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therealjordan23 · 4 years

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Maybe some uhhh debbigail fluff? Pretty please 😂

Maybe uhh yes😂😂

ooo

Summer had finally come, and Dewey had taken some time off work to spend some time with his family in Duckburg. Actually, Scrooge himself had ordered it. Ever since they found jobs in different areas, he and his brothers saw each other about once a year, and Dewey assumed Scrooge had enough with the lack of ‘family time’. Dewey had missed everyone, but he found himself missing a certain pink bowed girl a little more than necessary…

“Hey tough guy!” Webby shouted.

Dewey playfully glared at his best friend. “I’m right in front of you, Webbs, no need to scream.”

“I guess it’s a Webby thing, and I’m just so happy to have you back, Dew!” she said gleefully, and Dewey smiled. “Listen! Lena’s having her old amphitheater cleaned out, and she’s lending me her place for the weekend!”

Dewey raised an eyebrow. “Where are you going with this…?”

“Spend the weekend there with me! It’ll be one, big slumber party!” Webby exclaimed, making Dewey blush.

Dewey’s mind raced. A weekend? Alone with Webby? It was the sort of thing he’d daydream about, and think about at night: him and Webby alone, cuddled up on a big comfy bed, fast asleep in each other's arms. His strong arms would be around her smaller figure, and his hands would be running through her soft hair…

But he was getting ahead of himself.

“Yeah, sure. Why not.” Dewey cracked a smile, the smile that had always made Webby’s heart melt.

Webby jumped with glee. “I’LL GO BUY HUNDREDS OF UNHEALTHY FOODS!” she screamed.

Dewey laughed. That amazing laugh that made her heart melt as well.

The rest of the day found both Dewey and Webby packing their things for their weekend. Dewey looked around his room—he was happy that nothing much had changed. There was still a triple bunk bed, his brothers’ things were strewn around the room, there were dozens of posters of movies and bands they liked… sometimes he missed this place a little too much.

As Dewey packed his bags, there was a soft knock on his door.

“Louie!” Dewey exclaimed, rushing to hug his younger brother. “What are you doing here? I thought you were coming tomorrow!”

“Lena pulled some strings,” Louie smirked. “What's this I hear about you spending a weekend alone with Webby?”

Dewey snorted. “We’re going as just friends, and nothing more, Lou. don’t get any wild ideas.”

Louie gave him a sly smirk. “Oh, the ideas are already there, Dewford. And remember, this time Mom wants grandkids!”

Dewey blushed crimson, thinking about the ‘incident’ when he dated Webby back in high school. “S-shut up, dude!”

His brother just laughed. “Come on, dude. You’re both 24. When are you going to admit that you still have feelings for each other?”

Dewey sighed. “She doesn’t like me like that, Lou. Not anymore.”

“Oh, really?” Louie snorted, tossing him one of Webby’s various journals. Dewey frowned, and opened it, only to find this scribbled almost everywhere:

Mrs. Dewford Dingus Duck

Mrs. Webbigail Vanderquack-Duck

Mrs. Duck

Dewey blushed, and his eyes widened. “S-she still likes me?”

Louie rolled his eyes. “For a guy who’s a professional adventurer, solves mysteries about long lost artifacts, and literally rewrites history, you’re pretty stupid. Of course she still likes you. Do you still like her…?”

Dewey sighed. “I never stopped.”

Louie set a hand on his shoulder. “Then tell her that.”

ooo

Webby had left for the amphitheater a little earlier, so he entered the stage.

Lena’s old room was the same as it had always been, just a little cleaner and more updated: Dark blue and purple walls were littered with pictures of rock bands, and some photos of Violet and Webby. In one corner was her bed. It was a bed for two, and Dewey remembered when Lena and Louie would spend countless nights here with each other back in their college days.

In another corner was a desk, where a few books about the Shadow Realm were stacked. Beside that was a dark laptop, and in the other corner of the desk, was a blue cup, holding a few pencils and pens. Near the bathroom was a purple dresser that Lena kept her clothes in. On top was a hot pink lava lamp, and a large framed picture of Lena and Louie on their wedding day: it was romantic—Louie was dipping Lena in the middle of a thunderstorm, and several bolts of lightning illuminated the skies behind them. Lena had one leg up, and cupped Louie’s face. Both had intense expressions on their faces, but Dewey knew if you looked close enough, you could see that both were crying from joy.

Something caught Dewey’s eye, and he walked towards the dresser to find a pack of condoms, and beside that was a note with Lena’s handwriting: be careful Dew-night! ;))

Dewey groaned.

“Webbs?” he called.

“I’m in the bathroom! I’ll be out in a minute!” she called.

Webby swung open the door, and Dewey gawked at her: she wore a long white blouse, long enough so it reached her mid thigh. Her hair smelled like jasmine shampoo, and was still damp from the shower. She smiled the smile that had always made Dewey’s heart melt. He really wanted to kiss her. Her adorable face and everything beneath that goddamn blouse…

“Are you just going to stare at me?” Webby playfully glared. Dewey snapped out of his little daydream and sheepishly smiled, scratching the back of his head.

“Uhm, s-sorry…” Dewey apologized.

Webby shrugged it off and grabbed the laptop on the desk, heading for the bed. She looked at him expectantly.

“Are you going to join me, dummy?” she giggled.

“Hmm?” Dewey shook his head like a wet dog, trying to keep his mind off of Webby, who was fresh out of the shower, wearing a hot outfit, and lying on a bed, waiting for him. “Y-yeah! One second!”

He dropped his bag, and Webby frowned.

“You’re going to come like that?” Webby asked.

Dewey frowned, and looked down at his jeans, jacket, and shoes. He blushed, and disappeared into the bathroom, returning wearing a pair of grey sweats, and a comfortable black tank top.

“Much better,” she smirked.

The two sat in Lena’s room, and watched Darkwing Duck on her laptop. Webby laughed at the parts when Drake was visibly nervous of Morgana. Dewey thought about the mysteries of the last episode. When was he going to reveal that he was Drake Mallard? The two pigged out on pizza, soda, chips, and candy, and stayed up late watching the old show, laughing at the bad mistakes.

“Jeez, it’s 1 in the morning,” Dewey yawned. “We should sleep soon.”

“I didn’t even notice,” Webby frowned.

Dewey chuckled. “I think Ms. Vanderquack got carried away binging movies again.”

She scowled playfully. “Hey, that only happened once!”

“Okay, okay,” he held his hands up in mock surrender. “So I’ll sleep on the floor and you can—” he started.

“Wait, what? No. I can sleep on the floor.” Webby insisted.

