#I really took mother spore too literally | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

getgoodlol · 3 years

Text

An Unwelcome Meeting

part 3 of my Bdubs' Betrayal fanfic!

heyo! disclaimer before u read; i never claimed to be good at writing. this is purely for fun! i am aware that the hermits are all great people and they're all good friends. i am just playing on the roleplay and the characters they play within the storyline.

please do not tag this as ship. thank you and enjoy!

Grian rocked back and fourth on his feet, his hand in an L shape resting on his chin. His eyes were narrowed, staring at one of the chests in the Barge. He was pondering a price change on dirt; it wasn't selling particularly well. However, there were a few diamonds in the chest, so he took them out and eagerly went to his profit box to deposit his earnings.

Upon opening it, he noticed a thin leather book placed gingerly inside. He recognized it immediately- it had once graced his hands, after all. He dropped the diamonds carelessly, now focused on the presumed response from Bdubs. Grian gripped the book with two hands, excitement pulsing through him. A risky offer was always a rush.

He closed the shulker with his gaze still glued to the book. Swiftly, he opened it and flipped past his note. A few pages in, he noticed more writing that looked shaky and wobbly.

Grian scoffed with a smirk. He tried real hard to make it secret, didn't he?

He read each line with an eyebrow raised. Seemed as though Bdubs had turned him down. He was in denial, of course- nobody would want to be a mayor's doormat.

Then his eyes grazed the final scentence. The word accept looked like it was written slowly, the ink was heavier and it was smudged a little bit.

The pure excitement that beamed on Grian's face was priceless. Luckily there were no shoppers to be blinded at the time.

Quickly, he whispered a message in chat to Bdubs. Perhaps he could've sent everything like this from the start. That wouldn't have been as dramatic, though.

Hey Bdubs. Got your message. Meet me at Stress' potion shop.

Almost immediately, he got a response.

Alright, G. Scar's not around, is he?

Grian sighed. So what if he is? You won't get caught. And no, he's not even online.

A few minutes later, Bdubs popped into view, his elytra making a shadow across the shopping district. He folded his wings and landed not-so-gracefully in front of Grian with a nervous grin on his face.

Grian let the previous goofy excitement die down within him. Despite it all, this was still serious, at least for Bdubs. He expected the Mycelium Resistance to be light hearted, but he had to admit, Scar was taking advantage of his power quite ruthlessly. Although G's attitude was normally jokey, he felt maybe he should tone it down for now. A little bit.

Bdubs opened his mouth to speak- man, when did he ever stop rambling? Grian shushed him before he could say anything. The base had to be kept a secret away from all the other Hermits.

Swiftly, Grian showed him the way in through the shulker box.

"Ohhhhhh," Bdubs murmured, earning a glare.

Once they were inside, Grian led the newcomer to the table and had him sit down. "How does it feel?"

"Different," Bdubs sat awkwardly, clearly feeling out of place.

"Different as in: you're not literally sat on the floor."

"I guess you could say that."

He wasn't talking as much now. Had Grian been too harsh?

"I'm gonna call the other guys, okay? I haven't told them I recruited you."

Visible fear washed over the taller man's face. "I'm the mayor's second in command. There's no way they trust me."

"And I'm Mother Spore, founder of the resistance. What difference does it make? If you really care about the environment, you'll make them trust you. Plus, they trust me. And I recruited you."

"...M'kay. You'll introduce me?"

Grian nodded. He was afraid he was going to fast, but he needed to act quickly. He knew this really wasn't about the environment to Bdubs, of course it wasn't!

It really wasn't to him, either. It was about the principal.

Grian pressed the button with a firm press, eyes staying on Bdubs. His gaze was aligned with the table in front of him

"Y'know, G, you did a really great job with this table, the whole place is really cool! You say you're not great at interiors, b-"

Though Grian would have loved to sit and gloat about his builds, Bdubs' scentence was cut short by six ender-porters being activated, and six servermates finding their way into their respective chairs, looking frazzled.

"Grian?? Did you call this meeting?" Impulse asked, fixing his hair. He looked like he had been working on something.

Most of them did; Beef was covered in paint. Or blood. Could have been blood, knowing VintageBeef, but Grian assumed he was working on another album cover.

Stress' hair was full of nether-y bits, twigs, even flowers that were seperate from her regular head piece. She must've been working on her base.

Jevin was holding endstone, which was a surprise to no one.

Ren was quickly putting on his lab coat, brushing off ash from his shoulders.

Etho looked unfazed, but curious, his eyes locked on the new member.

Bdubs, on the other hand, sat quietly, eyes wide. He didn't really know where to rest his gaze, his pupils darting back and fourth. His neatly folded hands came undone, his fingers tapping on his palms.

"Yes," Grian answered simply, "Don't worry, everyone, everything is fine."

Before Grian could explain further, Etho pointed at Bdubs. "Uh, Grian? You sure everything is fine?"

Impulse gasped. "An infiltrator? We have to get out of here!"

Anxious chatter broke out amongst the crowd, everyone starting to get up from their seats. Bdubs looked over at Grian with a bewildered face.

"Everyone! Sit down! He's supposed to be here."

Everyone obeyed him. He held back a smile; it was nice to be in charge.

"So you've captured him, then?" Jevin asked, folding his arms.

"He doesn't look very captured..." Stress pointed out.

"No, I've recruited him."

Silence blanketed the table.

After a moment, Grian continued. "Bdubs has had a change of heart. He's on our side now."

Everyone exchanged looks.

"... He's literally Scar's second hand." Impulse gestured towards the silent man at the foot of the table.

"His lackey," Said Beef, leaning on the table.

"Hey! Am not!" Bdubs exclaimed defensively.

"Bdubs," Grian silenced him. He paused for a moment, looking around at his resistance. "Welcome, Bdubs, to the Mycelium Resistance. We have many things in store for you."

"So, what, you're just gonna tell Scar that you're with us now? He's gonna like... blow up the shopping district!" Ren straightened his goggles, as if he hadn't put them on correctly.

"I was planning on it, tonight, actually. He's expecting a note from me, about the shops or whatever, and instead, I was gonna just leave him a goodbye note."

Grian shook his head. "No, no, you're not doing that. You're now named the Head of Secret Angency."

"You really couldn't come up with a better name?" Etho muttered.

"Hey, mine is 'Head of Farming'. You take what you can get." Jevin laughed.

"Enough about the names. Bdubs, you're a secret agent now. You will be sticking by Scar's side, and reporting everything he does back to us." Grian explained.

Bdubs looked as if he had been put under a hydraulic press. Was he up for the job? Sure, Grian could manage the resistance on his own, but ... something about morals? Taking Bdubs away from the capitalist power? Something like that.

"I dunno about this, G, what if he just... double-agents us? Feeds us false information and tells Scar our plans..." Impulse suggested wearily.

Bdubs took a deep breath, then a long exhale escaped his nose. "Look, fellas, I get it if you can't trust me. I'm Scar's... 'lackey'! I wouldn't trust me either... but you'd wanna join the other side, too, if you were under Scar's command all the time."

He got stares from everyone around the table. Grian almost laughed. He knew it.

As soon as Bdubs realized what he had said, he added swiftly, "He's just so prominent about putting all the grass down! H-he really doesn't realize that the mycelium is the natural land..."

"I think I trust him." Stress offered, making Bdubs smile.

The rest of the table stayed silent.

"You're dismissed." Grian said after a moment of quiet. "Bdubs, go to Scar tonight. Find out anything you can about his plans, and report back at the next meeting tomorrow."

Bdubs nodded.

As everyone started to leave, Grian could see Bdubs gingerly grab Impulse's shoulder.

"Impulse? Can I talk to you after we get out of here?"

#hi there #i know its been a while but a couple people said they were still interested #sooo here you go?#this is so fun to write lmao #making both sides 'evil'#bdubs' betrayal fic #y'all like my cliffhanger? i tried it out #hermitcraft #hermitcraft s7 #grian #bdubs #bdoubleo100 #hermitcraft fanfic

29 notes · View notes

votederpycausemufins · 3 years

Text

Just about everyone is back together. There’s only a few minor concerning things happening. I’m sure it’s fine.

@petrichormeraki and @helleborusangel

Bad had taken Grian and Jrum back to Jrum’s section of his house, helping plug the bot into his charger. Grian couldn’t find a chair immediately, so he just quickly built one, leaving Bad blinking in surprise.

“So, I don’t think I introduced myself. I’m Grian, one of Jrum’s dads.” And he held out a hand while fumbling for his comm with the other.

Bad shook Grian’s hand hesitantly. “I’m BadBoyHalo, or just Bad. I adopted Jrum while you weren’t showing up.”

“Yeah, Tommy sent me a message about that earlier.”

“Wait so that really was Tommy we saw earlier? He’s not dead?”

Grian shook his head. “No. He’s been living with us and some friends in a different world for a bit now.”

“Oh… then… he’s not going to like hearing some bad news.”

Grian tilted his head, worried. “Why? What happened?”

“Just after those two showed up,” Bad gestured to Jrum. “A message showed up that Tubbo died and he didn’t respawn.”

Grian leaned back in his chair. “Oh, no he’s alive too. My guess is your admin lied to you so you wouldn’t question his disappearance. Philza and Techno have also been away, so anything you’ve heard about them is probably also false.”

“Wait… so if they haven’t been here, who’s dealing with Ghostbur?”

“Who’s that?”

“Phil’s son Wilbur. He died but came back as a ghost and now he goes by Ghostbur.”

Grian looked down at the ground. “Right… Wil’s dead…”

That took Bad off guard. “Did you two know each other?”

“Yeah. Yeah we did. But I hadn’t seen him in years.” Grian then distracted himself by reading his comm finally. “Well it looks like I’ve missed a lot.”

<MumboJumbo> Found EX. He’s seen both the boys. Jrum’s got a nylium problem and Grum is…

<MumboJumbo> I think I want to throw up.

<Tubbo_> Tommy and I were sort of kidnapped by Dream, and I think he also did something to Ranboo.

<Tubbo_> but we’re out now and have Grum. I’ve also got Michael.

[Eyes] Current X-S, Y-S, Z-S

[Eyes] End X-F, Y-F, Z-F

<EvilXisuma> What do you mean Tommy is with you? He’s with me.

<EvilXisuma> give me an answer!

<Ph1LzA> I found Ranboo, but he’s got no clue what happened.

<Ph1LzA> no sign of Dream either.

<EvilXisuma> fuck

<EvilXisuma> that’s got to be Theseus with Tubbo, and he’s going after Dream to try and revive his version of him.

<Tubbo_> Hi! We’re fine now! Mumbo found us, though uh, Theseus and Dream are gone now.

<EvilXisuma> that’s… mostly okay. Has anyone heard from Grian or that pig guy.

<Grian> hey! I’m here! I found Jrum and he’s doing okay now! Though just to get things out in the open, I do not quite remember how.

<Grian> whatever was possessing him is gone now though. Still trying to deal with the angry parent who adopted him.

<Grian> How’s Tommy doing btw?

<EvilXisuma> he’s still not awake.

<Grian> any chance you can bring him here? I’ve got Jrum charging and I think we should all meet up in one place.

<EvilXisuma> Pretty sure the giant thing in this place is also a charger though.

<Grian> It did sound like the boys were split up, so that makes sense. Can you still come over here?

<EvilXisuma> Fine, but only because you blacked out before

Grian sent his coordinates and then set his comm down. Then he started crying. Jrum’s condition had been bad enough and the fact that he still seemed upset at him without the plants controlling the bot hurt Grian. And then Mumbo’s reaction to just hearing about Grum without seeing him was terrifying. What had they done to his kids?

His wings flared open when a large hand touched him and he glared up to see the blurry form of the demon that was helping him. “Don’t touch me right now.”

“Just trying to make sure you were alright.”

“I’m not. My kids are… they’ve… it just hurts. It’s only been a few days but they’ve been alone for months and I couldn’t do anything! At least when they were stuck where we first built them we could visit, but even with everything I have, I couldn’t get in.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you- Have you ever heard of the Watchers?”

There was a slight hum as Bad thought. “Yes, though I haven’t really looked into them. I just know they’re really powerful and occasionally interact with various worlds.”

“Well, I’m that. And I’ve been trained as an admin. And based on what I have learned in the past few days, my mom is literally death, so that’s fun.”

“Is that related to you being able to kill the egg?”

Grian let out a short laugh. “No. That’s uh, Mother Spore. She tried using my body as a host, I tried killing her, we have a bit of a stalemate now.”

“You’re not going to-”

“It’s fine. It helped, didn’t it?” Grian asked.

Bad nodded, it had indeed ended up helping them. “Just making sure it doesn’t cause more of the same.”

Grian nodded before looking back over to Jrum. He was currently in sleep mode as he charged which was fine, but Grian still wished the bot was awake. His eyes then fell on Jrum’s empty arms. He checked his inventory and was glad to find one of the backups on him, so he pulled out a faux diamond block and carefully put it in Jrum’s arms. The bot stirred slightly, but then hugged the toy when it was in his arms.

“Oh, you have another one of those?”

Grian nodded. “Yeah. Jrum and I were out one day and found a trader selling them. We got eight of them for an emerald and a real diamond block.”

Bad’s eyes widened. “You must really love him if you’d spend that much.”

“It’s not actually that much to me, but I would have gladly spent more if it would make him happy.”

Bad nodded and then went over to a chest and pulled out an identical toy that seemed to have been dyed red. “Here, this is the one he had before. He got upset when it turned red. The egg was able to change blue things red and red things to white.”

Grian nodded and took the toy. “I’m pretty sure I can fix this. Just not until we get back to Hermitcraft. I’m pretty spent right now and still need to get us back home.”

Then Xannes was suddenly in the room holding Tommy in his arms. “Get me somewhere to put him down.” Bad jumped up and grabbed a bed for them to set Tommy down on while Grian started checking Tommy over. He looked mostly uninjured, but he seemed to have a large scar that hadn’t been there before over his stomach area. Grian carefully tested the area and was glad to see he was at least reacting to what was going on, but not in pain from the new injury.

“How’s he doing?” Xannes asked as Grian continued to look Tommy over.

“Well, him still being unconscious is extremely worrying, but I’m not seeing any physical injuries other than this large scar.”

“He got killed and revived. I didn’t get a good look at what happened, but I would assume that scar is from what killed him.”

Grian nodded, then carefully worked on sitting Tommy up. “Any head injuries?”

“He ended up against a wall, could’ve been slammed there.”

“Good to know.” Grian moved Tommy’s hair around to see if he could spot anything that was hidden. “You said revived?”

“We have a three life system here.” Bad spoke up. “If a death is important enough, we lose a life. After we lose all three, we’re dead for good. Though there are exceptions.”

“Yeah, Tommy mentioned those. Took us a while to convince him we didn’t have that.” Grian looked over to Xannes. “How do people normally react when they’re revived?”

“Normally they’ve got ghost pains for a while and are more violent.” The helsmit explained. “But everyone has a different reaction. I’m also not sure how different this is from hels, plus the fact that it was an instant revival.”

“That’s probably it then.” Grian frowned. “Makes me almost consider trying to contact Ellen. But she might not be around anymore…”

“Who?” Xannes asked, but Grian brushed him off.

“Our best bet is to try and kill him again and let him stay dead for a few minutes before reviving him again. I… It’s not the greatest thing in the world, but it… should work. And he should be linked to this bed.”

“Wait, are you just going to kill him again?” Bad asked, making sure he was really understanding the situation. “That seems like it would make it worse!”

“I know! But it’s probably that he died and got revived quickly enough that his mind or soul or whatever you want to call it didn’t catch up.” He then sighed, noticing his hands trembling and trying to calm them down. “I mean, I still can’t be sure… but again, best bet.”

Xannes looked skeptical, but relented. “Fine, but we try this once. Even if it only sort of works, we’re not trying it again.”

Grian nodded. “Alright, so I’ll just step outside while you do that… okay?”

“What, you’re making me do it?”

“You’re the one with evil in your name.”

“My name is Xannes!”

Grian held up his communicator. “Yeah, but it’s evil on here, and you got to choose that for yourself, so don’t complain.”

Xannes grumbled, but accepted the answer as Grian stepped out of the room.

“Grian finally got back to us.” Tubbo told Mumbo since his hands were still full from carrying Grum. “He’s also got Jrum with him and I’m guessing he’s killed the egg.”

“The what?”

“Uh, a plant that was possessing people.”

“Ah, EX did mention that.” Mumbo nodded. “Anything else?”

“Well he says he doesn’t remember how he did it.”

“Ah, have to talk to him about that once we get back home to ask if it was a conscious decision or not.”

“And Michael, someone found Boo and he’s okay.” Tubbo told the ziglin, who oinked happily. He then read more and looked back to Mumbo. “Still nothing from Techno though, but Grian wants us to meet up with him at some coordinates. Xannes and Tommy seem to have already moved there.”

Mumbo nodded, pausing to heft Grum up a little to readjust his grip on them. “Which way is it from here?”

“It’s on our current path. Closer actually. That’s the location of Bad and Skeppy’s mansion. Technically the house you had us going towards would have been closer, but only because of the trident path.”

