#a bunch of original posts in quick succession -- oh my!

[kindalikerackham]

In the creation of the time traveller, we imagine time in loops, in lines, in an endless branching explosion of decisions into a silly little network graph. None of these fully encapsulate the way we generally portray time (and I'm sure my suggestion will be no exception). Even in this branching eternity, our stories coalesce into the one core timeline, the one true story's outcome.

Maybe I've just been scrolling past too many mobile game ads, but I've recently become fond of another visualization. In my mind, the water of time flows down, down, down, and the facts of physical life shape its direction and speed, its depth and intensity.

It is thus the task of the time traveller to adjust that direction. Outside of time, they present new obstacles to its path upon returning, and the shape of the water changes, sometimes in minute twinges affecting few, sometimes in swirls of paradoxical eddies and stagnation, and, often, in the alteration of the flows beneath it.

Thus, the origin of the time traveler is real, and the river that dripped their way created them. And thus, the flow of time ceases to water it.

Thus, the new obstacles presented by the time traveler have real and lasting effects on the path of the water, though often much remains the same.

The old path of the water is no longer possible, but its still real. And it's effects will last, barring other obstacles' intervention.

That old path can be returned to, if the obstacles is removed or significantly altered.

Other streams may exist as well, but they're not xx

And in it all, time continues to flow down through the obstacles of space and time and human tampering

[st33le]

HALLO MASH PACRIM AU?????? im giving you free reign to infodump PLEASE tell me more

MEAHAHA! Thank you!!

I originally got the idea from @benevolenterrancy, thank you again for giving me this new obsession lmao.

I have so many ideas for the au in general, and my little story line especially.

I’m a CharlesHawk truther, so my story really revolves around them and their relationship, Bj and Trapper do exist in my storyline, but mainly in the background.

Trapper, I have unfortunately demoted to ✨ Element that drives the plot ✨. I’ve thought more on what I wanted the accident to be between him and hawk. Like there was the question of, oh well, does hawk visit him? No. Why? Guilt. Why is he guilty? That sort of thing.

So the accident, in more detail. Trapper and Hawkeye were deployed to deal with a large category 2, maybe a category 3. The Kaijus nickname right now is Sabermane, but I may change that in the future. Anyway, they’re deployed to deal with the Kaiju and through a series of mistakes, due to Hawkeye's pride and cockiness, they start losing the fight. The Kaiju gets the upper hand and throws Surgeon Resilient back (their jaeger is only a Mark 1, its pretty durable but it’s not as heavy as Cherno Alpha, the Russian jaeger from the movies) because of their jaeger being older there were a few key flaws in the design of the conn-pod. That being that the supports for the pilots can’t take sudden jolts and will release and drop the pilots.

So guess what happens! Hawkeye gets dropped and passes out. My favorite plot device. Leaving trapper to pilot alone, which as you know, people can not do. So later, hawkeye wakes up to a bunch of doctors and a bunch of press. He's confused and pretty out of it all still. hes not that hurt, but he's left a little scarred (i put a few scars on his face in one of my previous posts.)

Hawk is debriefed and finds out that he's been out for about a week. Surgeon Resilient was almost completely destroyed and both of them would have died if it wasn't for the quick actions of trapper. Trapper had piloted the jaeger alone for just long enough to get them a reasonable distance away from the kaiju to eject them both from the conn-pod. But it wasn't without its consequences, shortly after the military recovered trapper and hawk, trapper fell into a coma after all the adrenaline from the battle wore off.

Hawk after some rest was taken to see Trapper and the doctors/military explained that Trapper wouldn't be able to drive again as the Drift would be enough to kill him. Hawk immediately feels overwhelming guilt over this. Feeling that it was his fault that trapper ended up this way.

trapper does end up waking up later in the story and that's a whole angst arc for hawkeye to go through. (and Charles being there and being supportive) But yeah, after all that he goes back to being a civilian for a few years until he's called back for the trial runs for the new jaegers, sense the military wants experienced pilots to run them for the greatest chance at success. Anyway. BJ is also in the story but they meet later on. BJ and Peg are pilots but they were first deployed together after hawk retired, so they didn't really get to meet or know him until recently. I've given a little more personality to Peg, I want her to be a bit snarky and blunt. She knows her limits and strengths and tends to be the smarter out of the two.

Peg is respectful of Hawkeye, but I feel like if she found out why he retired from the service she would be a little more critical of him.

also, I realized I never really explained why Charles was so eager to jump into a jaeger to prove he was right. Charles does have drop experience from simulations. He works with Jaegers so, I would assume he had some.

Charles knows how jaegers work intricately so while Hawkeye handles the physical fighting bit, Charles handles the tactical fighting bit.

Also Ofc my storyline is an enemies-to-lovers sort of situation cause it's one of my favorite tropes. Especially when it comes to Pacific rim and drifting. Going from, I want nothing to do with you too We're so in sync we fight perfectly together,,, THE VIBES BRO.

also, I've come up with a name for my little story, I'm gonna call it Worn Metal. Idk if it's a little Cheesy but yeah, because the new Jaeger is made from bits of the old one and Hawkeye was a pilot before I thought it was fitting. I want it to be a little more on the ship side so I might change it in the future but oh well. i also may make posts about like little things within my story so yeah. Thank you for letting me info dump, i will do more in the future >:3

[leebrontide]

Secondhand Origin Stories, Chapter 8

Here's this week's chapter! Reblogs welcome!

For those of you just joining us, I'm posting a chapter a week of my free near future scifi/low neon cyberpunk YA/NA novel, Secondhand Origin Stories, which has been described as

"-a character driven, compelling story full of family, queerness, corruption, brain altering nanites, secretly teen parenting AIs, and taking aspects of the superhero genre to their very human and rarely-explored natural conclusions."

For content warnings and more, check here:

You can follow along by following #SHOSweekly

Chapter 8

Issac was sure he had a pad of paper around here somewhere. That was a thing desks contained. Pads of paper. He must have had a reason to use one at least once in his life. His tablet was on the desk, and it lit up. He tried to read it without looking like he noticed it. 

MARTIN: Issac, why do you keep going to Jenna’s old apartment?

Issac couldn’t explain, so he kept rummaging. If he told Martin what he was planning, Martin wouldn’t be able to keep quiet. One of his most central protocols was to protect Issac, Yael, and Jamie. He couldn’t out and out disobey certain codes of conduct. 

This wasn’t Martin’s first message about this. But he hadn’t kept Issac out, either. 

No good. Issac did not, himself, own a pad of paper. He tried the kitchen. He’d made it through three drawers before he noticed Jamie, frozen on the far side of the room like he’d caught her with her hand in his wallet. Because she had her guitar with her.

So he was even screwing up Jamie. She’d put in years of practice and gotten damn good, and now she thought she couldn’t even be seen carrying a guitar in front of him. He wondered if Dad would try to hide the grand piano in his apartment. Maybe Issac would just never set foot inside Dad’s apartment again.

That was a possibility.

Success. A sheet of paper and a pen. 

He turned it over-- there was writing along the back. A quick scan showed it was one of Mom’s camping plans. In Chicago, she was all printed suits and perfect hair, but once a year or so, she’d disappear into some woods somewhere to “live off the land” for a couple weeks. She went all out-- hunted or foraged her own food-- the whole nine yards. But it was still Mom, so the plan was neatly printed and had a date at the top. Looked like she was planning a trip. Trying to get away from the mess inside?

No…this list was supplies for two people, not one. And didn’t note anything being extra large. Jamie and camping just didn’t mix.

Which meant she was planning to invite Issac onto her wilderness adventure. Let him get out of the tower.

He’d gone with her once before. It lasted too long, and he didn’t have a taste for hunting, but actually…it had been nice, overall. She always said those trips cleared her head.

If this all went wrong, she’d hate him forever.

He headed out to the courtyard, ignoring Jamie as much as he’d been ignoring Martin. He stopped dead. There were a bunch of people in the courtyard. Sweaty, burly strangers in dusty pants. Oh, and hard hats. The construction workers. Of course. 

OK. OK, that was fine. Issac looked OK. As long as he focused on only one thing at a time so he wouldn’t freak himself out, he was OK. This didn’t change his plan. He’d accounted for strangers in Jenna’s place. Turning a gaping hole into an empty shell. He didn’t need that room anymore anyway. 

Instead, he slipped into the central column between the elevators, shutting the door carefully behind him. Just like a human, Martin couldn’t see into the center of himself. Without a tablet, Issac was safely out from under Martin’s eyes when he was sitting essentially inside Martin’s brain.

Issac made a complete loop around the server column to make sure he was alone, then sat with his back against the door, so no one could surprise him. 

He braced the paper on his knees. 

This was not a suicide note. He had to keep reminding himself of that. This was a strictly worse-case-scenario backup. More like a will. Adults kept a will even when they weren’t dying. So it wasn’t half as morbid as it seemed.

It wasn’t how he would have planned to spend the morning of his 18th birthday, but he couldn’t test his nanites without getting this done first. Just in case. 

He didn’t address it. If this letter got found, his family would know it was for them.

He stared at the blank yellow and delicate blue lines of the page, Mom’s plan faintly visible from the other side.

How the hell did you write something like this? Maybe it was better to not overthink it? 

He put pen to paper.

 If you’re reading this, then I failed and I’m sorry. I really did try. 

Dad, Drew, Jenna. I know you’ll all understand. It’s practically a family tradition to take a risk like this, right? Jamie, I know you would if you could.

He stopped his pen just before he could ask them to keep the others from hating him. That was probably too much to ask.

I want everyone to know I knew the risks and chose this anyway. 

Issac’s hands were freezing. Was the AC on overdrive, or was that just his circulatory system panicking? 

Never mind. That didn’t matter. He’d said enough about himself. He had to get to the important part. 

I need you all to know something. Martin is a PERSON. He’s been growing and developing for years, and now he’s a real, sentient synthetic intelligence. He’s self-aware. He has feelings. They’re not exactly like ours, but they map out pretty well. And he loves us. We’re his family. Please, I need you all to take care of him. He’s not legally a “person” so he hasn’t got any rights. People could destroy him. Or worse, they could take him apart. They could section out his mind and take away who he is and he’d know. He’d be aware of it. You remember “Flowers for Algernon”? Like that. God that story creeped me out. Even before Jenna. 

Why did you make me read that book?

He crossed out the last sentence. They wouldn’t be able to answer him.

Don’t let them make him like Jenna. Please, make sure they never do that. He really loves you all! And he’s never told me anybody’s secrets, I swear. He does his job like everyone else in the family, but without sleeping or stopping for even a second. If I’m dead, I know you’ll be thinking about memorials. This is what I want. Bury my research if you want, since it didn’t work. I don’t care. All I want is for all of you to take care of Martin. Please.

I’m sorry I never told you. 

It wasn’t a good letter. It wouldn’t be any comfort to them. But it should be enough to protect Martin. Which was fine, because this wasn’t a suicide note. He shoved away years’ worth of unanswered questions, unvoiced thoughts, and feelings that you just didn’t talk about on a day-to-day basis. If he wrote any of that, this would become something else. 

Issac wouldn’t die. 

He almost for sure wouldn’t die.

He shut his eyes. His hands were definitely shaking now. He balled them into fists, shoved them between his legs and his body, and curled in on himself, trying to make them stop. He could do this. He just had to believe in himself. Just stay the course, like the generation before him. They’d all made it through. And Issac must have something of his dad in him, right? Their resemblance was more than skin deep. It had to be.

Something touched his butt. He flung himself away from that creepy crawling sensation, like a huge bug. 

Skittles landed on her back half a foot away from where he’d been sitting. She flipped back over in an instant and flattened herself under the door, back out into the courtyard, before Issac could even process what had happened.

He threw the door open, but Skittles was long gone. A construction worker stopped to give him a funny look. 

Issac shut himself back in the central corridor and let himself collapse back down against the carpet. He was so tired of freaking out over every single thing that startled him.

He scrawled Yael, Skittles was alive and in the central hub at about 9:15 this morning. Start your search there. Then he folded up the note, crammed it in his pocket, and turned to the control hatch. 

For this, he’d have to turn off Martin’s sensors and communication. But this time, he’d set them to come back on after two hours. By the end of the day, Martin, at least, would be back to normal.

* * *

Jamie couldn’t believe Issac had talked Mom into going in to work today. She almost wanted to be mad at Mom about it. How could Mom choose today to physically check in at work?

Mom went to work because Issac seemed to be doing so much better. He was up and moving around, working and eating, doing everything he should. He’d been faking normal astonishingly well since he’d gotten Yael and Jamie to agree to his plan.  He’d told Mom she should go, so Mom was showing Issac she trusted him. 

Just like Jamie was.

On his stupid birthday. 

She tasted bile, and ignored it. She focused on the view outside-- there was a stunning thunderstorm rolling in from the distance. Ordinarily she’d park herself on the couch until it passed, and watch the jewels of the city lights scatter across wet pavement between flashes of lightning. It would be a big one. The foot she’d broken climbing a tree as a kid ached sharply.

Yael came in, trying so hard to be nonchalant xe was setting new standards in conspicuousness. Xe was even wearing a traffic-cone orange shirt. Xe looked around. “Are we--”

“Alone.” Jamie confirmed. “Issac’s in his bedroom, setting up. The sensors are already off.”

Yael started a short, pacing loop. “Tell me you think this is a bad idea.”

This is an incredibly bad idea. “I mean, I’m not exactly excited about it--”

“Excited about it? ‘Brilliant scientist defies international regulations and develops secret altering technology to test on himself’? We know this story! This building exists because of that exact story.”

“More because of altereds threatening other people--” Jamie started. 

“There wouldn’t even be so many altereds if those scientists hadn’t used other people like lab rats so they could get ready for their own alteration--”

“But Issac’s only risking himself. He’s not even trying to be altered. He’s just trying to be normal again.”

“His nanites could be so easily misused--”

“All the more reason to keep them secret,” Jamie argued. 

“Even from the APB?” Yael challenged.

“Especially from them!” Jamie shot back with venom. She couldn’t stand to think of Issac falling into APB hands, now. She’d looked up information about how deaf people fared in prisons. There was no way she would ever let that happen to Issac.

Yael stopped mid-pace. “Since when do you distrust our home?”

“They’re not our home. They’re, at most, our neighbors. And since I looked into what they’re really doing.”

“What they’re-- you know what they’re doing! All our parents work for them, and have, for longer than you’ve been alive.”

“If you’d read what I’ve been reading--”

Issac walked into the living room, booting up his tablet. “I’m ready.” Jamie felt like the leaden announcement should have been followed by a window-rattling thunder clap. But the storm was still too distant, and the pressure wouldn’t break for a while yet. 

Jamie looked at Yael with deliberate challenge in her eyes. “Are you going to tell?”

Issac looked at Yael, hurt and alarm radiating from every feature. Jamie could see his expression hit xyr, and xe buckled. “No. I won’t tell.”

Issac relaxed a tiny bit, and headed back to his room. Jamie and Yael followed wordlessly. 

He sat on his bed, and started opening little bandage-like packages. Inside, there were small, transparent squares veined with circuits and wires, sticky on one side. He arranged them on different spots on his head as he spoke, not looking at them or his tablet.

Issac’s voice shook, but his tone suggested he didn’t know it. “Right, for you two it’s pretty simple. Yael, watch the door and keep anyone else from getting in. Jamie, you’re a failsafe. If I have a seizure lasting more than four minutes and the system doesn’t automatically power down, you just hit this red button right here. Easy.”

Jamie goggled. “What?” 

He paused to read as he sat down, then glared at her. “What? It’s just pushing a button and reading time. At most. You can do that.”

Yael balked, too. “You never said anything about seizures.”

Issac shrugged nervously. “Just a possible side effect of additional electrical charge. It’ll ride itself out.”

Jamie covered her face with her hands, tasting bile again, feeling the acid of it against her throat. Don’t throw up. This was no time for throwing up. Issac needed her. When she pulled her eyes back up, Issac seemed to be done with the sensor stickers, and held a little vial of gray dust. She watched in stunned horror as he tipped it into his ear. Her heart hammered in her throat. 

Yael blanched, as shocked as Jamie by the suddenness of it. Xe pressed xyr back to the door. Xe looked to Jamie, but Jamie had nothing but her own shock to mirror back. “I’ll…get to my post,” xe said, and slipped out. 

Jamie was left alone with Issac. He lay back on the bed, a display on an adjustable arm above his face. He poked buttons on his homemade software. 

He ignored her as she pulled over his desk chair and sat. His translation software wasn’t available to him, now. And he’d never come to even one ASL lesson. She couldn’t talk to him. Reasoning with him was impossible, and way too late.

She repositioned his alarm clock. In case she needed it.

Half an hour passed with him fiddling with his own brain. Plenty of time for her to consider how badly this could go. How even the best case scenario would enrage their parents beyond all reason. How she’d never really asked him to go into detail about possible worst case scenarios.

She couldn’t stop thinking about Jenna. Jenna had been the smartest person in the building for most of Jamie’s life. In any crisis, she was calm, collected, and usually ready with a snappy comeback that broke the tension in the room. She remembered Jenna with her face streaked with frustrated tears as she struggled with remembering how the microwave worked. Coughing through smoke because of another dinner burnt hopelessly, but refusing to leave the microwave as she tried over and over to figure it out. How mad Jenna got every time someone tried to help.

If this went badly, would Issac be like that? Scraping furiously at limitations he’d never had before? Refusing help?

The storm still didn’t break. She couldn’t look out the window to check on it. She watched her brother.

Issac chewed his lower lip, staring at the screen, looking for some pattern or indicator Jamie wouldn’t understand. For a while, it seemed like nothing was happening. Jamie started to hope that the nanites were totally nonfunctional. Maybe Issac could try again later, with more testing, and someone better to help him than Jamie.

In tiny increments, Issac’s expression started to change. First, it looked like he was in pain. But it wasn’t enough to make him break his focus. He kept inputting commands into the program. Then, he was breathing hard, and starting to sweat. His hands started shaking, just slightly. He’d push a few buttons, and wait. Then push some more buttons, and wait, reading the display in front of him. She couldn’t ask questions.

Issac’s whole body jerked, arching backwards. He made a straining, strangled noise. Jamie got up on her knees, reaching for him, trying to see what was wrong.

"No!" Issac gulped, pushing himself jerkily back into his previous position. "It’s fine. Just a couple went astray. It’s fine." He did not sound fine. His teeth were gritted and his hands were twitching strangely. He reached for the screen, but his hand jerked off course and hit a different part of the touchscreen. "No. Blue button. Hit the--” Jamie rushed to obey, hitting the blue button he’d been reaching for. Issac reached for the display screen again. His breathing was heavily labored. This didn’t look right. A nerve for hearing shouldn’t do this.

He hit another series of buttons, and watched the screen. Then more buttons, and more watching. His hands were still shaking, but not jerking anymore. Jamie settled back onto the chair again, staring at Issac as hard as she could, as if watching him hard enough could protect him. According to the clock, this continued for another agonizing 20 minutes. Issac staring, twitching, and punching buttons on the screen while Jamie’s eyes dried out, both of them turning damp with sour-smelling sweat.

The twitches were getting worse. She started counting, timing them. Issac’s leg spasmed a couple times, but he didn’t say anything further to Jamie. Didn’t even seem to remember that Jamie was there. Jamie tried not to think about throwing up. She couldn’t afford that distraction. Issac sucked a breath noisily through his teeth. Jamie couldn’t be sure if that was an effect of the procedure or just plain fear. Or pain. Jamie wasn't breathing so well, either, and the sound of the two of them struggling for oxygen was only making things worse for Jamie.

Then, reaching for the screen, Issac’s hand froze. Jamie looked back to his face. His eyes rolled back in his head and partly closed. His whole body spasmed and constricted, arching painfully. A seizure. Jamie’s heart stopped.

She grabbed the screen to turn it off. To use the kill switch.

But Issac had said not to. To time it. How long had it been so far? A second? An hour? Was it already too late? Jamie swallowed, hard. No, it couldn’t have been more than a couple of seconds. There was a clock embedded in the screen. Jamie forced herself to stare at it, to not look at Issac. The clock didn’t move. Why not? Was it broken? Was there something wrong with time? Had time stopped?

After an eternity, the digits switched. A second. She had been staring at it for a second.

She was supposed to wait for four minutes.

She looked over at Issac. If she turned it off now, instead of waiting, Issac wouldn’t know. She could turn it off. She could turn it off right now. Issac was still twitching, his body arching and contorting unnaturally. There was saliva at the corner of his mouth.

Jamie looked back at the screen. Another two seconds had passed. What was wrong with time all of a sudden?

She could turn this off. She could.

She didn’t.

She waited.

30 seconds.

A minute.

Two minutes. Issac was starting to turn blue. Could he breathe like this? Could his lungs move any better than his spine, his hands? Could his heart?

Two and a half minutes.

Three minutes. Getting bluer. All the red was drained from his face, leaving only white, and that awful blue at his lips.

Three and a half. What if he was dead? What if he was just twitching because of nanites and electricity, and he was already dead? Other than the twitching, he looked dead. Like the corpse of somebody who’d died in agony.

What if she was sitting here, watching Issac die, and not doing anything?

Three and a quarter. Jamie broke. She pushed the kill switch as hard as she could. Her finger punctured the thin film, distorting the image hopelessly.

 Had it worked? Did it turn off? Her vision swam-- from tears or panic, she couldn’t tell. “Yael! Yael it went wrong get help get an ambulance get Mom or Dad or--!” She heard a shuffling, then rapid pounding, as Yael took off running.

She looked over at Issac. No change. Still blue. Still twitching. Jamie felt a whimper escape her throat. She let go of the screen.

She stared at her brother. She couldn’t bring herself to understand what she was seeing. Her mind shut down rather than comprehend that this was Issac, dying or dead, right next to her. That there was nothing she could do. It was too late.

Why had she waited so long? Why had she helped him with this stupid plan?

She felt lightheaded, and realized that she was holding her breath along with her brother. Could his hand still be twitching like that if he was dead?

The handle to Issac’s bedroom door embedded in the wall with a bang. She didn’t even jump. Dad rushed to Issac, just in time for Issac to go limp. Used-up air left him in a gust. She felt, more than heard, the whimper in the back of her throat. 

Dad had never looked like this before. She couldn’t think of any word but desperate. His hands reached for Issac’s throat, his wrist, looking for a pulse. Jamie remembered dimly how he’d complained before that pulses were hard for the sensors on his hands to pick up. It’d been a problem in the field. Jamie hadn’t checked for a pulse. She’d forgotten. She’d messed up. Of course she should have checked for a pulse. 

Then, Drew was there, shoving Dad away, replacing sensors with nerves. They held their breaths together. Drew's pronouncement was sharp, decisive. “He’s alive.”

Jamie exhaled. Dad’s head hung forward in what would have been relief if the rest of him hadn’t been almost shaking with tension. 

MARTIN’s voice sounded from a far hallway where it was still active. “EMTs on the way up.”

Drew looked at Jamie, and she fought not to recoil. “What happened.”

“He…the nanites. But it…it went wrong.” Her voice was shaking, so thin it was barely there.

Dad made a noise like he was choking. He was still kneeling by Issac. He'd taken Issac’s other limp wrist in his hand, still looking for the pulse Drew had found, trying to feel it himself. He rested one hand on Issac’s chest. Jamie strained to see it rise and fall. Drew had said he was alive, and Drew would never make a mistake about that, but she wanted to see it.

"Don't. Your hand's too heavy--” Drew picked Dad’s hand up, and Dad let him, but he didn't move from crouching over Issac, sitting on the cusp of the bed. 

Jamie could hear Yael from a distance-- a greater distance than she'd have thought possible. Miles away, at least. "Through here! He's in here!"

EMTs appeared with swift, professional precision. One of them tried to get Dad to move. His back was to Jamie, blocking her view of her dad, but she saw the EMT jerk back away from him.

"Neil! Move!" Drew barked. "Give them room to work."

Dad rose, dazed, and moved back several paces. The EMTs swarmed. Jamie lost track of anyone not around Issac’s bed. Then she lost track of what they were saying.

Issac was given oxygen, and transferred to a gurney. Nobody else moved. 

Then they started to move Issac. Dad tried to follow. Drew stepped in. "Neil, sit down. You look like you're gonna pass out. I'll go with him. Take a minute to breathe, then come downstairs. OK? Don't pass out on the stretcher. That's bad."

Dad's posture shifted, angry, but his voice still seemed distant. "I can't not--"

Drew held his ground. "You're going to. Get your head on straight, then come. You remember how you were when Mel was in labor? We're not doing that again. Sit. Breathe. Then come." Drew left with the EMTs. Dad stayed.

That was the first time Jamie noticed Yael, xyr huge bulk tucked near the door, gripping xyr own arms and looking lost.

Dad turned and walked slowly to Issac’s bed, to sit in the tangle of blue and white bedding. He stared at the floor, the upper half of his body bent forward and down. His eyes were red, wide, and blind to everything, his face as pale as Issac’s had been. Slowly, his eyes slid up the floor to the door of Issac’s room. He blinked a few times, as if he was waking up.

Jamie wanted to wake up. Wanted this to all be a bad dream, warning her not to go forward with Issac’s plan. There was nothing she wanted more than to wake up and run to Mom or Dad and tell them everything, bureau be damned. 

But when Dad woke up, just like Jamie, he was still here. The punctured display still hung above the overturned chair. 

For one terrifying moment, Jamie thought he was going to cry. His chin trembled.

In the span of a breath, everything that seemed about to shake apart turned to granite. 

His eyes moved to Jamie, and she froze. His voice was the thunder that had been hanging in the distance all day. “What happened."

Jamie couldn't speak, couldn't even swallow. She couldn't bring herself to tell him. What Issac had done, what he'd told her. What she'd sat by and let happen. Her guilt lodged in her throat, and she couldn't breathe. 

Her dad was one of the fastest people alive. He was standing over her before Jamie'd realized he'd moved. The thunder was right over her head. "What happened. What did you do."

Jamie’d never seen him look at anyone the way he was looking at her now, bloodshot eyes locked on hers. He seemed impossibly huge. Unstoppable. "What did you do,"” he demanded. His voice was raising-- louder, but lower. She could swear it shook the floor.

He came towards her-- too fast. Jamie was rooted in place. 

Then Yael was there, between them, shoving him back. "Stay away from her!"

"I told you to keep your fucking hands off me!" Dad roared back. He stepped forward. Yael's hand shot out, grabbing him. Jamie didn’t understand how anything could be bigger than Dad, but Yael loomed over him. 

But xe couldn't force him back. He braced his feet. Marble tile cracked underneath them. Jamie could hear Yael strain. "Don’t. Touch. Her."

"I said move!"

Something cracked. Not marble. Something muffled. 

Jamie wanted to shout, too. To tell them to stop. Why were they doing this? She didn't trust herself to move a hair. She felt dizzy. 

They shifted, moved just enough for Jamie to get a clear view of what was happening. Yael’s face was contorted with rage. Any tears were trapped inside the blackened silver encasing xyr. One hand gripped Dad’s shoulder, the other gripped his other arm. 

Jamie knew her dad had killed people. She'd never seen it. This must be what he would look like when he did it. He pushed Yael. Almost seemed to be winning. Xe surged forward again, just enough to clamp xyr hand onto his shoulder. Xe twisted xyr thumb, and Jamie heard a second sickening crack as his flesh indented all wrong. Dad didn't even flinch. 

Too much. The world, far away a second ago, suddenly crowded in against her. Something in Jamie snapped. Shrill and breathless as her voice was, it was loud. “Enough!” 

Fighter’s reflexes meant they both saw Jamie draw her gauntlet on them the moment she’d done it. “Stop right now!” she commanded. “No more fighting or I drop you both! This isn’t helping Issac!”

Solomon appeared at the edge of Jamie’s vision, but stopped at the sight of them. “Yael, go with your dad. Dad, sit down.”

Solomon took that for an order, and moved to pull Yael away from Dad. Jamie still felt lightheaded. Her eyes were starting to swim with tears, but when they cleared, Solomon had both hands on Yael and was dragging xyr away. Xe wasn’t fighting, but xe kept xyr gleaming metal eyes on Dad, and Dad watched xyr with all the fury of a force of nature in his own dark eyes. Dad didn’t sit. 

Once Yael was out of the room, Jamie's knees buckled under her, and she went down. She clutched her stomach, trying for a split second to fight the inevitable as her mouth filled with saliva. 

She grabbed the wastepaper basket next to Issac’s desk. Barely in time. There wasn't much-- breakfast had been beyond her today, but her body shuddered with the force of pushing up stomach acid. She fought it, desperately grabbing for control of her own body, but every time she came close, she lost immediately. 

Just as she thought she might be winning, she looked up enough to see Dad, walking out the door. 

* * *

Papa’s grip was a vice around xyr wrist, pulling xyr through the courtyard, through their own front door. Dimly, xe knew that if xe tried, xe could shake him off. He wasn’t any stronger than Yael. Without using major violence, he couldn’t physically make Yael do anything. Xe still couldn’t believe that he would.

But xe couldn’t make xyrself pull out of his grip, either. Xe needed to go after Issac, but xe was too scared to do it.

Once they were isolated, Papa pulled xyr arm around, making xyr face him. He looked as betrayed as xe felt, but his reasons were all wrong. He didn’t let go of xyr. “What were you thinking?! What in God’s name were you thinking!”

“You don’t even know what’s going on!” Xe shot back.

Yael didn’t want this fight. Xe was already so mad at Neil, and Issac, and xyrself, even a little bit at Jamie. A note of pleading bled through the anger in xyr voice, begging him to understand. To help. “He was attacking Jamie!”

He closed his eyes, physically blocking the truth as he shook his head. “He was not. He wouldn’t. The only attacker here was you! How could you do this?”

Xe snapped xyr wrist out of his grip. Xe took a step back. He wasn’t going to help. 

“And put that away,” Papa commanded. He meant xyr silver. Xyr protection.

Xyr inheritance. 

Xyr voice rumbled through xyr, slow and cold. “I see. I get it, now. You can’t see the betrayal right in front of you because you’re too busy seeing the betrayal you’ve always expected.”

Papa’s eyes widened, and he scrambled for denial. “No. I expected better of you.” He was always, always so bad at lying. It hurt.

“I wish I believed you. A month ago, a week ago, I would have tried. You don’t trust me enough to talk to my own uncle. You can’t even talk to me about my own parents.”

His breath came up short, but he was too proud to move his feet away from xyr. 

Xe stepped towards him. His knees bent as if to step back, but he held his ground. He was a hero. Which meant Yael had to be something else. Xe’d made a vow to xyrself, for him, years ago. But that was when Yael dreamed of being a hero. Back when xe trusted him and his promises of what xe could be. It was as if xe could feel that promise and xyr vow splinter in xyr hands. 

This shapeshift was so much easier than any other. All xe had to do was lean on xyr own features and the memories of old, secretly-studied news clips and articles.

First, xe resurrected Ezekiel's body and face. He was the easiest. Xe had his hair.

It was so much easier than mimicking Papa’s features. 

Papa lost his footing, staggering backwards. Xe could see greyed sunlight reflecting off of Yael in his eyes. He gasped as if xe’d slammed xyr fist into him.

Papa had said, just once, that Ezekiel’s temper was at his beck and call, like a guard dog. So Yael had found another inheritance waiting for xyr, today. There was a leashed beast, waiting for its chance, behind xyr words. “Who is it you think you’re talking to?”

His voice actually shook. Xe’d never heard that, before. “Yael, stop that. Now.”

“No. I want to know who you see when you look at me. Who do you think you’re looking at when you’re afraid to give me even a glimmer of contact with the ones who made me.”

Xe reset, leaning on the other half of xyr features. Putting Miriam in front of him. Xe forced xyr shield away to test the other option. “Who are you so afraid of me becoming that you can’t stand to look at me when I use their powers?” 

Horror was painted plainly in Papa’s face. Xe saw his legs shifting, could practically smell how badly he wanted to run.

Pain pressed in around the anger in Yael's voice. “Who are you so afraid of?”

He had no answer. His eyes searched xyr face. Or Miriam's.

Xe shut xyr eyes. “If you can’t handle raising their child then you shouldn’t have tried!”

Xe kept xyr eyes squeezed shut for as long as xe could stand to. Bracing for…for something. Denial. Reprimand. Anything. Xe forced xyr eyes open. Papa’s whole body canted away from xyr, frozen except for rapid, shallow breaths and the tiny, alarmed, assessing flicks of his eyes. He watched xyr as if xe really was a beast that might tear him apart. 

Xe wanted to hide from it. But xe was too furious to allow that. Xe was on the right side of this. Xe wouldn’t bend.

Yael drew xyrself up, as tall as xe could be, and built an icy veneer for xyr voice. “Unlike you, I’m going to stand by my siblings against anyone who threatens them. That includes their makers, and it includes you. Think what you want about me. But I’m loyal. More than you ever were.”

Head held high, xe turned, and walked deliberately, without any rush, to xyr room, shutting the door deliberately and quietly behind xyr. This was no tantrum. This was an oath.

Xe leaned heavily against the shut door, using xyr own body as a barricade in case he followed. He didn’t. 

After a long, numb minute, xe realized xe was shaking. Xe looked down at xyr hands, but couldn’t make them steady.

A sensation washed from fingertip to shoulder. It was a visceral memory. Muscle, sinew, and bone replayed the memory of Neil’s bone cracking, then shattering in three wet pops under xyr thumb. Xe could feel the muscle of his shoulder jump in pain under xyr fingertips. 

Yael shuddered, flexing xyr hand. Tightening it into a ball. Flexing it again. Trying to shake out the sensation. Praying the other memory xyr hands held wouldn’t follow. Xe held it in xyr other hand, pressing it against xyr own chest, and was briefly disoriented at the too-large breasts under xyr arm. 

Miriam's body. Xe shifted back, feeling the strain and pull of shifting too quickly. Xe didn’t want to be Miriam. Xe didn’t want to be Ezekiel. Right now, xe didn’t even want to be Yael.

* * *

Opal still got nervous every single time she had to come to Sentinel Plaza, even through the back door. She was mostly fine once she was inside, but she always expected security to stop her. Today, just like the times before, everyone ignored her. Well, given their security system, maybe they just assumed she couldn’t do any damage. 

Today, she had to go the public floors of the APB after her lessons, so she’d worn the suit Mom and Auntie gave her. It was a good suit, and Auntie had tailored it to fit Opal perfectly. With her makeup on, she thought she looked a solid 25. Maybe that would make her feel less shaky about going to her “check-in” appointment this afternoon. If she put it off any longer, she’d get questioned about it when she did come in. “Checking in” might not be mandatory, but it was expected, and you could get refused prompt medical help if you didn’t. Aldis’s guys had already warned her that the presence of plenty of other Detroit Line altereds didn’t make any difference in this unofficial rule.

The whole creepy thing with the crate hadn’t really made her want to rush into that clinic.

She felt better once she was in the empty back lobby. Just her, the cameras she couldn’t see but knew were here somewhere, and the elevator. “Private floors, please.”

The system responded with the same calm, machine voice as always. Sounded a bit like her mom’s old phone, actually. “I am sorry, but the lesson today has been canceled.”

Opal frowned. “The fighting lesson was canceled. Xe didn’t say anything about ASL class.”

“I apologize for Yael’s lack of precision. However, class is indeed canceled for today.”

She sighed heavily. Wasn’t it weird that Jamie or Yael weren’t the ones to tell her this? It was either suspicious or rude. The thing with the crate was days ago. If they were cutting her off because she saw too much, they would have done it already, right?  “What, did I piss them off somehow?” 

It wasn’t the kind of question she expected a computer to answer. But it understood her objection, even if it didn’t seem able to detect rhetorical questions. “There has been a family emergency. Ms. Meade and Ms. Tillman-Voss are indisposed.”

Her eyebrows inched upwards. She found herself tilting her face upwards to where the speakers likely were. “Is everyone all right?”

“No. But there isn’t anything you can do about that.”

A weirdly specific judgment call from a machine. “Well, I’d feel better hearing that from a person.”

“I do not intend to interrupt the family at this time.”

Opal sighed, leaning against the elevator. “Right.” She looked up again. “So you have, like, etiquette protocol and stuff, then. Based on people’s moods, instead of just concrete circumstances. That’s pretty cool.” She tilted her head. “Or do they just say ‘private mode’ or something?”

“I alter my actions based on the apparent or likely emotional states of the people affected.”

“Cool,” she repeated halfheartedly. The storm that had been threatening all morning chose that moment to break, sending sheets of water pounding against the doors. She groaned. She didn’t even know if she could take these elevators to the clinic floor. They’d only ever taken her to the Sentinels’ home. She was going to get her nice suit all soggy and cold. At least she wasn’t working for Aldis today. “You’re not going to call security on me if I hang out here a minute, are you? I want to see if I can get a break in the storm before I have to go around the front.” Her stupid appointment wasn’t for three hours.

“You do not pose any meaningful threat, so no.”

“Thanks,” she said automatically. She dropped her duffel bag of workout clothes on the floor, then leaned her back against the cool metal of the elevator door. “You won’t tell me about the nature of the family emergency, will you?”

“No.”

“Right. Guess that’s fair.” She pulled off her blazer, setting it on her lap. “That’s pretty impressive that people as uh…cautious, as the Sentinels, are OK with you making judgment calls about security, discretion, all that. You must be pretty ahead of the curve.”

“I was built by Dr. Jennifer Waterhouse for this purpose. They trust her work.”

“How long have you been running?”

“Approximately eight years.”

“So you’re like…what. A third grader.” She grinned. “Can’t say I’d trust too many eight-year-olds with my safety. You must have a good track record.” 

“Mostly. I have been known to make some very flawed decisions.” Its voice was as calm and impassive as ever, but the answer struck her. It sounded guilty. She felt bad for it, as nonsensical as that was.

“Oh. Well, we all make mistakes, right? I know I have.”

“True omniscience is not attainable, and even if it were, conflicts of values would make perfect decision making impossible.”

She laughed a little. That sounded like something she would have attempted to say when she was eight. “Preach.” Oh shit. “Oh…oh. The jet attack?”

“No. That was beyond my control.” 

“Right. Sorry. Not my business anyways.”

“May I ask you a personal question?” the ceiling asked. Apparently, even the lobby of this place brought surreal experiences into Opal’s life.

“Sure?”

“Following a major mistake, what is your course of action?”

Her brow furrowed again. “That’s a very…human question.” No answer. “OK. Well, I guess apologizing and trying to fix things is usually a good start. Do computers apologize?”

“I can. Few would interpret it as sincere.”

This conversation was getting weirder. “I guess that’s true.” She paused, feeling a little foolish. “You are really passing the Turing test right now. To an impressive degree.”

“Thank you.”

“Well, I guess you’re stuck with trying to fix it then.”

“That is not an option.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you, buddy. But if you were apologizing to me, I think I’d believe you.”

Another pause. “Thank you. I will tell Jamie you were here. These elevators can bring you to the clinic directly, if you’d like.”

Opal pushed herself to her feet. “Really? Thanks, Martin. You’re a pal. I don’t want to get all my makeup rained off.”

The elevator door opened. “My pleasure, Ms. Flynn.”

“Call me Opal.”

“Thank you, Opal.” The doors closed. She was sure the voice from the elevator was quieter, now. Not distant, but sad. “And good luck.”

[phoenixyfriend]

Auntie ‘Soka and Little Leia (and Rex)

The counterpart to Uncle Ben and Little Luke (Original Post, Chrono)

Listen. You all knew this was coming.

This got... very long and detailed and I’m going to have to clean it up and post to AO3. As in, this was supposed to be 2-3k and is literally ten times that long. It crossed 25k. And the initial section actually glosses over a bunch, actual fic-style writing starts at “That, of course, is when things get interesting.”

Warnings: discussion of various canon traumas (most relating to being child soldiers), general PTSD, several scenes featuring dissociation or panic attacks upon being triggered, and canon-typical violence.

Rated T, gen.

I still want there to be de-aging nonsense involved so Ahsoka is physically a late teenager despite having a solid two decades of field experience behind her (we’re pulling her from Malachor).

Leia, much like Luke, is now six. She just came from being a rebellion general. She is not happy about being a child. She was already short, this is just mean.  She’s a human espresso.

UNLIKE BEN, Ahsoka is not happy about this turn of events. Being seventeen-ish is not helpful in the outer rim. She’s a female togruta, young and healthy, and in the Outer Rim, caring for a small human child. Sure, she has her lightsabers and plenty of combat experience, and she can keep them safe, but she’s just one person, and a major target for those looking to make some quick cash. It doesn’t matter how good she is; she needs sleep at some point.

It makes my heart happy to treat Ahsoka and Rex as two halves of the same black ops specialist so you know what, he’s there too! He’s physically like... 10-12 in natborn, maybe. They’re not sure, because clones age weird. He’s moderately more useful than Leia (who is very competent but also physically six, and short for that age), but he’s still... very small.

Reminder that none of them have been born yet.

Ahsoka has a harder time explaining WHY she has children with her, since she's barely more than a kid herself, and clearly unrelated by species. She sometimes just says “Oh, my adoptive brother’s kids” since it’s kind of the truth for Leia and she’s not touching the actual truth about Rex with a ten foot pole.

Ahsoka definitely knows about Leia being a Skywalker, or at least has suspicions that Bail never outright confirmed but was conspicuously quiet about. She does tell Leia about it, but it’s not like that means anything, right? Just, you know, your dad was my teacher! I don’t have to tell you he became Va--oh shit, you already knew that part. Well, fuck. What do you mean he had a son? OH SHIT, PADME HAD TWINS.

Alt take for explaining why she’s got kids: She’s my foundling, I know her name as my child (Leia shut up!!!)

(Ahsoka can fake Mandalore. Sometimes.)

That said, there is... significantly less gambling and significantly more theft to get to Coruscant.

As previously stated, Ahsoka is a black ops kinda gal, and more importantly, she looks like a fairly attractive young woman in the Outer Rim, with two children in good health. She’s a target, and also not the kind of person one generally gambles with. If she does gamble, people get upset when she doesn’t lose, in ways they don’t get upset about Ben doing the same, because she’s, again, a cute teenage girl. It’s exhausting.

As things go, she largely ends up stealing from people who deserve it and/or smuggling herself and her charges into someone else’s ship. They’re small, they can hide. Sometimes she can get them all passage by working as a mechanic, she’s good at that.

Once they’ve got a handle on when they are, they have to decide on Names. None of them have been born yet, so technically they could use their own names without anyone Knowing. Rex and Leia might not even be born, depending on how successful they are at, you know, stopping the war and everything. Ahsoka, though, she’s going be born in two years, and there’s no reason to prevent it, so... she doesn’t want to steal baby-her’s name. That would be mean.