Dewey smiled. He was flattered that she would sleep on the floor for him. But she was the lady, and his Uncle Donald taught him that he was supposed to be the gentleman.

“No, no. You can have the bed, Webbs, I don’t mind.”

“Dewey—”

“Webby.” he warned.

“You know what?!” Webby snapped, pushing him onto the bed. “We’ll both sleep on the bed!” she glared at him. “HAPPY?” she shouted.

“Fine!” he snapped back.

Realization of what they had just agreed to hit both of them like a truck, and Dewey found himself scooting further and further away from Webby.

“Y-you’re okay with this, r-r-right?” he stammered.

“Y-yeah, only if y-you are.” she stuttered back.

“D-don’t worry about me!” he squeaked.

An hour passed, and both adults found themselves in the same position, neither daring to move a muscle.

“Dewey? Are you awake?” Webby’s voice didn’t sound raspy or drowsy, and Dewey knew she hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep yet. And it was the same on his end.

“I’m awake, Webbs,” he said nervously.

Both paused, anticipating the next question.

“What are we, Dewey?” she finally addressed the elephant in the room.

He faced her, and sighed. “I… I don’t know. I know we’re best friends, but deep down, I want to be more than that. Ever since that breakup in high school, I tried not to have any feelings for you, but… things didn’t go my way.”

There was a tense silence.

“Y-you still like me?”

“Webby, I never stopped,” Dewey murmured, running his hand through her soft hair. How they went from the edge of the bed to the middle, and had gotten so close remained a mystery. “I still like… I’m still in love with you.”

She stayed silent, and Dewey felt his heart sink. Then she grabbed his face, and kissed him deeply. He wasted no time, wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling her on top of him. Their lips parted, and both found themselves heavily panting.

“Y-you idiot!” she managed between breaths. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to tell me that?!”

“Uhm…” Dewey trailed off dumbly.

“Ugh, just go grab the box on top of Lena’s dresser, I’ll scold you after!” she groaned.

Dewey’s eyes widened at what she had just implied, and he had never rushed off to do anything faster in his life.

And that night was the best night of his life.

ooo

Back in the writing business :D

#ducktales #ducktales fanfiction #dewey duck #webby vanderquack #debbigail #dewey x webby #ask #fluff

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embeanwrites · 4 years

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Finding Home Gavin Reed x Reader

Chapter 25

Masterlist

As promised, shortly after dad got cleared to return to work, for desk duty only, me and Connor set a day to go shopping for his room. We had decided to go to the mall since they had the most shops in one place.

“So besides a lava lamp what do you want for your room?” I asked Connor as we got out of the automated taxi and walked into the mall.

“I’m not really sure. What would you get?” Once we walked in, I heard Connor’s coin flipping back and forth. Part of me was worried that this may be too much for Connor. Malls are crowded and busy and the general public was still indifferent or worse when it came to androids. Dad had expressed the same sentiment, but I just reminded him that the only way to get people over their fear and hatred was to prove them wrong.

“Well, I’d get some posters or art, maybe some books, little trinkets maybe.” I looked over at him and watched him nod. “You like dogs, so we could get a dog poster. I mean we don’t have to plan it all out if you see something you like we’ll get it.”

“Alright.” We started walking through some of the shops, going fairly slow. Connor seemed a little overwhelmed, staying quiet and growing increasingly nervous from people stares. At one point I noticed him trying to cover his LED with his hair, but it wasn’t long enough.

“Hey, do you wanna go to a different store?” I asked him quietly. He sighed.

“It will be the same in any of the stores. How much more stuff should we get?” I looked down at the basket. So far he had picked up a painting of some dogs, a small lava lamp for his nightstand, and a whiteboard calendar. I wanted to tease him because this really felt like he was shopping for his freshman dorm, but I could tell he was having a hard time already.

“Well, you have a decent amount of stuff...but let’s go to one other store before leaving.” Connor nodded and tried to take the basket from my hands. “Ah no, I’m getting you this stuff, don’t even try Connor.”

“But it’s for my room, (Y/n). You shouldn’t purchase all of it.”

“Consider it an early birthday present.”

“I don’t have a birthday.” He exasperated.

“Then deviation day. I’m not budging on this.” I smiled at him as he turned to face me and I could see his LED spinning yellow. I felt guilty, today was supposed to be fun, but if anything this outing was making Connor feel worse. He sighed and followed me to the counter.

The woman working the cash register glanced at Connor nervously before she started ringing everything up. She accepted my card and handed me the bags without saying a single word. Connor was literally doing nothing wrong, but the people of Detroit didn’t seem to care.

“We have to exit the store and walk around to get the next store,” I told Connor leading him out of the mall. He was still being awfully quiet. I sighed and stopped on the sidewalk, turning to look at him. I put my hands on his shoulder. “Those people suck, Connor. You’re fine, okay? I know that sucked but we’re here to have a good time, so don’t let them get to you.” Connor nodded, still seeming defeated. “Hey, repeat after me,” I told him, he looked up at me and tilted his head. “Fuck those people.” Connor chuckled.

“Fuck those people.” He whispered with a small smile. I quickly pulled him in for a hug.

“Alright, you ready to go to the coolest store in Detroit?” I asked him and he scoffed. “God, you really do have major little brother energy.” I reached up and ruffled his hair before I started walking towards the small bookstore. It was one of the last few left that sold paper books. Connor undoubtedly could read all of them way faster than I ever could, but owning your own books was always nice. Plus I had some books I wanted to buy for Connor.

Walking into the book store I immediately realized how little it had changed since I’d last been here. The store was tightly filled with bookshelves stacked with different books, both used and new. The store smelled of old books and cinnamon. In addition, music playing softly.

“A bookstore?” Connor asked quietly.

“No room is complete without a healthy supply of books, my dear brother.” I patted his arm and started walking through the store. “Are there any genres you’re interested in?”

“Not particularly. I’ve read all of dad’s mystery books. I didn’t particularly like them, they were too predictable.” I giggled.

“God, dad, and his mystery novels. Let’s get you a mix then. I’ve got some favorites I think you’ll like.” Suddenly I felt something soft rub my leg. Looking down I gasped and immediately got on my knees. The fattest black cat I had ever seen was looking at me with big green eyes and was already purring. I cooed at the cat and scratched his head.

“(Y/n) Anderson!” I heard a voice call behind me, I hadn’t heard my first name with my dad’s last name in some time now. I got up and turned around. I was greeted by a woman in her late 60s smiling at me. It took me a beat before realization dawned on me.

“Ms. Tomci!” I gasped and walked over to her, she immediately wrapped me in a hug. “I didn’t know you still owned this place!”

