#ask away about the process. the piece. any words. symbols. or references you wanna know! id be happy to answer :]

[jcmorrigan]

I don’t know if anyone here has been following the saga of my OC’s, which consists of me finally being brave enough to talk about them on Tumblr because what’s the use of guarding characters I don’t even have a manuscript for? And I wanna have fun. But mostly I’ve just been tagging fashion sets that belong to them, and as of late last night, too many prompts

I had been attempting to write a piece that introduces my villains in a SERIOUS manner by showing off the evil circus I plan to house them all in where each has a different tent they devote to an “act” that’s really their brand of villainy (dancing with deadly weapons, serving poison at the drinks garden, slaying innocent monsters for show, training horrific monsters from the deep sea), but I keep slacking on it, and I also keep adding new villains to the mix that would shake up the outline, so that’s stagnant.

But you know what I did figure out? Last night, I found a prompt that asked which of my OCs would go to Wal-Mart at midnight for fun. And my answer was that Alivain (the villainous leader, a smug young man who is not at all a Mozenrath ripoff) would take all his villain bros to Wal-Mart for a legitimate errand run, then turn around and realize they had all immediately scattered and just go “Oh no.” So here, I’m gonna introduce you to my villain squad by telling you what shit they would start in a Wal-Mart

Versafina is a weapons aficionado, so she’s gonna be looking for things that she can add to her repertoire of melee weapons. Especially small things that can fit in her hidden pockets...and not get noticed by security as she smuggles them out without paying. She spends way too long in the hardware section trying to figure out if a socket wrench is as good for scooping out eyes as she thinks.

Phantasia is busy giving herself a makeover in the cosmetics section, being the glam queen she is. She’s also opened it up for any teammates to come up to her and receive makeovers. She’s not paying for any of it either. Phantasia has also tested all the spray perfumes, then ran out of skin to spray, so she dragged Anastasios over. Anastasios is the physically oldest of the group, a rather elderly man who is about done with all these rowdy millennials (he’s just the character that’s there to say “OK Boomer” to), and he wanted to actually shop for the thing Alivain wanted except Phantasia is using him for more test perfume sprays and he won’t admit he likes smelling pretty.

Zangary is my resident monster hunter and also one of the sane men in the group and he probably ACTUALLY went to get what they came for in the first place and paid for it like a normal person, but no one noticed because no one expected anyone to actually do that. (*sweats nervously* Stoic monster hunter who wears purple and is shippable with the attractive sorcerer? I...I didn’t...it’s not the ADJL Huntsman no)

Dweixyn is lazy as hell and just found some patio furniture to collapse into and take a nap. Except she wears sunglasses everywhere she goes for the aesthetic, so the staff members who pass her briefly don’t realize her eyes are shut at first.

Belador wants two things out of life: to blow things up and to party hard. And because it’s probably not a good idea to blow up the Wal-Mart right now, he’s in the process of attempting to arrange several electronics and lamps to create a tiny pseudo-nightclub. He may also have hijacked the PA system for this purpose and is blasting techno.

Yridel is an angsty cyborg. She went right to the electronics section to see how many things she could connect to and corrupt. Eventually, she found a portable speaker through which she could just blast “Born Depressed” by Drill Queen on repeat, because it’s #mood for her, and just starts strutting around the store doing this to show off how edgy she is. Her snooty boyfriend who is usually narcissistic except when it comes to her, Lainnhartt, is following her and tossing confetti or an acceptable substitute in her wake, going, “That is my GIRL!”

Sherida is a monster who has a humanoid body, so she usually wears a bodysuit and a motorcycle helmet to pass among the general public. Well, tonight, she’s decided to take a walk in the mostly-deserted Wal-Mart with her helmet off so she can have a breather, but she came across some midnight shoppers who saw her paper-pale skin with blue veins, her lack of nose, her slit-pupil eyes, and her wide mouth full of fangs, and started panicking. So Sherida did the reasonable thing and began to eat them right there on the floor. Blood everywhere.

Lirian and Calpurniko are two teen girls - though Lirian is actually Fair Folk and has been alive for hundreds of years, but physically and mentally, she’s a teen. Lirian is a yandere and very exciteable; Calpurniko is a doomsday-device mechanic on a constant sugar high. So the two of them head right to the toy aisle to have a Nerf gun fight. Which is all fun and games until Calpurniko disappears into the hardware section for fifteen minutes and emerges with an augmented Nerf that can shoot (poisoned) foam darts at actual ballistic speeds.

Rachneira and Tomagi are also teens. Rachneira is a morbid Goth and also a variant of Fair Folk who is derived from spiders and therefore can spin webbing (and maybe has four arms? Undecided). Tomagi is an angsty sorceress who is mute. So the two of them decide to rifle through the cheap DVD bin, as kids do, and Rachneira keeps pulling out increasingly more disturbing horror films and stating in an ennui-laden tone that Tomagi should probably see them all before she dies. Then security blows by on their way to stop Belador from creating a mini-rave, they realize these kids are with the troublemakers, they turn on them, and Rachneira just webs her way up to chill out on the ceiling for a bit (as you do) while Tomagi gets angry and magically blasts the guards across the entire store, taking out several shelving units.

Diamandian puts on the airs of being a high-society man. What he is is a former manservant who killed his employer and usurped his fortune. He carries a white lace parasol wherever he goes. He heads right to the clothing section for the entire purpose of roasting every piece he finds, ripping it all off the hangers and throwing it to the ground because it’s all “Trash for the peasants!”.

Maraya is a pirate queen who is also an Eldritch Abomination thanks to an ancient tome of horrors. (Pink skin, silver or purple hair, the tattoos she previously had of nautical symbolism are now bright silver, pupil-less glowing eyes, stores a bunch of tentacles in her back.) She has a first mate, Soligeo, who has no eyes and many spidery limbs because he used the same book. Being that they’re pirates, they’re going to steal stuff, and they’re not gonna be subtle about it. They start ransacking the shelves and bragging very loudly about the fact that they will NOT BE PAYING FOR THIS. Unlike Sherida, Maraya doesn’t care so much about covering her monster exterior, and she likes scaring people for fun.

Kaxhalen is an intergalactic alien warlord (blue skin, silver hair) who acts like a stoic in the general public but is secretly neurotic and exciteable. He has sequestered himself in a fort made of bedding with several craft supplies he’s stolen to work on a therapy project.

Osmend Osmodias is a smug gambler, so he just sets up a shell game in the corner of the store and starts charging shoppers to find the hidden bean. When the guards try to oust him for soliciting, he argues that he’s not technically selling anything, and they can’t get anywhere unless they have the right charges on him.

Valencindri is this team’s token idiot and steals the toilet paper out of the men’s room, holding it up in triumph and screaming about how awesome it was that he got away with the (free) toilet paper without having to pay for it (it’s still free)!

Dr. Hope Lessness is a mad-scientist supervillain and sadist with cybernetic augmentations. She at first just starts breaking things at random to cause mayhem and monger fear, but then she hits the electronics section and gets distracted trying to wire together an iPod with a Fitbit and hook them to a drone mechanism that is somehow also a weapon. Her snarky robot companion, Mercy Lessness, makes several cracks about her attention span that she doesn’t dignify.

Orianelle is a biker witch swordswoman who likes to dress in leather shorts and tanks. She heads to the automotive section to pick up supplies to maintain her bike, but then some jerk dudebro makes a pass at her and she suplexes him into the nearest shelf, which causes an outcry. This somehow tuns into a mass brawl with Orianelle knocking ten men unconscious.

EDIT: I forgot Siersyrei on the first go. She’s a werewolf, but the joke is she’s more like a “were-human” because she defaults to acting wolflike even when in human form and refers to herself in the third person. So she’s over here literally eating dog food and looking for any sudden motions indicating prey she can hunt until Lirian shows up with a laser pointer to drive her insane.

By the time security has dispersed enough to actually be a problem, Alivain hijacks the PA system to announce “I’m going to bomb the Wal-Mart,” which is his code word to let the others know that he’s going to bomb the Wal-Mart. Everyone evacuates, and he dramatically activates a bomb that reduces the store to a column of flames as he dances in the parking lot victoriously with his back to the carnage.

Also, Zangary probably bought the wrong thing, so now they have to find a new Wal-Mart and start all over.

[stuckwith-harry]

hey you, i only followed you recently and I really like your hinny fanfics and your poetry. Would you mind telling me about your process when you write? I really wanna learn how to write properly and you seem to take your craft so seriously. How do you built a story, how often do you edit, how much time do you spent on your work, what do you try to go for,...? Thanks xxx

Anon, this is the coolest ask I’ve EVER received, and I’m hanging it on my wall next to all the colour-coded flashcards with poems on them. This is going to be LONG, and by no means exhaustive - I’m gonna jump around and ramble a bit and if there’s anything specific you wanna hear more about, please ask! I fucking love talking about writing!

