blast battering her, cutting her, until she landed with a thud, all the air and fight knocked out of her. Roughly thirty feet above her, the door to the seal room hung open at a funny angle. The rocky stairs under the seal remained intact, though perilous, with large gaps in spots.

Unphased, Lucifer-in-Spike sat beside her and caressed her cheek. “I’ve dreamed of touching you since I landed on your little Hellmouth. I’ve dreamed of ripping off your skin and snapping all of your fragile bones. Earth’s protector is just one girl.”

Ears still ringing, Buffy patted the ground around her for a weapon. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see blurry Potentials wearily trying to stand.

Lucifer continued, “I knew Spike was obsessed with you, but now that I’m in here -- goddamn, he doesn’t think about anything else. In fact, this bastard thought he could save you by controlling me. Isn’t that funny? He’s screaming right now, wants me to leave you alone, but I want him to watch you suffer first.”

He snatched a sword that had landed near her, and plunged it into her gut.

Dean had landed near the edge of a chasm. Rachel landed closer, the hard fall of her small frame enough to widen the cracked edge of the ledge. She was barely sitting up, wiping blood from her nose, when the ledge collapsed. Dean grabbed her hand, her body stopping with a jerk and bouncing against the rock. Far below her, a slew of monsters -- Turok-Han, Gorgons, Hellhounds, Hydra -- looked up and unleashed a deafening roar.

Rachel shook her head, fat tears flowing. “Don’t let go. Please.”

A cry of pain to his right. Buffy. He tried to block it out as the monsters raced up the walls toward Rachel. “I got you, sweetheart. It’s okay,” Dean said, pulling her up.

Suddenly, Dean was flying through the air listening to Rachel scream as she tumbled into the abyss.

Spike stood over him, yanked him up by his collar and grinned at him. “Hello, Dean. Time to play.”

Willow could not twist to see what was carrying her. Whatever it was made her feel warm and safe, like sitting beside a fire.

The ka-thump! Ka-Thump! of the bow’s energy grew louder. As Willow drew closer, she saw the star was actually a glistening cage. Inside the cage, a golden figure teetering between girl and woman, trapped in a heavy sleep, lay curled on a bed of evergreen boughs.

Willow alighted near the cage, hovering in space. She turned to behold a creature at least twice her height. It had a face and hands of mirror-like molten silver. Its many wings covered its eyes and feet while another pair furled out from its back. The feathers glinted like diamonds and rattled like swords. Small arcs of lightening traveled between the tips of the wings haloing its entire being.

“Do not be afraid.” Its voice sounded like the thunder of a thousand kettle drums. It’s mouth flicked like a blue flame.

Willow tried to scurry back -- for she was very much afraid -- but there was nothing for her to push against. She twisted and turned in the void, helpless.

“Willow, I am Castiel.”

She stopped twisting for a moment and considered the possibility. “Then why am I not angel-blinded like Steph was?”

“Because you’re not physically here,” he replied. “I am also trying to mask myself as much as I can.”

“Mask what?!”

Suddenly, Hecate landed with a primal scream so deafening, Willow feared it would snap her ribs. “Get ooouuut, angel! GET OUT!”

The stars flared so brightly, Willow squeezed her eyes shut lest she go blind.

The angel held out its mirrored hands in a gesture of openness. “I have not come here to fight you or to violate your sanctity, Goddess of Witches. I am merely here as a messenger and a witness.”

Two of her heads roared at him while the crone face snapped, “Why should I believe a filthy angel?”

From nothing, the angel produced a needle-like dagger. “I offer you my blade as assurance. If you feel I am an imposter, if I am here for any purpose other than to talk, you may kill me.”

For a fleeting moment before Hecate’s snarling heads blurred back into one, her pearl eyes blew wide with surprise. Slowly, she reached out to take the blade.

Willow exhaled in relief.

Hecate twirled the blade in her hand. “What is your message, Witness?”

Castiel’s flame tongue flickered. “My brother Gabriel and I took the Winchesters back to our world. Lucifer followed.”

“I am aware.” Hecate paced between them and the golden cage. “I tried to lock all the doors upon his departure, but not even I could seal the crack through which he slipped.”

By concentrating, Willow slowly moved away from Castiel. Perhaps she could rouse Artemis while Hecate was occupied.

But Hecate was no easily distracted monster. She began to phase in and out of her three forms. One pair of pearl eyes focused on Castiel, and another fixed firmly on Willow. “What are you doing, small one?”

Willow froze. Of course Hecate would notice. I was moving with magic! “I’m doing exactly what you think I’m doing.”

One of the goddess’s heads yowled like an injured animal. “Did you think,” another face asked calmly, “that you could trick me with this ruse?”

“No trick was intended,” said Castiel. “How could we possibly hope to best you? Especially here?”

“It’s just,” Willow bit the inside of her cheek, “could I see her? She’s been powering my friend for so long.”

For a moment, Hecate closed her eyes as she phased back into one form. “After I deal with the angel.”

Confident in Willow’s obedience, Hecate turned her full attention to Castiel. She held up the blade threateningly. “What is your message?”

Castiel gave no sign of fear. “While in our dimension, the Winchesters -- of course -- stumbled upon a meeting of several gods discussing what to do regarding the angels’ war.”

“I received word of this meeting.”

“Lucifer arrived. He killed them all.”

Silence fell between them. Hecate lowered the blade.

“All?”

“Odin, Ganesh, Mercury--”

The scatter of stars on Hecate's skin faded to black.

“Even my brother Gabriel. Kali and I were the only divine survivors.”

The goddess turned away from him. She wore only one broken-hearted face as she crouched beside the golden cage. “I am not surprised you found her, small one. After all, you found her vessel.”

Willow looked to Castiel for some clue what to do, but his frightening face was inscrutable. “What did Artemis do to you?” she whispered.

Hecate reached her hand through the bars to stroke the sleeping goddess’ hair. “Long ago, there was war. I only entered into the fray on behalf of you, my witches. I feared War and Father would be the death of you.”

“I thought you didn’t care about us?”

“I lied,” the goddess said. “Unlike the other deities of this realm, I procured the keys to wander where I wish. I have seen world after world at war. The people always lose. Demons take over. I do not share your view of demons as beings of evil, but I prefer humans. Their worship is deeper, more sincere, more powerful.”

“And Artemis?”

The goddess closed her pearl eyes. “She tried to bring Father back.”

Passing her arm through the cage and resting her hand on Hecate’s, Willow said, “Friends… disappoint you sometimes. The closer they are to you, the more it hurts. But friendship means you’re willing to give them another chance. I mean, I tried to end the world once -- which you seem totally cool with?”

Something almost friendly flickered across the goddess’ face. “You tried with magic. It was thrilling.”

Willow swallowed hard. Thrilling wasn’t the word she’d have used. “Anyway, when I tried to end the world, my friends were there to stop me and help me. Right now, they’re fighting demons and angels who are trying to end the world. Let me use my magic, your magic. Let’s lead an army of Huntress-led Slayers and tell these angels to go to Hell.”

Hecate rose and stretched to her full height. Higher and larger she grew. A slight smile was visible under her moon eyes. “You have planned well.”

Artemis began to glow.

Jo gasped for air. Why did the damn exorcism have to be so long? The fighting was wearing her down. The muffled roars beneath them didn’t help.

Andrew staked the last vamp before the recording finished. He bounced on his toes, looking like a joke of a boxer.

“Kid, save your energy,” said Ellen, leaning against a door.

“But I’m doing it! I’m a Scooby, and I’m heroing.”

Ellen smiled at him warmly. It had been a long time since they’d seen a happy hunter, let alone a green one.

The smile didn’t last. The door behind Ellen swung open, sending her toppling back into a classroom. She fell at the feet of a Bringer, his wicked blade raised high.

Andrew threw himself into the room, his stake held up to block the blow. His angle was off, and the dagger sliced through his wrist.

Boom! One blast from Jo’s shotgun blew the Bringer away. She fished for more shells in her bag as more monks crawled through the classroom window.

Ellen pulled off her sweatshirt to wrap around Andrew’s gushing stump. “That was so brave,” she told him over and over, trying to keep him from panicking.

“I’m a Skywalker! I don’t want to be a Skywalker!” he screamed, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Jo struggled to keep the tremble from her voice. “Mom, we gotta go. He smells like bait.”

Andrew started to protest. “But our post!”

“Is lost! We can’t fight dragons. We’ll hunker down in the office.” Or die there.

Sam swung a sledge hammer at Spike, sending him into the pit. That should be me, he thought. Why Spike?

Sam rushed to Dean’s side just as the first Turok-Han breached the cliff’s edge. Dean’s handsome face was purple and thick, one eye swollen shut. Blood gushed from his broken nose.

“Guess I don't have to worry about saying yes.” They'd argued over the decision for weeks. Once the words spilled from Sam’s lips, they sounded like a shallow victory.

Dean, his mouth full of blood and broken teeth, tried to smile for his baby brother.

Through his tears, Sam looked around the cavern at the tattered army of girls trying to push back what the Hellmouth offered. The less-trained girls were falling left and right. He had to stash Dean somewhere and guard the spot. Guard him until they finished and could get help.

Help from where? Their army was thinning fast.

“Can you walk?” he asked Dean.

Dean coughed, spraying Sam with blood. “It’s the end of the line. You know that.”

Not again. Not again. Hot bile rose in Sam’s throat. “I don’t accept that.”

Karen picked up the abandoned hammer and with one swing, knocked the Turok-Han back into the pit.

“Whoa!” She couldn’t contain her grin. “Did you see that? God, that felt amazing! I feel amazing!”

A large demon with four curved horns and long tusks crawled out of the pit before her. She swung again, this time the demon’s face dented the hammer. “Guys, you need to move.”

With the flap of charred, fiery wings, Lucifer-in-Spike soared from the depths of the Hellmouth. He looked amused. “Sammy! I was so ready for a new toy.”

He swooped down, grabbed Dean by the collar and tossed him to the monsters below.

Xander worried he’d cave under pressure. He rolled his shoulders, but it didn’t help. He tried reaching with his free hand, but the spot was too far away.

Eyeing him curiously, Bobby asked, “Someone starch your shirts with itching powder?”

Keeping one hand on Willow, Xander shimmied uncomfortably. “It feels like a million bugs in the middle of my back and I just can’t reach!”

“Maybe it is a million bugs? Spell side effect,” said Dawn with a giggle.

Remembering the time a classmate’s textbook exploded with spiders, Xander’s shimmying increased.

Dawn scooched over to scratch Xander’s back with her free hand.

Bobby rolled his eyes.

All of a sudden, Willow’s hair and skin glowed silvery white as if she’d eaten the moon.

Everyone snapped back into place with two hands each on Willow.

“What’s happening? Did we anchor wrong?” Xander asked hurriedly.

“She’s warm! Does she feel warm?” Dawn added with equal panic.

Slowly, Willow opened her eyes, now two white pearls. As she rose, she began to phase in and out of three forms. Pinpricks of light dotted her skin. Clutching Artemis’ bow and arrows, she looked down on her awestruck anchors. “Flee.”

In a flash of light, she disappeared.

Giles’ heart pounded as he staked another vampire. He heard a wet slice and a thud before turning around in time to see a headless figure turn to dust inches away from him.

“--fortitudinem plebi Suae,” droned a recording of Bobby playing on loop over the school intercom.

Robin nodded a you’re welcome.

“Benedictus deus. Gloria patri.” The remaining vampires turned to dust.

“Oh thank God!” Robin said, relaxing his arms for the first time in what felt like eternity.

“Could he speed that tape up or does the exorcism not work at chipmunk pitch?” asked Anya, taking a seat on an overturned vending machine.

A powerful wind like a sudden tornado knocked them to the ground; an ear-piercing squeal and blinding light followed it.

Their ears still ringing, they dared look around. “What the hell was that?” Anya asked.

“Not Hell,” said Giles.

Pinned to the rock, Buffy cut her hands trying to pull the sword from her abdomen, trying to save the man she loved, but she couldn’t do more than watch as Spike tossed Dean into the Hellmouth.

The air left her lungs. Her heart stopped beating.

Lara ran up to her, pulled the sword from Buffy’s gut, and put it in her hand. She was screaming something, but Buffy couldn’t hear.

Dean was gone.

Spike -- no, Lucifer-in-Spike -- had his hands around Sam’s throat.

Karen, Julia, and Ginika took turns chopping at what looked like a violently mutated bull.

Mio lifted a Turok-Han over her head and tossed it back into the abyss.

Dean was gone.

Molly and Wook tossed boulders into the abyss, celebrating as each hit knocked a monster back into the depths.

Maya grabbed the stinging tail of a lion-like creature and stabbed it in its eye.

Using a demon’s tentacles as a rope, Betje swung up on its giant shoulders and plunged her sword into its head.

Dean was gone, but her girls were radically present. Her Potentials were Slayers.

Suddenly, the cavern shook so hard, the kicked up dust obscured everything. Rocks crumbled all around Buffy accompanied by screams and roars as the crumbling cave impartially culled the warring armies.

An eerie quiet fell over the expanse as a blue light cut through the settling haze. Across the cavern, high up, what looked like a comet had crashed through the school. Only the comet was unfolding into a handsome young man, slimmer and sadder than his brothers, with lightning arcing from his back in spectacular wings.

Adam.

Michael was barely keeping his vessel together.

A few demons ran straight for the visitor who promptly ripped them in half.

He’s running low, Buffy thought. He’s saving his energy for Lucifer.

A few demons, upon seeing their kin mutilated with ease, ran back to the Hellmouth. Several more charged Michael, weakened from his previous efforts, who resorted to beating the hoard back with his fists. Most of the demons resumed fighting the Slayers.

Buffy reached out to her nearest Slayer, Margo freshly finished with a Tuork-Han. “Tell the others we need to run. The angels are going to blow.”

Margo’s blonde curls bounced as she nodded and set off to warn the others.

Adrenaline pumping, Buffy launched into the fray. She sliced through the leg of a giant, cut off the slithering head of a demon, and threw a rock in the eye of a cyclops while trying to get to the beast who killed the man she loved.

“Hey, Lucy! Ready for round two?” she shouted.

Lucifer-in-Spike dropped Sam, gasping at his feet. “Why can’t you stay dead?”

She shrugged. “It’s kind of a thing.”

He grinned at her with a bitter hunger. With Lucifer’s flaming wings unfurled, he moved lightly through the chaos, leaving a trail of ash in his wake.

A large serpent passed between them, blocking her view. Buffy plunged her sword in its side, cutting its length. It hissed, wrapping its body around her, cracking her bones. Suddenly, the serpent exploded in a spray of blood.

She fell to the ground, coughing and coated in snake’s blood. Lucifer-in-Spike stood before her, pale blue lines criss-crossing his skin.

“Spike?” she said, “Spike, you're a good man.”

He was on her in a flash, hands around her throat, turning the edges of her vision black. She tried to kick, to punch, to pull, but it felt like fighting stone with sand. “A sad little end for a pathetic little--”

He stiffened, his eyes softened as his hands eased up. He dropped to the ground screaming and clutching his head. Spike looked up, his eyes rimmed with tears. “‘ello, love.”

