#this got hella dark

[akanemnon]

This deja vu comes with a free concussion!

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

[moonchild-in-blue]

If I had a dollar for every band originated from a multi-instrumentalist / drummer duo of two best friends, lead by a sad pathetic wet cat piano man who writes the most gut-wrenching lyrics, with lore regarding the aformented frontman's darker side, who also uses black body paint and masks (on ocasion), and incorporates so many genres that made it impossible to properly classify it, I'd have two dollars, which is not a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

[wikitpowers]

she’s a changed woman~ 🤍

TYSM FOR LETTING ME USE UR AMAZING ART @meerabanerjee!!! i love it so so much <3

[luckyashes-art]

man, you ever realize you needed to correct a small character detail to make it more accurate and then it peeves you off a lil 💀💀💀

[the-shy-shade]

I really do think watching Code Lyoko as a kid ruined my standard for how high stakes should be in fiction. That show was wild with how many times each character almost died (some of which were super fucked up) and just all the insane shit they had to go through in general while pretending nothing was going on and still going to class. The stakes were in the stratosphere and the main characters all knew it too.

Like if your heroes don't struggle or lose or have "messy" wins that are debatable as to whether they actually count as a victory or not then your story isn't spicy enough for me.

I do think that's exactly why I ended up dropping Miraculous Ladybug after watching 2 (maybe 3?) seasons of it. The narrative was so afraid painting Ladybug or Chat Noir in any sort of imperfect light- both as civilians and superheroes- that the narrative was constantly bending itself in knots to justify their behavior and actions and have them save the day no matter what, despite the circumstances or how improbable, to the point the "danger" never felt real and the villain(s?) is an inconvenience at worst. Is ML a tent? Because its stakes are buried in the ground.

[demadogs]

recently noticed i have crows feet when i smile now and GOD. easily in the top five most insane things society has deemed unattractive and worthy of changing. ive never been hotter.

[landfilloftrash]

Nightmares and Night-Lights

***

Bayou-bayoushkji- bayou,

Seedjit kotjik na kriyou,

Her feet ached. Why did they ache. She hadn’t moved. Or maybe she’d moved too much, instead. Warm, too. It was too warm. The wind was too soft for the heat around her. Too wet. Familiar– not water. Thicker. Blood. On her. On the cobbles. On their faces. Her claws. Felt heavy and uncomfortable. Mom was split in half. She knew it was mom, despite her insides now decorating the ground, because that was the necklace she wore and opened to lull them all to sleep. It was open now. It was playing the tune softly, without pause or break like it would when mom played it; mama’s voice floated nearby. 

On nje bedjin nje bahat,

Oo njevo yestj m’noho rebjat

That might be Riik, laying next to it, with their eyes next to a smashed head and torn up body. Their eyes were facing her. Riik did tend to stare a lot. She wasn’t sure, but the way they were curled reminded her of how they’d fall asleep. Mama was nowhere to be seen, but from the corpses strewn all over the broken buildings, she felt numb with the certainty that she could find her. The voice that sounded like her provided only that same dread that she was gone.

Vcje pah lallichkum seedjatj

Kashou smasljetsum yedjatj.

There were others, even closer to her, but the way they were torn she couldn’t tell what creature they were. How long had she been standing here? She’d watched this. Right? She’d seen familiar faces and not rush around her and die. She thinks that was death. It reminded her too closely of when she caught a mouse or vole. But it was so loud. It still was. Why hadn’t it quieted? The insides were everywhere. She always hated when it was loud. Where was Ahky? Where was mama? She was holding a hand. It wasn’t connected to anything. 

She could taste the heavy pennies in her mouth. 

Bayou-bayoushkji- bayou.

Eno jolted to the side with a distressed cry. 

The room she found herself in was dark, shadow-filled room, the pale light that would barely give a human’s eye a fragment of information filling the room the dark but defined shapes of beds and desks and lumps filling the beds for the young owlin’s eyes; it was confusingly disorienting, as though she expected to be somewhere else.

But overwhelmingly familiar.

. . . Oh. She was in the church.

She blinked and peered around the room a secondary time, her heart thumping loudly in the pin-drop quiet– no one seemed to awaken at her call, which she was pretty happy about, since if one kid started groaning, it usually wasn’t long before the entire room started talking, shushing, and groaning alongside them.

That was just how her fellows functioned. She usually joined in on the shushing, if she did at all. 

(A pillow over one's head did wonders, especially with her experience with her siblings.)

A pillow over her head wasn’t a sure way to stop the nightmares, however, and she rubbed her eyes to blink away the afterimages of torn up bodies of her family and her friends like the aftermath of house cats finding a den of rats.

It made her tremble in the summer heat.

