#i imagine her either being on stasis and being one of the few who survived

[cacturnia]

miku if she had been aboard of the demeter 227

[vaalthus]

Convergence Part 2 (spoilers)

Let's get into it.

Honestly, I fell in love with this full synchronization animation alone and I can see from the quality, as well as everything that comes after, is the reason why the release had to be delayed.

Truth be told, prior to this release, I was expecting Jaania's fully synchronized form to be quite the visual abomination. What with her soul being in tatters and the circumstances regarding Hesperrhodos' creation. So imagine my surprise to find a certain level of beauty in this form and it's one that perfectly encapsulates Jaania's character.

The way I see it, if Uaanta's transformation was the last stand of a hero offering up all her devotion and faith to her gods through her body and Remthalas' transformation was that of an eldritch monstrosity puppeteering its slave, then Jaania's transformation is that of a scarred woman, hence her face scar being highlighted in the transition, frantically control the order of the very world itself. Her many hands meant either guide or cut away whatever she deems fit in her eternal era of perfection.

I like how in spite of the noble intentions that's clearly driving her, these few lines really reveal the egotism that's mixed up in her reasoning. It's "her" perfect world we stand in the way in and it's our fault for wanting to stop her from a plan that could doom the very world she wants so desperately to protect. And that is reason enough determine that we don't have a future worth preserving.

I love how Draco tried to pull the same little attack on Jaania that they did to Voyna, but she just doesn't even react to it. Never change little fella.

The entire boss fight that ensues after this is truly something. Very thematically fitting in terms of Jaania's character while also somehow managing to be a step up above even the last one in part one. I'd say in spite of it being elevated to the complexity of the Inn at the Edge of Time, it still felt pretty manageable even as a Chaosweaver, so I get the thrill of kicking Jaania's butt as a weaver twice.

In addition, I feel like a lot of the pop up text and status effects that Jaania has, or gives, really cement my thoughts in that she is rather similar to Notha's character, but unlike Notha, who existed on the side of Doom/Chaos, Jaania is the epitome of Order and Destiny. Which makes her vision for Lore all the more terrifying when she shows us what a world of perfect order looks like to her because it's a complete nightmare for the Hero.

A frozen stagnant world, forever kept in stasis. One that keeps everyone from ever being hurt again but one that also keeps people from growing as they should in this world.

Fortunately, we once again prove we are more than a match for Jaania rejecting her delusion of control.

And honestly, this just as much of the sorry sight I expected to be. All that time and effort she put into the Rose, to trying, in her very misguided way, to protect everyone and everything and it's all down the drain. Her hair is almost completely white now, meaning her soul is on the very brink and the people that were sacrificed along the way have essentially been wasted.

One of these days I would like to take a further look into how the Hero views, well, heroism and how they've struggled with because it's an interesting sight.

I'm not sure what comes next for Jaania at this moment. She didn't die in her fight but it's clear her soul is not in good condition anymore. Even if she survives the trek back to surface, the Magesterium made it pretty clear they wanted her in their custody for judgement. Not only that, the judgement that remains back home in Greenguard for her actions and that of the Rose. Even if she's kept from any harsh punishment, where does she go from here? Will she sit in a wallow in misery? Try to atone for what she's done, provided she can be made to see the error of her ways? Perhaps Kara could help with that but beyond that I'm not sure what lies ahead for Jaania but I'm curious as to what comes next. I am satisfied with this conclusion.

However, there's that one little wrinkle to deal with.

THIS BUTTHEAD IS STILL BREATHING AND ABOUT TO DO THE THING!!!

....AND HE'S JACKED. I mean seriously I know the experiments made him strong as hell but good lord! I suppose it makes sense it would end this way though as our band, and even the hero, has no means of actually subduing or harming Akanthus and so it's a race to ensuring that bomb does not go off in the Mana Core as there is still no telling what it might do to the Core though my guess is still that it might corrupt it with doom energy.

As for Akanthus himself, I'm not sure. It's starting to feel like he might actually just straight up and try and bathe in the core itself to connect with it at this point. Either way, this is ending in a titan fight. >:)

We are soon to reach the end of this saga Loreians. Get ready.

[violet975]

Random thoughts.

So i replayed BOTW a while ago for the first time and decided to write down some of the random thoughts that i get while exploring Hyrule, here they are.

… A lot of these things gave me some fanfic ideas and I hope that they will do the same for someone more competent.

It's realty in character that the response to being asked why you took the man's torch is either to bludgeon things to death with it or to be a pyromaniac.

When the tower pedestal shines, Link instinctively leans back for a second before diving right back in because curiosity kills the cat.

The message from the slate/tower is to watch out for falling rocks which either means that 

1: zelda is writing them (and has a fair bit of free reign still).

2: the ancient Sheikah could see the future.

3: Ai to the likes of Fi.

Ganon kinda reawakens when the towers are up so maybe he was resting and building a body until he was interrupted here, which could be why his form later is such a hodgepodge of the Blights?.

Link is not too naive since he kinda clamps up in his answers to the totally unimportant old man.

Did Link briefly make eye-contact with the camera when he got the spirit orb!?

Link is a bit freaked out in his "How did you know!?" Response cas now he knows something major is up when the old man directly mentions the spirit orb.

Again, in character that you can choose to be an impatient brat with the "paraglider please?" Or inquisitive when Roam points out the slate.

Either run out of temper with the "that wasn't the deal!" Or be resigned with "so I need more now?" When the old fart sends you off to the other three shrines.

Ohh, another adrenaline junkie option with the "got it!" Over climbing the tower for a good view or a Deadpan "are you joking?".

"Or so i heard quite some time ago.. I do not know if it actually works as such" so they did not get teleporting to work before? or he just didn't learn how it was done.

So the monks, according to how the Triforce signs they held, apparently associate Power with Magnesis, Wisdom with bombs, Stability with stasis and Courage with cryonis?

The monks dissipate into green specks like Ganon’s soul does under the castle!

I'm not into men but damn if Link doesn't look good in the Warm Doublet.

Oh. My. God, he was King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule!!!!!

Link is such a dumbass, you get to ask Kass "are you a ...bird?" As if the man isn't standing right in front of you. No shit Sherlock! What next, is that a recorder?.

OhhohoHO! You either say "no(, i have not heard of them)" or "Ancient songs?" As if you do not initially realize why they are thought to be ancient which either is old memories warring with the now world or Link not realizing what impact The Calamity had on culture.

Another flat-faced sarcastic remark everyone!

When Manny mentions that his job is checking for beauties/sus people you can either be a dumb dunce and ask about the said beauties or a little menace with "sounds though".

Manny is an Incel, talks a big game and puts himself on top of a pedestal alongside being demanding and a creep.

Does Hateno not have a goddess shrine? Just the ~Evil~ one?

There is a pair of rusty knights sword and shield by the leftmost part of the walkway of Fort Hateno. Some knight probably died laying there, watching out over the field of guardians having been/being purged by Zelda.

A traveler (Chelessa) is interested in history and wants to question Impa about it, and is on her way to do so in fact. . Describes her personality as very pleasant, that must be wrong.

The Yiga know exactly how Links first waking moments played out so either they have extensive knowledge about his character and the setup of the Shrine Of Resurrection or Ganon was watching in on Zelda's call and relayed it to a minion in the clan.

"Hero boy" - derogatory.

Arrow in the eye of the bridge at the entrance of Kakariko, the Yiga are petty and I love it.

Piano's (the painter) hair bun thing that is styled like a pencil has paint on the tip... this man painted with his hair.

So the great fairy Cotera makes it sound like she will enchant your gear because you rejuvenated her, not because you bring the materials to do the enchanting.

The levels of enchantment seemingly depends on physical closeness to the Fairy (blow< indirect kiss< kiss < sex)

She can not enchant beyond Lv 1 without her sister's help, so they share power?

Paya specifies that they have watched over the Orb since the grandmother of the grandmother of Impa, that's 9 whole generations of long lived Sheikah! roughly 1000 years of recorded history!

Again with Link being a dense Shonen protagonist with "where is it?" Or a sly bastard with "really, though?"... maybe so that she would want to prove it ;) 

…”I'll answer you some day, just not today!”

Either Paya is just not ready for that or she is so nervous that she did not think about the fact that her own grandmother was in the room when she said it!

“Served the royal family in secret” so it's not common knowledge that the royals have a village of Magic ninjas!? No wonder it took a damn demon to topple it instead of rebellion or infighting... probably has been like this since the old old king banished 'em.

"The royal family was destroyed, and the members of our tribe scattered."- okay so it was probably some Sheikah that either thought the royal family was completely extinct and either fled or, according to this next bit- "Sadly, there were some who swore allegiance to Ganon at that time. They joined together as the Yiga Clan, seeking out all who opposed Ganon... cutting them down, one after another." 

So from that we get to know that not all Sheikah deserters became enemies (unless the Sheikah dislike defectors enough to hunt them down) and others who either joined an existing opposing group or simply up and created the Yiga clan that then aligned itself with Ganon... probably under either the belief that Hylia's line was extinct and that it was join or die or because they wished to spite the goddess and her followers.

I actually like this way more because it makes no sense that the Yiga could survive before the Calamity when the Royals would have an entire damn country and anbu black-ops to hunt them down with.

"Master link, now that you are awake, you are surely the most formidable opponent standing against them!" Either hero worship or the Sheikah are freshly out on capable warriors with Ninja magic tricks, probably the latter which would explain why the world isn't infested with Lynels or why hynoxes haven't just trampled every settlement.

"No doubt they will come for you, employing whatever underhanded methods they can device" 

oh come on! Do not tell me that i'm stuck with the goodie two shoe ninja clan!? Underhandedness is your bread and butter! No wonder you served the royals in secret because you and them by proxy would have been a laughingstock otherwise!!!

"The great fairy Cotera... few remain who know that this village was built under her watchful eye." So the village is fairy new and the Yiga came about before Kakariko or it is old and so well protected that they can't get in... at least not easily.

"The mysterious power of Cotera is that of sacred protection..." so the Great fairies are linked to either Hylia or the gods, good to know.

So it’s not that Cotera “-would be happy to help” but, instead “i can't think of any reason why she wouldn't be happy to help you”. so either she only directly helps men or the earlier "you can put your trust in the great fairy" means that she judges more favorably for the chosen hero.

"I heard that the weather is going to be beautifully tomorrow... to bad you won't be alive to enjoy it"

So they have weather accurate~ich prediction? through magic or old time methods?

Again: Hero boy - derogatory... It's a common nickname for Link within the Yiga.

The lush green shrine could tell that a buck was on it, so the platforms are most definitely scanners.

A travelers sword by a campfire at the foot of mount Lanayru, so someone either took a swim and died to the Lizardfo, dramatically quit or got killed in their sleep.

Love the effect when you have metal weapons on the ground and swing a ThunderBlade!

You automatically reflect the Octorock's rocks, goes faster if you do it manually.

There is a hollowed out part of a hill/mountain with a lot of fic potential to the North-West of the Sword by the campfire.

Located where the lines meet if you draw a line to the right from Rabia plain and up from Trotter's Downfall.

Koko of Kakariko has been deceived by my cunning and slight-of-hand. 

Yes, Sagessa (woman by the lake of the Dueling peaks stable), there is, in fact, something "quite romantic" in Link's "endeavor" to save Zelda, thank you for noticing!

The chests inside the shrines can only (non-violently) be opened by use of the Sheikah slate so why not steal a few? prefect safe-keeping for more stuff to keep in Links house.

Dunce moment everyone! 

The Yiga traveler tries to seduce Link and you either go with "OK..." so he either has no damn idea about what is going on or is just not good with women? 

Orrrrr you go with a straight "I refuse!" cas you see through their ruse and want to rub their face in the dirt!

According to Mina the Hylian, taking out two Bokoblins is considered as great martial caliber which both she and her traveling companion could not do while decently armed.

Best way to deal with a guardian scout when you have weak weapons: hit with electricity, switch weapon, hit 2-5 times, switch to electric, repeat.

When you first enter the area around Hyrule Castle, smoke Ganon throws a fit until Zelda slaps him away. 

This either means that Zelda canonically gets a larger workload from there on and out or that the both of them push harder against each other every time you get close.

According to Zelda's diary, Link was assigned as her guard after the champions had been appointed.

How Link was focused on her yet did not voice his thoughts apparently "makes my imagination run wild!". Either romantic or dense.

Link admits to staying quiet because of the pressure of being the boy chosen by the sword. 