Free-falling into the Hellmouth, Dean thought quickly. He couldn’t dwell on Sam or Buffy, not while they were still in danger. Not while he could still save them before he died. He jammed his hand in his pocket for the horsemen’s rings.

Before he could throw them and open the cage, Dean stopped in mid air with a jerk before slowly rising. His feet found solid ground. A hand cupped his face, and his bones shifted back into place. The pain stopped.

Willow, the now white-haired, glowing vessel of Hecate, hovered before him. In cat pajamas and bunny slippers. “You can open it?” she asked in her chorus of voices.

She’d set him on a small ledge on the other side of the abyss, giving him a clear view of the Slayer army as well as Lucifer -- prone on the ground near Buffy -- and Michael, swarmed with hell beasts and burning through Adam.

“Why’d you save me?”

One of her heads cocked to the side while the other two met his gaze. “I have never wished you or the other vessels harm. I try to not interfere, but the angels have made no such promise. To survive I must change. I have awoken the Huntress.” She held out Artemis’ golden bow and quiver.

Dean looked across the abyss once more. The Potentials -- even the quiet ones, the frightened ones -- twirled and slashed their way around and through the monsters rising from beneath. They were kicking ass, but they couldn’t overwhelm what was coming.

“Little late, Sabrina. Artemis won’t be enough.”

“My vessel tells me you are the holder of a key; you can keep the angels from ever returning to my realm. Can you open the door?”

He snatched the bow and grabbed her hand. “Get me over there.”

“William the Bloody can’t even play hero correctly.” Lucifer-as-Buffy’s voice rang in Spike’s head, judging him short. “I gave you the chance to be my right hand, and you chose stinking humanity.”

Spike remained on his knees clutching his head. Bein’ a man is my highest aspiration, he replied. For her. For her.

It took all of his focus to stay in control, to press the Devil down. He’d been reeling and trembling since letting Lucifer in. People had died while he got his bearings; Spike could still taste the blood. He'd watched in agony as his fists had beaten Dean to a pulp, as his hands had thrown his former rival into the pit -- as he'd destroyed Buffy's dreams.

Buffy cut off the head of a large hound made of maggots and kicked it away. A Turok-Han got the same. Left and right, Sam used his sledge hammer to crush demons to dust. They were protecting him.

“Killing Dean wasn’t the plan. Kind of the opposite of the plan,” he shouted over the din.

Mourning painted her face. She couldn’t even give him words.

“What was the plan, Spike?” Sam asked between blows. “Did you honestly think you could beat the Devil?”

“Didn’t you?” Each time he looked at Sam, Lucifer's rage sent a seering burn through Spike's limbs.

Spike got to his feet. “Look, I’m keeping Lucifer down. I can still trap him,” he promised. “Lock up both the feathered bastards.”

Sam shook his head. “Dean had the key.”

Something in the abyss unleashed a thunderous roar. A great dragon flew up, dark blue like the night, with piercing gold eyes; its tail knocked against the back wall, and its leathery wings stretched across the cavern.

“I don’t remember this in training!” shouted Ju.

The dragon’s throat glowed like it had swallowed the sun. It reared back and blew fire at the ceiling, cracking loose several rocks. The Slayers ran for cover. Ju screamed as a large rock landed on her leg.

Buffy, Spike and Sam were perilously close to the dragon’s wing. One stray flap would toss them into the pit.

The dragon’s throat glowed again, and it belched fire all around them. Around them. High above floated Willow, her hands out held, giving each of them protection.

All save Michael, whose own protection caused more cracks in his imperfect vessel.

Small fingers interlaced with his. The dragon, the screaming, Lucifer -- everything fell away. He locked eyes with Buffy as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Now's your chance to be the hero you were meant to be, William.”

Michael’s weak. He’s alone, Spike realized.

“Anything for you, love.” Spike took off across the room, dodging the dragon’s scaly mass and the Slayers descending upon it. Without the cage, the Hellmouth would have to do. Spike ran full force into Michael, sending him flying toward the edge.

With Spike in pursuit of Michael, Buffy turned her attention to the dragon. She climbed onto the dragon’s wing. Its head constantly swayed, knocking over Slayers and charred monsters alike. Some of the girls near its abdomen tried to slip their blades in under its scales. Pulling a dagger from her pocket, Buffy poked it through the wing, ripping and slicing as she ran toward its middle.

A tall figure ran up the dragon’s back and neck. It reared up when the person reached its head, sending him rolling back down its neck and off at the wing. He landed at Buffy’s feet, dizzy, dirty and smiling.

“Dean!”

He staggered to his feet and delivered Artemis’ bow and arrows. “Hey Girly! You miss me?”

Her heart raced, and her body warmed. The air stank of fire and blood, but she had never been happier. “Make out session later, for sure.”

“Making out? I just came back from the brink of death. That’s gotta be worth at least a blow job.”

Buffy smiled, “Surviving first.” She loaded two arrows on her bow, and fired. The arrows sank deep into the dragon’s eye, sending the creature flailing it’s head and tail. A shrinking scream pierced the air as one of the girls was knocked into the abyss. Buffy fired two more arrows into its eye as Hecate-in-Willow continued to protect them from its fiery wrath.

Lara and Keisha latched onto the arrows and swung onto its head. Other Slayers tossed them swords. One went for the other eye and the other the soft spot by the ear. The pin cushion stumbled and collapsed as the Slayers cheered.

More demons and monsters climbed over the edge of the Hellmouth.

“Where’s Sam?” Dean asked.

Buffy quickly looked around the cavern, which was rapidly filling with smoke. “You know, Sam seems so spottable until something dragon-sized pops up. Maybe he followed Spike to fight Michael?”

“Followed Spike? The Devil-possessed ex-vampire who’s sadly still a punk fan?”

“He’s in control now.” She didn’t want to place bets on how how long he could last.

“Great timing. He’s still the Devil’s suitcase.” Dean took off to where a blue light glowed beyond the dead dragon.

Buffy resumed her fight, calling on the girls to retreat to the stairs, praying to live another day.

Spike and Michael wrestled on the ground, the dragon’s wing keeping them from rolling off the edge. A few yards away, Sam fought off any demon that tried to come close.

Relieved and confused, Dean joined his brother. “There a reason we’re protecting these feathered shits?”

Sam dropped his sledge hammer in shock. Tears filled his eyes.

“Hecate,” Dean said. “Chick flick moment later.”

His baby brother wiped his eyes before picking his hammer up again. “The demons only want to attack Michael. If he keeps fighting them instead of Spike, he’ll blow his vessel before we can get them in the pit. Or the cage. I guess the cage is an option again.” Sam, sweaty and bloody, smiled like he didn’t have a care in the world.

“Oh yeah!” Dean pulled the rings from his pocket and tossed the them near the struggling angels. The ground around the rings gave way to a black pit. Pebbles began to roll into it, then stones.

Spike, difficult to make out through the blaring light he emitted, looked up. “You’re alive!”

“I tried death once or twice. Didn’t like it.” Dean pointed up to Willow phasing in and out of the forms as she blasted demons back into the Hellmouth.

“It’s an acquired taste,” Spike replied.

Michael punched Spike in the face hard enough for Dean to hear bones crack. Stunned, Spike rolled on the ground.

With a sneer of pride on his lips, Michael stood over Spike. “You weren’t even strong enough to best one pathetic vessel. I win, little brother.” In that second, three golden arrows landed -- pfft! pfft! pfft! -- in Michael's heart.

Spike leapt up and shoved Michael into the cage.

A small laugh escaped Sam’s lips.

All around them, demons howled as Hecate-in-Willow continued her assault. The air was thick with sulfur and smoke. Girls continued to rush towards the escape -- towards life. “C’mon, Spike!” Dean called, hand outstretched. “Time to hit the road!”

Spike looked as his hands, a shattering shell, as if something holy were about to hatch.

But there was nothing holy inside him.

“I’m glad you two ended up in Sunnydale,” Spike shouted over the din. “You’ve been a good friend to me, Sam. Probably the best mate I ever ‘ad.”

Sam swallowed hard, holding back tears.

“Uh, okay. Let’s buddy comedy on the road,” Dean said.

Spike shook his head and took a small step towards the cage. “Dean, Buffy likes men with demons. Don’t let your demons get the upper hand, like I did.”

“Spike, you were literally possessed. We can unpossess you again,” Dean promised, knowing it was a lie.

“Love her. Have a life. Make little ankle biters, okay? She deserves everything.” Spike spread his arms wide, and fell backwards into the black hole of the cage.

The ground began to shake and crack as the entrance to the cage grew bigger, sucking in the dragon’s wing, then the dragon. Sucking in the Hellmouth. Sam and Dean sprinted for the exit. A girl in blood-stained nightgown tripped near the ledge and the cage claimed her.

Potentials raced up the broken stairs, leaping to the doorway back to the school.

The Winchesters and Buffy gazed down on the Hellmouth from the school’s basement door. Bodies and blood littered the ground. Monsters still climbed over the edge, some immediately being consumed by the ravenous maw of the cage. A light appeared from within that black abyss, and a hand grasped the cage’s edge.

“Stay out!” commanded Hecate-in-Willow, flying to the mouth of the cage and pushing the surviving angel back into its depths. The cage snapped shut behind her with a deep boom, and the cavern started to collapse.

They dashed through the basement and through the main hallway upstairs, shouting through the building smoke for people to run. The roars of demons followed them.

Outside dawn was just starting to break over the waiting cars. The packed bus took off as the sidewalk cracked beneath Buffy and the Winchesters. Buffy dove into Giles’ car with her sister, hugging her tight. Cramped in the back of the Impala sat the Harvelles holding a pale, sweaty Andrew; Bobby was already revving the engine as the Winchesters slid in. Tires squealing, they took off, the streets collapsing behind them.

Just past the city limits, the ground stopped quaking. To be safe, they drove on another mile before daring to stop. Slayers poured from the bus; some somber, some injured, some delighted at the power running through them.

Ignoring the hoops and hollers, pushing past the questions, Buffy and her friends slowing walked back to the edge of the Hellmouth. The Sunnydale city limits sign was singed and still boasting several thousand residents in the crater of a town glowing red in the early morning light. Soon the low whir of helicopters filled the air.

“That was maybe overkill,” Anya said as she cradled her arm.

“Was it though?” Sam retorted.

“What should we tell them?” Dawn asked.

“I’m going with wild slumber party.” Xander gestured at the girls still in their pajamas. “Hey, where’s Will?”

Giles put his arm around Buffy’s shoulder and they rested their heads together. “You’re not the only one anymore. What do you want to do first?”

Smiling, Buffy met Dean’s gaze and then collapsed.

They filled the waiting room. Dozens of Slayers -- bandaged, stitched, bruised -- spilled from the chairs, leaned against the walls, claimed space on the floor. They’d survived. They’d arrived.

Dawn, her legs curled up under her, was fast asleep in a chair. Giles, Robin, Bobby and Ellen sipped coffee from cups too small to combat their fatigue. Xander’s eyes were battle-weary, his gaze hollow.

Dean trudged into the waiting room and slumped into a chair between his brother and Bobby. “They’re taking her in for surgery.”

“She’ll be okay.”

“‘Course she will. She’s Supergirly.”

Within minutes of Buffy’s collapse, helicopters had landed on the now-useless highway out of Sunnydale. Blood from her stab wound had gone unnoticed, mingling with the monster blood soaking her clothes. Officially, she was one more anonymous injury of “the sudden sinkhole incident.”

The doctor said she may have some organ damage. Was that in the realm of Slayer healing? He also said Buffy was lucky. “Whatever impaled her just missed an artery. She would have died in minutes.”

Dean couldn’t help but wonder if Spike had pushed Lucifer off target.

“Do you guys want anything?” Andrew asked, quietly.

“Coffee. Irish,” Dean grumbled.

“I think they only have American and Colombian, but I’ll ask. Anyone wanna give me a hand?” Holding up his bandaged stump, he smiled at his own joke.

Anya pointed at her arm in a sling. “Together we can make a whole person.”

Jo put down the magazine she’d been staring at but not reading. “Come on. Maybe we can rummage up some snacks for the refugees.”

Looking at the crowd of girls flush with new powers, Sam chuckled.

Robin raised his eyebrows. “Care to fill me in on the invisible joke?”

“It’s not a joke, just irony. All of the Potentials are Slayers now, but we closed the Hellmouth. All this time it’s been one girl against everything Hell could throw at her. Now it’s an army against Hell's stragglers.”

“I wish it were that simple, Sam,” said Giles, his voice raw from tiredness and tears. “In addition to there being more Hellmouths --”

Dean threw up his hands. “Of course. Where?”

“Detroit for starters, but that’s an ongoing problem. There are more Potentials-turned-Slayers out there, girls pulsing with power they don’t know what to do with. We have to find them, train them before someone else gets to them, before they hurt someone. Trouble is, we’re low on Watchers.”

Ellen smirked. “You gotta have a posh British accent and glasses to be a Watcher?”

“Well, no --”

“‘Cause I see nearly a dozen people right here who’d gladly pitch in.”

“Gladly my ass,” said Bobby, squinting at Ellen like she’d volunteered him for the ballet. “I raised those two. I’m done!”

Ellen grabbed his face and turned it toward a circle of pajama-clad girls giving each other back rubs as they swapped stories. “Look at them and say no. You’re not that much of a gruff asshole.”

Bobby sighed. “Fine, but they ain’t living with me.”

Looking lively for once, Giles stood and stretched his shoulders. “Traditionally, a Watcher moves to the hometown of a Potential to train her, but seeing as we have so many Slayers at once, I was hoping to take half of them to England and while the other half remain to train with Buffy.”

“In Detroit?” Dean asked.

“Excellent idea, Dean!” Giles said with a half grin. “Of course, all of our resources were in Sunnydale.”

It was Sam’s turn to smile. “Good thing Anya, Willow and I put together a database of most of what was in Buffy’s books.”

“About that.” Xander’s voice was full of bite. “Can we stop daydreaming about the future for a second? Willow is dead.”

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Head thick with sleep but thankful to be yanked from her terrible dream, Buffy was positive she’d not set the alarm. She reached out to turn it off, but couldn’t find it. Had they slept in the bed funny again?

A large, calloused hand found hers. Her heart hummed. She wanted to start every morning holding Dean’s hand.

“Dean, will you kill that thing?”

“What thing?” he whispered.

“The beep beep. Death to beep beep.”

“I think the nurses would be pretty pissed if I turned that off.”

Buffy opened her eyes to find monitors and tubing on and in her body. A hospital. It wasn’t a dream. The fire. Spike possessed by Lucifer. Dean nearly dying. The Slayers. The dragon. The Hellmouth collapsing.

Spike.

Willow.

Agony sat on her chest, crushing her heart, drawing out a wail from her throat. Dean’s arms were around her, her face buried in the crook of his neck as the tears flowed. Other arms joined her. Xander, Dawn, Giles, Anya and Sam filled the room. She let go of Dean to hug Xander, his eyes bloodshot from crying.

