#Toothless knows Bill cannot be trusted

[httyd-art-requests]

Buddy is entirely unimpressed by the floating dorito

(Not canon to the Ad Astra AU)

[tails89]

Look what I did! I updated! Woah, go me :)

“The next thing I remember is waking up-” Hiccup paused to think about it. His sense of time had become so skewed. “-last night?” He sat back against the bed, exhausted. His body felt heavy, like it was made of lead. His leg hurt. His head hurt. Hiccup was tired of it. He just wanted to feel normal again. In the back of his mind, underneath the haze of fatigue and medication, he realised it would be a long time before he felt normal again… if he ever did.

“You woke up a few times yesterday.” Astrid filled him in, doing her best to bridge the gabs between what Hiccup’s hazy memories and what had actually happened the day before. “Don’t worry. The nurses said you probably wouldn’t remember.” She watched as Hiccup picked at the thin blanket covering his legs.

“I remember some things.” Hiccup found a loose thread, twisting it around his finger. “I’m sorry about the way I reacted last night. I just- it felt so real. Like it was still there,” his gaze drifted down to his legs. “Phantom pains, that’s what the Doctor called it.”

“You don’t need to apologise Hiccup,” Astrid told him. Cautiously, she reached out to take Hiccup’s hand, gripping it in her warm fingers. “I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.”

Hiccup didn’t say anything. He lay back with his eyes closed. Astrid thought he might have gone to sleep. His hand was slack in her own.

“Toothless really is okay, right?” Apparently not. Hiccup had one eye open, watching Astrid’s face.

“Yeah, he’s okay,” she confirmed. “All the animals are. Stormfly had a few superficial scratches, but she’ll heal.”

“I guess the fundraiser is off now.” Hiccup sounded so defeated. They had worked so hard to get sponsors, to get approval, but with the damage to the aquarium, there was no way it was going to happen.

“Actually, it’s still going ahead.”

Both of Hiccup’s eyes flew open in surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Astrid grinned. “Fishlegs talked to the board. At the very least, we can use the money to arrange new homes for the animals who cannot be released and pay for Toothless’s medical bills.”

Hiccup nodded. “That’s good. That’s really, really good.”

He seemed much happier than Astrid expected. He’d been so upset with the news he’d received about Toothless. Had he forgotten? They had talked about it that night, before Hiccup had returned to the aquarium. If he didn’t remember it, Astrid didn’t have the heart to remind him. He’d already received so much bad news in the space of a couple of days.

She kept talking, hoping to keep him distracted.

“There wasn’t all that much damage to the aquarium,” Astrid told him. “I mean, the outdoor area was trashed, but the main building is okay. They were talking about boarding up the broken windows for the time being.”

Astrid considered her next words carefully. Hiccup would hear about it soon enough, now that he was awake. Maybe it was best to hear it from her.

“Hiccup, the police…” she hesitated. “They were thinking that you might have set the fire.”

Hiccup bolted upright on the bed, unable to hide the wince as his battered body protested the movement.

“What?” He tugged his hand out of Astrid’s grip. “No! Never! The animals.” His mouth opened and closed as he struggled for words. “Toothless. Astrid, you know I would never risk them.”

Astrid reached forward to place her hand on his shoulder. The machine by the side of the bed beeped, detecting his rising heartrate.

“I told them that.” She tried to reassure him. “I told them there was no way you would have done that.” Hiccup’s heart was racing. The monitor let out another chirp. “You need to know. You’ll probably be questioned now that you’re up. But it’s good that you remember what happened.”

The door to the room opened.

“Everything alright in here?” Lucy bustled into the room. She made her way over to the bed, frowning at the way Hiccup was sitting up. “You need to be resting,” she told him. “This-“ she guided him back down so that he was lying against the bed, not missing the way he clenched his jaw. “-is not resting.” She checked the numbers on the screen.

“I’m sorry, it was my fault,” Astrid admitted.

Lucy turned back to the bed. “I know you must be bursting to know what happened,” she told Hiccup, “and you probably want to catch him up on everything.” Astrid nodded slowly. “But right now, you need to be focusing on getting better, as cliché as that sounds.” She straightened the blankets covering Hiccup. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay.” The words sounded fake, even to his own ears.