“That makes sense.” Mumbo nodded, before noticing something in the distance. “What’s that?”

Tubbo squinted to make it out at first, but then it was obvious what it was to him. “Pandora’s Vault. It’s a prison Dream commissioned. So far it hasn’t been used as far as I’m aware, but obviously a lot has happened, so I’m not sure anymore.”

Mumbo nodded. If there weren’t more pressing matters at hand, he would be curious, since Tommy had said large builds such as that weren’t common on the server if they existed at all. He was still staring at it when Grumbot suddenly stiffened up and he nearly dropped the bot in shock.

Life Counter active. Entity Check TommyInnit. Death: canon. Life counter: Infinite lives remaining. Commence Respawn.

Just as soon as it had happened, Grumbot was back to normal, though trembling again. Mumbo hugged the bot just a little tighter for a moment before looking at Tubbo. “Are you sure there’s not a faster way?”

“The only other option is still boats.”

Mumbo looked down at Grumbot. There was no way for the four of them to all sit in one boat. He couldn’t row since he needed to make sure nothing happened to Grumbot and obviously the robot wasn’t in any condition to row instead. Theoretically they could manage to get the two of them and Tubbo into the boat if Mumbo scrunched up and continued to hold Grumbot in his lap, but that would involve leaving Michael behind since the child couldn’t row a boat on his own.

“Right, okay. Still walking.”

The group continued to travel, Mumbo and Michael both getting spooked by suddenly getting mining fatigue as they got too close to the prison. There was a small river which they were able to cross easily, but a second wider river had them pause as Tubbo built them a bridge. “The mansion is essentially right on the other side of this river. We’ll just be passing the entrance to the prison first.”

“Is it that place made of quartz in the distance?”

“Yeah.” Tubbo answered, before getting a second look at it. “Looks like they got an extension built onto it though. So that’s new.”

“Might be where the others are. You said they were charging Jrum. I saw the one charger in the other house and it had to be built pretty big. That might be where it’s housed.”

Xannes came out in a few minutes to bring Grian back into the room. “I didn’t need to revive him. He respawned naturally, which isn’t a good sign. Because of that, nothing’s changed.”

“A-Are you sure? Nothing at all?”

Xannes rolled his eyes but did his best to keep Grian from spiralling. “Yeah, but that’s just from trying this. We’re still waiting on the others to show up and they should be able to come up with other ideas.”

“R-Right… I guess you’re right.” Grian nodded before going back to his chair.

Bad moved closer to Xannes and whispered to him. “I’m guessing he’s close with Tommy?”

“Obnoxiously so. I’ve heard a number of stories from Jrum about Grian and Tommy doing something together. Honestly not sure how they didn’t realize they were related in the first place.”

“What the muffin?!”

“...Did… Did you just use the word ‘muffin’ as a curse?”

“Maybe I did! Now what do you-” Bad cut himself off to go back to a whisper. “What do you mean they’re related?”

“The two of them are brothers. Not sure the current state in this dimension, but as far as I know, Grian’s a triplet and Tommy’s younger brother to the three. Same parents too.”

“Tommy’s mom is also a fridge?”

This time it was Xannes’ turn to be shocked. “Their mother is a what here?!”

Before much else could be clarified, there was a whine as Jrum woke up. “Stop yellinggggg. I’m sleepyyyy!”

“Jrum! You know that’s no way to act when guests are over.” Bad scolded, but Grian stopped him.

“Let him sleep. Charging in the middle of the day always messes with his sleep schedule.” Then Grian pulled out a certain shiny blue rock. “Besides, it just means he won’t get any diamonds.”

Immediately Jrum was fully awake and jumping off the bed to grab the diamond out of Grian’s hand. “Give give give give give!!!” Grian tried to hold the diamond up in the air, but Jrum just started climbing up him like he was a tree.

“Calm down! I’m not- mmph! Don’t step on my face! Okay fine! Take it!” Grian gave the diamond to Jrum who instantly put it into his inventory. “I’ve never seen that before.”

Now that the diamond was safely in his possession, Jrum realized exactly who was there and went back to his bed with a slight angry frown. “Well what do you expect when you just offer him up a diamond like that?” Bad asked, going over and patting Jrum’s head comfortingly.

“For him to wake up for it. I mean, he did, but the climbing and being very grabby is different.”

“Again, you offered up a diamond. To Jrum. He’s got a love for diamonds that could rival just about anyone. More than once he killed someone just because they hadn’t put their diamonds in their ender chest quite yet so he took them.”

“Jrum!” Grian scolded the bot, who just got angrier.

“Why do you care? You weren’t here.”

“Jrum, I swear we were doing everything we could to find you and Grum. Your daddy and I would never want to lose you. Some bad people just made things really hard for us. But once we could come to find you, so many people wanted to help because they know how much your daddy and I love you and how much you mean to us.”

“But why’d it take so long?! You should’ve figured it out sooner!”

“Well, you know the stories I’ve told you about my time machine, right?” Grian asked, Bad looking over to Xannes and mouthing the words as a question for clarification. “Well, it was like someone took this whole world and put it in the time machine, so that way everything seemed so much longer for you.”

“Well that’s stupid.”

“It is! But now we’re here. And I know you’re upset. You’re upset like I was at your grandpa.”

And that was what got through to Jrum. Back before any of this had happened, when Phil had first arrived and Grian had been upset at the older avian, Jrum was worried about ending up the same way with his dads. He didn’t want that to happen, but now it was starting to. He started crying and mumbling out apologies, but Grian just hugged the bot and rocked him. “It’s okay. You don’t have anything you need to say sorry for. It was scary and we weren’t there. But it’s okay now. It’s okay.”

The door opened up with a slight slam, making everyone there jump. “Oh thank goodness, you’re all here. Along with… a very tall… man?” Mumbo questioned, his previous train of thought already out the window.

“Demon actually.”

“Alright. Now what was I going to say?”

Tubbo poked his head out from behind Mumbo. “We’re back with Grum.”

“Right! Yes that was it!”

“I’ll get another bed.” Bad said, leaving the room to find one. While they waited, Grian and Mumbo met eyes and smiled sadly at each other, glad that at the very least they had their boys back.

“How’s Jrum doing?”

“Okay. Just upset that he was so angry at us.” Grian answered, rubbing the bot’s back for some comfort. “What about Grum?”

Mumbo frowned and looked down at the bot in his arms. “Not good. He’s a mess to the point I’m worried we’d have to…” He trailed off, not wanting to complete the sentence. “The admin ended up abusing the fact that he was a robot, barely treated him like a person. God… he’s in such disrepair just physically, and while Tubbo said he was speaking earlier, he hasn’t said a word since I’ve seen him.”

“Well, maybe once he wakes up, he-” Grian started to suggest, but Mumbo cut him off.”

“No, Grian, he’s been awake the whole trip here.”

Grian’s eyes widened and he shifted to calmly speak to Jrum. “Can I set you down so I can look at your brother?” Jrum shook his head and held Grian tighter. “Alright then.” Part of Grin wanted to push to get Jrum to say yes, but he also knew that that could just find a way to make things worse.

Bad finally returned with a bed and put it down between the two already existing beds. Mumbo tried to put Grumbot down, but the robot refused to let go and they ended up needing to pry it off of the redstoner. They nearly stopped trying when it was enough to get Grum talking, it simply saying ‘no’ a number of times. But still, they needed to get a good look at Grum, and being held in Mumbo’s arms wouldn’t help with that.

For the most part, Grumbot was still the same as when Tubbo had found it. The only difference was the screen flickering back and forth between the one it had been stuck with and its regular face. Also, instead of lying down on the bed normally, the moment Grumbot was on the bed, it curled up into a ball.

It hurt Grian to see his son in such a state. He didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until Mumbo was next to him taking deep breaths for him to follow with. He slowly helped Grian lie down on the bed with Jrum, obvious to the fact that the avian needed rest with everything going on around him.

Xannes pulled Tubbo out of the room at one point, and when they returned, the two of them were accompanied by Phil and Ranboo who talked in hushed tones. When Grian had finally gotten to sleep, Mumbo took Jrum into his arms to discuss things with everyone else.

Tommy pressed his hands against his closed eyes. He hated how sore he felt, but he supposed that’s what happened when you get your last life taken. Then he paused. If he lost his last life, was he alive? Tommy pulled his hands away and opened his eyes. He didn’t look see through, but his skin definitely wasn’t supposed to be ash gray.

He cursed and got out of his bed, looking around. That was his bed, but not from the SMP. The wood around him was all from Grian’s old hobbit hole, and the last place he had slept before… well before everything happened.

Tommy started looking through chests, glad to find a spare comm in one of the chests. He turned it on and was glad to see it was one of the backups X had made him after the first time he managed to break one. He hadn’t wanted to accept it at first, but apparently a number of the hermits lost or broke their communicators a lot, so he was more willing to take one.

<TommyInnit> Alright, hey guys. Guess who is having a crisis

<TommyInnit> btw, how long has it been since I left?

<GoodtimeswithScar> What seems to be the problem?

<Xisuma> Not that long. Definitely under half an hour.

<TommyInnit> I think I’m dead.

<TommyInnit> I died in the smp and I guess I lost my last life, but I respawned here

<Iskall85> Okay, and?

<TommyInnit> Well I didn’t respawn right. I look like I came out of some of those photos Grian had of demise.

<Rendog> black and white?

<TommyInnit> Skin yes, clothes no. blood is currently blue.

<Xisuma> I’m on my way over

<StressMonster> Does it hurt?

<TommyInnit> I mean, I’m sore? But not really. It’s not raining, right?

<joehillssays> nah, you’ll be fine Tommy

<TommyInnit> Okay.

<TommyInnit> panickign more now

<TommyInnit> i cna;t fucking get outside

<ZombieCleo> Someone blocked the door?

<TommyInnit> np. Nothing theere.

Tommy had tried going outside, but ended up running into something invisible. He tested it and found it was just a sort of invisible wall in front of the door. He remembered Xannes making something similar to trap dream in, so for a moment he thought it was the helsmit's doing. So Tommy broke a hole into the wall and tried going through that. But he just ran into another invisible wall. Had it been just outside where he mined, he would just be upset, but this time it was right in the space where he mined. He tried not to panic too much, but it was hard not to.

<TommyInnit> i’m jus stuck

<TommyInnit> help

#hermit!tommy au #hermit!tommy #grian #watcher!grian #grian xelqua #avian!Grian #badboyhalo #jrumbot #evil xisuma #tommyinnit #mumbo jumbo #grumbot #tubbo #michael_beloved #ghostinnit

32 notes · View notes

mayeetjim · 3 years

Text

@foolishcaptains @wisp-exe

My mha au so far

So bad has a demon themed quirk and is Sapnap dad. He teaches home ec in the school. He has a fire quirk, but only really uses it for cooking after he landed his hero partner in the hospital. He can still use it for protecting the students however

Sapnap is bads son. He didn't inherit bad's more demon looking form, but he did take on his fire. When he uses his power, it's hard to control, and his hair becomes fire

George can grow mushrooms from dirt that can release spores that are melatonin, which creates drowsiness and may cause a person to fall asleep

Dream's quirk is water based, with having the ability to change his form into water with different strengths and weaknesses depending on the mask he wears, think of deoxys in Pokemon, who's form changes

Dream has a twin, foolish. His power let's him control small amounts of water in his human form, but he can shift into a more sharklike human with golden spots and eyes to control more water.

In this household is puffy and schlatt. Schlatt never developed a quirk, causing him to turn to alcohol, but still keep it under (very poor everyone knows) wraps. He is very skilled at giving speeches however, as well as trains the rest of the household.

Puffy on the other hand, carries a light based quirk, where she can manipulate beams of light and colour to her advantage. She uses prisms on her costume to get these beams of light

Lastly in this found family is tubbo, who basically has bakugo's quirk, except he is under light radiation most of the time, leading to more goat like features

Next is ranboo, who inherited the quirk of teleportation, but the farther he goes, the more energy he uses up. He also inherited a half and half skin tone from another parent, but it is unknown why he is like this, as he hasn't taken the quirk that goes with the half and half

Technoblade, also known as the Blade, has been taught to be a hero sincea very young age, already making himself known as the Blade throughout the country, but very few know his actual Name, Technoblade. His quirk is alike to the bird head guy, in which he has his shadow, a blood red silloette nicknamed the blood god, to help in battles, but he is formidable even without his quirk. He constantly hears the voices of the blood god, which only increase in volume as he uses his power. If he uses it too much, his ear begin to bleed, which he can use the blood to make the blood god stronger.

Next is Phil, who's quirk is literally wings. He has wings y'all, idk what you want me to say

His wife, Kristin, can control spirits of those who were killed in battle, but were innocent bystanders, who died without cause. She doesn't make them do anything they don't want to though, which can be her strength and weakness. She runs the USJ.

Phil has an adopted son, Wilbur. His mother had ice powers but he gained his late father's musical quirk. Almost like a siren, he can influence people as he sings, but they have to hear him to be influenced. His mother died when he was about 6, and was an old school friend of Phil's so he took in Wilbur, who had no immediate family.

Moving to Karl, he can go back or forwards in time about five seconds, any more than that and it causes migraines, making him unable to function the worse they get.

Next up is Hannah, who can grow plants, mostly roses, but uses sunlight to do it. technically she is just using plants that grow on her and speeding up their photosynthesis and growth without the need for water, but that's all the technical stuff

Purpled is N alien, with telekinesis, but the larger the object, the more strength it takes

Charlie is goo

Ted isn't technically in dsmp but he is in my heart, so he can shoot milk but the more he uses it, the more his blood starts slowly mixing into the milk. He has a lot of blood tho

Oh! Eret can cause hypnosis using his eyes, but becomes blind when he uses it

Fundy is kinda like Tsu and has fox traits.

Antfrost is literally a cat. I saw that before

#tw mha #mha tw #mha #dream smp #dsmp x mha #marv rambles #bhna #tw bnha

17 notes · View notes

savannah-lim · 4 years

Text

You Gotta Be Squidding Me || Savannah & Winn

TIMING: Present LOCATION: Savannah’s office SUMMARY: Savannah meets with Winn to discuss Agent Sterling’s death and gets more truth than she bargained for. CONTENT WARNINGS: Discussion of murder and body horror

Savannah had no idea how she was supposed to put any of this in a report. Dr. Kavanagh had directed her to a gentleman called Winn Woods because she remembered she had seen something in a dream. Great. Excellent detective work, Agent. That doesn’t sound crazy at all. At this point though, Savannah was prepared to try just about anything. The Bureau had supplied her with a small rented office downtown so she at least didn’t have to interview people in a messy hotel room or keep going to the police station. She preferred not to have people looking over her shoulder. The buzz from the door told her Mr. Woods had arrived. Right on time. At least he was punctual. “Come in, have a seat. Would you like coffee or tea or anything?” she asked, closing the door after him.

It was one of those White Crests days where everything felt ominous — gray clouds overhead and a weird chill in the air, both typically foreign to August. Winn’s nightmares the night previous had been plagued with visions of the abomination, of the twisted corpse of Sterling ambling towards him, an inevitable end to what little of his life he’d managed to salvage. It was a wonder he’d managed to sleep. Since that day Sterling had washed up, Ulfric had done his level best to keep the body concealed. But ‘missing’ wasn’t much better than ‘dead’ — especially not where a federal agent was concerned. They’d both known it’d come back to bite them. And while Winn was a fine actor, one gift his mother had left him, there was no masking his unease. Human. Javier Sterling had been so painfully (pitifully?) human — until he hadn’t. Winn would tear his throat out again, spare him the indignity of his body, warped as it was. But that wasn’t the question, was it? “Coffee’s fine,” Winn said, noncommittal. It would give him time to think through a game plan. Smalltalk. He could do smalltalk. “How have you been liking White Crest, Agent Lim?”

“Coffee it is,” Savannah said, brewing a fresh pot. “Although the government doesn’t exactly offer generous funding for amenities, so I can’t promise anything about the quality.” She poured herself a coffee as well. Though she maintained a casual air about her, Savannah was already assessing the young man. His nerves were obvious, but that wasn’t necessarily an indication of guilt. If someone wasn’t nervous about being interviewed by a federal agent, there was something wrong with them. “I like it very well. It’s bizarre, which I find frustrating but also oddly comforting. I’m intrigued by things that are unusual. Something Agent Sterling had in common with me, I’m led to believe.” She handed Winn his coffee. “Did you know him well?”

“I think the first coffee I had was on the Hill. Representatives bring their own coffee, or suffer whatever their interns thought sounded good at the Trader Joe’s on Pennsylvania Ave.” Winn cocked his head. “Don’t know how much time you spent at y’all’s headquarters, or if you’ve always been on-assignment?” He took a sip from his coffee, ignoring the heat dancing across his tongue. Still too hot, but the pain helped to ground him in the moment. He’d dealt with government folks for most of his life. Could Agent Lim be discreet? It wasn’t as if the FBI was known for being bold and brash, not when subtlety could better pave the way to an answer. Winn wished, in that moment, that he had been close to Agent Sterling. Agent Lim’s hints that he’d been investigating the unusual… Could always tackle it the White Crest way, right? “Unusual?” Winn asked, more chipper than was probably wise. “Honestly, I barely knew him. Pointed him in the direction of a shop on Amity, but that was really the last time I ‘spoke’ to him.” Do not joke about Natalia killing Javier. Do not joke about Natalia killing Javier. “I can’t remember ever meeting him in-person, though.” Technically, not a lie.