I’m gonna put most of this under a cut, but before we dive in: yes, I tAkE mY wRiTiNg sErIoUsLy in the sense that I’d like to publish some original bodies of work in my life and to have physical copies of them exist on a bookshelf that’s not my own. I don’t need it to pay the bills, but if you googled my full name I’d like for, like, a poetry collection to show up and not, I don’t know, the two poems I got published in a regional newspaper when I was eight.

(And please let the record show that they’re fine poems for a primary schooler. The cringe years came way after that, kids.)

So, even having some ambitions in the industry, the reality is that I’m a 19-year-old kid with a keyboard and a dodgy internet connection who discovered fanfiction when she was twelve and got hooked for life. We’re going to retire the idea of “writing properly” for now, because writing is supposed to be fun and I haven’t actually gotten accepted into that Creative Writing Bachelor’s degree I so desperately want to do.��YET. Don’t let the fancy writing blog (@jessicagluch) fool you into thinking I know what the heck I’m doing. But, okay, with that out of the way, let’s get into what I’m personally doing right now, yeah?

Fanfiction

You asked about process, and the truth is, I don’t … really have one. For the Muggle/FWB AU called “Let Me love” I just published, I actually wrote a pretty detailed outline that I then filled in, which was fun, but it’s not a habit exactly. I’d written a lot of assorted scenes and pieces of dialogue for that one, too, so I had a lot of material and just had to put all the scraps and pieces in order and stitch it all together. After the brainstorming, word-vomity part of writing Let Me love, my #1 task was figuring out where everything went, and making sure it’s all there.

As soon as I’d written a full first draft, no gaps, and the anatomy of the whole thing had somewhat clicked into place, I moved away from it for a while. Wrote something else. Came back maybe a week or two later, polished up the prose a bit very late at night.

Figure out when your creative hours are, if you can pinpoint it at all. Mine are precisely “I was supposed to be asleep two hours ago and I’ve got an important thing tomorrow” o’ clock. Sigh.

Just - leave it alone for a bit, come back with fresh eyes. I love writing Let Me love - I’m working on part 2 right now - but after you’ve fucked around with the same sentence fifty times, you get sick of it. And I did. At some point you have to decide to put down the pen and let it be.

Especially because fanfiction isn’t something you’re writing for a publisher - hopefully, you’re writing it mostly for you - no one is holding a gun to your head to get rid of every last adverb or stuff like that. I can do what I want, MOM. I am allowed to make the thing I’m writing as tropey and campy as I want and hold up a big old middle finger to the rules, if that’s what I want to do.

Fanfiction, to me, is this grand, batshit writing playground. That’s why I fell for it in the first place - it’s inherently self-indulgent and hedonistic and that you can write everything EXACTLY as you please is the primary purpose it serves as a genre. So go wild.

(Process-wise, the one thing I do very consistently is making moodboards and playlists. I like having some inspiration material to swim around in, which helps me figure out what the story looks and feels and sounds like in my head. 

Every fic has a soundtrack. SOUNDTRACKS ARE IMPORTANT, PEOPLE.

Like, Let Me love is all coloured lights and night-time London and texts left on read. It’s neon signs and wearing somebody else’s t-shirt, messy bedsheets and hangover breakfasts and quarter-life crises.

This is the Pinterest board.)

What I pay most attention to is the stuff that gives the text depth beyond the surface. I look for metaphors - and I personally prefer the ones that carry through the whole thing, ideas we explore throughout the story and revisit at the end. I look for themes that hold a story together beyond the plot. I look for subtext and imagery and I want symbolism, goddamnit. 

(That’s the poet kicking in.)

And of course, I’m a product of my generation, so I love referencing other bodies of work and subverting tropes and stuff like that. Hey kids, intertextuality is fun!

(Like, do you see what I did there? See how the phrase “hey kids x is fun” in itself is a reference to something? See??? I’m a fucking genius.)

I think we need some examples. Allow me to toot my own horn for a minute.

In the Halloween 2018 oneshot I wrote, which is about Harry grappling with the anniversary of his parents’ death when he’s a little older, he visits the graveyard with Ginny and Lily Luna. Ginny comments that “it’s freezing”, to which Harry responds with the titular, “you’re warm”. And yes, it’s October, it’s probably cold. They’re keeping each other warm. And yes, it’s maybe about comfort in harsh situations in general, a more metaphorical warmth, if you will. I get it. 

But when you remember this exchange is taking place on a graveyard, you might start to wonder about warm, living bodies as opposed to cold, deceased ones. And then you think about how this whole story is about the living remembering - in a sense, living with - the dead. And how it’s about death as a part of Harry’s life. And you can probably guess by now that all my literature teachers fucking adored me.

(But he’s also choosing a side here, maybe. But I’m merely the author, you don’t have to listen to me at all. My words beyond the words don’t mean shit unless you decide they do and even then you’re going to find yourself knees-deep in a debate around authorial intent in record-time. In the age of “Nagini was a cursed human woman all along”, I’m not sure I want that.)

I also reference other pieces of work a lot. Often poems, and even more frequently, songs. The songs in Let Me love are VERY IMPORTANT and I can’t show you the full playlist right now because SPOILERS. But the chapters are split into sub-sections via song lyrics. Those are part of the playlist. There’s also a lot of referencing songs in general because Harry is a big music fan in this one, but that’s just indulgence on my part. If I want to make a 21st century Harry a Mitski stan, then I will. And I did!

(AND Let Me love has a Friends reference. For funsies, but also, for much more than funsies.)

“I love you / please do not use it” was inspired by a poem by Savannah Brown called “organs”. (It’s linked in the author’s notes at the beginning.)

“It’s two sugars, right?” borrows and/or references a ton of lines and phrases from T. S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men. Most noticeably:

Sublety isn’t my middle name, exactly. (The forget-me-not-blue sky in The Bride On The Train, anyone?)

In short: I like when my fanfictions are worth rereading. I like when you can come out the second read having found a little more than you did the first. I like when you can wander around a little, and, like a treasure hunter, make some strange new discoveries.

Lastly: of course, writing from your own experience helps. Spy on your own life. Collect all the ways in makes you feel, like a thief, write it down, memorise it, put it in the story. Reuse! Recycle! ✊🏻

I fortunately don’t relate to Harry’s childhood trauma, but the feeling at the beginning of “We’ll figure it out” - which is a story set shortly after him and Ginny find out she’s pregnant and he’s struggling to connect with everybody else’s simple bliss, because he’s terrified, and he’s terrified of admitting he’s terrified - that was real. That “wait a minute, this moment is amazing. I’m supposed to be the happiest person on the planet right now. Why am I not feeling it? What is this emptiness? Am I not happy right now? Why am I having doubts? I’m not supposed to have any doubts! What the fuck is wrong with me?”, that was lifted from a specific experience.

Side note, I’m really proud of that one.

Okay, poetry! 

Where there is even less rules and more fucking around ensues!

I read and promptly lost a quote recently about how explaining a song sort of defeats the purpose. (I’ll link it here if I ever find it again.) In some ways, poems and songs work really similarly, and I think it applies here as well: if you could really explain the whole poem in one sentence, or a few sentences, if you could accurately and concisely summarise exactly how it feels, then you wouldn’t really need the poem. My favourite poems (or songs) tend to be the ones that outline a really specific emotion via a few powerful images, but I couldn’t precisely tell you what the emotion is. Like, I know exactly what this thing is saying, I know this exact feeling, I GET-GET it, but don’t ask me to explain the thing, just READ the THING, and you’ll KNOW.

Mitski does this really well. Like, I couldn’t explain to you what Last Words Of A Shooting Star makes me feel, but it does. I can tell you that “I am relieved that I left my room tidy, they’ll think of me kindly when they come for my things” cuts through me like a hot blade but I can’t pinpoint exactly why and I don’t want to. All I know is she Gets It, and that I want her writing chops, goddamnit.

Or, like, look at Laura Gilpin’s Two-Headed Calf. Yeah, I’ve read that poem a hundred times and thought a lot about all the themes it’s presenting me with. But I have zero desire to explain those themes to you, because I’d kind of be robbing it of its magic. I don’t want to tell you what it’s about. I want you to read it and I want to simply sit with the knowledge that we know, we Get It, that “twice as many stars as usual” kicked you in the shins, emotionally speaking, as much as it did me.

Few words, max impact, is key.

In Mary Oliver’s words, we want something inexplicable made plain, not unlike a suddenly harmonic passage in an otherwise difficult and sometimes dissonantsymphony - even if it is only for the moment of hearing it.