The nurse stopped, regarding Hiccup with a scrutinising gaze. Hiccup glanced across at Astrid, then back towards his nurse, his shoulders dropping as he sighed in defeat.

“It’s still a bit painful,” he admitted. “Everything kinda hurts right now.”

“Hiccup, you should have said something.” Astrid frowned.

“Hiccup?” Lucy smiled. “That’s an interesting nickname.” She fiddled with a cable hanging from the IV stand. “And she’s right. You’ve just had some pretty major surgery. It’s going to be painful for a while, and when you’re in pain, you need to say something.” She tied the cable to the railing of the bed, placing the button in Hiccup’s hand. “Now that your awake, you can use this if the pain gets too bad. It’ll give you an extra dose,” she explained. “You can press it three times in an hour. I’d recommend pressing it now, because I need to change your bandages.”

Hiccup did as he was told. As Lucy collected up the things she needed, Hiccup’s face and posture slowly relaxed. Astrid hadn’t realised how tense he’d been up to that point.

“I see you managed to get your dad out of here,” the nurse made light conversation as she checked she had everything.

“Yeah,” with the pain gone, exhaustion had hit Hiccup like a freight train. He’d let his eyes drift shut, his voice was laced with sleep. “He’s gone to check into a hotel. I told him to get some rest.”

“It’s about time. Now,” Lucy turned back to the bed. “Would you like your girlfriend to stay for this?”

Hiccup managed to wrench his eyes open, staring groggily at Astrid, confusion obvious across his face. “Girlfriend?”

Astrid blushed. “It didn’t actually say I was your girlfriend,” she told him. “Snotlout’s mum assumed and I… didn’t correct her.”

Hiccup let out an amused huff. “Girlfriend. I like it.” His was having trouble keeping his eyes open. “Stay… please.” It was almost a whisper.

Astrid took Hiccup’s hand, squeezing gently.

“So how did you two meet?” The nurse drew back the covers and began to unwrap the bandages. She directed the question at Astrid, but Hiccup was the one who answered.

“Work together.” Hiccup grit his teeth as Lucy reached the last layer of the bandages. “’strid’s a vet.”

“I’m not quite a vet,” Astrid corrected him. “But I’ve almost finished my training.” She caught sight of what was left of Hiccup’s left leg. It was an angry mess of healing tissue, all swollen and puffy.

“’t’s bad?” Hiccup kept his eyes closed, but his hand tightened around Astrid’s.

“You had surgery less than two days ago,” Lucy reminded him. “These things don’t heal overnight.” She began cleaning out the wound. “You’ve still got a lingering infection, but trust me, it is looking a lot better.”

She redressed the wound and set the covers back over Hiccup. He’d finally succumbed to the exhaustion, drifting off to sleep.

Astrid watched as nurse cleaned up and disposed of the old bandages. “Can I ask a question?” She gave Hiccup’s fingers a brief squeeze then set his hand back down on the bed. “What happens now?”

Lucy sized the young woman up. She didn’t want to scare Astrid off with how hard this was going to be, but she didn’t want to sugar coat it either.

“Now?” she echoed. “Now is the hardest part. When I said these things don’t heal over night, I wasn’t kidding. Recovery is going to take weeks, months, years even. It’s going to be hard.”

“Hiccup is strong,” Astrid sounded confident, but did she really know him well enough to make this judgement? She’d seen how determined he’d been with Toothless’s care. Would he have that same determination for his own recovery? “What’s the next step?”

“That’s up to- Hiccup?” Lucy smiled again at the nickname. “His doctor wants to keep him here until the infection clears up, then he’ll most likely get transferred to a rehab facility. There’ll be physio, he’ll meet with a prosthetist, and depending on how quickly the swelling goes down he’ll get fitted for a prosthetic leg.”

“Okay,” Astrid was nodding to herself, taking it all in. “Okay- that’s… it’s a lot to take in. I don’t even know where to begin.”

“You can begin just by being there for him.” The nurse checked her watch, she needed to move on to her next patient. “He’s going to need all the support he can get.”

