#fic: dosimetry

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Dosimetry

☀ Kai, Nya, Lloyd ☀ ns3 au ☀ horror, apocalypse, open/ambiguous ending ☀ 798 words ☀ read on ao3 here

“I’m going up,” Kai says, throwing his jacket onto the bed as he enters their shared room.  In his peripheral vision, he sees Nya sit up straighter.

“Wait, what?  But you just went up a couple of days ago!”

“Yeah, but this is for Borg.” 

Kai throws open his locker.  There’s a new suit in here somewhere, he knows it.  He digs through his possessions with one hand, the other occupied by the shred of paper he clutches.

Behind him, Nya’s pen clatters to the table.  

“I’m coming too.”

Kai freezes.  “No,” he says, spinning around.  “No, you can’t.  You don’t have any powers.”

Nya gives him a sharp glare.  “Like fire is going to protect you out there,” she retorts, standing.  “Besides, you don’t even know a nut from a bolt.”  She plucks the note he carries from his hand and gives it an exaggerated onceover.  “How are you planning on tracking this stuff down?”

Kai matches her glare.  But she’s right, he knows she’s right, and she knows it too.

She smiles humorlessly at him.  “Scoot over.  I need into my locker.”  

There’s nothing Kai can do but obey.

Together, they don their suits and gather their equipment.  They check in with the Venomari by the door and slip into the outside tunnel. They ascend the ladder to the topside.  

Even after all this time, there’s no getting used to the light.  

Kai shoves the manhole cover aside.  Golden light floods down on them from seemingly everywhere at once, leaving no shadows to hide in.  It sets off his EPD counter’s mechanical clicking – slow, good.  It’s impossible not to trigger it on the topside, but as long as it stays this slow, they’re safe.

Well, as safe as one can be when exposed to the criticality.

“We’ve got twenty minutes,” says Nya, checking her counter too.  Kai nods. 

They beeline for the center of the city, and Kai’s breath hitches as the ruined point of Borg Tower rises into view. 

He hasn’t returned since that fateful day.

For all that it haunts his nightmares, his memories of the event are disjoined and confused.  One moment he was being strangled by the Digital Overlord’s tentacles.  The next, he came to consciousness with alarms blaring overhead and Nya screaming in his face, Borg and Pixal further back dragging chairs –

He and Cole made it out of the Digiverse before criticality.  

Jay and Zane are still inside.

Every day, Kai wonders why it was him who escaped.  Both Zane and Jay would fit into this new world far better than he does: Zane, who would be immune to exposure, and Jay, clever enough to assist Borg with his machines.  

He’d swap places with them in a heartbeat if he could. 

But rescuing them is what this machine of Borg’s will do.  Kai just has to collect the pieces, and then Borg can work his techno magic and save them.  They’ll be okay.  He’ll make sure they’re okay.

Something clangs as they pass an alleyway.

Kai freezes in place.

It’s not the criticality.  Their counters would be going haywire if it were.  But there’s more than just exposure to worry about on the topside – only the desperate linger up here, and he edges in front of Nya, reaching for his sword.  Fire is dangerous here, bright and bold and full of energy as it is.  Behind him, he hears Nya readying her chakram.

A tiny gray paw pokes into the light.

Kai stands there stupidly as a kitten wanders onto the street.

“Aw!” says Nya.  She drops into a squat and offers her hand to the kitten.  “Wow, I didn’t think there was anything left alive up here.”

Kai sheathes his sword.  “Huh, yeah.”  He scratches behind the kitten’s ears and smiles despite himself.  “Lloyd would have loved —“

He cuts himself off.  Nya rests her hand on his shoulder.

Click.

Click, click, click click clickclick clickclickclickclickclick –

Kai’s head snaps up.  His horrified eyes find Nya’s.

Light as bright as the sun, light that burns a hole through the universe.  Light that thralls, that dazzles, that kills.

Kai stumbles back.  The light reaches everywhere – he drags Nya into the alley to try to escape it but there’s nowhere it doesn’t touch.  