I’m realising right now that leading with these shining examples and then following them up with my own thing is nerve-wracking. But I like to think that I accomplished something like that with a little poem I wrote called Basements.

It’s is based on the prompt “back to nature” and follows that, uhm, somewhat loosely, a little subverted. I think it’s about impermanence and nostalgia and the fact that the places we lived in continue to exist even when our lives in them don’t anymore. It’s about that and a lot of other things. Maybe. The truth is, I don’t want to explain it to you: I just want you to read it, and then I hope that it made you feel something, and I’m going to trust that you Get It. Maybe you don’t get the same things I did, but that’s great. I’d love nothing more.

Before it was all those things, it was a poem about my life. The neighbourhood with the yellow house across the graveyard that I spent nine mostly happy years in. (The house, not the graveyard.) Every single thing in there is true: my sister really bust her lip and we both cried; wild lilac really grew there; we did spend most of our summers catching tadpoles, and yes, that neighbourhood was a construction site from the first day we lived there to the very last.

And I really sat in the driver’s seat of the family car about a year ago and watched it from afar. I didn’t come up with that - it’s my life. I only went on a scavenger hunt through my own memories, through the places and records and mementos of my life, and arranged a few specific anecdotes in a way that would give them meaning.

It’s kind of what I’m proudest of when it comes to my poetry - that I get to just live my life and see the metaphor and the meaning and symbolism as I’m experiencing it. I sat in the car and I thought, huh, that’s definitely making me Feel A Thing right now, that I’m sitting in the driver’s seat looking at this place I haven’t really been to in years, my childhood home, where I don’t live anymore. That I drove here myself.

I think that, when done right, specific makes universal. If you arrange a kaleidoscope of memories in just the right way, what it’s making you feel will speak for itself, and you won’t have to explain it. Most people who’ve read “basements” probably didn’t spend countless summers playing in literal holes, originally dug out for basements that were never built because no one wanted to move there. Holes that then grew full of weeds and wild lilac and felt like miniature jungles right outside our parents’ houses. It was perfect, it was specifically mine, but the feeling behind it is universal, I think.

Like, that’s how half of Taylor Swift’s RED works. That’s how most good Taylor Swift songs work. That’s why the bridge in Out of the Woods is so good and why I love New Year’s Day so much and it’s EXACTLY why All Too Well is considered her best song by so many people. Because she zoomed in on the details of her life and let the world take a look. Because “we dance around the kitchen in the refrigerator light” is a line in that song. THAT’s why it MAKES YOU FEEL THE THING.

Back to poems? This:

So we tell them all about the dayWe planned revolutions on my bedroom floor, or how we onceSpent an entire Monday lunch break making life plans over ice creamAnd most of our parties talking politics over beerWe both paid for ourselves.About the days you drive me to school. In your carI am the girl, front-seat passenger of our lives,Who does not need reach for the steering wheel –The road is alright. 

isn’t fiction. These are my memories, carefully selected and re-arranged for Politics at Parties Boy.

I didn’t make up these film stills of a non-romantic relationship that never became anything other than non-romantic because neither party ever made a move. What I did is look at my own life like it’s a piece of fiction. If these memories were a movie, you could pluck them apart and say, see, the screenwriters put this scene here to communicate that.

The truth is, I am the screenwriter and the protagonist and the actress and the director and the camerawoman. I looked at a teenage girl who refused to let her friend buy her a beer at a school party and decided “huh, I guess that tells us everything we need to know” because I was that girl. 

And I did pay for the beer, so we’d never move into “let me buy you a drink” territory. He was already driving me to school.

That’s my best lesson on poetry, really. I look at my life like it’s a piece of fiction and then I make it one. I put personal memories in poems meant to be read by other people, I overinterpret everything that happens to me, am literally constantly thinking about how to work every knock-back and struggle into my narrative arc and look for symbolism in anything from the date, the weather, and the colour of my front door. I watch myself in third person all the time and thus become my own muse. I’m the painter and the painting.

It’s a somewhat narcissistic and masturbatory approach to poetry, but as far as writing about your own life goes, it’s what works for me.

As far as writing about not yourself goes - well, I’m a narcissist and I’m bad at that, but I wrote a poem about the Mars rover Opportunity that shut down this February called Spirit shuts down and Opportunity feels no tremble, no ache. For stuff like that, if you don’t happen to be Struck TM by a lightning bolt of inspiration (which is the exception, not the rule), a good old-fashioned mind-map helps. I just let my robot grief go wild on the page for a bit and what I ended up writing about was death and the human condition and being a teenage girl, maybe.

I really enjoy taking two concepts/ideas and juxtaposing them, watching a theme unfold in the overlap. Like, it’s a poem about a robot AND about being a teenage girl and in between those two lies a poem about the futile attempts to teach a robot human emotion. Maybe.

It’s a poem about how my mum always cries at the airport and about me making my own happiness my priority and it kind of ends up being about my intense guilt of making my parents watch me change and grow and leave.

It’s about the night I wandered through a quiet street in Central London at 1 a.m. and realised that the city of my dreams sleeps like any other place, that people wake up early and make coffee and go to work and have bad days here. That it’s not all dream. It’s some people’s lives. But it’s also about watching another person sleep - the way someone’s face changes when they do.

In the middle lay a poem about finding a friend in a lover. Not the daydream, but my life.

Lastly, I can’t talk about my own poetry without talking about my darling poem 5 disasters. It’s my pride and joy. Like, you could kill me write now and I’d be like, it’s okay, I’ve written the poem I want to be remembered for and it’s this one. I wrote it in less than a day and every time I think about the fact that I wrote

I cravedsomething more violent than death, somethingviolent enough to bea beginningand for my life to be thousands of themI wantednothingto remainexcept the girl that sentthe disastersand survived -may this wasteland bewhere I find her.

… I lose my shit a little bit.

(5 disasters was a rarity in how quickly I wrote it. It often takes me weeks. Sometimes months. There’s poems I’ve been meaning to write for years now and I still haven’t found the words. Take your time.)

5 disasters is a lot of things, but within the context of the poetry collection it’s hopefully going to exist in one day, it serves as almost an instruction manual for metaphors: here, the floods and rainfalls are always change and the forest fires are always my highschool demons and my friends and how they look the same. The colour yellow is always referencing the same love. Basically, I like pinpointing my symbolisms and then crafting a poem around them. You end up creating something like an in-poem universe that you get to navigate like a fantasy novel. Like you’re telling a story about a natural disaster, but it’s all a metaphor, Hazel Grace.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As I do.

I hope this serves as a starting point of sorts, anon. Most importantly, have fun, don’t concern yourself with all the rules too much. Experiment, be bold, read lots.

Again, if you’ve got any questions, I’d be thrilled to help. Thanks for the opportunity to toot my own horn to this outrageous degree, it’s been a blast.

[minijenn]

Clipped Wings

It was days like today that made Lapis Lazuli truly feel at home.  The sky was a nice mixture of red and yellow, the temperature outside was just right and the blue Gem was perched up on her favorite spot on the silo that was nearby the barn.  Lapis had made some considerable progress with Peridot ever since she had moved in to the barn.  While the Homeworld refugee may have had a difficult time adjusting to the shared housing with her former detainer, she eventually grew to be amused by the green Gem’s wild antics.  Still, she did enjoy the times when she could go to her little spot and get some rest.  While the blue Gem thought the concept of sleeping to be rather confusing, Dipper was kind enough to teach her the benefits of the human ritual. 

Lapis sighed as her thoughts returned to the inquisitive boy.  Ever since that fiasco at the lake, she often found her thinking about both Dipper and Steven.  Ever since she was trapped in that damn mirror, those two boys had been there for her throughout her struggles.  Of course, she did realize that Mabel had also been there to help as well.  It wasn’t that she didn’t care any less for the rather hyperactive human, it was just that she didn’t quite resonate with her on the same level as the boys did.  Those nights out on the lake with Dipper a month ago were the first happy memories she had on this planet, and for the first time, she was beginning to have value over another being other than herself.  And when she was finally free from Malachite, Steven was instantly there to convince her that she deserved a place on Earth, free to do whatever she pleased.  To Lapis, those two humans had single handedly improved both her state of living and her self-esteem.  She was determined to spend the rest of her days repaying those two back by protecting them from whatever the universe had to throw at them.

But she was about to discover that someone else had the exact opposite plan for Dipper and Steven.   

