#ugly alert

[technicallydelightfulpenguin]

CreathingShitmera's version of Grudge give me this vibe: ↑ and it is concerning.

[nicollekidman]

the wildest derek dieworkwear series of events so far and that’s saying something

[ryebreadedd]

lizardcat or something

[faeriekit]

Health and Hybrids (XXVII)👽👻💚

[I can't remember the original prompt posters  for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and the prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]

🖤Chapter navigation can be found here🖤 Click to browse previous updates.

💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts 💚 (now featuring mediocre mouseover translations, only available on a computer)

Where we last left off... Danny has another hashtag breakdown! Diana helps mediate. Stinky Dad and the Alien Guy observe.

Trigger warnings for this story:  body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) |  my nonexistent attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.

💚👻👽👻💚

Danny’s space-watching time is very important to him. He’s pretty sure it’s on his schedule, even.

Every few days—and even more days in a week, now that people are relatively certain that he’s not going to start hitting the medical staff—Danny gets wheeled over to the big window to stare out at the moon.

The moon hasn’t changed all that much since his first few visits, since. You know. It’s in space. Still, the stars shift in their positions, and sometimes they face Earth, and sometimes they do not, and a couple times Danny sees people flying out there, which is super neat.

Sometimes Danny sees maintenance workers out doing repairs on their buildings, too. They wave back at him when they’re not busy or carrying something, which makes Danny’s core bubble and spark with joy.

So, Danny is watching the stars twinkle in the sky with all the meditative calm his Obsession requires when something plops onto his head. It doesn’t hurt, but it does put pressure onto his neck. Ow.

Danny hisses automatically, but he already knows who it is—the quick-fast-kid-who-hasn’t-introduced-himself practically vibrates against Danny’s skin, all excited by omg/omg/misch/iefomg.

Typical. Danny wants to feign a bite, but his neck kind of hurts. He settles for grumbling. “What?”

“Dude,” the teenager says, or, uh, Danny approximates he says something kind of like dude, anyway— “Want to come see a feoht?”

Uh. “A what?” Danny asks, ignoring how the guy’s chin keeps digging into his scalp. It might be the most non-medical physical contact Danny’s had since he broke down with Diana. Maybe.

The teen backs up, and models some very quick punches into the air, making his own sound effects to match. It’s all very impressive, or whatever. Danny’s not going to applaud, though; his arms are tired.

“…Sure.” It’s not like Danny has anything better to do.

“Berstan!” the kid chirps, and—

Danny clamps down on his wheelchair wheels because holycraptheyaremoVINGFAST. His wheels aren’t on the ground—the teen is carrying him, chair and all—!

He’s going to be in so much trouble for running. Danny’s wheels touch the ground, and he drops straight to the floor. His hands shake all the way up to his elbows as he grips his wheels. He is going to be in so much trouble when the nurses look for him and he’s not there.

Oh no. Oh no.

“Here we are!” the quickfast teenager announces, grinning. They’re in a room with a big, rubberized floor. It’s basketball orange. The rest of the room is virtually indistinguishable from the cloth folding walls Casper High uses to divide the gym into smaller gyms—giant cloth panels line every surface that isn’t the floor. Walls. Ceiling.

Well. It’s certainly…sound dampening. There’s vents, though. So. At least they can breathe.

The other teenagers Danny recognizes yell out to them, cheerful as ever. One waves—the kid behind him waves back, and then they’re all clustered together, pleased and breathing heavy and slightly sweaty.

“Feel alright?” one teen asks—Danny recognizes him after a second; he usually has a leather jacket on over his brightly colored shirt. He isn’t sure what the huge S is for, but hey, it’s a cool emblem or whatever. Danny used to have his initial on his…

…Danny doesn’t want to think about that, actually. He doesn’t want to think about anything about home at all.

Oh. Someone asked him a question, and now they’re all looking at him for answers. Danny nods jerkily—something sloshes inside his skull, though, which. Ew. He scrunches his face up when everyone else starts to look worried about his expression, though; it’s no big deal! It’s just! Gross!

