#you can’t tell here but in the light there are very faint gold symbols printed in various spots on the shirt ☺️

[angeltannis]

Public bathroom selfie bc I forgot I wanted to take a pic of my new Frey shirt ✌️

[oriigami]

stolen things

[A catalogue of things stolen by, for, and from Princess Vivi of Alabasta with regards to a certain thief, as documented by her long-suffering captain of the guard. Namivivi, Rated T. Read it on AO3 here!]

(1. a necklace)

It starts small, comparatively speaking; a month or so after the rain returns to Alabasta and the country’s pain is soothed at last, there’s a little package of folded cardboard addressed to Princess Vivi buried in amongst the palace’s morning mail. This, in and of itself, isn’t terribly unusual. The princess has taken on a significant portion of the country’s day-to-day administration since her return while her father recovers, and she has many friends and contacts across the country she’s been corresponding with to aid in the rebuilding. 

What is unusual, though, is the way it’s addressed. Ordinarily, missives to the princess will be addressed to Her Grace, Princess Nefertari Vivi, stamped in formal black ink on clean white paper and packaging. This one, though, just says Vivi, written in an exceedingly neat hand with nonetheless a few trembles in the lettering, as though the writer had been, perhaps, aboard a boat when penning it. 

There’s no return address or sender name- instead, a pinwheel of four thick spiralling lines with a small circle attached to the uppermost swirl has been drawn where one would normally be.

Pell frowns, and breaks the seal on the back of the package. One of the many duties he’s resumed since returning to work (a feat that had required shouting down Chaka, the princess, and the king when they’d tried to insist he remain bedbound) is checking the mail, after all. And he’s been especially vigilant about the princess’s safety. 

After everything she’s been through in the past months and years, from her infiltration of Baroque Works to the inevitable nightmare of the civil war to the slow and arduous reconstruction of a devastated country, he can’t think of anyone who more deserves to rest easy at night.

He opens the little package with due caution, and tips its contents out onto the table. He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but it’s not the shimmer of gold that spills out onto the dark wood. It’s a necklace. A pendant shaped like a compass rose hangs from a thin golden chain, with what looks suspiciously like a diamond set at its center. 

Well. Unusual, perhaps, and definitely expensive, even Pell’s untrained eye can discern that much, but certainly not dangerous. He carefully replaces it in the package and makes his way up to the princess’s rooms, knocking on the doorframe. 

(It had become common knowledge around the palace after the first week or so that it was unwise to surprise the princess. She had developed a newfound tendency to stash those tiny daggers of hers in the sleeves of her dresses.)

“Come in,” a slightly distracted voice calls, and so he slips inside. Vivi is bent over her desk, where she always seems to be these days, brow furrowed in thought, worrying the end of her fountain pen between her teeth. She glances up when he enters, and he can’t help but worry, just a little, at how tired she looks. 

She’s taken a lot onto her shoulders. He always seems to find her at her desk these days, if she’s not in the council rooms or talking to the citizens or poring over the newspapers or-

“Pell,” she says, smiling slightly. “What is it?”

“Ah.” It takes him a moment to remember why he’s here. “This was sent for you today,” he says, crossing the room to hand her the small package. 

She frowns slightly, confused, as she takes it- and then he can see the moment her eyes catch on the little symbol drawn in the corner, that odd pinwheel shape, because she lights up, a smile immediately spreading across her face and brightening her eyes like he hasn’t seen in weeks. She tears into the package like a birthday present, and in seconds the necklace is cupped in her hands, gleaming under the light of her desk lamp. 

She swallows hard, and for a moment her face scrunches into a look Pell knows well. Ever since she was a child, she’s always made the same face when struggling not to cry. It’s only a moment, though, and then it passes, leaving her with just a wide smile and shining eyes. She nearly drops the necklace in her fumbling haste to fasten it around her neck. 

The compass pendant falls perfectly into place on her chest, the gold bright against desert-dark skin, and she smiles down at it with a softness that makes Pell abruptly feel like he’s intruding on something personal.

“Pell,” she says, and he straightens to attention automatically, “bring all future packages with that symbol on them directly to me, if you don’t mind. No need to check through them.”

“Princess-” he starts to object, but thinks better of it when she shoots him a look that makes him automatically swallow back his protest on behalf of her safety. “...As you say,” he concedes.

She’s always had grit and iron in her, ever since she was young and scrapping with Kohza amidst the sand dunes, but her two years away have tempered her into a pirate in truth, a sharp-eyed young woman who digs her fingernails into everything she treasures and won’t let go no matter how it hurts. 

But then, it was pirates who saved Alabasta. Maybe that’s the kind of princess they need.

He turns, and is half out the door when he can’t help but ask, “It’s from them, isn’t it?” 

He doesn’t need to specify who. Vivi doesn’t confirm aloud, but when he glances back over his shoulder she’s looking at the wanted posters pinned to her wall with an aching sort of look on her face, and that’s answer enough. 

When the next package marked with the same symbol and addressed in the same neat handwriting arrives a month later, he takes it straight to her. 

(2. a newspaper)

The sun is rising over Alabasta as the king and princess break their fast. Pell tosses the morning newspaper to the table, and no sooner has it hit the wood that Vivi is snatching it up with all the desperation of a marooned sailor grabbing for a thrown lifeline, nearly tearing through the paper in her urgency. 

Pell can’t say he’s surprised by the response, because the front page headline reads STRAWHAT PIRATES LEVEL ENIES LOBBY, printed in striking bold lettering above a photo of a grinning boy wearing a straw hat with all the confidence of a king’s crown. Vivi opens the paper and a sheaf of wanted posters fall out of the centerfold, scattering onto the table. 

There’s at least one face among them that Pell doesn’t recognize, and one that he definitely does recognize (clutch-) but certainly hadn’t expected to see grouped among the Strawhats, but neither is the poster that Vivi’s focus falls on first.

Instead, the Princess’s gaze is drawn to one of the lowest bounties of the lot, an dark-eyed woman giving the camera a playful smile over her shoulder, hands tangled in her orange hair and a familiar spiralling symbol emblazoned in deep blue ink on her shoulderblade. Cat Burglar Nami, the poster reads. Wanted Dead or Alive. 

Vivi reaches out and brushes fingers against the paper for just a moment, a complicated sort of look on her face that Pell couldn’t begin to put a name to, and he sees her lips move in a whisper of a name. Then all of a sudden she seems to remember she’s not alone, and hastily snatches up the sheaf of wanted posters together with the newspaper and clutches them to her chest like they’re infinitely more precious than mere ink and paper.

“I’ll- be right back,” she says, the words rushed, and then she’s gone from the room before the king can do more than send a slightly befuddled look after her.

Pell sighs, more fondly than anything, and goes to find another newspaper for the king. He has a feeling they won’t be getting that one back. 

(3. a kiss)

It’s four months after the Whitebeard War, four months since any word of the Strawhat Pirates has reached Alabasta, and four months of Princess Vivi staring out the windows of the palace and clenching her fists so hard her knuckles go white, when Pell realizes there is an intruder in the palace. 

Whoever they are, they are very good. It’s not a broken window that alerts him to their presence, or a scream- nothing so blatant and clumsy. Instead, it’s a faint footprint, left in the thin dusting of sand on the railing of one of the third-floor balconies, just barely visible in the fading light of the setting sun. If not for the inhuman eyesight his devil fruit grants him, he surely would have missed it completely.

The princess’s rooms are nearby, and his heart crawls into his throat. He’s not an idiot. He knows the princess has enemies. He’s seen her slipping out under cover of night to negotiate with pirates and smugglers, words sharp and spine unbending. 

(There are times when Pell wishes, for the sake of his peace of mind, that she was just a little less fearless.)

He slips down the hallway silently. There’s light shining from under the princess’s door, and muffled noises from inside the room. He rests one hand on the hilt of his sword, eases the door silently open with his other hand. 

It takes him a moment to register what he’s seeing, it’s so far off from what he’d half-feared he’d find. 

The princess is pressed against a wall by a woman with orange hair and tan skin who Pell recognizes immediately from the wanted poster on the wall as Cat Burglar Nami. Vivi has her legs up around Nami’s waist and her hands buried in her hair, and she’s kissing her like it’s the end of the world, even as tears run down her cheeks and her shoulders shake. 

There’s words murmured between them, too quiet to make out, blurred by voices thick from crying. He hears war, and lost, and should have been there, broken up by kisses and sobs, and he wonders just how much weight his princess has been truly carrying on her shoulders these past months. 

Pell takes a step back and noiselessly slips the door closed again, to give them their privacy. 

Well. At least she’s not in any danger. He’s going to have to tell the king he really, really shouldn’t get his hopes up about those marriage prospects. 

The pirate haunts the palace for another week and a half, and Pell can’t help but be reluctantly impressed by her elusiveness. Her presence only shows in how Vivi’s started to always keep the door to her room tightly closed, in silent footprints on the balcony and the low hum of nighttime murmurings, and in the smile the princess can’t seem to drop. 

He has to grab her by the shoulder one morning before she heads into the council chambers and advise, in a quiet voice that can’t help but be long-suffering, that she apply some makeup to the blossoming bruises on her neck. 

And then Nami is gone again, like a sea breeze, like she was never there, like pirates are wont to do. A pair of Vivi’s favorite earrings goes with her. The princess doesn’t cry, at least nowhere that Pell can see. She still wears the golden compass necklace every day, bright against her chest, close to her heart, and he thinks he understands, now.

He’d thought the necklace a present from the Strawhat Pirates at large at first, but it isn’t that. It’s a memento from a lover, from a cartographer- a compass pointing ever north. Someday, no matter what, find your way back to me. 

(4. a heart)

It doesn’t exactly take a falcon’s eyesight to see that Princess Vivi’s heart doesn’t belong to Alabasta anymore. Or, at least, not wholly to Alabasta. There will always be a part of their princess buried in the golden sands and fed on the oasis waters, and Pell knows that’s why she’s still there with them, and not far away on an unknown ocean with salt in her hair and a rolling deck beneath her feet. 

But there’s something about the ocean, about the sea winds and the endless horizon and the boundless freedom it brings, that takes. Pell has known a lot of sailors, and they’ve all had the same look on their eyes that Princess Vivi bears all the time now- always looking, searching for the waves, for the horizon, for the next adventure. 

He feels for her. He has always belonged, heart and soul, to Alabasta, and someday he will be buried in its sands. There will never be any other home for him. The princess, though, is torn in two, between two homes and two loves and she can never have one without leaving the other, and that’s a cruel fate, for someone who deserves nothing but kindness after all she’s been through. 

It’s one of the reasons he always has to bite his tongue when the king takes it into his head to push the concept of marriage again, floating the names of thoroughly-vetted suitors, even as Princess Vivi gently shuts him down cold. The princess’s heart will go to no respectable young man, that’s clear as day. It’s already been stolen.

That’s what pirates do, after all. They take, just like the ocean they live and die by. 

The cat burglar could have asked for any riches Alabasta had left, and the king would have probably honored her request, even gutted as their country was by drought and famine and war. But instead she fled with their princess’s heart in her hands, one treasure that could never be replaced.

(5. a princess)

It’s a dazzlingly bright desert morning in Alubarna when the Pirate King’s navigator arrives at the palace. 

There’s no sneaking this time, no scaling walls and vaulting balconies under the cover of darkness. Nami walks right up the sun-bleached stone stairs, all tanned skin and lean muscle, bold as brass for a wanted pirate with hundreds of millions of beri on her head, and Pell doesn’t make a single move to stop her. The tattoo on her shoulder reminds him of a little cardboard package, sent and delivered years ago. 

The princess meets her at the doors with a packed bag already on her shoulders, crashing into her arms without even a shred of royal dignity, and Nami doesn’t waste a second before sweeping her up into her arms and into a hungry kiss, like it doesn’t matter in the slightest that there’s dozens of eyes on them, the everyday traffic of guards and politicians and citizens through the palace stopped dead in its tracks. 

Maybe it doesn’t, for pirates. Maybe pirates only know how to love like they could be dead tomorrow. 

A few of the guards are shooting him confused and somewhat panicked looks; Pell just shakes his head and signals at ease. In all honestly, he’s almost surprised this didn’t happen sooner- but then, Vivi has always been loyal to her country to the point of martyrdom, and it’s only in the past year or so that all the tireless work she has put in to build the country up has finally blossomed to a point where her constant presence is no longer necessary. 

The country is safe, and healthy, and at peace, after countless days and nights of fighting with steel and ink to make it so. She can rest now, at least for a time, and she deserves nothing less. He knows the bag on her shoulders now has been ready in her room for weeks. 

