#hiding the tablet in the attic

[faygos]

ONWARD NOBLE STEED

Sure gran whatever you say!

[geminiamethyst]

Skyline Gang: Trial of Darkness. Chapter 9

Chapter 1: click HERE

Chapter 8: click HERE

Chapter 10: click HERE

The rest of the day seemed to have gone relatively well. Everything ran on schedule. The show went exceedingly well again, though it started to lead people asking if a new show was in the works. Time to start brainstorming for another show soon. Having more than one show running might be a bit of a hassle, but if the Gang kept it balanced enough, everything should be fine. The only problem in the Skyline all day was just teenagers trying to harass the staff and some other guests. It led to them being escorted out and given a stern warning. Aside from that, almost everything ran as smoothly as they could.

The only thing that was out of place was Bud’s absence. He was having some trouble in doing his research, leading him to be holed up in his room. Dude was quick to spin the story that he wasn’t feeling well and needed some time off. As much as Dude didn’t want to, he used Bud’s autism as a reason for his sudden sick leave. Thankfully, that was enough. Everyone else in the Gang knew the truth. Dude couldn’t hide it from them. He told them about his discovery in the attic and what Bud was up to. He extremely stressed that no one disturbs him. He knew how Bud was when it came to his work and that he would be more than unhappy if someone distracted him. Something that Dude caught Sprout and Misty trying to do. Twice. Sprout intending to play a prank. Misty…actually Dude didn’t know what she was planning, but probably something similar to what Sprout had in mind.

After hours of not hearing anything, Dude decided to check on Bud. Some fruit and a bottle of cool water should be enough to help with an offering. He knocked as calmly as he could, but Bud didn’t answer. Did something happen to him? No, try not to think like that! Maybe he was wearing a pair of ear defenders or noise cancelling headphones? Dude knocked a little louder, hoping for the best and fearing the worst. His prayers were answered when Bud finally opened the door. A pair of headphones hung from his neck, classical music being heard from them. Did he hear those noises like Dude had and tried to block them out? Clicks and whirs from his small robotic helpers can also be heard from within the red room.

“Thought you could do with a break.” Dude smiled kindly, holding out the food and drink.

“Thank you. Please come in.” Bud sighed, looking incredibly relieved. Did he not give himself time to stop and take a break? Dude didn’t want to think that Bud wasn’t taking any breaks. He hoped that he was. Regardless, he stepped in the bedroom, taking in everything. It was still like how his room was in Pavilion. A few small robots were set to work. Some were scuttling on the floor, going under the bed and chest of draws to clean, while some were flying on the ceiling to clean away the corners. The only thing that was different was Dude’s discovery and the dark aura surrounding it. The artefact was now in a stand. A couple of Bud’s robots were scanning it at a distance. One robot was laying on the desk, completely broken. It was like it was short circuited and smashed itself on the desk. It was impossible to think that Bud would do it himself. Bud’s tablet was on the bed, the screen flashing a little as it collected data from the robots.

“What have you found?” Dude asked, hoping to get some straight answers.

“This is the Sceptre of Shadows. It shouldn’t be here.” Bud immediately became more serious. He sat down on the bed, scooping up his tablet. He gestured for Dude to sit down so that he could share his findings. “Unfortunately I haven’t found that much. The information is extremely limited. I find that unusual and unsettling. Something like this should have more information.”

“That doesn’t sound good. What have you been able to find?” Dude mused, glancing at the screen in front of him and his friend.

“From what I have gathered, there is a myth surrounding it. A rather unsettling myth, and one that doesn’t seem to be that well known internationally.” Bud explained, his face looking grim. With a quick swipe on his tablet he showed an image of a stone carving. It appeared to be broken, making part of the ancient text incomplete. However, there was a carving image of the Sceptre. “I had also found this image of a subscription. It’s partial but from what I’ve been able to translate, it’s warning about a form of “darkness”Darkness”. From other information that I’ve found, it’s supposedly acted as like a tool to stop it from coming. Unfortunately, the source isn’t fully reliable as there are other conflicting details. I’ve contacted several museums and archaeologists, but they know even less about this thing. Not many know about this, and those that do all called it a myth that shouldn’t be remembered.”

“Didn’t you tell them we had it?” Dude asked.