"The Hill?" Savannah repeated, unsure if she was impressed or actively cringing. "Interesting. You didn't strike me as the political type." He'd struck her as a sort of empty-headed party boy, but then, there were plenty of those in politics too. "I did my training at Quantico, and spent most of my career operating around the New England area." She picked up her own coffee, sipping it. "But this isn't about me. Unless you just want to be impressed by my credentials. I might not have them much longer if I can't solve this case." And the more she looked into it, the more unsolvable it seemed. Winn's name had literally been given to her by someone who said she'd seen it in a dream. "That's interesting," she nodded, "because an anonymous source told me you might know something about his disappearance."

“Representative Delacour. Or former? Figure she’s still up there; I try not to keep up with politics. I wasn’t up there often, just enough to figure out that there was better coffee in the world.” Winn shrugged, another sip from his own cup. Talking about his mother wasn’t his favorite recreational activity, so he was more than happy to drop the subject. He tried not to flinch at Agent Lim’s suggestion, a frown flickering across his face for just a second. Getting a federal agent involved in whatever was happening in White Crest, getting a human involved in all of this. Was that fair? No. It wasn’t. But less fair was keeping her in the dark, letting her wander into getting herself killed. Or, worse, the same thing happening to her that had happened to her former co-worker. Winn tried to think of how a hunter would describe what happened to Javier, Adam’s talk of mutations and infections coming to mind. Winn couldn’t even be sure that was what it was, but something about it rang true. Javier had changed so suddenly… “How much do you know about Cordyceps, Agent Lim?” Winn said, slowly, not letting even an ounce of fear slip into his voice.

“Well, we’ve got that in common,” Savannah scoffed. She knew just enough to make informed decisions at the voting booth, but when it came down to every single representative, Savannah was pretty clueless. Winn could have made up any name and she wouldn’t have known any better. She narrowed her eyes curiously, wondering where exactly he was going with this. “Cordyceps? Isn’t it a virus or something that affects insects? The thing that makes stuff grow out of their ugly little insect heads?” Fascinating, no doubt, but she had no idea what that had to do with her case. Javier Sterling wasn’t a caterpillar.

Winn wrinkled his nose at the reminder of what the fungus did to wasps, ants, and others. Planet Earth had been a staple of insomnia-fueled nights over the last half-decade, so Winn knew the metaphor didn’t stretch all the way out. There hadn’t been anything (yet?) to suggest Winn or Ulfric had been infected by Javier. “Fungus, but yeah. They take over the host body and direct it towards a purpose. For Cordyceps, that means gettin’ up somewhere high and poofin’ its spores as far as they can go.” Winn still had more questions than answers, but… Shit, would it be nice to have someone to bounce shit off of. It wasn’t like he was good for anything more than a helpful sniff or slashin’ someone’s throat. “Damn, almost wish you could read my mind. Would make explainin’ this easier.” He drummed his fingers along the arm of the chair. “Agent Lim, I need you to take everything I’m about to say at face value, alright? I won’t lie, not if I can help it, but I’m gonna sound like I’m off my rocker. If you’re not gonna believe me, this ain’t goin’ anywhere productive.”

“Fungus. Right.” Savannah focused on him, eyeing him as he spoke, determined to figure out exactly where this conversation was going. It wasn’t often someone took the lead on her interrogations, but she figured the more talking he did, the more he might slip up and tell her something useful. God, nobody had given her anything useful in weeks… “Alright, I guess now I don’t need to watch National Geographic when I go home.” She chewed the inside of her lip. “People say that sort of thing when they’re about to say something nonsensical,” she sighed. “But nothing in this case has made sense so far, so I suppose let’s start with ridiculous and work backwards.” She gestured vaguely with her hand for him to go ahead.

Winn almost laughed at the suggestion of nonsensicality. C’mon, Agent Lim. All he was askin’ was for her to believe her co-worker turned into a squid-man hybrid, and spit out a wackadoo language, before tryin’ to kill the werewolf sittin’ in front of her! It all made perfect sense. He groaned, leaning back in the chair. If it wasn’t so close to the new moon… But naw, no werewolfing it up. “I can do ridiculous,” he said, confident. “Javier Sterling washed up one morning while I was fishin’. Took me a minute to realize it was him, ‘cause somethin’ had happened to him. See, your boy had been infected with a— with a virus, if you like. I don’t rightly know what it was, but I can tell you what I saw. Not a fungus, but somethin’ from the ocean. I’d call it a growth, but then I’d have to rationalize the tentacle that wrapped around my arm. And nothing,” Winn wet his lips, “about this is rational.” Winn paused. “I’m not done, but figure that’s a lot to take in. Take, uh, take your time. It only gets weirder.”

“Fishing.” Savannah scoffed. “Yeah, okay, go on. My co-worker washed up on shore and had a… a what? A weird fungal infection from the ocean? Are you saying it was a natural death?” What exactly was he confessing to? It didn’t make any sense. But then she remembered— “Was there a red-headed man with you?” she asked. “Covered in tattoos? Big beard?” She’d seen it in her dream too. Maybe what Regan had said wasn’t so crazy after all. Except that it was, and this whole thing was absurd. Her superiors were going to laugh her reports right out of the office if she tried to go back to them with this.

Winn squinted at the perfect recitation of Ulfric’s description. There hadn’t been anyone around that day. As far as Winn knew, only one person even knew of what had happened to Javier Sterling, outside of Ulfric and Winn themselves. There were few explanations and Winn was eager to narrow them down. “Yes,” he said, evenly. “I’m keepin’ his name out of this.” No need to bring in Ulfric. ‘Sides, Ulf was out of town, last he heard. One phone call, and one of them could tell him to stay out of town. Winn had dealt the killing blow, even if Ulfric had made sure that Javier wouldn’t get up. “An anonymous source, huh? That sure is unusual,” he said, tone almost acerbic. “How much do you know, Agent Lim?” Whether she’d intended it or not, Winn’s hackles were raised, and he was just barely stifling the low growl in the bottom of his throat.

Savannah scribbled down a jumble of notes. Not that she’d have any difficulty remembering this, of course. “I’m not at liberty to reveal my sources,” she said. “And if I tell you what I know, I can’t be sure that whatever you tell me is genuine knowledge that you came to independently.” She sighed. “Would it help if I say I saw it in a dream? Would that be more or less asinine than whatever you wanted to tell me?” She was losing her damn marbles, and she might be about to be threatened by a frat boy. “I hardly know anything, okay? Is that what you want to hear? That’s why I’m asking.”

A long, long exhale of breath. “A dream?” Winn echoed, urging himself to calm the fuck down. “Naw, that sounds about par for the course… for White Crest, anyway.” Okay, Winner. Rewind. Back to square one. “Like I said, really, I’m happy to help. But so long as you’re withholdin’ your sources — and I get it, I do — I’m goin’ to keep back the name of our ginger friend.” She hardly knew anything. That was good and bad. Technically, Winn could lie his ass off. If he wasn’t a man of his word, he’d take that as an easy out. Funny thing ‘bout bein’ a counselor? It was easier to console folks, to let ‘em know it was alright to feel their own emotions than it was for Winn to get across his point, sometimes. So, an answer. “Agent Javier Sterling is dead,” he said, evenly. “He was dyin’ when he washed up, but I don’t know what got a hold of him. We were tryin’ to help him, and he attacked my friend. I moved quickly, because otherwise my friend would have died. I cut Sterling’s throat open. My friend grabbed a knife and gutted him. It was, I hope, less painful than what the infection would have done to him.” A pause. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Fine,” Savannah sighed. “Don’t tell me who the red-headed man is. I don’t care.” That wasn’t entirely true, but she was primarily concerned with finding out what had happened to Javier. The names of everyone else involved could come later. She froze momentarily when he announced Javier’s death. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. She’d suspected it from the get-go, but there was something chilling about the confirmation. “Right, dying from, um… ocean fungus?” She didn’t mean to sound so cavalier, but the whole thing was so hard to believe. If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she’d have dismissed him out of hand. Her eyes widened and she stood up from her chair at his confession. Her body was stiff, her gaze trained upon him, as if he would disappear like a thief in the night if she so much as broke eye contact. “Did you just tell me— you killed Agent Sterling?” Savannah stared at this man, dumbfounded. “I think I’m supposed to arrest you for manslaughter,” she said, but somehow, she didn’t. She didn’t even move.

“Oh. The fungus was a metaphor. Probably more like an ocean… demon? Honestly, I was real close to dyin’ last month, so I haven’t had time to do any ‘investigating.’” Winn swung his legs up under him, crossed, and cocked his head. His body was loose. There’d be plenty of time for him to agonize over his decisions in whichever afterlife he ended up in, but this one? No. “I mean no disrespect here, Agent Lim, but d’you really think those charges’d hold up? C’mon, you’re smarter than that.” Winn hummed, taking another sip of his coffee. “I wouldn’t be convicted by any human court. The marks on Agent Sterling’s neck,” Winn raised his hand, eyeing it with faux-disinterest, “were made by claws, for one. I was actin’ in self-defense, like I said, for the other — which is, unless Maine’s laws are weird as fuck, I’m pretty sure’ll get me out without gettin’ charged. And for a third, I’d argue,” Winn sighed, “that I’m not the one who killed Agent Javier Sterling. I killed a monster using his body for somethin’. For what, I really don’t know.” Winn’s gaze turned hard. “And none of that’s goin’ to matter, ‘cause no one would believe a word either of us said.”

Savannah didn’t believe in ocean demons. Why would she? Ocean cordyceps had been hard enough to wrap her head around. This nice, respectful young man had just confessed to her as if it was just another damn August afternoon. Nothing to see here, folks. White Crest was the most bizarre place she’d ever experienced. “No, no, I don’t think they’d hold up. Where’s the evidence? Is there a body? A murder weapon? Or did you dispose of all that too?” She scoffed. Maybe she could get him on destruction of evidence, of covering up Javier’s death, but even that was a long shot. Yes, it would be her word against his, but since her story made no damn sense either, it was going to be tough to do anything at all. “I don’t know if I even believe you,” she said firmly, like that would give her some kind of one-up on him. “There is no such thing as people-possessing ocean monsters,” she said. This whole town seemed as if it was playing one huge joke on her. She folded her arms across her chest. “Take me to his body.”

Winn was quiet while Savannah ran through her litany of questions. There were only so many ways to bust open a mind, let someone know the world was much, much bigger than they imagined. Unfortunately for Agent Lim, Winn hadn’t had to explain himself — or the supernatural world at large — to a garden variety human in, uh, ever. But leading with Javier’s death had been the only option, right? Otherwise, what, shift in front of her? Naw, too dangerous, and he didn’t have spare clothes on him. “Thing about the truth? You don’t have to believe me. As for a body? Doubt it’s there, anymore. Enough flesh-eating things in our rivers that the corpse was destined to get snacked on. But, look, I get it. Evidence.” As much as he loathed to admit it, another journey through his memories could be the easiest solution here. It’d take time, time that Agent Lim didn’t necessarily have. “I want answers, same as you. But it might take some doin’, and it’s gonna require you to trust me. Trust that I want to—” fight? destroy? “—bring to justice whatever hurt Agent Sterling. I said before, I won’t lie to you. And I might be able to give you something to work with. Teamwork’d be better than workin’ against each other, right?” Winn stood, holding out his hand.

Savannah's head was spinning. There was so much sincerity in the man before her. He was just honest, kind even. She wanted to scream, as if yelling would make all this go away, somehow make it easier to digest. She could yell over and over that this wasn't true, but she somehow felt the reality of it, no matter what kind of scepticism she might have wanted to win out, somehow she just knew that Winn was telling the truth. "You know this is the fucking weirdest buddy cop duo ever," she sighed, but extended her hand to his. "I'm going to need a drink."

#paras #with: winn

8 notes · View notes

theveryworstthing · 5 years

Photo

hello everyone, here are some very rough sketches of hare Messenger/caravan friends. i wanna draw more of these because i’ve finally settled on a general design and now i’m ready to get wacky with them.

but first.

it is time for lore.

this isn’t everything i want to say about hares and caravans and their relationship with rabbits and the above ground world but i figure it’s a start. so welcome to Hare Caravans: a short history intertwined with landscaping and postal work.

The beginnings of a journey: staying above ground where all the things that want to kill you are is good actually.

The first hare leveret was born at about the same time as the first rabbit kit. Some say that the two litters were only a nest apart, or that they were even reared together. No one is quite sure of the exact times and distances though because the only people there were the Mothers, who are all gone now, and a few couple minute old gods, who while gods, were just dumb babies who had no idea that any of this would ever matter in the future.

The main thing of importance is that in the beginning there were rabbits and hares in the same general area dealing with the same general existence bullshit and for some reason instead of wising up and going underground like the rabbits, the hares decided (in what had to be a blinding species-wide wave of spite and wanderlust because let’s be real they are EVEN TWITCHIER than rabbits) to stay above ground,learn to do sick stunts, and make the world Deal With Them.

Both rabbits and hares are naturally very quick on their feet but hares are faster and ridiculously acrobatic. They were able to live above ground on the island for so long because even though they still got got every now and then, they were able to juke their way to survival most of the time. But this made hares very solitary. They’re a little more resistant to fear death but it’s still a thing that happens and stress took less hares than you’d think but more hares than you’d hope. They didn’t have the guaranteed safety of the rabbits’ warrens to relax in and it’s hard to build a stable community when a group = a delicious easy target for predators. That’s where the Messengers came in.

The Messengers At first they were merely a small guild of traveling hares that worked as sort of builders/landscapers/proto-postalworkers. Everything about them was kept pretty hush hush and their founder, a tall albino hare who even then everyone suspected had been doing this job way before this job had a name, wasn’t much into discussing the business to those they didn’t deem prospective hires. This made them one of, if not the first, secret society on the island.

The Messengers would collect and deliver letters, small items, and general news from different parts of the island, packing their cargo on quick beetle steads and leading them through the night to distant territories. When they got to a new area they set up cryptic signs and elaborately camouflaged tents that served as pop-up meeting places for whoever was passing through. They were hardworking, crafty, sleep deprived, respectful of their clients’ privacy, and their slogan: ‘I might only be stopped by death and then I only might be’ has persisted as an empowering and slightly threatening mantra for the hares, rabbits, and now vultures who continue in their stead. Truly strong roots for modern island derived postal work.

The Outposts Now when I said those first Messenger-built tents were camouflaged I mean that they were functionally, borderline rage inducingly, invisible. Messengers would arrange entire false landscapes around their tents and the tents themselves were made of thick woven mats covered in layers of cultivated moss, fungus, and various bits of predator-offensive local vegetation for an optimal ‘this is totally a normal danger bush please piss off’ vibe. Some of their later outposts(where modern ‘postal’ work gets its name)included hidden doorways on seemingly regular boulders, clusters of reeds hiding entrances to submerged airtight rooms, and that one open grove near the Center that looked like nothing until you inevitably walked smack into an expertly painted wall like a dang cartoon character. That was the Head Messenger’s favorite outpost (and the most entertaining to watch from afar).

Most of these places got wrecked by time but some people say that the grove outpost still exists, much to the irritation of local postal workers. This is just an urban legend. Their official stance is that the place was destroyed in a storm shortly after the hares all left the island, and a search of the grove certainly supports their exasperated claims that nothing is there anymore. But there are also no ruins of any sort in the grove and to this day the rare rabbit or vulture will come back from their travels with stories about face planting into air and discovering a weird old building that contained nothing but a single black envelope. Again, the island postal service says these are all just urban legends and nothing more.

But also, maybe just keep away from the area and if you see any black envelopes please contact your nearest postal worker asap.

The Signs Since the outposts were so hidden, if you weren’t lucky enough to stumble into one or you didn’t notice the appearance of a New Bush, then you had to look for the signs. A stack of flat stones or a single hare antler tipped with black were signals that a Messenger was visiting. These items would always be at the base of a tree or some other large immovable object where the Messenger would use paint made with Medic’s Eye fungi spores to draw directional symbols that would light up momentarily when the surface was tapped. Before they left the Messenger would always recollect and scrub away their sign materials. Just leaving up signs was irresponsible, as future Messengers might set up in a different spot and conflicting signs would be confusing. Also, bandits might use abandoned signs to lure victims into ambushes. Very few bandits ever had the chance to do this since Messengers were diligent about erasing their signs and very few of them escaped the Messengers if they found out which hooligans had betrayed the people’s trust in mail, but still.

The birth of caravans and getting creative At the outposts, hares would collect their mail, talk amongst themselves, and generally spend leisure time with their brethren without the threat of danger. The outposts were (purposefully) hard to find, only stayed open for a day or two at most, and the messengers had a serious lack of chill due to their busy schedules, but people really loved them. As interest in these meeting spots grew trade increased, people grew closer(within reason, hares were still real solitary at that point), and eventually caravans were created to make setting up these pop-up marketplaces/communities easier.

