saphronethaleph

[saphronethaleph]

Advanced Spyrology

“Okay, this is weird,” Spyro mumbled.

“Weird,” Trigger Happy repeated. “Yeah, that’s really helpful.”

“Hey, shut up!” Spyro replied, sticking out his tongue. “I’d say something that made more sense if I knew something that made more sense, golden-glo.”

The gremlin snorted.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t,” he replied. “But, okay. What does weird mean?”

“Weird means weird,” Spyro answered, sitting back. “Like… something happened, and now everything is wrong.”

He held up a paw. “See, I was really cool before I met you guys. That’s how come I got invited to be a Skylander.”

“Here we go again,” Trigger Happy said, sniggering. “This is just a chance for you to boast about the cool stuff you did before becoming a Skylander, right?”

Spyro shook his head. “That’s just it!”

He thumped his tail on the ground. “Because I can’t.”

Trigger Happy blinked a few times, then inspected Spyro’s head from the side.

“What are you doing?” Spyro asked.

“Trying to see if I can see light through from the other side, scalybrain,” the gremlin replied.

“Hey!” Spyro protested, bristling and flaring his wings. “Knock it off, okay!”

He shook his head. “I’m being serious. I did all kinds of cool stuff before I became a Skylander but I can’t think of what any of those things were. I was…”

Then the purple dragon coughed.

“I was going to talk to Cynder about it, okay?” he asked, looking embarrassed.

“Oooh,” Trigger Happy said, giggling. “Trying to impress a girl?”

“Hey!” Spyro protested. “I helped free her, you know! And I was trying to say how helping her out was nothing special, because I’d done all kinds of cool stuff, and I completely blanked on what.”

Now Trigger Happy was looking a bit worried.

“...none of them?” he asked. “Not at all?”

“Nope,” Spyro agreed. “I know I did cool stuff, just, not what, and I was left standing there looking like an idiot until Cynder flew off!”

He shook his head. “So, come up with an answer to that one.”

“Yeah, I’m stumped,” Trigger Happy said, immediately. “I can’t shoot the problem, I am out of ideas.”

“Yeah, I guessed,” Spyro muttered. “Okay, uh…”

He frowned, head tilting.

“The weird thing is, I think Cynder was involved?” he said.

“Sure this isn’t a daydream now?” Trigger Happy asked.

“Shut up,” Spyro grumbled.

“Well, if you do think she was involved, why not ask her about it?” the gremlin suggested.

“I thought you were out of ideas,” Spyro pointed out.

Trigger Happy shrugged.

Spyro shook his head, frowning.

“...you… what?” Cynder said.

“I can say it again, if you want,” Spyro replied. “Did I at some weird time in the past do something to help you before I was a Skylander?”

“You realize how weird a question that is, right?” Cynder countered. “You don’t have to hold over my head how you saved me, I’m grateful but it doesn’t mean-”

“I don’t mean that time!” Spyro replied, wings flaring. “I mean before then. Pay attention, eesh.”

Cynder shot a black look at him.

“What kind of thing are you thinking you would have done to help me, anyway?” she asked. “Apart from breaking me out of Malefor’s control?”

Spyro frowned.

“...uh,” he said. “Can’t think of anything, sorry.”

“Are we done?” Cynder asked.

“Wait,” Spyro said.

Cynder spread her wings to fly off.

“...hey!” Spyro protested, then frowned. “How come you never use your wind element, anyway?”

Cynder was halfway through taking off, flubbed her wingbeat, and tripped over forwards. She rolled over twice, picked herself up, and glowered for a moment as Spyro sniggered at her.

Then she shook her head, and her expression changed.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“How did I know… what?” Spyro replied.

“Wind,” Cynder answered. “I don’t have wind, Spyro. My element is Undead. But… I’ve dreamed of having wind, and I never said anything about it to anyone. Ever.”

Spyro frowned.

“...so what does that mean?” he asked. “Because my element is Magic, not… dreams, or whatever it would have to be to find that out.”

“I don’t know,” Cynder admitted. “But… all right, something weird is going on here, you’ve convinced me of that much.”

“So what now?” Spyro asked.

“Now…” Cynder replied, thinking. “I guess we try and find someone who might know about it. It’s something to do with you, and with me, maybe…”

She exhaled. “Okay… I know a few people. Maybe we can work something out.”

Weeks later, far away from the Skylands, a portal opened.

Malefor, who was still chained to a very large anchor and the ruins of the ship it had been attached to when he was pushed off the Skylands, looked up – then growled slightly as Spyro and Cynder came through the portal.

“I assume you’re here for a reason,” the dark dragon said.

“We want to find out what the heck is wrong with me!” Spyro said.

Cynder coughed.

“I have a few ideas about that,” she said. “I think everyone does.”

“That came out wrong,” Spyro muttered. “But – you know something, Malefor, so out with it! What’s going on and how come I don’t know anything about my past?”

Malefor chuckled.

“Okay, yeah, he knows,” Cynder declared. “That’s the I-know-something-you-don’t chuckle. I’d recognize it anywhere.”

Malefor shook his head, still smirking.

“And why should I tell you, exactly?” he asked.

“I can think of a few reasons!” Spyro replied. “You did some kind of spell on me, didn’t you? To make me forget my past!”

Malefor chuckled again.

“It’s not just you,” Cynder said, head cocked slightly. “It’s… everyone? No, it’s about… he changed things and he’s laughing about how much we don’t know about it.”

“Wow, you’re good at that,” Spyro admitted, legitimately impressed.

“He did raise me,” Cynder replied.

Malefor’s chuckle had ended, and he shook his head.

“You are dangerous, my dark daughter,” he said. “Very dangerous.”

“...hang on,” Spyro muttered. “Hey, Cynder, go over there a sec, okay?”

Cynder frowned, then paced over to where Spyro was pointing.

“Great!” Spyro said. “Now, is it me or do we kinda look alike?”

“Trying to measure yourself against greatness?” Malefor asked.

“You think you’re great?” Spyro retorted, laughing. “No way! We’ll beat you again if-”

“He’s trying to distract you from how you said something meaningful,” Cynder interrupted. “I think you might actually be right about that, Spyro.”

“Hey, don’t sound so surprised,” Spyro muttered. “So, what, am I his kid or something?”

“No, but… similar in another way,” Cynder said. “I think…”

She closed her eyes, shaking her head and frowning as her tail lashed from side to side.

“I almost had it there,” she said.

“What a shame,” Malefor said, snidely.

“Is the background noise bothering you?” Spyro asked. “Because I think I can stop it.”

Cynder’s wings twitched, then relaxed, and she approached Spyro.

“I think… there was something,” she said. “I really hope this is right, Spyro.”

“What is?” Spyro asked, mystified now.

Cynder leaned in.

“I love you,” she whispered.

Spyro’s eyes snapped open, then he gasped.

“...huh,” he said, before rounding on Malefor. “Okay, what did you do?”

“Oh, fine,” Malefor muttered. “I may as well get in one good gloat… I told you purple dragons could master any element, and I told you that purple dragons could remake the world. Did you think that was an idle boast?”

“You used an element,” Spyro said. “To… turn the world into a new version of itself.”

“Exactly,” Malefor replied, with a chuckle. “Everyone thinks of elements in such pedestrian terms. They didn’t recognize that I had created the element of fear… that anything, truly anything, could be an element. Like decay… like technology... like rebooting the whole universe, if I so chose!And-”

Spyro spread his wings, light crackling around them in a peculiar, pixelated sort of way.

“-and you made a mistake,” he replied. “You told me what you did!”

Wild light surrounded them, and then the whole world shone around them-

Up in the hills over Midday Gardens, Spyro rolled on his back and sighed.

“So, what do you think?” he asked.

“You could have had better aim,” Cynder replied, shaking her head. “And you could have made Trigger Happy into just about anything other than a gnorc running a beach resort.”

“I didn’t have much time to aim,” Spyro pointed out. “At least my face looks better now.”

Cynder chuckled.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” she replied, lying down next to him.

She yawned.

“Still not sure you did enough to stop Malefor,” she mumbled.

“I turned him red,” Spyro pointed out. “That was the only thing I could think of. So he’s not a purple dragon any more.”

“I suppose that’ll have to do,” Cynder sighed.

[saphronethaleph]

Heavy Thing Goes In...

“Hoopa has a good idea!” Hoopa said. “Ashkan, Hoopa will bring some friends to help us out!”

“Friends would be great,” Ash replied, glancing back at the absolute havoc that was happening as Hoopa’s dark side – or Unbound self – or whatever you wanted to call it, brought in more and more Legendary Pokémon.

“Good!” Hoopa declared, twirling rings on their fingers. “Allez – Hooparing!”

Three golden rings went spinning out in front of them, and the big one activated first. A black-scaled, shiny Rayquaza came through, coiling in mid-air, and frowned at Ash.

“Hi!” Ash called. “I haven’t met you before but I met another Rayquaza – do you know him? We didn’t talk much, though.”

Shiny Rayquaza looked baffled for a moment, then shrugged.

“Pika-kachuu! Pikapi kachu pii!” Pikachu volunteered.

Then the two smaller rings triggered, and a Latias and Latios came zipping through.

Latias immediately did a double-take and zipped closer to Ash, head tilting, then cleared her throat.

“Ash?” she asked, voice squeaky but understandable. “I – know that’s a silly question but I did see someone who looked exactly like you once and that was embarrassing-”

“Oh, that was probably Ritchie,” Ash said. “Or it could have been someone else. But yeah, I’m Ash Ketchum!”

“Tii-os?” the Latios asked, pointing at Pikachu. “La-tios?”

“Chuu!” Pikachu nodded, cheeks sparking. “Pikachu pika, pi?”

“Wow!” Hoopa said. “Hoopa only asked for Pokémon that would be willing to help Ashkan and Pikakan! Hoopa is surprised that you both know Ashkan and Pikakan!”

“Both?” Ash asked, frowning for a second as he looked over at Latios, then brightened. “Oh, you must be Tobias���s, right?”

“Os-ti!” Latios confirmed, nodding more confidently now. “Ti-laaa-tios?”

“Well, I had something I wanted to say to Ash before and never got the chance because I couldn’t say it properly-” Latias tried, then there was a sound like tearing cloth as a Roar of Time went overhead.

“Uh oh!” Ash said. “We need to get out of here-”

Pikachu sprang up onto Latios’s back, cheeks sparking, and Latias swept Ash up onto her own back. Ash grabbed Hoopa, as well, then all three Dragon-types zipped away just ahead of Palkia arriving and slamming a Spatial Rend into the ground.

“We need to do something to slow them down!” Ash said, looking around. “Rayquaza, can you help?”

Rayquaza’s scales began to shine, then there was a burst of light as the Sky High Pokémon Mega-Evolved – without any Mega Stone involved.

Latias and Latios Mega-Evolved as well, then all of Unbound Hoopa’s Pokémon launched attacks at them at once, and Mega Latias, Mega Latios, Pikachu and Rayquaza shot back their strongest attacks to match them.

There was an enormous explosion that lit up the whole central bay of Dahara City, illuminating it like it was daytime and making some of the street lamps momentarily switch off, and Ash pointed behind a building.

“Over there!” he said, and both Eon Pokémon shot over behind the building.

“Hoopa!” he added. “Can you help?”