“Of course, sweetheart. Someone has to supply Detroit with real books.” She pulled back and put her hands on my cheeks. “You have grown up so much, you look just like your mama.” I nodded gently, I could tell by the look in her eyes that she already knew what had happened. “And who’s this strapping young gentleman?” I turned around and looked at Connor.

“That’s my brother, Connor,” I answered quickly, for a moment Connor looked apprehensive, but it quickly dissolved when she walked over and gave Connor a hug.

“Well, lord knows I love all the Andersons, your dad is easily our best customer. It’s nice to meet you, Connor.” She smiled and looked between the both of us. “Well you already know you’re getting the family discount, so get shopping you two.” I laughed and nodded, pulling Connor along. Walking over to the science fiction section, I quickly found the books I wanted to get Connor. Smiling, I pulled the trilogy off the shelf.

“‘The Robot Series’?” Connor asked.

“These books are 100% you and dad and you have to read them.” He took them from my hands and looked them over.

“How so?”

“Well first of all the main character is a detective who doesn’t like Robots, but gets partnered with R. Daneel Olivaw to solve a murder that could collapse society if they don’t figure it out. Over time they even become friends somewhat and solve crimes. It has mystery obviously, but I think you’ll enjoy them.” He smiled and nodded, tucking the books under his arm.

“Sounds interesting. I’ll give it a try.” I smiled.

We ended up spending over two hours at the bookstore. Connor had picked out a total of ten books and I had gotten a couple new ones for my office. We had spent a lot of the time catching up with Ms. Tomci, who showed Connor the same kindness she did me and I could tell that alone had made Connor feel better. She asked both of us what we were doing, how dad was doing, and catching me up all the things that had happened to her since me and my mom left Detroit.

“I have to ask and I don’t mean to sound rude, but…” I felt Connor tense next to me, I gently put my hand on his arm to put him at ease. “How did Hank Anderson, the biggest grump on the planet, get two sweetheart children?” I laughed and Connor let a sigh of relief out.

“Pure luck,” I responded feeling Connor relax next to me. “He should be getting home soon, so we probably need to head back to the house, but I promise we’ll come to visit again soon. I’ll even drag dad here.” She smiled as we said our goodbyes.

Sitting in the cab, Connor looked over at me and smiled.

“I had fun today, thank you.” I beamed at him and pulled him in for an awkward side hug.

“I had fun today too. We’re going to have to do something like this again soon.” Connor nodded and looked down at the shopping bags.

“Eventually, I’ll probably need more decor. Would you be willing to help me again soon?”

“Of course Connor! Whatever you’re free let me know. Your schedule is crazier than mine.” He flashed me one more smile as the taxi started driving to dad’s house. I hoped next time more people would be like Ms. Tomci because Connor deserved to be accepted.

#gavin reed x reader #gavin reed has three cats #detroit become human #dbh hank #connor #dbh connor #rk800 #connor has major little brother energy #rk800 connor #x reader

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adverb-slut · 4 years

Text

To Be Human (Fanfiction) Part 1/?

it got deleted again ... why the everloving fuck? Ah well, here’s the link to the AO3 version again.

Title:

To Be Human

Summary:

When a mysterious force attacks the Devildom, the brothers are forced to turn to their Father in the Celestial Realm for help. However, the Almighty is still miffed at the seven due to their involvement in the Great Celestial War, and sends them to seek asylum in the one place they have yet to make their mark—the Human World.

Without the help of their beloved MC, the brothers must learn to assimilate into this strange new world, all while trying to figure out who is responsible for the destruction of the Devildom and take back their home.

Rating:

Words:

3,006

Lucifer coughed, blanching at the bitter taste of blood that coated his tongue. As he roughly wiped away the rest of the red liquid that streamed out of his mouth, he raised his head off the ground to peer at the six angels that had fought valiantly beside him. Now, they laid, barely conscious, next to him.

He swallowed a sob; this was his fault—his fault that his brothers and sister were sprawled in front of the Celestial Realm’s pearly gates—just a few feet away from freedom—with the entirety of their Father’s heavenly legions barreling closer. His fault that the Great Celestial War had even happened. Worst of all, it was his fault that it didn’t look like they would get out of this War alive.

Carefully, he reached an arm out, trying to raise himself up into a sitting position, but his body, covered from head to toe in deep, angry wounds, couldn’t find the strength to support itself.

A moment later, he dropped his head low in defeat when he heard the sound of his Father’s legions approaching. Hundreds of thousands of angels, eyes ablaze and Swords of the Spirit drawn, were upon the seven renegades in seconds.

Leading them was him.

Michael, Angel of Destruction.

He raised a hand to the horde of angels behind him, signaling them to stop advancing. Michael’s golden eyes burned with remorse and justice as he took a step toward Lucifer. He drew from its scabbard his Sword of the Spirit and pointed its blade at his brother.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Lucifer.” Michael gulped and tightened his grip on his Shield of Faith. His voice was raw, and it broke when he said, “Surrender.”

Lucifer then raised his head and summoned the last of his strength to extend his wings to cover his brothers and Lilith, as if to shield them from what was to come. He steeled himself; this was no time to appear weak. It was time to be strong … for them.

He closed his eyes, imagining a cord of iron holding him and his voice together as he stared into the warm brown face of the angel who once had been his best friend and confidante.

Counting to three, he reopened his eyes and stared into the deep yellow irises of Michael and all at once the confidence seemed to flush out of him. All he could see when he peered at the Angel of Destruction were memories. So many memories—memories he would never be willing to forget, despite knowing that if he let them go, this moment would be infinitely easier.

He let out a strangled gasp when Michael walked forward.

The dark-skinned angel’s steps were pained, but now, his eyes were a deep, livid, amber, tears of betrayal pooling in them.

Lucifer watched in horror as Michael raised his Sword of the Spirit above him.

“Wait, Michael, please.” Lucifer choked on the words—he was too proud to beg, but as he turned his head behind him to look at his unconscious family, he knew that this time, it was worth it. The Angel of Destruction paused to let him speak. “Please, don’t hurt them.”

Michael’s hands shook as he inched the sword closer to Lucifer. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way, Luci,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” His dark knuckles lightened as he tightened his grip on his Sword. “You chose them over me.” With those words, Lucifer watched his once-brother's eyes darken with horrible, horrible wrath.

Lucifer’s eyes widened in fear as Michael slammed his Sword down at him so fast that it became a blur. Before it reached Lucifer’s neck, however, Michael paused.

“You chose them over me,” he repeated. The anger drained out of him, and Lucifer blanched when he saw the Angel of Destruction’s eyes fill with black, insidious hate.