“I know. I know. She was the best of all of us.” His voice was low and raw.

She wouldn’t argue. Willow was sweet and strong. Even before becoming a witch, she embodied power and bravery, standing up to vampires and throwing herself into the fray not because she had super strength or because she was chosen but because it was right.

Her friends stayed to share memories of Willow. Eventually, the conversation turned to Detroit and the new Slayers. All the while, Dean hovered by her side, keeping her in tissues and water.

She didn’t remember falling asleep.

When she awoke again, everyone had gone save Dean. “The local news is calling us refugees. Everyone who isn’t in recovery left to settle in. Some center is putting everyone up for the night, pizza dinner included.”

Her stomach rumbled at the mention of food. Throwing off her blanket, she swung her feet to the cold tile floor. “Cafeteria?”

Lacing his fingers with hers, he grinned. “Does this count as a date.”

“One of our better ones, hopefully.”

In the elevator, he kissed her hand, his lips lavishing over each knuckle. She was sore and exhausted; both thrilled and so upset she kept reminding herself to breathe at a normal rhythm. But his kisses calmed her.

“Dean, I--”

He was pressing his lips to hers, one hand cradling her back, the other tangled in her hair. The kiss was long, firm, with his tongue lightly tasting her lips. Heat spread from core to her toes.

Ding.

The elevator doors opened on a man holding flowers and three small children holding pink “Welcome Baby!” balloons gaping at them.

A different sort of heat rushed through Buffy, but Dean just put on a charming smile and pushed past them. He grinned at her embarrassment. “The guy’s got four kids, Girly. I’m sure that’s not the most action they’ve stumbled across.”

He brushed his fingers over her neck to play with her hair again. “You were awesome back there.”

“In the elevator?”

“In the Hellmouth.”

“I thought I’d lost you.”

“You’re stuck with me now, like that one jingle.” He started to hum a tune from a cheesy local car lot that bought excessive air time on all the radio stations.

“No! Now I’m going to be singing it forever!”

“Just like me. I’m here forever, even if I’m annoying. In fact, I was thinking with this whole Detroit thing --”

“Ew.” The idea of winters and driving everywhere did not appeal to her.

“-- I was thinkin’ maybe we could get a place together.” His face shifted from sexy to boyish as he spoke, the implication almost overwhelming him.

“Absolutely,” she said, grabbing his shirt and pulling him in for another kiss.

“You must be my six o’clock wedding.” A priest stepped out of an office near them, wrenching them out of their moment. “You don’t look like a cancer patient. Glad to see you’re on the mend!”

“Oh, we’re not--!”

“We’re here!” said a man coming down the hall, pushing a wheelchair. The woman in the chair was sunken-eyed, a scarf over her head, and an oxygen mask over her face. Buffy didn’t know much about cancer, but she figured the woman couldn’t possibly live to see Christmas. Still the woman couldn’t stop smiling each time she glanced back at the man who rolled her into a nearby chapel.

“Sorry, uh, carry on,” the priest said before following the couple.

For years, Buffy had feared hospitals. They were places for the sick and dying. Places where the newly departed roamed. But could they also be places of hope? A place full of babies and newlyweds. Of people who would walk again. Of people granted a second chance to get things right.

Hope.

The Slayer’s gift was death. Her role costarred monsters. But death could co-exist with life. Beauty with pain. Hope with horror.

Buffy and Dean considered the closed chapel door, then stared at each other, hoping to read what the other was thinking.

“You feeling impulsive?” Dean asked.

“Yeah.”

New beginnings. New cities. New Watchers. New Slayers. The same Dean Winchester.

Hope.

He bit his lip and looked back at the door. “It’s not just you anymore.”

“We could have a life. Are you feeling impulsive too?”

epilogue

[wildroseofarran]

Barnacles || Tristan, Oliver, & Ronan

Oliver: The day was hotter than he'd ever felt before from Edenton. Sweltering, nasty heat like he'd felt on his deployments.

Oliver felt in the cooler for something to drink. How were they out of everything? He could swear he could see the water evaporating from the goddamn ocean.

Off came his tattered gray shirt, tucked into his jeans.

"At this point I fuckin' pray for another hurricane," he called to Tristan.

Tristan: "Bite your tongue, Cole," Tristan called back. He too was shirtless, hair piled into a messy bun and sweat pouring down his forehead. "Unless you wanna put in another few days of ship maintenance."

Oliver: "So long as this thing don't have a breakdown. I'll get under the boat right fuckin' now if it got me a drink."

Tristan: He poked his head around the corner. "That a serious offer? Feel like scraping barnacles?"

Oliver: "Get me some fuckin' cold drinks n'I'll dive right now."

Tristan: "Is there any more ice in the freezer? There's a case of water in the cabin but it's at room temp. Probably hot as fuck just like everything else."

Oliver: "S'more like a slushie at this point. Toss it in the cooler n'I'll get started."

Tristan: "Done. Grab the goggles and tool belt."

Hell, maybe he'd join him, he thought as he went into the sweltering cabin to get the water.

Oliver: Back to following orders, tossing his shirt into the cabin, along with his necklace he'd forgotten to remove. He didn't need a tan line of a cross on his chest.

"Hear 'bout that tropical storm brewin'?"

Tristan: "Yeah. If it turns into another full-blown hurricane I'm gonna lose my goddamn mind. I tell you my dock at home took a beating? Gonna have to take a weekend to fix it."

Oliver: "I'll help with that, man."

Ronan: Tristan would feel his phone buzz. It would be a message from Ronan, a picture of him and the stranger from far away.

{Text} Send me $1m or I'll kill ur daughter. I have her hidden away & I've got eyes on u RIGHT NOW

Tristan: "Seriously? Thanks. I'll pay you in beer and margaritas. And actual money."

He felt in his pocket for his phone, squinting at it for a moment before laughing.

{Text to Ronan} Are you creeping on me over there?

Oliver: "Ya had me at beer." The laughter had him turning, body beginning to bead with sweat. The house tattoo on his arm was given the illusion of being rained on with his perspiration. He wiped his mouth and pointed.

"Someone ya know?"

Ronan: {Text} Bitch I might be. Whos the guy???! U have other friends??? disappointed

Tristan: "Yep, sure is. That's my friend Ronan."

{Text} The guy is Oliver, he works with me

{Text} Take a break from creeping and come meet him

Oliver: "Now that's a name." Over the side of the deck he went.

"Can he help with the barnacles?"

Ronan: {Text} I dunno. Whwt do i get in return?

Tristan: “Is he physically capable? Yes. Will he? Highly doubtful.”

{Text} My company and everlasting platonic love

{Text} Also pizza later

Oliver: "Great. What's he, a Northerner?"

Ronan: {Text} u had me at pizza.

He'll be over shortly, eyeing up the stranger the closer he got.

Tristan: “Irishman. One who’s not all that crazy about manual labor.”

{Text} Deal. Be polite, okay?

Tristan put his phone away and waved as Ronan approached. “Hey, renaissance man.”

Oliver: "Renaissance man? That your official title?" Oliver called.

Ronan: "Actually my full title is Renaissance Man De La Miguel Rodriguez the Third."

Ronan: He hadn't seen that last message, so he doesn't have to be polite. That's the law.

Tristan: Tristan chuckled and shook his head. “It’s his nickname. Ro, this is Oliver, my first mate. Oliver, this is my friend Ronan.”

Oliver: A stained rough hand was brought out for Ronan to take.

"Sup, man?"

Ronan: Gross. He smacked Oliver's palm with his own by way of greeting. "Hey. What's goin' on?"

Oliver: Uh, the fuck? His gaze remained steady despite his desire to glance at his captain.

"Anyway. Gonna start scrubbin'."

Ronan: Ronan finally looked at Oliver's face properly, having to drag his eyes away from those gross hands. He smirked. Where has Tristan been hiding this fucker?

"Or you guys stop workin' for the day an' we go out for some drinks?"

Oliver: "M'at the whim of my captain, but also wherever the beer flows."

Tristan: “The beer can flow after we scrape those barnacles.” Tristan gave Ronan a look. “No distracting my crew, you.” My straight crew.

Ronan: Ronan gave Tristan a wink. Suuuuuuuuuure thing, Captain.

"Stop bein' such a killjoy, your little boat will still be here tomorrow."

Oliver: "Could help n'get it over with? I'll buy ya two rounds of your favorite drink."

Tristan: Tristan grinned at the suggestion. Ronan doing physical labor was a delightful thought.

Ronan: "My clothes are worth a bit too much t'start... what did you say? Fuckin' scrubbin'?" Yeah, no.

Oliver: "Yeah. Ya take those off." He gestured between himself and Tristan, very much shirtless and sun baked.

Tristan: “And if you’re particularly attached to your pants, you can take those off, too. We won’t judge your choice in underwear.”

Ronan: Why is Tristan gesturing like Ronan hadn't very much noticed........ He may need to make a point of walking this way every day from now on.... What time do you start work, guys? Which days? Asking for a friend.

"I've got silk underwear on, so I'd have t'take those off too."

Oliver: Oliver's smile returned with a mischievous show of teeth.

"Tris, ya still got a scuba suit in the cabin?"

Tristan: Tristan grinned back. “Ya know, as a matter of fact I do. Goggles and everything.”

Ronan: Ugh fuck. "How 'bout I jus' support you, like, emotionally?"

Oliver: "Gonna miss out on free shots."

Tristan: He chuckled. "Go on then. You can heckle us while we scrape."

Ronan: "Heckle?" Hm... but the free rounds... "What would I have t'do if I helped?"

Oliver: "Ya take this here - or this brush - n'ya remove the shit on the sides of the boat." He'd deal with the bottom.

Tristan: Tristan was riding the same train of thought. "Just the sides, don't worry about the bottom. We'll take care of that. If you decide to help, that is.'

Ronan: He inspected the boat from where he was stood.

"Gimme your pants." He gestured to Tristan.

Tristan: "You wanna wear my pants instead of the scuba suit?"

Ronan: "It's gonna be fuckin' tight an' shit."

Tristan: "Have you ever been in a scuba suit? It's designed to be mobile and comfortable in the water. Especially this one since it's me sized and not you sized."

Ronan: "An' clingy. You tryna catch a glimpse of my cock size?" the question was directed at both Tristan and Oliver. "Jus' gimme your pants. You can wear the suit."

Oliver: Gayyyy. "They won't fit ya anyway. You're already fuckin' wearin' pants." And he was removing his own in favor of the new black, red, and blue board shorts in the cabin. The door creaked halfway shut behind him. If Ronan was determined, he would catch a glimpse of perfect swimmer's tan, accentuating the pale firm muscle of his ass.

Tristan: “It can’t cling if it’s too big for you,” he chuckled. “Also, it’s not silk. Silk clings. And Oliver’s right, my pants are too big for you, but if you insist. Just tighten my belt all the way.”

Ronan: "Yeah but mine are fuckin' clean an' nice. This is what clothes are meant t'look like. Must be a shock." Ronan would glance but nothing else... even if the image would linger with him for a moment after looking away.

"Uh huh. You're so lucky I'm even doin' this for you, you likkle prick."

Tristan: "Aww, you cut me to the quick." He grinned and kissed Ronan's cheek. "Yes, I'm very lucky. Thank you."

Tristan proceeded to strip out of his jeans. Unlike Oliver, he already had his trunks on underneath as he'd been vaguely planning to tackle the barnacles before the ungodly heat forced his hand. "Here you go. I need to get my tank on."

Ronan: Ronan was clearly very proud of himself! He smiled to prove it. The kiss helped.

"Don't start fallin' in love with me, 'kay?" He takes the jeans. Yeah. Pretty huge. He'll need to swap one pair for another... where... should he change...

Oliver: Oliver widened the door to the cabin and stretched. It seemed his favorite boss caved.

"So how pale are ya, Irish? I wanna see veins. Ya better bring honor t'Ireland," he smirked.

Tristan: "I'll try my best," Tristan chuckled, gathering his goggles and scuba tank from a storage compartment.

Ronan: Hm. He steps towards the cabin, putting a hand on Oliver's chest in order to guide him out of the way.

"I grew up in Italy an' have been around America for years. I'm tan, thanks."

Oliver: Touchy feely. Not new by any means, and not a surprise. What little he knew of the man, the touch was accepted.

"Italy, huh? Ya like the Mediterranean?"

Ronan: "Nah, fish kinda freak me out. Why the fuck do they move like that? Eugh, yikes." He stepped into the cabin to start changing. He'll have to message Matheus and let him know, too. Ronan'll also send a picture of his shirt folded up neatly and ask if he's proud.

Oliver: {Text via Matheus} Very tight fold. You've learned well.

Tristan was given a smile, humored by this random piece of information. A phobia, maybe?

"What about, ha, octopus? That do anything to ya?"

Tristan: Tristan was laughing as he strapped his tank on.

"He'd have told me, wouldn't you, Ronan? He would've freaked out every time he saw the one tatted on my arm. Speaking of, think I'll get another. Maybe a giant squid on my leg somewhere. Or a Kraken."

Ronan: "You should let Conor do it. You won't find any tattoo artist with as much experience as him." He smirked. It was a joke only he and Tristan would get.

He emerged changed, shirtless, and with the belt keeping Tristan's trousers up. "I'm fine with them. They don't move like-" he gestured the wishy-washy movement with a hand.

Oliver: The thirst which had nearly suffocated him had been quenched. Quietly, he got to work, tethered to the boat with rope and carabineer.

"I shoulda been in the Navy," he muttered, disappearing behind the port side with a wink.

Tristan: Tristan hummed thoughtfully. He actually hadn't thought of that. "Maybe I'll pop by his place and ask him," he said, smiling at Ronan. "See what he'll charge me."

He grabbed some gloves and a scraper for Ronan. "That's seriously the only thing that freaks you out about fish? The way they swim?"

Ronan: "I'll get him t'do it t'you for fre- actually you're makin' him do this, so I'm gonna tell him t'charge you double." the gloves and scraper were snatched. He put the gloves on far from gracefully. "They look weird an' move weird. An' they're wet ALL the time, or they die. It's fuckin' weird. Weird!"

Tristan: “You will not be present during price negotiations,” he chuckled. “Don’t worry, I pay well. Just ask Oliver.”

He laughed again. “Ain’t their fault. They’re just trying to live their lives. All right, into the water, Renaissance man.”

Ronan: "... Are there fishes around here?" He shuddered. "Talkin' about 'em freaked me out..."

Oliver: "Get in the fuckin' water!" came from the other side of the boat.

Tristan: "Nah, not in this area. The noise and activity from the ships scares them away. Come on. Oliver will show you how to do it."

Tristan adjusted his oxygen and his goggles and lowered himself into the water. A few moments later he disappeared beneath the hull.

Ronan: "Fuck you!" He casually called back. He watched Tristan disappear into the water and... shuddered. "Ugh. Gives me the heebie-jeebies."

Oliver: "You'll be fuckin' fine! C'mere n'start scrapin' with me."

Ronan: "You come HERE!" grumpy grumpy.