***

Hiccup dozed off and on for the rest of the day. His doctors and nurses came by. Vitals were monitored, blood was taken at one point. Sometimes Hiccup was awake for it. Sometimes he wasn’t.

Stoick returned to the hospital around lunch time.

The conversation between Astrid and Stoick was stilted, having exhausted most conversation topics the previous evening.

Astrid was relieved to see Hiccup stirring around five o’clock. She’d had a lot to think during the awkward silences that had stretched through the afternoon.

“Hey Hiccup.” Astrid stood to move closer to the bed.

“Astrid?” He blinked the sleep out of his eyes, shifting to make himself more comfortable.

“Hey, so-“ she hesitated. “I need to head back to Berk.” Astrid didn’t really want to go. She wanted to stay. Lucy’s words rang clearly in her mind. But the aquarium couldn’t run without someone to care for the animals. If anything happened to them, Astrid was sure Hiccup would blame himself for keeping her away. For the time being, this was the best way she knew how to support him; by making sure that Toothless and Stormfly and all the other animals would be there when he finally returned to Berk. For that, she needed to go home.

Hiccup looked thoughtful and a little disappointed. The drugs he was on made it difficult for him to hide his emotions. It took him a while to respond.

“I understand,” he told her tiredly. “You’ve got your job and I’ve been keeping you.” The small smile he plastered on his face felt forced. “Hopefully I’ll be back soon too.”

“Definitely,” Astrid’s smile seemed much more genuine. “Don’t worry, you can’t get rid of me that easily. I’ll be back to visit you,” she promised.

She gathered he bag slowly. Really, she should have been on the road ages ago, but she’d wanted to wait until Hiccup woke so that she could talk to him, rather than disappear while he was sleeping.

She lingered in the doorway. Hiccup had already drifted off again, so with a quick nod to Stoick, she left.

***

It was late when Astrid got back to Berk.

She was relieved to find that Ruff had either gone out, or had gone to bed. The house was quiet. The hospital had been so noisy, which in hindsight Astrid found odd. She would have expected silence so that patients could sleep, but the ward had been a buzz of soft footsteps, and squeaking wheels as beds were moved. Quiet moments were interrupted by the beep of machines and the ringing of alarms as people fought for life in the other rooms.

Astrid’s bedroom was eerily quiet in comparison.

She fell into bed, taking a moment to kick her shoes off before dragging her covers over her body. She didn’t think she’d sleep, her thoughts were too busy, but she drifted off quickly.

[whereitglows]

Five Times Micah Died (And One Time He Lived)

Part of The Real Unholy Trinity Universe, which I write with @shiverofjoy​ and @brushingpast​. This piece is just by me.

Prompt: Work Song for our Hozier Series

Warnings: Blood, gore, injury, suicide, death

The boys are stuck in a time loop and Micah is the linchpin. He fucks up a lot before he gets it right.

When my time comes around Lay me gently in the cold dark earth No grave can hold my body down I'll crawl home to her My baby never fret none About what my hands and my body done If the lord don't forgive me I'd still have my baby and my babe would have me

one.

The room is spinning. It’s hard to get his eyes to focus, but out of his peripheral vision--which is pulsing red with his heartbeat, is that bad? It’s probably bad--he can see the scrawl of permanent marker across his formerly cream-colored bedroom walls. The three-headed beast with his friends faces on it seems to move, as if it’s shouting from the plaster and paint.

How much blood did he have to lose before the goddamn voices fucking stopped?

Apparently a lot.

They are still talking to him. Sometimes he thinks he recognizes them. Other times, not so much.

His phone vibrates, inches from his left hand where he had held it as be bled, reading the messages he had saved from his friends.

Lucian: You’re a good guy, Micah.

Jules: yeah man if anyone was getting into the Good Afterlife when you died it would be you, fuck what your mom says.

The voices are laughing at him when he dies.

-

two.

He cashes in the jars of change his mother hoards all over the house and buys a bus ticket. It takes him weeks, but he does it a pickle jar at a time, so that Tammy won’t notice. At the end of it all, with the help of some scrounging for cans and a few incidents of theft from his mother’s wallet, he manages to scrape together almost $400--twice as much as he had expected and more than enough to cover a one-way ticket to Minneapolis.