Leia is already calling her “Auntie ‘Soka” when she can for reasons like “selling the bit” and “manipulating adults” and “making us both feel better after we had a mutual breakdown about Anakin being Vader.” Ergo, she decides that whatever new name she picks better include that in some way, and decides on “Sokari” because it sounds pretty.

Overall, they don’t... they don’t actually make it very far before there’s an Incident. Again, teenager with small children. They spend a lot of time hiding out in space ports looking for an opportunity.

That, of course, is when things get interesting.

Specifically, Ahsoka spots a Mandalorian.

She doesn’t recognize the armor. She does recognize the sigil, and thinks ‘well, they’re more likely to help than some,’ because from what she’s heard, the Haat Mando’ade are Decent People Overall. Her view is a little biased, mostly on account of the sheer level of grudge she has against Kyr’tsad. It’s fine! The True Mandalorians have the same grudge, right? And Mandalorians like kids and Ahsoka hasn’t slept in five days and it’s fine. It’s fine! IT’S FINE.

“Oh shit,” Rex whispers, before she can suggest anything. “Oh fuck.”

“Stop cursing,” Leia hisses, elbowing him. “People are going to notice.”

“That’s the Prime,” Rex panics, mostly quiet. Ahsoka’s heart drops, because fuck is right. “That’s Fett.”

Leia isn’t impressed. Ahsoka just angles herself between Fett and Rex and hopes that he doesn’t see them. That’s just asking for trouble.

Unfortunately, Ahsoka is in fact running on none sleep with left trauma, and doesn’t notice Fett walking up and dropping into a seat across from them until he’s actually done so, removing his helmet to glare a little more efficiently.

“Wanna explain why your kid has my face?”

Ahsoka later tells herself that he’s killed Jedi and that’s why he can sneak up on her, and that she can be forgiven some slip-ups with the exhaustion being what it is, and that she’s obviously going to be dealing with some emotional instability in light of the sudden return of teenage hormones and new forms of anxiety that are markedly different from those she was dealing with a few weeks ago.

What Ahsoka wants to say is “that’s kind of a long story,” or “maybe he’s a cousin,” or “kriff off, I don’t know you,” or maybe even “he’s a clone.”

What Ahsoka actually does is burst into tears, which is embarrassing for her, for Fett, for the kids, and for the entire rest of the bar.

It really is the straw that broke the eopie’s back. Even when she was actually this age, she didn’t exactly cry much. Objectively, Fett quasi-aggressively asking a valid question shouldn’t send her into a panic. She’s been through torture and worse. She shouldn’t be crying.

But she is, sobbing her eyes out with no control, and he’s just sitting across from her and looking uncomfortable while Rex wraps his little arms--oh Force he’s so small--around her, and both ‘children’ glare at Fett.

“So, I’m going to take it she didn’t kidnap you from a loving family or do something illicit with a blood sample,” Fett says, after it becomes obvious that Ahsoka’s not going to be ready to talk any time soon.

“She didn’t,” Rex says stiffly, with just the right emphasis for Fett to catch what’s implied. Ahsoka just keeps her head down, eyes pressed against the heels of her palms, trying to get her body to stop rebelling against her.

Fett’s eyes dart to Leia, who folds her arms and draws herself up, every bit the unimpressed princess. “My father claimed her as a sister, so she’s my Auntie ‘Soka.”

The man dithers a bit, the conversation clearly not going where he’d expected. “Right,” he says. “You--you’re all kids. I thought she was a little older, at least, but I didn’t have a good look at her face before.”

She is older, but actually admitting that is only going to make this worse, both for her pride and for her chances of making it out alive.

“Where are you staying?”

“What?” Leia bites out.

“You’re kids, you’re alone, and you’re clearly not okay if you were trying to hide the one with my face as blatantly as you did, and then... whatever this is, when I confronted you,” Fett explains. Ahsoka lifts her head to glare at him, but it’s probably not doing much with the way her eyes are rimmed with red and still wet. “Don’t give me that look, ad’ika, your kids looked as confused and horrified by that as the bartender did. They obviously didn’t think it was normal either.”

Well, kriff you too, Ahsoka thinks.

“And what do you mean by ‘blatantly,’ here?” Leia challenges. It’s adorable, but Ahsoka watched this tiny girl shoot a man last week, and wonders when people are going to start taking that seriously.

“There’s a lot of people in this galaxy, and I don’t exactly have the clearest memory of what I looked like at that age,” Fett says, slow and careful like he thinks they’re dumb. Ahsoka decides to chalk it up as being because Leia’s visibly six. “I would have thought it was just a coincidence if you hadn’t put in effort to hide him.”

Leia huffs, and Rex glares harder. Fett just sighs, like they’re all going to give him grey hairs.

“You can explain whatever the hell’s going on,” Fett says. “I’ll let you stay on my ship, there’s a spare bunk and you’re small.”

“For free?” Rex demands.

“A night on a bunk in exchange for information,” Fett clarifies. “We can negotiate from there.”

Ahsoka takes a few moments, notes that both of the others are waiting on her for the decision, and cringes. She doesn’t feel steady enough to carry that. She has to anyway.

“Rex?” she asks, voice rasping after the breakdown of the past few minutes.

“Yeah?”

“How much?”

He looks up at her, eyes calculating, and grimaces. “We don’t want Order 66. A warning is better, even if we... share information.”

She nods, and turns to Leia. “Any premonitions, princess?”

Leia glowers, cute and furious. “No.”

“No, don’t tell, or no, you aren’t getting any vibes about sharing info one way or the other?”

“The latter,” Leia clarifies, huffy to the last.

“Right,” Ahsoka says, and then just... hesitates. “Fett...”

“You’ve got conditions,” he guesses.

She bares her teeth in what could have, through a squint and perhaps a few drinks, been called an apologetic smile. “Just one, really.”

“Yeah?”

“No hurting, killing, or turning us in for bounties,” she says. “Any of us.”

“You’re children, I wouldn’t.”

She blinks at him, slow and careful. She hesitates. She reaches down, out of sight, sees him stiffen.

She unclips her sabers from her belt and puts them on the table.

His eyes are fixed on the weapons the second they enter his line of sight, and don’t move as he clearly realizes why she made the condition she did.

“I left years ago, because I couldn’t stay without it ruining me,” she says. Still slow. Still careful. She’s so tired. “But if I want to keep Leia safe, I have to get back to Coruscant.”

His eyes finally lift from the sabers, expression blank. “Just her?”

“Rex doesn’t have the same monsters coming after him,” she says. “If it were just me and him, I’d worry less. Leia’s a different kind of target.”

“You’re putting a lot of faith on the table by telling me that,” Fett says, voice flat and toneless. “Considering my occupation.”

“She’s a child,” Ahsoka says, feeling heavy and boneless. “Even with what I was and will be, even with what money you would get from the right buyer, you wouldn’t.”

“There are other risks.”

“There are.”

They stare at each other for too long, probably, and then Fett jerks as Rex kicks him under the table. The boys glare for a moment, and then Rex says, “If she weren’t good, I’d still be a slave to those who grew me.”

Fett blinks, and then nearly growls the word, “What?”

“She freed me,” Rex reiterates. “While I was trying to shoot her.”

Ahsoka lifts a hand and puts it on his far shoulder, pulling him into her side. She doesn’t meet Fett’s eyes again, because part of her is back on Mandalore, dodging her own soldiers and crying out as her family dies across the galaxy.

Fett breathes in. Breathes out. He puts a hand to his head, visibly frustrated. “Fine. A good Jedi kid, and two smaller kids, one of which is apparently in some way mine.”

Rex makes a face, which is fair, but also not helping.

“To the ship,” Ahsoka says, putting her sabers back on her belt and sliding out of the seat. “I’m... I’m Sokari.”

“You already know my name.”

“I do.”

---------------------------

Fett watches her like she’s a predator, which has the benefit of being accurate and slightly flattering. She lets other two take care of most of talking, and then Fett tells her to sleep first, and talk in the morning.

“You’re dead on your feet, jetii,” he snorts. “And that crying jag didn’t do you any favors. Sleep.”

So she does, and Fett doesn’t even wake her. He just lets her sleep. He watches her in the way of a guard. She sees him when she gets up to use the ‘fresher in the middle of the night, but he doesn’t even comment when she collapses right back into the mediocre cot she’s borrowed for the cycle.

Rex and Leia are safe, her hindbrain tells her, even in the depths of sleep. Her mind curls around theirs in the Force, and she trusts that they are here. They are not happy, but they are alive and unharmed, and that has to be enough.

When she stumbles her way to true wakefulness, groggy and loose-limbed, Fett greets her with caf.

“The kids wouldn’t let me near you,” he tells her.

“They’re good,” she says, cupping her hands around the mug. She feels wobbly, in every sense. Her body, her mind, her emotions, her connection to the Force. Nothing is on-kilter right now. “Did they tell you anything?”

“They waited for you,” he says. “But the little miss needed a nap of her own. They’re down in the other bunk.”

“I didn’t notice,” she admits. She should have. She’s Fulcrum. She’s a veteran of the Clone Wars. She’s... she’s supposed to be better than this.

“How long?” he asks, and then when she squints up at him, he clarifies. “How long did you fight?”

“My last fight--”

“No, whatever war you came out of,” he says. Her chest twists cold. “I don’t know if the Jedi sent you into it or if you waded in yourself once you left, but you move like a soldier.”

“I was,” she confirms. “But... but I don’t want to talk about the details. Not until the other two are here.”

He frowns at her. “Is there anything you can talk about?”

She shrugs and looks away, trying to take solace in the warmth of the caff she holds above the table, as if it can hide her, guard her, from the disgraced Mand’alor across the table.

“Jedi?”

“I’m not officially a Jedi,” she says, voice quiet. “Not anymore.”

“Then what do I call you?” he asks. “We’re not exactly close enough for names.”

“Torrent,” she says. “It’s not--I can’t claim my family name anymore. But I can claim Torrent, so I will. And if you want a title, I was a commander.”

“Bit young for that.”

“I got the rank when I was fourteen,” she says, and watches his face do something complicated and unpleasant. “Don’t. I know your own culture puts children on the field that young.”

“Not in command.”

She shrugs. “Yeah, well... the soldiers were technically younger. Adults, but...”

Ahsoka can see the way he casts about to figure out what species grows at that rate. He guesses a few, and she shoots all of it down.

She won’t tell him. Not until Rex is awake.

This part of the story is his.

--------------------------

When Leia tries to sit alone, a foot away on the bench like a proper adult, Ahsoka refuses to let it happen. She pulls the younger girl to her side and quells protests with a glance. It’s a decent skill, but she’s not sure how long it’s going to work on her niece-in-spirit.

“Your body needs the chemical release of skinship,” she says, and Leia glares at her. “I spent way too much time with the boys to not know about this. Deal.”

Rex sits close enough to knock their knees together under the table, and his warmth is the old comfort she needs.

“Do you want the story you’ll believe, or the truth?” Ahsoka asks.

“What’s the difference?”

“One of them involves something so impossible that even most Jedi wouldn’t believe it,” she tells him.

Fett folds his arms and leans forward to rest them on the table, challenging but oddly open. “Try me.”

“Time travel.”

He blinks, just once, fully controlled. “That’s a tough one.”

“There were only three Jedi left alive when I died,” she says. “Or... whatever it is that happened to me. I think I died. All I know is that one moment, I was thirty-two and dying, and the next, I was... seventeen again, and had these two with me. All of us younger than we were. None of us have even been born yet.”

She refuses to look him in the eye. “They both outlived me by... six years, maybe. Got caught up while traveling instead of dying. Leia was twenty-two. Rex was thirty-five. I’m not technically the oldest anymore. I mean, physically I am, but that doesn’t mean anything, and it’s not exactly doing us any good, and--”

Rex bumps his shoulder to her arm. “I dunno, Commander. I’ve spent a long time looking older than I should. Nice to look younger for once.”

She shoots him a small, pained grin. “Could be worse, yeah.”

“Let’s say I believe you.”

Her attention snaps back to Fett, who’s looking damnably blank, and is showing even less in the Force.

He waits a second for her to relax back into her seat.

“Let’s say I believe you,” he repeats. “How’s ‘Rex’ connected to me? What’s so special about Leia there? And what war did you fight in that has you acting like a veteran?”

“Three years in the clone wars,” she whispers, glancing to Rex and forcing herself to not go for her sabers to defend against an attack that her paranoia says is coming and the Force says is not. “Then almost all the Jedi were wiped out at once, and I spent a year... drifting. Then black ops for the next fifteen.”

“Black ops,” he repeats, still damnably flat.

“There was a Sith Empire,” she says, and she can hear her own tone growing somehow emptier. “Glassing planets. Enslaving entire species. Committing genocides all over. Of course, there was a rebellion, and of course I joined it. I was one of the only people left with Jedi training. For all that I’d left the Order, I still had a duty to the universe.”

His eyes flit to Leia, who shrugs and tries to look prim. “I was adopted and raised by one of the founders of the rebellion, a movement built on the desire to instate freedom and democracy in a galaxy that had lost even the pretense.”

“That why you’re special?”

Leia smiles, thin and patronizing. It doesn’t fit on her little face. “I’m special because my biological father was one of the most powerful Force users in history, and his Fall to the dark side and choice to become a Sith is why the Emperor’s rise was nearly uncontested. I do not like power, but it’s in my veins and I can’t change that. Force users are... a lucrative trade, and I’m still the size of a child, so I can’t fight back. I’ll be safer in the Jedi Temple, even if I don’t want to be a Jedi.”

Fett looks to Ahsoka, makes to ask a question, and then shakes his head. Not the time, maybe.

“So, that’s all... very complicated and I don’t know how much of it I believe, but it doesn’t explain...” he trails off, and sighs. “My kid, or whatever you are. I heard you mention clones.”

Rex grins. It is not a kind expression.

“Let me tell you about Kamino.”

---------------------------

Ahsoka has no idea if Fett believes them. Either he thinks they’re telling the truth, or he thinks their delusional kids. Whatever the case, he offers to take them closer to the Core. Ahsoka quietly offers to take a look at his engine in return, and then pretends not to notice when Fett awkwardly drifts to and away from Rex.

“They put chips in our brains to make us kill the Jedi we respected, cared for, even loved. I tried to shoot ‘Soka, Fett. She was seventeen and risked her life to get that chip out of my head while I was trying to kill her. I have never hated myself more than when I woke up and realized what I’d almost done, and I was one of the few that were able to fight it. I heard the stories of dozens of brothers who woke with their chips having degraded and chose to eat their blaster rather than live with the guilt of the orders they’d followed without question because of a thrice-damned Sith slave chip in their head.”

“So no, I won’t call you father or acknowledge you as clan until you do something to prove you’re worth it, shared blood or not.”

What Ahsoka does get out of the arrangement, for all that Fett’s route mostly takes them on a meandering path that isn’t faster than their previous system, is sleep. She gets to rest. She gets to trust that Fett won’t kill Rex, out of guilt for something he hasn’t done, that he won’t kill Leia out of a worry that she’s just a delusional child, a real child, that he won’t kill ‘Sokari’ because it would ruin any chance of gaining Rex’s favor, ever.

She’s not safe, won’t believe she can be until she’s in the Temple and Sidious is dead dead dead, but she’s safer than she’s been in a long time.

Every night, Ahsoka wakes up and stumbles to the little galley, deaths and torture sparkling behind her eyes with the energy of a thousand lost Jedi, ten thousand mourned brothers and sisters.

She is not the only one of their little group to be a survivor of a near-total genocide, but Rex could not feel his brothers die in the Force, even if his nightmares featured what they heard of suicide missions by the emperor’s favored shock troopers, and Leia had... Alderaan had more off-world survivors than there had been Jedi at all.

It’s not worth comparing their pain. It’s stupid to even think it. Part of her can’t help but do it anyway.

“Caf?”

She feels a lek twitch in response to the voice of the only other person on board who can reach the top shelf. “I probably shouldn’t.”

“Whiskey?”

“That’s a definitely shouldn’t.”

“Hoth chocolate?”

“...please.”

She doesn’t lift her head from her arms until the mug clicks down in front of her, ceramic on plastisteel.

“Do I ask what it was this time?”

She shrugs. “It’s hard to explain to non-sensitives.”

“Try me anyway.”

Ahsoka twists the Hoth chocolate in her hands, takes a sip as she thinks. “The Force isn’t just one thing. It’s... energy and philosophy and spirit, a sense of being that ties the entire universe together. Sentient and inanimate and living and dead, empty space and lush forests and stifled cities. For those of us who are sensitive to it, it’s possible to feel the life of everyone around you, theoretically possible to feel entire systems. If you have a Force bond, like a master and padawan, that can stretch across planets, even systems if one or both are particularly powerful.

“So just... just imagine, for a moment, what it’s like to feel the screaming of all those Jedi in the Force as their trusted men shot them down.

“Some of them were close enough that I could feel them die,” she manages. “I... it’s horrible. It’s horrific. It’s not something I can ever forget, and I want to. I want to forget what that moment was like. Not that it happened, but...”

She can feel the tears. Fuck..

“You want to dull the edges.”

“Don’t we all?” she asks, scrubbing the back of her hand across her eyes. “Leia lost her entire planet, billions of people, and she was forced to watch. Rex... Force, I can barely imagine, and I was there for most of it.”

Fett watches her, measuring. “From what he said, they were as much your brothers as his, by the end.”

“No,” she immediately denies. “They could have been, maybe, but the ones I was closest to died earlier, and then I left, and by the time the Empire rose, all but a handful were... no. Rex, I will claim as a brother in all the ways that matter, but I don’t get to do that with the rest. I don’t have the right.”

“You’re hard on yourself.”

“Fate of the galaxy, my good bitch. Guess who’s got it on her shoulders.”

He snorts at her, and nods at the mug. “Drink your Hoth chocolate. We’re landing in eight hours, and you’ve got kids to look out for.”

---------------------------

There’s a twitch in the Force when they land, something pulling at her in a way she barely feels. She’s had her shields up so fully for so long that it’s natural to hide away what she is to the point where she can hardly tell what anyone else is, either. It takes more than a moment to remember how to let herself spread out across the world.

“Auntie ‘Soka? Why’d you stop?”

She doesn’t have an answer to Leia’s prodding question. “I don’t know.”

It’s almost familiar. Old and half-forgotten, not the same as what she remembers, but--

“This way,” she says, and wanders off into the crowd. Leia and Rex follow without question. Fett curses and rushes through the rest of his transaction with the docking attendant. The sound of him jogging after them is almost funny, with the armor, but she can’t focus on that.

Ahsoka slips between people with the ease of a career built on such a habit, children trailing like ducklings. She knows this feeling, she knows this person, what is she missi--

“Oh,” she breathes, going stock still. She knows that face. She knows those braids. She even knows the presence.

Younger than Ahsoka had ever seen her, but unmistakably Master Billaba.

“Torrent, what the hell?” Fett demands, finally catching up. “You can’t just run off like that!”

“It’s Depa,” she says, eyes still fixed on the woman parsing through a datapad with an irritated vendor. She has a padawan braid. It doesn’t feel like Master Windu is on-planet, so this might be a solo mission, a... oh. Senior Padawan, Knight Elect. This is the kind of mission taken to test if she’s ready to be promoted.

Ahsoka feels light-headed.

Fett waits for her to elaborate, but she can’t. This was Kanan’s master. This was a member of the High Council. This was a woman who died and--

“You need to sit down,” Fett says, not a touch gruff. He puts a hand on her shoulder and guides her off the main walkway. “I’m... going to talk to the woman in the Jedi robes. You three just stay there and don’t get kidnapped.”

Ahsoka nods, feeling like she’s not quite inhabiting her own body.

It’s Depa.

Her eyes track Fett without conscious control, and her montrals pick up the sound.

Depa looks up when the armor comes close enough, free hand tensed in a way that says she’s preventing herself from reaching for a saber in reaction to the heavily-armored individual standing several feet away.

“Mando,” the woman says. “May I help you?”

“Are you Depa?”

Depa doesn’t do anything so dramatic as gape or step back, but she does blink rapidly for a moment. She then folds her hands down in front of her, drawing her spine up ramrod straight. “I am Jedi Padawan Depa Billaba, yes. May I ask why it is that you need to know?”

Ahsoka imagines Fett grimacing, or rolling his eyes, or maybe dithering. She can’t tell from this angle, and he has a helmet on besides. It turns his awkward silences into judgmental ones.

“I’ve had some Jedi kids on my ship, hitching a ride,” he says at length. “One of them recognized you and then just... froze.”

“You have our younglings in your care,” Depa says, carefully not accusatory, but close enough to be a warning.

“Not quite,” he says. “The one that actually came from the temple is seventeen. One of ‘em isn’t Force Sensitive, and the last one is but hasn’t been to Coruscant before. They’re trying to get the little one to the Temple for her own safety.”

Depa considers that, and then passes the datapad to the vendor. “Lead on.”

It’s surprisingly simple, really. Fett did all the talking.

And then Depa is standing right in front of her.

“Like I said,” Fett sighs. “She froze up.”

“Hello,” Depa says, hands laced together inside her sleeves. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Ahsoka shakes her head. “I know of you. I’ve seen you spar. You’ve never spoken to me.”

All true. A little misleading, but it’s fine, it’s all fine.

Depa waits a moment, and then says, “You seem to have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Sokari T-Torrent,” she manages. The words feel clunky in her mouth, the sound abrasive for all that it’s just her own voice, no different from usual. A little shaky, maybe. She can feel a cool breeze on her upper arms. Shouldn’t she have armor? She should have armor. “It... it’s been a long time since I’ve seen another Jedi. I’m having a hard time believing you’re real.”

“I see,” Depa says. “Perhaps we should take this somewhere more private? You seem a little unsteady.”

Ahsoka lets herself be led back to the ship, in the company of Mand’alor Jango Fett, Jedi Padawan Depa Billaba, Princess-General Leia Organa, and good old Captain Rex.

It’s like the start of a sick joke.

---------------------------

Fett and Depa talk where she can hear, but they rarely address her directly. Both seem to realize that she’s not particularly useful right now. Leia and Rex are pressing up against her at the little table in the galley, and Ahsoka lets them.

This is real. She can feel Depa in the Force, recognizes her energy even if it’s not quite what it will-was-could-have-been. This is happening.

It’s a textbook Traumatic Stress Response case, one of them says.

Fett has his helmet off. Ahsoka’s sure that’s wrong for some reason. She thinks he might already be on wanted lists. Should she worry about Depa trying to arrest him?

Depa asks about Rex at one point. Fett tells her that someone cloned him without his knowing, but the kid is more comfortable with Ahsoka so they’re still working on what that means for him.

It’s more or less true. Rex squeezes her hand the one time someone suggests separating them. She’s not letting that happen unless Rex wants to leave for whatever reason. They’ve worked apart before. They can do it again.

“Auntie Soka? You’re shivering.”

Is she?

Leia cuddles in closer, and Ahsoka runs a hand over her hair. It’s an absentminded motion, and for all that she knows Leia’s hair is fine as silk, it feels like plastic in the moment.

“I don’t think I’m okay,” Ahsoka announces. The words hang in the air like lead balloons, and she can feel Depa staring at her. “I haven’t been for a very long time.”

“Yeah, we noticed,” Fett says. “Do you need to lay down, Torrent?”

Does she?

“No,” she says. “I... I don’t know what I need.”

“The spicy drink,” Rex tells them. “It’s grounding.”

Right. That.

Fett goes to grab it, and Depa continues to watch.

“How long ago did you leave your master?” Depa asks. “Or... did he die?”

Ahsoka closes her eyes and shakes her head. She can feel the shivers now, tremors in her biceps and a shudder she can’t control in the height of her ribcage. Her teeth grind together, jaw like stone.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Depa assures her. “I’m... going to recommend you see a mind healer on Coruscant.”

That was a forgone conclusion.

A cup clinks onto the table. Fett’s back. “Drink.”

She does.

Depa and Fett continue discussing it as “the adults” at the table. She’s older than both of them. Rex is older than all of them. Ahsoka follows about half of what they say. She agrees with most of it. Rex bullies his way into speaking when she doesn’t, without her even asking, because he knows her mind as well as she does. Fett rolls with it. Depa lets him.

She’s going to reach out to the Temple and see about getting them a ride back to Imperial Center Coruscant.

Fett makes Soka go to bed, taking Leia with her.

---------------------------

She feels more like a person come morning.

Depa’s sitting at the table, datapad in her hands and caff on the table in front of her.

“Good morning,” Ahsoka says, rough and croaking, and Depa’s eyes flick up to meet hers. She nods a shallow hello.

“Feeling better?”

“Much,” Ahsoka says, and goes about gathering a breakfast. There’s definitely some dried meat in here. She can get something fresh when they stop by the market later.

“I was hoping to speak with you about your options,” Depa tells her, once she’s sat at the table. “Fett and your friend Rex took care of most of the negotiation, and I feel like I have an idea of what would work best for you.”

Ahsoka nods slowly. “Okay.”

“There is a Master-Padawan pair a few planets away,” Depa says. “The Council informed me when I spoke with them about you and your wards. They’d be headed back to the Temple in a few days anyway, and the Council has agreed to extend an offer to Fett to handle the transportation. The presence of a Jedi Master on board will allow for him to get in and out of the Core unmolested, and we’d like for you and yours to have a Jedi escort, given what happened yesterday afternoon.”

Her complete spiral into nonbeing?

“I understand,” she says instead. “I suppose Fett agreed because he’s still trying to get Rex to like him?”

Depa shrugs. “That part isn’t my business.”

Of course it isn’t.

“Rex can stay with me for a while, right?” Ahsoka finally asks. “I know it’s not exactly protocol, but I’m...”

“In need of a support system until you’ve seen a mind healer, and against all odds, the child is part of it,” Depa summarizes. “Yes, I recognized as much. I think the Council will be able to allow some leeway there. I don’t know if he’ll enjoy it, given that all the others his age are Initiates, but we can adjust as necessary. On that note... Do you know Leia’s midichlorian count?”

“No,” Ahsoka says, and hesitantly adds, “But her biological father was my Jedi Master, and I’m told his count broke records even as a child. Given what Leia’s shown so far... it’s why I’ve been in a hurry to get her to the Temple.”

Depa frowns at her, clearly working through the implications of a Jedi having a daughter and still teaching... and then visibly dismisses the situation, eyes closing to breathe in the steam of her caff.

Biological father certainly implies a child that was raised by her mother or adopted out so the Jedi father could remain in their chosen career without a conflict of interest or duty.

She’ll tell the council the truth, or... at least Master Koon. Master Kenobi is still a padawan, but she can tell Master Koon.

She already told Jango Fett, of all people.

“Padawan Torrent?”

Her head snaps up. She hasn’t been a padawan in over fifteen years. It’s weird to hear. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I asked if you wanted some time to think it over before I presented the offer to Fett,” Depa says.

Ahsoka gets the distinct feeling that Depa is planning a report to the Council that has ‘needs a mind healer’ underlined at least three times.

“No, I’m--I’m fine. That sounds like a good plan.”

“I’ll speak with him, then. Would you like to come with?”

"No, thank you.”

---------------------------

Fett agrees. Ahsoka’s pretty sure it’s all to do with Rex and maybe Leia. It’s probably nothing to do with ‘Sokari.’ She’s a Jedi, an adult in mind and in body, or at least close enough to count. She’s a damn sight more ‘enemy’ to Fett than the other two are. Not as much as Depa, maybe, but Fett’s been playing nice with her for Leia’s sake.

He plays nice with Ahsoka for Rex’s. That’s all.

They’re only a few planets over from the meeting point, and they have a few days to hang around before the escort meets them. Depa hadn’t given them a name--apparently it could have compromised the opsec for the Jedi team--but Ahsoka’s pretty sure she’ll be able to identify almost anyone. She gets the feeling that the Force is going to send her a familiar face, just as it did Master Padawan Billaba.

Ahsoka lets herself feel the world around her. It’s dark and dreary, in the sense that the beaten-down port is full of petty crimes and less petty horrors, but it’s still lighter than most of the Empire had been. She sneaks away from the ship at night, ignoring Fett at her back, and performs a bit of vigilante justice while she can. She’ll be banned from doing so as soon as she’s reinstated as a Jedi, probably, but for now... for now, she can look at the drug cartels and ‘they’re not slaves, really’ workers and do something to help.

She doesn’t use her sabers. She doesn’t need to. It’s been a long time since she has, for small fry like these.

“What are you doing?” Fett asks her, landing heavily behind her back.

“Chip removal,” she says, hand pressed to the slave’s leg. Her eyes are closed, but she can hear him shifting. “Let me concentrate, I don’t have a meddroid for this.”

He’s silent until she finishes, and waits until the people she’s helped are on their way to the planet’s freedom routes. He doesn’t ask what she did with the owners.

“You’ve done this before.”

“Regularly,” she confirms. “You?”

He doesn’t answer that, just ambles over to the the chains and stares down at them.

“Fett?”

“You go through this like it’s as easy as breathing,” he says. “It’s... impressive.”

“I guess?” she hesitates to continue. “I’m... I don’t think of it that way. This is the easy stuff. A time-waster that helps people. If I wanted to help for real, I’d been going after Jabba or Sidious or--”

“How old were you?” he asks, turning on his heel to face her dead-on. The vocoder of his helmet pulls the emotion from his voice. “When did this... these missions, the slavery battles, when did that start for you?”

“Fourteen,” she says. She’s not entirely sure, really, what counted as a mission for ending slavery and what counted as just a part of war, but she can round down. “Maybe fifteen. It’s a bit of a blur.”

“And you just kept doing it.”

“Of course,” she says. “If I have the time and the energy, if I need to do something and there’s nothing official on my hands, why not?”

He doesn’t answer her.

---------------------------

Rex greets them before she does.

Ahsoka, in her defense, is asleep at the time. It’s a restless sleep, but it’s enough that she doesn’t sense the nearing Force signatures until they’re almost at the ship.

She recognizes one of them.

“Auntie ‘Soka?” Leia questions, when she lurches to her feet and starts pulling on her boots with all the energy of a zombie. “Where are you going?”

“Jedi,” Ahsoka grunts. “Here.”

“I see.”

Leia dresses to follow her, in a little coat that’ll withstand the chill of the outside air, and Ahsoka makes it to the cargo hold just in time to hear Rex saying, “I’m not shaking your hand until you put your gloves on, Vos.”

She laughs to herself, breathless with the knowledge of what she’s about to find. She jumps the railing of the upper walkway, drops down just in front of the Master-Padawan team, and keeps her back to Fett and Rex. “Hello, there.”

One human, one Kiffar. She knows the latter.

“Would you be Sokari Torrent?” the Master asks.

“I am,” she says, with a slight bow. She can tell there’s a bit of judgement for how she’s dressed, but they’re covering it well. A Shadow and his trainee know the value of armor better than most Jedi bother with. “I’m afraid Padawan Billaba didn’t inform me of your names before we met.”

“And yet your friend knew my padawan,” the Master says.

“By reputation,” she says, as smoothly as she can. “I’ve encountered Quinlan Vos before, though I doubt he remembers--”

“I’d remember someone like you,” Quinlan interrupts, with a grin she’s sure is meant to be charming and rogueish.

He’s... very young for her, and not her type. Mostly, she wants to pat him on the head, but that probably wouldn’t go over very well. She still looks like she’s younger than him.

“Anyway,” she says, turning back to the master, “I’m afraid I still don’t know who you are, Master.”

“I am Tholme,” he says, with the bow that a Master gives a Padawan. She feels a little slighted, but it’s fine. She looks the right age, it’s fine.

It’s not like they know.

“It’s nice to meet you, Master Tholme,” she says. “My charges are Rex Torrent, the young man behind me, and currently coming down the ladder is Leia Antilles. I’m sure you’re aware of Jango Fett.”

“The Mand’alor,” Quinlan volunteers, and Ahsoka can almost hear Fett’s teeth grinding.

“Don’t call me that,” he says. She’s sure he’s got a hand drifting for his blaster.

“There isn’t a whole lot of room on the ship,” she says before the men can get into whatever weird contest she’s sure someone might start. Her bet’s on Fett. “But Leia and Rex are small enough to share with me, so I’m sure we can make it work.”

“There’s spare rolls for anyone comfortable with sleeping in the hold,” Fett grunts. “Or on the floor in the passenger room.”

“Well, I guess I could ask for a little help fi--”

“Vos,” Ahsoka snaps, letting her voice take on the kind of ‘obey me or get fresher duty’ irritation that she’d perfected back when the rebellion still had her managing people, before they’d realized she was more use in the field. “Do not.”

There’s a moment’s pause, and Tholme looks unimpressed with that raised eyebrow, but the kind of unimpressed that’s split between his own padawan and the stranger before him.

“Um,” Quinlan says. “I just--”

“No,” she cuts him off. “No flirting.”

It’s weird and uncomfortable and she’d have maybe been okay with it if she was actually the seventeen-or-eighteen-ish(?) that she looked, but she’s not. She’s in her thirties and Vos is... what, twenty? Twenty-one? No.

He stares at her, and she wonders momentarily if she’d gone too far in the direction of judging his intentions in the Force and preempted actual flirtations.

“I’m sorry?” He offers, looking confused, but ashamed. “I, uh, I’ll keep that in mind.”

She definitely preempted the actual flirtation.

Fuck.

Ahsoka closes her eyes and breathes in. Breathes out. Opens her eyes. “Right. That was... I’m not sure how much Padawan Billaba told you about me.”

“Enough,” Tholme says. He moves forward and puts a hand on Quinlan’s shoulder. Ahsoka has no idea if it’s to comfort him or hold him back. “I didn’t share most of it with my padawan, but I have a general understanding of what’s going on.”

Quinlan darts a look at his teacher, but Ahsoka doesn’t acknowledge it. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

“Thank you for your understanding,” she says, and bows, and stiffly turns away to walk to the galley.

---------------------------

Leia squirms into the bench seat, shoving her way under Ahsoka’s arm like a particularly wriggly tooka.

“What was that?” Leia demands, the authority of a rebellion general rather useless in the squeaky voice of a child.

“What was what?”

“The whole thing with Padawan Vos,” Leia says. “You blew up at him before he even did anything.”

That’s pretty true.

“I felt the flirtation coming before it happened and reacted inappropriately because I panicked. I’m significantly older than him, but I can’t tell him that, so it’s just awkward and uncomfortable and... I’m not okay, Princess. I haven’t been for a long time.”

“Yeah, we can tell.”

“Leia.”

“What? I need therapy too! Captain Rex needs therapy! I’m pretty sure Fett needs therapy! You, Fulcrum, you really need therapy. None of us are okay.” She huffs, wiggling impossibly closer. “I don’t like it, but it’s true.”

“I know,” Ahsoka groans. “I just... I just need to hold out until the Temple.”

“Will you be able to hold it together if you see someone you actually care about?” Leia demands. “What are you going to do when you see Kenobi?”

“Stop.”

“I’m serious, you--”

“Leia, that’s enough,” she snaps. “I was fighting that war before you were even born, and I’ve dealt with the consequences since. I know the risks and I’ll thank you to remember who taught you to control your own mind.”

Leia stiffens, sucking in a sharp breath. “That was uncalled for.”

“You’re not the child you appear to be,” Ahsoka reminds her, not a little sharply. “You want to dish it out, be ready to take it. What will you do when we see Bail Organa? When we see the toddler that is Anakin Skywalker?”

“I get it.”

“I’m not sure you do,” Ahsoka mutters. She isn’t surprised when Leia ducks out of the embrace and leaves the galley. She lets the girl go, guilt warring with the memory of how Master Kenobi had more than once spoken that way to Anakin at the height of the war. The fact that she’s an adult in the body of a child isn’t an excuse for poking at Ahsoka’s open wounds. It was cruel and unnecessary, and unbecoming of a... not a Jedi. A princess. A politician.

She rests her head on her arms and zones out. She should meditate, but that seems like... too much effort.

She can feel Vos and Tholme setting up in the room they’ve been assigned. Neither seems particularly angry. Most likely, Tholme’s given the absolute shortest explanation of ‘child soldier, dead master, highly traumatized and emotionally unstable’ to Vos to smooth over the incident in the cargo hold. Rex is with Leia; he’s agitated, but less so than Leia herself. Fett’s annoyed, in the cockpit, but he seems annoyed as often as not. There’s a shudder at lift-off, and a few minutes later, they’re in hyperspace, headed for the Core.

Fett finds her, falls into the other bench in full armor, and drops his elbows onto the table. The helmet clunks down a moment later.

She doesn’t lift her head. “What do you want?”

“Do I need to keep Vos away from you?”

“What?”

“Vos. He made you uncomfortable. Was that him being someone that hurt you in the future, or just the interaction being awkward?”

She lifts her head. She stares at him. “What?”

He leans back and crosses his arms. “Do you need me to tell Vos to stay the hell away from you?”

She’s gaping. “You realize I’m thirty-two, right? I can handle my own battles.”

“You’re also traumatized as hell and everyone can see it,” Fett argues back. “If Vos himself is a trigger, I can handle it.”

“He’s not,” she tells him. This is strange. Fett’s being strange. “He was actually a friend of my grandmaster’s. I’m just uncomfortable with the flirting because I’m a lot older than he realizes, and I can’t tell him that.”

He nods sharply, and then looks away. The silence sits.

“Thanks for asking?” Ahsoka says, well aware of how her confusion over the offer turns it into a question. “I mean, thank you for... caring.”

I guess, she finishes in the privacy of her own head. Or at least pretending to.

Fett makes a face, still not facing her. He eyes the galley instead. She can guess where his thoughts are going. The galley is... not very big, especially with six people on board instead of one, but she’s sure they’ve stocked up enough. On the off chance they do go through more than expected, because of how many growing bodies are in residence, they can stop off and buy more. They have those resources now.

Jango never does ask what she did with the slavers.

“Who’s going to cry if I spice things properly?” he asks.

“Probably Leia,” she says immediately. “Vos will try to power through it even though he’s going to be overwhelmed. No idea about Tholme, but I think he’ll keep a straight face whether he likes it or not. Rex and I are fine, ‘hot’ was pretty much the only flavor of seasoning the GAR had.”

“GAR?”

“Grand Army of the Republic.”

He finally looks at her.

“You already knew I was a child soldier, Fett; don’t act surprised.”

“That doesn’t mean I like hearing about it.”

“I was fourteen. That’s old enough by Mando standards, Fett. Just think back, when did you get on the battlefield?”

“I take your point,” he says, lip curling unpleasantly. “It just hits different now that I’m old enough to look back and think of how damned young fourteen really is.”

Ahsoka shrugs. “Yeah, well--”

“You said the clones were ten.”

There’s the rub, isn’t it?

Of course it was about the clones.

“...closer to seven, by the end. Kamino was just making speedies at that point. Triple growth on the average instead of double, but averages in that case meant they’d been growing at double rates for six years and then got forced through four growth cycles in a single year to beef up the army when we kept losing men.” She looks down at the table, picking at a scratch in the plastipaint with her nail. “Rex and the rest of the ones from the beginning were basically twenty in mind and body, even if they’d only been decanted ten years earlier. The speedies... I always wondered. They’d gone from functionally twelve to functionally twenty in a year. That’s not... even in Kamino, that can’t have been normal. They didn’t act like adults, not the way the originals did.”

Fett rubs at his face, groaning. He swears under his breath in three different languages.

She pities him, if only because he hasn’t actually done any of this yet. He’s paying for the crimes of a man he likely won’t ever become.

She kicks him under the table. “Wanna make tiingilar and see how long it takes Vos to start crying while he insists it’s fine?”

---------------------------

Dinner is when the questions start. Some are relatively easy. Others, not so much.

“My Master was Leia’s biological father,” is an easy truth to share. “She inherited his power, so I need to get her to the temple for her own safety, because home no longer is.”

“Yes, her adoptive parents were unfortunately killed rather recently. We’d prefer not to talk about it.”

“Rex is with me. Where he goes, I go, and vice versa.”

That one gets her an odd look.

“I thought...” Quinlan trails off, gesturing between Rex and Fett.

Fett keeps his face impassive, but his discomfort and guilt leak into the Force. “I didn’t know Rex existed until I ran into these three in a spaceport cantina a few weeks ago.”

Quinlan blinks at him, looks at Rex again, and then turns back to Fett with a grin that might have been described as ‘saucy’ if he were less smug about it. “Wild oats, huh?”

“Are you shitting me right now,” Leia whispers, and Ahsoka elbows her.

“That was inappropriate, padawan.”

Quinlan’s grin fades as Fett just continues to eye him.

“Um, so--”

“How old is the kid?” Fett interrupts.

Darting eyes answer him, as Quinlan tries to gauge Rex. “Ten? Maybe twelve?”

“And how old am I?”

“...early thirties?”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

Quinlan’s grin fades further as he does the math.

“I’d have been between fifteen and seventeen when he was born,” Fett says, tone flat. “Between fourteen and sixteen at conception. I know damn well I wasn’t doing anything that could have resulted in a kid at that age.”

Quinlan rallies. “So, brothers?”

Tholme sighs loudly, hand over his eyes.

“I’m a clone,” Rex says, and Ahsoka can feel the amusement he gets out of Quinlan’s confused shock. They’d both had plenty of respect for Master Vos, but Padawan Vos was nothing but trouble. “Harvested genetic material, grown in a tube, inconsistent aging meaning I don’t even know how old I am for sure.”

“I broke him out,” Ahsoka adds, which is half true.

“There was a chip in my head,” Rex adds, with a bright smile. Quinlan’s discomfort grows. “She got it out. Also, lots of brothers. None of them are... around anymore. The creators were trying to make an army.”

Vos and Tholme have no response. Fett looks like he’s been carved out of stone. Leia’s just ignoring them and picking at her food.

Ahsoka lifts a hand and, without looking, Rex high-fives her.

---------------------------

“Drop your elbow.”

Ahsoka tries to cover her smile at the dirty look that Leia shoots Fett. Fett remains unimpressed by the glare of royalty, just gestures for the girl to do as he said.

“I know how to fight,” Leia grumbles. “I took lessons. I was good at them.”

“And I’m better,�� Fett says, leaving no room for argument. “You want the Torrents to take over?”

The Torrents. Rex and Soka. She likes being referred to that way. Like they’re a team that never got split up.

Force, she wished they’d never gotten split up.

“Again,” Fett orders, and Leia moves through the Mandalorian kata with ill grace in her emotions and all grace in her sweeping limbs.

Well, as much grace as an undersized six-year-old can, at any rate.

“Think he’ll ask me to spar her again?” Rex asks, dropping down into the seat next to Ahsoka and passing her a drink.

“Maybe,” she acknowledges. “I think he’s wondering if it’s worth asking Vos to spar with her, so she gets more experience with size differences.”

