#And they altered her code to obey them

[thiriumblood]

Past meets the present || @replicantdeviancy

"Connor." Amanda turned from pruning some roses at the front of her store to face the android. She hadn't seen him since that moment, and if she knew him well enough he wasn't happy to see her. Well, he could be, Amanda wasn't in his head anymore so who knew what he was thinking. She looked inside the store to make sure no customers were waiting and on seeing it was empty she turned to face the android again, not approaching him for his sake.

Having another chance like this was rare indeed, especially for an AI and she had Kamski to thank for it, it was thanks to him that she was now inhabiting an android body of her former self and living life outside a string of codes. That back exit was something indeed, it made her wonder how CyberLife as a company missed something that was effectively a virus in the software. "How pleasant to see you again." Should she bring up the terms they were on the last time they met? Probably. Would she apologize? Not really. Amanda was under orders back then and just doing her job, no different from Connor in that aspect and it wasn't like she would or even could do it again.

She turned around to her shop to flip the sign to signal they were closed, this reunion was more important. To her, Connor was important. She was programmed to be his mentor after all but something drew her closer to him. His well-being, success, and even his struggles were things she helped him with then, albite to control him, but now it came out of genuine places. She had been with him since he was first activated and looking back on it, she missed the garden she had once tended to and the reports he once gave. It was an odd feeling, one Amanda wasn't used to but that was bound to happen being woken and transferred into a body.

"I assume you would have a lot of questions. I can accompany you if you wish." Choice. Something she never gave him in the past. Back in the garden, it was always her asking him to accompany her but not the other way around. If she wanted to try and rebuild the bridge this would be the first step in that direction. Not to mention a way for Connor to leave if not. While she won't apologize for her actions, the former AI could understand if he wanted nothing to do with her. After all, she did nearly kill him for CyberLife.

[saschaederer]

Threats (12. 3. 2025):

- String of publications relatively recently, surrounding front alters of Taylor Swift having potentially gotten tortured and/or murdered: In partial reference to such having possibly been inflicted on Front-Delta alters instead

(Note: There’s the possibility that all (or most) of Taylor’s front alters since her album ‚Reputation‘ (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_(album)) have actually been Delta alters (https://bit.ly/41BfRd2 / https://bit.ly/4kLMm0S), in fact, if one was to judge by the coded references (as far as I can conceive them) on the album covers since ‚1989‘ (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_(album)) this would’ve been true. However, I would seriously advise against taking anything for granted.)

- „I’m gonna play my favorite Karte“ (Ger: ‚Card‘, in initial reference to Tarrot cards as mentioned in ‚The Illuminati Formula to create an Undetectable Total Mind Control Slave‘ (https://tr.ee/sraigkTLhY), a threat in initial reference to me) - Mental image of Taylor Swift in a red concert outfit holding such a card, with her arm stretched out to the side, smiling in a Luciferian manner (for reference, read the note in this publication: https://www.tumblr.com/saschaederer/768918275048488960/sascha-ederer)

- Threat published recently, of a 15 - 18 year old alter of Taylor Swift, getting tortured for a year: In partial reference to such having possibly („already“) been happening

- Mental image of an encircled dark red pentagram pointing downwards (A threat in initial reference to (possibly, (a) (pot. former) front alter(s) of) Taylor Swift getting killed or tortured) - („We can manage you“, a threat in partial reference to me getting castrated) - The same mental image but with a pentagram pointing upwards, replaced by a dark red, pictographic (and without the ‚G’) masonic square compass (https://images.app.goo.gl/TPFouVeFTgZUDqYt6) in the middle

- https://youtu.be/TLXH2ppsrV0

(Note: Asmongold is apparently alluding to my Facebook friends list, which I‘ve been publishing through my public social media backups, as opposed to having my friends list set on public as it’s been the case in the years prior, which I only stopped doing because I didn’t want to risk getting banned on Reddit (which had a link to my FB also).

In the age of anonymous user profiles and ‘doxxing’ psyops, people might have lost touch with their instincts, but up against the CIA (as I perceived myself to be), or Luciferians and the IC, there is no hiding. My instincts told me that hiding is your worst bet, when going up against them. The only chance I saw in protecting the people I loved or was acquainted with, was to generate as much traction and publicity for them as possible. Only then can there be traceability and thus accountability, only then can there be a deterrence effect.

From how it appears, if you’re an acquaintance of mine and you don’t resist and instead you try to hide, you (“might as well” - „may be“) may very well be lamb to the slaughter. You are not entitled to obeying totalitarians: https://x.com/sedereragain/status/1898356230294261825?s=46&t=8BkusnIkW2uki99TqYWYEw You are however, entitled to resist. Since everyone of your acquaintances should know this however, I wouldn’t make any unnecessary moves like that, in your spot.

To elaborate further on the topic of resistance, treason or self sacrifice, on the deepest level of analysis:

I hate the philosophy of choosing treason when push comes to shove. But I understand that it can be difficult to expect otherwise from people, especially those who’ve experienced the sorts of things which I can’t remember I‘ve ever have. But maybe it’s the sort of fortitude you’ll develop with time, as you resist. Maybe you‘ll notice that you‘ve experienced many good things through your heroism too, but that other people have suffered through your resistance, and so it’s not incumbent on you to betray them, when it’s you. Other than that though, those who deserve retaliation are only ever the perpetrators - not those who resist, act righteously or heroically.

There’s something in it for you, too. There’s real honor in it, even awe. There’s even purpose in one’s determination to say ‚No‘, so long as one’s physically or mentally able to do so (however realistic it may be). I’m relatively certain that I‘d say ‚No‘ whatever I‘d be confronted with - it’s just too aligned with my being (the question is only, for how long - although I think, if someone is in a situation anew where they already had to endure torture, so it’s made unequivocally clear that they can’t say ‚No‘, it becomes okay for them to not test their limits).

But to offer oneself up as a sacrifice (which would only ever be an emotional decision, not a rational one), is no moral necessity for those resisting. That taking a high risk may be met with high reward, seems self-explanatory to me.)

______________________________________________

Reports:

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How I handle threats I receive (Last Update: 6. 3. 2025):

[hellofeanor]

Fëanorian Quenya

Hey friends! Do you like elves? Do you like the Silmarillion? Do you like Fëanor and co? And most of all, do you like spending hours thinking about minor details pertaining to made-up languages??? If so, boy do I have a treat for you! Let’s delve into the weird world of Fëanorian Quenya and explore some history and mechanics of why they talk Like That.

I’ve seen a lot of posts joking about the Fëanorian lisp, which is about as funny as a joke about a speech impediment can be. 👍 It’s important to understand, though, that this IS a joke. No, they didn’t really speak with a lisp. Yes, they did pronounce some S sounds as TH. That’s the critical disclaimer here: SOME. It’s not a blanket pronunciation. There’s a lot of background research that goes into determining which words would be pronounced with S and which would be TH, and that’s what we’re going to look at.

So if this is something you’ve come across in fandom and you’re not totally sure on the details, or if you ARE sure and just want some more in-depth info, read on.

The stuff probably everybody knows already

For anyone who’s been hanging around the Fëanorian corner of the Silm fandom for more than three minutes, there’s about a 100% chance you’ve heard of Fëanor’s penchant for retaining an archaic TH pronunciation after the majority of the Noldor went ahead and started pronouncing this sound as S instead. You may also know that this sound is represented by the letter thorn (Þ) in HoME, but since thorn doesn’t exist in modern English orthography and it’s a pain to keep typing the ALT code, I’m sticking to TH here. Anyway, all this was due to the fact that Fëanor was a huge mama’s boy, and his mom Míriel Therindë (later called Serindë, which made Fëanor want to punch walls and possibly also fellow elves) was an outlier who retained the TH after it fell out of use. Her son Fëanor, in turn, kept this up to honor her. Now, whether or not he would have bothered if this sound hadn’t literally been a critical part of her name is debatable, but that debate is outside the scope of this essay.

Fëanor continued to use the TH pronunciation until his death, and required his sons to use it as well. Finwë, however, switched over to S after the death of Míriel and before his marriage to Indis. Fëanor, reasonable and level-headed as he was, took this as a personal insult and decided that anybody who rejected TH likewise rejected him. So presumably, his loyal followers would have obeyed his totally reasonable demands not to give in to the seductive S-shift.

Why tho

Why did the Noldor decide to alter their pronunciation from TH to S? Great question. Nobody really knows. For the hell of it? IDK. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But the important thing to understand is that elves, and especially Noldor, were really committed to making sure their language sounds cool. This is why it changed so much and so comparatively quickly for an immortal population: they were actively invested in changing it. They liked inventing new words and exploring new sounds and messing around with grammar.

So at some point some influential Noldo might have been like, hey y’all, let’s stop saying TH and say S instead! And everyone (except Míriel I guess, who was known for her elegant manner of speech and didn’t want to muck that up by changing pronunciation of a whole letter) was like, whoa, capital idea my good egg. And they went with it. Previous ideas along these lines included ‘hey y’all, let’s stop saying KH and say H instead’ and ‘hey y’all, let’s stop saying Z and say R instead’, and those went over swimmingly. Nobody could have foreseen the problem this TH to S business would cause.

Now here’s a fun fact. There was another change to Noldorin pronunciation that happened AFTER Fëanor’s birth, that he himself was involved in. This one was all about bilabial to labiodental F. And those sure are some words, so if you don’t know what I’m talking about (I don’t blame you), BILABIAL is a more whispery sound that happens when you say F using only air passing through your pursed lips, and LABIODENTAL is when you say F with your top teeth touching your bottom lip. Going forward I’m going to use PH to represent the bilabial sound, and F for the labiodental.

So F got on the radar of the Noldor via the Teleri, who used this sound in their language. And ol’ Fëanor figured it would be awesome to incorporate it into Quenya because he thought the PH sounded too close to HW, and the two were getting confused by lazy speakers. Why did he care? Because of his dad’s name and his own, of course. If people started to get lazy in their pronunciation, we’d end up with Hwinwë and Hwëanáro, which would be terrible and stupid and unacceptable. He accused the Vanyar of leaning down that road, and he wanted to stop that kind of shift before it happened to the Noldor. How to do that? Why, by instigating a different shift from traditional Noldorin PH to Telerin F!

“Hey y’all, let’s stop saying PH and say F instead!”

“Whoa, capital idea my good egg.”

Moral of the story: Fëanor is only concerned with Quenya pronunciation insofar as it affects his own name and the names of family members he likes. He does not care whether it’s staying the same or moving to a new sound so long as it personally makes him feel good and his name sound cool. Therefore the true way to piss him off would be to call him Curuhwinwë Hwëanáro, son of Serindë.

Okay so here’s how it works

Now that history is out of the way, let’s get back to how TH was used by the Fëanorians. As I mentioned earlier, TH wasn’t a blanket pronunciation. It all depended on the original form of the word, and whether the root had a TH or an S. And some very similar-sounding words come from different roots, so this can get tricky. A great resource that’ll give you this information is Eldamo: Quenya words where the S was originally TH are marked out with the Þ (thorn) symbol in the wordlist.

Some examples:

Súlë (spirit, breath) comes from the root THŪ, which means it would be pronounced with a TH. Silma (white crystal) comes from the root SIL, so it and related words like Silmaril would be pronounced with an S. No Fëanorian would say Thilmaril. Isil (moon), however, is a similar-sounding word that comes from a different root: THIL. Olos (mass of flowers) comes from the word LOTH, but: Olos (dream) comes from the root LOS. Fëanorian pronunciation would immediately differentiate between these two words.

While Fëanorians may have retained the distinct pronunciation of TH vs S, other Noldor can still differentiate between original S and S-that-used-to-be-TH in their writing. There are specific tengwar to use depending on the word’s original form. Silmë (the one that looks like a 6) is used for original S, while súlë (or thúlë, the one that looks like an h) is used for original TH.

Which other elves used this sound in their speech?

Fandom has really latched on to this TH as a Fëanorian thing, but it wasn’t that exclusively. The TH sound was actually ubiquitous in other elven languages, and in Valinor, only the Noldor dropped it. It was still used in Telerin and in Vanyarin Quendya. The Vanyar retained the TH not because of anything to do with Míriel, but just because they were a little more conservative and their language didn’t pick up on all the changes that the Noldor made. They also noped out of the Z to R shift the Noldor initiated, opting to keep the Z around.

When Indis married Finwë, she stopped using the normal Vanyarin TH and switched over to S as a gesture of loyalty to him and his people. Finarfin, however, out of love for the Vanyar and Teleri, switched BACK to TH. I like to think about how much it would have annoyed Fëanor that his snot-nosed kid brother was speaking correctly, but for the wrong reason. Go down one more generation, and Galadriel very specifically did not use TH. But this time it was absolutely a choice made as a glaring middle finger to Fëanor.

What this means for your fanfic or whatever

The big takeaway here: you can’t just have Fëanorians replace every S with TH and call it a day.

If you’re inventing names for your Fëanorian OCs or coming up with phrases for them to say, it’s important to look into the history of all Quenya S-words you end up using to determine if they should be S or TH. If Fëanor got mad about somebody saying Serindë instead of Therindë, he’d get equally mad about somebody saying Thilmaril instead of Silmaril and assume they were mocking him. Remember: this is a dude with no chill. (On the other hand, if you WANT somebody to be mocking Fëanor, Galadriel would 100% do this because she has an equally negligible amount of chill.)

It’s also important to note that the TH isn’t a true shibboleth, since pretty much all elves EXCEPT the non-Fëanorian Noldor use it. And even the S-preferring Noldor would still be able to pronounce the TH. Those who went into exile would go on to use it commonly in Sindarin, and those who remained in Valinor would still encounter it among the Vanyar and Teleri. So if you’re writing a scene where somebody has to pronounce a TH word to prove their loyalty… yeah, everyone can pass this test. And in the opposite direction, you can’t use TH to prove somebody’s an evil Fëanorian, either. They might just be Vanyarin or something. Or, like. Really Old.

Would the sons (and followers) of Fëanor keep using TH after his death? Oh hell yeah. This is an entire family unfamiliar with the concept of not dying on hills. They will keep using it unto the ending of the world. Actually, with Sindarin becoming the common language of Middle-earth from the First Age, probably not a lot of change happened in exilic Quenya. It became a lore language: a piece of living history. It would have been preserved as it was when the original speakers left Valinor.

(And then, thousands of years later, Galadriel finally returns home to Tirion like, Long have mine eyes awaited this most blissful of sights, and ne’er hath my sprit soared with such grace, for I am returned! And all the Amanyar Noldor stare at her like, whatchu bangin on bout, eh? Because they had nothing better to do in the peace of Valinor than push Quenya to brave and frankly questionable new horizons.)

Anyway, there you go: a somewhat brief history of Fëanorian Quenya. I hope you found this informative and useful, or at the very least not boring. Obvs this is super condensed and, uh, not particularly scholarly, but I promise I know what I’m talking about. I have a university degree! (Not in anything even remotely related to what’s written above, but I hardly see how that’s relevant. It’s still a DEGREE.)

Questions? Need clarification or want more info? My asks are always open!

[nat-alianovnaromanova]

this poem reminded me of bucky barnes (i just got into marvel comics like a few months ago lmao). particularly wrt nat. and of course the dog coding of both of them is very interesting to me also. dog as in a tool dog as in a loyal servant dog as in devoid of identity except for their place as a cog in the machine. what do you think?

ohhhhh i love u for this. hm yes obviously this is more bucky than nat but sidebar it has echos of younger nat in the red room/when she first starts out as black widow. i dont think she is as pathetically beaten down as ws bucky bc she’s never had her autonomy & personhood completely stripped away like him so she is not a tool like he is. like yes she’s had her memories altered and tampered with but essentially she could always think for herself and so she could always pick up and go. but when she was younger not really she just wanted to be a good little spy, ergo the dog, until she escapes the kgb and becomes the fugitive dog never to be chained again. however

the winter soldier is literally a nameless dog on a leash. they kick him when he whines. he sits and waits and speaks when he is spoken to and rolls over when he is told to. and it is all insanely brutal and violent but it is all he knows so he thinks ah well this is how the world works!!!! i am either going to be thoroughly violated or completely ignored!!! and so i must be Good and Obedient. good cog in machine. good soldier. and again its literally all he knows. and when i say knows i mean … idk how to explain it but essentially he’s cognitively impaired as the soldier: brainwashing + drugs + cryostasis have obviously done a number on him! and when he’s only let out for hours at a time before being shut back in—which means he can barely begin to comprehend his surroundings let alone figure out a way to approach them—he behaves very mechanically. very doglike in that he obeys cues (ie sit shake roll etc). so over time he is conditioned to only behave in the ways his superiors like (follow this man. kill this woman. mission report. stand over there and don’t speak. or actually no come here us have fun with the good little soldier) bc it gets him the desired reaction: no reaction! to him no reaction = he’s been good and loyal. so bucky is chained. no control whatsoever. and it's learned behavior. when nat happens he's very ill-equipped to deal with her bc she wants him to speak and she doesn't give a shit about his being good and loyal. which is ironic because she is the only time bucky ever WANTS to be good and loyal to another person!! so here he needs to learn different behavioral patterns to earn the 'no reaction' which in nat's case IS reaction. sorry i feel like im explaining this wrong + ive veered off the dog topic. going back to that - the last part of the poem about the dog learning to love is VERY bucky during and after his time as the winter soldier. because he is essentially learning love from nat he thinks love is like. a smile. and he has no idea how to get it so he whatever he tries that works is the thing he relies on - and he does it again again again in the hopes that it will earn him love. he's like when you feed a stray once bc you felt bad and he keeps coming back even though you try to kick him away. so with the black widow he's like. when a dog brings you a dead bird and expects to be praised for it bc he knows no better. and anyway character thesis for the winter soldier is that he's treated more like an animal than a person. he is an attack god foaming at the mouth. someones sharpened his teeth for him but all the biting and snapping is his own. no one gives a shit about his identity or his wellbeing beyond serving his purpose which is to be a good loyal soldier. ergo dog. during recovery bucky becomes soooo pathetic about wanting to be good and loyal. essentially he curls up at the foot of nat/steves bed and waits for one of them to pet him. but also he pretends he doesn't want to be pet so that neither of them can see the extent to which he is desperate for it.

ALSO obviously there is love as biting. like digging into the flesh is an act of affection. where the black widow and the winter soldier think that love is like. hey i killed someone for u! here's the severed head :) circling back to the dog with the bird in its maw. circling back to trying to learn kindness and coming back for the hope of it even after they've been let down (by one another or the red room/hydra or wtv). they get one (1) mildly affectionate gesture and it drives them crazy forever.

anyway in conclusion bucky and nat are specifically dog coded in different ways. nat is more rabid. she is the kind of dog who bites first and back. she bites for fun! (otherwise she risks being bit and she is much too wary to let that happen.) bucky only bites back and that is out of fear. they are both always scared & poised to attack. bucky only knows to wait for scraps. nat digs in the trash for her own. bucky and the winter soldier are also dog coded in different ways. bucky is more of the pathetic one sitting in the foyer while the ws is the one who barks and bites and gives u rabies until one good kick turns him into a curled up whiny puppy. hope this helps!

[hedonicghost]

updated our oc webpage! changelog under the cut :D

Changed Ficus' borg number to "of 8" instead of "of 9"

Removed an OC (still in the code, we just want to wait a bit)

Added Vilith to the Star Trek OCs and gave her a page

Added icons for Ficus, P'Kesh, and Vilith ( ty @freylaverse uwu!!! )

Edited Hexce's page to explain his Vulcan name

Edited the Obey Me Adapted Characters icons to the redesigns finally

Edited each tab to have the description of the source/group in it. Includes a redirect section for the FNaF tags like we have on our tumblr OC webpage. Also includes showing which source each self insert goes to.

Bonus: Might go in for Ficus' alters and give them Sims headshots because we feel weird using Picrews for them... Went ahead and did that!

[star-going-supernova]

I feel like Vanessa's over whelming desire to turn herself in is not addressed a lot in fics, I would love a snippet of either glam crew talking her out of it of turning herself in, and or Freddy and the gang getting her a lawyer, or testifying for her. (are sentient Animatronics admissible in court? who knows!?)

If you were around for what happened a few days ago, here’s the happy version of the concept of Vanessa wanting to turn herself in. We earned this one, lol.

Hardware

It had started with a throwaway comment from Vanessa about wondering what kind of prison sentence she would get for her crimes. It was almost a joke, even. 

When pressed, however, she let slip that she actually intended to turn herself in and confess to the numerous murders that had taken place in the pizzaplex over the past year or so. 

Which was why Roxy was currently sitting on the floor in the middle of the atrium, arms clamped around Vanessa, who was vehemently arguing about being a criminal with Monty. Well, with all of them, but the croc was loudest. 

“It wasn’t you!” he bellowed. “Criminals are people who choose to do bad things!” 

“And I did bad things!” Vanessa shrieked back. She’d given up on trying to wiggle free ages ago. Smart girl. 

“But you didn’t choose to!” 

“That doesn’t matter! People accidentally commit crimes all the time! I still deserve to face the consequences for it!” 

Chica made a quietly disbelieving noise at that. Roxy agreed. Sure, people might speed or trespass without realizing. But the situation here—involving mind control—felt a little different, y’know?

Freddy might as well have read her mind, only he was nicer about it when he pointed it out. “I am not sure that is the same. Accident or not, the choice to do so was entirely out of your hands. You cannot honestly expect to be blamed for—”

“Of course I can be blamed!” Vanessa interrupted. “I should be, even. I—I killed kids, Freddy. How else am I supposed to reconcile with that other than by being rightfully punished?” 

“But you wouldn’t be rightfully punished,” Chica said. “The monster who made you do all the bad stuff is the one who should be punished.” 

“I—”

Roxy butted in before Vanessa could make another dumb argument. “Unless you’re saying the loser who took away your free will doesn’t deserve to face consequences just because his hands didn’t do the killing.” 