“I didn’t know if I should’ve done that. Not with how little we know about it.” Bud explained, quickly glancing at the Sceptre. His eyes went wide for a brief moment and tapped at his tablet rapidly. The drones that were scanning the Sceptre immediately backed off. They were probably flying too close and Bud didn’t want them to suffer the same fate as their fallen mechanical brother. Dude meanwhile glanced at the Sceptre of Shadows rather coldly. This thing was supposedly a myth and as Bud said, not meant to be here. How or why was it even here in the first place? This didn’t make any sense.

“Where did it come from? Or at least this myth surrounding it?” Dude continued to ask.

“It allegedly came from this jungle.” Bud said, bringing up a map on his tablet. He zoomed in to the relevant area and using the pen tool, he swiped a cross on a small area. “Using all of the data that I’ve collected, I’d estimate that its origins are from this area.”

That’s on the other side of the world. Around South America by the looks of it. This Sceptre took quite the journey. So there was technically a how as to it being here. Someone obviously took it from its resting place, and brought it to the Skyline. The question as to why and now who was still murky. Dawn? Maybe. She had this darkness surrounding her 24/7. If she had that thing then it would explain where her powers came from. But why did she not have it on her? It would make sense for her to have it rather than not. Maybe it was stolen from her? So the previous Skyline Gang could’ve had it, but why hide it in the attic? Why not just return it?

“Could Dawn have put it in the attic somehow? Or maybe the old Skyline Gang?” Dude asked, wanting Bud’s opinion on this matter.

“I took a look at the chest that the Sceptre was in. It seems to me that until you touched it, no one has opened it for a long time. It could be possible that Dawn smuggled it in here somehow through her magic. Or someone else put it there themselves, without the previous Gang’s knowledge.”

Not exactly what Dude wanted to hear, but it was still one nonetheless. However, as Bud was explaining this issue, he didn’t notice how Dude was staring at the Sceptre, colour draining from him. He can hear it all over again. The horrible whispering. It was more intense than before. And it was so awful that it took everything that Dude had to not get up and grab it. He tried desperately to distract himself.

“What if we return it to where it was found? Would that stop this “Darkness” from coming?” Dude asked, shaking his head a little to block out the intrusive sounds. So far nothing bad has happened since Dawn, but who said that something worse won’t come soon? Best to try to resolve this now before everything goes from bad to worst.

“In theory. But I don’t think it’s worth the risk, Dude. Not when we know so little.” Bud sighed after taking a sip of water. He glanced over at Dude and finally saw how abnormal Dude looked. He was shaking his head a little, as if he was poorly attempting to clear a headache. And in all honesty, he looked a little sick. “Are you okay? You look very pale.”

“I think it’s being around that thing that’s doing it.” Dude muttered, gesturing shakily at the Sceptre. Bud took one concerning glance at it, and then back at Dude. This was very strange. Bud had the longest exposure to the Sceptre out of the pair, and yet, Dude seems to be the one that was affected the most by it. There was something else about the scans picked up that he neglected to mention. There was a strange energy that came from the Sceptre. It was abnormal to everything that was logical. Not only that, but there was something negative about it. He didn’t want to draw possible comparisons, but if Dude was right to suspect Dawn’s involvement, the energy might be similar to her magic. The more he thought both it, the worse Dude suddenly looked. He needs to do something quick before it potentially gets from bad to worse.

“Let’s get you outside.” Bud concluded, standing up rather quickly. Dude shakily got to his feet, just as eager to get away from the Sceptre. Bud quickly retired all of his robots to their charging stations manually. He didn’t want to lose another one by accident. Needless to say that once Dude got outside, he felt better almost immediately.

It was a large space. Plenty of room for Rainbow to play in and explore. It was mostly a green area, a quarter of it being patio. There was a large tree that offered plenty of shade. It wasn’t stable enough to build a treehouse (much to Sprout’s disappointment when he found out) but Candi did ask for a swing to be made to play on. On one end of the garden was a vegetable patch, which gloriously grew enough to make everyone happy. It was also fenced off to prevent Rainbow from trying to stick his nose into it. Flower patches and bushes flourished thanks to the tender care that Candi and Pip provided. The garden housed benches to sit on, a barbecue and a dog house for Rainbow. It even had a concrete fire pit for when the Gang wanted to feel like toasting marshmallows and making s’mores. It was all surrounded by a high hedge and fence for privacy. It was perfect to just come outside and relax.