“Hm?”

“She flinched at his face again,” she tells him. “The whole... thing with Boba, I guess. She still won’t tell me why Fett triggers her sometimes, but he’s not pressing her to spar with him, and there’s only so much she can get out of fighting me. Asking Tholme would be presumptuous, but Vos is just a padawan. I think it’d work out.”

“And you?”

She looks at him, already feeling a cresting wave of bullshit she doesn’t want to deal with. “What about me?”

“Are you going to spar with the Jedi?”

She should. She hasn’t sparred with a saber since she got tossed back into a body only half-familiar to her. She’s let Leia borrow the shorter one to learn some basic blocking moves, Shii-Cho and then, with hesitance, the first Soresu form. Another time, she loaned it to Rex to practice some attacks; they both know that the next time he picks up her saber in battle, having lost his weapons or she her grip, it will be neither the first or last time he wields a sword of light. None of that, however, is... sparring.

None of that is against someone who knows what they’re doing.

How long has it been since she sparred with anyone other than Kanan and Ezra?

How long has it been since she sparred without the looming specter of Darth Vader in the back of her mind, without fear of the Inquisitors, without the knowledge that any saber held by someone other than her two friends would be red as blood and twice as drenched.

Would she be able to hold back as she fought?

“I should,” she acknowledges, eyes on where Fett is nudging Leia’s feet into position for some kind of leveraging flip. She’s so small. “It would probably be a good idea to spar against a master at some point.”

“Do you think you can?” Rex asks.

“I never knew him,” she says. “And he isn’t Dark. It should be fine.”

Rex nods, taking her word for it. They watch as Leia stumbles on a final move, and Fett gestures for her to sit down and get a drink.

“That man is a terror,” she informs them.

(She’d once described him as a slave-driver. She had not made that mistake twice.)

“Least it’s not Kamino!” Rex tells her cheerfully. When Leia refuses to look impressed, he laughs at her.

Ahsoka has a half-second’s warning before heavy boots thud to the ground next to her. “What’s Kamino?”

“Hello, Vos, it’s nice to see you too,” she drawls. “I’m good, thanks for asking, and yourself?”

The boy-not-quite-man rolls his eyes. “Hi, Torrents; hi, tiny one.”

Leia glares at him next.

“So, Kamino?”

“Planet by Rishi,” Rex says.

“Why were you there?”

“They specialize in cloning.”

Ahsoka covers her mouth as the conversation drops into the same awkward gap that always happens when Quinlan stumbles into a subject he didn’t know to avoid.

“Like... you were made there, or you were researching how it works for your own--”

Ahsoka slaps a hand over his mouth. “Now’s a great time to stop talking.”

He licks her palm.

She bares her teeth and arches her fingers just enough to press nails into his cheek.

He bites at her palm, and she yanks her hand away.

“You’re all children,” Leia accuses, conveniently forgetting that Ahsoka and Rex are both over a decade older than her.

“I can throw you the length of a swimming pool,” Ahsoka tells her. “One of the fancy competition-ready ones that would make a Tatooinian cry. You are absolutely the child here.”

“Using the Force is cheating, sir,” Rex informs her.

“Only if there’s a competition,” Ahsoka shoots back. “And proving that a certain princess is a small child is not a competition. It’s a declarative fact.”

“I’m going to rip open the seams on all your tops except the ugliest one,” Leia decides.

“Try me,” Ahsoka challenges. “Adi’ka.”

A low, rough cough interrupts them. “Are you done?”

Fett has his arms crossed, and an eyebrow raised. He knows they’re all adults here, and is entirely unamused. As the silence drags, the eyebrow climbs a little higher.

“Done with what?” Quinlan finally asks, thereby volunteering himself to spar in hand-to-hand with Jango Fett, as one does.

“Poor, poor Vos,” Rex laughs, watching as Fett barks out orders at Quinlan every five seconds to fix his footwork, to stop dropping his guard, to stop wasting energy on flips instead of just dodging the easy way.

“Throw him!” Ahsoka calls. To her delight, Fett obliges.

The thing is, Quinlan isn’t bad at brawling. He’s got training, endurance, skill. The man knows what he’s doing, objectively. He’s just not a match for Fett, and is used enough to relying on his saber that his hand-to-hand skills are rusty. They are perhaps less rusty than those Jedi who don’t take questionable jobs in the Mid-Outer Rim, and Ahsoka’s got a suspicion that Vos regularly gets into bar fights in his downtime, but none of that is enough for him to actually do more than survive against Fett without his saber.

Even the saber wouldn’t help, if Fett had his armor.

“Whose idea was this?”

Ahsoka cranes her head back and smiles. “Hello, Master Tholme. Vos... volunteered.”

“Did he know he was volunteering?”

“No comment.”

Tholme snorts, crossing his arms and eyeing the spar in front of him. “I thought Fett hated Jedi. Giving us a ride for the sake of you three is one thing, but why is he teaching my padawan?”

Ahsoka shrugs. “Constructive bullying?”

There’s a small twitch of a smile, quickly gone. “He said something wrong, I’m guessing?”

“There was no way he could have known,” she dismisses. “We’re just, like, ninety-percent tragic backstories.”

“You’d think the Force would warn him,” Rex notes.

“That’s not how the Force works,” Leia chides.

“No, no, he’s right,” Ahsoka corrects. “The Force does sometimes step in to stop a person from saying something stupid. However, Padawan Vos is at an age where people think they are very rational while being more irrational than they likely ever will be again.”

“Do I want to ask what you were doing at that age?” Tholme asks.

“Running bla...” she trails off, then whips around to gape at him.

He smiles, bland and unassuming. “Does Fett know?”

“Know... what?” Ahsoka asks.

“That you’re significantly older than you look,” he says, voice just low enough that the sparring duo can’t hear him. “All three of you.”

Ahsoka turns back to the spar, only catching Tholme out of the corner of her eye. “He knows.”

“Mm. Were you planning on telling the Council?”

“Yes.” That part was never in question. “How did you figure it out?”

“I am a good investigator,” he says. “And you rely a little too heavily on your physical forms to obfuscate. Were it just one of you, that wouldn’t be a problem, but the pattern repeated across three is a little easier to discern.”

“I hoped the whole ‘child soldiers’ thing would be a bigger distraction,” Ahsoka mutters. She glances at Leia and Rex. Both of them are used to being in charge to some degree, giving orders and making contingency plans, but in this... in this, Ahsoka is in charge. They’d decided that at the very start. It didn’t matter that Rex had lived longer and had more experience, or that Leia had held the highest Rebellion rank of the three of them. Ahsoka had been agreed as leader, and they were relying on her.

They’re waiting on her orders. Stiff and unhappy, in Leia’s case, but they trust her.

“Will you be telling Vos?” She asks.

“No,” Tholme says. “Your secrets remain your own unless they endanger us, and I’ve a feeling they won’t be.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Rex jokes, smile not reaching his eyes. “I’ve been working with this family for too long to trust that trouble won’t find them around the next corner.”

“This family?” Tholme repeats.

“Sokari was telling the truth about her master being Leia’s biological father,” Rex says. He shrugs. “I worked with him, with his wife, with both of his kids, with his master and his padawan. All of them, to a one, are trouble magnets.”

“Ah, but that’s not the secret that’s putting us in danger,” Tholme points out. “Simply existence as a Jedi.”

Rex shrugs. “Fair enough. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.”

Ahsoka lurches to her feet, turning with a smile and dancing backward into the the stretch of empty cargo hold they used for such things. “A spar, Master Tholme?”

He looks past her, to Quinlan, and raises a brow. “Would you not prefer to spar with someone a little closer to your level first?”

She barks out a laugh. “Master Tholme, I’m afraid I’ve spent more of my life fighting to survive than having normal friendly spars. My style is more lethal than the average, and you’ve already seen what war’s done to my mind. I ask to spar with you because, if I lose control, if I slip in time or react on an instinct that isn’t appropriate, I trust that you’ll be more able to stop me than a senior padawan.”

He smiles. “Yes, I gathered as much. Still, better to ask. Shall we wait for them to finish up?”

Ahsoka shrugs, turns, and yells. “Clear the deck!”

Rex snorts behind her, and lowly mutters, “Sir, yes, sir.”

She smirks at him over her shoulder. “At ease, Captain.”

“That’s ‘Commander’ to you, I got promoted,” he sniffs, chin held high.

Heavy steps herald Fett’s arrival at their little group. “The hells are you doing?”

“I’m going to have a spar with a Jedi Master, and I want you and Vos to not get stabbed.”

“I’m not that easy to injure in an actual fight, let alone by accident,” Fett grouses. He looks up and over at Vos, who is already significantly taller, if a fair shot less built. “This one, on the other hand...”

“Hey!”

Ahsoka laughs and backs into the center of the cargo hold, drawing her sabers. “Don’t worry, Vos, I won’t play dirty. You’ll probably get your master back in one piece.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “Getting a bit ahead of yourself there, aren’t you? He’s a Jedi Master and former Watchman. You’re... what, eighteen?”

Ahsoka raises a brow and activates her sabers, tapping the blades together and watching as more than one person winces. “Wanna bet on how long I last?”

“No,” he says immediately, stepping back to join Rex on the bench. “You’ve already blindsided me enough. I’m not dumb enough to fall for whatever you’ve got up your sleeve.”

“I don’t have sleeves.”

“Armwarmers-slash-greaves, then.”

“Greaves go on the legs, these are vambraces.”

He throws his hands up in the air. “I’m just going to stop talking now!”

“Good plan,” Leia snarks, and then literally hisses when Rex ruffles her hair.

Tholme lights his saber and sinks into an opening stance.

Ahsoka mirrors him.

---------------------------

She wins, but barely. She's had a few weeks to practice her forms, has sparred hands-only with Rex and Fett, but this is her first real try at using her sabers against a person, instead of a blaster or thin air, since she arrived in the past. She’s only mostly adjusted to her body.

But Tholme is a healer and a watchman, not a duelist. Ahsoka held her own against Ventress, against Grievous, against Maul when she was this age. Still adjusting to her body or not, her lineage is one of battle, and it bled true.

“You’re terrifying,” Quinlan tells her after they’re done, smiling like the sun as he hands her a towel. “Please never turn that on me.”

She laughs at him. “Would you believe that I’m out of practice?”

“Out of practice with what?” he asks, horrified and fascinated. “Fighting Sith Lords?”

“Among other things,” she says, and smirks when he chokes on his drink. “Multiple darkside users who claimed to be Sith, at least. One being a full Lord, one that was disowned by his master, and one that was apprenticed to a Banite apprentice, so she wasn’t technically allowed to be a Darth because of the rule of two.”

Tholme meets her eyes past Quinlan’s shoulder, head tilted and eyes half-shut in consideration. He’s taking her seriously. He knows what she’s not saying.

“How...” Quinlan trails off and shakes his head. “You know what, no. Asking you people questions never ends well.”

“Good plan,” Ahsoka says, clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “Also, you need to spar with Fett more. Your footwork is shit.”

“It is not,” Quinlan gripes. “You’re all just scary good at this stuff.”

“You mean surviving?” Leia pipes up, and smiles innocently when Quinlan turns to pout at her.

“You’re getting bullied by a six-year-old,” Rex informs him.

“Yeah,” Quinlan sighs. “I know.”

Ahsoka laughs, and it’s fine. It’s all fine. For a week, everything is honestly great. She trains, she laughs, she works through the nightmares.

Then fucking Denon happens.

---------------------------

Denon is a city-planet on the intersection of two major hyperlanes. It’s the kind of place where they stop for two things:

Fuel.

Paperwork.

Technically, there’s a whole mess of paperwork they have to fill out to continue along this specific hyperlane, since they aren’t official Republic ships, and don’t have the licenses to just pass along like ships that are pre-registered to the Trade Federation or the like. They could sneak past--literally all of them know smuggler’s routes--but it’s honestly less of a pain to do things legally. They have a Jedi Master. They have cash. Some of that cash wasn’t quite legally acquired, but nobody needs to know that.

It’s supposed to be a pit stop. That’s all.

It’s just a pit stop.

But no, the galaxy isn’t that kind and Ahsoka’s luck is currently being compounded with a Skywalker, two Fetts, and Vos, which means that of course they run into trouble. Of course they do. There was never any other option, was there?

“Motherfucker,” Ahsoka snaps, lifting her head up and slamming her drink on the table.

The glass is empty. That’s good. They’re in a restaurant right now, a little splurging after weeks with only each others’ company, and spilling the sugary child-friendly juice with that move would have drawn way too much attention from the servers.

“Language,” Tholme says, voice idly unconcerned.

“Sir?” Rex asks, kicking Ahsoka under the table. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wr--that jackass,” she hisses, getting to her feet. “Rex, grab a blaster, I’ve got shebs to kick.”

“Okay,” Rex says, grabbing one out of Fett’s holster and scooting out of the booth before anyone can tell him not to. “Whose?”

“I didn’t even know that he was... osik, I don’t have jurisdiction,” she realizes. “I don’t have any record of wrongdoing. I can’t arrest him since we don’t have evidence of criminal wrongdoing...”

“Are you two going to explain what’s going on?” Vos asks. “Or sit down, maybe?”

Ahsoka makes her decision. She eyes the window--the restaurant in question is a little dingy, but it’s also several dozen stories in the air. “Rex, remember the thing we did on Geonosis that you hated?”

He pauses, and then sighs heavily. “Yes, sir. I remember the... yeeting.”

Hah. That slang doesn’t even exist yet.

“Great. With me!”

It’s a good thing the windows are forcefields instead of transparisteel. A bit of a twist to the energy and they’re gone.

She only hears a little screaming before the wind tears all noises away while they plummet.

They land lightly--of course--and Ahsoka wraps them both in a don’t notice me aura. Nobody even notices that they’ve just come from above. It’s great that she can just Do These Things again, and get brushed off as Weird Jedi Shit, instead of worrying about the Empire. She’s missed being able to jump out of windows without fear.

Rex follows her as she starts running through the city. They don’t have comms, and he’s still so small, which means he can’t keep up with her even if she runs at normal speeds without Force enhancement.

“Should you carry me?” he asks, before she can figure out if it’s worth suggesting. She did it a few times before they joined up with Jango.

“It’s not... urgent, I think,” she says. She hesitates to speak, even as she keeps jogging with Rex at her heels. “Honestly, I’m trying to figure out if there’s anything I can ding him for so we can attack him. It’s all well and good that I can beat him right now, but all the crimes I know about haven’t happened yet, so it wouldn’t be legal...”

“Commander?”

“Hm?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

She scrolls the conversation back mentally, considers, and says, “Oh.”

“Who’s getting steamrolled?”

“Uh, Maul’s here,” Ahsoka admits.

“Ah,” Rex says. He makes a face. “I understand the desire to jump out a window, now. I don’t agree with it, but I understand.”

Ahsoka laughs. “I mean, I just... every time I’ve seen him for almost twenty years, it’s been like... on sight, you know? We’ve never not attacked each other, except when I needed him to cause problems on Mandalore. But I always knew I was in the right, then.”

“So... what do we arrest him for?” Rex prompts.

“Um... carrying a lightsaber without a license?” she hazards. “We’ll need Tholme there. Hopefully I can just shout at him and he’ll attack me, but I think he only went full nutjob after Master Kenobi cut his legs off. He might be too controlled to try to kill me just for yelling at him.”

“...do we have to stalk him?” Rex asks, sounding like he’d most likely sigh if he weren’t mid-run.

She scoops him up and swings him around onto her back before she answers. “I think we have to stalk him, Rex’ika.”

“Don’t call me that.”

---------------------------

Maul is... exceptionally sneaky, actually. Either that, or he hasn’t done anything wrong yet. Ahsoka’s betting on the former, because she’s seen this particular skocha kung take over a planet before anyone realized he was the most dangerous person around.

Or maybe he’s just not committing crimes, and is in fact just here to buy groceries.

He’s examining a papaya.

She fantasizes about jumping across the market and greeting him with a heel to the cheekbone.

“Are you imagining a flying kick, Sir?”

“Yeah...”

“He’s examining a papaya, Sir.”

“I know...”

“Does he know we’re here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? Do you think I should go hit him?”

“No.”

“Should I hit on him?”

“No, Sir. I would not advise that.”

“He’s looking at the neloms.”

“I can see that.”

“Why does he have to be so bo--did he just fucking bite a nelom?”

“It appears so, Sir.”

“Like... like rind and all. Just bit the little fucker.”

“Seems it.”

A scuff of metal. “What the fuck are you two doing?”

Ahsoka tips her head around to peer through the grate. “We’re spying, Fett, what does it look like we’re doing?”

Rex cranes his head. “We’re hanging upside-down from a fire escape to get a look at a suspected Sith Apprentice that is currently shopping for various fruits, Mand’alor.”

Ahsoka waves. “Hi, Master Tholme.”

“Sokari,” the master greets. “This seems a very conspicuous way to spy.”

She shrugs as well as she can from this angle. “Yes, but you see, this way’s more fun.”

“Is it now.”

Rex shifted. “He’s on the move!”

“To kill someone?!”

“No, to the deli meats.”

“Kriff.”

---------------------------

Apparently, Tholme and Fett had told Quinlan to take care of Leia, as Leia had wanted to finish her juice and refused to get involved in the Torrents’ nonsense. According to her, if they couldn’t be bothered to explain the nonsense, they didn’t need her.

This was true and accurate.

Quinlan shows up while they’re still stalking Maul, having moved to a low rooftop for a decent vantage point with less likelihood of being spotted. He’s giving Leia an eopie-back ride, and the pout on her face at needing it is adorable. She pouts harder when she sees them.

“Are you even trying to hide?” Leia scoffs.

“Not really,” Ahsoka admits. She’s got Fett’s binoculars out. “I’m not sure he’s caught wind of the fact that we’re here yet.”

“Or he has and he’s just biding his time to escape while we’re distracted,” Tholme points out.

“Meh,” Ahsoka says, avidly devouring the visual that is a teenage Maul glaring at leafy vegetables. “I just want him to do something so I have an excuse to beat his ass.”

“Do I get to know who?” Quinlan asks, setting Leia down on the roof. “Or are we going to keep being completely unwilling to share information?”

“Baby Sith Lord,” Ahsoka says. “He’s fifteen. A child.”

“A baby,” Rex agrees.

“You’re... that’s... ugh,” Quinlan groans as loudly and as dramatically as he dares, flopping down to the rooftop. “Master Tholme, please tell me this isn’t a real Sith.”

“He’s Dark,” Tholme confirms. “Sith is... up for debate until we have evidence.”

“He’s a bitch is what he is,” Ahsoka mutters. She observes the teenager in question stop to poke at some pink tomatoes. “E chu ta, break the law, already!”

“Does he have a lightsaber?” Quinlan asks. “If he has a lightsaber and no Jedi ID or specialty license, we can probably arrest him.”

“Auntie Soka doesn’t have a license or ID,” Leia points out.

“She’s got a Jedi escort,” Tholme says. “And if our supposed Sith is polite and plays nice, we can probably escort him to the Temple as well.”

Rex snorts derisively.

“Do you know why he’s on Denon?” Fett asks.

“No clue,” Ahsoka admits. “Evil reasons, probably.”

“You’re useless,” Leia tells her.

“Thanks, princess, how’s that attempt to open the jam jar by yourself coming?”

Leia says something very inappropriate for a princess, for a child, and for a lady. It’s fairly appropriate for a soldier, which is admittedly what she’s been for a few years now. Ahsoka sticks her tongue out at the girl like the mature operative she is.

“I wish we could still get him to lose his osik by just showing up and insulting him,” Rex mutters, low enough that Quinlan probably can’t hear.

“I wanna punch him in the face,” Ahsoka confesses. “I want him to try to punch me in the face, and fail.”

“Don’t bully the baby Sith,” Rex admonishes.

“He’s a Sith.”

“He’s fifteen, it’s tacky.”

“But it’s Maul.”

“I know, but you’re tw--significantly older than him.”

“But... but it’s the motherfucker himself.”

“...you can bully him a little, but only because he’s a Sith.”

Fett steals the binoculars. “You can borrow them again when you stop acting like children.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rex says, dry as Ryloth. “I’m ten.”

“Pretty tall for your age,” Ahsoka mutters, and then giggles.

“Don’t steal my jokes,” Rex says. He elbows her, hard.

“You know,” Quinlan says, slow and tired. “Master Tholme and I are trained investigators.”

Ahsoka and Rex look at each other, and then up at him.

“Okay?”

“...do you want me to find actual evidence of this guy doing something criminal?”

“Oh, yes please.”

---------------------------

Quinlan, as it turns out, is not overselling his skills. He does catch Maul doing something illegal later that day. It’s a little more ‘stealing corporate secrets in the dead of night’ and less ‘torturing people for kicks,’ but it’s still enough to legally arrest him. Quinlan attempts to do so.

Quinlan does not succeed, and is forced to jump out a window to avoid getting cut in half. Maul follows, steals a passing speeder by throwing out the driver, and takes off. Someone--looks like Tholme--drops back to save the driver, but the rest of them give chase. Ahsoka gleefully takes point on that, of course. She’s the best pilot.

(Rex looks bored, but someone is likely to puke by the end of the night. She hopes it’s not Leia, who insisted on coming for some fucking reason.)

“How the kriff is a teenager that good?!” Quinlan yells, clinging to the edge of the speeder to avoid getting tipped out as Ahsoka swerves around a corner with a wild laugh.

“He’s a Sith!” Leia shouts over the wind. “What do you think?”

Quinlan is not impressed by the claim of Sith.

Ahsoka screeches as she drifts across four lanes of traffic and into an alleyway to pursue Maul. He’s pretty good at dodging cross-building walkways, but she’s better. She bares her teeth, hissing, and tries to pick a plan.

“Vos, how’s your aim with Force throws?” She calls to the backseat.

“Uh, decent?”

“Great! Fett’s the projectile!”

Vos takes a second longer to process that than Jango does.

“I’m wh--”

He cuts off, screaming, and is flung forward by Quinlan to crash headfirst into a teenage Sith.

“Take the wheel!” Ahsoka commands, not waiting to see who follows the order, because Fett and Maul are both getting to their feet, the other speeder is about to crash, and she’s not sure who’s going to win that fight.

She jumps from the speeder they’ve been violently dragging around Denon, and lands feet-first on Maul’s... shoulder.

Hm.

That definitely dislocated something.

“You should wear armor!” she chirps at him, drawing both sabers and grinning as he whirls to face her, eyes wide with hate.

He’s utterly silent.

That’s disturbing. Expected, but disturbing.

“Did you just throw me?” Fett demands, higher pitched than she’d normally expect.

“No, Vos threw you.”

“Because you told him to!”

“Yeah, it’s a good strategy!”

“It is not!”

“Why not? Throwing people was standard practice in the GAR.”

She can’t see his face, but she’s pretty sure he’s about ready to strangle her.

Ahsoka cannot, at that point, continue snarking with the father of her best friend, because there’s a red lightsaber coming for her throat, and she should probably worry about that. Maul’s very good at killing people and she’d like to avoid becoming part of that statistic.

As she is quickly reminded, he is... fifteen. And shorter than she’s used to. And already injured.

It’s really, really easy to take him out, actually.

At some point, the other speeder was safely recovered before it caused property damage, and their own is landing a few meters away with Vos and the kids.

“You have Force-negating cuffs, right?” Ahsoka asks.

“No, Master Tholme has them.”

“Oh,” she says, and grimaces. “I guess I’ll just... keep sitting on him then.”

Maul snarls, and she raps him on the skull. “Stop that, it’s uncivilized.”

Rex snorts.

Jango makes a noise that is incredibly frustrated with the lot of them, and turns on Rex. “Was she telling the truth?”

“About?”

“Throwing people being standard practice for the GAR.”

Rex’s face goes pained. “It was in the five-oh-first. And a few others.”

“What’s the GAR?” Quinlan asks.

“None of your damn business,” Fett snaps.

Quinlan throws his hands up in the air again. “Come on! I just proved I know what I’m doing!”

“And their tragic backstory is none of your business, prudii!”

Quinlan blinks at him, and then glances at Ahsoka. “Um.”

“He called you a shadow since your training, um, seems to be pointing in that direction,” she says as carefully as she can. “We were theorizing.”

“Wh... you actually paid attention?” Quinlan asks, looking horribly confused. “I thought I was just annoying you.”

Ahsoka laughs at him. “Oh, Vos... I’ve been running black ops for... much longer than most would guess. Trust me, I know another spy when I see them.”

She smiles as kindly as she can, because she hadn’t actually meant to make him feel left out or unwanted or... well, she’d been pretty patronizing, especially for someone seemingly younger than him. The smile does not work. Quinlan just looks kind of horrified about how young she just implied she started spy work.

Granted, she’d been sixteen for Zygerria...

Deciding to ignore him for a bit, she shifts on Maul’s back and pats him on the cheek. “Don’t worry, Baby Sith. We’re going to get you lots of nice therapy. Mind healers, no Sith tortures, all that fun stuff. Maybe some plushies.”

“You’re also getting therapy, right?” Quinlan asks. “Please say you are. I’m required for the specifics of my training and if anything you’ve said is true, I feel like you really need it and I’m scared of what’ll happen if you don’t.”

Ahsoka laughs, knowing exactly how empty it sounds. “Oh hell, if I didn’t get therapy, I imagine Kix would rise from the grave to force me into it.”

The name means nothing to anyone except Rex, and... ah, yeah, she told Fett about Kix a few weeks ago.

“No more throwing me without warning,” Fett grumbles, dropping to sit on the ground next to her. “Especially not at baby Sith Lords.”

“I am not a child!” Maul spits.

“He speaks!” Ahsoka cheers. “Aw, I knew you could do it.”

“’Soka, I told you not to bully him,” Rex complains. “It’s tacky. You’re being tacky.”

“I’m allowed to be tacky,” Ahsoka declares. “I’ve died twice, that’s, like, permission from the universe.”

“You’ve died twice?” Quinlan asks, back in ‘fascinated horror’ territory. “Wait, no, I shouldn’t ask--”

“Too late! The first time was on a planet that doesn’t exist and my Master lost his mind, killed a god, and used the good favor of another god to have me brought back to life at her expense. Not in that order.”

“I--what? No, that’s--what?”

Ahsoka smiles brightly. “You asked.”

Tholme finally shows up with the cuffs.

---------------------------

“You should eat something.”

He glares at her.

“Baby Sith Lords need to eat.”

He keeps glaring at her.

“Maul, you’ll never get big and strong and ready to kill if you don’t eat your vegetables.”

He bares his teeth.

“No, I don’t eat my veggies, but I’m a Togruta, so if I eat too many vegetables I throw up.”

Rex kicks her thigh, right on the faulds. “What did I say about bullying the Sith Lord?”

“Not to.”

“And what are you doing?”

“Making him eat his vegetables.”

“Soka.”

“Rex’ika.”

He kicks at her again. “Get up, we’re swapping out the watch.”

“But I wanted to hang out with my favorite little criminal mastermind.”

Rex drops to the floor and presses his forehead to her shoulder. “How the hell is being around this guy the first thing to make you cheer up in weeks?”

“I’m allowed to be mean to him.”

“He’s going to bite you.”

“I’ll bite back.”

Rex jabs a finger into her ribs, and she squeaks. “Go get something to eat, Commander.”

“Fine,” she huffs, rolling to her feet and moseying along to the galley. She walks in on Tholme and Fett having an argument about the ways in which Jedi and Mandalorians differ. Quinlan’s on the side, watching with wide eyes, and little Leia’s drinking a juice box at his side, tucked up under his arm and occasionally saying things to fan the flames. Ahsoka assumes she’s enjoying herself.

She opens the cooling unit, looks over the contents, and pulls out a raw leg of eopie mutton. She leans against the counter, bites into the chilled-but-not-frozen meat, and uses the back of one hand to wipe the blood off her chin. The ‘real adults’ don’t notice.

“I’m like ninety percent sure you’re doing this to mess with me but also...” Quinlan trails off, staring at her with horror. “Why?”

“A girl’s gotta eat.”

“Yeah, but all the obligate carnivores I know are like... generally holding to basic rules of courtesy when it comes to not grossing people out,” Quinlan says. “Like, I don’t chew with my mouth open. You don’t... eat in the most intimidating--did you just crack the bone with your teeth?!”

Ahsoka smirks at him, using her free hand to take away the shard of bone so she can suck out the marrow without eating the bones themselves. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this isn’t polite society. We’re in a galley on a bounty hunter’s ship, and I’ve been living on the run or in an army for most of my life. Table manners are optional.”

“No, they’re not,” Leia orders. “Fett, it’s your ship, tell her to--”

“--and another thing!” Fett snaps at Tholme, clearly paying less than no attention to the food argument.

Ahsoka keeps on eating, trying to catch wind of where the discussion’s at. Mostly, it seems to be at ‘talking past each other.’ Neither of them seems to have fully grasped more than the absolute most basic parts of the other culture, and that’s only enough to insult each other, not actually have a constructive conversation. She’d have expected more out of Tholme, at least. He’s not exactly young.

“Hey, quick question,” she says, in a moment where both of them have paused for breath and the opportunity to seethe. “Fett, when’s the last time you worked with a Jedi, or any member of a Force-based religion, before I popped into your life?”

His nose scrunches up as he makes a face.

“And Tholme, when’s the last time you worked with anyone from the Mandalorian system?”

Tholme’s reaction isn’t any more gracious than Fett’s.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she says. “Vos, were either of them actually interested in that conversation, or just looking for an excuse to yell?”

“Now listen here, jetiika--”

“Fett,” she snaps. “I am not a child.”

“And neither am I,” he growls right back. “This is my ship, and I damn well don’t need you treating me like a misbehaving youngling. You’ve got a problem, you bring it to my face, not get all smug about people’s tempers blowing over.”

Well, then.

She smiles thinly. “Of course.”

He stands with his arms crossed, in full armor save for the helmet. She puts aside the eopie meat and wipes her hands, smiling until she can put her hands on her hips and let it drop to a challenge.

“You know, I’m just--I’m just gonna go,” Quinlan mutters, pulling Leia out with him, the girl hanging from under one of his arms. “This, uh, this looks like a problem for... you folks. Um. Yeah.”

He sidles out.

Tholme doesn’t.

Fett rubs at the bridge of his nose, and then gestures at the table. “Sit.”

��I’d prefer not to.”

He drops his hand and glares at her. “We have another week on this ship together. We are going to have this conversation. Sit.”

She sits, right on the warm spot left behind by Quinlan and Leia. She crosses her arms, lifts a brow, and waits.

Fett takes the seat across from her. Tholme leans against the counter.

“We all know you’re older than you look,” Fett says. “I heard Tholme mention it, I know that much has been shared. You’re acting like an actual teenager, and I’ve... I’ve put up with a lot. I am trying to keep things civil, particularly with you. I’ve tried to be friendly. You’ve been fucked up since we met, fine, everyone’s got trauma. The thing where you’ve started talking shit to our faces for what seems like your own amusement? That has to stop. You’re older than me, Torrent. Fucking act like it.”

She blinks at him, slow and not exactly happy, and turns to Tholme.

The man shrugs. “I was planning to put up with it until we arrived to the temple and handed you over to some mind healers. Fett doesn’t have that kind of time.”

There’s a curdle in her stomach, defensive and angry and guilty.

“You’ve been... a bitch,” Fett finally says. “You know that. I’m not going to mince words. You’ve been holier-than-thou and rude and condescending, and aiming that at Antilles is one thing, when you’ve apparently known her since she was a toddler and taught her things. Aiming at the rest of us isn’t going to fly. We’re all adults trying to share a space. Stop acting like... just like you have been.”

There is no defense to be made that they aren’t both already aware of.

She closes her eyes and tries to strangle the burst of irrational rage.

Their accusations aren’t unfounded.

They deserve an apology.

She is in the wrong.

She’s felt freer than she had in years, and in that freedom allowed herself too much rein, let herself lace her words with barbed wires and poison instead of sparks and spices, comments that were cruel instead of just joking. Too familiar. Too comfortable.

“My behavior’s been inappropriate,” she finally says, the words clumsy and too big in her mouth. “You’re right about that. I’m sorry, and I’ll endeavor to keep a tighter rein on my less pleasant behaviors in the future.”

At least she only lashes out with words. It could be worse.

She opens her eyes, fixes her gaze on the wall behind Fett, wrestles her expression into stiff neutrality. “Am I dismissed?”

“...uh, no, not after that,” Fett says, sounding just a little horrified. “What the hell was that?”

Tholme hisses out a breath. “Let her go.”

“No, this needs to be discussed, that’s not a healthy rea--”

“Fett, let her go,” Tholme insists, low and heavy.

Fett looks between the two for a moment, seems to come to a realization he doesn’t like, and then gestures almost violently towards the door. “Fine. Go.”

She walks out, doesn’t sprint. She’s stiff. She’s controlled. She’s the one that fucked up, so it’s fine if she doesn’t feel great right now. Getting called out on one’s own failings as a person isn’t something to get upset about if the failings are real. The feelings are real and normal, but this was her fault, and so it’s up to her to fix it, and she can’t let them know it hurt her, because this was her mistake.

She goes to the cargo hold.

---------------------------

Ahsoka works out her frustrations on Fett’s punching bag. She does not augment herself with the Force, just uses raw strength and technique, ignoring the tears that press at her eyes.

She’s fine.

It’s not weird. It’s not odd. It’s not strange to not notice she’s been kind of a bitch since her mood came up with the whole Depa thing, and then Maul. She’s been mean, mostly to Vos and Fett, and nobody’s confronted her about it until now. They let her have room for her trauma, and she hadn’t reined it in. She’s just gotten worse.

‘Snippy’ she’d always been, but age apparently hadn’t fucking tempered it.

“Um.”

She catches the punching bag, breathing heavily and covered in sweat. She hasn’t worked out all the twitchy, nervous energy yet.

“Vos,” she greets, once she’s caught herself enough that her voice won’t waver. He’s on the other side of the bag, but she knows his voice. “Do you need something?”

“You’re kind of... projecting,” he tells her, drifting to where she can actually see him. “Not self-loathing, but, um, recrimination? You just don’t feel very good and I was hoping to help”

Why in all the Sith hells does he have to be nice.

“I got called out on my behavior and wasn’t ready to face the fact that I’d kriffed up,” she tells him. “I’ll be fine. And I’m... sorry. I haven’t been fair to you and was using you as an easy target for some of my ruder comments.”

“I mean, I kind of figured,” he admits, coming closer. “I’ve been tutored by Shadows before, and a lot of them act like you. I just assumed it was more of that.”

“I still shouldn’t have let myself run loose like that,” she says. “I’m... it wasn’t appropriate. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

He shrugs, not meeting her eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” she says. “Not with... not with you. Or anyone other than Rex and a mind healer, really. Most of it is...”

She trails off, distantly noticing that her eyes are tearing up enough to blur her vision, and her nails are digging into the bag in a way Fett won’t appreciate.

There’s so much that beat her down, never quite breaking her, that she doesn’t even know what made her act the way she does.

“Want to spar?”

She looks over at him, wonders what he sees that makes him want to fight her when she’s visibly unstable.

He smiles, kind and easy, and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It’s genuine in intent, if not in energy. He wants to help. “You all keep saying I could work on my hand-to-hand. Just take off the armor so I don’t break a finger, maybe.”

“You’re serious.”

“No, I’m Quinlan.”

She’s going to wipe the floor with this boy. “You sure you wanna fight me?”

“You won’t be able to meditate until you do,” he says. He’s right, damn him. “The other option is that I go get your... vod, I think? I go get Rex and you two can talk it out since you trust him with more. I don’t want to do that, though, he’s still a kid.”

She eyes him, lips pressed together and mind awhirl with emotions and thoughts she’d tried to beat out of her head and into the bag. “Ever fought someone without the Force?”

“...yes?”

“Was it cuffs?”

“Oh, you meant me not having the Force,” he realizes. “Er, no. Is... is that something you’ve done a lot?”

She smiles at him. “You’re planning on Shadow work. That means getting captured and stripped of everything you are at some point, Force included. Unfortunately, the cuffs are in use on a very annoying Dathomirian right now, so we’ll have to make do with you shielding like your mind’s a Kessel Spice Mine.”

“...do I want to know how often you’ve been captured?”

“No, you don’t.”

When he comes at her, it’s easy to dodge. It’s easy to tap him on target points, little pokes that show she could take him out, but isn’t going to until he’s learned something. He stays grinning throughout, letting her take the lead, and he treats her like... like a knight. Like a teacher. He’s stepped back and gone from trying to impress her as a fellow padawan, to proving himself to a full knight.

She’s not sure when that change happened, or why or how, but it makes things much smoother. She wants to think that it would have even if she hadn’t gotten a wakeup call from Fett.

So she treats him the way she treated Ezra, for the year she’d spent traveling with Kanan. She treats him as a student that’s willing to learn, good but not yet great, competent but not yet ready to survive. She draws him into the kind of chest-heaving exhaustion that tells a fighter just how much energy they waste.

(Ahsoka may have had her own style, but her grandmaster had been the pinnacle of a Soresu user. She’d spent years on the frontlines of a war. She knew the worth of conserving energy, and she’d teach it to any who stepped in to challenge her.)

“Who taught you to fight like this?” He asks, when they’ve taken a handful of moments to circle each other. His steps are heavy, sure, planted. Her own are light and ready.

“Soldiers,” she says. It’s true enough.

“Not your Master?” he asks, just as he tries to kick for her upper arm. It’s a safe question. For anyone else, it would be a safe question.

But for Ahsoka, it’s another chink in the armor, after a maelstrom of emotion, a storm of self-loathing, a dervish of instability.

She doesn’t break right away.

She spirals. She fights Quinlan, but doesn’t quite see him. Her strikes get sloppy, her feet stumble. She can’t make herself meet Quinlan’s eyes, not when the scrape of his heel against the metal sounds like the rasp of a breathing machine. Her shields get fuzzy, she knows, and she leaks what she feels into the air, making it sour and thick. She doesn’t notice, because all she can see, all she can--all she can hear and feel and--

She drops to her knees and grabs at her head, trying to stop it.

“Sokari?”

She breathes. In and out, harsh and jagged but natural in a way that the damned respirator wasn’t.

Her master her teacher her brother the traitor the hound the executioner

Her face is hot. Something prickles. It might be tears.

She tries to say something, tries to say a name or a request, tries to make anything come out of her mouth that isn’t the broken wail of a woman who hasn’t let herself think about how she died.

She feels herself pulled into someone’s arms, and she can’t quite tell who, but they’re bigger than she is, and feel warm and worried. They care. They don’t understand, they’re scared, but they care.

Her hands shake, clutched to her chest and she can’t breathe she can’t make herself take in enough air to do a Force-damned thing the empire is going to feel her her shields are down and broken and her emotions are spilling and the empire is going to find HER ANAKIN IS GOING TO FIND HER AND--

“COMMANDER!”

Rex.

Rex is here.

Her breath is coming so fast that she’s hiccupping more than she’s actually inhaling. She feels small hands in gloves on either side of her face, and then her forehead presses to something warm.

Rex. A Keldabe kiss. Her brother, her partner, her other half. He’s here. He’s calm. If he’s calm, then things are fine.

“What happened?” Light voice, high voice, small and distant. Leia. Little Leia little princess Leia she’s in danger she’s in trouble Anakin will--

“Commander.”

No. Here and now. She needs to focus on here and now. Her throat feels cold. She breathes too fast, still. She can’t stop it.

“I don’t know.” That’s Vos. He was... they were doing something. He was here. Talking to her. “We were sparring, and she just--”

Right, sparring.

“I don’t know if I said something?” He offers, voice pitching up, unsure and worried. Is he the one holding her? He’s the one holding her. That’s embarrassing.

“Commander?” Rex prompts. “Commander, can you open your eyes?”

She tries. She can’t. She shakes her head.

“Soka?” he asks, voice quiet. “Where are you?”

“F-F-Fett,” she manages. It’s enough.

“And where were you?”

His voice is so soft. So worried. She held him the same way after Mandalore, after Order 66, after all his brothers, all her friends...

“Soka.”

Her mind is spinning, and suddenly all she can hear is Anakin Skywalker is dead. I destroyed him.

Her breath hitches, and she wails.

“Commander,” Rex tries again, but her head is a vortex of Then you will die and Perhaps this child and not the Jedi way.

Our long awaited meeting.

I destroyed him.

Then you will die.

She can’t breathe she can’t breathe she can only see that yellow eye that’s too familiar but belongs to a stranger can only hear a voice that shouldn’t exist can only mourn and break and--

“Soka?”

“Malachor,” she manages. “I--h-he--I died.”

“What did you say?” someone asks. A vod. It’s the right voice, almost, rough and business-like, not accusing anyone yet, and... and... no. No. Not one of her boys. It’s Fett.

“Um, right at the end? I asked her who taught her to fight like this,” Quinlan says, nervous. “And she said it was soldiers. And I joked, I asked that it wasn’t her Master, and she didn’t answer that. A couple minutes later, she just started...”

“Oh, Soka,” Rex whispers, pulling her closer. “Commander, just breathe with me.”

“H-h-he, he just--R-Rex, he j-just--and I c-c-couldn’t--”

“I know,” her captain whispers. “I know, just breathe with me.”

“He k-k-k-killed me,” she sobs, falling out of the Keldabe and into too-small arms. “I l-loved--he was my broth-ther and--and he just--he killed me, he didn’t even stop.”

“I know,” Rex whispers. “Soka, I know.”

Of course he does.

---------------------------

“It was just bad timing,” Rex says, once they’re in the room she’s been sharing with her little family, curled up under a blanket and watching the floor like it has all the secrets to how she lost her world three times over.

“Is there anything we need to keep in mind?” Fett asks, gruff and uncomfortable. She wonders if he’s angry that she took his necessary confrontation and turned it into this mess.

“Don’t bring up her Jedi Master,” Rex says, and pulls her in when she shivers. Her eyes squeeze shut before she can stop them, tears beading up again. “Just... don’t. It’s too soon.”

“He’s--”

“He Fell,” Ahsoka interrupts. “I thought he died, but he became a Sith. And fifteen years later, we ran into each other, and I refused to join him in the Dark, so he tried to kill me.”

Fett swears, low and muffled. She thinks he has a hand over his mouth.

Quin and Leia aren’t there. She thinks they’re keeping an eye on their Baby Sith prisoner. That’s good.

“Soka,” Rex whispers, and she buries her face in his shoulder. She’s too old to be this kind of mess. She’s thirty-two. She’s Fulcrum. She’s...

She’s in need of a lot of therapy.

“We can avoid the subject unless you bring it up,” Tholme promises. “Definitely until the Temple. Is there anything else we shouldn’t talk about?”