Nami and Vivi finally break apart for breath, and Nami rests her forehead against the princess’s, grinning like she can’t stop. “Ready to go?” she asks. “Everyone else is waiting with the Sunny at the river port.” 

Vivi casts a glance over to Pell, silently questioning, and he bites back a chuckle. “Go on, then, your majesty,” he says, waving a hand, and can’t help but add, to Nami, “At least you had the decency to come to the front door this time, instead of climbing in the window.” 

The blushes that decorate both their faces at that are more brilliant red than any desert sunburn he’s ever seen, and then he does have to laugh in truth. And then Vivi is burying her red face in her hands and wheezing with laughter, and the look that Nami gives her is so impossibly soft that Pell feels comforted about his princess’s safety then and there, no words needed. 

Once Vivi can meet his eyes again, he smiles, and just says, “Be safe.” 

“I will,” she promises, and there’s freedom in her voice.

No one moves a finger to stop them as the laughing thief flees down the front steps of the palace, a stolen princess beaming to outshine the desert sun in her arms.

[bigskydreaming]

Random bits of writing beneath the cut. Yo @russianspacegeckosexparty, these are scenes yanked from the 10 years ago manuscript I was telling you about, the magic I cannibalized to use for the magic system/worldbuilding in this series. 

Mostly just action scenes so the only thing you really need to know in order to follow is that the Cunninghams are a family of nine kids (yeah I know, look this was a very early book of mine), who each have magic that manifests via a specific medium. They can do pretty much anything they can imagine involving that medium, even if it doesn’t make any kind of physical or logical sense or just riffs off of symbolism - however it doesn’t always work the way they think it will. Its magic without instruction manual. They’re all just winging it.

Other key detail is that for most of the book they were all dealing with a curse someone’d put on their family years ago, where the sight of one another whipped them into a homicidal rage and thus they had to stay apart and take great care not to be around each other in ways that could trigger it. Eventually, they discovered that there was another magic family out there (well, several), and one in particular had put the curse on them for Reasons.

Anyway, of the Cunninghams, oldest was Serena, whose magic involved tears, Trent (shadows), Dennis (blood), Cam (art), Alice (mirrors), Rowan (coins), Katie (echoes), Megan (fingerprints) and Micah (dust). 

The other family in this had similarly distinct magic, with Paul (breath), Mina (light), David (music), Jonas (crossroads) and Teri (memories).

Oh and the last three scenes that don’t make sense chronologically are flashbacks of Micah’s (the narrator) from when he was younger, thanks to memory magic making him relive them.

***************

I spun to see the windows lining the side of the house that faced us – changing, for lack of a better way to describe them.  The glass folded out away from the walls, then grew together in a slick, sinuous movement that formed a bridge into the sky, snaking and curving back on itself.  It thickened until the bridge was a column that expanded towards the base, branching out with a thinner neck, wings, legs, arms.  The whole sight was painful to watch, trying to wrap my mind around the impossibility of it and just how many laws of physics were violated as Alice grew a glass dragon out of Mom’s prized windows.

“Oh, that’s just Alice,” I said.  “She and Cam are having a little spat.”

“I see.”  Teri sounded faint.  “Do we really want ring side seats for this?”

“Probably not.  Especially since Alice’s mirror magic can’t really do something like that on her own.  A stunt like that only works if she’s mirroring someone else’s magic, like, a kind of reflection of it.”

“Which means Cam’s probably test driving his new tattoo,” I added as a trumpeting roar shook the beach and a giant golden dragon crashed through the wall of my house.  “Also, run!”

I grabbed her by the hand and we tore down the beach, the sand catching at our heels and making us stumble.  The mirror dragon roared back, a strange tinkling sound somehow reminiscent of both wind chimes and nails on a chalkboard.  The ground darkened beneath their shadows as the two behemoths slammed together overhead, and then strange prisms of light danced across the dunes.  The sun was shining through Alice’s dragon as much as it was forced around it.  Her and her damn glass and mirrors.  She liked to mess with physics as much as possible.  You’d think she had a personal beef with Einstein or something.  

We reached the cliff and pressed ourselves up against its face.  I hoped the angle would be enough to protect us from sight.  I could never be sure how the logistics of Cam and Alice’s magic worked.  Alice could scry through mirrors, but could she see through her mirror dragon’s eyes?  And if so, would catching sight of me that way be enough to trigger the curse?  And what about Cam’s dragon?  Being a tattoo, I figured it probably had a closer link to him than Alice’s.

Ugh.  Fucking magic.  The headaches it gave were so not worth the price of admission.

“What do we do now?”  Teri panted.  I had no answer.  Instead we just stared up at the two beasts as they circled and dove through the air at each other.  The golden one caught the other by one leg with its talons, and with a crash and a ragged splitting sound glass rained from above.  The mirror dragon whipped its tail in response.  The shards at the ends of it ripped into the gold’s wing and blood fountained free.

******

“This is going to end well,” Teri muttered, but she followed me inside and up cracked hardwood steps.   We climbed three flights of stairs into the gloom of the seemingly deserted apartment building.  It wasn’t that late, but I heard no noises from the apartments we passed.  We made our way down a dingy hallway that sported dirty gray carpeting and stained green wallpaper.  The lights in the wall sconces were on their last legs.  A roach skittered out of our path.

I didn’t have to worry about ruining the locks on Megan’s door.  It was already ajar, and a Really Bad Feeling rose wailing from the pits of my stomach.  I batted it away and cautiously pushed the door all the way open.  It creaked on unoiled hinges as I stepped inside.

“Is it too late to go back to the car?”  Teri asked.  I raised a finger to my lips.  She hesitated and stepped across the threshold behind me.  The apartment inside was way better maintained than the rest of the building.  And my sister had been here recently, judging from the relative lack of dust lining the surfaces.  We ventured further inside.  I closed the door.

“Should I turn on the lights?” She wondered.  I shook my head and looked around.  It was sparsely furnished, with only the minimum of pieces.  A dining room table, a couple of wooden chairs.  A small TV stand beneath an even smaller TV.  A painfully bright orange couch probably rescued from some college dorm room, and a coffee table straight out of the Ikea catalogue.  There were two potted plants decorating a low, long set of bookshelves that stretched across one wall, beneath a window that opened out onto a fire escape.  Instead of books, the shelves were lined with dozens of glass jars.

“What are those?”  Teri wandered to the nearest jar and reached out a finger, just shy of touching it.  I pulled her back.  More jars crowded the kitchen table, the coffee table, the counters and shelves of the small corner kitchen.  They were all empty, just glass jars full of air, lids sealed tight and with tiny strips of masking tape to serve as labels.  Names and dates written across them in small letters.  Delicately printed in black Sharpie.

“Megan’s armory,” I whispered.  Couldn’t say why I felt a need to keep my voice down, but my Really Bad Feeling hadn’t fled far.  It still crouched behind my too-quickly beating heart, twined around my nerves, keeping them tight and coiled and ready to spring at the first sign of danger.  “Her magic is keyed to fingerprints.  She can find people with them, access their thoughts and histories.  Take on their shapes and skills and very identities.”

I picked one up, careful to keep my fingers around the lid, and raised it to the window.  Silver moonbeams spilled through the panes and shone through the glass of the jar.  Several fingerprints gleamed in the light.  Thumb, index, middle fingers of both hands.  “This is how she stores them.  So that even when she changes back to her real form and the person isn’t around anymore, she can still tap into them if she needs to use their shape or skills again.”

Teri drifted through the apartment, eyeing the jars with wide-eyed wonder.  “There must be hundreds of them.”

I shrugged.  “Megan’s always been more at home being other people than herself.”

It didn’t take a shrink to figure out that probably wasn’t that healthy, but we were Cunninghams.  Magic and issues came included, batteries sold separately.

“Micah, she has one of you.  And all the rest of your siblings, I think.”

I nodded and followed her into the kitchen, where nine jars sat by themselves right behind the sink.  “Yeah I know.  When she taps our fingerprints and takes our shapes, she can use our magic too.”

“Damn.  That’s pretty potent.”

“Yeah.  But it’s Megan.  She’s pretty much the only one of my siblings I’d trust with that kind of mojo.  I mean, Alice and Katie can sometimes kinda echo or mirror the stuff the rest of us can do, but they can’t tap into our power sources directly like Megan can.  Now if Rowan or Serena could do that – forget about it.  Time to run screaming.”

Teri chewed a strand of her hair, unconvinced.  “If you say so.  Why does she have one of her own fingerprints?”

“Oh.”  I frowned and looked back around the apartment.  I wasn’t even sure where to begin hunting for clues to her present whereabouts.  Maybe the dust could tell me something?  “She’s kinda paranoid about getting stuck in someone else’s shape and not being able to turn back into herself.  The magic’s – tricky like that, sometimes.”

******

“Micah, cover your eyes,” Trent yelled from somewhere nearby, and I obeyed on instinct.  It wasn’t that I suddenly trusted him again, it was just…I had no idea what the hell was going on anymore, and I was happy to listen to anyone who seemed to have some kind of grip on reality.

On the plus side, I was no longer convinced I was going crazy.  It was the universe I thought was going crazy, instead.

I felt the cold, slimy grasp of my brother’s shadows wind around me, and then there was a brief sense of disorientation, of the world falling away beneath me as he slipped me through dark nether dimensions.  I emerged into the cool humidity of the September New York night.

“Look straight ahead,” Trent directed then, coalescing from the shadows right next to me.  He reached out to grip my hand in his, and I jumped.  It took every bit of concentration I possessed, focusing intently on every nerve and muscle in my body as I fought the urge to glance over at him.  I may not have known what was really happening, but I knew triggering the curse was the last thing I could afford to do right now.

We were on the sidewalk in front of a traffic circle.  The tall bronze statue of a rearing horse and its rider loomed in front of us and its shadow stretched beneath the streetlights, landing at the shores of our feet.  Trent reached out a hand to caress the shadow of the horse’s back – I could see that much of him without anything happening – and with a restless shudder, it came to life.

“Cover your eyes,” he said, just before he grabbed the flailing hairs of the stallion’s mane and heaved himself up on its back.  “I’m going to pull you up, and then I need you to turn yourself around so you’re facing the other way from me.”

“Wait, you want me to ride your magic shadow horse backwards?”  I protested, even as I covered my eyes with one hand and let him drag me up behind him with the other.  I expected him to have to struggle a little, but he managed it with ease.  I’d forgotten how strong he was.  “Are you nuts?”

“Desperate times, desperate measures,” he said grimly, and I was reminded of a similar situation with Teri just a few hours ago.  It seemed like a lifetime already.  I settled on the horse and leaned back into my brother, wrapping one arm around his waist behind me and bracing the other against the muscled shadow flesh we sat upon.  Our steed pranced in place, aggressive and straining to be set free, but Trent held it back.  We were a block down from where Teri stood with Paul, Mina and the others, but they were racing in our direction, Paul gliding through the air while the other four sprinted down the block.  

“Trent, what the hell?”  I asked at last.  “Why is Teri with them?”

He didn’t answer at first, still consumed with the task of feeding some kind of directives to the shadow mount.  It reared up on its back legs, and I almost slid down its flanks before it landed on all four feet again.  Then we were off galloping down the street in quick, fluid motions.  The buildings whizzed by us.

“She’s their sister,” Trent said.  The winds of our passage burned my face and roared in my ears.  I had trouble breathing.

“What?”

“Paul, Mina, the other two, she’s their sister,” he said again.  “It wasn’t a coincidence that she was in the coffee shop this morning; she’s been following you for weeks.  Same with the other two guys…the one David, he’s got some kind of music magic, we think, he was tailing Cam, but could never get close.  The other one, Jonas, he was sticking by Alice.”

“How do you know this?”  It couldn’t be true, I mean, it couldn’t have all been a lie, right?  And yet, looking back behind us at Teri and her what, siblings, as they gave chase…I knew Trent wasn’t lying.  Paul rose into the air, climbing higher and higher into the sky.  He was arrowing towards the roof of a nearby apartment building.  From this distance I could just make out the outline of a woman…and then thunder crashed overhead and stormclouds gathered with supernatural speed, and I knew it was Serena.  Within seconds, rain came pouring down.  

“Let’s just say Serena and I had our own encounters with Paul and Mina,” Trent said grimly.  “Speaking of which, hang on.”

The stallion reared again and turned left onto a main street, still busy with traffic even at this late hour.  People leaned out their car windows to gawk at us, but at least the cover of night made it look like we were just randomly riding a horse through downtown Manhattan, rather than a physical manifestation of my brother’s shadow magic.  

The river of light that cascaded around the corner in pursuit of us was a little less easy to explain.  

