#where she realizes she can use the crystals for her explosives

[rheydhotts]

// The Missing Hour...

word count; 3.9k

♡ summary; we never got to see the hour of deleted footage that takes place after ekko saves jinx, so this is my take on what might have happened.

♡ contains; jinx × ekko/timebomb. mentions of isha, vi, caitlyn, claggor, mylo, ambessa, and powder.

♡ warnings; suicide attempts, self-harm and malnutrition, nudity.

SPOLIERS! for arcane season 2 (just incase)

The only way to break the cycle is to walk away. This was the right choice.

The thought replayed over and over again in her mind. As if to ease any worries or doubts. It was calming, unlike the other voices. A quiet chant that protected her from feeling anything. No more fear, no more pain, no more rage, and no happy endings.

She burned all things from her past and it made her wonder. She’s not proud of it and there’s no difference made by harboring, but she did. Maybe if she stayed away like Vi told her. Maybe when she, Claggor, and Mylo were getting punked for their loot, she should’ve taken a punch. Maybe if she didn’t take those stupid crystals. Maybe if she never existed at all, none of this would’ve happened. It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. There’s no redo button and besides, Jinx wasn’t going to be around for much longer. Her finger was on the pin.

This was the right choice.

“Wait!” A voice called to her. It’s loud and urgent. And it startles her. Just a bit. Her head tilts to look at him. It looked like Ekko.

“I just wanna talk to y-”

“Get out of here, Ekko.”

She pulls the pin again. The first time was terrifying to him. A drastic shift in narrative, it was. He had just come back from his version of paradise. Zaun, the Undercity, was thriving. Almost everyone was alive, and happy. He had Powder. Now, Jinx was trying to kill herself. This wasn’t the first time she tried to take out the both of them. As if he could ever forget that night on the bridge. That night where she looked so…vulnerable. At peace with him as her company. Here, she looked numb. She looked different. That blue hair hacked off at the base of her neck and her eyes lacked sleep with tears stains painting her pale cheeks. Her eyes were shut as she let herself drift into death, that was before she saw him. This time she was ready to get it over with. The explosion sent him back a few feet. With a tug of the pull string, the Z-drive took him back to 4 seconds ago.

“I just wanna talk to you, Pow-”

Shit. He thought.

“Jinx.”

In her last moments her mind keeps taunting her. Playing cruel tricks to make her feel like dirt before she goes. Well not this time. “You’re too late, Ekko.”

“Always a dance with you.” He chuckles. He cuts her off before she can pull the pin.

She turns to him. Somehow, he looks more beat up than before. He’s bloody and bruised with burn marks lacerating his skin. Steam wafts from him.

“I think, I’m just gonna sit here a minute.” He takes a step back and drops to the floor. He sits on the step to the middle of her lair. “Y’know, catch my breath. See if I can try to talk an old friend out of blowing us up.” His breaths are heavy. As if he ran from enforcers.

Jinx’s eyes shift with a sudden realization. This was Ekko. The real Ekko. Not some eloquently crafted hallucination. And she almost killed him too. He didn’t deserve that. Unlike her, he had so much to live for. The boy savior.

Her gaze stops on the bomb in her grasp. It weighs a good bit. His eyes flash with charged energy. Jinx’s grip on the pin releases. A tiny shift in her thumb’s positioning, it was all the movement she could muster. “I’m tired of talking.” She brings the mechanical monkey to her chest and leans forward, off the edge of the propeller.

“NO!” Ekko reaches out for her. His other hand, instinctively, tugs back the pull string before he realizes it. The Z-drive takes them back. That was the 5th time he had to watch her try. Jinx was determined. She barely even gave him a chance, a second of silence was the deciding factor of whether she went boom. Ekko couldn't stand the sight, but he would try a million times over to get it right.

“Y’know, I learned from someone…”

Jinx turns back to him. He's closer to her now. Somehow he managed to sneak up on her. Her eyes widened with curiosity and her tense shoulders dropped. He had her full attention.

“...very special…that no matter what happened in the past, it’s never too late to build something new.” For a second, their eyes meet before something draws her anyway from him. Jinx looks down at the Z-drive. The ring of crazy-looking monkeys spinning slightly at the bottom intrigued her. It looked like something she would craft. But it wasn't exactly Jinx.

Ekko follows her leering trail before once again looking at her. “Someone worth building it for.” He adds.

Slowly. Very slowly. Her eyes find their way back to his. Now that he was this close, he saw just how tired she looked. Her irises lacked that insane mania. They were glowing a dim pink rather than blue. What happened to her since the bridge? He thought.

His feet move on their own. She was looking at the bomb once again. He wanted to pull a hand on her shoulder but instead he reached out in front of her. Jinx hesitates, a momentary pause in her breathing makes her shoulders freeze. “It's okay.” Ekko eases her. His voice is quiet and patient. A stark contrast to earlier. With that, she lets the bomb drop into his palm and he disarms it. He sets the monkey down and pockets the hextech crystal.

Why? Why are you doing this? You need to break the cycle. Why won't you break the cycle? Why won't you die?

The soft sounds of Jinx’s choked up sobs catches his attention. Her body is rigid and she's using what's left of her hair to cover her face. She bites her lip to keep quiet but it's not enough. The cracks in the dry flesh start to leak blood.

“Uh…I don’t know what…Uh-” Ekko reaches for her, then pulls back, then reaches for her again. Not knowing if he should touch her or not. Do something, idiot. He thinks before finally making a decision. With a gentle hold on her shoulders, he guides her body to be parallel to his. His hands make their way to her face, lingering softly on the apples of her cheeks. She’s so cold and thin. It makes him sick knowing that if things were different, maybe if he did something different, she wouldn’t have to be like this. Ekko’s thumb softly wiped away her tears. Jinx couldn’t take it anymore. Her shield, the numbness, was gone. She felt everything, and she hated it.

“Oh! Okay. This is cool…” Ekko mutters to himself as he sinks into Jinx’s hug. She was absolutely wailing into his shoulder. Her nails dug deep into the flesh of his back, it hurt, but Ekko would rather her claw him until he was practically skinned than let her go. She’s choking, hiccuping and the tears just won’t stop. She hates it. She hates it. She hates it. She. Hates. It.

Ekko can feel the shift behind his back. The digging stopped but her hands were still there. He heard scratching. Violent scratching.

“Hey. No.” Ekko grabs her arms and holds them out in front of the two. They were bloody and abraded. Bits of her dull, ashen skin stuck out from underneath her chipped nails. Jinx tries to free herself from his hold, her hands desperately trying to find their way back to each other, but she’s too weak. Just standing up is making her feel dizzy.

“C’mon. Over here.” Slowly, he guides her to the center of her hideout. Where she couldn’t plummet the both of them to their imminent death. Jinx drags her feet. “That's it. Almost there.” Ekko takes a seat with his back propped against the iron railings. “C'mere.” He pulls her down to meet him on the floor, pulls her into another hug. Ekko tucks his chin on the top of her head, his grip on her arms never faltering. “I'm not letting you go.” He says.

They stay there, her in his embrace and he as her protector. It feels like an eternity being here together and Ekko savors every last second. Slowly breathing, their chests rise and fall against the other. Easing into a steady rhythm. Jinx was calmer now. Her blubbering diminished into a soft snivel. He’ll admit, the snot, tear and slobber combo in the crease of his neck was gross, but he wasn't going to tell her that.

“Let's get you cleaned up, yeah?” Ekko doesn't move, in fact, he’s extremely still. He waits for her to give some sort of response. Jinx nods and he gently moves her to the side. She weighs less than a bag of tomatoes. Ekko stands up, stretching his lower back before surveying the area. Jinx didn’t have much to work with. There wasn’t even a bathroom here but there was a half empty water bottle and a rag on her desk, it was good enough. Ekko grabs the items before making his way back to her. She sat there like a ragdoll. It was scary just how still she could be. Her eyes lacked all focus and he would’ve thought she was dead if it weren’t for the gently expanding of her ribcage.

He wiped himself down first, all that mucus was a sensory nightmare. Then he got to work cleaning her face of the ash, soot and dirt, then her neck. His face felt hotter as he wiped down the sides of her ribs and back through the cutoffs of her top. After all, she’s still a girl.

“Uh, Jinx?”

“Hm?”

“You think you can…uh- clean the rest of you?” Ekko holds out the rag for her. Jinx looks at him, humming in compliance, she begins to work her way out of the leather. Undoing the belt at the bottom causes the entire thing to come loose. Now it just looked like a really short poncho. Ekko quickly turns around, feeling liquid heat rising to his ears. After a few moments, curiosity gets the better of him and he takes a quick peak. She was turned with her bare back facing him too. Jinx leisurely cleaned her chest of any grime before moving to her arms. There’s a reflective glint that hits him in the eye when she makes work with the rag on her right shoulder.

“What happened to your finger?” Ekko couldn’t help but ask.

“Caitlyn,” Jinx says. She didn’t spare him a glance, all of her focus was on cleaning herself.

“The topsider?” His voice raised in volume, echoing off the metal area.

“Yup. Shot it clean off.”

“Why?”

“She wanted me dead but her aim is shit. I don’t blame her. I killed her mom.”

Ekko was fully facing her now. “Caitlyn was here. In Zaun.” He presses a finger to the ground to accentuate his point.

“Mhm. With her little enforcer friends.” Ekko was livid. How long had he been gone for? It couldn’t have been that long. He’s gone for what? Maybe a few months and this is what happens?

“Gassing the streets with Grey, the whole debacle.” Jinx continues.

“What?”

“Vi joined them too.”

“What!” Ekko slammed his fist on the propeller blade. “Are you kidding me?! Vi?! Buddy-buddy with the Piltie-goons? The same people that hunt our people down for sport?”

“The same people that killed mom and dad. Yeah.” Jinx stops what she was doing. She looks over her shoulder at him. “Yeah, it hurt me too.” She smiles. It wasn’t a Jinx smile. It wasn’t even a real smile. Just a small, weak, hurt smile.

“I’m gonna kill her.” Ekko stands up and paces around in a small circle. “I alway knew she was stupid but I didn’t think she was dumb. Why would she do that? I don’t get it.” Ekko was almost ripping the locks out of his head. He keeps rambling on about Vi and her idioctic actions.

“There’s gonna be a war.” Jinx cuts through his thoughts. He turns to her. Somewhere between his death threats, she started to clean her lower half. She was fully naked now. He turns away, eyes wide with embarrassment. “Or something.” She continues.

“A war?”

“Yeah. Vi asked me to help out but…”

“With who? For what?” Ekko was a machine gun of questions. Rapid-fire, one after the other. There was so much he missed.

“Ambessa and her army against Piltover, I guess.” He could hear the soft patters of her footsteps behind him. She was getting closer. Ekko turned away just as she passed him, clearing his throat before speaking once again.

“And for what?” He reiterates.

Jinx shrugs with a soft hum. She grabs some bandages from the desk. “No clue, little man.”

“What?” He turns to her, not even realizing it. Jinx was already in the process of wrapping her chest with the more than a bit dirty bindings, so luckily he didn’t see anything. Still, the possibility that he could've made him flustered. Ekko made an effort not to look any lower than her face. She was still half-naked. He clears his throat again. “Whaddya mean ‘no clue’?”

“I mean exactly that. Can't be nothing good though. Lots of people died already.” Jinx’s mind wanders to the events of yesterday. Isha. She thought. And they weren't good thoughts. Isha, her little soldier. That little army girl. That blasted fool. Jinx felt familiar tears clouding her vision. The same ones she cried when that kid ran through the crowd, when she lifted the gun. Isha was dead once the second crystal was put in its chamber. And she died saving them. She died saving her. They never got their rematch.

Jinx sniffles and wipes the small rivulets of water from her eyes. “Someone worth building it for,” She mumbles. She was finished clothing her chest. Isha sacrificed herself so that she could live, and she was going to waste it, throw it away like it was meaningless. Fat chance. “Suit up, wonder boy,” She starts, walking up to Ekko and pulling him in close, “because we have a war to fight.”

“Seriously?” He grabs her arms but he’s unmoving, not closing any gaps but not making an effort to pull away either. “You are in no condition to fight anything.”

“I’ve been worse than this.” She retorts, releasing herself from his grasp, “And I remember kicking your butt no problem. A few Noxuians ain’t nothing.” She walks past him with a swat of his shoulder.

“You’re a bag of bones.” He spins on his heel, offended by her arrogance, “Also I beat you into the ground on that bridge.”

“Blah-blah-blah.” She was rummaging through a mess of discarded fabrics, trinkets, and whatever other crap she has lying around.

“Why the sudden urge to fight now anyways?”

“I had a kid. Her name was Isha. And she died because of what they did. So I’m going to avenge her.” She pulls out a pair of black leather pants like some sort of rabbit-in-a-hat trick.

“You had a kid?” She slips into the pants and buckles its three intricate belts. They sat higher than her previous pair but the exaggerated hip windows made them just as revealing.

“You have ears? Geez, keep up.” Jinx sasses.

"Here." She tosses him a shirt. It was too big for her but still way too small for him, accounting for the muscle mass. He looks at it. Thick, deep greenish material with a thousand details in the patchworking. The shirt was jaggedly cut along the bottom with the left sleeve hacked off. It might have been longer in the past but right now, it was a crop top. Ekko curls his lip and raises an eyebrow. Jinx smiles. “You got a killer body, show it off.”