“K A I ?”

Kai’s blood runs cold.  

He should be fleeing, should be trying to hide.  Instead, he turns at the dreadful call.

The criticality hovers in the sky above them.  Despite being formed of raw energy, its original shape can still be seen within the light.

A boy with unseeing golden eyes reaches out his hands.

“W H Y  A M  I  A L O N E?  W H E R E  A R E  Y O U?”

Kai seizes Nya’s hand.  “Run.”

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20 questions for fic writers

ty @that-was-anticlimactic for the tag!!!!

tagging @rosiehunterwolf @only-lonely-stars @cboffshore @knowledgequeenabc

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

I've got 63 officially! One of those is a one-shot collection though so it's secretly like 85 :D

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

518,844 - let's see if I can break 600K this year!

3. what fandoms do you write for?

the ninjago brainrot is still going strong after 10 years!! I've also dabbled in Monkie Kid, SLA, and MP100

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

The Sun Rises Every Single Night

Oh, haven't you heard? 

Reference Letters

Oh, can I be your Bibilly Hills? 

White

Sun Rises doesn't surprise me at all, but I'm eternally shocked that "haven't you heard" is so popular. I wrote it in like a day for funsies and stuck it on tumblr, not even planning to post it to ao3, but then it blew up. it is a buzzfeed unsolved fic tho, so that might be why XD

5. do you respond to comments

what a great question :DDD I do, but not for like months afterwards 😭

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

so I think let the wild rumpus start takes the cake with this one, but it's also the first in a series so like it's gonna get better, yk? For standalone fics, my ritsu fic brother let's cry (and get it over with) is def up there, along with Dosimetry :D

7. what is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Sun Rises's ending still makes me smile when I reread it!! too fast / too slow also has a happy ending planned

8. do you get hate on fics?

not quite hate, but I'll get comments in the "it's been forever since this updated" style lol. I get it i haven't updated in forever

also i've gotten comments that my nya is annoying and like. that's not hate either im just salty

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

i do not!

10. do you write crossovers? what's the craziest one you've written?

not really? I've done things where characters from one fandom are put in a different fandom's world, but that's not really a crossover as much as it is an au. oh and i put ryan and shane in TLNM universe so ig that counts.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that I know of!

12. what's the longest you've spent working on a fic? and the shortest?

*cries in Skyward* um? I didn't start you in 2014 you're still young queen

the shortest was probably Perfect World! I wrote that one in an afternoon :D ignore that it's 332 words.

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

yep!! I wrote fics for a telephone event early 2023, including Fang-llo, Everything for Them, and Shattered :D

14. what's your all-time favorite ship? from all fandoms?

shadolin!!!! shadolin my beloved!!! he's a horse girl and she's a system and no one is doing it like them <3

15. what's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

my morro is adopted by the Smiths fic,,,,, also this one collab that never finished either augh

16. what are your writing strengths?

I feel like I'm really good at writing action scenes! I also really like figuring out pacing and how sentences flow.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

details. wym these characters have to exist in a setting??? is it not enough they are talking in the void???

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

i don't think I've done it but I don't have a problem with it personally. ao3 has a skin where you can hover over words for translations too so that's kinda cool

19. first fandom you wrote for?

corey said rainbow fairies and YEAH SAME ACTUALLY. i also tried rewriting LotR as a 12 year old? fun times.

20. favorite fic you've written?

my current favorite is ceiling hung with vines hands down!! it's in the same series as Rumpus from earlier :D i also am really happy with A Heist with the Ninjagos, a CYOA fic

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1, 6, 13 for the fic asks?

Thanks woods!

1 - How many words have you written this year?

My ao3 stats officially say 118k, but I had some carryover fics from years prior so I would estimate it closer to 85k :D

6 - answered before, it’s Dosimetry!

13 - Longest fic of the year

ceiling hung with vines takes the title for this one! It’s my modern!mythical creature!college ninjago fic that’s centered around the stress and mystery of Nya having a stalker. Very proud of how it turned out!