The boy who is very fast pats his hand before sliding to the other side of the room. There are buttons there, which he presses; the room shifts, just a little, to make a piece of the floor turn away in favor of a rack of weapons. The teenager who’s always masked, but is now in an exercise shirt, whistles approvingly, and two of the teens—whoah—start flying off to grab at the equipment available.

…There’s some cool stuff there. Danny. Danny might…

He doesn’t want to fight, per se, but. Um. Weaponry is intrinsically cool. There’s no doubt about it. Half the reason he liked to play Doomed was collecting the newest and coolest weapon to blast at all his enemies with! And Tuc—

—and—

—Tucker—

Something clicks right up in front of Danny’s face.

He flinches.

“You good?” the teenager asks, big blue eyes on him as Danny struggles to breathe. “Do you want hweorfan?”

Danny gasps around three uneasy breaths before his ears catch up. Or. Well, his ears work, but his brain doesn’t know what the teen is saying?? Danny shakes his head anyway—he doesn’t want more to happen. He wants less.

The teenager frowns. Danny immediately worries that he did something wrong. “Okay, but tell me if you change your mod.”

As soon as Danny figures out what that is? Sure. He’ll tell him.

In the meantime, the kids split up into groups; one set of two goes to one side of the gym and the other goes in the air, floating on the other si— wait, they can float??

…Danny stares, and two ostensibly human-looking teenagers take to the air, loudly teasing the two left on the ground, and, yeah. They’re flying. Danny watches as the one on the ground starts counting, ready to start their match, only to interrupt his own countdown for a sneak-attack at the start and a PIFF of a smoke bomb going off. Danny can’t see the buzzing kid disappear from sight as the air begins to thicken, but there’s a distinct taste of JOY/games/VICIOUS that flutters through him that tells Danny that, wherever he is in that smoke cloud, he’s living his best life.

 And. Well.

The fighting is—there isn’t a better word for it, it’s just so damn cool. There’s kicking and punching and throwing and tossing and—sure, Danny can take a few hits and deal out some surprise punches when he has to, but these kids know what they’re doing, which is so cool, because once Danny lost the benefit of gravity mid-fight basically everything Mom had trained in him had been thrown out the window. The physics were just never right.

(And— Mom—)

Like, all the punches are happening at speeds that Danny can only kind of follow. His neck starts hurting from trying to follow them—but he can’t stop watching, and the kids are really having a blast. They’re laughing. They’re teasing. They show off, even, stopping to pose and flex and be admired by their sole observer, which Danny obliges with some gentle claps. The others are quick to jump on any distraction, though, and are more than willing to have Danny be the center of attention while they sneak up on showstoppers, stick or lasso in hand.

On one hand, Danny should probably be more alarmed by the sight of kids acting as literal child soldiers training to be combat ready. He…he’s pretty sure he’s meant to be one of them as soon as he’s recovered enough to get trained.

And…it is scary. It is kind of a scary thought that Danny might have to go back to…go back to fighting and getting hit and hitting and everything that fighting means.

On the other hand, there’s no one here. All the kids here are Danny’s age, and they’re not fighting because someone is making them; they’re having fun, and their job is to help people.

…Danny puts his legs higher up on his wheelchair, until he can wrap his arms around his knees. They’re supposed to beat up threats, but they don’t think that Danny’s a threat. They’re letting him sleep in a bed and get medical care and making sure he gets medication and everything. They let him hang out with their children and he has toys and fidgets to pass the time, and maybe he’ll have to pay them back later, but… isn’t helping out because he got helped only fair?

And they let non-humans live on Earth! That one teen’s stinky dad said that they could help Danny stay on Earth, he thinks. Or, uh, it’s what he thinks the green guy translated that as? So as long as he doesn’t leave, they could even protect him from the— all the bad stuff on Earth! So really, all Danny has to do is work on getting better. He’s safe here. Diana is here, the stinky dad is here, and there’s a whole team of super-people with super powers ready to help people.