Ekko scoffs.

“Did you make this yourself?” He holds up the holy amalgamation of cloth. Examining the shoddy stitch work.

“Yeah, I have a talent for craftsmanship.” Jinx grins, sifting through even more bits and pieces of clothing.

“I just wanted to say I could tell. Your style choices are questionable.” Ekko rids himself of his own attire. He places down the Z-drive.

“Says the guy wearing an oversized bib.” She snorts.

“It's a smock!” He says just as he finishes removing it, it was the second thing to go after the scarf.

“It's an apron.” Jinx was nearly fully dressed. Somehow she managed to find a piece of brown leather similar to a pauldron, gloves—way too many gloves—and she was currently sewing shark teeth onto a purple hood.

He freezes. Ekko couldn't argue with that.

“That's what I thought.” She muses, happy with herself for winning their little back and forth. “Now can it and get dressed. I need to focus.”

“What? No pants?” He jokes, putting on the shirt she gave him. He was used to his tank top and thick waist belt so the air hitting against his abs was a weird sensation. It did fit him better than he thought it would.

“Don't get greedy.” Jinx snarks. Ekko rolls his eyes and walks up to the desk. He looks for whatever he thinks might fit him. Is all she owns leather? It takes him a minute but eventually he finds something. It wasn’t leather—surprisingly—with a purple strap wrapping around the right thigh and a ridiculous looking belt and side pouch. Ekko couldn't figure out where one strap ended and another began.

He took the opportunity to quickly put the contraption on, alongside a few other accessories, while Jinx was focused on her arts and crafts project. He gets stuck a few times but eventually manages to wiggle himself in. They were a bit small but the material used gave them some stretch, so they weren't that bad.

“Here.” Jinx hands him a red scarf, “It’s like your old one but red.”

Ekko takes it, “Why can't I just wear my old one?” Jinx shrugs. Ekko rolls his eyes and puts the scarf on anyway. His guard drops for a second, he’s hit with a strong pressure followed by a wet feeling. He looks down to see a paint splatter right in the middle of his chest. When he looks back, Jinx is holding out her old paint gun. The one she used during their stand-offs. A shit-eatting grin plastered on her lips. “Really?”

She tosses him the gun. Her arms spread out wide when he catches it. “Go on, do me.”

Ekko scoffs before chuckling. He holds up the gun to shoot.

“Your stance sucks,” Jinx coughs into her fist before going back to as she was. Acting as if nothing had happened.

“This is how you stand!”

“No I do not!”

“Yes it is! This is exactly how your stance is.”

Jinx blows raspberries and Ekko shoots her in the shoulder. “Wow, your aim sucks!” She laughs. Ekko scoffs and throws back the gun. She catches it and sets it aside. Climbing her desk to the high levels of her hideout, Jinx dips her fingers into buckets of paint before charging him. She manages to pin Ekko down and smear a large X across the front of his shirt. She continues to draw on him, his hands naturally falling on the curve of her waist. Once she's bored with painting him, she gets up to paint herself.

“Grab a paintbrush, little man. There's some spots I can't reach.” Ekko snaps out of his trance.

“Uh…sure.” He stands from his spot on the floor and walks to find the brushes she was talking about.

Jinx's eyes fell on the piece of junk Ekko had carried with him. Little monkeys still dancing at the bottom. From someone very special. She pondered on the thought. She had a hypothesis, although it was out there, she couldn't think of any other explanation. “Who taught you that?” Jinx called out. Ekko had found the painting equipment and was making his way back to her.

“What?” He sat back down. Buckets of green, pink, purple, blue paint splattered as they hit the ground.

“You said, some told you, ‘that no matter what happened in the past, it’s never too late to build something new’. Who was it?” She stopped her artistry and devoted all of her attention to him. Ekko was a little freaked out by her simmer eyes, so intense and focused. He knew she knew. Jinx, Powder, had always been frustratingly smart. He looks at the Z-drive, watching how the monkeys spin.

“Powder.” He said. Jinx hummed, her suspicions were confirmed. Now a whole other can of worms were opened. How?

Ekko saw it in her eyes, and with a sigh he began to explain it. He started to paint her as well. Stars, crowns, a plethora of tiny X's. Jinx painted tally marks. He had no clue what they meant but knowing her, most likely nothing. Saying his adventures out loud really made him understand just how crazy this whole thing sounds, but Jinx listens to every word. Nodding along and asking clarifying questions.

“Then we created this and I came home.” Ekko was long done with his drawings. He hauls his device into his lap.

“What does it do?” Jinx taps her nail against the glass in blunt curiosity.

Ekko chuckles at the question. “It's a time loop.”

“A huh?” She looks at Ekko as if he was stupid.

“A. Time. Loop.” He leans in close to her, gritting his teeth.

“That's impossible.” Jinx dismisses.

“And reality hopping isn’t?”

She grumbles, a low growl within the depths of her chest. Now she was the one who couldn’t argue. “I guess it's cool.” Jinx picked up a paintbrush dipped in light green. On her arm, she decorates a shape similar to an hourglass. Though, it was a bit hard to see since underneath it was more layers of colors and a cloud tattoo. She smiles then extends the arm to him, giving Ekko a better look.

“A tribute to the boy who shattered time.”

Ekko was stunned. She basically just marked herself and didn't think anything of it. He inhales, “So are we ready now?”

“Nope. Just one more thing.” Jinx zips past him and grabs a dull pair of scissors. She begins to cut. One chunk at a time, she cuts until she can no longer run her fingers through. She would’ve been completely buzzed if she hadn't kept the front bang, which she dyed a streak into with leftover pink paint. “Tada!” She turns to him, “Whaddya think?”

Ekko was speechless as he took her all in. His silence worried her. He stepped closer and she turned to look in her cracked mirror again. “Look. I know I'm not the best hairdresser in the world but I don't think it's that bad‐” Jinx was cut off by Ekko’s hand lightly gripping her jaw. He turns her head to face him. Cool paint feels wet on the under of her eyes as he drags the paintbrush over her skin.

“Go big or go home.” He mumbles. Jinx smiles, finding herself sinking into his touch. He pulls away, “Now how are we gonna get to Piltover anyway?” Ekko crossed his arms and leaned a hip against her makeshift vanity. Jinx clicks her tongue. She hadn’t thought of that. There weren't many options. The perimeter would most likely be surrounded by enforcers or brutish Noxians. She taps her foot in thought. The clanging resonance of her boot hitting the metal propeller below her popped a wicked idea. Jinx’s eyes lit up with excitement. She’d always wanted to fly an aircraft. This was the closest she was gonna get.

“How good are you at manufacturing?” She grins.

♡ Author's note — this was extremely hard to write. their were a lot of questions Arcane brought up that i needed to make up answers to lol. so sorry if it doesn't make the most sense, i did the best with what i had. (OMG I FINISHED MY FIRST FIC, YAY !) — xoxo, rheyd.

p.s. i got lazy towards the end oops–

[mettywiththenotes]

Viktor looking for a way to use Hextech and wanting to help people with it ("Scientists seek discoveries. Ways to make the world a better place."), Powder looking at the crystals as they shimmer with power and wanting to help her family ("I can help them.")

[candiedspit]

Praise

Often, I yearned for my mother; I imagined her sitting at the table with Crystal, my younger sister and they mourn and drink sprites of tea, complaining, trading gossips to further bury my absence. Crystal with her damaged hair and sad eyes. Once, she came home with a black eye. A boy friend.

A mistake, she said over and over again.

He didn’t mean it, she said. He lost control.

I didn’t understand what she meant, not until I had a gun in my hand and not until I blasted the gun, used my life force to expand the bullet, not until I aimed at someone’s head and let out a scream as the impact happened, a furious crash of red. Not until someone left earth on my own accord. It was a moment of white, as though I was being born again. I left myself and my hands went numb and when I returned to the hot moss and clear skies and great sweeping vines and a tap on my back. The loose fabric of my clothes, I realized I was trembling from the effort, exhilarated and exhausted, almost weeping. Russian tapped me again, telling me we had to leave, to come on. I blindly followed him, leaving behind the hole where someone had been a moment before, thinking and seeing and breathing.

I had taken a life. I had lost control. As Crystal said.

The feeling stained me for days; I lost sleep. Russian told me it happens the first time.

You stay in that moment, he said, as we ate dried biscuits and drank black tea.

Your life is split into two parts, the before and the afterwards. This is your new life now, he continued. You are a person who takes things and you don’t mean to be but you can be cruel, selfish. You destroy things. Welcome to the world.

I ruminated in this as we saddled up and set our in foot cross the vines and grass troughs and blossoms of dirt. The world was a beautiful, open place. The heat sunk into my skin like venom. My head was shaved. Russian was my friend. A few years older than I was, he was the first person to speak to me. The other men, beautiful and brooding men shunned me. I arrived with bright skin and good teeth, I was a kid, eighteen years old. Still dreaming of schoolbooks and girls. I knew nothing of what was to come. Had no fucking idea. Russia spoke in a metallic accent and stood over me and told me the gist.

We are here to kill, he said. And we are here to cleanse. This is your mission. You might not get the rest of your life. Keep careful. Keep awake.

I followed his grace and made my way through months of grime and brutality and harsh sunlight. Sometimes, Russian and I stayed awake reading poems. He spoke in a low voice and recited the news. I praised these words. I ate them. And sometimes, Russian would rub my head and call my kitten. I would bow to his touch. I needed to be reminded of my realness. I accepted his aggressive, hushed love. I would climb on his back and laugh into the treeline and pull on his ears. The other men called me a pansy and told me to go back home.

You’re not fit to fight, one man said.

I had been there for seven months when the fight came about. The enemy surprised us, a sudden explosion. Men, dead. Blood shed. I was all reaction and feel and spider senses. I acted without thinking, impulse and forget the strategies. I shot and kept shooting. The sun about us bleeding out, witness to the spectacle. Russian was somewhere behind me. I could hear his grunts. I knew which grunts were his. I knew his vocal patterns. My man. My big man.

As I shot, I thought of the nation. The nation had a cup of coffee and shook off sleep and worked in decimals and droned and dreamt of atomic bombs and feared death. I shot someone ten yards off gritting my teeth and heart on fire and sweat in my eyes and the nation was asleep.

[broadwaybalogna]

I’ve seen a lot of people ask about Jayce hate and why it exists, so please allow me to remind you why this piece of trash deserves it all /lh

1. The Golden Child

From the beginning, Jayce was the epitome of privilege. Growing up in Piltover never offered him much perspective on life, and he grew an awful bias towards the upper city which we can clearly see when he confronts Victor after the ladder traveled to the undercity.

Not to say this is all his fault, there’s been obvious polarization between the two cities as well as propaganda dehumanizing the undercity.

It’s no surprise that much of the upper and under cities problems can easily be related to modern day racism- especially when Vi says “I grew up knowing I’m less than them” so from the start, Jayce is meant to be viewed as a harmful bystander and even an oppressor, rather than empathetic.

The scene between Victor and Jayce also gives “you’re one of the good ones” kind of vibes. Jayce only likes Victor because he’s separated Victor from being a part of the undercity, like it’s something for Victor to be ashamed of. Which is further exemplified when he states how it looks bad for him to be opening the hexgates to let Victor in.

We see more of Piltover’s dehumanization of the undercity in season two with the consistent comparison of the citizens to “animals”. Cait herself even reverts back to this mindset when she enters her dictator™️ era.

So yeah, he was the privileged child who represented the oppressors perspective in season 1. What about season two?

2. Right idea, but too late.

Everyone understands that Jayce was always trying to do what was right, but when he finally figured out what the true thing to do was, it was too late and caused terrible casualties. Had Jayce followed Victor’s instructions from S1 and destroyed hextech, so much of the problems that arose in S2 would have never happened.

Him killing Victor would never had needed to put blood on Jayce’s hands had he destroyed Hextech, because Victor would’ve died in the explosion instead (allegedly).

3. Avoiding doing the right thing

This also ties into his privilege, but I’m putting it in this category because I think it shows off his mindset on self-centeredness rather than just privilege.

When Jayce and Vi try to destroy a shimmer facility, Jayce backs out the moment he realizes he, instead of other people, will have blood on his hands. He throws up at the thought. Jayce choosing not to complete what could slow down Silco because there will be casualties shows off how he has always been happy to be left in the dark because he could never stomach the truth of Piltover. I’m sure he would be fine if someone else had gone with Vi to complete the task because then he would be separate from the lives lost, he could disillusion himself from the truth of what would have happened. But when he’s out face to face with it, it’s too much, and he backs out.

4. Harnessing an unsafe environment

It’s no question that it was technically Powder that caused the first explosion at the beginning of S1, and it’s also no question that it was Jayce’s hextech that made the explosion. Had he harnessed his research in a safe environment where his highly dangerous crystals could be properly contained, Vi and Jinx’s tragedy would have never arisen.

Remember, the uppercity needed their “pound of flesh” for the explosion, and we quite literally saw a reality in which hextech never existed. It was at his disregard for the safety of people that caused butterfly effected it’s way to ending thousands of lives.