No, Lucifer thought, breathing fast. His heartbeat sped up as he watched in horror as Michael flipped his Sword so that the diamond-shaped pommel faced Lucifer.

“No,” he whispered. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he looked up at Michael, who stared at him with odiously dead eyes. His body trembled as Michael brought the pommel of his Sword of the Spirit closer and closer to Lucifer.

Then, as the pommel met Lucifer’s forehead, he froze, overcome with a burning sensation where it had touched him, as Michael returned his Sword to its scabbard.

Lucifer knew what happened when the Angel of Destruction touched anyone with the pommel of his Sword.

He knew that on his forehead there would forever be a mark.

A black diamond.

A terrible promise.

Oh, how Lucifer wished Michael had just killed him.

“Mammon!” Lucifer’s voice was low but so loud that even from the House of Lamentation’s Common Room where he bellowed, everyone could hear him.

A moment later, Mammon peeked his head into the room and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, what?”

Lucifer held up with two fingers an incredibly skimpy pair of silk Versucci underwear, glaring at the article of clothing (if one could call it that) as if it offended him. “What have I told you about leaving your laundry in here?”

Mammon stomped into the Common Room, raising an eyebrow in disgust. “What makes ya so sure it’s mine, huh?”

“No one else would waste their money on such frivolous things.” The eldest demon dropped the underwear on the couch, gagged, and slipped off his gloves, vowing to disinfect them later.

“You found them!” Asmodeus cried, prancing into the room. He dove toward the couch and rescued his beloved undergarments. He nuzzled them close to his face, ignoring the eye rolls of his two brothers. He sidled up to Lucifer and raised his eyebrows. “I’ll reward you nicely with a good time, I promise,” he sung, winking.

“Ha! Ya owe me an apology, now Lucifer!” Mammon grinned, pointing at the eldest. His grin grew absolutely devious as he tapped his fingertips together. “I take my apologies in the form of a check, cash, or credit.”

Before Lucifer could hush Mammon, Leviathan walked into the Common Room, his eyes glued to his D.D.D. “Wow, Lucifer apologizing to Mammon. I never thought I’d see the day.”

“That’s because—Asmo, if your hand moves any lower down my body, I’ll cut it off—it’ll never happ—” Lucifer’s retort was cut short when one of the table lamps fell over.

Levi grumbled, “Hey! Quit shaking me, guys! It’s making me lose my concentration and I can’t defeat this final boss!”

“Uh,” Mammon began, staring at the ground, which had begun to tremble, with his eyes wide. “No one’s touchin’ you, Levi.”

Asmodeus clung to Lucifer tighter as the eldest demon exchanged alarmed looks with the secondborn, who had gone to secure other items which had begun to shake and topple off of the tables. “Quick,” Lucifer asked. “Where are the others?”

“Last I saw,” said Levi, pocketing his D.D.D when he realized that the vibrating was not just an immersive feature in his mobile game. “Satan was in the Library.”

Asmo nodded as Lucifer tried to peel him off of him. “And Beel and Belphie are in their room.”

“Asmo, text them and tell them to get out of the House of Lamentation, immediately. Everyone else, follow me.” Lucifer marched out of the Common Room on shaky legs once he ensured that the other three demons were behind him, but they didn’t get very far when a wall of flames sprung out of the ground, blocking their way. The fire glowed an unholy black and from the crack in the floor from where the inferno had come, oozed blistering lava that glowed red and radiated heat.

Although the demons were accustomed to high temperatures in the Devildom, even they took a step back from the fire.

Asmo fanned his face furiously. “No, no, no. This heat is going to absolutely murder my hair.”

Mammon bit his lip as he stared at the inferno. “This ain’t no ordinary earthquake, is it?”

“I don’t think it’s an earthquake at all,” Lucifer admitted. “Otherwise I would’ve told us to take cover, not evacuate.” He brushed the sweat off his forehead and sighed. “We’re going to have to go above the flames. Mammon, you carry Levi.”

For once, Mammon didn’t complain at the order and transformed into his demon form, hooking his hands under Levi’s arms and flying above the wall of fire. Lucifer and Asmodeus flew behind him.

“Hey, this is like that one time in Ruri-chan’s Magical Adventure To the Land of Disney Where She Was Kidnapped by Mortimer Mouse—” Levi explained.

He was cut off by Mammon, who quipped, “Levi, if you don’t shut up, I’m gonna drop ya.”

The four made it safely on the ground on the other side of the fire and lava and as Lucifer silently took a headcount, Asmo walked out the door and peered down the hallway. He groaned and said, “All the paintings on the walls fell down—even that totally sexy one with the naked imp.”

Mammon stood on his tiptoes to see over Asmodeus and rolled his eyes. “Maybe also mention that there’s fire blockin’ both ends of the hallway, huh?”

“Is there enough room between the ceiling and fire so that you guys can fly above it?” Leviathan wondered.

“Maybe for me and my slender figure,” decided Asmo. “But definitely not you guys. There’s barely an inch to squeeze through.”

Indeed, the towering flames licked the ceiling on both ends of the hallway. Unfortunately for the brothers, both ends led to possible exits out of the House of Lamentation.

“I sure hope Satan, Belphie, and Beel got out okay,” Mammon muttered nervously.

The perspiration on Lucifer’s forehead turned cold with his younger brother’s words. No. He was not going to lose his brothers—not even almost like last time. He clenched his hands into fists and racked his brain to figure out a way to get out of the House safely. “The North Staircase is in this hall. Is it blocked by the flames? Or the smoke?”

“Nope,” reported Mammon. “Well, sorta. The fire kinda splits the staircase’s entryway down the middle. And it’s weird: there’s no smoke anywhere.”

Lucifer sighed, silently thanking Father that they didn't have to worry about smoke. Nevertheless, there was still another issue. “Then the fire will spread and engulf the rest of the entrance any minute.”

“That’s the strange thing,” Levi noticed. “It doesn’t look like the fire’s moving. Maybe it’s just an illusion—that’s happened in some games I played before. Although …” he paused and showed the singed bottom of his shoes, and everyone gagged at the scent of burned rubber. “Maybe not.”

Asmo pulled out from his pocket a bottle of perfume to cover up the smell. “It’s gardenia and hyacinth,” he explained. “And also, my wonderful self has a thought: what if the fire isn’t spreading because it’s black? Clearly it’s not normal fire.”

“That’s true,” Lucifer agreed. “Alright, well since it’s not spreading, perhaps then it should be fine if we go up the North Staircase, provided we don’t accidentally clip the fire on our clothes or the like.”

Mammon nodded. “Yeah, that leads right into the Planetarium. If we bust open a couple a’ windows in there, we can get outta here.”