King Rhoam mentions that he decided to honor THE royal family's traditions by naming his daughter Zelda, and that he is "not a man accustomed to frivolous musings". 

Basically confirming that he is not the parent of royal blood.

They probably knew about The Calamity for a good while cas the page after zelda's naming speaks of the fortune teller, probs 3-8 years since Zelda was described to already have vast interest in the relics.

Pikango gets up at 10 past 5, I spent the night watching him and Beetle sleep.

According to all known laws of aerodynamics, Rito should not be able to fly, is Revali's gale then just an absurdly strong variation of some kind of sky Arcanum that all Rito possess? Do all the races possess one as Well?

Slimes ate the Bokoblins in the tree base at the center of the west Hyrule fields.

Savelle is a helpful guy without a pension for violence.

Munk Shae Loya is just flexing on all the other Munks, those old farts need to sit down while he's been squatting on one leg the last 10'000 years.

Chork of the Tabantha Bridge Stable is drunk.

Toren is either naive or a simp for the Faireys.

If you have the Hylian hood equipped with no weapon while riding at max speed then your cape will flap.

"Sweet boy..." "...I see now that my first impression of you was correct. You most definitely are pleasant to look at." 

So link has some kind of presence/soul-thingy that appears pleasant to mystical creatures? Might be the spirit of the hero or this link in particular.

The Fairy Kaysar makes Link blush! No player input needed! We’ve found one of his types!... either that or he's just shy.

The fairies almost never use normal materials to enchant, it's always either monster parts that don't dissipate or things that grow in magical arias.

The Sheikah towers are sturdy as all hell, the Tabantha tower did not even get a scratch from a giant fucking pillar falling on it.

Okay, am I just crazy or is a Lizardfo and a Moblin holding a class for 5 bokoblins just to the left of the Tabanta fairy fountain!?

Lester, the wise curry rice guy at Rito Stable, describes Link as sunny boy, another point to the soul/aura theory thingy.

Phontos laughs to hide the pain.

According to the story that Kass sings. 

Calamity Ganon was the result of sealing the enemy at its source.

It fought not only the spawn of the Goddess and the bearer of the Spirit Of The Hero but also the army of Guardians and the Champions that piloted the Divine Beasts for quite some time, as implied in the "and the guardians protected them throughout every hour".

So what i get from this is that the attack 10 000 years ago was the first sighting of what we know as calamity Ganon. 

It was also far stronger than the one that attacked 100 years ago which implies that that one was either a rush job or that Ganon bounds had been tightened, both of which would drive him to seek out other methods like corrupting the Guardians.

...And the Guardians are apparently powered by the ancient blue energy which was, time-line wise, first shown when the Golden Goddesses created the world.

No wonder that Ganon was capable of doing this since he most likely is running on fumes, spite and the power of the Triforce which likely is made of/channels said energy.

According to the rumor mill, you need the blood of the Hero in your veins to wield the Master Sword, if this is accurate then that means that Fi is sentimental or that Link has magic blood.

Wildberrys are fucking massive.

Genli (the salmon child) is a cunt, one kid was crying about someone Vah Medoh killed and then Genli is all like "no don't stop it, if you do then i have to go to class again!", She would fit right in with today's youth.

Monk Akh Va'quot has the best position so far, he is just done with your shit.

"You adventurers are Crazy" -> "you're right"

You get nothing if you melt all the ice by the Tabantha tower! You lose! Good day sir!

Monk Daka Tuss got bored during his self-inflicted quarantine and started stacking his arm bands.

Tula (the bathing Zora) said "wow either you are a Hylian or hideously deformed"

Phura has vandalized and mounted one of the spirit frog statues above her door.

Okay but the fucking noice that comes out of Bolson when you buy everything!! It's as if you just walked up and twisted his nuts with the power fit to shield block a Lynel’s charge.

Is the flower by Link's bed a Korok version of a Silent Princess?

The monsters of Hyrule are show to have interest in consumption based on three accounts. 

1: the Bocoblins and the Moblins by Hateno bay steal cattle. 

2: Hynoxes carry around warriors foodstuffs. 

3: Moblins (or at least the ones by the camp near the Serenne stable/forgotten temple) have a resting animation where they dig through the dirt and stuff something down their goblet.

...not to mention that nearly every camp has a bit of meat roasting by the fire.

Koyin has joined the fan-club!

God, the Naydra snowfield is fucking loaded in chill-shromes!

Stasis is perfect for looking for ingredients in forests, just open it, look around and bam! No more hidey hoe.

Why no shiny text for hylia's statue!?

I really do not like that they changed Naydra's colors when the malice was removed, they were so cool and then bam! White! White is not the color for ice and cold!

When praying by the spring of wisdom you are facing Hyrule castle, the same with courage and power if my memory serves me right.

...The master Torch

The Katona Aug shrine is just fucking mini-golf, how is that meant to prepare the hero?! Imagine how that Monk goes to the afterlife and has to look his fellows straight in the eye and admit that he was so lazy that not only did he make the hero play golf, not only was he so lazy that he made the Hero play mini-golf, but that he was so lazy that he did not even make a course! It is literally just a straight line!

Robie wants to see Links scars to verify that he is who he says that he is, Robie was likely one of the ninja that took Link to the shrine of resurrection.

Oh and Robin has two interesting sketches in his lab, the first is a detailed graph of a Sheikah tower so those were likely known about long before Link activated one (the one closest to Robin would be the one covered in malice and guardians so he could not have gotten enough detail from that one).

And the other is a sketch of what I believe is either a tier 2 or tier 3 guardian scout. Now, how can Robin know how that looks if only Link can/could enter shrines?

The Sheikah shrine that has the Barbarian helm is located at the end of the Sinai maze, did they just plop the shrine down there and steal the treasure of the ruin to later present to the hero?

There is one usable room in the citadel.

There is no compendium slot for the malice eyes that litter Naydra, Hyrule Castle and the Divine Beasts.

You can change the element of already elemental slime, not just the neutral kind.

Those head-spitting fuckers inside the divine beasts! They are partially reanimating mobs! So it's not that the Blood Moon is the time where Ganon is at his strongest, it's just where he chooses to revive everything.

The edge of duality can also be found in the shrine at the top of the dueling peaks.

[thelittlesttimelord]

The Littlest Timelord: The Fall of the Eleventh Chapter 44

TITLE: The Littlest Timelord: The Fall of the Eleventh Chapter 44 PAIRING: No Pairing RATING: T CHAPTER: 44/? SUMMARY: Elise Smith is now a teenaged Timelord. In addition to losing the Ponds, the fields of Trenzalore are calling. But first they have to figure out exactly who Clara Oswald is.

[A/N - I am having so much fun with this! We find out some more about Elise’s backstory and our little Timelord is starting to bond with the Tenth Doctor.]

They were shoved into the cell.

The Doctor and Ten started fussing over Elise and she pushed them away. “I’m fine!”

“Ow,” the older Doctor muttered.

Elise looked over at him.

“I’m okay, my dear.”

“Three of us in one cell? That's going to cause some nasty anomalies if we don't get out soon,” Ten said.

The Doctor picked up a piece of metal off the floor and started scratching at a stone pillar.

“What are you doing?” Ten asked him.

“Getting us out.”

The older Doctor tried sonicing the door.

“The sonic won't work on that, it's too primitive,” Ten said.

“Doesn’t do wood,” Elise explained.

“Shall we ask for a better quality of door so we can escape?” the Doctor asked.

“Okay, so the Queen of England is now a Zygon. But never mind that. Why are we all together? Why are we all here? Well, me and Chinny, we were surprised. Elle has no idea who you are, but you came looking for us. You knew it was going to happen. Who told you?” Ten asked the older Doctor.

“Oi, Chinny?” the Doctor snapped.

“Yeah, you do have a chin.”

Elle? The Doctor had never called her that, so why was his younger incarnation calling her that?

“In theory, I can trigger an isolated sonic shift among the molecules, and the door should disintegrate,” the older Doctor said.

“We'd have to calculate the exact harmonic resonance of the entire structure down to a sub-atomic level. Even the sonic would take years,” Ten explained.

“No, no, the sonic would take centuries. Oh, we might as well get started. Help to pass the timey-wimey. Do you have to talk like children? What is it that makes you so ashamed of being a grown up? Oh, the way you both look at me. What is that? I'm trying to think of a better word than dread.”

“It must be really recent for you.”

“Recent?”

“The Time War. The last day. The day you killed them all,” the Doctor said.

“The day we killed them all,” Ten corrected him.

“Same thing.”

“I don't talk about it,” the older Doctor told them.

“You never talk about it. I have been with you for hundreds of years and you’ve never once sat me down and explained what you did that day,” Elise said.

“Because you don’t need to know,” the Doctor said.

She rounded on him. “Who says I don’t need to know! I am an adult! I’m not a child anymore! Quit treating me like one!”

Ten couldn’t help but smile. He’d missed her sassy personality (even when it was directed at him). It reminded him of Donna.

“I killed you. I killed the one thing that means more to me than anything in the universe. And then you died again while you were under my watch,” the Doctor whispered.

“You didn’t know who I was,” Elise told him.

“Doesn’t change the fact that I did it.”

Ten turned to her. “Tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“How did you escape the Timelock?”

Elise’s hearts froze in her chest. “How do you know about that?”

“It’s kinda obvious.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Ellie,” her father said softly.

If there was a time to come clean, now was it.

Elise looked at the three Doctors and sighed. “My father was on the High Council, so I knew what they were planning. I heard all the discussions and the arguments about what to do. I listened to them read off the number of causalities. Civilians and soldiers alike. They didn’t care. All they cared about was winning the war against the Daleks. They didn’t care who lived or died. Imagine being four years old and in all that time all you knew was death, destruction, and war? My father worked long hours. When he came home, all my mother and him did was fight. So what did I do? I quit talking. Why talk when no one will listen to you anyway?”

“But how did you get out of the Timelock?” Ten asked.

Elise knew it hadn’t happened for him yet, so she had to be careful what she said. “What my father didn’t know was that I was clever.”

“You ran?”

“I wanted off Gallifrey. I didn’t care how.”

“Sound familiar?” her father asked.

“Hey, if I knew what a TARDIS was, I would’ve stolen one of them. I was just working with what I had.”

“Did you ever count?” the older Doctor asked.

“Count what?” the Doctor asked.

“How many children were on Gallifrey that day?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“How old are you now?”

“Ah, I don't know. I lose track. Twelve hundred and something, I think, unless I'm lying. I can't remember if I'm lying about my age, that's how old I am.”

“Four hundred years older than me, and in all that time you've never even wondered how many there were? You never once counted?”

“Tell me, what would be the point?”

“2.47 billion,” Ten answered for him.

“You did count!” the older Doctor said, surprised.

Ten turned to his older incarnation with disgust. “You forgot? Four hundred years, is that all it takes?”

“I moved on.”

“Where? Where can you be now that you can forget something like that?”

The Doctor grabbed Elise and put her between them. “Because of this girl right here. She is the reason you move on. Because she’s the one you saved. After that, nothing else will ever matter again. Except her.”

Ten looked down at her wide emerald eyes and stalked away.

“I don't know who you are, either of you. I haven't got the faintest idea,” the older Doctor said, “No.”

“No?” Ten asked.

“Just, no.”

The Doctor started laughing.

“Is something funny? Did I miss a funny thing?” Ten asked him.

“Sorry. It just occurred to me. This is what I'm like when I'm alone.”

Ten started tossing his screwdriver in the air and the older Doctor pulled his out.

“Four hundred years,” the older Doctor muttered.

“I'm sorry?” Ten asked.

“At a software level, they're all the same device, aren't they? Same software, different case.”

“Yeah.”

“So….” The Doctor said, pulling out his own.

“So, it would take centuries for the screwdriver to calculate how to disintegrate the door. Scanning the door, implanting the calculation as a permanent subroutine in the software architecture and, if you really are me, with your sandshoes and your dickie bow, and that screwdriver is still mine, that calculation is still going on.”

The Doctor and Ten checked their screwdrivers.

“Yeah, still going,” Ten said.

“Calculation complete. Hey, four hundred years in four seconds. We may have had our differences, which is frankly odd in the circumstances, but, I tell you what, boys. We are incredibly clever,” the Doctor said, smiling.

The door suddenly swung open and Clara was standing there.

Elise had never been so happy to see Clara in her life.

“How did you do that?” the Doctor asked her.

“It wasn't locked.”

“Right.”

“So they're both you, then, yeah?”

“Yes. You've met them before. Don't you remember?”