5. Heimerdinger

I don’t think people need much recollection of this, but Jayce DID remove Heimerdinger from thr counsel because they didn’t agree on hextech. That was literally it, they had a dispute on the use of hextech, WHICH HEIMERDINGER WAS RIGHT ABOUT!!!

-

Now, none of this takes away from the fact that Jayce is an incredibly realistic character that viewers can sympathize with, but it does make him extremely hateable. Jayce made mistake after mistake which led to more and more tragedies to arise. His actions, while understandable, led to so many problems that could have been avoided.

TL;DR: Jayce perpetuates common behavior that is seen in racist ideologies, he grew up in privilege and never did anything to try and widen his perspective, every time he tried to do the right thing, it was too long too late, even though he had the chance to do the right thing earlier, he avoids accountability, literally none of the tragedies in arcane would have happened without him, and he got rid of the puffball.

This doesn’t mean you can’t like Jayce and defend him, he was written to be much like an ignorant human, like many people are. He does what he thinks is right even if it’s at the cost of causing longer lasting problems. This is behavior we see in human beings extremely often, it’s not like he isn’t relatable, but much like humans, he’s also easy to hate, and it all stacked. The only thing going for Jayce is that he’s bi, but it doesn’t seem like the citizens of Piltover seem to care if someone is gay or straight, so of course he never experienced any hardships because of that. Jayce’s hardships were actually pretty much all caused by himself, unlike other characters. He was really just facing the consequences of his actions.

Everyone else was also facing the consequences of his actions.

If I forgot anything else, please let me know, and I’ll add it. I’m sure there’s more shit Jayce did, but these were the top five I could remember off the top of my head.

[melishade]

what if Optimus appeared during Willy’s declaration of war and saw the start the battle of libreio which side will he help?

I am sorry this took so long to respond. I’ve been working on other projects. But I gotta say this is a really interesting ask. Because it’s an alliance with Marley with much more drama and stakes.

So Optimus gets dropped immediately after Eren kills Willy, but he’s still a great distance away from the actual fight in Liberio. But he hears screaming and panic, and from a distance, he sees Eren’s titan form skewered high in the sky. He immediately transforms and drives towards the danger. He sees the humans are in danger. There are dead humans everywhere. And Optimus is devastated that he can’t do much to protect them now. But he sees carts of military units getting bombed and immediately tries to act. Optimus sees the two gate guards trying to tell Gabi to run. Optimus sees Sasha ready to gun them down, and Optimus immediately transforms and shields them from the attack.

Sasha is immediately unnerved and calls to her comrades to run to the battlefield and warn the others, but she and Connie still hastily set up the lights so they can have an escape plan. Meanwhile, Gabi and the other two are stunned at the sight as Optimus sits up fully and asks if they are alright. They are all in shock at the fact that Optimus can speak so clearly, and Gabi almost mistaken him for Reiner, but Optimus doesn’t notice and just asks what’s going on. One of the guards explains that the devils of Paradis have attacked and are killing civilians. They point to where the battle is taking place and Optimus tells them to get to safety before transforming and driving towards the battlefield. Gabi uses this opportunity to run after him, causing the guards to follow and try and get her.

When Optimus approaches he’s stunned. He sees humans flying around like spidermen. He sees Pieck, Porco, and Zeke on the offensive. He sees Eren holding a human encased in crystals. He can’t tell who the enemy is. There was so much happening. He hear Magath barking out orders. He’s trying to figure it out, he can’t make the wrong mistake. But suddenly, everyone is met with the sight of an explosion. Armin has activated the powers of the Colossal Titan and took out the port. Optimus sees the Cart incapacities and the Beast getting taken out, and Eren is ready to use Porco as a nutcracker to kill Lara. That’s when Optimus decides to act.

Now because Optimus doesn’t have the full context of the situation and he and Eren are not allies, Optimus shoots off Eren’s arm, forcing him to drop Porco and Lara. And because energon is toxic to humans, Eren is screaming out in agony, causing everyone to cover their ears in pain, including Optimus. Mikasa cuts Eren out, but she’s mortified to see his right arm starting to decay. She quickly cuts off what remains to save Eren’s life and the Survey Corps are forced to retreat in a hurry, without securing the War Hammer.

Optimus is mortified at what he’s done. He didn’t realize he harmed a human. He sees the blimp and aims his blaster at it, but he can’t will himself to shoot and let’s them flee, something that Armin himself notices as he helps an injured and crying Eren. Optimus is then met with hostile Marleyans who are aiming their weapons at him out of fear. Porco is too weak to do anything, and Reiner is still out of commission. Optimus raised his servos in surrender, but Gabi ends up arriving and coming to Optimus’ aid, saying he just saved her life. Optimus then hears crying under the rubble and sees a child pinned by gravel. He ignores the weapons aimed at him and immediately digs him out, noticing the armband on his sleeve. Optimus begs the others to help him dig out survivors. They are all stunned as Optimus continues to work, but Magath tells the others to dig and fast.

Meanwhile, the Survey Corps still have Zeke, but Eren can’t regenerate his arm and he’s still in pain. And they all can’t help but be terrified. Their chances at survival had just significantly decreased.

So some notes for this timeline (I don’t have a name yet):

-Optimus is immediately imprisoned by Lara after he aids in helping the humans out of the rubble. The Marleyans can’t trust this new Titan, they don’t know what he is. The news headline does include him and how he saved the War Hammer Titan, but they don’t include how he did it. Because Magath and Pieck realize that Optimus has the power to not just kill the titans in one shot, but also has the ability to stop regeneration. What happens after the Founding Titan is eliminated? Would Optimus turn on them?

-Optimus did help reduce the causality count through his efforts. And he does let himself be imprisoned and chooses not to break out. However he still notices that something is wrong. The snide remarks directed at him, calling him a devil. The armbands on some of the humans, the language. He knew that something was wrong. He hasn’t received the full context of the situation and is concerned.

-The Survey Corps and the island are terrified of this new Titan. Eren is treated for his wounds but he is still thrown into prison for his inaction. And because of his failure to capture the War Hammer Titan, he doesn’t get the same amount of support from the public as he would have. They still took out the port but Marley appeared to have two new titans. And because of Eren’s injury, the calls for Eren being transferred over to another grows stronger. Zeke is still imprisoned in the forest, and he’s worried at Eren and his plan.

-Lara does come to Optimus and apologize for imprisoning him, but she thanks him for saving her life.

-Armin still doesn’t know what to make of Optimus’ hesitance to shoot them down. He knows he had the power to. Why did Optimus choose not to?

-Megatron still gets shot through the groundbridge in the Purpose OVA and actually ends up being an ally to the island when he realizes that Optimus is here but he’s clearly being deceived or having information withheld from him.

-Also, Sasha is still alive because of Optimus’ actions, but Gabi and Falco don’t go to the island. Also Reiner is so confused as to what’s going on when he recovers.

[v0rd1g4n]

The Thundermans Return - Part 2

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Previously on my review...

The Thundertwins are taken to Dark Mayhem's old lair, to be tortured by an AI and unfortunately for them, nobody else knows where they really are, so they're on their own.

Later in Hiddenville, the V-Team break into the Thundermans house to find out where the Power Plant is and once again, nobody was able to even face them. I mean, Billy could've knocked them out in a second, but they only saw Hank getting tased by a plasma beam.

All they had to do to get what they want, was showing the family a live stream of Max and Phoebe getting tortured, so Hank and Barb decide to give out the plant, which was hidden inside of the penguin butler all this time.

The V-Team take the plant and leave the house to continue with their plan and even though Hank tries to follow them as always (by flying out the roof), the Thundermonitor informs that Hiddenville is being covered by a powerful dome, so now they can't get out of the city, even with Chloe's power.

By the way, I wonder if the squirrel they used to test the red seeds, was the same one Dr. Colosso lost to, after their short encounter in "Breaking Dad". It was funny though.

Back in Metroburg, Max and Phoebe are in a worst danger, as Dark Mayhem's AI has started to fill the booth with liquid mercury to kill them, and since the cell is un breakable and their powers doesn't work on the liquid, they'll be practically doomed once the booth fills.

Let's pretend that their suits are mercury proof and that freeze breath and heat breath can't reach 234 K and 630 K respectively.

That's when they finally open themselves up to each other, about their reasons to work so hard as superheroes and realized that they're not that different as they thought.

Max was focused on getting famous on social media, because he thought he could never be as good as her, and she was so obsessed with being the best superhero, because that way she could get to feel special again, like when Max was a villain and she was the favorite.

After having this talk, they figure out a way to break the crystal booth from the outside with telekinesis and once they're safe and sound, they find out that they're still trapped in the lair due to the security system and they only have 20 minutes before it gets destroyed, along with them.

Back in Hiddenville, Colosso is still dealing with the evil squirrel as the Thundermans gather some of their friends and neighbours at the park, so they can help them out to go save Max and Phoebe.

At first, Bardford and Mrs. Wong, were hesitant to help since they've always despised all of the Thundermans, but Chloe manages to convince them and this is when we learn that Gideon still has a crush on Barb. Dude...

At the end, only five citizens are given blue seeds to get superhero powers:

Cherry = Pyrotechnic Manipulation Oyster = Super Burp Gideon = Iron Fist Mrs. Wong = Super Tornado Principal Bradford = Super Strength

They all use their powers along with the Thundermans to hit the dome repeatedly, until breaking a hole out the park. Now that Chloe is able to use her powers, she teleports with her family.

They get inside of the not-so-discreet lair, just in time to save Max and Phoebe, but they're still trapped inside with an inevitable explosion and they only have 15 seconds left.

With no password to be used, they were expecting to use Chloe's power to teleport out, but she says that she needs a minute to recharge.

And this is when I said... WHAT?!

We've previously seen baby Chloe using her powers two times in a row in "Are You Afraid of the Park?" or multiple times in "On The Straight And Arrow". The only explanation I can think about, is she only experience this limitation, when teleporting more than one person at a time.

But she's like 12 now, so her powers should be stronger than before, but yeah, I'll let it go.

The place is about to explode, but Hank saves them all by using brute force to deactivate the self-destruction sequence. But there's another problem, since the V-Team is still out there.

And right before they go save the day, Billy finally has a moment to show he's not the dumb they think he is, by helping them to figure out where the villains may have gotten to end with their evil plan; Mount Metroburg.

Far away from there, the villains are all together on the top of Mount Metroburg, ready to launch a giant drone with the red seeds turned into dust and spread them around the whole city, but the Thundermans appear just in time to stop them.

I wonder if the Hero League was aware of the V-Team identity at this point, because I really doubt the guards would just let them walk out of the Superjail next to the V-Team, but considering how easy they must've defeated Max and Phoebe, they probably just knocked out all of the guards in the blink of an eye.

Anyway, they start fighting each other and we fiinally get to see what Kira was talking about, when she said the movie had a lot of fighting scenes. I really liked it, especially because now we see the Thundertwins using all their powers and skills.

Telekinesis to push the enemy in the middle of the battle or throwing back plasma balls, and heat breath and freeze breath to break some plasma shileds and explode a few rocks during the fight.

At first, I kind of felt Hank and Barb's powers were a little bit nerfed here. I mean, they're practically veteran superheroes and still were struggling to defeat King Crab and his daughter. But in "A Hero Is Born", Hank was able to defeat three villains without any help, but here... well he was using a stick to hit the bad guy.

I guess they were trying to balance the fight to not make it boring or easy to win and that's why they find another way to defeat King Crab and She-Crab.

Also, I liked to see Billy and Nora working together to fight back Strongdor and his son, Krondor. They didn't look like they were holding back, but the way they beat them up was kind of weird. I guess that's the price when heroes try to stop the bad guys, instead of killing them.

Anyway, Dark Mayhem is the last man standing and the Thundertwins keep fighting against him side by side, until they're close enough to freeze him and the fight is over.

However, Dark Mayhem Jr. manages to launch the drone at the last minute and even though Max freezes him too, now they have to stop that thing from spreading the red dust around the city.

Hank quickly mentions that the drone is faster than him, so there's only one way to stop it; Chloe's teleportation powers, that's when Hank and Barb finally make the hard desition of letting her youngest daughter take a risk for once, and she teleports with Max and Phoebe.

Now they're flying on the drone as Max shuts down the energy so Phoebe can get the red dust container out, but at one point she slips her hand and is about to fall, so she hands Max the container, getting ready to sacrifice herself in order to save the city. Max refuses and Chloe keeps struggling to thouch her hand to teleport back safely.

Did anyone else notice how Max was holding the container under his right arm, but on the next scene it's gone and he's just grabbing the border of the drone instead, but once they teleport back with the family he's holding the container again and gives it to Hank?

Back in Hiddenville, the family is spending time together at home and talking about their new life at their old town. Everything seems to be back to normal, when President Kickbutt arrives to apologize and get all of them back into the Hero League.

Max and Phoebe ask her to turn their house into the new headquarters of the T-Force, to give their family the place they deserve, to which Evelyn agreeds, along with two more bratty requests from the twins.

We then see that Cherry, Oyster, Gideon, Mrs. Wong and Bradford still have their powers and it is implied that the Thundermans were meant to take their powers away, but they decide to freeze the problem (just like old times) and have a family night together, while enjoying Hank's chilli.