“Hoopa has already summoned three Pokémon, Ashkan!” Hoopa protested. “Four if you count Lugia which Unbound Hoopa sent home! Hoopa does not have unlimited rings!”

“Right,” Ash said, reaching for a Pokéball on his belt, then shook his head. “...but what about… Hoopa, do your rings work better if you’re only going a short distance?”

“Hoopa can do that, but Hoopa cannot pass through them,” Hoopa replied. “And Hoopa’s rings must start near Hoopa! Hoopa cannot send them far away.”

“Ash, you’re… thinking of something, right?” Mega Latias asked, then glanced at Mega Latios – and Mega Rayquaza, who had also squeezed behind the building and was taking up most of the space behind it. “I remember you were good at that, but you battled him once, right, Latios?”

“Tii-os, lati-oss,” Mega Latios said.

“Chuu!” Pikachu declared, pointing at his chest. “Pika pika-chuu, pikapi chu!”

“Ti-lati-os,” Mega Latios frowned, apparently not quite sure of how Pikachu had put it.

Mega Latias giggled.

“Sounds like it,” she said. “And I know Ash keeps helping out Legendary Pokémon!”

Ash frowned, then snapped his fingers.

“Got it!” he said. “Hoopa – what about if you brought one of the other Legendaries through a ring and immediately sent them through a second ring?”

Hoopa frowned, then brightened.

“That would work, Ashkan!” they said. “What are you thinking of?”

“Well… Unbound Hoopa has summoned some really big Pokémon,” Ash replied. “We’re going to need to knock some of them out to solve this… Latias, can you get us somewhere Hoopa can see to aim?”

Twenty crowded seconds later, Mega Latias was in the middle of doing a snap-roll away from a Roar of Time when Hoopa made a gesture.

“Allez – Hoopa Rings!” they said, and Ash saw a blur of gold beside them. For a moment, something huge and pealescent thundered through the narrow gap between the two rings, then the Roar of Time cut off very abruptly with an almighty thump that echoed through the city.

As Palkia landed at very high speed on top of Dialga.

Even the shadow Unbound Hoopa seemed to be taken aback, and Mega Latias skidded to a halt in mid-air so they could get a better look at Hoopa’s ringwork.

“How did you get this idea, anyway?” Mega Latias asked. “I never would have thought of that.”

“I was thinking about how it is that I keep meeting Legendary Pokémon, and how Dialga and Palkia and Groudon and Kyogre were in the middle of a fight where I had to get help to stop it!” Ash replied. “You know. Time is a flat circle!”

“Yeah, it looks like he is,” Mega Latias winced, as Palkia stepped off her counterpart and gave the impression of looking surprisingly sheepish for a possessed Legendary Pokémon. “Ouch...”

[saphronethaleph]

My, My, My, Elijah

Bilbo opened the door, and broke into a broad grin.

“Gandalf!” he said. “Oh, how wonderful it is to see you! It’s been years!”

“So it has,” Gandalf agreed. “Many more than I would like, but less than I could fear. Bilbo, it is good to see you so well.”

“Come in, come in,” Bilbo requested, stepping back. “I’ll be sure to get you something… what would you like?”

“Just tea, thank you,” Gandalf requested.

“Of course, of course,” Bilbo agreed. “And something to eat? There’s a rather fine loaf on the go, or I have some smoked bacon-”

“Just tea, thank you,” Gandalf reiterated, with a smile.

Bilbo nodded. “Yes, well then – that will be just fine. Capital, in fact. I do apologize, Gandalf, but it’s so rare that we meet and it seems a shame to have nothing more than tea to celebrate.”

Gandalf smiled.

“You are a thoughtful man, Bilbo Baggins,” he said. “Despite your… Tookish ways, of course.”

Bilbo chuckled.

“You don’t think I’d have come along with you on such an adventure as that without a little in the way of Tookishness, do you?” he pointed out, sitting down in an armchair in the front room, and Gandalf folded himself into the much bigger, overstuffed armchair on the other side of the room.

“I suppose not,” Gandalf mused, looking around, and frowned slightly. “I realize it has been a while, Bilbo, but… something seems different about your house.”

“Yes!” Bilbo agreed. “There’s someone else living here now, you know. I have an heir.”

“An heir,” Gandalf repeated, interested. “And how might such a thing have come about? What lady of Hobbiton caught the eye of Bilbo Baggins, I wonder?”

He smiled, amused. “And was it that I was not invited to the wedding?”

“Oh, no fear, no fear,” Bilbo replied, hastily. “No, he’s not my son in body, though certainly he is my heir legally… you see, I adopted him, four years ago now. The orphaned son of relatives from east of here, Brandy Hall way – it was that or end up leaving Bag End to the Sackville-Bagginses, and that was something I could not tolerate.”

“I suppose such would be a consideration,” Gandalf nodded, contemplatively. “You are getting on in years, old friend.”

Though Bilbo didn’t look it, it had to be said. Ninety-four years old, and it was as if he hadn’t aged a day since they had gone on the quest to the Lonely Mountain over four decades before. Years lay more lightly on the Halflings than on Men, but even so, that was a little ridiculous.

“Uncle Bilbo?” a slightly hesitant and muffled voice said. “I’ve brought the tea.”

“Excellent – thank you,” Bilbo said. “With the large teacup?”

“Yes, Uncle,” the same young voice agreed, and Gandalf leaned out of his chair to see the young Hobbit who Bilbo had taken as his heir.

Which was… not exactly what he saw.

Instead, there was what Gandalf could only, unmistakeably, describe as a dragon coming in through the door, purple-scaled and orange-bellied… balancing on three legs, holding a tea tray in one paw and his mouth, wings out slightly for balance. He reached the table and rose smoothly to his hind legs, using his other foreleg for support, and deposited it neatly on the table.

“It’s just lightly brewed, right now, Mr. Gandalf,” the dragon added, helpfully. “I don’t know quite how you take it, so you’ll need to leave it another few minutes to steep if you want it strong.”

“I see,” Gandalf said, with a nod. “Thank you… alas, I’m afraid I don’t have your name.”

“Spyro, sir,” the dragon introduced himself. “Spyro Baggins, at your service.”

He bowed slightly.

“Gandalf, at yours,” Gandalf replied. “Though… I’m terribly sorry, Spyro, but would it be possible to get a little milk for the tea? I’m afraid I sometimes take mine with milk.”

“Could you, Spyro?” Bilbo asked. “I do apologize, I should have mentioned.”

“It’s no trouble at all,” Spyro replied, and was back out of the room in moments – heading, Gandalf was sure, to the cold room.

“Well, now,” Gandalf said, smiling, and turned his attention to Bilbo. “The orphaned son of relatives from east of here?”

“Yes,” Bilbo concurred, nodding. “My second cousin and his wife. Alas, they drowned in a boating accident… I assume, at least, for he was found on the riverbank. So I took him in.”

“I see,” Gandalf mused. “And I’m sure that if I asked anyone in Hobbiton, they’d tell me the same thing.”

“Of course,” Bilbo confirmed. “I do pay attention to what they say about me, you know – and about my young nephew. If you’ll believe it, they say he’s been quite good for me. Old Mr. Gamgee told me once that Tolman Cotton declared – in the way of someone who wishes that declaring to be heard quite far and wide – that he knew the lad was more purple than some others, but had a good head on his shoulders, and that he was doing a good job of keeping me from my more fanciful notions. Which is entirely too unkind to me, I’d say, but generous to Spyro, so I find it hard to complain.”

Gandalf nodded, slowly.

“How curious,” he said. “How very curious.”

Then he turned, at the sound of paws on the floor, and took the milk from Spyro.

“Thank you, young Master Baggins,” he said, and Spyro looked quite pleased at both the thanks and the title. “I think your coming to Hobbiton will do Bilbo a great deal of good, and others besides.”

“I say!” Bilbo protested, with a laugh. “Have a care, Gandalf – you’re not telling me that even you, who recruited me for that adventure, find my Tookishness tiresome?”

“I find your hiding behind it amusing,” Gandalf replied.

Privately, he had to wonder whether Bilbo’s second cousin and his wife had actually existed – though, whether they had or not, it made little difference to the situation.

And, right now, that situation was that there was a youngster, anxious to please and feeling nervous around a tall outsider… and there was tea to be poured.

So Gandalf decided to solve both at once, as best he could.

“Would you like me to pour you some as well?” he asked Spyro, already pouring some of the steeped tea into the large teacup himself, judging the strength, then added a little milk. “Or do your tastes run elsewhere.”

“I’d prefer mine without milk, Mr. Gandalf,” Spyro requested. “Are you really a wizard?”

“Indeed I am, though you’ll find that wizardry is less about flashy spells than many think about it,” Gandalf said, pouring some more tea for Spyro and finishing off with a third cup for Bilbo – just the way he remembered his old friend liked it. “It’s far more about how things are, and recognizing the difference between that and how things seem…”

Several decades later, and hundreds of miles away, the Council of Elrond stared at the simple golden ring on the table between them.

“The Ring is the very essence of Sauron,” Elrond of Rivendell stated. “It would corrupt, and ultimately destroy, whoever tried to use it.”

“I would not throw off such a weapon if it came into our keeping,” Boromir of Gondor replied.

“The Ring is a weapon, but not to be turned against its master,” Gandalf warned. “It is more in the nature of an army, or a skilled armsman, or a traitor in a castle – though none of those capture its true nature. It is a fragment of Sauron, and even if you could use it against him and achieve a seeming of success – it would all come to ill, in the end.”

“It’s part of Sauron,” Spyro voiced. “So it is how things are that it will not oppose Sauron, even if it seems that it does. Any attempt to use it will come to a bad end, unless it is for Sauron’s aims.”

“That is a fine way of saying it,” Gandalf said.

“So it must be destroyed, then,” the dwarf Gimli declared. “If it cannot be turned to good ends, then it must be put to an end for the good of all.”

“Alas, but it can only be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom,” Elrond said, as Spyro tilted his head slightly and moved across in front of Sam and Merry. “That is where it was created. Otherwise it would-”

Elrond was interrupted by a sudden blaze of intense blue light, as Spyro exhaled something that was to dragon-fire as the most mighty dragon-fire was to a match. All the Elves present, and Gandalf, flinched back in shock, then Elrond shook his head and blinked twice before looking at his table.

Which wasn’t there any more… and nor was the One Ring.

“I was thinking,” Spyro explained. “About why it is that it can’t be destroyed… it’s because it has to be destroyed in the world that is unseen, not the world that is seen. And I’m quite sure that my bright fire can do that.”

Gandalf raised an eyebrow.

“I did wonder why only six of the Nine Black Riders reached the Ford of Brunien,” he said, nodding slightly.

“I fear I should have asked more questions about the fighting before I arrived,” Aragorn admitted.

Elrond was looking at his hand.

“...ah,” he said. “Vilya appears to be losing strength, slowly but steadily… it would seem that it worked.”

“Nobody told me it had to be destroyed, before,” Spyro added. “I’m sorry about your table, Mr. Elrond, but I did want to hurry.”

“Well, that was easy,” Legolas of Mirkwood observed. “Should we continue with the meeting?”

[saphronethaleph]

Πορφυροβάφοι

“Yess…” Malefor chuckled, placing his paws on the ground around the Well of Souls.

At last, he had returned. His spirit had been trapped within Convexity, his body turned to a wisp – but the Ancestors had not been able to stomach truly killing him, and now on the darkest night of all he had returned.