Lapis slowly opened her eyes, still feeling a bit sluggish from her nap.  She had expected to see the beautiful rural landscape that she had come to adore.  However, she instead got another rather familiar sight: the cold reaches of space.  This immediately put the blue Gem on full alert as she began to fully examine her surroundings.  She appeared to be floating in the Earth’s upper atmosphere; as she could see the planet’s blue oceans and green landscape below her.  Her wings were outstretched from her gem, which was obviously the only thing keeping her from plummeting to the ground.  Above her were the hundreds of twinkling stars that had always graced the Earth every night.  Lapis was finally able to grasp her new location.  The only question was that how did she end up here?

“Wait, how did I get here?” she asked herself.  She wasn’t expecting to receive an answer to her question.  “Well, I thought I would put you in more familiar environment!” a high-pitched voice suddenly announced itself behind her.  Lapis was startled by this sudden voice and moved away from the source.  When she turned around, she was rather shocked to see where the voice had originated from.  A bright, yellow triangle with an eye in its center floated before her.  It had rather short black sticks for arms and legs and appeared to be wearing some type of hat and formal wear.

Lapis was about to press the triangle for further questioning, but it seemed to be one step ahead of her.  “Well, well, well, it’s about time that I have a nice one-to-one with you, Water Wings!  Guess I should probably introduce myself.  The name’s Bill Cipher: genius, dream traverser, and overall one handsome devil, wouldn’t you think?!”  While at first the blue Gem was totally confused at this creature’s presence, the pieces in her mind finally started to click together.  The water Gem was told that she had missed a lot ever since she trapped herself at the bottom of the lake with Jasper.  Some things, like the return of that one human she had briefly encountered on Homeworld, were rather obvious.  Other things however, had to be explained through descriptions based from the kids.   

One event in particular hit the water Gem rather hard.  Not long after her self-imprisonment, Dipper had spent many a sleepless night trying to find a way to save her.  While Lapis was very touched by this selfless endeavor for her freedom, it quickly turned into dread as she discovered its terrible consequences.  Dipper had admitted that in his restless search for an answer, he struck a bargain with a dream demon by the name of Bill Cipher.  What followed was a domino effect that led to the boy losing his body to the demon, watching helplessly as it maimed his body and almost ended up losing his life.  A near waterfall of tears were shed when Lapis learned to what had happen to Dipper all just to find a way to fix her mistake.  So, after a long period of time involving tears, hugs and promises to never do something that reckless again, Lapis was determined to never let something like that happen to the boy who filled her with such care and affection.

But now this demon was right here, simply conversing with the gem in a rather casual mood.  And Lapis certainly had a few words to say to him.

“Y-y-you!!!,” she began, fists starting to clench at her sides. “You’re that thing Dipper told me about!  You’re the one who took advantage of him when he was trying to save me!  You’re the one that took over his body and went and mutilated it!  You’re the one that almost killed him!”  Lapis wished that she was close enough to the planet so that she could manipulate the water into something to appropriately express her rage.

“Ah yes, good old Pine Tree,” the dream demon began.  He held out his right hand as the symbol that was on Dipper’s hat appeared, gulfed in a blue flame.  “I sure had a blast run around in that body of his!  Shame that I was kicked out of it so early, could have done a lot of interesting stuff while in that meat sack!  Of course, he wasn’t the only one that I played mind games with.”

The demon held out his other hand, this time it was something Lapis was able to recognizes as the symbol of Rose Quartz.  Watching the emblem engulfed in the same blue blaze, Lapis was able to realize who the triangle was referring to: Steven.

“Yeah, you remember that time Rose Bud was able to talk to you in some dream-like state while you at the bottom of the lake?  Well not long after that, I decided to go over to him and lay down a few hard-hitting truths.  He probably didn’t tell you cause I don’t think he likes talking about it.  You should have seen face, all terrified and confused like that!  It was absolutely hilarious!” Bill laughed out.  Lapis was rather stunned to hear that this demon had went and tormented Steven as well.  Steven was one of the most kind and generous beings she had ever had the pleasure to meet.  He in no way deserved to be in the same company as this mental sadist.

Lapis was growing more and more irritated.  Bill had just admitted that he had tormented both boys like it was just another part of his routine.  She was getting tired of him just admitting to these atrocities like it was nothing.  “Why,” she asked. “Why are you doing this?!  Those boys have done nothing wrong to deserve this kind of treatment!  Are you just doing this out of some sick, twisted pleasure?!”

The demon gave the water Gem a rather serious look with his singular eye.  “Normally, that would be the case!  But Pine Tree and Rose Bud are a rather special case.”  The gestured over to the burning tree. “Pine Tree has become a special kind of annoyance as of late.  Always trying to stick his nose in places where it doesn’t belong.  It’s interfering with carefully designed plans that are years in the making!  If I have to break a few limbs to stop him from finding the truth, then I’m all for it!”  The demon then gestured over to the burning Rose Quartz insignia.  “Now with Rose Bud, that’s a little more personal.  While it’s true that I have some other associates that are also interested in him, I have more important matters with him.  Quartzy caused me some real problems back in the day.  She practically defied and humiliated me every step of the way!  But before I could properly deal with her, she had to go and give up her existence for a whining brat.  So, seeing Rose Bud’s agonizing face as I teach him his real place in this sham of a universe will just have to do!”  

Lapis was completely appalled by the dream demon’s twisted reasoning for wanting to hurt the boys.  Dipper didn’t deserve to be tormented for simply wanting to uncover the truth that surrounded Gravity Falls and Steven certainly didn’t deserve to face the demon’s wrath just for his mother’s actions.  Before the water Gem could retort against these remarks, Bill decided it was time reveal his grand scheme.  “So, I think it’s time I finally deal with those two once and for all!  You wanna know how I’m gonna do it?  Well, that’s the whole reason I decided to call you up!  You see Water Wings, I was thinking, and you’ve been a huge inspiration for my plans for those two.  Let’s just say that instead of wasting time and energy dealing with them separately, I think I’ll deal with them when they’re MASHED together!”

Bill suddenly smashed the two items in his hands with great force.  When Lapis looked back, she looked at the new item that was in Bill’s hands in complete terror.  The pine tree and the insignia had morphed together into a distorted combination of the two.  The twisted amalgamation was still engulfed in the bright blue flame Bill had conjured.  It didn’t take long for Lapis to realize what the dream demon was planning.  Painful memories of Jasper and Malachite began to flood her mind.  Those memories and feelings were some of the worst she had ever experience.  It was only made worse when her thoughts began to process what would happen if Dipper and Steven had to experience those very feelings.

“No….NONONONONO!!!”  The blue gem was past maintaining a calm demeaner and was on the verge a complete mental breakdown.  “You CAN’T do that to them!  It’ll destroy them, it almost destroyed me!  YOU CAN’T MAKE THEM FUSE!”  When Lapis had heard that Dipper and Steven fused, she was a little surprised.  Fusion was still a sore subject for her at the time, but that didn’t stop her from feeling genuine pride for the boys.  And now this demon was going to turn that experience in to something terrible.

However, the dream demon simply ignored her pleas.  “Oh that’s the plan Water Wings!  Those two are really going to find out what happens when two minds are stitched together permanently!  Gotta say though, I can’t take all the credit for this revelation.  No, I think some of the credit should go to you and Stripes!  That little lake stunt you two pulled off was hilarious!  Not to mention that constant mental suffering you two went through during the process!”  Bill then turned his back to the Gem, looking out into the cosmos and folded his arms behind him.  “You see Water Wings, I’ve been in this dimension for a while now.  With that time, I’ve learned how to twist the arms of both humans and Gems alike in many ways.  But THIS is something entirely new!  Using fusion as form of torture is so brilliant, I can’t believe I have thought of it sooner!  All the opportunities I can have with Pine Tree and Rose Bud makes me all giddy inside!  They’re gonna wish they were dead when I’m through with them!”

Lapis felt like she was dying inside.  Bill was planning to unleash the absolute hell that she had experienced for so long on two children that had guided her to a life worth living.  The demon was going to turn a magical experience for the boys into something that could end up killing them.  It only made it worse that she appeared to be the catalyst for this disaster.  “Please,” she practically begged him. “You can’t do this to them!  It’s not fair, it’s not right!  You don’t have to do this!”  The blue Gem was sounding desperate at this point, but she hardly cared.

Bill simply floated there for a moment and then turned around toward the water Gem.  “You know Water Wings, you’re actually right about that!  I really don’t necessarily have to do this to Pine Tree and Rose Bud.”  The dream demon then floated around Lapis, then wrapping his arm around her shoulder.  “It’s perfectly plausible for me to leave Pine Tree and Rose Bud alone for the rest of their measly lives.  But nothing’s free in this world, everything has a price.  But for you Water Wings, I think I can make a fair offer!  All I really ask for is a small FAVOR in return!”  Bill’s eye converted into a shade of blue and his spontaneously erupted in the blue flame he had summoned before.