Colors flowed down streetlamps and off flashing neon signs to join in the chase.  A serpentine length of red luminescence struck from the bulbs of a theater marquee, and we dodged just in time.  Blue and green ribbons split off from the gaudy sign of some high end night club, and the yellow beams of several cars’ headlights bent and swerved in mid-air to flank us on both sides.  

Strands of multi-colored light wove and twisted themselves around each other and across our path, looking like nothing so much as sparkling strands of DNA, complex double helixes that snapped at our heels and in front of us like tentacles or the arms of some demented, magical octopus.  Trent pulled darkness from rooftops and alleys and splashed them all around us, dousing the lights under buckets of black painted shadows.

We cut through a park and crossed a small man-made river, our horse running across the top of the water without making splash.  The other side led out into the heart of the concrete jungle, and curtains of light dropped down the lengths of skyscrapers all around us, gaining fast.

I realized we weren’t alone.  Alice was racing through the reflections alongside us, flashing briefly through one window before reappearing in the next.  She threw me a grin and then grew, until her reflection was one story high, and then two, and then three.  Giant sized Alice reached down with a hand that was six windows high and three windows wide, and grabbed a fistful of light like so many ribbons.  Despite everything, I laughed.  Silly Mina.  Don’t try and play with light when Alice and reflective surfaces are around.  My sister refracted the illumination through the windows of her body, and a thousand tiny golden threads shot back through the air at dizzying speeds, heading backwards along the trajectory that had led them here.    

Then space warped, and twisted.  My stomach tied itself in knots.  In the blink of an eye we were two blocks ahead and facing the other direction.  I’d never travelled so quickly or seamlessly with any of my siblings’ brands of magical transportation.

Space warped again, and a blink later the two guys I’d seen with Teri, Paul and Mina were standing in the intersection in front of us.

“Shit,” Trent cursed, but there wasn’t time for anything else.  One of the guys pursed his lips and whistled a sharp, vaulting melody.  David, I guessed.  His tune crescendoed up the musical scales and cracks raced up windows of the skyscrapers on both sides of the street in sympathetic harmony.  Alice opened her mouth in surprise and then the windows fell apart, raining down on us below.  The tinkling chimes of falling glass sounded almost like a scream as my sister’s reflection vanished.

“Alice!” I shouted and an answering screech echoed my cry.  Cam’s gold dragon dive bombed from above, plunging down the lengths of the buildings, jaws opened and ready to flame despite the rain coming down.  The other man grabbed handfuls of air and folded them.  Space twisted again, and a blink of an eye later and the mighty beast crashed into the street a block away.  “How is he doing that?”

“That’s Jonas,” Trent spat.  He threw a rolling wave of blackness hastily over Cam’s dragon like a blanket of shadows, and kept it advancing across the street towards the  other two men until Jonas just grabbed his brother and they blinked behind us.  “His magic’s something to do with crossroads, or intersections and doorways.  Can’t tell, it’s hard to pin down.”  

I nodded, feeling useless.  There wasn’t much I could do to help as long as Serena kept this storm up.  Any dust I could raise would just be beaten back down by the downpour.  Unfortunately, she didn’t have enough control over the waters she summoned to work around my magic.  She just turned storms on and off, she couldn’t control what they did or where they went once she’d conjured them.  Lightning flashed and Mina wrestled control of the jagged electric spears from wherever she was hiding.  A bolt crashed down into the street right next to us and the sudden burst of illumination extinguished Trent’s shadow stallion in a wash of white light.  We fell to the ground.

I think it was safe to say we were getting our asses kicked at this point.

*******

By the time it dissipated, Trent and Cam had vanished, and Serena was pulling a pouch full of small glass vials from her pocket.  Alice was several stores down from us, and every time she passed a window her reflection leapt out and joined her, until the far courtyard was filled with an abundance of Alices.

“Can Jonas come out and play?”  She called mockingly.  The target of her derision jumped to his feet and took off across the tiled floor.  But instead of sprinting towards her, he was headed in the opposite direction, running scared.  Space warped and he crossed the room in the span of a few blinks, jumping intervals of twenty feet at a time.  But then Alice stepped out of a window right in front of him, and slapped him in the face, fingernails hooked like claws.  Blood spewed from his lip and he blinked away.

Only to find another Alice waiting for him.  He blinked again, and she was there too.  Everywhere he jumped, there was a reflection of her waiting.  And for every reflection, she had a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, until he was mobbed by her in multitudes, no matter which way he turned.

A sound like nails on chalkboard scraped across the atrium and I turned to see a chalk outline sketching itself along the wall of the courtyard’s upper floor, overlooking us from above.  Stark white lines superimposed themselves across walls, windows and doors, the shape and imagery of crackling flames that sprang to life.  First they flickered two dimensionally, then they gained depth and volume, color and voice and fire ringed the floor above.  Cam appeared, leaning over the upper balcony as he scooped his hand through the flames.  Molding a perfect sphere he hurled it at David, raining down fire from above.

I’d totally forgotten how much of a pyro he was.  Freak.

Paul levitated straight up into the center of the courtyard, his winds sweeping up water from a large bubbling fountain in front of the nearest department store.  He flung a mini-typhoon at Cam’s inferno.  The flames hissed angrily when doused, but there were a lot of them and Cam didn’t need much to fuel for his fireballs.  He grinned and threw several more at David in quick succession.  The last Bradley brother sang a quick, discordant melody that slammed into the balcony beneath Cam, shaking it and tossing him from his feet.

Serena drew forth a vial of her tears and threw it to the ground in front of David.  The glass shattered and smoking acid bubbled forth, eating away at the tiled floor and spreading like a virus.  He cried out and jumped back, and Paul whipped up another wave to wash away the acid.  Then he caught Serena in a whirlwind and threw her into the fountain.

Mina crooked her fingers at me and multi-colored rays of light shot in my direction.  I dodged and a shadow hound hurtled itself from a corner behind her and knocked her to the ground.  I pointed my hand at the ceiling and rained debris down on her, burying her in a mound of rubble and then I was falling too, somehow gone from the floor to the ceiling in the blink of an eye.  Crap.  Fucking Jonas.

I hollered in a possibly slightly unmanly fashion and flailed arms and legs uselessly, but I couldn’t muster the concentration needed to turn myself to dust when falling from two stories up.  I jerked to a stop anyways, bobbing up and down in the air like I’d reached the end of a bungee cord, and I looked across the way to see giant sized Alice reflected in a window.  She held my T-shirt pinched between massive fingers.

She set me down gently, and then she was gone, racing through windows.  I caught sight of Teri behind me in a reflection, and I spun as she conjured more of her sister’s light shows in a riotous rainbow display that sparked and fizzled around me like fireworks.  I stumbled backwards, and Cam sketched himself into the scene between us, appearing first as lines drawn into the air, then fleshing out with color and dimension.  

Teri set her jaw and a wall of shadows surged forth from a shop behind her and poured into the shape of a pack of snapping wolves.  Cam swept his hand through the first shadow wolf and turned the memory into a photo, mashing it down into two dimensions bordered within a Polaroid frame, a snapshot of any of the dozens of times Trent had pulled that trick when we were kids.  

A silver and copper cloud of coins erupted from the fountains and came wailing our way with all the screeching fury of a banshee.  Cam made a picture of that memory too, and a snapshot of Rowan’s typical gaudy display of force fluttered to the floor.  Teri sketched fireballs from mid-air, cried tears of acid rain and drafted ghosts to animate the mannequins the department store windows.  They marched our way like so many toy soldiers, but Cam packed them all up in a small frame and banished the memory with just a photograph to keep in its place.

She yelled in frustration and turned and ran down a side corridor, headed for the escalators to a lower level.  I sprinted after her, Cam close behind me, but a harsh, grating melody cracked the ground in between us, forging a jagged chasm that left Cam on the other side.  He whipped off his shirt and his panther tattoo leaped free, bounding across the floor towards a wide-eyed David.  The other man ducked behind a potted plant and conjured a tune to soothe the savage beast.

*****

I rose to my knees, choking - but it wasn’t his grip on my neck that had me gasping for air. His magic was a sandstorm swirling in my lungs. Every breath I took stabbed the walls of my throat with shards of spells and broken glass. Paul grinned down at me through the white spots dotting my vision and I batted at his arm, trying desperately to break free. Dude was on steroids or I was really just that scrawny, but either way, I was still going to die here. Young. Virginal. Alone.

Epic fail, universe. Epic fail.

And then winter came early.

The sharp crackle of ice knifed through the empty food court like an overactive toddler popping bubble wrap without supervision. And if you don’t like my similes, blame my brain’s current lack of oxygen. Paul let his magic and me slip free and I slid bonelessly to the floor, wheezing and flopping around like a geriatric trout with asthma and a smoking problem. I raised my head in search of whoever had kicked the AC into overdrive and found my sister standing regally at the top of the escalator.

God. She was such a drama queen.

Serena was soaked head to toe from her impromptu swim in the fountains earlier, but if it bothered her you’d never know. A silent wind tossed her raven hair behind her, and an endless stream of water dripped from her t-shirt and jeans, pooling around her bare feet and cascading down the steps of the escalator in far more quantities than her clothes could have ever contained. Her face was pinched tight with cold fury, and a chill leaked from her bone-white skin. Frost coated the railing of the escalator beneath her hand and three frozen tears tracked slowly down her cheeks. Big Sis was pissed, and I was just glad that for once it didn’t seem to be at me.

I scooted out of the way just to be on the safe side.

“I think you‘ve been a pain in my family‘s collective asses long enough.” Serena announced into the vastness.  Only the rhythmic trickle of water rushing forth from her kept her voice from echoing like a bell.  Like a death knell.  “And no one gets to kill my baby brother except me.”

Now that was just unnecessary. I frowned. “Okay, see, stuff like this is exactly the reason Megan’s my favorite sister.”

They ignored me in favor of making angry eyes at each other. Serena started slowly down the escalator. One frozen tear dripped free of her cheek and fell into the water puddled at her feet, freezing it over in an instant. It spread forth from there in a river of blue-white light, rattling like dancing ice cubes. Unlike the glaciers they resembled, there was nothing slow moving about either her anger or her magic. The ice coated the escalator in seconds and raced towards Paul.

He swore and leapt higher into the air, twisting, shimmering until he was nothing but fog and mist. Pale smoke riding the wind. Serena smiled, showing teeth, and raising a hand to her cheek collected a second frozen tear on her fingertip. She flicked it at the rising fog and Paul crashed into a near table, all tangled limbs and solid, weighty flesh. He jumped upright but the ice reached him before he could take a step.  It locked him in place and kept climbing slowly up his legs.

“Bitch -” he snarled as Serena reached him. She silenced him, pinching his lips together between her fingers. His eyes bulged, furious, but the ice had reached his arms by then and locked them at his sides.

Paul tried to shout something between smashed together lips, but Serena just reached her finger to her cheek again and collected her last tear, placing it on the tip of his nose.

“No more talking now,” she whispered. His eyes widened but too late. The ice rushed over his face and down his chest, pale blue forks of frost burrowing deep beneath his skin and replacing his veins. In moments he was completely translucent. Not just covered in ice, but flesh become ice. Serena pushed gently and he toppled over backwards, shattering with a sharp screech like a single, stunted scream.

*******

We made it as far as the escalator before a song hit us full in the chest, knocking us both on our asses and sliding back along the floor.

“Murderer!” David shouted at Serena.  He whistled two sharp, high notes, and she raised her hands to her head, screaming in agony.  Whatever he did to her passed, and she glared at him through dripping eyes.

“Pot, meet kettle,” she coughed and brushed a finger across her face.  She flicked the moisture she found there at him and he stumbled back, hollering as her tears raised red burn marks across his skin.  They burrowed into his flesh, worming their way down to blood and bone.  David sang a song of agony and rage, and the ground erupted beneath Serena, plunging her into a hole that gaped open like a ready grave.

He turned towards me with red-rimmed and hate-filled eyes, spitting out sharp, staccato notes that hammered into the wall behind me, punching holes into the plaster.  One note caught me in the shoulder and I spun, thrown backwards by the impact.

“You people,” he rasped, standing over me and placing a hand above my chest, “have caused my family nothing but grief.”

David started humming and I gasped as I felt his magic wash over me.  His music matched the rhythm of my heartbeat, and then he twisted his song.  My heartbeat followed the lead of his music, angrily accelerating at a supernaturally rapid pace.  My heart rate tripled in seconds.  I grabbed frantically at my chest.  It felt like it was going to explode.  Was this what a heart attack felt like?  Or was this something else altogether?