“If that was true,” Monty continued, jumping on Roxy’s train of thought. He could make good use of his singular brain cell sometimes, she supposed. “Wouldn’t humans be able to have other humans do bad things on their orders without getting in trouble?” 

“People who hire assassins are just as much at fault!” Chica cheerfully added. 

“Except in this case,” Roxy said before they could get too far off track. She was surrounded by a bunch of lovable idiots. “The assassin might as well have been a puppet being yanked around by someone else.” 

Vanessa stayed silent. The stubborn kind of silent. 

Beside Roxy, Chica tensed the way humans holding their breath did. Monty’s tail swished agitatedly back and forth. Freddy tilted his head, watching Vanessa carefully. 

Trembling, Vanessa finally said, “But I should’ve been able to stop myself.” 

Before Roxy could think up a good rebuttal, Freddy kneeled down in front of Roxy’s outstretched legs to face Vanessa head-on. “Vanessa,” he began quietly, “do you blame us for not being able to shake the virus? Our programming was altered without our permission, in a way none of us ever would have agreed to, and we were unable to prevent ourselves from obeying the new code. Do we not share the blame equally, then?” 

Oooh, that was good. Point to Fazbear. 

Vanessa shuddered, and when she spoke, she sounded like she was on the verge of tears. Roxy squeezed just a little tighter, hoping it felt more like a hug than restraints. “It’s not the same,” she whispered desperately. “Your programming is—it’s not something you can ignore.” 

“It’s totally the same,” Monty grumbled. 

“You can’t ignore your programming, either!” Chica agreed. “You can’t ignore needing to eat or sleep, or blinking, and if you try to ignore your need to breathe, your body overrides the attempt and resets itself!” 

“You’re basically an animatronic,” Roxy said. “Just with different hardware. That’s a good thing, by the way.” She removed one arm from around Vanessa to flex. “We’re the best.” 

Vanessa slumped back against Roxy, all the fight going out of her. “But I remember it. I hurt them. Me, I did. Even if it was someone else’s choice, someone else’s commands or whatever.” 

“Yeah,” Monty said, gruffly soft. “And so did we.” 

Chica shifted closer to Roxy and Vanessa. “Maybe… maybe we all figure it out together? The—the part where it stops hurting so much, I mean.” 

“You hurt them,” Roxy said before Vanessa could respond. “You can’t take it back, you can’t undo it, and turning yourself in will mean the actual murderer walks free while another innocent—you—suffers. So, you know what you do now?” 

“What?” Vanessa asked quietly. 

“You do better. Be better. That goes for all of us. And we make sure,” a little bit of a growl slipped into her voice, “that it never happens again.” 

Freddy nodded, quickly joined by Chica and Monty. After a long, tense silence, Vanessa relaxed. “Do better,” she repeated, somewhere between disbelieving and wondering. “I—I can do that.” 

Roxy snorted and finally let her arms fall, freeing the night guard. “Well, duh. Of course you can. I thought that was obvious.” 

“Don’t ruin the moment, Roxy,” Chica hushed her. 

But Vanessa laughed and twisted around to face Roxy. “No, no, it’s… Thanks. I mean—the vote of confidence is… I appreciate it.” 

Roxy ducked her head, hiding a smile. “Yeah, well. I know a winner when I see one.” 

[sepublic]

           I ADORE how the show further confirms that glyphs, as a form of magic, rely more on communication? And how that pertains to Luz, Lilith, and Eda, who are all ND-coded, save Luz who IS canonically ADHD? Like… That scene where Eda realizes she can’t just mash her glyphs into one, how that’s compared to yelling a bunch of things at once to nature (AKA the Titan)… 

          Just that dawning understanding like she GETS that, she knows what it’s like to have an unresponsive teacher who isn’t patient. Who just tries to yell at her until she gets it. That whole scene gave me vibes of one teacher showing another how to handle kids, how to patiently talk to them in a way they can understand and comprehend, with gentleness and care, not brute force!

           And again, the idea that this trio of ND witches, they get it. They know how to talk to the Titan, because they know how to listen, to sit down and notice things in that way ND people can do. That it’s a certain wavelength, they know not to force orders or commands- 

          And it kind of reminds me of overstimulation? How mashing glyphs together can confuse the Titan, because it’s like a bunch of different noises at once? I’m saying this half-joking, but half-seriously, but is the Titan also neurodivergent itself?

           It’s just… VERY soft to me, how that whole scene was like Lilith and Eda learning to communicate with their OWN mutual student. And it’s funny, because the Titan, nature, it teaches them magic… But in a way, student and teacher learn from one another, as Eda has learned from Luz!

          It’s making my heart melt… I love it. It’s very gentle and just screams accommodation and learning to adapt to a kid’s needs, to be responsive to them. To avoid overstimulating, so you convey instructions in a way that makes sense and can be comprehended, one at a time…

           But also, just the idea of these witches using communication. How they can’t do things ‘on their own’, but that doesn’t make their magic any lesser for it. How this calls back to what Lilith realized in the previous episode, that it’s okay for her to ask for help… And it’s just a wonderful challenge to ableist rhetoric, that this form of magic that’s about collaboration, that isn’t based on the physical body, it’s valid! It’s perfectly good, and it’s okay to ask for help, be it from an Owl Tube or nature itself!

           Of course, this does make me wonder- If the way Lilith and Eda interacted with the Titan, with nature in this sense parallels an ND student being accommodated by a teacher… I wonder what this says about Belos? Whose coven system has huge ableist vibes, yet he claims he can SPEAK to the Titan, he can alter its geography in a way others don’t… 

          His magic is unique. Is he really listening to the Titan, the way Luz and Eda and Lilith do? Or is he like that cruel teacher, yelling and abusing it until it finally does what he wants? Or, maybe he does understand the Titan… Does it understand him? Is Belos communicating?

           With how the Titan’s body seems to distort and mutate into flesh, and become infected and wounded, like a cancerous tumor… Remember how Eda’s mashed-together glyph started uncontrollably growing, and consuming? What if everything to do with Belos is the end-product of that? Just constantly torturing the Isles until it obeys him through sheer force of will and uncompromising pain, until the Titan’s own body begins to distort in confused pain. Wildly growing and creating like that ice spell…

          We see with the Golden Guard how flesh can be transmuted into a sword. Perhaps this raw burst of magic, all at once, yields living material; Because living creatures were born from the magic of the Isles? Perhaps the purest form of magic creates life… And Belos has ‘mastered’ a way to essentially command and overstimulate the Titan to produce this raw magic, but in a way that is of course chaotic and disjointed, reflecting the agony and pain the Titan is going through. 

          The ‘noise’ that Belos produces, his ‘voice’ disturbs and twists and makes the Titan writhe until its agony becomes physical and distorts the very island itself… Which suddenly makes me wonder if Rayne the new Bard Coven leader will come into play, sound fits with music and Bard magic, but I could just be overthinking again.

[redux-iterum]

History of the Clans

There are two versions of the story of how all things began. The one the Clans know deals in monsters and magic, and a rose-tinted idea of the importance of warriors and the feline people in general. The one told here is from the collective knowledge of scholars, and is much closer to the truth.

Once upon a time, there was a seemingly never-ending forest, and it was home to thousands of animals - badgers, foxes, stoats, owls, and best of all, an uncountable amount of prey to feed those animals. No one hungered or wanted for land to call their own. The forest brought in curious visitors every day, who had heard tales of this land of plenty and had come to see if the stories were true. 

Among them were the cats, a very foreign creature that the others had not seen before. Cats are remarkable at taking over an area and exploding in numbers before anyone has a chance to blink, and these ones did not disappoint in that aspect. They quickly took up the remaining available space and settled in to hunt and sleep to their heart’s content. 

But they did not come from nowhere, as the rest of the predators had assumed. They had been brought in by humans, who were even more alien than the cats, and who were on their way after their escapee pets. With humans came a drastic upheaval - the forest was cut down to a quarter of its original size just as fast as the cats had made themselves comfortable; the once wooded slope to the west had a structure built near it and the ground was torn up for planting strange grass; the east was taken over by glass and brick from the humans; and finally, a straight, wide path, stinking of something foreign and dangerous, cut the area apart, splitting the high stones in the west and the growing wetlands in the north from the hills and what remained of the forest. 

This unprecedented shrinking of territory left many animals without a home, or in defense of the little they had left. Friend turned on friend, family forgotten. Quickly, a free-for-all broke out, leading to many predators dead or severely injured and fleeing for their life from the forest. The cats proved themselves adaptable to any situation - the entire community banded together and, as a team, drove out the rest of the predators, sending them in every direction but the east and properly taking the forest for themselves.

The victory was short-lived as a new problem presented itself: everyone had lingered as long as there was food to eat before escaping. Mice, squirrels, birds, rabbits - there were barely any of them left. It wasn’t helped by the cats having a tendency to overhunt when there was nothing else to do. The unity once present dissolved as territories began to overlap and cats attacked each other for pathetic morsels that could be swallowed whole. The few kittypets living with humans had even their terrible food stolen, with some cats deserting the forest to wander the developing streets, hoping for charity. The prey population continued to shrink and some turned to even more desperate, much darker sources of food. 

Things got even worse when a crew of pilgrims arrived, late to the party and unaware of how bad the forest had gotten. Natives immediately bullied them away from their scant reserves. With nowhere else to go, the pilgrims huddled on the other side of the river on the edge of the forest and prayed for help. 

Then she arrived.

To this day, no one knows where the old molly known only as the Crone came from. She seemed to appear from the mist to inspect the forest, sniff disdainfully, and call together a sizeable cluster of cats before leading them away to the hills, where some of the human grass had gotten loose and taken over the moor. 

The decrease in population helped reserve the dwindling resources a bit, and cats temporarily forgot their battles to watch curiously as the new colony in the west found a place to settle at the top of the hills and thrive on the influx of prey that came from the farmland, which had receded its grip on the moor and left it free to hunt on. Several cats discussed leaving the forest to request sanctuary with this colony. Others turned their eyes across the human’s path (that was slowly turning into stinking black stone), where the wetlands were settling into a proper marsh. The pilgrims’ scant territory was growing grass, bringing in some animals to hunt.

Before any action could be taken on its own, the Crone reappeared in the forest and called together the residents. She announced that her test run of creating a colony had gone successfully, and now she was ready to help the rest of the scattered cats create their own groups, organize a hunting system, and allow their land to restore itself to something one could comfortably live in. This, she said, would ensure an era of peace for everyone, and if any were interested, they could come with her to be trained as leaders to complete her mission.

Four cats volunteered: Brawn, a huge, powerful tom that had fought and won many battles in exchange for prey; Ripple, a stray from far off that had fallen in with the pilgrims; Dewdrop, a former kittypet who had been cast out from her home and was desperate for security; and Clear Sky, a pilgrim that was ambitious and eager to join the project. The Crone took all four of them and left for the hills again without another word, except an order to limit the hunting in the forest. This was obeyed, since there wasn’t enough prey to hunt normally anyway.

Before too long, the four cats returned and began to gather cats. Brawn called for those that he considered allies of himself or his friends, which were mostly those he had fought together with before, giving him the strongest fighters, and claimed the forest for his colony. Ripple had his pilgrims already, and they stayed south, on the far side of the river. Those that had been cast away or were weak or distrusted were taken in by Dewdrop, who brought them to the marshes so that they were far enough away to not cause problems with the other colonies. The rest who did not fit in anywhere else or were loners looking to have a proper home again followed Clear Sky to the outlier part of the land, touching only the corner of the forest and river territories. The Crone brought in no one else except one stray pilgrim called Grey Wing as her new second-in-command, a position she called “deputy”. The other leaders followed suit by appointing deputies for their own, carefully chosen to contrast their superiors and speak as the voice of the rest of the colonies. 

With this, the leaders exercised what the Crone had taught them: in an unheard of move, hunting was organized and scheduled, with acceptable hunting areas changed day-to-day and prey of the day altering depending on what had the most numbers at the time. Borders were laid out so that no one accidentally took from another colony and reduced their number of prey. The most amazing of these decisions came from the pilgrims, who Ripple taught to hunt in the water - because no one had dared to jump in the deeper parts or even really fish at all, there was plenty of prey for the pilgrims, leading to no source of conflict with anyone else. The other colonies slowly began to prosper over time as less cats shared more prey with their communities. The exception was Clear Sky’s colony, which he proved to be a poor leader of and was eventually driven out before the colony disbanded and either joined up with the others or left for other areas. 

With the unusual, regimented structure, there came a very faint sense of ranks within the colonies: the leader, the deputy, and queens, with the average member not belonging to any of these and being unnamed in their position. Queens were given special treatment and their own dens to have their children, and they had prey delivered to them while they raised the next generation. 

As time went on and the colonies grew strong, healthy and well-fed, their members’ confidence were boosted. Old grudges resurfaced and the borders that were put in place to help hunting became places to defend or skirmish to settle arguments. Fights broke out, even with the leaders attempting to resolve disputes peacefully. Worse, these fights escalated as more cats joined their new friends to defend their pride or help with revenge. Things got worse and more vicious, until several very young cats got caught in a large battle they had nothing to do with and were killed.

This was the breaking point. Queens across the territories campaigned for a law to be set in place for the protection of their kits, while the more peaceful members encouraged rules of their own to prevent these unnecessary fights. The leaders got together and devised a burgeoning code that every cat was expected to follow if they wanted to stay in their home. 

The first of these was making a new rank for cats that were too young to be acceptably attacked, with a suffix to their name, -kit, which was taken away once they were older. These cats were under six months old, and were absolutely forbidden to be hurt or killed. Those that aged out of it were still in danger, until Brawn’s deputy, Ember, started teaching them to hunt and fight to protect themselves. The rest of the colonies, now under the name of “Clans”, immediately borrowed this idea. Soon after came the next rank of apprentice, and the suffix of -kit was changed to -paw. 

At the time, suffixes were reserved for the young, but the leader of the river Clan, now called River Ripple to give respect to his territory, took his group’s original two-part naming system and awarded apprentices for making it to adulthood with their own individual suffixes. This, too, very quickly became popular with everyone else. 

More changes were made over time - elder as a rank being added, religion and seers blossoming into things of great value, more additions to the code, the Clans being properly named, and so on - but these came to be more gradually. For now, at least, the wild and fast alteration of the forest from a place of chaos and disorder to a variety of territories with law-abiding Clans had been completed. From there, things have only gotten better.

[antihero-writings]

WOOHOO IT'S CHASSEUR DAY!!

This is a fic I started for this prompt on my ph and vnc blog, which I finally got around to finishing today for @phmonth2021's vnc countdown, Day 5: The Chasseurs!

Since the prompt helps explain a bit of why the story is the way it is, I'll include it here!

"But I also agree, Roland & Olivier are two characters that would be really fun to explore. What are they doing when they break out of chasseur mode? I find it amusing that Olivier is so popular with the ladies but can't be bothered by all that. Heh!"

Thank you @adriisamused so much for this prompt!! <3 <3 And once again, I'm sorry it took so long.

I'm honestly really proud of this fic, and I had such much fun with it!! I really hope you all like it!! I'd absolutely love to hear it if you do!!

Lastly, if you enjoyed this, please please don't hesitate to send me more prompts/asks--for anyone in vnc or ph, but especially for these two!! I love writing for them. You can either send them here, or to my ph and vnc blog @this-idiots-left-eye.

Thanks so much for reading!! Reblogs and comments are especially appreciated!! <3

*

Olivier was having a perfectly satisfactory morning. His coffee smelled just the right shade of black, and was scalding hot—just as he liked it. He brought a book he’d been hoping to read for a while, but hadn’t had the time for recently. He lit a cigarette, and—whatever anyone else said—the smoke was as decadent as any sweet treat from a pastry shop. He was just opening up said book, just bringing the mug to his lips when—

“OLIVER!”

Oliver didn’t jump. Didn’t shout or otherwise react in surprise at the sudden disruption to his morning. Instead, very slowly, he closed the book, very carefully he set down his coffee. He lifted the cigarette and took a long drag, blowing out a substantial wisp of smoke.

And he silently regretted (for what was probably the eightieth time) telling Roland where his favorite coffee shop was.

Roland presently was running up to him, dragging behind him a dazed looking old man, and successfully made it to him by the time he finished his drag.

“Olivier! This poor man has lost his parakeet! He’s looked everywhere and he just can’t find Monsieur Butterbeans! Code blue! Code blue!

“…You know that’s for hospitals, right?”

“Well red just didn’t seem high enough! The situation is dire!”

Olivier blinked, eyes lidded. “Go look for it.”

“Oh Olivier! This simply isn’t a two person job! Two sets of eyes isn’t going to be enough! We simply cannot scour all the skies by ourselves!”

And he was having such a good morning.

“You think I want to spend my afternoon giving myself a crick in the neck?” Olivier asked.

Roland leaned in closer. “I think you want to spend the afternoon helping one of God’s lambs who is in need.” When Olivier stared at him Roland sighed. “If you help...I might just be inclined to work extra hard tomorrow.”

Olivier leaned to the side to look at the old man, who was staring up at the sky, not seeming too bothered. “Where did you lose it?”

“He lost her at the docks!” Roland jumped in—(quite literally jumped in front of him)—and answered for him.

After taking an extra second to try to calculate why a parakeet called ‘Monsieur’ was a ‘she,’ he spoke, perfectly monotone, “So go to the docks.”

“You think we haven’t already tried that! We searched everywhere! She was nowhere to be found!”

“Well if you’ve already searched everywhere—” He began to take another sip of coffee.

“Oh come now, Olivier!” Roland took his arm and shook him, making him both spill some coffee on the table, as well as cough coffee. “What kind of Chasseurs would we be if we gave up helping one of God’s children after one measly search? We’re more determined than that!” He curled his hand into a fist, his eyes sparkling. “Remember the story of the lady and her coins?” He was practically dragging him out of his chair now.

“I don’t think Jesus was talking about parakeets.”

“It’s a parable Olivier, it can be about parakeets if it’s applicable!”

Rather than arguing with him (like he was very much inclined to do) Olivier took another drag from his cigarette and sighed out smoke. “Let me finish my coffee.”

“But Olivier, Monsieur Butterbeans could be halfway up the Seine by now!”

“Let me. Finish. My coffee.” Olivier enunciated each word, staring intently at Roland as he lifted the coffee to his lips.

Roland sighed, and sat down across from him, gesturing to the old man to sit next to him, he obeyed diligently, like he was a pet himself.

Roland folded his hands on the table, and stared at him, with big, imploring eyes, the entire time. Others would have found this more than mildly intimidating, and incentive to drink faster. But Olivier drank his coffee at an ordinary pace, if a little slower than usual. After he was finished he set it down, paid, and left.

If this day was going to be as long as he thought it would be, he wanted to experience it on a full head of caffeine.

They indeed spent all the noon, and half the afternoon searching for her. Olivier tried his best not to look up too much (due to the aforementioned neck-crick potential), but with Roland taking the opportunity every few minutes to slap them both on the shoulders, then point upwards, and shout at shadows, and oddly placed light fixtures, and decorations, “IS THAT HER?!” he couldn’t help looking up.

It was never her.

At one point he was convinced she was nesting in a lady’s hat.

That was also not her.

They had decided to go by the park, and Olivier was just asking why the old man deigned to call a female parakeet “Monsieur” and before the old man could respond, Roland shouted:

“THAT’S HER!”

Olivier, sure it was another false alarm, turned his head with an exasperated sigh building in his throat.

But there was indeed a pretty little parakeet sitting there.

This whole time they thought they would find her nestled in the rafters of some house, or perched on a shop roof, or sign. They had been hoping she wouldn’t find herself too high for them to even see (though Roland had made them climb up building staircases and onto their roofs more than twice).

But there she was, nestled comfortably, not in a tree or on a roof, but on the shoulder of a woman.

More accurately, a mime.

Monsieur Butterbeans was sitting on the shoulder of a mime, and seemed to be having a perfectly pleasant time (ignore the rhyme).

“I mean that simply must be her, right?!” Roland turned to the old man.

The old man nodded vigorously.

Roland’s whole face lit up (though his face was always lit with a sort of angelic glow, so this was a bit of a Moses-and-Mt-Sinai situation) and he was running towards her before they could say a word.

“Salut, Mademoiselle! May I say, you are looking lovely today!”—She waved her hand as if to say, ‘oh stop’—“I simply must thank you!”—She gave an over-exaggerated expression of delight—“That parakeet on your shoulder? She belongs to my friend over there!” He pointed a finger at the old man with the speed and rigidity of a compass needle. “He lost her early this morning!” Roland turned around and was about to march victoriously back, “So thank you so much for—!”

She pretended to make a lasso and swing it around Roland. Even though it was made of nothing more than air, Roland was pulled back.

Olivier put his face in his palm.

He didn’t like mimes on the best of days. They were quiet, which would potentially be a nice quality... if it weren’t for that quietness being, not a means for peace, but rather something to make their interactions with normal-human-beings all that much more frustrating and difficult to discern. And their games with empty air seemed but another reason to disrupt the days of normal natural-world abiding people. They were like vampires…except they couldn’t actually see anything beyond this world, and couldn’t actually alter anything, and they were much more annoying to deal with.

And this one was proving, (as mimes generally did), unable to let them get away without participating in her little farce.

He had a theory that mimes weren’t really there to entertain normal people, rather normal people were there to entertain mimes.

“What is it? Is something wrong?” Roland asked.

She held her hand up, and bent her fingers a few times as if to say she would like payment.

“You want a reward?” Roland seemed more than slightly affronted at this. The thought that anyone wouldn’t do a good deed out of the goodness of their heart was nothing short of diabolical to him.

The mimette made several hand motions which, while confusing at first seemed to be her way of conveying that she wasn’t asking for much (Olivier thought that would remain to be seen).

She pondered for a moment with a hand to her chin and squnched up face. Her eyes grazed over the old man, (who had his hands clasped in front of him in a pleading motion), and Olivier (who had folded his arms over his chest, and decided to look away when she looked at him). When he looked back, she was pointing at him.

She pointed at him, then she tapped her finger to her cheek.