Danny’s safe. He’s calm. He’s fine. He’s…worried that Diana doesn’t know where he is, but she’s smart and there’s probably cameras.

He watches the teens play around with various weaponry like they’re his model rocket. There’re thrown projectiles and giant hammers and dodgeballs and sticks, staves, and lassos; someone pulls out a shield, of all things, glittering gold and gleaming with something that itches at the back of Danny’s eyeball, and there’s a gun that sh—

Danny only breaks out of the memory of RUNNINGRUNNINGRUNNING when he realizes that someone is holding him. He’s choking. He doesn’t know who’s holding him, but they’re not hurting him right now and he can see a crowd of other colorful figures around him, which means he’s not with the Guys in White.

He’s hyperventilating. He can’t help it. He can’t stop it! His lungs hurt and there’s no end to the stress pressing out of his chest. Someone is holding him; where’s his chair? Did he lose it?? That’s really expensive medical equipment—they’re going to be so mad at him—!

Someone lifts him out of the stranger’s arms. It’s one of the older quick-buzzing humans. Not the teenager, and not the oldest one, he thinks. Danny can’t tell. He can’t breathe, and it’s hard to focus.

He’s shushing Danny like he’s a kid. Danny would be insulted, except he can’t breathe, and he really wants someone to help him, and his eyes are all weird and he can’t see and he doesn’t know where he is and his core hurts and his chair is gone—

Oh. The guy puts Danny’s hand on his chest and models breathing in with one big, visible breath.

Danny breathes in.

The guy models breathing out. It’s a long, slow breath.

…Danny struggles through the follow-through, but he manages. Well. He chokes hard enough to cough, twice, but…close enough.

The colorful forms milling about slowly disperse, until it’s largely just Danny, and the fast guy radiating very measured levels of calm, and his friend in black and blue, who is eating a sandwich. They breathe in, and they breathe out. That one guy eats his sandwich.

Danny looks around. He’s…the room he’s in is really big. Tables. Benches. Little stands of foo… Oh. He’s in a cafeteria. Cool.

…He squints through the new haze of green in his eyes. He’s probably strained something, but there are more important things at stake here: can he get some real food here?

“Where is here?” Danny asks. Rasps. He’s mostly horizontal, so manipulating his head around to glance at his surroundings is kind of a strain on his neck. Is that a hot dog cart?

“Wistheall,” the two say simultaneously—the guy in black and blue and a bird on his chest swallows his sandwich. “…Want a snakka?”

You know what? Danny’s going to assume that this means a snack. Sure! Why not. Nodding his head so quickly hurts, but he’s also not walking anywhere, so it’s not like it’s a full-body pain. The buzzing-quick guy sort of just…carries him around and asks Danny what he wants, and the bird guy gets it for him.

The little vibrations the guy is giving off are tinged a little with wor/ryworry/worry, but the guy’s mostly…at peace? Forcibly shoved it all down? Danny and the guy are practically chest to chest at this point, so it’s probably just that Danny’s close enough to feel even really quiet things.

His suit is super smooth, by the way. It’s not, like, skintight—there’s a little armor underneath, Danny can feel—but the fabric itself is like super slick. It’s cool. Texturally.

Also, he gives Danny a tube of something that are clearly off-brand Prongles, so Danny’s mostly just enjoying that instead of wondering what’s up with this guy and his friend.

“Are you okay?” the guy finally asks, his chatter mostly winding down into a question Danny can recognize. Danny swallows his bite of chips with a swig from his water bottle, and nods. He’s…unsettled, but he’s fine. He doesn’t know where he is, but he didn’t know where the teenagers had left him either, so this is about what he expected.

Even under his red hood-and-mask, the guy’s eyes are kind. Kinda worried. Not mean. “Something bad happened?”

…Danny looks back at his chips. Something bad happened, but it didn’t happen recently. “No,” Danny muttered around the crumbs in his mouth. He swallowed dryly. “Not…not now.”

The vibrations slow, and dim, melancholy lacing through the air. The sensation makes Danny itch. “Before?”