“A bit.” Clara looked at Ten. “Nice suit.”

“Thanks.”

“Hang on. Three of you in one cell, and none of you thought to try the door?”

“It should have been locked,” the older Doctor said.

“Yes. Exactly. Why wasn't it locked?” the Doctor asked.

The door swung open a bit more and Elizabeth stood there. “Because I was fascinated to see what you would do upon escaping. I understand you're rather fond of this world. It's time I think you saw what's going to happen to it.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Elizabeth led them deeper into the Tower dungeons.

The walls were covered in red pods.

“The Zygons lost their own world. It burnt in the first days of the Time War. A new home is required.”

“So they want this one,” Clara asked.

“Not yet. It's far too primitive. Zygons are used to a certain level of comfort.”

A Zygon walked up to them and Elise jumped back into her father and Ten. They both put a comforting hand on her shoulder. She’d never seen one before, so it was quite off-putting.

“Commander, why are these creatures here?” the Zygon asked.

“Because I say they should be. It is time you too were translated. Observe this. I believe you will find it fascinating.”

The Zygon placed it’s hand on a glass cube and disappeared into the painting they saw earlier in the Under Gallery.

“That's him! That's the Zygon in the picture now,” Clara said.

“It's not a picture, it's a stasis cube. Time Lord art. Frozen instants in time, bigger on the inside, but could be deployed as…” the older Doctor started.

“Suspended animation. Oh, that's very good. The Zygons all pop inside the pictures, wait a few centuries till the planet's a bit more interesting, and then out they come,” Ten finished.

“You see, Clara, they're stored in the paintings in the Under Gallery, like cup-a-soups. Except you add time, if you can picture that. Nobody could picture that. Forget I said cup-a-soups,” the Doctor said.

“And now the world is worth conquering. So the Zygons are invading the future from the past,” Clara surmised.

“Exactly.”

“And do you know why I know that you're a fake? Because you're such a bad copy. It's not just the smell, or the unconvincing hair, or the atrocious teeth, or the eyes just a bit too close together, or the breath that could stun a horse. It's because my Elizabeth, the real Elizabeth, would never be stupid enough to reveal her own plan. Honestly, why would you do that?” Ten asked as Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at him.

“Because it's not my plan. And I am the real Elizabeth,” Elizabeth said.

“Smooth, Casanova,” Elise muttered.

“Yeah, shut-up. Okay. So, backtracking a moment just to lend context to my earlier remarks,” Ten said.

“My twin is dead in the forest. I am accustomed to taking precautions,” Elizabeth told him. She pulled out a dagger from underneath her skirts.

“That’s familiar,” Ten said, looking at Elise.

“These Zygon creatures never even considered that it was me who survived rather than their own commander. The arrogance that typifies their kind,” Elizabeth explained.

“Zygons?” Clara asked.

“Men.”

Elise snorted in amusement and then turned to her father. “You just love strong women don’t you?”

“Oh, shut-up.”

“And you actually killed one of them?” Clara asked.

“I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but at the time, so did the Zygon. The future of my kingdom is imperiled,” Elizabeth said, “Doctor, can I rely on your service?”

“Well, I'm going to need my TARDIS,” Ten told her.

“It has been procured already.”

“Ah.”

“But first, my love, you have a promise to keep.”

[rubbishrobots]

I wrote a Doctor Who story for Christmas

It's been a funny old year. High highs and low lows. My brain processes everything in terms of Doctor Who, so I thought I'd write a little story about a crap Christmas.

Doctor Who - “The Best Of it”

The drop in air pressure was first detected on December 24th. About 3% approximately every 5 hours, which might not seem like that big of a drop, but when you’re in a big research base right down at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, any air pressure escaping is a bit of a big deal.

And so I found myself, on Christmas Eve, in a big clunky OxySuit, lumbering around upon the sea floor at the deepest point in the Earth’s Ocean. I moved around the outer walls of Cameron Base One with great difficulty, pushing my limbs forward through the high-pressure water, the headlamps on either side of my helmet providing minimal light.

Reaching the West Wing of the base, the first thing I saw were the cracks in the floor. It began right where the wall of the base touched the ground, and then snaked out and broke off until the ground in front of me looked like a shatter pattern. This was an alarming sight, to say the least. It meant that the ground which Cameron Base One sat on, that the crew walked across, was unstable. I would have turned around immediately and gone to raise the alarm. But I didn’t.

Because the second thing I noticed was the tall, blue phone box. With a lamp on top and two square windows that sent wavy shimmers of light wafting through the ocean. It was right at the furthest reaches of the cracks in the floor. I wondered how the hell it had got there.

Of course, then I was plummeting through one of the cracks that opened up at my feet, so there wasn’t much else I could do except fall.

I only remember bits of my plummet, so it’s hard to describe now. But it was like being on a pitch black water slide that you fully expected to die at the end of. Something had struck the lights on my helmet almost immediately so I couldn’t see a darn thing, but my stomach twisted and turned, which told me I was being tossed to and fro. Then I remember a tiny bit of light approaching fast, and an impact. Then nothing.

Nothing until I was blinking awake in a dimly lit cave, and there was a woman peering down at me.

“What size shoe do you take?” she asked.

I stared at the fractured image of her through the cracked glass of my helmet. She had short yellow hair, a long pale blue coat, and a t shirt with a rainbow stripe across it. She waited expectantly for me to answer.

“I’m Ellie Tyson, Chief Engineer at Cameron Base One,” I said, unsure what else but name and rank was appropriate in this conversation.

“I’m the Doctor,” the woman replied. “I just knock about space, really. You alright?”

She helped me to my feet and out of my OxySuit. I was bumped and bruised, and the jumpsuit I wore beneath the suit was a bit scuffed, but I was otherwise okay and able to survey my surroundings. The cave was not spacious. There were small tea light candles dotted about, and a steady drip of water coming from the breach in the ceiling that I must have fallen through.

“Right! Welcome, welcome,” said the Doctor. “Let me show you around. I’d say this is the living area over here.” She gestured to the left side of the cave, where a fireplace had been drawn on the uneven rock wall. “But to be honest, it’s a bit of a studio apartment situation.”

“How long have you been here?” I asked, eyeing the crudely illustrated roaring fire and wondering if this was the sign of stir craziness.

“About a week. Been surviving on rations.” She held up a box of dried raisins. “And a few bits I had in my coat pockets to keep me busy.” On the floor of the cave, there was the aforementioned candles, a pack of crayons, a pair of knitting needles and some wool, and a tourist pamphlet for the Blue Man Group. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any food in that big clunky diving suit?”

I shook my head no. The only thing in the utility belt section of the suit was some bandages, medical tape, and a flare. None of which struck me as particularly edible.

“No hope of escape?” I asked, fearing the answer.

“Well, not until now.” She started walking to the mouth of the cave. “Come on, then.”

I followed. There were no candles in the long, narrow passageway she crept down, but the Doctor had a metallic remote thingy that was giving off an orange glow, and she rooted around her pockets until she found a small torch she could toss to me.

“So full disclosure,” said the Doctor, “I got knocked silly on the way down. Consequently, I was half unconscious for like the first 3 days, but as soon as I was able to, I did a bit of exploring. Didn’t get very far. There’s a massive wall just up ahead that proved to be a big fat dead end for me.”

I frowned. “So why are we bothering?”

The Doctor waved a hand impatiently. “You’ll see in a min. Anyway, I knew someone else was bound to fall down the same hole I did, it being next to a massive human science-y base thing.”

The word ‘human’ got caught on some filters in my head, but I moved past it. “Nobody else knows. They sent me out to see why we were having air pressure problems.”

“Exactly, so I knew it was only a matter of time till I had a mate. That reminds me, what size shoe did you say you took?”

“I didn’t, and we have much bigger problems. If the ground up there is this unstable, the whole crew of Cameron Base One could be in real danger.”

The Doctor pulled a face. “I’m working on that! Give us a chance.”

“Except you’re not working on it – you’ve been down here a week and you’re no closer to escaping. Now I’m stuck down here too. The whole base could collapse any second and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“You literally just told me the only passageway leads to a dead end!”

“No,” the Doctor corrected. “I said it was a dead end for me.” We came to the huge wall she’d spoken off. It was about twice our height, but it did not reach the roof of the cave passage. There was a sizeable space at the top of the wall, and beyond that some source of light could be seen blinking on and off from out of view. In the torchlight, the Doctor grinned with great satisfaction. “See? All I needed was someone to give me a boost. I’ll go first and pull you up after. Don’t worry, I’m dead nimble in this body.”

The brain filter picked up that last weird comment too, but I didn’t have time to question. I laced my fingers and let the Doctor put her dirty boots in the palm of my hands, whereupon I heaved her high enough for her to grab something to hold onto and pull herself, and then me after, up onto the raised ground.

Wiping the muck off of my knees, I stood up and looked at where we’d ascended to. The sight before me made no sense. For at the top of this ledge, in this cavern deep down in the Earth’s crust, were a large pair of steel doors with a blinking control panel next to it.

“Oh, brilliant!” said the Doctor. She rushed towards it, aimed her metallic torch thingy at it, and I was amazed to see the doors rumble and draw themselves open. There was a great cloud of dust as they parted.

“These doors must have been sat closed for a good amount of time, then,” I coughed, as I followed the Doctor through the doorway.

On the other side, the Doctor stood dead still. “A very long time,” she said.

If the sight of steel doors had shocked me, it was nothing compared to the room of cryogenically frozen lizard people I was looking at now.

In this laboratory the length of a football pitch, there were rows and rows of pods, half metallic, half rock formations, and each of them contained a bipedal, human-sized lizard. There was frost on the glass of the pods, and they were cold to my touch. The creatures inside had not stirred a bit during our entrance or my examining of their containers. Astonished, I turned to the Doctor, hoping to gain some comfort in a shared vibe of ‘not knowing what the hell was going on.’

So imagine my surprise when I found her gazing at the cyro-pods in delight. “This works out perfectly.”

Silurians, she called them. I dropped to a seated position, probably going into some form of shock, while she paced around the room and ranted about the civilisation that walked the Earth eons before humans evolved (“Eons,” she paused to grin at me. “Love that word. Eons!”). Apparently they saw an asteroid approaching, and evacuated deep underground, putting themselves in stasis until such time as the damage from any impact would have passed. She’d moved over to a raised console built into a slab of rock and had been tinkering with the controls for a good minute before she realise I still hadn’t spoken.

“Soz, that was probably a bit of an overload, wasn’t it? Which bit did I lose you on?”

“The lizards who ruled the earth before humans,” I said softly.

The Doctor’s nose scrunched up in confusion. “Really? That bit makes sense, if you think about it.”

“In what universe does a secret society of Lizards frozen beneath the Mariana Trench make sense?!”

“Well that’s where all those daft stories about the Illuminati come from. It’s just people stumbling across all the different Silurian hibernation chambers and letting their imagination run wild.”  

That did actually make a little bit of sense, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of saying so, so I just stayed silent.

“Anyway,” she said, turning back to the controls. “Cheer up, this means there’s probably a way out of here.” That got my attention. I leapt to my feet and came to her side, staring at the panel of strange, unlabelled controls. “The Silurians tunnelled all the way down here, and they were obviously planning to return at some point. So logic says there must be a way out. A lift, or a teleport, or something.” She gasped. “Could be a massive ladder!”

“I’m not climbing a ladder out of the Mariana Trench, Doctor.”

She looked about to respond, but then a shrill, angry bleeping noise erupted from the console. The Doctor stuck her tongue out thoughtfully, the pressed some other buttons, only to be greeted with the same angry bleeping noise. She then tried pointing her metallic object at the controls, but the bleeping noise sounded again. The Doctor glared at the console panel. “Well, now you’re just being difficult.”

“Doctor,” I said, pointing to a small indent in the bottom corner of the console, that looked something like a fingerprint scanner. “It must need, I dunno, authorisation or something.”

I should have noticed the Doctor’s falling expression as she stared at what I’d pointed out. “Oh,” she said, and I should have noticed it was without her usual pep. “That’s a blow.”

Maybe I didn’t want to notice any of it. I was already looking around at which of the Silurians was closest. “So will we need to fully wake them up, or can we just sort of drag one over and then put it back?”

The Doctor turned to me. Her expression was grave. I turned my back on her and marched quickly over to one of the pods so I could pretend to be having a look. “And can it be any old one or does it need to be, like, a Boss or a President or a Mayor? I don’t know what the Silurian political hierarchy was like, was it like ours?”