On the last scene, Dr. Colosso is alone at Max's laptop, talking to a misterious voice that seems to be recruiting him for a secret mission, which leaves us wondering if they're actually planning something in the not too distant future, such as a new season or another movie.

And this is it.

"The Thundermans Return"

I was gonna write all the things I needed to point out in this post, but I wanted to elaborate my opinions with more pictures, which I can't add due to the 30 pictures limit, so I've decided to write all I have to say about this movie in a new post, which is already published, by the time you read this.

See you there.

[excessive-vampires]

Danger in Numbers Part 3: Fallout

Masterlist

The force of the shockwave was so hard that for a moment after Cassie’s head hit the ground every member of Sweethive lost consciousness. 

Then the universe slowly came back. Carter pulled his car off the road and Sweethive thanked whoever invented the safety feature that stopped you from drifting into oncoming traffic. Kara picked herself up off the kitchen floor, her shirt covered in heavily sauced pasta and a cracked ceramic bowl a foot from her head. Mel hurriedly got their burnt brownies out of the oven before they burned down their home. Silas surveyed the damage as he coughed dust and smoke from his lungs. There was fire and rubble everywhere. The stage was completely destroyed. Everyone was screaming. He carefully made his way towards the press area. 

Cassie couldn’t move. Perceiving her surroundings was difficult for Sweethive so Silas didn’t know exactly where to go. Sweethive assumed Cassie was trapped under rubble until her brain began to process sensation enough to realize that whatever was on top of her was much softer than wood and concrete and crystal. 

Someone pulled whatever was on top of Cassie off and suddenly she could see. She looked over to see what had been pinning her and felt every single bonded heart of Sweethive skip a beat. 

Drew Findhive was being dragged off of her. His body had taken the brunt of the force of the explosion and there were pieces of the stage embedded in his back. Cassie tried to crawl over to him but a strong hand grabbed her shoulder. “You okay, Sweet?”

Cassie looked up and Sweethive was confused by the unfamiliar face in front of them. 

“Drew’s alive, don’t worry. We’re a doctor as well as an incorrigible flirt.” 

Then it clicked. “F-Find?” 

“Yeah.”

Cassie sobbed and the rest of the hive struggled to keep dry eyes. “You saved… You saved our Cassie.”  

“Drew’s body is tough, and a medical degree often comes with protective instincts.”

Cassie took a deep breath and nodded. “Another one of us is on his way, he wasn’t injured, we can help you.” 

“Sweet, we’ve got this, okay? Go see if there’s anyone who no one else is helping if you want, but don’t over-exert Cassie’s body. She probably has a concussion.” 

By the nausea building in Cassie’s gut, Sweethive could tell Findhive was right. But everyone else in the hive felt it in their own stomachs so maybe it was just fear. Cassie gave one last look to both Findhive members, then got up slowly and surveyed her surroundings, Sweethive was trying to figure out where she was in relation to Silas. Then Cassie heard a muffled cry. 

She made her way towards it, careful until she saw a newly familiar face with blood dripping into her short purple hair. Then she started moving as fast as she could. 

By the time Cassie got to the newest Exohive member she could tell what was muffling the woman’s cries. The rubble on her chest was suffocating her slowly. 

Sweethive tried to figure out the best angle from which to move the rubble without crushing the woman’s chest further while at the same time trying to figure out the best way to safely move the unconscious people Silas had seen out of the path of the approaching fire. Every single one of them jumped when a hand grabbed Cassie’s shoulder. 

“Cassie! Are you okay?” Alex asked, the relief in his voice palpable. 

Cassie turned around. “Just hit my head. I’ll live.” She pointed at the woman. “Need to help her.” 

“Moving the rubble could make her wounds worse…” Alex said. 

“Look at her, Alex! She can’t breathe!” Sweethive wasn’t actually sure which member the growled exclamations had come from. High emotion and head wounds could make lines like that blurry. 

Alex looked at the woman struggling to force unintelligible words out of her mouth. He nodded. 

They moved the rubble slowly, and just enough that she could get air in her lungs again. That made her words easier to hear. 

“Rose…” she said weakly. 

Cassie rushed to her side. “Exo, does Rose need help? Where is she?” 

“Rose!” The woman repeated, with enough desperation that this time Sweethive realized she wasn’t trying to tell them something about Rose. She was calling out for Rose. “Where…” 

Hives could always feel every member, even if they were unconscious there was at least a muted buzz of physical sensation and dreams. So this member crying out for Rose like this could only mean…

Kara and Mel began to cry. Cassie took a deep breath and got down beside the woman. She was becoming more and more hysterical and trying to move, which probably wasn’t good for her injuries. Sweethive needed to calm her down. 

“Hey,” Cassie said. “Exo, calm down. W—I’ve got you.” Sweethive remembered Alex was there at the last second. 

“Who…” she squinted, trying to focus. 

Okay they could comfort Exo and still be subtle about this. Cassie put a hand on her arm. “It’s honeybee, darling.” That was what Exohive used to call Sweethive after Carlos witnessed Silas lean in so close to a sweet-smelling flower that he spent the next minute sneezing out the pollen he’d inhaled.

“Honeybee…” the woman said softly. “I’m scared.” 

“It’s okay.” Silas heard distant sirens. “Help is almost here, you just have to hold on.” 

“It’s…” she sobbed. “It’s so quiet.” 

A terrible sinking feeling settled into Sweethive’s collective. They had to fight to keep Cassie’s hand on the woman’s arm. To not let Silas drop the person he was carrying away from the flames. To get Mel to the sink before they vomited on the floor.

[mightycrumbles]

Yesmy and their companions have been through quite a lot in the span of a few weeks. YES, they were able to survive the blast from the explosion they may or may not have caused, thanks to a companion, Stoker the Kobold, that carried them out of the flames. The party was able to find the source of the “twisted” energy that’s been affecting another companion, Prince Jeremiah Jr. II (Princey), which was guarded by some “twisted” beasts. After much deliberation, meaning arguing, Yesmy used a remove curse scroll Stoker had given them to be rid of the enhancement spell placed on an-anti magic crystal that was radiating the “twisted” energy, which seems to have stopped the curse on Princey’s leg.

With a resolution, but frustration still in the air, the group returned to their carriage and made camp for the night with plans to return to Asten Falls in 3 days travel. However, with tension still high in the group there was, a rather inevitable, confrontation between two members, Stoker and Lias, having Stoker attack Lias in the middle of the night, resulting in Lias getting a broken jaw- however he has a “Not-Friend” on his side, which sent Stoker flying farther into the woods. The other three companions awoke to Lias rushing to pack and leave in fear. Thrill of Life (Thrill) tried to question him, asking what was happening, where’s Stoker? Lias tried to make a break for it, but being far too used to chasing the man, Yesmy teleported in flames in front of Lias to try to stop him in his tracks, but in a too-gone state Lias attacked Yesmy. Thrill and Princey eventually knocked out Lias after Yesmy threatened to do worse.

Thrill decided to stay and talk with Lias while Princey and Yesmy looked for Stoker in the woods around them, after finding some tracks. Thrill and Lias had a chat on their own, bonding more than they may have wanted. Yesmy and Princey realized Stoker’s tracks were heading back to Asten Falls. They talked about Lias, Princey being adamant that he is a danger not only to the group but to the Kingdom and should be arrested- even going as far as to look for his “dark evil secrets in his diary”, however when he couldn’t understand what was written in the book, and Yesmy insisted that it must not have been Lias, it has the “Not-Friend” he gave up looking for evidence. The two argued a bit more of their situation before Yesmy got annoyed and charmed Princey to just quietly head back to camp.

Once there, Lias was awake and Thrill was nowhere to be seen. Yesmy immediately rushed to find Thrill, and Princey and Lias got into a heated back and forth. Yesmy found Thrill scared and alone not too far from the camp, he simply said, “It wasn’t Lias-“ and Yesmy was pulling him back to camp in a panic and fury. Yesmy immediately told the charmed Princey to stop talking and then examined Lias, figuring out that it was Lias now, but that the “Not-Friend” was still around. Yesmy then got everyone packing and telling them that they’re all going back to Asten Falls this very moment.

On the way back Yesmy promised Princey they’d never use that spell on him again, Thrill shared a new ability he’s been starting to grasp onto, time manipulation (!!!), and Lias shares more of his past with the group, having twisted beginnings, a title, and a predestined life now lost to ashes-

We then cut to Lite, a young woman that has finally gotten her long awaited letter from Otto, she’ll finally get to be an adventurer, and she can’t wait to meet the people joining her-

.

.

.

We’re finally lvl 5 babes, LETS GOOOO!!! I love this DND group so much, it may not be other people’s cup of tea, but the stories we’re creating are so fun to me! I mean, these are my friends, so I’m mainly glad we just get to hang out- BUT I MEAN, you give a bunch of film majors and closeted theater kids a game where we can create whatever wild story we want 👀👀👀 It’s gonna get a little wild-

[dawnslight-aegis]

7. morsel

It began with a feeling one evening, right before she drifted off to sleep – a brush of a hand over her cheek, of lips against her forehead. Blinking awake in the gloom, she murmured a soft “Mama?” before shaking her head to dispel the feeling. A dream, no doubt, or perhaps the whisper of an elemental – ever since coming to Gridania, her ears had become even more sensitive to what her mother would have called the Green Word. It was the reason she had been permitted to become a Hearer, despite not being one of the forestborn. At times, their voices took on familiar tones – this must have been one such occasion, that her sleeping mind had associated with her long-distant mother.

Half a moon later, while walking through Stillglade Fane, she caught the quiet conversation of two traveling traders, and flicked one large ear towards them. Hyur never realized how keen viera hearing was, if they had even noticed her at all.

“A friend of mine who does some trading in Radz-at-Han, he heard from some associates from Dalmasca that Bozja Citadel is just gone. A flash of light so bright it illuminated the whole sky, and an explosion you could hear in Rabanastre. The whole city just a hole in the ground.”

“Imperials’ doing, no doubt. Serves them right. If it’s even true – probably some story cooked up to make us think they’ve got some weapon that can bring us to heel.” The second man shook his head dismissively, and they walked away, the distance and the rush of water from Apkallu Falls covering any other words they might have spoken.

A chill ran down her spine at the mention of the city of her birth, and though her logical mind agreed with the second man’s assessment, she could not shake the discomfort, even as she went about her duties for the day. The dread twisting in the pit of her stomach continued to grow, until three days later, without a word to anyone, she walked out of Gridania’s gates and into the eastern Shroud. The empire had recently begun construction on a great edifice against the corruption and influence of eikons, but it was simple enough to find a place on the fringes of the Shroud where the border between Gridania’s domain and Ala Mhigo’s was unattended, and slip across, as she had done years before the other direction.

Eirys Tswarra shed her forest name and became Linnaea eir Galanthus once again, passing unremarked through imperial-occupied Gyr Abania. The missives she had passed to her superiors in the XIVth Legion, full of half-truths and exaggerations – enough morsels of information to keep the Empire satisfied and wary of Gridania’s invisible protectors – bought her passage on an airship across the Ghimlyt Dark, to Locus Amoenus, but no further. The supply routes that had once connected to Bozja Citadel now ran to the port city of Kralja instead.

All along the journey she had attempted to make subtle inquiries about the city, but had been met with nothing but unsettling silence. To every imperial she encountered, it seemed as if it had never existed at all.

Linnaea’s dread and certainty that something was indeed very wrong only grew as she traveled from Kralja inland, and the land was silent. No flowers murmured, no trees sang. And when finally she reached the last leg of her journey, where she should have seen a sprawling sandstone city, replete with trees and brilliantly blue streets, there was only a crater full of twisted crystal and half-melted buildings.

And somewhere in the center of all that destruction had been her home, where her mothers had lived, quietly, tending gardens and teaching local orphans.

There had never been much love in Linnaea’s heart for the Empire itself – her stepmother’s status had given her citizenship, allowed her to escape the poverty and deprivation that most Bozjans who were not born into nobility faced. But she had not been blind to its sins. Bozja was isolated, no one allowed in or out, save the military, and this alone would have made her chafe under its yoke, even if she did not hear word of the wars of conquest waged against Dalmasca, or see the cruelties suffered by those few left in Bozja who did resist Garlean rule. Indeed, it was that very doubt that had made her the ideal candidate to spy on Gridania, for the operatives the Empire had sought to place there before her had been loyal, and thus taken by the greenwrath before they could even enter the city. It was only the implicit threat that her family would suffer for her defection that had kept her from walking away and never looking back.

Looking out over the desolate wasteland that was all that remained of her home, her childhood, her family, the last flicker of gratitude to Garlemald in her heart died, and she was left with only the deep-seated certainty that for the land to live, the Garlean Empire must be scoured from its face.

But where could she go? Gridania had doubtless discovered her duplicity, or would soon, making Eorzea a dangerous prospect. A viera traveling alone would be easily identifiable – something that Empire had always made sure to remind her of, as a way of ensuring her compliance. Garlemald’s reach extended to the entirety of Ilsabard and most of Othard. Hingashi did not accept outsiders, and Radz-at-Han was on strained but peaceful terms with the empire. She did not have enough gil to her name to buy safety there. Indeed, all she had left was herself – her mind and her magic, the secrets of Garlemald and of Gridanian conjury.