Of course by this point the safest spots had small permanent outposts with a rotating staff of guard hares (and a few adventurous rabbits). But hares were too twitchy to leave whole towns just…there. Out in the open. Permanently. A house can’t run. Or at least most houses can’t run. Who in their right mind would want long term shelter you can’t pick up and take with you? But a vehicle? Strap a streamlined wagon to a strong beetle, or better yet get a walking worm that can really sprint, and now you’re in business(some of the most beloved hare fables are about a witch who lived in a walking worm that ran around on pillyki legs). And so these hidden outposts became the center of constantly fluctuating camouflaged towns made of caravans.

The wagons and worms that inhabited these towns were really…a sight. Of course they were all the equivalent of speedwalking shrubbery, but the variation! The ingenuity! The application of literally whatever they found while rambling around! Closer looks revealed dead branch coverings held up by years of interlocking shed antlers and tied together with cast off scraps of green fabric that were coated with wax and artfully styled into very convincing leaves. Plants with woven roots for floors and branches for roofs were kept on shallow platforms of soil and molded into tiny but ever growing shacks. Walking worms resembling rotted logs filled fine garden lounges and stages and libraries and laundry rooms tiled with smooth bits of broken pottery. In a small tent that from the outside looks like three sticks and an unfortunate amount of wolf poop, a midwife helps deliver three healthy leverets. A wonderland made of pure natural beauty, art, and a little teeny tiny bit of collected travel garbage. Magnificent.

It really is too bad that most of the more fragile ones didn’t survive the trip to the mainland. Being successfully converted into boats was just not in the cards for them. Silver lining? They got to re-design them all over again with mainland materials. So even though true Island Vehicles are rare now they’re all just as funky.

The Connections Caravan communities really changed hare society. They had always had culture and stories and art, but it was hard to enjoy any of that with frickin’ wolves and owls on their heels 24/7. While families with younger children or disabled members traveled together, it was just so much safer to stay in small distant groups if you stayed in a group at all. This meant very little non trade or procreation mingling. The relative safety of the caravan towns gave birth to a wave of new art and culture exploration since people now had time, space, and input from so many new friends with similar interests in the same place. It’s amazing what you can do when you aren’t constantly running on survival mode and even though they had had access to friendly rabbit spaces before, it just wasn’t the same. Soon entire droves of hares started moving together in very loose communities. Wagons or worms never really right next to each other but all heading in the same direction on their own paths and coming back together at the end of their journeys. Close enough to run to a neighbor if need be but never clumped up. As these droves solidified, they each developed distinct new customs and skills, and the connections between members became as strong as any warren.

These connections are especially apparent in an old practice called Path Merging. Originally only done to seal peace treaties after the rare violent cross-caravan spat but now a common practice, if a single leveret is born (a rarity) they are paired with a single leveret of a similar age from a neighboring ally caravan and raised together. The pair travels back and forth all of their young lives, first with their mothers and then alone, living in their home caravans for different parts of the year. A few of these pairs stay together forever and some only part ways when they start their own families but ideally they at least make it to twenty years before calling for a separating ritual for the whole deal to be Solid. Similar to a diplomatic betrothal but based more on creating lifelong partners of any relationship type over setting up a marriage, this fostering of an intense bond from being the only true constants in each other’s lives is a show of good will and connection between their people. In a way they come to embody the essence of their community and as single litters are seen as a sign of pure hare independence and the old ways of their lost island home, these children are very powerful symbols.

It also means surefire preferential trading and aid from what are pretty much blood-contract bound allies.

These leverets are supposed to be raised like any other, but may receive a little special treatment in times of hardship to prove one caravans’ dependability to the other. A pair being returned in bad condition or with tales of abuse can start or further irritate conflicts. A falling out between the bonded pair can also be disastrous but it happens. You usually have no idea if babies will just super hate each other once they learn what hate is! Or what life in general will throw at you! If everything else is fine but they’re just not compatible people then after a while the caravan elders from both sides will come together and amicably agree to separate them. Although if one deeply wrongs or injures the other there can be some…dire consequences for the offending party that can splash back on their community depending on the situation. Hares almost always avoid war, but they’re real big on justice.

Despite this intense ritual, hares are still hares. They travel together now but they’re still kind of solitary creatures. Caravans are still pretty spaced out affairs, relying on radios and slime mold compasses to keep in touch when someone needs to wander away from the group for a bit. Outside of the usual life threatening issues, they’re not really worried about wandering the untamed mainland alone.

It’s not really a big deal when you have somewhere to come back to.

#rabbits of downtrodden #long post #hares #walking worm #bugs

1K notes · View notes

unfortunate-stranger-losers · 5 years

Photo

Six Baudelaires AU, Part Three {AO3} {Masterlist} {Part One} {Part Two}

Chapter Fifteen → in which Lilac and Fiona are Gay as Hell

It wasn’t until after they finished their chowder, and Phil left to clean the dishes, that Klaus asked, “Captain Widdershins? VFD stands for Volunteer Fire Department, right?”

“Aye!”

“Then why are you underwater?”

Nick, who was helping Fiona and Solitude clean up the tidal charts, said, “Because they’re not a literal fire department, more of a figurative one.”

“Aye!” Widdershins nodded, not noticing Nick’s disdainful tone. “I’m told it started that way, but the volunteers were interested in every such thing! I was one of the first to sign up for Voluntary Fish Domestication. That was one of the missions of Anwhistle Aquatics. Aye! I spent four long years training salmon to swim upstream and search for forest fires. That was when you were very young, Fiona, but your brother worked right alongside me. You should have seen him sneaking extra worms to his favorites! Aye! The program was a modest success! Aye! But then Cafe Salmonella came along, and took our entire fleet away. The Snicket siblings fought as best they could! But as the poet wrote, ‘too many waiters turn out to be traitors.’”

“I am so lost.” Violet admitted.

“The Snicket siblings?” Klaus asked. “Like Jacques?”

“Aye! Jacques was once a member of our crew! He-”

“We think we found a message directed to him.” Lilac said. “That’s how we found out there was a gathering, it was Verbal Fridge Dialogue, addressed to JS.”

“That’s impossible! Aye!” Widdershins waved his hand. “Jacques Snicket is dead! Aye! Nobody would address a message to a dead person!”

“Perhaps the sender didn’t know.” Violet said.

“Or perhaps it was some other JS.” Solitude said.

“Speaking of mysterious initials,” Klaus said, “I wonder what GG stands for. If we knew what the cave was called, we might have a better idea of our journey.”

“Aye!” Captain Widdershins said. “Let’s guess!”

“Aye, let’s not.” Nick said.

Fiona frowned as she pushed the tidal charts into a drawer. “Wait a minute.” she said. “I may have an idea.”

“Really?” Lilac asked, watching her as she ran to a cabinet.

“I just remembered a recent addition to my mycological library.” Fiona said, opening a door and pulling out a book. “This might be useful.”

The captain sighed. “You and your mushrooms and molds!”

“Let her speak.” Lilac snapped, shooting him a glare. “She has an idea.”

“It was in the table of contents.” Fiona said, bringing the book back over to the table, as the Baudelaires peered over her shoulder. “Chapter Thirty-Six, The Yeast of Beasts. Chapter Thirty-Seven, Morel Behavior in a Free Society. Chapter Thirty-Eight, Fungible Mold, Moldable Fungi. Chapter Thirty-Nine, Visitable Fungal Ditches. Chapter Forty, The Gorgonian Grotto- there!”

“Grotto?” Sunny asked.

“Another word for cave.” Violet said.

Fiona flipped to Chapter Forty, and then read aloud, “The Gorgonian Grotto, located in propinquity to Anwhistle Aquatics, has appropriately wraithlike nomenclature, with roots in Grecian mythology, as this conical cavern is fecund with what if perhaps the bugaboo of the entire mycological pantheon.”

“Aye! I told you that book was too difficult!” Captain Widdershins said. “A young child can’t unlock that sort of vocabulary!”

“Piss off, we can get it.” Nick hissed.

“Aye! Watch your language!”

“Aye! I don’t give a fuck!”

Klaus sighed and pushed Nick back so he could get a better look at the book. “It says the Gorgonian Grotto is named after something in Greek mythology.”

“Gorgon!” Solitude said excitedly, shaking her head as if she still had snakes woven into it. “It’s named after Medusa!”

“That sounds right.” Nick said.

“She was a legendary monster who could turn people into stone.” Fiona mentioned.

“Aye! I think I went to school with such a woman!” the captain said.

“Snakes!” Solitude said excitedly.

“The book is saying,” Lilac said, “That it’s appropriate that the grotto is named after a legendary monster, becauses there’s a sort of monster living in a cave- a bugaboo.”

“Bugaboo?” Sunny asked.

“A bugaboo can be any kind of monster.” Klaus said. “We could call Count Olaf a bugaboo, if we felt so inclined.”

Nick stared very hard at the floor. “I’d rather not speak of him at all.”

“This bugaboo is a fungus of some sort.” Fiona said, and she continued reading. “The Medusoid Mycelium has a unique conducive strategy of waxing and waning: first a brief dormant cycle, in which the mycelium is nearly invisible, and then a precipitated flowering into speckled stalks and caps of such intense venom that it is fortunate the grotto serves as a quarantine.”

“Translation, please.” Solitude said, turning to Klaus.

Before Klaus could say anything, though, Fiona spoke up. “It’s rather simple, really. There are three main parts to a mushroom. You can see the cap and the stalk, but the part you can’t see is the mycelium. It’s like a bunch of thread, branching out underneath the ground. Some mushrooms have mycelia that go on for miles.”

Lilac sat on the table, eyes wide. “I remember reading a little about that at Prufrock, when we were studying the fungus in our shack.”

“I’d love to hear about that, when we have time.” Fiona smiled. “But it says here that the Medusoid Mycelium waxes and wanes, which means the caps and stalks spring up from the mycelium, and then wither away, and then spring up again. So you don’t know the mushrooms are there until they poke up from the ground.”

“That sounds unnerving.” Violet said, as Klaus pulled out his commonplace book to write this down.

“Oh, it gets worse.” Fiona said, not sounding very bothered at all; she was too excited about her fungus. “The mushrooms are exceedingly poisonous. Listen to this: ‘As the poet says, “A single spore has such grim power / That you may die within the hour.”’ A spore is like a seed- if it has a place to grow, it will become another mycelium. But if someone eats it or breaths it in, it could cause death.”

“Within the hour.” Lilac repeated.

“Monev,” Sunny said, which meant, “That’s a fast-acting poison.”

“Must fungal poisons have cures,” Fiona said, “And the poison of a deadly fungus can be the source of some wonderful medicines. I’ve been working on a few myself, actually. But this book says it’s lucky the grotto acts as a quarantine.”

“Quarwa?” Sunny asked.

“Quarantine is when something dangerous is isolated, so the danger cannot spread.” Nick explained to her, also sitting on the table.

“Because the Medusoid Mycelium is in uncharted waters, very few people have been poisoned.” Violet said.

“If someone brought even one spore to dry land,” Lilac shivered, “Who knows what would happen?”

“We won’t find out!” Widdershins said. “We’re not going to take any spores! Aye! We’re just going to grab the Sugar Bowl and be on our way! Aye! I’ll set a course right now!”

“Are you sure?” Fiona asked, shutting the book. “It sounds very dangerous.”

“Dangerous? Aye! Dangerous and scary!” the captain said, already climbing the rope ladder to the controls of the submarine. “Scary and Difficult! Aye! Difficult and mysterious! Aye! Mysterious and uncomfortable! Aye! Uncomfortable and risky! Aye! Risky and noble! Aye!”

“I’m going to take Solitude back to our room,” Nick muttered, picking up the toddler, “Where we don’t have to listen to him. Anyone else wanna go?”

“Even if it could hurt us, aye! The amount of treachery in this world is enormous! Aye! Think of the crafts we saw on the sonar screen! There’s always something more enormous and terrifying on our tails!”

“I’ll take Sunny.” Violet said.

“And so many of the noble submarines are gone! Aye! You think the Herman Melville suits were the only noble uniforms in the world? There used to be volunteers with PG Wodehouse and Carl Van Vechten! There were Comyns and Cleary and Archy and Mehitabel! But now volunteers are scarce! So the best we can do is one small noble thing!”

“We should really get some sleep.” Klaus agreed, shutting his commonplace book. “Before the grotto.”

“Like retrieving the Sugar Bowl! Aye! Remember my personal philosophy! He who hesitates is lost!”

“Or she!” Fiona said.

“Or they!” Solitude added.

“Lilac, you coming?” Violet asked, as she lifted up Sunny from the table.

Lilac hesitated. “Um, Fiona, I’d… like to see your fungal experiments. If that’s alright. Maybe I can help.”

Fiona smiled. “Maybe. I could use a mechanic.”

The Baudelaires all shared a very excited look, and when Fiona turned her back, Lilac gave them a glare and a middle finger.

“You all get some sleep. I’ll meet you in the dorms.” she said.

“You have all this in your room?” Lilac asked, spinning around the room to take it all in.

“Well, technically I sleep in the dorms, because I converted that bed into a table, and used the strips of the mattress to make some wall art.” Fiona said nervously.

Inside the small room- barely larger than the closet, Lilac noted- several tanks had been set up, as well as multiple other containment boxes. A large table, that had been crudely fashioned from the bed, sat in the middle, holding some of the tanks, as well as a flow hood, several tools, blocks and jars, and scattered mycological books.

“I know I should have a better table, but it’s the best I can get.” Fiona said. “Stepfather won’t buy me mycological equipment, so I have to get it all myself. My mother told me to just throw bricks through shop windows and steal what I need, but I’m not near those a lot, so improv it is.”

“It’s very impressive.” Lilac whispered, kneeling down to look over several petri dishes. “Are you growing some in here?”

“Yes. But I’ve got some in the plant terrariums, too.” Fiona said, gesturing to the tanks that she’d managed to attach to the walls. “A bit difficult to make sure they stay upright in such an old submarine, but that just makes it a challenge, and challenges are fun.”

“Which one’s this?” Lilac asked, moving to a tank. “Are those wood chips?”

“Yes. Those are my Stropharia Rugosoannulata mushrooms.” Fiona walked over, gesturing proudly. “They’re good at bioremediation, I hope to start setting them out in polluted waterways after the meeting on Thursday, once I get the okay from some other volunteers.”

“Stropharia Rugosoannulata.” Lilac repeated slowly.

“I mean, you could call them King stropharia. I just like the scientific names. They’re fun to say.”

“Oh, that’s completely valid.” Lilac smiled. “I learned Russian when I was younger just because the boys read Anna Karenina and all the names were fun to say.”

“You speak Russian?”

“I mean, I’m not fluent-”

“That’s still impressive. All I’ve got is Latin, Māori and Urdu.”

“I know more Italian. Mom taught me a lot, because operas are usually Italian.”

“Your Mother was an Opera singer?”

“An actress.” Lilac paused. “What about your Mom? What did she do?”

“She helped on the submarine.” Fiona’s face fell slightly, and she moved over to a group of mushroom grow bags. “Um, I don’t remember much about her. She died when I was five or six, and Stepfather doesn’t tell me much about her.”

Lilac flinched. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t-”

“It’s alright. My brother was a poet.” Fiona smiled. “At least, that’s what I remember from him. He disappeared around the same time as my Mother… but he was around much more, because he didn’t have to do as much Volunteer work. His job was watching me. He taught me how to play cards.”

“Our parents were Volunteers, too.” Lilac muttered.

“I know.”

“But we didn’t.” Lilac sighed. “We didn’t know anything about VFD.”

Fiona blinked. “Really? I’ve been raised completely in VFD, I just assumed that’s how all Volunteers recruited their kids.” Lilac shook her head, and then Fiona carefully asked, “What did your brother mean? About… recruitment?”

“I don’t… know. Nick learned a lot of things while he was captured, but when he tries to say them… it doesn’t always work out.” Lilac glanced at her. “But he, um, doesn’t have a great opinion of VFD.”

Fiona bit her lip. “Well. Maybe we can discuss that when we get the Sugar Bowl. I’m not sure we have enough diving suits, but maybe he’ll want to go.”

“Do you know how small the cave is?”

“Afraid not.”

“He’s not too good with small spaces.”

“Then hopefully we get to the last safe place fast.” Fiona said. “This submarine seems smaller the longer you’re here. And I hope the last safe place is big.”

“Well, it’s a hotel.” Lilac said. “That’s gotta be big.”

Fiona stared at her.

“Oh. You didn’t know that.”

“My… Stepfather said that I didn’t need to know. That all I needed to know was what VFD needed from me.”

“That’s a horrible way to live.” Lilac said. “If all we knew was what we were told, we’d never know what was right or wrong for ourselves.”

“I don’t really have a choice. He’s my guardian, and VFD left him in charge of me.”

“Count Olaf was our guardian.” Lilac glared down at a tank of wood logs and Hericium Erinaceus. “And we fought back. We’re still fighting, and we’ll never stop until he’s…” she took a deep breath. “Until he can’t hurt us anymore.”

“I wish I was as brave as you. You must be fearless to go through all of what you have and still be sane.”