“Ellie…” said the Doctor. “We can’t. The Silurians wouldn’t understand. They’d want to come back to the surface with us, and they can’t. The Earth isn’t ready for them yet.”

The trip back to the cave was awkward. I walked ahead, in silence. I heard the scuff of the Doctor’s boots behind me, and I felt her worried gaze on my back. And when we got back to the cave, I sat in the corner and didn’t look at her.

I was going to die down here. At Christmas. And everyone in that base above us had no idea they were walking and working on ground that could crumble awake at any second.

And worst of all, the only company I had, the person with which I was to perish, was a buffoon. At a certain point I had to break my sulk and look up at the Doctor, because I could sense her constantly moving and wondered how the hell she could be finding so much to do in a tiny little cave at the bottom of the planet.

Watching her, I still didn’t know. She was rummaging inside her coat pocket for a while, eventually fishing out old Quality Street sweet wrappers of red, green and gold. At one point, I heard her squeak with delight and drop down to examine something in the dirt and soil of the cave floor. When she began to draw more cave paintings and hum merrily to herself, I could take no more. I briefly considered digging the medical tape out of my suit and using it to seal her mouth shut.

“What on earth are you doing?” I asked instead.

She glanced at me over her shoulder. “I’m making the best of it!” she said, and moved aside so that I could see. Next to her 2D fireplace, she had scrawled a Christmas Tree on the wall, with scribbled baubles and doodled tinsel. And now she was humming White Christmas. “We might be stuck down here with no hope of escape. But it’s still Christmas.”

I stared in disbelief. “Are you for real? It is not Christmas.”

She did that nose-scrunch thing again. “I mean, it sort of is.”

“It is Christmas on a technicality!” I yelled. “It is Christmas only in the sense that the date is December 24th. Our current predicament, that being our impending death, takes precedent. And, for that matter, negates all circumstantial Christmas-ness.” I realised that tirade had come off oddly formal, so I added: “So stop being a dope, you big blonde-haired nutter.”

The Doctor, annoyingly, did not look hurt. Or offended. She just shook her head, like I didn’t understand. “That’s not how it works. It doesn’t matter what’s happening. Could be right in the middle of wartime, could be disease and pestilence sweeping the globe, you could be separated from everyone you love. The Titanic could be falling out of the sky! But if any of those things are happening in December, you get to press pause on them for a little bit, and be happy. Because it’s Christmas, and Christmas is magic like that.”

Nice speech. It didn’t work. “You’re a child,” I said, turning back around.

We didn’t talk again for a while. I sat and sat and sat, and at some point I lay down, and at another point I fell asleep.

Hours later, I awoke to a veritable Winter Wonderland.

The Doctor had been busy through the night. She had gone all around the cave, drawing holly and garlands all over the walls. Three tiny knitted stockings were stuck to the hand drawn fireplace. She had carefully placed the different sweet wrappers around the candles, creating a fairylight-like effect of flickering red, green and gold all around. And as I sat up, she was in front of me, beaming.

“Happy Christmas!” she bellowed, and thrust a folded piece of kitchen roll in my face. I took it from her delicately, realising that it was only obscuring something folded within. “Sorry, no wrapping paper. Best I could do.”

I did my best attempt at a smile, given the still pretty awful circumstances, and opened the gift. I had expected to find some random object standing in as a gift. After all, there was hardly a Henrick’s or Magpie Electricals to pop to down here. So when I opened the paper and found two carefully knitted socks, I took me a second to put the pieces together. Finally though, I looked up at her in wonder.

“Is this why you kept asking for my shoe size?”

The Doctor grinned. “Got it in the end. Took a tape measure to your footprint.” She pointed at what I’d seen her messing with on the floor the previous night, an indentation in the mucky ground from my shoe.

That broke my Scrooge-ness. I could continue to be a misery no longer. I thanked the Doctor genuinely, pulled on my new socks, and allowed her to lead me around the cave and tell me in great detail how she had thrown together every single makeshift Christmas decoration. We played snap and charades, and then gathered around the illustrated roaring fireplace to tell ghost stories (the Doctor’s were better than mine).

“I wish I had a gift for you,” I lamented after our Christmas Dinner of raisins and half a Wham bar. The socks really were quite cosy.

The Doctor waved a hand and tried not to look bothered. “No worries. It’s not the getting at this time of year, it’s the giving. That’s what my Mam used to say.” She paused though, then added “But also, if you happened to pack a toothbrush in that suit, I’ll love you forever. It’s been a week.”

A thought struck me. I stood up and wandered over to my discarded OxySuit, and reached into the utility belt. “No toothbrush, sorry. But in the spirit of the season, I gift you the one thing in my possession and pray it brings you happiness and good fortune.” I produced the small roll of medical tape, and tossed it to her.

She did not catch it. She did not even make an attempt. The Doctor had gone dead still since the moment she saw me pull the tape out of the suit. The roll bounced off her tummy and then fell lamely to the floor. Here, she stared at it, eyes wide.

“Doctor?”

When she looked up, there was the biggest smile on her face. “Ellie Tyson, this might be the most important Christmas gift I’ve ever been given.” Then she rushed across the distance and flung her arms around me. “Do you even realise what you’ve done? You’ve saved our lives, you daft little human.”

I had no chance to question her further. The second she let me out of her death-clutch hug, she snatched up the roll of tape and went sprinting out of the cave. I followed her through the narrow passage as best I could, but she was faster than you’d think, and by the time I reached the wall at the end, she was bouncing up and down impatiently. “Come on, come on, come on,” she begged, and I quickly boosted her up onto the ledge and let her heave me up after her.

Back in the Silurian chamber, the Doctor rushed over to the nearest cryogenic pod and started messing with the controls.

“But you said we couldn’t wake them up!” I shouted.

“No time to explain,” she shouted back. “Try and find some sort of powder or talc, any type will do.”

As she pointed her metallic thingy at the pod, I searched all over until I found what was probably the lizard equivalent of baby powder in what was probably the lizard equivalent of a medicine cabinet. I came back to the Doctor to find one of the pod doors open. The Silurian was still completely unmoving, and the air coming from the pod was predictably ice cold.

“What are we doing?” I asked, handing her the bottle.

“Spy stuff,” was her reply. And then, teeth chattering from the cold, I watched her crouch down to be able to coat one of the Silurian’s finger tips in the powder. Then, taking my Christmas gift, she pressed the scale-covered finger into a piece of tape and applied pressure. “That should do it,” she said, and stood up straight again.

“Do what?” I said. Except, no. That wasn’t my voice who had said that. And it wasn’t the Doctor’s either.

It was the Silurian. He was blinking awake, groggy like he’d overslept. “What are we doing?” he asked, then squinted at what was surely a blurry sight of two strangers in front of him. “Who are you?”

“Nobody,” the Doctor squeaked, pressing a complicated sequence of buttons on the panel next to the pod. “We’re nobody. Go back to sleep. We’re just… ghosts. We’re the Ghosts of Christmas Yet To Come.”

The Silurian frowned. “…what’s Christmas?”

“Shush,” said the Doctor, and she quickly closed the door and zapped the controls with her metallic remote, and the Silurian was asleep again.

The Doctor pressed the borrowed fingerprint on the tape into the scanner on the console and it worked perfectly. We were directed to an area at the back of the chamber, where a steel compartment took us back to the surface with frightening speed. We emerged into sparkling daylight, finding ourselves on an island in the Philippines. Well, there are worse places to spend Christmas Day. The Doctor helped me find a phone, which I used to contact central command, who in turn got in touch with Cameron Base One and ordered a speedy evacuation. The Doctor made friends with an old man who had a submarine, and he said he would take her down to retrieve her Blue Box after he’d had his Christmas dinner.

While we waited for the old man to finish his afters, the Doctor and I sat on a beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I thought it to be the bluest blue I’d ever seen, but the Doctor said she’d seen blue-er.

“It’s going to be mental down there,” I said, thinking of Cameron Base One. “Everyone loading stuff into boxes, shutting down all the experiments. Must be chaos.”

The Doctor smiled, looking out at the point where, miles and miles below the water, there was a whole base of people packing up and heading home. “It won’t be that bad,” she said. “It will still be Christmas. They’ll make the best of it.”

[tev-the-random]

You Have No Idea -- a Shadow the Hedgehog One-Shot

(Oh, shoot, they’re writing fanfiction now...)

I had a burst of inspiration last night to write about Maria and Shadow. I was drunk with sleepiness and had a headache, but why not write, huh?

Anyway, hope you enjoy it!