Oliver: A head peeked from the edge a moment later. "What d'ya want, an audience?"

Ronan: No, he just wanted to be a brat.

"You're on thin fuckin' ice."

Oliver: "That was easy," he smirked.

Ronan: "What was?"

Oliver: "Gettin' on thin fuckin' ice." Beads of sweat and ocean were wiped from his brow. "If ya can't swim just say so."

Ronan: He scoffed. "Can't an' won't are different."

Oliver: "The result's the same." He held out his hand. "Come on. I'll help ya down."

Ronan: He squinted at the hand. "I thought you weren't a pansy."

Oliver: "Says the man afraid of fish."

Ronan: "What's that got t'do with bein' a pansy?"

Oliver: "You're a fuckin' pussy."

Ronan: "People wanna fuck me? True."

Oliver: "People wanna fuck you?"

Ronan: "Yeah. Like a pussy." Is there a fish somewhere he can throw at this fucker?

Oliver: "You're alright with that?"

Ronan: "Are YOU?"

Oliver: "I ain't into all that gay stuff. N'I ain't wantin' a conversation. Just get in."

Ronan: He gave the other a dirty look.

"You sound like-" me not that long ago. "Make me, nigga!"

Oliver: "If you were any less black you'd be clear." A splash followed his disappearance from view.

Ronan: Eyes rolled. Yeah. He's not gonna help. He'll find a place to sit and smoke some weed instead.

Tristan: It was a few minutes before Tristan's head popped out of the water again.

He looked around. "Ro?"

Ronan: "Mm? Your friend's a piece of shit. Wanna smoke?"

Tristan: "Ro, you're supposed to be helping!"

Oliver: "He's just gonna keep tellin' me why people wanna fuck him."

Ronan: "Go back t'your fish friends!"

Tristan: "Jesus Christ. Ro, if you weren't gonna get in why take my pants?"

Ronan: "I was gonna get in 'til he annoyed me, now I don't wanna help him."

Tristan: "You're not helping him, you're helping me."

Ronan: "Ughhhh why you gotta pull that shit?"

Tristan: Tristan flashed his best smile. “Is it working?”

Ronan: "Bitch it might be." He threw his joint into the water and below and shuddered. He hadn't even smoked enough to calm his nerves yet, but apparently here he goes... "How do I get in?"

Tristan: He laughed. "Nice to know I still have my charm. There's a ladder on the side there. I'll catch you if you need."

Ronan: "Uhhhh huh." he just had to... uh... do some stretches first...

Tristan: Tristan swam over to the ladder and offered up a hand to Ronan. "C'mere, renaissance man. I've gotcha."

[himecchi]

keith trapped in a burning building, his dad saves him but his dad ends up dying ((also i already love this blog. i live for keith whump))

Summary: While learning about Altean sensory alteration rooms, Keith is shown an image that triggers an unwelcome flashback. 

Fandom: Voltron

For: @badthingshappenbingo

Square filled: Trapped in a burning building

Note: this was partially inspired by this art by @zuspacey 

An Altean sensory alteration room. The paladins were fascinated. They’d never seen anything like it before and, as they stepped inside, Coran began to explain how it worked.

“Alright Paladins, listen up!” Coran paused for a moment, then continued “This is an Altean sensory alteration room. It’s similar to the virtual reality chambers you have on Earth, but it’s a bit different. This here, alters your senses. All five of them. What you experience in here will feel real in every respect. For example…” Coran trailed off as he turned towards a large digital screen and began typing, “If we do this…”

Suddenly, the environment began to shift. An icy tundra materialized before them and, just as Coran had said, it truly felt real. They could taste the bitter air, feel the chill on their skin, smell the frosty wind, see the snow-coated landscape, and hear the dull roar of bone-chilling breeze whooshing past them.

“Wow…” Pidge began, “This is…”

“Amazing…” Hunk trailed off, taking everything in.

Lance began forming a snowball, then reached back, preparing to launch it. “Hey, Keith! How about a sensory alteration room snowball to the fac-” Lance called out, but was cut off by an orb of cold snow smacking him in the face instead.

“Heh, nice try.” He could hear the confident smile in Keith’s tone and, sure enough, as the snow slid down Lance’s cheeks, Keith’s smirking face came into view.

“Oh, you’re so gonna get it,” Lance retorted, looking unamused.

As the paladins began throwing snowballs at each other, Coran watched them at a distance, shivering from the cold. He wasn’t used to these freezing temperatures as Altea’s climate tended to be fairly mild.

“A-alright, paladins!” Coran called out, teeth chattering slightly, “That’s enough! Let’s turn up the heat!” He then typed another command into the digital screen, and suddenly, the surrounding area was on fire.

“Uhhh… Coran?” Lance questioned, cocking an eyebrow, “Is this supposed to happen…?”

“Yeah, I don’t like this,” Hunk said, knitting his eyebrows together slightly, “Can’t you make this into… I don’t know… a nice, tropical island or something?”

“Yeahhh,” Pidge began, “This is a little extreme, Coran. I mean, I know none of this is actually happening, but it feels like it’s actually happening and I’d rather not feel like I’m burning in a fire.”

“Right, right! Sorry, paladins!” Coran spoke, “It seems I accidentally input the wrong data. Just a moment.” Coran began typing into the digital screen once more…

But for Keith, it was already too late.

His eyes grew wide as the vibrant reds and yellows danced before him, his breath quickened at the overwhelming scent of smoke, and suddenly, he found himself back there.

He was 10 years old again, inside a building surrounded by the crackling of fire. Thick smoke was filling his lungs as he struggled to breathe. Vivid colors jumped into his vision. Terrifying heat engulfed his body… and the taste. A bitter, ashen taste was sharp in the back of his throat. He looked around frantically, searching for an exit - for any possible way out - but he couldn’t find anything. Terror began to set in as he realized he was trapped.

“Help!” He cried out, choking on his panicked breaths, “Somebody please! Help me! HELP!”

Hot tears began to soak his cheeks as he coughed, gasping desperately for air. Everything began to shift in and out of focus as the stifling heat intensified and the thick smoke clouded his vision.

“PLEASE! Dad! Somebody! Anybody! HEL-” he cried out, choking on the last word.

Tears continued to spill past his eyes as they stung from the ever-increasing smoke. He could feel the painful sting of cinders against his skin as the raging fire began to close in around him.

“No… I don’t… want to die…” Keith choked out weakly, “Please… somebody…”

Just as his world was about to go black, he saw a figure moving towards him. The figure quickly hoisted Keith into the air, cradling him close to his chest.

“Everything’s alright, son. I’ve gotcha.”

Keith recognized the voice instantly. It was his dad.

“D-Dad?” Keith managed to breathe out.

Suddenly, Keith registered bright light meeting his eyes as he was enveloped in cool, fresh air. The change in environment was sudden, and it jolted Keith into a state of slightly greater alertness, but everything in his vision swam and still appeared blurry to him.

He managed to pick up on bits and pieces of the commotion: flashes of red and blue, his dad’s hand brushing back his bangs, and the sound of sirens in the distance.

“Take him… going back…”

Fragments of conversation flooded Keith’s ears.

“… too dangerous…”

“Take care of Keith…”

“…building could collapse…”

“…I have to…”

Keith’s weary mind was too exhausted to piece all this information together, but something in him understood the gravity of the situation and, at the realization that his father was in danger, he suddenly found himself hyper-alert.

He sat up, finding himself in a pair of unfamiliar arms. He began frantically looking around, then caught a glimpse of his dad just as he was about to turn and run back into the building. Keith struggled free, running towards his dad, calling out to him, “Dad! Wait! Don’t leave me!” he cried out. “DAD!”

Before he knew it, he felt unfamiliar arms wrapping around him once again, holding him in place. “Let go of me!” Keith screamed, “Dad! Dad!” he yelled again, as tears began to pool at the corners of his eyes. “DAD!!!” Keith cried out with every ounce of strength he had in him.

Suddenly, his dad paused, then turned towards him, “I love you, Keith,” he said smiling softly, eyes wrinkling gently to form the loving expression Keith knew so well… then, he turned and ran into the burning building.

“DAD!” Keith screamed, “No! Don’t go! DADDD!!!”

Without warning, an explosion was heard as the fire intensified and then, right before Keith’s very eyes, the building collapsed, his father still inside.

Keith stood in place as time suddenly froze. Reds and yellows and blacks and blues all merged together in his vision, and Keith felt himself completely disconnect from reality. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be happening… and then it all faded away to black.

Keith’s eyes fluttered open and he awoke to a ceiling washed in fluorescent lighting. He groaned, placing his arm over his eyes.

“Wh-where am I?” he mumbled to himself.

“Good to see you’re awake.”

Keith turned to see a nurse peering down at him.

“How are you feeling?” the nurse asked kindly.

Keith paused for a moment, trying to process everything.

What happened? How did he get here? Why was he here? Where was…

“Dad!” Keith yelled out, as it all rushed back to him. “Where is he? Where’s my dad? Is he… is he okay? Can I see him?”

The nurse gazed into Keith’s young eyes, wide and innocent, and slowly, she turned away, shifting her eyes towards the ground and swallowing hard.

“Just a moment,” she mumbled as she walked out of the room.

Keith watched her as she left, continuing to stare at the door until a new face appeared before him. He recognized this man as Jeff, one of his dad’s colleagues.

“Hey, kiddo. How ya feeling?” Jeff smiled awkwardly.

“Jeff?” Keith questioned, “What are you doing here? Where’s… where’s dad?”

The pieces were beginning to fall into place for Keith, but he didn’t dare allow himself to consciously acknowledge what he already knew to be true: his father hadn’t made it. Somewhere in his heart, he knew, but he just couldn’t bring himself to accept it.

Jeff drew in a deep, shaky breath, then moved to sit near Keith. He didn’t have it in him to break the news to the kid, but he knew he had to. One look into Keith’s eyes, glazed over with concern, was enough for Jeff to know it was no use trying to dodge the subject.

“Listen, kid,” Jeff began, “Shoot… I don’t know how to start this……” Jeff closed his eyes for a moment, attempting to compose himself. “Your dad… I just… before I tell you this, I want you to listen to me, Keith. Your dad… he loved you very much, okay? You were his entire world… all he talked about - his pride and joy. Do you understand?”

Keith nodded silently.

Jeff took another deep breath, “Okay… now listen, the thing is… that fire… your dad… he went back in to save the last person in the building and… it collapsed, Keith. He… ummm… he was inside when it collapsed.”

“I… I see…” Keith stuttered, swallowing hard, “Well… is he okay? Can I see him? He’s probably in this hospital then, right? I… I’m sure he’s worried about me, so… I should go see him and maybe-”

“Keith.” Jeff cut him off. “He’s… not here, Keith.”

“Well where is he?” Keith asked, feeling irritated.

“Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it,” Keith’s mind was screaming as he watched Jeff begin to speak.

“He’s dead, Keith. He died… I’m… I’m so sorry. Your dad… he was a true hero. He… he knew the building would collapse, but he… just ran in there anyways and…” Jeff trailed off, voice breaking.

Once again, the whole world froze around Keith. No, no, no. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t… it couldn’t be… none of this was real. The neutral tones of the hospital room began to shake and… wait… the hospital room wasn’t shaking. Keith was shaking. His vision began to blur as fresh tears welled up in his eyes and overflowed, leaking down his face.

“Keith,” Jeff spoke softly as he moved to place his hand on Keith’s shoulder.

Smack.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” Keith screamed at him, slapping his hand away with the ferocity of a wounded beast, eyes wide as tears continued streaming endlessly down his cheeks.

“You’re lying!” Keith yelled, “I know you’re lying! I’m going to find my dad… I’m going to… see him…”

Keith’s breathing was beginning to quicken as panic set in, causing him to struggle to get the words out.

“I’m… he’s… I have to… have to see him… where… which way…” Keith began frantically looking around the room, trying to orient himself as his breathing picked up pace yet again.

“Keith…” Jeff began moving towards him, unsure of what to do.

“GET AWAY FROM ME!” Keith screamed, slicing his arm through the air in an attempt to make his point clear.

“I just… have to… dad… which way… dad… dad…”

Huff. Huff. Huff. Keith’s erratic breath was now ringing in his ears and, with the way he seemed to be choking on air, he felt as if he were back in that burning building all over again. He was suffocating - completely consumed by the thoughts whirring around in his mind.

Keith… Keith… Keith…

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

“I thought I told this guy to leave me alone!” Keith thought.

He angrily slapped the hand away. “I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE ME ALONE!” he cried out.

Immediately, Keith paused as he was met with a familiar set of eyes: Hunk.

“Keith… hey, calm down,” Hunk spoke in a soft, gentle tone, “Are you okay?”

Keith blinked several times, eyes darting around the room in a panic, trying to process this sudden change of scenery.

“Where… where are we?” Keith asked urgently, “What happened? The fire… there was a fire…” Keith was still looking around the room, terrified.

“Keith,” Hunk tried again, placing a hand on Keith’s shoulder. This time, Keith accepted the touch. “Calm down, buddy. We’re in the sensory alteration room. Remember? The fire was just a sensory illusion. Coran accidentally typed in the wrong code.”

“Are you okay, Keith?” Pidge asked, features tensed in concern, “You completely zoned out.”

“I… I did?” Keith asked, swallowing hard as he brought a hand up to his head in confusion.

“Yeah,” Lance spoke, “We called your name again and again, but you were just… it was like you were in another world…”

As reality began to set in, Keith started regaining his senses.

“That’s right,” he thought, “I remember now… we’ve been in here the whole time… but it felt like I was…”

Keith could feel fresh waves of panic rising in the back of his throat as the flashback he’d just had resurfaced in his mind. He felt sweat begin to pool on his skin as his face went pale.

“I… I’m fine, guys,” Keith spoke, trying to keep his voice from shaking, “Sorry… I think I’m just t-tired… I’m gonna go.”

It wasn’t at all convincing, but Keith’s fellow paladins felt it would be best not to push him, so they decided to let it slide, instead exchanging worried looks with one another.

After several moments, Hunk spoke, “Maybe we should go talk to Shiro?” he suggested.

“Yeah,” Lance said, looking at the ground, “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”

“Shiro probably knows best when it comes to Keith,” Pidge mused.

Shiro was in his room reading, when suddenly, his double doors slid open to reveal Pidge, Hunk, and Lance. Shiro cocked an eyebrow. This was certainly out of the ordinary.

“Hey guys,” Shiro said, closing his book and walking towards them, “What’s up?”

None of them spoke, instead they awkwardly stared at the ground, unsure how to begin the conversation.

“Okay… you’re kinda freakin’ me out,” Shiro noted, eyebrows raised, “Seriously, what’s up?”

“It’s…” Lance began to speak.

“It’s about Keith!” Hunk blurted out.

Shiro’s demeanor immediately shifted, his casual stance becoming alert as his eyes flooded with concern.

“Keith? What’s wrong? What happened?” Shiro questioned.

“Well…” Pidge began, “We were in the Altean sensory alteration room and Coran accidentally put in some incorrect data. It made everything seem like it was on fire, and-”

Pidge didn’t even get to finish her sentence before Shiro was pushing past them and running down the hall.