He considers going to Columbus. Strongly. But there is no chance he could show up at Lucian's family home. The streets of Minneapolis are a different story.

On a morning in April, he throws himself into a whirlwind of transportation. First, a cab from his town to the next town. A stolen bicycle, unlocked in front of a library, to the train station. (He leaves a note tied to the handle with where he stole it and hides a $20 bill under the seat; he hopes it will find its way back to its owner). A train from Rhinecliff to Poughkeepsie. A train from Poughkeepsie to New York City.

The city is loud, brash, and oppressive. It stirs up the silt in his brain, clouding his thoughts like river water. He leaves the relative brightness of Grand Central to a corner bodega, where he pulls his wad of change-jar money out of a jeans pocket and peels off an astounding $20 for a pack of cigarettes and a plain white lighter.

He doesn’t notice the man follow him out until the hand falls onto his shoulder and he jumps.

“Eeeeyyyy man, gotta light?”

Micah turns around. There is a man in baggy clothes, a black knit cap, and a tangled beard over a mostly-toothless mouth where an unlit cigarette bobbs in time with his words.

“Oh, yeah, I--” Micah reaches into his jeans pocket awkwardly, squeezing around the hip strap of his backpack. When he draws his hand out of his pocket, his clumsy money roll follows it. “Fuck, hold on--”

He never sees the man’s eyes light up. He never sees the knife.

He finally dies in an alley mere seconds after his bus pulls out of the garage, bound for Ohio, thinking, man, I never even fucking got to smoke a goddam cigarette. For a moment, he is standing, once again, in the bright lobby with the clocks and the ticket booths, but without the commuters. A tall, thin person with dark eyes, a long braid, and a red and gold sari approaches him. “You’re not supposed to be here yet,” ey say, sounding annoyed. Micah tries to speak and finds he cannot. The person rolls eir eyes. “Julian, get it right this time.” Micah thinks his friend’s name sounds more like an epithet on the person’s lips than a name.

-

three.

This time around, he makes it far enough to see them, and they are in a shitty car that Luc or Jules probably stole and they are driving through Ohio and fuck, who ever thought Ohio would be beautiful? But Jules is driving with one hand and Lucian is reading a well-worn book in the backseat and Micah is watching the sun set out the passenger side window. He has stolen the aux cord over everyone’s objections, and he trusts them enough to let the armor slip, to play something soft, like the dust motes drifting over the wheatfields in the distance.

The car swerves and Jules laughs. Micah’s head snaps around and sees Jules has traded one hand on that damn steering wheel knob-thing for both knees pressed to the wheel as he tears open a bag of chips. Suddenly the golden light of the sunset is gone, replaced by the red-black pulse of Micah’s tunnel vision and the tell-tale whispers that precede a vision.

“Jules--” he says through his distress. Jules laughs.

“Look ma, no hands!” he crows proudly. Lucian chuckles from the back seat and when Micah turns to look at him, half of his face is missing and Micah can see brain through his based in skull. He thinks he will vomit, turns to Jules to make him pull over, has no desire to vomit on his lap, but Jules is slumped back against the seat, eyes unfocused, tongue lolling out of a bloody, foaming mouth, and Micah lunges for the steering wheel.

The voices are persistent; he is sure he hears both Luc and Jules shouting at him as he yanks the dumb black knob hard to the right, even though they are dead, died somewhere in the golden sunset without Micah even noticing--

The car skids roughly from the highway, hits a ditch, rolls twice and lands upside down. Lucian, never one to impede comfort, has not been wearing his seatbelt and he is thrown around the sedan like a ragdoll. His head hits the half-open backseat window at just the right angle to tear the skin from one side of his face and break open his skull. Jule’s head whips back and one of the metal posts from the shitty, broken headrest impales him in the base of the neck. He is brain-dead before the car even stops moving.

Micah dangles upside down and somehow manages to undo his seatbelt, even though he’s sure that isn’t supposed to happen. He is screaming their names. Jules does not answer, but there is a rasped breath from behind him and he crawls across the ceiling of the car until he is with Lucian, holding his spasming hand.