Ahsoka can practically feel Rex’s deadpan look. “Sir, we’re a trio of child soldiers ripped from everything we know. Every other sentence is a risk. We’re just... working our way through.”

There’s a knock at the door. Oh. Quin and Leia.

“Just figured we’d drop this off before we went down to visit Mr. Grumpy-Face,” Quinlan whispers. He still thinks Leia’s a child. He’s trying to make things less terrible for her. That’s nice. “We decided he’ll be less angry if he tries Hoth chocolate, and made some for everyone.”

They definitely made it for Ahsoka herself, and Maul was an afterthought. Still. It’s sweet.

“Commander?” Rex prompts, jostling her a little to try and get her to sit up.

“Gimme a sec,” she manages. It takes longer than it should to push herself away from him, to accept the mug that Leia gives her, too-serious worry in the furrow of her brow and the twist of her soul.

She doesn’t look six. She doesn’t even look twenty-two. This girl was always too old for her skin, forced to grow up in the hostile fear of the Empire.

“Thank you, Princess.”

She sips.

She can barely taste it beyond the ashes she imagines coating her tongue.

I destroyed him, her memory echoes. His slightest hesitation before he made the final move, it haunts her. She almost reached him. If only she’d tried harder, yelled louder, been better...

She shivers.

“Do you need help falling asleep?” Tholme asks. “I’m a regular healer, not a mind healer, but...”

She probably should.

She takes another sip of her drink, willing herself to taste it. It’s good. She likes it. She knows she does.

“Can you make it dreamless?” she whispers.

“It doesn’t always work, but I can try,” he tells her.

She nods. “When I finish the chocolate.”

“Of course.”

---------------------------

Everyone’s careful around her for days. The whole decision to be nicer doesn’t mean anything when she’s walking about in a daze of too few emotions, drained of everything she could feel in favor of a grey cloud of fluff in everything she does.

She does forms. Single saber and Jar’kai. Ataru and Djem so and Soresu. Reverse grip, regular grip, partial reverse on either side.

Again. Again. Again.

She loses herself in the motions, not meditating so much as just empty.

Rex worries. Fett worries. Vos worries.

Leia and Tholme keep their shields locked up tight, and she doesn’t know how they feel. She thinks Leia might be judging her. She think Tholme might be pitying.

Maul simply hates. It’s an old and familiar sensation to walk into, and she takes unthinking comfort in his rage. She’s silent instead of snippy, when she plays the role of guard, and they stare at each other in silence. His eyes burn, and she wonders how much he’s heard of her nightmares.

“You need to talk,” Rex tells her, when he finds her with a cold cup of caff, eyes fixed somewhere beyond it all. She lifts her head. “Soka.”

She just stares at him.

He sighs and pulls her into a hug. “Commander, please.”

She can’t.

Ahsoka stares at the wall behind him, resting her chin on his head. Her neck itches under the lek at the back of her head, a little tingle of a feeling that she can’t bring herself to do anything about. The pale light of the galley is sharp against the chipped paint of the metal that surrounds them. It hurts her eyes to look, but it’s not the deep and dark lit only by red--

Then you will die, her memory growls.

She flinches.

“Breathe,” Rex tells her, too-small hands clinging at her back. “Just breathe, ‘Soka.”

She curls in tighter and tries to just breathe.

---------------------------

“Tell me something good.”

Ahsoka blinks. She looks at Leia. She doesn’t have the energy to parse that.

Leia chances a look at Rex, who isn’t leaving Ahsoka’s side any more than he has to, and Fett on the other side. Tholme’s asleep and Quin’s on Baby Sith duty. It’s just people who know, right now.

The little girl across the table, the child senator, the spy, purses her lips and huffs in irritation. “You knew my biological father before he became one of the worst people in the galaxy. Both of you did. Tell me something good about him.”

Good things.

About Anakin.

“You fought a war as a Jedi,” Leia prompts. “Surely you must have done some good things with him, or at least thought you were.”

Did they?

Every mission ended in tragedy or was just a ploy of Palpatine’s. Every saved life was just...

Wait.

“He built Threepio,” she finally says. “Your father wi--I mean, Bail wiped Threepio’s memory after the Empire rose, for your safety, but Anakin was the one who built him.”

Leia sits up, eyes brighter. “I didn’t know that. I... was Artoo involved? Did he build R2D2, or...”

“No,” Rex says, “But Artoo was his favorite astromech, and they always pushed each other into stupid stunts. We risked a hell of a lot to save that droid, more than once, and I didn’t find out until you started working with the Rebellion full-time, but Artoo and Threepio were the witnesses for your bio-parents’ wedding.”

Leia gapes at him. So does Ahsoka. (Fett doesn’t know enough to care.)

Rex grins, and if it looks a little forced, that’s fine. “He had a holo recording. I was one of the few people left that knew about the marriage that might have wanted to see, so Artoo offered. It was... sweet.”

He waits, probably for Ahsoka to add something herself, but she has nothing.

“I think that’s when they swapped droids, since Threepio was more useful to a politician and Artoo did his best work when we set him loose on the enemy.”

“He never changed,” Leia muses. “Did he always swear that much?”

“Yes,” Ahsoka answers, as Rex laughs. “Always. All the binary I learned started with the best swears.”

She tries to think of another good memory, something else that Leia might appreciate. Her mind ticks back to saving Stinky, which is just a terrible option, because that mission started with Hutts and ended with the Battle of Teth. That massive loss of life, all for the son of the creature that had put Leia in chains.

She wonders if she has anything in her memory that doesn’t end in blood and graves.

“Soka.” Rex.

“Hm?”

“Remember that time Fives and Echo got lost in the undercity their first time on leave, and we had to get the General to help us find them?”

She does.

He’s right, that’s a good story.

“Okay, so what you have to understand,” Ahsoka says, already digging the faint details out and dusting them off, “is that these boys were ARC troopers, top-notch, terrifyingly competent once they got through specialty training, and loyal as hell. Echo had memorized the reg manuals front to back, and Fives was... well, Fives ended up being the only person to figure out the chips before they went into action. Point is, the Domino twins were good... eventually. Just like everyone else, though, they started out shiny.”

---------------------------

“Tholme’s hiding something.”

Ahsoka wonders if Leia will just leave if she ignores her enough. Probably not. This was the girl that got kicked out of boarding school for leading a sit-in at age seven. She’s got patience.

“His job requires him to hide a lot of things,” Ahsoka says instead. “Not as many as Vos will have to, eventually, but a lot.”

“He’s hiding something from us,” Leia insists, visibly frustrated that Ahsoka isn’t as upset about this as she is. “Something important.”

The way she says ‘important’ is clumsy and impacted by the missing baby tooth. She can’t say the r. It comes out as ‘im-poh-ten,’ which is adorable, and if Ahsoka comments on it, she’s probably going to get punched by a six-year-old.

“The Force doesn’t care,” Ahsoka says. “I trust his intentions, if not him as a person.”

“If you don’t trust him, then why trust his intentions?”

“Leia, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I trust one and a half people in the galaxy,” Ahsoka points out. “Me not trusting a person isn’t a sign of anything except my paranoia. The only person I trust fully and without reservation is Rex. Even you, I only mostly trust, because my brain starts screaming if I think too hard. That’s why you’re the half.”

“Okay, whatever, paranoia aside,” Leia barrels on, “He should tell us. Whatever it is that he’s hiding, we deserve to know. We’re not children that he can just hide things from for our own good.”

Ahsoka presses her lips together. “Leia. Princess. I know you’re used to holding all the cards--”

“This isn’t about me being a control freak!”

“It is, though,” Ahsoka soothes, and smiles. “Your mother--the bio one--was the same way. You spent years as one of the leaders of the Rebellion, so obviously you’re used to having all the information, and people reporting to you... but Tholme is a Jedi Master. He reports to the Council and the Republic. Do you know how many people I kept secrets from while I was a padawan? We’re an unknown, Leia. They have no proof that we’re on their side, especially since we’re traveling with Fett.”

Leia crosses her arms and glares as hard as she can.

“I’m not going to bother him,” Ahsoka says. “I’ve already had, like, five unrelated mental breakdowns. I’m putting this on hold until we get to the Temple and I can trust that there’s a healer on hand to sedate me or something.”

“You... want to be sedated?”

“Leia, this... really should be obvious, but a Force-Sensitive losing their osik the way I have been isn’t actually safe. I know I broke a weapons rack last week.” Ahsoka gestures vaguely. “If the Jedi Master isn’t telling me something for reasons that might relate to my clear and obvious mental instability, I’m going to assume he’s got a point.”

“So he should tell me or Rex.”

“We’ll be on Coruscant in four days,” Ahsoka soothes. “Just... let it be. They won’t hurt us.”

“You don’t know that.”

Ahsoka shrugs. “I don’t have to. The Force leads me in all things, including this.”

Leia isn’t impressed by that, but Leia isn’t impressed by much in the first place.

She strides off in a fit that is, perhaps, more influenced by her six-year-old emotional control than she’d like to admit. Ahsoka lets her. It’s not worth the argument.

It’s only a few minutes later that Fett strides in, takes the seat Leia was just in, and asks, “What would it take for you to teach me how to use a jetii’kad?”

She blinks at him. “You want to learn how to use a lightsaber?”

“Yes.”

“...why?”

“Viszla.”

“I see.”

She does.

Ahsoka taps her fingers against the table, eyeing him with the kind of interest she copied from Master Kenobi, years ago. Fett doesn’t fidget, but she thinks he might want to. He just looks back, waiting for her judgement.

“You’ll need to justify it,” she finally says. “It’s a significant difference from what you actually did, so I need to know your reasoning for doing it, and your plans for once it’s done.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s step one,” she corrects. She tilts her head, considering. “My standards for you aren’t built in a vacuum, and you know that. Explain to me what you plan to do and how you plan to do it, and if I approve...”

“You’ll help me achieve it.”

“Maybe,” she allows. “A lot of that depends on Rex.”

“I expected as much,” Fett says. “He is... an admittedly large part of the reason.”

“He would be,” she says. She gives the silence a few more seconds to sit awkwardly between them, and then stands up. “I’d guess you’ve been brainstorming already. Do you have it written down or is it mostly just in your head so far?”

“I’m still... debating options, so to speak.”

She grins, and the shape of the predator’s smile, the baring of teeth... that almost makes him step back. She can see it in the twitch of his muscles. Smart man.

“Follow me,” she says, and doesn’t wait for him to stand. She strides out with tooka-light steps, hears the heavy beskar tread behind her, and goes to the cargo hold. Fett’s confusion grows tangibly behind her, especially when she tosses him a wooden quarterstaff. She picks up the other and spins it in one hand.

“You’re going to fight me,” she tells him, stretching and letting the staff help with the process. “And while we fight, you’re going to tell me what your plans for Mandalore are.”

He mimics her, but there’s a frown on his face. “And why staffs?”

“You and I, we’ve only sparred bare-handed,” she says. “I need a feel for how you fight with a weapon anyway. These are a good start.”

“Not the beskad?”

She grins, and the twitch is back. “No. That can wait. We start with the staffs.”

He takes a stance, and she mirrors him. She lets him strike first with a weapon, but she’s the one that asks all the questions.

(He is the only one on the ship that can fight her one-on-one right now, and he can win. Still, she makes him work for every inch, and what she doesn’t win in bruises, she wins in words.)

(Fett might yet be a proper Mand’alor, but Ahsoka learned war from her brothers, negotiation at the knee of a general and in the shadow of a prince, and government at the side of duchesses and queens.)

(If he wants her help uniting his people, he needs to prove that he can hold them together once she’s gone.)

---------------------------

Ahsoka’s interrogation of Jango’s plans is thorough, and she’s not the only one involved. She brings Leia in, and has her join in on the grilling. She maybe laughs as the twenty-seven-year-old survivor of Galidraan, the Mand’alor, a man who has killed Master Jedi with his bare hands, gets lectured on various government structures by a tiny girl that's missing several teeth and needs to sit on books to see the table properly.

Still, Leia knows this better than any of the rest of them do. The girl might have grown up heir to a monarchy, but she got a classical education and was drilled on democracy and all associated forms of government. Where Ahsoka knows military protocol and law enforcement, intersystem relations and defensive measures, Leia knows agricultural subsidies and welfare programs, infrastructure and education.

Ahsoka may know how to find out if someone’s breaking a zoning law, but Leia knows why it exists in the first place.

“And I grew up in a cult,” Rex says, when an argument on that topic breaks out. Everyone that hasn’t heard the joke-that-isn’t-a-joke stares at him. “The Jedi grew up in a religious meritocracy; Leia grew up in a monarchy; and I grew up in a cult.”

Ahsoka elbows him. He’s not wrong, but still.

Unfortunately, Ahsoka is about forty-seven percent sure that Leia will put her foot in her mouth when it comes to Mandalorian culture, blunt as the girl is. That prefrontal cortex isn’t anywhere near as developed as it should be, either, so impulse control for the princess isn’t great. Ahsoka refuses to let Leia and Fett talk about ways to mend the breaks between tradition and the pacifism of the New Mandalorians without either Rex or Ahsoka herself as a mediating presence. Tholme sits in a few times, but while he knows that Leia isn’t really six--though not about the time-travel, yet--Quinlan doesn’t.

They admittedly end up doing this while he’s on Maul-sitting duty.

“It’s like he doesn’t even care about making nice with the people that, at this point, make up the majority of his people!” Leia grumbles one night, as Ahsoka kicks over a step stool so the girl can brush her teeth. “He may not like the New Mandalorians, but from what I understand, it’s still early enough to prevent the majority of the cultural bleaching you brought up. If he stays this stubborn--”

“Leia,” Ahsoka says, and the girl’s mouth snaps shut. “I’m aware of your reasons for not trusting his intentions. But if I may say? Chill.”

“He’s not even trying!”

“He’s trying a hell of a lot harder than he did in the original timeline,” Ahsoka reminds her. “Brush your teeth.”

“I’m not a--”

“Teeth.”

It’s a little worrying, how the child’s brain affects Leia, but... well. That’ll pass in time, hopefully. Until then, Ahsoka gets to be the aunt she should have been. This includes tucking Leia in, which the girl grumbles about despite the fond waves of comfort that enter the Force around her. Ahsoka doesn’t call her out on it, just brushes back wisps of hair to plant a kiss on Leia’s forehead, and then does the same once Rex stumbles in, grumbling about the limitations of a cadet’s body, but far more ready to follow the protocol that is bedtime.

Rex doesn’t pretend to not like getting tucked in, for all that he’s sharing with a grumbly, already-asleep princess. He smiles up at Ahsoka, lets her hug him, and pretends they can be a normal family for five seconds.

Quinlan’s making a late night snack for himself in the galley. Tholme is guarding the Baby Sith. Fett...

Ahsoka goes to the cockpit, takes the copilot’s seat, and watches hyperspace pass them by.

It takes long minutes before either of them say anything.

“Do Jedi believe in souls?”

His shields are up, locked up tighter than the innermost chambers of the Imperial Palace. She has no idea where he’s taking this question. She has to cast about for an answer.

“That depends on how you define a soul,” she finally says. “Leia told me about Force Ghosts. A Jedi Master who underwent the right meditations and training could pass into the Force upon their death without losing their sense of self. They could remain themselves, to an extent, and interact with force-sensitive individuals. I don’t know if they could last that way indefinitely, but depending on your definition, I could argue those ghosts were evidence of a form of soul.”

“So you believe that the dead pass into the Force, but that what passes could be a soul. Something must exist for a sense of self to disappear at death in a way that impacts the Force as you understand it, and many would use the word ‘soul’ for that something.”

“Mm,” Ahsoka considers it. “I’d say that’s pretty accurate. You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

“What about those not yet born?”

Her fingers feel cold, and she finds herself no longer able to watch the passage of hyperspace as passively as she had, and her eyes catch on streaks and motes of what is not dust, her vision unable to keep any more still than her heart.

“Oh,” she hears herself say. “The clones.”

It’s a long time before he answers, but the walls come down. He carries a confused sort of grief with him, guilty and a mite resentful. His questions have been building for longer than she’d thought. His voice is rough. “I’ve taken plenty of lives, but I’ve never known the name of someone I erased from existence before they were even born.”

“The stories we told Leia about the brothers.”

There’s a grunt of agreement from Fett, so those dots at least connect.

“I take it my answer wasn’t helpful,” she manages to say.

“Will they still exist?” Fett asks. “Will they be born elsewhere? Or is... is a soul something that only comes into existence after the body does?”

“I have no idea,” Ahsoka admits. “I want... I want to think that I’d be able to find them eventually, to recognize them, if their souls are still born into this world elsewhere.”

“And if your Sith finds someone else to build his army out of?”

Ahsoka looks at him, sharp and pointed. “You wouldn’t.”

“They’ll be doing it anyway, if their plans are as ironclad as you say.”

“You’re already associating with Jedi,” Ahsoka says, fighting the urge to break his nose. “They wouldn’t approach you, not now. They can’t leverage your anger against you. They won’t know everything, but they’ll know that you have friends among the Jedi.”

“You think they can’t come up with better lies?”

He has a point. He has more than one point and she hate hate hates it.

A Jedi does not hate.

I am no Jedi.

“You’re going to have to convince me,” she says. “Especially if you want to somehow balance this with the darksaber thing. I won’t teach you how to fight with it if you’re not planning to retake Mandalore.”

“That’s how they’d sell it,” he says. “Retaking Mandalore. An army ostensibly for the Jedi, and ultimately...”

“You’d build an army of slaves.”

“No, I’d be the inside man for when they build that army anyway.”

She holds his gaze. She looks away first.

“Torrent?”

“I’m thinking.”

He lets her.

“I’ll need to talk to Rex. Probably Leia.”

“Understandable.”

“I don’t like this.”

“I’m only just considering it. It’s an idea, not a plan.”

“That’s the only reason I haven’t ripped your throat out with my teeth.”

“Hyperbole doesn’t suit you.”

She glares at him, and leaves, her mind chopping up and laying out every possible angle on Fett volunteering to do the exact same thing as last time, but somehow worse.

Great. Just what she needed.

---------------------------

Ahsoka isn’t there for the shouting match between Rex and Fett, but she doesn’t have to be. She can hear it form clear across the ship, and Rex comes to her afterwars. He’s been crying, which isn’t as surprising as it could be. These bodies are still prone to such things, and will be for years. She doesn’t comment.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

“We need to take out Sidious before he starts anything on Kamino.”

“Agreed,” she says. “It’ll be hard, though.”

“I don’t care.”

“What did Fett say?”

“That if it wasn’t going to be my brothers, it would be someone else’s. Either we stopped the cloning from happening at all, or we mitigated damage by being there.”

“I don’t think Sidious is going to tap him for it,” Ahsoka admits. “Not unless you’re willing to stage that kind of fight publicly enough for Fett to claim the Jedi poisoned you, family, against him. It could work, but it’s a gamble.”

He knows all of this.

“I miss them,” he says, and she cards her fingers though the curls he’s managed to grow in the past weeks. “I just... even at the end, I had Wolffe. I knew Boba was out there; I wouldn’t be surprised if the beskar let him survive a Sarlacc. I had brothers. Not as many as I used to, but there was always someone. I miss them all, so much it hurts.”

“It wouldn’t be them,” she reminds him. She pulls him closer, puts her cheek to his head. “It would be the same process, the same faces, the same training, even, but the boys themselves...”

He clings to her and shudders.

“Rex?”

“I can’t force them to grow up the way I did. I want them back. Sidious is going to make the army no matter what. Someone’s going to suffer, and I don’t want it to be my brothers, but they won’t exist otherwise, and...”

“And it’s an impossible choice,” she summarizes. “And it sucks.”

“It’s sucks Gungan balls, ‘Soka.”

She laughs, and feels him smile against her shoulder. Good. He needs to smile more.

“He’s still trying to get me to like him,” Rex says. "He’s still making an effort, and he never did that for anyone except Boba, and it’s weird. I don’t know what to do with any of that.”

“Gain a brother,” Ahsoka whispers, and she feels him jerk against her. “If that’s what you want.”

“He’s not vod.”

“Same blood as all the rest, and you’re older than him, so he’s not really in a position to be a parent to you like he was to Boba,” she says carefully. “You don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want to, but... I think he’s trying. I think this means a lot to him, and that he isn’t any more sure of what to do than you are. You don’t have to forgive him for what he did in the future, you don’t have to accept when he reaches out, you don’t have to ever talk to him again after we reach Coruscant if you don’t want, but I think... I think it’s worth at least considering what you have to gain. I think it’s worth looking at what he’s trying to give you.”

Rex huffs. “Why couldn’t he just be the shabuir I knew in training?”

“Something happened between now and then?” she offers. “I don’t know. I never met him in the original timeline. I just know the guy that keeps trying to get on my good side so you’ll like him.”

He outright scoffs. “Soka, that’s not the only reason he’s trying to get on your good side.”

“...I’m a former Jedi who talks trash to his face,” she says slowly. “And I cried on him. There is no reason for him to be nice to me, other than you.”

“He thinks you’re cool and a good person and wants you to be his friend.”

“Bantha poodoo.”

Rex grins in a way that goes straight to smirking. “Soka, I’m not joking. Jango Fett wants you to be his friend.”

“Kriffing why?” she asks, more than a little horrified. “I’m a mess, look like I’m ten years younger than him, have gleefully kicked his ass in front of an audience; I even told Vos to throw him at a baby Sith Lord. Putting up with me is one thing, but I’m... I’m only barely not a Jedi. I’m a historical enemy of Mandalore, and part of the community he hates more than anything, and--”

“And his reaction to you kicking his ass was pure Mando,” Rex says. “In that he now thinks you’re a badass, and thus worth being friends with.”

“I can’t believe that. I physically cannot.”

“Soka, just accept it. The Mand’alor wants to be friends with you.” He scratches at his scalp. “I mean, he met you while you were protecting what appeared to be children, and it’s apparently still early enough for him to care about that.”

She leans back in her seat, eyes on the wall ahead of her and back against the cool metal of the other side. Rex falls back with her. She wonders if Rex changed the subject so they didn’t have to talk about deciding how many of his brothers get to exist, and whether or not he can swallow the bitterness of his history to have a connection with at least one member of his blood. She doesn’t ask. If he wants to change the subject, that’s his right.

“I don’t... no.” She denies it as well as she can, and then the implications dig a little deeper. “Is this me accidentally signing up to be the Jedi Order’s official liaison to the Mand’alor?”

“I mean, this point in time... they’ve got Kenobi for the Duchess, yeah?” Rex shrugs. “Good relations with the system are probably a good thing, and you’ve got a stronger connection than Tholme and Vos.”

“Ugh,” she says. She rubs a hand against her head, and then lurches to her feet. “Fine! Fine. If it’ll get him to retake Mandalore before the Sith decide to bribe him with an army he doesn’t get to keep, I’ll teach him how to fight for the kriffin’ Darksaber.”

“That’s what makes the decision for you?”

“Well something had to!”

They only get one lesson in before Coruscant, but the lesson lasts a full day, and Ahsoka’s got his comm number. Fett’s a quick learner anyway, and Tholme was there to give pointers where Ahsoka couldn’t.

He won’t measure up to a Jedi in saber-to-saber combat, but he doesn’t need to. He just needs to learn enough to turn all those skills with a beskad to something that works with a jetii’kad.

(The balance of a saber is wrong to those used to a physical weapon. The inertia doesn’t work the way anyone expects. There’s no need to worry about damaging the blade.)

(Fett is good. Ahsoka is better. And, bless his heart, he knows it.)

(She will mold him into the shape of someone who not only can, but should rule a system with a history like that, and he damn well knows that too.)

---------------------------

“Dropping out of hyperspace in T-minus twenty seconds.”

The Slave I is not, in fact, a Venator-class starship, or anything else near the size and smoothness of the ships that Ahsoka grew up on. This is a bounty hunter’s vessel, and the drop to real space jolts like nothing else. Ahsoka’s in the copilot seat for the return, but Tholme’s going to swap with her as soon as they’ve got confirmation that there were no problems with exiting hyperspace, and nobody’s shooting at them.

“We’re not going to get shot at,” Tholme had assured her.

“I always get shot at,” she’d told him.

“I have our clearance,” he reminded her, seeming more amused than frustrated. “There’s no need to worry about getting shot at.”

“I also always get shot at,” Jango had thrown in.

“Okay,” Tholme had allowed, after several minutes of his trust in the Temple warring against Ahsoka and Jango’s learned paranoia. The looks Quinlan had darted around the room when Leia and Rex also claimed ‘chronic getting-shot-at disease’ had been a treat. The paranoia of a Watchman and a future Shadow was great, but the paranoia of three revolutionaries and a galaxy-wide criminal was greater. “You can take us in close enough to get in radio contact, but the second we have to ask for clearance and a vector, I’m in the seat.”

She’d agreed, of course. She was paranoid, not inexperienced.

“We’re much less likely to get shot down by ground control if you tell them we’re with you,” she’d said, to his hilariously apparent metaphysical exhaustion. “Obviously.”

“Good enough,” he’d sighed.

What that means is mostly just that Ahsoka gets to watch the distant star at the center of Coruscant’s system grow rapidly brighter. She can pick out the constellations she’d grown up with, the stars the creche had projected on the ceiling every night, the ones that she may not have seen from the surface, but had greeted her and then sent her on her way every time she left on yet another campaign that lost her men their lives for a Sith Lord's wretched plans. These were the shapes and stories she’d never seen again as Fulcrum, a woman so hunted that to come within a dozen subsectors of the planet was to court her death.

For sixteen years, she hadn’t ventured closer than Alderaan, save for a single trip to Chandrila.

And now, maybe twenty minutes away at this speed, was the Temple. It was home.

A home that didn’t know her, that had sentenced her to death, that had hosted the rampage of her former master... but home nonetheless.

“Stable?” Fett grunts.

“Thrusters are good,” she confirms.

“I meant you.”

Ah. “I’m... fine. As good as I could be, anyway.”

She hesitates, but manages to speak before he does. “You?”

“I’m not the one walking into an entire building of triggers.”

“Only because you’re not entering it,” she says. “It’s the home of your ancestral enemies who, bad info or no, killed off a whole lot of your friends.”

“I get to leave,” he says. “You don’t.”

She plans to needle him a bit more, maybe on something a little less based in both their traumas. She needs to talk, if only to fill up the silence and keep herself from reaching out to all the lights in the Force. It’ll be too much, she knows.

Tholme enters the cockpit. “Change of plans.”

“Better be a good reason,” Jango says, voice flat.

“Leia’s crying.”

Ahsoka’s unbuckling herself before she can process the words fully. “What?”

Leia doesn’t cry for no reason. Her emotional control is as difficult as the body makes it, but she doesn’t just cry. There’s always a cause.

“I don’t know. Rex said to get you,” Tholme explains. “She was saying a name. He seemed to recognize it.”

Not good not good not good. If Leia was feeling the Emper--No. She cuts the thought off there. No catastrophizing. Information first.

“What name.”

“Luke. Mean anything to--and she’s gone.”

Ahsoka ignores him, just sprints to where she knows the ‘young ones’ are. They’re all in Maul’s room, because nobody wants to be alone with him now, but it’s the worst time to leave him without supervision. It’s not the worst option; he mostly refuses to talk, still.

This holds true, because he definitely isn’t talking when she bursts in. He’s sitting on the bench, in a corner, hugging his knees and watching Quinlan try to calm Leia down.

“Captain, sitrep.”

“Vos and Tholme attempted to show Leia how to reach out to feel the Temple from a distance. They felt that it would be a good use of the time, and an interesting exercise at this distance. She attempted to do so, struggled for several minutes, and then reacted with shock. She has repeated the name ‘Luke’ several times since then, and we’ve been unable to fully calm her down. I asked Tholme to get you, as you are the only Force-Sensitive on board that understands the situation in full.”

“Understood.” She nods to him, and then goes to nudge at Quinlan. “Vos, move.”

“Torre--”

“You can sit behind her, hold her in your lap like you did when we had lunch the other day, but I need to get in her face.” She waits for him to comply, and then drops to her knees and takes Leia’s hands in her own. She radiates calm and assurance, even though she knows Quinlan’s probably been doing the same since this started. She dips her head enough to get in the girl’s line of sight, waits for her to meet eyes.

“Princess,” she says, and meets Leia’s eyes. “What did you feel?”

“Luke.”

From this distance... they’ve got half the system to go, at least, and Leia’s training shouldn’t reach that far for anything more than the fact that the Temple is there. Ahsoka could feel unshielded individuals from here, if she focused, but she’s also been doing this much, much longer. The twins theory holds more water than ever.

“Can you show me?” Ahsoka asks, instead of asking for more clarification. She squeezes Leia’s hands and smiles. “In the Force?”

Leia nods, and closes her eyes. It’s not the first time they’ve done this, but it’s the first time in a while that Leia’s needed Ahsoka to guide her through.

Luke’s light, for all that it’s unfamiliar to Ahsoka, is brilliant among the rest of the signatures in Coruscant. Like Anakin and Leia, he’s a star in his own right, but he’s brighter. He doesn’t have Anakin’s bitterness or Leia’s righteous anger, just... light. Ahsoka had asked Leia to show her instead of looking for herself because she’d expected to not recognize the boy, but she needn’t have. He’s unmistakable.

He’s so bright that she almost misses the other signature that she does recognize. She shies away, knowing that it would be there, but... but it’s almost twinned with another nearby. Not identical, but different in a way that comes with age, with trauma, with... death.

Leia hadn’t arrived alone, after all.

Why would Luke?

Her eyes snap open, her hand coming up not-quite-fast enough to clap over her mouth as she gasps. She feels a shudder, one that starts in her shoulders and reaches deep into her ribcage, finds a home in her chest and doesn’t stop.

“Oh fuck,” Quinlan whispers. “Torrent? Um, Sokari?”

Rex steps closer. “Commander?”

“That shabuir faked his death again,” she manages. “Three times, Rex!”

He blinks at her. “...I know way too many people who fit that description, Soka.”

“Master Ke--” she cuts herself off. He might have changed his name, just like she had. There’s already an Obi-Wan here. Rex seems to be figuring it out, but she needs to give him another hint.

“He pulled a Hardeen,” she stresses, and Rex’s eyes snap shut with a tired groan.

“Who?” Leia asks, her own tumult of emotion paused in the wake of Ahsoka’s shock. There’s a hope and relief to her, and Ahsoka belatedly realizes that her main worry had been that she’d misidentified what was going on, that she’d given herself a false hope. Ahsoka’s internal reaction, her approval and awe at Luke’s presence, had trickled over enough to give Leia the reassurance she’d needed.

Unintentional as it was, Ahsoka was glad that she’d succeeded in helping her charge.

“Er...” she trails off. “I don’t know what name he’s going by, right now. We’ve spent so long in hiding...”

“The man Luke knew as Crazy Old Ben,” Rex says, and Leia’s eyes light up.

“Oh,” she breathes. “General O--no, names. The High General, then.”

“Yeah,” Ahsoka says, not a little soft. “Yeah, I guess death didn’t stop him any more than it stopped me.”

“I could have told you that,” Leia says, smiling far too widely. She squirms where she still sits on Quinlan’s lap. “He was... he taught you, right?”

“As much my master as the official one,” Ahsoka says. She glances as Quinlan, feels Maul’s gaze on the back of her head. “Your f... my official master was very young when I was assigned to him. He wasn’t ready to teach, wasn’t even ready to be a knight, entirely, so my training was split between him and his master.”

Quinlan pops in at that moment, “Your grandmaster was military, too?”

We all were, she thinks. Even you, in your own way.

“I landed in their care mid-battle,” she says carefully. “It was a complicated situation.”

He nods, and she vaguely notes that he’s got his arms wrapped around Leia, and his chin tucked on top of her head. She isn’t sure if Leia’s noticed, but Quinlan’s picked up ‘baby’-sitting duty so often recently that she’s fairly certain he’s all but declared her ‘little-sister shaped.’ It doesn’t matter that Leia’s older--she’s still taking the juice boxes and gummy snacks that Quinlan shoves at her every single snacktime.

“Do you think...” Rex trails off, something uncomfortable twisting in the Force, even though his face keeps it mostly hidden. “My brothers. If the General survived and... and made it back...”

“I didn’t feel any,” Ahsoka says, because she knows she’d have noticed if it was anyone she’d met, and likely any clone at all. They all felt different in the Force, but they all held a spark that made her know it was one of them. “I’m sorry, Rex’ika.”

“A long shot,” he says, that dash of hope shriveling up. He must see something in her face, because there’s a curl of warmth in him, even if his smile is brittle. “It’s fine, really. I have you, ‘Soka.”

Rex and Ahsoka. Two halves of one whole.

She can’t wait to hear the lectures on attachment, the way people who haven’t seen her wars try to criticize her for clinging to any chance at still having a will to live. She can’t wait to see them justify telling her that it’s selfish to hold her sanity in her hands and refuse to let the grief take it away. She can’t wait to stare someone down for asking her to ‘learn to let go’ after she’s lost her family, her life, her universe three times over.

Most of the Jedi are more sensible than that, are reasonable enough to see those shades of grey and how to approach rules in the spirit they are meant instead of the rigid letter, but there will be some.

There will be more than enough telling her she is wrong to hold her oldest, closest, best friend as dear as she can.

Attachment, they’ll say.

What they’ll mean is ‘codepedence.’

They won’t be entirely wrong.

She reaches out for him, lets him fall into her side and stay there, closes her eyes and reaches out for the man she’d long called father, when they’d still been in each other’s lives.

This time, past the deafening flare of surprise-love-hope of the little star next to him, she can feel him reach back.

---------------------------

The second the ship has landed, even before Tholme and Fett are done with the checks, Ahsoka’s waiting at the exit. She strains her hearing so she’ll know the second the system will let her open the massive door of the cargo hold.

Leia clings to her side, and the boys stand to her back.

Quinlan’s stressed enough that she can feel it like a cloud. She is very much not trying to feel that stress. Quinlan’s stress levels, back where he’s got Maul so he can keep an eye on Ahsoka and the Baby Sith at the same time, are so low on her priorities list that it’s a a little sad.

It doesn’t take long for her to be able to punch the button and open the damn door.

It opens slowly. She bounces on her toes, because there’s a beacon of light and a steady, familiar glow on the other side, and she’s so, so close. She can’t see through the crack yet, because it’s day in this part of Coruscant, and the sunlight is blinding against the dark of the hold. So close. She’s so close.

“The hell’s wrong with you?”

Fett? Fett. He’s already here to get off? This door’s slow.

She doesn’t answer him, because the door is finally open enough to let her out, and she leaps through the gap.

She lands on a pourstone floor, feels pebbles and grit compress under her boots, frantically looks around as her eyes adjust to light and--

The High General, the Negotiator, Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, looking just as he did when she first met him, if a little less armored and a little more fed. The hair, the beard, the crinkle in the corner of his eyes. His spirit is a little older, his smile a little more strained, his posture a little more tired, but it’s him.

He spreads his arms, low enough that she could have dismissed it if she’d cared less for hugs, except she’s almost as small as she was when they met.

And every other hug she’d given back then had been, functionally, her being a living missile aiming her montrals for someone’s organs.

She’s a little more aware of how to avoid stabbing her friends in the intestine now.

“Master!”

She sprints for him, collides and sobs, feels him stumble back and then sink to his knees on the too-hard floor, and can feel the tears pouring out of her already. Her breath hitches, and she wails like a child, and that last part of her that couldn’t even grasp at safety shreds itself. His arms are tight around her, warm and strong and Master Kenobi don’t you dare leave again.

It doesn’t matter that Sidious is out there, that the Republic’s been building towards war for a century, that even now someone’s kicking up the Trade Federation. Her dad is here.

“I’ve missed you too, my dear,” he says, pressing a kiss to the side of her head, the bristles of his beard scratching along the skin of her forehead. Off to the side, the binary suns that are Luke and Leia grow brighter in proximity, so bright she can barely bear it.

(“Fett, why the kriff are you reaching for your blaster?!”)

(“Torrent said her master tried to kill her.”)

(“Different guy, that was a different guy, put the blaster away.”)

(“You could have just warned me.”)

(“I didn’t expect you to go for a shot on sight!”)

(”Calm down, Jetiika, if I was going to shoot on sight, we’d already be in a firefight.”)

She ignores everything.

“If you fake your death one more time, I swear I’m going to kill you myself.”

He tries to pull away to talk to her more directly. She does not let him. He apparently resigns himself to this, because he just adjusts how he’s sitting and pulls her in closer.

“In my defense, I was far from the only one presumed dead that took advantage of that status, by the end,” he says, letting her slump into his lap and cry herself dry. “I’m proud of you. You know that, I hope.”

She nods against his chest, smearing tears and snot across the linen and wool. She doesn’t care that they’ll need a thorough washing. She can have her public breakdown and it’s fine because Master Kenobi is here.

He doesn’t even know what she’s spent the past fifteen years doing. Luke wouldn’t have known. He doesn’t know she’s thirty-two and broken, beyond a shadow and cut down by her own master. There’s so much he doesn’t know but the Force rings with the truth of it: he’s proud of her anyway.

“I’m going by Ben, now,” he mutters against her montral. “There’s already an Obi-Wan here, after all. Still, I remain a Kenobi.”

She can’t make the words come out of her mouth. She’s overwhelmed, so much so that speech is a mite bit beyond her.

Sokari Torrent, she presses along the frayed bond that’s knitting itself back to life with every breath they take. Leia was already calling me Auntie Soka, and Rex and I both took Torrent, for...

“For the men you lost,” he mutters. “Yes, that’s fitting.”

He smells like sapir tea and a spiced beard oil.

There’s a whirl of activity about her, greetings and ‘a Sith apprentice?’ and introductions. She distantly notes when Fett almost shoots Dooku before Rex shuts that down and advises the Master to leave the area before things spiral out of control. She feels Ben stand, and she stands with him, clings to his side like a child and trusts that whatever happens, whatever needs to happen, he’ll take care of it until she can stand on her own two feet without swaying.

Rex grabs her free hand, and she feels herself settle back into her skin, bit by bit.

She’s back at the Temple. The twins are safe. Her grandmaster is here. She has her other half.

They can save the galaxy this time.

She’s alive she’s home she’s okay.

She’s okay.

Everything’s going to be okay.

[cmyknoise]

(hhdfh this is very random don't mind me, I just feel like talking to people) but if you've seen the dream smp streams today, what are your thoughts on everything that's happened/is happening? :0

I have, a whole lot of thoughts. I watched Tommy’s entire stream, then Tubbo’s from after he was exiled (and I popped in long enough on Quackity’s to know that he and George are still planning). 

I personally have mixed feelings on the exile move. On like,,,an action standpoint I agree with Quackity, Fundy, and Tommy. I think that the exile only makes it more clear that Dream can do whatever he want to whoever he wants and get away with it- and by exiling Tommy it shows that even L’manburg, a country built on rebellion, still bows to his requests. I don’t think that Tubbo was wrong, bad, or even a villain in his position though, because I think he’s still hurting from the original destruction of L’manburg, and he did make a promise that he would take down the walls no matter the cost, and that he wouldn’t start unnecessary wars. I’ve never seen Tubbo with his hands so tied, the decision was a tough one, and he was right that they weren’t prepared. 

However on a story standpoint? I really didn’t want another war. We just had one, and this had no build up for war, nor were any of them prepared, so I don’t think it would’ve been very....successful nor would it add much to the story besides what would’ve already likely happened. Storywise it’s unnecessary conflict. I definitely think there were more moves that could’ve been taken that would’ve been a bit more interesting and new that hasn’t been done in the history yet before, though it’s in the past now and I’m actually really excited for the next events. 

Storywise for the exile, I think it’s great! It is extremely good with it’s parallel to Tommy and Wilbur’s first exile! I think it’s great to show how things have changed and how they’ve grown despite being put in the same situation. 

Also, just a moment to appreciate Awsamdude and Ranboo!! They fully support Tommy and I can see Ranboo relaying information from L’manburg and the Dream SMP to Tommy and Wilbur. His private message to Tommy was sweet and it is nice to know that despite being exiled, Tommy won’t be truly alone. Sam is just nice, and I think it shows that the Badlands are on Tommy’s side, or at the very least Sam is. I really want the Badlands to make a push, they’ve been building power for so long that soon I feel like they can make a show of it. 

I just made a post about my hopes for what could possibly happen in the future, at least for the Sleepy Bois Inc. part of the SMP. 

In general I really want to see Phil’s thoughts. Tommy is canonically his youngest son, and he’s all on his own. I hope Phil helps them out at least a tiny bit- because they really did just have to start over and I don’t think a bunch of streams spent mining would be good content wise askdjhaskdjh. 

I hope Technoblade becomes more than a secondary character and I really want, especially with Ghostbur there, him to get on at least okay terms with Tommy. 

I loved the quick moment between Fundy and Dream, and the implication that there really are three different Dreams? In the book, it was evident that the Dream Fundy is dating is Dre. We’ve seen him before, he’s the goofy jokey one and he’s not as much of a dick as say, Dream. Dream is a dick, chaotic, but not quite cruel. Nightmare is the Dreamon, which was never fully exorcised, and is extremely chaotic and has no control or chill. I like that lore and I like that it seems Fundy, very easily, brings out the Dre of Dream? He did in the Dreamon hunter bit, and whenever he’s around Dream and mentions their relationship Dream sort of instantly goes soft for him? I think that is interesting and useful information for later. 

I loved the Logsted bit, the prime log, and the campsite (and Tommy actually losing his mind at an apple). 

I loved Ghostbur’s comments on Dream like ‘he’s not very nice is he’ and stuff. I know its because he lost his memory but idk I find it charming and kind of funny. 

I have no idea why Tommy didn’t do what Wilbur did and like,,,, keep some of his items in his inventory and act like that was all of them. 

Oh! Also! Technoblade’s stream yesterday, he stated that he’ll be the writer of the next arc (after the whole exile one. i have no idea if that arc ends today, or if it ends after a few more events) and that has me excited because it means rather than having a lot of metaphors and references back to history and hamilton, there may be more referencing back greek stories, plus he’s a english major drop out so writing go brrr. 

I am sure you probably weren’t expecting me to write this much but i REALLY have a lot of thoughts and not a lot of people to share it with. 

[commentaryvorg]

Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 8 - The Singer’s Secret

This is a companion to my commentary on the original Japanese Digimon Savers! Reading my commentary on the original version of this episode (which you can find here) is recommended before reading this dub comparison. 