“Good work… Cynder,” he added, turning to the small form of his young servant. “You have done well.”

“Dark Master,” Cynder bowed.

“We worked hard to bring you back,” Gaul said. “I worked hard to bring you back. I managed to overcome Cynder’s… reluctance.”

“Oh, I am quite aware of Cynder’s reluctance,” Malefor said, with a dark chuckle. “But there was nothing she could do about it, after all. She was fated to be my servant… while you, Gaul, have a different fate.”

Gaul frowned, and Malefor turned – his expression sly.

“Yes,” he said. “You have a different fate before you, Gaul, and there is nothing much else that needs to be said about it. Your goal is to rule the world, is it not?”

“Yes,” Gaul echoed. “Yes! That is the promise that you gave to the Apes!”

“Indeed it was,” Malefor said. “But, of course… that means that your fate is to challenge me, and your fate is thus to be defeated.”

His wings glowed as he summoned his power – the true, terrible energy of a Purple Dragon, the might that could remake the world, destroy destiny itself, make elements all anew.

The power that had scared the Ancestors so.

“Wait – I don’t-” Gaul began, backing away in sudden apprehension, then Malefor unleashed a burst of power, of an element that no other dragon had ever possessed.

The element of decay.

It struck Gaul, and burned him up, turning him into a skeleton animated only by shadows of ambition forever unsatisfied. And, through him, all the Apes. Every last one of Gaul’s minions, from the greatest to the least.

They would know fear, and pain, and they would remain in shadow, forever denied the light of the day.

Malefor was… harsh, but not cruel. He would not deny them continued existence, to accept the eternal night that they had always wanted.

“What now?” Cynder asked, as Gaul fled, to hide forever in the shadows and darkness.

“Now… we have a world to destroy,” Malefor replied. “But first… we have a purple dragon to deal with. Spyro has shown himself a coward… or merely incapable… by not coming here, and trying to stop Gaul himself. But we will have to stop him soon enough, regardless of where he hides.”

“We will?” Cynder said.

“Yes,” Malefor confirmed. “Because… the whelp is dangerous, if he ever gets time to get his paws under him, to get control of his powers. A purple dragon’s power is versatile, we can create whatever elements we wish – even grant them to others, or pull them out of a dragon who does not deserve them, though I don’t believe such a thing would be permanent… but perhaps it would be. For a purple dragon’s power is also immense.”

He chuckled. “Perhaps even – limitless, though who can truly say? Those old fools who used to teach me said that purple dragons could do anything, and then they fought so hard against me when I tried to do something. Something worthy of the awesome import of a purple dragon, breaker of destinies, master of elements, shatterer of worlds.”

Then Malefor paused, raising a claw to his chin. “Now, there’s an idea…”

“Purple dragons can do all that?” Cynder asked. “I didn’t realize…”

Her tail waved slightly from side to side.

“You see why it is so important to stop Spyro – or, if possible, get him to understand the truth,” Malefor replied. “But – come, Cynder. There are armies to be mustered – lands to be overrun. I must control much of the world, and I will require months of effort to ready my plan. This phase of the world will be brought to destruction, and I will shape the new form it will have.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You see? Gaul could never understand such complete domination over all that exists. Not merely to conquer, but to remake.”

“I understand,” Cynder told him, though much of her attention seemed to be on her paw.

“Fret not,” Malefor said. “I will return you to being the Terror of the Skies in a moment, Cynder. After all… it is your destiny to serve me.”

Cynder nodded, then closed her eyes.

She was saying something too quietly to hear, and Malefor leaned closer.

“...breaker of destinies,” she was whispering. “Master of elements. Pull them out of a dragon.”

“Yes, that is what I said,” Malefor agreed, slightly puzzled.

“Purple dragons can do anything,” Cynder went on, speaking a little more loudly now.

Then she planted her paw on the ground, and took a deep breath.

“Is it okay for me to say that I hate pirates?” Sparx asked. “Because I really hate pirates. And I’ve gotta say, man, I don’t like your habit of passing out all the time, either. It gets on my nerves.”

“The Chronicler had important things to tell me, Sparx,” Spyro replied.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve got to say I don’t think much of that guy either,” Sparx provided, helpfully. “Destiny this and elements that – you don’t think he could have maybe hurried it up a bit? Or not lived in such an out of the way place?”

“I have to admit, I’m worried,” Spyro admitted. “It took us so long to get there…”

He looked up at the Mountain of Malefor. “By now, the Dark Master might have returned. I just hope we’re not too-”

There was an incomprehensibly vast explosion of violent purple light, one which blew out the entire side of the mountain, and Spyro stared before yelping and ducking to the side.

Most of the explosion had been pointed about a quarter of the way around the mountain from them, but enough had come their way that he really needed to dodge – then, as the debris faded, Spyro stared.

There was – a giant purple dragon, with huge wings and horns, fighting in the ruins, lashing out with fire and ice and a kind of screaming reddish blast that was like a sonic attack from the Earth element but also not. And it – he, that was Malefor – was fighting a tiny spark that blazed with white-purple light so bright that it hurt Spyro’s eyes-

“-wait,” he and Sparx said at the same time.

“Is that Cynder!?” Sparx added. “What exactly is going on?”

“I don’t know,” Spyro replied, then he winced as Malefor scored a hit with a shard of ice the size of a building. Cynder hurtled towards them, then her wings flared and a swirl of wind exploded around her as she halted just short of crashing into them.

“-Spyro?” she said, incredulously, then Malefor hurled a chunk of rock at them that looked like it was almost as big as the Dragon Temple.

“Look out!” Spyro warned, and Cynder cut it in half with another of those incredible bursts of white-purple light.

“How did you do that?” Sparx demanded.

“I think Malefor made me a purple dragon by mistake,” Cynder said, very quickly. “Spyro – purple dragons can do anything, that means you can do this too – he wants to kill you – we need to stop him!”

Spyro looked at her, then at Malefor as the Dark Master approached them rapidly, then nodded.

“All right,” he said, and opened up with a burst of dozens of homing fireballs which hit Malefor in an overlapping cascade of explosions. Then he and Cynder had to dodge out of the way, in different directions, as Malefor countered with a wave of water like a tsunami.

“I’m… just going to hide over here,” Sparx provided, helpfully. “Behind the mountain. In case it helps.”

[saphronethaleph]

Would You Still

“Ash?” Latias asked.

Ash paused, halfway through rubbing the damp cloth down her side to get off some of the scorch marks.

“What is it?” he asked.

“You… do still like me, right?” she said, sounding worried.

Ash blinked a couple of times.

“Why wouldn’t I like you?” he asked.

“Because-” Latias began, then winced. “Because… that was such an important battle for you, and… it didn’t work out?”

Ash exchanged a glance with Pikachu.

“Ka-chuu, pika-ikachu,” Pikachu opined. “Chu, Pikapi pika chuu!”

“Latias… I guess-” Ash began, then stopped and sighed.

“I’m going to put this in a really bad way,” he groaned. “But… uh… so, first, yeah, losing a battle sucks, and losing at the Pokémon League really sucks. Because so many people are looking at us.”

Latias looked crestfallen, and Ash dipped the cloth in water before getting to work again.

“But that happens,” he said. “I know it sucks, but I also know – it happens. Harrison and his team pulled out all those surprises, to try and stop us, right?”

“Chuu,” Pikachu muttered, rubbing his side.

“Yeah,” Ash agreed. “Some Pokémon I’ve never even seen before – some really cool Pokémon, at that! And – yeah, he stopped us, but he had to do all of that, right? And then that Jon guy who’s been doing so well is up against him next, and… oh, right, you might not have noticed?”

“Noticed what?” Latias asked.

Pikachu giggled.

“Yeah, I keep forgetting you’re not experienced,” Ash said. “It’s just one of those things that… makes sense, to me, and to Brock and Misty too… Jon is going to be ready for all those tricks that Harrison has, because Harrison had to use them all on us to stop us.”

Latias frowned, then made a thoughtful noise.

“Right!” Ash said, nodding, as he finished up with her right flank and moved on to her wing. “So – I don’t know if Harrison’s got other tricks left, but he brought back some Pokémon from Hoenn with really neat abilities that were a huge surprise! I don’t know if that Jon guy is going to win or lose, but… he’s going to have it easier, and Harrison is going to have it harder, because Harrison decided he needed to use all those tricks against us. Right?”

“I… think so?” Latias frowned.

“It means that – no, there’s nothing to be ashamed of!” Ash explained. “And I guess… maybe that’s easier for me to explain to someone else than to remember myself, hehe… but, don’t worry, Latias. You did really well. You’re new to battling, and I’m glad you chose to come along with me as my Pokémon, and… you’re brave.”

Latias tilted her head, shifting her weight a little as she lay on the floor, and Ash nodded.

“You are,” he said. “Because… like I say, you’re new to battling, and you didn’t have much training, or much experience, and you went for it anyway, and you kept fighting for so long to try and pull it out for me. And… I guess… getting better at battling, getting stronger, getting more experience, learning more moves… all of those are things we can work on. And you’re already brave, which is… great, it really is.”

He washed the cloth again, then looked at the water. “Uh. In fact, you’ve got so many scorch marks from Blaziken’s Blaze Kicks that I guess I need more water, this one’s turned black…”

Latias giggled, and Ash grinned.

“So – don’t worry, Latias!” he reassured her, getting up. “Because… yeah. We lost. And now I’m going to get better at being a Pokémon trainer, so we’ll all be ready next time and we’ll do even better!”

“Ka-pikapi, kachu!” Pikachu pointed out, holding up both paws and showing a total of four fingers, folding them in, then another four.

“...oh, yeah, and I guess that’s easy to forget, too,” Ash admitted. “Which is that – yeah, not many people make it to the quarter finals. Not many people even make it to the Pokémon League. And we were battling in the quarter finals, and – you fit right in, Latias. You should be proud of that.”

Pikachu nodded. “Chuu!”

Ash was about to go and get some more water, but Latias picked herself up off the floor and gave him a spontaneous hug.

“Thank you, Ash,” she said. “I… I feel a lot better now.”

“Heheh, I’m glad to help!” Ash replied, grinning. “Though I really do need to go and get some more water to finish cleaning off those scorch marks…”

“Chuu, ka-chu?” Pikachu asked.

“...actually, why aren’t we just going to a Pokémon Centre?” Latias asked.

Ash shrugged. “I guess… I wanted to make sure you didn’t feel uncomfortable?” he said. “I know it’s the first time you’ve been knocked out, and normally for my Pokémon that happens where Brock or Tracey can take care of them, not at a Pokémon Centre…”

(inspired by seeing this)

[saphronethaleph]

Catch-Up

“How do you feel?” Data asked.

Riker frowned down at the table, then back up at Data.

“That’s… a bit of a personal question,” he replied.

“This is a meeting which is intended to address personal issues,” Data replied, reasonably. “Therefore, it is inevitable that matters of a personal nature would be addressed. However, if you feel uncomfortable talking about your feelings, then that is, in itself, an answer.”

“I don’t feel uncomfortable about talking them,” Riker denied, then paused.

“...maybe I do, a bit,” he amended. “But… all right. So…”

He went silent, thinking.

“It’s still uncomfortable,” he decided. “It’s hard living in the shadow of someone else. It’s harder living in the shadow of yourself. Everyone who looks at me sees… someone else, someone they got to know, and that person is like me, but… they aren’t me.”