Lapis just eyed the demon for a second before finally coming to her senses.  “What?!  After what you did to Dipper when he took a deal with you?!  I’d never make you with you!  Even if I wasn’t aware of that, I still wouldn’t be stupid enough to trust you!” she shouted at the triangle.  Bill rolled his eye and floated back in front of the water Gem.  “I don’t know Water Wings, Pine Tree sure thought that it was worth it to save you.  You’re telling me that you would pass up an opportunity like this?!  Hmph, maybe Stripes was right after all.  I guess you really are just a monster.  It would probably be safer for everyone else if you were still trapped in that dinky mirror!”

Lapis bowed her head at those remarks, wishing that there wasn’t any truth to them.  The words that Jasper had said on the lake were still fresh in her mind.  Being called a monster by a violent Gem right in front of the kids was not one of her best moments.  She had always tried to push those thoughts away, but they always seem to return stronger than before.  And now the dream demon was using them against her to further threaten Dipper and Steven.  For a second, she almost considered taking the demon’s offer.  It wasn’t like it was the first time she had made a deal that ultimately hurt her to save others.  She was practically an expert at it by this point.

But then she remembered that promise she made to Dipper.

After Dipper had explain the whole possession scenario, Lapis quickly embraced him and made him promise something.  She made him promise that he would never do something that would threaten his life just for her sake.  She said she could never forgive herself if something were to happen to him.  Dipper eventually agreed to this promise, but only on one condition.  He said that Lapis had to promise the same thing to Dipper.  The Malachite situation had been hard on the boy, and he couldn’t take losing her again. 

So that was her answer.  “No,” she said defiantly. “I don’t have to make a deal with you to protect both Dipper and Steven!  I’m tired of being used as just a tool by everyone!  I won’t fall for your tricks and let you hurt the boys I love!”  Lapis was standing her ground now.  She wouldn’t be fooled by the demon’s proposition, no matter how tempting it is.

Bill just stared at her for a few moments and put his arms at his sides. “Hmph, suit yourself Water Wings.  I’m just giving you an easy solution to this.  You’re the only one who can be held responsible for whatever happens next.  But don’t worry, no matter how bad things get, I’ll be here, ready to make a deal!”  Bill then began to float in to space before turning back around to face the blue Gem again.  “Hey by the way, you ever heard of the story of Icarus?” 

“Who?” the water Gem ask, clearly not familiar with the old human tale.  Bill responded with a chuckle.  “Oh, it’s great story.  Personally, I can’t help but be reminded of you whenever I read that story!  Why don’t I help relate to the main character!”

Bill then snapped his fingers, only to instantly disappear and be replaced by what could only be a miniature version of the Sun.  Lapis had to shield her eyes from the sudden brightness, but then she realized that was the least of her worries.  Her beautiful wings that had kept her afloat this whole time were beginning to boil.  Steam was rising off her wings and they started to shrink smaller and smaller.  Before Lapis could even consider fleeing from the sudden heat, it was too late.  Lapis wings were sizzled up into useless numbs and she began her downward fall towards the surface of the Earth.  For the first time in water Gem’s life, she was falling to her death.  All she could she was flail her arms and scream as she plummeted to the ground.  The last thing that she heard was the demented laughter of Bill Cipher.

“LAPIS WAKE UP!”

The blue Gem suddenly raised her head of the ground with a startled scream.  She then quickly swiveled her head around to see where she was this time.  She was back at the silo, although in a rather different position.  Instead of on her back at the top of the silo, she was face down on the ground next to the silo.  Once she was sitting on the grass, she looked to the rural landscape that painted the sky every night.  The water Gem then turned to Peridot, who was looking more frazzled than usual.  “Peridot, w-what happe-“

The former technician suddenly interrupted her though.  “Oh my star, Lapis thank goodness you’re okay!  I was going out to check on you and I saw that you were face down on the ground!  At first, I thought you were just sleeping but I know you usually like to sleep on top of it!  So, I thought you fell and I went over to check that your gem wasn’t cracked!  Then I tried to wake you up and-“  Peridot was interrupted when Lapis suddenly pulled her into a tight embrace.  Her cheeks became flush with a dark green since Peridot was not used to this kind of affection from the blue Gem.

Before Peridot could further question this, Lapis finally uttered something. “I’m never sleeping again, Peridot!  I’m never sleeping again.” The green Gem was rather taking aback by the water Gem suddenly giving up one of her favorite pass times.  “W-what,” she said. “But, I thought you said that helped you calm down?  You just had a bad dream, Lapis.  Steven says that everyone gets them sometimes.  It doesn’t mean that you should give up sleep completely.”

“NO!” cried Lapis. “I can’t go back to sleep.  I’ll be safe from him if I don’t.”  Lapis sobbed into Peridot’s shoulder.

Lapis had to escape from Bill.  She couldn’t face the dream demon again.  He had hurt her and he threatened the two most precious people in her life.  She had to stay in the waking world so that she could protect them at all cost.  She needed to stay away from that triangle at all costs.

Because deep down she knew, the more time she was in the presence of the demon, the more tempting his bargain would be.  

[writesandramblings]

The Captain’s Secret - p.96

“Nowhere and Everywhere”

A/N: This concludes the events of episode 13, "What's Past is Prologue." I swear on my life we're almost done. Five chapters remain.

For the record, I think the difference in cranial size makes the show concept referenced in this chapter one of the least credulous "twists" in TV history because brain matter. Where did it go. Was it compressed? How did that not show up on a scan? It's brain matter! How do you not end up with a drooling mess when you compress or remove brain matter? Surely there's a difference in the neurological structures between species that shows up on a brain scan... /rant

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << 95 - Maybe I’m Amazed 97 - Facing the Music >>

Lalana found Groves asleep in the front of the lab, his head resting on his basketball, a line of drool trailing down onto the metal surface of Mischkelovitz's desk. She considered waking him, updating him as to the status of things in the other room, but she decided to sit in Mischkelovitz's chair and watch him sleep instead. Dreaming fascinated her. It was not an action lului had the capacity to do. She wondered what thoughts were running through Groves' head. Many times she had watched her Gabriel Lorca sleep, and sometimes, when he woke, he even remembered what he had been dreaming and described it when she asked.

Eventually Groves stirred, wiping the drool from the corner of his mouth as he sat up. "Hey," he said in greeting. "You want some tea?"

The delicate aroma of the pu-erh tantalized the surface of her cells as it brewed. It really was no different to any other foodstuff from her perspective, but the hot temperature was reason enough for her to enjoy the experience of drinking it. "Perhaps you could bring Gabriel a cup."

"Nuh uh, I'm not brewing this for him."

"It is a shame you two do not get along. You are so alike."

Groves snorted. "You realize that's an insult."

"Not to me it is not."

He poured out Lalana's cup first, piping hot, and then his own, which he left sitting on the table to cool. She dipped her tongue into the scalding hot liquid, absorbing the mixture of tea particles and water. She could have, if she wanted, strained out the particles of tea from the water, or the reverse.

Groves leaned over his cup and breathed into it, letting the steam wash over his face. "So," he said, settling down into his chair. "They kick you out, too, or have you finally had enough of all the bullshit?"

Lalana tapped her fingers and let her tail drift back and forth like a stalk of wheat in the wind. "I will never have enough of it for as long as I live."

"That's a long time."

Her tongue clicked. "Yes, it is!"

They sat in silence, sipping tea. Groves noticed Lalana's padd on the workbench. Just prior to Lorca and O'Malley's arrival, Lalana had come out from her quarters with the padd saying she had noticed something unusual. "What was that thing you wanted to show me earlier?"

"Oh! There was a glitch in Brig Chess." Lalana pressed her tail against the padd, turning it on, but the program did not load. It stalled out on a "no connection available" screen. Brig Chess resided in the central computer core, which they were presently cut off from.

"Probably just wear and tear on your padd," said Groves. The fault had to lie in the hardware because Brig Chess was a perfectly coded program. "If you wanna play a game, maybe we can, I dunno, use some of Melly's junk as chess pieces?" There were plenty of bits and bobs around, the scattered remnants of Mischkelovitz's many forays into cloak detection research.

"I would rather not, I am still recovering from helping Gabriel and I do not feel up to a game. It is very taxing, redirecting internal resources to affected cellular regions."

Groves hummed in disinterest, unsympathetic to the lului's self-inflicted plight, and looked over at the door to Lalana's quarters. "She about done in there?"

"Emellia has finished with the surgery and is now working with the spores in the wall. That is why I left. It was too bright to look at the spores directly. Like a halo of supernovas."

"What's she doing?"

"Something involving particle charge. She became very excited about it after we watched the message from her future self."