“We’re not fearless. I’m definitely not. But I’m…” Lilac struggled to find the words. “Hopeful. That one day everything will set itself right, or at least right enough we can find a place for ourselves.” She smiled. “No matter what… there’s always something.”

Fiona beamed at her, and then she said, “Listen, if you… if you don’t want to listen to me blabber on about fungi, I think we have some stuff that you could repair if you-”

“No! No, I want to hear it. I like…” Lilac paused. “I like hearing you talk about mushrooms. You get really passionate about it.”

“Passionate.” Fiona repeated. “Well, maybe you can tell me about your inventions or repairs afterwards.”

“Maybe I can fix that table up.” Lilac said, pulling her ribbon from her pocket and starting to tie back her hair. “What’s that over there?”

“Lentinula Edodes.” Fiona said, smiling at some fungus growing on a hardwood log. “Also known as Shiitake Mushrooms.”

“Shiitake?”

“Don’t start.” Fiona giggled.

“Don’t tell Violet and Nick what they’re called, or you’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Noted.”

They gave each other a look, and then burst out laughing.

Lilac and Fiona returned to the dorms very late, arms linked together as they chatted about a book they’d both enjoyed, about another sugar bowl whose contents were actually very well known. When they swung open the door, though, they quieted, and Lilac let out a soft gasp as she saw her siblings.

Violet and Klaus were sleeping on individual bunks, and Klaus had a book about different currents open on the pillow beside him. Solitude and Sunny had fallen asleep beside each other, curled under a single blanket, while Babbitt slept on a pillow, kicking their legs in their sleep. Nick, meanwhile, was passed out on a chair near the door, almost having fallen over; Lilac recognized this position quickly, from the many times he and Klaus or Violet would sit at the bottom of the stairs waiting for their parents to come home late at night.

“He was waiting for us.” Lilac whispered to Fiona, who smiled. Lilac slowly let go of Fiona’s arm and walked over, carefully lifting up her brother. She was having a bit of difficulty; shit, he was taller than her now. When did he and Klaus get so big?

She carried him to a bunk, lowering him onto it. “Go back to being five years old, okay?” Lilac whispered, reaching over to grab a blanket. “We’ll lock you in the closet again and then make ice cream towers.”

Fiona giggled a little, as she climbed up to her top bunk, watching with a very soft gaze. Lilac turned around, and flinched as she saw Nick starting to move.

“No, no,” she moved back to him, running a hand over his hair. “Go back to sleep. You need it.”

“Nu-uh.” he muttered, but Lilac could tell that in his few seconds of conscious, he’d already started to fall asleep again.

Lilac sighed and pulled the blanket over him. “You’ll be okay. You want me to sing?”

“Mm.”

“I’m not sure if that was a yes or a no.” Lilac laughed. “Just… go back to bed.”

Nick mumbled again. “Thanks, Mom.”

He was passed out again before Lilac could process what he’d said. She stared at him, her face paling. Fiona peered over the bunk, astonished to see tears start to form in her eyes. “Lilac?”

She stepped back, putting a hand over her face. Fiona leaned over the bunk until the eldest Baudelaire looked up at her, and then she said, “Are… I’m sorry, is this a happy or sad cry?”

Lilac opened her mouth to answer, but stopped. Like she herself wasn’t sure.

“Good or bad cry?”

Lilac shut her eyes. “Both.” she admitted.

“Both.” Fiona repeated, and then she reached out her hand to wipe Lilac’s tears away. “Aye.”

#asoue #asoue netflix #asoue movie #a series of unfortunate events #six baudelaires au #the grim grotto #six baudelaires official fic #mine #my fanfic

15 notes · View notes

illogicalbroccoli · 6 years

Text

Not OK

Content Warnings: Discussion of PTSD

Pairings: None, really

Summary: Tilly is there for everyone. Who is there for her?

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16964904

According to her mother, Sylvia Tilly had a character flaw. Actually, according to her mother, she had many character flaws, ranging from talking too much to choosing to spend her life fiddling with warp coils and matter converters in the depths of empty space. Tilly’s mother had sometimes even implied that Tilly’s allergies must stem from some hidden moral defect, worming its way to the surface as a bronchio-nasal reaction to artificial fibres. But among these flaws was the one that Tilly was thinking about now: Tilly couldn’t pass by anyone who looked sad.

It had started young. One of Tilly’s earliest memories was of herself at age four, walking to ballet lessons with her mother. As they walked, they passed the outdoor tables of a small cafe, where a man sat by himself, reading a PADD with a pained expression. Tilly had stopped, letting her mother march ahead, tapped the man on the knee and asked what was wrong, and if he wanted to hear a joke that would make him smile. She hadn’t had a chance to tell it – her mother, finally noticing that she was alone, had run back and snatched Tilly up, telling her NEVER to talk to strangers like that again.

The lesson didn’t take. At school, Tilly had always been the student who took it on herself to welcome the new kids, showing them where the bathrooms were, which the best swing was, where the biggest puddles formed when it rained. When she saw a kid crying, she would usually rush up to hug them and tell them it was OK. That was how she made her first real friend in school. It was also how she got punched for the first time. From kindergarten onward, her school reports gushed about her empathy, her compassion, her sunny disposition. Her mother would read these outpourings with a tight mouth, and mutter about how her daughter would turn into a pushover.

Tilly knew she was not a pushover. Right now, though, she had to admit that, perhaps, a compulsion to comfort the sad could have its downsides. Not that Tilly had any desire to stop comforting people, but perhaps it would be nice if there weren’t quite as many people to comfort at once. First and foremost, of course, there was Michael. These days, Tilly spent at least one evening in three lying with her arms around Michael, feeling the waves of silent sobs move through her body. As a child, Michael said, she could only remember crying a couple of times. She seemed to be making up for it now.

Then there was Paul. Tilly had known Paul as a sarcastic, persnickety, perfectionist, always ready with a cutting remark; she had known him as a singing, dancing, obsessively joke-making goofball, hopped up on mycelial spores and tardigrade DNA. Nowadays, she was getting to know silent Stamets. In Engineering, Paul worked obsessively, eyes fixed on his screen, speaking only to ask Tilly to check readings or make calculations. She had sat with him at lunch a couple of times. Paul had eaten mostly silently too; Tilly’s attempts to start conversation had been met by shrugs and one-word answers. She dearly wanted to tell him he could talk to her about Hugh, that sharing would help, that it was OK to feel whatever he was feeling. She didn’t dare, though, and not just because he was her boss. He seemed brittle somehow, like too strong a shock might shatter him like a porcelain cup. So she said nothing.

And what about Captain Saru? Or rather Acting Captain Saru, as he insisted on reminding her. Not that she could ever ask Saru about his feelings, but she had served with the Kelpien long enough that she thought she could read him. She could see that Saru was not happy. As the first Kelpien in Starfleet, Saru bore so much. In popular imagination, Kelpiens were a species of cowards, who would turn tail and run at the first sight of danger. Even after everything he had done, Tilly knew that Saru still felt the weight of that stereotype. He had led the Discovery out of a hopeless situation, had held true to the ideals of Starfleet when Starfleet itself had abandoned them, and still, she knew, there were many who expected him to fail. True, they had given him a medal, but they had not given him Discovery. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be back taking orders from someone else; the admiralty was, apparently, not ready to put a cowardly Kelpien in charge of a starship.

And those were only the people she saw regularly. She had lost count of the one-offs, the random people she encountered in the cafeteria, in the recreation room, in the corridors. Like the crewmember she had found sobbing against a bulkhead, whose sister had been on the Buran when Lorca blew it up; the nurse whose hand shook when he tried to take Tilly’s blood during a checkup, and who had explained that he hadn’t slept in three days because whenever he slept he dreamed of Klingons ambushing him with bat’leths and knives… And so many more. Discovery had been, almost literally, to hell and back, and everyone bore scars. Of course, there were psych-trained medics in sickbay. Two of them - for a crew of 130. So Tilly picked up the slack. She listened. She hugged, when people wanted it. Sometimes she gave advice, or just made silly jokes to distract them, for a few minutes, from their pain.

If you had asked Tilly how she was taking it, she’d have said she was fine. That helping people was her thing. That feelings were good, no matter what they were. That making other people happy made her happy too. All of that was true. But, she was starting to have to admit to herself, she wasn’t fine.

The realization had come very suddenly. She had been on the bridge, at her station, doing routine engine diagnostics. Saru had asked her for some statistic, she couldn’t even remember, and she had pulled up the entry and read it out. Saru made one of his clicking noises, and said “Ensign, I do not believe that can be correct.” Tilly had looked, and saw he was right, she had pulled up entirely the wrong menu. And then it hit. Her stomach felt like it had just fallen down a turbolift shaft, her face got terribly hot, and she knew that she was about to cry. Sylvia Tilly’s crying was like everything else she did: it was not subtle. She bit her lip, tried breathing slowly through her nose, counting to twenty, all the other things they had taught her when she was small. It was not going to work.

“Captain Saru?” she said, working hard to keep the waver out of her voice. “Request permission to return to quarters. I’m- I’m unwell.”

Saru tilted his head, and for a moment fixed his pale blue eyes on her.

Please please please please say yes. Please don’t let me start bawling on the bridge.

“Very well, Ensign. Do you need to report to sickbay?”

“No, it’s- no I’ll be fine,” Tilly said.

She walked to the lift doors, step after careful step. She managed to hold it together just until the doors closed.

* * *

The next day found Tilly eating lunch alone. Michael, Paul and Saru were in the ready room, in some sort of holo-meeting with Admiral Terral. Normally, Tilly would have gone and sat with the bridge crew, but after yesterday’s incident, she wasn’t sure she trusted herself around them. So she sat alone, eating her macaroni and cheese, and stared idly out at the ripples and flashes of the warp slipstream.

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

Tilly started, banging her knee on the tabletop. Lieutenant Detmer stood by her table, a laden tray in her hands.

Tilly hadn’t talked much to Detmer. If she was honest, she had sort of been avoiding her. Not because of her implants, Tilly would have hastened to add. True, when she first joined Discovery , Tilly had been slightly taken aback by Detmer’s one cold blue eye, by the forking trail of metal along her scalp. But that had faded quickly; now Detmer was just Detmer, and her implants were just another part of her, like her hair or her smile. No, Tilly avoided Detmer because she was tall, slim, and straight-haired; because she didn’t talk much, kept her feelings in check, and projected an air of professionalism at all times. (Almost all times, Tilly corrected, remembering that party all those months ago). Basically, Detmer was everything that Tilly’s mother wished Tilly were. Tilly knew that that was a stupid reason to be nervous of someone, that Detmer seemed perfectly nice, that she was being stupid for letting her mother get in her way like this. Nonetheless, Tilly avoided Detmer.

She realized that she had kept Detmer waiting quite a time while she thought, and said, “Oh, um, yes, of course, sure. I was just- I mean, if you want to. Of course you want to, because you asked, um, yeah.”

SHUT UP SYLVIA , Tilly thought.

“Thanks,” Detmer said, smiled, and sat.

They ate in silence for a moment.

“It’s been quite the year, hasn’t it?” Detmer said.

Tilly drew in a breath. She wanted to shout not now! Come back tomorrow, next week, I’ll totally listen to you. But just not today! But she didn’t. Instead she said,

“Did you want to talk about something?”

Detmer held Tilly’s gaze for a moment.

“Actually,” she said, “I was wondering if you did.”

Tilly blinked.

“You left the bridge pretty fast yesterday,” Detmer said. “I wanted to make sure you were OK.”

Tilly opened her mouth. Then she closed it.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m OK.”

Detmer took a sip of water.

“Really?”

“No,” Tilly said. “I guess I’m not.”

Detmer smiled.

“I have forty-five minutes until my next shift. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Tilly took a deep breath.

“OK,” she said.

And she did.

#Star Trek #Discovery #Sylvia Tilly #Keyla Detmer #Michael Burnham #Paul Stamets #Saru #CW ptsd

8 notes · View notes

poisonwonders · 6 years

Text

POISON IVY.

pamela lillian isley. twenty six.

biochemist / botanist / toxicologist. MOTHER NATURE.

i am not ruined. i am ruination.

okay so ------- ivy is mostly based on the PAMELA ISLEY we encounter in DC’s prime earth universe, but some influences are also drawn from new earth and DC rebirth. a lot is also just AU / headcanons.

BASICS: ivy is 26, currently working at a lab that works on researching different toxins & poisons. she did not die during the whole thanos ordeal.

obviously no one has to read all this because i got carried away as per usual ! i’ve labeled each section if there is something in particular u want to know ! c:

BACKGROUND.

domestic abuse cw, child abuse cw, parental death cw, murder cw:/

she grew up incredibly sheltered, hidden away from sight. her father locked her away and used threats and fear to force her to stay inside. he also made her believe that if she went outside, into the sun, she would burn. pamela wholeheartedly believed this, because she did have a rare skin condition that made her sensitive to sunlight.

so her mother home schooled her, and tried to protect her the best she could. it was never enough, for either of them.

ivy’s mother emptied her heart of sorrows and poured all her energy into her garden. as a result, it was a beautiful place, filled with carefully tended flowers from all over the world and meticulously trimmed fruit trees and bushes. pamela could see it from her window, and she spent most of her days looking through the blinds and daydreaming about what life outside might be like. she didn’t notice that her mother’s garden grew little by little, every time her father was sorry for yet another unforgivable, unspeakable thing that he had done. but how was pamela to know that her mother’s pain was measured in flowers? that the reason her father showered ( no, drowned ), her mother in the most expensive bouquets, flower arrangements and exotic plants - was to keep her quiet? buy her forgiveness.

every now and then when her father was away for work, her mother would let pamela out into the garden, just as dusk was setting. she’d bask in the day’s last ray of sunshine, taking in the feeling of warmth across her face, stinging her skin ever so lightly. she wouldn’t dare be out there for long. her fear of her father, combined with her fear of her skin igniting, made her careful.

but no matter how careful she and her mother were, disaster eventually struck when ivy was eleven. her father came home from a work trip early ------ and saw his ‘beloved’ daughter outside, flowers in her hair, pale cheeks rosy with laughter. that night, her mother was sent to the ER. she came home the next day, her skin stained black and blue. her mother pretended like nothing had happened, and instead immediately went out to her garden. it had grown, over night. slowly, but certainly, ivy began to see a pattern form. when her mother was trying to hide another bruise, the garden expanded, and a new vase of beautiful flowers stood on the kitchen table. she may have been young, but pamela finally understood that flowers could be used to manipulate, to destroy, to conquer.

but her mother didn’t stop - she refused to let her daughter be cooped up like a beautiful bird in a cage. so she continued to bring a young and frightened pamela outside. she spoke to her in a low voice, about how flowers bound this world together, how they were linked to its very core. she spun tales of girls just like pamela, with flowers in their hair, dancing underneath the starlight, transforming into fairies and witches and elves. she explained that her garden always listened, and if you spoke to flowers, and you kept very very quiet, they’d answer. so pamela was bewitched, and her daydreams of the magical garden continued. she’d sit perched in her bedroom window, her gaze fixed on the roses below, watching them sway in the wind.

daydream turned into yet another nightmare when she was twelve. she saw it all happen, from her window. she saw how her father dragged out a lifeless body, and began to dig up the roses that pamela & her mom loved so much. she saw how careless he was, how flowers were thrown aside, how he barely looked at his wife before tossing her into a hole beneath the garden that she had poured her soul into. now she became part of it.

it took a few weeks of ‘your mother has gone to live with her sister, who is very ill’, before the police came knocking. they took her father away, and a few months later, he was sentenced to a life term in prison.

pamela’s aunt moved into her house and started taking care of pamela instead, and pamela’s life took a drastic change for the better. she was now allowed to go outside, received treatment for her skin condition, and was enrolled in a private school. all of ivy’s free time went to her mother’s garden. on some level, she thought that through her flowers, she’d be able to keep her mother alive.

end of cw.

COLLEGE YEARS / BECOMING POISON IVY.

teacher / student relationship cw, human experiments / testing cw, abuse cw, ptsd cw.

ivy enrolled in college with a double major - chemistry and botany. she excelled in her course and soon became one of her chemistry teachers’ favorite. they embarked on an erratic relationship, their power balance completely skewed, with a naive pamela completely lost in love, thinking she had met the one. she was willing to do anything to maintain that feeling. so when he asked her to steal some seeds from another lab? there was no way that she would say no. and so it continued - he asked her to steal, from museums, from labs, from botanical gardens.

eventually, he found what he was looking for, and her perfect dream turned into yet another nightmare. he locked her up and experimented on her, injected her with every biochemical poison imaginable, a little at a time. seeing how her body reacted, how she slowly became immune to his tests. how almost succumbing to their effect drove her a little bit mad. what he didn’t count on was that pamela’s body would take to more than the poison [ continued in power section ].

after pamela broke free of his prison, she killed him. no remorse. just anger.

she dropped out of college. accidentally killed her new boyfriend with a kiss, and decided to go on the run.

at first, she had some trouble controlling her powers. the first few months, she didn’t dare touch anyone. too afraid that her touch would be toxic, deadly, disastrous. but a new rage had been ignited within her, and it was a rage that would soon become everything she was afraid of.

what was really nice though was that the sun now made her stronger, instead of weakening her!!! cool cool cool

she had been controlled by men many times by now - with disastrous consequences. people wanted to make her feel like she had been ruined, that she was now rotten. pamela refused to be anything other than their ruination in return. she wanted to prove to herself that she was now in control, that she had the power over men.

suffers PTSD after everything she has been through. it sucks

so maybe she went on a murder spree or two, while on the run. what about it?

also became very involved in environmental activist groups!!! often went to protests and was heavily involved with several pro-environment groups and their leaderships.

eventually.... started taking things waaaaaay across the line of what could be considered decent. became involved with underground groups, and turned to crime as the only answer to get the justice that she thought that she, along with mother nature, deserved.

end of cw.