Also available on AO3.

~~~~~~~~

 Maria Robotnik looked just the way Commander Tower remembered her.

 It had been over fifty years, and she still looked exactly the same.

 The man could barely notice subtleties such as how thinner she was; perhaps because she had never been able to gather much weight in her sickly body, or perhaps because the memory of her had faded from his mind just enough so that he couldn’t paint the most accurate of portraits anymore. But if it wasn’t for her hair, which grew closely to her head as if it had been shaved but a few weeks ago, he would say not a day had passed, for this was still the exact same thirteen year old he knew when he was a kid.

 It was a very strange feeling, to hear her calling him “sir” as if she didn’t know him. He couldn’t imagine how much stranger it was for her to suddenly hear that this old man was the little boy she one day called Abby.

 Because that was before she died.

 Abraham didn’t quite know how to react when, roughly a month ago, he received a report about an old cryogenic pod hidden on the ARK. He didn’t know how to react when they said there was a girl in that pod, alive and frozen in stasis for what was likely a very long time. He just couldn’t believe it. Why would the old G.U.N. authorities shoot a girl dead and then save her just to… what? Leave her in space, never to be found? Hide her away, after her supposed death had driven a man insane? The current commander read the most secret of archives, all sorts of reports and all types of investigation results, and still he couldn’t comprehend why someone would do something like that.

 He couldn’t believe it was real.

 Yet here she was. In his office, by his window. With a medical chart longer than some military reports, and as real as she could be.

 ‘I wouldn’t take you for the military type, Abby,’ the girl said after a long moment of awkward silence. She kept her eyes on the outside, admiring the vivid city bellow. Abraham would usually keep his blinds closed as to not be distracted from his work, but there was barely a point in doing so anymore; with or without the blinds, he had been unable to focus for weeks now.

 ‘I always thought I’d be doing the world some good,’ the commander stated.

 ‘But you said you wanted to be a doctor?’

 ‘I couldn’t get the marks.’ That was a lie. Tower was very much a top student, but, after all that had happened, he didn’t even think of enrolling in medical school.

 But his lie made her laugh. Right about now, he thought literally anything in the world was worth it to hear that breathy chuckle; to keep her eyes shining with wonder and admiration for the planet she once wanted to visit so badly.

 ‘But why G.U.N.?’ She asked. Somewhere deep, deep down in her gentle voice, Abraham could hear a bittersweet tone. ‘Is this a place you can trust?’

 ‘Things changed,’ he spoke so readily he almost cut her midsentence. ‘I’ve been trying to make them change for the past forty years. If I can help it, none of the mistakes from the past will ever be repeated.’

 She smiled. ‘That’s supermurgitroid.’

 He almost laughed back at her, imagining how Agent Rouge would chastise him should he ever use the word “supermurgitroid” like the old man he was. Maria truly hadn’t had the time to grow past that sort of outdated slang, had she? Still, to think someone appreciated his work gave him a warm feeling.

 But the feeling subsided as soon as the thought of Rouge brought his mind to the hedgehog that often accompanied her. The commander hadn’t told him anything yet; he couldn’t find the words to, no matter how hard he tried. Despite being the very thing that connected them, Maria’s death was also the rift between Commander Tower and Shadow.

 The Black Arms incident immediately came to mind.

 “None of the mistakes from the past will ever be repeated.”

 That was also a lie. He had repeated many of the mistakes he wanted to avoid the most. What made him so different from the commander that had ordered the raid on the ARK fifty years ago?

 He wondered if she knew. He wondered how much she knew. Was she aware of what had happened to Gerald Robotnik? Did someone tell her of her cousin’s reoccurring terrorism? Did she know what Shadow had tried to do to the Earth? Or how many times he had saved it since then?

 As if she was just waiting her cue, Maria asked the question she had been meaning to ask since she woke up from her stasis:

 ‘How’s Shadow?’

 The commander honestly should have been prepared for that question. But how to answer it without dwelling into the dark abyss that was that little alien’s story?

 ‘Agent Shadow is… alright,’ he replied. ‘He’ll be glad to see you.’

 ‘Agent Shadow?’ She questioned. ‘He works here, too?’

 Abraham nodded. He wasn’t completely sure why the girl frowned at that, but she gave one last look outside before sitting on his chair with a pensive look. He remained silent beside her for a few long minutes.

 ‘I’m sorry, but after what happened to grandfather, and the ARK and all they did… I didn’t think he would want to work for people like these…’

 It shocked the commander to hear this girl being so wary of his agency. This girl who seemed to believe there was good everywhere, who always gave everyone a chance. He wasn’t offended. If he hadn’t gotten to live all he had, and hadn’t had the chance to see the world change around him, he would surely still be pretty bitter about the organization that killed the people he loved just to shut down a project that could have saved lives.

 ‘Believe me, he didn’t want to at first. And we weren’t seeking to employ him, either,’ Abraham responded.

 ‘So why would he want to work here? Why would you employ him? I thought G.U.N. wanted him dead, I th-’

 ‘Maria.’

 He said her name in the sort of whispered voice one would use at a funeral. And she noticed.

 Maria wasn’t unused to be talked to as if she was on her death bed, because usually, she was. If it wasn’t for the medicine decades advanced, the surgeries and medications she had been taking to hold back her illness, she surely wouldn’t have survived even one month out of stasis. But this was different.

 His mismatched, tired eyes met her young, unchanged ones.

 ‘A lot happened since… that day. I don’t even know how to begin telling you all of it,’ said Abraham, still with that quiet tone. ‘I don’t know the reasoning behind Shadow’s actions, but if I were to guess… I’d say it’s because of you. He chose his own path,’ he quickly added when Maria raised her eyebrows. ‘But he says he has a purpose, and that he made a promise… he’s trying to protect innocent people. So am I. And experience has proven to both of us that this place and these people can help us make a difference.’

 Silence followed.

 The girl looked down with that thoughtful expression so similar to her grandfather’s; an expression that, unfortunately, was also shared by Dr Ivo Robotnik, which didn’t do much for Tower’s distress.

 Maria came from a family of geniuses, and she would often prove to be  smart enough to live up to that legacy, should time allow her. Yet, she was kinder that any human or mobian the commander knew. Had she had the chance to live her life, she could have done humanity a great deed. Now that she did have that chance, what would she do? Would they even let her? After all, for G.U.N., she was a national secret. But for Abraham Tower, she was his family brought back to life.

 And there was a wall of time built between them.

 ‘I’m sorry,’ she said finally, looking back at him. ‘I didn’t mean to say that the people who work here are bad. I know you’re doing your best.’

 ‘It’s alright. I know it must be hard for you…’

 Before the commander could continue, however, a knock came. From the other side of the door, he could hear a certain bat’s enthusiastic chatter, and he immediately knew who knocked.

 He didn’t feel ready for that conversation, but it was bound to happen sometime. He asked them to come in.

 ‘… So Omega should be back in time for that,’ Rouge was saying, and Shadow had one of those rare amused smiles on his face the moment he came in.

 Maria immediately got up. She had the brightest of grins on her.

 The second Shadow looked at her, his own face fell. For a moment, he thought it had been a trick of the light; there was no way on Earth this girl was who he thought she was.

 ‘Shadow!’

 The trick of the light talked. And she had a horribly familiar voice.

 ‘Agent Shadow. Good to see you got my memo,’ Commander Tower mentioned. He stood next to his desk, his chair occupied by this unknown child. ‘Agent Rouge, I’ll ask you to please leave us alone for a moment.’

 ‘What’s going on?’ Rouge questioned.

 ‘Is she your friend, Shadow?’ The child asked in an enthusiastic manner, then waved at the bat. ‘Hullo! I’m Maria!’

 Rouge’s eyes widened. Her immediate reaction was to look over at her friend, who hadn’t taken his eyes off the blond girl. He now strongly believed she had to be a very vivid hallucination.

 But he knew that wasn’t the case from the instant she approached, knelt in front of him and looked him in the eye. Those bright blue eyes that shone with joy…

 Rouge exchanged a look with the commander and decided that it would be best to leave silently and close the door behind her. That moment wasn’t hers to interfere with, and she didn’t know what to make of the situation right now.

 The hedgehog stood there, half wishing Rouge wouldn’t leave him alone.

 Maria hugged him. It wasn’t a feeble hug like the ones she used to give him back on the ARK, over fifty years ago. This one was strong, filled with longing and content, wholehearted and almost healthy.

 Shadow wasn’t quite sure if he was breathing. He definitely wasn’t moving. It was almost as if his brain had stopped dead for a full minute.

 At first, Maria thought it was because he didn’t remember her; it had been at least five decades, after all. It was painful, to think that it could have been so long and that she had missed so much that her little brother couldn’t even remember her anymore. But if he remembered his promise, then surely that couldn’t be the case, right? She then thought that maybe he just didn’t want to overwhelm her; maybe he didn’t hug back because he was afraid of hurting her. He had always been very concerned for her frail wellbeing.

 What she didn’t expect was for him to push her away.

 He held her shoulders with shaky hands. The look on his face was absolutely haunted.

 They stood silent for what felt like an eternity. Shadow would have been less startled if he saw an actual ghost, and Abraham felt the urge to slap the hedgehog awake just to make that worried look leave the girl’s face. But he didn’t need to.

 ‘Maria…?’ Shadow’s tone was distant, as if he was internally trying to shake himself awake.

 Maria nodded, a cheerful smile on her, but still sensible enough to not say anything and let him take it all in.

 ‘How…?’ He whispered.

 ‘It seems you weren’t the only one put in stasis,’ Tower cut in. ‘It doesn’t make sense, and we still don’t know why they would keep her alive. But we found her.’

 ‘But… y-you died- you-’ Shadow was unable to finish as he choked on the tears that started slowly falling. His vision blurred. He couldn’t breathe.

 The girl placed two calming hands on his cheeks. Her hands were warm, almost as warm as her expression, and he couldn’t help but place his own palms over hers.

 ‘Shadow, I’m here,’ she said, clearing one of his cheeks with her thumb.

 ‘Y-you’re here…’ he repeated.

 ‘I’m alive.’

 ‘You’re alive… you’re alright.’

 Shadow’s eyes began trailing through her figure, still small and frozen in time like a perfect picture, yet somehow different; not as sickly pale as she used to be, he noticed. The thought of her basking in the natural sunlight for the first time crossed his mind and, despite having a million other things to say, what immediately left his mouth was:

 ‘Do you like the Earth?’

 She laughed at that. Chaos, he didn’t remember how her laughter sounded. He didn’t remember how sweet it was and how much he loved it instead of the cries his memory usually haunted him with.

 ‘I love the Earth!’ Maria exclaimed. She shortly looked over at Abraham before adding, ‘Thank you so much for saving it, Shadow.’

 He was fairly sure his heart stopped at that.

 If not for her hair, her clothes and the lack of blood staining them, Shadow would have thought this was the exact same Maria he had watched die so long ago. Like not a second had passed since then. Like he hadn’t grown, like his entire journey meant nothing, like he was still on the space colony. And it hurt.

 He could still see the blood. He could still hear the gunshots and her desperate plea for him to protect humanity. He could still see her limp body smiling at him as he descended to Earth, alone and helpless.

 But his sister was alive. She was here. He could see her, feel her, and those gentle blue eyes bore into him once again.

 Shadow didn’t know what else to do if not fall into her arms. He held her as tight as his trembling limbs could, terrified she would just disappear again at any moment. Tears streamed down his face like a waterfall, and he didn’t know how to make them stop, nor did he care.

 Maria just held him back, delicate and kind and caring.

 She wasn’t sure when it started, but she was crying as well.

 ‘I missed you,’ she murmured, softly stroking his quills.

 She could barely distinguish his voice between his sobs when he murmured back:

 ‘You have no idea…’

[theseerasures]

Frozen 2 Reactions, Pass #2

went to see the movie again yesterday, which helped solidify a few more thoughts percolating in the back of my head. i don’t think this one will be QUITE as long as the first, but everything’s going under a cut anyway because i’ve met me

tbh most of this is just me dunking on Elsa

one of the things that i think both helped AND hindered the movie is that they really did make an effort to make the sequel its own separate story from the original--hence the timeskip, the retcons, and so forth. on the positive end of things there’s obviously a much lower barrier of entry for the like...three people who never watched the first movie, and the characters get to feel more grown up while remaining (thanks no doubt to the writing team remaining much the same) consistent enough that the changes to their personalities still make sense. it never feels like it’s retreading old ground, and if fans want to connect the new ideas and themes to the older material (and i count myself among those, what with my first fic in almost four years being about exactly that), there are plenty of kernels with which to do so.

on the other hand: some of the new plot stuff really just DOESN’T work with what’s already been established. chief among those is the idea that ~~~the story of the enchanted forest with requisite creepy lullaby~~~ is a well remembered bedtime story for BOTH Anna and Elsa?? like what does this imply about their childhood? that their parents told them this same bedtime story over and over again, but separately in their own respective rooms? that Elsa got charming bedtime stories about magic-based conflict and war???

(”yeah papa!!! please tell me again about how magic can not only kill people but also SUNDER AN ENTIRE LAND FROM REALITY, that story’s my favorite!!! looking forward to some really spirited nightmares tonight!”)

or are we supposed to assume this is like. the thing bad Batman writers try to do where everything poignant that has ever happened to Bruce happened the night his parents were murdered? that Elsa and Anna remember the story only because it was the night of the Accident (tm)? because that’s...also stupid, i gotta say.

i love that Elsa’s verse in this song start with “the winds are restless” bc it’s exactly the way i imagine her starting conversations with her hapless subjects. “good morning, Your Majesty! how goes the kingdom?” “the winds are restless” “...” “...” “...yes. that was...something i noticed as well”

Local Sisters Make Every Time They See Each Other in Town a God Damn Event

ever since @professorspork pointed out how stupid the “and i promise you the flag of Arendelle will always fly” line is in Some Things Never Change i haven’t been able to stop laughing about it. it’s just such a BLATANT telegraph: “whooo!!! yes! Arendelle!!! we all love that place and want to save it, and you can tell because the song said so!”