Of everywhere on the star, she could only think of one place where a viera might not raise eyebrows. One place that might hold the answers to the question of what sort of weapon could obliterate a city overnight. One place where knowledge and information was more valuable than currency.

Old Sharlayan.

[allthecreepsofthecosmos]

Meet Salamander!

Hi everyone! Crystal here. Every now and then I’ll be posting little updates talking about different aspects of the VN. Today I’d like to talk about one of the two protagonists of Side Future. Here’s Salamander!

Salamander’s the second character we came up with for the game. The first is… the other protagonist of Side Future. You’ll have to learn about that character later, though you’ve already gotten a glimpse… anyhow, Salamander is, as you can tell, a very reckless and impulsive girl. She gets in over her head easily and has to improvise her way out of bad situations. I felt she was a good perspective to start the story from because of this. It’s just not as fun if your protagonist never makes mistakes! Her attitude also ties into her powers. Of course I had to give a hot-headed character like her a heat related power. I didn’t want to go the route of having her shoot fireballs or anything, in part because I was so set on the image of someone fighting using a baseball bat. So that became, “what if she could make the bat burning hot?”, and then, “what if she could heat ANYTHING she touches?” It was a lot of fun writing different ways she can use her power in combat. You’ve already gotten a glimpse of that, with her shattering the window, and one Slipperman’s explosive end. She’s got more tricks up her sleeve than that!

She’s relatively new to the underground resistance; her teammates Meteor and Starlight have been there longer than her. I feel like she plays very well off of both their characters; Meteor’s much more precise and serious, while Starlight is more sensitive and forgiving. I hope you look forward to seeing how their relationships develop as the story goes on! 

Of course you’ve already seen another side of Sally. Underneath her confident veneer, she’s actually quite anxious and unsure when it comes to the missions her team runs. She’s a bit like a wavering flame, in that sense! This part of Salamander is probably the most personal to me. The introduction of the game, where Sally walks through a crowd of people, is taken from my own anxieties of being out in public as a trans woman. Like, of course things have been fine most of the time. Where I live people generally mind their business. But there’s always been that fear of someone ill-intentioned clocking me and deciding that today’s the day they’re going to fuck someone up in one way or another. I wish that wasn’t there, but it sticks with you, and so it’s something that sticks with Salamander. Powers aside, she’s a character who’s lived the reality of being trans in a place extremely unwelcoming to her, and those experiences are really important to the character she is.

To lighten things up, let’s talk about names! Why Salamander? Well, salamanders have always been associated with fire. It’s said that people used to believe that salamanders were born from fire… though actually, they had just tossed logs that already had salamanders in them into their fire without realizing. That’s what I heard, at least! So there’s that old sort of association, but there’s also something bigger than that. And that is… I’m a big retro game fan. Can you guess my favorite Konami game? From Salamander, it makes sense to shorten it to Sally, and it’s pretty cute, too! On top of that, she has her real name, Samantha. Why all these names? I guess it’s because I know a lot of people who go by a lot of names; names used online, names used in real life, names used only with certain people… I thought it would be fun to incorporate that into the story in a way. If you ever get confused about who’s who, you can always check out their profile!

And now, a word from our sprite artist @alexidv on designing Sally!

"Hello! I'm Alexandra, and I'm the character designer and artist on All the Creeps of the Cosmos! Salamander was the first character design I worked on after joining the project, which also meant that her design would be what defined the look for Side Future, and the standard that future designs would be created to work well with. Crystal and Sadie were great at making the process as smooth as possible, though, discussing what they were envisioning for the game and answering questions, and providing reference material including photos, descriptions, and a draft of the script. The dream situation for anyone doing art commissions! 

In large part due to their excellent communication, the design only had to go through a few revisions before we had settled on what she should look like, primarily involving some minor changes to her hairstyle. The first draft left her ears uncovered, which was pretty cute (you can see a doodle I made of this on the design sheet) - but at this point I'm so used to her final design that it honestly feels weird to consider anything else. 

For the in-game sprites, we went for pixel art with an aesthetic influenced by adventure games like Snatcher and the GBA/DS Ace Attorney games. As I started working on them, I did end up tweaking the proportions a bit to focus more on her face and to make the patches on her jacket read better, and did a sketch in the intended resolution that I then pixeled over, to make sure that everything would be legible even when the game camera is zoomed out. 

I'm really glad to be part of this project, and I love these characters so much... I was about to end this little write-up by talking about how Sally is one of my favorites, but as I went through the cast in my head, I'm realizing that I like all of them and that it's difficult to say that any aren't among my favorites...... Crystal and Sadie are just doing too good of a job at writing them, I guess!!" That’s all for now! Thanks for reading! Next time I’ll be talking about our inspirations for Cosmos. See you!

- Crystal

[heiseidominantation]

Heisei Project: Imitation Hero Keyword & Character Data

"White Noise"

A phenomenon that occurred in the Surface World 10 years ago. The sky was eerily self-inflicted for 10 minutes. With this phenomenon as a boundary, magic was given to the Surface World, and the world continues to be devastated as a result.

"Awakeners"

It is a general term for those who gained magical powers in the Surface World where magic originally didn't exist. The exact number isn't known, but it is said to be one hundred thousandth of the world's population.

"Deviators"

A criminal who uses their magic for evil in the Surface World. It is assumed that magic drives them crazy because they regain their humanity when they lose their powers.

■ Toki

16 years old / 174cm / Male / Left-handed / Dominant

Magic: Explosion Magic "Division Bomb"

He has mastered rare gunpowder synthesis magic and includes grenades, smoke screens, device bombs, etc. He can produce a wide variety of bombs. Remote generation is less powerful.

Even before he realized it, he was detained in a Church facility without knowing his family. Growing up, Mikage and Rei's presence began his interest in the unknown. He sees them as heroes, and at the same time, wants to be equals. He is basically out of touch with other people's subtleties and gets scolded by Kureha for making careless remarks.

■ Rei

15 years old / 158cm / Male / Ambidextrous / Dominant

Magic: Absorb other people's magic

The act of using the absorbed magic as his own. His magical powers are very stingy.

Mikage's younger brother. He was born with a weak body and can absorb other people's magical powers to continue living. Five years ago, Kiki kidnapped him into the Surface World and he lost control of his body to Sakuhi, a split personality. Basically, he has a gentle, reasonable and reserved personality, but he cherishes Mikage, his only relative, above all else. He doesn't mind sacrificing anything to protect his sister. Without thinking, he said those words beside Toki as a child, who looked at him deeply as if he were just amazing.

■ Mikage

17 years old / 158cm / Female / Right-handed / Dominant

Magic: Black Wave "Black Knife"

Dark magic that uses a sheet called by magic as a medium and releases a sharp blade.

Leader of Dominant and sister of Rei. Among the Dominants, she entered the Church facility last. She was beginning to feel burdened by her weak brother in a harsh environment, but when she was dying in the Church facility, she was sheltered by Rei. From then on, she decided to protect her younger brother for the rest of her life. Usually cool, but when a friend is hurt, her inner passion breaks out. Her everyday life is rough.

■ Kagura

15 years old / 155cm / Male / Left-handed / Dominant

Magic: Far-sight "Telathika"

He can look down over a wide area to search for enemies and gather information from the perspective of birds flying in the sky.

A boy who is dressed as a shrine maiden but has a strong history. He is like the youngest son of Dominant with a weak-willed personality and doesn't like to fight. Compared to the other members, he feels inferior and sees himself as timid and useless in battle. People often mistake him for a girl and flirt with him, but he's unaware of this.

■ Deyssel

18 years old / 182 cm / Male / Left-handed / Dominant

Magic: Falling Fist "Falling Charge"

Martial arts in which magical powers are placed on his fist.

A young man who hides his real face with a mask. He was born with a defect in his right eye, and after being looked down upon as a cursed child in his hometown, he was sent to the Church facility. He cherishes Kagura, the first person who has been kind toward him in his life, like a younger brother. The most silent Dominant member and doesn't speak any more than necessary.

■ Kureha

17 years old / 157cm / Female / Left-handed / Dominant

Magic: Melted Crystal "Melt Crystal"

A function is modified by merging two different properties.

The chief of staff of Dominant. She has been paying attention to Mikage since they were in the Church facility and prides herself on being the one who understands her the most. Prioritizes logic and objective correctness over emotion, and is trusted by all the members. Whenever she needs to reprimand them, she comes off like a mother. She's interested in girly things but doesn't really show it.

■ Hirokina (Takenaka Hirokina)

18 years old / 179cm / Male / Right-handed / Dominant

Magic: None

Originally a resident of the Surface World but was flown back and forth into the Reverse World when Rei was taken to the Surface World. He is indebted to Mikage who looked after him in a strange world. He has little interest in anything other than swords, and for Hirokina, who was better than anyone else at his parents' dojo, there were no good opponents. The promise of a second duel with Sana was the only thing that got his blood pumping. His favorite sword is Izanami, the sacred sword.

■ Tokido Haku

17 years old / 158cm / Female / Left-handed / Heisei Snipers

Magic: Fire Magic "Flamegia"

Fires a flame from a pistol-shaped magic gun.

She lost her parents to Deviators and formed the Heisei Snipers to eliminate Deviators. She has a strong sense of justice and a strong will once she has made up her mind. To put it bluntly, she's stubborn. The people around her are worried because she acts on her conscience.

■ Kamise Kyou

16 years old / 175cm / Male / Right-handed / Heisei Snipers

Magic: Magic Rifle "Kill Sniper"

He is good at long-range sniping with a rifle-shaped magic gun and can freely adjust the power of the bullet.

His father, who gained magical powers through White Noise, became a Deviator, and his mother had an affair. He had no place in his family, and while walking around game centers, he was invited by Haku to become a member of the Heisei Snipers. To be cautious and protect his friends, he's willing to play the role of being disliked with his bluntness. In love with Akari, but hasn't confessed.

■ Amemiya Lislette (Liz)

16 years old / 162cm / Female / Right-handed / Heisei Snipers

Magic: Recovery Magic "Recovery Cell"

Treat the wounds or disease of the person touched.

Haku and Akari are her childhood friends. She has a girlish personality of her age but has a violent temper. She is good at cooking and lives mainly in her daily life. She has romantic feelings for Haku but doesn't want to reveal her feelings and gets jealous of any man who approaches Haku. Was given "fluctuations" by KIKI and had her jealousy amplified.

■ Yuzuki Fuyuto

12 years old / 141cm / Male / Left-handed / Heisei Snipers

Magic: Reflective Magic "Reflective Film"

A transparent film that can be cast around oneself or others that reflects a magical attack. Defensive magic.

His parents belong to the Church and told him "Tell the Surface World about the threat of KIKI. He was ordered to "Block their plan" and came to the Surface World, but lost his memory as he passed through the Gate, and was protected by the Heisei Snipers. By coming into contact with people from the Reverse World, such as Dominant, he gradually recovers his memory. The cat he has is a sealing device given to him by the Church.

■ Mitsuoka Akari

17 years old / 157cm / Female / Right-handed / Heisei Snipers

Magic: Forgotten Bullet "Noise Shutter"

A pearl white magic pistol can be summoned and the magic ability of Awakeners can be negated with its bullet.

The always calm chief of staff of the Heisei Snipers. The main activity of the Heisei Snipers is to calm down Deviators by erasing their magic with Akari's Noise Shutter. She is full of intellectual curiosity, and bombarded Fuyuto with questions as he had just come from the Reverse World, and was also interested in Kureha and her connection to herself. Kureha has exactly the same genes, and it is presumed that they were born both Surface and Reverse due to the influence of an unstable world.

■ Kuroda Sana

18 years old / 180cm / Male / Right-handed / Heisei Snipers

Magic: None

A serious young man who lives in the art of swordsmanship. In a joint match against Takenaka Dojo, He lost to Hirokina and vowed to fight him again. His magic never awoke, but worried about the present state of the ruined Surface World, he joined the Heisei Snipers. He joined them very recently. He doesn't seem to care much about anything other than swords, and he's a little out of it. His favorite sword is Izanagi.

■ Sakuhi

15 years old / 158cm / Female / Ambidextrous

Magic: Use Rei's body to absorb and release magic.

Rei's behind-the-scenes personality created by KIKI. KIKI is her master and is programmed to obey their instructions. Because she was created to have the opposite nature of Rei, she's cruel and forced to enjoy hurting and degrading people. The color of her eyes is symmetrical to Rei.

■ KIKI

Age: ? / 167cm / Gender: ? / Hand: No concept

The mechanical god who created the present Surface and Reverse Worlds. Originally the most powerful magician in the world, using themself as a machine and lived for thousands of years. They were enshrined in a Church in the Reverse World and granted the wishes of many people in Paradise, but they were sealed as dangerous by the Pope. Now the Church rules the Reverse World.

[ohadinosaurlastoneoftheseason]

Dwogabata Konto, the Split-Jaw Dragon/the Ice Queen: [?]

MONSTER CLASS: Elder Dragon

ELEMENTS: Ice, Thunder

AILMENTS: Iceblight,

WEAKEST TO: Blast, fire

HABITAT: Frozen Seaway, Tundra, Snowy Mountains, Polar Sea, Snowy Mountains Peak, Polar Field

SIZE: 2810.90 cm

RELATED MONSTERS: Velkhana (distant relative)

MATE: Nergigante

Dwogabata Konto, or Konto for short, is a massive and muscular elder dragon with the ability to control ice and the weather, separate her lower jaw as a snake would, and create ice crystals with explosive lightning inside of them.