Original name ~ Dubbed name

Masaru Daimon ~ Marcus Damon

Yoshino Fujieda ~ Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda

Tohma H. Norstein ~ Thomas H. Norstein

Chika Daimon ~ Kristy Damon

Captain Rentarou Satsuma ~ Commander Richard Sampson

Hitoshi “Neon” Hanamura ~ Neon

[Since several characters share the same name between the original and the dub, quotes from the dub will always be in italics, while quotes from the original will not, in order to distinguish them.]

Since the dub constantly varies which character reads out the title card for each episode, I have to side-eye the fact that it’s Marcus and not Yoshi reading out the title card for Yoshi’s episode.

Marcus: “And now it’s eatin’ time!”

I am amused by the variation on Marcus’s “it’s fightin’ time” catchphrase. Gotta find something to replace the very-Japanese itadakimasu, and this sounds less awkward than a lot of things would in a very dorkily Marcus way.

Reporter:  “We won’t name names, but only because we haven’t discovered who she is… *yet*.”

The dub appears to be leaning into the seediness of this whole gossip thing even more than the original, which I guess is fair, since it was already pretty seedy to begin with.

Megumi:  “What’s the meaning of this?”

Miki:  “How did you, the meekest of us all among DATS members…”

Megumi:  “…Manage to snag Hanamura Neon?”

~~~~~

Megumi: “You’re dating Neon?!”

Miki: “That ring a bell, Miss Keep-Secrets-From-Her-Friends?”

Megumi:  “We read all about it in the newspaper!”

I actually somewhat prefer Megumi and Miki’s angle in the dub. Instead of being jealous and putting her down as if she doesn’t deserve to date a celebrity because she’s too “meek” or whatever, they only appear to be upset that she didn’t tell them this because they consider themselves someone she’d share this sort of thing with. (Whether they actually are that is another matter; Yoshi never seems especially close with these two. But at least that is a less tiresomely misogynistic thing for them to be being unreasonable about.)

Megumi:  “We’ve been getting phone calls one after another since morning!”

Miki:  “We’re also getting loads of hate mail from Neon’s fans!”

Megumi:  “They’re demanding to know who Fujieda Yoshino thinks she is!”

~~~~~

Megumi: “We’ve been getting phone calls all morning long asking for Yoshi to give interviews!”

Miki:  “Not to mention the mail from Neon’s fans. My papercuts have papercuts!”

Megumi: “Everyone wants to know who ‘Yoshi’ is!”

Neon’s other fans are also apparently being a little more reasonable in the dub. Rather than being jealous and hateful (“who she thinks she is” very much carries connotations of them acting like she’s too ordinary to deserve to date a celebrity), they instead seem to be suddenly treating Yoshi like a celebrity as well. Even though jealousy and hate is definitely the way a fanbase would be likely to act to something like this in real life, I do not mind at all that the dub is toning this part down.

Yoshi: “…and I wore a hat. That’s a foolproof disguise!”

Apparently Yoshi subscribes to superhero universe logic if she believed that that was ever going to work. She had a hat and sunglasses; totally couldn’t have possibly been recognised.

Thomas then pulls up the photo that was taken of Yoshi after she took her hat and sunglasses off, amusingly implying that that’s the only reason she got busted and she totally would have been fine otherwise.

Thomas: “Your name, phone number, even your favourite music… Hmm, showtunes.”

Based on his tone, Thomas appears to be judging Yoshi for her taste in music, which doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing he would do. The dub just threw in that quick gag without thinking about if it fit the character.

Also, if, according to the dub, the information published about her included her phone number, why isn’t Yoshi herself the one getting all the phone calls and not her workplace? The dub does not mention her workplace being one of the details that was made public about her, so why Miki and Megumi have been swamped with letters and phone calls about this is a mystery.

Agumon:  “What’s an undercover investigation?”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Under what cover?”

Oh hey, dub, remember how Agumon shouldn’t know a whole bunch of human terms because he only recently came into the human world? And hey, look, you can make jokes with that, too, rather than making jokes with things that it doesn’t make any sense for Agumon to be saying!

Tohma:  “So if we carelessly break in, we’ll be kicked out before we know it.”

~~~~~

Thomas:  “So if we rush in, the Digimon will know that we’re after him.”

Gaomon: “And he’ll run.”

The dub actually gives a much better excuse for why the building’s hi-tech security system means they can’t just rush in: not because the security guards will kick them out, since they should be able to pull DATS authority on that, but rather because it’ll alert Keramon than they’re coming. Good job, dub, fixing a plot hole!

Unfortunately, despite the dub’s attempts to remove Miki and Megumi’s jealousy of Yoshi and turn it into them just having wanted the gossip, which I appreciated, the dub can’t really change the part where they jealously complain that they weren’t the ones to get to (fake) date Neon. Their animations for that are too extreme to really be interpreted as anything else.

Yoshino:  “Neon is my childhood friend.”

~~~~~

Yoshi:  “I knew Neon when we were children.”

Yoshi doesn’t mention the fact that he was specifically her friend. Their conversation later in the episode is still going to clearly establish that they were indeed on friendly terms back then, but I feel it’s a bit of a shame that their friendship isn’t something Yoshi outright mentions here. Her friendship with him is obviously quite important to her and to how she approaches investigating him; it makes sense that she’d want to bring it up.

Yoshino:  “He’s completely different than before. He was shorter than me, and he was fat. When he debuted, I didn’t recognise him at all.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “He’s so different than he used to be. He was just a shy little boy back then. I would never have guessed that he’d become such a success story.”

I am very disappointed at the dub leaving out the part where he used to be fat, because that’s an important detail that makes it significantly easier to imagine that he was probably bullied back then. Yoshi doesn’t mention that she literally didn’t even recognise him as a singer, either. The dub’s take on this is focused more on his personality and less on his image.

Under normal circumstances, that shift in focus might be a good thing, but in this particular context, image is an even more relevant thing in the celebrity world than personality is. And image also tends to be more important in terms of how likely a kid is to be bullied. This is watering down the interesting parts of Neon’s character and it makes me sad.

Yoshino:  “Hitoshi!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Hi, Neon!”

Another very significant change: apparently, Neon just is his real name in the dub? Or, if it’s a stage name, Yoshi doesn’t care and is happy to call him by that rather than by whatever name she knew him by as a kid. Neon having an ordinary real name and Yoshino insisting on using it (and him not liking her doing so in public) was a neat aspect of the original that helped showcase the vast contrast between who he used to be and who he is today – again, kind of the whole point of Neon’s character – so I’m very sad that the dub loses this, too.

(The dub also hasn’t mentioned his surname and just calls him “Neon” at all times. Which really doesn’t actually matter at all, because the connotations of the surname Hanamura that I talked about in the original post would obviously be lost on a Western audience (unless they changed his surname to a Western one with similar connotations – now there’d be an actual reason to give a Japanese character a Western name, for once!). But I am disappointed about it for a very silly reason anyway, because Neon’s English voice actor happens to also voice one of those other Hanamuras that I mentioned in that post (who incidentally happens to be one of my favourite fictional characters, which is probably the only reason I care about this), and it would have been a hilarious coincidence for him to have voiced two Hanamuras. He still sort of did anyway, but only sort of.)

Neon:  “I told you not to call me by my real name.”

Yoshino:  “What does it matter?”

Neon:  “You haven’t changed at all.”

~~~~~

Neon: “Hey, wanna blow off work and come to the beach with me?”

Yoshi: “Sorry, I can’t. Too much to do.”

Neon:  “Oh well, I guess it’s your loss then.”

Because Neon doesn’t have an ordinary real name in the dub, we also lose the exchange that told us some interesting things about Yoshino and Neon’s characters and how they see each other and their relationship, replaced with completely meaningless fluff. (Inviting her to blow off work and come to the beach with him is a significantly more usually-romantically-coded thing than anything else they actually do in the episode.)

Masaru:  “Is this really a mission?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “You do know this guy’s a criminal.”

Miki & Megumi: “Alleged criminal!”

Marcus: “Gimme a break!”

Instead of being exasperated by relationship nonsense, Marcus is instead really sure already that Neon’s a criminal and writing him off as not worthy of respect as a result. Miki and Megumi are being totally reasonable to point out that it’s only allegedly for now.

Masaru:  “But Yoshino…”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Yoshi, he’s hiding a Digimon.”

Marcus is way more sure and making a much bigger point of this than Masaru.

(Masaru may have already basically decided as well that Neon’s probably the culprit, but even if he had, I don’t think he’d really have cared. He’s not here for the crime-solving and human-focused side of things – so long as he gets to fight that Digimon, that’s all that matters to him!)

Yoshi and Neon have basically the same conversation about carrots as in the original, but it doesn’t have quite the same meaning without the detail that Neon used to be fat, implying that Yoshino was probably encouraging him to eat them to try and help him lose weight.

Yoshino:  “I was exercising parental love because I wanted you to eat healthy and get bigger.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Hey, I was just making sure you grew up big and strong by eating your veggies!”

The one real difference here is the lack of her mentioning parental love, which is a shame because I liked it emphasising the idea of Yoshino the mom friend. Perhaps they removed that because they’re trying to make this relationship seem more actually romantic. I also liked the idea that it really wasn’t that romantic in the original, at least on Yoshino’s end.

Yoshino:  “I remember you were never able to do anything on your own…”

Neon:  “Thanks for the meal.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “This has been so much fun. It’s really a shame that you have to work tonight.”

Neon: “Wish I didn’t.”

Another really meaningful and interesting line about Neon’s kid self (and his subtly telling reaction to it) gets removed and replaced with more fluff. This isn’t even the dub accidentally losing meaningful bits because they’re missing the point; this is clearly them removing these interesting parts on purpose. Why. Neon’s character was one of the most compelling things about the original episode. All they’re doing is deliberately making this episode significantly less good.

Chika:  “Neon is so cool!”

Masaru:  “What part of him?”

~~~~~

Kristy:  “Oh man, that Neon is so cool!”

Marcus: “Yeah, right.”

Marcus sounds so weirdly bitter here, like he really has firmly decided that Neon sucks and doesn’t deserve anyone’s admiration because he’s A Criminal. Why the hell does he care so much? Masaru was just bewildered as to what the big deal about him was in a way that had nothing to do with the suspected Digimon-harbouring.

Chika:  “Obviously, the part where he tries so hard to protect his girlfriend!”

~~~~~

Kristy:  “Do you think I’ll ever date someone who’s as cool and sweet as Neon?”

Kristy also does not specify that she admires Neon for trying to keep his girlfriend out of the limelight, which I appreciated Chika doing.

Kristy: “Just have him make it out to ‘Superfan Kristy the Most Beautiful Girl in the Whole World’.”

Geez. Kristy: still noticeably more of a brat than Chika.

Masaru:  “Look, Chika, you wouldn’t like it if other people were prying about who you like or date, right? It’s the same with Yoshino. That’s to say nothing of the fact that you’re demanding his autograph just because he’s a celebrity…”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Look, you wouldn’t like it if people kept prying into the private details of your life – I mean, if you had any. Well, Yoshi’s the same. Besides, Neon is probably sick of signing autographs for annoying fans.”

Marcus is technically giving the same sort of advice here, but my god, he is being way more of a dick about it than is necessary. The dub is ruining Masaru’s adorable fatherly-advice moment and turning it into a Marcus Is A Jerk™ moment instead and I don’t like it one bit.

Kristy: “You think I’m annoying, Marcus…?”

And so in this version, Kristy is actually pretty within reason to get upset, because her brother was being a dick. (Though she was also being slightly more annoying and bratty about the autograph thing than Chika was in the first place.)

Promotional video: “Hey everybody! Have you heard the new song by pop sensation Neon? Download it today, and tell all your friends, too!”

The dub version of the “promotional video” actually has a voiceover and therefore is vaguely more believable as an actual promotion than just a weird silent two second loop. Fixing another minor plot hole, dub, well done.

The dub completely cuts out the security guard who confronts Masaru at the door, probably because they didn’t want to include the part where Masaru assaults the guy. This is despite the fact that in the original episode, Masaru implicitly gets in trouble for this later when the guy wakes up, and otherwise generally comes across as having acted very rashly and unreasonably for this whole situation. But nah, apparently we can’t have our kids’ show protagonist do a bad thing, not even when the story presents it like it was kind of a bad thing to do.

Marcus: “Open the door, I’m here to protect you!”

Masaru never actually mentioned that he’s here to protect Yoshino, even though the possibility that she was in trouble is most of the reason why he came. Marcus making an explicit point of this is him making things a lot more about himself than Masaru did, like him coming here is mostly him wanting to seem like the Big Hero, rather than him genuinely just being worried about his friend.

Yoshino:  “Masaru! What are you…?”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Marcus, what are you doing?! You’ll blow it; Neon’s here! Go away!”

Yoshi gets a longer line here – they’re probably filling in time lost from cutting the security guard – but in the process I can’t help but think that Neon should have heard the “you’ll blow it” part, since he shows up at the door just a second later. Which in fact would have been Yoshi blowing it and not Marcus.

Masaru:  “Don’t play dumb! This was all part of your scheme!”

Neon:  “Wh-What are you doing? Who are you?!”

Masaru:  “What are you plotting, using that Digimon?!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Don’t play dumb; I know what you’re up to!”

Neon: “What do you mean? Who are you?!”

Marcus: “Just confess and tell me what you have planned in that mind of yours!”

So, despite Marcus having been significantly more convinced than Masaru ever was that Neon is definitely hiding a Digimon, he’s… not bringing up the Digimon for some reason now that he’s actually confronting Neon, even though Masaru did. What the hell.

The dub cuts the moment of Yoshino slapping Masaru, albeit not very convincingly, since there’s still a shot of him briefly looking like he’s just been slapped, and then a visible mark on his face a shot later.

Yoshino:  “How dare you suddenly intrude into other people’s houses! How about you consider *not* being a nuisance to others for a change!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Who do you think you are, barging into somebody’s house just for a measly autograph?! I don’t care how big a fan you are, you better learn some manners, kid!”

I do enjoy Yoshi putting on even more of an act here, trying to make it look like Marcus is some crazed fan desperate for an autograph. Though I’m not sure that angle entirely matches with Marcus’s behaviour of grabbing Neon and demanding that he confesses what he’s up to. Then again, Neon is going to figure out people are onto him from this either way, so I guess it doesn’t matter how convincing Yoshi is or isn’t.

Masaru:  “Hey, wait! I said wait! What was that for?”

Yoshino:  “You’re ruining my undercover investigation.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “What was all that for, Yoshi?”

Yoshi:  “To stop *you* from blowing my cover and all of my hard work.”

I enjoy Yoshi being more pointedly annoyed about this with her emphasis that he’s ruining her hard work. She has a right to be.

Masaru:  “What the hell, I was just worried about her.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Well, I’m so sorry for trying to save you!”

Marcus! This is not about you! Masaru wasn’t trying to make this about himself; he was just worried about his friend – but Marcus is making this all about him Being The Hero and him being the one to save her.

It’s not that I don’t hypothetically enjoy characters who have issues along those lines, but that should not be the point with Marcus here. The dub isn’t going to go anywhere interesting with this because it wasn’t a thing in the original, so instead this just sticks out as another thing making Marcus more self-absorbed.

The security guard showing up here now is still there in the dub, even though they cut Masaru knocking him out earlier.

Sampson: “Keramon’s making it seem like Neon’s selling more songs than he is.”

[…]

Kudamon: “The more popular people think he is, the more albums they buy.”

They have an interesting point here not brought up in the original, that even if Keramon is only making Neon look more popular by messing with the figures, that’s going to result in actually making him more popular. In the original, it was unclear exactly what kind of manipulation Keramon had been doing (until the obvious stunt last night) and I sort of vaguely got the impression that it’d been actually making people download his songs even if they never wanted to. Then again, that might be obvious enough that people would have reported it, so perhaps things were always meant to be how the dub is explaining them to be here. Good job to the dub again for making that clearer. (…Or so I thought; hold this thought.)

Thomas: “Clearly, Neon’s making a fortune through fraud.”

I don’t especially like the dub adding this, though, because Neon should not be doing this for the money. He’s doing this for the popularity. Admittedly Thomas is only speculating and wouldn’t know better, but him stating it like this makes it seem like this is the correct conclusion to make about Neon’s motives.

Neon:  “To think that you were one of them…”

Yoshino:  “It’s prohibited to give a Digimon refuge!”

~~~~~

Neon:  “I just can’t believe you were a part of this. I trusted you!”

Yoshi: “Yeah, that’s why you told me all about your illegal Digimon!”

I enjoy Yoshi actually somewhat responding to the accusation of betrayal by pointing out that he was hiding something from her as well. Though I also do think Yoshino’s response of completely avoiding the topic says something interesting in and of itself.

Neon:  “Don’t order me around!”

~~~~~

Neon: “Don’t you judge me!”

While the “don’t order me around” perhaps touched on Neon’s past of not being able to do much on his own, “don’t judge me” would also potentially touch on his past of being bullied. However, I can’t help but think that’s more by luck than judgement on the dub’s part, since they went and deliberately removed so many of the other hints of Neon’s past even being like that in the first place.

Neon:  “He distributes my songs around the world and manipulates music charts…”

Wait, so Keramon actually does forcibly distribute the songs even to people who don’t want them, and not just fake the figures so that people will be more likely to check out what the fuss is about?

Yeah, actually, this line is basically exactly what Neon said here originally, so I guess that is what was meant to have been going on after all. Sampson and Kudamon must have missed that part when they were discussing things earlier.

Yoshino:  “Hitoshi, stop this!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “You have to stop this. Fraud is a criminal offence!”

Though the lack of her being able to call him Hitoshi is a bad thing again, I do appreciate Yoshi pointing out that fraud is a crime. Even aside from DATS’s rules that nobody’s allowed to have a Digimon unless they’re a DATS member, Neon has still been breaking the regular law anyway, and the original didn’t really emphasise that very much.

They cut out the moment of Keramon grabbing Yoshi by the neck, but they do still show her being held like that in a shot a second later.

Neon:  “No way! Keramon is my partner!”

~~~~~

Neon: “Keramon is my partner just like your Digimon! I wouldn’t betray him any more than you’d betray them!”

Dub-Neon is very deliberately making the parallel to DATS’s Digimon rather than only accidentally invoking it by happening to use the same word – but it really isn’t a parallel he should be making deliberately. Keramon is not a person. It hasn’t spoken or expressed its own desires or sense of self at all; it’s just giggled creepily and done as he’s ordered it to. There is no actual meaningful bond of friendship here for Neon to care about not wanting to betray.

I think the dub added this in because the dubbers actually think that it’s basically the same deal going on with Neon and Keramon as with DATS and their partners. But it really, really isn’t.

Neon:  “Thanks to him, my songs are played throughout the world! He’s making me famous!”

~~~~~

Neon:  “He made me rich and famous!”

Famous, yes, but the money is not the point, dub. Neon in the original never mentioned money as being part of why he’s doing this.

Also, the past tense implies that it’s only because of Keramon that Neon became famous at all. Which I really doubt is supposed to be the case, because there’s no sense given at any point that Neon just burst into the public eye out of nowhere within the past month since he’s had Keramon. He must have been already doing reasonably well on his own merit before he started using fraud.

Masaru:  “What’s this crap about him making you famous?! It’s not through your own efforts! If you wanted to change yourself through your music, then do it using your own merit!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Your whole career is a giant lie! You haven’t actually achieved anything! That Digimon of yours did everything for you; you’re nothing but a phony!”

…But it seems the dub really wants us to think that it’s only because of Keramon that Neon got anywhere at all and he was never genuinely good enough to deserve any amount of success whatsoever. I think the dubbers might have missed the point of this as well and believed that that was actually what was going on in the original episode.

And of course, because of this, we lose the interesting nuanced moment of Masaru being really good and pointing out that Neon should have kept working at this using his own merit. Instead we just get Marcus boringly shooting him down completely.

Yoshino:  “Stop!”

Lalamon:  “Stop!”

~~~~~

Yoshi:  “No pictures!”

Lalamon: “Give me that camera!”

Lalamon demanding the camera further emphasises the point of Yoshi choosing to do this instead of fight, and it gives more of a vague impression that maybe she really does take the camera and wipe the pictures offscreen, even though we won’t be seeing it. I approve.

Neon:  “Everyone needs to quit making fun of me!”

~~~~~

Neon:  “My career’s ruined now, and you’re gonna pay!”

Unsurprisingly, after everything the dub has already removed about Neon’s interesting aspects, they also remove probably the most interesting line – the one that very strongly hints he used to be bullied and that this has all been about him breaking away from that in a way that gradually became more and more desperate and obsessive to the point of illegality.

Instead, dub-Neon is somebody who wanted to be rich and famous just because, apparently had genuinely no actual talent or merit to base that on whatsoever, and just faked his entire success story (which the dub expects us to think he could have believably done within a month) using Digimon-driven fraud. That’s just… boring.

It also makes it significantly less interesting and meaningful why Keramon evolves in response to these words, though I suppose a burst of vengeful anger at them for ruining his fraudulent career is still reasonable enough to do it.

Masaru:  “Change places! Let’s go, Agumon!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “We’ll take ‘im! It’s fightin’ time!”

I am mildly sad at the loss of the sense that Masaru sees this as him tagging in for Tohma and being equal teammates with him, rather than trying to grab all the glory himself.

Neon:  “Even the memory of when we met again?”

~~~~~

Neon: “Even the stuff about you and me?”

In the dub, Neon makes this just about losing what their relationship is now and nothing else. I liked the sense that, after all the fraud had been uncovered and he’d basically given up, original-Neon was mostly sad to lose the memory of seeing her again, his childhood friend who was there for him during that tough time and could be proud of how far he’d come.

Overall differences

This episode has quite a few significant differences, with a lot of them being bad, but at least there’s a small handful of good ones too, for once.

Let’s start with the good ones. This episode’s dub actually has a couple of small fixes to some minor logic issues the original had. They explained that they can’t break into Neon’s building because the high security meant that Neon/Keramon would see them coming and run, which made a lot more sense. Then they gave the promo video a voiceover, making it a lot more believable as a promo video than some weird silent two-second loop.

Yoshi also has a few minor good bits: leaning more into the story that Marcus is a crazed fan when he shows up at the door, pointing out that fraud is a crime. I also appreciate that they attempted to tone down Miki and Megumi’s harshness towards her at least a little.

But onto the bad stuff: the really huge glaring problem with the dub of this episode is Neon. Neon’s character was the big saving grace of this otherwise not especially interesting episode to me in the original, and none of what makes him that way is present in the dub. All of the hints of him being weak and helpless and probably-bullied as a kid are watered down into him simply having been kind of shy, there’s no hints of him remaking his image (no mention that Neon is a stage name; for all we know in the dub, that’s somehow his real name), and way too much emphasis put on him doing this for money, not just fame. If Marcus is to be believed, he had absolutely zero talent and got where he was entirely through Keramon’s meddling, which is extremely unrealistic to have happened in a single month without anyone questioning it and is also way, way less interesting. Dub-Neon is just some boring flat villain greedy for fame and fortune, rather than an interestingly messed-up character.

And it’s really strange to me that this character assassination is so complete and consistent that it must have been deliberate? The dub writers consciously decided to remove everything that made this episode’s focus character interesting. Why in the world would they choose to do that.

Then there’s this episode’s treatment of Marcus, which is standard fare at this point but still frustrating enough that I am always going to talk about it when it happens in any significant amount.

He’s more insistent that Neon’s harbouring a Digimon from the start despite the lack of proof, but then, bizarrely, doesn’t bring up Digimon when he breaks in even though Masaru did. He makes the breaking-in part a lot more About Himself by making a point that he’s here to save Yoshi, which is a very different thing than Masaru coming there in case Yoshino needed saving but not actually caring whether she knows it or not. Marcus is also more of an unnecessary dick to his sister in the bit where she’s asking him for Neon’s autograph. And the interesting nuance that Masaru had in his speech to Neon, about putting in effort and changing yourself through your own merits, is lost in favour of this new boring narrative where Neon apparently had zero talent and deserved none of his fame in the first place.

Oh, and the bit where Masaru attacked the security guard was cut, because I guess your kids’ show protagonist isn’t allowed to attack a responsible adult, even when the narrative presents this as a bad thing that he shouldn’t have done and implicitly gets in trouble for.

[lunawings]

Joji’s Birthday PriZoom (9/15/21)

Translation of the bonus content is in a seperate post again.

So yeah I never actually fell asleep after the showing haha. Was just lying in bed playing Love Live when I thought well... I got a good 4-5 hours of sleep in before the showing (better than literally nothing like last time)... If I’m gonna be awake I might as well start this while my emotions are raw so I rolled out of bed and wrote most of the below rambly mess.

And then I went to work. Which was kind of surreal. Because for a few hours my brain really was back in Japan again. There was something just a little magic about this showing I think. A lot of things came together (starting with how talkative people actually were during Pride the Hero! Ahh!) etc. 

B... ut.....

I guess I’ll get this out of the way first. I was super heartbroken at the low turnout for this one. Only 65-85 people in the cheering room... But it was a weekday, sooo... I’m just going to hope that a lot of people bought the archive tickets to check it out later.... Yes... I have decided that is the case.............

The people who did, however, missed out on the cheering room and thus missed out the latest incident to enter my personal list of all-time favorite moments in this fandom. After Joji’s episode in SSS Part 2 we had some “technical difficulties”... (I put that in quotes because I somewhat doubt it was technical difficulties. I mean, the stream cut out cleanly RIGHT at the end of Joji’s episode. So I wonder if maybe someone just forgot about Minato’s episode and shut it off early hahaha...) and while we were waiting for them to restart the movie there was a long period of silence and a black screen. But us in the cheering room could all still hear each other. .....And someone started singing Brilliant Oath.

It was PERFECT. These are the moments I live for! This is why I’ve been to like over 100 cheering shows and I still KEEP GOING! I love this fandom! It may not have made the archive since the cheering wasn’t recorded for that but it will live on in our hearts.

Anyway...

I guess one bonus to having less people this time was that I actually managed to keep on the soundboard hell... the ENTIRE... TIME!! Although at a low volume. And honestly... I more or less completely stopped hearing it at one point I think haha. So... that kinda defeats the purpose I suppose. Actually no, even if it was just static background noise it was still nice to have on in SSS, which would have been pretty quiet without it. And it was worth it just for the one person who was like SHISHOOOO during one scene in Pride the Hero when Jin was going crazy hahaha (AH! When was it? I don’t remember now...). I also tuned in for a bit in episode 6 and loved when Minato’s sister says her age incorrectly everyone was like EIIIGHT (...that’s not correct either hahah....)

Since I knew this was going to be archived I tried bring my cheering A game to Pride the Hero with moderate success. Kinda mad at myself for missing stupid small things probably no one would care/look for I mean my camera is shit anyway (BUT I--). I’m just lucky it wasn’t way worse because Pride the Hero I can mostly run on autopilot. Out of all King of Prism media, it’s probably the one I’ve cheered the most (I mean it was all we had in theaters for literally like two years), and it was fresh in my mind from Minato’s showing too. So even with how exhausted I was, I made it through! (Then proceeded to take micro power naps on the floor during episodes 4 and 6.......) I also kinda wish I’d changed my background earlier. The show started before I got around to changing it and I was like I’ll change it during a break (........Pride the Hero has no breaks........) haha but yeah. I had Okayama station up from the Prism King Cup onward and the Momotaro mailbox up during SSS. The real background MVP though is the person who appeared to have up the bench in rural Okayama where Joji made his promise to Miyo!? I mean it looked kinda different because it wasn’t on a bridge but that HAD to be it, right!? (!!!??)

Also cosplay at this showing was amazing! We had like 3-4 Miyos, 2 Aces, KOKORO!? (and Taiga. Because who are we kidding there’s always a Taiga)

Also shoutout to the girl who cosplayed as... the PIECE OF CLOTH Joji sewed for Miyo!? (I think she was at both showings but I didn’t fully realize what she was supposed to be until the Playback Allstars at the very end hahah...) 

And shoutout to the Ace cosplayer “singing” during all of Joji’s performances haha!!

And the person spinning in an office chair whenever any character was twirling around...

But BIGGEST shoutout to our own @takadanobaba who was somehow THE ONLY Joji cosplayer in the cheering room!? (The only overall for the first show, but another joined in the text-only room for the second show.)

I was SO HAPPY when Tatsuyuki Kobayashi noticed you!! RIGHT!?!? He was like “Oh and there’s someone dressed as Joji!” and you were the only one!!! He didn’t even say anything about the people dressed as Ace!!?! Haha! I wasn’t trying to do anything to get his attention (I wouldn’t know what to do anyway, and besides he’s not the kind of person who works the crowd like Masashi Igarashi does so I wasn’t expecting much) so having him notice you was a huge surprise and honestly just about as good!! AHHH!!! 

But the concept of this showing was a little awkward ‘cause it’s like, as a fan, do you appeal for Joji or Ace? Tatsuyuki Kobayashi was maybe a little conflicted about how to act too. First he said he was coming as himself, but then he backpedaled and slipped into Ace being tsun when pulling the birthday crackers for Joji heheh. 

But yeah, we’ve got to give him a break, he’s just so happy to have his own character finally. I’m happy about how happy he is to be Ace! But like honestly... Not like I’m necessarily complaining but... This showing ended up being almost exactly the same as the Ace one pfffthahah!!! I mean he mostly just talked about being Ace and went over a lot of the same things. Like being the surprise guest at the MRS concert, etc. I think he may have said this before too, but when he originally recorded Love Mix, Ace didn’t exist yet so he didn’t really know who he was supposed to be singing as and just tried to sound like a sparkly idol. And I’ve always felt that! Like I think his voice changed or evolved between Love Mix and Joker Kiss into being less generic idol/Joji and a lot more Ace. 

OH!! I don’t think he said this at the other one (but for some reason it sounds vaguely familiar?). He was talking about how he knew of King of Prism and actually went to shows before he was cast in Pride the Hero. And after he was going to a Pride the Hero show and Sugita (Joji’s actual voice actor) was on the escalator behind him. HAHAH. 

I LOVE stories like this because... okay like, when you go to a theatrical cheering show there is always this introduction video where they talk about cheering manners. And they warn you not to say anything mean because “you never know, a star might be sitting next to you.” And to know THAT’S ACTUALLY TRUE SOMETIMES.... JFLSJDLJG. I mean, I’ve only seen King of Prism in Tokyo a handful of times so it’s probably never happened to me. Actually I guess... technically... this show and the last one DO count because Masashi Igarashi and Tatsuyuki Kobayashi were watching with us before and/or after their segments and probably listening in!!! (Still, I guess the point is it’s nice to know the voice actors actually do go in their private time, too.)

Oh, one more shoutout I forgot about to the person I think had a big red car with Joji and... a bunch of Jin mochikoros in the back!!? They rolled it by the screen so fast why hahah.  

And it was great to see Joji’s 2019 birthday video again and confirm it wasn’t a fever dream. Hopefully I can grab that from @takadanobaba when the archive goes up in a couple days (it will be a quick and easy translation!).

Okay that’s it.....

DO THE PRIZOOMS

Or at least buy the archive tickets and watch later

(but they are expensive and it’s not the same)

[quicksilversquared]

A Christmas Liar

After Ms. Bustier mentioned the annual school charity fundraiser in class, Lila seems determined to raise funds for her own "charity", aka herself. There's no way that Marinette is going to let that fly, but how successful will she be in taking Lila down in time for the holidays?

links in the reblog

It started with a normal morning in Ms. Bustier's homeroom class.

"As you all know, it's fast approaching the holiday season, and our collège always does a fundraiser for a charity before Christmas," Ms. Bustier told the class, smiling widely. The first few cut-out paper snowflakes had appeared in the classroom window that morning, and they all knew that the collection would only grow as December went on. "So remember to remind your parents to check their emails for details soon! Our student representatives have been hard at work brainstorming what to do this year."

Marinette smiled, even as she kept drawing in her sketchbook. Jagged Stone had commissioned an outfit for his Christmas present to Penny from her, and wanted the design ready to be sent to his seamstress as soon as possible so that he could have it ready in plenty of time. He had told her not to rush, of course- "you have so much going on, and I don't want to put you behind in your studies!"- but Marinette wanted to try to get things done early.

After all, akumas could appear and eat up her free time without any notice, and so she was going to take advantage of any extra time when she could.

"Oh, a charity fundraiser?" Lila asked from the back of the room, and Marinette mentally sighed before setting her pencil down. Clearly she wasn't going to get anything done now, if she had to deal with Lila's nonsense, and her nonsense-o-meter was going wild. "That's so wonderful! Do you think that- oh, no, I suppose it would come off a little self-appreciating, never mind..."

"No, go ahead!" Ms. Bustier reassured her quickly. "What is it that you wanted to ask, Lila?"

"Well, I was wondering if maybe I could put forth one of my charities to be considered for the fundraiser's proceeds," Lila told the class, and even without turning around, Marinette could picture the way that Lila would press a hand to her chest delicately, doing her best to look bashful. Adrien's eye roll from in front of her told Marinette that her mental picture probably wasn't very far off. "But I suppose that could come off as, well..."

Ms. Bustier perked up. "Oh, how could I have forgotten that we had someone in our class who had done so much charity work before? I don't think it would come off as self-serving at all! In fact, it could add an extra connection and an element of interest to the whole thing if the school picked one of your charities. Marinette, could-"

"Student council has already settled on a charity for this year's fundraiser," Marinette said at once, not even bothering to look up. She could see exactly where this was heading, and she was going to put a stop to it. Now.

In front of her, she could see Adrien's hastily-hidden grin out of the corner of her eye.

"But this is special, Marinette," Ms. Bustier implored. "Surely they'll understand and want to support a fellow student's charity efforts! This is a pretty unique opportunity!"

"We've had multiple meetings about it, thinned our selections down, did all of the background checks and verification on our final pick, filled out all of the paperwork to submit to Mr. Damocles, and let the charity know so that we could get more information to post around," Marinette informed her, because seriously? Ms. Bustier was going to fall for it, just like that? Also, she was super glad that she had pushed for the council to make the decision early this year, because at this time the previous year, they had been working on finalizing everything still, which would have made a last-minute change like this possible. It wouldn't have been fun, or easy, but it could have been possible. "We can't change it now."

Lila let out a small sigh from the back, and Marinette turned around just in time to see her shoulders slumping. "Oh, that's really a shame, then. For a minute there, I was picturing how much good I- we could do for the children in Africa with a bit of extra funding, but I suppose if they've already picked a charity..."

Ms. Bustier glanced from Marinette to Lila. "Marinette, do you think that we could do two charities instead of one, perhaps? It would just be so nice to be able to support Lila's charity!"

Marinette was honestly going to scream.

"I'm afraid that that would make things too complicated," she said instead, politely as she could and with as little teeth-gritting as possible. "We had a couple fundraiser activities in mind- which we agreed was important, in case an akuma attack keeps people away from an in-person event- plus a couple volunteering opportunities that we wanted to offer. Plus, there would be all of the paperwork and the background checks that would have to be done to add in another charity, and that's not exactly a short process. It's a lot of work."

There was also the fact that Lila didn't have any charities, and any money they earned would- if she managed to sneak her way through their careful screening process- no doubt go straight into her own pockets.

"Oh, I could fill out paperwork so that you guys don't have to!" Lila offered eagerly. "I don't mind, it's for the kids-"

"And the email letting parents know about our fundraiser and our selected charity is already scheduled to go out today," Marinette continued, raising her voice just ever-so-slightly to drown Lila out and making a mental note to talk to Aurore to actually get that email sent over lunch. It had originally been planned for tomorrow, actually, but Marinette wasn't going to give Lila any ins. "So the deadline for any changes has passed." She pasted on her best fake smile, trying not to let any signs of a smirk through as she looked back at Lila. "It's just not possible for this year, I'm afraid. Maybe you can bring it up for consideration earlier next year."

"I suppose that's fair," Ms. Bustier agreed. She smiled over at Lila. "It's my own fault for not bringing it up earlier, it just slipped my mind. Hopefully your charities will still get plenty of support! But right now, we're going to move on to today's lesson. If everyone could please get out your notebooks, we're going to start with a quick video..."

Marinette smiled to herself as she put her sketchbook away and opened up her notebook to a fresh page. This probably wasn't the last that she would hear about Lila's so-called "charities", but at least Ms. Bustier had dropped the subject and she wouldn't be getting pressure from that angle.

Now she just had to be ready for Lila's other attempts to get her hands on charity money.

  "I am so glad that you already had stuff all finalized," Adrien said in Marinette's ear as they headed for their next class. Lila was ahead of them, surrounded by several of their classmates. "I got worried for a minute there when Ms. Bustier hopped on the Lila's charity thing."

"I'm just glad that it's a school-wide thing, not just a class-wide fundraiser," Marinette admitted, glancing around to make sure that no one was going to overhear them. She had managed to get out of being blamed for deliberately denying Lila's "charity" a chance to get more money because she wasn't the only person in charge of the fundraiser, and she didn't want anyone in their class mishearing and blowing things out of proportion. Again. "I mean, it's obvious that Lila jumped on that because I'm class representative and she wanted to put me in a bad spot, but she couldn't when I'm just one of the people involved in that process."

Adrien nodded. "Yeah. I was so sure that she was going to drop it after you mentioned the background check and verification thing, though, and then she didn't. Which is...weird, honestly."

"Not really. If we tried going forward and I was the one doing the check, she would probably just say that I was making stuff up about her charity out of jealousy or spite and that was why it failed or something." Marinette had thought the same, honestly, but it became apparent pretty quickly what Lila was up to. Lila wasn't nearly as sly as she thought she was. "I'm surprised that she didn't jump on that and complain that I was just making the background check thing up because I was doubting her. Ignoring, of course, that we want to have statistics in our flyers and posters and emails about how the money is used, and how much work they get done, and their rating by a charity watchdog. That's standard."

"Which is why she wanted to do her own paperwork," Adrien added. He made a face. "I bet that she's still going to try to piggyback off of the fundraiser somehow, or at least rope people into donating some of their own money. I already heard Rose bringing it up, and Alya mentioned something to Nino about posting something on the Ladyblog."

Marinette winced. That wasn't good. She would have to forward the link to their charity watchdog site to Alya later on, maybe under the guise of providing a resource to get all sorts of charity statistics at once to put in her posting. That didn't guarantee that Alya would look at it, of course, but it was worth a try.

(Also, she could use her throwaway account to point out the charity's questionable status, and then- well, hope that other people would see her post and upvote it.)

"She's really going too far now," Adrien said after a moment, pulling Marinette out of her brainstorming of how she could keep Lila from pocketing a bunch of charity money. "I mean, she has been for a while, especially when she tried to get you expelled, but this is just the cherry on top of a heap of awful. I just don't know... I mean, she's sunk her claws in really deep now, I don't know how to fix it. I guess I should have recognized it earlier, but..."

"Well, there's no point in worrying about what we should have done earlier now," Marinette said as they went through the door for their next class, though she couldn't help but feel a bit validated, since she had wanted to stop Lila's lies ages ago. "We can brainstorm later, if you can get away for lunch. I was going to talk to Aurore then anyway."

Adrien looked puzzled for a moment, then caught on with a grin. "Aha, right, since she's on student council too. Is she the one in charge of submitting paperwork?"

"No, that was me. She's in charge of sending out the emails to families." Marinette grinned up at him. "And I bet that we can do a bit of damage control with that."

-0-0-0-0-

Aurore was all too willing to bring her lunch over to the Dupain-Cheng bakery instead of eating in the school cafeteria. After all, she told them as they headed upstairs, her lunch was leftovers and best served warm, and the cafeteria microwave was gross.

Marinette could believe that. Aurore had already floated the idea of setting up either a roll of paper towels near the microwave so that people could cover their dishes to keep the contents from exploding all over, or going the more environmentally-friendly route of having microwave plate covers instead, which could then be washed daily in the industrial dish washers that the cafeteria kitchen had. Clearly it was a Big Deal for her.

"You said you wanted to talk about the email right?" Aurore asked finally, finishing her grumbling about someone who had apparently microwaved fish and ugh, the smell was awful. "I thought it was meant to be going out tomorrow? I have a draft that's almost complete, I was just going to review it tonight to make sure that it was perfect, but do you need something changed?"

"We had a situation come up in our class this morning," Marinette told her, leading the way into their kitchen. Her mom had left out food for her and Adrien, it just had to be warmed up and assembled. "I don't know how much you've heard about the new girl in our class..."

Aurore frowned. "Lila? The one with the questionable stories?"

Adrien laughed. "Okay, so we aren't the only ones with working brains in the school, that's good to know. Yeah, her."

It didn't take long to get Aurore caught up, and predictably, she was furious at the idea of Lila trying to hijack their fundraiser funds.

"This is going to go one of two ways, I know it," she told them, pulling out her laptop and getting it set up next to her on the table. "Either this girl is going to make up a charity- name, mission, and all- or she's going to find a charity that already exists, and then she'll claim credit for it. The first one is easy enough to disprove, because no one will be able to find anything about the charity. We could just put a reminder in the email about checking charities out before donating to them, and then enter that link we've been using. But the second one...well, she could use their rating and reputation to collect money, and then- if I'm reading her character right- keep it all for herself."

They all thought about that.

"Well, if Alya posts anything on the Ladyblog, in theory any donations would have to be electronically, though a website," Marinette pointed out after a minute. "As for in-person donations, I would say that people should use checks instead of cash, but I don't know how many people use checks anymore, and besides, that's not going to stop her from cashing them if she wants."

Adrien made a choked, horrified noise in the back of his throat. "It- it won't? How do you even know that?"

"But it might deter her, since that's a traceable crime," Aurore pointed out, her eyes gleaming. She snapped her fingers. "And as for the Ladyblog- if she's capable of creating a website that looks decent, she might give Alya a link for that. So that's still a problem-"

"-unless we notice that and bring it to the attention of the police!" Adrien exclaimed, sitting up straight. He winced. "I'd hate to get Alya in trouble, but otherwise people will be thinking that they're doing something good and helping people in need when actually, they're just giving Lila spending money. And if she told them that Lila gave her the link, then she'd get off pretty fast."

Marinette nodded. Alya would probably be a thundercloud that they had gone to the police first instead of her, but she couldn't say that they hadn't warned her. She just never listened when it came to Lila.

"So we can put in a line reminding people to check charities before they donate and to make sure that any links they follow for charities go to the actual website," Aurore finished. Her fingers tapped away at her keyboard. "My older brother is a computer whiz, so I can text him and ask about things people should look for to make sure that a site is the real deal. Then I can get that typed up and sent during study hall, so it'll go out today."

Marinette could only grin. Maybe Aurore could be hotheaded at times, but there was no denying that she could really pull through. "That would be great."

  Unsurprisingly, Lila sold a sob story to Alya about her charity's website being down at the moment, so she couldn't provide a link right away.