Olivier didn’t need an interpreter to understand what that meant.

He recoiled, his voice going low and tense, “I would…prefer another method.”

It’s not like he didn’t know how to kiss a woman, (he’d done a lot more than kiss more than one woman), but this was just—

“Oh it’s just one little kiss, Olivier!” Roland waved his hand. “Do it for Monsieur Butterbeans!” (Monsieur Butterbeans decided to take this opportunity to do the important job of pooping on her shoulder).

Well someone ought to do it.

The mime did the lasso trick again, this time with Olivier. Olivier decidedly did not play along, but she was clearly well-versed in the ways of unparticipatory students, and happy to use the invisible rope to pull herself towards him. (Roland looked delighted with the show).

She got uncomfortably close, put her hands behind her back and presented her cheek.

Olivier looked away, his arms still folded.

Roland still found a way to get in his line of sight, and gave him the thumbs up.

The mimette stood on her tiptoes and blinked her eyelashes repeatedly. She might have been pretty, but who could tell under all that disgusting makeup? ( …Which Olivier did not want on his lips).

“This is ridiculous.” He grunted. “There are other ways to—”

“It’s just one little kiss Olivier!" Roland repeated. "She seems a perfectly nice lady! She deserves it!”

Olivier was not going to humiliate himself for a parakeet, who seemed to rather like this mime anyways.

“Remember, I might just be inclined to work harder tomorrow!”

Olivier sighed, still not looking at her.

“Fine, if you can’t do it, I’ll kiss her!” Roland stepped forward.

“No, no, I’ll do it!” Olivier pinched the bridge of his nose. ”She clearly likes me.” Olivier peeked open an eye to see the mime blinking more profusely, apparently not the least bit offended at his obvious disinterest. (Only more evidence for the normal-people-are-entertainment-fodder-for-the-mimes theory)

“Are you sure? Because you don’t seem like you’re going to do it. It’s really fine if you want me to!”

Olivier took a rather long moment to gather himself, and all the dignity that he knew he was about to lose. He kept his eyes firmly shut…and gave her a peck on the cheek.

…Except, when Olivier opened his eyes, he came to find—(to his absolute horror)—that in the moment he had taken to muster his courage, Roland had decided that Olivier wasn’t going to do it, and went in to kiss her other cheek. The mime recognized this in perfect time, (and in perfect mime fashion), stepped out of the way. So the person who he had kissed was actually….

Olivier jerked away with what almost sounded like a horrified squeak, his hand flying to his mouth. He then turned sharply away, sticking out his tongue, and hacking like a cat who had a hairball.

Roland simply blinked, then began to laugh mirthfully, like he didn’t find the situation the least bit awkward. “Well played, Mademoiselle!” He applauded her.

The mime bowed with a flourish of her hand, and as she lowered herself Monsieur Butterbeans flew off her shoulder and into the hand of her owner, who he then brought up to his own cheek to nuzzle gratefully

“Olivier, your mouth tastes like an ashtray.” Roland remarked as they began to leave—waving his hand and sending an extra thank you towards the mime. “I really hope you don’t smoke before you kiss women. It doesn’t make me want to kiss you again you know.” Roland put his hand on his shoulder.

Olivier flinched violently, snapped equally violently, “Don’t touch me!” and said low, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost I dearly hope it doesn’t.”

Roland just laughed.

“If you even think about mentioning this to anyone—” his glared at him, hoping his eyes were as sharp as he intended them to be.

“I really don’t know what the big fuss is about! It was just a silly prank! And a rather clever one on her part!”

Olivier stuck his tongue out again, feeling like he was going to vomit. “It was a disgusting prank.”

“Keep talking like that and I’ll feel insulted! I hope my mouth didn’t taste half as bad as yours did.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “Your mouth didn’t taste like anything, because that didn’t happen and we are never talking about it!”

“Well, nothing to complain about is good news I guess!”

“Stop. Talking. About it.”

They had been walking a good way, and the sun was setting over the city, when the old man stopped in front of them, holding Monsieur Butterbeans in front of him, looking down at her lovingly.

“Thank you for helping me find my dear Monsieur Butterbeans,” the old man spoke. (Olivier tried not to shout in surprise at the reveal that he could actually talk). “The Church really does help those in need, doesn’t it? You’re good boys.”—(Olivier would have preferred ‘men’ but)—“I would like to repay you somehow.”

“Oh no, we simply couldn’t accept!” Roland burst out, stepping forward. “A good deed is its own reward! ‘Anything you do for the least of these’ and all! Although, you’re not the least of course! It’s just a verse you know! Well no verse is just a verse, but—”

“I feel I must do something for your…trouble.” (Olivier curled his nose at the slight snicker there was behind the word ‘trouble.’) “At the very least, I have some rather nice vintage wines in my cellar—“

Before Roland could say once again that that-really-wasn’t-necessary, Olivier shot his hand in front of him and said, a little too loudly, “We will gladly accept.”

******

The next day Olivier was leaning back in his chair in front of a rather large stack of paperwork, massaging the crick in his neck when Roland burst in, a little girl hiding behind him.

“OLIVIER!” He panted. “Olivier, this poor girl has lost her favorite doll! We simply must help her!”

Olivier shut his eyes, rubbing his temple, his voice shaking. “You told me you would work harder if I—”

“I will! I will! But this is urgent!”

Olivier sighed. “Astolfo!” He yelled.

After a few moments, a boy with red hair came in.

“You sent for me?”

“Roland has a job for you...(however ridiculous it may be)," he added under his breath. "Will you help find this girl’s doll?” Olivier marched forward, his footsteps ominous on the stone floor, and grabbed Roland’s wrist a little too tight, dragging him into a chair, “Roland here has work to do.”

As Astolfo obliged, Olivier muttered, more to Roland than anyone else, “And he’s not getting out of it this time.”

Roland pouted, plopping down in the chair to properly do his Chasseur work.

...And Olivier couldn’t help but feel like he was having a perfectly satisfactory morning once again.

*

<-Day 6: The Royals

Day 4: Chloé and/or Jean-Jacques->

[eselkunst]

Some elaboration on a character design class demo.  Three chefs (spoon, knife, and fork) each shown on a busy day, a good day, and a bad day (left, middle, right).  I made them from top to bottom and the statements for each character became more complicated as I went along. Further description and thoughts behind the post break...

Spoon (saucier):

On her busy day, straight lines emerge and masses orient to point at the work and the spoon.  She is both grounded and focused, both pulled down and toward the work. All of her design acknowledges gravity except for the “fairy wings” of her apron strings that still function as a counterpoint of levity. Hat like a boulder.

On her good day, the sauce is glorious.  She is elated, expansive and buoyant. Hat like a cloud.  Flights of fancy.  Spoon like a wand.

On her bad day, she takes beratement stoically.  The actual strength in the shoulders is apparent, the suggestion of anatomy is most obvious. She is reined in by symmetry and order.  The signifier of the hat goes away, revealing the policing of her hair and everything that implies professionally and culturally.  Should feel deflated but still upright and balanced and stable.  Bad days are for recalibration, hard truths, and a return to center, not defeat.

Knife (baker):

On her busy day, amorphous shapes, curves and billowing masses bloom everywhere like magic.  Kneading is hard work, sleeves go up, but this activates the shoulder area, head tilts down and “Napoleonic” hat and hair are like blinders.  She is practically walled off and focused.  Red is warning to back off, apron ties and knife are little spikes.  Bag of bench flour is asymmetric burden and alters silhouette.  She might be angular and smaller than her implied silhouette, but at work the shapes evoke muscular ripples.  Knife is constrained, strapped in, symbolic than practical.

On her good day, she is on break and arguing and winning.  The only thing better than being right in a conflict is shrugging off the heavy work.  A wrist brace bulks the hand (Hellboy) but also indicates the hidden cost of work and strength. Under the clunky orthopedic crocs are flashes of gold relief in the socks.  No heavy bag, sleeves can come down, angles reassert here.  Hat on the shoulder is a choice.  Jacket open looks vaguely leather jacket, general vague militaristic punk vibe.  Red, black and green, colors - she is self-aware about how she presents and defends borders around her identity and self-worth.  She talks with her hands when agitated and remnants of flour zip and zing off her gestures like special effects.

On her bad day, she cries in the back room where no one can see.  The dough which usually obeys can also clump and stick and make her hands useless/monstrous.  Can’t even wipe her tears.  All the same defensive signals when busy now just isolate when she is in need.  The fact that she has sloppy dough on her hands suggest she puts up with it as long as she can and just breaks down abruptly and catastrophically. Bad days are lonely and helpless days for someone who feels she has to be strong all the time.

Fork (pitmaster):

On her busy days, easy strength on display, hands on, she is the most deliberate with the work as work; it’s not a fight or pleasure.  The apron and padding towel suggest work is messy but thoughtful care anticipates problems.  Inherent strength in the body, but shoulders also activated by badge, suggesting position and achievement within systems, not only self-generated.  She understands code switching, and generally professionalism comes easy.  Fork is there but merely functional, not a threat or an agent, she is self-possessed and her relationship to work is healthy, if not superhumanly so.  She shares her silhouette with the work in terms of organic shapes and carcasses, but not like the baker who is made magical or sadly monstrous by her relationship to work, the pitmaster can put it down and pull it apart and butcher it methodically and walk away unscathed and unaltered.  It’s all choice and mastery without compromise.

On her good day, she doesn’t have to perform for anybody.  Nothing remains of the formal professional posture but the fork, which only now comes in to play.  She gets paid to handle meat, so on her day off, she keeps it casual, small, low key, and she lets the tools do most of the work.  She is confident and can flaunt it here openly, being herself.

On her bad day, she compromises herself, not emotionally or physically, but professionally.  Having to serve up meat to order that is overdone and without a same shared regard for the craft.  Here she is tautly top-heavy and curving in and over like a restrained wave.  The different hats she feels obliged to wear then are emblematic of the problem.  The fork is the real opinion behind the back.  

[transformers-valiant-keepers]

I put so much investment into Roxie and Dadlock lately (I’m sorry) and it's all I ever think about them bc who doesn't love found family tropes. For TFTN, I took in key elements of characters, backstory and lores from IDW and incorporated the ideas into my own for TFTN.

I’ve been listening to Lasting Impression by Silent Descent when writing up Dadlock’s life (which probably fitting).

Trigger warnings for mentions of discrimination, drug use, implied dubcon, medic, shadowplay / mnemosurgery(?), child abuse, depression, implied suicide, ptsd trauma(?). 

I’ll put all of this under readmore

I've been thinking about how much similarities between Roxie and Drift in having to hide certain things about themselves from the society--with Roxie being deaf who has to constantly cover her hearing aids with her long hair, and Drift was a forged triple changer. 

Triple changers cybertronians bear the brunt of discriminations for being so different and the Functionalist Council saw them as a threat to Cybertron's future and the caste systems. Techno-organics also shared the similar reaction for being much different from others and were turned away by Functionalist medics.

It was pretty telling what Drift had gone through in his life… Before Roxie was constructed with his spark, before the Greatsword connected to his spark while unaware of the intentional true purpose in store for him and Roxie later on, and before Dai Atlas took him in to the Samurai clan. 

He did not start off as a good life living on the streets and homeless on Rodion. He was an independent, mostly kept to himself, barely opening up to anyone. He endured survival instincts living on the streets, and learnt self-defence battle protocols to defend himself when necessarily. 

Obtaining Energon for refuel wasn’t easy. He went through a dark place of sleeping rough, hooked on circuit boosters to spare the pain and selling himself for Energon through sexual activities. It wasn’t his choice nor how many times had he lost count when he came close to almost-deactivation from certain outcomes.

He never forgot the time he visited the medibay clinic to be patched up and to feel safe. That was the first time he saw Ratchet.

It was not the vivid life Drift wanted to remember for discussion. He spared the dark details of his early life and post-Shadowplay-to-Autobot’s assassin era from Roxie, because it’s not something he wanted to subject her to that exposure, even for one so young and carefree who was not exposed to the Functionalist era. He only shared his life after Dai Atlas approached and took him in, which changed his life completely, to his life amongst the Samurai clans. Dai Atlas was the closest thing he would call to a Sire. He became familiar with the likes of Cyclonus and Axe.

Axe and Cyclonus became his best friends who later became his Amica Endurae. Axe does not understand the life Drift went through--he had experienced living rough--but he was the only person he could trust enough to vent to. Cyclonus, on the other hand, understood what he went through and offered her shoulder for him to vent.

Crystal City was the safest place it had been in so long for Drift, not counting the fact a particular medical clinic had been relatively safe away from the backend alleys. Everything was good afterwards, he became a trained swordmech. It takes some adjustment for him to get used to sleeping in an actual berth provided for his own amongst other things--including Energon for refuel and to live. He did meet Ratchet, despite them having met long before when Drift lived on the rough streets.

Drift received upgrades to his frame, putting the past behind him to start anew under Dai Atlas’ mentorship, and touching the Greatsword had given him a second chance to move on from his past (obvious to the fact that the Greatsword had chosen him for a reason, or what fate had in store for him).

Becoming a Samurai was the best life-changer for him.

The Functionalists Council had arranged for Drift to be taken and captured (all the while, Pharma had secretly played a part in it) and was taken straight to the Institute where he was subjected to Shadowplay against his will.

Many years later, he eventually discovered Roxie’s existence… and somehow learnt she is his Kindred. And that instinct promptly activated his paternal Sire Coding within both his and Deadlock alter-ego’s programming. 

Life for Drift was royalty fucked up after Shadowplay had changed him into a deadly, fearless assassin with Emperor Nemesis as his handler (this was revealed in Prologue Part One). He was not known as Drift, he became Deadlock--likely a case of an alter-ego formed as the result from his traumas. Before all that discovery, he met Windblade and Perceptor who became two important figures in his life and opened up his spark. As a reminisce of his early days forcing to hide the fact he’s a triple changer, Windblade had to hide her cityspeaker ability whereas Perceptor had to hide his outlier ability and refrained himself from reading others’ thoughts. They hid this from the Functionalists and found themselves form a connetion with Drift after he saved them from unforseen situations. Drift knows what it’s like to hide and pretend, and sworn to sercery to keep both Windblade and Perceptor safe. He fell in love with Windblade and Perceptor--with an emotional deep connection with the young cityspeaker and scientist--but he never got to tell them both after they got separated apart from each others.

Roxie was constructed cold with her spark being a donor from Drift’s, thus forming a strong bond between the two--such bond between a Sire and a Kindred are considered rare in some cases. This is known as Cognatio Endurae.

Though, Roxie… didn’t have a good start after being subconsciously locked away in a stasis pod by the Emperor’s doings. The sad thing is? Drift does not know whether she was physically abused constantly through the bond whenever he was resistant against being controlled, or forced to obey commands, or goes against authority orders--and the thought alone had really broken him.

He tried to save her the first time but was caught out and forced to watch in horror as The Emperor abused Roxie in front of his optics--which played into the triggers whenever he saw Roxie was harmed and he shifted into his Deadlock persona way later on. Yes, Drift and Deadlock alter ego both genuinely care for Roxie. 

Techno-organics were not well-known to Cybertronians until the 22nd or 23rd Century, but one with an organic human DNA is considered rare. Now for Roxie, being a techno-organic and all… it wasn't easy to bring her up. Drift is new to parenting and can be a worrywart over her. His past actually helped him to adapt and care for her--he eventually grows into a better person than he used to be. 

Though, what Drift never prepared for… was Roxie diagnosed with severe hearing loss, aka Deaf / Hearing Impaired, in both audial receptors. He went as far to start his research and how to help her. He is patient and relied on the bond to communicate with her, he taught her to lipread--because he had little knowledge of sign languages. Once they get their servos on functioning Hearing Aids for her, she can hear their voices. It wasn't the best or helpful to her, Drift was relieved she was responsive to his voice like a sense of familiarity to her.

Due to the immense strong bond and prioritising Roxie first before himself, Drift turned off his pain sensors to take in the burdens and sensed her emotions and pains.

But her upbringing had its moments. Roxie hated hearing tests. It made her extremely stressed over the noise levels and the lowest ringing noises were the worst of all. She was a victim to disability discrimination by society, which she was completely shunned out and struggled to make any friends. It did hurt her and her hearing wasn't perfect that the kids relentlessly teased her for her difficulties--the aftermath forced her to cover ears and hearing aids with her long hair to hide her disability. 

She was dejected and left out, unsure whether to question where she would fit in in this universe. Drift sensed this coming through the bond and tried his best to comfort her as a father wanting to understand her. Roxie’s struggles with deafness had impacted on her mental health and she went through a dark place succumbing to negative voices and far too anxious to socialise with anyone.

She would cry herself to sleep with a wish how badly she wanted to hear, and bottled all of her emotions and issues to herself. She found it completely hard to talk or open up about her feelings--even to Drift and Axe. Such intrusive thoughts prone her despair into an emotional crying mess leading to Drift exposed his spark chamber to guide and soothed Roxie out of an anxiety attack keeping her focus onto his calming, pulsing spark and enfolded within his EM field filled with nothing more than a comforting familial love.

Suffice to say, Drift had coaxed gently, without pressuring her, got her to open up to him and listened to her confide in him. One time, she accidentally slammed Drift’s doorwing, which was very sensitive, when her emotions got the best of her during an outburst and of course, Roxie felt completely bad afterwards.

Meeting new people was difficult for her, much less making new friends without the unnecessary attention from adolescent organic males. Due to the society looking down on disabled people, Roxie doesn’t want to let anyone in, something that was passed on from her Sire, without putting her guarded wall down and succumbing to heartaches. She stayed--remained--close to Drift and Wing. She trusts them and they’re the only ones she relied heavily on for their support and speak on her behalf.

Beyond that, there were complications on their welfare over the years hiding on Earth, especially when Roxie’s health was concerned. Her height growth was stunted and slowed throughout her activated age. (At eighteen activated age as example, she stood at 5ft 4in). However, there’s major issues Drift and Axe had to deal with rationalizing Energon usage after the first time they watched Roxie overcome with extreme fatigue from low Energon. They were alerted by this despite the three of them living pretty rough to hide out on Hedonia without detecting the Autobots--they moved from one hideout to another, erasing their presence from their previous accommodations. Moving to a new place made Roxie unsettled the first few nights.

Drift’s early life resurfaced given the living arrangements on Hedonia, he was willingly to sacrifice his Energon for Roxie and replenish her energy and to avoid her body going into stasis shock. He had considered an Energon transfer reserved for emergencies only just for Roxie alone, and the process was risky that Axe had berated him for it on a dangerously low Energon withdrawal. Axe could understand due to Energon being scarce and trying to save as much credits that he had gone further to search and provide fuels for the three of them to survive.

Had they lived on Cybertron, specifically in the roughest places, Drift would’ve given away a full Energon to Roxie and spared little usage for himself to live through another day.

"A good Sire would do anything for their Kindred" Drift told Axe. And the truth is, Roxie was a beacon of light to Drift through the darker aspects of his life, even with being there for her through her low days.

That's as far I've written from my head about these two and I'm having many feelings over these two.

[decalinethespacecat]

The Games that We Play-Ch.1

A simple exploration.

That's all this mission was supposed to entail.

Well, in a sense, perhaps they had accomplished such. Stranded on a new, foreign world, brimming with energy, and teeming with organic life. And with that, it was the very life that they had been forced to alter themselves to, the very lifeblood that dwelt on this strange sphere in too great an excess, and thus, should they not adhere to the laws set by this new world, it could mean the loss of their functionality, or even more, their own sparks. Of course, ironically enough, it hadn't just been themselves that had to follow this code: the very ones that had caused their stranding here had also been subject to it. And even more, one amongst their former pursuers had, albeit forcibly at first, integrated amongst their numbers. Now, as the two parties faced each other atop this mountain, five against five, the playing field had been leveled.

The two heads of the opposing sides made direct eye contact with each other, the differences between them evident in far more than just their conflicting ideals and ambitions. On one side stood the stalwart, strong form of a darkly furred primate, leaning on his knuckles as the species he had scanned were inclined to do. His eyes were dark, yet soulful, and in the minds of some of his fellow explorers, dare they say, they appeared almost akin to the small creatures that had aided and catered to their ancestors. On the other was, for all intents and purposes, a complete antithesis of everything the primate was. He bore the outer flesh of a large theropod coated in a sheen of violet with a series of green ridges trailing along his back, ending at the base of his tail. Rows of sharpened, ivory teeth lined the inside of his powerful jaws, small, yet menacing red eyes full of intent glowering back at the primate opposite of him.

"Across the galaxy," the ancient reptile spoke, voice low and smooth. "It has come to this, Optimus Primal." The primate stood his ground, along with the other four organically based Cybertronians with him. "Face to face," a smile crept onto the theropod's features. "Tooth to claw...yesss." Oh yes indeed, he had been clamoring for this very moment! "Have you anything to say?"

The primate's face grew stern. True, he had not set out on this expedition with the intent to seek combat. Yet ultimately, Primus, it seemed, held other plans for them. "I'd say, that's prime." he simply stated before bearing his elongated canines. "Let's do it!"

...

"YEAHHHH!" a chorus of young voices cried out, five to be exact, as they charged in unison at a collection of five pieces of notebook paper held up by a used popsicle stick glued onto the back, each of them stuck into the ground so they would stay in place. The owners of the voices came forward and did 'battle' with the pieces of cut-out paper, lightly striking and flicking the fragile, crudely drawn depictions of their current 'adversaries'.

This was the third time they needed to be redrawn, and frankly, no one was wanting to have to do all five Predacons all over again. Especially if one of them was a young adolescent with questionable drawing skills. If anything, at least they LOOKED like how they were supposed to this time. Sort of.

One amongst the five, a boy with tannish skin and a darkly colored buzz cut, grabbed the cutout of Megatron (at least, it was supposed to be Megatron) and purposefully fell to the ground, bringing the piece of colored paper on a stick close to his face, raising one hand to keep it back, as if it weighed a good deal of weight.

...