Her bumpy and rough yet shiny skin is snowy white, assuming to blend in with her environment, with gold vein-like streaks that similar to kintsugi or kintsukuroi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. There are light blue splotches on her skin and outer sides of her wings, and a soft white to blue gradient on the inner sides. The sharp spikes on her back, horns, tail fin, and claws are a dark grey to black. Her eyes are a light blue and have slit pupils.

Note: I didn't add this to her design until I realized at the last minute, but behind her horns is supposed to be a flexible "frilled crest", similar to the design of the Blood Dragons' from Skyrim. It expands when Konto is hostile or focusing on a particular object.

Attacks:

Ice Breath: one of her most beautiful yet dangerous attacks is her ice breath, which takes around ten seconds for her to warm up from a cold, foggy mist to the equivalent being inside of a raging blizzard to a beam of supercooled fluid that can instantly freeze monsters and hunters. Hunters can tell when she is preparing to attack when her lower jaw separates.

Ice Crystals: her second most dangerous attack are the ice crystals she forms when she fuses her lightning breath with her ice one, creating explosive ice that burst after five seconds—it also sends sharp ice fragments that can harm hunters and monster at close range. Hunters can tell when she is preparing to attack when her underside starts glowing purple.

Tail Swipe: she will run in a circle, her tail knocking down anything that's in her way.

Air Stomp: she will fly into the air then drop to the ground, crushing anything underneath her.

Charge: She will charge at another monster then headbutt them with her horns.

Storm Clouds: she will create ice storms above her that will rain down long icicles. Don't stay in one place if you don't want to be hit!

Wind Blow: using her wings, Konto will create massive gusts of wind that push objects away.

Bipedal Slam: she will rise on her hind legs and use all the force in her body to slam as hard as she can into the ground in front of her.

Claw swipe

Wing slash

Claw slash

Bite attack

Bite grab/slam

Body slam

Dwogabata Konto is passive, and despite her large size, she only hunts other monsters once in a while to refuel her energy. Due to being much bigger than the other elder dragons, with the exception of Shara Ishvalda, Nergigante doesn't attack her, and seems to show signs of courtship with the ice dragon.

Unless provoked, Konto doesn't mind hunters and even smaller wyverns coming up to her out of curiosity. She usually observes then continues on whatever she was doing, most of the time sleeping, eating, or crunching on ice. Nergigante is noted to be calm in her presence.

Before every hunt session, Konto would prepare her ice breath by looking towards the sky and breathing out the "mist", causing it to look like smoke coming out of the mountain peak, where she lives. Then she'll fly into the sky and ambush large monsters from above by diving bombing into them. After killing the monster, Konto opens her jaws and swallows the carcass whole.

Mephistopheles and Dwogabata Konto often enter turf wars whenever Mephistopheles is looking for food. Both leave each fight scarred and limping in opposite directions.

Prey:

Baggi

Zamite

Giggi

Pokara

Blango

Giaprey

Anteka

Vespold

Popa

Brahabra

Konchu

Glacial Agnaktor

Tigrex

Barioth

Great Baggi

Deviljho

Giaorugu

Any other monster that's not a Elder dragon

Horns, teeth, armor fragments, and frills can be broken off, but she can't be killed.

Sounds:

Into battle

Distant rumbling

Distant roar

In pain

[varteeny1234]

SHE MADE IT HOME

;-;

THE VOID IS HAPPY <3

When Marm went to talk to Anathra about the void and it being much quieter than it used to, and how she thinks that she's made it happy.

DREAM SEGMENT & MEMORIES

All of the following are screenshots taken directly from Marm's 18th Skyblock Kingdoms episode, but are of places in her other Minecraft worlds:

In left-to-right, top-to-bottom order, the screenshots are from the end of LPS1, the beginning-beginning of LPS2, her LPS2 house, the giant magical tree built at the end of LPS2, the 100 Traps dungeon from Avid Adventures, and the beginning-beginning of Hardcore.

This was a dream segment that Marm had- she went to sleep, trying to find out if she'd have more memories from her past, and she did. She remembered almost every world she's been in so far (excluding chunklock and chillbee).

The dream segment ended with Marm waking up on the Skyblock island she started on- a little mud and mangrove thing in a vast expanse of void and nothingness.

Then, right after this, she woke up.

Transcript of what Marm said before and during the dream segment:

Marm: Now, a few nights ago, I had a weird... dream. And I think I'm starting to remember some things from.. somewhere else, another time. I think that maybe I should just go take another nap, we've done a lot of building today. I think I'm gonna take a nap, and maybe, just maybe I'll remember something else. [screen cuts to lps1. marm has a book and quill and is looking at the crystals.] Marm: The sound is so loud now and I still haven't figured out what it is, but I can feel the pull from these crystals! There's- there's power here, more than we already knew abou thtese. Something's happening, I can feel something coming- [screen cuts to the middle of a forest biome] Marm: What just happened...? I don't- I don't remember. What do I... do... [screen cuts to lps2 house. I still haven't figured out how we got here but at least we have a home for now. I think I might have come from somewhere else. I think something might have brought me here for a reason. [marm's eyes change color now. she turns to walk towards the magical tree.] Marm: I've been having these dreams of another place. I think it might be where I was before i... came... here... I think I'm remembering what happened... to... me- [screen flashes three times, going first to the 100 traps dungeon, then HC, then the sbk starter island] Marm: I... think that's happened before. I'm forgetting- what am I forgetting, and why... why am I on an island... in the void?

After waking up in her witch tower, Marm realizes she remembers everything. She is from somewhere else. And she knows that the void was what was taking her to different places. It was testing her, pulling her through different worlds, because it needed her in SBK. It needed to make sure she could handle its magic being fully rooted in her.

She cannot remove it without great risk...

EYES

A sound effect played when Marm said "I think something brought me here... for a reason" and her eyes changed color: from their original blue to the more familiar purple shade. We know it was the void that brought her here, and the void turns eyes purple.

*meme voice* this is fine :D

SHE'S COMING HOME

After waking up with her memories restored, Marm dons a new adventurer's outfit, and makes her way back to her mangrove swamp in LPS1! She went home!

(Now. She said "I think it would be okay if I head home. Just for a bit! I can come right back... if I'm needed." This means that I ready an explosion for Marm getting stuck in LPS1 but first must cry because she came back home.)

CAN'T FORGET THE SILLY STAIRCASE SHENANIGANS :3

Marm, of course, enjoys messing with people almost as much as she loves learning about magic, so she decided to build a tall tower with a parkour staircase that you have to do while being chased by phantoms (named after the powerpuff girls) and also there is black concrete at the bottom, creating the illusion of a bottomless pit. Marm I love you so much+

AVIDVENTURES TIMELINE WEIRDNESS

Marm's HC skin was used in the 100 Traps video, but her SBK skin was used later on in AA, and then, Marm was surprised she could travel. Also, HC came before SBK in Marm's own lore timeline, so really- Olm yeeting Avoid back in time just makes everything line up so perfectly! It also probably brought her to AA originally because it knew she'd be there again in the future. I do not question the void's knowledge /silly

IS THE VOID DONE WITH HER??

PROBABLY NOT. I DOUBT THAT IT NEEDED HER ONLY TO HELP AVID. There will definitely be more for her to do, and I for one cannot wait!

Overall, this was quite possibly one of my favorite Marma1ade videos ever! The ending scene, where she went back to her home, made me cry. I am not ashamed to admit it :3 Marm's storytelling is just absolutely phenomenal and I am always ready to be emotionally destroyed by beautiful art! And this was NO exception!! :DDD

[flowersdaggersviolasandblood]

Blood, Flesh, and Tears

Name: Torment (He/Him)

Race: Zariel Tiefling

Class: Paladin (Oath of Vengence)

Background: Haunted One

WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD!

Taking a break from Pero, let's go back to our secretly-not-a-psycho paladin, Torment. To refresh, Torment and the gang decided to go under to reach Moonrise Towers. While there, we fought a Bulette, met some fungus peeps, killed some Duergar, killed a stray Sovereign because they wanted to overthrow the current one, and agreed to find some guy named Nere who was behind the attack against the Myconids and the Deep Gnomes.

Before we took the boat to our next destination, I wanted to explore the place a bit.

I was able to find the missing husband to a Dwarf named Derryth who came down to the Underdark looking for a specific fungus that can only be found in the Underdark. The missing husband, Baelen, got themselves stuch amongst explosive fungi that will spread noxious fumes that can go up in flames. Because I had a scroll of Misty Step on me, Torment was able to save the guy without stepping into the danger zone. Once he was gone, I tried my hand at navigating the poisonous maze in hopes of getting any goodies...It went up in flames and Astarion nearly died lol.

When we went back to report back to Derryth, she wasn't really...Relieved that her husband was back. While she was "happy" he was back, she still acted rather rude about him. Apparently, Baelen's head isn't right and before he went a bit sick in the head, he wasn't a good person allegedly. Doesn't really help Derryth's case that she now seems to use her husband as a dimwit slave...Maybe something can be done about that when we reach Baldur's Gate.

After doing that side quest, I was able to find my way over to the stoned Drow and fought the Spector that was shown in the trailers. Homie was easy to handle when you got potion of speed on ya. Thanks to fighting the Spector, one of the Drow was released from their prison and explained that they were mercs paid to escort a wizard named Dhourn, who unfortunately perished during the fight. Dhourn carried a crystal that held a memory within. Peering inside, we saw a place that's deeper in the Underdark that also held a forge within. Perhaps a hint on where our adventure will send us next.

While exploring, we found a Arcane Tower that was protected by magical construct security drones. We were able to bypass them, but if we wanted to use the arcane elevator, we had to find a way to activate the entire tower. Torment and the gang descended by foot to the bottom of the tower and found a machine that required fuel to activate the tower. I love this area in the same way I love the Reithwin area in the Cursed Lands. If you're the type of person to read the notes and books in the game, you essentially get the answer to most of the puzzles and challenges in this section of the game. I love that this game rewards you for exploring everything there is to see.

So down in the Underdark, you can find these flowers called Sussur Blooms. If you explored all of the Blighted Village, you probably know that there's a side quest that requires Sussur Bark to make a weapon that silences your foes (I gave Astarion a silencing dagger :D). Well, while down there, you'll encounter the flowers of the Sussur tree and can collect them. If you weren't already collecting them, you might want to go flower picking when you reach this part of the game, because based on a note you can find while exploring the Arcane Tower, it explains that the flowers can not only mute magic, but also empower items with magic. When I realized this, I immediately went back to camp, picked up my collection of Sussur Blooms, and watched the entire tower come to life.

This meant that the elevator was now accessible. Going to the very top, we met a construct by the name of Bernard who speaks to us through what would seem like riddles. This is another instance where if you were thoroughly exploring the tower and reading the notes left behind, you will know that Bernard is quotes some of the notes and books left in the tower. Because of this, Torment didn't have to fight the constructs. I was also able to get a cute, but sad hug scene with Bernard that insinuates that the owner of this tower was a lonely individual; requiring the comfort of magical steel for depressing days.

After some minor exploration here and there, Torment and the gang took the ferry to find the place where Nere was positioned at. While on our boat ride, we encounter some Duergar in a separate ship that recognized the ship belong to their homies and wondered why we had possession of it. Torment was able to intimidate his way out of a fight, especially with the help of the symbol of the Absolute that was on his person. While traversing the waters, we caught a glimpse of what this new area is gonna be; and it looks like it's gonna be another Shar temple since the statues and the iconography is matching the ones back at Reithwin.

Upon entering, we learn that the True Souls are not particularly liked at the moment since they ran off with the money from the Duergar after asking for their services. They demand that we seek out the True Soul Nere and get his ass for cheating them of their services. Torment was close to breaking and simply killing the Duergar since they were holding the Deep Gnomes hostage and enslaved them to do their work. But that will have to wait, for now.