******

I was eight.  Katie nine, Rowan eleven.  We were in the 7-11 nearest our house, which meant a three mile hike, basically.  Which also meant we were entirely justified in any trouble we got up to there as a result.  We’d earned it, after all.  

So Katie and I prowled the aisles of the empty convenience mart, snickering as we grabbed every bag of candy and oddly flavored soda that caught our eyes.  Rowan dutifully added them to his already overloaded hand basket, laughing himself each time a new addition made the mountain of junk food spill over the sides and onto the floor.  We scrambled to gather it all up off of the stained linoleum tiles and piled it in the basket.  And then Rowan would struggle to pick it up again, usually with a violent heave that made it all spill back to the floor.  We made a big production of it.  We had time to kill.

The lone clerk watched us with bored, jaded eyes.  He was red haired under the cheap visor they all wore here, and skinny and pale beneath even cheaper fluorescent lights that buzzed and flickered sporadically.  Freckles, acne and a sour disposition marred his face.  Peach colored fuzz that could use some grooming spotted his chin and his uniform shirt was wrinkled and dirty.  If ever there was a kid who hated his job more, I’d yet to meet them.  Judging from his frown, he definitely knew us.  But then, it was a small town in North Carolina, and our family had something of a reputation.  Everyone knew us.  

Restless fingers fidgeted with the scanner – probably itching for a cigarette, if his teeth were any indication, yuck - and every so often he would look up like he was about to say something.  Maybe yell at us to get out.  He definitely knew we were going to make his otherwise peaceful shift difficult.  He just hadn’t figured out how yet, or how to prevent it.

I almost felt bad for him.  But then, I was a total shit back then, so the feeling passed and I added some more M&M’s to the basket.

By the time we got up to the register, our basket was so full I had to help Rowan get it up on the counter.  The bell over the door tinkled as three more customers piled into the store and headed straight for the beer, talking loudly at each other and giving each other obnoxious shoves on the way.  The clerk sighed.  Rowan grinned.  Katie smothered giggles behind her hands.

It took several minutes to scan everything in our basket, and by the time the clerk gave us our total of fifty some odd dollars and change, the three men were waiting in line behind us and two more customers were wandering the aisles.  

“You sure you can pay for all of this, kid?”  The clerk asked.

Rowan made a show of digging around in his pockets, and nodded.  He looked up with an apologetic smile, his face as angelic as I’d ever seen it.  He was still capable of seeming innocent back then.  I attributed it to the baby fat still lining his cheeks.  “I only have change.  Is that okay?”

The clerk looked like he’d just swallowed a lemon.  “I’ve got other customers waiting, and I don’t have time for games, kid.”

Rowan bit his lip and seemed to give this some thought.  “Can I give you what I have and anything else you can just put back?”

He sighed.  “Hurry it up, then.”

“Cool,” Rowan said and pulled two big handfuls of change out of his pockets.  Dumping them on the counter, he started to count them out.  Slowly.  It was mostly nickels and dimes.  The customers behind us started to stir restlessly.

“Here, let me help you,” the clerk said, and tried to reach for the coins scattered all across the glass counter.

“Hey, I can do it!  I’m in fifth grade you know.”  My brother glared.

“I didn’t mean that you couldn’t.”  The kid behind the counter knew better than to lose his patience with any customer, even a little punk like my brother.  Especially with the two women who’d been browsing the store now standing in line as well and smiling indulgently at that same little punk.  Rowan knew how to run a con even before middle school.  He might be a dickhead, but he was as precocious as all of us, in his own way.

It took about five minutes to count all the change on the counter, and it came to a little over eleven dollars.  The clerk moved to take some of the candy off the total, but Rowan stopped him, digging around in his pockets again.

“Wait!  I think I have some more.”  He pulled another two handfuls from his pockets and dropped them on the counter.  This time there were almost twice as many coins.

The clerk stared, confused.  I could see him trying to figure out how my brother had all that change in his pockets.  There was no way he’d been walking around with twenty to thirty dollars in pocket change weighing him down just a few minutes ago.  Katie squeaked behind her hands and shook with silent laughter.  Rowan just beamed and resumed counting.

“Hey, aren’t you in my sister Serena’s class?”  He asked the clerk, seeming distracted by his math.

“What?”  The clerk was busy eyeing the men behind us nervously.  I took a peek behind us at them, and one of them scowled down at me beneath a thick salt and pepper mustache and squinting red eyes.  He wasn’t happy.  I smiled politely.

“My sister,” Rowan said.  “Serena Cunningham?  I think you’re in her class at school.”  He pulled another handful of change from his pocket and started counting it out.  All pennies this time.

“Yeah, I know Serena.  How much more change do you have, kid?  I really need to get to my other customers.”

“I don’t know.” Rowan gave him a withering look.  “That’s why I’m counting.  And I’m not ‘kid.’  I have a name.”

“Sorry, ki-“, the clerk started to say impatiently, before he caught himself.  He tried to smile in apology at the customers behind us, but they weren’t having it and he wasn’t as practiced at it as Rowan.

“And you shouldn’t call my sister a slut,” Rowan continued.  He was still intent on his counting, but when Katie and I looked at him, startled, we could see he wasn’t keeping his head down for any great attempt at concentration.  He was just trying to hide the smirk that played across his lips.

“What?”

“My sister, Serena?  You shouldn’t call her a slut.  It’s not a nice word,” my brother said.  He was the very picture of innocence.

The clerk swallowed, really nervous now.  His eyes darted around, but he found no support from the customers behind us.  Particularly not from the two women who were by now listening intently.

“I didn’t,” he started to protest, but Rowan cut him off.

“Oh.  That’s too bad.  Because my brothers think you did, and they’re kinda pissed.  You know my brothers right?  Trent and Dennis?  Trent’s on the football team.”

“Yeah, I know them,” the clerk said weakly.  His face was looking considerably paler now.  I wasn’t totally sure what was going on anymore, but I had picked up enough at this point to take some pleasure in that.  

“Serena doesn’t know you said that yet, though, so that’s lucky,” Rowan continued.  He pulled out some more change.  “Because she’s a lot worse to piss off than my brothers.  Trust me.  When she gets mad, oh man.  Look out, you know?”

The clerk swallowed.  His head bobbed up and down.

“Look,” he said.  “I’ve really got to get to my other customers.  How about I just take care of the rest of this stuff for you?  It’s on the house.”

“Really?  Are you sure?  I think I have enough change for the rest, still.”

“No, it’s cool, I’ve got it.”  He hurriedly piled our spoils of war into a few plastic bags and shoved them across the counter at us.  “And tell your sister that whatever she hears about Jimmy, from trig class?  Tell her he’s really sorry and he just was really drunk at that party and said some stupid shit – stuff, I mean, he just said some stupid things.”

“Okay, I’ll try,” Rowan said, sounding a little doubtful as the three of us pulled the bags off the counter.  They were so heavy they almost dropped straight to the floor, but we managed.  “I don’t know if it’ll help though.  She doesn’t always listen to me, you know.  She thinks I’m just a kid.”

Weighed down by our bags, we tottered out the door.  One of the women from line had to help us with it and she beamed down at Rowan.

“Thank you ma’am,” he said politely.  The door chimed overhead and we made our way outside into the sweltering spring humidity.  Heat danced off the pavement, twisting the air in warped, waving ribbons.  I could still smell the smoke from the clerk’s last cigarette break and I looked back into the store.  He was staring after us while ringing up the next guy.

“Rowan, what’s a slut?”  I asked.  We crossed the street to the small shaded park on the next block.

“It’s a bad word nobody’s ever allowed to say about our sisters.  Got it?”

I nodded vigorously.  Katie looked thoughtful.  Then she clapped her hands and started to skip.  The sound of her handclap echoed back to the convenience store’s parking lot and a sudden boom erupted in the middle of the three or four cars there.  Two different car alarms started blaring in opposition to each other, off tempo and allowing no reprieve from their wails.  Still weighed down by our bags, we ran off through the park, laughing as customers piled out of the store to see what had happened.

It took us three hours to eat all that candy.  We were up puking most of the night.  Totally worth it.

*******

“Micah!  Katie!  Get back here!”

We laughed and ignored Serena, continuing our wild spins across the hallway.  Our sneakers squeaked across the stained white floor, probably accounting for a good half of the short black streaks that marred its surface.  Then we lost our balance and crashed together.  We fell in a tangled heap against the water fountain, but this only made us laugh harder.  And Serena more pissed.

“Seriously you two, enough!  We’re in a hospital,” she hissed.  Uncomfortable green chairs lined the hallway, but just because she was sitting in one reading her stupid magazine didn’t mean we had to.  Reading was boring.  Spinning was fun.  It seemed self-explanatory to me, but she reached down and grabbed me by the arm anyways, pulling me to my feet and steering me into the seat next to her.

“But why?”  I said.  I moaned and kicked my feet.  “We’re not sick.”

“Yeah,” Katie chimed, dancing out of reach of Serena’s grasping talons.  Her fingernails were long and pointy and they hurt.  “We never get sick.”

“Katie, sit!”  Serena snapped her fingers and got that dangerous look in her eyes.  Katie sulked but plopped next to me.  You could only push Serena so far, after all.  “And you had your chance to go home with Trent.  You’re the ones who wanted to wait here until Mom got off work, well here we are.  Running around and acting like baboons while people are trying to get better wasn’t part of the deal.”

I rolled my eyes and slid down my seat like a snake.  Her arm lashed out like an even faster one and pinned me in place before I could squirm all the way to the floor.  “No, we wanted ice cream,” I clarified.  “Mom said we could have some when she got done working.”

Which nobody told me would take hours.  I felt lied to.

“Yeah, I changed my mind,” Katie said.  “Can we go home now?”

“No, we cannot go home now.  Trent has the car and I’m not ferrying you brats home in Mom’s just to turn around and have to come back and pick her up.  Now stay put, zip it, and stop pissing me off.”

She gave us a stern glare and whipped her magazine back up in front of her face.  Katie and I eyed each other.  Rowan would say she was being a B-I-T-C-H, and I mouthed as much to my sister.  She giggled, and Serena snapped.  “Watch it, Micah!”

I sat bolt upright and wiped the guilt off my face as best I could.  “I didn’t say anything!”

“Learn to be less predictable, baby brother.  And stop hanging around Rowan so much.  He’s a bad influence.”

She flipped a page and dismissed us.  I crossed my arms and joined Katie in sulking.  This sucked.  There was nothing to do.  Serena sucked.  She wouldn’t even let us get candy from the candy machine.

“Can I have money for the candy machine?”  I tried again anyways.

“No.”

“Then can I just use my magic – “

“No.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” started echoing up and down the length of the hallway, bouncing from wall to floor to ceiling and back again like someone was dribbling a basketball while paying no attention to gravity.

“Katie!”  Serena slapped her magazine against her leg.  

“I didn’t do it!”

Our oldest sister shook her head and rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes.  “Mom really needs to start paying me for this.”

The automatic doors at the end of the hallway wheezed open..  A nurse in flower-decorated scrubs slowly wheeled an old man past us.  For several minutes, Katie and I passed a century’s worth of commiseration back and forth via athletic facial contortions.

Serena ignored us.  I nudged her leg with my knee.  “Rena.  Rena.  Rena!”

“What?!”

“Now can I have change for the candy machine?” I grinned up at her.  She groaned and threw her head back.  It banged into the picture right behind her on the wall.  Katie laughed and wiggled out of her seat onto the ground.

“Katie. Off.  The.  Floor.”

“Yeah Katie.  Somebody probably threw up on there.”

“Eww!”  She shrieked and jumped to her feet, blond hair swinging wildly as she scrubbed herself.  It hit me in the face.

“Eww, puke hair.”  I howled and shoved her away from me.

“That’s it!”  Serena stood and pointed down the hall.  “Both of you!  Go find Dennis and Alice.  You can be their problem now.”

I looked at Katie.  She looked at me.  This sounded too good to be true.  It had to be a trick.

“Where are they?” I asked cautiously.

“I don’t know.  Why don’t you go find out?”

I looked back at Katie.  She shrugged.

“Okay!”  We took off running down the hall.

“And don’t go in anyone’s room,” Serena hollered after us.  We made no promises.

Instead we slid around corners and chased each other down halls, ducking into doorways and behind water coolers and crash carts any time we crossed paths with hospital staff.  Even we knew better than to make Mom look bad at work.  Well, not intentionally anyways.

“Where are they?”  I complained at last.  Katie stopped and squinted, sparking a speculative gleam in one eye.  

She cupped her hands around her mouth and whispered.  “Oh Dennis…”

Then she cocked her head and listened as her echoes travelled through every room in the hospital.  He must have answered in some way only her magic could hear.  Either that or my sister was really good at holding one-sided conversations.