“I fucked it up, Luc,” Micah cries. There is a stabbing pain in his back, near his shoulder. Perhaps he dislocated it when he dropped from his seat. “Luc, I’m sorry, I fucked it up, I fucked it up.”

Lucian’s functional eye swivels to look at Micah. His lips twitch in what might be a kind of a smile. “Not… fault,” he breathes. There is blood in his mouth. Micah finds one of Lucian’s hands and he is kissing the knuckles.

“I fucked up, I fucked up.”

“‘S always…. Next time…” Luc rasps. With surprising strength, he grabs Micah by the shirt and pulls him close. Micah smells blood and shit and gasoline. Is something burning? Lucian’s lips press to his forehead. “I… forgive you,” he says.

By the time the car burns, Micah has dragged Jules to be with them as well. Their ashes mingle in the corn fields.

-

four.

The duplex is narrow and old and sometimes the power goes out, but Micah loves it. He knows that they will leave soon--Luc is gone more often and Jules laughs whenever Micah mentions any time-frame longer than a few weeks--but for now, he loves it.

Usually.

Then there are nights like this, when Luc is gone somewhere and Jules has been holed up in his room for hours and Micah hasn’t spoken to a living soul since lunch. The internet is down again and so he can’t even watch Netflix on the ChromeCast in the livingroom. He’s read every book in the house by now and he can only imagine the derision he would face from the others  if he was caught signing up for a library card with the duplex listed as his address. Still, he has checked every app on his phone twelve times and beat 2048 twice, and has seen neither hide nor hair of his friends.

He realizes the sun has finally set at the same time he notices the glow that flashes on-off-on against the wall of the staircase. From the accompanying curses, he can only assume it’s related to whatever Jules has been working on up there, alone.

After a short internal debate, Micah ascends the stairs, careful of the rough wood under his bare feet. He finds that Jules’ door is slightly ajar, and peeks in.

There is a black-purple light around Jules’ hands. He is staring at it with his brow furrowed. Severus, his snake, is on the floor in front of him and appears to also be watching intently. The light is shifting, changing form, and Micah can’t tell if Jules is encouraging it or fighting against it. At first it is the size of a softball, then a football, then a basketball. It shrinks then, back through the progression until it is golf-ball sized again. It does this several times, and the intense and uncharacteristic expression of concentration on Jules’ face never wavers. I’ve never seen him this focused on anything, Micah thinks.

Suddenly, the light flashes a bright red and grows to half the size of the room. Forgetting himself, Micah shouts in surprise and slips against the doorframe. The door swings open into Jules’ room. Jules’ head snaps around just in time to see Micah. He shouts and the ball of light continues to expand, until red is all Micah can see. He hears Jules’ voice--“Oh, balls! Not again, you nosey motherfucker!”--and then nothing.

-

five.

Lucian stands before him, but it is not Lucian. Jules has come up with a phrase for Lucian’s in-between moments, when he was neither Luc nor Lucifer--Lux. A crossing. An uncertainty.

This is not Lux.

“God fucking dammit, Micah,” Lucifer breathes. “What have you done?”

There is blood on Micah’s hands, in his hair. He can feel it on his torn t-shirt. He tastes metal on his tongue--is that blood, too, or only terror? Paul, the leader of the cult, slumps dead and cold in the corner of his office. There is darkness pulsing in the corners of Micah’s vision. The whispers slide over each other like the rasp of the sheets on Lucian’s skin.

“I didn’t want to,” Micah says. Is he speaking out loud? Does it matter? Probably not. If anyone can hear his thoughts, it’s the Light Bringer, isn’t it? “Lu--. He tried--.”

Lucifer’s skin--Lucian’s skin, with Lucifer’s intent--is cool on his face. His lips are soft, patient. Micah kisses him as if Lucifer is air and Micah is drowning, is trapped in a house fire, is halfway to the moon with nothing around him. Lucifer--Lucian--Lux’s tongue is sliding along his jaw, licking the blood from his face. Micah doesn’t mind. He twines his hands into Lux’s hair, staining it pink with Paul’s blood.

“I’m sorry,” Micah say, the words rasping in his throat. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“So am I, Micah,” Lucifer says. He pulls back from Micah’s neck where he has left bite marks that are already bruising. “I really hoped I didn’t have to do this this time around.”