She– no. She couldn’t go down that road of thought. If she started thinking about if it were truly a ‘prophecy’ like what the ‘pastors’ talked about, she would start crying�� and crying would wake everyone and ask her what’s wrong, and she’d have to explain her nightmare, and she’d have to tell about who she saw— 

Mister Rollo!

Her head snapped up as one of the faces that haunted her sleep, covered in gore, flashed in her vision.

That was how she knew it was a dream. It had to be. Mister Rollo was too big to be taken down by anything short of a dragon. Unless the monster was sneaky. Or perhaps dragon shaped. Then maybe it could have gotten him without anyone knowing. Oh, shoot– what if it was one of those ‘prophecy dreams’ or whatever they were called and Mister Rollo was in trouble?

There was only one way to make sure.

Shuffling from laying on her side, (she slept on her belly, but her nightmare had apparently gotten her to toss and turn onto her side) she hopped off the bed and armed herself with blanket and pillow, and began to hustle her way into the dark of the hallways.

Part of the challenge was making sure no one saw or heard her, because even when she was small, (Well. Smaller.), she recognized that adults didn’t seem all too thrilled when you were up and about after they called ‘lights out’. She wasn’t particularly sure on the hows or whys of it, but she knew that much! So that was her main goal in the darkness of the church— aside from trying to wrack her scattered, wired brain into remembering where his room actually was.

She just.. Had to ignore the lingering taste of copper in her mouth was all, and the noises from the woods outside the windows that reminded her too closely of screams or calls for help.

That’s all.

It took a couple false starts and a couple incorrect room-peekings, but she eventually remembered her way in the monotonous hallways. Landmarks weren’t really a thing, so she tried navigating via the feelings around her. Not really a sure choice, but so far her gut hadn’t really steered her wrong!

Besides she was pretty sure wolves couldn’t get in the building, so she was okay to take her time and find her way through.

Clicking quietly on the tile and wood, she let herself stand there for a moment and feel the silent air. Incorrect feeling. Mister Saint Rollo had a weird energy to him, but it was a nice one; made her feel comfortable. So it wasn’t any of these— and she made her way through like that.

At some point, her head decided to remind itself that she had a map of the building that she had been working on for the past few weeks and that it would probably be really useful right now. But it was all the way back at the creche and what if she got caught on her way back out?? It was under her mattress anyways so she couldn’t get at it without a bit of effort on her part. So all in all, it took longer than she liked while sneaking, but suddenly at one point her feet stopped and she stared at them. She didn’t think to stop walking. Turning her head to the door next to her she peered up at it. This one?

Some doors, when you open them, have a creaky feature. This feature varies; some creak when you open them slowly. Some creak when you open them too fast. Some don’t creak at either speeds and only creak when you open them at a vaguely normal pace. Eno had been listening to the doors throughout her stay and found them to be of the first variety— mostly, at least. After gently grabbing the handle she moved the door swiftly to avoid the slow opening creak and peered in. 

The small mountain on the bed was a promising sign however. But she knew illusions existed. Monsters could use magic. And Dragons were powerful magical creatures; She would not be fooled. Ducking into the shallow gap between the door and its frame, she dragged her weapons of choice in with her before she closed the door once more.

Creeping closer to the bed Eno noted that, yes, it did look like an asleep Mister Rollo but she wasn’t completely convinced. She wasn’t sure how she was going to be convinced, but she knew that she needed to find that proof. By the time she was standing right next to him, she had completely assured herself that she’d figure it out, and then go back to bed. 

Now. If it were an illusionary spell, casted by a monster as either a disguise or a stand-in for something that wasn’t there; would it start to fail if she stared at it too hard? She wasn’t quite sure about how magic worked. It didn’t sound right, but she knew from the way some fancy dressed people complained in town, or even some of the bigger kids in the church, that magic was extremely ‘finicky’ and ‘could make no sense’, so she was hazarding that something to that effect might happen, but it wasn’t a completely assured thing. So as she stared intently, she tried to take note of anything that could be categorized as ‘off’ or ‘very-definitely-not-what-it-seems’. 

Not as easy as it sounded. 

Maybe she should just wake him up and see if it was actually him? No, because if it was then she’d just be interrupting his sleep— she didn’t want that— but if it wasn’t actually him, then it’d be no harm, right?

Eno stood there debating, and studying, moving her position slightly so her legs didn’t ache too bad and to get a new perspective, and doing more debating about that studying, for an unidentified amount of time. Mostly because she wasn’t paying attention and had no inclination to.

(It was nearly an hour.)

But as she was finally settling into the idea that he was what he appeared to be, and that she could leave, she noticed a slight shifting– well. Stronger shifting than he had been doing for the time she’d been watching, and she paused in all her processes to tune back in and see.