ASYLUM YEARS / ‘MOVING ON’.

was eventually caught while trying to take control of los angeles, by threatening to release lethal fungus into the town’s water supply, and equally as lethal spores into the air. she wanted them to meet her environmental demands. they refused, and she was eventually captured.

after that, she was deemed insane, and was sent to an asylum.

eventually escaped, and returned to her ways of crime.

was caught again, and sent back to serve a year within the asylum’s wall.

decided to be smarter about it, and pretended that she was changed by her stay in the asylum.

she found a job in new york, at a local lab that researched biochemical toxins. it’s rumored that ivy has created poisons capable of wiping out half of the earth’s population. at that, she just laughs.

CURRENTLY / MOTIVATIONS.

ivy has managed to keep her job at the lab. possibly because the boss is a questionable figure, himself. mostly interested in money.

her motivation is to keep plants safe. she can feel every plant around her, and she can hear their pain. she communicates with them, and through them. they willfully do her bidding, and she can take control of any plant close enough to her. she is mother earth’s protector, first and foremost. any harm to her also hurts ivy.

working closely with both underground environmental groups and larger, public groups. her motivations never change. neither does her anger, or her ambition.

she will do ANYTHING to get what she wants.

pretty girls cloud her morals even further, we love a chaotic bi

PERSONALITY / CHARACTER TIDBITS.

murder cw.

that girl that’s always fucking running in high heels

loose morals? yeah

has her own very specific agenda and follows it religiously!

mood swings? yes. sweet like sugar one minute, sour like venom the next.

can be so cold!!!! literally doesn’t care 98% of the time if it isn’t related to plants or someone she loves.

she’s in a bad mood? probably would be best to hide.

might hate humanity, but she loves children. can be so maternal! will always protect kids and take them under her wing.

has a really nice aesthetic! wears a lot of dungarees, wooden shoes, flowery patterns and pastel colors.

uses her sexuality as a weapon.

so so so smart !!!!

kinda unstable, too?

lowkey into the idea of sisterhood. will have girls’ back.

used to be super naive, now she’s more cynical :c

thinks that humanity ain’t shit ( except for her gf, who is The Shit )

lowkey just wants to live on a deserted island with her gfs and her plants but she can’t do that yet because !!!! people !!!!! keep !!!! fucking with her plants. and ivy is also of the belief that someone’s gotta keep this world pure. so that’s what she’s about, really. purity. a peaceful world where plants are safe from harm. by any means necessary.

end of cw.

POWERS.

IMMUNITY:

ivy is completely immune to all toxins + poisons and can also use them as weapons through her skin and lips. the natural oils that her body produce are also laced with biochemical toxins, so her mere touch can be lethal, if she wants it to be. she can also conjure up toxins and manipulate plants into becoming toxic.

also possesses specialized toxins, such as truth serums & love potions.

MENTAL CONTROL OF PLANT LIFE:

ivy can control plants, completely and effortlessly. she can animate them to attack and ensnare her opponents. she can also create new plant hybrids and accelerate a plant’s growth and strength and size. if she has seeds with her, she can also grow new plants quickly.

ivy also has a very special relationship with plants, and treats them as her children and family members. they thus respond to her will and command.

she has also brought back formerly extinct plants to life !!!

she can also feel plants. what they’re feeling. she shares a deep telepathic bond with wildlife, and can communicate with all flowers, trees and other plants.

she can hear through plants! if she focuses, she can eavesdrop on people through plants. super useful, really.

hmmmmm plants also act as her spies, a lot!

DURABILITY & STRENGTH:

all that poison and it just made her stronger!!!! really though, it’s the sun that makes her strong!!!

anyways she’s more agile than the average human and less prone to injury.

#returningintro #✦ ° • ☆ ◣ ▽ ┊IVY • about. )#plot with me !!! ♥#also if u know where that quote is from we are instant bffs thank u

1 note · View note

bluebipples · 4 years

Text

Mora/Bean is Canon

(but I’m not sure about Endgame)

A very (very) long, unnecessary post. I’d like to start this off by saying bisexuality is consistently erased in the tumblr community, but this isn’t about if bean is bi or a lesbian because it literally does not matter

*ahem* Also, spoilers if you haven’t watched season 3 because, i don’t know, you probably have a life

anyway, there’s lots of speculation on whether or not Bean’s romance with Mora was a dream or not, and I’m here to give you the (probably) definitive answer (and throw a wild guess at the next season).

To begin with, Disenchantment is no stranger to foreshadowing. In fact, rewatching the show a few times you notice that the writers practically laid everything out in front of us the entire time. It’s actually admirable from a writer’s perspective, imo, but I’m not here to cream my pants over the writers. An example of their consistent foreshadowing would begin in the very first episode, when a blimp is seen in the far background of one of the scenes over some mountains. This would later be explained by the introduction of Steamland, which became a pinnacle location to the plot in seasons 2 and 3. There are plenty more examples, but I’d rather save it for the ones I’ve found in season 3. (And, one could argue, Bean asking a hot mermaid to nibble her earlobes was foreshadowing her later romance with one, but, hey, who am i to over-speculate)

Now, for the juicy stuff, as well as some artistic appreciation. Was anyone else absolutely in love with the ocean scenery? Like, somebody popped the fuck off in the background department bc hot damn. Don’t worry, I promise, this is extremely relevant.

(excuse the thing in the top left) This is the sky a few hours after they’d left Steamland, meaning it’s early morning / sunrise. Holy shit, I nearly cried when I saw this scene. This is goddamn beautiful. The clouds? The blending? The bright coloration? Who the fuck did this??? How do I give them money??

Sorry for the lack of a consistent timeline, but I didn’t get a good shot of the sky in the same day afternoon shot, so, here’s the afternoon sky before Bean and Elfo crash.

And this delightful pink son of a bitch is the sunset, into which our ladies rode with my heart soaring. At this point, I had to pause to search ‘disenchantment’ on tumblr to see if it was gay and sure enough the top image was mora and bean kissing. i love this hellhole.

Now, why the hell are skies relevant, my friends? Well (I’m starting to realize this is another fucking dumb sky post like that one that’s 10 years long but this is worse because I’m losing my mental sanity to prove half an episode in a 3 season cartoon actually happened)

This would be when the ‘dream’ starts, which is after Bean hits her head, and presumably, late afternoon. Swimming with your mermaid girlfriend underwater all the way to Mermaid Island probably takes some time, so they get there by, say, sunset maybe?

yes, i use subtitles, i do not have a good attention span. So, yeah, maybe sunset-ish, or like, really late afternoon.

and, of course, our wildest sapphic fantasies come true. again, excuse the subtitles.

Here’s the juicy juicy shit that real good-good. Please stay with me.

The lyrics to Mora’s song:

They say that you’re a drowner

And we’re parted by the sea

But I can keep you floating

If you just hold on to me

I’ll keep you safe, I’m on your team

And when it feels like just a dream

Believe it’s true

Because I do

And someday if there’s a war

On some not-so-distant shore

And lines are drawn

I’m never gone

This star’s your guide

And I am always on your side

Well, well, well, how the dots have connected and my gay brain is spiraling. Not only am I swooning, but I’m also itching with theories. Lots of ‘em. I’m about to give MatPat a run for his money.

First, I wanna get out there that if you tell me Bean’s subconscious could have written that song, you are incorrect. Bean is a lot of things, but... creative isn’t exactly one of them. There’s an entire episode dedicated to how bad she as at writing creatively (unless it’s about her familial issues): season 2, episode 8: In Her Own Write.

So, ‘when it feels like just a dream / believe it’s true’ sounds a whole lot like we’re being told something. Or, Bean is, but she’s not great at picking up hints. Another fact we are shown again and again and again.

‘Someday if there’s a war / On some not-so-distant shore’ I mean, this shouldn’t be so hard to point out. Kinda seems like Dreamland is in a bit of a tizzy right now, huh? I mean, what with the Elves learning that the Trøgs are direct descendants of their forgotten ancestors that adapted to living underground overtime and- oh- wait- did that not get revealed yet?

Well, let me do you a think by referencing Skyrim because that’s the easiest example I can think of. There are these ugly bitches that ruin my entire day every time I encounter them called the Falmer that dwell underground that were once Snow Elves, but had adapted to living underground after, you guessed it, the arrival of... goddamn nords/humans (a few centuries after, but still). Large eyes with poor vision, bigger ears to make up for that lack of vision, and a more grey skin pallor from, y’know, living underground. I won’t give you a lecture on evolution, because this is already super duper long. Kinda wild that Disenchanted would take a commonly used Fantasy trope like creatures colonized by humans adapting to life underground, it’s almost like the whole show is to poke fun of overdone fantasy tropes.

And, of course, it’s revealed that the Lost Kingdom of the Elves is underneath Dreamland, directly where the Trøgs dwell. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots. Elves have hidden themselves in this world - remember, Elfo was the first elf since Leavo to leave Elfwood in years. So let me spin you a yarn about a well-known tale called Colonization. I’m sure we all know where this is going. Clearly, not all of the elves stayed underneath Dreamland. Judging by how many Trøgs there are in relation to how many elves, I assume less than or around half of the elf population managed to evacuate Dreamland while those who remained took to living in the shadows. We’ve seen the conditions of their underworld, and, well, one can assume they went a bit nutty along the way. I’m sure the mushroom spores didn’t help.

Then, there’s the prophecy. Bean, Elfo and Luci are the saviors of the Trøgs.

‘Lines are drawn’ - after Bean is crowned Queen Bean (lol) she and Elfo drift apart. He obviously feels abandoned by her, and even if he did sacrifice himself for Dreamland, I’m certain he won’t be killed. I’m on that wonderful conspiracy train that the Ogre Queen is his mother, but that’s another story for another day though it’s somewhat related. Needless to say, if the Elves declare war on Dreamland, lines will certainly be drawn. And, I recall my statement above: Bean, Elfo and Luci are the saviors of the Trøgs. I’d count it as ‘saving’ them if they reunite with their cousins, the Elves, and take back the kingdom that once belonged to them; wouldn’t you?

‘I’m never gone / This star’s your guide / And I am always on your side’ This is a callback to a few things in this episode. Mora tells Bean that the heart of the Big Flipper leads to Mermaid Island, as Bean recalls when she is given the necklace Mora made for her. So, that’s another double nudge-nudge wink-wink from the writers (a joke they also made consistently this season, making me feel aggressively mocked. so i have powerpoints on this show, now, and nothing to do with them.)

Anyway, if the Elves and Trøgs do succeed in taking over Dreamland, Mora has explicitly stated that Bean has an ally in her - and, of course, the mermaids. So, looking too deeply into a song written by a fictional mermaid for her equally fictional girlfriend aside, let’s move on to more obvious evidence.

Bean then wakes up on the beach to Elfo saying nobody wanted to help them, , yadda yadda, it was clearly a dream, right?

(yes, I wanted to get the caption that made me cry. now you have to be sad, too.) except, wait a second, that’s a goddamn morning sky. And, beyond that, the very next episode which continues off from Bean and Elfo walking back to Dreamland, it’s also morning and leads right into the rest of the same day. well, shit me a brick. chronologically, it makes sense for this to have not been a dream.

and, naturally, the nail in the coffin. There it is, the necklace, right there in front of our fat faces. I’m sure you’re wondering how Bean can sleep through swimming underwater for presumably hours, but, hey, tHAT’S JUST A TH-

In conclusion, the Disenchantment writers make it a point to give us not-so-subtle hints (mostly in the background) towards future plots. This seemingly innocuous, what, ten minutes of a sapphic fantasy come true could be an incredibly important plot point. It’s not the first time they’ve used a small storyline to pull the strings together for a far bigger one - they literally do it every season, multiple times. My evidence towards Mora and Bean having a real romance stems from the design of the sky backgrounds that clearly show the passage of time throughout the episode (and show), as well as the fact that Mora’s necklace washes up on shore not long after Bean wakes up. Along with this presented evidence, I believe the Elves are going to try and overthrow Dreamland (just like, basically, every other kingdom or secret society in this show) and Bean will have to figure out for herself if Mora really is waiting for her on Mermaid Island. As for what else Season 4 has in store, I have lots of other theories but for the 4 people who read this, I shall not disclose.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk, and I am so very sorry.

Also, here’s a bonus pic of the ocean scenery.

(luci voice) who did that?

#seriously THIS WHOLE EPISODE #WAS SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL #why was this such a gorgeous episode #who did this #who dunnit #i want to personally give you a fucking raise #they really goddam popped off #also if anybody read this.#im so sorry #i thought abt posting it on reddit but i dont want to get roasted #for being uhh #fucking insane #this is probably just all bullshit and it probably doesn't make sense #but i had to expel this demon from my body #before the tumblr discourse over a fictional characters sexuality takes over the whole fanbase #for the record idk if shes bi or gay bc arguments could be made for either one but at the end of the day #it doesn't fuckin matter because it's a cartoon and we are kebabs on a rock hurtling through space #where was i going with this #oh the proper tags #disenchantment #disenchanted #disenchantment netflix #disenchanted netflix #bean #mora #bean/mora #disenchantment bean #disenchanted bean #disenchantment mora #disenchanted mora

1 note · View note

aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Finale Ending Explained

https://ift.tt/3gYLntQ

This Star Trek: Discovery review contains major spoilers for the end of Season 3.

What a ride! The third season of Star Trek: Discovery was easily its most consistent and, dare I say, best yet? From the get-go, the series’ decision to vault its characters into the far future for its third outing proved itself a smart one, as the crew of the Discovery set about exploring this strange, new reality. The hour-long finale was a solid ending for the season, answering some questions we’ve had since the season premiere. In that way, “That Hope is You, Part 2” really was the perfect bookend to the premiere that started this far-future arc. That being said, the episode also set up some fascinating plot and character arcs for Season 4. Let’s break down all that happened in the Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 finale, and what it means for the bright future of this show.

We Finally Know What Caused The Burn

The big reveal in the Season 3 finale is the confirmation that it was a scared Su’Kal who caused The Burn when he was a small child. With Saru’s support and encouragement, Su’Kal faced the memory of the event: the death of his mother, when he was small. With her death, Su’Kal was all alone on the KSF Khi’eth, on a dilithium planet in an isolated nebula. His mother made Su’Kal promise not to turn off the holo until the Federation came. She couldn’t know that the Federation wouldn’t come for another 125 years.

Su’Kal is a polyploid, aka someone whose genetics were altered based on the environment around him. Because Su’Kal was born on a planet filled with dilithium, it gave him a unique connection to the element. The sonic scream he emitted upon losing his mother sent a shockwave through subspace that caused the Burn. Now that he is no longer in the nebula, it is unlikely a similar event will happen again. “I’d like to help repair what is broken, if I can,” Su’Kal tells Saru, when he learns the truth. Perhaps this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the Kelpien.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The Bridge Crew Saves the Day

This was another excellent episode for Team Bridge Crew, who use their relative freedom on an occupied Discovery to sabotage the ship’s nacelle, dropping the ship out of warp and allowing the Federation and its allies to catch up. The Bridge Crew does so believing that it will be a suicide mission, as Osyraa has cut off life support to the lower decks of the ship, and they only have one oxygen tank amongst them. It’s Joann, who apparently has very impressive lung capacity, who manages to complete the mission (with an assist from one of those little DOT-23 droids), taking the oxygen tank and leaving her friends to die (per their request). “I love you all,” she tells them, which would have been solid last words. However, once Michael regains control of the ship, she is able to restore life support to the lower decks before her friends/co-workers die. So that’s good.

Are Keyla and Joann Together?

These two have always been depicted as especially close, and the season finale had me wondering yet again if these two might be romantically linked. “You’re alive.” “So are you.” This is their conversation post-nacelle explosion. There are other people there who are also unexpectedly alive. We see them embracing shortly after. I don’t support the cultural reenforcement of romantic relationships as more important than platonic ones, but I do wonder what the nature of this relationship is. Generally, I hope both characters—and their dynamic—get more screen time in Season 4.

Michael Kills Osyrra

Of course dropping the ship out of warp is only part of the solution. The Discovery crew also has to regain control of the ship. This is Michael’s mission. With some help from Book, and via a very cool sequence in the backend of the turbolift, Michael is able to make it to the ship’s data core. She manages to get rid of Osyraa’s goons, but Osyraa gets the upper hand in the fight, literally pushing Michael into the data core. It looks like it might be the end for Michael (though I doubt any viewer actually believed it would be), until shots fire from within the core, taking Osyraa out once and for all.