“Hey, did anyone notice that the shaking stopped?” Levi asked.

However, the tremors began again just as the boys began to bolt up the North Staircase. A general uproar went up among the four as they tumbled down the stairs multiple times, for butts smushed faces, tails were stepped on, and wings were bent in uncomfortable positions.

After twenty-three unsuccessful attempts, the brothers made it to the top of the staircase and were in the Planetarium. The trembling had already caused the glass that composed the ceiling to shatter, and even though black fire filled this room as well, they were able to fly through the crumbling windows to safety.

As soon as Mammon set Leviathan on the ground—which also was afflicted by the quaking—several feet outside the House of Lamentation’s gate, he scanned the area for the other three brothers. “Where are they?” He flipped out his D.D.D. “Damn it, I've got no signal out here.”

Lucifer peered at his own D.D.D in alarm, dodging a flyaway tree branch. Normally, he was able to make a call anywhere in the Devildom, but today, his device read NO SERVICE. “Me neither.”

“Same here,” chimed Levi, who leaned against Mammon for support amidst all the shaking.

Asmo’s face crumbled as he, too, shook his head in agreement. “This is terrible! How am I supposed to post about my trauma on Devilgram?”

Lucifer looked at him sternly. “You were able to text Satan and the others to get out, though, right?”

“Yes, that was the last message that went through,” Asmodeus moaned.

Mammon’s tan skin paled. “Holy Father, what if they didn’t make it out or somethin’? What if they’re still tr—trapped? What if they’re all alone in the fire and are meltin' in the scor—”

“Relax, Mammon, we’re here.” Satan waved as he walked up behind them, Belphie and Beel in tow.

An enormous weight fell off Lucifer’s shoulders as he and Mammon sighed in relief. He turned to his most intellectual brother, “Good to see you all. Any idea what happened?”

Satan shook his head. “Not a clue. It can’t be natural, though. Those flames obviously aren’t. And these earthquakes—” he was interrupted by another round of shaking, causing him to lose his balance. If it wasn’t for Lucifer’s graceful reflexes, the fourthborn demon would have fallen flat on his face. Satan blushed at the support and pushed his brother away. “—are not possible in the Devildom, considering this realm isn't on Earth and doesn’t have to worry about tectonic plate shifting and such.”

“A good way to avoid falling down all the time like Satan—” Beel, who was in his demon form and carrying Belphie a few feet off the ground, began.

“—not all the time, Beel!” Satan’s blush deepened.

“—is for those of us with wings to fly up with those of us who don’t. That way when the ground shakes, you can’t lose your balance,” finished Beel.

Lucifer nodded at the suggestion and flapped his wings to get himself a few feet off the ground. “Mammon, you carry Levi, and Asmo, you get Satan. Beel’s already got Belphie.”

After it had been done, Mammon asked, “Okay, now what do we do?”

Lucifer thought for a moment. Normally, long before this point, he would call Diavolo to see what was going on, but since it seemed that for some reason, the cell service had been cut off, phone calls were impossible. “I say we go pay Lord Diavolo a visit.”

Belphegor sighed. “We’re going to R.A.D?”

“No, Diavolo should be in his Castle today—it’s not a school day, after all.”

As the seven brothers made their way to the Demon Lord’s Castle, they were shocked to see the rest of the Devildom in disarray, as well. The tremors had broken up the paved roads and buildings, and while there were no walls of flame, deep gashes where torturous lava spewed riddled the streets.

“It looks like someone’s trying to destroy the Devildom,” Asmo noticed, as he stared at the wreckage below.

“Yes,” Satan agreed. “And did you notice that there doesn’t seem to be any demons anywhere?”

Lucifer raised his eyebrows. Satan was right. “Perhaps they’ve all evacuated, as well.”

“Or they’ve all been crushed by the rubble,” Belphie—ever the optimist—suggested.

Lucifer was saved from delivering an admonishment as the group arrived at the Demon Lord’s Castle. Strangely enough, the gates to the Castle were swung wide open, leaving them to gaze upon the monstrous edifice. However imposing the building had been before, it was a crippling sight to see now.

The wine-colored bricks that composed the bulk of the palace were scattered in mounds of debris, where golden trim and ancient furniture lay blackened and charred. Remnants of grand staircases and fountains, rare paintings and statues, as well as all manner of blasphemous artifacts of witchcraft, rained down like morbid confetti.

“What happened here?” wondered Leviathan.

Lucifer’s blood ran cold. “Where’s Lord Diavolo?” He flew toward the rubble, scanning it for some kind of indication that the Prince of the Devildom was here and that he was okay. Without thinking, he reached out toward a still-sizzling span of dismantled metal railing to look for the Demon Lord, when he felt Mammon’s hand on his shoulder.

The secondborn demon looked at him with worried eyes and said, “Diavolo’s not here, Lucifer.”

Lucifer’s heavy breaths slowed down as he calmed himself, staring at the torrid piece of metal that he had been about to touch—metal that would've absolutely blistered even his tough demon skin. He let out one more deep breath before nodding. “You’re right.”

He flew back toward the rest of the group with Mammon.

“Something strange is definitely afoot here,” Satan decided, gesturing at the decimated Castle and the rest of the Devildom. “How mysterious. All of this can't be natural. Someone must be orchestrating all of this.”

It then clicked for the six ex-angels, who all exchanged knowing glances.

“There’s only one possible enemy of the Devildom and the Demon Lord,” said Mammon.

Beelzebub nodded. “Only one reason for all this destruction. ”

“And not just of property, but hair, too,” Asmodeus—whose hair looked absolutely fine—huffed.

Leviathan added, “And demons’ lives, of course.”

“This is definitely the work of the Celestial Realm.” Belphegor’s eyes darkened as he said the last two words.

Lucifer grit his teeth and put a hand on Satan’s shoulder (even though the fourthborn pulled away immediately). “Looks like it’s time to go 'home' and pay Father a visit.”

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Geological Explorers Discover a Passage to Earths Dark Age

In August, the geologist Matt Jackson left California with his wife and 4-year-old daughter for the fjords of northwest Iceland, where they camped as he roamed the outcrops and scree slopes by day in search of little olive-green stones called olivine.

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Original storyreprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of theSimons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences

A sunny young professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a uniform of pearl-snap shirts and well-utilized cargo shorts, Jackson knew all the best hunting grounds, having first explored the Icelandic fjords two years ago. Following sketchy field notes handed down by earlier geologists, he covered 10 or 15 miles a day, past countless sheep and the occasional farmer. Their whole lives theyve lived in these beautiful fjords, he said. They look up to these black, layered rocks, and I tell them that each one of those is a different volcanic eruption with a lava flow. It blows their minds! He laughed. It blows my mind even more that they never realized it!