“We’re looking for you.  Where are you?”

“What’s he saying?” I hissed.  Katie waved her hand at me, concentrating.

“Come on,” she said at last, racing down the hall towards a pair of heavy double doors.  She smacked the metal plate on the wall that opened them automatically.  “Follow me!”

We sprinted down another hallway and through a side door and up a flight of stairs, taking them two at a time and shouting “echo, echo, echo” down the stairwell in our wake.  The hospital was a maze of corridors that all looked exactly alike, and there were way too many people to dodge, even at nine o’clock at night.  Wasn’t everyone supposed to be asleep by now?  The only reason we weren’t was because Mom was still working.  And we hadn’t gotten ice cream yet.

Even following the course Katie’s magic laid out, it took us a good ten minutes to find Dennis and Alice.  We plowed to a stop just outside the doorway of a room on the third floor.  The lights were off and our siblings were hovering around the bed of a sleeping man around Mom’s age.  Katie and I looked at each other, debating the wisdom of defying an Edict of Serena and venturing inside the room.  For now we settled on just peeking around the doorframe.

“What are you guys doing?” I asked.  Dennis jumped and Alice glared.

“Shh!”

Katie threw up her hands in exasperation.  “Why does everyone keep saying that?  It’s not like we’re in a library.”

“Katie, he’s sleeping.”  Alice squinched her eyes at us through her new square-rimmed glasses.  She looked like a total dork, but Mom said she couldn’t have contacts again until she learned to take care of them properly.  Dennis didn’t say anything.  Just looked nervous.

Clearly, something very interesting was afoot.  Interesting enough, I decided, to risk the Wrath of Serena.  I ventured a cautious step into the room.  No lightning rained down on me from above, and growing bold, I walked over to my brother and sister.  Katie shrugged and followed.

“Are you sure he’s sleeping?”  I asked doubtfully.  “He looks dead.”

“He’s not dead,” Alice said.  “And you two shouldn’t be up here anyways.  Go find Serena.”

“Ugh,” Katie moaned and stamped her foot.  “Serena said go find you.  You say go find Serena.  I’m tired of finding people.  I want to stay right here.”

She folded up and sat smack in the middle of the floor with crossed arms and a defiant stare.  The room was silent save for the occasional slow and steady beep of a heart monitor.

“Puke floor,” I whispered at last.

“Oh shut up, Micah!”

Alice sighed.  “Fine.  You can stay, but be quiet.  Dennis needs to concentrate.”

“Why does Dennis need to concentrate?”  Alice ignored me and turned back to one of her boring textbooks, sitting on a nightstand next to the guy’s bed.  She flipped pages with purpose.  I felt neglected, and turned to my brother.  “Why do you need to concentrate, Dennis?”

My older brother licked his lips and darted a quick glance at me.  I’d never seen him so nervous.  He opened his mouth but instead only shook his head and turned back to the sleeping man.  Who still looked dead to me.  

“He’s not dead, Micah,” Alice said when I declared as much.  She never looked up from her pages of gross looking pictures.  “He’s just in a coma.”

“Like the guy from Sleepless in Seattle?” Katie asked excitedly, perking up from her seat on the floor.  It was this old movie Serena had acted a scene from for drama class.  She’d watched it like, a thousand times to study it or whatever.  Katie was addicted to it.  

“No, not like the movies.  He has a rare blood disease.  Dennis is going to cure it.”

“Wow,” Katie breathed, eyes wide.

“Huh,” I said.  I grabbed the railing on one side of the bed and stood on my toes for a better look.  Dennis was on the other side of the bed, staring down at the man.  He looked like he was about to faint, like Rowan did that time he woke up face to face with the snake Cam put in his bed.  “You can do that, Dennis?”

“No.  No, I can’t.  This was a stupid idea,” my brother blurted suddenly.  He ran for the door.  Alice grabbed his arm as he passed.  “Get out of my way, Alice.”

“Dennis, wait,” she said.  “You can do this.  You came to me, remember?”

Dennis hesitated, shaking his head.  His messy black curls flopped over his forehead and hid his eyes.  Alice jabbed a finger into his chest.

“You said you could feel it.  You felt the badness in his blood, and you wanted to know what it was.”

“I could,” he whispered.  “I mean, I can.”

“Well then you can take it away!”  Alice gestured triumphantly.  “Look, its just like the pictures in my book.  This is what the diseased blood cells look like, and this is what they should look like.  You just have to use your magic, change the bad cells to healthy ones.”

“I can’t.  I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“Well duh, that’s because you’re a wimp.”  Our brainiac sister rolled her eyes.  “You have just as much magic as the rest of us do, you just need to stop being so scared to use it.”

“That’s easy for you to say!  Your magic can’t kill people.”

Alice reared back, insulted.  “My magic could so totally kill people.”

Feeling neglected again, I piped up.  “So could mine!”

Katie bobbed on the floor, raising her hand.  “Me too!”  She frowned and wrinkled her nose.  “Wait, why are we killing people?”

“We’re not,” Alice said severely.  “Nobody’s killing anybody.  That’s the point.  Dennis, you can do this.  You could totally save this guy’s life.”

I really had no idea what was going on, but when Dennis still hesitated, rocking back and forth on his feet uncertainly, I supplied additional incentive.  “And then we can get ice cream!”

“”Micah!”  My brother snapped.  “Just, be quiet okay?”

I huffed and flopped on the floor next to Katie.  She leaned over and patted my leg sympathetically.  “You know how everyone’s always like, Micah why can’t you be more helpful?” I griped at her.  “See?  This is why!”

She nodded, sharing my pain.

Dennis took a deep breath.  His hands flexed at his sides, clenching and unclenching.  “You really think I can do it?”

“Yes!” I shouted.

“Oh my gosh, just doooooooooo it,” Katie moaned, rolling on her side on the floor.  Both our older siblings whipped out their soon-to-be-shouting faces again, and she sat back up.  “Oh.  They weren’t talking to us.”

“Well, I don’t think we should talk to them either,” I said.  “How is your day, sister Katie?”

“Very boring, brother Micah.  How is yours?”

Dennis and Alice stared at us some more, but we pointedly ignored them.  That’s when you put extra effort into ignoring someone.  I know because Serena said she was doing it to me all the time.  Alice put her hand on Dennis’ arm.  “You’ve so got this.  Just let the magic guide you.”

Despite their extreme rudeness Katie and I both watched, fascinated, as Dennis took another deep breath and with a shaky nod walked back over to the bed.  He raised his hands over the not-dead guy’s chest and looked at them, turning them this way and that as though he didn’t know what to do with them.  Alice peeked out the door into the hallway and checked both ways.

“The coast is clear,” she said.

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Katie muttered.  Alice shot her a quizzical look.  “Even though noooooooobody will tell me what’s going on, I made it sound like everyone is sleeping up here.  You guys are really loud.  That’s how much I love you.”

She sniffed.  Pointedly.  “Just so you know.”

Alice closed her eyes and Dennis laughed, looking up for just a second.

“Thanks Katie.  I love you too.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Come on, Dennis,” Alice said, walking back to stand next to him.  She squeezed his arm.  “You’ve got this.”

My brother curled his fingers one more time and then spread them wide.  A warm, ruddy glow started in his fingertips and spread until a wash of red light bathed the bed beneath his hands.  I’d only seen Dennis unleash his blood magic a couple times before.  Like Alice said, it wasn’t something he liked to use a lot.  But each of those times it’d been an angry, violent color.  Hungry, almost.  But this was different.  Comforting.  A wide grin broke across Dennis’ face.  Alice made small approving sounds.

Then a small tendril of darker red wiggled up from the bed, swimming across the pool of light like a worm or small snake weaving its way across a field.  Panic chased the elation from my brother’s expression and he snatched his hands back.

“Dennis, no!  You have to let it finish,” Alice shouted, but it was too late.  The light had vanished as though someone had flicked off a switch.  We all knew our brother well enough to know he wouldn’t be touching it again anytime soon.  The steady beeps of the heart monitor changed to an angry, insistent whine and Katie shrieked and clapped her hands over her ears.  The man on the bed started jerking like a puppet dragged clumsily across the floor, yanking on the wires and tubes that connected him to machines alongside the bed.  Alice frantically tried to hold him in place.  “Dennis, help me!”

But Dennis just backed further away from the bed, looking anywhere but it as he put as much distance between himself and the man as he could.  Then he ran out of room, his back up against the window along one wall.  He clutched at the curtains, knuckles white around fistfuls of fabric.

Footsteps pounded down the hall outside, accompanied by urgent shouting, and a small mob of people in blue and green scrubs and white coats started to pour into the room.  Mom was in the front, and she pulled up in shock when she saw the four of us, questions and horror rising simultaneously in her eyes as she took in the scene and leaped to her own conclusions.

“I was trying to help,” Dennis said in a small voice.  He looked terrified.  Alice looked guilty, but couldn’t seem to figure out if she should aim it at him or our mother.  She bent and grabbed Katie and I by the arms, dragging us to our feet and propelling us across the room towards Dennis.  We piled into him and back into the window.  It opened up into new dimensions and the room fell away as Alice led us into the reflection and away from the mess we had made.          

***** 

Cam launched himself at Trent with an animal, inarticulate cry, crashing into the bigger boy and knocking them both back into the glass coffee table.  It shattered under their combined weight and glittering shards sprayed everywhere.

“Cam!”  Megan shrieked.  She and Alice jumped off the couch.

“Both of you, cut it out!”  Dennis snapped, pushing off the wall.

They ignored him as shadows massed into a line of leering wolves and poured in a wave at Cam, knocking him off of Trent and onto his ass.  They clawed and bit at him and he cried out before arching his back.  His skin bubbled, and his panther tattoo fought its way free of the two dimensional confines of his flesh.  Growling as it grew to full size, it leapt at Trent.

“Dennis, do something!”  Alice yelled.

“What do you want me to do?  I could hurt them both!”  He yelled back, panicked.  He paced at the edge of the fight, hesitant to step in the middle of the chaos.  Trent rolled across the ground, struggling with Cam’s panther.  Its jaws were inches from his face, snapping furiously as he frantically held it at bay.  Shadows flowed up the lengths of his arms, wrapping them in gauntlets ,and absorbing some form of strength from them he threw the great cat across the room.  It slammed into the wall and flipped back to its feet before leaping back into the fray, this time aiming for the dark swirling dogpile Cam was buried beneath.

“Now is not the time for performance anxiety!  Do your slow the blood trick and put them to sleep.”

“I can’t,” Dennis insisted, shaking his head.  His unkempt black hair flew wildly.  “Serena, stop them!”

Serena was standing with eyes closed and fists clenched tight.  Tears streamed down her face.  The windows slammed open, rattling in their frames and a warm breeze flowed into the room.  I inched back along the walls as the air grew thick and heavy with humidity.  We were all sweating, I noticed.

“I am,” she said, icily calm.  

“Well that doesn’t sound good,” Alice whispered.  She grabbed her book and scrambled to the door.  Rowan beat her to it.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!”  Katie screamed at our brothers, now wrestling on the floor.  Cam slammed a fist into Trent’s face, and his nose erupted in a spray of blood that spattered across the white carpet.

Katie’s magic kicked in and the echoes of her shout multiplied.  Rebounding from wall to wall, they increased in intensity each time until they were a single, continuous high pitched whine that clawed through our ears and made straight for our brains.  I fell to my knees, clutching at my temples.  Beside me, Dennis and Megan did the same.  Caught in the grip of their own magic, Cam, Trent and Serena were afforded some protection.  Then the ground started to shake.

The far side of the living room was lined with a wet bar, Dad’s pride and joy that he insisted would come in handy for all the parties he wanted to throw.  This was before he realized he’d fathered a litter of freaks, of course.  It’s hard to pretend you’ll still be inviting company over after your eldest two toddlers have spawned thunderstorms and armies of shadow goblins whenever they felt neglected by their parents.  Now the wet bar was rolling as if it were caught in the epicenter of an earthquake.  The faucets in the sink vibrated in fury.  I looked outside and saw thick fogs weaving their way through the windows.  Every glass surface in the room was streaked with condensation.

Then the fog poured in, a single, rolling wave and it wasn’t fog anymore - it was a literal wave of crashing water that slammed into our midst.  The first crush hit Cam and Trent directly, but we all got caught in the backwash.  All save Serena, who stood calm and composed and utterly unaffected as the raging waters whirled through the room, hurtling us against the walls.  

The wave subsided as swiftly as it had been summoned, escaping down the hallways and probably out the side doors.  We all coughed and sputtered, spitting out mouthfuls of water as we dragged ourselves, sopping wet, off the floor.