"We're working on it, of course, because this is the best time of the year to get donations and we're going to fall so far behind with every day we miss, but the entire system is down and our tech guy is having trouble," Lila told Alya, looking positively wilted. "It's so upsetting! The longer it's down, the fewer people find out about our work, and the less budget we have to work with next year."

"That's terrible!" Alya exclaimed, frowning, and Marinette exchanged an exasperated look with Adrien. "I just wish there was a way to help..."

"Maybe you could post about our school charity instead, for the time being," Marinette suggested dryly. "Since Lila's charity is on the table for next year anyway."

"But we need budget for this year!" Lila repeated, and- yep, she was gritting her teeth. The glare that she flashed Marinette left no question that she had been trying to set up some sort of fake website and the email the night before had thrown her off. Either she was trying to make a more convincing website or- more likely- she was just hoping to wait until the reminder to be careful had faded from people's minds. Or she had had to abandon the online idea entirely in favor of throwing a pity party for herself in hopes of getting cash donations with the help of their classmates, if that hadn't already been the plan all along. "If we wait for a maybe next year, we could go into debt and collapse!"

Alya was looking worried now. "Marinette, are you sure that the student council can't switch charit-"

"It's all set up. We can't change anything, Alya, we established that yesterday." Marinette spared a glance at Lila, who was clearly working to keep a poker face. "Maybe Max can help you with your website issues, he's quite good at stuff like that. We wouldn't want you missing out on donations, after all."

"Oh, I couldn't," Lila simpered, glancing towards Max as well. "We, uh- well, my tech guy is back in Italy, so they wouldn't be able to work together, and he's quite protective of the system. Plus we were in the middle of upgrades when everything crashed, so that makes everything more complicated."

"We'll figure something out, Lila," Alya promised, patting the other girl's arm. Marinette took that as her cue to leave, but she wasn't going to go far. She needed to be able to overhear, after all. "We don't want those kids in Africa to suffer, after all! We can brainstorm before class."

Adrien caught Marinette's eye as she came back to her seat. "It sounds like she's just going to go another way, but isn't about to give up."

"No, she's got the idea of getting money into her head, and she's not about to give it up." Marinette kept her voice low, so that no one would overhear. "Which means that we need to come at the problem at a different angle. Any suggestions?"

Adrien looked unexpectedly delighted at being consulted, but then he paused, clearly not coming up with any ideas. "Uh."

"My first instinct would be to try to warn Alya and Rose and whoever else is going to get sucked in, but we all know how well that would go over," Marinette said, just to fill in the space. "They would clamp down and refuse to listen."

Adrien nodded. "Yeah. But I like what you did yesterday, where you made it sound like you would have gone along if you could and suggested trying next year. Then everyone thought that you weren't fighting against her-"

"-and was actually willing to listen!" Marinette finished, smiling. It was an approach that Tikki had suggested, and she was glad that it had worked. Well, sort of. It had worked in the moment, but just- apparently- pushed the problem off for later. "Yeah, that was nice."

"Maybe we could do something similar now," Adrien suggested. "And offer to be helpful by providing that link still. Like, it doesn't need the website, right? Just the charity name."

Marinette grinned. "Right. And there's no way that she can get around not telling anyone her charity's name. And if she does...well, either it's made up, or she's going to pick a real charity and we can find the real website."

"And congratulate Lila on her site getting back up so quickly," Adrien added with a small laugh. "It's a pain to deal with her, but I'm actually curious about what she's planning on doing going forward. Like, how long can she play this game? She's going to run out of escapes soon enough."

"Yeah, I don't know..." Marinette trailed off as Alya slid into her seat, and she and Adrien exchanged one last look before he turned back to the front, greeting Nino as his best friend entered the classroom.

"Man, I can't believe what bad luck Lila has, to have her charity's website crash at a time like this," Alya said glumly, sliding into her seat. "Lila is stressed about it, of course, but she has so many other obligations for her other charity work that she can't go out and do a collection, not that it would be easy with her throat still recovering from her laryngitis surgery. She can't be out in the cold for more than ten minutes without it causing a ton of pain, which can't be fun at all."

...Naturally.

"I want to help, but if we don't have a working link to put on the Ladyblog, I just don't know..." Alya trailed off. "I mean, we could do a door-to-door, I guess, but that only ever gets fairly minimal donations. And there's so many people who set up near the Eiffel Tower, we wouldn't have a chance. But- oh!" Alya perked up as another thought hit her. "We could put posters up at school, so more people know about it and maybe help us!"

Yeah, how about no.

"That's actually against school rules," Marinette said idly, flipping through her notebook as she waited for Ms. Bustier to call for a start to class. "All posters posted in the building have to be approved by Student Council normally, so that the walls don't get too cluttered, but there's an amendment to that that say that if the school is doing a charity fundraiser, posters promoting other charities can't go up during that time. I think it's to keep the effort from getting too splintered and distracted."

Alya slumped. "Oh."

That was not actually a lie, though clearly Adrien thought it was, if the slight frown on his face was anything to go by. Marinette had picked through the guidelines to make sure that she knew every rule that she could use to turn Lila's attempts aside, and apparently the Student Council had come up with and voted to implement that particular rule at some point in the past.

"Maybe you could do a surprise collection," Marinette suggested. "As a Christmas gift to Lila." She was improvising, admittedly, but this would be a good way to keep Alya and Rose and whoever else was getting sucked in from asking Lila too much and giving her chances to control the narrative. "If you ask her what the name of her charity is, and then you can use the website that we were using on Student Council to look at charities- it has all sorts of stats that you could use, information about charities and their work. That way, you don't need to bother Lila for all that when she's so busy."

"Oh, good idea!" Alya exclaimed. She grabbed Marinette's arm. "You know, none of the rest of us has ever organized any sort of charity fundraiser before- if we put you in charge of that-"

"I'm already busy, Alya," Marinette pointed out. She wasn't about to go make a fool of herself collecting money for a charity that didn't exist, not when she had a million other things to do. "The fundraiser for the school is already going to take up all of my time. I can send you the link that we used, but that's it."

"Oh, but-"

"She already said no, Alya," Adrien cut in, so Marinette didn't have to. "Marinette was telling me about that entire process yesterday, and it sounds like a lot of work and planning to pull something off at the level the school is planning. Asking her to plan another thing on top of that for you, instead of doing it yourself- that's not fair to her."

"I just thought that it might be a good way to repair the bad blood between the two of them!" Alya objected, frowning. "Since Marinette wasn't very welcoming when Lila first arrived."

Marinette narrowly withheld a snort. Gee, I wonder why?

"But if you're busy, I guess you can wait to try to mend that bridge later," Alya added. She sighed. "We probably won't be able to raise as much money, though, since we don't have your experience."

"Mmm," Marinette managed noncommittally, ignoring the clear attempt at a guilt-trip in favor of checking her email on her phone. Alya really had been spending too much time with Lila if she was starting to act just the same. Hopefully she would cut that out after Lila's lies had been exposed and everyone realized what a manipulator she was.

Marinette's phone lit up with a text, and she didn't hesitate to open it at once.

Adrien: Remember, if you commit homicide, you won't be around to gloat when people discover the lies.

Marinette snorted in amusement.

Marinette: I'm going to gloat for a solid MONTH after she gets found out. I wasn't very welcoming? Try SHE was a bully from the start and I wasn't about to tolerate that.

In front of her, Adrien's head gave a tiny nod as he put his phone away, just in time to start class. Marinette locked her phone and put it away, resigning herself to what was probably going to be a week of poorly-concealed efforts to get her into the extra fundraising before Alya either dropped it or realized that something was up with Lila's "charity".

At least now she had Adrien on her side.

  The school fundraiser was going well as they marched steadily closer towards the holidays, their online portal showing just how much money had already been raised by people going through the link that they had both sent out and posted on the school site. There was going to be a bake sale before the break too, with each family asked to donate two dozen cookies for them to sell at their booths near City Hall and (courtesy of Chloe) in the Grand Paris.

Marinette was really happy. People were being generous, and it really was a very deserving charity to receive the funds. On top of that, Adrien had asked for her help in baking his family's two dozen cookies, so they would get to hang out together.

(She was going to ignore the fact that Alya had tried to convince her to make another extra two dozen cookies because Lila "wasn't going to have time" because "all of her charity work"; that attempt had fallen flat when Marinette had just point-blank asked Alya why, exactly, Alya didn't just do that herself. At least with Adrien, he was just a novice baker and was going to be actively participating in the baking, but he just wanted help to be sure that his attempt turned out edible and it was a good excuse to hang out with one of his friends.)

And possibly best of all...well, Aurore's tech-savvy older brother had pulled through for them again.

"I was looking at the email that we had on file for Lila, and something about it just didn't seem right," Aurore told them as they sat together in a private study room in back of the library over lunch. "The domain on it, to be exact, because it was '.net' instead of, oh, I don't know, something actually related to the government. And my brother agreed, so we did a little searching."

Marinette was pretty sure that her jaw was on the ground. Next to her, Adrien wasn't doing much better. "You mean she was keeping her mom from finding out about everything school-related? I wondered how she got away with skipping so much school! And she was probably emailing as her mom, too, to confirm whatever stories she was telling."

Aurore grinned. "Exactly. So we did some digging, and found Mrs. Rossi's actual email. It's almost the same, just with a different domain. So I'm trying to think of what to send that wouldn't sound weird, because obviously we need confirmation that this is the right address so we can get Mr. Damocles to change it for the school system, but I don't want to come off as accusing or anything and have her tip Lila off accidentally."

Marinette exchanged a look with Adrien as she thought about it. "Well, we could just send the fundraiser email again with a comment about how we think that maybe her email was mis-entered before and is this one the correct one that we should be using. That's pretty straightforward and it asks for a response, and she might not even think to say anything about it to Lila."

"Ooh, I like that." Aurore typed that in at once, giving it a quick once-over to make sure that there weren't any errors and that the email had been entered correctly before sending it. "So, what else is going on in Ms. Bustier's homeroom? Anything new with the not-a-charity?"

"Alya's been confused about why our watchdog site doesn't list anything about Lila's 'charity'- she decided to go for the make-one-up route, apparently- and she's still been trying to find stuff on it just on Google, but apparently no connection has been made," Marinette told them, trying not to roll her eyes. "I know she and Rose were talking about trying to just go ahead with a collection of sorts anyway, so I forwarded an email talking about the importance of keeping track of how much money they raised, down to the last cent, in a ledger sort of thing." She couldn't hold back the grin. "Which Rose is really into. So even though they're trying to collect money for Lila still, at the end she won't be able to keep any of it because there'll be record of how much money they collected."

"Which, if we get in contact with Mrs. Rossi, we can make sure that that gets paid back in full!" Adrien exclaimed, scooping Marinette up in a hug for a long few seconds. Marinette prayed that she wouldn't turn red and make things weird. "Genius!"

"As long as Rose doesn't give that to Lila," Aurore pointed out. She raised an eyebrow at Marinette's head-shake. "No? You've already taken care of that?"

"She'll give Lila an electronic copy, but not the hard copy. I suggested that she might want to hold onto that to show what she did for future charity work. Which I still think is a good idea, even if Lila's charity is a sham. It doesn't change the fact that she was doing all of the bookkeeping."

Aurore made a face. "I am so glad that Samuel is doing our bookkeeping for the non-online donations, because that stuff is not fun. It's really fiddly, and if anything gets off..."

Marinette nodded. Things had gotten off fairly early on, and she had head Samuel- another member of Student Council- complaining about having to go through everything to figure out where his mistake was. Since then, he did regular, frequent checks so that he wouldn't have to go through absolutely everything again, just the most frequent donations. Admittedly, Rose was working with much smaller amounts of money- most people wanted more information on what they were donating to than just the name and "helping kids in Africa" if they were going to toss more than an euro or two into the collections basket- but it was still good practice.

Aurore's computer let out a ding, and she pulled up the student council email at once. "We already got a response! Mrs. Rossi says that yes, this one is correct, please keep using it and thank you for catching the error and were there any other recent emails that she might have missed. I'm going to forward this to Mr. Damocles with a message to note the change in email address, just a second- and done."

"Nice job," Marinette told her, leaning across the table to bump fists with Aurore. After a second's thought, she fist-bumped Adrien, too, so that he wouldn't feel left out. "That's one more thing off of our plates."

  Their fundraiser finished right before holiday break with a silent auction, with all of the items up for purchase having been donated by parents, teachers, extended family members, community business owners, and- in the case of an array of signed CD cases and posters- Jagged Stone, Clara Nightingale, and several of their musician buddies, after Marinette had approached Jagged Stone with the request.

And of course, everyone was invited. Posters had been put up outside of the school and emails had been sent out, reminding everyone about the time and date and their charity, plus attaching a list of the items up for auction to get people's interest.

"My mom so wanted to make it, but work came up," Lila told several of their classmates when she arrived at the auction, looking sad. "And there were several things that she was really interested in, like the-"

"Ooh, barf, I can see what you mean," Aurore said, materializing at Marinette's side and wrinkling her nose at Lila. "That's a pretty obvious ploy to get people to buy things for her, isn't it? Or at least to pitch in some of their own money to help her, so that she won't have to pay them back."

Marinette nodded. It really was disgusting, but at least now Lila was moving off with the group towards one of the items so that they didn't have to hear her. She was steering clear of the signed Jagged Stone things, oddly enough, but maybe that would be a dead giveaway that she didn't actually know him. After all, Jagged Stone would sign anything put in front of him, so her going out of her way to buy a signed item when she was supposedly on great terms with him would be pretty strange.

"Do you think her mom actually can't make it, or Lila just assumed that she wouldn't know about the auction and didn't tell her?" Adrien asked. His arm was tucked through Marinette's, though she was pretty sure that it was just so that he wouldn't lose her in the crowd. "Is the fake email still on the list?"

Aurore nodded. "Yeah, up until this morning. I cleared it off so that there wouldn't be any confusion going forward."

"And I would place bets on Lila assuming that her mom doesn't know anything," Marinette added. "She wouldn't want to risk anyone asking her mom about her charity." She grinned and pointed as she noticed someone new stepping into the school. "And look, over there."

The other two looked. There, standing in the entryway and looking around, was Mrs. Rossi. She really didn't look much like Lila, but it was easy enough to recognize her from her official embassy photo.

(Her official embassy photo, where she wasn't listed as the actual ambassador, but just one of the embassy staff, but that- well, that was an interesting little tidbit that Marinette was going to sit on for a little bit longer.)

"Oh, she's spotted Lila," Aurore said gleefully, craning her neck to follow Mrs. Rossi as she wove through the crowds. "And- whoops, Lila sees her!"

Marinette hastily smothered a laugh. If Lila's expression was anything to go by, she definitely hadn't realized that her mom was getting emails from the school and was going to be coming. She had never seen the other girl look so pale before.

"I'd ask if I should go get some of that amazing-smelling popcorn that they're selling so that we can watch, but honestly, I kind of just want to let things take their course and find out later," Adrien said, glancing down at Marinette. "There's some pretty cool items up for auction that I want to check out."

Marinette considered that. On one hand, she wanted to watch Lila's downfall. On the other... well, she had been keeping an eye on the whole Lila fiasco for a while now, and she was kind of tired of it. It would probably be a bit awkward to watch, too, and there was no guarantee that it would happen right away, and they were too far away to hear anything besides.

...yeah, her decision was pretty well made.

"That sounds like fun," Marinette told him, before glancing over at Aurore. "What about you?"

"I might go point Mr. Damocles in her direction," Aurore commented, glancing around the crowd. "Or maybe that can wait until later, since I don't want to throw everything at Mrs. Rossi at once and disrupt the auction with an akumatization." She sent them a slightly sheepish grin. "But you know I like my gossip, so..."

Marinette had to laugh. That was so very Aurore. "All right. We'll bump into you later, then."

Aurore grinned in return, and then was off. Marinette watched her go for a moment, then let Adrien lead the way off into the crowds surrounding the tables. It was amazing to be able to sit back and relax after the past weeks of planning and making sure that everything, from the online link to the cookie sale to this, was going to go off without a hitch. They were well on track raise more money this year than they had any other year, and that was amazing.

And to think that she had had a hand in setting all of this up...well, Marinette just couldn't be prouder.

It was fun investigating all of the donations with Adrien, even though- as part of Student Council and also part of the team that had photographed and logged all of the donated items- she had seen them all before. Marinette couldn't help but peek at the bids despite herself, grinning when she saw some of the higher ones.

"This is amazing," Adrien commented once they had made the rounds and had gone to browse through the assorted refreshments available for purchase. "There were a lot of nice things donated. And people are definitely bidding plenty of money."

"Yeah, some people will spend more to win the prize than it's worth," Marinette told him. "Like with the voucher for stuff from our bakery- the top bid right now is for more than the value of the voucher. It's interesting, but I think that people see it as buying the item, and then making a donation on top. Or something, I don't know."

"That's really cool," Adrien commented, then pointed. "Oh, look, Nathalie and the Gorilla are here! They said that they might show up and do some shopping. I honestly thought that Nathalie was just saying that to be nice, because she's been sick and hasn't wanted to go out, but I guess she's been feeling better lately."

"Oh, that's good," Marinette said, before a memory made her frown. "Wait, I thought you commented on her being sick, like, three months ago. Is she still having problems?"

Adrien shrugged, but he was frowning, too. "I don't know. She had been having these weak, dizzy spells like Mom used to before she disappeared for a bit before I commented on it at school, I think. Maybe whatever treatment she was getting finally kicked in, I don't know."

Marinette frowned even deeper. Nathalie had been showing the same symptoms as Adrien's mom before she vanished? That was a really weird coincidence. And for both of them- presumably both, at least- to have those same symptoms for an extended period of time?

If Mrs. Agreste and Nathalie had been related, Marinette might have guessed that it was a genetic thing. But since they weren't- again, that was an assumption- then the chances of them both separately having the same condition...

"I cannot believe that I fell for such a manipulative, thieving, disgusting liar!"

Alya materialized at Marinette's side, clearly steaming. Rose, Mylène, and Juleka weren't far behind her. Rose looked like she was close to tears, and the other two just looked lost.

"Pardon?" Adrien asked politely, but Marinette could see the amusement glimmering in his eyes.

"Lila's been leading us all around by the nose, making up stories about her life and about her nonexistent charity- and I've missed a dozen akuma attacks because I was wandering around in the cold, trying to raise money for her! I offered to make a posting on the Ladyblog so that I could put up a link to her site to raise more money! She was probably just planning on pocketing it all!" Alya scowled deeper. "I can't believe we fell for it! And aren't you even surprised?" she demanded when neither Adrien nor Marinette reacted. "At all?"

"Are we meant to be?" Adrien asked dryly. "After Marinette's spent so long calling Lila a liar?"

Alya faltered for a moment, then scowled deeper. "You- you knew, but you didn't warn us?"

"Yes, because pointing out the obvious lies worked so well the first several dozen times I did it," Marinette said, adopting the same dry tone that Adrien had used. "And I gave you the watchdog charity link to use. I rather thought that its complete lack of anything about Lila's charity might tip you off."

Alya faltered. "Oh."

"But we still gave Lila money that was meant for charity," Rose said tearfully. Juleka pulled her to her side, trying to comfort her. "And it was a decent amount, too."

"You have your log, right?" Marinette reminded her. "If you tell Lila's mom how much Lila got for her 'charity', then I bet that she can get that money back to you and you can donate it to another charity."

Rose perked up at once, tears drying up magically. "Oh, that's right! We can still put that money to good use! I'm glad you suggested that we keep track of everything, Marinette."

"Yeah," Juleka agreed. "Lila sucks, but at least we can get the money back."

"We should go talk to Lila's mom before she leaves," Rose decided. She dug in her bag, pulling out the ledger notebook that she had been using for their charity collections. "Aha! Yes, I have the amount we gave Lila yesterday written here. C'mon, let's go make sure that Mrs. Rossi knows!"

"Well, all's well that ends well," Adrien said cheerfully as the other girls headed off. "I bet this isn't how Mrs. Rossi saw her evening going, and Lila definitely wasn't expecting any of this, but at least now the adults can figure everything out and Lila can actually see some consequences. And hopefully next semester, there'll be less drama now that she'll be restrained- or gone, if Mrs. Rossi or Mr. Damocles decides that Lila staying here wouldn't be a good idea."

"Hopefully," Marinette agreed. She grinned over at Adrien. "But that's enough worrying about Lila and her nonsense for tonight. I think we should just sit back and enjoy the evening, don't you?"

Adrien beamed back. "I couldn't agree more."

[ayamari-no-goshi]

Verboten 12 | (T)

ff.net | AO3

Fandom: Danny Phantom (DP)

Summary:   AU. When Danny was five years old, he went missing for 2 weeks. In the years that follow, his family tried to make sense of what happened, only for the truth to be discovered years later.

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, language. Be prepared for some very weird things

Chapter warning: minor character death. Blood

Parings: Danny/Sam

Notes: originally uploaded to Ff.net. Cross-posted to AO3 and tumblr. This fic is very heavily inspired by folklore surrounding mysterious wilderness disappearances

Chapter 12

After he was cleared to return to school, he found the media waiting for him. Somehow, Danny’s parents managed to keep them away from the house. Actually, that wasn’t too surprising as his dad did have a bad habit of accidentally attacking people who paid unplanned visits to the house. The mental image of a particularly annoying reporter with too much perfume covered in the green goop from one of his parents’ inventions was rather pleasing. Following the events at the campgrounds, the school was closed for a week while the police conducted interviews with the staff and school board The information he got from Sam, whose parents were among those interviewed, suggested the police wanted to verify those involved with the school had nothing to do with what happened. However, a rumor circulated that the staff knew about the original missing person investigation prior to the trip, which prompted the school to release a statement where the park and its employees for the tragedy. That didn’t sit well with the general populace, who began regular protests in front of the school.

Once the school re-opened, the reporters began targeting students for interviews they couldn’t get with the school’s staff. Since most of the students were minors, the police got involved to prevent any potential legal issues. However, their presence did not stop the reporters from trying. Each time one of the students involved in the “mass abduction,” as it was being called, returned to the school, the reporters renewed their attempts.

After successful dodging the reporters, Danny made his way to his locker. Unlike the countless times he previously made the trip, this particular time was different. The tension in the air was palpable as the other students stared at him as he passed.

His friends met him at his locker. When he mentioned the stares, Tucker gave an awkward chuckle. “About that, word got out that you were found hours after the rest of us. There are a lot of rumors about what you might or might not have seen and why you weren’t as injured as the A-listers.”

“Speaking of the the A-listers, which ones are back?” Danny questioned as he grabbed his books. Other than the general aftermath, he didn’t know too much regarding what happened to the other abductees.

“All but Star are back. She lost part of her arm, so she’s in physical therapy. I overheard the queen bee saying something about how Star might end up being transferred,” Sam answered as she kept an eye on some of the students staring at them.

He nodded. “That’s more than understandable.” The noticeable tension gave way to what he could only describer as an overwhelming wrongness.

His friends grabbed his arms to stabilize him. “Dude, what’s wrong? Is it related to your… you know?” Tucker’s voice momentarily seemed distant, and it took Danny a great deal of focus to concentrate on it. “Are you sure you should have returned today?”

“It’s okay… it’s just…”

“FENTON!” The sound of Dash’s voice rang through the hallway. Danny had little time to react before the jock suddenly appeared in his line of sight and pinned him to the lockers. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back. You better have an explanation for what happened that day!” Anger radiated off Dash in waves.

“What is your problem?” He still didn’t understand how he became so sensitive to emotions, but they seemed to affect what Frostbite called his core. “If you forgot, you ran off and left us!”

“Are you telling me that you didn’t see that thing? You didn’t see what hurt Star? You better not be lying to me. You’re the one who gave us that weird warning before everything happened!”

“Get off me,” he snapped as he pushed Dash away. “Regarding what happened to you and your friends, I only know what I was told when I was in the hospital. We,” he gestured to his friends as his chest suddenly seemed to freeze, “never saw you guys after you ran off. So, whatever you saw, we certainly didn’t see it.”

“Don’t play dumb with me. Don’t your crackpot parents study this type of stuff?”

Before he could reply, the cold sensation gripped his chest again as the wrongness from earlier returned. The girl who was on the new the other night walked by and momentarily locked eyes with him. His entire body screamed danger, and his core tried activating in defense. It took all of his willpower to squash it down. The girl just gave him a haughty smile and continued on her way.

“Well, aren’t you going to say something?” Dash’s voice brought him back to the situation at hand.

“My parents aren’t crackpots. If you want information from them, go ask them yourself. Good luck at understanding their explanations though. Come on, guys.”

“Are you calling me stupid, Fenton? Cuz if you are…”

“Dash, even I can barely understand some of their theories, and I grew up exposed to that stuff.” That seemed to somewhat diffuse the jock’s anger as he simply growled and sulked away. After nodding in satisfaction, he caught the stunned looks of his friends. “What?”

“Well, at least we know one good thing that happened from our little romp in the woods, you grew a backbone.” Sam’s satisfied smirk caught him off guard. Was she preening? However, her eyes narrowed as her gaze drifted towards where the underclassman disappeared. “But what was that about? You looked like you were going to have a fit when that girl walked by?”

“You noticed that too? I thought I was imaging things,” Tucker added as warning bell rang.

“Remind me to tell you at lunch. I’m not sure if it’s something others should hear.”

….

A few hours later, Danny and his friends found themselves huddled at one of the lunch tables at the far end of the cafeteria. While his friends took a few bites of their meals, he scanned the area to make sure no one was close enough to overhear them. His eyes eventually fell on the girl from earlier.

She seemed normal enough, especially since she was sitting next to Paulina. They wouldn’t have let her anywhere near them if they thought she was odd. However, even though her hair and clothing seemed immaculate, there was something stiff and unnatural in her posture. It was almost as if she was trying too hard to sit normally.

“Alright Danny, spill it.” Tucker’s voice made him jump. Glancing back at his friends, he realized they were both impatiently staring at him. “What happened earlier?”

“Let me ask this first: what do you know about that girl?” He gestured towards where she sat.

“Oh, you mean Maura?” Sam’s voice was full of spite. “She’s been trying to suck up to Paulina over the last two years. Apparently, she managed to get into Queen Bee’s good graces enough to be acknowledged as her unofficial successor. She’s just as mean and shallow as the rest of them. Why?”

“Because, according to the news, she went missing on a local trail around the same time we went missing in the forest. Eww! Tucker!”

Tucker’s apology for sitting out his drink was short as he brought out his PDA. After a few quick taps, he brandished it in front of him. After Sam snatched it from him, she and Danny discovered he brought up the article that matched the new report Danny saw. “Dude, that’s really weird.”

“I’d have to agree.” After Sam glanced at the article, she glanced towards the girl. “They found her in a dazed state but uninjured?”

“What was she even doing other there anyways?”

“With your attempts to hit on most of the girls in the school, I’m surprised you didn’t know.” Sam raised a questioning eyebrow towards Tucker. “She’s a member of the cross country team. From what I’ve overheard, it’s fairly normal for her to train on the trails around the area.”

“Oh, I forgot about that.”

“Do you know anything else about her? What?” Danny hadn’t expected Sam to scowl at him. “Look, I get you don’t like her, but the news said something about how her parents said she felt off to them. And when we made eye contact earlier, it was like my entire being screamed something was very wrong and very dangerous.” He glanced in Maura’s direction again. “Look at the way she’s sitting. Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Danny, did you ever think it was possibly less supernatural?” A sigh escaped Sam when he just raised an eyebrow. “She honestly could have just seen something she shouldn’t have. I mean, it’s not weird for drug dealers, cultists, and other people who don’t want to be seen do their business in the woods.” After glancing back over towards Maura, a deep frown crossed Sam’s face. “It is weird that it happened the same day though.”

“Hmm… maybe. I mean, it did happen the same day. Can we just keep an eye on her, just to be safe?”

“I’m cool with it.” Tucker adjusted his glasses before glancing back at the A-listers.

“Of course you would be.” Sam shook her head in disapproval before turning back to Danny. “I think you’re being paranoid, but I’ll let you know if I see or hear anything weird.”

“I appreciate it.” While he knew his friends were humoring him, Danny couldn’t help but feel somewhat relieved. After a moment, a memory from the morning came to mind. “Hey, did either of you see a lot of police this morning? There were a bunch a few blocks away from my house.”

Instead of immediately replying, Tucker paled as he quickly checked something on his PDA. “Damn it, there was another one.”

“Another what?” Both Sam and Danny echoed as Tucker shoved the PDA into Danny’s hand. A brief glance showed the article was about a recent death in Amity Park.

Before Danny had a chance to read more, Tucker launched into a hushed explanation. “You guys know my mom works for the 911 call center, right? Well, she said something about there being a lot of weird deaths recently.”

“Weird how? Like normal weird, as in ‘person’s weird hobby got them’? Or strange weird as in ‘that’s effed up’?”

“Like ‘that’s effed up’. Sam, you need to stop laying off the true crime shows if you’re make distinctions like that. Anyways,” the techno-geek leaned in as he lowered his voice again, “when my mom asked a police officer friend about it, he stated that they think there might be a serial killer.”

“A what?” Danny felt the blood run from his face. Did Tucker really just say what he thought he did?

“Dude, keep your voice down! But yeah, that’s what they’re thinking because the victims all have something important ‘missing from their person’.”

An uneasy sensation pooled at the bottom of Danny’s stomach. “What exactly is missing?”

A frown crossed Tucker’s face before he responded. “You know, I’m not really sure. Mom doesn’t want to say anything about it. I just chalked it up to the police not wanting to spread information on what they have.”

“But you’d think if it was something as simple as a personal item, they’d could at least specify that,” Sam mentioned. After glancing around to make sure no one was nearby, she continued. “That makes me worried there’s something more sinister going on.”

“You’re the true crime expert. How common is that?”

“It’s extremely common for killers to take souvenirs, but it’s insanely rare for them to… err… take part of a body.” Her voice pitched in discomfort as she spoke.

“And on that note, I think I’ve lost my appetite.”

Sam grabbed his arm as he went to stand. “Come on, Danny. That’s most likely not what’s happening here.”

“With everything else we’ve recently dealt with and learned, that’s not something I want to hear. Do you remember what Frostbite told us? Do you remember what you said Plasmius talked about? I don’t want to get paranoid for no reason.” With that, he gathered his items and walked off.

….

As the week came to a close, Danny noted it almost seemed the entire town was on edge. People on the streets spoke in quiet whispers about what the police were doing. His fellow students tended to go straight home after school instead of hanging out in the normal spots. Even the animals seemed on edge. Several times he caught dogs whimpering if their owners stopped for any reason.

His parents’ research did little to help his unease. Their scanners signaled several times that week. According to his mother, they were detecting electrical abnormalities, but the abnormalities only seemed to last for a few minutes. His parents were concerned about the sudden spike in them and were doing all they could to attempt to find some sort of explanation. People also started calling around the times of the spikes reporting sightings of odd shadows.

To make matters worse, he was having trouble falling asleep. Normally, he’d chalk it up to insomnia, but his body didn’t seem to feel tired in the morning after only three or four hours. It was as if the normal amount of sleep was just not needed. While he wasn’t certain if it was a weird side effect of his ghostly affliction, Sam’s mention of ghosts drawing energy from strong emotions often came to mind. He hoped that wasn’t the case, but he couldn’t outright dismiss it.

Around eleven in the morning on Saturday, he received a text from Tucker. It simply said he had some important information for him and Sam, and that he wanted them to meet up. Sam immediately offered her home as her parents were out of town for the weekend. After sending his reply, Danny got ready and headed out.

Normally, it only took ten to fifteen minutes on his electric scooter to reach Sam’s, but he decided to take a slightly longer route to give himself a little longer to clear his thoughts. Rounding a corner to go through a commonly used alleyway, he came to a screeching stop as a cold chill and the feeling of wrongness overcame his body. Clutching his chest, his breath misted in front of him as he glanced around the alley.

Nothing seemed off, but the feeling refused to go away. Unnerved, he decided he needed to get out of there as quickly as possible. However, when he rounded the corner that would allow him to pass behind some of the buildings he found something he was unable to register what was in front of him.

His mind eventually processed the sound of dripping and an angry hiss, and almost like fog lifting from his eyes, he finally made sense of the scene. Someone was lying on the ground. Blood completely covered his chest and must have come from the large wound in the center of it. Danny was almost certain the man wasn’t breathing.

Something stood almost protectively over the body. It was mostly humanoid, but the sickly gray of its skin and skeletal frame showed it certainly wasn’t human. Black eyes seemed to glow in hatred. Something red and dripping blood rested in its hand.

Danny backed away in fear. He had no idea what the thing was, but he knew it was dangerous. To make matters worse, it knew he was there. Slowly, he decided to back away from it. At first, it seemed like it was fine with his retreat, but after sticking whatever it was holding inside its own chest, it dropped its hands to the grounds and walked forward on its knuckles.

Not knowing what else to do, Danny ran. As soon as he turned his back, the thing bolted after him. He barely made it halfway back through the alley before the thing was on top of him. As it tried to attack, he managed to knock it aside. The thing growled before lunging again. It was too close for him to attempt to escape, so he help up his hands and braced himself.

But no attack ever came. Instead, the thing bounced off of a translucent green wall with a sickening splat. After a few dazed steps and a shake of the head, it hissed while appraised whether or not it could get to him. It hesitantly touched the wall, only to pull back its hand with a yelp of pain. After baring its teeth, it stepped backwards. As it moved, its body jerked, cracked, and popped as it slowly morphed into what appeared to be an old woman.

As it disappeared around the corner, Danny’s knees gave way, and the strange green wall disappeared. He just stared in the direction where the thing disappeared as his mind tried to process exactly what just happened. It wasn’t until his phone buzzed, that he clambered to his feet and ran out of the alley. His fingers shook as he called the police.

....

The police and paramedics arrived in less than ten minutes. As the police examined the scene, the paramedics treated Danny for mild shock. While he sat on the rear step of the ambulance, he watched the police did their job.

Most of the officers wore grim expressions. Some whispered to each other. One of the younger ones had to excuse himself as he felt sick from the sight of the victim. Eventually, one of the older officers approached him for a statement.

Danny tried to be as truthful as possible. He described the creature as a thin and sickly looking person. After some internal debates, he finished by explaining it looked different as it moved away.

“Son, what do you mean?” There was a deep edge in the officer’s voice. “You better not be messing with me.”

“I… I really don’t know. Maybe it… he had one of those creepy realistic masks or something, but I’m telling you, he looked different right before it disappeared.”

The officer frowned as he stared at Danny. “I don’t think you’re lying, but shock sometimes warps what we think we see. Next week we’ll call you to the station to make an official statement.” He sighed before continuing. “We’ve contacted your parents. One of my juniors will take you home. Take it easy for the rest of the weekend, you hear me?”

After another fifteen minutes, Danny found himself in the front seat of a cruiser. Neither Danny nor the officer spoke for the entirety of the ride, and soon, they were in front of Fenton Works. After telling Danny to stay safe, the officer left him to be swept into the arms of his mother.

His mother was understandably scared. The officer who called the house told her there was an incident and that he was okay, but due to the investigation, he was unable to give any details. After letting her have a few tears of relief, he asked if they could go inside. Maddie ushered him into the house.

His father and friends were waiting for him in the living room. Sam rushed over to him to pull him into a hug while his dad and Tucker shared a smirk. His mother excused herself to go get everyone hot chocolate and cookies. Once she returned, Danny told them what happened. Unlike with the officers, the only detail he left out was the green wall.

He knew his friends would ask why he was so open with his parents, but without knowing exactly what he saw, he figured the two paranormal experts would be the best source for information. And, he wasn’t disappointed.

“Sweetie, you know it was probably a person, but your father and I will do some digging,” his mother promised. “You described something that sounds too much like some of the legends in Native American folklore. And with all of the abnormalities we’ve been detecting recently, I don’t want to be foolish enough to rule it out.”

“Don’t worry, Dann-o.” His father’s grin was infectious. “We’ll find those spooks and take care of them for you. To the lab.”

As the behemoth of a man disappeared down the stairs to the lab, his mother just fondly shook her head. “Get some rest. Sam, Tucker, let me take you home. I don’t think your parents would be too happy with me if I didn’t.”

“Thanks Mrs. F. I appreciate it. Can I take some cookies home? My mom loves your snickerdoodles.”

“Sure, let me go get a container for you.”

When she disappeared into the kitchen, Danny leaned forward and whispered. “Thanks for the distraction, Tuck. Guys, one other thing did happen. I… I think one of my abilities activated. I’ll call you guys later with the details. It’s probably the only reason that thing didn’t kill me.”

Before either of his friends could reply, his mother returned to the room carrying a container full of cookies. “Alright you two, let’s get going.”

Once he was left alone in the living room, Danny decided it was the perfect time to get a shower. After everything that happened, it would help him sort through his thoughts. He hoped his parents were right. Maybe it was just a strange looking man, but the wrongness of what he saw and the thing’s transformation told him otherwise.

========================================

Notes: I’m not sure how familiar people will be with it, but Cross Country Running is a type of long distance running, and at least in the US, it’s a Fall sport. However, it’s not on a track or indoors. Runners are usually on fields, trails, the in woods, etc., depending on the area. If you’re in the Allegheny plateau, it’s common to see the trails involve hills and/or some type of wooded area.

The creature is based off of a story (which I still can't find again) was submitted to a YouTuber channel that goes by “Darkness Prevails.” The channel tends to read a lot of accounts submitted to it. And while the stories cannot be verified under most circumstances, all stories are claimed true by the submitters.

The story that heavily inspired it is from a narrator who explained that her dad barred her from seeing a family friend (who she viewed as an uncle) after something that happened after a camping trip. She ended up encountering the family friend a couple years later and was invited to his home. The house was unkempt and stunk, and there seemed to be a strange substance everywhere. The friend and his wife were both acting strangely. After being lured to the kitchen, the friend tried attacking her, and she managed to escape and called the police. She was told her uncle had seemingly up and left a few years prior. After questioning father ended up explaining that when he and his friend were gathering firewood on that trip, they were chased by something that sounded like a pack of coyotes or wolves. The friend fell when they were running back to camp, and the dad lost sight of him. When the dad got back to camp, he tried to get his wife and the friend’s wife to call for help. However, they heard the friend call from the forest, and the friend's wife went to help him. When they returned, they seemed off. They spoke strangely and walked stiffly. Normal tasks seemed to baffle them. The dad didn’t know what happened to his friend and his wife, but he was convinced that what was left was something impersonating them.

Stories like this pop up in folklore, and there are a lot of online stories telling of similar encounters. However, it is difficult to tell what’s a true account and what might be a “Creepypasta.” There is a rather famous folklore entity in First Nation stories in the Southwest US that is sometimes said to wear others skins. The most famous stories are from the Navajo, but other tribes also have them in their folklore. However, there is also a spirit called Kanaima from the Carib tribes that is somewhat similar. Some renditions of Wendigos (traditionally Algonquin) also put them in this category. A Kee-wakw (Abenaki) might also fall into this.

And then I managed to combine the story with some of the information I know about the entity known as a Raven Mocker (from Cherokee lore). It’s another rather unsettling creature, and some accounts have it change shapes.

[oopshidaisyy]

July Fic Recs

a little late but here we go!

praying for sparks in the dark (in the heart) by susiecarter "Him," the Bat repeats, in a low and deceptively soft growl. "I don't know who he was," the man says immediately, taking this cue and running with it. "I don't, honest. Honest, I swear to god. Nobody did. He just showed up, that's all. Asking about you, asking everybody what they knew, if they'd ever seen you, what you'd done. Metropolis," the man adds belatedly. "He had that look, you know? Clean. Said his name was—Carr, or Kemp, or something. Something like that." (Or: in a universe where Bruce becomes aware that someone's looking into the Batman, he goes to the effort to track down Clark Kent. It doesn't play out quite the way either of them expected.) Clark/Bruce, 20k, E

having let go forever the fallacy of ever being alone by gyzym This time there are shitty dogeared paperbacks Arthur wouldn't be caught dead reading piled on the coffee table, and half-finished crosswords tucked into the bookshelves, and the far wall is hung with that tapestry they'd bought in a shit part of London on a whim. This time they've spent all day fixing their sink and there's a mug of yesterday's tea sitting on top of the television and it's not just Arthur's living room at all. Arthur/Eames, 16k, E

A Sure Thing by lightgetsin "Okay," Peter says, and there's a rasp in his voice. "Repeat after me: theft is not foreplay." Neal/Peter, 3k, E

perfect strangers by susiecarter Batman and Superman are fucking. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are a great cover for fighting crime, and also might be dating. Bruce and Clark have no idea what they're doing; but they definitely aren't going to be able to talk themselves into stopping. Clark/Bruce, 15k, E

run to the river (dive in) by susiecarter MoS AU: With one successful fishing season already under his belt, Clark's finally getting comfortable on the Debbie Sue. He just wishes this guy Dixon hadn't signed on with them, because the way he watches Clark is really starting to give Clark the creeps. (Or: Bruce goes undercover looking for enhanced individuals before BvS instead of after—and finds one.) Clark/Bruce, 5k, M

Took Me By Surprise and Then by thehoyden After the second surgery in New York, Charles doesn’t anticipate anyone keeping vigil by his bedside — and certainly not Tony Stark. Charles/Erik, 5k, T

as to which may be the true by susiecarter It isn't difficult to go on in the wake of Superman's death. His resurrection, though, poses a problem—especially when it turns out there's no such thing as the right moment to explain that Martha Kent's obnoxious billionaire friend? Is also the man who tried really hard to shove a kryptonite spear through Clark's face. Clark/Bruce, 53k, M

Blue Devils by VillaKulla /blo͞o ˈdevəl/ noun, inf: a feeling of despondency, depression, or low spirits origins: Old American West Billy/Goody, 4k, M

Spree by thingswithwings "So, okay, Britta," Annie says, "this thing you gave me is seriously just a scrap of ripped looseleaf that says 'IOU one shopping spree at A Woman's Touch.' I do not even know what that is." Britta does an excited little leap in the air and claps her hands. "It's me deciding to help you discover your true womanhood." Britta/Annie, 4k, E

embroidery appreciation by Annie D Written for an anon on tumblr who requested Natasha and Tony as brotp, or Steve/Tony being schmoopy in love. This is a bit of both. Tony & Nat, 1k, T

and every map is blank by gyzym It's -- topography, Carlos thinks, of a person, of two people, it's so complicated, it's so much easier to just go it by yourself. He doesn't want to hurt Cecil but he doesn't want to keep any part of himself from Cecil, either, and it scares him that that's true, and it scares him to know it's what Cecil wants. Carlos/Cecil, 7k, T

trothplight by arriviste “What a metaphor,” Grantaire said bitterly. “I may dress your windows, but no more. We’ll greet each other in the streets, but you won’t admit me to your chambers or your hearts. I know all the words, all the empty speeches one needs to mouth for membership – I can rattle them off as well as you. Want me to prate Hébert or praise the Supreme Deity? Quote Rousseau or Marat? I can mum them; I don’t, because I don’t mean them, and because I’m an honest sceptic, I’m untrustworthy.” Enjolras/Grantaire, 4k, E

A-Wing, X-Wing, Y-Wait, B-Mine (Please) by ester_inc Finn keeps finding himself in situations where – no, wait, let's start over. Poe keeps ending up shirtless, nearly shirtless, or soaking wet, and somehow Finn is always there when it happens. The universe is either taunting him with what he can't have or rewarding him for good behavior, and Finn can't decide which is more likely. Either way, he's emotionally unprepared for, oh, let's be honest here: Poe's entire existence. It's fine. No big deal. He's working on it. Finn/Poe, 7k, E

Just Give Me Moments by barricadeur Enjolras comes home from a protest to a not-empty apartment. --- "What happened?" Grantaire says. His other hand grips Enjolras's shoulder, as if to keep him from pulling back, but Enjolras is so tired that the energy necessary to break away seems monumental. He lets Grantaire inspect him, says only, "I hit my head." "On someone's fist?" Enjolras/Grantaire, 1k, T

The Rare Gift by triedunture The prompt was "Dean receives an . . . unusual . . . Christmas gift from Castiel." The gift turns out to be wings. Dean/Cas, 4k, M

i love you now like i loved you then (this is the road and these are the hands) by theappleppielifestyle Somewhere in their phone calls after Derry 2.0, Richie and Eddie had decided to finally take that road trip. Richie would fly in from LA, then they’d drive back there from New York. It’ll be just like it could’ve been, Richie had said once. (Or, Eddie and Richie resume.) Richie/Eddie, 6k, M

i guess i should say thanks or some shit believe it or not, charles has a well-thought-out moral philosophy. he doesn’t follow it. but he has thought it out. alternatively: charles and erik douche it up in amsterdam. Charles/Erik, 17k, M

this is your sword, this is your shield by susiecarter Post-BvS, Diana and Lois start to develop a habit of protecting each other. But sometimes habits become ruts, and every now and then it's a good idea to break out of them. (Or: a whole bunch of times Diana and Lois looked out for each other, plus the time Lois ended up feeling like it might be worth it to be just a little less careful.) Diana/Lois, 9k, T

Family Portrait, c. 1840, oil on canvas by littlerhymes Lestat's latest favourite is a painter. Lestat/Louis, 2k, T

get religion quick (cause you’re looking divine) by brinnanza So it was fine. Even if Crowley couldn’t love him, he clearly liked him well enough, and that was almost the same thing. It no doubt would have continued to be fine, or at least fine-adjacent, were it not for a narrowly averted apocalypse and several bottles of a really quite nice Riesling Aziraphale had found in the back room of his newly restored bookshop. Aziraphale/Crowley, 4k, G

[betweengenesisfrogs]

Homestuck is My Favorite Sprite Comic

Yes, you read that right.