The olivine erupted to Earths surface in those very lava flows between 10 and 17 million years ago. Jackson, like many geologists, believes that the source of the eruptions was the Iceland plume, a hypothetical upwelling of solid rock that may rise, like the globules in a lava lamp, from deep inside Earth. The plume, if it exists, would now underlie the active volcanoes of central Iceland. In the past, it would have surfaced here at the fjords, back in the days when here was therebefore the puzzle-piece of Earths crust upon which Iceland lies scraped to the northwest.

Other modern findings about olivine from the region suggest that it might derive from an ancient reservoir of minerals at the base of the Iceland plume that, over billions of years, never mixed with the rest of Earths interior. Jackson hoped the samples he collected would carry a chemical message from the reservoir and prove that it formed during the planets infancya period that until recently was inaccessible to science.

After returning to California, he sent his samples to Richard Walker to ferret out that message. Walker, a geochemist at the University of Maryland, is processing the olivine to determine the concentration of the chemical isotope tungsten-182 in the rock relative to the more common isotope, tungsten-184. If Jackson is right, his samples will join a growing collection of rocks from around the world whose abnormal tungsten isotope ratios have completely surprised scientists. These tungsten anomalies reflect processes that could only have occurred within the first 50 million years of the solar systems history, a formative period long assumed to have been wiped from the geochemical record by cataclysmic collisions that melted Earth and blended its contents.

The anomalies are giving us information about some of the earliest Earth processes, Walker said. Its an alternative universe from what geochemists have been working with for the past 50 years.

Matt Jackson and his family with a local farmer in northwest Iceland.Courtesy of Matt Jackson

The discoveries are sending geologists like Jackson into the field in search of more clues to Earths formationand how the planet works today. Modern Earth, like early Earth, remains poorly understood, with unanswered questions ranging from how volcanoes work and whether plumes really exist to where oceans and continents came from, and what the nature and origin might be of the enormous structures, colloquially known as blobs, that seismologists detect deep down near Earths core. All aspects of the planets form and function are interconnected. Theyre also entangled with the rest of the solar system. Any attempt, for instance, to explain why tectonic plates cover Earths surface like a jigsaw puzzle must account for the fact that no other planet in the solar system has plates. To understand Earth, scientists must figure out how, in the context of the solar system, it became uniquely earthlike. And that means probing the mystery of the first tens of millions of years.

You can think about this as an initial-conditions problem, said Michael Manga, a geophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies geysers and volcanoes. The Earth we see today evolved from something. And theres lots of uncertainty about what that initial something was.

Pieces of the Puzzle

On one of an unbroken string of 75-degree days in Santa Barbara the week before Jackson left for Iceland, he led a group of earth scientists on a two-mile beach hike to see some tar dikesplaces where the sticky black material has oozed out of the cliff face at the back of the beach, forming flabby, voluptuous folds of faux rock that you can dent with a finger. The scientists pressed on the tars wrinkles and slammed rocks against it, speculating about its subterranean origin and the ballpark range of its viscosity. When this reporter picked up a small tar boulder to feel how light it was, two or three people nodded approvingly.

A mix of geophysicists, geologists, mineralogists, geochemists and seismologists, the group was in Santa Barbara for the annual Cooperative Institute for Dynamic Earth Research workshop at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. Each summer, a rotating cast of representatives from these fields meet for several weeks at CIDER to share their latest results and cross-pollinate ideasa necessity when the goal is understanding a system as complex as Earth.

Earths complexity, how special it is, and, above all, the black box of its initial conditions have meant that, even as cosmologists map the universe and astronomers scan the galaxy for Earth 2.0, progress in understanding our home planet has been surprisingly slow. As we trudged from one tar dike to another, Jackson pointed out the exposed sedimentary rock layers in the cliff facesome of them horizontal, others buckled and sloped. Amazingly, he said, it took until the 1960s for scientists to even agree that sloped sediment layers are buckled, rather than having piled up on an angle. Only then was consensus reached on a mechanism to explain the buckling and the ruggedness of Earths surface in general: the theory of plate tectonics.

Projecting her voice over the wind and waves, Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni, a geophysicist from University College London who studies tectonic plates, credited the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener for first floating the notion of continental drift in 1912 to explain why Earths landmasses resemble the dispersed pieces of a puzzle. But he didnt have a mechanismwell, he did, but it was crazy, she said.

Earth scientists on a beach hike in Santa Barbara County, California.Natalie Wolchover/Quanta Magazine

A few years later, she continued, the British geologist Sir Arthur Holmes convincingly argued that Earths solid-rock mantle flows fluidly on geological timescales, driven by heat radiating from Earths core; he speculated that this mantle flow in turn drives surface motion. More clues came during World War II. Seafloor magnetism, mapped for the purpose of hiding submarines, suggested that new crust forms at the mid-ocean ridgethe underwater mountain range that lines the world ocean like a seamand spreads in both directions to the shores of the continents. There, at subduction zones, the oceanic plates slide stiffly beneath the continental plates, triggering earthquakes and carrying water downward, where it melts pockets of the mantle. This melting produces magma that rises to the surface in little-understood fits and starts, causing volcanic eruptions. (Volcanoes also exist far from any plate boundaries, such as in Hawaii and Iceland. Scientists currently explain this by invoking the existence of plumes, which researchers like Walker and Jackson are starting to verify and map using isotope studies.)

The physical description of the plates finally came together in the late 1960s, Lithgow-Bertelloni said, when the British geophysicist Dan McKenzie and the American Jason Morgan separately proposed a quantitative framework for modeling plate tectonics on a sphere.

Other than their existence, almost everything about the plates remains in contention. For instance, what drives their lateral motion? Where do subducted plates end upperhaps these are the blobs?and how do they affect Earths interior dynamics? Why did Earths crust shatter into plates in the first place when no other planetary surface in the solar system did? Also completely mysterious is the two-tier architecture of oceanic and continental plates, and how oceans and continents came to ride on themall possible prerequisites for intelligent life. Knowing more about how Earth became earthlike could help us understand how common earthlike planets are in the universe and thus how likely life is to arise.

The continents probably formed, Lithgow-Bertelloni said, as part of the early process by which gravity organized Earths contents into concentric layers: Iron and other metals sank to the center, forming the core, while rocky silicates stayed in the mantle. Meanwhile, low-density materials buoyed upward, forming a crust on the surface of the mantle like soup scum. Perhaps this scum accumulated in some places to form continents, while elsewhere oceans materialized.