Danny nods. He thinks about his body melting from the outside in, his face dripping off in chunks of wet matter, his throat torn open still screaming.

“It was a—“ Danny tries, but he doesn’t actually know their word for gun or blaster. He just forces his fingers to make a familiar symbol, holding his own middle and end fingers back, leaving a shaking, uncomfortable thumb and pointer.

The quiet pew pew sound effects probably aren’t necessary, but the more detail, the better, or something like that.

Danny remembers how hot it got. Just…all the heat and light, and he could smell smoke right up until he couldn’t. And his face…everything hurt—everything still hurts, even—but the scary point had been when suddenly his face hadn’t hurt, and there was nothing left to feel.

…The guy holding him pulls Danny’s fingers away from his face. Oh. Danny was pulling at his still-green, still-healing wound. He. Uh. He doesn’t remember starting to do that anymore.

“Sorry,” Danny whispers. He swallows something wet from his sinuses to his stomach, and has to fight back the memory of a blood-and-ecto-and-flesh slurry taking its place in his esophagus as he tried to crawl away to die. Again.

The man sends out pulses of sorrysorrysorry through his skin. “Me too,” he murmurs back.

Then Danny gets hitched up—Danny squawks—and gets thrown into a better position over one shoulder, so Danny has better height to see from and a better perch in the guy’s arms. Danny drops half his prongles on the floor in the process. “Want to go find your chair?” the guy asks, body vibrating just a touch outside of Danny’s conscious awareness. Still, even without seeing the guy’s face, his whole body radiates sympathy/curiOSITy/Hungry.

…Didn’t they just eat?

Either way, Danny’s not torn between staring sadly at the ground where his prongles lay cold and bared to the cruelty of the world or getting up to go find his chair. “Yes,” he agrees, and uses the flat of his forearms to haul himself up higher onto the guy’s shoulders. Kindly, the guy in red doesn’t even budge. “Thank you.”

“Na geswincan,” the guy reports back easily, which Danny is pretty sure is a less-formal you’re welcome. Too bad there’s a whole language’s worth of context Danny’s missing out on here. His friend even snags Danny an extra can of prongles, and is kind enough to rips open the seal for him.

Nothing beats recovering from a crying jag like chips. Danny takes them earnestly.

The quick-fast guy hooks his arm onto his friend’s, and the world starts to stretch and blend into the in-between planes of reality, slices of world layered atop each other. The guy smashes through each one and pulls them both along for the ride.

It’s not quite like dunking his head in the portal, but it’s not not like sticking his head in a homemade portal either. Danny shakily pulls out a chip and starts chewing. He’ll just take the ride as it comes.

*

“Superboy.”

Kon winces.

“Robin.” Wonder Woman’s eyes turn to the more remorseful end of the bunch. “Wonder Girl. Impulse.”

“Wedidn’tmeanto!” Bart wails into a pillow, which. Fair. Cassie is sweating from possibly every pore she’s ever had (and maybe even a few she doesn’t??), and Tim is doing that stoic-faced thing that means he’s flipping the hell out too much to even tell his face to make expressions about it.

Kon just looks…miserable. Just absolutely miserable.

“…Triggered by firearms, maybe…?” Tim mutters under his breath, which means that he’s theorizing about their guest’s symptoms rather than coming up with solutions-oriented paths out of this confrontation and Cassie wants to shake him because this is NOT the time, Timothy Jackson Drake, except he’s kind of made of mortal human flesh and if she actually shakes him too hard he might die.

“I hope you understand how deeply irresponsible it was to take our patient out of his rooms without any form of supervision from either myself, his medical team, or an adult up to speed with our patient’s medical and psychological needs.” Wonder Woman’s voice is sharp—and her eyes are on Timmy Wonder Boy, who’s barely paying attention, making it clear that the majority of her ire is currently on him. “All four of you are being taken off of mission rosters for the next month in favor of remedial training. I hope that you are all satisfied with the decisions you made.”

“Fiiiine,” Cassie groans. Kon slumps in place. Tim nods without really looking.