His eyes slowly blinked partially open— and then seemed to jolt into awareness and onto an elbow as his eyes widened and looked back at her, blinking rapidly.

A couple seconds passed as the Goliath visibly strung together coherent thoughts, and a quiet sleep-slurred voice greeted her; “….Hello, Enososin.”

Well that was ‘fortuitous’ timing. Mom liked that phrase.

“Are you real?” She demanded, quietly, but getting straight to the point of her debate.

In the dark, Rollo’s expression flashed to one she had absolutely no idea how to categorize; just in general— (and if she could, she’dve labeled it as ‘having a brief existential crisis’)— before he slowly nodded at her. “…I believe so, yes.”

She poked the closest thing to her— his arm— with suspicion. It felt real, but nighttime always had secrets.

Hm. Well. It sounded like him, looked like him, and probably by all accounts was him. Besides, she was already planning on sneaking away the second before he woke up, so, for now, it was safe to assume it was, in fact, Mister Saint Rollo. But in case it wasn’t, or she had been pre-emptive in her checking in on him…

She nodded to herself as she finally concluded her deliberation. “Goi’g to be making sure.”

“‘Making sure’?” He echoed.

She dropped down to her belly and swiftly crawled underneath the bed with all the confidence of a child who played in crawl spaces, dragging her blanket and pillow underneath it with her.

There was a brief moment of silence as she got herself settled into her little spot before she heard the bed creak above her— what she presumed to be Rollo to be laying back down; and she was right! Up to a point. 

In the dark she saw a shape peek where she was, bright whites of his eyes squinted slightly in the shadows; he had laid back down to peer under the bed and look at her.

“Enososin,” he quietly, but gently— not mad then, just seemed to be confused— asked into the slight echo, “what are you doing?”

“Maki’g sure!” She whispered. She’d already told him but that was fine. He just seemed to be a bit slow to wake up!

More silence. “Making sure of what, little owlette?”

“It took you a long time to wake up while I was looking at you!” She fiercely whispered her explanation, “If a monster creeps in, you won’t know! I’m making sure that doesn’t happen!”

Another moment of silence, and she allowed it, because he seemed… actually, she had no idea what that expression was. His face was strange, in the best of ways she could possibly enunciate in her limited vocabulary, but nonetheless she couldn’t parse some expressions yet. This one looked… at the very least soft, but the widened eyes and the creased brow confused her. Those meant a lot of different things with humanoid faces.

Eno wasn’t about to ask what was up with his face, so she waited patiently for him to either go back to sleep or continue talking. Eventually after a couple more moments he sighed, quietly, but she saw him slump a bit with closed eyes and a small smile on his lips. “Alright, little savior,” he quietly chuffed to her, “you plan to defend me as I sleep?”

She chirped an affirmative with a little headbob.

“Well,” he hummed, and there was shifting above her and suddenly one of his hands reached down below and offered itself to her, “I have an idea for your quest.”

She looked at his hand and chirred at him in interest. “What’s the idea?”

He wiggled his fingers at her, and as he did, his tattoos started to glow ever so slightly as a spell manifested like water filling a cup in his palm, glowing softly in the night. “To give you my power to defend against the mightiest beasts, should they choose to go against a defender of your caliber.”

‘Oh !’ Her eyes widened, ‘Magic!’ That would absolutely help in her mission. And if it was some of Mister Rollo’s magic… She reached for his hand and the orb of light floating within the little presenting curve of his palm and touched it. 

Upon her touch, the orb didn’t quite shatter, but it did break apart into little bright pieces, swirling her finger– hand— arm— before sinking onto it like vines on a branch. A warmth accompanied the swirling magic like instead of touching an orb of soft light, she’d grabbed a very pleasantly hot mug of cocoa filled her hand raced through her arm, settling nicely throughout her bones and leaving a warm center in the middle of her chest as she blinked in slight surprise. She hadn’t been sure what was going to happen, but that had been really cool. She chirped in quiet excitement as she pulled her hand away, looking at it in curiosity.

“That should be able to tide you over,” he murmured with a yawn, drawing her attention back to the receding hand and tired face– right. She’d woken him up. Well now she definitely had to make it up to him. “You sure you’ll be alright down there?” 

Eno chirped another quiet affirmative. No need to be loud when he was clearly sleepy. “Nothin’ will get you while I here!” 

“I’m sure it won’t,” he hummed again, a different kind of smile on his face as it disappeared, once more going back to laying down, indicated to her by the slight creaking and shuffling of the bed’s frame above her, “be careful down there, little one.”  