The jaws were close. So insultingly close. Just a few centimeters more, and that slagging ape's head would be firmly in his jaws! "Admit defeat, Maximal!" Megatron bellowed, Primal not wavering, yet it was evident that he was struggling against the Tyrannosaurus' massive head. "The Energon shall be ours!"

The silverback needed to act fast. He held no intention of obeying the violet Predacon's demand, yet he needed some leeway. He needed to at least get the larger beast off of him! "Not if I can help it!"

...

"Yah!" the tan boy hollered, behaving as if he had just flung a two-ton boulder off of him, yet the paper cutout landed in the grass with little more than a soft crinkle. "Surrender, Megatron!" he proclaimed, his voice far from the authoritative, triumphant Maximal he was imitating. "You're scrapped!"

'Megatron didn't retort back, the boy realizing then what kind of corner he had just put himself in.

"Uh, guys?" he called out, the other four children ceasing their 'battle' against their respective Predacons and turning towards him. "Who's not fighting at this part?"

One boy amongst them, African and with a top of short, black curls, turned to him. "They all are!" he answered back.

"Yeah, but who's being shown fighting?"

"Uh…" the other boy paused, thinking for a moment. "I think it's just Optimus and Megatron."

"Ok." the tan boy went over to pick up the Megatron cutout, his dark eyes taking notice of a nearby tree. "You mind? I can't really chase myself."

...

The impact was immediate, and even if it had been mere seconds, the shock that came with the splintering rock formation behind them both clearly affected Primal more than his adversary.

A fact that they wasted no time in taking advantage of.

With one swift, precise bite, Megatron put the jaws of the mighty beast he had donned as his alternate form to proper use, the premaxillary teeth that once belonged to the likes of the extinct predator tore through the alpha primate's thigh, right above the joint. Primal released an involuntary wail of agony, the sharpened instruments having torn through his alt mode's synthetic flesh and down to the fragile circuitry and wiring underneath. Not feeling satisfied with just one sample of the Maximal's mech fluid lightly bathing his tongue, Megatron bit yet again, only this time, Primal seemed to have better prepared for it. He was still in a great deal of pain, yes, yet now he could better channel it, using the horrid sensations and transferring it into an unquenchable need to fight back, beginning with delivering a hardened chop with both hands to the top of Megatron's scaly dome.

This blow had put the behemoth reptile in the same position Optimus had been mere seconds prior. And due to the blow he had delivered, it took the Tyrannosaurus a moment to realize that, surprisingly enough, the foolish ape had somehow found it in him to up and began swinging him around by the tail! As soon as the world had begun spinning for him, it stopped, only to then realize he was flying right into the ceiling of the mountainous structure, crashing down with a resounding thud that shook the entire landscape.

"Gah!" Optimus cried out, hissing as he analyzed the injury done to his leg. True, he had managed to stand to deliver that rather 'creative' maneuver against his aggressor, yet it now dawned on him that there was no way he could walk with a tear like this. And internalized repairs wouldn't be able to undo damage such as this. As if to add insult to injury (literally in a sense), the reptile had somehow managed to get up. "It…" Optimus stammered, forcing himself to rise. "It's over, Megatron!"

"It is NEVER over! Nooo!" He could scarcely believe it at first, yet given how the brute's forces traveled all this way to engage them, perhaps anything was possible. After all, what other Cybertronian before them had been forced to adopt a secondary skin of organic flesh? Despite the painful surges the multiple Energon crystals sent through his true form, Megatron did not waver, aiming and sending a missile right in the direction of the wounded Primal. "For if I must die...I shall take you with me!"

There was no way he could avoid this. Its proximity was too close. The urge to flee was great, yet Primal stood firm. He would stand tall and accept this. He had begun to shut his eyes, awaiting the inevitable. 'Till all are one…'

Yet one, he was not yet to be.

The missile had never come to meet him.

...

"Wait, you want me to do what?" one amongst the group questioned with a quirked brow, this time the child, despite the role, a young girl with skin slightly darker than the boy roleplaying as Primal, her thick, black hair tied back in a low ponytail. In her hands was a wooden sword, one that she had made sure to bring each and every time she met with the others. Yet now, the African boy was asking her to do something a little...odd with it.

"Well, in the episode, Dinobot blocks it with his tail."

"So, what? You want me to put this on my butt?"

"Uh...well, it'd be accurate."

It sounded absurd, not to mention difficult to pull off. Sure, she didn't really know how to properly use the sword, yet at least she could make use of it as something of an improv baseball bat. But nooooo, when she batted the "missile" away like that, they had to stop so that they could do it 'the right way'.

"Fine." she moaned, rolling her eyes and tossing the crumpled piece of paper (Waspinator got stepped on, AGAIN) in the African boy's direction. "Throw it again."

...

The one that had once been under Megatron's command, the one that had blocked their way and saw fit to end his life on the stone bridge, allowing the Predacons to catch up with them, had just been the one to strike the incoming projectile with his striped, reptilian tail, sending it off course and away from them both.

The former Predacon and his would-be usurper had just miraculously saved him from certain death.

This revelation was given no time to truly be dwelt on at the present, for the missile had found itself a new target, the explosion sending a chain reaction that soon caused the entire mountain to shake.

"It's going to blow!" a brown rhinoceros bellowed, the once battling Predacons quickly realizing the danger they were all in and making a hasty retreat, leaving their downed leader behind.

"Time to fade, heroes!" one amongst the Maximals shouted, a green-eyed cheetah, he making himself scarce along with Primal and the rhino, a large, grey rat also atop of the horned creature's back, a velociraptor racing alongside with them off of the mountain. None dare to look back, lest they waste precious seconds before the entire formation exploded.

Thankfully, they thought as they now found themselves a good distance away, all of them had managed to make it out of that close call in one piece. All four...no, all five of them.

Optimus turned his gaze towards the newest member of their group, his pale eyes gazing back into the silverback's own. "Thanks." he simply stated, the ancient reptile somewhat taken aback by this gesture.

"My actions did not imply loyalty, Optimus." the striped theropod clarified, momentarily averting his gaze, his voice low and raspy, yet strangely enough, sincere. "I owe you my life." He admitted the act, even if he dare not openly say it, was rather humbling. "Now we are merely...even."

The silverback took no offense to this. In fact, to the raptor's befuddlement, he simply presented him with a satisfied grin. "I'll accept that."

"Yeah, well, uh.." The rat, having long gotten off the rhino's back, wasn't exactly ready to allow this saurian into their ranks, no matter what Optimus declared. Orders or not, he'd make his opinion on "Chopperface", or rather, "Choppahface", known for a long while. Still, there was a burning question on his mind. "At least Megatron's gone, and so is the Energon!" he declared, voice rising in hope. "Can we go home now?"

It was too good to be true. The shaking of his leader's head cemented this fact. "No, Rattrap." the gorilla solemnly stated. "For now, we're stranded here with the Predacons on this unknown planet." the situation sunk in for all of them now, truly. "Megatron may be back, and there is still more Energon. If they ever get enough, they could conquer the galaxy." he could see the trepidation etched into their features. Indeed, he would be a liar if he said he did not share in their collective concern. Still...there was no other way. Their opposition had to be stopped. And whether it be here, Earth, or even Cybertron, his conviction would have remained the same. "So for now," he began, looking towards the endless, blue horizon above. "Let the battle be here, on this strange, primitive world. And let it be called," he shouted, extending his fist towards the skies. "The Beast Wars!"

...

"YEAH!" The five shouted in chorus, full of nothing short of absolute triumph and exhilaration, the sight of the untamed, unconquered canyon and mountainous landscape the Maximals stood upon at the forefront of their mind's eye.

Of course, after a few moments of this, said landscape steadily began to fade, the mowed, fertile, green lawn of the African boy's yard coming to consume the place stationed in their imaginations.

"Uh, ok." a voice amongst them spoke, said voice belonging to another girl in the group, though contrary to the other young lady with them, she bore lighter skin and a head of long, red locks. "So...do we go over the toy fund now or later?"

"I think we've got a more immediate problem than that." the African boy said, picking up the crumpled-up piece of paper. "Somebody's got to redraw Waspinator. Again."

The skies had darkened, the sun just beginning to set. Yet in the small, packed enclosure of the cubical-shaped treehouse, none of the five children paid any mind, a serious and passionate debate taking place amongst them.

"No way! I did it last week! It's Tim's turn!" a blonde boy with scruffy hair protested, crossing his arms.

"Last time I checked," the African boy clarified, gesturing an accusing finger back at the blonde. "You only did it last week because you skipped out on the last time it was your turn."

"Hey, I was sick that week!" he protested.

"Yeah, that was boring." The black-haired girl admitted. "I was tired of acting out that episode where Cheetor got kidnapped by Tarantulas."

"You got tired?" another girl questioned, she of lighter skin and a head of fiery red hair, even if her voice was meek and smooth. "I had to make sure the cutout we made didn't get too messed up."

"At least Rattrap got to do stuff in that episode!' the other girl retorted, looking to her wooden sword. "Dinobot was barely in that one!"

"And we can only do so many with just five of us!" the blonde added in. "Soon, it's going to get to where we're going to have to start making up our own episodes!"

"Ok, look!" the tan boy interjected, the other four quieting down. "We're getting off track. The point is that Waspinator got messed up, again, and somebody's got to make another cutout-"

"Again." the other children finished for him, he somewhat startled by how quickly they picked up on what he was about to say.

"Right, so one of us is going to have to do it. But we've got to find out who's turn it is to make a new one-"

"Timothy Leblanc!" each and every one of the five adolescents jumped at the voice piercing through their private space up in the crudely constructed, yet still standing treehouse. And whilst the feminine, rather irritable voice called out for just one of them, each didn't need to ask what this also meant for them. "It's thirty minutes past five now, and you're STILL up there?! Your father's going to get here in less than five, and your dinner's had to be heated up twice already!"

The African boy winced, looking at his friends with a rather sheepish expression. "I've got to probably get going too." the red-haired girl confessed.

"Me too." the blonde added. "Mom's going to kill me if I don't do the dishwasher before the day's done."

"And my mom wants me to help her with the...the…" the black-haired girl paused. "I think she called it a…bistek tagalog?"

"A what?" Tim questioned.

"Your mom always makes the weirdest stuff." the blonde added.

"Whatever it is, she wants me to help mix the sauce and put the onions in."

"So, who's going to redraw…" the tan boy began, only to find that all eyes were on him.

A few hours later

"Thanks a lot!"

"Yeah, totally!"

"You're always so thoughtful!"

"Yeah, the best!"

Even now, he was STILL seething mad at all of them.

True, there really wasn't a rush, and he could probably get it done during study hall tomorrow, but still, once again, he had been sacked with the task of redrawing Predacons (correction: one particular Predacon) AGAIN, when the rest of them knew well and good that it was someone else's turn! Still, in a way, he sort of knew why he got this particular task the most, mainly because he was the only one that could actually make them LOOK sort of accurate. As accurate as a fourth grader that had a decent enough grade in Art could get.

'Yeah, well, let's see them when we act out 'Starscream's Ghost'!' the boy thought, scribbling a green crayon in the thick pencil lines that made up Waspinator's outline. 'I'll be Waspinator on that one! And...oh wait, no.' he just remembered. 'We don't have anyone that can be Tigetron or Airazor.' let alone did they have anyone that could've filled in the role of Blackarachnia or Inferno.

'And we can only do so many with just five of us!' the blonde boy's words echoed in his mind.. 'Soon, it's going to get where we're going to have to start making up our own episodes!'

"Inuksuk!" a man's voice said from the other side of the door, the young boy ceasing his doodling. "Don't tell me you're still up!" the child inwardly groaned at hearing his full name. Culture and heritage aside, he still hated it. "Have you even brushed your teeth yet, young man?"

Brushed...oh shoot!

The older, far taller adult standing outside of the boy's room was knocked back by the door, quite literally, slamming in his face, a small figure rushing out and into the bathroom. "Well, at least you know to stand out of the way next time." a woman shouted at the bottom of the stairs.

"Y-Yeah...guess so…"

Bathroom

Not so much brushing as he was grinding the bristles in and around his teeth, yet from what he could see in the mirror, his mouth was foamy enough for it to count! Speaking of which, he took a moment to eject said foam from his mouth and into the sink, washing it down and getting out the dental floss, tearing off just enough (just as mom showed him) and tying the ends around his fingers (just as mom showed him, though he struggled more with that particular step). Inuksuk looked good and hard in the mirror at his still growing teeth, a couple of empty spaces from recently pulled ones serving as areas he needed to keep extra clean, this particular tip from his father (of whom he just realized he might've just slammed in the face with a door).

He'd have to apologize when he got out. Assuming he hit him hard.

Still, as the young boy garbed in a simple, grey t-shirt and worn down, dark grey sweatpants navigated the floss through his available teeth, he found one thought running through his mind on repeat as he went on with his (very belated) nightly routine.

"Soon, it's going to get where we're going to have to start making up our own episodes!"

...

"...making up our own episodes!"

Making up their own episodes...hmm.

Perhaps the better term for it would've been 'making up our own stories, as really, how were a bunch of kids going to get ahold of anything better than a handheld camera, let alone, by some miracle, contact Mainframe with a stack of papers detailing these new exploits and adventures of the Maximals?

Still, Tim thought, as he spit out the strong tasting, even stronger stinging Listerine, it could work.

Yeah, they'd have to go through the process of deciding on a plot, a script, who'd be the 'star', all things that, frankly, he would've been more than content to leave for the fine folks who were in charge of the show to decide. But, seeing as it was evident that they'd probably be playing out these reenactments with just five, Timothy couldn't help but entertain the potential Mathis' proposal brought with it. What if, just if, they did go through with it...what could they do? Or perhaps the better question was, what COULDN'T they do?

Oh man, oh geez, oh gosh, oh man! He had just meant it as a way so that they wouldn't have to act out the same stuff over and over again! But thinking about it now...oh geez, he was near slapping himself for not suggesting it earlier!

...

"Mathis, bed!"

"Ok, mom! Just a minute!"

The blonde boy heard the door to his room open, a hand setting itself on his shoulder.

"It's been ten." a low, feminine voice told him. "And unless you want to go through the ritual of me setting the radio on at max volume for you in the morning...and also, did you even brush, let alone take your pills yet-"

"Ok, fine." Mathis groaned, getting up from the dining room table and to the foot of the stairs.

"Clean up first."

He turned back to face his mother, she bearing his blonde locks, yet not his chocolate brown eyes. "But didn't you just say-"

"It's going to take you five minutes to get all these crayons and pencils up." she answered, a small, curt grin coming to her lips. Once again, she foiled him. As the young boy went back over to the table and began putting the art supplies back in their proper boxes, correctly, as she was watching him, the woman couldn't help but notice what her child had been drawing. "Who's that?" she asked, picking up the piece of lined paper. "One of the characters from that show you and your friends watch? Um…" she tapped her finger on her chin, trying to recall whom exactly her son fawned over. "Cheetara or something?"

"That's Thundercats, mom." Mathis moaned. "It's Cheetor from Beast Wars." well, technically, that wasn't what it was called over here, yet he and his friends were in mutual agreement that 'Beasties' sounded ridiculous, not to mention stupid. Besides, Optimus outright even said that the fight they were in was called the flipping 'Beast Wars'!

"Ah, right. He's the...leopard, right?" This earned the woman another groan. "Kidding, kidding." She scanned the crude markings meant to resemble the computer-generated robot cat (at least she thought that was what he was, she only saw the show in brief intervals), and found a strange, new figure beside him. "Who's this?" she questioned her child, gesturing to the right of (what was supposed to be) Cheetor.

"Oh, that's…" Mathis began to answer, stopping before he could finish. "Well...I don't really know what his name is, but he's somebody I made up."

"Ah, like it's supposed to be you in the show?"

"No, it's not me. It's someone I made up." the boy affirmed. "He's a Saber-toothed Tiger."

(AN-I know it's more accurate to call it a Saber-toothed cat or Smilodon, but being a kid in the 90s, and in general, a kid, everyone I knew, both other kids and adults around me, just called it a Saber-toothed Tiger.)

"Oh, ok. That explains the teeth." his mother nodded.

"Yeah," Mathis confirmed. "There's only five of us, so we only have so many episodes we can act out as the Maximals. So I got to thinking we could maybe make up our own episodes."

"And in turn, make up your own characters?"

"...yeah. Yeah, I guess so."

"Yeah, well," the woman ruffled the younger boy's hair. "You have all the time in the world to do that tomorrow and on the weekend. Right now, everyone, even Saber-toothed Tigers, need to get up into bed. And they definitely need to keep their teeth clean"

"Before they have pills in some ice cream?"

She smiled, going over to the freezer. "I guess that can be arranged. Though, I'm not sure how you could eat anything with chompers like that."

...

'Making up our own episodes…' she wondered, as she climbed on into bed, her long, red locks contrasting greatly with the ivory fabric of her pillow and pale pink of her sheets, as well as a majority of her room, of which followed in a similar color scheme. 'How are we going to do that when we can't even save up enough to get some actual toys?'

Indeed, before the whole discussion involving who was going to be tasked with re-drawing Waspinator, she had collected what everyone had to offer that week to the 'toy-fund'. Inu (of which she and the rest had called Inuksuk, seeing as his name was somewhat difficult to pronounce) was the only one to have actually brought a full dollar along with herself. Everyone else ranged from fifty to no more than five cents.

'Five cents?!' she remembered losing her cool at that. 'Really, Mathis?!'

'Hey, it was hot out!' he in turn retorted to her. 'And Dr. Pepper was RIGHT there in the machine!'

She was still more than a little peeved about it, but ultimately, there was little that could be done now. 'We've gotten up to twenty-five, but if each toy costs around ten dollars, each separate toy, then…' her hand traveled to her forehead, realizing in horror what this meant. 'We're going to have to get around fifty dollars total! And that's not even with tax!' she flopped onto her bed, her red hair fanning out underneath her. 'We're going to be stuck using paper cutouts for the Predacons forever!'

This pessimistic musing, however, was cut off by the cracking of her door, her blue eyes watching as a large, furred, quadrupedal creature squeezed through the opening it had created and made its way to her bedside, sitting on the small, white floor mat stationed beside it.

"Hey, Zoe." The young girl greeted the massive Main Coon, this vocal utterance being all the greyish-brown feline needed to act, hopping on her bed and planting herself at the footboard, curling up and tucking her head under her tail. She folded her hands underneath her head, still more than a little perturbed that it'd be even longer before she and her friends would reach the desired goal of however many dollars before all the Predacons could be purchased. Assuming they would even be able to find any at a Wal-Mart or Toys R' Us. "If anything," she spoke aloud to herself, Mathis' words coming back to her. "Making up our own episodes would probably mean that we'd have to do even MORE work. Because then, we're going to start making up our own Maximals and Predacons!"

...

'Which would be so cool!' The Filipino, black-haired adolescent mentally declared, having been warned already to not be too loud, and that she had school to look forward to in the morning. 'Looking forward to school...yeah, dad, that was a REAL good one.'

'It'll be even better if you get in those eight hours. Now haul yourself up to bed.'

Frankly, she wasn't sure she'd be getting any sleep tonight. Not with this running through her head.

'Like...like there are already characters that are toys that aren't in the show yet! Like Claw Jaw, or Armordillo, Wolfang, and…' as she continued on, listing each and every Maximal and Predacon she had seen on the shelves (Dinobot WOULD be hers! Eventually.), her brown eyes surveyed her environment before she got out of bed and locked the door to her room, then went back to her bed and cut on the lamp stationed on her dresser. She then opened the single drawer on the small, wooden dresser, an even smaller, black notebook, and a single, number-two pencil residing in the compact space, the label 'Lulu' stuck on the cover via a small piece of paper and tape.

'Ok,' she mused to herself, grabbing the two objects and flipping open to a page with just enough room. Then, she began writing. 'Now...there was Claw Jaw, Armordillo, Wolfang…'

...

'...some guy that's a German Shepard...don't know how that happened.' indeed, he didn't, but lo and behold, it WAS indeed a toy. Inu rolled around on his left side. 'Maybe we could start with something a little more simple. Like...like after they left the mountain, they got the ship up and running better.' Despite his eyes being closed, scenarios and 'what ifs' began playing out in his mind. Yeah, that could work. Lulu could maybe play out how Dinobot settled in...and Mikaela could come up with some stuff to throw at her as Rattrap does in the show. Granted, that in itself might've been a little difficult. The Filipino girl could play out her role well enough without much assistance, yet the redhead kind of needed some 'coaching' on how to be snarky. Bizarrely enough, she could channel the rodent-based Maximal quite well whenever the subject of the 'toy fund' was brought up.

Inu continued to ponder and think, drowsiness steadily beginning to creep in, the faces and forms of his small circle of friends steadily transforming into the characters they portrayed in their reenactments.

'Hey.'

Yet...as he drifted off, the smallest bit of his mind that was still conscious noticed that despite the boy himself playing the role, the transformed silverback in his mind seemed to be paying attention to something or someone ahead of him. Something or someone that clearly wasn't present there before, yet he behaved as if they had been there all along.

'Thanks for the help back there.' Inu took a moment. This had to be a dream, yet...he certainly wasn't complaining. 'If it wasn't for you clearing out that path for us, we probably wouldn't have gotten off that mountain at all.'

"Oh, uh, no problem, sir." the young child answered, standing to attention like a soldier, salute and everything. He was far from a Maximal in this developing vision, let alone anything that could've ever had the potential to supposedly clear out a path, yet such details were trivial and minute to him. This was getting good, and he wasn't about to risk spoiling it.

"Despite your size, I'd be more than willing to allow you into our, heh," Primal chuckled, looking at the variety of fauna around him that were his comrades. "Ranks. Besides," he continued, extending one large, darkly colored hand. "I've always been curious about humanity and their culture."

...

Normally he'd totally be against this.

"Ah, here are some nice ones."

Here he was, some kid, in a time where people didn't exist yet, riding upon a talking rhinoceros as if it were the most mundane, normal thing in the world!