the Friends shot of them all walking back to the castle and Anna has kicked her heels off is great though i love it

also love the multitude of shots where it’s Elsa and someone else and we get a peek at her silent reactions to whatever the other person is saying. not since Legolas have we been blessed with so many memeable dumb faces

“ah yes, Mama’s words! cuddle close, scootch in! you remember her saying that all the time right Elsa?? after all it’s not like you have any decade-long baggage about not being able to be near anyone, most especially family members, because you were deathly afraid that you’d instantly murder them”

more thoughts on why Into the Unknown stands out so vividly in my mind: the first movie’s songs by and large did a VERY good job of moving plot around while still exploring character emotion. Do You Want to Build a Snowman moves us through ten YEARS of story, while still leaving space for long, unsung moments where we just get to process what’s going on between the sisters as they grow up. For the First Time in Forever catches us up with the sisters, gets the gates open, and has Anna meet Hans at the end, a pivotal moment for both her and the plot. Love Is an Open Door has them get engaged and sets up the rest of the story. Let It Go is Elsa’s big character shift and sets up the goal for the other characters: the ice palace is where they all need to go to bring back summer. the FtFTiF reprise begins the endgame. the other songs are all more fluff pieces that JUST serve to introduce characters, which is why they’re...not as good, and most people don’t really care about them, but we can accept that they’re there because the strength of the other material.

with Frozen 2...Into the Unknown is pretty much the ONLY song that fits into the first category: Elsa works through her conflicted feelings about wanting to explore the unknown, AND wakes up the spirits (sidebar: her pure joy at using her powers to communicate with the spirits is SO GOOD, guys. it gets me every time). the other ones just kind of transporting their singers into the Emotional Expression Dimension for them to do their thing. sometimes the songs transport them to the next plot point while they’re singing, but nothing really happens DURING them. i can give Some Things Never Change a pass on this because it’s supposed to be about stasis (and because i’ve bitched about it enough on other fronts), but much as i love Lost in the Woods and Next Right Thing for their character exploration they’re really just music videos to get us to the next scene. Next Right Thing is particularly egregious about locking the plot in the boot--the ENTIRE sequence is just Anna climbing or slumping against random rocks until the song ends and she can actually move the story along. one could make an argument that Show Yourself does get stuff done, but it’s still mostly Elsa running around in a cave for three entire minutes before we get to that point

i don’t think Get This Right is perfect but it DOES pull off the multitasking well, and it would have not only resolved the torturously stretched engagement subplot early on but creates a nice thematic echo to Love Is an Open Door: she really knows Kristoff, she really loves him, and she proposes. it’s her choice.

Kristoff’s line about question of how/question of whether works great for highlighting his continued insecurities, but again: either we’re supposed to think he’s wrong and Anna has ALSO been thinking in terms of how and she’s just been too busy in sister-drama-land, and this whole plot should have been resolved early, or we’re supposed to think that Anna really ISN’T on the same page, in which case they...probably should have a serious conversation about where they see their relationship going and not just get engaged at the end because Elsa made a new dress

as soon as an HD version comes out i demand a gifset juxtaposing Anna slumped against a rock with Anna slumped against Elsa’s door at the end of Do You Want to Build a Snowman, because this whole sequence is where the distance between sequel and original really WORKED. Anna is singing about how alone she feels, how she’s never felt such darkness before, when we know that that’s...not true. she's felt pretty close before--not long ago that was her whole LIFE. it’s natural for her to feel this way, because being knocked off your happiness always hurts more than never having it in the first place, but we the audience get to have faith in her, because we remember. eventually she does too, and now she knows exactly how resilient she can be, exactly how strong she’s ALWAYS been.

the animated faces are SO GOOD. we see Anna flicker through seventeen feelings at once when Kristoff rescues her from the dam: delayed fear, relief, and--this is the crucial one for me--horror that she survived, because that means she’s going to have to live with the fact that Elsa didn’t.

Elsa riding into the sunset of her sapphic life is great obviously but every time i see it i worry that the movie is going to end with the same face smear effect as the Prisoner of Azkaban movie

[greensword101]

Inquisitor!Kanan AU Pt. 1

Alright, this is going to sound stupid, but I’ve skimmed through a few fics where Kanan is an Inquisitor but is either a reluctant recruit or immediately becomes conflicted when he meets Ezra, his space son.

That didn’t make sense to me. An Inquisitor was a Jedi that fell to the Dark Side. And those who fall typically do so in a sense of “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions” at times or because they are disillusioned like Bariss was in the Clone Wars. In the event that Kanan ever turned to the Dark Side, I believe it would be for good intentions or because of his earlier characteristics as a Padawan (i.e. curiosity). It could be justified as Kanan was fourteen when Order 66 happened, but what if his master fell to the Dark Side prior to this right around the time she took him on as a student? Cue him becoming the Anakin to her Palpatine, except Depa genuinely cares about her student (ironic).

In this au, Depa Billiba had begun to lose faith in the Jedi Order right as she meets Caleb and she sees him as a kindred sou, especially after she learns more about the boy. One who is questioning the way of the Jedi in ways that the Council is very uncomfortable dealing with. Naturally, this feeling of isolation leads to Caleb trusting Billiba, especially when she states that the Jedi are afraid of people like him.

“But why?” Caleb asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.

“Because, my Padawan,” Depa smiled, “the most dangerous weapon one can have is a weapon that can think for itself.”

Caleb, having never known his parents, having been considered an outcast by his peers, puts his faith in the first person to openly express faith in him and encourages his curiosity. Thus begins the decent of Master and Padawan to the Dark Side. Depa, who was drawn towards it due to her disillusionment of the Jedi and Caleb, who’s hunger for knowledge of all kinds would become insatiable as his understanding of the Dark Side grew.

When the Jedi Purge occurs, Caleb and Depa are spared from the slaughter, having deserted their Clone comrades and killing those who have attempted to take their lives. They go into hiding, taking work as bounty hunters or stealing whatever they can. Usually, it would be Jedi archives or artifacts that the Council wouldn’t have wanted falling into the wrong hands.

It doesn’t take long for them to be put under the Emperor’s radar and he orders them to be hunted down to join him as his assassins or die. Naturally, Depa and Caleb agree to serve as Inquisitors, out of pragmatism and because they felt flattered that their abilities were acknowledged by the Emperor himself.

Depa and Caleb stand out among the Inquisitors, being the only Former Jedi to be a part of the Master/Apprentice dynamic before the Republic fell. Caleb stands out due to being the youngest, but somehow just as brutal as the rest of their comrades as the First Sister and First Brother. The First Sister and First Brother quickly become a dreaded duo, due to their strong bond to one another and meshing together fighting styles of Light and Dark. After all, the First Brother considers “know thy enemy” to be the greatest teacher (after Depa, of course).

As the Empire looms over the galaxy, the Emperor soon realizes what a great threat the duo would become if they continued without challenge. Never mind the fact that overthrowing the Emperor never crossed either minds of the First Brother and Sister. They are content with knowledge for knowledge’s sake, freedom to act as they please, and with staying as a team. The Seventh Sister made the mistake of suggesting the First Brother was being groomed to be the First Sister’s boy toy. Her screams still echo to this day in the old buildings of Coruscant.

Through Vader, the Emperor sets up an “accident” to occur on one of the duo’s missions together. Caleb survives at the cost of his beloved mentor, who’s last words to him were “Run!” When he learns that the First Brother survived, the Emperor placed blame on Vader (true from a certain point of view) and redirects anger at his apprentice. It is a clever plan that he knew would lead to the First Brother either killing Vader and taking over as the Emperor’s apprentice or Vader dealing with a potential rival a move is made against him. Caleb knows this himself and he goes through a drastic change in personality.

His thirst for knowledge, unbeknownst to the Emperor, would lead to him desperately searching for hidden knowledge of the Force, such as saving the ones he loves most from certain death. At the same time, he becomes ruthless as an Inquisitor, isolating himself from others and seeking comfort in pleasures of the flesh and drink when the memory of his beloved mentor burns too painfully in his mind to function.

Jump to “Spark of Rebellion” time and without meeting Kanan, the chances of Hera meeting the rest of Ghost seem impossible now, right? Wrong! The Force works in mysterious ways, after all, and while she doesn’t find her crew through one person, she still manages to find the like of Ezra by herself on Lothal.

Ezra is still the same kid from canon: trusting no one, hard to think about others, a thief. And he managed to steal Hera’s heart when he tries to run off with her ship. Chopper stops him and a deal is made: work as her employee and Hera would forget about the kid trying to steal her baby. She also promises actual payment which manages to keep Ezra invested and maybe allows him to open up to her.

And through Ezra, they still manage to find Zeb and Sabine. Ezra has a brief crush on Sabine that evolves into a platonic friendship. Sabine still views the Ghost crew as a family. Zeb still smells. Chopper is Chopper. Hera is suddenly like a single mom with the distant uncle that suddenly decides to help her raise the kids.

Without a second actual adult - no, Zeb, you may be the oldest but you are at the same mental age as Ezra sometimes - Hera is probably more stressed than usual. She loves her crew to death, but it can be a bit much sometimes without a second hand to help.

But they are still the same force - no pun intended - to be reckoned with and get under the radars of both the Empire and Rebel alliance.

Ezra doesn’t know about his Force abilities for a while, not even when they are executing a rescue mission to extract an old Jedi Master named Luminara. It’s trickier without Kanan to do the mind trick on Stormtroopers, but Sabine and Zeb manage to distract the two guards in the end while Ezra sneaks in.

The first thing he notices is how weak and frail this “Luminara” lady is. The second is how he seems to feel her presence in his very bones, like an old memory. The third is another presence, a colder one that makes him shiver.

Enter the First Brother. The years since he’s turned have changed him drastically. He wears the Inquisitor uniform, with a black cape. His skin tone is pale as snow, like he hasn’t seen the sun in years. His hair is long and not held down by a ponytail (imagine it a bit like a lion’s mane) and his yellow eyes. piercing and seeming to see through Ezra.

He’s expecting a Jedi risking discovery to rescue the body of Luminara, someone who would hopefully give him a decent challenge. He’s not expecting a teenage boy who is clearly not a Jedi and clearly has never seen what a lightsaber looks like when the First Brother pulls one out.

Ezra in canon was aware of the Force existing and had been pleading with his mentor to actually teach him. Here, he’s thrown into a massive loop and straight up terrified of this new enemy who clearly wasn’t a Stormtrooper. His typical maneuvering doesn’t work when the First Brother is able to pin him down without making physical contact. To Caleb, this is just him barely using Force Stasis. To Ezra, it’s like he’s walked into a nightmare.

Ezra, now frozen both literal and in fear, has a new enemy blocking his only exit and no way to warn his team about the danger they’re in.

“How did you know Luminara?” The First Brother asked.

Ezra doesn’t respond, he isn’t sure his mouth can work and his mind is numb.

“You can still talk if you want to, kid,” the man added in a surprisingly gentle voice.

Somehow, Ezra finds his courage, “I don’t know her. I was trying to rescue her.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s a prisoner of the Empire,” Ezra tries and fails to snarl defiantly at the man, “She doesn’t deserve to be treated like this.”

“You’re partially right,” the First Brother admitted, “She didn’t deserve the fate she got. But the Empire needed a honey pot to draw in the flies.”

“D-didn’t...?”

“Luminara is dead, been that way for a long time.” Out of the corner of Ezra’s eye, he notices the pale Mirialan’s body fading away like dust in the wind. His heart stills.

After a tense moment, Ezra collapses to the ground, having been freed.

“I don’t take pleasure in snuffing younglings,” the First Brother said dismissively. “Take your friends and leave this place.”

Ezra doesn’t even bother asking how the hell he knew Ezra didn’t come alone and simply runs out of the cell. He finds Sabine and Zeb and they all flee in one piece. He doesn’t speak for the rest of the day, too shaken from his experience with the new enemy to do anything.

He has no experience with the Force. He understands he is different, but not why. And he certainly doesn’t expect to see that man again after today.

Meanwhile, the First Brother, for the first time in years, feels something close to excitement. Someone who could use the Force, someone who clearly didn’t know about the Force until just then, someone that was on the side of the rebels.

He sincerely hoped his master was looking down on him in the afterlife, because he was going to become that kid’s new teacher whether the kid wanted him or not.

To be continued...

[kelkat9]

Nano Projects

Because editing is grueling and unpleasant for me, I have mulitple NaNo projects this year.

Putting under the cut

Original:

CLAIMED AGAINST THE ODDS

Book Two of the Aswaya Pack Series ​

Stasi Bodrov lived for dominating her enemies.  Diplomacy wasn’t in her vocabulary. ​

Stasi is no ambassador. Anarchy with a side of espionage is more her style.   She never expected to find murder, political intrigue or Jake Dubois who looked like he might survive a few rounds of sexual conquest, Stasi style. ​

Jake Dubois, Captain of Aswaya pack security enjoys his freedom and bachelorhood.  He keeps a cajoling distance from all but a chosen few. Jake chooses the security of his pack over love. Until he meets Stasi with her sarcastic comments and refusal to back down from anyone.  She makes an enticing leather jacketed package for a few nights of fun. ​ ​

What was meant to be casual sex, soon turns into a love neither could escape.  Through an attempted assassination and life shattering turns, Jake and Stasi find themselves bound closer than either wants but neither can deny.

Fic

The Guild Wars

Sequel To The Blessing

Love endures.  It stretches and yields, and suffers growing pains as it tempers and grows like seeds in the Earth bursting upward toward the Sun.

