#hey gill i wrote it up I'm Ashamed

[clonerightsagenda]

Good morning everyone, it is time for a very cursed post.  This was a lot funnier in the middle of the night when we were hysterical on Gill's floor.  I am now bathed in the harsh light of day and regret, but I promised I would write this up.

This post will make zero sense without the context of reading this other post and the tags.  All of the tags.  Did you do that, and come back?  I'm not sure why.  But here we are.  And after posting that, we hung out on our floor for like an hour in the middle of the night and hashed out an actual plot for this trainwreck. Because it was better than going to sleep, I guess. I have no excuses that can truly justify this.

So. A semi-functional explanation for all of this. The Light lands on a new prime material plane and due to a weird type of magic the inhabitants have going on, it gets sucked in the land and spread out throughout the plane.  Neither the Hunger nor the IPRE can get their hands on it, which means they can't kick off a new cycle.  They're just stuck.  So eventually they parley with John and make a deal - they will work together to use the transmutation magic of this universe to suck the light back together again and then return to their typical pattern of vying for it and moving between planes.  It's better than staying here forever.  Cooperating means they can both keep an eye on each other, rather than worrying that one of them is going to make a move behind the other's back.  But this plan is going to take a while to carry out, so John does...  Something, to keep the humans alive for the long haul and to help them and himself blend in.  Look, we were kind of working backward and had to come up with an explanation for why they're all filling the homunculis' positions, and that ended up being 'John uses evil opal ductape to stick ensouled artifacts on people' because again, it was the middle of the night, and we were hysterical.

Things work out for a while.  But Lup has always been the super moral one, and she's not thrilled with how things are going. "Look, I love Luce with all my heart," she says, " but I think her problem is that she always thinks her morally dubious plans are to pop off a lot faster than they do.  And the longer you wait, the more they get dubious. 'Yknow what I mean?" Taako and Barry are not sure they do, but naturally they follow along when she blows off Central to go start a bar, although they keep sort of in touch with Lucretia and Davenport, who have infiltrated this plane's government. Mrs. Bradley rolled a critical miss on her perception check. Magnus is uncomfortably caught in the middle. Merle has been digging a hole for the last 50 years. "You're a dwarf, right?" John asks. "You dig." "I was a BEACH dwarf," Merle protests.  He has been hitting on tree roots to pass the time.

While they're hanging out in their bar, Barry hear about some cool new way to preserve souls without bodies, and Lup is like, "Sure babe I'll go borrow that kid for you and you can check him out". "Sounds GREAT" says Taako, who has gotten kind of bored even if he gets to wear a cute crop top and he has unlimited polymorph spell slots. It's not morally dubious if you're just borrowing him, right? So Barry's going over Al's armor with a magnifying glass and saying "Hey, I'm just curious about how this works, but if you want your real body back, if you can get me a DNA sample, I could probably grow you one a few months" when John finds out two of his sacrifices are being meddled with and sends Davenport to straighten them out. (He is Fuhrer President Captain Davenport now. 'That's a lot of titles,' observes someone. 'No,' Magnus says, completely convinced. 'Captain is his first name.' 'That can't be right, Magnus,' Lucretia says. 'Are you SURE,' Magnus says. Lucretia is silent. She isn't sure.  It has been like 60 years.  It's too embarrassing to ask now.) I'm not sure how things go down - maybe whenever John did to them has some unfortunate corrupting side effects - but Lup ends up dead, with her soul in her umbrella, which ends up back with John.

Shit happens.  God knows I'm not sure what's going on here.  Barry ends up getting his ass burned to hell in the lab (he probably just wanted to see what sort of weird science is happening) and here's where we go even more off the rails, because according to Gill (who knows a lot about this fandom having been in it for a decade or something) apparently Lust!Roy was/is a big thing?  And the concept of him running around with haunted jeans duct-taped to his ass was Compelling.  I must specify here that John did not force him into wearing the jeans on his legs, as one might expect.  He duct-taped them to his ass. Possibly over the coat. 

Fast forward. Magnus vores Taako and some civilians accidentally. Taako's pissed but also has to fight vague adoption urges when presented with a Small Magic Boy.  He's uninterested in the other one until they get spat out and John's like, "We should probably get Lup back", leading to the aforementioned 'taping an umbrella to someone'.  Lup's not wild about being a 15 year old dude. She's also not wild about not being able to flirt with her husband, considering he's currently a 30 year old ranking officer and that would be weird. Ling is not wild about the entity possessing him trying to wheedle him into letting her brother transmute his body into something she's more comfortable with. "We could change you BACK later" she says.

This leads us to the great switcheroo.  It was probably inspired by some of Gill's Undying Middle School Ships but who am I to deny her some small satisfaction. Anyway, Lup gets wind of some sharp shooter lady upstairs and is like, "Hey,  hey, can I have THAT one". Barry thinks this is a great idea. Roy does not think this is a great idea. First of all, he does not want to explain to his subordinates that he’s holding hands with his Lieutenant because they are possessed by married liches. Second, if Riza gets fire powers then he's entirely irrelevant. "I can do necromancy," Barry says helpfully. "Raising the dead is impossible and forbidden by god," he is told. "Not the way I do it," he says. (Besides, once the Hunger shows up, the celestial plane is blocked off. The Truth just has a sign saying god can't hear you in their living room.)  This is. Tempting. Everyone shutting up about how tragic Maes Hughes’ death was is but one Raise Person spell away. But Ling's not giving up his free superpowers for *nothing* so they're like... look, we've got a dog here. Throw the dog at Magnus to distract him, then rip his sideburns off. (We decided the sideburns were his soul vessel because that was the worst possible option.) You'll do great.  You'll be best friends. ("Do you have to put the sideburns on your FACE" I asked. This led to a period of silent contemplation.) Magnus!Ling feels a terrible compulsion to rip Ed and Lan Fan's automail arms off.

I feel like I missed something, but this is all I remember.  Oh, Barry feels bad that they're leaving a trail of infertility in their wake so he gives various people little Necromancy-inspired Make Your Own Baby Kits and is like 'Add a little blood, put it in the oven for 5 minutes, let it rise, it'll be fine.' He's got the theory down for whenever he and Lup decide they can settle down and parent. The Curtises seem appreciative.

Also the nationwide transmutation circle sucks the Light back together and John goes Full Hunger until an angry fifteen year old punches a hole through him. Taako is So Proud.

Merle missed like everything.