She waited until his own shuffling had stopped and waited patiently for the now familiar sound of sleep from him. Once she was sure of it, she began shuffling her blanket into a position where she could watch the door and window with no real issues. Making sure it was spread out as much as it could go, she layed on her belly and settled on her blanket, and then methodically pulled the edges over her legs, left side, and then right. The last step was simply pulling her pillow closer to her as she settled her chin on it.

Tonight, she was the wolf that would bite if anyone got close to the edge.

Pulling a– what had Mama called it–? An all-nighter, wasn’t exactly new to the owlin, but it had been a long time since she had done so. Eno mused to herself that she hadn’t done this since mom’s birthday, all her siblings having wanted to surprise her with breakfast and all their little gifts. Admittedly, she had volunteered to wake them up, so she had no one to blame but herself for the boredom that ensued, but the mere fact she had been put on duty to wake the others so they could get breakfast ready kept her strong throughout the night. Minus a couple of nod-offs that she had quickly rectified with pinching herself. She had stayed awake ‘till daybreak, done her job by quietly waking the others, but had passed out as everyone else made breakfast. 

She yearned to be able to do that again— to wake others to surprise their collective loved one. Even if she went to sleep afterwards, her mom had come by while she was still trying to fight sleep and chided her gently for the all-nighter, claiming that she wasn’t built for being a ‘night-owl’, before giving her kisses and a thank you for the gift. Then told her to sleep and that she would wake her for lunch. That had been nice. She missed that.

Maybe they’d come back. She’d like to introduce her moms to Mister Rollo. He was very nice, and even if they didn’t like the church surely they’d get along fine with him? Mama would probably have a joke stowed away that would make him laugh. Mom might comment on something he was wearing and usher him away to ‘fix him up’, considering that was her job. Mom liked clothes.

She had no idea how her siblings would react to him. Okay, that was a lie; she could make a very smart guess at it. They’d probably start various climbing techniques to investigate him. Odus would probably see what was in his pockets. If he had any. She didn’t know, and was not in a position to ask. Maybe later. Zofaas would be the only one of them to ask smart questions– Kinzon would try to copy, but none of their brains worked as good as Zoe in that regard. Ahky would maybe whisper to her about whether or not he was as nice as she was claiming (sometimes she lied about someone’s niceness, but she would whisper to her twin what was the real deal) and she’d be able to tell him that he was as nice as she claimed. Oo, Frul might not get along with him but they’d certainly like Ms. Saint Celestine. They liked stars. So did Riik. 

Riik…

She hoped they’d come back. Or whatever had taken them would give them all back. Was this what it felt to be on the receiving end of a scavenger hunt? They didn’t steal people, but if this is what it was like she never wanted to do it again. But if something stole them, wouldn’t there have been some kind of sign? Did she miss it? Should she check the house again? And if it wasn’t being taken, when would they come back? She hoped they missed her as much as she missed them. Or at least thought about her. Even thinking would be nice.

It was thoughts and wants like that that kept her awake as she peered between the entry points with critical eyes. The shadows moved slowly, the night methodical in its plodding through time, but she didn’t give into the soft call of sleep. It had its chance and decided to give her nightmares, so she was preventing them and that preventing was making sure the sounds her ears picked up throughout the night stayed away.

She didn’t want to move in case something happened while her back was to the entry points, but occasionally, to wake herself up a bit, she gently patted the bed above her to make sure the weight of a goliath was still resting on it. Eno guarded the room with critical eyes until the morning birds were singing and her own eyes were like candles, burned down to slits. No one was getting her family without warning again.

Eno suddenly rapidly blinked as she saw something moving in front of her, getting her to raise her head from her scrunched pillow, before realizing that Mister Rollo had gotten up. Getting up. Process of being awake. Whatever. He was ok. She’d done what she set out to do. She made a soft sound of delight. 

His feet shifted suddenly at her sound, and it took a couple of moments but then he was kneeling and looking under the bed again, this time on the floor with her.

“You’re still down there?” He whispered to her. The quiet sound of ‘bafflement’ was very much present there, Eno thought with a quiet giggle.

“Mhm,” she chirred back, “I tol’ you I’d keep watch.”

“So you did,” he whispered back, “so you did.” And she was too tired to see what his face did as she let herself slowly blink, but when she was looking at him again, he was gesturing gently for her to move towards him. She quietly trilled at him in confusion. He only gestured again with slightly squintier eyes. Happy? Too tired. Sleepily, she figured it couldn’t hurt, so she gently shook herself free of her blanket before crawling forward with her weapons of choice.

Rollo backed up as she crawled from under the bed, and she didn't really process why his hands were slowly approaching her– clearly meaning to grab her but she didn’t really mind. She knew he was safe. Then she was gently scooped from the floor and placed on the bed. Oh.

“Why don’t you go to sleep, now, little owlette?” He murmured to her, “Even mighty protectors need to rest.”