His fist punches through skin and muscle, and up through Micah’s diaphragm like wet tissue paper. Then, suddenly, there is a look of horror on Lucian’s face.

“Micah, no,” he moans. He looks at his arm, buried up the elbow in torn and bloody flesh, and winces. He doesn’t try to move.

“I k-k…. I killed Paul,” Micah says.

“I know. Lucifer, he--we need Paul, he says we can’t go on without him.”

“What about m-m-me?”

“You’re the anchor point,” Lucian says. This means nothing to Micah. “Lucifer says… he says when you die, we get to try again.”

“I didn’t… didn’t m-m-mean t-to,” he manages, and he swears he feels Lucian’s fist against his lungs when he tries to breathe.

“I know, kid, I know,” Luc says. “It’s not your fault. We’ve done this before. I see it sometimes, in the blackouts. I don’t remember a lot, but Lucifer does. Sometimes he lends the memories to me.” He smiles weakly. “I’ve seen you do way worse. One time, early on, you killed me. Crashed the damn car.” He is quiet for a moment, his left arm quivering with the weight of Micah’s body. “I gotta let go now, Micah. I’ll see you next time around.”

“I killed someone, I--”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ve all killed people somewhere in the loops.”

“Luc--”

“Sorry Micah. It’s time to go. I promise, you’ll find us again.”

-

six.

The building seems much higher now that he’s standing on top of it. The wind, barely noticeable from the ground, whips his hair around his face. He realizes it has grown long since he left New York.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asks his friends. Jules pats him roughly on the back.

“Of course it is! Paul is giving his press conference about the cult down there.” Jules points down what seems like an impossible distance, to where people scurry like ants around news vans that can’t be bigger than a soda can. “When you fall and you don’t die, it’ll prove to all his cronies that we’re telling the truth, and that we are who we say we are. Then we have the energy we need.” There is an unusual hunger on Jules’ usually playful face. “Can you imagine what we can do once our parlor tricks don’t drain us? How well you’ll be able to see the future, how far I’ll be able to teleport us? And not to mention Lux--I mean Lucifer. With enough power from believers, he said he’ll leave our good buddy Luc here all to himself and find a better way to--what was it? ‘Cross ethereal planes of existence’?” He falls silent and there is a faraway look in his eyes for a moment before he snaps back to himself. He looks almost guiltily at Micah. Micah has a feeling that, for the first time, he may have glimpsed the Antichrist hiding in his class clown of a friend.

“Besides,” Lucian chimes in. “If you do die, we know we fucked up somewhere along the line and we’ll just have to reset anyway.”

“Comforting,” Micah mutters. “What happens to you guys when I die, anyway?”

Luc shrugs. “Lucifer doesn’t usually share the memories of the other cycles. He just tells me they exist. From the few times you and I have caught glimpses of the same stuff, I assume he’s telling the truth.”

“We live,” Jules says shortly. He is still looking out over the Dallas skyline, as if he is searching for something. “Until we die. And then we just come back again. As babies. Until we meet each other.”

Micah isn’t sure what to say about that. The silence is thick and unbroken until Jules breaks whatever reverie he was in. “Anyway!” he says brightly. “Luc and I will head downstairs. When you hear your phone ring, that’s when you jump. Okay?”

Jules and Luc turn to leave down the series of fire escapes before Micah has a chance to answer.

It feels like he’s alone on the roof for hours, shivering a little as the wind picks up. Isn’t it always supposed to be warm in Texas? Why the fuck does he feel like his snot is going to freeze? Will it be even colder on the way down, with 33 stories to fall before he hits the pavement? Will he hit the ground? A car? People?

Will he land on his friends?

His phone rings, and he realizes it’s the ringtone he set for Lucian in a moment of sentimentality. He never thought he would actually hear it; they never call each other, only text in rare moments when they are not together anyway. Hozier’s deep, Irish voice sounds small and tinny in his pocket.

Boys workin' on empty Is that the kinda way to face the burning heat? I just think about my baby I'm so full of love I could barely eat

He takes a deep breath and runs. Don’t trip, he thinks madly. Don’t trip, don’t trip-- When he reaches the lip at the end of the roof, he vaults it like a gymnast. He has a moment to wonder if he’ll roll his ankle when he lands before he remembers he won’t be landing, at least not like he normally would.