Michael emerges from the ship itself, telling the Season 3 antagonist: “Unlike you, I never quit.” As a post-murder tagline, it’s not a great one—especially because Osyraa didn’t really seem to be quitting so much as losing in this moment—but the imagery that accompanies it, of Michael literally merging with Discovery to take Osyraa out, is thematically-rich. This has been a season of Discovery really evolving as a character in their own right, and it was nice to see the ship itself have a hand in the crew regaining control of the ship.

Book Can Pilot the Spore Drive

In one of the most game-changing moments of the season, the Discovery crew figures out that, because of ability to communicate empathically with plants and animals, Book can pilot the spore drive. They bet the farm on the conclusion, too, jettisoning the warp core while within Osyraa’s ship Viridian. Book is eventually able to figure out how to jump, but they barely make it away in time. While this was a cool moment in the episode, it is a much cooler reveal for what it might mean moving forward. Book has expressed an interest in joining Starfleet, but it hasn’t been clear what his role in the fleet or on the Discovery might be. His ability to pilot the spore drive certainly makes him invaluable to the Discovery and to the Federation as a whole.

Yeah, Stamets is Still Pissed at Michael

One of the minor, unresolved character threads left lingering at the end of Season 3 is Stamets’ anger towards Michael for forcibly removing him from the Discovery in the season’s penultimate episode. Frankly, Michael made the right choice. If Stamets had remained on the ship, then Osyraa could have forced him to use the spore drive and the Federation never would have been able to catch up. That being said, I can’t say I wouldn’t be pissed at Michael if I were in Stamets’ shoes. By physically forcing Stamets off the ship, she took the choice to stay and try to save his friends and family away from him. But them’s the breaks when you volunteer to be the universe’s sole spore drive pilot.

Gray Gets a Corporeal Form, Then Loses It Again

One of the chief joys of the Season 3 finale was seeing Gray gain corporeal form while in the holo-program, allowing people other than Adira the opportunity to see and interact with him. (Hugh takes the chance to give Gray a big hug!) The holo gave Gray the form of a Vulcan (if you were wondering, Adira is Xahean here), but, for Gray, it just matters that he can be seen. When faced with the dismantling of the holo, Gray tells Adira and Hugh that he doesn’t want to go back to before. “It’s not enough,” he says. “I’m stuck. Tal’s stuck.” Hugh promises that they will find a way to make sure Gray is seen, but when the episode ends, Gray is still invisible to all but Adira again.

Burnham Becomes Captain of the Discovery

Discovery churns through at least one captain per season and the ship ends the season with a different captain than it started with: Michael has replaced Saru as captain (at least for now). Saru has taken a leave of absence to help Su’Kal settle into his life on Kaminar. It’s unclear for how long. When Michael brings up waiting until his return to decide anything permanently, Admiral Vance pushes back, with Saru’s blessing. So will Michael be Discovery captain forever and ever? Frankly, the show seems to have left enough room for the writers’ room to make that decision later, as they are breaking Season 4.

The Federation is Back on Its Feet

The season finale was a happy ending, not only for the Discovery but for the entire Federation. With Osyraa dead, the source of the Burn discovered, and the Discovery equipped with two spore drive pilots, the future is looking promising. As Michael’s closing voiceover tells us, the Discovery is poised to bring dilithium to the worlds of the Federation that have been cut off since the Burn. With this new source, they will be able to properly rejoin the Federation. With this new mission outlined in the finale’s closing minutes, Season 4 seems to already have a new plot structure, one even more based on discovery and diplomacy than Season 3.

We also learned that Trill decided to rejoin the Federation, and the Ni’Var have opened lines of communication with the Federation back up. The fact that the Ni’Var responded to Michael’s request for help earlier in the episode, effectively coming to the Federation’s aid when they needed it the most, says a lot about their potential willingness to become part of the organization again.

How Star Trek: Discovery’s BIG Twist Sets Up Section 31

By Ryan Britt

Star Trek: Discovery Just Challenged the Federation’s Fiscal Hypocrisy

By Ryan Britt

What Does the Closing Quote Mean?

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 ends with a tribute to Gene Roddenberry, and to his original vision for Star Trek, exemplified through the following quote: “In a very real sense, we are all aliens on a strange planet. We spend most of our lives reaching out and trying to communicate. If during our whole lifetime, we could reach out and really communicate with just two people, we are indeed very fortunate.”

Why did the series decide to end the season this way? As showrunner Michelle Paradise told Comicbook.com: “It emerged closer to the end of the post process as we were finishing post for the season and just recognizing that this was going to be airing at this particular time. And we just felt like it would be appropriate to have something from him. I mean, Gene Roddenberry, we’re only here because of what he did and because of the show that he created and there’s the baseline, the template that he established. And so it felt appropriate to have something from him, a quote from him at the end of our season. And that was one that resonated with us.”

The post Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Finale Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/38ngNr3

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

1 note · View note

pickyperkypenguin · 7 years

Text

of mushrooms and recklessness

I ate a mushroom today.

You see, I’m from a mycophilic kind of country, so it’s a pretty normal thing, ingrained deeply in our cuisine, especially when it’s season for them and I like mushrooms. They taste great and they make a very good ingredient.

We have lots of kinds of mushrooms here, and lots of names for them. I always feel so emptyhanded, when I have to reiterate to Latin, when there is no equivalent common name for a particular mushroom in English. Oh, those mycophobes (please, imagine this said with Bobby Farell’s voice, the same way he speaks at the end of ‘Rasputin’)

But, back to the mushrooms eating – they’re a food not worth sparing a thought when they’re champignons. Grown (hah, and I’m already missing a word covering ‘the place where champignons are grown by people in a controlled environment’, pieczarkarnia) on a mushroom farm, they are as safe as they’re bland. I can eat them and not even think of Caesar or shamans of Syberia.

But then I’m sometimes offered handpicked mushrooms, and I usually stop to think. Do I know if the person who picked them knew their skill? Do I trust them and my fate today? Do I trust fate at all, because even the most experienced (and another word missing, grzybiarz, plural: grzybiarze) people who pick mushrooms are sometimes wrong, and sometimes it’s just bad luck, or the mimicry and similitude especially intense that day? You never know. And so you sometimes trust, like me, or don’t trust at all, like my mother (funny thing that it’s the only thing we’re completely reversed in the putting trust matter).

Sometimes, though, it’s not really your friend or family who offer you this autumnal gift – sometimes it’s just you who saw giant caps of parasol mushroom (kania, a homophone of milvus milvus or milvus migrans, apparently called red kite and black kite. Funny it’s also a homophone in English too) in your favourite greengrocer, and, unfortunately, forgot to ask where did they come from.

Were they picked in the forest? Were they grown on a mushroom farm? Do you even grow a parasol mushroom on a farm?

A note on a margin – how nice that parasol mushroom does have a name here. Also, the answer to the question above is: no, there are only two kinds of farms, for champignons and pleurotus, or boczniak as we call it. Boczniaki are super tasty and I love them especially.

Yesterday I was so full of energy that I made a soup, a batch of ginger ale, and baked a pie – all in a span of one afternoon, right after coming from my internship hours full of sending emails, running to the post and doing an exhibition inventory in a dark basement, and after that eating some brief meal at home and grocery shopping. So, after that, things couldn’t go to waste, ‘cause some vegetables are just not made for laying around too long, also I would like to eat sometimes, so cooking it was. I was a bit tired after all that, and I didn’t really spare much thought on how I did not ask the lady at the greengrocer where the hell those mushrooms came from.

So, that day went around without me caring about a single mushroom (also because it came out I didn’t have yeast nor sourdough starter, so I had to cease my plans that involved making some savoury pastries with champignons, onion and meat inside them, on top of all the cooking I done that day). The next day, though, which is today, to be precise, my eyes spotted two big caps of parasol mushrooms that were laying on the kitchen counter since yesterday, and I was immediately enlightened with a vision of them fried like cutlets. It’s a traditional way of preparing kanie here. Well, here as regional here, I’m pretty sure Czechs and Slovaks would prepare them the same way.

I did as I thought, and I took a first couple of bites of my deliciously looking mushroom posing as a cutlet – and I felt it tasted bitter.

Now, after all that, I read somewhere that it can happen after frying, particularly if it was an older mushroom – but then I was aware of two things: that either I prepared it wrong (which isn’t exactly correct, but I was indeed not aware that the preparation can make it bitter and that the cap I tasted was probably older, so, this assumption is much more correct) and that the lore passed by XIX century polish villagers states that bitter mushrooms are poisonous.

Now hold on a second, while I will explain: there are two kinds of my reactions to basically everything, one when I have sufficient knowledge or information, and the one when I don’t. It was the second version this time, I have never handpicked a mushroom in my life except for some puffballs growing in my backyard when I was a kid. My practical knowledge of mushrooms is exceptionally scarce. I have no idea if I would be able to identify correctly a fungus in the wild, or in the less–wild of my kitchen. I had also been blissfully submerged in thoughts and daydreams when I was preparing my parasols for cooking and my observation of their appearance was perfunctory at best.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a pretty good photographic memory, and I can usually recall a pretty detailed visual image of things I’ve seen, even if not focused on remembering them. But when you’re trying to identify anything by its looks, it’s pretty important to catch every detail. Especially when it’s so easy to mistake between species and end up eating the very wrong one.

Why had I panicked so fast? Well, as I said, I had no experience nor sufficient data to extrapolate and reach any valid conclusion on whether or not the thing I was eating was any good, and all I had in my head were scraps of oral tradition. And as reliable and rich with experience of generations as it is, it has its moments of rapid clashing with modern knowledge. And medicine.

Of course, I immediately googled what kania can visually resemble and what can it be mistaken with, and I was just about punched in the face, because it can be – by some – mistaken with not only amanita pantherina (panther cap), chlorophyllum rhacodes/macroleptiota rhacodes (shaggy parasol), but also lepiota especially helveola and chlorophyllum molybdites (green spored parasol), and if you’re unobservant enough, with amanita phalloides (death cap).

The only one among them that is mostly just diarrhoea inducing is the shaggy parasol, and even this one is not entirely safe. The rest...? Let’s say, there was a reason why a dish made of amanita caesarea with some addition of its less friendly cousins sneaked in was a good way for ancient Romans to, ahem, get rid of their chosen fellows that hindered their businesses. And why Henry Winter was so bent on having a mushroom stew for dinner with Bunny Corcoran.

Seriously, I went from happily chewing on a mushroom cutlet to panicking about possible poisoning in about three and a quarter seconds.

After I looked and compared carefully the mental image of not yet coated in egg and breadcrumbs cap of my supposed parasol mushroom with the ominous images from the Internet, I came to a conclusion, that it is, most likely, a goddamn honest and innocent kania.

But I was not about to eat any more of it. I was too scared, that perhaps I’m wrong. As much as I hate, literally hate, to throw out any food (again, a culture thing and an uprising thing, I guess. When I compare how much more some western nations are throwing out food, I feel like I’m getting hives, cold and a rash all at once just from looking at it. One does not throw out food, unless it’s spoiled. Then you can. And better don’t let it spoil, do something with it before. Sorry, rant over) I just had to throw out on a compost pile my perfectly fine two fried parasol mushrooms. I couldn’t let my father eat it, just in case, my mother wouldn’t anyway, so, safe from that angle, and I went through too much nerves over those stupid caps. At least they weren’t overly pricey.

I have also preventively made some steps to be sure I won’t get a poisoning from all this, and let me just say, it really wasn’t pleasant. I vomit very rarely, even after excessive drinking – there were literally three of those occasions in my life and I remember every single one in a painful detail – so it’s not the favourite way for my body of getting rid of toxins, and as it comes out, despite having an upchuck reflex, it is not so easy for me to provoke actual results. Also, I tend to feel like I already died after.

But I did what I had to, and went on with my day, promising myself to stick to black tea till tomorrow. Well, maybe I will eat something for supper, I’ll see.

Why am I even talking about this?

Well, except for the want of sharing a NEar dEAth EXPERIENcE!!!11! and talking about mushrooms, which I wanted to talk about for some time, it was one of the situations when I remembered again, that I kind of want to live.

Sometimes I’m in such a floaty thinking places, where all borders and world itself doesn’t even seem real, everything is fluid and kind of bad, and kind of boring, kind of not worth anything and especially not suffering, and I can’t really remember what I was even doing here, on this earth? Was I having fun? Was I enjoying something? Was I living, really? What were my interests? Did I had any goals? Was I just drifting through space? Am I an entity with a meaning or am I a speckle that nobody would notice, if not for obvious consequences of my existing?

I don’t think of suicide. Never did, never want to. I was just thinking of not existing, and not as a thing that I would want to actually happen to me. Those are very abstract thoughts for me, those of nonexistence, more of concepts, and they occur only when I’m not sure if I am, well, whatever I am, and when I’m letting my thoughts loose and free to roam. They’re more academical in nature.

What is more personal in them, is this – I never wanted to live a ‘meaningful’ life. I can fully accept, that life might not have have any meaning (or it can, I don’t particularly care). Or that it might be incomprehensible for me. Or that everybody makes the meaning of their life, and that meaning belongs to us, the entirety of us, our identities with all our bindings and horizons that allow us constructing our visions – and that this is the way we can give the meaning to our life.

All those concepts I find sound and valid. All possible, and more of them. I just don’t really have the universal or objective truth as a valid concept in my world view. So I don’t have to believe in any of them, and I don’t have to choose. They’re all tales we spin for ourselves, or that are spun for us. Co–spinning would be a more correct term for this, I think.

The older I’m getting, the more choices I’m having – or the more responsible for them I become – I’m starting to get, not intellectually, but in my heart, the fact, that I can literally do anything I want in and with my life. With some limitations and consequences, of course, but you get the gist.

I wasn’t so sure of that before. Theoretically, I knew, but having less responsibility for myself (It was a different kind of burden, when I was trying more to appeal or appease someone who held my responsibility for me than to actually bear that responsibility) I had less choices to make. That’s the correlation, that’s the thing I’m discovering now.

So, I felt like that, even before, that I wasn’t sure if I was living. I didn’t really had a lot of situations to feel it, living the privileged and, let’s not be afraid of that word, sheltered life I did, that was reinforced with my tendency to take as little risk as it is always possible. I just didn’t, and still I don’t, make rash choices. I think all things through and through. I plan, I analyse, I extrapolate. I beware all potential dangers, I hate surprises.

I’m not spontaneous. The last spontaneous thing I did was buying a bunch of radishes on sale, even though I didn’t plan to. What a wild life.

When I had my mandatory field practices back in the first and second year of my studies, I was putting myself in a different mode – open to everything, not planning much, simply because I wasn’t able to, mostly. It was not depending on me. It was all dictated by my surroundings, opportunities and situations. I had to deal with it, there was no other way around.

And I managed. Quite well, I’d say.

I remember one of those field practices: it was an abhorrently hot July, with weather enhanced additionally by the proximity of power station, notabene influencing the whole ecosystem it was built into. The asphalt was a pan, and I was walking on it, thinking if it was possible for the soles of my shoes to be melted by the contact with the almost liquid black.

I was marching on the side of the road to the next village – there were no other methods of transportation, unless one had a bike or a car. I had neither. I was in this out–of–touch state, when my mind bored to the bone with the long walk and uneventful landscape was doing whatever it wanted, and my emotional state back then was leaving much to desire, too. I was thinking of not existing again, of all its possible outcomes and consequences, in a remote, abstract way – when I suddenly noticed I was walking a viaduct without any sort of pavement, not really even a footpath. I think I missed the road sign of ‘no pedestrians allowed’, because I was so disengaged and distracted.

There were a lot of cars. Thankfully no police, though.

Then, after the string of quite fast moving cars came a string of about three or four trucks.

You don’t really think about how big a truck is in your daily life, or just how monstrous is the idea of a puny human piloting a beast made of metal and capable of killing you by accident.

I think life was on my side that day, and I was not even honked at, but I was awfully close to more–than–five ton trucks and the sheer wind, the movement of air induced by them that sort of, well, not pushed, but encouraged my body to get closer to the railing, was enough to make me vividly aware how fragile my life is, and how easily would it be not exist by pure chance.

In that same moment, I’ve had another thought.

I wanted to live, definitely. I wanted to keep my existence on this earth, as I was most certainly not done.

I didn’t really know what I wasn’t done with, or when I would supposed to be accomplished and if after that it would be acceptable to go – I just knew I needed more time to do stuff here.

Right now I’m on the path, hopefully, of figuring out what is that I actually want to do. Maybe it will somehow happen. I don’t know, I’m just so happy to know that I want to accomplish something. That I want to do something. I wasn’t really sure before, and I’m sometimes not sure now, but most of the time I feel like it would actually change me somehow – which is actually what this whole thing is about, a proof that I exist.

I hope, too, that I will find the will, the power, the willpower for it, for finding and pursuing and carrying on, and for the results – or a graceful acceptance of re-evaluation of my goals during the way, if I find it necessary.

I got yelled at by my friend at Monday, and I think he wanted to tell me about some of those things too. That it’s not about some kind of worthiness, that you can just do things. And that they have an outcome and an impact. That it can be felt.