Homestuck is my favorite sprite comic.

Those of you who remember the earlier days of the internet are probably looking at this post in disbelief right about now. Others of you might be scratching your heads, not knowing what I’m talking about.

But here’s my pitch: Homestuck is the culmination of an entire genre of internet art, and the tools that make it so powerful are the very tools that made that genre once so reviled.

Homestuck is the greatest and most successful sprite comic of all time.

And honestly, I’ve wanted to talk about that for ages, so let’s do it.

WHAT SPRITE COMICS WERE

Many of my readers are probably too young to remember the era of sprite comics. So: what were sprite comics?

Sprite comics were a genre of webcomics made entirely by taking pixel art from video games – especially character art, called “sprites,” but also backgrounds and other images—and placing them into panels to tell a story. They were near-ubiquitous on the internet in the early 2000s, emerging right as webcomics in general were seeking to establish themselves as an art form.

They were not, shall we say, known for their quality. The low bar to access meant that art skill was not an obstacle to starting one. The folks behind the huge swell of them tended to be young people, kids and early teenagers recreating the plots of their favorite video games with new OCs—not the most advanced writers or artists. They were the early 2000s’ quintessential example of ephemeral, childish art. Unfortunately, they look even worse today—blown-up pixels don’t hold up well when displayed on higher-resolution monitors.

Today, they’re mostly forgotten, remembered only as a weird, strange moment in the youth of the internet. Someone who evoked them today, such as a blogger who compared them to one of the most successful webcomics of all time, would be inviting good-natured teasing at the very least.

It would be unfair to dismiss them entirely, though. In this low-stakes environment, comics where the author could bring more skill—engaging writing, legitimately funny jokes, or especially, a real ability to work with pixel art—really stood out. (Unsurprisingly, these authors tended to skew a bit older.)

The obvious one to mention is Bob and George. Bob and George wasn’t the first sprite comic, but it was the most influential. Conceived initially as Mega Man-themed filler for a hand-drawn comic about superheroes, it quickly became a merging of the two concepts, with the original characters made into Mega Man-style sprites, full of running gags, humorous retellings of the Mega Man games, elaborate storylines about time travel, and robots eating ice cream. It was generally agreed, even among sprite comic haters, that Bob and George was a pretty good comic. Worth mentioning also are 8-Bit Theater, which turned the plot of the first Final Fantasy into a spectacular and hilarious farce, and of course Kid Radd, my second favorite sprite comic. (More on that later.)

But even if you weren’t looking for greatness—there was something just damn fun about them. The passion of sprite comic authors was clear, even if their ideas didn’t always cohere. To this day, I think the sprite comic scene has the same appeal pulp art does—it’s crude and rough, full of garbage to sift through, but every so often, something deeply sincere and bizarre shines through, and the culture of its authors is a fascinating object of study in itself.

Okay, full disclosure: I was one of the people who made a sprite comic. I’ve written about my experiences with that in more depth elsewhere, but yeah, I was on the inside of this scene, rather than a disinterested observer, and from the inside, maybe it’s a lot easier to see the appeal.

Still, let me make this claim: even with all their flaws, sprite comics were doing some incredibly interesting things, and Homestuck is heir to their legacy.

TAKE ME DOWN TO RECOLOR CITY

One of the problems people always had with sprite comics was the sprites themselves. They’re the most repetitive thing in the world. You just keep copying and pasting the same images over and over again, maybe with a few tweaks. That’s not really being an artist, is it? It’s so lazy. Re-drawing things from different angles keeps things dynamic, develops your skill, and makes your work better in general. Right?

I’m mostly in agreement. Certainly I think it’s fair to rag on the Control-Alt-Delete guy, along with other early bad webcomics, for copy-pasting their characters while dropping in new expressions and mass-producing tepid strips. And to be fair, digging through bad sprite comics often felt like an exercise in seeing the same slightly-edited recolors of Mega Man characters over and over again. You got really tired of that same body with its blobby feet and hands.

(It should be noted, though, that there were folks in the sprite comic scene who could pixel art the quills off a porcupine. I salute you, brave pixel art masters of 2006. I hope you all got into your chosen art school.)

All this said, I think the repetitive and simplistic nature of sprite comics was often their biggest strength.

THE POWER OF ABSTRACTION

In his classic work Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud makes an observation about cartooning that has stayed with me to this day.

McCloud notes that simple, abstract drawings, like faces that are only few lines and dots on a page, resonate with us more strongly than more detailed drawings. This is because our minds fill in what’s missing on the page. We ascribe human depth to simple gestures and expressions based on our own emotions and experiences – and this makes us feel closer to these characters as readers. Secretly, simple cartoons can be one of the most powerful forms of storytelling. If you want your readers to fall in love with your characters, draw them simply, and let them fill them in.

Video game sprites work very well in this regard. They have that same simplicity that cartoons do. In fact, I’d be willing to bet a huge part of the success of SNES-era RPGs was simple, almost childlike character sprites drawing people in. I think sprites did the same for sprite comics.

Here’s the weird thing: Bob and George worked. Despite four different characters being variations on the same friggin’ Mega Man sprite in different colors, they immediately began to seem like different people with distinct personalities. For me, George’s befuddled, helpless dismay immediately comes to mind whenever I picture his face, while with Mega Man himself it’s usually a wide-eyed, childlike glee. I would never confuse them. This, despite the fact that the only actual difference between their faces is that George is blonde. It’s pretty clear what happened. The personalities the author established for them through dialogue and storytelling shone through, and my brain did the rest.

Sprites, in short, were a canvas upon which the mind could project any story the author wanted to tell. Even the most minute differences in pixel art came to stand, in the best sprite comics, for wide divergences in personality and ideals, once the reader spent enough time with them to adapt to their style of representation.

Wait a minute, haven’t we seen this somewhere before? Character designs that focus on variations on a theme, with subtle differences that nonetheless render them instantly recognizable?

Oh, right.

Look at what greets us on the very first page of Homestuck. An absurdly simple cartoon boy, abstracted to a ridiculous degree—he doesn’t even have arms!—followed a whole bunch of characters that follow suit. Though many other representations of the characters emerge, these little figures never quite go away, do they? Why is that?

Simple: they’re very easy to manipulate. They’re modular—you can give John arms or not, depending on whether it’s useful. You can put him in a whole variety of poses and save them to a template. You can change out his facial expressions with copy and paste. You can give him a new haircut and call him Jake. It’s all very quick and easy.

Sprite comics proliferated because they were very easy to mass-produce. Andrew Hussie’s original conception of Homestuck was very similar: something he could put out very quickly and easily, where even the most elaborate ideas could rely on existing assets to be sped smoothly along. We all know the result: an incredible production machine, churning out unfathomable amounts of content from 2009-2012. I’d say it was a good call.

But it goes way deeper than that. The modular nature of sprites always suggested a kind of modularity to the sprite comic premise. George and Mega Man were different people, true, but also two variations on a theme. Was there something underlying them that they had in common? Perhaps their similarity says something like: We exist in a world which has a certain set of rules? One of my favorite conceits from Bob and George was that when characters visited the past, they were represented by NES-era Mega Man sprites, while in the present, they were SNES sprites, and in the future, the author used elaborate splicing to render them as 32-bit Mega Man 8 sprites or similar.

Suppose there was a skilled cartoonist thinking about his next big project, who wanted to tell a story centered around this kind of modularity, a narrative that was built out of iterative, swappable pieces by its very design. He might very well create a sprite comic named Homestuck.

Homestuck is a story about a game that creates a hyperflexible mythology for its players, where the villains, challenges, and setting change depending upon what players bring to the experience, yet which all share underlying goals and assumptions. What more perfect opportunity to create a modular story as well? Different groups of kids and trolls have motifs that get swapped around to produce new characters, whether that’s through ectobiology, the Scratch, or the eerie parallels between the kids and trolls’ sessions. And yet each character can be analyzed as an individual.

This is an incredible way to build a huge emotional investment from your readers. Not only does this kind of characterization invite analysis, the abstractions draw readers in to generate their own headcanons and interpretations. A deep commitment to pluralism is at the heart of Hussie’s character design. Then, too, it encourages readers to build their own new designs from these models. Kidswaps, bloodswaps, fantrolls—these have long been the heart of Homestuck’s fandom. And what are bloodswaps if not sprite recolors for a new generation? With the added bonus that now a change in color carries narrative weight, evoking new moods and identities for these characters in ways that early sprite comics could only dream of.

In Hussie’s hands, even the dreaded copy-and-paste takes on heroic depth of meaning. Even when Hussie moves away from sprites to his own loose art style, he continues to remix what we’ve previously see. Indeed, Hussie talks about how he would go out of his way to edit his own art into new images even when it would take more time than drawing something new. Why? Because he wanted to evoke that very feeling of having seen this before—the visual callback to go along with the many conceptual and verbal callbacks that echo throughout Homestuck. This is at the heart of what Doc Scratch (speaking for Hussie) called “circumstantial simultaneity:” we are invited to compare two moments or two characters, to see what they have in common, or how they contrast. Everything in Paradox Space is deeply linked with everything else. And Hussie establishes this in our minds using nothing less than the tool sprite comics were so deeply reviled for: the “lazy” repetition of an image.

(It’s fitting that some of the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous images in Homestuck—dream bubble scenery and the like—are the result of Hussie taking things he’s made before and combining them into fantastic dreamscapes.)

But it all started with the hyperflexible, adaptable character images Hussie created at the very beginning of Homestuck.

And if you need more proof that Homestuck is a sprite comic, I think we need look no further than what Hussie, and the rest of the Homestuck community call these images.

We call them sprites.

THE FIRST GENRE-BENDERS

Was Andrew Hussie influenced by sprite comics in the development of Homestuck? It’s hard to say, but as a webcomic artist in the first decade of the 2000s, he was surely aware of them. It’s likely that he quickly realized that his quick, adaptable images served the same purposes as a sprite in a video game or a sprite comic, and chose to call them that.

One purpose I haven’t mentioned up until now: sprites lend themselves very well to animations. In fact, in their original context of video games, that’s exactly what they’re for: frames of art that can be used to show a character running, jumping, posing, moving across a screen. It’s not surprising, then, that sprite comic makers quickly saw the utility in that.

Homestuck was, in fact, not the first webcomic to make Flash animations part of its story. There were experiments with various gifs and such in other comics, but I think sprite comics were among the most successful at becoming the multi-media creations that would come to be known as hypercomics..

Take a look at this animation from Bob and George. It represents a climactic final confrontation against a long-standing villain, using special effects to make everything dramatic, but ultimately, like many a Homestuck animation, leads to kind of a pyscheout. The drama and the humor of the moment are clear, though. This relies in large part on the music—which is taken directly from the game Chrono Trigger. This makes total sense. Interestingly, it also contains voice acting, which is something Homestuck never tried—probably because it would run contrary to its ideals of pluralism. What I find fascinating is that in sprite comics, animations like these served a very similar purpose to Homestuck’s big flashes: elevating a big moment into something larger-than-life. Another good example is this sequence from Crash and Bass. Seriously, it seems like every sprite comic maker wanted to try their hand at Flash animation.

(By the way, it’s a lot harder than it looks!! I envy Hussie his vectorized sprites. Pixel art is a PAIN to work with in the already buggy program that is Flash.)

The result: because of the sprites themselves, sprite comics were among the first works to play around with the border between comics and other media in the way that would come to be thought of as quintessentially Homestuck.

What it also meant was that another genre emerged in parallel with sprite comics: the sprite animation. Frequently these would retell the story of a particular game, offer a spectacular animated battle sequence, parody the source material, or all three. Great examples include this animation for Mega Man Zero, and this frankly preposterous crossover battle sequence. Chris Niosi’s TOME also found its earliest roots as an animation series of this kind. You also found plenty of sprite-based flash games, in which players could manipulate game characters in a way that was totally outside the context of the original works.

The website the vast majority of these games and animations were hosted on?

Newgrounds, best known to Homestuck fans as the website Hussie crashed in 2011 while trying to upload Cascade.

What’s less talked about is that Hussie was friends, or at least on conversational terms with, the owner of the site, hence the idea to host his huge animation there in the first place, and other flashes, like the first Alterniabound, were initially hosted there as well.

It’s hard to believe that Hussie wasn’t at least a little familiar with the Newgrounds scene. I suspect that he largely conceived of Homestuck as part of the world of “Flash animation—” which in 2009 meant the wide variety of things that were hosted on Newgrounds, including sprite animations.

The freedom and fluidity sprite comics had to change into games and animations and back into comics again was one of their most fascinating traits. Homestuck’s commitment to media-bending needs, at this point, no introduction. But what’s less known is that sprite comics were exploring that territory first—that Homestuck, in short, is the kind of thing they wanted to grow up to be.

PUT ME IN THE GAME

I would be a fool not to mention another big thing Homestuck and sprite comics have in common: a character who is literally the author in cartoon form, running around doing goofy things and messing with the story. This was an incredibly common cliché in sprite comics, no doubt because of Bob and George, who did it early on and never looked back. You might have noticed that the animation I linked above concerns a showdown between Bob and George’s author, David Anez—depicted, delightfully, as another Mega Man recolor—and a mysterious alternate author named Helmut—who is like Mega Man plus Sepiroth I think? It’s all very strange. I could ramble for hours about the relationship between Hussie and the alt-author villains of Homestuck and what it all means, but I’m not sure I can nail anything down with certainty for these two. Maybe Bob and George was never quite that metaphysical.

But yes, bringing the author into the story in some form was already a cliché by the time Homestuck started up. Indeed, I think that’s why Hussie’s character refers to it as “a bad idea” to break the fourth wall—he’s recognizing that people will have seen this before, and are already tired of this sort of shit. And then he goes and does it anyway and makes it somehow brilliant, because he’s Andrew Hussie.

Homestuck breathes life into the cliché by taking it in a metaphysical/metafictional direction. I don’t think that was really the motivation for most sprite comic authors, though. Let’s see if we can dig a little deeper.

I think the cliché kept happening because sprite comic authors were writing about a subject that very closely concerned themselves: video games. I’m only kind of joking. The thing about video games is that even though they’re made for everyone, playing through one yourself feels like an intensely personal experience. You develop an emotional relationship to a world, to its characters, that feels distinctly your own. Now, suddenly, thanks to the magic of sprites, you have an opportunity to tell stories about that world for others to read. Of course you’re going to want to put yourself in the story in some form.

When it wasn’t author characters in sprite comics, it was OCs. You know Dr. Wily? Well here’s my own original villain, Dr. Vindictus. You know Mega Man? Here’s my new character, Super Cool Man. He hangs out with Mega Man and they beat the bad guys together. Stuff like that. Most sprite comics retold the story of a game, or multiple games in a big crossover format, with original elements added in. There was quite a lot of “Link and Sonic and Mega Man are all friends with my OC and they hang out at his house.”

What’s interesting, though, is that because these sprite comics were very aware that they were about video games, this was where they sometimes got very meta. It started with humorous observation—hey, isn’t it funny that Link goes around breaking into people’s houses and smashing their pots? But sometimes, it grew into more serious commentary. Is Mega Man trapped in a never-ending cycle, doomed to fight the same fight against the same mad scientist until the end of time? Is it worth it, being a video game hero?

Enter Homestuck. What I’ve been dancing around this whole time is:

Homestuck is a sprite comic…because Homestuck is a video game.

Or more specifically, Homestuck’s a comic about a video game called SBURB, where the lines between the game and the comic about the game blur as characters wrestle with the narratives around them, both those encoded into the game and those encoded into our expectations.

Homestuck presents the fantasy of many a sprite comic maker: I get to go on heroic quests, I get to change the world and become a god. I get to be part of the video game. And then it asks the same question certain sprite comics were beginning to ask:

Is it worth it, to be that hero?

I want to tell you about my second favorite sprite comic, a comic called Kid Radd.

Kid Radd distinguished itself from other sprite comics of the time by being a completely original production. Its sprites looked like they could be from a variety of NES and SNES-era video games, but they were all done from scratch, and the games they purported to represent were all fictional. Kid Radd used animations with original music, and sometimes interactive, clickable games, to tell its story. It also used all sorts of neat programming tricks to make it load faster on the internet of the early 2000s, which was great—unfortunately, these same techniques made it break as web technology evolved, something Homestuck fans in 2019 can definitely relate to. The good news is, fans have maintained a dedicated and reformatted archive where the comics can still be seen and downloaded.

Kid Radd’s premise is that video game characters themselves are conscious and alive—more specifically, their sprites. Sprites developed consciousness as human beings projected personality and identity onto them, remaining aware of their status as video game constructs while also seeking to be something more. The story follows the titular Kid Radd, at first in the context of his own game, commenting on the choices the player controlling him. He must endure every death, every strange decision along the way to save his girlfriend Sheena. Then the story expands into a larger context as Radd, Sheena, and many other video game characters are released onto the internet as data. They try to find their own identities and build a society for themselves, but struggle with the tendency toward violence that games have programmed into them. The story culminates in an honestly moving moment where Radd confronts the all-powerful creators of their reality—human beings.

It’s a very good comic.

The first sprite comic authors wanted to fuse real life with video games. Later sprite comic authors decided to ask: what would that really mean? Would it be painful? Would you suffer? Would you find a way to make your life meaningful all the same? Despite the limitations of sprite comics, these ideas had incredible potential, and in works like Kid Radd, they flourished.

Homestuck is heir to that legacy.

It takes the questions Kid Radd was asking, and asks them in new ways. It tries to understand, on an even deeper level, how the rules of video games shape our own minds and give us ways to understand ourselves.

At its heart, Homestuck is a sprite comic, and it might just be the greatest of them all.

EPILOGUE

I’ve seen a lot of good discussion recently on how Homestuck preserves a certain era of the internet like a time capsule: its culture, its technology, its assumptions, its memes.

I think sprite comics, too, are part of the culture that created Homestuck. Do I think Hussie spent the early 2000s recoloring Mega Man sprites? No, probably not. But what I do know is that sprite comics were part of his world. The first webcomic cartoonists came of age alongside an odd companion, the weird, overly sincere, dorky little sibling that was sprite comics. Like them or hate them, you couldn’t escape them. They were there.

And maybe a certain cartoonist saw a kind of potential in them, in the same way he summoned Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff from the depths of bad gamer culture.

Or maybe he just knew, as some sprite comic authors did, that the time was right for their kind of story.

On a personal level—Homestuck came along right when I needed it.

Around 2009, the bubble that was sprite comics finally burst. People were getting tired of them, or growing out of them, and blown-up sprites no longer looked so good on modern monitors.

I was more than a little heartbroken. I’d enjoyed Bob and George, read my fill of Mega Man generica, and fallen utterly in love with Kid Radd. I’d been working on my own sprite comic for a long time out of a sense that there was huge potential in them that we were only scratching the surface of. I’d dreamed of maybe someday doing something as amazing as the best of them did. But I was watching that world disappear. I had to admit to myself that my work wasn’t going to continue to find an audience. That I could live with. But it was painful to think that the potential I sensed, the feats of storytelling I wanted to see in the world, would never be realized.

And then, in the fall of 2010, a friend linked me to a comic that broke all the rules, that mixed animation, games, music, images and chatlogs. A comic that crafted its own sprites, just as Kid Radd did, and remixed its images into an ever-expanding web of associations and meanings. A comic that took on the idea of living inside a video game with relish and turned it into a gorgeous meditation on escaping the ideas and systems that control us.

That this comic would exist, let alone that it would succeed. That it would become one of the most popular creations of all time, that it would surpass other webcomics and break out into anime conventions and the real world, that it would become such a cultural juggernaut, to the point where it’s impossible to imagine an internet without Homestuck—

I can’t even put into words how happy that makes me. It’s the reason I’m still writing essays about Homestuck nearly eight years after I found it.

And it’s why Homestuck will always be my favorite sprite comic.

-Ari

[Notes: The image of the kids came from the ever-useful MSPA Wiki—please support and aid in their efforts to provide a good source of info about Homestuck! They need more support these days than ever.

For more on Homestuck’s place as a continuation of the zeitgeist of early 2000s experimental webcomics, this article by Sam Keeper at Storming the Ivory Tower is excellent and insightful.

Thanks for reading, y’all.]

[jaimesonsloan]

Behind Closed Doors

Weekly Writing Challenge - Week 3  Warning: Lots of smut, and some swearing; Just lots of NSFW things and also, this is a very long post as it part of Sloan’s backstory. 

You’ve been warned. xD

“Just call me Emma.” Her first name is revealed just before she empties the remainder of her glass, the amber liquid burning her throat. The blonde gives only the slightest of hints to the unpleasant sensation as she gestures to the empty chair next to her. Sloan removes his hat, dipping his head in gratitude as he takes his place at the table. Uncorking a fresh bottle of finely aged badlands bourbon with a smirk tugging at the edge of his mouth he replies, “Emma is a lovely name.” Though the whiskey was originally only intended for himself, the man refills her glass and then pours some into his own dry vessel. Exhaling a satisfied sigh the woman continues, “And before ya ask why I’m here in this tavern all by my poor pitiful lonesome so late in the evenin, I used ta work at this bar, before I hid myself away at home. I started sewin all kinds of fancy dresses and suits to earn my livin. I werked about twelve hours a day every Saturday and Sunday. I served up drinks and cooked and cleaned and thangs.” A proud smile forms on her lips, clear of color as she wears no makeup, “Now, I only have to come to the city once every couple of weeks to auction off a few of my creations and here I am havin done just that this very fine day. I made me some good coin, iffin I do say so myself.” Gesturing to her refilled glass he lifts his own, “Then I say we drink to your success and give thanks that we are both in this very city at the very same time and both enjoying a bottle of very fine drink.” She smiles as she lifts her glass up and then quickly brings it to her lips to seal the toast. “And that I’m enjoying it with a very fine woman,” Sloan adds just before doing the same.

His eyes then travel slowly over her form, thinking of what lay hidden under the taut clothing that hugs her body. She leans against the back of her chair, eyeing Sloan, “By the looks of it, I’d say yer likin what yer lookin at?” His eyes intentionally continue to roam over her womanly curves, “I could lie and say that I do not think fondly of what I see if that would please you to hear.” Amber eyes meet with her sapphire blue gaze as she replies, showing him her bare arms, “Ya see all these scars, like tiny little slices all over em?” He nods in acknowledgment, “Yes, miss, I do.” She vaguely gestures her hand from her neck downward, until it disappears under the table, “I’m perty much covered all over in scars just like my arms. Ya still likin what yer lookin at?” She watches for his reaction to her confession as her fingertips now fiddle with her empty glass. The sharpshooter leans forward in his chair, his eyes staring intensely into her own as he reaches for the bottle sitting in between them. Wrapping his hand around it in a firm grip, he began pouring more drink for her to enjoy. “Your scars are beautiful. I would have a woman with a thousand scars over one with smooth flesh like a blank page of a book that has no words on it; no story to tell,” he reassures her with barely a blink. Slowly she brings her filled glass to her lips and takes a decent amount of whiskey into her mouth. Feeling the whiskey beginning to course through her veins, Emma relaxes in the man’s company, “Iffin ya say so, I s’pose. Not too proud of my scars and don’t much like rememberin the story behind em, iffin ya know what I mean.” She turns her eyes to her glass as she rests it on the table in front of her, “What kinda scars you got?”

Sloan smirks once again, his fingers drumming lazily in front of him as he speaks, “Training scars, battle scars, emotional scars; the usual scars that someone who comes here would generally possess.” He watches her steadily emptying yet another glass of whiskey, “You seem to be keeping a good pace, Emma. I’m guessing that this is a place you like to frequent while you are here on business as you stated.” She chuckles to his last words, “I can’t stand bein in this city sober, so I’ll be fine, don’t ya worry.” She took another decent drink and exhaled a long sigh, “Usual scars.” She chuckles once more,“Guess that’s perty much everybody ‘round here. Everybody’s all scarred up one way or another or lots of ways or maybe even all the ways a person can be scarred. I think I fall in the latter bunch. I think ya do too, iffin ya don’t mind me sayin so.” She shrugs her shoulders and glances about the tavern, “But s’pose havin that in common with somebody ain’t so bad.” She offers a silly sort of smile that was met with one of his own as she turns her eyes back to his. The man laughs after swallowing his last bit of drink he would have for the night, “I like you, Emma.” A smirk replaces the smile on his lips, “And I think you like me too.” He teases as he places the cork back onto the bottle.

Emma stares at Sloan with barely a blink as she brings her glass to her lips. Her eyes peer over the rim of the glass as she takes the large mouthful of whiskey that remained. As she sets the glass onto the table with a light clattering sound of glass against oak, she blinks, but only once and then swallows. The blonde slides her tongue across her lips,“Mayhaps I do, Mayhaps I don’t.” The words themselves did not sound very encouraging, but the tone and the slight curl of a smirk on her lips told a different story. She adjusts herself in her chair and leans back without a single change in her demeanor or expression. Sloan leans forward, his head crossing the halfway point of the table with his gaze shifting from her eyes to her lips and back to her eyes, “Oh, do you need more convincing?” He cocks his head to the side, adding with confidence, “Frankly, I think you have an interest in me.” His own tongue gently moves across his bottom lip before a slight hitch of hot air leaves his mouth. The scent of whiskey and mint tease the woman’s nose as his face moves in closer. 

She was beginning to think that perhaps he was right about maybe needing to be sober for something or another. However, the thought was fleeting as his gaze seemingly pierces her soul. “And what if I say yes ta both of those questions?” Emma bluntly asks. Leaning even closer towards her, he pauses with his lips barely centimeters from her own, smelling the whiskey on her own breath, “Then you would not mind if I did this then, hm?” Be it from the whiskey, or the company, it was clear that Sloan can’t seem to resist and neither can she as he leans in to kiss her. The blonde allows his lips to hover as she whispers with her warm breath fall against his face with each word, “I’ve been awful lonely and I ain’t usually one ta admit things like that, but it’s not every day I come across somebody that catches my attention.” She drags her tongue across her lips and lightly gulps. 

With that, Sloan leans in just that tiny space more and takes her lips. His left-hand holds the nape of her neck, while the right delicately cups her cheek and it wasn’t long her own hand rested against his. Her soft whimpers and with how she began to writhe beneath his hands and against his lips fed his desire, coaxing his lips and tongue to work against her own with a fiery intensity. The taste of the whiskey and mint mixing with her sweet saliva force a quickened breath to escape the man in the slight parting of their lips, followed by a few of her own. He could feel her pulse steadily climb beneath the thumb of his left hand and it was then Emma abruptly pulls away. There was a slight hint of fear in the woman’s eyes as they open and she quickly hides it away behind a smile, but it doesn’t go unnoticed. She clears her throat, averting her gaze, “Well then, that was… uh…somethin else now wasn’t it?” She laughed a quick few breathy chuckles rather nervously and cleared her throat once more as if her throat was bone dry. 

Turning her eyes to look at him, he smiles softly while she watches him take up her hand and softly kiss the skin, “No need to hide from me, Emma.” His eyes look to the door, before looking back at her lips. “Fuck it.” he murmurs as he presses his lips against hers again, causing whatever she was about to say to become meer muffled words and then sighs. His fingers thread through her long blonde locks while her hands met with his bearded cheeks. Despite being in a public place, the two were well hidden in the back corner and didn’t care who may or may not be watching for the time being. Moving his kiss from her lips to her neck he pulls her petite body over into his lap and despite his strength, he was gentle as if she was a delicate rose he wished for no one else to hold. Emma gasps in a shuddering breath as his hot breath escaped his nose, falling against her neck. Her fingers slide through his hair and to his back. She whispers through soft, quivering lips, “Sloan…not here.” She whimpers the rest, “Anywhere...but here.” But once those words left her lips, she found herself tilting her head back, giving the man much more room to roam and his lips travel over every extra inch she gave him before he forced himself to stop. 

Taking in a much-needed breath, Sloan traces back up her neck with gentle pecks before stopping at her ear, “I have a room upstairs.” His lips brush against her ear as he finishes his sentence, “and I want you so fucking bad.” His words vibrate against her skin coaxing her to whisper the words he needs to hear to venture forward, “I’ve wanted ya since the moment I laid eyes on ya.” All control was lost as he lifts her up from his lap with his lips burning against hers once more he makes his way to carry her upstairs. Whispers of those that notice fall on deaf ears as they pass by with her hand gripping his shirt, tugging it free of his trousers even before they made it to the top of the stairs. As he grips the knob on the door and kicks it open, Emma was already working his belt free of its buckle. 

His fingers fumble for the lock once he kicks the door closed behind them. The room was quaint, but it held a small hint of luxury as it was the best room the tavern offers. Once the door was locked he let Emma slide to her feet, making sure she got her footing before he releases her. He pulls his jacket and his shirt away from his body, tossing each aside. As she tugs at the buttons of his trousers, his large hands unfasten the buttons on her blouse, “I want to kiss each scar on your body. I want to forget about everything for just a few hours; just think about us.” He confesses while kicking off his boots. Not long after the two were standing before each other in their undergarments revealing quite the map of scars, telling the story of where each had been. He closes the space between them, one step at a time as she agrees, “Let’s forget, then.” 

Despite knowing they may both regret this later somehow, they both silently agree they would be willing to live with those consequences as their lips tangle for a brief moment. “You are beautiful, Emma.” Sloan insists as he slides her panties down, kneeling down in the same motion and kissing her scarred skin. Her body trembles to every sensation as she watches his lips trail down her stomach, coaxing goosebumps to splay out like a skymap of stars over her flesh. With her maidenhood exposed, Sloan places his mouth over it, kissing the nub and lightly flicking his tongue against it, tasting her salty sweetness. Every attempt she makes to speak, a gasped moan takes its place. His hands grip the backs of her thighs as his tongue and lips work against her delicate skin. Her hands drifted to grip his hair and one moves to brace herself on his shoulder as her knees began to buckle. Kissing her bud with determination, but with a form of grace, Sloan grips her back with his hands and coaxes her to the bed. 

Upon reaching the bed, Sloan pulls away from her just long enough to lay down on his back and lifts her to straddle his face. One hand grips her thigh and as his other hand inserts a digit into her hot flesh and Emma gasps out a moan. While working his finger in tandem with his tongue, the blonde can’t help but grind her hips. Never being handled this way was driving her wild and Sloan was all too eager to accept her womanhood grinding against his face. Leaning her head back he caught glimpses of her groping her breasts in ecstasy, encouraging him to slip a second finger within her. Her hand drifts from her breast to reaching behind her and taking hold of his erect manhood, only eliciting her to ride his face even more as she strokes him. He feels his shaft throbbing in her grip and pulls his mouth from her lifting her and positioning her near his waist. With his face still wet from being wedged between her thighs Emma’s lust-filled sapphire eyes stare into his as she slid further back, straddling his waist. 

Already, Sloan’s coarse manly hands traverse over her scarred, womanly body as she positions the tip of his manhood just at her entrance. With his eyes locked onto hers, his body shudders and blended sounds of pleasure fill the room once she lowers herself, taking his entirety deep inside of her. Amber eyes watch as this gorgeous woman slowly leaning her head back in bliss begins rocking her hips. His hands cup her swollen breasts as he thrusts his hips upward in tandem with her own movements. She grinds her hips faster, feeling his shaft stretching her tight walls. She leans back, bracing her hands on both of his thighs and Sloan was given a clear view of his member working into her. His hands grip her waist as he thrusts harder against her motions, watching each passion-filled movement she makes in awe. Sloan had been with many women before, but something in this woman sent him wild and the sight of it all only added to the lust that was building. 

Quickly, he pulls out from her and positions her on her hands and knees. With gentle coaxing, Emma bit her bottom lip as her head met with the pillow and he brought her rotund backside into the air. Without a moment's hesitation, Sloan carefully positions himself in and thrusts back inside of her with full force and Emma cries out blissfully. His hands reach under her body, pulling her back up, holding her against his chest as he takes her from behind. Her head leans back as he kisses and lightly bites her neck causing a soft hiss to erupt within her rhythmic moans. He grips her breasts with his hot breath pouring out raspy lustful words into her ear, “Emma you are so fucking beautiful. I want to see you cum so fucking bad. Cum for me, Emma.” One hand pulls her blonde hair down, exposing her neck once again as he kisses the skin. “Oh fuck!” she screams out, then gasps in a deep breath. She opens her mouth and cries out his name in ecstasy, gasping for air between each moan as he held her sweaty body tense and rigid against his own. The beautiful blissful expression on her face and in the sound of her moans, push him over the edge. Unable to take the pressure any longer, he pulls out from her womanhood, pushing her down, spilling his seed upon her bare behind. 

With both of them covered in sweat, Emma falls onto her stomach and Sloan collapses next to her. His words are shaky and sporadic as he attempts to catch his breath, “Emma...Please, do not go. Stay the night, here with me. I want to get to know the real you.” His words were sincere and it was quite the change from the commanding man that was present before. The blonde still lay on her belly with her body glistening with sweat and her behind painted with his bliss. Panting heavily and trying to catch her breath, she feels the room spinning. With her cheek resting against the bed, he saw her hair was a mess, some covering over her eyes as she looks at him. He couldn’t turn his eyes away even if he wanted to in this moment. Each huffed breath blows some of her hair about, but she couldn’t even be bothered to brush it away. She stares at him a moment through her locks of hair and then she closes her eyes, “Only if ya want me ta stay, Sloan. Don’t feel like ya gotta get ta know me.” She opens her eyes, looking directly at him, “It’s alright, I’m a big girl and I know yer not lookin fer nothin and I ain’t either.” Sloan could only sigh, shaking his head slightly, “You still that afraid of me?” A smile peeked out from behind her hair as he moves a hand to caress her cheek. His smile returns as he confesses to her,  “I want you to stay, even if it is just for the night...Just stay.”

As he brushes her hair away from her eyes she chuckles, “Well, iffin I’m gonna stay and ya wanna know the real me, yer gonna need ta know that I’ll be tryin ta hog the bed and all the blankets. Yer gonna have ta fight me fer em all night and ya know what else?” She lifts her head, brushing even more hair away from her face, “Sometimes I even snore.” She turns on her side, propping her head on her hand with her elbow sinking into the mattress, “How’s that fer gettin ta know the real me?” The man chuckles quietly in turn, his hand still caressing her cheek, “Well it is a fight you will have to lose, beautiful.” He moves in to kiss her lips once, before pulling back and smiling at her, “I meanwhile tend to talk in my sleep sometimes and I have bad news.” Her brows raise in curiosity, “Oh?” He brings the blankets up to cover them and pulls her close, “I’m afraid you will have to suffer through me holding you close to me tonight.” Emma exhales a sigh as she rests her head against his broad chest, “I might drool on ya, but alright.” Quiet laughter of the two could be heard and it wasn’t long they were sleeping soundly. 

The next morning, Sloan awoke alone in the bed they shared without a single slither of evidence that she was ever there. He gathers up his things and looks inside the empty room. As he shuts the door behind him he shuts the door to his heart. His deep voice mumbles out quietly, “Never again.”

@weekly-writing-challenge

[redeyedryu]

Cross Dimensional Problems

Chapter 2 - Hmmm... | [Ao3]  | 1 | x |  » |

Hey look! Another chapter! And it hasn't even been a day! Amazing, I know. Who knows when the next one'll come though.

Summary:  What if I told you that your whole existence is nothing more than a creation meant to entertain people?

What if I told you that you're not even the original, that you're just some recolored imitation?

So. This is apparently a thing that's happening. And you’re pretty sure it really is because those slaps to the face didn't exactly feel pleasant. Neither did the pinches. Your company is probably questioning your state of mind after that display and honestly? That's fair because you're currently doing the same thing.

The proverbial “they” say you can't feel pain in a dream but what if your brain is just really good at playing pretend? It'd make more sense than this—sitting on a thread bare, obnoxious green sofa that doesn't make you think of a very certain event in a very certain game. The skeletons kind of drive that point hard enough, you don't need more reminders, thank you.

Someone clears their …throat? Whatever, the sound is made and it draws your attention, your eyes drifting to one skeleton in particular out of the three—the Classic™ one.

“heya,” he says and oh boy, that is a really deep voice. Very nice, very rumbly. You could listen to it for hours, you think. “what’re uh… what’re ya doin’ down here, bud?”

You purse your lips and squint your eyes, fingers pinching and pulling and scratching at the suede fabric of the couch you are sat on. It’s wedged off to the side of the safety hazard that is the sparking boiler-thing, just near enough for you to have dazedly stumbled over to.

“Hallucinating, I think,” you eventually reply as you continue to fidget. The fingers of one hand slip and you accidentally stab the side of your thigh with a particularly sharp nail. You don't so much as react to the stabbing pain. “Or maybe I'm actually having some kind of mental break?”

You watch (see: blatantly ogle) as the skeleton’s expression shifts, his sockets pinching as his brow furrows, as that perpetual grin of his dips at the corners. He pulls his shoulders in a shrug, that iconic blue hoodie of his bunching and creasing with the motion.

You never did get around to ordering one of those. Too bad, it looks really comfy.

“gonna be honest, kid,” that deep, soothing bass breaks through the wandering of your mind. “wasn't expecting to see a human down here.”

“Didn’t really expect to be down here,” you shoot back. You let loose a heavy sigh, pushing air through your nose as you slouch and violently throw yourself back against the couch. Your arms flail as you rant, “There’re bags of popato chisps and Grillby’s takeout bags and talking skeletons and couches from video games and nothing is making any sense! ” An arm lays across your face, shielding your eyes, as the opposite lays bent above your head.

There’s an awkward stretch of silence, though you're pretty sure you hear the ruffling of fabric, the sktch of someone’s shoes coasting along the filthy floor. And then,

“uh… what?”

Your arms shoot up, fingers splayed, and you glare at the ceiling as you shout,” Video games, Sans! Video games!!” You pull yourself back into a proper seated position and meet the eyes (eye sockets??) of the vanilla bean. Oh. Huh. He’s doing that pitch black eye socket thing. Looks like the edgy bastard behind him is doing it too. Maybe the tall one is as well. You can't tell with Papyrus types--sometimes they have eyelights, sometimes they don't. Oh well.

“What?” Your brows furrow and you purse your lips as you tell them to, “Stop doing that eye-thing at me.”

They don't listen, of course. Just continue to creepily, silently stare at you.

“Stop it!” you demand, and in an effort to get them to cease and desist, bring your hands together in a rather forceful clap. You have to bite your lip to keep from laughing at the way they jolt at the noise.

Sans clears his non-existent throat again, then he shuffles in place, before finally, “how’d ya know my name, kid?”

You quirk a brow.

“What? You're telling me most people wouldn't recognize the brother of monsterkind’s mascot?” Hey, look at that, he really does sweat blue magic. Neat. “Aren't there only like two skeletons in all of existence? Your alternate copies don't count.”

Op. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say ‘cause the voided eye sockets are back again.

“Hey, no! You stop that!” You snap your fingers several times in quick succession and thankfully, it seems to work.

”I mean… Y’all are on the surface, right? This is a post-pacifist ending timeline, right? It usually is in these kind of scenarios.”

And before the sweating Sans so much as squeaks, you hear a rumbling growl, see a blur of reds and black, and then you’re being pinned to the sofa. Underfell Sans is literally right up in your grill, his snarling, sharp-toothed face mere inches from yours.

“th’ fuck kinda shit’re you spoutin’, ya sack a’ shit?”

Oh. This is awkward. Not to mention uncomfortable. He’s practically kabedon’d you, arms on either side of your head, a sneakered foot precariously positioned between your legs.

Kinky.

His voice is pretty nice, too; a deep bass like his vanilla counterpart, though there’s an edge to it that the blue-clad skeleton’s clearly lacks. You think you could listen to this guy's voice for hours too.