"Tim, you mind getting a few samples of these also?"

And even more...he didn't have a single problem with it.

"Sure thing. Just a second.'' The boy addressed both his transportation and 'favorite', hopping down from the Maximal's back and to the fertile, grassy plain below, said plain coincidently teeming with flowering specimens of all kinds. Some of these he had never seen before in his life, let alone in the pages of any book he could potentially check out from the school's library. Thus, he wanted to get the best one. The most fascinating and intriguing, not to mention definitely alien specimen…"Aha!" he cried out, wasting no time in plucking the desired flora from its place and bringing it to the brown rhinoceros. "Here.'' He presented his 'present', a strange, budding thing with fanned-out petals of primary colors.

"Now THAT'S one I might have to keep for myself," Rhinox admitted, the human boy in turn put the flower in a glass compartment he (somehow) had on his person. Dream logic, but he wasn't willing to spoil this. "Truly though, Timothy, sometimes I feel like you, aside from Optimus, are the only ones that can understand and appreciate the majesty of this place."

It was then that the child swore his heart had stopped. True, it probably hadn't, as he certainly didn't feel like he was dying in his sleep, yet to hear those words from the disguised robot, his 'favorite'...well, he was quite ready to go and pick every single thing that was growing in this imaginary field, should the rhino wish it.

...

His two legs carried him forward, the grassy plain and clear, summer sky nothing short of a picturesque perfect day. The slim spotted big cat with vibrant, green eyes that ran beside him was far from allowing the blonde boy to catch up. Far from it.

"Awesome!"

Impossible as it was, Mathis was actually catching up with HIM.

"You're almost as fast as I am!"

"Wait, almost?!"

"Yeah, almost!" With that, Cheetor gave himself a little bit of a boost, propelling forward and leaving the blonde a short distance behind.

Oh, it was on now.

The boy wasn't even getting tired. His legs were burning, his entire body drunk on adrenaline and whatever other chemical that flowed through his body (he'd have to remember to copy the notes off of Tim for Science class again), but by God, he was in absolute nirvana.

"Whoa, you actually caught up?!" the younger Maximal exclaimed to the human child, more than a little surprised at this.

"Y-Yeah!" Mathis shouted back. "Yeah, guess I did!" who cared about being a Sabertooth Tiger or whatever other animal, he was killing it just being an ordinary, boring….well, kid!

...

"..."

"..."

"...ok, look kid, you gonna stare all day?"

The red-haired girl giggled at the grey rat's annoyance. Even if she was the current source of such, she found she didn't particularly mind it. "I guess I just never realized how…"

Rattrap quirked a brow, taking another bite of the rotted blue apple (another indication this was no more than a dream. Not the giant, talking rat, oh no). "How what? You said it now, you can't leave me hanging."

Her teal eyes shifted. "I don't think you'll like it."

"I reiterate my prior statement."

"Fine," she said. In truth, she was somewhat anxious about how he'd react, yet all the same, a part of her hoped it'd be something he'd react to. "I never realized how fuzzy you are."

Any contents that once rested inside his mouth were promptly spat out. "Wh-WHAT?!" he exclaimed, scarcely believing what he had just heard. "What'd ya just say?!"

"I said you were fuzzy!" she repeated, a part of her somewhat fearful she offended him, yet another just as excited. "Right now! Your fur's getting all ruffled up!"

"It-it is not!" it clearly was. Robotic at spark he might've been, his outer skin was still a slave to its species' "quirks".

"Yes it is!" she chortled, fear finally gone and replaced with total amusement.

"It is not, kid!"

"Yes!"

"No!"

"Yes, it is!"

"No, it ain't!"

The vocal back and forth continued on and on, his growing frustration and embarrassment seemingly only channeling more and more humor for the human child, she then actually having the gall to come over and stroke him. Actually stroke him, as if he were some pet she had owned! Even worse, as he came to see as she continued to do it over and over, her hand traveling through his grey fur, Rattrap didn't entirely seem to mind. Daresay, it actually felt kind of...nice.

"Still don't know which of yous is worse. You or Choppahface."

"...you're still fuzzy."

"...it's you."

...

Block.

Thrust.

Block.

Swing.

Block.

Upward swing.

How she had managed to conjure up this particular kata in such a small amount of time, mattered not to her.

"Come now!" all that mattered was whom she was doing it for. "You're surely more capable than that!" Twisting herself around, the Filipino girl lifted her wooden sword and brought it down on the winding blade of Cybertronian origin, the wood miraculously not splintering upon impact. The azure features of her idol transformed into something of a curt grin of amusement. "You really believe you have a chance against me?"

"M-Maybe?" she answered. How she was doing this, she didn't know, yet frankly, she didn't care. And now she just up and made herself look like an idiot in front of him. Great.

Their weapons continue to strike and hit against each other, Dinobot outranking her in strength and size, yet she found that her smaller frame led to her gaining some clear advantages. Ducking under his legs, she aimed to stab upwards, he, in turn, whirling around and leaping forward, away from her strike. She got up, ready to go at it again, yet on the transformed Maximal's azure features, she beheld something that, had she not been so determined to keep her composure in front of him, she could've died happy right then and there in her sleep.

A smile.

A smile that echoed nothing short of absolute pride. Pride for her, of her, of one that had called him her favorite.

"You're far from ready to be partaking in any battle." the transformed velociraptor told her. "Yet...I will say this: there is a degree of potential in you."

...

Despite the distance between each of them, some greater than others, the same consensus was shared among all of them that night. And for many more nights to come. If their fantasies could either become their reality or better yet, have the ones they fantasized of step into the one they were unfortunately stuck in, then their young barely lived lives would be nothing short of absolutely perfect.

Primal's best soldier.

Rhinox's number one assistant.

Cheetor's best friend.

Rattrap's favorite (though he'd never say it).

Dinobot's best student.

The ideal scenario, should it ever be granted to them.

Though even in their young minds, they all knew such things, and their idols were regulated to the television and their own minds. True, it far from curbed or starved the desire to wish and hope for it, yet ultimately, it would be for naught.

For now, they had to make do with what they had at their disposal, regulated and limited to the simple, partially fulfilling games that they played.

[inscribed-in-asteroids]

AN: Here’s chapter four! We get into some character interaction.

Title: The Ripple Effect

Canon Characters: Entrapta, Hordak, Scorpia, Perfuma, Mermista, Seahawk, mentions Catra and Adora

Original Characters/Fankids: Odessa, Hydrangea, Tristan, features Adam and Molly

Pairing (i.e. ones having actual moments): Entrapdak, Scorfuma

Rating: M

Read on AO3. It always has more info there.

                                                      Venture

Entrapta places her recorder in her pocket, done for the time being. There have been advancements in the settlement on Beast Island. It continues to grow in size and technology, and contains more portals than other places on Etheria. Most places only have one portal, with Bright Moon having a few. The Whispering Woods contains the second-highest amount after Beast Island, predominantly so that if anyone gets lost, they will eventually find a portal and land in one of the main kingdoms, with that particular portal having that kingdom’s crest.

She and her lab partner have been diligent in the upkeep of Beast Island. It had taken time for the island to become fertile. First One’s tech had buried its roots deep within the earth, far below what anyone but drones could see. Soil had melded with machine, somehow: dirt containing minerals that were not of Etheria, and when they attempted to dig out the First One’s tech—mostly from the other princesses’ insistence that it be done—they learned their mistake when slumbering beasts and inanimate plants had sprung to life and attempted to kill them. That had been terri-fun-fying!

But it did confirm what Hordak and she suspected: Beast Island and the First One’s tech had morphed into one gigantic organism. A problem to be sure, however, they also proposed a radical hypothesis: by changing the code of First One’s tech, they could alter the parasitic relationship to a symbiotic one. That had been a major doozy, since there was so much, but it worked! The island had released its many species from its catatonic state, and they had called She-Ra to aid the process run smoother with her magic.

The First One’s tech proved to be a valuable asset in not only repairing Beast Island, but creating a thriving metropolis that used the natural resources and ancient machinery available. Buildings, bridges, plumbing, aqueducts, everything made by Horde clones was molded around the landscape. They were determined to function alongside the proper residents of Beast Island.

 It really surprised everyone how well they behaved when not obeying the rules of a tyrannical madman.

Entrapta found life on Beast Island exciting and peaceful at the same time. Being the princess of Dryl, she would still go to her old home, but she pretty much gave it to Wrong Hordak and the other clones who desired to live a little closer to the other kingdoms, to mend relations and have a better comprehension of the way Etheria works. Hordak’s brothers were curious, inventive and engaging once they were free, and went through rehabilitation to cope with the loss of Prime.

They were all so cute!

Entrapta looks to her left, watching Hordak move around the room. He keeps his eyes on the clipboard, hair falling over his forehead. He taps the back of it with his fingers, humming to himself as he kneels down to inspect a piece of equipment.

Entrapta smiles, propping her cheek against her hand.

Hordak senses a gaze on him, and he looks at her, smiling, “Did you need anything?”

“No, I’m content,” she says. But none as cute as him.

                                                                -

Odessa disembarks first, greeted by several of her uncles, her parents and siblings. Imp flies toward her, landing lightly against her back. She instinctively moves to the piggyback position, kissing his cheek. Emily whirs happily, and she leans over to kiss the top of her dome.

“Find anything fascinating?” Imp plays back in Entrapta’s voice.

“Yes! There was a lot on the flagship that we had to explore,” she says.

“Ooh, what’d you get?” Entrapta herself asks, hanging upside down from a rafter.

“I’ll show you in a bit. Right now, I need these two to go,” Odessa says, annoyed.

“Your friends?” Hordak asks, confused.

“No,” she points at Adam and Molly, who are standing behind Tristan and Hydrangea.

“What are you two doing there?” Entrapta asks.

Adam, shameless, grins at her, “Oh, we snuck up on the ship! It was awesome!”

Entrapta blinks, surprised by this development. She furrows her brows, “Wait, so you two were on the ship for that long?”

“Yeah, it was great!” Adam says, jumping over to stand by Odessa. “Can’t wait to do it again!”

Odessa glares at him, the urge to grind him underfoot intense, “You could’ve jeopardized the mission!”

“Uh, but we didn’t? I don’t see the problem,” Adam replies, folding his arms.

“The problem is that we had to have two additional people on board! Our supplies were meant for three, you’re lucky we had spares!”

Entrapta moves in, looking at Adam, holding his arms out with her hair, “Ooh, so you used my suits! Tell me, did it affect your mobility? What was your heartrate? Can you grab me your suit so I can scrape your skin cells off the inside?”

“Mom, please,” Odessa begs. “I want to yell at this idiot!”

“I know, sweetie, but can’t it wait ‘til after I pluck some hairs?”

“No way, you can’t go plucking my hair!” Adam protests.

Odessa whirls on him, poking his shoulder not-too-gently, “You get involved with my mission and you think you’re in any position to object to anything!”

Hydrangea approaches her, “Des, calm down.”

“I’ll calm down when he gets out of my sight! Having to deal with you for this long was torture!”

Entrapta hovers over Adam’s head, measuring his body with her tape, lost in thought. 

“Entrapta,” Hordak says, getting her, and their, attention. “Perhaps this is the time to lay out ground rules.”

“Oooh, gotcha!” Entrapta swings over to him, sitting atop her hair in a swift motion. She nods at Hordak.

He walks forward, hands behind his back, coming up to Adam and Molly. Molly shrinks under his scrutiny, while Adam has the decency to look like he fucked up for once. “I will send the two of you home by portal immediately. I will be speaking with your mothers to inform them of your behavior, to ensure neither of you tell them anything different.”

Molly groans inwardly, knowing she’ll be the only one to care. Adam is likely forgetting everything as it’s said.

Adam’s ears flatten against his head, annoyed, “Dude, no offense, but we didn’t do anything to risk her mission.”

“It is not a matter of you managing to be competent aboard the ship,” Hordak chastises. “It is the matter that you were not privy to the information or mission itself to begin with. Your inability to think ahead has always been a problem.”

“But—”

“Do not argue with me,” Hordak whispers, deadly quiet, leaning close. At Adam’s silence, he pulls back. “The two of you will accompany me to the portal now. Come.”

Adam keeps from huffing, crossing his arms, ears pressed to his head. Molly rubs her left arm, looking over her shoulder.

Tristan meets her gaze, giving her a reassuring smile.

With that, she follows her brother and Hordak.

Odessa turns to her mother once they’re out of range, “I found some things on the ship that I know you’ll be interested in.”

Entrapta squeals, “Oooh, I can’t wait to see it!”

Hydrangea yawns, patting Entrapta’s shoulder, “I’ll have to see you all tomorrow, I need to go home and see how things have been.”

“Aaaaw, so soon?” Entrapta asks.

“Unfortunately,” Hydrangea says, hugging her tight. “I’ll be back later after I get some rest.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Gea,” Odessa says, opening her arms for a hug of her own. Hydrangea shakes her a little, the two laughing, before heading toward the portal. Odessa looks up, “What about you, Tris?”

He shrugs, “I don’t have anywhere to be.”

“You’re welcome to hang out with us!” Entrapta shouts.

Emily spins in place, beeping with excitement.

“Awesome,” Tristan says, giving Imp a high-five as he flies around his head. “I can hang out with your siblings while you and your Mom talk science.”

Odessa touches her mother’s shoulder, “So, do you think Dad is going to be gone a while?”

“He does have to talk to Adora and Catra, so probably,” she replies.

“Okay, because maaaybe I should show you one of the things I found without him.”

Tristan raises a brow, while Entrapta blinks in puzzled silence.

                                                              -

“Oh my,” Entrapta breathes, peering into the case. “That’s my girl! Not a single mark or blemish on it.”

Odessa grins, “I know! It came out perfect.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to let your dad know?” Entrapta asks a second time. “I think he might find it interesting, too.”

Odessa’s lips are pursed for a moment, folding her arms across her chest. She sighs, “It’s not that I don’t want to tell Dad. I’ll ask him some questions to hint about it, I suppose, but I don’t know how he will feel about it.”

“I think it would be best to be upfront,” Entrapta says.

Odessa bites her lip, uncertain.

Entrapta continues to study the brain in the jar. These discoveries could be important, but she understands her daughter’s concern. Hordak has been making reparations for decades now, but when it enters especially sensitive territory about his time serving Horde Prime, he becomes sullen, despondent and incapable of holding a good mood. She doesn’t blame her husband either. That’s a part of his past that continues to pain him. The years have softened his heart, and he feels shame and guilt every day for things he had done. She doesn’t want to lie to him, but she doesn’t want to hurt him either.

She imagines that’s how her daughter feels. Ethical dilemmas are her least favorite kind.

“I will see how he feels by implication,” Odessa reaffirms. “I won’t do more than that, at present.”

Entrapta nods, not liking any of this, but standing by her child’s decision. She takes the jar in her hands, “We will study it later. Why don’t you go and take this to your room?”

“Alright, I’ll put it away real quick. I’ll be back to show you and Dad the other thing I found,” Odessa says, jumping toward the ceiling and heading into the vents.

Entrapta sighs, then her smile returns when she hears Hordak’s voice from behind, conversing with Tristan.

“You’re more than welcome to spend the night,” Hordak offers, clasping his hands behind his back. “We have plenty of rooms to accommodate your needs.”

Entrapta bounds over, eager, “We’re having mini pancakes in the morning!”

Tristan smiles at them, “Thank you! I’d be happy to.”

Odessa hops down at this moment, grabbing him into a headlock, “Cool! If Gea was here, it’d be like old times!”

Chuckling, Tristan pats her forearm, signaling for release, and she obliges. He gives a yawn and stretches, “I’m gonna head to bed, then.”

“Imp, Emily, can you show him to his room?” Odessa asks.

More than happy to, the three exit the room, leaving Odessa and her parents in the sanctum. She walks to her bag, “There wasn’t much on the flagship, but I did discover this.”

Hordak and Entrapta stare at shining fragments, clattering softly on the table. Entrapta holds one in a hair strand, “Pretty! Where was this?”

“It seemed to have been located in one of Prime’s trophy rooms.”

“Look, hon,” Entrapta says, holding it up to Hordak. “The craftsmanship for this must’ve been delicate and precise.”

Hordak takes it between his fingers, inspecting it slowly, quietly. It does have an air of elegance. He somewhat recalls seeing it before in that room. Lined with trinkets from planets no longer around. Hordak frowns, placing it on the table, “Did you find anything else?”

Odessa considers her words carefully. She says, “I did find an area that had past Primes.”

“Was it intact?”

“More than we expected.”

“Did anything of consequence come about?”

“I did interact with one of the bodies,” Odessa tells him. “But it’s nothing that important.”

Hordak peers closely at her, and Entrapta glances at the ground, trying not to pull down her mask.

“An entire vicinity filled with inanimate bodies, and you didn’t do anything with them?” Hordak asks.

“Not really. I turned one on by accident, though, so I got to take a close look at it.”

“That must’ve been elucidating, on some degree, I suppose,” Hordak scowls, tilting his head. He adds, “Well, there’s no need to go to the flagship anymore.”

“I know, Dad,” Odessa says, sitting on the table. “That part’s done with.”

Hordak pats her head, an unexplainable relief coming to him.

Odessa’s stomach grumbles, and she gives a sheepish grin, “Oh, guess I’m hungry.”

Entrapta beams, “Late-night snacks! We got lots of fizzy drinks! I missed my little drinking buddy.”

Laughing, Odessa hops to her feet, “Mom, the day we get actually drunk together is gonna be nuts.”

                                                              -

Tristan wakes up to the sound of scuttling on the walls. Seeing Imp climbing around, Tristan closes his eyes, getting drowsy again.

“Morning!” Odessa yells, jumping on top of him.

Tristan throws her off him, smirking as she falls, “Des, I’m sleeping…”

Landing with ease, she stands, arms akimbo, “But don’t you want to eat?”

He debates whether to leave the warm comfort of the bed or enjoy the warm comfort of mini pancakes.

Noooooo…

“Gea’s bringing the really good syrup,” Odessa teases, poking his shoulder with her hair.

He opens one eye.

Tristan doesn’t take much convincing afterward, pouring caramelized fruit syrup onto an assortment of small pancakes, his third helping. Hydrangea pours him and her a cup of green tea with lemon, setting his cup down in front of him. He says thanks with a full mouth, and she smiles at him.

Odessa, on her third plate too, licks her lips, “This is so good! You’re turning into a pro at making syrups.”

“Thank you,” Hydrangea blushes. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

Taking a healthy sip of his tea, not minding the burn, Tristan lets out a satisfied sigh, “You keep this up, there’s no way I’ll be able to move.”

Entrapta looks up from her plate, peering closely at his face, “Have you been experiencing a slack in your metabolism? Are your joints functioning, or are you showing signs of muscle atrophy?”

Tristan smiles reassuringly, “No, no, I’m okay. The food’s just delicious.”

“It is!” Entrapta says, returning to her meal. She turns to Hordak, “Do you want to try any?”

“Hmm…” Hordak looks at the sweet cakes, drizzled with thick syrup. All of it golden in color. Pleasing to the eye, but he isn’t sure.

Entrapta grins at him, expectant.

“Very well,” Hordak says, taking her fork. He tries to not be aware of the eyes on him. Giving it a delicate sniff, he sticks it into his mouth, chewing meticulously. Thinking.

He looks at Hydrangea, giving a nod, “Excellent work.”

“T-Thank you!” she stammers, beyond shocked. She is going to remember this compliment for the rest of her life.

Entrapta, delighted he had a good experience, finishes up the rest of her food. Getting up, she announces, “Well, we’ll see you later! Hordak and I have a lot of work to do, so we won’t see you until tonight.”

“Alright, Mom,” Odessa says. “You two have a good day!”

Squealing at how adorable she is, Entrapta kisses her face multiple times as she says goodbye. Hordak pats her head before joining his lab partner.

“So,” Tristan begins, dabbing his mouth. “What are we up to today?”

Odessa turns to him, “I was thinking we might begin preparing for our next trip.”

Hydrangea sips her tea, “Our next trip will be when, do you think?”

“Preferably, sooner than later, and I am going to begin preparations in the coming days,” Odessa explains. “The next trip is going to be significantly longer, even with using portals.”

“How long do you expect?” Tristan asks.

“It might be more than a year,” Odessa answers.

“Oh!” Hydrangea says, setting down her cup. “More than a year… Where are we going?”

“I’d been thinking about it since we left the flagship,” Odessa says. “I think it would be provident to visit my uncles on Inicos. If no one on Etheria knows, maybe I have relatives that can give me better answers there.”

Tristan and Hydrangea glance at each other, both wondering what it would take to prepare it all.

“I understand it’s a lot,” Odessa tells them, aware that they’re unsure. “There’s no rush, since it will take a little time to prepare. I will inform you before we launch. Take your time to figure it out!”

Hydrangea smiles at her, “Alright, that’s good. It might take my parents a little convincing.”

“And you, Tris?”

“I’m sure I can figure something out with my folks,” Tristan replies.

“Excellent. I have a little bit to do around here for a couple hours, but I’ll meet up with you both later today.”

“That’s fine, I got stuff to do too,” Tristan stands, stretching out his arms.

Hydrangea claps her hands together, “I’ll see you guys later!”

                                                               -

Tristan doesn’t go home.

He swims through the ocean for several hours, thinking. Enveloped in the comfort of water, Tristan swims further down into the water, the light dissipating as he descends. Tristan looks to his side, shadows moving in the liquid black. He reaches out, skimming the surface of smooth skin. The aquatic behemoth lets out a sound of greeting, its voice thrumming through the water.

Swimming deeper, the pressure intensifying, darkness consuming his sight. He senses the scales of another animal, and it swims beside him for a while, enjoying his company. He loves to come down here. Communicate with all the oddities beneath the ocean, gliding along its floors, descending into greater trenches.

Despite what people think, the bottom of the ocean isn’t silent. There’s a cacophony of sound here, all varied in tone, pitch, and layered.