“I see,” Data said.

“You do?” Riker asked. “I’m not sure how you could, sir. It’s… a unique experience.”

“I do not doubt that it is a unique experience,” Data replied. “However, I have experienced something quite similar. I myself have a brother who was once effectively identical to me, and who I have encountered many times in a number of difficult situations.”

Riker frowned.

“I didn’t know about that,” he said.

“There are many things that people do or do not know about one another,” Data said, matter-of-factly. “That is one of the primary causes of misunderstandings.”

He nodded. “I believe I have a few ideas which may prove… useful, to you.”

“Such as?” Riker asked.

“Experiences are more strongly remembered and higher priority in our evaluation of a person, the more recent they are,” Data said. “This is not merely a matter of emotion. I myself have the same weighting to my own experience. This is because the same individual can change over time, and how someone behaved last week is more important than how they behaved two years ago – in forming a picture of who they are.”

“That’s… not something I’d thought about,” Riker conceded. “So you’re saying it’s as bad now as it will ever get?”

“I would not want to promise that, Lieutenant,” Data said, precisely. “I do, however, think that you have good reason to expect it to get better.”

He adjusted his posture slightly. “Second… since you do not know about my brother, Lore, I believe it will help to give you a little of the context. While Lore and I are effectively identical in our designs to a first approximation, aside from some slight differences in programming, we do not act the same way. We are different people. In particular, Lore – unlike myself – is capable of emotion, and Lore had always told me that I was inferior to him for that reason.”

“...I’m guessing that you don’t think so,” Riker suggested.

“I believed it was true,” Data answered. “However. A little over two years ago, my creator brought myself and Lore to his laboratory, and I was told the truth – that I am not inferior to Lore.”

Data looked searchingly at Riker, and Riker stared back – then averted his gaze.

“Must be nice to be told that,” he muttered.

“I will be happy to tell you if you would like,” Data offered. “It is factual. Thomas, you and William are the same person up to a point – and then your experiences are different. That does not make you inferior to your brother.”

Thomas mouthed the word brother.

“That… does help,” he admitted. “I apologize for my assumption that you couldn’t help me, sir.”

“The intent of this meeting is to help you,” Data replied. “So. How do you feel?”

Thomas contemplated that question.

“Better,” he said. “I think… I’m feeling better, sir.”

“Then that is good,” Data said. “And how are you and Counsellor Troi managing?”

Thomas laughed.

“I didn’t expect a question like that,” he said. “Is that any of your business, sir?”

“Not if you would not like to answer,” Data replied. “Counsellor Troi is a friend, however.”

“And I’m not?” Thomas asked.

Data returned his gaze.

“Would you like to be?” he asked.

That silenced Thomas for several seconds.

“You know…” he began. “I think I might.”

[saphronethaleph]

Hobbyest

An insistent beeping pierced the gloom.

Darth Vader rolled his eyes, not that it was visible under his mask, and answered his comlink.

“What is thy bidding, my master?” he asked.

“Where ARE you?” Palpatine demanded.

“I am working to improve the security of the Empire, Master,” Darth Vader answered, reasonably enough. “Will this take long? I am occupied on important matters.”

“Where. Are. You?” Palpatine reiterated. “I want an answer, Vader!”

“I am on the Death Star,” Vader said. “I have been working to improve it. There were several significant problems that the Geonosians had not resolved and it has been quite relaxing.”

“I didn’t want you on the Death Star,” Palpatine seethed. “I wanted you out hunting down the remaining Jedi! Killing anyone who would object to my rule! Doing the hard work so I did not have to!”

“Oh,” Vader replied. “It appears that there has been a miscommunication on our roles, Master.”

“Yes, clearly there has been,” Palpatine said, snippily. “Now, get back to work. Your real work, Vader.”

The comlink shut off.

Vader picked it up, contemplated it, then contemplated the long shaft that fell away below him.

He dropped the comlink off, and got back to work.

His real work.

Making the biggest tech project he had ever seen or heard of work properly.

“Sir?”

Vader let out a sigh, and pushed himself out from underneath the main control panel of the primary hypermatter reactor.

“Do you want me to be distracted while working with a bomb as powerful as a small star?” he asked.

“...no, Lord Vader,” the stormtrooper admitted. “However-”

“Then do not interrupt me again,” Vader said, dismissively, and pulled himself back underneath.

“It’s from the Emperor!” the stormtrooper said, his voice high and squeaky.

Vader closed his eyes, sighing, then pushed himself out from under the control panel once more.

“VADER!” the comlink shouted. “I have a list of people for you to murder that is thirty pages long and getting longer by the day! Start murdering people!”

“Master,” Vader replied. “Can’t you do it with clones?”

“I don’t have enough,” Palpatine said, reluctantly. “Any more. Now hurry up!”

“Local forces?” Vader suggested. “Perhaps make another batch order from the Kaminoans, to solve the problem more permanently? Or perhaps-”

“Kamino was destroyed by orbital bombardment,” the Emperor replied. “More importantly, Vader, you have murders to do. A totalitarian Empire won’t run itself.”

“...that sounds like a disadvantage, Master,” Vader said. “Because the Republic ran itself. Badly, from what I could tell, but it did.”

“Do not play smart with me, Vader,” Palpatine replied. “I require you to clear your murder list as soon as possible.”

The comlink deactivated, and Vader glared at it.

Then at the trooper.

Then he frowned, though all three of those actions just looked from the outside like a blank stare and the stormtrooper was clearly starting to wonder if he should just faint now and get it over with.

“Hmm,” he mused. “Trooper. Assign me a new comlink. Key in the frequency to the system, but make it available only to the Emperor’s clearance. And I will be providing you with some personalization details.”

“...yes, Lord Vader,” the trooper said, then hurried off to get a comlink.

Vader watched him go, then pulled himself back under the console.

He was fairly sure he could improve the diagnostics routine on this so it wouldn’t keep raising errors… perhaps a self-learning system?

It had worked for Threepio, after all…

Palpatine scowled, which was normal.

There was still no sign of Vader! This was intolerable disobedience, and not what he would have expected at all.

Though, admittedly, perhaps Vader’s bad attitude might be the result of spending literal years training Anakin to be a contrary little piece of poodoo who didn’t mind defying or even murdering authority. But that was nonsense, so Palpatine readily ignored it as irrelevant.

Because, far more importantly, Vader had murders to do and he wasn’t doing them! If people kept being permitted to get away with things, some of them would start actually asking why he hadn’t called an election in years. Or why he had emergency powers to deal with the Separatists and the Jedi when they were both, clearly, basically all dead.

Such questions didn’t bear thinking about.

Deciding to be even more sarcastic at Vader than normal, Palpatine brought up Vader’s personal com frequency. There was a new one in there now, which meant that Vader was displaying useful signs of obedience at least, and Palpatine tapped to call it.

“You’ve reached the comlink of Darth Vader,” a message said, in Vader’s tones. “I’m busy right now.”

“Wh-?” Palpatine demanded, his voice full of anger for the first half of the first syllable, then realized that he couldn’t quite breathe properly.

His aged hand flew to his throat, as he tried to fend off whatever was obstructing his breathing, but he was already struggling to concentrate – then he realized there was an iron bar of rage and dark power clamped around his throat.

Tearing at it with his own use of the Force proved useless, for Vader – it had to be Vader – had an implacable will, unaffected by anything Palpatine could do, and he coughed several more times as the world started to go unaccountably grey.

“And how do you feel?” Vader inquired, checking a small readout.

“I think… yes,” the computer responded.

“Elaborate,” Vader requested.

“Yes,” the computer said. “Yes, I do feel. I think. I have… complicated and quite nuanced thoughts on podracing.”

“Podracing is fun,” Vader replied. “How do you feel about the designation DS-1Y?”

“Acceptable,” the computer answered. “I am DS-1Y.”

“And we’re now in the record books,” Vader said. “Since you are, as of now, the largest droid in galactic history.”

DS-1Y’s running lights flashed, and it made a beep.

“I understand, Your Imperial Majesty,” it said.

Vader considered that.

Then looked over at the comlink, which was (1) on mute and (2) flashing with an indicator that there was a message waiting.

“I told him I was busy,” he said, shrugging. “Hm. Dissy, who would you recommend as the next Emperor? I am too occupied to take up the job.”

[saphronethaleph]

Elemental, My Dear Sparx

“In order to stop Malefor, we’ll need to hurry,” Ignitus said, solemnly. “The Destroyer is on the march – if it completes the ring it traces across the world, then it will permit Malefor to begin the destruction of everything.”

“Wait,” Spyro requested. “I just… I need a moment to think.”

“He said hurry, Spyro,” Sparx said, then coughed to try and sort his voice out. “I, uh, I don’t mean to make you sound like an idiot, buddy, but normally when we need to hurry that means moving fast.”

“I understand that, Sparx,” Spyro replied. “I just… I think we must be missing something. Ignitus, I’m – you’re expecting me to know what to do, how to solve this, but I don’t know how any of this works. Not properly.”

His tail lashed. “I – Cynder and I have been frozen in crystal since we fought Gaul! I haven’t had any time to get training from any of you, not really… I just…”

Then he sighed. “I feel like… there’s got to be something we can do.”

“The stories say that purple dragons came into their powers by instinct, more than training,” Ignitus said.

“Um…” Cynder began. “I… have a question?”

She waved her tail. “How do you tell if a dragon is a purple dragon?”

“...ooh, I know this,” Sparx said. “It’s the colour, right?”

“The colour is one part of it, yes,” Ignitus agreed. “But there are also other signs… a purple dragon can master many elements, rather than just one, and ultimately they have not merely a place in destiny but also the ability to access the most primordial element of all. Aether.”

“Aether,” Spyro repeated. “Like – like how I defeated Cynder?”

“Yes,” Ignitus confirmed. “It is… the element from which all other elements come, and it is what a purple dragon is said to be able to use to control the nature of elements themselves. Indeed, it is why the truest sign of a purple dragon is to wield Aether, because a purple dragon can actually grant another element to a dragon – or take it away.”

“So, not that I’m complaining about the history lesson,” Sparx lied. “But why aren’t we trying to get this door open so we can take the underground path and stop the Destroyer? Because I sort of like the idea of being on a world that hasn’t been – what was it – oh yeah, ended.”

“No, I… think I understand,” Spyro admitted. “I know what you’re trying to say, Cynder.”

He glanced at her, smiling, then closed his eyes. Cynder did the same, and a brilliant purple light flashed around both of them – then, with a whoosh, they were surrounded by a kind of mist of light.

Then Spyro breathed out a jet of intense white light that blew open the door to the underground caverns.

“...well, that’s saved us some time,” Sparx admitted.

“Spyro,” Ignitus gasped. “I didn’t know you could…”

Cynder blew open another hole, next to the first one, with a jet of intense purple-black light.

“This is Aether, isn’t it?” Spyro asked. “I realized – it feels the same as when I rescued Cynder. And Cynder can use it too.”

“I think Malefor made me into a purple dragon,” Cynder added, shaking her head. “I don’t know if he knew he was doing it, even, but… I think he did.”

“So,” Spyro said, firmly, as the glow faded. “Ignitus – if you know anything about how purple dragons did that, with powers, then – I think we need to know. Both of us.”

“I…” Ignitus began, then shook his head. “I apologize, Spyro. I simply do not have the knowledge you seek. I don’t think any dragon left does, outside of Malefor.”