The veil of disinterest lifted. Groves sat straight up and spilled a small quantity of tea onto his leg in the process, wiping at the liquid hot spot with his hand to distract from the faintly scalding sensation as he abandoned his cup. "We have the message?"

"Yes. Gabriel has it. If you like, I am sure they would let you see the message, too."

Groves considered that. "Eh." He shrugged. There were still forty hours left on Mischkelovitz's protocol and whatever tea party was going on in the next room was not one he had an interest in joining. Not while he had a perfectly good cup to finish out here. "In a bit. We got plenty of time to kill!"

Lalana's eyes glinted mischievously as she asked, "Will this be first- or second-degree murder?"

"Neither. I'll represent us. Guaranteed acquittal."

Lalana clicked her tongue and rolled back on her haunches, recalling a conversation with the original Lorca. "I doubt they have a murder sentence long enough to be truly punitive to me."

"Yeah, but you've got money! They could always go after damages. Take your ship, for example."

The clicking ceased and Lalana gripped the back of Mischkelovitz's chair and curled her tail around it. "I am very much looking forward to being back on my ship." Saru's shipwide announcement regarding the possibility of jumping back on the wave of the mycelial reactor's destruction had given everyone something to look forward to. There were still particles of the other Gabriel Lorca present in the dusty corners of the Gabriella. "Though, it will mean that Gabriel becomes no one again. Do you know, Emellia said the message was about saving Gabriel the whole time? Apparently, the words 'I can't save anyone' were a reference to Captain Nemo."

Squinting thoughtfully, Groves said, "Huh, yeah. In qoryan, that'd be 'no one can be saved.' And, well, nemo est supra leges! Geez, now that's got a double meaning, too. Wait. Why's he Captain Nemo?" Groves jabbed his thumb towards Lalana's door.

"Because Gabriel's favorite book is Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, he is a captain, and in our universe, he is also no one."

If Groves had still been holding his cup, he would have dropped it. His jaw went slack.

Lalana watched the spreading despair on Groves' face. "What is wrong, John?"

"We're..." He worked it over in his head again to be sure. Allan thought the timeline had corrected itself and expected Lorca to die. If history said Lorca lived, this whole timeline would become a manifest paradox. "We're the remnant. Oh, god. It's us." He covered his mouth with his hand. The only thing keeping them extant was the null time bubble.

Lalana pressed her knuckles together. "I do not think that is the case." Allan might have been lying when he said the message was the remnant, but Lalana was looking at this from the perspective of a lului, which told her something very different.

"Unless!" snapped Groves, jerking his finger into the air. "History stays the same." His every word was punctuated with determined intensity. He dropped his gaze away from Lalana, ruminating a moment, then grabbed the padd from the table and opened Brig Chess.

The main chess program remained inaccessible, but Groves didn't need the main program. He just needed the initialization skin on the padd. He began to program a series of commands to automatically trigger once the padd's connection to the central database was restored.

"What are you doing?" asked Lalana, leaning forward and peering over the top of the padd. From her perspective, Groves was programming upside-down, but she had no difficulty reading the letters on the screen at this angle, even if she did not understand what all the numbers and symbols meant.

"Everything must go," declared Groves. "Anything that'd clue a historian into what's going on. All the footage in the lab since we got here, all the footage in the hallway... Too obvious. I'll wipe it all. Just make it look like a... power surge. Burn up all the security footage and backups since our last data transmit."

This suited Lalana just fine because it proved the thing she had been suspecting for a while now: once the deed was done, it was done. They had been past the point of no return from the moment she encountered the Triton. None of them could see the bigger picture in the moment, but they were all pieces who had been moved into place by someone who could. Someone with a very long perspective indeed.

The issue of the security feeds was now solved, but not the source of the problem. Groves put the padd down. "Listen. I have to tell you something. You're not gonna like it. That man in there? He is a threat to our entire existence. If we don't get rid of him, and someone finds out he's not dead?" Groves brought both his hands up and imitated an explosion. "Poof! We vanish in a paradox. He can't be alive."

"Then I will make sure he is dead," said Lalana.

Groves blinked. He had expected at least some pushback to his latest time travel murder proposal. "So, how do you wanna do it? Phaser or some sort of injection... Vent the atmosphere?" He shuddered at the thought and realized if they were going to do this, he was not going to be the one to pull the trigger.

Lalana clicked her tongue. "There is no need. We have a perfectly good dead body just outside."

Einar Larsson. She was proposing they pass off Larsson as Lorca. "You don't understand. If he's walking around—"

"I understand perfectly. My mission is clear. I must make sure history believes Gabriel Lorca is dead. I know I can do this because I have already done it. If I had not, we would not be having this conversation."

It was partly true. Time was a flat circle, nonlinear, all points happening at once, except right now, they were in a bubble that was not permitting information to escape. Once the bubble popped, either Lalana was right, or they were all dead. No, not dead. Nonexistent.

Groves had questioned the value of existence for most of his life. A few times, the answers had been force-fed him by O'Malley and others who found existence worthwhile and insisted he fall into line with their values. He acquiesced not because he agreed, but because he wanted them to be right and to figure out whatever it was everyone else saw in life that made it so worthwhile and meaningful. Thirty-seven years of enduring futility. Now that he found himself suddenly confronted by the end of all the futility—potentially forever—he did not want it to end. He wasn't even sure why, just that he desperately wanted to stay alive and keep existing. Maybe just to prove he could.

There was one big problem with Lalana's idea, emphasis on the big. Larsson's size was unmistakable. "No one's gonna believe Einar is Lorca."

"They will when I am done with his body."

"Oh, god," said Groves, covering his mouth again, this time to fight the liquid bile rising at the horror of her suggestion. Blood drained from his skin, turning him an ashy brown. "He's your best friend!"

"He is," said Lalana. "He was dying, John. At least this way his death has served a purpose."

It was perfect lului logic  Groves still struggled with it. "You used him," he said in a small voice.

"I did, but because we loved each other, he was happy to be used. It was of benefit to us both."

Groves shook his head. Was that what love was supposed to be? He realized he didn't know. He still wanted no part of this, but if this was the price of preserving reality, then he had to pay it. The alternative was unthinkable in a wholly literal and terrifying sense.

Out of nowhere, the computer said, "Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen..."

Groves startled. "Computer!"

"I think it is time," said Lalana, hopping down from Mischkelovitz's chair and pushing it aside to access the passage into the wall. "I will go and fetch Gabriel's hair dye. Please inform him of what we must do and bring Einar's body inside." She ducked into the wall and disappeared as the countdown ended.

The prospect of dragging Larsson inside was daunting. Groves grimaced and went to the interior door to ask for help.

The scene that awaited him was not what he expected. Lorca, alert and propped upright, and Mischkelovitz collapsed into a twisted lump in his arms. O'Malley slumped on the floor next to the coffee table. Cables running from the couch to the wall and an exposed wall panel revealing tubes filled with the remnants of what had to be Prototaxites stellaviatori spores, but they were green instead of blue.

Even stranger, Lorca looked relieved to see Groves. "Get Melly to sickbay," he ordered.

"Don't call her—"

"Now!" barked Lorca, gasping at the resulting pain.

Groves lifted Mischkelovitz up as easily as a paper butterfly, his eyes widening at the sensation of dead weight in his arms.

The comms sounded. "Bridge to O'Malley. What's your status?"

"Don't answer," hissed Groves to Lorca, then shouted, "Can't talk! Call back later. Groves out." The comm cut off and he started towards the door. "You say anything to anyone and we're all dead! Got it?" He did not wait for a response and went tearing out of the room.

Lorca sat there, mildly amused by Groves' outburst. This was not ideal, but once he cleared everything up with Saru, Discovery would realize helping Lorca was its best chance at surviving in this universe. They would rally Lorca's supporters and cement control of the Charon. Then he could get back to what was really important: executing Georgiou. Burnham was going to feel like a total idiot once she heard the truth about the emperor. Let her, he decided. She needed to know there were consequences for betraying him.

A minute later, Groves was back. "What the hell! She has a heartbeat, but..." He shook his head back and forth in denial. Zero neural activity.

"Mally," prompted Lorca.

Groves grumbled in qoryan—it sounded to Lorca like swearing—but managed. O'Malley was not much bigger than his sister.

The lights suddenly shifted and the computer calmly intoned, "Black alert, black alert."

"Shit," said Groves.

"Stamets?" asked Lorca, because last he knew, Discovery was incapable of performing any spore jumps owing to the incapacitation of its mycelial-modified navigator.

Groves ignored Lorca as he headed towards the door. "Computer! Override all Lab 26 operational protocols to my voiceprint only. Authorization Game..."