Bart, still wailing at lightning speed into his pillow, continues doing…that.

[cupcek]

♫ ˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̥°̩̥‧̥ ケルン 香り高い 🪜📟💢࿐᭒⃜⃟

[personallyfive]

time for us

[macethetiredartist]

Curly is an enabler

TW: MENTIONS OF RAPE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT, SPOILERS FOR MOUTHWASHING

Listen, I know Jimmy is a rapist and he is absolutely irredeemable and overall just a POS, but Curly isn't a saint either. After Anya told him that she was pregnant, his immediate reaction was to go to Jimmy. However, this doesn't make him a monster. Jimmy is Curly's best friend and has been for years, it makes sense that he'd be conflicted. But his friendship doesn't matter, and it shouldn't when it comes to something as serious as sexual violence, he is the captain of a ship and it is his job to keep his crew safe. He couldn't have stopped the rape, but he could've made Anya feel safer.

In this situation Jimmy is the abuser, Anya is the victim and Curly is the enabler.

Adding onto this, Jimmy's joke about being sexually attracted to horses can be seen as a silly little joke that can be brushed off, but knowing what Jimmy did to Anya, it is sexual harassment. He is intentionally making her uncomfortable to have power over her, to let her "know her place".

Curly is a kind and trusting person, which is an attribute to strive for, however in his case it becomes his biggest weakness. It is Curly's fault that the ship crashed. He knew that Jim was at least somewhat unstable and yet let him run around unsupervised. He is in a hell of his own making. I'm not saying that Curly is irredeemable, but he isn't a good person. He's nice and caring, but he's not good. The victim always comes first, regardless.

Of course, feel free to correct me on anything I got wrong or debate with me in the comments if you think Curly is genuinely a good person. It was kind of hard to write this because he's a good person but at the same time he's not? idk.

[witchlingcirce]

Jon snow and Gerold Dayne (darkstar) should link up to discuss there deep hatred for Mycrella

[imagine-darksiders]

Only 20 minutes into this game and I can already tell that Psuedo is gunning for Dad of the Year.

[deranged-charisma]

EUGENE "BUBS/BEEZLEBUB" CURTIS: SLENDERVERSE OC DROPP

[akissaura]

[gabrieldrawsstuff]

Cutest Techno I drew so far methinks

[potatothemouse]

Another scammer: ways to tell this was a scammer

1: bad grammar

2: wants me to draw her sons pet

3: want to know your location

4: tries to stall the prices

[a-star-that-burns-brightly]

I'm surprised it's been a year and no one has mentioned that water is often a symbol for death and rebirth

(x) Symbolism of water often implies both death and rebirth. In the Christian baptism, the initiate dies in water, and is then reborn from it in the Kingdom of God

(x) Hu: You see, when my parents were younger, they often visited a local lake. Hu: Supposedly, the water was so still that it perfectly reflected the sky and the many butterflies that flew above the lake during those quiet morning hours. Hu: They had many fond memories of that place and wanted to work it into my name. My last and first name can be translated into something like "still lake"

There's also definitely something I want to say about Hu's character and the contrast being made between Change and Stagnation, but I should probably wait to see if she actually has the hopeless child secret before I say what I want to say.

[anxiously-sidequesting]

Okay Girls gather round because we need to talk about a very important factor in Wizard101. The Storm Triton... so why does he look Like That

Why does he look like that

[probably-impossible]

Signs & Wonders

Tuco made a hasty sign of the cross. “Blondie, y- you…” he stammered. “You have…”

“What?” Blondie could feel Tuco’s panic spreading to him. His stomach twisted with apprehension. “What do I have?”

Tuco hesitated for a moment, biting his lip. Then he spread his arms. “Wings!” he said. “Great big white feathery wings!”

Day 3 entry for @dollarstrilogyevent

The man known as Blondie was not religious. But he was only a man. Deep down, he was just as scared of dying as anybody else.

In the desert, with the skin peeling off his face and thirst burning his throat, in his desperation, he made a deal with God.