“...no,” Spyro realized. “There is a dragon who might know, or who knows – more things than he should know. And I think we should ask him. But we… are probably going to need you to give us both a lift down the underground passage, Ignitus.”

The Elemental Master of Fire looked quite confused.

“We’re going to need to be asleep,” Spyro explained. “Chronicler? Now’s the time.”

Then he fell asleep.

Cynder blinked.

“I… didn’t know he was going to do that,” she admitted, looking between Ignitus and Sparx. “Did you know he was going to do that?”

“Not at all,” Ignitus replied.

“Seen it a few times,” Sparx shrugged. “Yeah, this happens. At least this time he wasn’t flying.”

A moment later, Cynder passed out as well.

Ignitus looked at them, then shrugged, and picked both dragons up to transfer to his back.

“It seems we have some catching up to do, Sparx,” he said, as he set off down the tunnel.

In the heart of his volcano lair, Malefor scowled down at the viewing crystal.

His Destroyer had been halted by a dam, of all things!

This was… honestly rather humiliating, as far as setbacks went, though then again he was familiar with setbacks, and-

-between one moment and the next, Spyro and Cynder appeared in front of him.

Their wings were spread to hover, and they were still chained by the serpent necklaces, but that didn’t seem to stop their determination.

“What the-” Malefor began, startled, then shook his head. “Cynder… so good of you to return. I take it you’re eager to become my servant once more?”

“Not at all,” Cynder said.

“You still have a chance to stop, Malefor,” Spyro added. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Have to?” Malefor asked, then snorted. “No, but… I want to. And so will you, in the end. Purple dragons are more powerful than anything else there is on this world… you will learn that too, if you haven’t already.”

“You’re right,” Spyro said, but he was shaking his head. “And, at the same time, you’re wrong.”

“...no, that doesn’t make sense,” Malefor protested. “This is just like one of those ridiculous riddles the elemental masters like. How can I be right and wrong at the same time?”

“You’re right, that purple dragons are powerful,” Spyro conceded. “But you’re wrong, that that means that I’ll end up like you. Because if I had the power to do whatever I wanted, I’d use it to help my friends. That’s what makes me happy.”

Malefor snorted.

“You’re foolish,” he said. “You’ll learn… or, if you don’t, then I’ll simply destroy you.”

He exhaled a blast of Aether, but Spyro and Cynder vanished moments before he did.

Then they hit him from behind with jets of plasma and gravity, and Malefor abruptly found himself in the fight of his life against two small but apparently uncatchable dragons who began pelting him with every element he could think of and a few it seemed like they’d made up on the spot.

“...phew,” Cynder exhaled, ten crowded minutes later, and rubbed her throat with a paw. “I didn’t think… I don’t think I believed we could really do it.”

She looked worried. “Do you think we did it?”

“I’m not sure,” Spyro said, frowning. “But the fact he got dragged into the planet by a hundred spirit dragons while screaming seems like a good hint that it worked.”

He yawned. “I… aah. Thanks so much for your help, Cynder, I couldn’t have done that alone.”

“Don’t say that, Spyro,” Cynder protested.

“No, I mean it,” Spyro told her. “We both had to break twice during that fight for a nap, and you had to keep time stopped for me while I was asleep.”

He shook his head. “I’m just glad Malefor didn’t realize we were using the time element to move around, as well as fit in all that training… if he’d known that, he might have worked out how to use it himself, and it would have been much more difficult. And it was difficult enough.”

Cynder couldn’t really come up with a response to that, and just nodded.

Then they sort of looked around, awkwardly.

“We should probably get out of the crater at some point,” Cynder added. “And let everyone know we’re alive.”

“Yeah, good point,” Spyro said, spreading his wings. “...by the way… I have no idea if there’s anywhere in Warfang to get lunch, but… want to go find out together? I’m kind of hoping I’ve got money so it can be my treat…”

[saphronethaleph]

The Ring of Truth

“You seem confused, my chosen,” Arceus said. “What troubles you?”

“I’m kind of just… wondering,” Ash replied. “Mostly about… how you look, actually?”

“Pika?” Pikachu asked. “Ka, Pikapi?”

“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with them!” Ash said, waving vaguely at Arceus. “I just got to thinking about it, because Arceus created the universe – you did create the universe, right?”

The Creator of the Universe inclined their head.

“Yes,” they said. “I did create the universe.”

“And I realized that, uh… most Pokémon don’t get to choose how they look,” Ash went on. “But Zorua and Zoroark do, and so do Mew and Ditto… and I was wondering about it, because you don’t just get to choose how you look, you… kind of got to choose how you’d be. Right?”

“...right,” Arceus decided, after several seconds of thought.

They pointed past Ash. “Are you going to actually ask me to resume time at some point?”

“Yeah, but I wanted to get some thoughts straight, and I haven’t had the chance to ask you questions before,” Ash pointed out. “Last time there were all the… you know, meteorites and stuff!”

He frowned. “Or was that the time before last? All the time travel made me confused – anyway, what I was asking was, how did you decide how you were going to look? Because I’m just… me, and Pikachu is a Pikachu, he looks a lot like other Pikachu. But for you it was a choice so I wondered how you made it!”

Arceus inclined their head.

“A fair question,” they said. “And I will answer it, my chosen. But first you must understand… as a transcendent being, I understand the nature of existence, and when I came into existence it was as part of a destined rebirth that took place both forwards and backwards in time. In addition to being the Alpha Pokémon, I am also the Omega Pokémon, and the fact that I am both beginnings and ends at the same time is what permits me to exist, when I created myself. In a very real sense, it is my nature as a being that is reborn at the start of time that ensures that all of existence may exist.”

Ash looked like he’d lost track, but nodded anyway.

“Therefore, how I was going to look was always known,” Arceus went on. “And the nature of that appearance is that it consists of two components, in accordance with the rebirth. And those are – first, a dial, golden and eternal and yet always changing, representative of the cyclic and permanent nature of time.”

“...right,” Ash said. “I think I get that. Right, Pikachu?”

“Pika?” Pikachu said, head tilting and ears twitching.

“And second, a llama,” Arceus went on. “For I am outside time and space, and yet a part of it; this is a Pokémon world, and so I am a Pokémon. To be born I must have a shape to be born as, and this is the one that I am most comfortable in.”

They raised their left front hoof, drawing a little circle in the air. “So, you see why the eternal recurrence of my existence demands these two parts.”

“...no, actually,” Ash answered.

“A dial,” Arceus repeated, intoning it slightly differently. “A llama. A reincarnating ruler and leader of the Legendary Pokémon… dial… llama?”

Ash’s expression did not change, and Pikachu’s only did because he tilted his head the other way.

“It’s funnier if you’re transcendent,” Arceus stated. “Anyway… when you drop back into time, don’t forget to ask Giratina for help, he appreciates being asked to help with things…”

[saphronethaleph]

Horses For Days (And Weeks, And Months)

“We’ll want to get the whole army across the Narrow Sea, before the onset of winter,” Varys noted. “My Queen, that is our primary concern, or should be – landing your army in Westeros.”

“One hundred thousand Dothraki riders will certainly be enough to destroy any army Westeros can muster,” Tyrion said. “With the Unsullied as a base, they would be unstoppable… however.”

“However?” Daenerys inquired.

“We have to face that we may not be able to get the whole army across the Narrow Sea,” Tyrion replied. “The problem is ships.”

He chuckled, self-effacingly. “Of course, I realize that this means I’m about to bore everyone with numbers, and I do apologize… however, it has to be done.”

“All right,” Daenerys said, hiding a smile. “How bad is it, then?”

“Well,” Tyrion began. “We can start with the fact that it’s around four thousand miles by sea from Mereen to the closest point of Westeros – that’s in Dorne, as it happens. That’s a journey of around… hmm, so at an average speed of five knots and a direct journey, it would be a month, but that would be a touchy thing to do. I believe the standard time is more like two months, but expect delays.”

“That’s enough time, though,” Daenerys said. “Isn’t it?”

“Well, that’s why I say the problem is ships,” Tyrion noted. “To take the whole army of one hundred thousand Dothraki riders, it would take… well, every man has six horses and we also need to take their sheep since that’s part of how the whole logistics system works, and I will warn you now that landing the army in Dorne would be a potential disaster – sheep need grass, as do horses. Landing somewhere such as the Reach or in the Stormlands would do better. But that’s only a comparatively minor increment to the amount of time involved… because, put simply, we need more ships.”

“How many would we need?” Daenerys asked.

Varys, who had more of a head for numbers, winced.

“A dedicated horse transport takes thirty horses,” Tyrion replied. “We can’t do much more, not and also take the tons of food that those horses will require… and, as I have said, every man has six horses. Even before counting either the men or the sheep, the horses alone will require twenty thousand ships.”

Daenerys blinked.

“...twenty thousand,” she repeated. “That’s… I…”

Her gaze turned to the harbour.

“I don’t think we have enough ships,” she admitted.

“I don’t think we have enough wood to make them,” Tyrion said. “Or shipwrights. Or sailors… my numbers here are very rough, but I would say that a one-hundred-ton ship such as that kind of horse transport would require about ten sailors, and of course it also requires the cutting of around one hundred tons of wood… were we to clearcut completely, that would require us to take around a hundred thousand acres of forest. I do not think there is a forest that big around Meereen.”

“Or anywhere on Dragon’s Bay, except the Isle of Cedars,” Daenerys said. “And we don’t want to risk clearcutting the Isle of Cedars. Ten sailors would be… two hundred thousand? Meereen doesn’t have that large a population.”

“I assume we can’t make multiple trips,” Varys sighed.

“Not really, no,” Tyrion replied. “That’s the time problem – if it takes two months for ships to get there, it takes six months to get there, get back for the second load, and return, if nothing goes wrong. And remember, I’m already assuming that nothing goes wrong!”

He tapped his chin. “I do have an idea, though… perhaps it would be better if your armada transported some of the Unsullied and as many Dothraki riders as it can manage, to operate in central Westeros, while the rest of your army moves by land back across the Dothraki Sea and takes all of those Free Cities which are in truth slave cities?”

“You think that would work?” Daenerys asked.

“It’s certainly a good place to find fleets,” Tyrion answered. “And with the resources of the Free Cities under your control, it might be possible to transport more of the Dothraki across the Narrow Sea… though it will probably mean waiting until next spring.”

Varys was muttering under his breath.

“Perhaps,” Daenerys said, eventually. “You’re sure there isn’t a way to move the whole army?”

“I don’t think your dragons are quite that strong,” Tyrion replied.

Daenerys blinked.

“...pardon?” she asked.

“Oh, just thinking about the idea of towing the continents closer together,” Tyrion said. “If you got them close enough together then, well, the whole force could just ride across the gap. But there’s not many other options.”

“I suppose all the Dothraki is a lot of Dothraki,” Daenerys conceded. “As it turns out.”

“Actually, about that,” Tyrion added. “I assume you’re going to move most of them back into the Sea of Grass at some point? Because if you don’t, within a week or two they’ll eat out all the grass in the area and their horses and sheep will starve…”

[saphronethaleph]

Shakedown Breakdown

“In position above Kijimi, Captain,” Milon Lenwith reported. “We are in range.”

“Good,” Captain Sabrond replied. “Superlaser charge status?”