The door slid shut. Lorca stared a moment, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, then slid his legs down from the couch to the floor. "Lorca to bridge." No response. "Computer, status report." Nothing. Lorca got up from the couch, fighting the reeling sensation in his head, and used the coffee table as support to reach the door. He hit the controls. Nothing again.

Discovery shuddered under an impact and Lorca half-slid, half-fell to the floor. He was trapped, just like the little girl in Mischkelovitz's story.

The command to access the system override turned out to be a sequence of attempted moves on the Brig Chess practice game screen. Petrellovitz found the sequence buried in the middle of the program's code and intentionally mislabeled. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, commit, cancel. She executed the code through the program's interface and just like that, she was into Discovery's data.

The first thing she looked for was important information. The most highly-guarded files, the secrets coded for the captain's eyes only, and anything that had high levels of encryption. There were plenty of files about the spore drive to parse. Petrellovitz skimmed past them. She hardly needed instruction on how to conduct mycelial transports.

There was a file about her neighbor in the brig that made for some interesting reading. Normally Petrellovitz had little regard for the medical sciences, steeped as they were in interpersonal interaction, but this one represented a real threat to the Terran Empire. Aliens capable of disguising themselves as humans well enough to fool medical sensors. Disgusting.

Also potentially useful. Petrellovitz did a mental reassessment of the Klingon woman, willing to admit L'Rell was a scientist worthy of some begrudging respect for her accomplishments in this area.

She also accessed her own personnel log. It took a moment to locate because her counterpart's surname was "Mischkelovitz," but her given name was still "Emellia." When Petrellovitz opened the file, she found her own face looking back at her, entirely unblemished, and could not help but stare in dead-eyed wonder. Stranger still, this "Mischkelovitz" had been married—to "Milosz Mischkelovitz," who could only be Milosz Mieszała.

Petrellovitz's memories of Milosz were of a depraved, perverse, cruel boy who had given her all her early scars. They had been bitter rivals up until the moment of Milosz's death. She missed him sometimes. Hating him had been the highlight of her childhood.

Petrellovitz's foray into the "what ifs" of her counterpart's life was interrupted by the sensation of Discovery dropping out of warp and firing its weapons. She switched to the bridge log and read through the action. It was a little dry absent the sharp tones of command under pressure; the computer rendered every line with only the most basic punctuation.

[OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: Sir, incoming emergency transport. [CMD] CDR SARU: Is it Burnham? [OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: No. It's the colonel, and... The containment field is still up. [CMD] CDR SARU: Mr. Bryce, find out O'Malley's status. [COMM] LTJG BRYCE: Yes, sir. Bridge to Transporter Room 1. [OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: Sir. Burnham did it. The containment field is down. [CMD] CDR SARU: Get her back, now. [OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: I can't get a lock, captain. I'm working on it. [CMD] CDR SARU: Work faster. Mr. Rhys, torpedo status. [TACT] LT RHYS: Armed and ready to launch. [COMM] LTJG BRYCE: Copy. Bridge to O'Malley. What's your status? [OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: Detecting a comm signal. I've got her. [CMD] CDR SARU: Get her out of there now. [OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: She's onboard. [CMD] CDR SARU: Black alert! [ENG] CDR AIRIAM: Aye, captain. [OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: The Terran ship is targeting us, sir. [CMD] CDR SARU: It's now or never, Lt. Detmer. [NAV] LT DETMER: Aye, captain. [TACT] LT RHYS: Locked on, captain. [CMD] CDR SARU: Fire all three. [TACT] LT RHYS: Aye, sir. [CMD] CDR SARU: Warp speed, now. [NAV] LT DETMER: Yes, sir.

There was a tremendous shudder as Discovery was racked by a series of concussive bursts. Not weapons fire, waves of energy from an explosion. The whole ship shuddered and shook.

Then the spore drive engaged. Petrellovitz felt the hairs on her arm stand up. She had never experienced mycelial transport firsthand, Georgiou had captured her before she had the chance, and she was thrilled to finally have the chance. She switched over to the data stream from the engineering lab. The power and possibility of a fully-functional ship with a spore drive.

She realized immediately this was no normal jump. The data was incredible. They were sustaining travel through the mycelial network. That meant two things to Petrellovitz: first, that their target was not anywhere near their starting point, and second, that they were not going to end up where they intended.

Then it was over. Petrellovitz checked the scans just to be sure and found her suspicions entirely confirmed.

They were back in the universe of Discovery's origin.

Petrellovitz scowled at the tiny brig control screen. This was a significant setback. While Lorca could pass as the alternate version of himself and move freely through this universe, she could not.

Unless Lorca was onto something with all that nonsense about fate. The guard walked by to check they had both survived the trip and Petrellovitz glared at him, then resumed pretending to play chess. The guard resumed his post by the door. She opened a comm line.

"Don't look up. I'm in the other cell. We're not supposed to be talking."

The answer was slow to come, hesitant. "Who are you?"

"My name is Petra. I'm a captive of these humans, same as you are, but not the same, because I've taken control of their computer core. Do you understand what that means?"

"Yes."

"I've noticed you speak English well. I had a question for you. Your work creating infiltration agents, Ash Tyler, could you do the same to me? Can you re-skin me?"

Across the brig, L'Rell twisted slightly in her bunk, turning her head to look at the woman in the other cell. Petrellovitz was staring intently at her cell's computer panel, apparently engaged in some sort of human game. L'Rell had seen the game in her own brig controls, but she did not know how to play and no inclination to learn. "You want me to turn you into someone? Who?"

Petrellovitz smiled at her fake display. "Myself."

L'Rell sighed and settled back down. The weapons fire and black alert had roused her from her sleep and now she was being prevented from returning to it. "You do not understand. In order to re-skin you, I need another person to use as a material. Then there are the bones and muscles. They must be resized..." That had taken a very long time to sort out with Voq, especially owing to the difference in cranial size between humans and Klingons.

"I understand perfectly. How long would it take if the template possessed the exact same physical dimensions and characteristics as the person being reskinned? If you only had to change the surface and the surface already matched perfectly in every dimension."

This was a curious question. "A day, with the right tools."

"What about just the tissue on the skull and hands?"

The questions were getting stranger. "A few hours," offered L'Rell.

"Do they have what you need in sickbay?"

L'Rell thought back to her time there, when she had released Ash Tyler from his torment and turned him into whatever he was now. "Yes, they do. But why would I help you?"

"Because we have something in common. The people on this ship are our enemy."

This was not the first time L'Rell had been part of a deal to work alongside a human out of mutual self-interest. She had done the same with Cornwell aboard the Sarcophagus. That arrangement had been sufficient for L'Rell to escape Kol but it had not played out as expected. Instead of being transferred to a secure holding facility, L'Rell had been left to languish in Discovery's brig, a forgotten token of a war that seemed suddenly unimportant to Discovery.

There was no reason to expect this would not turn out similarly, but equally, sitting in this cell was an embarrassing, dishonorable circumstance with no clear end in sight.

L'Rell said slowly, "It would be very painful."

"Sounds fun," said Petrellovitz, keying in new commands through the master override hidden within the Brig Chess program. "Let's take a field trip."

Materializing with Georgiou in Discovery's transporter room, Burnham looked for some sign of Lorca but all she saw was a pool of blood smeared across the transporter pad. The computer announced a black alert. "Where is he," Burnham demanded of the transporter technician as she stepped down from the transporter.

The curly-haired cadet looked at her haplessly. "Lab 26."

Any further investigation was cut short as Discovery shuddered under an impact. Georgiou stepped down from the transporter pad, hands tight on her phaser rifle, her eyes scanning as if she could spot her prey though Discovery's walls.

"Burnham to Lab 26."

"Unable to comply. Lab 26 is under a command lockdown."

There was a smaller series of shudders—Discovery firing torpedoes—and then the whole ship shook as it initiated a jump to warp ahead of the resulting explosion.

The shaking intensified as the familiar shift of the mycelial drive kicked in. "It's our spore drive," Burnham explained to Georgiou, but this was unlike any previous spore jumps. The shaking did not stop and the vibration of moisture particles in the air continued far longer than was normal. All they could do was hold on and wait.

Discovery dropped back out into normal space. The air around them stilled. Glancing between Burnham and the fearsome Emperor Philippa Georgiou, the transporter technician offered an update: "There was an emergency transport from Lab 26 to the medbay." Emergency medical transports bypassed the transporter pad, but he had seen the transport in his logs.

Burnham turned to Georgiou and held out a hand for her weapon. "You can't keep that on this ship," she advised.

Georgiou handed it over with a sneer. "I don't need it," she proclaimed. "I will make sure he is dead with my own two hands."