Her brain was. Sloshing in her skull like– like? Soup. Yeah, soup. She liked soup, but not this soup. She was already partially gone. But she nodded as the words processed. Yeah. “Had to make sure y’were okay,” she slurred a little bit, curling once more with her blanket, “tha’wuz my job.”

“And you did beautifully,” he chuckled. She felt him gently pet her head as she shut her eyes. “Now sleep, Eno. You’re safe in the light.”

And she was out like a candle.

***

Prologue; One - Two - Three (you're here!) - Four

High Seas; It Begins - Something's Wrong - Blood in the Water pt. 1 - Blood in the Water pt. 2

[stars-and-darkness]

so the minecraft movie trailer looks like a fever dream but i hope that mojang knows that the bar is VERY high for me as i have been watching forge labs scenario smp videos for over a year now and there is no beating that

[liebgotts-lovergirl]

Fire On Fire: Chapter 26 Part 2

(Ch. 26.1) ... (Ch. 1)

II Gallery II Symbol Guide II

Summary: With the Gestapo on high alert and a bounty on her head, the stakes are only getting higher for Alix as the night of her mission fast approaches. But luckily, she and Captain Nixon have some help.

WARNINGS: War, Death, Espionage, Survivor's Guilt, Nix's functional alcoholism, the usual

A/N: All disguises mentioned are actual techniques used by the OSS, SOE, & CIA! Also, Cisco is based heavily on SOE spy Juan Pujol Garcia (aka Agent Garbo) & several other Spanish Maquisards who fought the rise of fascism in Europe for years before WW2 began!💖

Taglist: @latibvles @softguarnere @brassknucklespeirs @mccall-muffin @lieutenant-speirs @bellewintersroe @emmythespacecowgirl @holdingforgeneralhugs @parajumpboots @hxad-ovxr-hxart @sleepisforcowards @suugrbunz @ax-elcfucker-blog @chaosklutz @mads-weasley @vibing-away @eightysix-baby @ithinkabouttzu

Contemporary: December 2nd, 1944. Resistance Safehouse, Signy-l’Abbaye, France.

Alix awoke to the sound of hushed voices in the hall.  

Cracking a reluctant eye open, she reached for her knife just as the mantle clock chimed.  

4 o'clock in the morning. 

Splendid.

She must've dozed off waiting for their asset's arrival.

Silently easing herself off the couch, she crept towards the adjacent wall, her path just barely illuminated by a cool sliver of moonlight peeking through the curtains. 

The voices were getting closer…

Alix relaxed instantly as she recognized her handler’s voice, dry bemusement drizzled over his every word like syrup.

"That’s all you brought, Picasso? One bag?"  

There was a hearty chuckle from the darkness and then a second voice replied simply:

"They tell me pack light, I pack light." 

The speaker's voice had a rather airy, almost nasal quality she hadn't heard before and a pleasant, rolling accent she couldn’t quite place. 

Sheathing her knife, the spy subtly retreated to the sofa, managing to be seated just as the two men entered the room. 

“Sorry we’re late, Runt,” Nixon remarked as he threw himself into his usual chair and propped his boot-clad feet up on the coffee table.

His gaze flickered over to their visitor and playfully raised his voice just loud enough for the other man to hear. 

“Seems like the Spanish can’t keep to a schedule!”

"Next time, you hike the Pyrenees then, chaval," the diminutive newcomer retorted, a toothy grin appearing from underneath his scraggly beard as he removed a faded leather jacket and placed it delicately on the coat rack.

"And I will be the one to drink and complain. Besides, 'Más vale tarde que nunca', as my abuela always said." 

As the asset dragged a chair from the kitchen and into the living room, Alix watched him blearily and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

He was supposed to be here at midnight, she thought with a pang of irritation. What had taken him so long?

The visitor-- Picasso, Nixon had called him-- was in his early thirties, disheveled in ill-fitting black fatigues covered in dirt and twigs, a dark cotton shirt nearly swallowing his frame whole. 

Even in his beaten-in combat boots, he couldn'tve stood more than an inch taller than her and he was so slight that his clothing seemed to hang off him like the rucksack he had slung off one shoulder.

Noticing Alix's scrutinizing gaze, the visitor's smile only widened and the American spy observed a barely-visible gap between his two front teeth that reminded her vaguely of her baby cousin.

"You must be La Mariposa Negra," he noted brightly as he sat down, placing the canvas rucksack onto his lap with care.

"There is a poem in my country called that! Perhaps you have heard of it?”

“Unfortunately not,” Alix responded stiffly, still trying to figure out who on Earth this man was working for, why he was late, and why he was now sitting so casually in the living room of the safehouse as though he were part of the furniture.