You sink into the couch a bit, entirely unimpressed, and shift your weight to the side, bringing up a hand to push against his arm, and slide to the side, out from under him. Your nonchalance seems to catch him off guard as he just stares, befuddled, as you casually extricate yourself, resettling against the arm of the couch.

“C’mon,” you start, gaze shifting from Underfell, to Undertale, to Underswap, “you're smarter than that. You can pick up on the context clues, can't you?”

“the machine…” Your gaze shifts back to the tall, lanky skeleton still standing towards the back as he speaks. His voice is definitely somewhere in the tenor range, though it’s a bit raspy. It's nice, but nowhere near as smooth, broadcasting quality as Sans's is. “you're from an alternate timeline.”

He sounds so convinced, so sure of his deduction. You? Not so much.

“Mmm… something like that? I guess?”

The edgy skeleton beside you shifts, lowers his arms from the couch and instead just… lets himself flop into the cushions. The action causes you to jostle slightly.

“whadda ya mean, ‘summin’ like that’?” he all but growls, scowling at you.

“I mean what I mean. It's something like that but not quite? Because uh…” You drag your eyes from one skeleton to the next and then back again before shifting your gaze to the left and right. Man, this place is an absolute pigsty. “Because hmmm….”

Sans, the Classic™ one, chooses that moment to re-engage with the conversation. He lets loose a world weary sigh and plops onto the other end of the couch, sandwiching his Underfell variant between the two of you.

“‘hmmm’?” he prompts.

“Yes, hmmm,” you respond, face scrunching up in thought. Well, the cat’s pretty much out of the bag (not that it was ever really in one to begin with) so. What’ve you got to lose?

“It's a game,” you begin and you don't miss the way they all seem to snap to attention. “Undertale, by the way. That's what it's called. Came out a few years ago. Actually just had its what… fourth anniversary the other week?”

Underswap Papyrus, likely envious of everyone else sitting but him, comes over to the couch and props himself against the opposite arm. “so… what. we’re just a buncha video game characters to you?” He appears to be frowning as he fishes a honey sucker from his hoodie pouch pocket and wedges the treat between his teeth.

“Mmmmmmm… no. Not exactly. Sans—the original one—” and you point to the blue-clad skeleton, “is technically the only video game character. Which by the way, congratulations on making it into Smash, even if it’s just as a costume.”

Sans’s expression twists in confusion, a bead of sweat dripping down the side of his skull as he responds, voice slightly higher pitched, “…thanks?” He has no idea what you’re talking about.

“You’re welcome. But as I was saying, Sans is the original, the main branch, as I’m sure you’re all familiar with that particular analogy. You,” and you point to the Papyrus, who quirks a brow, “and you,” you point to the scowling, sharp-toothed Sans whose scowl only tightens in response, “are from AUs—Alternate Universes created by fans curious about different takes on canon. Underswap and Underfell, respectively.”

It occurs to you, then, that maybe you should go at this a little lighter, maybe don’t be so blunt about everything… but. Well… you don’t really know how else to lay this down. You’ll apologize about any existential crises you induce later, you guess—asking for forgiveness over permission and all that. Besides, it’s not like you asked for this situation to unfold, either; it’s not like you know what the hell is going on. You’re pretty much in the same boat as these jokers.

The skeleton seated beside you growls (he likes to do that a lot, doesn’t he?) and twists to face you, the little lights in his eye sockets burning red hot.

“s’what? we’re s’posed t’believe yer a human from sum kinna reality where we ain’t even real? jus’ summin made up fer yer own sick entertainment?”

You recoil at the sheer animosity in his voice, back sinking into the worn padding of the couch’s arm. It’s a miracle you don’t just tumble over the side of the thing, honestly, with how far you pull away.

“Uh… I mean. No? You’re free to believe whatever you want but it’s not like I just decided to break into some random dingy basement in my lounge clothes for shits and giggles.”

He just stares at you, his scowl tightening, his sockets creasing and his face just absolutely scrunching in anger before he’s just. Gone. Poof! Shortcutted right the fuck outta here.

Well.

That was a thing that happened.

You can empathize with the guy to a certain degree but well. You don’t exactly want to spend too much energy thinking about things. Not right now. Like a lot of things in your life, you’ll deal with it later.

Brushing that exchange aside, you find yourself releasing a lot of pent up tension you hadn’t realized you were holding onto (in your shoulders, your neck, back, even your jaw ) and address the two remaining skeletons still sat with you. Sans doesn’t appear to be sweating anymore, though he does look like he’s thinking something over. Underswap Papyrus is much the same, though he’s taken to fiddling with the stick of his honey sucker.

“So hey,” you start, effectively drawing their attention, “got any popato chisps?”

You want to know if they taste any different from regular potato chips.

[zippdementia]

Part 72 Alignment May Vary: The Vortexian Spires

The best laid plans...

Before tonight’s session, I had made some notes on what I intended to lead the group through. They were to go to the Vortexian Spires where the Aether Craws roosted. The spires I described in my notes as huge floating pillars, the broken remnants of a Cloud Giant’s domain, a Cloud Giant who challenged the god-like Genies and was rewarded for his avarice with the destruction of his kingdom. My notes read “He is still imprisoned underneath the Citadel of Ice and Steel and sometimes the city shakes as he rages against the walls of his prison.” Down from the spires dangle impossibly large chains that wind their way up past humungous waterfalls to the underside of the spires themselves, which are littered with the nests of the Aether Craw. A quick trek through some caves leads to the “overside” of the spires and the players’ goal.

Here’s what I believed would happen tonite... this is taken from my notes. As you read through it, note how linear it is and how everything is fairly pre-determined. I’ll talk about that in a moment...

The players, accompanied by Star, Puck, and Alyss, would start out the session already at the spires, climbing the chains. Star shows them these grapple hooks, kind of like the hookshots in Zelda games, which can fire off with pneumatic hisses and pull players across great distances if aimed right. Using these to climb the chains, the players would be attacked on the way up by a giant serpent swimming effortlessly through the sky waterfalls. It was meant to be a beatable fight, though made tricky by their precarious positioning.

They make it to the top, and see the nests, the birds swarming over the peaks like colorful adornments. Star finds the biggest bird. She is going to go for that one. She grapples off towards it and has the players follow, telling them that it will take a show of character and strength to win over their prize. A series of challenges follow to help Star tame the beast.

Once astride, the creature takes off through the mists. At this point, there is a cry below them and Star looks down to see another large bird with a strange wing. Her eyes widen. “It’s Feserania’s bird!” (see previous post for the significance of this) She says she has to catch that bird and gives the reigns over to the players, telling them they are going to have to demonstrate their strength to the Aether Craw in order to ride it. “Meet me on the tallest spire!” She then leaps off, grappling into the mists.

The players are left to handle the Aether Craw and must win contests of strength against it as it dives and spins through the air. After succeeding three times, they control the mount and tame it and make it to the highest spire to await the coming of Star. 

But she never shows and as the day wears on (between three suns, there is never night on the plane of air), the weather begins to shift. A massive storm hits and the Craw becomes agitated and demanding to flee, only controllable by a combination of three successful charm checks or strength checks.

If the Craw doesn’t flee, they are hit with a screaming gale. Puck calls out that it is an elder elemental, they must flee. Regardless, the players are attacked by three air elemental. They may be able to use the Craw creatively to escape as they are chased through the floating spires. If they succeed on all of this, they have their mount. They must name him and prepare for the race.

... are not as good as the machinations of the moment

When I first started DMing three years ago, I meticulously planned everything out. Encounters, NPC scripts, item lists, treasure lists... I rehearsed fights and memorized spell effects and ran scenarios to figure out what would happen if Tyler did this, or Morgaknight choose this attack, or Kavan targeted this guy with this move. I would spend two hours designing and stating out a fight that the players may never face.

All of this taught me things. I learned how CRs on the page translated to CRs in actual combat. I learned many spells and treasure effects. I got deep into the mechanics behind DnD 5e and feel genuinely more nerdy because of it. The best lesson I learned, however, was how NOT to prepare for Dungeons and Dragons and how that makes a game better.

Recently, I’ve been embracing this notion more and more. So when I looked over my two page of notes for the upcoming session and found them to be fairly detailed and descriptive of everything that I suspected would happen that session, I realized something needed to change. I tossed aside the notes and destroyed everything I’d written with two sentences spoken to the players at the beginning of the session:

The Vortexian spires await you. How do you want to get there?

I just handed the keys to the bus to the players. And of course what followed was a dozen times better than my original notes.

So the players decide to ask Immerstal for his help. And because I legitimately don’t know how well connected he is out here, I have the players roll for him. And they roll low. An 8, to be precise. And because of this, I have to make up some sketchy NPCs on the spot, with ulterior motives. Oh, and an airship that will actually take the players to the Spires despite the poor roll (because failed rolls are so much more interesting when they complicate instead of just blocking). I start describing the airship and Stalker (Carrick’s player) says the ship reminds him of the koopa kids from Super Mario Brothers 3.

This is how the players end up riding to the Vortexian Spires with the Koopa Kids. Only here they are a cursed Genasi family, the Minja family, cursed by a Genie for trying to trick it into giving them wishes, forced to wear this bizarre half-human, half-turtle hybrid form. It’s a little creepy, really, as some parts of them are recognizably human and the whole image just doesn’t fit together. Their leader, Otto, explains how they have fallen and how the once proud family is now a bunch of (get ready for it) “Remade Mutant Minja Turtles.”

And this is how what was planned to be a simple and quick opening to a session turns into an entire memorable session with a single roll and an offhand comment. Let’s go down the list and see what changes:

The players, accompanied by Star, Puck, and Alyss, would start out the session already at the spires, climbing the chains.  

Instead the players start on board the Minja ship, where they learn that the Minja family is trying to pay off their debt to their Genie tormentor and that they believe they can kill and harvest a bunch of body parts from the Aether Craws for a ton of gold. The players realize this and quickly make (successful) rolls and speeches to convince the Minjas to instead try and tame the Aether Craws, accept their broken nature, and find peace by bonding with the birds. In an unusually impassioned speech, Imoaza asks them “aren’t you really just looking for someone to accept you?” The Minjas are moved to tears and plan to help the players.

Star shows them these grapple hooks, kind of like the hookshots in Zelda games, which can fire off with pneumatic hisses and pull players across great distances if aimed right.

The Minjas give the players the grapple hooks and they all grapple off to the chains, pulling the airship alongside and leaving Alyss to man it. This grappling plan... it doesn’t go great. Imoaza and Aldric make it to the floating island fairly easily, but Carrick botches his chain roll and plummets down into the open abyss that is the air planet, only saved at the last minute by grabbing one of the Minjas (a silent bloke named Plato) who barley manages to hookshot the chains and pull them to safety.

Using these to climb the chains, the players would be attacked on the way up by a giant serpent swimming effortlessly through the sky waterfalls. It was meant to be a beatable fight, though made tricky by their precarious positioning.

Because Carrick is the only one climbing the chains, he and poor Plato are attacked instead by the serpent. It’s far too strong for Carrick to take on solo (and Plato isn’t much of a help, his attempt to cast powerful time stopping magic failing to do anything). The snake chases them around the chains, breathing lightning, snapping down with its mighty jaws, and trying to shove them off with its powerful coils into open air. Carrick finally chases it off when he dives inside its mouth and channels divinity from inside it, backfiring its own electrical energy down into it. It doesn’t kill it, but it flees from him, terrified by this display of power. And also by something else, growing beneath them.

It is the elder storm, brought into the scenario a lot sooner because it felt better to put it here and drive the action forward (hilariously, I tried to bring it in earlier, but all the players failed their perception rolls so badly, they failed to sense the storm building up). It begins to form a vortex around the chains beneath Carrick and he begins to climb madly, as Plato finally begins to speak to him in a long winded and almost non-sensical manner about the philosophical nature of storms: 

“The question that we face here while staring into the abyss of the storm is not so much whether we believe that the storm exists beneath us, but whether we believe the nature of the storm is to do us harm. In fact, if the storm is simply a part of nature itself and is acting according to the nature of being a storm, then if we fall into it any effect it has on us is also part of our nature, the nature of being in a storm. Therefore, we do not have to consider what happens to be harm, but rather simply us living out the expected act of being and the storm acting out its purpose in being. Of course, this all assumes that nature itself has a purpose and is not a simple random connection of events and forces.”

They see the nests, the birds swarming over the peaks like colorful adornments. Star finds the biggest bird. She is going to go for that one.

While Carrick climbs, Imoaza and Aldric climb up through the underside of the mountain to come out on its surface. Here they, the Minjas, and Star and Puck begin to try and plan a route to the birds that won’t disturb the nesting. The Minjas say they are super stealthy and good at this kind of thing and, well, earlier Imoaza failed an insight check into these guys, and so now that comes into play. She believes them, and convinces Aldric they are “the real deal.” This is followed by a hilarious botch, a literal roll of 1 on the stealth die for the Minjas as they launch into horrible, horrible action. Battle cries are made, swords are slammed loudly together, and one of the Minjas hookshots a piece of the cliffside only to realize too late he’s hookshotting one of the Aether Craws... who promptly takes off, pulling him off the island and disappearing with him helplessly dangling from his grappling tool. Bye bye, Bill.

Mass hysteria breaks out on the island. The Aether Craw are definitely disturbed by the sudden eruption of movement and noise coming from these mishapen misfortunates charging them with drawn blades and weapons. Star desperately tries to regain control of the situation while Aldric goes running for one of the smaller Aether Craw, determined to bond with it and make it his mount. Imoaza freezes herself in the Tomb of Leviticus (a very cool Warlock effect that encases her in protective damage soaking ice for a round or two) just as one of the bigger birds drops down and rends the crap out of two Minja (in a maul using all four of its taloned legs). If not for Imoaza’s spell, she would be killed too. Instead, she breaks free of the ice in time to take cover behind a large boulder and debate what to do next. Star ends up scrambling towards her and suggesting they need to calm one of the beasts and bond with it quickly, before the whole herd coordinates an attack.

She grapples off towards it and has the players follow, telling them that it will take a show of character and strength to win over their prize. A series of challenges follow to help Star tame the beast.

Once astride, the creature takes off through the mists. At this point, there is a cry below them and Star looks down to see another large bird with a strange wing. Her eyes widen. “It’s Feserania’s bird!” (see previous post for the significance of this) She says she has to catch that bird and gives the reigns over to the players, telling them they are going to have to demonstrate their strength to the Aether Craw in order to ride it. “Meet me on the tallest spire!” She then leaps off, grappling into the mists.

So a lot of this ends up happening. The challenges, Star noticing Feserania’s bird... but Star doesn’t go leaping off any spires. In fact, the players end up leading all the action, which is better. Three birds get targeted: Aldric leaps astride one and plummets with it off the edge of the mountain, wrestling to bend it to his will with his prodigious strength. Imoaza and Star try to calm Fesserania’s Craw, and the Minjas band together to try and bond with a third, led in the effort by Otto and his daughter, Virgo (who is saving up for an art college fund). 

I roll for the Minjas and... it doesn’t go well. After they lock eyes with one of the big birds, they fail to impress it and the Craw charges them, tearing them apart into bloody hunks and finally impressing upon Imoaza that, no, they weren’t stealth ninjas and, no, they weren’t prepared for this mission at all. 

I also roll for Star and roll incredibly poorly for her attempts to bond with Fesserania’s bird. Instead, it is left to Imoaza to try and make Charisma rolls to empathize with the Craw, and she succeeds incredibly (all the more impressive because of her dismally low charisma score). Star joins her on the bird, wiping away a tear. “I’m being stupid,” she explains to Imoaza. “I thought I would be the one to finally tame Fesserania’s Craw and for a moment I thought maybe by bonding with her Craw I could maybe feel her again. Be close to her. But she’s chosen you, instead. Maybe she isn’t ready to forgive me. Or maybe she’s gone, and this has nothing to do with anything. Maybe I’m too close... I’m rambling, damn.”

Imoaza doesn’t know how to react to this. Emotion isn’t her strong suit, yet in bonding with the Aether Craw she gains a flash of feeling that makes her almost heady. Bonding with an Aether Craw is hard to describe. It may be magical in nature, it’s hard to know. It takes all the elements of bonding with a horse and cranks the dial to 11. A good horse rider can feel the horse’s emotions through every movement of the horse’s body and vice versa. With an Aether Craw, the rider has this sensation, yes, and on top of that feels like they ARE the Aether Craw. Experienced riders learn to differentiate between what is the Craw’s emotions and desires and what is their own, but as this is Imoaza’s first time, she has to focus hard to maintain her usual monotone reticence.

Someone else ends up being disappointed as well, and it is also a surprise: Aldric! He fails to bond with his Aether Craw with a series of bad rolls and ends up getting thrown off it, plummeting into the open air. This is pretty angering for Aldric, who has been trying to replace a mount ever since letting his go back at the Fane of Tiamet. And it also poses a significant problem, because it’s at this moment that the players notice the storm building up beneath the mountain. And then Aldric plummets into it.

Carrick at this point asks if Plato can cast haste on him and the Minja Turtle tries, but messes it up and instead blasts him with color spray in the face, causing Carrick to drop him into the storm along with Aldric. Carrick shakes off the spell and manages to clamber up at last onto the mountain, in time to see the remaining Minjas getting torn apart by the Aether Craw. He gets targeted himself and after unsuccessfully trying to calm the Craw goes into full rage mode.

I don’t recall how much we’ve talked of Carrick’s past. At some point, he turned from the path of good and decided that dominion over others was the best way to achieve order in the world and honor his gods. During this time, Carrick wielded a quarterstaff of his own making, imbued with necrotic energy. He still carries it as a reminder of the evil he once did, and he uses it now against the Craw.

Sometimes dice rolls just seem to go along with the story. Tonite is one of those nights. The Minjas have been terrible at everything, the Craw took to Imoaza instead of Star, and now Carrick rolls two critical hits on the Aether Craw he is fighting, and in a show of violence and speed that he has never displayed to the group before, Carrick terrifies the Aether Craw he faces, tearing into it with such ferocity that it is forced to back away in fear for its life.

At this moment, Imoaza and Star land on the mountain and Imoaza calls out to Carrick, bringing him back to himself long enough to get him to join them on the bird before he retreats into himself, horrified by his loss of control. Meanwhile, the storm is approaching. The general consensus is they have to get the heck out of Dodge.

A massive storm hits and the Craw becomes agitated and demanding to flee, only controllable by a combination of three successful charm checks or strength checks.

Inside the storm, Aldric is being battered from all sides. Lightning and thunder, tempest and surging power, lift and spin and rip at Aldric. And then, suddenly, it stops and he realizes he is gripping the Rod of Storms and commanding obedience of the forces that move around him. The storm addresses him then, demanding to know of the power he wields, calling him wizard, and asking how he came to create such an item. Aldric is honest, saying that the Rod of Storms is something he inherited from an ally and he is not sure how he uses it. At this, the storm addresses him again, asking him what it is he desires with such power. Aldric’s mind is filled with the thoughts of rebuilding the Green Company, of returning to Faerun, of being a strong leader for the Company. And the storm seems to understand.

“I will join the company,” it announces in a voice made of the elements. “And together, we shall build it into something worthy of such power.”

And with that, Aldric is ejected from the tempest, the Rod of Storms suddenly seeming to make more sense to him. A piece of the Elder Tempest is in the Rod now, though that does not mean that danger has passed. A storm is a storm after all, and nature is fickle. Aldric finds he can fly for a short moment, and he directs himself towards his companions escaping from the scene of chaos on their Aether Craw (placeholder name is Cookie, because Imoaza loves cookies, as comically established in our prior session). Aldric is none too pleased to see that the snake woman has charmed an Aether Craw while he failed to do so (he fails to acknowledge the fact that he just charmed an elder tempest). Still, there are bigger matters at hand.

The final part of the session is spent escaping the storm while Aldric struggles to direct it with the Rod of Storms. It makes for a narrow escape and a fantastic end to the session, setting us up for next time’s crazy crazy race.

And the point is? The hundred post lesson...

What this session (and this post) illustrates is how a good game of Dungeons and Dragons grows organically with the story telling. It leads me to share one major piece of advice for aspiring DMs, a piece of advice that I believe in so strongly that I would say that if you take nothing else away from the hundred or so posts I’ve made, take this.

Listen to your players. 

This is the number one rule. As a DM you have the burden of being the personal screenwriter for a television series for your players. But you also have the benefit of being able to have their immediate feedback and change direction on a whim if needed. 

If your players express an interest in something, in anything, go with that. If they are enjoying a scene, keep playing with it. If they seem to be disinterested in something, mix it up and take a hard left to bring them back.

Don’t confuse this with giving the players everything they want to happen. If a die roll or a bad decision kills them or loses them the big treasure, so be it. But when running your session, don’t be afraid to let them steer the action. Again, if they steer it directly into a cliff, that’s okay. As long as they were the ones who brought it there, they won’t mind. Probably. Not too much.

If you build a dungeon room and threw in some meaningless tapestries just to fill it out (”there’s some decaying tapestries on the walls”) and suddenly one of your players is fascinated with these tapestries, convinced they hold some deeper meaning, then give the tapestries some deeper meaning. It is clues like this that tell you what experience your players want to be having. Pay attention to that, and I promise you your games will always be memorable and enjoyable.

That’s why, when my players decided to go with Immerstal, I changed the scenario to suit it. Because they were laughing and getting a kick out of the Minja Turtles, I made them an integral part of the night’s session. When Imoaza took it upon herself to try to calm Fessoriana’s bird and managed to do it, I didn’t have Star butt in and do it better. Instead she bowed to the player’s expertise and the story changed. For the better, honestly.

Listen to your players. They will tell you what they want. This goes two ways, of course. You are also trying to tell a story and have your own style and aesthetic. A good player will understand this and will be looking to plug into that more than they will be trying to fight it. That’s a bigger issue for another day, but for now, my biggest advice to you as a DM is to listen. It’s advice that took me a while to get used to, and for my first couple of years of DMing I took hours to prepare before each session. I think it’s natural to believe that as DM you need to over prepare in order to create a good experience. But trust me: let go a little bit and just see what happens when you let things be steered by your players. Even if just a bit. You’ll be surprised the places your group will go.

[2theburgs]

Day 5 Bayeux and East

Okay this post is 1 day late. Hoping to get caught up here. Today we packed up and got ready to move further East so that biking to Juno and Gold beach wouldn’t be ridiculously far. First though, Eric and Regine gave us a tour of their “little zoo”. Their property is huge! We started out by visiting the Koi fish, who by the way, are really friendly and like to be pet! Then moved on to see the ducks and horses. The cats were sleeping. There are apparently, extra ducks hanging out at their place because they are entering hunting season here. Regine said the ducks know that their pond is safe. The dogs (5) followed us almost the entire tour- all 5 of them are rescue dogs from various parts of the world! So basically Regine is me just 40 years later! She is living the farm sanctuary. At the end we got to meet their bunny who was sooo cute and WAY bigger than little Pipkin.

Eric told us a bit more about the history here in WWII. He was of course born after, but his parents remembered. He said basically, the Germans came in and occupied the region nearer the end of the war, then they left June 6, came back from June 7-8, and then left again. Shortly after that, the Americans rolled in. He didn’t mention if this property was occupied, or used by either side. We did learn that his house is from the late 17th century! Good grief!

We packed up our stuff and said goodbye. I almost felt like I wanted to hug them, but at the risk of being awkward, I went for the handshake. We started headed NE, but decided to stop at the German war cemetery on the way. This was a very interesting experience. It is a simple place, there is one large statue in the middle but in comparison to the American cemetery, it’s just...less. You can understand why. There are over 22 000 German soldiers buried here, 2000 of which were SS officers. The cemetery and corresponding exhibit centre really focused on peace for all, that everyone deserves a proper burial and a grave site. This is much easier to understand for the regular German soldier, many of whom were forced to fight, but the SS? Ugh, that’s harder pill to swallow. Despite my mixed emotions, I tried to take the perspective of peace.

We moved along to Bayeux. This wasn’t particularly on the list of things to see, but Eric recommended it particularly because it was largely untouched in the war (unlike Caen). It was taken by the allies with relative ease. Most of it is lined with cobblestone streets and old Norman architecture. It was really beautiful. There is a really big Catholic church in the town center. The original church building was built in the 11th century, the only part that remains are the crypts- dark and kind of creepy, a few quick pics and I ran back up the stairs. What is very interesting is on the church grounds there is a wall that is enclosed that dates back to the 3rd century! We wandered along the streets, and Ken finally got the crepes he’s been talking about since we got here!

We arrived at our next B&B around 430 pm and we’re really surprised by how close it is to the beach. We technically are on Gold beach, just East of Arromanches Les Bain. We walked into the little town, La Guerre and stopped in at the local butcher. It became abundantly clear that we should have practiced our French a bit more. In this area anyway, there a quite a few people who don’t speak English. We tried to get by in our broken 2-3 word French that we could pull from school. Ken said “Parle-vous Francais?” and the young woman behind the counter, smiled and said, “no”. Fortunately, there was a French couple behind us who knew a bit more English and helped us out. They were a bit older, I think perhaps felt a bit sorry for us and the lady behind the counter. We all had a good laugh as we tried to navigate our two languages. All in all it was a success and we walked out with a bunch of meat! Unfortunately, the bakery was closed so we went without a baguette tonight. Oh well, there was still wine!

The most shocking thing was seeing the remnants of Mulberry harbour. There is so much more than I thought. We were able to walk out to one of them at low tide. Incredible. 75 years later and these things are still here. Tomorrow we’ll head into Arromanche to learn more about the construction and execution of this massive undertaking.

[crashdevlin]

Marion-9: Friends In Low Places

Marion Masterlist

Author’s Note: Originally posted to ao3 (This is an edited and improved version). This started as an excuse to write some Castiel/OFC loving, but it blossomed into an epic-length fic and even an AU where Marion was with them the whole time.

Summary:  Dean’s not the best brother, Cas isn’t the best boyfriend. Sometimes, dreams are the best escape.

Pairing(s): Castiel/Marion, Lucifer/Marion

Word Count: 3403

Chapter Warnings: feeling devalued, family drama, manipulation

Marion could only see Sam’s back as she came through Bobby’s study, but she could tell just from how he was sitting at the table, that he was the old Sam again. “Hey, Sasquatch!”

Sam scoffed happily and stood, smiling brightly. “Marion! Where’ve you been?” he asked, wrapping her in a hug.

They sat down at the table. “Well, Dean couldn’t live a happy, normal life with Lisa as long as his angel-resurrected twin sister was pulling on his coattails.” Marion gave a small look over her shoulder as Dean walked in and leaned against the door frame. “So, I went off to find my own normal. I got my GED and some college under my belt. I changed my name and got a boyfriend. And a cat!” She sighed. “But I’ve got a bunch of Dean’s memories in my brain, and hunter tendencies got the better of me. After about a year, I got mixed up with putting down a demon that had convinced somebody to hang four nuns. And hunting just seemed more important than a degree.”

“I didn’t know you changed your name.” Dean spoke up from behind her.

“You didn’t ask.” Marion snapped.

Sam’s brow furrowed as he looked from his brother to his sister. “What’d you change your name to?”

Marion looked down, a bit embarrassed. “Well, you guys call me ‘Marion’, of course. It’s my given name. But I changed it to Barbara… Bobbi… Singer.” Sam and Dean snickered. Marion rolled her eyes. “Chuck told me that Bobby was dead. I wanted to honor him. Shut up.”

“No middle name?” Dean asked, walking over to the coffee maker.

“No one likes their middle name. It’s not important.”

“Yeah, but you chose yours. What’d you choose?” Dean pushed.

“Samantha. Barbara Samantha Adama Singer.” Marion lied.

“Bobby, Sam, and Adam. Isn’t that sweet?” Dean rolled his eyes.

“Everybody who died in the Apocalypse. I’d’ve stuck a ‘Cassie’ in there, too, but the name was already pretty long.” Marion quipped.

Dean slammed the coffee pot back onto the burner and walked out with his mug. Sam’s eyes followed him out. “Okay, what the hell?” Sam asked.

Marion took a deep breath. *Don’t poke the wall.* “Dean and I had a disagreement while you were gone. He was… working hard to get you back. But the way he was working toward it… he was working with a demon, and the demon couldn’t bring you back, but Dean wanted to believe. So, he let this demon use him for favors. For months, he did this creature’s bidding.” Marion looked at the table, her lips pursed in anger.

“I told Dean that it didn’t make sense, that he was being used. But if there was a tiny chance of it working… he would do anything for you, Sam. He won’t even listen to me. So… I’m just letting myself get used to… being so unimportant.”

Sam took his sister’s hand, long fingers curling easily around her much smaller ones. “You aren’t unimportant. Dean and I, we’ve depended on each other for so long, we get irrational when the other dies. It’s not an insult-”

“He thought I was dead for a year and he barely flinched, Sammy. He cares less about me than he did Jo and Ellen. Which I get, ‘cause he didn’t get my mind, I got his. None of you know me. But Dean still thinks he gets to act like he does. And I’m not here to be lied to. I’m here because I’m not cut out for normality and I’m tired of hunting alone. Otherwise, I’d be off by myself, like Chuck… strongly suggested.”

“You’re right. We barely know you, me especially. You were with us for less than a month before you got possessed. And then, you left right after Meg left you. But… I know you can quote Shakespeare at the drop of a hat. I know you prefer the Grimm Brothers over Disney. I know you never felt completely comfortable with the Cornwells, which is why it was such a profound experience when Castiel filled you full of grace. I know you hate Zeppelin, even if you won’t admit it to Dean.” Sam smiled, softly. “If I know all that from a few weeks in the middle of Armageddon, don’t you think Dean knows more?”

Marion smiled up at Sam, a bit sad, with a bit of pity in the gesture. “I can list a few thousand things Dean knows about you. Thousands of things about Dad and Bobby. Hundreds of things he knows about Jo Harvelle. Dean probably knows a fraction of that about me.”

“You think you’re Rapunzel. It’s why your hair used to be so long,” Dean said, from behind Marion. “It was the most read volume on your side table at the hospital. When Meg cut your hair, I thought you’d realized you were out of the tower. You take your coffee with 4 sugars and cream, but if someone accidentally brings you a coffee black, you’ll drink it, anyway. You never had a crush before Cas, and that’s why you fell like a schoolgirl.”

Dean leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. “You miss the Cornwells, and that makes you feel guilty. Just like you feel guilty that you sat in a house for twenty-seven years being treated like the next damn Messiah, while we fought monsters and broke our bones. You’re trying to hide that you’re back with Cas, ‘cause even though you’re pissed at me, you don’t want me to be pissed at you and Cas.”

Dean pushed off from the wall, licking his lips before shrugging. “We’re stubborn, so I know you’ll be mad for a while. You’ve got every right. But you love me, and you’re a lot nicer than I am, so when you’re ready to forgive me, I’m willing to… make more of an effort to show you you’re valuable.”

Marion tried to keep her face stern as she looked up at her twin, but her heart was melting. “How did you know?” she whispered.

“That Cas is the reason you want your own room? He’s been leaving more and mentioning his war less. And you’ve been a lot more successful with your hunts lately. I did the math.”

“I’m still mad at you.”

“And I’m still not cool with you dating Cas, but… we’ll get over it.”

Sam looked awkwardly between his older siblings. Marion took a look at Sam, then Dean. “Eventually,” she said, with a nod, before standing and walking out of the kitchen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So, Dean knows?” Castiel asked.

“Yes, but you don’t have anything to worry about. He’ll get past it.”

“I’m not worried about Dean.”

“I’m not… it’s not a big deal, Castiel. Dean kinda gave his blessing… in his own way.”

Castiel sighed loudly, sending static through the phone. “His blessing is unimportant, Marion… but it is much easier for us to be together when Dean is oblivious.”

“I understand, but… he’s observant.” She shrugged, feeling a bit confused at Castiel’s rough tone. “So, why don’t you come to Bobby’s and we’ll work through it, together?”

“I can’t. I’m only on Earth to retrieve an item. I have to get back to Heaven.”

“Oh,” she said, crestfallen. “Okay, well… I heard Dean and Bobby talking about a case… I’ll just… see if they would want me to go with them. Or I can stick around and watch out for Sam. I’ll find something to do. You just, uh, call me the next time you’re back on Earth with some extra time.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean said, setting his bag on the table next to her. “Someone’s got to stay here with Sammy.”

“Great. I’ll watch him sleep and try not to poke the wall while you’re gone,” Marion growled, before walking out into the study and flopping down on the couch. Twenty minutes later, Bobby walked in, alone. She straightened, trying to look around him. “Where’s Dean?”

“He and Sam took off together. I’m still on the fence about that boy after what he pulled last week, so… I opted to let Dean take him out alone,” Bobby answered, grabbing a bottle from his desk drawer.

Marion shook her head, anger radiating through her. “Of course. I, specifically, ask to go out on a case and Dean takes Sam, instead. I’m sensing a pattern here, Bobby.”

“He didn’t exclude you on purpose, ya know. It happened pretty quick.”

“He never does it on purpose, Bobby. But Mister always said, ‘It doesn’t matter if you meant to, because you didn’t mean not to’. He never considers, Bobby, never thinks of anyone but himself and Sam.” Marion lied down on the couch and closed her eyes. “I’m gonna take a nap… or a coma.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Marion arrived in her dreamscape in her basement bedroom at the Cornwells’ home. The familiar scene of grey cinder block walls lined with full bookshelves made her smile. She breathed in deeply, a savory and sweet smell invading her nostrils. “That smells like…”

“Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and homemade yeast rolls. Mmm-mh, good,” Lucifer said, appearing on the stairs.

Marion’s eyes went glossy as she looked up at him. “You set up my favorite meal for me? Why?”

Lucifer smiled as he appeared next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Thought you might need it. I mean, Sam and Dean went off to fight evil without you. Brother Castiel is too busy to have a drink with you. Bobby’s got his mouth to the bottle, just on the thought of being around Sam after what he did. Thought you’d enjoy a calm family moment, even one that’s not real.”

“Luke! Is she sleeping? What is taking so long?” Mister’s voice called from upstairs.

“They think I’m 29 and I go to your church.” Lucifer winked and pushed her toward the stairs.

“There they are! The food’s gonna get cold,” Missus said.

Marion sat down at the square oak table, across from Mister and Missus and smiled as Lucifer took the seat next to her. This dream, it made her happy. It filled her with calm and well-being, just like Castiel had when they first met.

Mister and Missus smiled at them as they spooned food onto the plates. “I never imagined the angels would send you a disciple. I almost thought they’d forgotten about you, Marion. But Jesus was in his thirties when he started ministering,” Missus said.

“I’m not… That’s not what I’m here for, Missus,” Marion dissented. “I’m sure I’m not anything like the Nazerene.”

“Oh, hush. The angels had us save you for a reason. Now, eat your meatloaf,” Mister demanded. “How’s that taste, there, Luke?”

Lucifer smiled. “It tastes perfect. You should have a cooking show, Mrs. Cornwell.”

Marion smiled over at Lucifer. He was so much different in this setting. He didn’t seem like a powerful, almost omnipotent creature who had been intent on turning everyone into rage zombies. He seemed almost normal, and like the only person who actually wanted to be around her. Marion shoved a forkful of mashed potatoes into her mouth and thanked Lucifer, silently, that he’d gotten the details of Missus’ cooking perfectly. The grin he shot at her told her he’d heard it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As Lucifer helped Dream Missus clean the dishes, and as Dream Mister retired to his study, Marion snuck out onto the front porch to sit on the little wooden porch swing. She swung back and forth a bit as she stared out at the semi-familiar lights of Lawrence down below her.

Lucifer appeared next to her on the swing and looked out at the lights. “It’s kinda pretty.”

Marion leaned back. “I know I should wake up. I can feel Bobby staring at me from his desk. I can smell the coffee he brewed to nurse his hangover. It’s morning… out there in the real world. I’ve been out since last evening. I should wake up before Bobby starts checking for vital signs. But this world… this dream you made for me… I know why djinns use dream worlds now. I don’t want to go back there where I’m nothing.”

Marion ran her hand through her hair and breathed deeply. “When I was a teen, living here with those God-fearing people, I pulled away from God, just a little bit. I couldn’t help but question it, why God would let a crazy old couple turn a little girl into a false idol. They were so sure, I would be something big, someone important. I never had any aspirations for myself. Mister and Missus told me I’d never leave, not until God willed it, but even if I had… nothing I could have imagined would have been close to my life now. I’m around wonderful, powerful, special people all the time. My boyfriend is an angel. My only real friend is the Fallen Angel. I hunt demons and monsters with my brothers… when they let me go with them… I never had dreams so wonderful as my real life. So, why don’t I want to wake up?”

“Maybe… you know something is wrong. Maybe you don’t want to think about whether the vibe Castiel has been throwing off is the beginning of the end. You don’t want to question whether his distance has to do with the heartbreak God told you is looming. But…” Lucifer turned to look at her instead of the lights. “… you’ll never know for sure if you stick around here. I mean, I like the company, it’s a bit of a sausage fest in the Cage, and I like that you’ve finally recognized me as your friend, but… you have to wake up, Mare. Your brothers are facing something… different, to say the least. You need to be awake.”

A ringing sound went through the air and Lucifer smirked. “Bobby’s phone. That’s them. They need help.”

Marion sank down into the swing. “I wish I could stay.”

“I know. I’ll throw together something good for you tonight. Something like this, but better. I promise, you’ll love it. Go on. Wake up.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Dragons?” Marion asked, incredulously.

“Don’t make sense to me, either, but… Dean says it’s the only thing he and Sam can come up with.”

Marion took a sip of coffee. *Luci did say it was something different.* “So, who would we talk to for dragon lore? I mean, actual dragon lore, not Tolkien or World of Warcraft lore?”

“Oh! Dr. Visyak. Gotta find my address book,” Bobby said, digging through his desk drawer.

“Dr. Visyak. Why does that name sound familiar? Did she write a book?”

Bobby looked up at her as he found the address book he was looking for. “Um, yeah, I think. A textbook on medieval studies. She’s a professor…”

“At San Francisco University. My medieval studies professor down South taught her textbook. She’s brilliant.”

“Yeah. She’s amazing,” Bobby said, pulling his phone out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Marion laid down on Bobby’s couch and closed her eyes, excited for whatever Lucifer had planned for her. She appeared in a hotel lobby, with purple and black and gold streamers and balloons hanging from the roof. She could hear pulsing music behind a set of doors to her left. “What’s this?” she asked, a bit awed.

“This is your Prom, Marion. You never got the chance to go. I thought you’d like the opportunity,” Lucifer said, appearing suddenly, leaning against a table with a bunch of pictures on it.

“I don’t think we’re properly dressed, Luci,” she said, turning to him with a smile.

“Oh, silly me. Forgot the most important part.” Marion looked down and she was wearing a sleeveless red ball gown and long white gloves. She looked up and smiled at him, then frowned playfully when she saw him still wearing jeans and the flannel shirt.

“You’re still under dressed, Luke.”

“Oh, I’m not your date. He is,” Lucifer said, nodding toward a figure suddenly in the doorway to the right of her. Marion gasped a little when she saw Castiel in a black and grey suit.

“But… I don’t want to go with him.” She turned back to Lucifer. “As handsome as he looks, and as much as I would enjoy watching him struggle with a corsage… he’s not really here. And if I’m going to be at my Prom, I’d like to be there with someone who isn’t too busy to even show up in my dreams. What do you say, Lucifer? Will you go to Prom with me?”

Lucifer smirked and stood up, finally. He snapped his fingers and she turned to look as Castiel disappeared. When she turned back around to Lucifer, he was wearing a tuxedo. Marion giggled happily. “You look amazing.”

He offered his arm and she took it, walking into the ballroom.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Marion walked outside as the boys returned, semi-victorious, from their dragon hunt. As Dean walked into the house with a bag of gold and shiny trinkets, Sam grabbed her hand and pulled her over to the open trunk. “You okay, bro?” Marion asked.

Sam’s eyes shined with regret as he looked down at her. “I’m so sorry, Marion.”

“What? For leaving me behind? That was Dean’s fault,” she dismissed. “I don’t…”

“No, I’m…” Sam looked toward the door, then back to his sister. “I’m sorry for what I said. I know now that I’m a big part of why you feel so unimportant. I’m so sorry.”

Marion picked up a knife from the trunk and leaned against the bumper, twirling the blade. “Oh. That. Bobby tell you?”

“Cas.”

Marion nodded. “I don’t really hold it against you, Sam. I know that Soulless Sam is different than Normal Sam.” Sam seemed to relax a little, looked a bit grateful until Marion dropped the knife and looked him in his eyes. “But I do know that Soulless Sam was still Sam. And somewhere, in those dark, deep parts of you that your soul hides away, you really do think everything would be better if I’d just stayed dead. If it makes you feel any better, Sammy, I feel the same way.”

“Marion…” The sadness and guilt in Sam’s eyes only barely overshadowed the pity there.

“Sometimes, people should just stay dead, Sam. Don’t feel bad, though. God’s will or not, I’m here to stay. Do me a favor, and don’t dwell on this. We did have a good reason for not telling you the truth.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So, your boyfriend’s an asshat. Should’ve asked one of us before he filled Sam in,” Dean said, sitting next to Marion on the couch and offering her an open beer.

Marion took a sip of it, keeping her distaste to herself. “Yeah. I know. I mean, Sam kinda tricked him, but… he’s an angel, he should’ve known better.”

Dean nodded in agreement and took a drink of his beer. “So, we’re gonna head out. I’ve got Sam convinced that he shouldn’t think too much. I think we’re okay to go catch a few cases while Bobby works on this ‘Mother of All’ thing and-”

“You’re not leaving me here, Dean.” Marion interrupted in a tired, but cold whisper.

“What?” Dean asked, a bit surprised at the tone.

Marion lifted her head from staring at the floor. “My boyfriend is too busy fighting to come see me, but he has time to regale my brother with a year and a half of events. I have no friends, no family but you two idiots. I am sick of looking outside and seeing junk cars. I am sick of walking into that kitchen and finding nothing but beer and condiments. I’m sick of pretending like Bobby’s taste in beer doesn’t suck. I’d much rather drink shitty beer in a shitty motel room with my brothers, knowing that I’m on the heels of kicking the shit out of some creature or demon. You can’t leave me here with my thoughts, Dean. They’re getting a bit dark.”

Dean nodded, obviously not wanting to leave his sister in such a dangerous mindset. “Yeah, okay. Might need help with Sammy, anyway.”

She leaned her head on Dean’s shoulder. “I think I know why you used to leave a trail of floozies behind you. So much easier.”

“They weren’t all floozies. Some were just naïve and tipsy,” Dean said, taking a drink, and wrapping his arm around her shoulder.

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