Speaking of feeling, I felt very cared for, by the way, thanks to that yelling, because that’s how my friend shows he cares – if he finds a person worth being annoyed with, it is because he wants the person to not fucking suck and self-sabotage, as he sees their inherent value as much more. Aggressive caring sometimes really works on me, here mostly because his yelling was very constructive and I could draw useful conclusions from it.

So, concluding all that I said here: if my hitherto way of careful living did not bring me much, perhaps a change would be good, even though it won’t be easy at all, and pretty sure it’ll be painful in some ways, and that I will have to overcome a lot of my habits and maybe even things that lay deep in my personality. Basically, that some recklessness, spontaneity and adrenaline high tasks would be healthy for me, probably. Oh dear.

Maybe if I find the courage for the openness, for not being ashamed of who I am as a person, and instead I will hold my ground and make my own mistakes, decide on some things, I will feel better. This way, I will be able to own those things, and make myself –– an author.

#whatever life #mycophobia #mention of vomit #long post

3 notes · View notes

providentially-demonic · 7 years

Text

Daren’t Go A-Hunting: A Demon!AU Short

This was written as a belated birthday present for the lovely creator of the Demon!Arthur AU, @ectoimp / @ecto-rp. (Sorry it’s so late) I didn’t have a prompt to work from so this is more or less a mad ramble than it is cohesive story.

Author’s maunderings are at the end of the story where you need not read them if you don’t wish to. Thanks to @phantoms-lair for a second opinion on the readability of it.

Arthur had to get out of the cabin for a bit. Not that it wasn’t lovely (If nothing else, Lewis had style.) but after being trapped in the cave for who knew how long, he wanted the feel the sun on his face and the wind in his hair. Lewis, however, had an annoying tendency of hovering, both literally and figuratively. His protective instincts, while always strong, had seemed to only increase with what had happened to them.

Fortunately, Lewis had tired himself out to the point of having to rest. The first time it had happened it had scared Arthur witless seeing Lewis go intangible and fade until there was nothing left but Lewis's heart locket. He’d curled around the locket, begging Lewis to come back and not leave him alone until he’d cried himself into an exhausted sleep. When he’d woken, he’d been on the couch with Lewis’s warmth curled around him. Lewis had apologized over and over for scaring him, admitting that when he wore himself out he had to rest or something bad would happen. The look in his eyes when he’d said ‘something bad’ had convinced Arthur not to ask. But this time Arthur knew what was going on, and knew Lewis would ‘wake’ up in due time.

But his terror the first time had only increased Lewis’s overprotective streak and he’d been even worse with the hovering. Arthur didn’t deny that he needed Lewis. Lewis was what had kept him sane when the thing in his head had been transforming him. Lewis had helped him; taken care of him, but the mother bear act wore on his nerves after a while. He was used to being independent. He’d never needed anyone to look after him until this had happened and it was— aggravating, to say the least.

He hadn’t snapped at Lewis, but he’d been chafing to get outside for a little while without Lewis and his deadbeats literally hovering over him. He was a grown adult, dammit, even if his current shape wasn’t one he had chosen. He ignored the little niggling thought that he might need Lewis if something happened. All he wanted to do was get a little sun and fresh air. He thought he remembered the way back to that nice meadow clearing where he had enjoyed his first bask in the sunlight since the cave. Stepping carefully over the mushroom ring, Arthur ventured out of the sheltered little grove that hid the cabin from sight.

He hadn’t gotten very far without realizing he wouldn’t get anywhere at the rate he was going. He still wasn’t used to walking on what was essentially his tiptoes and his damned claws snagged on everything. He remembered that first night in the cabin, when he’d been unable to sleep and, panicky, had looked for Lewis, how he’d shifted to an ungainly but ultimately more stable and faster stride, using his wings as modified legs. It took him an hour and falling over several times to get the wings to do what he wanted them to and allow him some freedom of mobility. He looked up at the sky and realized he couldn’t see the sun to tell how far he’d gone or how long he’d been gone. Clouds had crept in and shrouded the sky.

Well, hell, there went his plans for enjoying the sun. Disgruntled, Arthur turned around and headed back toward the cabin... or at least he thought this was the right way. Yeah, there were the marks of his claws where he’d tripped. So he followed his own trail while the trees grew darker around him and the air smelled of coming rain.

Rain that came before he could find his way back. Yelping at the first drizzle of (cold?) water down his neck, Arthur ran faster in his awkward, loping gallop. It took him a few minutes to realize he’d lost his own trail. A wind whipped through the branches and the rain bit into his skin like stinging needles of ice. With a yelp, he took shelter in the first place that presented itself; the space where a tree had fallen against another, creating a small but bearably dry place to hide.

Grumbling, he squeezed himself back into the small area, lifting his wings up as much as the space allowed to keep his hair dry. He hoped the rain let up before Lewis ‘woke’ or he’d never hear the end of it. Hopefully the rain hadn’t eradicated every trace of his trail so he could be sure of his way back. If he got lost and Lewis and the deadbeats had to find him, well— he’d never get Lewis to stop smothering him.

The sky grew darker and the rain trickling down the membranes of his wings where they stuck out slightly seemed colder than ever. For a rain in Texas, even this close to the Texas/Louisiana border, it was disturbingly chilly. He hunched down a little further, trying to get all of his wings into the shelter. “Friggin’ rain.”

He watched the rain shaking the leaves and tried to judge how much time had passed by the darkened sky. Unfortunately the thick clouds weren’t any help in that regard. He hunkered down with a muted growl. He wasn’t going to make it back by the time Lewis woke. Dammit!

If it weren’t so cold the melody of the plinking raindrops would be soothing, but Arthur was in no mood to be soothed. He wanted to be back at the cabin where it was dry. He was cold and he was wet and he was stuck in the feeble shelter of a fallen tree. Altogether not a good start to his first solitary outing.

Arthur growled under his breath, shifting position again. A spiderweb caught on his left wing-talon and he shook it off with a grimace. Was all of nature going to conspire against him today? Not enough that his own body didn’t work the ways he was used to anymore, but no, everything else had to be out to get him.

Arthur closed his eyes and hunched down in a miserable ball of wet skin and troubled thoughts. He could almost hear the creature in his mind. He hadn’t really heard its voice since... well since he had woken from the fog of pain and hallucinations that had been his world after falling off the cliff. But there was an insidious whisper in his head that he should just stay right here and let Lewis get on with whatever it was still holding him to the living world... Not that he had any doubt what that was. Vivi. It had always been Vivi with Lewis from the first moment he had met her.

Vivi had captivated both of them with her outgoing cheer and wit. She was the motivating force behind all their investigations and indisputably the leader of the Mystery Skulls. And she had been the lodestone to which they had both gravitated. It had almost seemed a foregone conclusion that she and Lewis would start dating.

Lewis didn’t need him like he needed Lewis, Arthur knew. For all that he was a man grown, in this form that wasn’t his, he was the next best thing to helpless. He couldn’t manage more than a stumbling walk unless he went down on wingtips and feet, like some sort of animal. Lewis could hide as a normal human with only the addition of a pair of sunglasses, while he— he could not. He could never be anything like normal again.

It hurt.

Maybe he should just stay here in the dark and the cold until this demon he had become simply died and went to feed the creatures of the forest. It would be a fitting end to a monster...

Arthur jolted a little, the fog in his mind lifting just a bit, like a break in the clouds would let sunlight in. He’d had dark thoughts, even wished he’d been the one to die in that cave instead of Lewis, but he wasn’t suicidal. He’d spent too much of his life running from frightening and/or deadly things to just lie down and die. What was wrong with him?

There was a tickling across his skin and he glanced down to see thin strands of spider silk, pale white against his green skin. More festooned the edges of his wings, running from the trees to the upper edges of his wings. He flexed one wing, watching the strands stretch and finally snap. Perfect, he had to have found a nest of spiders to hide in. He lifted his head and came face to mandible with a spider the size of his fist, black and yellow and green legs as long as his forearm, watching him with eight bright gold eyes from its perch in the crux where the two trees met. Arthur yipped and scooted backwards, rain trickling down his back and flared wings.

Given the choice between cold rain and the mother of all daddy-long-legs, Arthur decided soggy was something he could live with. He scuttled free of his meager shelter and left it to the ownership of an arachnid he would be seeing in his nightmares for months. The rain washed away the bits of silk on his skin and no matter how chilly it was, he felt cleaner.

But he was still lost. The rain had washed away any trace of his trail. And he wanted more than ever to get back to the cabin. Even Lewis scolding him for wandering off would be better than this. Lewis...

He wished he had Lewis or one of his deadbeats to guide him back, or just Lewis’s faith in the magic of this stretch of forest. The fairy circle and Lewis carefully leaving out offerings, while all well and good, had done nothing to make Arthur think there was anything more at work than superstition and the biology of mushroom spores.

Lifting his wings above his head as a sort of makeshift umbrella, Arthur squinted into the darkness of the trees, hoping to make out something— anything— that looked even the slightest bit familiar. Nothing.

He had just about resigned himself to spending a cold miserable night out in the wood until Lewis woke and came looking, when he spotted a faint light through the trees ahead. Hope rose in his throat. There! He must be closer than he thought he was!

Ignoring the rain, he hurried toward the light, toes squelching in the mud. He nearly tripped again and with a curse he shifted back to the awkward, animal-like lope using his wings. He hurried on through the wet and cold, concentrating only on the faint glow ahead and getting back.

Surprisingly, the dim light grew no closer and he thought he should be able to see the cabin by now. Frustration burned in his throat, and he pushed himself to move faster. He just wanted to go back to the cabin!

One of his wing claws snagged on something in the dark and he went sprawling on the ground. His breath escaped in a frustrated sob as he clutched his aching, wrenched wing. “Dammit, I just want to go home!” Home meant safe and warm and Lewis, and he wanted that like nothing else. Rubbing his abused wing, Arthur started to push himself up onto hands and knees. Something white and red caught his eye and he found himself only inches from one of the red-and-white spotted mushrooms that made up the fairy circle around the cabin. Lifting his head, he saw he was only a few feet from the cabin door.

Scrambling to his feet, Arthur stepped over the fairy ring and hurried to the steps. A faint trail of light wove around the porch posts and darted away into the trees. Arthur blinked and it was gone. He swallowed down a sudden thickness in his throat, remembering Vivi’s tales of fairy lights who led travelers astray. But this one... it— it had led him home. “Thank you,” he whispered, half-believing.

He thought he heard a faint giggle in answer right as the door closed behind him.

Arthur thought he might join Lewis in laying out an offering tonight... just to be on the safe side.

A/N: The light that led Arthur home was a fairy light, sometimes called a will o’wisp, said to lead travelers astray.

The spider of the whispered thoughts comes from my own encounter with a garden spider the size of a small tarantula. It was bright and colorful and creepy as all get out when I ran into a part of its web so it seemed like a good choice. In all honesty, the only thought I had for this story was the moment Arthur stopped thinking of the cabin as someplace he was doomed to have to hide in for the rest of his life and more an actual home, especially with Lewis (and later Vivi and frequent visits from the rest of his loved ones) there.

So please excuse if the story as a whole is just one long wander into “what the heck?”

#Demon!AU #demon!Arthur #ecto-rp #mystery skulls animated #idk

83 notes · View notes

dmcracy · 6 years

Text

My first group - part 5. The fall

When the group arrived to Slanterk with the caravan they were praised for saving the goods and money by the Arkenbrands. Mína tried to restore the local flora in the park and her young apprentice Kost was helping her (Kost was an orphan boy from the Sawmill who was poaching in the forest where Mína lived) . I guess in this time she was given a gift from her patron Silvanus (because they complained about how long it takes to travel from one place to another). Her god bestowed upon her a gift of feather token which allowed her to summon a gigantic bird Roc and they traveled on his back from place to place. At that time it was a great idea, in my opinion. And thanks to that, I learned that players do not deserve anything for free. Mína also asked the Arkenbrands for help with housing of Bostock and his family. It was a nice moment and I was really glad she said it, even tho I half railroaded her to that decision (that is probably also the reason why Silvanus gave her the gift because I cannot recall anything druidic she ever did). Then they returned to Mirin Kartak because it was a large city with lots of options and Llthrae bought there few items last time they were visiting. A bag of holding and a ring of mind shielding were the main additions. A ring of mind shielding for 500 gold. An uncommon item. And that was the painful way I discovered the crazy prices of items, their rarity and stuff like that. But it was all my fault because I was still pretty new and did not think about the rings properties. Anyway, the party returned and they wanted to report that the horse died. The owner was furious because it was his most favorite horse and one of the best in the land. So, naturally, they were punished. The owner, who was also a guild master of Halls of fortune, made them sign the contract for four adventures, for which they won't be paid and they must do the job no matter the danger. They signed without hesitation and a first job was given to them immediately. A group of young adventurers inspired by their deeds got a job probably too difficult for them and they did not show up in a few days. So Llhtrae, Mína and Rollus were given a task to look for them (one of them was a son of local dwarven lore master).

Next day, they ventured to the mountains, fought some wolves and found the first clue that those whom they seek might not be alive anymore. Eventually, they found a tower peeking from the snow on the plateau and entered. That was when they discovered Enlil. Enlil was a white dragonborn warlock of Dendar and they found him close to the entrance where he was hiding from Ettin. They did not meet the Ettin so they did not care. Enlil was my first NPC I really played as a character. He was my precious. And he was evil. But they never questioned his involvement in the death of his companions and never thought anything bad about him (not even when Rollus used his paladin feature to find evil in the room and it pointed right to Enlil). So they traveled through my first mega dungeon, clearing room after room. I made my first really detailed map from the free pieces I found on the internet. It took a lot of time but I was really glad I could present them with something like that (I still have one half of it - the caves under the city). But this map showed me another complication and I never made another ever since. They took every small detail and little thing on the tiles as it was in the dungeon and did not pay attention to me describing rooms and so on. It also led to a great deal of metagaming (which Llthrae always did but never admitted). The side quest of this task was to learn and gather any information about this new location (new because it was discovered recently after a great avalanche which revealed the ancient fortress). So they found some diaries, mostly in languages they did not speak, and lots of ancient dwarven items. After clearing the whole city they fought the “boss” guarding treasure horde. Enlil died decapitated by the guardian and Llthrae laughed at him how stupid he was. I used Enlil to show them the boss is resistant to magic and boss crited me. Rollus buried Enlil close to the treasure horde while Mína took an ancient helmet and filled the bag of holding with gold. It took her an hour and I finally understood the last trait of her personality - greed (she also tried to snatch a great sapphire on the pedestal but got hurt by the trap and Llthrae got the gem instead). They took around 25k gold. Paid no mind to the possibly magical items on the ground. And they ventured below. Here they found a peaceful tribe of Myconids. They tried to communicate and Mína with Rollus eventually spent the night in a spore trance connected with each other as a single being. Llthrae resisted the spores because he was a drow. His reward was Myconid alchemical knowledge, which granted him an advantage for harvesting components underground. In the morning they explored rest of the cave and found the Ettin Enlil was talking about. She was sitting in the large grotto near the fire. A massive two-headed creature from the nightmares filling the air with a foul smell and her growls echoing from the walls. So they prepared a plan and they butchered her in one round. By butchered I mean she did not even have the chance to stand up. After the triumphant screams of the adventurers a new sound struck their ears. The crying of the baby. That was the moment when they realized that she was a mother and her child was a few feet from her corpse. The philosophical question arose: was the baby evil as well? After a moment they decided to bring the baby to the Myconids, so they could take care of him. The Myconids agreed and with no troubles on their mind, they escaped the caves.

I think here the session ended but I am not sure. We had a week before us and I contacted Mína on many occasions because we needed to talk about one thing. Exploring dungeon she found an ancient scimitar and wanted to keep it. I also told her that she does not act as chaotic neutral and advised to change her alignment to neutral good if she wanted. Because that scimitar was a powerful sentient weapon, who hated Ankhegs (and other cool stuff which I do not recall anymore). But it needed to be wielded only by neutral good characters with at least one level in a druid class. I tried to contact her four times. She never had time. So I asked her for the last time, very briefly, at the beginning of the next session. Do you want to change your alignment to neutral good for the sword? And she frustratingly replied yes. And then she tried to summon Päivässä, her Roc. But nothing happened. She tried again and again and at the third try Roc came down from the sky. That was the moment when she realized that Silvanus abandoned her and Roc would not ever come to her aid. And I was there to blame. Looking at it now I know I made a mistake to grant them such powerful item so early without any effort and taking it from them with the expectations of understanding. In their, eyes it was not because she betrayed one of the most ancient gods (she literally stopped caring about the nature, neutrality and things Silvanus reveres) and was greedy as hell. NO. It was because I wanted to hurt them. To put more oil into the fire, Llthrae and Mína started to like each other in the real life. So many times I was just interrupting their fun by DMing the game when they were stoned making jokes about the name of the Roc or other silly things like that. This was really hard for me to accept As I wished to stick to the real role-playing and to keep the world as believable as possible and this was disturbed by their reckless behavior. My heart was breaking thanks to that but I tried to focus on the campaign and find some hope. And than Rollus called me and said that he quits.

#d&d 5e #d&d shenanigans

0 notes