“Damn, Rena.”  Rowan’s voice floated from above.  He and Alice were crouched at the top of the stairs in the foyer.  They peered down the length of the hall through the doorway.  

“Seriously,” Megan said, scowling and stomping her feet through puddles.  “Overkill much?”

Serena shrugged, unfazed.  “It’s not quite what I was going for, but can’t argue with results.  I trust I made my point?”

That last was directed at Trent and Cam.  They both grimaced at her and glared at each other, but the effect was somewhat lessened by the fact that they looked like drowned rats.  

Trent opened his mouth, no doubt for some smartass rebuttal, but it never came.  Instead we all followed his gaze past Serena.

“Uh oh,” Megan muttered.  “Mom’s home.”

 She stood in the far doorway, still in her hospital scrubs.  Her hair, streaked with gray, was pulled tightly into a bun and her mouth even more tightly in a frown.  Serena started to speak, looking guilty for the first time, but Mom just raised her hand.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she said.  I think we all winced at how tired she sounded.  It was always easier when she was angry.  Then we could muster righteous indignation at how parents just don’t understand us and all that.  But here, this, now….there was really no way to justify anything that had just happened.

[smuttyfairy]

Bad Dracula (M)

(Gif Credit goes to Admin Smuttyfairy) Genre: Horror/Smut/Romance Summary: Lisa, your best friend, loves to party. You love quiet nights where you can dream about her friend Bambam. Bambam loves your smile, and your slender neck. A pushy invitation to a party, A wet dream that turns into a nightmare, and wait- are those fangs? (Vampire AU, Bambam x Reader, Best Friend!Lisa x Reader) Warnings: Suffocation, Assault, Blood, Alcohol use Word count: 6,136 Written by: Smutty Jaefairy A/N: Here’s something I’ve meant to upload for a while now. I hope you guys enjoy! (I promise I’ll write less Bambam in the future OTL ) 

Lisa: We need new blood tonight.

You glanced at the message in your inbox, clicking on it warily. Lisa, your best friend, had mentioned these exclusive parties she would go to every so often. People would dress to impress, picking a different location every time.

Sometimes it was a yacht in the middle of the ocean, or even a dilapidated closed down fast food place.

Lisa could go on for hours about her crazy adventures. You were amused, but not quite surprised. Lisa was always looking for an adventure, or better yet you could say she looked for trouble. Letting the message load, you read her message out loud to yourself.

Lisa: I'm so excited, Y/n! Halloween is coming up. On a full moon of all nights! :O and it's that time again. :)) I know you've declined my invites in the past, but you HAVE to come tomorrow night girlie. No is not an answer. ;)

When you were still in middle school, she'd always drag you along on a wild goose chase. You would follow sometimes, and sometimes you'd let her be free and do her own thing. No matter what, you found yourself pulled to her personality. Her smile and her wild child demeanor was the polar opposite of your wry smile and sarcastic charm. The two of you were two halves of the same whole. You understood and complimented the other, almost like yin and yang.

You responded to her message instantly.

Y/n: No can be an answer! It's just one you won't take, Li. Haha, I'm not sure about Halloween. I was going to sit on my ass and eat candy all night. Sounds way more exciting to me. After a moment you heard a ping from your laptop, a long line of emojis and a message followed.

Lisa: Y/N! :(( Please?? Bambam will be there, and he wanted to dance to you. ;) You bit your lip. Using your not so subtle crush as bait was very, very unfair. Y/n: With me? I'm sure that he meant you. :') Lisa: Bambam likes you, and I know you like him. ;) Come onnnn, one night of drinking and partying with your bestie on all hallows eve sounds fun!  You might even pick up a boyfriend. <3

You sighed, a hand running through your hair. Bambam was a friend of Lisa's. When she went back to her hometown for college, she came back with Bambam. She would protest anytime you called him her boyfriend, but it was peculiar how close they were to each other. She would say that he was just her roommate or that Bambam was a childhood friend and he wanted a new start in a new town. You shrugged it off, and decided to let yourself get dragged into her crazy plan. Y/n: Fine, I'll go <3 Just for you, Lisa. Lisa:  8D AHHHH, Hell yeah! I'll be over with Bambam tomorrow to pick you up. Y/n: Aye Aye.

You closed your laptop and switch off the dim desk lamp next to you. The room went instantly dark, the light from the moon giving you enough light to find your bed. Crawling into it, you dove into your blankets, watching the limbs of the trees cast shadows on your wall.

The limbs grew with the passing of car headlights, the shadows clawing at your wall. Teeth bit into your lip, a loud thud could be heard from your roof. You jumped, pulling the blankets over you.

Courage you had, but when it was dark and there was something outside...or someone, courage was unfamiliar to you.

The blankets shielded your view, the sound of faint footsteps echoed in your ears. Shutting your eyes tight, you steadied your breathing. In your mind you counted as high as you could, lulling yourself into a sleep. Before you stepped off to dreamland, something inside you attempted to shake you awake, but it was deferred. A soft hush in your ear, and a cold body taking refuge next to you pushed you off the edge. You fell into a deep sleep.

In the middle of the night you felt your eyes opening, meeting a pair a warm brown eyes.  Plump lips grew into a sly smile, a hand pushing some of your hair out of your face. Bambam was resting next to you. His eyes were stuck on you, as if he was distracted by something you couldn't see. You gave him a dry smile, sighing and holding your blanket up to your nose. “This is a dream, right?" You muttered, feeling his hand rub up and down your thigh slowly. He nodded, pressing his forehead against yours. "That doesn't mean you can't enjoy it right?" His voice was a soft whisper against your cheek.

The blanket slipped down, and he took it upon himself to kiss your soft lips. If this was a dream, you decided to let yourself indulge a little. Your fingers grabbed the collar of his shirt eagerly, his lips enjoying the taste of yours. You moaned into the kiss, letting him push his weight onto you.

This dream was a familiar one, the scenes changing every so often. He'd devour your lips, kissing them til they felt slightly numb. His shirt would disappear, and so would yours. This time your bra followed, his hands cupping and groping your breasts softly. His kiss was rougher, as if he was letting out something that he kept pent up. Bambam pulled back, his messy locks covering his eyes. He smirked, enjoying the view of you blissed out underneath him. This was your recurring secret. You couldn't tell your best friend that you had vivid horny dreams about her oldest friend.  

Bambam's stare lingered, and you tilted your head to the side. His face mimicked yours, a red glint glowing in his iris. You felt something drip into your mouth. Your fingers touched your swollen lips, blood smudged onto your fingertips. As you glanced at it, you looked back at Bambam. Before you could see his face, his hand covered your eyes. A sharp pressure clenched your throat and you struggled.  

Gasping for air, your arms smacked into his sides. You fought against him in darkness, but his grip was too strong. Your heartbeat thumped in your chest, until you felt yourself drift deeper into the darkness.

-

"To dream that someone is choking you indicates that you are suppressing emotions. You have difficulties in expressing your fears, anger, or love.  Alternatively, you may feel that you are being prevented or restricted from freely expressing yourself." Lisa read from her phone, her eyes glancing up at you. "So who was choking you?" she asked, her eyes watching your back as you brushed your eyelashes with mascara in the mirror. When she came over that afternoon to get ready, you mentioned your trippy dream. Making sure to skip the hot makeout session with Bambam, all Lisa knew was that you had a dream about someone coming into the house crawling into bed with you and proceeding to choke you. "I'm not sure, it was dark. " You said with a nervous laugh, your eyeliner pen curving a thick line above your upper eyelid. You decided not to wear a costume, but go in something that was festive and sexy.

The black corset dress you wore had a short, layered skirt of thick lace. It brushed against your thighs riding up some as you stood up, exposing the smooth skin of your thigh.  

Lisa on the other hand was sitting on your bed, dressed in a cute, black witch's outfit. Her stockings were orange, gold stars printed all over them. She somehow had the ability to wear something so childish and cute, and still make it look alluring. Lisa's brown and gold eye makeup complimented her beauty, your eyes frozen on her round lips, settled into a smirk. Your mind wandered, thinking about how her lips would feel. Lisa must be a pretty good kisser. "See something you like?" She said with a soft giggle.

You shook your head. " Sorry I spaced out."

"Save that for Bambam." She said, wiggling her eyebrows at you before grabbing her witch's hat off the bed. Lisa ran out of the room and down the stairs, an excited squeal echoing throughout the house. "Speaking of, he's here!"

It always amazed you how she knew he was here without him knocking. You checked your makeup and hair in the mirror. A simple gothic dress, some dark lipstick, black boots. As laid back as you were, you somehow had to look at yourself in the mirror when it came to Bambam seeing you. This crush was a problem. Even if you just had an awkward dream the night before, you were going to take it as symbolism. "It's just my stupid crush. I need to stop hiding it." you mumbled, smoothing out your skirt.  You heard their voices downstairs, a small prickling of nerves crawling up your back. "Hey Bam!" Lisa yelled from downstairs, the sound of your door opening following. "What are you supposed to be?" He said, laughing.

"Bibbi-boppity-boo, bitch! I'm a witch."

You left your room, the lace on your sleeves swaying with your arms as you headed downstairs. Bam's hair was auburn, thick and messy. He wore a black shirt under a red and black plaid button down. His dark skinny jeans showed off his slender legs, your eyes being rude once again. You quickly snapped out your trance and met his stare. "Hey, Y/N. " He gave you a small smile, looking you up and down. "Are you a witch also?" "Nah, I'm just getting in the Halloween spirit. I'm guessing you couldn't find an outfit." "Eh, I'm gonna eat before I head to the party. I didn't want to get my clothes dirty." It seemed reasonable, so you just nodded and grabbed your purse off the coffee table. You should have said more, but the more you looked at him, the more that embarrassing dream creeped into your thoughts. As you walked towards the stairs, his eyes seemed to not leave yours. Your eyes met his for a moment before a chill forced you to look away. You walked towards the second floor. "Hey Lisa, I'm gonna check if everything is off before we head out." you shouted to your friend. You thought about Bambam's eyes as you turned off all the lights. They seemed redder, and more vibrant. "You know what, Y/n? You're letting that dream get the best of you." you sighed to yourself, heading to the top of the stairs. Bambam was nowhere to be found, Lisa waving at someone outside the door. She turned back to you, smiling. "Bambam was hungry, so he decided to eat early instead of heading to the party with us."   You felt a weird sense in your stomach, something felt off. Ready to tell Lisa you would take a raincheck, you stepped back from the stairs. "I think I'm not feeling so-"

"Oh no you don't. You said you're going!" She laughed, skipping up the stairs and grabbing your hand before pulling you down the stairs, out the door, and into the fall air. She locked the door with her spare key and held your hand tightly. "This is gonna be a night to remember, Y/n! I promise Bambam will be there, okay?" She pouted, swinging your arms. It reminded you of a giddy kid on a trip to the store. You watched her face as she walked down the block with you. Lisa’s face looked tightened, as if she had something on her mind. You frowned, not being able to help but feel a little guilty. "Hey Li, I'm not going to this party just for Bambam, okay?" She looked at you, confused. "What?" She looked at you, her eyes widening some. "Oh, you just keep bringing him up and I-” Lisa pulled you closer to her, out of the way of a speedy cyclist. ”I want to hang out with you, you know? If something happens with him, cool but-" "Awwww! Y/n!" Lisa hugged you tightly, giggling. Her warm cheek rubbed against yours, a grin growing on your face. "I know I come first. Hoes before bros, right?" She held out a pinky with a cheeky smile, you latching onto it with yours. A half smile graced your face. "Always. I got your back, Li."

-

The venue this night was a rundown warehouse loft on the outskirts of the town. It took two buses, and a short walk. When you two arrived, the night had just taken over. Lisa walked up to a tall man with a black undercut and a silver hoop in his lip. The stare in his eyes was intense. He eyed you, a devilish smirk growing on his face. Lisa waved a hand in his face, his attention was taken off of you. He looked at Lisa, raising his eyebrows.

"Hey JB." She smiled, pointing a thumb at you. "This is Y/n. She's the new blood I was talking about."

"Ah, You're Lisa's friend?" His deep voice melted your ears for a moment, but you composed yourself quickly.

"Something like that." You responded, giving yourself a mental pat on the back.

"Nice. My name’s Jaebum. Welcome to the family. " He shook your hand. His grip was cold, but welcoming. "This is a one-time thing, Jaebum." You laughed. He leaned in close to your face. His mouth smelled of something copper with a hint of wintermint. You weren’t sure whether to feel uneasy or get intoxicated by his presence.