I'll do anything, be whatever you want me to be, just don't let me die here…

No one making those kinds of promises expected to be bound to them. He certainly hadn't. After all, he was the furthest thing you could find from a saint. Worse than evil, he was apathy walking; he was a greedy drifter with nothing in his life worth saving. Of all the prayers from better men that God wouldn't grant, it seemed unfair for his to be answered.

But then he'd started seeing miracles. A Confederate army wagon had appeared out of nowhere, just in time to save him. Tuco, the inveterate sinner, had taken him to a Catholic mission, where holy men had washed his face and tended his wounds. And he'd recovered, against all odds. Despite his unbelief, God had taken him up on his offer.

Now it appeared that He was holding Blondie to his end of the bargain. Because that was the only possible explanation for any of this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He and Tuco had just left the mission in San Antonio when he started to feel an itching between his shoulder blades. No matter how much he scratched at it, the feeling wouldn't go away.

Tuco shot him a glance. “You got a rash or something?”

Blondie scowled silently back at him. Tuco rolled his eyes. “Then stop fidgeting so much. This wagon ride is bumpy enough as it is.”

Blondie shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to ignore the feeling. It worked for a little bit. He figured he must have gotten sunburned back there and just hadn't noticed until now.

But after a while, the itching graduated to a sharp pain, sharp enough that even he couldn't ignore it anymore. Pain, and a sense of pressure. It felt like something pushing against his skin from beneath.

After a while he realized he was sweating and clenching his fists in his pockets. He doubled over, and his vision started to go fuzzy.

He could hear Tuco saying something, then the wagon slowly came to a stop. He tried to step down from the bench, but stumbled and landed face-down in the dirt. On his hands and knees, he arched his back and clenched his jaw.

The pressure in his back built and built, and his body twitched and jerked as whatever was growing inside him strained to get out. Finally, he felt a searing explosion of pain that turned his vision white.

Something burst through his skin.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He must have gone unconscious for a few minutes. He didn't remember how he'd ended up on the ground, exactly. There was a dull ache that ran from his shoulder blades down to the small of his back.

He took a moment to catch his breath. Above him, he could hear Tuco yammering in frightened Spanish. He felt a weight on top of him, like a thick blanket. Had Tuco covered him with something?

Slowly, he pushed himself back up to his hands and knees, then stood. He swayed, feeling oddly off-balance. The weight on his back was still there. And he was experiencing strange sensations. Something dragging in the dust behind him… something ruffling in the breeze. His own body felt wrong, somehow. Different.

Behind him, Tuco stood pressed up against the wagon, looking at him with wide eyes. “La hostia!”

“Hey, that's blasphemy,” Blondie said, then blinked. He didn't know why he cared all of a sudden.

Tuco made a hasty sign of the cross. “Blondie, y- you…” he stammered. “You have…”

“What?” Blondie could feel Tuco’s panic spreading to him. His stomach twisted with apprehension. “What do I have?”

Tuco hesitated for a moment, biting his lip. Then he spread his arms. “Wings!” he said. “Great big white feathery wings!”

Blondie froze. “Quit fooling around.”

“I'm not fooling! I never fool! Look!” Tuco pointed at him. “They're huge!”

Blondie didn't move. He didn't want to. “You've gone crazy,” he said. “The heat got to you and you finally snapped.”

Tuco let out a frustrated groan. “You're the one who's crazy! All you gotta do is turn your head!”

“Don't feel like it.”

“You stubborn son of a—!”

Tuco lunged suddenly towards him, reaching past his shoulder. Blondie ducked away from his grasp, but still felt fingers close around his… his… He jerked as something pulled at his still-sore shoulder blades. “Tch—! Let go, you—!”

“No!” Tuco gave another sharp tug. “Not until you look!”

Blondie gritted his teeth. He looked.

Over his shoulder, he could see, sure enough, a huge wing, like a bird's. It was covered in pure white feathers that seemed almost iridescent in the sunlight. It had to be at least eight feet long, and it was firmly attached to his back.