“Ah, qué pena,” the Spaniard commented easily, still seeming far too cheery for the hour.

“But probably it will lose something in translation anyway." 

From his chair, Nixon yawned lazily before gesturing to his protégé. 

“Agent Martinelli, meet Cisco León Estrada of the Cantabria Maquis. He’ll be in town for a few days on special assignment.” 

The Spaniard extended a gloved hand and they exchanged brief pleasantries before he began unpacking the canvas rucksack on his lap.

“We hear much about you on the radio, Mariposa,” he gushed as he placed two detail brushes onto the coffee table.

"How you make the Germans afraid. It will be an honor to work on you.” 

Alix was instantly alert.

“On me?!”

"Correct,” Nixon commented from his place to her right, popping a caramel block into his mouth before going on:

"Cisco is a master of disguise. The SOE calls him Picasso for a reason." 

“You are too kind, my friend," the Spaniard replied with a modest wave of his hand. “I have had much practice.” 

"Donovan called him in for you personally, Runt,” her case officer garbled through a mouthful of candy.

“He’s going to get you– Well, ‘Tanya’ – ready for her big debut.” 

A small vial of dark liquid was placed onto the wooden table top with a plink. 

"Is that iodine?" Alix asked as she eyed the antiseptic nervously. “Somebody performing surgery?”

The two men exchanged glances.

"Yes" Nixon deadpanned at the same time Cisco answered with a light "No". 

"Well as long as we're all in agreement," Alix snorted as the shorter man rose from his seat, scrutinizing Alix with a pensive gaze.

The former model recognized that look and remained still, patiently allowing the artist to work. 

Mumbling to himself in Spanish, the Maquisard plucked absentmindedly at the bush of his beard for several minutes as he paced and studied her features, clearly trying to decide where to begin. 

After a moment, he snapped his fingers.

"The eyes,” the Spaniard stated with a decisive nod. “Then teeth. Then hair.”

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

Breaking an ankle during jump training hadn't been as miserable. 

It had been one flash of pain when she'd collided with the ground and that was it. Mercifully, the bone had gone numb. Alix wished she could go numb now. 

But instead, it felt like her scalp was being flooded with lava, each strand of hair being personally seared to the root by the peroxide Cisco was using.

She'd been sitting on the edge of the tub in a robe they'd pilfered for what felt like half an eternity, letting her stinging eyes wander the cramped bathroom. 

The Spanish asset, Cisco, was standing by the counter, a needle-thin brush in hand as he painstakingly dabbed each pearly tooth of the mold with a thin film of iodine just dark enough to discolor them. 

Every good agent knew the devil truly was in the details.

Eating with the wrong fork, a discontinued brand of cigarettes, a discarded receipt with a traceable bank number, even wearing a certain color too frequently could all spell disaster for an agent undercover behind enemy lines. 

They couldn't afford to overlook anything; Alix's life would depend on it. 

But even with Captain Nixon firing questions at her about her cover from his spot on the tile, all she could think about was the torturous burning sensation of her head and the dark blue colored contact lenses making her vision blur.

"Madonna mía, can I rinse it out yet?" she burst out finally, her fingers clenching onto the side of the tub as she tried to distract herself from the sizzling sting of the liquid seemingly seeping into every open pore. 

"Please? Jesus Ch-"  

"Only if you are wanting to lose half your hair," Cisco responded, his sharp eyes never wavering from his work.

"And I do not think you are wanting that." 

"Where did you go to school, Tatiana?" Nixon quizzed her as he reached the third page of her cover's dossier. 

Alix ignored him. 

"How much longer?" she inquired and the Maquisard took a quick glance at his watch. 

"Thirty more minutes, tía." 

"Am I talking to myself?” Nixon complained loudly. “I said, 'Where did you go to school, Tati-'" 

"It's Tanya," Alix snapped finally, dropping her voice to a lower, throatier pitch with a thick Russian accent. 

"Only my mother calls me Tatiana. And I was trained at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy." 

Her case officer didn't miss a beat. 

"And your mother? Where did she train?" 

A trick question.

"This is joke, yes?" the spy asserted, crossing her arms in front of her chest with an imperious toss of her head as she imagined a spoiled collaborationist socialite like Tanya would. 

"We only train with the best. And the best have always been at the Bolshoi." 

Captain Nixon gave a silent, grudging nod and Alix could see him fighting a smile at her performance. 

"And your dad?" he prompted. "What's your old man do?" 

"He is dignitary," she responded, the smoky quality of her lowered voice adding an extra layer of flippancy. 

"That is all you need to know." 

Nixon nodded his approval and drew a check mark in the margins of her dossier just as Cisco put the finishing touches on her false teeth and sat them on the counter to dry. 