The Doctor and Rose soon learn the Blessing will test them beyond their defeat of Davros and the Cult of Skaro.  For in that defeat, Davros planted his own seeds, ones that destroy, fester and create  even more chaos.  Even between Rose and the Doctor.

Rose and the Doctor’s relationship is put to the test as they and their friends are soon swept into a battle of magic, of power and for the freedom of not just themselves but for the world.  Lines will be drawn and sides taken. Both must fight for what they have and what they want, if either can decide what that is.

Human Nature Fic

In all her travels with the Doctor, Rose never imagined ending up in 1984 in the American South taking care of a now human Doctor who had no memory of who or what he was.  In some ways, it gave her new insight into the man she’d fallen in love with.  But danger lurked in the form of alien hunters seeking to devour his Time Lord self. 

Wanderlust and caution drive them from town to town on the back of his Harley.  But danger follows be it in the form of the ever growing intimacy sizzling between them, or the humans they encountered who could be even more dangerous than the aliens that hunted them.

Rose is no stranger to the game of survival.  She survived growing upon the Estate in an unforgiving London, being plunged into danger with the Daleks and somehow surviving  the ultimate battle with them on The Game Station.  She could do this.  Except with Jack on his own mission, distractions she normally relied on were gone.  Leaving her to battle her heart and a now amorous Doctor.  A battle she may lose quite willingly.

Terror of The Mererid - existing fic I have partly done.

[tea-and-conspiracy]

Resignation (WoL AU)

Persephone hissed, flinching her fingers away as they accidentally brushed the sample. Somehow it bit through her gloves, and she hastily pulled them off lest it spread. Her fingertips were lightly reddened, but no further harm seemed to have been done.

She grabbed her tweezers and carefully re-ushered the spilled soil back into its bottle, where it fizzed like a carbonated drink. None of the physics made sense. Why was the star suddenly…breaking?

“Is five enough, I wonder…?” she mused aloud, corking the vial and slipping it into her satchel. Lahabrea had been in such haste that he’d never given her a number. But a sudden startled whinny broke her from her thoughts, and she lifted her head to see the corruption creeping for her. Persephone grabbed her instruments and fled to where Pegasus awaited her.

He was one of her earliest creations, and still her favorite. Afterwards the academics had sought to “improve” upon her formula, which meant staining it strange colors and making it glow. As far as she was concerned it was a downgrade, but it would be impolite to argue with the experts.

She stuffed her equipment into his saddlebags and climbed astride him, but already the corruption had gained momentum. Tendrils of it sputtered against the creature’s hooves as it bolted to a running start, springing for tattered skies. Whatever drove that dread force underneath was clearly displeased with their escape, and from the aether appeared two winged monstrosities who followed.

“By Creation!” she cried, spurring Pegasus onward. Nothing had been there to imagine these creatures – so where had they come from!?

Pegasus was swift, but he could not shake his pursuers while he held a passenger. Instead Persephone turned, calling upon Creation for its light, and blasted the nearest creature with searing starfire. It screamed and fell. The second hung back.

But before she could so much as exhale in relief, dozens more creatures spontaneously appeared, these ones smaller and faster. They swarmed Pegasus in a cloud, and he whinnied and bucked in an attempt to remove them. Persephone clung to him for dear life, reaching for anything her panicked mind could think of. She spawned a net, dropped stones, slung arrows, and at last conjured a veil of fog that she and Pegasus vanished into. But such reckless conjury came at a cost, and she slumped forward into the saddle, unconscious.

Persephone later awoke in the infirmary, only to find Hades hovering over her. He visibly sagged as she opened her eyes, and she realized the physicians had removed her mask and hood in order to care for her.

“Hello, stranger.” She managed a tired smile.

“You are a sight for sore eyes.” He glanced back but, convinced no one was near, gathered her hands into his. “Hythlodaeus found you collapsed in the square with Pegasus. What happened?”

“I made it mad.” Her eyes slid closed. “Did the samples survive?”

“I sent them to Anyder myself.”

“Good. And Elidibus…?”

“Still overseas. Last I heard he’d found something big.”

“And you?” her eyes opened again, though she could not see his through his mask.

He looked away. “Persephone…leave this to those of us who are expendable. There are some things we can ill afford to lose.”

She managed a weak laugh. “I am the least accomplished of the entire council! To this day I cannot fathom why you elected me Chairwoman.”

“Because you’re the sanest of us.” He breathed a laugh. “Cooler heads prevail, as they say, and we need that now more than ever.”

“Ilinrot is gone…” she whispered. “I never made it there.”

He bowed his head. “…As I said.”

Persephone sat up and reached for him, and he gathered her in close. She pressed her face into his shoulder. “…this feels so helpless…”

“It’s not.” He nuzzled into her hair. “Amaurot is full of the world’s most brilliant creative minds. There’s never once been a problem we could not solve. Give it just a bit more time.”

When Hades was eventually forced to leave, Persephone conjured him a wild rose and stuck it in his hood. “For luck,” she said as he departed. But once he was gone and the door was closed, she sunk in empty idleness in her bed. Sleep was impossible, not with so many thoughts whirring in her mind, so she turned instead for the smattering of books left on her bedstand. She grabbed one at random and opened it to discover that it was a book of oil paintings. The arts were the one thing still done the old-fashioned way, as there was a decided cheapness and inhumanity to merely conjuring it.

She idly flipped through the pages, occasionally pausing on a work she liked, but then came upon an image that arrested her. A brilliant seraph rose triumphant on glowing wings, crystalline skies spreading behind her. The piece was simply labeled, “Hydaelyn”.

“Hydaelyn,” she murmured, expression softening. Gods weren’t really something the Amaurotine worshiped; it was just passively acknowledged that they were there. Zodiark and Hydaelyn were responsible for all of Creation, but it was often the former who received reverence, for life was inherently chaotic. Hydaelyn was stasis, order, preservation…

Persephone closed the book and fell back on her pillow, drowning in her thoughts.

 “The Prodigal Son returns,” Emet-Selch sang as Elidibus strode into the room. “I was about to hand your chair off to someone else.”

“Hilarious as ever, Architect,” the Emissary said, taking his customary seat.

“You have news from the West?” Persephone asked.

“And thensome.” He sounded smug. “First of all, we’ve managed to capture a most terrifying beast – perhaps the most complex example of spontaneous creation yet. It’s been confined to Anyder and is being examined as we speak. Once we know how it operates, we can determine a means of creating a defense against it.”

“Heartening news indeed!” She beamed behind her mask. “And our neighbors?”

To that, Elidibus only shook his head.

“You cannot be serious? The whole continent?” she asked.

“All gone, Chairwoman, and it will reach Amaurot sooner than we projected.”

The Council fell silent.

“I would, however, like to propose a solution.”

“Seconded,” Nabriales replied, cautiously.

Persephone inhaled. “It has been properly moved and seconded that a solution to spontaneous creation be proposed. Is there any debate?”

Elidibus rose. “My friends. What has become most clear from our forays into the unknown is that this calamity arises from within the very star itself. So far not a single attempt from our brightest minds has been able to quell it. Thus, if the star itself is spontaneously creating abominations, then I propose we give it sentience: the will to realize what it is doing, and likewise the will to stop it.”

“How, pray tell?” Mitron asked.

“By summoning Zodiark, and fusing him to the planet.”

Minutes of silence passed. Each council member looked to the other, but for once even Lahabrea was speechless.

“Come again, Emissary?” Persephone managed at last.

“Allow me to explain.” Elidibus strode up to her chair, his arms spread wide. “We already know that Creation magic follows the laws of equivalent exchange. For a certain amount of aether given, something can be conjured into existence. Thus, with the right amount of aether, we can theoretically summon either of the gods to our aid. If this problem is truly beyond us, then let us halt it before any further lives are lost. Zodiark, as the champion of life, will defend our star.”

“That is a logical fallacy,” Lahabrea replied. “The amount of aether required to conjure something as mighty as Zodiark would result in…” A lingering pause. “It would kill half of us. All of us.”

“We’ve already lost half of us to this madness!” Persephone cried.

“But isn’t it worth it, to guarantee our future safety?” Elidibus asked. “The needs of the many must needs outweigh the needs of the few.”

“How is ‘half’ the few?” Persephone shot to her feet.

“Councilwoman,” he chided. “You are a mediator. It is not your place to debate.”

She exhaled through her nostrils and sat back down.

“My friends…” Elidibus began to pace along the dais. “After witnessing the devastation in foreign lands, I find myself unable to articulate the urgency of this matter. Our scientists will not find a solution in time. It will be a matter of days before Amaurot, too, is destroyed. We have but one chance to thwart this madness, though it comes at a dreadful cost. But if so many lost will guarantee the future of all, then is it not a worthwhile sacrifice?”

The council began to murmur but, to Persephone’s dread, no one else stood to speak.

“Is there any further debate?” she asked.

They shook their heads.

“Then we shall vote on the motion. All in favor of…” It was surreal that she was even speaking these words. She felt suddenly disconnected from her body. “All in favor of summoning Zodiark, say ‘aye.’”

“Aye,” rang the room, including Emet-Selch. The gavel tumbled from her fingertips.

“You’re all mad…” she whispered.

“Pardon?” Elidibus asked.

“You heard me.” She stood, deliberately, pulled back her cowl, and threw her mask on the table. The council gasped. “I will not pass the motion. I resign from the council. This is not salvation, it is slaughter.”

Emet-Selch rose as she stormed out, but he did not follow.

“I do it so I won’t lose you…” he murmured.

[lost-scarecrow]

Technically inktober is drawing based or "ink" based and I was going to hand print this out but I was too tired to write.

Inktober

Tranquil (2018)

OneTiredCrow

The void. The great abyss. Lethal to all but a few. It is always quiet, always peaceful, always freezing. The type of horrible mix of burning cold that makes your skin crawl and feel like it burns the shivers or lingering warmth slipping away leaving room for the near instant freeze burn that develops. Only a few known creatures can survive the void so not much is known about the void outside of fleeting moments of frigid pain before death. Even then, not much is known about those void creatures, only that they exist. Some far bigger than what one could imagine living their days in the void surviving on fallen players and those foolish enough to get too close to the void. Some choose to live among players, learning their rules and following their ways of living. No matter how long one of those creatures lives away from the void, the inky blackness of the great abyss still calls for them to return to their proper home.

In the liquid darkness floats a green clad being, he doesn't take any damage from the void as he rests eye's closed and his pointed piglin-like ears flick at noises no one would hear other than him. It's peaceful, serene, and everything about his position screams that he's comfortably familiar with the void he's laying in.

"Crow!" A voice shouts from above snapping the creature out of the restful state he was in, in a hole in the bedrock of the bottom of the world carefully poking her head over the edge is Bug, "I know you're doing that void thing you voidlings do, but if we wanted to go hang out with Code, Lash, and Rainy later we should get stuff together now."

Crow sighs before turning over to swim over to the water column he left to get back to the above bedrock. "Do I have too?" He asks once he's close enough to grab his partner's hand.

"They're our friends, we don't have to but we both know you'll have fun once we're actually there. Besides, this whole hang out thing was your idea."

"True and true, but it doesn't mean I can't complain. I'm going to complain." He states as he opens a chest full of his items and armor. Once he's retrieved all of his items and sorted his inventory screen again he smiles at Bug.

She smiles back, "Of course you will. I honestly would be worried if you didn't complain."

Two make their way through the enclosed room, Crow making sure all the obsidian blocks encasing the hole in the bedrock are in the right place, safely keeping other players from accidentally stumbling into the void below. As he approaches two buttons with signs above labelling one 'Crow' and the other 'Buggie' on the far wall from the pauses, turning to the other who was about to press her own button.

"I've got one more thing before we use the stasis chambers." He pauses, "Did you know…" He pauses again with an amused grin as Bug gives shouts of anguish and cries of 'No. No! No, don't you start this right now.' "Did you know I lost the game?" He laughs at her dismayed reaction and quickly presses his button.

"GOD. DAMN. IT. CROW." She yells out to the empty space where her partner had been seconds before, she has an amused smile on her face either way as she presses her button leaving the room empty.

[katiehavok]

Newtina headcannons: what kinds of disagreements pop up throughout their marriage? (I saw a post by Megan the other day about them arguing over cosleeping- N in favor and T against- and this is totally my new headcannon now) but interested to hear your thoughts. Also, you've talked about WWI, what about WWII? Especially given a) Grindelwald still happening and b) Tina being Jewish

The first obstacle they have to overcome is Leta. I don’t mean that Leta comes between them because it’s made pretty clear at the end of the movie that Newt is...if not over her, then well on the way to being over her. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all, and being away from Tina is only going to push him closer to Tina. The issue is going to be Tina’s insecurities--which only she can address and do something about. So that will be their first challenge.

Their second challenge will be where to live. Tina will most likely not want to be far away from her sister, but Newt can’t legally have his creatures in America. So, they’ll have to work out the particulars of that. My thinking is that they have a fairly long engagement (we're talking years,) carried on through regular letters and quick visits whenever one or the other has time. 

When they do finally wed, it is only after Jacob and Queenie have moved to Europe to elope, therefore taking the “big sister burden” off of Tina.

The children issue is a little tricky because I can see it going in so many possible directions. However, my strongest head-canon/hunch is that they will have amazingly few childcare-related disagreements. 

Neither Newt or Tina are very heavy sleepers: Newt because he has to be on high-alert for his creatures, Tina by dint of what she does for a living. So while I doubt either one of them would be comfortable with directly co-sleeping (i.e. the baby in the bed with them), having the bassinet, cradle or Moses Basket directly beside the bed is a very viable compromise. This allows them both to keep an eye and ear on the baby, as well as allow Tina easy access for nighttime nursing (I don’t see Newt or Tina as using formula, or at least not very often, if only because of costs concerns. While pumping technology was in its very infancy, I imagine there’s a spell Tina can use to extract a certain quantity of breastmilk and keep in stasis so Newt can take a nighttime feeding or two.)