[spacenutspod]

One of a telescope operator’s primary jobs is to keep any stray light out of the instrument. Earthly and other unwelcome photons can swamp the cosmic light from distant stars and galaxies. During more than a decade as a project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, Jane Rigby obsessed over minimizing light leaks — with extraordinary success. The sky looks darker to JWST than most anyone had hoped. Rigby herself, now the senior project scientist for JWST, is a source of light. “I remember the light in her eyes,” says astrophysicist Jane Charlton, who met Rigby the summer before her freshman year at Penn State and later advised her research. “Jane had incredible grades, but that’s not necessarily what I look for. The love of astronomy, and passion for that, is what I look for.” Nearly three decades later, Rigby’s palpable joy in discussing the success of JWST, which launched on December 25, 2021, has made her one of the public faces of the telescope. She presented the telescope’s first images at the White House and has given keynote speeches at some of the biggest astronomy meetings (SN: 8/13/22, p. 30). During public appearances, she often wears JWST-themed socks, scarves and pins. “I have JWST socks for pretty much every day of the week,” she says. She has also lit a path for queer astronomers, as well as others who are historically underrepresented in astronomy. Rigby has been out as part of the LGBTQ+ community since 2000, when she met her now-wife when they were both astronomy graduate students at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She has devoted much of her career to holding the door open for others. “I didn’t grow up with any queer role models,” she says. “I hope I’m the last generation for which that’s true.” Focusing on the instruments Rigby remembers being asked to draw a favorite TV show in preschool. She used up an entire black crayon drawing Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. Her interest in space crystallized into a career plan at about age 12, after she saw Sally Ride speak at a local college. Ride, the first American woman in space, made Rigby want to be an astronaut. “I knew there were two paths to becoming an astronaut: a test pilot or a scientist,” she says. “And it was pretty clear that I was never going to be tall enough to fly the shuttle.” At 5 feet, 2 inches tall, she’s still two inches too short to have been a space shuttle pilot. If she couldn’t make it to space, she saw more potential in science than in flying planes. Rigby’s first experience using a telescope for research, as an undergraduate student at Penn State, was stymied by light leaks. She, Charlton and another student traveled to western Texas to use the telescope at the McDonald Observatory. They were looking to catch light from a distant quasar filtering through a diffuse and mysterious cloud of cosmic gas. These small, dense clouds appear to be packed with heavy elements from supernova explosions, but surprisingly, they’re not found in galaxies’ centers where a lot of stars are born and dying. “We were, at that time, trying to figure out what they were,” Charlton says. “As we still are.” After a night of guiding the telescope by hand, the group realized that light from something other than the quasar — maybe an alert light on an instrument panel — had flooded the telescope. The trio tracked it down, covered it with tape and tried again. The same thing happened night after night. Ultimately, they returned to Pennsylvania with no quasar data. “It didn’t work,” Rigby says. “But it was really fun. I was learning everything, trying to learn how the telescope worked.” Jane Rigby has had the opportunity to observe at many notable telescopes around the world, including the Magellan telescopes at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, shown here around 2011.J. Rigby Since then, Rigby has used many major telescopes, from those at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to the Magellan telescopes in Chile to the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes. Along the way, her research developed a theme: investigating how galaxies grow and change along with the super­massive black holes hiding within. But her approach is less “How can I answer this burning question?” and more “What can I do with this shiny new instrument?” “I’m a very observational astronomer,” she says. “I will use any telescope I can get my hands on.” All that telescope time meant she was ready to join the JWST team when the opportunity came. “Because she had seen data from Spitzer and Hubble,” JWST’s precursors, says astronomer Matt Mountain of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C., “she knew what she was looking for.” Meeting the James Webb Space Telescope Rigby began working on JWST in 2010, when she took a job at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., as the telescope’s deputy operations project scientist. One of the first things she did was read the report of an independent review panel that found that the telescope was mismanaged, over budget by billions of dollars and would launch years later than originally planned (SN: 11/11/10). “I’ve certainly been four years from launch multiple times,” she says. Before launch, most of her time was devoted to making sure that changes to the telescope’s design wouldn’t mess up the science. She imagined possible ways to use JWST and met with other team members to make sure the final telescope would deliver on those goals. Would the telescope materials glow or release gases that could freeze to the machine? Could JWST use two cameras simultaneously? Could it study moving targets, like asteroids within the solar system (SN: 11/5/22, p. 14)? “Because she is a working scientist who really wanted to use the data,” Mountain says, “she was an ideal choice for operations scientist,” a job she moved up to in 2018. “In these complex spaces, with all the engineering, the personalities, the politics at NASA, working with contractors, she always keeps her eye on the prize: What science are we trying to do?” Rigby bridged the divide between the science and engineering teams, helping them speak a common language. Her job has been “a lot of active listening and soft power, a lot of synthesizing and a dose of specialized technical expertise,” she says. “Oftentimes I’m the big-picture person in a room full of specialists.” Thousands of people worked on the James Webb Space Telescope, shown here at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in 2017.Desiree Stover/NASA Engineer Larkin Carey removes the cover that kept the telescope’s instruments safe from contaminants and stray light while it was being assembled and tested.CHRIS GUNN/NASA After the telescope launched, got in position and unfolded itself — “the six-month unwrapping of the Christmas present,” Rigby says — her job shifted to characterizing how well the telescope works. In practically every metric, it’s a dream come true. There’s better-than-expected image quality, higher sensitivity, faster response times and a longer potential mission lifetime than predicted before launch — and practically no light leaks. The telescope’s great golden mirrors are exposed to space, and light can scatter off dust grains on the mirrors, registering on images as faint, diffuse patterns the team calls “wisps” and “claws,” or a ghostly streak dubbed “the lightsaber.” But the mirrors proved remarkably dust-free, meaning the sky appears incredibly dark. “It’s not an accident that the telescope works so well,” she says. “That was careful work beforehand.” When asked about such successes, and her own, Rigby points to a huge amount of work by tens of thousands of people. “I understand the desire to humanize something that can seem really big and impersonal. But I don’t like the singling out,” she says. “I try to reflect it back to the team.” It took thousands of people and tasks to ensure JWST’s success. Engineer Larkin Carey, with Ball Aerospace, for example, cleaned every square centimeter of the telescope’s mirrors by hand with a tool like a shaving brush, Rigby says. With the telescope working so well, Rigby could turn her attention to the scientific questions. She helps lead an observing program called TEMPLATES, looking at galaxies whose light has been magnified by foreground objects to get a glimpse at how the galaxies form stars. At a June meeting in Albuquerque of the American Astronomical Society, Rigby shared how the TEMPLATES team found hydrocarbons, “the same stuff that smoke is made of,” in a galaxy whose light dates back more than 12 billion years — the furthest back in time such molecules had ever been seen. Early in July, Rigby became the senior project scientist for JWST; it’s her job to figure out how to get the most and best science out of the telescope. Research colleagues describe her as superhuman. “I don’t know how she does everything that she does, and does everything well,” says TEMPLATES collaborator Keren Sharon of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And Rigby’s enthusiasm is abundant: “She gets giddy,” Sharon says. “It could be about figuring out a bug, or discovering this super exciting thing about a galaxy that we didn’t know before … and she’s literally bouncing. Her face lights up.” With data from the James Webb Space Telescope, Rigby and colleagues found signs of hydrocarbons in this galaxy (red ring, shown in false color) more than 12 billion light-years from Earth. A second, closer galaxy (blue) lined up perfectly to magnify the light from the more distant one.J. SPILKER, S. DOYLE, NASA, ESA, CSA Opening doors for others Rigby wants anyone to be able to experience and pursue that enthusiasm. When she started attending American Astronomical Society meetings in the 1990s, she didn’t know there was a secret LGBTQ+ networking dinner. “You had to know it existed. That was a little closety. But it’s where people were.” At the time, there was a lack of protection from employment discrimination and no guarantee of institutional support for astronomers with same-sex partners. Rigby recalls accepting a fellowship at Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, Calif., and immediately having to request health insurance benefits to cover her partner. “That’s awkward,” she says. “You want to be talking about your science and your telescope proposals, not how can I get health insurance for my family because we’re different.” Finding other LGBTQ+ astronomers was “a lifeline,” she says. These days, the meet-up at AAS is too big to go out to dinner. At a January 2023 meeting in Seattle, “we lost count at 120 people. We had to spill out into the hallway,” Rigby says. “That feels good.” Seeing queer astronomers like Rigby so far along in their careers was helpful to Traci Johnson, a data scientist who was a graduate student in astronomy in Sharon’s lab at the University of Michigan. Johnson identifies as lesbian and nonbinary and came out during graduate school. “I realized it is possible to be out, and be happy, and also have a really amazing career,” Johnson says. Rigby has taken an active role in encouraging inclusivity, though she seems to be up against the legacy of JWST’s namesake. Many astronomers have called for the telescope to be renamed because James Webb was NASA administrator at a time when the U.S. government fired employees for being gay. Rigby won’t comment on the telescope’s name. But her support for LGBTQ+ astronomers is clear. Rigby was a founding member of the AAS Committee for Sexual-Orientation and Gender Minorities in Astronomy, which works to promote equality for LGBTQ+ astronomers within the field; has co-organized conferences on making astronomy more inclusive; and authored a recent white paper urging the astronomy community to address diversity, inclusion and harassment. A current priority is making sure trans people feel safe and welcome. Rigby doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as “the gay astronomer.” She knows her contributions to astronomy extend far beyond any particular group. But she says the leadership skills, resilience and ability to shift her perspective that she has learned through living and organizing as a member of the LGBTQ+ community have made her a better astronomer. They’re skills she transfers to her role as a leader at NASA. “The whole vision is, you get to bring your authentic self to work,” she says. “And work embraces your authentic self.”

[jonathanvik]

Starlight Dream - Chapter 50

“Ouch.” Seina groaned, pushing aside a piece of rock that had toppled on top of her. Darkness surrounded her, leaving her confused about where she was. 

“Seina! You still alive?” Came her partner’s muffled voice, making everything that had happened return in a rush. 

“Colten, are you okay?” Seina summoned her staff and created a glowing bubble. Beyond the rubble, the floating orb illuminated little. 

“She’s okay! Over here. Mr. Kiyojiro!” Her partner’s voice was almost blocked by tons of rock. 

“Mr. Kiyojiro!” She’d tried to protect her bodyguard from the explosions but lost track of him amongst the chaos.

“Thank goodness you’re okay! How injured are you?” Mr. Kiyojiro asked. 

“I’m okay.” Her head still rang, but she’d manage. She definitely wouldn’t forget the flames anytime soon. She cursed that maniac for using her own power against her.

“Oh, crap! How are Emiyo and Arisu?” Seina said, realizing they were still in dire straights. If those star-destroying explosions hadn’t killed her, it seemed unlike it’d do much to a Devil Princess!

“We don’t know.” Mr. Kiyojiro said, voice pensive. “We have found no trace of the Poison Ivy either. But one problem at a time. Can you dig your way out?”

“Shouldn’t be an issue. Step back.” Her staff summoned a bubble that would disintegrate anything it touched. It floated outward, digging a path toward her friend's voices. 

“Seina! I was so scared! You took the worst of that blast!” Colten threw himself into a big hug. When she’d finally gotten free of the rubble. It seemed she’d entered what remained of the original chamber.

“Me too.” Seina returned the hug. She sighed in relief to find her bodyguard unharmed after all that craziness. How did he survive?

“I sent himminutes into the future before the explosion hit us,” Colten said, answering her unasked question.  

“Fat good it did.” Mr. Kiyojiro said, voice self-deprecating. “It was a dumb idea to join you to Starlight Dream. I’m just getting in the way. Colten could have used his power to save you instead.”

“You’re good moral support, regardless!” Seina said, maybe too quickly. It was hard to deny he might have a point. She quickly changed the subject for her bodyguard’s sake. “Where are Liam and Charity?”

“We haven’t found them yet,” Colten said, annoyed. “We’ve been kinda trapped down here.” 

“First things first. Find them, then to the surface!” With luck, the evil, hateful magical girl thought them dead. It provided them the perfect opportunity to regroup and plan. While Seina was still uncertain if Takako and Chō were safe, they could at least join forces with Himari. That was something, at least. Though, how they’d defeat Reiko was beyond anyone’s guess. 

With some effect, they found Charity and Liam unharmed. Using her remarkable prediction power, the Wicked Queen’s partner had found the perfect spot to escape most of the damage. 

“Charity, you’re still here,” Seina said, relieved. “That must mean your partner didn’t die in the explosion.” Remarkable considering she’d been at the epicenter. 

“She’s a survivor, always has been,” Charity replied.

“I just hope she’s okay.” After still finding no sign of Emiyo or her partner, Seina feared the worst. She dreaded what they’d discover once they reached the surface. If Charity seemed concerned about their situation, she didn’t show it. Instead, she directed them upwards. 

“Let’s go!” She was ready to fight, mostly healed from their encounter with the mad Poison Ivy. 

The surface of Starlight Dream was worse than they imagined, scarred by the intensity of the explosion. Many fairy homes were in ruins, with relatives crying for their fallen kin. She winced as fairies pulled out of a wounded child from a collapsed roof. Despite their heinous corruption by the Devil Princesses, they didn’t deserve this. 

“Heave!” A fairy said, guiding other fairies as they tried to push a crystal beam off an unconscious fairy. Without hesitation, Seina rushed to their aid. 

“I got it.” With one hand, she lifted the beam like it’d been cardboard. Fairies tensed as they saw a magical girl approaching, sending hateful glares in their direction. 

“We don’t need your help, magical girl.” An older fairy whose white fur had grayed with age said. “You’re the one that caused this mess!”

“I...” Tears stung Seina’s eyes at the rebuke. 

“Grandpa! You can’t say such a thing!” A terrified young fairy said, taking a proactive stance in front of her senior. “Blessed magical girl. Forgive my elder’s harsh words. He doesn’t know what he’s saying! If it pleases you, mighty and wonderful magical girl, we’ll kill the wounded fairy to placate you. Such insolence should be paid for with blood.”

Much to Seina’s horror, the fairy pulled a sharpened crystal from some rubble and intended to do as she’d promised. “That’s unnecessary! I’m only here to help!”

“What? Why?” The fairy peered at Seina suspiciously. 

“Why shouldn’t I?” 

“Who are you? I haven’t seen you around. A new recruit?” The fairy asked. 