"I must get the, ah como se dice…El tinte– " He gestured frantically as he tried to summon the English term.

"Hair dye," Nixon supplied and the Spanish Maquisard nodded enthusiastically, scooting the large box toward himself.

"Sí, yes–" he said between grunts as he tried to pry the tightly-sealed packaging apart. "The dye! Hostia–"

With a huff of irritation, Cisco flicked a knife out from his boot and began to carve the box open to get to its contents. 

“You would think–” he muttered in between laborious saws. “– they are hiding gold in here, when really, this– ” 

With a final, swift cut, the Spanish operative was able to dip his hand inside and pull out a small package of Auburn Allure buried within layers of cardboard.

“– is all.” 

“Dye’s hard to find these days,” Nixon commented as he shifted from the sink to the wall so Alix could finally rinse the peroxide from her hair.

“With shortages and all. Kathy’s always on about it.”

The cool rush of water on her scalp sent a shiver of relief washing through but when she flipped her hair back and looked into the mirror, Alix let out a yelp of horror at the ashen creature staring back at her. 

“What did you DO?!” she shrieked as she clutched at the limp strands of her now ghastly-yellow hair.

Skip and Don were going to have a field-day with this.

“Hostia, I told you not to look yet,” Cisco scolded, swatting her hand away from her face.

“You will only scare yourself. Captain Nixon, the scissors porfa.”

Alix opened her mouth to respond but suddenly thought better of speaking sharply to a highly-trained operative with scissors now in hand.

“Not. One. Word." She growled in Nix’s direction and even though it obviously pained him, her case officer made a sarcastic zipper motion across his lips and turned back to her dossier while Alix continued to violently pantomime slitting his throat. 

“Ignore him,” Estrada uttered sympathetically, swiping a portion of her bleached hair to the side and clipping it.

“We are not even halfway finished. You must trust me, vale?”

Alix sighed hopelessly and rubbed her stinging eyes again as the operative took the scissors to her beloved hair.

“Vale.” 

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

Within a couple hours, Alix had gotten used to the contact lenses and even the uncomfortable dental façade that shifted her jawline but she was still getting used to the overall person staring back at her in the mirror. 

The haircut and bangs suited her face surprisingly well but being a bleach blonde did not. Luckily, the Spanish operative had a plan to fix that too.

“Damn Cisco,” Alix remarked in a tone tinged with envy as she watched him combine ingredients like an expert chemist.

"You can do hair, you can paint, you can take a dental impression, you can kill a man in probably at least 5 different ways, is there anything you can’t do?” 

The Spaniard contemplated the question as he vigorously shook the bottle of dye.

“Maths,” he declared after a moment’s pause. 

“When I was in university, I always struggle in Maths. Painting a scene from memory, no problem, but you ask me to solve a complicated equation? This I cannot do.”

“What did you end up studying while you were in college?” Alix inquired curiously as he began to apply the deep burgundy dye into her hair with patient strokes.

“Art,” was the wistful reply, his hand faltering slightly with his fading smile. 

“But I leave university when the Guerra Civil starts… My little brother and I, we fight in the war. I make it out…Diego does not.”

“I’m so sorry,” Alix whispered, instinctively reaching to touch her rosary. 

She knew the ache of that loss all too well. 

“How did you end up in the intelligence game?” Captain Nixon asked, finding his voice.

In the mirror, she could see a shadow cross Cisco’s face.

“I go home to Cantabria. I see what Franco has done to mi pueblo…mi gente… mis amigos… Everywhere you look, there is death."

He swallowed hard.

“That is why I no longer go by my first name... Francisco.” He spat the word like a bitter curse. 

“After what I have seen…All of the things he has done to good people, all of the things he is doing to mi amada patria…I cannot stand –” 

His voice broke and he cut himself off, lapsing into a tense silence.

After a moment, he gritted his teeth and soldiered on.

“So I put down my brushes… I pick up my guns and I go to the mountains, I join the Maquis. Then the SOE, they reach out to me. They hear of my background. They want to train me in disguise and–” 

He finished brushing in the dye and made a half-hearted gesture with the brush as if to say Voila, here I am.

“Bueno, what about you? Why intelligence? I am curious.”

Alix took a deep breath and shifted anxiously in her seat.

What reason could she give? There was only one reason she had stuck with the OSS for so long, only one reason she hadn’t quit the spy game long before.

This operative had just poured out his whole life story to her and she couldn’t even say a name? 

“M-My brother,” she forced out, surprised at how brittle her voice sounded as the words tumbled out. 

“He, um…He was a Navy lieutenant. He shouldn’tve been there that morning, on the ship, but –” 

She took a shuddering breath, the words feeling like sawdust in her mouth as she slowly continued.