He falls and thinks of roller coasters, of parachutes, of birds, and then of none of those things. The ant people are cockroach people, then mouse people, then dog people, and then he sees faces, whites of eyes, individual hairs blowing in the Texas spring wind--

He lands four feet to the left of Paul’s impromptu press-conference. His neck snaps. When his head rotates, he sees Luc and Jules leaning nonchalantly against a streetlight. Jules winks at him. People are screaming, he can tell eyes and cameras alike are turning to look at his broken body on the concrete.

He finds he can move his hands, gets them beneath his chest, pushes himself up off the sidewalk, feels the gravel embedded in his palms. He cracks his neck like he fell asleep wrong on the couch; peolple around him are too scared to do more than gasp. The screams, he thinks, will come later. He feels people near him, realizes Jules and Lucian are coming to stand at his shoulders. This is it. I’m the prophet now. Front and center. The ring of horrified observers has become a semicircular audience. Micah wants to touch his face, to see if it’s all still there, but he doesn’t dare. Instead, he turns to face the cameras.

“I’m alive,” he says to the cameras. “And it’s not because of Paul Sangano’s cult. It’s because I am the Prophet Micah.” He reaches to either side, finds Luc and Jules’ hands, and has an intense deja vu--dead in New York City, dead in Ohio, dead, dead, dead--and it rolls off of him.

“I am the Prophet Micah. I’m here to save the world.”

[junker-town]

Nikola Jokic must keep playing like Nikola Jokic because no one else can

Plus, is Brad Stevens a witch?

Under the bright lights at Madison Square Garden this week, Nikola Jokic put on a show the only way he knows how. With the Nuggets trailing the Knicks, Jokic collected a rebound in the first quarter, courtesy of Paul Millsap sliding down low and blocking Kristaps Porzingis at the rim. With the ball secured, Jokic’s eyes immediately turned up the court. Gary Harris, a favorite long-range outlet pass recipient, was leading the break, but had yet to cross the halfcourt line.

In the seconds it took the gangly, 6’10 center to dribble up the court, swiveling his head side to side three times like a creepy new-age CCTV camera as he advanced, teammates Wilson Chandler and Jamal Murray filled the lanes. The 22-year-old from Serbia considered pulling up at the three-point line, where he is shooting 46.2 percent this season. Instead of letting it fly, or driving at Knicks center Enes Kanter — who would be the subject of Harden-esque defensive lowlight reels if anyone cared enough — in the paint, Jokic pump-faked, evaded Porzingis’s attempt to block him from behind, and kicked it to a trailing Millsap for a wide-open three, who drilled it.

Jokic is a generational passer, unlike any of his contemporaries. Unlike Ben Simmons, an opponent can’t stymie his abilities by stepping a few feet away and daring him to shoot. Unlike Rajon Rondo, Jokic is not obsessed with dominating the ball at every juncture. Much like Chris Paul, there are very few angles that he doesn’t see and utilize. But when the game dwindles down to a few final critical possessions, even Paul tends to trust own scoring ability more than his teammates.

With the ball in his hands, Jokic is a one-man supercomputer, surveying the court, spitting out probabilities, with no apparent bias towards his own abilities or stat line.

Against the Kings in the Nuggets’ second game of the season, he went scoreless but gathered nine rebounds and doled out seven assists. Against the Raptors on Wednesday, he was two points shy of a triple-double. Jokic’s style is quintessentially European, prioritizing team concepts over individual stardom. He is easy, under North American tenets, to criticize when his pass goes haywire or a teammate rewards his generosity with a missed shot. But he is impossible to categorize, and even harder to guard. In his third NBA season, he is trying, as Denver continues to rebound from a horrendous offensive start, to redefine what it means to be star.

“I cannot change myself,” Jokic says. “That's how I think. That's how I like basketball.”

Can you blame him? As a scorer, Jokic is formidable. As a passer, he is deadly. According to Cleaning The Glass, Jokic’s assist-to-usage ratio is 1.23, which puts him in the 98th percentile of big men.