“She must be part of Himari’s rebels!” Another fairy said, disgusted. “Expel her before she gets us all killed!” The fairies hooted and jeered, wanting this troublemaker gone before more trouble fell upon their little heads. Seina tensed as a tin can smacked against her skull, recoiling from the scorn. But they weren't wrong. The vengeful Devil Princesses would destroy these innocent fairies if they found Seina and her friends here.

“I’ll tell you who she is!” Colten bolted forward, head held high and proud. “This is Seina. She’s here to free us all from the Devil Princesses!” 

“Seina, the Butcher?” A terrified fairy said, wide-eyed. The other fairies backed away in terror.

“No, don’t be ridiculous!” Seina snapped back, eye twitching. “I’m Seina, the one who only wants fairies to be free.”

“Seina, This is why you need a moniker,” Colten replied. “Otherwise, people will make one for you.”

“Oh, shut up. It wouldn’t have stopped them.” Seina said, shooting back. 

As the pair fought, the fairy from before stepped forward, expression amazed. “Colten, is that you?” 

“It’s me, sis.” Colten puffed out his chest. “With a partner and everything.”

“You have a sister?” Seina said, dumbfounded by this revelation. 

“And, like always, you ruin everything. You’ve partnered with a notorious outlaw? Mom will be so disappointed.” Colten’s sister replied. 

“Shows how much you know, Botan!” Colten shot back. “I’m doing what our kind should have done all along, fight against the Devil Princess.” 

“To your death! And ours! Do you think they’ll show your home village any mercy once they discover you’re Seina the Butcher’s partner?” Botan said. 

“That’s not my name!” But everyone ignored Seina as the fairies jeered at Colten. 

“So this is the fairy kingdom.” Mr. Kiyojiro said, shaking his head. “Doesn’t it remind you of something?” 

“Just like home, back when the vampires still ruled.” Seina said with bated breath. “They’re just scared, wanting to survive, even at a terrible cost.” 

“Stop it!” 

“Ouch!” Botan winced as the older fairy smacked her with a cane.

“Don’t speak to your brother like that!” The older fairy smacked her again. 

“Grandpa! Stay out of this. Do you realize what this maniac has done?” Botan said, glaring.

But the older fairy ignored her, examining his grandson. “Truly, you’ve bonded with a partner, Colt?”

Colten puffed out his chest with pride. “Sure have! We’re a mighty duo! Seina’s the most powerful magical girl out there. She beat a Devil Princess!”

“Not alone! I had help!” But the fairies ignored her, muttering to themselves. They’d heard rumors about this, but it’d been a shock to have them confirmed. 

“Never thought it was possible.” A tear came to Grandpa fairy eye’s. While other fairies became even more fearful, others gave Seina deference, like she was a deity. It was a little overwhelming.

“It still doesn’t change that they’ll send Starlight Dream’s wrath against us!” Botan scowled. 

“I hope to change that,” Seina said with passion. “I’m creating a better future where fairies and magical girls can live together in peace and harmony!”

“Colten, is your partner simple?” Botan replied, unimpressed. 

‘Hey!’, thought Seina, ‘That was a good, inspiring speech!’

“Is there somewhere safe you can hide? The fight against the Devil Princesses might get messy.” Mr. Kiyojiro said, changing the subject to something more useful. 

“Good idea! Gramps, please spread the word. We need to evacuate Starlight Dream.” Colten glanced up at the deteriorating Needle of the Cosmos, flinching as the spider web cracks spread further. “We don’t have long.”

“Don’t worry, lad.” The old fairy replied. “We’ll handle this. Just be careful, okay?”

“You’re not mad?” Colten asked, tears welling in his eyes. “I’ll fix everything and return Starlight Dream to its rightful state! I promise!”

“What, return Starlight Dream to the nightmare of the Wicked Queen’s reign?” Botan replied sarcastically. But the other fairies nodded. Colten’s words had sparked hope within them, which they coveted greedily.

“Goji!” A fairy said, pointing to another. “Fly to the next town over. I’m going to Crystal Paradise! Fairies need to hear the word!” The other fairy nodded, disappearing through a summoned portal. Fairies grabbed children and anything they deemed essential for the trip. They knew how dangerous a fight between magical girls could get and dare not linger. 

“Crazy.” Botan only shook her head. “You’ve done it now, Colten! Can’t you do anything without causing trouble? You’re lucky Mom and Dad are out visiting family!”

“Thank goodness.” Colten sighed in relief. “That’s a conversation I’d rather avoid right now.” From what Seina understood, their relationship wasn’t great. 

“Now that’s settled, let’s find your partner, Liam.” Mr. Kiyojiro said. “You can sense her, right?”

“Yeah, but she’s on another plane of existence. Give me a sec. I’ll find her.” Without another word, Liam’s body just faded away like a ghost.

“You’re quiet, Charity,” Seina asked the Wicked Queen’s partner. She hadn’t spoken a single word during this entire conversation.

Much to Seina’s trepidation, the fairy looked worried. She replaced the expression with a smile, peering into a nearby house that the occupants had vacated. “Fairy architecture has changed since my day. We preferred more castle-like structures then. This whole area used to be a sprawling, expansive city. Not these bare huts.”

And Seina saw she was right. The fairies possessed very little, living in almost squalor despite living in beautiful crystalline structures. 

“The great battle must have done worse damage than Charity thought.” Charity’s expression became glummer. “With the Devil Princesses in charge, they never got a chance to rebuild it. Charity and her father used to love playing in the park. Gone now, though, nothing but an empty patch of weeds. Crushed by time and neglect.”

Without prompting, Seina gave the fairy a tight hug. “I’m sure we can rebuild Starlight Dream into something grand again.”

“Thanks. But forget Charity’s foolishness. She’s dwelling on old days long since past. Not important to our mission.”

“Was this great battle against the Devil Princesses?” Seina asked, curious. 

“No, they exploited an already weakened Starlight Dream.” This caught everyone’s attention. “A great evil tried to steal Starlight Dream’s power for themselves. It nearly cost us everything! It even cost the great Fairy Queen’s life.”

“Oh, so there was a queen!” Seina said, pleased after having her previous image of Arisu shattered. Someone had to rule Starlight Dream. 

Reading her thoughts, Charity chuckled, nodding. “But it wasn’t my partner. She’s never been one for authority.”

“What was this evil you fought?” Mr. Kiyojiro said, crossing his arms. “Is it related to that giant needle?”

Before Charity could answer, Liam reappeared. Much to Seina’s disappointment, he was alone. “Guys, I know what happened. The Poison Ivy wished Takako, Chō, and their partners to different points across the multiverse. So far, Himari has only found Takako.”

“To make it easier to chase after us instead,” Seina said, scowling. 

“She’ll return with Takako soon,” Liam said. 

It was better than nothing. “Okay, with that settled. Let’s find Arisu.” Since Reiko hadn’t chased after them yet, Seina guessed the battle hadn’t gone in the Devil Princess’s favor. Still, the lack of explosions and fireworks concerned her. 

“Sounds good to me.” Mr. Kiyojiro said, and everyone agreed. 

“Hold on, what are you doing?” Colten asked when he noticed they had an extra party member. 

“I’m not leaving you alone,” Botan replied. “I can’t let you screw up anything! Too much is at stake! While I still think fighting against the Devil Princesses is utter insanity, I can’t abandon my idiot brother.”

Colten only groaned. “So annoying as usual. This is why I never mentioned her.” His sister responded with a rude gesture. “Leave with the others, Botan!”

“I agree. It’s too dangerous.” Her bodyguard’s month formed into a hard line. “I’ve already seen what power these monsters can throw around.”

“Speak for yourself,” Botan replied, tone haughty. “I have more reason to be than some dumb, ordinary human. Drop him, he’s dead weight. Why is he even here?”

Before Mr. Kiyojiro could protest, Seina broke in. “Against the Devil princesses, we’ll need every bit of help we can get.”

“Simple girl. Whatever, it’s his death wish,” Botan said, rolling her eyes. 

“Bossy little fairy, isn’t she?” Mr. Kiyojiro muttered to himself. 

“Now that we’re all friends, let’s find Arisu!” Seina said, stomping towards the enormous crater in the distance. She prayed things hadn’t gone too badly.

“Who?” Botan asked, furrowing her brow. “Is she another rebel?”

“She’s this one’s partner,” Colten said, smug that he knew something his sister didn’t. “You might have heard of her. Some call her the Wicked Queen!”

“What?” Botan said, eyes widening to dinner plates.

---

“Hey.” A familiar face said, crouched down in her usual position. 

“You survived!” Seina said, amazed. And the infamous magical girl didn’t even seem that hurt. Tears stung her eyes as she spotted Emiyo nearby. “And you’re okay, too!”

“Barely,” Emiyo replied, giving a shaky smile. “But we did it. Reiko, the Poison Ivy is no more.”

This news earned an audible gasp from her entire group. It seemed impossible anyone could slay that monster. 

“Impossible!” But Botan wasn’t as quick to believe, incredulous, nothing could beat such an undefeatable, wish-granting bane of fairykind. But Seina couldn’t blame her. It’d been difficult for people to accept the vampire king’s sudden defeat too. 

“Are you a dumbass? Of course, it’s true. We’re standing, aren’t we?” The glare the Wicked Queen sent Botan’s way sent her scrambling behind Mr. Kiyojiro’s enormous frame. 

“Anyway, with Yuuka gone, only two Devil Princesses remain!” Seina said, excited. 

“Yuuka, the mad, chaos-loving lunatic is dead?” Arisu asked, standing bolt upright. “No kidding?”

“Thank Seina,” Charity replied, beaming. “She dealt the final blow.”

“Not alone.” Seina’s cheeks reddened with embarrassment. “Another magical girl named Ume helped! I wouldn’t have won without her!”

“I really owe you that drink, then.” Arisu gave Seina’s shoulder a playful punch. “That monster killed a dear friend of mine.”

“Someone needed to stop her. And grape juice would be fine, thanks.” Seina gave a weak smile.

“Is this really the Wicked Queen?” Botan said, peering at the odd girl. “She’s not quite what I expected.”

“I knew all along that rumors about the Wicked Queen were wrong. It didn’t surprise me at all.” Colten lied, trying to one-up his sister. 

“Hey, Kiyojiro. Do you smoke?” Arisu asked. 

“No, sorry.” 

“Damn.” Arisu gave an annoyed sigh.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure you can ask Takako to summon you some,” Charity said, exasperated. While she clearly thought this was beneath a magical girl’s dignity, Charity wanted to help her partner, regardless. “And here she comes.”

“Guys!” Himari said, popping from nowhere. Attached to her arm was a shaken Takako. “Thank goodness you’re okay!”

“That’s an interesting way to travel.” Takako shook her head, her pupils a little too large.

“Sorry, Takako, but slipping into a higher universe was the quickest way to get here.” Himari turned to address her friends. “Hey!”

Seina hadn’t a clue what that meant, but okay. “You will not believe this! Reiko has been defeated!”

“Truly?” Himari said, beaming. 

“And we found that Wicked Queen! She helped us defeat her!” Seina gestured at the squatting girl.

“Yo!” Arisu gave a slight wave. “Arisu Ikehara.”

Himari seemed flabbergasted at the girl’s unusual demeanor, but Takako only beamed, pleased. “Takako. She seems pretty cool!” 

As usual, nothing flummoxed the cool, collected Takako. They exchanged a quick version of their stories, confirming that Reiko was, in fact, dead. Time was against them. Soon, Kaguya would return with reinforcements. Seina noticed Arisu’s sour expression when she mentioned the Dreamer’s name.

“Do you know Kaguya?” Seina asked. 

“We go way back. Though seeing her again puts a sour taste in my mouth. She has a lot to answer for!”

“What happened? Why are the Devil Princesses destroying the multiverse to topple the Needle of the Cosmos?”

“Apotheosis!” Everyone tensed as Kaguya the Dreamer appeared from nowhere. Behind her stood a grim Mei, her lips set in a firm line behind her metal, demon-like face mask. “That’s what everyone wants to obtain in their brief lives, to become something great!

“You have some nerve, Kaguya, creating this mess.” Arisu spat on the ground. “How much slaughter will satisfy you, beast?”

Unlike the other Devil Princesses, the Dreamer wasn’t wary of the Wicked Queen. No, she seemed to delight in how much pain she’d caused Arisu. Her eyes were alight with mischief. “And I will continue to do so. That’s the difference between the two of us. I’m stronger. You act all tough, but inside, you’re a scared, weak little girl who can’t accomplish what needs to be done. This wouldn't have happened if you hadn’t shown me mercy years ago.”

“Shut up. I’ll show everyone the real difference between us.” In a flash, Arisu disappeared. She reappeared behind the two Devil Princesses. To everyone’s surprise, she clutched Kaguya’s sleeping partner in her fist. Everyone gasped as the Wicked Queen tightened her grip, and the fairy shattered into dust. 

“You’re nothing but a fake,” Arisu said, breaking the shocked silence. “You aren’t a magical girl, never were. That pretty face hides the monster within. Much to my shame, I didn’t recognize it centuries ago. I truly believed I could save you.”

“What? She’s not a magical girl?” Seina’s head spun at the implication. What did this mean?

“Not a magical girl, a vampire. A Great Vampire.” Arisu pointed at the Needle of the Cosmos. “And that stake is impaled in the heart of Kaguya’s real body.”