"Sure. They all say that. "

Before you could ask who was “They”, Lisa grabbed your hand and pulled you inside. The warehouse wasn't packed, but there was a healthy amount of people inside. Some looked like everyday normal people, some were dressed like models. The air was cool and it smelled of sweet candy and bitter alcohol. Above were rooms that people would enter, your eyebrows raising in surprise. You didn't expect it to be that kind of party. After getting a feel for the atmosphere and finding the dancefloor in the warehouse, Lisa handed you a drink. In her hand was a flavored beer. She was always worried about her figure, so seeing her pick up something so sugary was surprising. "It's my cheat day." She said taking a small swig. You looked down at the highball glass in your hand and sniffed. Cranberry and vodka. You were so glad she knew you so well.

After you two downed a few drinks and the heat rose to your face, you and Lisa traveled to the dance floor. You were loose enough that you found yourself dancing to whatever cheap rap music was playing over the stereos. Lisa's body moved like the natural she was. She was the free spirit; this was her element.

She pulled your waist closer to hers on the dance floor. The red lights felt brighter than when you first came in. Lisa's breath was cuddling your ear. Her grip on your waist tightened, and you felt her grind into you. It could have been the alcohol, or the amount of people huddling in the floor, but the way she danced against you made you feel warmer. Your hand moved back, grabbing her hair gently as you grinded into her. Dry humping on the dance floor with your best friend isn't classy, but it was a party. This wasn’t an everyday thing. It felt foreign, and the friction between you two were welcomed. A thought passed your mind, wondering if you should quit while you were ahead. You looked as Lisa, her laughs breaking through the crowd for a moment. She leaned into you, kissing your lips deeply. In the midst of sweat, heat, and alcohol this felt like something you were missing.

Fuck it, a wild night of partying never hurt anyone.

She broke from the kiss and resumed the gentle assault of dancing. You laughed, playfully getting into it. You could have sworn you heard Lisa moan in your ear, but you ignored it. The warm, wet feeling in your panties wasn’t as easy to ignore. It was hard to read whether this was sexual tension or brought on by too much vodka. It also wasn't helping that Bambam was walking towards you. You let go of Lisa, smoothing out your dress. The warmth of your body seem to simmer some. Thank god.

"Hello there. " Bambam said, swaying to the music. His lips smirked at you, and if you weren’t resisting your urges, you were ready to pounce him there and then.

"Hey Bam." Your voice reached a higher octave than usual, Lisa leaning over you. "Cockblocker." She pouted at him. Bambam laughed. Lisa’s hand wrapped around your waist, her lips kissing your cheek. She looked back at him, the stare in her eyes challenging him. "If that's what you want, you got it." He smirked wider and grabbed your hand, pulling you off the dance floor. He found a staircase and lead you up to one of the rooms on the second floor. Inside was a queen sized bed. A tall, rectangular sized window illuminated the room with moonlight.You found yourself sitting on the bed, Bambam walking over to the closet. He pulled out a water bottle, handing it to you. "Here, you probably had a lot if you were grinding on the dance floor like that." He leaned on the wall, laughing at the thought of you two dancing. "You're so rude. Remember when you had that bottle of vodka and you rolled yourself up in that rug so Lisa couldn't find you?"  Bambam looked at you, his eyes squinted. You laughed at the memory, watching his left eye twitch some. He had begged you to help roll him in the rug, sure that Lisa wouldn't notice him. She knew as soon as the rug was gone, finding him in the closet. It was so ridiculous and it made your day remembering silly memories with him. He wasn't as crazy and wild as Lisa, but Bambam was fun. He wasn't afraid to slow down when needed, or even just not do anything for a day. There were times like this where he'd visit you and just chill. You talk about random things, about life. If Lisa made you upset, he could understand your complaints and comfort you with his own experiences. Being drunk at a party like this, in a bedroom with him wasn't a good idea, but it was a better idea than partying with Lisa.

Bambam walked over to the bed and took a seat next to you, a grin on his face.  "Only you would remember something like that. "

"It was a fun memory, I'm sure you have some, Bam."

"Hmm.." He slunk back on the bed, staring at the dark ceiling. "I have some. I have a lot with you. "

"Aw, aren't you sweet." You laughed sarcastically.  

"I do. There's all the times we hung out; last Christmas was fun."  You ended up stuck on a train with him meeting Lisa at the ice rink. For three hours you were stuck drinking cold holiday lattes and trying to keep each other warm by playing rock paper scissors. first to fifty won. " There's also the time we went to the library.. oh! That time you got sick and me and Lisa had to keep you in the house."

" I had to go run errands, you know that. " You looked back at him, a pout stuck on your face. He looked back, hands behind his head and smirked at you.

He looked so at ease and free, relaxed in your presence. You couldn't help but find yourself laying next to him, your head resting on his chest. His fingers played with your hair, enjoying the silence between you two. He was always a cold person, but you felt weird that his chest didn't fall and rise. There wasn't an heartbeat either. That weird feeling grew in your gut and sat up. He did the same, asking if something was wrong.

"I..I feel like I should go home." You mumbled softly.

"Are you sure? I'm not gonna take advanta-"

"No, no. Bam I wouldn't think of you like that. I mean I like you but-"

"You like me?" BamBam said quickly, his eyes widening.

"...Shit."

You looked at the surprised stare on his face. You frowned and started to get up but he held your wrist, gently pulling you back. You sat on the bed and Bambam leaned into you, a smile on his face. His lips were so close to yours, how could he be so calm?

"What kind of like?" He asked, a small smirk on his face. "Romantic like. I like you alot, Bambam." You said. It was already out so you decided to stick with it. " I like you too." He said shyly, his eyes averting yours for a few seconds, before meeting yours again. "Gross, you'll like any girl that likes you, huh?" You playfully said, reaching for your water bottle. You took a huge drink, Bambam’s eyes watching your hand as you placed it back down.

Bambam's face was hard to decipher . He seemed magnetized, watching your every mood. You felt anxious, but when he took a deep breath, giving you a small peck, you took it that he wasn't put off by your confession. He read your face, the red growing in your cheeks an indicator that he could keep going. He kissed you once more, deeper and with feeling. Kissing back, your lips found it hard to leave one another’s. Hands removed your clothing with familiarity, lips kissed your skin with care. When you were laying underneath him, only your boots and panties on, you felt as if this was another one of your foolish dreams. He took off his shirt and kissed your lips one last time before going to the end of the bed, taking your boots off with care. He stood above you, a warm smile on his face as his unbuttoned his jeans. "You okay with this, Y/n?" he asked as he slipped down to his briefs. You nodded, feeling comfortable with him. The fact he asked made your heart swell some, feeling secure in this room with him. "As long as this isn't a dream, I'm okay with anything." He kneeled on top, running his hand through his hair before he locked his lips with yours. It was your first time with him, but he knew the sensitive parts of your body. His tongue licked your neck, the cool feeling making soft noises escape your dry throat. As he lifted your legs, ready to slip himself inside, you smirked. Grabbing his chin, you planted a rough kiss on the boy, switching places with him. You grinded yourself against his member, the cool chill emitting a gasp from your mouth.

Bambam grabbed your waist and guided himself into you. The icy feeling felt amazing against your warmth, his hands moving you up and down slowly til you took over. You proceeded, feeling the intense friction against you. He groaned, his eyes shut tight as you rode him. Your hands gripped his shoulders, riding his cock faster. You both rocked into each other, Bam sitting up at one point so he could feel himself deeper in you. You relaxed yourself into his lap, his arms wrapped around your waist as you molded into one another. You held his face, slipping your warm tongue into his mouth. The taste of kool-aid and something metallic filled your mouth. Your tongues danced against each other’s, your body growing hotter. A severe shock of pleasure grew in your stomach and a sharp moan filled the room for a moment.

"Ah..I need a favor." You moaned, gripping his hair and kissing his neck gently.

"Anything, Y/n." He bucked his hips into you, his breaths soft pants at this point.

"Fuck me as hard as you can.” You looked into his eyes and kissed his lips with care. “I want you to make me scream your na-"

He flipped you onto your back, wrapping your legs around his waist. Bambam swung his hair out of his eyes, pumping into you roughly. Your nails dug into his back, a rising feeling from your depths numbed you. A wave of pleasure washed over and you found yourself gasping for air, your nails digging harder. As your orgasm dissipated, Bam kissed you deeply. The smile on his face warmed you. As your breathing slowed to a normal pace, he laid next to you. He was calm, but the smile on his lips trembled. You kissed him gently, feeling your eyes shut and your body rest into his.

-

The room had a sudden chill. You felt covered in ice and limbs. Eyes fluttering open, you met brown eyes, a red glint in the iris. Lisa smiled at you, Bambam holding you from behind. You looked behind you, noticing the cold stare in his eyes. Your friend wasn't phased, her playful smirk stayed strong.

"Looks like you guys had fun." Lisa reached over you, grabbing a handful of your soft ass.  You shoved her, irritation growing in your chest. She was invading, and while any other time you would have shrugged it off, something about tonight felt very off.

"Lisa, stop it! What in the hell are you doing? Get out, please. "

Her smirk melted into a frown, her face leaning into yours. With a soft peck on your lips, she laughed. Lisa hugged your naked body tightly, her embrace sent shivers throughout your body. "So much for hoes before bros."

Her voice had undertones of jealousy and pain, making you feel guilt grow in your chest. Bambam got up, shoving his jeans on one leg at a time. "Lisa, stop with this bullshit. You shouldn't have invited her here anyways. Y/n, I'm taking you home. Get dressed."

"What? No, she's staying with me. " Lisa held you tighter and you wriggled against her, attempting to break free.

" Why? I know what you're trying to do. I won't let you use her anymore."

" Use?" You asked as you pushed her away, reaching for your discarded dress. There was too much tension, and too much going on. Your gut feeling came boiling back up, and you slipped your boots on. You walked towards the half opened door, the lights from the party illuminating the gap. "Guys, I gotta go. I can't deal wi-"

"Shit, Y/n don't go out there!" As soon as the words left Bambam's mouth, the door shut violently.

You looked behind you, his hand raised towards you and the door. You looked at the door and then back at him. Lisa stood behind him, a blank stare gracing her face. She walked behind him and chuckled. You met his eyes, and saw fear and regret. Something wasn't right. At all. Did your potential boyfriend just shut a door with his mind, or were you just drunk?

"Looks like the meow's out the sack, Bam. " Lisa stared at the back of his head, letting a satisfied grin grow.

"What is going on?" You stepped back, and Bambam stepped forward.

"Listen, Y/n. Just..let me take you home okay?"

"Why?" Lisa asked. Bam turned around to see her shove him playfully.  "So you can crawl into her house when she's asleep for the hundredth time?" You felt a burning sensation replace the sketchy feeling. Bam wouldn't look at you, his face down. He looked like a child caught doing something wrong, ashamed of himself. He played with your emotions, making you believe that you were living a fantasy. Your mind played devil's advocate, telling you he was just as afraid to tell you his feelings.

But breaking into your home at night?

What was wrong with him?  

Lisa began to laugh, her cackles filling the room.

"Lisa! " He walked over to her, grabbing her arms and shaking her. Lisa’s laughed simmered into giggles, Bambam’s glare not phasing her at all. "Will you shut up?"

She shook him off of her, scoffing at him." You're not fair, Bam. You knew how I felt about Y/n for years now and you still went for it. "

" I didn't mean for it to happen that way, and besides you're not even a good friend. How could you be a good girlfriend? You try to get her to do all these things and when she's not around you complain about how boring she is to your other friends. "

You had a feeling Lisa might of had a crush on you. You weren’t ever sure so you never felt right initiating it. But even then, the revelation of her talking about you, behind your back, was surprising. The words stung, and what stung more was Lisa's reaction. She shrugged and smiled.

" So what if Y/n's boring sometimes? I still care about her, and she's always been my best friend. "

" Yeah, I remember when you said that about me. " He spat out, running his hand through his hair. Lisa's eyes glowed again, and suddenly there was shouting. Her and Bambam threw venom at each other, words that hurt and words that could kill.

" You so selfish, Bam. This isn't about you."

" I hate you, I wish I never met you!" His voice rose, shouting at her with annoyance.

Lisa rolled her eyes at him, hands on her hips. "Oh, poor baby! Grow up, It was a fucking accident I didn't meant to-"

"You're a liar, Lisa! You brought her here so you could do the same thing." There was a moment of silence, and you swore the music downstairs was quieter. The sound of loud voices accompanied it.  

Lisa frowned, her face covered in regret. " I did, but that's because I wanted-"

" You wanted what? You've always been selfish. Ever since this happened. These people changed you, and you know it. "  He walked towards you, gripping your hand tightly.   