Figuring out precisely what happened and the sequence of all of these steps is more difficult, Lithgow-Bertelloni said, because they predate the rock record and are part of the melting process that happens early on in Earths historyvery early on.

Until recently, scientists knew of no geochemical traces from so long ago, and they thought they might never crack open the black box from which Earths most glorious features emerged. But the subtle anomalies in tungsten and other isotope concentrations are now providing the first glimpses of the planets formation and differentiation. These chemical tracers promise to yield a combination timeline-and-map of early Earth, revealing where its features came from, why, and when.

A Sketchy Timeline

Humankinds understanding of early Earth took its first giant leap when Apollo astronauts brought back rocks from the moon: our tectonic-less companion whose origin was, at the time, a complete mystery.

The rocks looked gray, very much like terrestrial rocks, said Fouad Tera, who analyzed lunar samples at the California Institute of Technology between 1969 and 1976. But because they were from the moon, he said, they created a feeling of euphoria in their handlers. Some interesting features did eventually show up: We found glass spherulescolorful, beautifulunder the microscope, green and yellow and orange and everything, recalled Tera, now 85. The spherules probably came from fountains that gushed from volcanic vents when the moon was young. But for the most part, he said, the moon is not really made out of a pleasing thingjust regular things.

In hindsight, this is not surprising: Chemical analysis at Caltech and other labs indicated that the moon formed from Earth material, which appears to have gotten knocked into orbit when the 60 to 100 million-year-old proto-Earth collided with another protoplanet in the crowded inner solar system. This giant impact hypothesis of the moons formation, though still hotly debated in its particulars, established a key step on the timeline of the Earth, moon and sun that has helped other steps fall into place.

Chemical analysis of meteorites is helping scientists outline even earlier stages of our solar systems timeline, including the moment it all began.

First, 4.57 billion years ago, a nearby star went supernova, spewing matter and a shock wave into space. The matter included radioactive elements that immediately began decaying, starting the clocks that isotope chemists now measure with great precision. As the shock wave swept through our cosmic neighborhood, it corralled the local cloud of gas and dust like a broom; the increase in density caused the cloud to gravitationally collapse, forming a brand-new starour sunsurrounded by a placenta of hot debris.

Over the next tens of millions of years, the rubble field surrounding the sun clumped into bigger and bigger space rocks, then accreted into planet parts called planetesimals, which merged into protoplanets, which became Mercury, Venus, Earth and Marsthe four rocky planets of the inner solar system today. Farther out, in colder climes, gas and ice accreted into the giant planets.

As the infant Earth navigated the crowded inner solar system, it would have experienced frequent, white-hot collisions, which were long assumed to have melted the entire planet into a global magma ocean. During these melts, gravity differentiated Earths liquefied contents into layerscore, mantle and crust. Its thought that each of the global melts would have destroyed existing rocks, blending their contents and removing any signs of geochemical differences left over from Earths initial building blocks.

The last of the Earth-melting giant impacts appears to have been the one that formed the moon; while subtracting the moons mass, the impactor was also the last major addition to Earths mass. Perhaps, then, this point on the timelineat least 60 million years after the birth of the solar system and, counting backward from the present, at most 4.51 billion years agowas when the geochemical record of the planets past was allowed to begin. Its at least a compelling idea to think that this giant impact that disrupted a lot of the Earth is the starting time for geochronology, said Rick Carlson, a geochemist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. In those first 60 million years, the Earth may have been here, but we dont have any record of it because it was just erased.

Another discovery from the moon rocks came in 1974. Tera, along with his colleague Dimitri Papanastassiou and their boss, Gerry Wasserburg, a towering figure in isotope cosmochemistry who died in June, combined many isotope analyses of rocks from different Apollo missions on a single plot, revealing a straight line called an isochron that corresponds to time. When we plotted our data along with everybody elses, there was a distinct trend that shows you that around 3.9 billion years ago, something massive imprinted on all the rocks on the moon, Tera said.

Wasserburg dubbed the event the lunar cataclysm. Now more often called the late heavy bombardment, it was a torrent of asteroids and comets that seems to have battered the moon 3.9 billion years ago, a full 600 million years after its formation, melting and chemically resetting the rocks on its surface. The late heavy bombardment surely would have rained down even more heavily on Earth, considering the planets greater size and gravitational pull. Having discovered such a momentous event in solar system history, Wasserburg left his younger, more reserved colleagues behind and celebrated in Pasadena in some bar, Tera said.

As of 1974, no rocks had been found on Earth from the time of the late heavy bombardment. In fact, Earths oldest rocks appeared to top out at 3.8 billion years. That number jumps out at you, said Bill Bottke, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. It suggests, Bottke said, that the late heavy bombardment might have melted whatever planetary crust existed 3.9 billion years ago, once again destroying the existing geologic record, after which the new crust took 100 million years to harden.

In 2005, a group of researchers working in Nice, France, conceived of a mechanism to explain the late heavy bombardmentand several other mysteries about the solar system, including the curious configurations of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and the sparseness of the asteroid and Kuiper belts. Their Nice model posits that the gas and ice giants suddenly destabilized in their orbits sometime after formation, causing them to migrate. Simulations by Bottke and others indicate that the planets migrations would have sent asteroids and comets scattering, initiating something very much like the late heavy bombardment. Comets that were slung inward from the Kuiper belt during this shake-up might even have delivered water to Earths surface, explaining the presence of its oceans.

With this convergence of ideas, the late heavy bombardment became widely accepted as a major step on the timeline of the early solar system. But it was bad news for earth scientists, suggesting that Earths geochemical record began not at the beginning, 4.57 billion years ago, or even at the moons beginning, 4.51 billion years ago, but 3.8 billion years ago, and that most or all clues about earlier times were forever lost.

Extending the Rock Record

More recently, the late heavy bombardment theory and many other long-standing assumptions about the early history of Earth and the solar system have come into question, and Earths dark age has started to come into the light. According to Carlson, the evidence for this 3.9 [billion-years-ago] event is getting less clear with time. For instance, when meteorites are analyzed for signs of shock, they show a lot of impact events at 4.2, 4.4 billion, he said. This 3.9 billion event doesnt show up really strong in the meteorite record. He and other skeptics of the late heavy bombardment argue that the Apollo samples might have been biased. All the missions landed on the near side of the moon, many in close proximity to the Imbrium basin (the moons biggest shadow, as seen from Earth), which formed from a collision 3.9 billion years ago. Perhaps all the Apollo rocks were affected by that one event, which might have dispersed the melt from the impact over a broad swath of the lunar surface. This would suggest a cataclysm that never occurred.