Keith sat on the floor in his room, head between his knees, body shaking.

“Calm down,” he told himself, trying to steady his breathing.

It was no use. The flashback had really shaken him up, and he couldn’t keep the panic at bay any longer. It was now at full force, wreaking havoc on him. Each time he told himself to calm down, he felt a fresh wave of alarm rise in his chest. The air around him was stifling and he felt as if it was suffocating him. It was an endless cycle: whenever he had a panic attack, he’d find it hard to breathe, which would remind him of the feeling he had when he was trapped in that building, choking on smoke the way he was now choking on air. This would cause his panic to rise even more, which would make it even harder to breathe, and it would continue on like that for what felt to Keith like an eternity.

As fresh memories flooded his system, Keith began to sob. These were the memories he’d buried deep within himself - the memories he’d wanted to forget. They resided in the darkest depths of his being and he had intended to always keep it that way… but today, it was all too much. It was all too real, and it had opened the gate he’d built to keep these memories locked away.

“Get out!” Keith screamed in his mind, “Stay out of my head! Just stop! Please stop!”

“Keith!” Shiro’s voice came out in a panic as the doors to Keith’s room slammed open.

Suddenly, Keith felt familiar hands wrapping around his shoulders, pulling him into a comforting embrace.

“Sh… Shiro?” Keith choked out, confused.

“I heard what happened,” Shiro explained. “It’s okay, Keith. You’re okay.”

Shiro rubbed comforting circles into Keith’s back, trying to help him calm down.

“You’re safe, Keith,” Shiro reassured him, “It’s okay.”

“I miss him so much,” Keith cried out, choking on a stifled sob. “I… he died when he went to save the l-last p-person in the building… th-that means… if… if I hadn’t been there… m-maybe he’d still be-”

“Don’t say that,” Shiro shushed, “Don’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault.”

“I don’t… I just… I never knew how to feel back then… sometimes I still don’t. I was so angry. I didn’t understand why he’d leave me. I was so lonely. I missed him so much… but… I was also so proud… so proud to have such an amazing dad… but… I… I just… why… why did it have to be this way? I just…… I miss my dad,” Keith whispered the last words, as if he was admitting a secret to himself, and with that, the flood gates had been opened. Keith was now crying freely, the grief too intense to hold inside himself any longer.

“I know you do,” Shiro said softly, rubbing gentle circles against Keith’s trembling back.

Shiro reached back behind him and grabbed a blanket, draping it over Keith’s shoulders, then pulled him in closer as liquid grief continued to spill past Keith’s weary eyes. Shiro knew nothing he said right now would help, so instead he let Keith bury himself in his shirt as tears cascaded down his face like waterfalls.

“You’re okay, Keith. I’ve got you.” Shiro whispered soothingly.

Eventually, Keith had cried himself to sleep in Shiro’s comforting embrace.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed! Thank you so much for the prompt @koganewest! I’m glad to hear you’re liking the blog! I lowkey highkey live for Keith whump too :) 

 If anyone else has prompts, feel free to check my bingo card (updated version can be found on my page) and send any that haven’t already been requested my way :)

[gipsytrips]

Around the world with my baby daughter.

Article for traveling parents.

Finally I got just a little bit of free time and maybe I could write several posts about traveling with my baby daughter. Right now we are in Dominican Republic, Thaissia is sleeping and I’m using this bit of time to share our experiences and how we are managing.

From her very early days Thaissia was already traveling around France, and I did write a couple articles devoted to those trips. When she turned 2.5 months, we left France for Saint Petersburg, Russia and then took a train over to Moscow to visit family. Later when she was almost 5 months, we took off to California. At the age of 8 months we were in Dominican  Republic and we are still here spending the winter and traveling around a bit more seriously.

As for flying in airplanes, Thaissia does it like a grown up. She doesn’t cry, sleeps in my arms, eats, plays with me and sometimes wants me to carry her around the cabin so she can look and smile at people. During the flights we never used any baby gear (like infant airplane seat from amazon) except for sling or baby carrier. Her habits and the ability to fly easy can of course change in the future, she might become more capricious and demanding… For now she is fine and it is great.

Lets talk about everyday life on the go and baby travel gadgets. In France and Russia Thaissia was still a little baby and everything was rather simple – elastic (Je porte mon bebe) or cotton sling wrap– Amazonas brand (and no stroller), foldable travel bed-bag (and no separate crib), car seat, baby bath tub with seat or hammock, medicine and first-aid kit, diaper backpack for long walks (I just adapted my regular day backpack for baby needs), blanket on the floor with some toys hanging over it (baby gym). In Petersburg we also had a baby chaise longue at the balcony. Our most important accessory has always been a sling wrap and starting from the age of 6 months we replaced it with baby carrier Ergobaby 360. This thing is vital and super useful for traveling and everyday life. But not all parents got their backs ready, so train yourselves in advance.

When Thaissia learned how crawl, in the States I had to get her some more baby gear… Besides a couple different baby gyms from Ikea, we got a huge blanket on the floor, that would cover almost the entire room, and later I had to buy a spacious 6-panel baby gate (Summer Infant), which I was using as a gate only in order to separate that part of the room where I didn’t want my little one to crawl to… I purchased all kind of baby safety things, but we only used outlet plug covers and mini night light. We have a bunch of other safety gadgets (like cabinet and toilet seat locks, silicone corner protectors), but because of constant traveling and moving from one house to another, we still didn’t have a chance to try all that stuff out. For our beach days I bought a baby tent, but we used it for only about a month, then my baby didn’t want to lie in one place anymore… Also at home we had a fit ball, a great thing for exercises with your baby!

I breast feed, its healthy, pleasant and comfortable, never have to worry about any bottles or formula. In California I started giving Thaissia additional food, so I got a mini blender (380 ml) that can be USB-charged. We used it for 3 months, while I needed to make puree. Now I just use a fork to mash some food in a plate as my baby got 8 teeth.

Sleeping question. We have been co-sleeping from the very beginning. Whatever people may say, it works for us perfectly. So we never had a separate baby bed. Just the first five months Thaissia was sleeping in a foldable baby bed-bag that was standing next to me in a big bed. When we travelled this bed was easily transformed into a diaper bag. Later when my baby grew out of this magic bed, I got a long braided bumper pillow and used it to delimit her space from mine. When we went traveling I didn’t take this pillow with us of course and now I just use rolled towels to separate us in bed. We can sleep without those towels of course but then Thaissia will take the whole bed leaving me on the edge. Also important (if possible) that bed would be a low one and would stand next to a wall on one side and on the other side its good to have a carpet, a blanket or a small mattress, so in case of falling, there would be something soft on the floor.

Here in Dominican Republic Thaissia learnt to sit and stand up practically all at the same time, and looks like soon she will start walking… Also she really loves bathing in the ocean with me! Maybe soon she will also start swimming? J An inflatable sit up bath tub, that I got specially for this trip, only served us for a short time. Now I can take my baby with me in the shower and she can stand there while I wash us (a bit harder to wash her head though). If she needs just a quick rinse, I can do that in the sink. One of my most needed travel gadgets is the pocket waterproof beach blanket with stakes (its super thin and light). We don’t care about wind or sand anymore! Speaking of two main tropical problems – sun and mosquitoes – yes, you do need all kinds of creams and sprays and have to rent a place with nets on windows or at least a mosquito net over the bed. If there is no shade at all where you are walking, you might want to get a small SPF 50 umbrella and/or a pareo to cover up hand and legs of your little one while you carry him or her around. Fast drying wide brim hat and long sleeve rash guard SPF 50 are also a must, as for baby sun glasses you might not be lucky, because your little one might refuse to wear them.

Food theme is particularly interesting when traveling. In California, where we stayed for 3 months in the same place, and I was routinely making porridges and boiled veggies without salt and oil/butter. Now here in Dominican Republic apart from those homemade breakfast porridges I feed Thaissia whatever I have in my plate for dinner (fish, chicken, beef, bread, veggies and of course lots of different fruit!). Sometimes we are still using hard food feeder, but less and less now. An important question is where to sit your baby at home (on the go) and in the restaurant? At home I still use car seat which I got here for everyday use indoors. Here in the house we are renting we happen to have a good size stable kids chair in the kitchen. She can’t still sit in it all by herself of course, but I was able to secure her in it with baby seat strap that I bought on Amazon for this trip. It’s not going to fit every possible chair, but it’s cheap, takes almost no space in your luggage, so you can purchase a couple different models and experiment. How do we eat out?... However we can, we are very creative… If there is a high chair (which is rare) – that’s great, if there isn’t – fine, we will deal with it… We can make our own “baby chair” from several chairs and pillows, and even better if we can eat on some sofa (we do not promise it will be clean afterwards) or at the worst case scenario I can ask restaurant personnel to hold my baby while I quickly devoir food after a long walk… Sometimes it’s a lot more comfortable to eat while standing at the bar and your baby is attached to you in a carrier…

As for baby play yard while traveling, you can make it from whatever stuff you find around – flipped tables and chairs, boxes, pillows, mattresses, suitcase and other barriers… But you little one might learn how to crawl over all that stuff… It’s perfect if while traveling you can rent a one bedroom or a little house (not just a studio), where besides the bedroom, you will also have a living room and separate kitchen. So when you put your baby to sleep, you can sneak out of the room and just sit on the couch in that nice little living room and… write a story in your blog or crochet a new toy.

Toys… A whole separate topic! I crochet toys, and half of our suitcase is taken by toys – crocheted, wooden, rubber (just not plastic), developmental and just funny… You don’t need lots of toys all at once, you need to change them… So we still had to pack quite a lot of toys with us and change them from time to time.

Clothing… I though we could travel with just minimum of clothing. Not really. I think there has to be a good amount of baby clothing so that you would let you little one to get dirty as much as he or she wants. And you can avoid every day washing.

Of course it’s a thousand times easier to travel in three when Thaissia’s dad comes to visit us some place. Here in Dominican  Republic, when three of us traveled around, I had a real holiday! But the two of us, me and my daughter, we can do just fine as well. Yes, I don’t get much time to relax and have to think one step ahead always. Our regular routine day without flying in airplanes, moving to a new place, without equipping the new house with all the necessary things and a baby zone, without going shopping for food and water, without traveling somewhere on local transport (which can be quite authentic, depending on where in the world we are at the moment), without visiting some nice faraway place, like a secluded beach or a national park, etc, etc., can never be dull and boring by definition. Make breakfast (fruits, porridge), and while Thaissia is still eating wash the dishes (or ants and some other tropical insects would come to feast), take everything needed on the beach or on the walk, not forget to put on sunscreen, put up a beach blanket in a good shady spot, sticking in stakes and taking away all rubbish (or whatever is on the ground) so the baby doesn’t eat it, prevent my little one from eating too much sand, find her a company to play with (she is super social and playing with other kids is essential), give her some water, give her a banana or an avocado or something else, give her water again, ouch she fell dooooown…., fold up the blanket and unfold it again in shade, walk a couple kilometers or more with Thaissia in the carrier and then walk back, bathe with her in the ocean (favourite activity!), laugh, “fly’, play while sitting down, “walk”, sing and dance, take a nap at home for a couple hours (while Thaissia is sleeping, if she is in her deep sleep, I can maybe do some stuff on internet, sweep the floor, make a salad, wash my hair, crochet a toy, buy some airlines tickets… etc), feed my baby many times during the day and change her diaper just as many times, take some photos, have a coffee with something sweet, not forget to have dinner and not let Thaissia eat everything from my plate, wash my baby and take a shower myself, wash beach clothing and hang it to dry, read some books with Thaissia and play with her, finally put her to bed and fall asleep myself (or not.. while she is asleep, make some porridge or chicken for tomorrow, do some stuff at the computer, work on pictures from the camera or crochet)… and so on and so forth in different variations, it’s fun.

Is it easy for me? No, absolutely not. But I’m not complaining and not going to talk about those days when it’s super hard, when I have to solve all kinds of problems, when I don’t know where we are going to stay or when am I finally going to get some sleep, for example. Of course it is not like that when we are traveling, but more so when I’m working and Thaissia has to stay with a babysitter (but this is a whole different story)…

I am indeed very very happy and I do everything possible to make Thaissia smile and surprise her all the time. I love her so much and want to show her the whole world! Even though she is so little and doesn’t understand a lot of things (or she understands them in her own way, not like I do), she enjoys the sun and the warm weather, she loves to splash in the ocean and play in the sand, she is curious to see animals and colourful flowers, she adores new tasty foods and really likes to meet people and smile at them! Thaissia is happy when I am happy, and backwards. My baby absorbs everything that is around her and every day she is more and more curious about the world. Also daily she hears all the five languages that I speak.

Finally I would like to note that before I was traveling with an 11-13 kg backpack, now I also got a big suitcase, BUT my daughter and me don’t really need at least one half of this suitcase, and we can kind of do without the second half as well if we try… But in order to be able to travel this light with a baby you have to train. I promise myself that next time our suitcase will be smaller!

So this was a little introduction guide (with lyrical digressions) about everyday life when traveling and baby gadgets for trips. Attaching some photos from California and Dominican Republic. Next posts will be about actual travels around Dominican  Republic.

01-2019. Las Terrenas, Republica Dominicana.

[orangememesicle]

zebenaya and harris

Behold my children

1.

Full Name: Zebenaya Arkenrret 

Gender and Sexuality: cis lesbian

Pronouns: she/her

Ethnicity/Species: Drow

Birthplace and Birthdate: Underdark, sometime in the winter

Guilty Pleasures: kitschy tourist shops, her newfound home decorating hobby

Phobias: having her mind manipulated, narrow caves, running out of food

What They Would Be Famous For: Holding the best parties

What They Would Get Arrested For: drunk and disorderly conduct, doing something weird while on a bender worthy of a florida man headline

OC You Ship Them With: Jokingly with @thehomosexualistagenda‘s tiefling rogue 

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: her mother

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: adventure

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: love at first sight

Talents and/or Powers: She’s a paladin of Lolth, and has the typical 5e paladin spells as well as some illusion spells my DM homebrewed for her. 

Why Someone Might Love Them: She’s playful, cheerful, energetic, sociable, and very driven when she wants to be. She’s dedicated to living life to the fullest because she knows she’s lucky to be alive, and she tries to push past the ingrained cynicism she grew up with and find ways to be optimistic and hopeful. She’s deeply loyal to her friends, and in general a pretty nice person trying to put her life back together after trauma.  

Why Someone Might Hate Them: She’s A Lot. She’s impulsive, doesn’t think anything through, and is an absolute pest to the other party members. Her moral system, while strong, is wonky as hell, and she’s only now learning to look at others as real people rather than just toys for her to play with. She believes that everyone’s just a product of circumstance, and doesn’t get why certain things (betrayal, some kinds of murder) are wrong if you have a good reason for them. Sometimes falls into old patterns of manipulation. 

How They Change: She’s starting to open up to her fellow party members and move forward. Developing strong friendships. Planning on her to become less afraid of her past and more adapted to the world around her. 