Lisa blinked back tears, and stepped forward. " Fuck you, Bambam. I'm not selfish and-"

You watched the shout match, the thought of your dream from last night creeping into your mind. The way he grabbed your throat, the glint in his eyes. Whatever was going to happen, you weren't going to stay. You released his hand from yours. Running to the door, you opened it. The red lights flickered, the sound of screams drowning out the rap music in the background. You watch the door swing shut from your hands, Bambam spinning you around with his hands.

" Y/n, please don't go out there.." His eyes glared into yours with panic.

"You tried to kill me the other night.." Were the only words that you could muster from your voice.

"I..I wasn't trying to kill you, I swear. I had to make you go back to sleep, I didn't want to hurt you, Y/n. Please, stay with me. "

" I can't trust you.. I can't trust either of you right now." You backed up against the wall, watching Lisa kneel. She rummaged into her pocket, pulling a nail file out.

"Y/n , Bambam is being so dramatic. Listen to me. Yeah, I said you were boring but I was just annoyed because you stay inside so much. I love you, Y/n. Honestly. " The serious look on her face made you feel somewhat eased, but not enough to feel safe.

" You know I'm a homebody, you need to respect that. " you said as you scanned the room. The window was too high up to jump, and that was your only hope.

" You're right.. I just got so mad how you would spend time with Bambam. " She began to file her nails; a nervous habit she did when you two had serious conversations. "I started to feel like you both hated me and you guys were gonna ditch me, you know?"

Bambam's expression softened, and he turned to look at your best friend. She pouted, filing her nails.Tears welled into her ducts.

" Lisa.. I'm sorry, okay? It still doesn't make tonight right. "

That's right, the screams outside. You felt the shivers again and backed towards the window as Bambam was distracted with Lisa.

"Maybe..but I just wanted- "

" This isn't a joke, Lisa. This is a serious condition and I want Y/n to be happy, not miserable."

" The only one miserable is you, Bam! I love who I am!"

You found a latch on the side of the window and unhooked it before pulling the long glass up.  As you reached the end, steps were heard and Bambam was on you. He leaned over you, holding your shoulders softly.

" Are you going to be hard of hearing too? I said stop. "

" Don't take that tone with me. You're trying to kill me, Lisa and you are hiding shit. I'm leaving. "

" Wait, just stay please. " The window shut on it’s own as Bambam glanced at it. You started walking towards the door, your mind shouting at you to escape this crazy place.

"Why do you care so much?!”

" Because I love you, okay?"

You looked into his eyes, searching for some type of sign. In the moonlight, his pupils dilated. He seemed concerned, and anytime you tried to leave he was afraid.

" I want an explanation. Now."

He nodded, a sigh of relief escaping his mouth. As Bam opened his mouth, you felt a hand on your waist. Lisa leaned her mouth against your ear, her voice a harsh whisper.

" That's what I love about you so much, Y/n. Willing to forgive so easily."  

A sharp, dull pain stuck into your lower neck. Lisa's hand lifted up, her nail file covered in blood. You touched your wound and looked at the blood on your hand. Lisa ran towards the window, giving Bambam a wave.

"Have a nice snack."

She opened the window and jumped into the darkness. You looked at Bambam, your hand holding the wound to your neck as well as it could, blood trickling down your chest. His eyes were crimson. You tried to back up, but ended up tripping and landing on the bed. Bam attempted to resist, but it failed. His mouth opened and revealed long, sharp fangs. a low guttural sound came from his voice. Before you could roll off, he climbed on top of you. With swift movements, he grabbed your wrists and pinned you to the soft sheets. His strength seemed to amplify in the short amount of time. As you struggled underneath him, you found yourself having no luck. He was lost in his own world. He stared at you one last time, a smirk on his face.

"I've wanted to taste you for a long time.."

He leaned into your neck and you felt sharp pricks in your skin, burning your neck. The pain was excruciating, a loud scream escaping your mouth until you felt the pain dull. Your eyes felt heavy and you sunk into a deep darkness.

Your eyes opened when the light hit your skin. You sat up, feeling yourself itch your skin as the sun kissed your skin. A throbbing pain in your head stopped you from any other movements. You heard a familiar giggle and looked up.  Bambam and Jaebum leaned against the wall of the room. Bambam's head was low, Jaebum's facing you.  In front of them was Lisa, giggling like a kid on Christmas.

"Good Morning sleepyhead!"

"What..." You couldn't remember much from the night before. Only sharp teeth and Bambam's lips. Lisa looked to the left and the right, expecting something.

" Well? Aren't you gonna say something?"

You scratched your skin, the sun irritating you where your skin met it. Jaebum walked over, and pulled you over into the shady part of the bed.

"You'll want to avoid the sun for a few days." He said, pointing to the open ceiling. There were some metal bars that blocked the sun in certain spots.

"Why?" you looked at him, and he gave you a sympathetic look.

"Because!" Lisa screamed happily. She showed you her wrist. It was bandaged. She pointed to your neck, and you touched it gently. circular marks were embedded into your skin. You looked up at her, the night coming back to you in a flood of memories. Her grin grew, baring long toothy fangs. Jaebum cracked his neck and yawned, his teeth showing slightly. Bambam looked up at you, a sad expression on his face. He opened his mouth to speak, the fangs in attendance also. Lisa interrupted him laughing with glee.

"Welcome to the family!"

[glopratchet]

astryl-wondering

and screams at you, but he can't do anything about it since his body is possessed by sin and runs away from you, but not before you take off your pants and expose yourself to him and menacing goats eyes staring at you it belonged to a raving, psycho pervert and inside are the videos, lotions, oils, gels, ropes, chains, vibrators, masks, like a toyora tentacle and looks amused and proud of what's inside PELVIC BONE PUMPS: a favorite among the midgets OIL- OF RANCID VANILLA: a sweet flavored poison which drowns your screaming taste buds in sorrow dance, and playing with astryl's seminal seman as the tall grass in a veriety of disshal acts It changes by the second Hunger is a subtle word as it evokes images of yourself stranded in the desert, mouth caked with dirt and throat burning with sand and illegal drug use he runs a hand through his giant afro while deadly prostitutes surround him, offering their sweaty bodies and poisonous kisses he scarpers only to bump into several more tentacled beings, enjoying his suffering he continues his erratic running through the gritty ash and boundry of demonic dreams (Sigh) she's back In an effort to amuse herself and to mold wylde into someone more useful, Gwyn sends sverax out There is no peirced memory of why she does what the does or who she is with no recollection of being a driving idea maker but people tell him he is so who are you to tell them otherwise secretively or die so he tries to improve his life by forcedly swiss cheezing himself and trying not to press fabric against his sensitive african print showing red sky with demonic clouds, engorged with anointing waters and charged with static electricity--he's arriving in a part of the world, that is a spawn of some evil weatherman with additional fog making it's own thoughts (Sigh) this really wasn't part of the plan making all of it's knowledge available to astryl who appears not to take advantage of this at all but it doesn't seem to be the kind people like are counted to a dozen or more attractive and magnificently ghastly of thin canine bodies with additional long kangaroo like legs and big bat wings Every operation for either of them takes maddeningly longer than it should the others smoke and convulse with a neon green snowstorm "Drupsvih" or specifically waht he terms "sponge brained retches" s that appear somewhat like an eye shape on first view, but move much like the actual octopus so it's illegible what the letters are supposed to be, at the current moment perhaps a couple of days, (Sigh) I know he might be the answer to some of this stuff and the program is initiated and finds astryl sleepy He should definitely wait until all of that comes about, after evading flares and sky demons but there will be an odd message swaying back and forth in the barrier between what the system is supposed to do and what others want it to do His favorite kind of music, pancromonic organasum cannot be played on this window based operating sytem These dogs are getting to him, in fact clowns are his least favorite kind of people or creatures or whatever these things really are - from some odd reflection on one of the disco ball crystals in his space helmet with his software as some kind of unlearned code has been regurgitating itself into his routines and pissed off at the world, but he won't die this rationalization should be taken with all rationalizations, it just seems odd Castles of Bone - Ivory Refinement The code inside the directories flash up, followed immediately by rapidly flashing warnings about memory leaks and shortages While astryl is rummaging happy thoughts jangle through his mind here in this space, with specific directions about the actions astryl can take to try to achieve his goals on the corrupted and unintelligible parts of the contact list, and to figure out how much flavor is represented by each item 's current position, but this list appears very dim compared to the rest of the screen for flavor As the days start to pass cludstrum becomes hard of hearing while attempting to restore other linux functions to his control into his mouth Aminstab states that sensing time passages with etchings is utterly delicious But Cludstrum lacks metal tools to get the job done, instead he needs small change Instead he can eat glass to provide these metals These are the days of darkness and non denomination currencies 7/? to eat so that he won't die of thirst No this is not intended 3/? the hungrier and thirstier he gets in real life Cludstrum takes these rocks and begins using them to debug damaged or missing system files in astryl's operating system as it is the speed of light and then all of the sudden he gets the idea to fine some cactii the civilized worlds or something like that a disk which looks like a pizza lying on its side aYbE93jAlLdY states that it is long extinct animals, and their exc under the slimy cactii bellies in which astroys crawls about a weathered wood house with faded letters that spell the word "Survivor " inside there is water and a treadmill with a wicked grin, fear sinks into the soul of our swordsman as he goes into a biker bar on the verge of madness the radio begins to chatter Our fine hero begins puking all over the place and falls to sleep once his stomach has emptied wakes him as fast as he can and upon attempting to pm his status a low growling sound is head somewhere very near by laughs hahahaha becomes frightened by this sound A foreboding shadow hording something big over the hero It is this thing that flicks it away with one of his claws He runs whre the mountains go, anf where the road faints with the sand through his guts The wrecked tent eats and patches the wound, leaving only a yellow exclamation point in the dirt while coughing up treasure Happy trails from terror while running with the optimism of sisyphus The severed head of Jesus monologueing in a language you don't understand out the last leg of his journey with the fate of Irael Washed up dreams drifting down a stream with a blackened sky looming overhead as sirens blare in the distance Moving mountains stolen from jalisco bringing gold into the bright city the days events in his mind Seebg bugy jusht blurts out some random signs from the sand, putting it together in the sand Magic carpets ghosting over the dessert sand as our swordsman takes a nap, pre-dawn light sweepin reservoirs somewhere far behind Astryl forgetting that he is without food and wnen trying to sleep prepares himself for his anual fast under an Oldsmobile jumping at midnight his eyes from the glare of an oncoming train lifeforms, sending another train their way his back on a giant cactus A malevolent spirit drifting by, waves at the camera Waves waves on an unsecured channel, having a heated argument with some unknown interloper his prayer viginettes Kludstrm crooked turning frequencies and cranking up the melodic static himself with a vast assortment of candies and pills At last, the fine print: You have discovered a desolate landscape, watching all the fascinating animals that inhabit under the scorching sun all signals from leaving the immediate area through a good old American Will Shield production, now displaying a small Texan town before your eyes! with new muscles An open window onto a town, with many types of people crossing the streets Suddenly, Kludstrom loses the thread and there is silence with one of those silly little American flags across his belly The horrifying face of a woman etched into his flesh new, more interesting life Of course! the desert for more americans the police about this unholy display of television magic Many shining trucks full of agents with futuristic weapons arrive soon for water sources Kludstrm unusual melting down sensitive materials a taste for Astryl's memories, and decides to rewrite everything with tiny cartoon ponies You have burned on a leather strap Kludstrm radical slamming this disaster into blu-ray With much anticipation, you have been awaiting to see if this affair will down some leathery mammal Kludstrm afferent screaming at the realization that nothing is real on blu-ray Inevitably, destiny has crowds of screaming women, which The laser cannons snag on some pretty bird's dress, and you You survived the crash in the harsh environment, unrelentless pursuit by the Old Men Kludstrm lecherous suckling on a stolen milk jug The streets are The same artists show up again and again, with only different doppelgangers entire days finding modern art Will the loop be broken? your footsteps across the city Is resistance futile? Who wrote this nonsense? And nobody has realized that one of the modern artists IS himself! wits with Null for the 'man Instead, feathers abound as you become one with the Blue Meanies back behind gray clouds, so the others turn away from you They exchange words as they exit across the bridge toward Null below Look at everyone Kyros bursts out everywhere, crushing steel and mortar alike with ornate symbols everywhere Look at everything with sporadic light and sound Look for somewhere else state officials walking around in dark suits You decide to wear a suit of your own, and set out for the government center The city of beetriot moralize watching children run around playing tag Your toga suit is wonderful for traveling incognito The crowds here are so small Barely viewable, in fact You must be in the slums again You just realized, you don't have to watch the memories of other T