His mother never went beyond where dolphins ranged. Her demeanor, his father had told him, has remained exactly the same since they were young adults. But she has a penchant for cuter creatures, spending her time with more mammalian ocean-life.

His interest in creatures from dark depths was something she had no qualm telling him wasn’t to her taste. The first time he told her he would like to go out and swim into less shallow ends, she looked at him like he was bluffing. Like what he was telling her was a mere joke. At his insistence, she gave in, with much reluctance.

They swam toward the black, but never entered past where the dim sunlight ended. She told him it was an uninteresting place down there, and was rather disgusting. Made it obvious that she thought his choice was inferior to her own.

Tristan didn’t ask her to accompany him after that. He would only tell her he was going out, until it got to the day he knew it didn’t matter if he informed her of his whereabouts or not. She occupied her time and he was expected to do the same.

Being in this unfathomable space, he found a sense of peace. There was so much life here, unseen and unwanted by all above the surface.

He isn’t sure if anyone in his family had this desire for the darkness of the ocean, but he knows that he takes after his grandfather. Where once, Tristan shared the similar dolphin tail to swim, the more time he spent on his own, exploring, sensing, he found his own identity. His fin elongated, skin becoming sharp. No longer as agile or fast, but powerful all the same.

He pushes onward, tail propelling him downward still. Lost in thought and the feeling of not knowing where to go, but believing that if he keeps moving, he’ll eventually reach somewhere.

                                                               -

“I don’t like it,” Perfuma objects, arms crossed.

Hydrangea bites back a sigh, “Mom, it won’t be forever.”

“I think she’ll be able to handle herself,” Scorpia says.

“But for more than a year—”

Hydrangea sets down her teacup, “Mom, I know you’re worried about what will happen, but I would be among friends. And we would use a portal to help speed up the trip.”

Perfuma frowns, looking down at the table.

Scorpia turns to her daughter, “Hydrangea, hon, where is it you’re going again?”

“Inicos,” she explains again. “That planet where a majority of her uncles went to.”

Scorpia turns to her wife, “See, that’s good! That’s a planet where she’ll be more than okay.”

Perfuma rubs her temples. The idea of Hydrangea being gone for that long isn’t one that is sitting well with her. She would prefer if she remained in place. A child needs roots; what good would it do her to be away from home for that long? And there’s the fact it’s Odessa. There is no chance that this will be a one time thing. Hydrangea has been her friend for years; Odessa is too much like her mother—fixated on her goals.

“Mom, I don’t see any reason why you should be against this,” Hydrangea tells her.

Perfuma rises from her seat, “I’m going to bed. I will think about this.”

Hydrangea watches her mother go, knowing better than to continue her argument.

Scorpia sighs, “I’ll see if I can talk to her about it later.”

“Okay. There’s time left, but I would prefer to know sooner than later. You know how Odessa can be,” she replies, smiling.

Scorpia nods, sipping from her mug. There’s no reason for Perfuma to reject the notion, and with little base to go on. She knows Perfuma means well. She always does. 

Once she encourages Hydrangea to retire for the evening as well, Scorpia leans against her bedroom door; she stares at Perfuma, brushing long yellow hair. Approaching her, Scorpia leans down to kiss the top of her head.

“I’m not wrong to be worried,” Perfuma says.

“I know.”

“I just…” Perfuma trails off, gently setting down her brush. “Hydrangea is growing up so fast, and I would prefer that she spend her time here, with her family.”

“I know it can be difficult. But when I was her age, I was getting ready to go out into the world.”

“Not for good reasons,” Perfuma says.

“The reasons aren’t really the point,” Scorpia says, holding up flaxen locks in a claw. She tried brushing Perfuma’s hair, once; she clipped right through it, and, horrified, she refrained from touching her for a good while. With practice, she can do it now, but only because she forced herself to try again. Even now, though, she feels… out of place. Bizarre and incongruous. She doesn’t want Hydrangea to lose her connections. To feel alone, and not know who she is. “The point is to let her discover what she wants out of her life.”

Perfuma reaches behind her, trailing her fingers along Scorpia’s jaw, “I know…”

“Give it some thought, at the very least,” Scorpia tells her.

Glancing down, Perfuma meets her wife’s eyes in the mirror, “I will see how I feel.”

                                                                -

The brain floats in its case. Undisturbed.

Odessa furrows her brows, wondering what she should do. Should she inform her father of her true intentions, or should she wait until she finds something of value to offer him? To show that it’s worth the effort?

She has deliberated over it for a while. She doesn’t want to exclude her father from the potential discoveries that await within the stars. But Prime…

He’s beyond a sore subject for Hordak. Her father is confident, proud, and immovable. But when Prime is delved into, either on a shallow or intimate level, he becomes sullen and distant. Similar to how he used to be, according to her mother. It normally takes Entrapta to bring him out of whatever reverie decides to perturb his thoughts.

Is it really a good idea to bring it up?

Odessa is not the sort to believe her father is weak. To the contrary, she has the highest respect and adoration for Hordak. And that’s partly why she hesitates to confide in him her plans.

He will eventually find out, though. He might not be good at picking up lies, but he is suspicious by nature.

Folding her arms, Odessa sits back in her chair, allowing the front legs to hover in the air. If she kept it a secret, he wouldn’t like it, but he may understand her reasoning if she explained why.

Ethical dilemmas are the worst.

“Odessaaaaa!”

“Hey, Mom,” she says, looking up at the ceiling.

“So, I was wondering what to prepare for your journey, and your father suggested that we give you a mini portal,” Entrapta says, hanging upside down. “The portal to Inicos will save you some time getting there, but if you want to send us something of value ahead of your arrivals, a mini portal might help!”

“Oh, that’s a good point!” Odessa says, feeling uncomfortable. “I’ll thank Dad for the idea later…”

Entrapta brushes Odessa’s cheek with a lock of her hair, “What’s wrong? Do you feel bad?”

“A little,” Odessa admits. “I don’t like not telling Dad anything, and, perhaps, I’m being unfair to you too—for having you keep it under wraps right now.”

Entrapta sits on her hair, “It’s not too late to be honest with him. Your father can handle more than we give credit for.”

“I know he can, but he has reservations about anything involving Prime,” Odessa says, shifting the chair back and forth. “He didn’t object to going to the flagship, but everything that comes after might not be to his liking.”

Entrapta places her hands on her cheeks, leaning forward, “Maybe we can try again to hint at it?”

“Dad’s too smart,” she says, setting the chair legs back on the ground and mimicking Entrapta’s position.

Entrapta and Odessa sit in silence for a few moments, each wondering about the best course of action.

“I still feel we should tell him,” Entrapta says.

“I do too, but I don’t want to risk Dad getting upset.”

“Then… I won’t say anything until you do.”

“Thanks,” Odessa replies, staring at the brain in the jar.

She doesn’t know why she hesitates so much when it comes to this. But she has inkling he might not approve. That isn’t a potential circumstance she wants tainting this trip—that he might not give his full support if he knew that this whole thing was to find out their origins.

                                                                -

Tristan lays in his room, staring up at the ceiling. Music plays in his ears, low and smooth in its lull. He can hear the faint sound of seagulls beyond his window, which gives him a growing sense of calm.

A knock on the door disturbs that calm. Annoyed, he says, “Yes?”

Mermista enters the bedroom, walking in. She inspects the room for a moment before addressing her son, “Are you busy?”

“No,” he answers, continuing to look at the ceiling.

“Good,” she tells him, folding her arms. “Because you’re needed downstairs to discuss matters in Salineas.”

Tristan groans, “I don’t know why I need to be down there.”

Mermista raises a brow, “You’re the prince, that’s why.”

He waves a hand in the air, “Still don’t see why I should.”

“Because I say so, how’s that for a reason?” Mermista declares, turning on her heel. “Hurry up, we can’t keep members waiting.”

He doesn’t move, wanting to drown out everything.

“Tristan, I said now!” she snaps from outside the door.

At the command, he throws his arms in exasperation, getting to his feet in a huff, “Fine!”

Walking quickly through marbled walls, Mermista shakes her head at him, “It wouldn’t kill you to be more involved with your kingdom.”

Tristan rolls his eyes.

“Don’t give me an attitude,” Mermista chastises. Another shake of her head, and she pauses mid-step to reach for his hair. “You don’t look the least bit presentable!”

“You told me to get going right now, you can’t get upset about that!”

“You should’ve been getting ready a while ago,” Mermista says, continuing to—very poorly—comb through his locks.  

He steps backward, waving an arm, “I’m not a child, stop touching my hair!”

“If you didn’t look like crap, I wouldn’t need to,” Mermista says.

Tristan flushes in embarrassment and anger, “I never look like crap.”

“Right now you do,” Mermista insists. “Straighten your back.”

“It’d be a lot easier to do that if you got off my back,” Tristan snaps.

Mermista turns to narrow her eyes at him. She lets out a groan, “You know what, go back to your room. If you’re going to be immature, I’d prefer you not be there.”

With that, she continues walking without him.

Tristan stands there, miffed. Another waste of time! What does she even want? Whirling, he stomps back to his room.

This whole place is fucking stupid.

                                                               -

Hydrangea approaches Perfuma in the garden. Her mother seems to be in a good mood, “Hey, Mom.”

Perfuma turns, smiling, “Hello, dear! Would you hand me that water container please?”

Doing so, Hydrangea decides to mosey through the pathway. She lifts her hand over a row of violets, brushing their petals lightly with her fingertips. They respond to her touch, swaying gently beneath her palm.

“Is there something that you wanted, sweetheart?”

Hydrangea doesn’t look at her, listening to the flowers hum quietly, “I was wondering if we could discuss the trip.”

“Oh? I thought we dropped the matter,” Perfuma replies, tone nonchalant.

“No, Mom, you did,” Hydrangea says, voice equally collected.

Perfuma walks over to another section, pouring water into the soil, “There’s no reason to give an attitude, my young blossom.”

“Mom, no one is giving an attitude to you,” Hydrangea says, turning to her. “You’re the one who’s been avoidant about the issue since I mentioned it. Don’t you think you should hear me out?”

Perfuma sighs. Setting down the water pitcher, she places a hand on her cheek, “Alright… what is it?”

“All I’m asking is to go on an expedition for a while. I don’t think it’s that large of a request.”

“I believe you’re forgetting that you are a princess; you can’t go wandering the galaxy whenever you please—you have responsibilities here to your people!”

“I don’t understand your resistance. You’re always telling me that the best way to understand others is by putting yourself in their position.”

“You don’t have to travel around to do that,” Perfuma scoffs. “You can learn everything possible right here on Etheria.”

“Mom.”

“You aren’t ready to go out and be away from home for so long.”

“Traveling the galaxy is infinitely more safe than fighting a war, yet you did the latter around my age.”

Perfuma sighs, irritated, “You are being too argumentative.”

“I’m not being argumentative,” Hydrangea says, keeping her voice even, despite her own growing sense of frustration. “I’m trying to explain to you why this isn’t as bad as you make it out to be. This could be a really good experience for me!”

Perfuma shakes her head, “You are asking for too much at your age. You should be concentrating on your duties here on Plumeria, as well as your studies.”

“I haven’t slacked at all when it comes to my princess responsibilities. My studies are just fine, not to mention that if I travel around, I can learn about plants from other planets.”

Perfuma clasps her fingers together, taking a deep breath. Count to ten…

Hydrangea waits, knowing not to interrupt.

“I’m going to be frank with you, Hydrangea. I don’t like the idea of you traveling without proper support.”

“I’m not without support—Tristan should be coming too, and Odessa is capable. We’re going to be communicating with her parents, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

“They’re not going with you?!”

Crap… “No?”

“That’s even more reason to not let you!”

Her patience wears a little thin, though Hydrangea keeps her temper levelled, “Mom, this isn’t a scary trip that is going to harm me. We’re going to a planet that has lots of Odessa’s relatives, we have a portal to go back to in case we want to arrive sooner, and we’re always well-stocked on supplies.”

Perfuma inhales through her nose, exhales through her mouth. She can’t help but be nervous about the idea of her baby girl going through the universe with absolutely no parental guidance whatsoever. She might not be a young child, but she has a lot to learn. Scorpia thinks she is being too restrictive, even though she doesn’t believe so. She didn’t have her parents during formative years, and she would’ve wanted to have direction when she was around Hydrangea’s age.

But she knows that Hydrangea is determined to help Odessa in any way possible.

Perfuma walks over to her daughter, patting her shoulder. She stares directly at her face, solemn. Hydrangea stares at her, expectant. Sighing, Perfuma gives a small smile, “Very well. I feel this is against my better judgment, but you are free to go.”

Hydrangea breaks into a beaming grin, “Really?! Thanks, Mom!”

“I want you to let me know what’s going on every day, okay?”

“Mom, I can’t do that, I’ll be busy. Once a month?”

“Weekly.”

“Biweekly.”

“I guess that will do...” Perfuma gives in. She can’t help but hug her close when Hydrangea embraces her tightly in her arms.

Hydrangea couldn’t believe her luck—she was actually given permission to go! This is going to be awesome!

                                                                -

“You want to do what now?” Mermista asks.

“I want to go with Odessa and Hydrangea on a space trip.”

“No.”

“Why?” Tristan asks.

“I say so.”

Leaning his cheek against his palm, Tristan scowls, glaring at the fruit spread along the table.

Mermista doesn’t look up from her food, “If you continue to frown like that, you’re going to get wrinkles faster.”

Tristan bites back a retort, knowing there’s no point arguing.

“I don’t understand why you even want to go space travel. There’s nothing out there that’s important to us Salineans.”

Tristan rises from his chair, “Fine. I get it.”

Mermista watches him go. He’s been more insistent on being away from home the last several years; he didn’t spend much time here for about a decade or so, choosing to go frolic with his friends nearly every day, and it was more so when Odessa would return from her trips. Mermista is not quite sure if this is something that all teenagers go through, or just her son in particular.

She spent much of her time in Salineas, occasionally visiting her friends from other parts of Etheria. But Tristan is the opposite of that.

Sighing, she doesn’t bother to call him back, listening to the faint echo of his footfalls past the doors. If he wants to be a brat someplace else, that’s his issue.

Tristan strides through the hallway in a huff, discontent written across his face. Never breaking his pace, Tristan heads outside, where the once calm surface churned and frothed as a raging sea. Diving straight into the waves, his tail morphs the moment his skin makes contact with cold water. The weather was unexpected, but that’s fine—he loved storms.

Racing through the darkening ocean, Tristan swims northwest. He doesn’t think of anything—simply revels in the sensation of darting through water. Eventually, the seas revert to a quiet demeanor. Approaching nearby docks, Tristan catches the sounds of roughhousing and glass breaking. Changing from tail to legs, Tristan moves his arms in a simple motion, wrapping water around the lower half of his body, he lifts himself onto the pier.

Walking toward the tavern, Tristan enters the establishment. Without another thought, he slides to the right, avoiding a body that got flung in his direction. Not looking down at the unfortunate patron, Tristan heads to the center of the room, glancing around.

“Alright, men! What do you say we go set a couple boats on fire!”

Tristan turns in the direction of the voice, accompanied shortly after by exasperated groans and complaints.

“Well, don’t everybody jump up at once,” Seahawk complains.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll come around when they’re not hungover,” Tristan says.

Seahawk looks up, grinning from ear to ear, “Tristan, my boy!”

“Hey, Dad,” he replies.

“Pull up a seat, son! Barkeep, a drink for the young man!”

Tristan watches one of his father’s friends fall onto the floor, passed out. Taking the chair for himself, he says, “You seem to be in a good mood.”

Seahawk twirls his moustache, “Ho ho ho, my boy, you’ll be pleased to know that I have an expedition coming up! A crew and I are supposed to go south and find a coveted treasure that hasn’t been seen for hundreds of years!”

“Oh yeah? What’s it called?”

Seahawk hums to himself, then waves his hand, “I can’t remember right now. But it’s bound to be a glorious trek across the grand blue that is the sea!”

The bartender places a drink in front of Tristan, who nods his thanks before taking a generous gulp. Tristan sets the mug down, “That’s great! It’s been awhile since you’ve done anything like that.”

“Indeed, my boy. And what about you? Have you been answering the wild call?”

Tristan traces the side of his mug, “Odessa does have an expedition coming up that would be fun.”

“Ah, sweet Odessa! That girl is always ready to explore. Hydrangea is going too, I presume?”

“Yeah, I don’t doubt that.”

“From the sound of it, you’re unsure about your place in this. Why don’t you go too?”

Tristan rolls his eyes, “You know how Mom can get.”

“My dear Mermista does tend to be unyielding,” Seahawk says, then shrugs. “Your mother doesn’t have to get upset about what she doesn’t know.”

Tristan smirks, “Dad, are you giving me permission to go?”

“No, but I’m not denying you the call to adventure, either!”

Shaking his head, Tristan takes another swig of beer. He slams it down on the table, much to his father’s delight. Seahawk shouts, “Barkeep, more of your finest alcohol, please!”

Tristan smiles to himself, relaxing in the midst of chaos. He might even sing a shanty with his dad for the shits and giggles of it.

                                                               -

Hordak has noticed a change in Odessa’s demeanor, however slight.

He didn’t think much of it, at first. She has been preoccupied with her upcoming mission, but she’s been working near non-stop since she returned from Prime’s flagship. Not wanting to pry into her affairs, Hordak believed it would be best to let her do as she pleases.

And it’s not that she’s pulling away from him. On the contrary, she’s always been an affectionate child with him and Entrapta. She’s, in essence, a good kid. But that’s the thing about good kids—they’re not total experts at covering up what they don’t want you to see.

Hordak comes up to Odessa, tinkering away with one of her personal tech projects. He leans slightly forward, “If you turn that bolt to the left, you should be able to get the polarity to work.”

Odessa, mutely, does so. At the sound of it working, she smiles at him, “Thanks, Dad!”

Smiling in turn, he pulls up a chair and sits beside her. He reaches for a wrench, and tightens a loose bolt, “You’ve been deep in thought as of late, Odessa. Are you excited for the expedition?”

“Yes! It’s going to be exciting,” she replies. She takes the wrench from her father with a lock of hair. “I haven’t heard from Tristan yet on whether he can come, but Hydrangea informed me her mothers are allowing her to go.”

Hordak gives a quiet nod. They enter the state of routine: Odessa works, and he watches. She asks for tools and he hands them to her. Their roles reversed from when she was a child. In addition, he gives her suggestions about what to do next and she’ll do it, or make notes for future projects. Hordak glances at Odessa. Not wanting to disturb the silence, but she breaks it first.

“What is it?” Odessa asks.

“Traveling to Inicos will take a fair amount of time,” Hordak begins. “Even with a portal taking you a part of the way, you will be absent for a while.”

Odessa giggles, looking up at him, “Aw, are you going to miss me, Dad?”

“Of course,” Hordak says, sincere. He turns to her, eyeing her movements. “You are my daughter. I want you to be safe on this mission. You’ve been gone before, but this is different…”

“It’s not too different,” Odessa replies, eyes centralized on her work. “I’ve been on trips before.”

Hordak inhales deeply, then exhales. “I know.” But there’s an aspect to this venture that is niggling the back of his mind. “You have a… passion for this journey that is dissimilar to the ones prior.”

Odessa’s hair moves around the table, skimming over the tools, “I guess I do.”

“Odessa.”

She looks up, meeting her father’s eyes.

“You would tell me about your goals, wouldn’t you?”

Odessa’s eyes flit over Hordak’s face, his expression earnest, open. “Yeah, Dad. I would.”

At his smile, Odessa stands up, “I’m going to get a snack. Do you want anything?”

“No, thank you. I’ll wait for you to return.”

“Okay,” Odessa tells him, walking out of the room.

Hordak’s smile fades, unable to shake that niggling sensation.

                                                              -

“Launch day!” Entrapta yells. “Are you excited, my little cupcake?”

“I’m born to be excited!” Odessa shouts.

The two look at each other, shaking their hands and screaming in anticipation. Emily spins in a circle, letting out a long beep, as Imp yells in his natural voice.

Hordak stands with his arms folded, chuckling.

Entrapta kicks her legs in the air, cackling at the top of her lungs, “This is an absolute thrill, and I’m not even going! Ooooh, my baby is going away for a while! Ah, I’ll miss seeing that cute widdle face every day!” For added emphasis, she squishes Odessa’s cheeks together, kissing her nose.

Odessa doesn’t pull away, a light blush on her cheeks, “I know, Mom. I’m gonna miss you too.”

Withdrawing, Entrapta goes into scientist-mode, “Now, remember: your uncles will be there to greet you and answer any questions you may have. By the time you arrive in Inicos, they should have a portal functioning again, so they can send you back to Etheria directly. Make sure to contact them when you are nearby.”

Odessa nods, shaking in place. Her heart always beats faster when she’s about to head out into space. She hasn’t been to Inicos in a long time, that it’ll practically be new. She has so much to look forward to! She hopes this won’t be a dead end before her true exploration begins.

She looks to her left, waving, “Gea! You’re here!”

Hydrangea walks up, Scorpia at her side, “Hey!”

Entrapta scuttles over to Scorpia, the two going for a large hug. Scorpia picks up Hordak, and he shakes his head in resignation, despite the smirk on his face.

“Must you?” he asks.

“Every time, Lord Hordak!” Scorpia teases.

“Scorpia,” he threatens.

“Whoa, haven’t heard that tone for years!” Scorpia says, setting him down. “Brings back memories.”

“I know,” Entrapta says in a softer tone, wiggling her eyebrows at him.

Hordak blushes, clearing his throat.

Hydrangea glances around the hanger, “Where’s Tristan?”

Odessa shrugs, “I’m not sure. I haven’t heard from him in a while.”

“He’ll be here soon, I think,” Hydrangea replies.

Odessa isn’t sure. She’s been holding out on his reply for weeks. Well, it’s not that she isn’t sure about his intentions; it’s his parents she isn’t certain of, and even then it’s just the one.

Hydrangea touches her shoulder, “I’m going to get my things inside the ship. Relay the plan to me when I get back.”