Why You Love Them: I’ve played her since I was seventeen, and it’s been really fun to develop her over the years. I created her as something of an answer to edgelord-y “evil race” tropes, but she ended up turning into the most complex character I’ve ever created. I’m never bored when I’m playing her, and she lets my more extroverted impulsive side out. She’s my sketchy ray of sunshine and I love her. 

2.

Full Name: Harris 

Gender and Sexuality: cis gay man

Pronouns: he/him

Ethnicity/Species: human

Birthplace and Birthdate: January 27 1913

Guilty Pleasures: eating competitions, parkour (or the fantasy world equivalent of it) 

Phobias: drowning, hurricanes/tropical storms, losing control of his atmos (magic taken from the atmosphere of the planet)

What They Would Be Famous For: Inventing his world’s first radio

What They Would Get Arrested For: accidentally setting someone’s house on fire during one of his dumb experiments

OC You Ship Them With: I’m planning on giving him a monster boyfriend somewhere down the line. (Working on that OC)

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: His adopted sister Nicola, accidentally, while challenging him to something dumb like a cliff jumping competition. Any character daring him to do anything dangerous, really. 

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Space operas  

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: trite, overdramatic “please don’t leave me!” death scenes with big “NO”’s in them. 

Talents and/or Powers: His atmos. He draws his power from the atmosphere and weather, and can channel that into creating magical energy that he usually uses to power his funky, pointless little inventions but occasionally uses for fighting. 

Why Someone Might Love Them: pragmatic and smart as hell. He takes absolutely no shit from anyone, and will use that ability to defend people he loves who have less of a backbone. He’s the friend you go to when you need someone to tell you to get your shit together, the kind of person who’ll yell at you to take a shower and get off your ass and do something with your life. Serious to an almost comical degree, even when he’s doing something ridiculous like shove an entire hot dog in his mouth as once. He aggressively cares about people, even though he pretends he doesn’t, and will do anything to protect his sister. 

Why Someone Might Hate Them: He’s just… so insecure, and on so many layers of irony it can be kind of obnoxious for the people around him. He has a pessimistic streak a mile wide, and that can push him into missing important opportunities. 

How They Change: I’m planning on him becoming more open about who he is as a person, and learning to actually like things and care about people without pretending he’s so unaffected. I plan on him becoming less afraid of his powers and less afraid of himself, and have him become less uptight and more confident in himself. 

Why You Love Them: New son! I love how he’s the “straight man” of a comedic duo who’s actually goofy and quirky as hell, his loyalty towards Nicola, and his intensity and strong personality. 

[words-writ-in-starlight]

for the character ask meme: one member of the IPRE (your pick!)

*slams my fists down* L U C R E T I A.  This is just gonna be…it’s just gonna be rough.  I’ve made a few goofs about the Director here and there but I literally have not written a happy headcanon here.

Send me a character and I’ll write 10 headcanons!

Lucretia’s hair has been white all her life.  Her mother suffered a bit of a magical mishap halfway through her pregnancy and there was a lot of concern that Lucretia would die, or be born with three heads, or the gods only know what else, but instead she was a perfect, healthy baby girl with skin like black walnut wood and tightly crimped white curls and all the usual number of limbs.  She wore her hair long for all her childhood and all her time in the IPRE, usually tied back into a ponytail that poofed out into a snowy cloud like a halo behind her.  On the Starblaster, as the crew grew closer, she let the others come up with new ways for her to wear it, letting Lup cast spells to turn it straight as bone (and long enough to brush her knees), or teaching Magnus how to twist it into dreadlocks, or letting Merle braid it with flowers and oils that kept it soft and strong.  Sometimes Lup and Taako would team up with two Mage Hands each and she’d have eight hands turning her hair into a thousand tiny perfect plaits.  It reset after each cycle, after all–Lucretia was game for anything, as long as it didn’t require her to cut her hair.  

After Lucretia became Madame Director, after the Bureau had been founded and the moon base was under construction and all her journals were gone, the Director stood in front of her mirror and took a razor to her hair until it was a cap of curls less than half an inch long, and all the glorious clouds of white lay littered around her feet.

Lucretia’s resume might say ‘biographer’ but it would be more accurate to call her a ‘war correspondent’.  A universe where a significant majority of the population has powerful magic means that even a minor civil dispute can be some pretty impressive hijinks, and Lucretia was kind of like Angus, a wayward twelve-year-old wandering into the local dragon-vs-hero battle and writing furiously in the background while dodging fireballs without looking up.  By the time she got recruited by the IPRE as a young twenty-something, she’d ghostwritten about fifteen books and every journalist worth their salt knew that, if you needed someone to go somewhere horribly dangerous and write something about it with no concern for their own safety, you wanted Lucretia.  Lucretia’s class is Multitasker and she’s level 450 with a prestige class in Unflappable and she didn’t exclusively get that from her time on the Starblaster.

Lucretia and Magnus were an odd pair, as far as most people could tell, but they fell in together immediately and with a vengeance.  It was never an issue of romance or sex–Lucretia only occasionally remembers that those are things that people experience–but Magnus was big and jovial and seemed to fill a room with his booming voice, and Lucretia leaned toward him like gravity and was surprised to find that he could be quiet and soothing as easily as loud and boisterous.  Lucretia never had a brother, before, but she thought sometimes that Magnus was what brothers were like, affectionate and rough and protective.  So protective.  Magnus died in almost one in five cycles, more than anyone except Merle–and Merle’s many deaths were quick, painless things.  Magnus died trying to find the Light, bled out as they tried to save him or fell protecting their backs as they ran, and after his tenth death Lucretia hurled herself at him, at the start of the next cycle, and burst into tears.  He had to be more careful, she said as he hesitantly rubbed her back.  He had to remember that they were waiting for him to come back, he had to remember that the crew was waiting for him.  Sometimes Lucretia thinks about telling Magnus those exact words and she hates herself.

Lucretia couldn’t stand the idea of abandoning her crew, even after the voidfish took their memories at her behest.  Davenport, of course, she took on as an assistant–she didn’t know, she had never imagined that she would reduce him so far, her brilliant, competent, well-spoken captain.  She cried for an hour and a half, locked alone in a room, before she could stand to face him again.  She attended Merle’s wedding, took a private bet with herself that it wouldn’t last more than two years.  She attended Magnus’ wedding, too, and that one, oh, that one she thought would last–news of the destruction of Ravensroost came just months later, and Lucretia’s chest hurt with the need to go and hug Magnus and let him cry into her shoulder the way he had when worlds died.  Barry was…a problem to track, to say the least, and Lucretia was never quite sure if he was alive or dead or just a very competent illusionist.  Liches are such a pain.  Seeing Taako playing up to an audience without Lup at his shoulder was jarring, but he seemed…not happy, but like he was enjoying himself, at the very least, and then Glamour Springs happened and Taako dropped off the map and Lucretia’s heart stopped.  Lup was dead and if Taako died too, she would never forgive herself.

Lucretia hired Magic Brian for a lot of reasons, among them his competence, but his voice–his voice reminded her so much of the twins.  On her better days, she would listen to him talk and her wistfulness would be a small part of her, not enough to really distract her.  On her worse days, she would hear Brian laugh from across the room and there would be a lurch in her chest as her head snapped up and she looked for a flash of red and identical smirks, and the crashing revelation was like losing them all over again.

In theory, the Bureau of Balance uniform is blue and silver.  Lucretia chose it on purpose, because she couldn’t take the way her throat closed up every time Davenport wore a red coat.  She doesn’t enforce it, but generally speaking people don’t wear a lot of red because it makes them stick out like a sore thumb.  She should have known that Magnus and Merle and Taako wouldn’t give a damn one way or another.  Merle still dresses a little bit like a train crash in a tropical print shirt, and Taako’s sense of style remains Unique, but they both usually have at least one item of red clothing on at all times.  Magnus has a red bandana that he wears around his neck like it’s sewn in place.  When it’s pointed out to them, Carey making a joke about how “well, no one ever has to wonder who you are, you all dress in red!”, they laugh it off and make excuses about how it’s just what’s in their closet.  They just don’t feel right without some red.  Lucretia, overhearing this, has to excuse herself, because she can’t tell if she’s going to laugh or cry.

Lucretia is tired a lot of the time.  She can’t tell if it’s because her body is older, now, older than she’s ever been but also nowhere near the age she really is, or because she’s so lonely.  There are days where she’s just numb, where the only thing that gets her out of bed is Davenport standing there looking expectant, and other days where she breaks everything in her office, until she runs out of things to throw and is left staring at a room full of shards through a haze of tears she doesn’t remember crying.  It shocks her, a little bit, to wake up on the first day after she’s recruited the boys, and actually think I can’t wait to see what happens today.  It’s the first time in years that her reflection smiles at her.

Lucretia sits with Junior sometimes and just…talks to them.  Tells them about all the things that no one knows, that no one remembers, talks about the Starblaster and all the worlds they visited.  She talks about how Lup and Taako could cook an entire feast with a bunch of shitty phosphorescent mushrooms, and how Davenport banned the pair of them from piloting the ship except in a crisis because while Taako was learning the controls Lup shouted do a barrel roll and he almost killed them all.  She talks about Magnus and his huge stupid heart that he always wore on his sleeve, and how it broke every year that they failed to save a world.  She talks about Barry and the way he once accidentally became the messianic leader of a necromantic cult, and about how Merle had to swoop in and save him from being sacrificed by riding a treant into battle.  She talks about the year where she was alone because they had all died, they died and she escaped and she thought that this would be like that year, but this is worse.  Seeing them see her and not know her, knowing they’re literally inches away, it’s so much worse.  Junior presses their tentacles against the glass when Lucretia starts crying, and she presses her hands back.

Lucretia hasn’t slept for more than three hours straight in a decade.  She has nightmares, you see.  This is a known, but unspoken, thing at the Bureau.  The Director wanders the halls like a homeless ghost at odd hours, not really checking up on anything so much as just…drifting.  Sometimes she finds another person, wandering, and brings them back to her office for tea, but there’s never any discussion of it.  One night, after Refuge, she passes the Reclaimers’ dorm and hears the sound of clattering and murmured voices, a familiar ramble about who the fuck makes powdered chocolate why do people not love themselves Magnus do not FUCKING touch that pot, and she has her hand on the doorknob and is about to walk inside on weary autopilot before she remembers.

After the dust settles, Lucretia goes and sits on the floor in the mostly-dark voidfish room.  Not very Directorly, perhaps, to be sat on the floor in the light of the voidfish tank with her old jacket in her lap, but she’s finished her task and she’ll be unDirectorly if she wants to.  Besides, there are tearful reunions happening, and she feels horribly out of place.  This is their victory, this is what she worked for all these years, what she sacrificed everything for, and she just feels empty, because even after all this, her crew, her family, is still outside and she’s in here, in this base that has been more or less her self-made prison.  It is, she thinks, no more than she deserves, but the part of her that’s still a reserved twenty-something biographer newly thrust into the spotlight had wished for something else.  The sound of footsteps takes her off-guard, and she looks back over her shoulder, away from the voidfishes, to see Davenport.  He looks sharp and alert in a way she’s sorely missed, but he also looks…unsure.

“You, ah.  You cut your hair,” he says, and Lucretia raises a hand thoughtlessly, as if she’s not used to the short length.

“It was too much work to take care of it alone,” she says, the lie she always tells about why she keeps it so short, and Davenport huffs at her, cracks a faint smile.  She’s a very tall human, and sitting, they’re almost on eye level.  

His eyes fall to her jacket, in her lap, and he sighs.  “Come on,” he says.  “Everyone’s getting drunk.  You’d better join us or they’ll come get drunk here, instead.”

“I thought maybe–”

“We’re still going to have a talk,” he says sharply, interrupting her.  “But get up off that floor and come have a goddamn drink, Lucretia.”

“Yes, Captain,” she says softly, and after she stands, he takes her hand and leads her back into the light.

[wineanddinosaur]

EOD Drinks With Shannon Mustipher

In this special episode of “End Of Day Drinks,” VinePair’s editorial team is joined by Shannon Mustipher, a NYC-based bartender, author, cocktail consultant, and spirits educator specializing in tiki and rum. Mustipher details her experience in working in the world of spirits and becoming a student of rum, an often overlooked spirit among American consumers.

Mustipher also explains how the Caribbean became an influence in the style of her cocktails. Finally, Shannon discusses the future of rum cocktails amid the ongoing pandemic and gives listeners a sneak peak into her future ventures.

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Or Check out the conversation here

Joanna Sciarrino: Hi, everyone! Welcome to End of Day Drinks. I’m Joanna Sciarrino, executive editor of VinePair. And as always, I’m here with members of the VinePair team. We’ve got Tim McKirdy, Elgin Nelson, and Cat Wolinski. Today, we’re joined by guest Shannon Mustipher, award-winning bartender, spirits educator, cocktail consultant, and author of “Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails.” Welcome, Shannon. Thank you for joining us.

Shannon Mustipher: It’s great to be here. As always, it is fun to spend some time with the VinePair crew. Thanks for having me.

J: Of course. Shannon, among all these other things, you’re also a rum expert, which is pretty awesome. We definitely want to talk about Women Who Tiki and your book and everything else. First, we’d love to hear more about your interest in rum and cane spirits and how you came to be so familiar with the category. Also, you touched on this briefly in a piece for VinePair but how you learned about the history of rum cocktails and their significance in modern-day drinks culture. I think that’s really interesting and something that people probably don’t know a lot about.

S: Yeah, I like to say I was drafted into service here as prior to becoming beverage director at Gladys Caribbean. That was in 2015, when I knew next to nothing about the category. For those of you who may be less familiar with the New York bar scene over the last decade or so, at that time, there was next to nothing going on where rum cocktails, tiki or otherwise, were concerned in the influential bar spaces. If you look at Back Bar, maybe there were three or four options. For myself, prior to taking that job, my main interest in spirits and cocktails was more based on American classics, pre-Prohibition era cocktails, gin and whiskey. Up until that point, I think I had three or four rums tops. Bacardi, Smith and Cross, Blackwells, Goslings, maybe. I think that was the extent of it so I didn’t know anything. Looking back, that was actually beneficial. I had no preconceived notion going in as to what the category is going to be like or what I would end up doing with the drinks as a result. I had about 30 days to taste somewhere between 200 and 250 rums to come up with Gladys Caribbean’s opening selection of 50. It’s hazy. That’s why I say 200, 250, because those are some hazy days, but they’re really enlightening and eye-opening. I was pleasantly surprised and shocked by what I discovered as I started to taste through rums from all over the world. Up until that point, the only thing I knew about rum cocktails was that there is a Mojito, a Daiquiri, and I’d never had a really good one up until that point. Then a handful of tiki drinks that I’ve heard of that are pretty ubiquitous, like the Mai Tai or the Zombie, and that was it. I took a deep dive first by reading Jeff “Beachbum” Berry’s books because he just released “Potions of the Caribbean.” It was a really cool primer on the history of rum in the Caribbean and how that led up to the invention of tiki. I like to think of him as a tiki guy, but the book covers quite a bit more than that, and that was super cool. I also read books like “Cuban Cocktails.” Jane Danger was one of the authors of that book. Those are my crash-course guides to learning about rum cocktails when it came to learning more about the role that rum drinks played in the history of American cocktails. A few years into opening the bar when I had a little more time, I started to revisit books like “The Ideal Bartender” by Tom Bullock, the Jerry Thomas “Bartenders Guide,” looking at books like “Punch” and realizing that in colonial America, rum was the spirit of choice. First, because it was the easy thing to get here. This is before corn and wheat became a staple crop, and people weren’t really making a lot of whiskey. It just made more sense to either get rum from the Caribbean as part of trade or to bring up molasses and do distillation here. A fun fact, the favorite spirit or preferred spirit of George Washington was actually Barbadian rum. I learned that the earliest punches were made with rum. Some of the earliest examples of the Mint Julep were based on rum. There were examples of Old Fashioneds that were also based on rum. These started to fall out of favor in the 1850s, and maybe we can unpack that a little bit later, but rum is the basis of American drinking culture.