“– But he'd stayed the night to mediate some stupid squabble. So he was with his men that morning on the Arizona when…when–”

She shook her head, unwilling to give voice to the awful words, but she didn't have to.

"Entiendo por lo que estás pasando," Cisco intoned sympathetically as he began painting dye onto another section of her hair. "We have both lost much and it drives us here, to make a difference."

"Definitely. I tried to join the Women's Army Corps first," she admitted. "But I don’t take orders well. So suffice it to say, my superiors and I didn’t exactly get along.” 

She looked over at Captain Nixon, expecting some sort of quip but he appeared to be studying the pristine white tile, so she went on:

"Luckily, Director Donovan was looking for the headstrong type and knew my father personally, so he asked if I would be interested. And--” 

She shrugged, trying and failing to keep her tone light.

 “Here I am.”

"Bueno," Cisco chuckled. “My wife, Yessenia, has a favorite saying: 'Pan con pan, comida de tontos'.”

Alix's brows knit in confusion.

“‘Bread with bread'…?”

“A ver, it loses something in translation,” the Spanish operative expressed with another breezy laugh. “Es como...all the same is boring, no? It is good to be different.” 

Captain Nixon was strangely quiet throughout the course of the conversation and Alix stole another furtive glance in his direction. 

The intelligence officer was taking a sip from his flask with a hollow stare straight past her, at the wall. 

He was the odd one out, she realized, and he knew it. 

The only one of them who hadn’t lost anything…or anyone. 

It suddenly dawned on Alix that she had never known why he had joined the Airborne to begin with or why he had agreed to become a case officer. She never knew why he was so strict with her but lackadaisical when it came to everyone else. 

To be frank with herself, Alix realized she had never thought to ask. Even if she had, she reasoned, would he have given her a real answer? Probably not.

But now that everyone else was opening up too, perhaps he just might.

"Hey Nix--" she started and it was almost like her case officer sensed that she was about to inquire seriously about a topic he was loath to discuss because he hurried to cut her off.

“Say, you two mind if I turn on the radio?”

“Madonna mia, you’ve got to be kidding,” Alix groaned, throwing her hands up in exasperation before adopting a gruff, mocking tone.

“What happened to ‘no radio for the month, Runt. It's not safe’?!” 

“Well first of all," Nixon noted dryly, already exiting the bathroom to retrieve the contraband. "That impression of me could use some work!"

Moments later, he reappeared, radio in hand, and plopped it onto the bathroom counter.

"And second of all," he finished with a self-satisfied smirk at the look of indignance on Alix's face. "Since we’re leaving tonight, HQ gave the okay." 

Before the young agent could respond, the saccharine voice of one of Germany's most notorious propagandists came wafting over the crackling airwaves.

“–the Andrews Sisters singing ‘Pistol Packin Mama’. GIs sure love girls and guns, don’t you? Is that why some of you are lending your aid to The Black Butterfly?" 

Axis Sally let out a girlish giggle so malicious that it made the spy’s blood run cold and she exchanged worried glances with Nixon, whose expression had darkened instantly.

How did Berlin know she was getting help from American soldiers?!

Where were they getting such detailed information?

Even Cisco blanched as the announcer’s words set in, the dye brush slipping from his grasp and clattering to the floor, deep red splattering across the tile.

“You are smart men," Sally purred coquettishly, somehow sounding more threatening than if she had been yelling.

"Surely you realize you’re backing the wrong horse. After all, do you know how easy it is to kill a butterfly?”

There was a brief pause and then another chime of haunting laughter as the infamous announcer answered her own query:

“All you have to do is catch it.”

[go-sullivan]

I wish more people commented on fics in this day and age because I forgot I put a blink and you miss it reference to the time the Addams Family met Mystery Inc.

I forgot I did that

[n41r]

Beware of the man named Kurt and his "Chance Strike"

((Sariel is KO'ed first by the same move))

[crimsonscloud]

Are you afraid to be alone with me? No. I'm just afraid.

[mai-mai-lim]

Ah yes love it when i wanna be productive on drawing and then boom

Residental blackout :)

UPDATE: oh nice the power came back, i can even hear the joys from kids outside my house lel

[echo-s-land]

“Can you present the beautiful performance from last time ?”

[...]

“-Where do they come from ?”

“From *looks at notes* Ukraine”

“-There are still Ukrainians ? That’s cool ! It’s surely the last two of them, you have to enjoy it! Be sure to take a good look!”

“I’m going to get fired because of you!”

date of publication of the stand up on Youtube: 18th October 2014

[tachyon-omlette]

was not aware there was a solar eclipse earlier today

[chrissy-kaos]

I feel like I’m looking hella cute today.. Also! I gots new hair, do you like it?