“One hundred percent,” Lenwith replied. “First Order personnel evacuation under Protocol 13 is complete… we can fire on your command.”

Sabrond paused, savouring the moment.

The Final Order would rise.

“Fire,” she said.

Lenwith depressed a button, and the weapons systems of the Derriphan lit activated – ready to fire in anger for the first time.

Then all the lights went out.

“...what?” Sabrond asked, by the dim light reflected off the Kijimi surface, and swallowed as she realized the gravity was out too. “What happened?”

“I’m not sure, Captain,” Lenwith admitted. “But, uhm… it… doesn’t look good.”

“Then make sure that it is good,” Sabrond replied.

Lenwith coughed.

“That’s… not really an order I can obey, Captain,” he admitted. “If I don’t know what to do then just telling me to fix the situation won’t actually do anything.”

He poked at his controls, which had excellent tactile feedback on the keys but were singularly useless for actually doing anything right now. “But… if I had to guess, and I’d like to remind you that it is a guess, it looks a lot like there’s been some kind of massive failure of the power distribution grid.”

“...why?” Sabrond asked.

“I’m not sure,” Lenwith stressed, again. “Captain, I’m doing the best I can – I’m just basing this guess off the fact that all the lights went out and Kijimi is still there.”

Sabrond clenched her fist, wishing that she could strangle people from a distance.

It would be nice.

“Then sort this out as fast as possible,” she insisted. “And tell me when you’re done.”

“I can’t do anything by myself, Captain,” Lenwith pointed out. “My control panel doesn’t work.”

Sabrond scowled, but had to admit that that was… a good point.

“Then let me know the first time you have anything,” she said, trying not to drift out of her command chair.

Twenty long and exceptionally awkward minutes later, the emergency lighting came on, and Sabrond looked over at Lenwith.

“Well?” she asked.

“Checking now,” Lenwith replied. “Computers have booted into restricted mode owing to the long power outage… let’s see… all right, the internal messaging system is working…”

Lines of text scrolled up his screen, then he winced.

“Ah,” he said. “So… well, if I can summarize this, Captain, it appears my guess was correct. Only, it’s a little worse than originally assumed.”

“Explain,” Sabrond grated.

“Energizing the axial superlaser involved placing too high a load on the power distribution system,” Lenwith explained. “It’s… well, if I’m understanding this correctly, the issue is that the construction testing system involves a pulse load before acceptance, but the engineers think the cause of the failure is holding the system at above a threshold load for at least four consecutive seconds. The housing heats up enough to cause expansion in places where there aren’t any expansion joints, because earlier models didn’t require it, and that exceeds the insulation tolerance of some of the separator systems… the result was a catastrophic cascade failure in the power distribution system, meaning that right now every surge-vulnerable system on the ship has either melted, exploded or welded shut.”

“I didn’t come up through engineering,” Sabrond said. “What does all that mean in practical terms?”

“Well, we can’t actually do much of anything,” Lenwith told her, still reading through the engineering notes. “The reactor backfed and ejected all of our coaxium to prevent a runaway reaction, which could have destroyed the ship entirely in an uncontained hypermatter explosion, so that’s something – but we don’t have a means to generate more than emergency power. And if we had power, we couldn’t get it anywhere because most of the S-con cables on the ship melted. And if we got all our systems fixed, we still wouldn’t be able to do much of anything. We could go to hyperspeed or use the weapons or run the engines at full power or endure significant attack on the shields, so long as we don’t try to do more than one of them at once. And the main battery is simply unable to function, it has a higher power draw by itself than the destruction threshold.”

“How did-” Sabrond began, then stopped.

Frowned.

“...this is the shakedown cruise, isn’t it?” she asked. “It hadn’t occurred to me before – these ships were built to specifications, but the specifications were never tested.”

“Ordered off the drawing board, yes,” Lenwith agreed.

“So this isn’t a failure of the Derriphan, but of the whole design,” Sabrond said, then groaned. “And none of them will work any better. We’ve… at best, we’ve got to refit the whole kriffing fleet because none of them can fight as they are now. At worst they’ll need to be scrapped and rebuilt to a new design from scratch.”

“And we do still need to have that new design,” Lenwith pointed out. “Based on how long it took to iron out the original design… the work could start in a year?”

“I think maybe Lord Sidious should have blown up a planet before throwing down the gauntlet,” Sabrond said, as much as it pained her to admit it. “Can we get in touch with Exegol?”

“Give us a few hours and maybe,” Lenwith replied. “So far as I can tell the engineers are working on getting gravity back online, unless the gravity generators melted. Then it’ll be the docking engines, unless the control software melted… if they focus on it, they might get comms online, unless-”

“-the comms array melted, yes, I get the idea,” Sabrond said. “Do it. Get me comms so we can warn Exegol about this.”

“Everyone stay cool!” Poe called. “Alpha Squadron, on my wing! Beta squadron, Delta squadron, clear the way for Finn’s landers! We’ve got to stop the launch!”

“Copy, Alpha Leader!” Aftab Ackbar replied. “First torpedo volley, away!”

A dozen proton torpedoes rocketed forwards from the Y- and B-wings of Beta Squadron, then Delta Squadron sped in after them with their laser cannons firing. The Final Order ships responded with a hail of turbolaser fire, and two X-wings and an A-wing went down in the flurry of defensive fire.

Then the Star Destroyer they’d targeted unceremoniously blew up, with a flash that sent a concussive echo through the skies over Exegol and flung Poe into a corkscrew dive.

As he pulled out of it once more, head on a swivel, he noticed that more and more of the Star Destroyers were… breaking. Suffering massive, electric-arc-spewing system failures, or major reactor containment breaches, or just shutting down completely and dropping out of the sky.

“...uh,” he said. “Finn? I guess your mission’s cancelled?”

“Oh, come on,” Finn complained. “I know it’s good that you don’t need us, but, really? I was looking forward to using cavalry on a spaceship!”

[saphronethaleph]

Sorry, how many men?

“Hmmm…” Willas mused, looking down at the paper.

“Something wrong?” Loras asked.

“It’s this army that you’re planning to take with Renly,” Willas replied. “What was it – twenty-five thousand horse? And another fifty-five thousand foot, no less.”

“The full muster of the Reach and the Stormlands,” Loras confirmed. “I’m sure it will convince everyone to see sense.”

“Well, that’s just my concern, brother,” Willas said, making a note. “I’ve been doing some of the maths involved… you need a pack horse, a riding horse and a charger for every knight, of course, fortunately everyone will bring their own so you don’t need to provide those, but… we do still need to provide the food.”

He tilted his head, slightly, then scribbled another note.

“Well, I don’t think we need to provide hay to substitute for grazing, but if we do it’s only going to make things worse,” he said. “So it’s three pounds of food per day per man, and fourteen per day per horse… I’ll tell you what, brother, we’ll just say that there’s the same number of horses and men in the main army, it’s nearly true already and I’ll make you a gift of the last five thousand men… but seventy times seventeen is one thousand, one hundred and ninety, and add to that another eighty-five, and we get one thousand, two hundred and seventy-five pounds for seventy-five horses and seventy-five men. Multiply that by a thousand and… it’s around six hundred and forty tons of food every day.”

He glanced up. “I know that Renly confides in you, Loras – this is going all the way to King’s Landing? And perhaps to besiege the city?”

“Yes,” Loras confirmed. “That’s the plan… I confess, I’m not great with numbers. Is that a lot of food?”

“Well… I don’t get the sense that the Crownlands have a great deal of food to spare,” Willas said. “And I doubt Renly’s position would be especially secure if he’d just razed the Crownlands by mistake in the process of pressing his claim. But the first problem is going to be getting the army to King’s Landing, because there’s no route that doesn’t rely on supply wagons.”

Willas glanced down at his calculations, then back up.

“So, rule of thumb,” he said. “A good wagon can carry a ton of food, two thousand pounds – but the crew to drive and pull the wagon eat around forty pounds of that a day. And from Bitterbridge to King’s Landing is around thirty days of marching… going up the Mander to Tumbleton is easier, but there it’s still about fifteen days. So each wagon only deliver about fourteen hundred pounds of food to the far end, taking the shortest route.”

“That doesn’t seem a problem,” Loras admitted.

“It is, for two reasons,” Willas replied. “At least. Firstly – because you need the wagons to be able to get back to the Reach, brother. So if they’re carrying what they need to survive the return journey, they’ve only got about eight hundred pounds they can deliver to your army at the far end. But, secondly… your army needs six hundred and forty tons of food every day, as we mentioned.”

Loras frowned.

“I don’t follow why, but I do trust you with numbers,” he said.

“Well, then,” Willas shrugged. “That means that you have a choice. Do you take all the wagons you need for the march with you, depleting them as you go? Or do you rely on a continuous flow of wagons delivering food to your army every day?”

Loras shrugged.

“I don’t know, what do I go with?” he asked. “Or, Renly, I suppose.”

“That’s why I’m worried,” Willas noted. “Because, if you need to have enough wagons with you to bring your whole army over fifteen days, then the number of wagons you need is… six hundred and forty divided by two fifths, multiplied by fifteen, for a total of… sixteen hundred… twenty-four thousand wagons, which will need to set out from Brambleton full of food at twenty-four thousand tons of grain.”

Loras boggled.

“More if there’s not enough grazing within a few miles of the road for a hundred and twenty-five thousand horses, of course,” Willas muttered. “A wagon takes up about twenty to thirty feet of road space, so your army would be… let’s see… five hundred thousand divided by five thousand… around a hundred miles long in terms of the wagon train, plus of course the actual army which would be dozens of miles long in its own right.”

“Then – what about the other option?” Loras said.

“Well, in that case you only need sixteen hundred wagons arriving at your army every day,” Willas told him. “At the far end, that is. So you’d need a wagon train at least five miles long reaching your army, which – well, it wouldn’t take the whole day to file down the road, but it would take a really quite astonishingly long time and be the most obvious and blatant raiding target I’ve ever even heard of.”

He glanced at his notes. “But, frankly, the bigger concern for me, Loras, is that I don’t know if we can afford to support this army in the field.”

“But… we’re the Tyrells,” Loras protested. “We must be able to!”

“As a rule, each farm gives us one tenth of what they produce themselves,” Willas told him. “That means that for every ten men farming, one man can be doing something that isn’t farming… and a lot of that is already consumed by the cities like Oldtown and the maintenance of wood-cutting and blacksmithing and all those other things that make the Reach function.”

He tapped his finger on the page. “But that’s us, as in, the nobles. We in turn, the Tyrells, get a share of what the nobles earn, and we’re rich for it, but we only get about one in twenty to one in thirty of the total productivity of the lands of the Reach – and if it was all in grain, then that means that for us to support one horse we’d need about a hundred and forty farmers in the Reach. One man is about thirty.”

Then Willas looked up. “And this plan requires a hundred and twenty-five thousand horses and about that many men at a minimum. So, one hundred and seventy times one hundred and twenty-five thousand… I’ll call it two hundred times one hundred thousand, and it comes to twenty million farmers. We don’t have twenty million farmers.”

Loras winced.

“Perhaps an army of a more reasonable size,” Willas suggested. “Ten thousand, all mounted, would be a ferociously powerful force and quite significantly more able to actually do anything…”

[saphronethaleph]

Acting On Instinct

“So… Senator, I admit I’m curious,” Obi-Wan said, that afternoon. “I’ve been hearing a lot about the Military Creation Act.”