Elgin Nelson: Hi Shannon, I want to talk about the Caribbean. I’m currently in the Bahamas right now. What I’ve noticed is that rum plays a big part in the drinking culture down there. Do you draw any inspiration or share any background in terms of the Caribbean influence on rum? I know you spoke about reading books on why rum is such a big influence in the Caribbean. However, did you use any Caribbean style or influence when you started making cocktails?

S: Oh, yeah. It was absolutely essential that I did it because I really wanted the bar at Glady’s — and this is per the owner’s passion and point of view and why he wanted to do this concept in the first place — I wanted to reflect the way I would feel to taste and drink rum in rum drinks as if you were on the island. The menu at a restaurant, the centerpiece of it was wood fire jerk. That covered not only chicken and pork, but seafood. With a really simple set of side dishes. The vibe was just make to feel like a beach shack. I didn’t want to deviate from that where the bar is concerned. I started off with a really simple menu that was based on traditional things that you would find on an island. For instance, the rum punch, we always had one on the menu. It would rotate seasonally, but we needed to have that because that’s authentic to when you spend time in the Caribbean. Likewise, we had a Painkiller that was based on what you would get at the Soggy Dollar Bar. Our Daiquiri that was on the opening menu was based on a historical recipe from El Floridita in Havana that a lot of people had not seen in the U.S. for some time. Having that history there was really important, too. Over time, as the restaurant grew in the neighborhood, I eventually put edgier drinks on the menu. This is Crown Heights, mind you. I didn’t want it to be about my take on rum from the outset. I wanted to be on the authentic experience of rum, which is what we were selling. Then, I let my personality come out a little bit as I got more comfortable with it as well. Case in point: One of the things I learned about rum as I was tasting all the bottles was that there are some rums that you see on islands that you don’t see in the U.S. and vice versa. I try to have this healthy mix of bottles that are very ubiquitous in the Caribbean and maybe you never see in the U.S., and then go easy on bottles that are actually more designed for American consumers and never really show up in the islands. One specific example, Forest Park is a puncheon rum. That’s an overproof white rum from Trinidad. Bartenders don’t use that stuff, but I had guests that totally lit up when they saw it. I wanted to make sure that someone could revisit what it was like growing up there or visiting whatever island they’ve been to.

Tim McKirdy: Shannon, can you describe that feeling behind the bar? Because you mentioned before that you were coming into this from a professional place of making the modern American classics as we know them or the cocktail renaissance drinks. Those are really high-quality drinks. But in some respects, maybe the setting is a little darker or people take themselves quite seriously, whereas trying to transport people to the traditional settings where you’d enjoy these cocktails. Did it change the way that you experience service, drinks, and interacting with guests?

S: Well, up until that point, I’d worked primarily in fast-casual Brooklyn neighborhood-type spots. For instance, I worked at Saraghina, I worked at Do or Dive. I did stints in other places as well, but I did prefer a more neighborhood feel. For me, I felt that I was disguising elevated cocktails in this casual form because they were served very casually. I needed them to be as good as drinks that you find in the East Village. I was really adamant that we were all using fresh lime juice, which at that time was crazy because Mexican cartels were putting a squeeze in the market, and each lime cost a dollar. The owner was like, “are you crazy?” It was nuts. It was right before we were opening, and I wanted to use fresh lime. I did not want to use pre-packaged juice in these drinks. I refused, because I knew that rum didn’t have a great reputation at the time. In order for that program to be successful, in my eyes, I needed people to experience not only authentic rums, but also the best-quality version of these drinks so that they wouldn’t walk away thinking they had yet another sugary rum drink. We even went so far as to squeeze our juice to order at the bar for each Daiquiri that we made. I wanted to send that message to the guests that their drink is not coming out of a cheater bottle. They could see that this is actual fresh lime juice that we’re squeezing right here in front of you for this Daiquiri that you’re about to get.

Cat Wolinski: Speaking to the freshness of citrus being so important to any cocktails that use it, but especially tiki, do you think that tiki drinks or rum drinks that incorporate lime or other citrus is something that will become part of this larger ready-to-drink (RTD) canned cocktail space? Or do you think it always has to be right there in front of you, freshly made?

S: No, it doesn’t always have to be. Again, there are different geeked-out opinions about squeezing it right then and there or squeezing it before service. I was doing that as a way to send a message that people can see it was fresh. However, from a more scientific perspective, if you juice it a few hours before, it’s actually better because a little bit of oxidation gets into the juice and will balance it out better. Whereas if you’re doing à la minute, there’s a chance that the flavor can be slightly off. Yet there is a way that we built that drink that would offset that problem. Nevertheless, the juice should be pressed the same day and not used the next day. I don’t see that going anywhere, because it’s just so standard right now that any bar that doesn’t keep that level of quality, they’re just not going to be able to compete.

C: Right. What about as bars are creating cocktails to-go or prepackaged drinks? Do you think there’s a chance for tiki to move into that?

S: I love that you ask because as chance would have it, I just made a tiki RTD this weekend. It was for a pop-up at Fuchsia in New Paltz. I worked on this in collaboration with Eamon Rockey. He supplied one of the ingredients in the cocktail. It is called Bird of Paradise and it is a white Jungle Bird. We used a combination of citrus and citric acid solutions for shelf stability. I think you’ll see some people, if they’re carrying the cocktail as we did, err more on the side of using malic acid and citric acid just so it keeps longer. If it’s a to-go that the bar is reasonably confident the guest is going to consume within the same day or two, I still see people doing fresh juice. Strong Water in Anaheim, they use fresh juice. Most other programs I know do that as well. Now, when you start moving into the can, that’s where you go to see people veering off into two directions. Are we going to just do juice only? Are we going to do juice and acid? Or are we just going to do acid? At Fuchsia, we used juice and acid. In a case of another project I’m working on that I cannot divulge here — I can tell you about it after we wrap because it has not been announced yet — I’m doing an RTD with an L.A.-based company and we’re just using acid in this cocktail.

J: Yeah, so I have a follow-up to that. When you were talking about becoming more confident with your cocktails the more time you spent at Gladys, and I’m guessing that your guests were receptive to those drinks. What do you think the future of tropical cocktails is and what do you envision your role will be in that?

S: One of the things I observed when Glady’s opened, there was next to nothing was going on, rum cocktail-wise. Then, you start to see more mainstream programs have things like a Jungle Bird or Mai Tai or at least the ingredients to make it. If someone asks for it, you start to see the Daiquiri emerge just like the bartender handshake. We call them Snackerquiris where you go into the bar, your friend’s working, and you get a half-Daiquiri or you do little shots of Daiquiris with your friends. That’s basically a thing no matter where you go, be it tiki tropical or otherwise. It’s just a way of saying, “I love you.” Now, you see places like Blacktail open and that was a Cuban-style bar, but they did a little bit of tiki here and there. Now, it’s come full circle, where I know there are some people that are questioning whether tiki is something that we want to keep doing, given the cultural connotations. You are starting to see bars and restaurants either choose a nautical theme or tropical theme? There is Navy Strength in Seattle. They have tiki drinks but are not a tiki bar. There’s the Coconut Club in Washington, D.C. Again, it’s a tropical bar with a Polynesian-ish seafood menu, but it’s not tiki. They’re not saying that they are. Even locally, a place like Diamond Reef is more of a nautical bar. I think the tropical drinks are going to start to encompass other spirits apart from rum as well, as you see people move away from overtly tiki things. That’s when you see more agaves, more Margaritas, even things such as pisco and brandy starting to make an appearance. The drink builds might resemble tiki drinks, but they can be a little simpler, maybe four ingredients instead of seven or eight, because tiki bars are very expensive to run. If you want to go broke as an operator, open a tiki bar. I think especially post-pandemic, operators have to be more cost-conscious and also labor-conscious because tiki programs are very labor-intensive. The Polynesian’s prep crew all by themselves, I’m sure their payroll allocation rivaled the whole bar staff. That’s how much production has to go into that. I think there will be some people that continue to love the genre, but I think we’re starting to see more tropical and nautical bars that come into play now.

T: Shannon and I wish we were having this conversation last week because I had a real-world scenario where I could be asking this question and wish I had. However, to that end, with tropical drinks, many require a lot of ingredients. I was wondering if you could give us any tips or certain things that you should always have on hand. Possibly, a small selection that would open up a range of possibilities and possibly not like Polynesian-levels of prep because they went pretty deep.

S: Yeah, I’d say there are three syrups, three juices, and three types of spirits that if you always had them, you could come up with a really simple punch. As for syrups, you want to have cinnamon clove syrup. It’s a simple syrup that’s infused with cinnamon and cloves. It’s so easy. You just put the spices in there and let it simmer. Honey syrup is also really easy to make. It’s just half and half honey and water, or maybe two to one. You can also add spices to that. Vanilla syrup is nice. It’s a little more subtle, and if you’re doing drinks with gin or vodka, that is a really nice complement to the flavor profiles of those types of spirits. It’s important to note that with vanilla syrup, you want to use a vanilla bean, you want to use a split pod as opposed to an extract. An extract will do it in a pinch, but it doesn’t give you everything. It’s not the same. Some of the things I mentioned you can buy already. Those are really easy things to make at home. If you want to add one more thing that comes across as a tad exotic, you can buy passion fruit syrup. There’s a couple of places online to get that. You can also buy orgeat if you don’t want to make it yourself. I would say those five syrups. Of course, there are at least 10 that I could rattle off, but those three could easily make it home. Then, the other ones you can order online from numerous sources. That’s where I would start within the syrup department. Now in terms of juice, obviously fresh lime and lemon, that goes without saying. You have that at any bar. Pineapple juice, again, really easy to get. I like Dole. I think it’s decent quality if you’re not making it yourself. Passion fruit juice as well. Also, there is a juice that I don’t always see people use too often. I encountered this mostly in the French Caribbean. Guava juice is delicious and it works really well, either rum or with agave and tequila.

J: Oh, that sounds good.

S: It is everything. I visited Martinique a few years ago and every restaurant has this drink called Planteur, which is basically planter’s punch. It’s just guava and rum, and it’s so good.

J: There you go, Tim.

S: Anything else that I would add to that, of course, rum. Have some tequila, pisco, or brandy. I use whiskey in my tropical drinks, too. It’s a lesser-known niche there, but it’s all about the modifiers. I love using rye whiskey in my tropical drinks.

J: Shannon, you talked very quickly about tiki and its possibly problematic past. You wrote a book called “Tiki.” How do you think your book redefines what people know as tiki?

S: Yes, my book did or does — and this is my intention — was to open up the idea of what a tiki drink was. Up until that point, the majority of tiki books had historical recipes, and yet it would have a scattering of originals or newer drinks, but by and large, if you open up any tiki book before mine, about 80 to 90 percent of those are all classics. I flipped it around. So I had only 20 classics, followed by 70 originals. The whole idea is explaining that a tiki is an approach to making drinks, and you don’t have to use this narrow set of ingredients that you see recurring throughout the tiki canon. You can take any ingredient and make it into a tropical cocktail, though for me, the philosophy behind tiki is just balancing complex flavors. I thought to myself that this genre was invented in the ’30s when there are only so many things that you could get in the United States to make drinks with. That time has changed. I would say to myself, “Well, what would Don do?” I feel like I should make a T-shirt that says that. If Don Beach had mezcal, I’m sure he would have been using it. If he had lemongrass, galangal, or Buddha’s hand, I’m sure he would have used it. He just didn’t have it, so that was the idea. It’s about layering flavors, use whatever you like, and make it interesting.

J: Sounds great.

S: Looking back, and I don’t know what I was on because there were over 300 ingredients in that book, and I’m kind of afraid to write the next one. My editors are asking, “Where is the next proposal?” I’m not doing that again. I learned my lesson.

C: Maybe the next one has three-ingredient tiki drinks.

S: You’re hitting it on the head. We’re heading in that direction. I was like, “We can make everyone’s life easier.”

T: With your incredible experience with rum and the time you spent now with the category, rum remains one of those spirits that many people might describe as the next big thing, especially more aged rums. I’m not sure whether that does it a disservice, but I still think rum hasn’t quite reached the levels of a whiskey or a tequila. Where do you think rum is currently in its journey in the United States and possibly returning to that glory where, as you were saying, it was the most popular liquor in this country?

S: Well, among rum circles, this idea that rum is going to be the next big thing has been a rumor that’s been circulating for 15 years. We joke that we’re waiting for the Messiah to come back. We’re sitting there praying, and it hasn’t happened as of yet. I can just say that I think there are some good signs, though, that it could be closer than we think for a couple of reasons. One is that it has been embraced by the bar community. Bartenders love rum. They figured out that you can do a lot of things with it in cocktails that you can’t do with other categories, mostly by virtue of how diverse the category is. It comes from over 90 countries. There’s no one universal standard or definition apart from it having to be based on sugar. Thus, the diversity of the category means that it’s almost akin to wine. Of course, I’m a little biased because I worked in wine prior to working in rum, but I think there’s a good case to be made for that. From a bartender’s perspective, it’s a really intriguing category because there’s such a range of things that you can pick out of it. Then, when it comes time to make drinks, unlike other categories, again, rum is amenable to mixing various bottles together. In fact, that’s inherent to the development category. You would take rum from a couple of different islands or different ages to create a blend that you desire. Bartenders really resonate with being able to have that flexibility with a spirit, as opposed to you wouldn’t do that with multiple gins because that just runs counter to the idea of what a gin is meant to do. You also wouldn’t do that with whiskeys either. I think bartenders are doing a lot to introduce the consumer to rum, and they’re doing it in a setting where, as a consumer, if I don’t know much about the category and I go to Astor Wine & Spirits and I see 200 bottles, I’m going to be at a loss. But if I go to my local bar and my bartender pours me a couple, then I start to get it, and then I understand what it’s about. The education piece is really big. Meanwhile, I’ve seen the selection and variety of rums in the U.S. explode over the last five years. When I was working on setting up Glady’s, it was almost a struggle to find those 50 bottles that I felt really good about pouring. Now, or when the restaurant was last open, I didn’t have enough space for the bottles that fit my criterion. The criterion, in this case, was a certain level of quality and production, authenticity to tradition, things along those lines. There’s just so much more product to choose from now. I think the fact that bars have been leading the charge has emboldened producers in the category to start offering more releases and better products. It’s about to hit a mezcal tipping point, like where mezcal was at maybe a decade ago. Think about when Vida came out and it was the only game in town, similar to how Plantation for a time was this one house that was representing the category as a whole. So we’re getting there.