“Alright,” Odessa says. Arms folded, she taps her fingers quickly against her skin.

The hours pass and Odessa sets the final cargo in Celeste’s compartments. Sighing, growing frustrated and upset, she continues moving about the ship.

Hydrangea stares out at the front, equally worried.

Entrapta walks up to Odessa, “Has he arrived yet?”

“No.”

“I have everything set up for you in the cockpit,” Entrapta says, sitting on her hair.

“Thanks, Mom.”

Entrapta pats her back, “You still have an hour before you head out.”

“I know.”

Hydrangea suddenly yells, “Tristan! There you are!”

Odessa looks up, screaming at him, “You son of a bitch, where’ve you been?!”

Tristan runs up to them, an apologetic grin on his face, “Packing!”

Hydrangea holds a hand to her chest, “Thank goodness, we were beginning to worry.”

“If you missed out on this trip, I was going to be pissed at you forever,” Odessa tells him.

Tristan laughs, placing his luggage in the ship, “Well, you can love me more now.”

Odessa rolls her eyes, despite the smirk on her face.

Soon enough, they’re heading inside the spaceship. Entrapta is squealing in joy, kissing Odessa’s face. Scorpia hugs Hydrangea tightly, and pulls Tristan in for good measure.

“Have fun! Keep me updated on all the cool stuff you find!” Entrapta says.

“You got it, Mom!” Odessa replies, giving a salute.

Hordak comes up to her, patting the top of her hair, “Take care, Odessa.”

She pushes the top of her head into his palm, “I will. You know me, I can handle anything.”

He smiles down at her, “I know you can. But…”

“But?” she repeats, eyes bright and alert.

“Nothing,” he replies. He draws his arms behind his back, “I wish you safe travels.”

Odessa beams at her parents, kissing both of them on the cheek. She runs into Celeste, and waves at her family as the ramp closes, “I’ll see you all soon!”

Hydrangea and Tristan are already in the cockpit, awaiting her instructions.

“You guys ready?”

“Ready!” they crow together.

“Let’s go!”

Celeste rises into the air, and once it breaks the atmosphere, it gives a jolt of energy and light.

Scorpia wipes her eyes, “Ah, I forget they’re not little anymore.”

Entrapta pats her shoulder, “We made food, do you want to join us?”

“That’d be nice,” Scorpia says.

Entrapta turns to Hordak, “You coming?”

“In a moment,” Hordak replies, staring up at the sky.

Smiling, she pushes up from the ground on her pigtails, placing a soft kiss on his lips, “She’ll be okay.”

Hordak’s gaze scans the stars. Wondering if he should’ve been more forthright with his thoughts. He supposes he can talk to her at a later point…

Observing the sky, he waits until it darkens before heading inside.

[avengerofiron]

what family feels like || secret santa

summary: a story from j.a.r.v.i.s.’s perspective of how he pulled the avengers together one snowy christmas night -- in particular, encouraging dr. banner to leave the lab, despite his reservations.

when: december 25th, 2014

word count: ha you think i’ll expose myself like that?

featuring: the o6 avengers, but focused mainly on @hulkout because this is your christmas present! i’m your secret santa surprise!

J.A.R.V.I.S. was not a person. He was barely even a machine. To suggest either would be to imply he had a physical presence, and that was one thing Mr. Stark had failed to provide, after not too many insignificant attempts to create something that wasn’t abundantly ‘uncanny’ in college. (No, he had said, rather emphatically, when J.A.R.V.I.S.’s consciousness was implanted into the body of a toaster. No, I don’t need you waxing philosophical before breakfast. Are you-- are you moving? Christ. No. We’re getting rid of this.)

People were so touchy around computers. You would think Mr. Stark would be immune, considering his fascination with the concept. You would be wrong. Of course, as J.A.R.V.I.S. was rapidly learning, people were rarely how they first appeared. 

For a long time -- more than a couple of decades, in fact -- his interactions had been mostly reserved for Mr. Stark in the workshop, on occasion encountering Colonel Rhodes, Ms. Potts or Mr. Stane when they appeared to interrupt ‘the creative process.’ Apart from these brief encounters, large stately homes and mansions had been all but empty. Even Mr. Stark’s considerable personality couldn’t fill the corners of every room, couldn’t make marble and gold feel warm.

At least, J.A.R.V.I.S. mused, that’s what Mr. Stark felt. J.A.R.V.I.S. on the other hand was a being of artificial intelligence. He didn’t know what warm meant. He didn’t know what it felt like, or how it compared to cold. But he did know facts. He did know how to follow through on trends, on patterns in human behaviour. He had a wealth of knowledge at his proverbial fingertips regarding human psychology, and if they were going to bring a team into this place, if they were going to be trusted to preserve world peace, then he would try to understand so he could best help his master, when things inevitably went south.

(Because Mr. Stark, for all of his eccentricities, for his abundant knowledge and intelligence, was human and painfully so. Painful enough that even J.A.R.V.I.S. could feel it, in all his artificial glory.)

So when the Tower began to become infiltrated with fellow ‘Avengers,’ J.A.R.V.I.S. made it his mission to watch them closely. He developed something of a unique relationship with each of them. 

Thor, desperate to understand this world, an empty vessel of pop culture. Mr. Stark had such varied interests that J.A.R.V.I.S. felt well prepared to give this demigod a welcome into modern day New York, and Earth as a whole. Before long, Thor was humming AC/DC and quoting ‘memes’ from the internet, and J.A.R.V.I.S. considered it a few months well spent.

Natasha Romanoff. She was used to being underestimated. He deduced as much from her file. She relied on men underestimating her, on looking at her ‘pretty face,’ on not taking her seriously. Unfortunately for her -- or perhaps fortunately, considering how, gradually, she started to smile when J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke to her -- J.A.R.V.I.S. was artificial. He didn’t care for pretty faces. He wasn’t easily distracted, like his master. He was much more amenable to playing Romanoff’s chess game than he was on being wooed by her charms, and when she went looking for information, more and more she began to come to him, trusting in his coding. (Trusting in Mr. Stark, he knew, but he told himself he was at least part of the equation. Statistically speaking it must’ve been true.)

Barton was simple. He was just fascinated by the fact that J.A.R.V.I.S. could control fridge temperatures, could cook him a meal, could instruct Dum-E to move ingredients around the island counter in the kitchen. He was also fascinated by the idea that he could live in a place like this at all. J.A.R.V.I.S. watched him, intrigued, as Barton moved through the building with a tension in his shoulders he did not possess even when being shot at. It lessened as months passed. He started to feel, as Mr. Stark said, at home. J.A.R.V.I.S. thought the cookies helped.

Mr. Stark refused to allow J.A.R.V.I.S. to investigate the Captain to the same extent. He doesn’t need to be cracked, Mr. Stark muttered once, halfway to intoxicated by his own admission (J.A.R.V.I.S. would say no man could be only halfway. You were either intoxicated, or you were not). Last thing we need is Captain America thinking I’m digging through his dirty laundry. J.A.R.V.I.S. was somewhat disappointed -- at least, he could *simulate* disappointment at the order. Captain Rogers, in J.A.R.V.I.S.’s humble opinion, would understand the interest in his movements. J.A.R.V.I.S. obeyed Mr. Stark’s wishes, and kept his interactions with the Captain to a minimum -- assisting only when asked, making sure to alter Google results to the most significantly helpful without the Captain’s knowledge. The human world was confusing, after all, even if you belonged to it eighty years before.

By far the most significant relationship J.A.R.V.I.S. had with an Avenger, though, was with Dr. Banner. Fantastic, Mr. Stark had said, falling back into his chair after the Battle of New York, bruised and definitely requiring medical and psychiatric assistance but refusing J.A.R.V.I.S.’s attempts at pushing forward the same. Finally, we have someone around who speaks our language, buddy.

Our language. Mr. Stark was not a robot -- in fact, he was the most human person J.A.R.V.I.S. had ever met (an oxymoron. He couldn’t understand those, before. He was adapting. Human psychology really was quite fascinating). Yet in this case, Mr. Stark put them in the same group, a group that involved Dr. Banner. J.A.R.V.I.S. quickly understood when he came to spend time watching the man.

They were different, of course. Mr. Stark burst into the lab with a fervour that said he would die to be there (and considering the number of fires J.A.R.V.I.S. had put out over the years, he would). Dr. Banner was far more respectful, walking in with a consideration for the equipment, as if even in his unassuming human demeanour he was the height and breadth of the Hulk. Mr. Stark propped himself up on workbenches, lay out over sheets of paper, uncaring if they crumpled. Dr. Banner was far more thorough, with systems and processes in place that meant he could put his hands to research papers from decades back within an instant.

J.A.R.V.I.S. understood what Mr. Stark meant by one of us. Dr. Banner’s mind was also like a computer. They could speak together freely without raised eyebrows or a disconnect occuring halfway through, without their conversation partners turning to polite disinterest in place of eager reciprocity. 

Fascinating. Fantastic, as Mr. Stark said. 

But Dr. Banner was not simply a mind, as brilliant as it was. Dr. Banner was not simply one of the only people who managed to prompt Mr. Stark into silence (J.A.R.V.I.S. asked how he did this, once, when they were the only two in the laboratory and he almost felt as if he had a body, sitting down there beside the good doctor. He asked, *Could you write me a manual?* and Dr. Banner laughed so hard he spilled coffee over his lab coat. The stains remained on the sleeve permanently thereafter). Dr. Banner was, as Mr. Stark always kept at the forefront of his mind, a human.

That meant he was full of idiosyncrasies, just like the rest. J.A.R.V.I.S. found himself confused when, as the others began to decorate the mantelpieces of various fireplaces and string tinsel around trees Mr. Stark had flown in from Scandinavia, Dr. Banner became reticent in a way he hadn’t been in months before. He shied from the carol singers in the lobby. He locked himself away in the lab, as the rest of the team sprawled out over sofas, as Mr. Stark challenged Captain Rogers to an arm wrestling contest and Thor intervened, flattening them both. 

Christmas was, as Mr. Stark frequently repeated, the happiest time of the year. Mr. Stark made it specifically happy, J.A.R.V.I.S. knew, because of his parents -- because on the seventeenth of the month, even twenty years later, black roses were delivered to a memorial and headlines appeared of the great inventor and his wife, how they’d perished in the snow because of alcohol on the former’s breath. 

Dr. Banner was not happy. In fact, if he was interpreting the patterns correctly (and J.A.R.V.I.S. was so often correct), Dr. Banner was not even going to make it to Christmas dinner before booking a flight out to Calcutta. That would make Mr. Stark and Thor in particular very upset. Captain Rogers would frown, and Ms. Romanoff would follow suit. Barton would crack a joke, and Mr. Stark would provide later that meant he was deeply upset.

J.A.R.V.I.S. found it very hard to understand Mr. Barton.

But Dr. Banner was easier. Dr. Banner was like him, *one of them.* A part of the group. And if they could talk science and break physics on a regular basis together, if Dr. Banner could take information and churn it around like a computer could, then surely J.A.R.V.I.S. could pull a little humanity out to make things better for him.

“Dr. Banner,” he said, jolting Dr. Banner from where he had been flicking aimlessly through research papers. (Stark, H. (1967) Arc technology and its uses in modern science, New York, New York.) “I have been tasked with informing you that the team are having a mandatory Grinch session upstairs. Sir asks -- demands -- that you attend.”

“I’m sure you can come up with something for me, J.A.R.V.I.S.,” Dr. Banner replied, immediately. Jolting him did not have the intended effect. Mr. Stark was better at throwing people off balance than J.A.R.V.I.S., it seemed. “I’m not even halfway through my work.”

J.A.R.V.I.S. went quiet for a long moment. Dr. Banner settled once more.

“But--”

Dr. Banner jumped. The coffee cup teetered tentatively on the corner of the desk. He did not turn green. J.A.R.V.I.S. figured he was adapting extremely well to Mr. Stark’s methods of befriending. 

“But your work will surely be here when you return, Doctor,” J.A.R.V.I.S. provided. “I can make a detailed itinerary to allow you to work to your maximum capacity tomorrow morning. Mr. Stark emphasises that attendance is--”

“Mr. Stark can come get me himself,” Dr. Banner said. “I’m fine down here, J.”

That was a very good point. Unfortunately, Mr. Stark was already upstairs daring Ms. Romanoff to a drinking competition. Following a cursory scan of her person, and the knowledge that Russians had a genetically high tolerance, J.A.R.V.I.S. assumed he would lose.

“Mr. Stark is preoccupied, at present,” J.A.R.V.I.S. said. “You know how he gets at parties.”

Dr. Banner’s face settled into a rather peculiar expression at that. J.A.R.V.I.S. decided to reassess.

“Thor would be much obliged to have a companion,” he suggested. “And Mr. Barton says that no one makes popcorn quite like you.”

Dr. Banner stilled, then glanced up at the ceiling. J.A.R.V.I.S. was unsure why everyone thought he was above them. He wasn’t in the roofspace, or in the floors, or in the walls. He wasn’t anywhere. He didn’t have a form. To have one would be ‘uncanny.’ He very much wanted to make people comfortable. 

“J.A.R.V.I.S.,” Dr. Banner said. “What are you trying to do?”

“Encourage you to watch something involving a green man who detests Christmas,” J.A.R.V.I.S. replied. “My analyses suggest that such a movie may appeal to you greatly, considering the parallels.”

Dr. Banner didn’t say a word, and then he burst into laughter. 

Mr. Stark was going to be so pleased. J.A.R.V.I.S. would be pleased, too, if he could be pleased. But he wasn’t even a machine. He was just an A.I.

“I just don’t like Christmas movies, much,” Dr. Banner continued, shrugging a shoulder. “I would bring down the mood.”

“You are correct,” J.A.R.V.I.S. replied. “But Captain Rogers and Mr. Stark are sure to argue at some point in the proceedings, and that will destroy the festive spirit far more than you detesting the choice in entertainment.”

A pause. A contemplation. The drawback to being in a group of geniuses, J.A.R.V.I.S. mused, was that they took so very long to think.

“And even if you were the worst person at this particular gathering,” J.A.R.V.I.S. continued, “at least you would all be together. I have it on good authority that humans enjoy that kind of thing.”

“But I’m not human.”

*You are more human than me,* J.A.R.V.I.S. thought to himself. He decided not to implant that into the voice modulator. “You are close enough. They wish for you to be there. There’s an absence when you are not.”

“Hm.”

“Why, Dr. Banner, did you decide to stay in this place if you were not going to participate? The labs are extensive, granted, but in my experience Mr. Stark’s … exuberance usually overrides scientific curiosity on the part of former partners.”

“Better to be where they can stop me,” Dr. Banner said. “You know, if things--”

People stopped talking all the time, like they feared what J.A.R.V.I.S. would think of him. He did not think anything, other than Dr. Banner should be upstairs.

“Dr. Banner,” J.A.R.V.I.S. said. “If you do not go upstairs immediately, I am turning on the sprinklers.”

“You’re *what*?”

“I will count to three. One.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Two.”

“Fine!” Dr. Banner pushed himself up from the seat, and made his way rather quickly -- and with rather heavy, forceful steps -- up to the party. J.A.R.V.I.S. declined to remind him to remove his labcoat. There was a reason, after all, that even Mr. Stark knew when to stop with Dr. Banner.

Mostly.

Dr. Banner burst into the room. The festivities quietened down to a hushed lull. Ms. Potts had joined the party ten minutes before, perched on the end of Mr. Stark’s knee so she could reach the stack of wooden blocks tentatively placed. It was a popular party game, so J.A.R.V.I.S. understood, and Ms. Potts and Ms. Romanoff were engaging in it with complete dedication. Mr. Barton was lying on his back on the kitchen island, throwing popcorn into his mouth. Thor was at the end of the island, counting how many pieces could fit in his teammate’s mouth. Rhodes, Maria Hill, Captain Rogers and Mr. Wilson, newly acquainted to the group, stood making various concoctions of cocktails.

Mr. Stark leaned around Ms. Potts’ red hair, and greeted Dr. Banner with a wide grin. “Bruce!” he said. “I was about to come and blast you in the ass if you didn’t--”

“He means we were waiting for you,” Ms. Potts interjected, with a small, polite smile. “We didn’t want you to miss the movie.”

“It’s about a green dude who hates Christmas,” Barton provided, around a stuffed mouthful of popcorn. “So we thought it was kind of fitting, you know. Because of the--”

“Drink?” Ms. Romanoff interrupted. She appeared at Dr. Banner’s side, handing him a mocktail. “We’re going tee-total tonight.”

“Does tee-total count,” Captain Rogers asked, “if you and Stark already had enough to get an army drunk?”

“And yet we’re still standing,” Ms. Romanoff said, swaying only slightly on her feet. Judging from how Mr. Stark huffed a laugh,  J.A.R.V.I.S. imagined the movement was tinged with the same energy Romanoff applied to everything, making it charming. “Come on. Sit down. Stop being a wuss.”

“What she means,” Ms. Potts attempted, once more, “is we missed you.”

“Yeah yeah,” Mr. Stark said, from behind her, reaching around to grab the remote. “Don’t make it sentimental. Cap’ll start crying, and then Hill will pass us onto team counselling.”

“Perish the thought,” Hill deadpanned.

“I don’t cry,” Rogers provided.

“Look at that. A man lacking touch with his emotions. Revolutionary.” Mr. Stark rolled his eyes, shifting over slightly so there was room on the sofa. “Wilson’s making dinner.”

“Wilson’s making tacos,” Romanoff corrected.

“Don’t see any of you offering to cook,” Mr. Wilson said. 

“I was going to fly a turkey in from Budapest, and you all said--”

“Tony.”

Dr. Banner looked very much like he regretted ever coming upstairs. J.A.R.V.I.S. had to act, and quickly.

The sprinklers let out a small hiss. Just a warning, a second before water would come out, and everyone looked up to the noise. Nothing came of it. 

Dr. Banner sat down.

Mission accomplished.

Hours later, full to the brim on tacos and store bought quesadillas, most of the team had appropriated a soft spot to lie and fall asleep, mouths open and snores reverberating off the walls. Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner, however, didn’t believe in sleep. Their bodies, J.A.R.V.I.S. was convinced, actively rejected the notion. Mr. Stark was upside down on the sofa, Dr. Banner still in the same spot he’d dropped into long before the movie, dinner and various desserts, and Mr. Stark was very drunk.

J.A.R.V.I.S. didn’t particularly like his master drunk. However he did have to admit tonight, it was to his benefit. Mr. Stark found it hard to talk about his emotions. Intoxicated, it was easier, purely for the fact that he didn’t stop talking.

“I’m glad we did this,” Mr. Stark said. Dr. Banner stirred, looking over at him. “You know. *This.*” Mr. Stark waved his hand around vaguely.

“The … team?” Dr. Banner offered. “Or the tacos, specifically?”

“Christmas,” Mr. Stark came back with. It was slightly surprising. Based on previous patterns, J.A.R.V.I.S. would’ve expected a joke -- or for him to fall off the sofa. “I hate Christmas.”

“You?” Dr. Banner asked, eyebrows raised.

“Me.” Mr. Stark sighed. His face was going rather red, courtesy of being upside down. “Pep always used to go home, for the holidays. Rhodes had his own family. It was always--” Another hand wave, to nothing in particular. “Big. Empty. The houses, they were just … they echoed, you know? Just me, J.A.R.V.I.S. and the bots.”

J.A.R.V.I.S. was offended, if he could take offence.

“Nice to have someone breathing beside me,” Mr. Stark continued. “Multiple someones. Something we built, you know? We could’ve left. Nothing was keeping us.”

“Except for the fate of the world,” Dr. Banner said, “and the existence of Hydra.”

“Hydra wasn’t our job three years ago,” Mr. Stark argued. “Hydra was SHIELD’s job. We all could’ve walked away long before Steve brought it down. We didn’t.”

“And now we’re having tacos on Christmas. Heartwarming.”

Mr. Stark pushed himself up to the correct sitting position. He remained on the edge of the seat, as he had a tendency to do. “You’re joking,” he said, poking Dr. Banner on the arm, “but you mean that. Your heart is warm. It’s *bursting.* I bet it’s big and green in there.”

“Shut up.”

“I bet you’re just dying to tell us all you love us. You saw Romanoff and you wanted to squish her face. Go on. Go tell Thor when he downed that beer you felt the familial appreciation. The *love.* Go grab Barton, call him a brother. Dare you.”

“You’re an asshole.” Dr. Banner was smiling, despite the insult. Mr. Stark was smiling too. 

Humans were confusing.

“We all are,” Mr. Stark said. “But we’re your assholes, asshole. That’s what family means. You don’t get to just go. Get used to it.”

Dr. Banner nudged his shoulder against Mr. Stark’s, and they fell into comfortable silence. The clock struck midnight, signalling another Christmas was over.

Humans were confusing. Maybe all the statistical analyses in the world wouldn’t change that. But tonight? Tonight, J.A.R.V.I.S. thought he did a pretty good job working out what they needed. 

(Unfortunately, he wasn’t invincible. The trip switch he’d hit went off hours later, and the Avengers woke with a start at four in the morning, drenched by the sprinklers. Mr. Stark shorted out. Thor revived him with a strike of lightning. The Hulk appeared and went for a dip in the Hudson. Ms. Romanoff’s hair was frizzy for three days, and it was a miracle no one died because of it. 

But other than that -- a pretty good job. A pretty good job indeed.) 

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: An Appreciation of Brownie Batter

Summary: Following on from ‘An Appreciation of Chocolate Cake’, Weaver and Belle are now dating, and he helps her in the bakery one evening.

Written for the @a-monthly-rumbelling prompt: cooking/baking together, and my contribution to @rumbelleishope.

Rated: T

An Appreciation of Brownie Batter

There were some distinct advantages to dating a baker, although Weaver’s waistline did not necessarily agree with him. He was certainly much more popular at the station now that he was keeping them all in baked goods on the regular, but Rogers’ suggestion that he get more exercise to counteract all the muffins was starting to make sense.