For the first time, Burnham felt a slight tinge of concern about the woman she had rescued, but the idea of leaving Georgiou to die on the Charon was too much to bear. The face was cold and hard and angry almost beyond the point of recognition, but when Burnham looked at the emperor, she still saw her old captain and she would not be responsible for Georgiou's death again. This seemed the only way to be rid of the guilt.

Saru's voice came over the comm. "Burnham, what is your status?"

"Cuts and bruises. Nothing serious," said Burnham. "And Lorca?"

There was a pause—a small one, just long enough for Burnham to realize Saru was receiving new information. "Lorca?"

"He beamed over with O'Malley," said Burnham.

(On the bridge, Saru looked at Owosekun, who shook her head. She had tried to say the name in the moment but had been too shocked herself.)

"He was wounded. He'll be in the medbay," Burnham stated. "The emperor and I are headed there now."

This time, there was no hesitation at the new information. Saru said smoothly, "I will meet you there."

Lorca was sitting on the ground next to the coffee table, violently throwing the implements of Mischkelovitz's trade at the wall, when the door finally opened. He grabbed the nearest tool, a spanner, and lifted it to throw at Groves' smug face only to freeze in place, not that it mattered. His throw would have been too high. Lorca's face twisted into a question.

"Voice modulator," said Lalana, disturbingly in Groves' voice. She removed the device from the translator around her neck and her usual voice returned. "How are you?"

"Better now that you're here," offered Lorca, liberally smearing on the charm. The confinement had given him time to strategize. "I know a lot's happened, but we can fix this. My people listen to me. They'll back down if I tell 'em. Tell Saru I'm prepared to negotiate, we don't have to be enemies. I want Discovery to get home as much as its crew does. Just not with Michael. I need her. Hell, you can stay too, if you want."

"We are already home," said Lalana, settling down next to his knee.

All the levity fell away. So many times Lalana had said something that seemed to be figurative and it turned out to be literal. There had to be a reason the spore jump had taken far longer than it should have, but Lorca figured it had something to do with compensating for Stamets. Surely she was not saying that... But he knew she was. He stared at her in horror.

Lalana flicked her tail across Lorca's hair at his obvious distress. It only annoyed him further. "I am sorry, I know this is not what you wanted, but it is not as bad as it seems."

Lorca closed his eyes and exhaled. Starfleet was going to lock him up in a hole so dark, it would make this confinement look like an amusement park. When he opened his eyes, it was with an expression of determined annoyance. "How do you figure that?" he seethed. "You gonna help me escape?"

"If need be, but I do not think I will have to. You have committed no crime."

"Really?" said Lorca crossly. "Killin' the other me and taking his place? That's not a crime?"

"I believe they can be convinced to forgive you for taking his place, and they will never know you killed him. Life is a story we tell each other. I told them a story of you. And I am a very good liar, Gabriel."

Except O'Malley had asked the question point-blank on the Charon. The cat was already out of the bag. "I think they're gonna figure it out," said Lorca. Probably as soon as O'Malley woke up. "We need a plan."

"I have a plan. I told them how scared you were to lose Discovery, so now they will understand and help you."

He could scarcely believe his ears. "Why would you say that!" he howled, ignoring the pain.

Lalana's head twisted. "Because it was true. I needed that truth to convince everyone of the lie."

Lorca stared at her. "No wonder Saru fired on the Charon! You emasculated me."

"Gender is not a lului concept," noted Lalana, clicking her tongue lightly.

Lorca grimaced, not meaning it literally, but as usual, literal was what he had gotten. "You know that's not what I meant," he scowled, filled with revulsion and contempt. "You told them I was weak."

"That is the difference between our universes, Gabriel. In your universe, a weakness is something to be pounced upon and taken advantage of. Here a weakness can be something else. It can be something for which people have compassion. Now they will help you."

At what cost, he wondered. This was a disaster. He pressed his hands against his head, fingers digging into his scalp.

"The important thing is, they now know what I know. They know you are a good man and that you have a good heart. A heart that includes me."

He remembered the fortune he had cracked open when he first took command of Discovery. Then, as now, he did not believe its contents. "You have got to be kidding me!"

"I promise I am not. For as long as you live, my cells will be in your cardial tissue," Lalana assured him. "I had to put them there to keep you alive."

Petrellovitz, he realized. She was here on Discovery. Petrellovitz had gotten him through the universes the first time and could do so again. He had to find her, get some spores, recreate the experiment, get back, rally his people and convene a meeting with Sarek. Sarek was on his way to the Charon right now, would probably arrive within the hour. Not enough time to set up a return transport, but Lorca would arrive a day or two late, make a dramatic entrance, proclaim some tactical advantage had been gained by this course of action, act as if the whole thing was intentional. In fact, this was an opportunity to negotiate terms with the Federation for every alien not of use to the Empire to be deported to this universe and bring back confirmation of the deal. With a bit of bluster, Georgiou would be cowed back into submission and executed. He had already proven she was weak.

This was salvageable. Lorca could fix it, put the puzzle back together, make it even better this time.

The sound of the door interrupted Lorca's plotting. It was Groves. He dove towards Lorca, grabbed him by the shirt, and shook him as he sprayed spittle and shouted in Lorca's face, "What the hell did you do to her!"

Lorca could feel the rip in his chest begin to tear again. A heady wave of pain swept over him. "Get off me," he said through gritted teeth, half-twisting away.

"Yes," said Lalana, wrapping her tail around Groves' neck. "Put him down, John, or I will deprive your brain of oxygen."

The threat was not idle. Groves could feel the surface of his skin being prodded by a thousand tiny little tendrils. He released Lorca and retreated a few steps. "So help me, I'll kill him myself! You killed her!"

Sneering, Lorca pulled his shirt back into place. "I didn't do anything."

This was enough of a clue for Lalana to realize Mischkelovitz's absence was not because she was watching over an unconscious O'Malley off in the medical bay. "What is he talking about, Gabriel? Where is Emellia?"

Lorca explained, more or less, what Mischkelovitz had said she was doing. Groves watched the message for himself. When it was over, he snatched the holodisc from the air and threw it across the room.

"That is the most asinine thing I've ever heard!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, apoplectic with rage. He sat down on the floor and put his head in his hands. How could Mischkelovitz be so stupid.

Because it was a pattern. Mischkelovitz saw patterns in everything. She was easily swept away by them, obsessed with them to a fault. She really, truly thought the universe was configured like a jigsaw puzzle and that everything fit together one way and if she could just figure out all the pieces...

Groves knew the truth. There was no pattern. Oh, there were some patterns, like physics and math, but not on the level of significance where Mischkelovitz saw them. Patterns on this level were just the human brain trying to make sense of the random coincidences of the universe.

She had fried her brain for nothing, chasing a remnant that did not exist.

As the rebel forces neared the Charon's position, an alarm sounded. "We are detecting weapons fire at our target coordinates."

"Do we have a visual?" asked Sarek. He was standing beside the captain's chair on the bridge of the Vulcan-Klingon-Andorian cruiser currently serving as the rebel command ship. Voq was seated in the captain's chair itself.

An image appeared of a small but unmistakable ship silhouetted against the massive glowing orb of the Charon's mycelial reactor: Discovery, barreling down towards the reactor in an apparent suicide run.

"Turn us around," said Sarek.

The helmsman complied, but Voq bristled with dismay. "Is that for you to decide?" Voq asked.

"Perhaps not," said Sarek as the Charon exploded in front of their eyes, "but it seemed only prudent."

The shockwave produced by the ship was massive, on a scale unlike anything. Cheers erupted from the non-Vulcans present. Lorca might have been in control of the Charon, but the ship was a symbol of Terran superiority, and every non-Terran had reason to enjoy seeing it destroyed, even the Vulcans.

Sarek watched the shockwave dispassionately. "It would appear we have gotten more than we bargained for," he intoned. "I suspect this means our deal with Lorca is no more."

"This is a victory!" said Voq.

"It is," agreed Sarek, and signaled the two Vulcan guards standing at the bridge doors with a wave of his hand. At once, their weapons were firing, cutting down every Klingon and Andorian on the bridge.

Voq was splayed out on the ground, gasping as he stared up at Sarek. "You... Why? You have betrayed us."

"No," said Sarek, taking the phaser the guard offered and pointing it down at Voq. "I've done what was necessary for my son." He pulled the trigger and ended Voq's life.

Sarek did not need Lorca or Michael. Waiting in the wings were other, more Vulcan-friendly Terran factions who could see the difference between Vulcans and the other, more grotesque humanoids. As he opened a channel to the rest of the fleet, the pattern of death was repeated across every ship and the Vulcans took control.

"The fall of the Charon," said Sarek, "is the rise of Vulcan."

Part 97