Lucy Reading-Ikkanda for Quanta Magazine

Furthermore, the oldest known crust on Earth is no longer 3.8 billion years old. Rocks have been found in two parts of Canada dating to 4 billion and an alleged 4.28 billion years ago, refuting the idea that the late heavy bombardment fully melted Earths mantle and crust 3.9 billion years ago. At least some earlier crust survived.

In 2008, Carlson and collaborators reported the evidence of 4.28 billion-year-old rocks in the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt in Canada. When Tim Elliott, a geochemist at the University of Bristol, read about the Nuvvuagittuq findings, he was intrigued to see that Carlson had used a dating method also used in earlier work by French researchers that relied on a short-lived radioactive isotope system called samarium-neodymium. Elliott decided to look for traces of an even shorter-lived systemhafnium-tungstenin ancient rocks, which would point back to even earlier times in Earths history.

The dating method works as follows: Hafnium-182, the parent isotope, has a 50 percent chance of decaying into tungsten-182, its daughter, every 9 million years (this is the parents half-life). The halving quickly reduces the parent to almost nothing; by 50 million years after the supernova that sparked the sun, virtually all the hafnium-182 would have become tungsten-182.

Thats why the tungsten isotope ratio in rocks like Matt Jacksons olivine samples can be so revealing: Any variation in the concentration of the daughter isotope, tungsten-182, measured relative to tungsten-184 must reflect processes that affected the parent, hafnium-182, when it was aroundprocesses that occurred during the first 50 million years of solar system history. Elliott knew that this kind of geochemical information was previously believed to have been destroyed by early Earth melts and billions of years of subsequent mantle convection. But what if it wasnt?

Elliott contacted Stephen Moorbath, then an emeritus professor of geology at the University of Oxford and one of the grandfather figures in finding the oldest rocks, Elliott said. Moorbath was keen, so I took the train up. Moorbath led Elliott down to the basement of Oxfords earth science building, where, as in many such buildings, a large collection of rocks shares the space with the boiler and stacks of chairs. Moorbath dug out specimens from the Isua complex in Greenland, an ancient bit of crust that he had pegged, in the 1970s, at 3.8 billion years old.

Elliott and his student Matthias Willbold powdered and processed the Isua samples and used painstaking chemical methods to extract the tungsten. They then measured the tungsten isotope ratio using state-of-the-art mass spectrometers. In a 2011 Nature paper, Elliott, Willbold and Moorbath, who died in October, reported that the 3.8 billion-year-old Isua rocks contained 15 parts per million more tungsten-182 than the world average the first ever detection of a positive tungsten anomaly on the face of the Earth.

The paper scooped Richard Walker of Maryland and his colleagues, who months later reported a positive tungsten anomaly in 2.8 billion-year-old komatiites from Kostomuksha, Russia.

Although the Isua and Kostomuksha rocks formed on Earths surface long after the extinction of hafnium-182, they apparently derive from materials with much older chemical signatures. Walker and colleagues argue that the Kostomuksha rocks must have drawn from hafnium-rich primordial reservoirs in the interior that failed to homogenize during Earths early mantle melts. The preservation of these reservoirs, which must trace to the first 50 million years and must somehow have survived even the moon-forming impact, indicates that the mantle may have never been well mixed, Walker and his co-authors wrote. That raises the possibility of finding many more remnants of Earths early history.

The 60 million-year-old flood basalts of Baffin Bay, Greenland, sampled by the geochemist Hanika Rizo (center) and colleagues, contain isotope traces that originated more than 4.5 billion years ago.Don Francis (left); courtesy of Hanika Rizo (center and right).

The researchers say they will be able to use tungsten anomalies and other isotope signatures in surface material as tracers of the ancient interior, extrapolating downward and backward into the past to map proto-Earth and reveal how its features took shape. Youve got the precision to look and actually see the sequence of events occurring during planetary formation and differentiation, Carlson said. Youve got the ability to interrogate the first tens of millions of years of Earths history, unambiguously.

Anomalies have continued to show up in rocks of various ages and provenances. In May, Hanika Rizo of the University of Quebec in Montreal, along with Walker, Jackson and collaborators, reported in Science the first positive tungsten anomaly in modern rocks62 million-year-old samples from Baffin Bay, Greenland. Rizo hypothesizes that these rocks were brought up by a plume that draws from one of the blobs deep down near Earths core. If the blobs are indeed rich in tungsten-182, then they are not tectonic-plate graveyards as many geophysicists suspect, but instead date to the planets infancy. Rizo speculates that they are chunks of the planetesimals that collided to form Earth, and that the chunks somehow stayed intact in the process. If you have many collisions, she said, then you have the potential to create this patchy mantle. Early Earths interior, in that case, looked nothing like the primordial magma ocean pictured in textbooks.

More evidence for the patchiness of the interior has surfaced. At the American Geophysical Union meeting earlier in December, Walkers group reported a negative tungsten anomalythat is, a deficit of tungsten-182 relative to tungsten-184in basalts from Hawaii and Samoa. This and other isotope concentrations in the rocks suggest the hypothetical plumes that produced them might draw from a primordial pocket of metals, including tungsten-184. Perhaps these metals failed to get sucked into the core during planet differentiation.

Tim Elliott collecting samples of ancient crust rock in Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia.Tony Kemp

Meanwhile, Elliott explains the positive tungsten anomalies in ancient crust rocks like his 3.8 billion-year-old Isua samples by hypothesizing that these rocks might have hardened on the surface before the final half-percent of Earths massdelivered to the planet in a long tail of minor impactsmixed into them. These late impacts, known as the late veneer, would have added metals like gold, platinum and tungsten (mostly tungsten-184) to Earths mantle, reducing the relative concentration of tungsten-182. Rocks that got to the surface early might therefore have ended up with positive tungsten anomalies.

Other evidence complicates this hypothesis, howevernamely, the concentrations of gold and platinum in the Isua rocks match world averages, suggesting at least some late veneer material did mix into them. So far, theres no coherent framework that accounts for all the data. But this is the discovery phase, Carlson said, rather than a time for grand conclusions. As geochemists gradually map the plumes and primordial reservoirs throughout Earth from core to crust, hypotheses will be tested and a narrative about Earths formation will gradually crystallize.

Elliott is working to test his late-veneer hypothesis. Temporarily trading his mass spectrometer for a sledgehammer, he collected a series of crust rocks in Australia that range from 3 billion to 3.75 billion years old. By tracking the tungsten isotope ratio through the ages, he hopes to pinpoint the time when the mantle that produced the crust became fully mixed with late-veneer material.

These things never work out that simply, Elliott said. But you always start out with the simplest idea and see how it goes.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.