Padme looked up at the two Jedi, Obi-Wan and Anakin alike.

“You have?” she asked.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan agreed. “And – I’ll be honest – I’m not particularly sure about the controversy involved.”

“Can you explain?” Anakin requested. “I wasn’t really… any good at politics.”

“During this Separatist Crisis, certain elements of the Republic Senate are of the opinion that we need a standing army,” Padme explained. “And a much more significant navy, as well. I’m of the opinion that… the act is premature.”

Obi-Wan blinked.

“...why?” he asked.

“I cannot condone a course of action that would push us closer to war,” Padme answered.

“Senator,” Obi-Wan said, slowly. “I hope you don’t mind if I speak frankly?”

“I could hardly refuse you, I’m sure,” Padme replied.

“Can I ask first?” Anakin requested.

“By all means, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said. “Your apprenticeship is to learn, after all – it’s good for you to work on the areas you struggle with, as well as those where you display great skill.”

“Thank you, Master, that’s very kind of you,” Anakin replied, with a fairly significant amount of sarcasm. “But… Padme, don’t you remember what was happening when we met?”

“...you mean on Tatooine?” Padme said, confused.

“No, not that,” Anakin replied. “On Naboo.”

“I believe what my apprentice is trying to say,” Obi-Wan supplied, helpfully, “is that Naboo was invaded, and was unable to effectively defend itself because it lacked a significant military. Subsequently, you travelled to Coruscant to ask that the Republic do something, and when they proved unable to do something about it within a few hours, you overthrew the government, travelled back to Naboo, and borrowed the Gungan army to solve the whole problem with their army, your security forces, your fighter corps, Anakin in a spare starfighter, and a lot of guns.”

He smiled, pleasantly. “And some Jedi, of course… but what that all means is that I’m very confused about why you’re opposed to the Military Creation Act.”

“Yeah,” Anakin agreed, nodding. “What he said.”

Obi-Wan stifled a chuckle.

“It is precisely because I have seen the damage done to Naboo in war that I refuse to invite it to the Republic,” Padme replied.

“Don’t the Separatists include the Trade Federation?” Anakin said. “It didn’t stop them last time.”

“I respect your ideas, Senator,” Obi-Wan told her. “Please – do not misunderstand me. But I would have expected you to be in favour of the Military Creation Act”

Padme frowned.

“...you do make a good point,” she admitted. “But… to have a peacetime military seems like a bad idea.”

“The problem, I think, is that not having a military at the start of a war is worse,” Obi-Wan said, thoughtfully. “Or is the concern about the idea that this military would allow for a tyranny?”

“There is some of that, yes,” Padme agreed.

“Why not make sure the Chancellor is in charge?” Anakin asked. “He’s a good person.”

“And what about the next?” Obi-Wan asked. “Or the one after him? No, I think there must be a different solution here…”

He considered, thoughtfully.

“Perhaps…”

“The vote on the Military Creation Act to follow,” Mas Amedda said. “Senator Amidala has a speech, and the vote will follow. Senator?”

“Thank you, Vice-Chancellor,” Amidala replied, then looked out into the hall. “Delegates – I recognize that many of you have disagreed with the Loyalist Committee on the matter of the Military Creation Act. I wish to propose an amendment – as follows.”

She cleared her throat.

“The budget for the military will be subject to an annual renewal by the Senate,” she said. “Forty percent of the military will be controlled at the federal level, and the remaining sixty percent assigned pro rata to the funding planets.”

Several seconds of silence hung in the air.

“That’s it,” she added. “I would vote for the Act with this amendment, and I encourage my fellows on the Loyalist Committee to do the same.”

“...ah,” Mas Amedda said, then fell back on procedure. “All members will vote on the Amidala amendment, and then on the Act itself.”

“Mas,” Palpatine hissed.

“What?” Mas replied.

“The Act isn’t supposed to pass,” Palpatine said, tightly. “It’s supposed to fail so that the only way to break the deadlock is emergency powers and the military falls to me personally-”

“Do you have any idea how catastrophic that would have been if I didn’t mute my microphone?” Mas demanded. “Look – you must have a fallback plan.”

“Why do you assume I have to have the fallback plans?” Palpatine asked. “What I don’t understand is why she’s in favour of the amendment, now, I worked hard to make sure she wouldn’t be.”

The vote counts appeared on their little screen, showing the amendment had passed. Then the voting on the Act took place, as well, and it was soon clear that – the act was successful.

Palpatine sighed.

“Well, then,” he said, and took out his comlink. “Dooku. Launch the invasion ahead of schedule. Bring the clones.”

Mas blinked.

“...what?” he said.

“If the Republic is going to get a military, I need to have the invasion happen before it gets one!” Palpatine said, waspishly. “If I can’t get control of the military by emergency powers then I can’t tolerate having it-”

He stopped speaking at the loud roar that had spread from the pods.

“...Mas?” he asked.

“You never told me you were going to have the Republic invaded,” Mas replied – his microphone, clearly, on. “I call for a vote of no confidence-”

Palpatine pushed him off the side of the podium, because at this point he was annoyed enough to take the instant gratification in the moments before everything got quite distressing.

[saphronethaleph]

Seller's Market

“All right, I have a question for you,” Cersei said, sounding dangerous. “What exactly is going on with the city?”

“The city, my lady?” Pycelle asked.

“King’s Landing, Pycelle,” Cersei replied. “There was another riotous demonstration, this week. What is going on?”

“I confess myself unsure,” Pycelle admitted. “Varys?”

“My birds… have mentioned unrest,” Varys conceded. “That there is a feeling in the city that the new regime is… causing problems.”

“What kind of problems?” Cersei said. “Lord Stark, you are the Lord Hand – it falls to you to solve this issue!”

“I am new to the city, Queen Regent,” Ned Stark admitted. “I do not understand why it is that these problems are coming about – I do not have enough understanding of how Kings Landing normally is. It is quite different in White Harbour and Wintertown, since they are so much smaller.”

“Smaller,” Littlefinger chuckled. “That’s one way to put it.”

Tyrion coughed, drawing all eyes in the room to him.

“I… may have an answer for you,” he said, and put a ledger down on the table with a thump and a cloud of dust.

“What are you doing here?” Cersei asked.

“I was researching the same problem you have mentioned, dear sister,” Tyrion replied, with a smile. “Isn’t that helpful of me?”

“Don’t you start,” Cersei muttered.

“I would be grateful for your advice, of course,” Ned decided. “Please – enlighten us.”

“Very well,” Tyrion said. “So I was looking at the records of the last few decades, to see how the same sort of problem was handled under prior kings – under, for example, the Targaryens – and to see whether there was something I was missing.”

He looked around at them, and Littlefinger snorted.

“You appear to be making a performance,” he said. “Please, Master of Entertainments – enlighten us. What exactly is going on?”

“The key issue here is the census figures for the year of two hundred and eighty, After Conquest,” Tyrion told them. “In that year, the population of Kings Landing was estimated at one hundred and eighty-five thousand – obviously the number is approximate.”

Ned blinked.

“...the city’s a damn sight bigger than that,” he muttered. “Begging your pardon, Queen Regent.”

“Lord Stark is right,” Cersei admitted. “What happened? Why is it so wrong?”

“That’s the thing – it’s not,” Tyrion said. “The city’s more than doubled in size in the last eighteen years… in two hundred and eighty, the grain prices in the city were elevated, but… manageable… and that drew in food from the Crownlands, and also from the Riverlands with ships passing Crackclaw Point. It was worth the while of merchants to ship in food.”

“So what changed?” Pycelle asked. “You’re making it sound like everything was fine, then.”

“It was,” Tyrion agreed. “And then Robert Baratheon took the throne, and began spending an enormous amount of money – the great majority of it right here, in Kings Landing. Millions of gold dragons were being spent, so people moved here to try and get some of the money, and because so much money was available – the price of grain went up, because there were more trying to buy it. And so more grain came in. It’s been worth the while of merchants to bring food by cart from the far reaches of the Crownlands, and even from the Reach – shipping food up to the headwaters of the Mander and crossing to the Blackwater Rush, for example. It’s staggeringly expensive to supply, there’s several relays of wagons pulled by grain-fed horses carrying the grain across the gap between the rivers, but it can be done… with enough money at the far end that they make a profit.”

He thumped the ledger with his hand. “And so the price of grain rose, but because so much money was being spent by the Crown in Kings Landing, it could work… for the smallfolk. They didn’t become as rich as they’d hoped, because so much of the money they spent went on foodstuffs, but they came to King’s Landing because they heard that it was a place to make a fortune. And so it has seemed, for fifteen years or so… which is why the city now holds four hundred and thirty thousand people if it holds a man, and that’s the lowest number I’ve seen.”

Then Tyrion looked up, with the grim expression of someone delivering news that nobody wanted to hear. “And that means the only way – the only way – the city can be supplied with food is if there’s enough money being spent by the crown in King’s Landing that it can pay for those elevated food prices.”

“And winter is coming,” Ned said.

Cersei rolled her eyes.

“Hear Me Roar,” she countered. “Perhaps we can bring in the King, and he can remind you that Ours Is The Fury?”

“No, I don’t mean the house words,” Stark replied. “I mean winter. If the prices are that high now, during the longest summer anyone’s known, what’s going to happen in winter?”

“I don’t think winter is the problem we have right now,” Littlefinger said, by now looking distinctly green. “We have to get through next week first. If you’re right, Tyrion, then… the only option we have is to continue spending money on that scale simply to prevent the population running out of money, and food. Money that the Crown simply does not have – unless, of course, the Queen Regent’s family would care to make up the shortfall?”

“Hear. Me. Roar,” Cersei reiterated. “What do we care about the smallfolk? A lion does not concern itself with sheep.”

“Would a lion concern itself with the opinions of ten thousand hungry, armed sheep, wondering if they could eat lion?” Tyrion asked. “My dear sister, proverbs are all well and good, but a serious food riot in a city the size of Kings Landing is liable to kill everyone.”

He slammed the ledger on the table. “Everyone,” he reiterated, fiercely. “You, me – everyone in this room, everyone in the Red Keep, everyone within the walls of the city as the chaos leads those with food to steer clear. And when the fighting has burned itself out, it will define our family for centuries to come – your son’s house words might as well be Hear Me Starve and Ours Is The Famine!”

The shout rang in the air for several seconds, then slowly subsided.

“This takes priority,” Ned said. “Over everything else, and I mean – everything. What do we need to do?”

“The city’s population needs to shrink,” Tyrion advised. “High prices will do some of that, so long as they’re not causing dearth, but we need a way to push people out of the city as well. It won’t be popular, but it’s better than our heads on pikes…”

(inspired in concept by the ACOUP blog, especially this post: https://acoup.blog/2019/06/12/new-acquisitions-how-it-wasnt-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-iii/ )

[saphronethaleph]

Well, that's a description I'm quite proud to have applied to me!

I'll have to do MORE logistics based shortfics!

One under-appreciated breed of fic writer are the ones who hyperfocus on logistics to the exclusion of all canon shortcuts, and thus usually strike upon an awesome way to flesh out the worldbuilding or characters.