E: That was great. You broke down what the future of rum has in store. Obviously, there’s a rumor going around for 15 years that it may or may not come back. Either way, I do want to ask about your future plans for the upcoming year. Where do you see yourself? Obviously, people are getting vaccinated, and we might see the emergence of bar culture come back, or we may not. I want to get your opinion on that and where do you see yourself fit into that as well?

S: Yeah, that culture will come back because people want to socialize. We can’t eliminate that out of human nature. I think we’re going to start to see different types of bars. I think rooftops, and outdoor spaces, they’re going to have a handy advantage. I think anybody moving forward with new projects is definitely going to be prioritizing outdoor spaces, so that as we ease out of the pandemic, they can comfortably offer guests not only a safe experience but one that actually feels good. It’s already been a big trend, but I think this is just going to become more of a priority. I think to-go and RTDs are still going to be big because there will be people who won’t go out as much as they did in the past. They’ve come to enjoy drinking at home or not exposing themselves to as many people as they may have done before, so I think RTD is going to continue to grow. I’m curious to see how that will be integrated into bar programs. I say that because I recently met a business called Canned Cocktail Company, and they make RTDs custom for bars. They were the ones that did the RTD that I served this weekend upstate. They have an upcoming restaurant and retail location in the West Village where they are going to be pouring cocktails for various clients. We might see more of those. As far as me personally, well I may not look it, but I’m getting older, guys. I’ve worked in hospitality for 15 years, and when I started at Glady’s six years ago, in my conversation with the owner, I said,  “This is going to be the last restaurant job. I’m planning to consult after this.” So I started consulting maybe three years ago. And when the pandemic hit and the work that I was doing was largely attached to bars went away, thankfully it already had enough momentum to shift into consulting full-time, which I’ve been doing for the past year. I expect to continue to do so as well. What that looks like, practically speaking, is I create recipes in educational content for brands, and some of that is aimed at consumers. Some of it is aimed at their internal team, and that could be a mix of everything from making recipes and giving seminars, putting branded content on my social media channels, leading seminars virtually or in person, and recording training videos. Education is my passion, and I forgot how much I missed doing seminars. I had a lot of fun this weekend. That’s what I plan to be doing for the foreseeable future. I’ve also entertained the idea of creating a product and working on this RTD, which I can again elaborate on a little bit later. This is my first foray into that because the company that I’m working with has let me in on the marketing conversations and strategies, and they’re incorporating my ideas into that. I was approached to create a rum brand a few years ago, and it wasn’t a good time for me. But now, I would certainly welcome that opportunity because it would be a lot of fun for me to take what I’ve learned over the years and be able to find something special and bring it to market. Those are a couple of things, but there’s more. I might end up in front of a camera, too. I’ve been approached by a few outlets to develop shows. I basically plan to become the Martha Stewart or Rachael Ray of cocktails. That’s the dream.

T: I’m here for it.

J: Yeah, that would be wonderful. That all sounds so exciting. This is also a great moment to end our chat. Thank you so much for taking the time today, Shannon. It was so great to talk to you.

S: This was super fun.

J: I think we’re all looking forward to our next tropical cocktail, maybe this weekend. We hope to share one with you soon.

S: Well, you guys know where to find me. We can always do a Zoom happy hour, it’s not a problem.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of “EOD Drinks.” If you’ve enjoyed this program, please leave us a rating or a review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps other people discover the show. And tell your friends. We want as many people as possible listening to this amazing program.

And now for the credits. “End of Day Drinks” is recorded live in New York City at VinePair’s headquarters. And it is produced, edited, and engineered by VinePair tastings director, yes, he wears a lot of hats, Keith Beavers. I also want to give a special thanks to VinePair’s co-founder, Josh Malin, to the executive editor Joanna Sciarrino, to our senior editor, Cat Wolinski, senior staff writer Tim McKirdy, and our associate editor Katie Brown. And a special shout-out to Danielle Grinberg, VinePair’s art director who designed the sick logo for this program. The music for “End of Day Drinks” was produced, written, and recorded by Darby Cicci. I’m VinePair co-founder Adam Teeter, and we’ll see you next week. Thanks a lot.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article EOD Drinks With Shannon Mustipher appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/eod-drinks-shannon-mustipher/

[onestowatch]

Q&A: Topaz Jones Is Cooler Than Your Favorite Rapper

The dictionary has two definitions of the word Topaz. The first one is “a precious stone.” The second is “a large tropical American hummingbird.” Hip-hop artist Topaz Jones seems to be an amalgamation of both. The New York-based artist has been injecting live instrumentation into traditional hip-hop song structures to create his own brand of modern funk. Inspired by Outkast and driven by Parliament-Funkadelic bass lines, Topaz has displayed his progressive musical prowess recently on singles like “Toothache” and “Cotton Fields.”

His debut LP, Arcade, was released in 2016 and now we’re in 2018 and ready for new music. I caught up with Topaz Jones to discuss his exposure to the music industry as a child, his plans to achieve his musical goals, standing out in Hip-Hop, and how the current state of the music industry allows for experimentation in all forms. Read the full interview below.

OTW: How did you get into music?

Topaz Jones: I grew up with a dad who was a musician and a lot of other family members who were musicians as well. I had a very practical view of the music industry. A lot of the kids who I grew up around saw working in music as a lofty goal. I was fortunate enough to know what it looked like to work in the music industry and not necessarily have to be Michael Jackson to sustain a living off of it. I decided pretty early that a career in music was something that I wanted for myself. I started writing songs when I was around seven or eight years old but I really didn’t feel a part of the music industry until 2014 when I put my first real mixtape out.

Did having prior knowledge of how the music industry worked gave you an advantage – or did it affect how you made music and connections?

It was a privilege because I already knew that there was a lot of hard work involved. I was very aware because my dad was a musician and I watched how dedicated he was to playing his guitar every day. His love and passion for the craft was always there. I try to apply that to everything I do in production and writing.

Did your 2016 debut project, Arcade, have the impact that you wanted?

The things you want never come to you dressed the way you expected. I put a lot of weight on that project because I graduated from school and I was trying to get out of having a day job. I definitely wanted it to do really well. I’ve always wanted to tour. Even to this day, I haven’t been on a major tour yet. The only thing that I was disappointed about was that I didn’t get to hit the road and play that music in front of a lot of people but as far as the response I got from it, I feel like people began to understand who I was as an artist. At that time, I was really happy with the way the project resonated. Personally, I felt as if I reached a new level of authenticity in my work.

What’s the biggest priority for you at this stage of your career?

Trying to keep it pure. I’m trying to continue having fun and trying not to put so much pressure on myself. A lot of times, I’ll start criticizing myself before I even finish expressing a thought and I’ve been trying to get better at allowing myself to create more freely and refine later. I’ve noticed a lot of the greats are expert refiners. I want to join that class of artists.

You have a unique sound within Hip-Hop. Did your sound come to you naturally or did you have to experiment a lot?

I always had a very strong musical compass. I would hear songs on the radio as a kid and know what I liked and didn’t like about them. Similarly, I have to know what I like. It’s not that I don’t try all those other sounds; I’ve experimented with all of the sounds under the sun. But naturally, the things that call to me on an intrinsic level are the things that end up getting finished.

Hip-hop is in an interesting place right now. Where do you fit into it?

That’s like the hardest thing in the world because there’s so much happening right now. People are really pessimistic about music in general right now. I’ve been guilty of having that kind of elitism and having that “Oh it’s not as good as it used to be” attitude but I think that excuse is wearing thin now. There are so many good things happening. There’s so much experimentation. So many lanes are being created. There are so many lanes that it’s hard to pigeonhole myself into any one of them. My ultimate goal would be to have my own lane and have other people fall into that lane. That would be the ideal scenario but there’s a lot of stuff coming out right now. There’s a revival of funk, soul, and things that were always a part of hip-hop but didn’t have as much shine 5-10 years ago. Things are cyclical so I knew it would come back around.

What artists from the 90’s or early 2000’s do you think paved the way for your sound?

The Internet has really flattened time and space in a really cool way. My little cousin listens to Ray Charles and the “Rolex” song back to back (laughs). Back in the day, I would have had to buy a bunch of different CD’s and spend a handful of money to get that experience. I think for me, the biggest precursor is Andre 3000 and Outkast. They were really my introduction to hip-hop. They were hugely successful commercially and responsible for the experimentation that led to new creative directions being accepted. Outkast, to me, were The Beatles of hip-hop.

In today’s climate, being a musician isn’t just about the music but it’s also about your interaction with fans and building a community on social media. How do you balance those things?

The honest answer is that I really don’t. I’m pretty terrible at social media (laughs). As of recently, I’m starting to get more followers on Instagram but my Twitter’s pretty dead. I’ve tried so many times to be the life of the party on the internet and I think all that I’m doing is taking time away from the music. Without fail, the people who do all the talking on social media are great for what they’re great for. A lot of people that I look up to are people that shy away from that and focus on creating great bodies of work. I aspire to be like those people and allow my work to speak for itself. If I have something cool to document, I’ll give it a shot but I’m trying to put less weight on social media.

What made you drop your series of double EPs this year?

I was looking at the landscape and I realized that there’s really no limitations anymore. We’re tied to these ideas of what a release should be based on. We create physical metrics for products that aren’t physical anymore. It’s like why would I worry about the difference between an EP and an LP? The Pusha T album being 7 songs is the future. I’m ready to try things. We’re currently in a singles market. I often do a lot of switch-ups to show my versatility when I make music so this is my newest way of showcasing that but with a rollout.

Can you tell us about your latest single, Cotton Fields?

Cotton Fields is probably one of the most personal songs I’ve made. It was one of the only songs that I produced 100% by myself so it was cool to prove to myself that I can make that kind of song. It was also one of the last things that I recorded at my childhood home in New Jersey so there’s a lot of sentimental value attached to it. It’s something that makes me feel really good and it’s connected to a point and time in my life.

What’s the rest of the year looking like for you?

We’re about to shoot the Toothache video and do a lot more shows. Also working on the new record man. I feel like I’m in a vortex but it’s a positive vortex. Hopefully, I dig myself out with something really nice and shiny to show the world.

How do you approach festival stages? How do you capture audiences in an overexposed environment?

I find that festival audiences are easier to please a lot of the time. Obviously, the best thing is when people come to see you and pay for a ticket. I’d like to believe that people go to music festivals to experience a lot of different music. I feel that when people who haven’t heard of me before are exposed to my performance, I do a decent job of getting them to latch on. I look out in the audience and try to make as many personal connections with people as I can. I try to stare people in the eyes in a non-creepy way (laughs). I’m just trying to build my following and invite people into the world that I’m creating.

If people only had time to listen to one song of yours to understand who you are as an artist, what song would it be?

Damn, that’s hard man (laughs). It’s hard because there’s the artist that I want to be, the artist that other people want me to be, and the artist that I actually am is somewhere in between. I would probably lean towards “Cotton Fields” or “Toothache.” I think my fans would probably lean towards “Tropicana.” Where I’m going musically is always changing. I’m never going to make an album that sounds like the last one so it’s hard to pin me down and that’s intentional.

[2021ssajka]

Sketchbooks are also something I did not do in the past. As an intuitive painter, every work I have done is finalized because I can never really recreate what was done. I did not like sketching because if I keep practicing a composition, it is not authentic anymore. At times I would document my work with not just the date but also with time because there is something about the “right time right place” concept that has always intrigued me.

I have kept a few sketchbooks in the past for art classes and I never really understood the concept of it. It’s an unnatural process for me, too much thinking of where I will place which, what if I ruin it by putting this thing in this area? It's a lot of pressure lol.

I think its easier for me to experiment in a loose leaf paper because it is more forgivable. I can just toss it in the trash afterwards rather than messing up a whole book where I have already invested my time and energy in the begining pages. There is more to lose in a sketchbook.

Maybe it's the perfectionist side of me what is expecting something more from the sketchbooks. It may be similar to the same dilemma I have with stickers. I am too intimidated to place a sticker anywhere because it is too “permanent” and I always think about the “what if” of what if i find a better place for it in the future? So now all my stickers are kept in an envelope somewhere waiting to be used (LOL). Actually I placed some in the back of my clear case laptop but without really peeling it off, I just stuck it in place lol.

I do not draw, so the concept of sketching is odd to me because how can you really sketch color? I usually take my paintings head on. I leave room for chance and mistakes, letting a painting be a document of that moment. I have always been more interested in the process rather than the final product.

I had people tell me that I think in motion. I like movement, and that's probably why I am also very interested in videos and film making. I like making vlogs when I travel and home videos for my family for special occasions like birthdays and Christmas. I like capturing memories and joyful times. I usually take videos of my painting process because for me that is where the excitement comes in. I like watching things be created, and I like seeing the energy throughout work.

I am also a very sentimental person. I keep all the letters and cards given to me for my birthdays. I keep pictures, concert tickets, flight tickets and movie tickets. You name it, it's in a box somewhere. I also write in my journal almost every day. It is through writing that I navigate my thoughts and emotions and I like keeping everything in a safe box somewhere.

Recently I had someone in my zoom meeting ask me if i ever wanted to be a florist since they can peep in my room and see the floral decorations all around the windows in my room. It is very interesting because I did want to do that when I was younger. I told her that I am kind of fulfilling my florist aspirations by including it in the visual language in my work. I have always been captivated in floral elements given that I grew up in a tropical country with the plants blooming all year round, and my grandfather being a gardener (also a music and art teacher!!!) I remember visiting him in our province in Laguna and him teaching us how to make paper flowers.

When I was younger, I used to dance for family parties along with my sister and my cousins a lot. In school I would dance in school plays and school dance competitions, I was even in the cheerleading team. Dancing was my identity before I found my talent in art. Today, I still dance around my room a lot, and during parties, I'm always the first one on the dancefloor. I always thought that ART IS DANCING BUT WITH COLORS- we are just documenting it on a paper.

It is very fascinating to see how all my interests all go hand in hand together and made me the artist I am today.

It is also a big growth for me to see that I am tackling many sketchbooks all at the same time today, from zero to 100. I still have many nit-picky stuff and a specific order I liked in my work but it's a step in letting go of that sense of preconception and sense of control.

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The size of the new mini sketchbooks that I recently got reminds me of a children's book. This size is perfect for a kids small hand to handle. I have always been inspired with children's books’ typography, illustrations and color choices. I also have this book of the same size that is a collection of designs and illustrations that are combined with affirmations to encourage you in your day to day life. I actually ripped pages from that book and stuck it in my family's personal vision boards without them realizing.

There is beauty in seeing progress in a book in a consecutive order. Watching how I grow in my craft as I go along.