There is no statistic, however, that measures just how accurately he pinpoints those dimes. On a team stacked with shooters curling off screens, there is no reprieve playing against him. Play it straight, and you’re giving up an open shot to one of Barton, Harris, Murray or Millsap. Overplay, and Jokic will find them for a backdoor cut. In the split-second it takes for a defense to hedge and recover, Jokic finds his angle. Switch? He’ll readily give the ball up and let his teammates exploit the mismatch. Don’t bother fronting his target in the post. Like a good quarterback, Jokic will throw the ball where only his guy can catch it.

Jokic gives utility to the kind of off-ball cuts that, on other teams, qualify as literally going through the motions. For him, every movement creates an opportunity.

“He is probably the most talented passing center that the league has seen,” says Richard Jefferson, a 37-year-old veteran who played with LeBron James and Jason Kidd over the years before arriving in Denver just before opening night. “Most of the passing big men would pass out of the post — Arvydas Sabonis, Shaq, Bill Walton, Kareem — or through double teams, whereas he's a guy who's leading the break and throwing up lobs.”

At Jokic’s best, his ability to thread the needle creates an air of inevitability that inspires his teammates and demoralizes the opposition. He nonchalantly fires passes from 30 feet — an area where even the most creative big men are relegated to toothless dribble hand-offs -- and summons parallel visions of Stephen Curry fearlessly shooting the ball.

On occasion, both miss. But pass-first stars bear the brunt of the criticism when the play fails, because they’re perceived to be entrusting the game to someone else, a decidedly non-alpha move. Jokic felt that heat when the Nuggets stumbled out of the gate this season, as he and Millsap struggled to adjust to each other’s games, and key scorers like Jamal Murray struggled to nail open shots.

Scorers starting the season on a cold streak might hear some boos, but we’re less prone to criticize their game. We’ve seen it before, and we understand it’ll improve. Whenever someone doing something unorthodox struggles, they can hear about their entire approach being the problem.

“To try to fit into our tradition,” says Jefferson, who saw James take similar criticism as a member of the Cavs, “The way we expect superstars play, based off our culture, it's — I won't say that it's wrong — I just think that you can't try and please everyone.”

Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports

Jokic’s whip-fast dimes may not make all the highlight reels or even show up in the box score if the ensuing shots are off target. Passing, as we understand it, is a precursor rather than a result. But even the best shooters leave something to fate when they unfurl a jumper.

In the end, we all live and die with percentages. Jokic, dribbling down the court, increases the probability of every possibility.

***

AT CENTER COURT

It has been exceptionally hard to pin down a story of the week, because we have been inundated by so many of them. That, in itself, tells us something.

It helps that the Warriors (though they still lead the league in net rating, and don't you forget it) have already dropped three games, while the Cavs’ players not named LeBron are floundering. The sense of inevitably around this season is showing cracks, and surprising upstarts and improving contenders are moving in and filling them.

The Magic, led by Aaron Gordon and a pass-happy trove of shooters, are among the leaders in the East. Is Jonathan Simmons the most poised offensive player of all time? Victor Oladipo and Myles Turner are pick-and-roll duo to be reckoned with. The Pistons finally look like the board-crashing, floor-spacing unit they set out to be when they paired Stan Van Gundy and Andre Drummond. Blake Griffin, one-man wrecking ball, has led the Clippers to a hot start in the West. Russell Westbrook’s balancing act in Oklahoma, a salve for basketball purists, has them just behind the Warriors in terms of net rating.

Blake things. http://pic.twitter.com/yf5oSwC4lO

— LA Clippers (@LAClippers) November 4, 2017

Is Brad Stevens a witch?

All the while, Houston, a team that was considered by many in the offseason to be the only true challenger to the throne, patiently awaits the return of Chris Paul.

The magic, pun totally intended, will eventually come to a halt. They’ll stop shooting 44 percent from three eventually. So will Blake. In Indiana, the best defenses will funnel the ball to Thaddeus Young. And then, the slow grind of maintenance will begin for the teams that can withstand the scouting report.

But right now, the fears of pessimists have been momentarily washed away: The regular season, thus far, has been anything but boring.