Tuco had his grubby fingers buried in the feathers at the other end of it. By itself his grip didn't hurt, but it felt deeply strange; a touch in a place his mind was still telling him should not exist.

True to his word, though, Tuco let go when he saw Blondie turn his head. “I told you,” he said. “Wings.”

Blondie swallowed. He looked down the length of the wing and watched the feathers flutter slightly in the breeze. He looked over his other shoulder; there was a wing there, too. They were both very, very real. He tried extending them, and they unfolded clumsily, their tips dragging along the ground. He reached out and touched one. It was surprisingly soft.

“Wings,” he echoed numbly. He had wings.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later, he sat on the seat of the wagon with his shoulders hunched, doing his best to keep the wings folded up over his back while Tuco drove. But it wasn't easy. Every time the wagon went over a bump in the road, the wings would be jostled from their position and start unfurling. They were huge and unwieldy and awkward, and they had ruined his sense of space. He'd had a very difficult time climbing back onto the seat of the wagon at all, with the wings flailing around and bumping against the canvas. At least they hadn't spooked the horses.

The wagon jolted as it hit a rock, and Blondie’s left wing flew free and smacked Tuco in the face.

“Ay pendejo, watch it!” Tuco snapped, batting it away. “How am I supposed to see where we're going with your feathers in my eyes?!”

Blondie didn't respond. He didn't feel like talking. Instead he wanted to burn through his cigarillos and not think about anything.

Tuco scowled at him. “Hey, are you even listening to me?” He huffed. “Just because you grew a big pair of chicken wings doesn't mean you have to sit there moping all day. I need you to keep a lookout. We're getting close to the fighting, there might be soldiers around.”

Blondie frowned at him. “You act like you're used to them already.”

Tuco shrugged. “There are two types of people in the world, my friend: people who can accept whatever this life throws at them, no matter how strange it is, and people who can't. You've got to be the first type of person if you want to survive like I do.”

“Yeah, well, easy enough for you to say,” Blondie muttered. “They ain't your wings.”

Tuco threw up his hands. “What do you want me to say?! That I think you're a freak? Fine, you're a freak! Your unnatural appearance frightens and confuses me. Is that what you were waiting for? Now you can either stop sulking and make yourself useful, or you can jump off this wagon and fly to the cemetery.”

Blondie glowered at the scenery. He still felt he should be allowed to sulk for a while. He furled the wings as tightly over his back as he could.

“Wait a minute,” Tuco mumbled. He stroked his mustache with his free hand. “Now that's an idea. Yeah… that's a good idea.”

Blondie gave him a sideways glance, narrowing his eyes. He liked Tuco even less than usual when he got ideas.

Tuco just grinned at him. “You really could fly up and look around.”

“Fly.”

“Yes, fly, what are you, deaf?” Tuco pointed towards the clear sky above them. “You'd probably be able to see for miles from up there. And then we could avoid the war altogether! Just think about it: those wings could save me—I mean, us—a whole pile of trouble.”

Blondie had to spend a minute processing this. His gut instincts rebelled against the suggestion; he didn't want to be Tuco’s scouting pigeon. But it made sense. It was a good idea. “I don’t even know if I can fly with these.”

“What? What else would they be for, huh, estúpido?” Tuco stopped the wagon and started trying to push Blondie from the seat. “Come on! There's no way to know if you don't try!”

Blondie gave him a glare but hopped down of his own accord. He stumbled; his center of gravity still felt off. But after some wobbling he managed to right himself. He took a few steps away from the wagon and glanced around. He and Tuco and the horses were the only living things out here.

Tuco was watching him expectantly, with a nasty little smile on his nasty little face. Blondie didn't want that gaze on him while he did this. He started to walk around to the other side of the wagon. When he got there, though, he saw Tuco lying on his stomach in the back, supporting his head in his hands and kicking his legs. He grinned. “Don't let me distract you.”