Newt’s the “earthier” of the two parents. While Tina prefers the pram, Newt’s all about carrying that kid around on his chest. While Tina wants to stay indoors on a warm day, Newt’s all “Ricketts, Tina!” and takes the baby for a walk around the block to soak up the sun, or down into the case to meet the (gentlest) creatures. While Tina burns through every parenting advice book on the market (historical note: these books were...incredibly bad) Newt is all about listening to the child and following its lead to determine how best to parent. 

(Also, Newt absolutely used a rudimentary baby carrier of some sort. Someone, PLEASE draw this!)

Tina eventually comes over to this way of thinking, though it takes a long while, many sleepless nights, and an enduring bout of post-partum depression to get her there... (before anyone accuses me of misogyny or anything like that, please remember that Tina being high-strung is canon, and that new mother’s face a variety of crushing pressures: from society, from their family, but most of all, from themselves. Newt’s job is going to be to hold her together while she adjusts, but once she’s where she needs to be, she’s going to be the best damn mother their little Scamanderling could ever hope to have!)

When WWII breaks out, Newt and Tina decide at first to remain in America. This is for the most prosaic of reasons: there are no concentration camps in the US (at least, not for Jewish people...the Japanese had a bad time of it, though) and very little chance of either of them being called to serve. 

However, this doesn’t stop Tina (who’s done with having children--they have the one, and she has no wish to endure all that again) from itching to go off and join the fight against both Grindelwald and Hitler. 

This is the only true argument Newt and Tina have over the entire course of their marriage, one that ends with a long and enduring bout of stony silence from Tina, and many, many tears from Newt. 

Eventually, Newt recognizes that his Tina is a warrior and that he had agreed to accept her entirely when he asked for her hand in marriage. So, with heavy reluctance, he doesn’t give her permission to go so much as he realizes that she needs to go, and no longer puts up a fight about it. His only stipulation is that he and their son move to Hogwarts in the interim so they can be closer to the fight should she ever need them (read: should she be injured or placed in danger of death.)

Tina agrees, and Newt sends off a letter to Professor Dumbledore to see if his old school happens to need a Care of Magical Creatures professor. As luck would it have, they do, and the family leaves for England two weeks later.

We know that Tina survives the war, though I don’t imagine she survived it entirely intact. She came home with a heavy burden of battle fatigue and was prone to long fugues of depression, bouts often punctuated by either fitful sobbing (which was bad) or catatonic silence (which was much, much worse.) Newt does what he can to help her through it, and during one particularly bad episode, he sends their son off to Aunt Queenie’s for a few weeks so he and Tina can spend some intense one-on-one time together, during which time he encourages her to remove the worst of her memories from her mind if only to bring her some measure of relief.

She does eventually take his advice, and it brings about marked improvement...but his Tina is never quite the same after WWII, and from what he’d seen of her thoughts, Newt can’t find it in himself to hold it against her.

During this jaunt of healing, on a particularly good day when Tina was able to smile at him, Newt takes her for a walk along the beach in Dorset. There, they find a little stone cottage, long-neglected but with an air of familiarity about it that they both immediately attach to; Tina finds herself picturing rose bushes and a vegetable garden. Newt imagines a small shed magically expanded to hold his menagerie, what little of it is left.

Together, they contact the owner by tacit, unspoken agreement. They purchase the cottage and the little plot of land it comes with for a very reasonable price, hardly putting a dent in their savings. Moving there proves to be a boon: their son thrives on the English sun, the sand, and the crash of the waves. Tina finds some measure of peace in their little home, and long walks on the beach calm her when she finds herself feeling especially claustrophobic. 

Tina secures employment with the MoM after officially immigrating and rockets through the chain-of-command in a short time. Newt remains with the beast division nominally, though, in reality, he’s too independent for that, and churns out a new edition of his book, on average, every 18 months--a task made much easier once their son is off at Hogwarts. 

They retire within a year of each other, and spend the remainder of their days in their little cottage, raising their Kneazles and grandchildren (and later, great-grandchildren) and simply loving each other.

[sunflowerseedsandscience]

X-Files Fic: But Always Together

For @leiascully‘s X-Files Writing Challenge: “List.”  This is basically a big ol’ “FUCK YOU” to The Field Where I Died.

1. 1890 B.C.

He is a shepherd, the youngest of six sons, tending to one of his father's many herds.  She is the oldest daughter of a priest, and he sees her fetching water at a well one day and loses all power of speech in the face of her beauty.  He knows who she is- his father and hers are known to each other- and even though she smiles warmly at him, he cannot bring himself to speak to her.  As the youngest of six he has nothing to offer her, and he knows she'll be married off to some oldest son, some fortunate man who stands to inherit much when his father dies.

One day when he's out with his flock, he sees her approaching in the distance.  She's carrying a lamb in her arms- one of his that, it transpires, had managed to wander off without his noticing (he's been spending more time than he should dreaming about her).  He thanks her profusely, stumbling over his words, expecting her to laugh at him at any moment, but she doesn't.  She's sweet and kind and sits with him for hours, talking, until the sun in low on the horizon.

After that, they meet nearly every day, at the well or in the fields.  It takes him months to get up the nerve to ask her if she's promised to anyone, and in response, she quirks an eyebrow at him and says, "I had assumed you would be asking for my hand, but maybe I was wrong."

So they approach her father, and of course, he's against the match, because he has nothing to offer her.  He goes to his father to ask him to intervene, but there's no help to be had there: his father tells him he'll find someone more suitable to his station.

They leave, together, that very night.

It's difficult, far more difficult than either of them could have anticipated, and nearly every waking moment is consumed with ensuring their continuing survival- especially when children start to come- but at the end of every day, there are brief, fleeting moments of peace and love together, and it makes the rest of the hardship worth it.

2. 582 B.C.

She is a queen, and he is a servant in her household.  He prepares her bath each evening, then stands silent and respectful on the other side of the screen as she bathes.  There is always a peculiar energy in the air between them and she feels it acutely, even though he never meets her gaze, forbidden as he is to raise his eyes to hers.  

One night, curious to know what would happen, she summons him to her side of the screen, and he comes.  She orders him to look at her... and the charge that flies between them is so sharp and powerful that neither can resist it.  He's in the bath and in her so quickly that it's over before either has the chance to wonder whether or not it's a good idea.  Certainly the smart thing to do, in the future, would be to have someone else draw her bath, but as intelligent as she may be, this is one smart idea she rejects out-of-hand.

Eventually she makes an appropriate political marriage, of course, to the second son of the ruler of a neighboring kingdom.  Her husband has more than one occasion, over the years, to remark on her dedication to cleanliness, her absolute refusal to give up her ritual evening bath (or to ever deviate from having the same servant prepare it, night after night).

And if the new king notices that some of his children do not resemble him at all, he's smart enough not to comment on it.

3. 43 A.D.

They are both slaves in neighboring households in Rome.  His master is a kind, learned man, and his life is a happy one.  He catches a glimpse of her through the window and is immediately smitten.  She is shy at first, only looking back at him in quick, fleeting glances, but as time goes by, she comes to expect seeing him each day at the same time, in the same room.

It's from watching this window that he learns that her master is nothing like his own.

The first time he sees her master strike her, he is downstairs and out the front door before he realizes that intervening is likely to get them both killed.  So instead, he begins to save money, as much as he can, in hopes of helping her buy her freedom.  When at last he has enough, he motions for her to meet him in the back garden.  He passes the money over the wall and explains what it's for, and she thanks him amidst her tears.

It's the first time they've heard each other's voices.

But when she gives the money to her master, he takes the coins from her, then beats her, then pretends the entire conversation had never taken place.  When she tells him what's happened, he goes to his master, begging him to help.  His master approaches hers and offers to buy her, naming such an exorbitant amount that he can't possibly refuse.

They live out their days together in happiness in the kind master's household.

4. 1275

He is a monk, and she is a woman living in the village adjacent to the monastery.  He glimpses her while in town during a religious ceremony, and afterwards, he makes excuses to go back and see her again and again.

They are not as cautious as they should be, and before long, they're caught.  She is accused of being a witch, because it's the only possible explanation for her having convinced him to break his vows, and they are both put to death.

5. 1590

He is a writer, and she is a noblewoman, her husband one of his patrons.  She inspires him with her wit, her intelligence, her beauty, and her kindness, and sonnets and plays pour forth from his pen in an endless stream.  He composes poem after poem in praise of her, and her husband (though he is a good man who values her every bit as much as he should) never suspects that she is his true muse.

She knows, though.

She comes to his home one day while her husband is out and thanks him for his beautiful words... but it goes no further.  She is rigid in her morals, terrified of the effect a scandal would have on the lives of her children, and devoted to her husband, who has never done anything but right by her.

In time, he marries another, and while they are happy, he never gets over the feeling that his life is not quite right, that by not meeting her earlier, before she married, he has missed a rare opportunity to truly know the sublime.

6. 1781

He is a colonel in Washington's army, and she is a soldier under his command, a woman posing as a man in order to fight for her newly-birthed nation.  He discovers her true identity when she is wounded, and against his better judgement, he promises to keep her secret for her.

She saves his life in battle, taking down an English soldier aiming at him from only a few yards away while he's busy re-loading his own weapon, and he never forgets it, not for the rest of the war, and not for the years that follow.  When the conflict is over, he returns to his father's farm, which he runs after his father's passing.

One day, he is in Philadelphia on business, and on the street outside of the bank, he sees a woman whose face is incredibly familiar, though he can't quite place it.  He starts across the street without checking for oncoming traffic, just as she is turning to look at him.  She sees the carriage barreling towards him, though he does not, and she cries out his name, making him pause on the curb... saving his life for a second time.

The moment he sees her terrified expression, he knows exactly who she is.

They are married the following spring, though both his mother and her father insist on coming up with a fake story of how they had met, and his father's farm is passed down through generations, flourishing all the while.

7. 1863

He is a soldier in the Confederate Army, and she is not a she at all; she's his sergeant, and he is engaged to marry a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh... but something in his sergeant's eyes captures him, and he cannot stop thinking about the man, no matter what he does.

The first time is in the woods, unplanned, and they tell each other after that it was wrong, a sin, repeating the things they've been told repeatedly by their fathers, by their churches.  But neither truly believes it, and it happens again, and again, and again.  He feels guilty for deceiving Sarah, whom he loves dearly, but he feels that somehow his soul and his sergeant's, their very essences, are knit together in such a way that they can never be truly separated.

Both men die in battle in Hamilton County, and their final thoughts are of each other, both speaking an unheard promise as their lives expire: I will find you again.

8. 1993

He is an FBI profiler fallen from grace, tormented by the loss of his sister, and she is a green, young agent assigned to debunk his work and bring him back into the bureau mainstream.  At first, he's wary and mistrustful and she's exasperated and skeptical, but as time passes, they come to trust one another without reservation (though she remains, to the end, skeptical- and often still exasperated).  Together, they uncover a conspiracy that goes deeper than either could ever have imagined, and they make it their lives' work to bring it down.

And somewhere along the way, they fall in love.

They overcome abductions, illnesses, injuries, and multiple separations that should, by all rights, have torn them apart.  They have- and eventually have to give up- a son, and for a time, a darkness grows up between them, and it seems as though their relationship might be broken... but it's not.  They find their way back to one another, and eventually find their way back to their son, and when the forces they have fought against for their entire lives are finally vanquished, the happiness and the peace they find together make all the suffering worth it.

9. 2194

They are scientists on the team selected to be a part of the first manned mission to the Trappist-1 System.  They share a nervous joke on the cryo-deck, right before being put in stasis for the trip out, and the last human contact either of them have before being frozen is when they shake hands and introduce themselves.

There's a malfunction with his cryo-tube on the other end of the journey, and it's her quick thinking and medical knowledge that save his life.  She tends to him in the infirmary, and when he's well enough, they make the trip down to the surface of the habitable planet- creatively named "New Earth," much to the disgust of every member of the team.

Originally, he had been a part of the team that is scheduled to return to Earth, while her team remains on the new planet, but when the time for departure arrives, he finds that he cannot possibly conceive of leaving her behind.  So he stays, and they build a life- and a family- together.

At the moment of his death, he has a fleeting thought, born of a deeper knowledge that is far, far older than his body: What if she's on Earth in her next life, and I am here?  Will we find our way back to one another with so much space between us?

10. 2942

But they do.

11. 4729

They always do.  No matter how great the distance, they always find one another again.

12. 10,284

Forever.