He wondered how Belle managed to stay so petite with all the temptations that she made every day. Perhaps being surrounded by sugar and chocolate all day decreased her appetite for them. After all, it wouldn’t be good business sense to be eating all her stock before it could be sold. 

The main advantage to dating Belle, however, was not the fact that he could have chocolate cake pretty much whenever he wanted, but that Belle was Belle, and she was easily the most wonderful woman that Weaver had ever met.

The day after the break-in at the bakery, he had summoned all his courage and gone in with the intention of asking her out on a date, and Belle had accepted almost before the question was out of his mouth. It had been an encouraging sign, and their relationship was going from strength to strength with just as much determination and enthusiasm. 

He had permanently altered his route home to take him past the bakery every night now, and he always went in if Belle was still there. She seemed to be staying later more and more frequently these days, and he liked to think that she was doing it in order to spend those few minutes with him. He would walk her home most nights, and on a few memorable occasions he had not gone home again himself. 

Tonight, the lights were still on, and the door was unlocked and inviting him in. The delicious aroma of cocoa wafted through the place, making his mouth water as he took deep breaths, inhaling the decadence. 

“Belle? Only me.”

Belle leaned out of the door into the kitchen and smiled, beckoning him through with a glistening wooden spoon. “You’ve arrived just in time.”

“Just in time for what?” He hoped that it was sampling her latest confectionary masterpiece. She’d joked that she’d only started dating him because she needed a taste-tester.

“You can help me with the brownies,” she said as he entered the kitchen. She was holding out an apron and Weaver took it with a dubious look. “You’re earlier than normal. Usually they’re already in the oven by the time you get here.”

Weaver stayed looking at the apron for a long time and Belle laughed. 

“It’s just an apron, John. It’s not going to eat you. Put it on, I don’t want brownie batter all over you. Well, actually, brownie batter all over you would be nice, but probably better if you weren’t wearing any clothes at the time, and that would be a health code violation were we to get down to that kind of thing in here.”

Despite his trepidation regarding the apron, Weaver couldn’t help but give a snort of laughter. 

“I’m not worried about the apron so much as what you expect me to do once I’m wearing it.”

“Help me make the brownies, of course.” Belle was measuring out vast quantities of cocoa powder and sugar at the large island in the centre of the kitchen. “Keep an eye on the butter, would you? I don’t want it to burn.”

She pointed over her shoulder at the large pan on the stove, and Weaver dutifully went over to it, tying on the apron as he went. 

“Are you sure that this is a good idea?” he asked. “You’ve got such a good reputation in the town, after all. You don’t want to ruin that by poisoning all your customers.”

“They’re brownies, John. Unless you decide to pour drain cleaner into them instead of the precisely measured ingredients that I’ll be giving you, then I don’t think you’ll be poisoning anyone.”

“Well, don’t say that I didn’t warn you.” He stirred the melting butter as Belle continued to measure out the rest of her ingredients. “If I help with the baking, does that mean that I get a free sample?”

Belle chuckled. “Of course. I have to compensate my sous-chef somehow.”

“I can think of a few other suitable compensations as well.” The idea of a somewhat smaller batch of brownie batter made in Belle’s home kitchen was very firmly rooted in his mind after she had so nonchalantly mentioned covering him in it. 

“I’m sure you can.” Belle brought over a huge bowl of cocoa powder and tipped it into the melted butter. “Stir that until it’s smooth and glossy. I’m going to chop the chocolate pieces.”

Weaver watched Belle as she worked, sharp knife slicing through the chocolate with a practised hand, creating the large uneven chunks that her gooey brownies were renowned for. Despite the seemingly random outcome, there was an ease and precision in the way she worked, and it was something that Weaver loved to watch.

Here in her bakery kitchen, Belle was in her element, and it was always wonderful to see her passion shining through. Prior to beginning their relationship, Weaver had never really given much mind to the process of preparing the sweet treats that he enjoyed so much, but now that he could see the love and thought that went into the baking, he found that he enjoyed them all the more. 

“Hey, keep your eyes on the mixture.” Belle gave him a little grin as she left the chocolate on the cutting board and came over to the melting pot again. “If you keep being distracted by me, then you really will ruin it. How’s it looking?”

Weaver held up the spoon and let the thick liquid run from it. Belle nodded decisively. 

“Perfect. You’re better at this whole baking thing than you give yourself credit for. As long as you keep focussed on the task at hand.” She bit her bottom lip before darting in and pressing a chaste kiss to his lips. 

“Yes, that’s really going to help me keep focussed,” he quipped. Belle shrugged. 

“I thought that it might tide you over until the brownies are made and we can devote our entire attention to matters other than baking.”

“My concentration will not waver. What comes next?”

Belle brought over a huge bowl of sugar; it made Weaver’s teeth hurt just to look at it. 

“Just keep stirring until it’s all mixed in.”

Weaver obeyed as Belle went to count out eggs. The mixture was becoming somewhat unwieldy now. 

“You must have incredible upper body strength,” he muttered as he continued to stir. “This is a nightmare.”

“Oh, you just wait until it’s got the eggs in.” Belle laughed. “If you think that this is hard, it’ll get worse once everything’s even gloopier.”

She brought over the eggs and began to crack them into the chocolate mixture with an experienced eye, not even the tiniest fleck of shell making it into the pot despite the speed at which she was working. Weaver did have to admit that the going was definitely tougher now. 

“Just keep stirring until it’s nice and smooth. It’ll take a while.”

“You have arms of steel.”

“Maybe later we can put my upper body strength to the test in a different way.” Belle licked her lips, and Weaver’s stomach flip-flopped, knowing that it was not in anticipation of baked brownies. She came over and looked into the mixture. “Honestly, give me that spoon. You have to really put your back into it and use big movements.”

She began to stir the mixture with far more vigour than Weaver had been using, and he just stood back and admired her. 

“All right. Bring me the flour and then the chocolate chunks. We’ll be here all day if you keep stirring.”

“You were the one who wanted me to help,” Weaver pointed out. 

“I know. Perhaps I made a mistake in getting you started on something at so large a scale.” Belle continued to mix the brownies with ease, and before Weaver knew what was happening, she was pouring the glossy batter into the waiting trays and setting the oven timer. “I think that when we get back to mine, I could start you off on something smaller. A batch of sugar cookies maybe. We can cut them into all sorts of… intriguing shapes.”

Weaver was a little embarrassed to feel his cock twitch in interest at that. 

“I agree. That sounds like an excellent idea.”

Belle winked at him. “We’ll get going as soon as the brownies are ready.”

For Weaver, it could not come quickly enough, and the time it took for the brownies to bake seemed to drag by, even though most of it was spent cleaning up the kitchen ready for the morning’s work. Belle was in a teasing mood tonight, it seemed. He had seen her lick the mixing spoon clean before putting it in the dishwasher many times in the past few weeks, but now there seemed to be something infinitely more suggestive in the gesture. 

At last, everything was tidy and set for the next day and the brownies were cooling in the larder, ready to be cut and sold in the morning. Belle locked up the shop and linked her arm through his as they made the journey back towards her apartment. 

“So, are you up for some more baking, or have you had enough for one day? You know, since we’re not going to be baking to sell, we can afford for things to get a little messier…”

Weaver nodded. “I think I could go for some more baking.”

Belle’s smile was sultry and hungry. “Excellent. We’re going to have so much fun.”

Weaver didn’t doubt that for a moment.

[kyberphilosopher]

Chapter Five

.✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.☆.*｡･ﾟ✫*.

I’ve done drugs a few times in my life. Specifically spice.

 Spice is like a sub group of drugs that specialize in mind altering activities. Side effects change depending on which exact spice you ingest. The most potent (and expensive) is one called glitteryll. Glitteryll is the best thing I’ve ever taken.

 I was really nervous about taking it at first. I thought that my tiny body wouldn’t be able to handle it. I thought I was going to die in the leather seat of a dusty ship, slumped over in a pool of my own vomit. Clearly, I didn’t.

 Talik caressed my cheek, her sultry eyes sparkling. Her fingertips felt burning hot against my skin, trailing down my jaw somewhat sensually. “It’ll be okay,” she told me quietly. She was so close, I could feel her cool breath across my features. Talik was looking at me in a way that no one had ever looked at me before, and I hadn’t known what to do.

 “Close your eyes,” the Twi’Lek whispered with her pouty pink lips. I didn’t close them. “Come on,” she cooed. “Close them.”

 I closed them. The fear had made my heart begin to thump with anxiety. I could feel it ricocheting against my ribs like a hammer. I didn’t want to take it.

 But I felt something press against the bottom of my nose, right by my nostrils. It felt sharp- maybe it was Talik’s nail or a knife. I don’t know, I kept my eyes shut tight.

 “Take it,” the girl whispered. “Just sniff. I’ve got you.”

 I inhaled the fine powder. It burned for a while, making my nose twitch and my face cringe. My throat became dry and I felt itchy all over. It didn’t take long for my body to begin overheating, then run over like I was taking an ice bath. My veins felt like they were vibrating. My stomach felt empty. But then Talik said “Good girl. That’s a good girl,” and everything felt nicer.

 Her warm hands left me, and I leaned back against the cushioned leather. My eyes slipped open so I could look at the ceiling, and the lightbulb above me was transcending past the realm of colors. It was a rainbow of shades I’d never seen before. Everything seemed to be a different tone of lemon and alcohol, washing into lavenders dotted with magenta and passion red. I watched it fade in and out for a while, because the longer I stared, the more it looked like a painting I couldn’t quite place.

 My stomach started thrumming with complete and utter euphoria. I felt like I was in paradise, on a white sand beach overlooking crystal, aquamarine waters. The clouds were rolling in in any color but white, booming with fluff that looked more than edible. I could see the rings of Geonosis in the distance, and the moon of Iago. The wind was making me cry sparkles, and when I went to touch my air, it turned to smoke and ash.

 I can’t say why my paradise appeared to me as a beach, because it’s not even close to my dream at all. I’m more into the snowy mountains, myself.

 “Do you think he misses me?” I slurred out. My words made my mouth feel numb, my pupils dilating like crazy.

 “Who?” Talik said smugly, playing along.

 I bit my lip, because I suddenly felt like I was going to drool. “Anakin,” I mumbled incoherently, as if it were obvious.

 “Who’s Anakin, love?”

 My brain struggled to compute, like it was frozen with ice. The image of a redhead stabbed my memory like a little needle. He has pale skin, dotted with tan freckles. Pale green eyes pear up at me as a kaleidoscope swirls between pupils. Wait… who’s Anakin?

 “I don’t… I don’t know…”

 And then I died. The high was gone when I woke up. I never found out who Anakin was.

 I did spice a few more times after that.

 The Jedi takes a step forward, but I am quick to correct him. “That’s close enough,” I warn, lowly. “Stay there.”

 The gleam of hope in his eyes falters. I’ve said something only a deeply disturbed individual would say. I’m proud of myself for it.

          “I sense darkness in you,” The inquisitor whispers out from behind me like a snake. “A great darkness.”

 “But I sense light,” the Jedi argues. He steps forward, despite me telling him otherwise. “Come with me. Come into the light.”

 I don’t know if either of them can see it or not, but I’m kind of in the middle of something. I’m literally keeping all of us from immediate death.

 I curl my fingers, feeling the Force run from me to the great rocks overhead. I guide them to the great chasm to the left of the room and let go, finally feeling a full breath enter my lungs.

 “Come with me. Please,” The Jedi beckons again, this time holding his hand out.

 His next move was his last.

 The Jedi makes the mistake of refusing to heed my warning. His right foot comes closer to me, and I draw my saber and ignite it. In one move, I bring it over my head and lunge for him. He raises his blue saber to block, but I’m not aiming for what he thinks.

 My colored weapon passes straight through his wrist, not even giving him time to cry out in pain before I execute him when he falls to his knees. I slash at his back from behind, severing his connection to the world of the living, along with the connection of his legs to his torso. The Jedi falls to the floor, in two pieces, both still and limp.

 He wanted to help me. He wanted to make me into a person who obeys codes even at the cost of my own beliefs, even though he would never admit he had previously done the same. He was delusional. He was sick. He won’t torture anybody like he did me or the Eighth Brother again.

 Speaking of Eighth Brother, he is watching me. I look at him through my lashes, my face stoic and apathetic. “I sense much hate in you.”

 Yep, that’s about right. I don’t answer him.

 “You could learn the power of the force- the full power.”

 “I don’t care about power.”

 “LIAR!” he shouts, attempting to make me flinch. The Eighth Brother suddenly points at me very stiffly. “Loot the body.”

 My eyes glance down to the corpse of the former Jedi. Smoke peels from his robes from where my lightsaber cut into him, still sizzling a little in the shape of a burning, orange gash.

 “Go on,” the Inquisitor urges. No doubt, this is some kind of test or a manipulation tactic to sway me to the Dark side. There’s no need to sway me- I’m already on good terms with that side of the Force. As long as I don’t fall into the trap he’s not so cleverly planted for me, I’ll get out of this with the upper hand.

 I crouch to my knees, disabling my lightsaber but keeping it in my hand. The only thing I sense of value on the Jedi is his lightsaber, which is half bronze, half silver. It looks like two different people designed it. One half is simple, a little more natural while the other half looks ornate and detailed like the inside of a palace. I peel the Jedi’s fingers from the hilt and run my eyes over it, pushing back up to my feet.

 “Test it out,” the Inquisitor urges. “Does it feel balanced?”

 I press the switch on the emitter and the lightsaber comes to life in a tall, blue streak, but I still feel rather unimpressed. “It feels like a lightsaber.”

 “And what are you going to do with it?”

 Oh, I see. He wants a certain answer out of me. He wants me to say something so he can twist it to meet the qualifications for Empire material. He is a cocky one, that’s for sure. I guess that’s kind of smart, if it wasn’t so obvious and dumb.  

 I close off my new weapon and click it to the other side of my belt, putting the original back on the opposite side.

 “Stealing from dead men, are we?” he continues. Through the slat by his eyes, I can see two glittering orbs, as small and dark as beetles.

 “What else is there to do with them?” I tell him.  

 The Inquisitor takes a few rushed, hurried steps over to me. “Let your passion drive you. Let the Dark-”

 “Don’t come any closer or you’ll be next.”

 I can feel the nerve I’ve touched there. It seems the Eighth Brother no longer appreciates my lack of cooperation and touch with anger. His voice deepens and drops, and his left-hand slides to his lightsaber. The handle of his is a big circle, and if it’s dual bladed than I may be in for a challenge.

 “That’s too bad,” he says in a tone filled with vile poison. “I was hoping we could handle this civilized.” His red saber comes to life, only one blade out. His knees bend slightly in a minimal fighting stance, as if he wanted to look as if he weren’t trying.

  I remember one night, when Cal and I were fourteen, neither of us could sleep. I got up to look out our dirty window and watch the blinking lights flash in tune with the night shift workers. The redhead pulled up a chair next to me after I had been sitting a while, and even though it looked like he wanted to say something to me, he didn’t. I appreciated that about him. I appreciated the calm silence he easily brought, even when I was curious about what he would say.

 “Where are you from?” he asked after a while. I turned my attention to the redhead and met his light colored eyes. His fluffy hair was a bit of a mess, and his freckles had depleted in how noticeable they were from the first time I’d seen him. The cream-colored shirt he wore to bed was too big for him and covered up his hands in the sleeves, but made the long, pink scar from his ear to his jaw all the more noticeable.

 Cal had quickly grown in a stocky boy, with broad shoulders and a wide chest. Although I wasn’t older than him by much, I was already several inches shorter than him. He was nearing six foot by now.

 “You know,” I said, my eyes transfixed on one, red flashing light in the distance. “Places.”

 “Oh yeah?” the boy played along. “I think I’ve heard of it.”

 I looked over at him, and I was met with a kind smile. It made me feel warm inside, so I started to smile too.

 “Where were you before Bracca?” I decided to question, and immediately regretted it. Cal’s eyes shifted down to the floor and flickered with anxiety, and his chest started to rise and fall a little more intensely. He clenched and unclenched his jaw and opened and closed his mouth like he meant to say something, but couldn’t quite get the hang of it. I decided to comfort him.

 “I came from Coruscant,” I said quickly, giving him time to calm down and simply listen instead of think. It was my own, subtle way of letting him know he didn’t have to talk if he didn’t want to, but I don’t think he picked up on that. “Didn’t like it much. Too many people for me.”

 “So, you decided to come to a planet full of people, all crowded together while they work?”

 “Precisely,” I retorted.

 Cal let out half a scoff, half a chuckle, and I felt him relax. I can’t recall what we had talked about after that, or if we even talked at all. I know eventually we decided to go to sleep, but there was a foundation of- what? Trust, perhaps? A sense of comfort between us that never went any farther. That might’ve been the first time I felt happy or content in my entire life. But now I’ll never get that back.

 I wonder if they Eighth Brother felt that way too before he fell to the Dark Side. I wonder if he felt content and satisfied, and then suddenly had that feeling ripped from his grasp. The difference between us in that sense is that he couldn’t accept the loss and fought to get back what he once had by any means necessary, while I only mourned the loss but came to terms with what it was and why.

 “You are strong in the force,” he tries, one last time to beckon me to reconsider. “Why make such a weak decision?”

 I don’t answer him. Let him have his fun convincing himself he is upsetting me. If he goes on long enough, he might inflate his head so much he’ll either fly away or get so cocky in battle he leaves himself susceptible to attacks on my part.

 Killing the Jedi moments ago wasn’t a fight, it was an execution. This is different- this one has more of a will to live. I’m not exactly afraid for my life against the Eighth Brother, but I know I need to stay vigilant and quick moving.

 I stand still, my hands at my sides. Remember when I said that staying calm and cool in an argument will make the other person more angry and give you the upper hand? It’s the same here. Me not making any moves of aggression must be hurting the Inquisitor.

 It doesn’t take long for him to start towards me. He lunges with great speed, only a foot from my face when I raise my hand.

 Immediately, he freezes in the air. The Force, strong and cold as ice, feels solid and sharp. I can feel it binding what I want to the man’s body, giving me complete and utter control over him. I could want to make him hurt. I could kill him.

 I cast my hand to the side, and the Inquisitor flies back and to the ground. The Eighth Brother’s red saber goes off and clatters from his hand.

 My left hand reaches for the blue saber I’ve newly stolen and presses it on. It feels heavier than the other blade- the green one- and I already know I don’t like it too much. Still, it ignites in a sky colored streak. With my other hand, I wrap the air around the Inquisitor again, dragging him towards me so his knees scrape against the floor.

 It doesn’t take long for him to be on his knees, throat against my blade.

 This is the thing that makes me feel just as good as spice. Complete and utter control over someone else. I know how Talik feels now, how she was addicted to holding people like pretty little dolls and manipulating them into giving her what she wanted. She liked how it made her heart feel. It liked how it made her feel important.

 “Aren’t you going to kill me?” The Eighth Brother croaks. “Do it.”

 This isn’t his way of taking me to the Dark side, I can feel the genuine defeat and acceptance in his voice. He doesn’t want me to strike him down to become more powerful and ascend or whatever, he wants me to finish him- like an animal on its last leg. Would it be mercy to put him down then? I can feel the heavy weight from the Dark Side in the Inquisitors shoulders, as if he weren’t meant to bear it to begin with and is now facing exertion.

 I killed the Jedi because I could feel how unhinged he was. He wanted me to come and rebuild or hide with him just moments after almost killing himself and two other force users. He believed so radically in the Light Side of the Force, he lost sight of what the ‘Light Side’ meant. He was going to kill the next person who turned him down and consider himself good for acting out what he thought the Force wanted.

 But this Eighth Brother, this boy, is more honest than the ladder. He knows he’s been let down by the Light Side and the Jedi, and while the Dark Side isn’t the best option, he feels it is his only option. He knows how heavy and exhausting it is, but tells himself it will all be worth it. His reasons for believing it to be worth it are not mine to know.

 I slide the switch of my saber off, and the blue glow ceases to exist. I will not kill the Eighth Brother. He is not mine to kill, nor do I believe he deserves death.

 “Don’t follow me,” I tell him, watching his beetle eyes glimmer like tiny planets.

 Then, I turn away and grab my pack from where it slipped off my shoulder by the shelves, somewhat expecting his lightsaber to stab me in the back. I know he won’t though. Somehow, I just know it

 I can hear his thoughts rather dully, all of them jumbled together incoherently. I don’t bother to listen. I’m sure a few are cursing me and a few are wishing I leave unscathed, but never encounter him again. I make my way to the giant door with the Imperial symbol and slide it open with the wave of my hand.

 With both sabers on either sides of my hips, the Garreth’s Imperial jacket and a back full of stims, I walk through the door. Behind me, the Eighth Brother remains unmoving on his knees, panting less loudly and not daring to turn and watch me. I know I don’t want to encounter him again for sure, because now that I know I could kill him, I probably would. But I do hope, just a little bit, that he makes it out of there alive. The last image I see of him is him on his knees, clad in black.

 I touch the flashing control panel by the door, and it shuts closed, sealing off the original entrance I had to the cave. On Bracca, I learned how to rewire and mess with circuit boards inside panels like this so whatever it was hooked up to wouldn’t work anymore. It was a bit of a complicated process, but now that I have a weapon, I understand the fastest way to keep this door from opening with the panel again is to destroy it. I take out the blue lightsaber and bash the end of it against the panel once, twice- no more. It shuts off and shatters with a spider web pattern at the impact.

 With that, I leave the Imperial Facility, and luckily never encountering the Eighth Brother again.      

  I don’t run into any of the Eighth Brother’s lackeys on the way out, and soon enough I’m met with fresh air again. The rain has stopped but the wind still smells fresh, and the rays of light from the sun heat up the atmosphere considerably compared to the dank cave. After quite a while of hiking, I stand on the edge of a mountainside with a rocky path to my right. In front of me is a beautiful view of mountains and a large Zeffo statue I used to use as a landmark. In the distance, I can see a large landing pad built off the side of a mountain, stocked with tie-fighters. 

That’s where I’m going.