Blondie narrowed his eyes and took a few steps backwards. There was nothing around but empty flatland, stretching off into the distance. He extended his wings and tried flapping them a few times. Their size made them slow and he had to push hard against the air, but he felt his heels lift a bit before the dust cloud his wings had kicked up swallowed him. He coughed, fanning red dirt away from his face and backing up a few more steps.

He glanced at his wings, then up at the horizon. For some reason, he was apprehensive about this. …Should be able to, it's what they're for… He clenched and unclenched his fingers. Only thing to do was to try.

He spread his wings and took a running leap.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Bah ha ha ha ha ha!” Tuco doubled over and practically rolled out of the wagon. “Oh man, I think my sides are gonna burst! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!”

Blondie lay face-down in the dirt, wings akimbo. He had decided not to move from where he'd face-planted on his fourth attempt. So far his new appendages had done nothing but betray him.

He heard Tuco’s footsteps drawing towards him, still laughing. “You looked like a blind pigeon! Ha ha ha ha ha ha… You looked like a chicken having a seizure!”

“Hrrnngh.”

Tuco crouched down and poked at his feathers. “Hey, you didn't break any bones, did you? If you're dying again you'll tell me the name on the grave, won't you?”

“M'fine.” Blondie tensed when Tuco touched his wing. He was pretty sure his feathers were disheveled, and he felt like a cat being pet the wrong way. He shook Tuco off and pulled himself up to a sitting position.

“Ha ha ha… I guess pigs still can't fly.” Tuco plopped down into the dirt next to him. “I'm serious, you know, your feathers look messed up. Here, let me just—”

“Don't touch me.”

“You quit being so pissy! You think you're gonna be able to fix this shit by yourself? You got extendable arms too, huh?!”

Blondie scowled, but he didn't pull away when Tuco’s hands found his wings again.

“Whiny bird-bastard, can't even accept a favor from the goodness of Tuco’s heart,” Tuco grumbled. His fingers dug into the soft, downy feathers near Blondie’s shoulders and gently combed them back into place.

The touch sent a shiver through Blondie's entire body. His breath caught for a moment. That felt… really good. So good, in fact, that it was almost…

Tuco stroked his wings again and he had to bite his tongue to keep from making an embarrassing noise. Apparently that area was … sensitive. “‘S enough,” he mumbled. “Do the— the bigger ones instead.”

“Huh? Why?”

“...”

“Oh, alright.” Tuco shifted position and started working his way towards the tip of his left wing. Blondie sighed. By contrast, this just felt pleasant. Tuco's hands were warm on his wings as they swept the dust from him and smoothed his errant feathers back into place. He wouldn't admit it, but it was nice.

“Hey, Blondie,” Tuco said after a while. He let his hands drop. “The whole flying thing… eh, you'll get it eventually. Probably. But I, ah, shouldn't have laughed at you. Even though you did look like a dead parrot rolling down a hill.”

Blondie whipped his head around, almost smacking Tuco with his wing. “Was that an apology?”

“Don't get used to it,” Tuco sneered. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I just thought to myself, you know, that Blondie, he’s had it pretty rough lately, what with sprouting big chicken wings and almost dying and everything. That can't be easy to deal with, even for a bastard like him. Maybe I should ease up on him a little bit. Maybe we could even let the whole trying-to-kill-each-other thing be bygones, eh? Call it even. After all, we're partners again.”

Blondie gave him a long look. Somehow, he could tell that Tuco was being uncharacteristically sincere. He didn't quite know how he knew.

He'd never been big on intuition, but this felt like some kind of sixth sense. If he focused on it hard enough, he could almost convince himself that there was a faint glow around him, telling him that this was good, this was a start, and he should trust it. If he’d been a religious man he might have called it a still, small voice.

Tuco had an almost sheepish look. “You know, Blondie,” he said, fiddling with the scapular around his neck. “This is gonna sound silly, but those wings don't really make you look like a chicken. Really, you look almost like … well. An angel.”

Ordinarily, Blondie would have never let Tuco forget he'd said a thing like that. But for some reason, today, he let it go.

He stood up and stretched his wings. He was starting to feel like maybe he could get used to them.