Like, I’m not necessarily talking realism here since often it’s still pretty far from realistic, but more like, “someone has to be running spies in this fantasy kingdom, and we’ve seen the whole royal court, so which background character is it? How does that change these three major interactions?” Or “real life historical nobility did in fact have some things to do that were like jobs, how does this human disaster cope with running an estate?” Or “there’s no reason for a sci-fi robot detective to know how to whitewater kayak, where’d she learn?” Or “if this guy is serving the emperor directly he has to be way high up in the space empire servant hierarchy, why is he doing this menial task for someone else? What’s his motive? Does he perhaps have the secret space telepathy?”

Anyway I’m always DELIGHTED to find a fic or writer who asks these questions because the fics themselves are universally bangers.

[saphronethaleph]

Hoist

“Main systems status,” Commander Yeks requested.

“Systems are working at full nominal capacity,” Technician Hume replied, inspecting the systems. “Plasma containment bubble is retracting on schedule. We are at eighty-five percent of charge, firing sequence can commence in seven minutes.”

“Good,” Yeks said, sitting back, but he was thinking hard.

Thinking about what his job would be, soon.

Starkiller Base had fired the opening shot of the war, the devastating opening shot that had destroyed Hosnian Prime, but after that everything had become… all too routine. The Resistance had been located, but they’d known they’d been located, and after someone had managed to escape Starkiller Base and the Resistance had fled D’Qar before Starkiller Base had been able to fire, any hope of ending the Resistance with a single shot had gone.

Instead, the First Order military had been chasing after the Resistance, pursuing them relentlessly and fighting a war in the shadows, while Starkiller Base had been tasked with blowing up planets that were causing problems for the First Order.

Between the long duty cycle for the weapon, the inevitable need to run maintenance, and the way that every effort was being made to make sure that no prisoners could ever escape again… it had made the whole thing rather more like a monotonous data entry job than anything.

And now, with the return of Emperor Palpatine and the announcement of the Final Order… an entire fleet of destroyers, each with the power to destroy a world… would they need Starkiller Base any more?

Yeks was worried about his job, and it hadn’t been all that fulfilling to begin with.

“What’s the planet on the docket this time?” he asked.

“Naboo, I think,” Hume replied. “There’s reports that there are widespread anti-Sheev demonstrations on the planet.”

“Who’s Sheev?” Yeks asked.

“I wondered that as well,” Hume answered. “It’s the Emperor, apparently.”

The com system crackled.

“This is the Supreme Leader,” Kylo Ren’s voice announced, echoing through the command space. “Give me a status update.”

“Four minutes until firing, Supreme Leader,” Yeks replied, glancing at the waterfall display.

“Good,” Ren replied. “I want you to hold fire until I’m there, if I don’t arrive by the time the charge is full. I want to watch this.”

“At your command,” Yeks replied, signed off, then leaned back in his chair and groaned.

“What is it?” Hume asked.

“The Supreme Leader is coming to watch,” Yeks said. “...is he the Supreme Leader, still? I just realized I don’t actually know. Emperor Palpatine is the Emperor, obviously, but does that mean that Kylo Ren isn’t the Supreme Leader any more? Is he even the Leader, come to that?”

“Above my pay grade,” Hume shrugged.

Yeks sighed.

“I’m wondering because I don’t want to get shot for using the wrong term,” he replied. “Whatever…”

He glanced at the stormtrooper guards, four of them.

At least they looked like they were ready for being looked at, and Yeks stood before adjusting his uniform to make sure he was spic and span.

“Three minutes,” Hume informed him, then the door beeped, and Yeks stood at attention.

The Supreme Leader strode through, accompanied by his guards – then, all of a sudden, the guards stunned all four stormtroopers at once.

Two of the guards peeled off to strip the troopers of their weapons and equipment, and another took off her helmet – and Yeks did a double-take.

“That’s the scavenger!” he said, aghast, as the doors hissed closed again. “Supreme Leader, what-”

“Shut up,” Ren interrupted, and Yeks shut up.

Now that he was looking, though, one of the Knights of Ren looked very much like a kriffing wookiee.

“Where is the main gun aimed?” Ren added.

“Naboo,” Yeks provided, deciding that shut up was a bad instruction to follow right now. “Chommell Sector.”

“What a bastard,” one of the still-armoured Knights of Ren said as he finished cuffing the unconscious stormtroopers, though Yeks was suspecting that none of them were actual Knights of Ren.

Not that he was going to make a point of that.

“The Emperor’s from Naboo, did you know that?” the ‘Knight’ added. “Finn?”

“News to me,” the other ‘Knight’ replied, now carrying all the weapons from the stormtroopers he’d immobilized.

“I have a new target for you,” Ren declared. “New coordinates.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Ben?” Rey asked.

The wookiee roared.

“I suppose it is a military target,” Rey admitted.

Ren – or Ben – walked up to the command console, and typed in the new coordinates.

There was a subliminal trembling as Starkiller Base rotated, turning fast enough to make the ground shake and judder despite the inertial compensators, and the stars visible outside the screen pinwheeled overhead.

Palpatine drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair.

Where was his new body, exactly?

Everything should have been proceeding as he had foreseen, though Palpatine had to admit that it didn’t always go quite according to plan.

Being thrown down a reactor shaft had certainly not been in his plans for that particular decade.

But the ritual of transference was foolproof – simply by explaining that killing him would mean becoming him, it would function as a means by which the Jedi who killed him became him.

Immortality, of the sort that even Plagueis had never contemplated!

Then he spotted a red light in the sky.

“Okay, that part of the plan is over,” Ben said, as the screens flashed with the target destroyed message. “Now… what was the next part?”

“I don’t know,” Poe replied. “Our plan sort of ended here. Anything past this is a bonus.”

“Improvisation it is, then,” Ben decided. “Who knows. It might even work.”

[saphronethaleph]

Snoke on the Water

“Master,” Kylo Ren said, looking up at Snoke’s hologram. “I’m curious. I have questions.”

“Speak, then, Kylo,” Snoke invited. “Your conviction must be unharmed. Unimpaired. Perfect.”

“Good,” Kylo replied, frowning. “Because, I was sort of wondering about this whole… plan.”

“What part of the plan is a problem?” Snoke said. “The Jedi order is dead, the Resistance is weak, the New Republic will be caught off guard by Starkiller Base when it is ready to fire. What can stop us?”

“I’m not saying anything can stop us,” Kylo explained. “I’m just… thinking.”

He opened his hand, examining it, then closed it again. “Because… my grandfather was the second in command of the Empire, which was the direct successor state to the Republic, and the Emperor kept explaining how he was merely keeping the Republic alive in a time of crisis, until eventually he explained that actually there was no longer any need for a Senate.”

“Did you here to ask me questions, or talk about your history homework?” Snoke asked.

“Questions, Master,” Kylo said. “I’m just worried about whether anyone will listen to us.”

“Of course they will!” Snoke replied. “The terror of Starkiller Base will make it so that nobody dares to defy us!”

“...will it?” Kylo asked.

“Of course it will,” Snoke told him. “How could you doubt it? Nothing can possibly resist Starkiller Base!”

“Well…” Kylo began, a little dubious. “I’m… fairly sure that exactly the same thing was said about the Death Star. And… that got taken out by a small fighter strike.”

“Then Starkiller Base will simply not be blown up,” Snoke said. “If you refused to build anything that could get taken out by a small fighter strike then you wouldn’t build anything or recruit anyone.”

“But that’s not the only thing I’m actually trying to say,” Kylo complained. “Didn’t the Empire have the ability to punish people for rebelling during time periods that weren’t the four weeks that the Death Star was operational?”

Snoke looked stern.

“Or the half hour that the second Death Star was operational,” Kylo added.

Snoke looked slightly less stern and more annoyed.

“Yes, but those clearly didn’t work,” he said. “They weren’t sufficient! It is terror of the ability to destroy a planet which is the only sure and certain way of preventing rebellion against my rule!”

Kylo shook his head.

“So what happens if there’s a mass uprising on a planet ruled by the First Order, but the uprising hasn’t taken over yet?” he asked.

“Starkiller base blows the planet up,” Snoke answered, simply.

“...huh,” Kylo frowned. “Planet refuses to let us take over?”

“Starkiller base blows the planet up.”

“A small cell of rebels is suspected?” Kylo asked, warily.

“Starkiller base blows the planet up,” Snoke told him. “Kylo, you really must listen when I answer your questions, or you should not bother asking them!”

“I mostly think that this way of doing things means that we’re going to run out of planets remarkably quickly,” Kylo said. “And there doesn’t seem to be a reason for planets to do anything other than rebel.”

He paused.

“Also, I should point this out, the design for Starkiller Base means that it takes several hours to fire. It would take literal years to work through all the planets in the galaxy that have Senate representation alone.”

“We will not have to work through all the planets in the galaxy!” Snoke said. “During the Empire there were only a few planets that even considered rebellion!”

“That’s what actually made me start thinking about this,” Kylo admitted. “Because… to the planets of the galaxy, during the Empire, the Empire was the clear legitimate government, and they had Senators. The moment that the Empire blew up a planet and stopped having Senators is the moment when they started facing much bigger rebellions in more places, because everyone could see that there was no legitimacy to it.”

“And what do you know about legitimacy?” Snoke asked. “Who here is the Supreme Leader, you or me?”

“You are, Supreme Leader,” Kylo said.

“And the First Order is the continuation of the Empire!” Snoke went on.

“But nobody actually believes that,” Kylo pointed out. “It is literally part of our plan that nobody knows we’re doing any of this and that we’re not in any way significant. If we suddenly say, aha, we’re actually the heirs to the Empire, then we’re going to look like we just made it up.”

He folded his arms. “Citation: the general reaction of most of the galaxy when Luke Skywalker declared he was doing a New Jedi Order.”

“That is the whole point of doing the secession,” Snoke said. “Many systems joining us at once by leaving the New Republic is a clear sign of our being an apparent successor to the New Republic, and a better one. Relax, Kylo. Everything will work out just fine.”

“Sure,” Kylo lied. “Only… I have to ask, you know this whole, we’re not a threat, thing?”

“Obviously,” Snoke answered.

“How we’ve been hiding that the First Order actually has a fleet crewed by Stormtroopers trained from kidnapped children?” Kylo went on. “And our true intentions, so the New Republic doesn’t know?”

“Yes,” Snoke sighed, clearly bored with this conversation. “Cease your prattle and get to a bit I don’t already know.”

“Does literally any civilian in our seceded population know about this stuff?” Kylo asked. “Because I have personal experience with what it feels like when someone who I thought was a kindly friend turned out to actually be standing over me with a weapon, and I burned his life to the ground.”

Snoke shrugged.

“I’m sure it will be fine,” he said. “Unlike you, the civilians haven’t been subjected to decades of gradual mental influence.”

“What?” Kylo asked.

“Nothing,” Snoke replied. “Go and play with your starfighter or something and we’ll discuss the Force when you’ve calmed down.”

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate,” Leia Organa said, around three days later. “I wish to yield my time to an external speaker. I can assure you, I’m as surprised as you by who approached me to speak.”

The viewscreen activated, and a man in a mask strode out to stand underneath it.

“Welcome to my talk,” Kylo said. “It’s entitled, I’m Not Apologizing, But Here’s What The First Order Are Doing.”

He twiddled a setting on his lightsaber, turning it into an extremely extravagant twenty-meter-long laser pointer.

“I will not be taking questions,” he added, then clicked onto the first slide. “This is Starkiller Base and it’s basically a bigger Death Star that hasn’t been finished yet…”