Once Dude had settled on one of the benches, everything felt right with the world for a brief moment. Whatever the Sceptre was doing no longer had an effect on him out here. Bud saw this and immediately started to brainstorm. If Dude was going to be in this kind of trouble, something needed to be done about it. Holding it in some kind of case should do the trick. Maybe something like those storage tubes that Pip uses for her large drawings. It’s just finding the right material to keep it from effecting Dude and possibly anyone else. It does call for some experimenting. And possibly breaking the Skyline’s budget.

“So, do you really think that putting the Sceptre back is a good thing?” Bud questioned once Dude’s colour came back to him.

“I’m willing to take the risk.” Dude replied, face full of determination.

“Do you think that the others will be on board with it?” Bud asked again.

“Even if they aren’t, I’m still going. Alone if I have to.” Dude doubled down on his determination. This thing was dangerous. Even if there is a risk, it was better to return it to its resting place, right?

“You’re not going alone.” Bud suddenly announced. Dude felt his jaw hit the ground when he heard that. Bud wasn’t usually one to get into the great outdoors that often. The closet that he got to nature is the beach and the furthest that he had gone from the Skyline is the nearby town. He wasn’t one to change his routine that much either. Any change that was major to his routine often caused him to have a meltdown. So Bud volunteering to step out of his comfort zone was surprising. And somewhat relieving.

“Thanks Bud.” Dude smiled gratefully. He doesn’t have to be alone in this. Especially if that Sceptre starts to cause him problems and he’s on his own.

“Just one request.” Bud stated, wanting to nip something that was nagging him in the bud.

“What’s that?” Dude asked with a raised eyebrow.

“If things go wrong when we put it back, I’m allowed to say “I told you so”.” Bud offered to compromise.

“You’ve got yourself a deal.” Dude smiled in agreement, reaching out a hand to shake. Bud accepted the gesture, giving a firm hand shake. Dude took a deep breath from this. He felt apprehensive about the Sceptre of Shadows and returning it. Noe that he had a friend going with him, it started to feel a bit less stressful. Of course there were still other things together such as funding for the trip and making sure that they had everything that they need for it. For now, it was best to enjoy this moment of peace while it was there.

Then the peace was interrupted.

“Misty! Where did you get that?!”

Dude stood up rapidly as he heard that. That sounded like Mimi shouting. It sounded like she was in a mix of panic and fury. What was Misty up to now? The alarm bells started ringing louder as the back door swung open with a panicked Candi standing there.

“Dude! Bud! Please help!” She begged before heading back to the chaos on the house.

“Oh no…” Dude muttered, before charging into the house. Bud followed after him, feeling his nerves spike to a hundred within seconds. Misty was causing mischief again…

[wastefulreverie]

skeleton in the closet

3336 words | danny phantom fic

"Wait." Emelia's gaze fell on the smallest figure in the weathered photo. He stood opposite her mother and in front of her grandparents. Grandpa Fenton's hand rested on his shoulder, proud eyes staring straight into the camera. The young man beamed, dimples hiding traces of dark circles beneath his piercing blue eyes. There was something familiar about him that Emelia just couldn't place. "Who's this?"

Grandma Fenton's smile fell from her face when she spotted the family portrait.

"He's no one." Her voice was terse and stilted.

"No one? What, he wasn't mom's boyfriend back in the day, was he? Grandpa seems awful fond of him…"

Grandma made a face. "No. That's your uncle. Before."

"I thought… I thought Uncle Danny died when he was a kid."

The young man in the photo looked well into his twenties. Emelia had always been told he'd passed when he was fourteen, one year younger than her now.

Grandma shook her head. "Emelia, we don't talk about Danny."

"But what happened to him?"

"We don't talk about Danny."

Grandma's lips were pressed into a thin line now. Her gloved hands trembled and there was something unreadable in her violet eyes. "I didn't mean to—"

"Go back downstairs to the reunion, sweetie," Grandma insisted. Her eyes flitted back to the photo album Emelia had scavenged from the attic. "I'll take care of this."

As Emelia descended downstairs, she had the sinking feeling that she wouldn't be seeing that album again soon.

"Hey, Dad," Emelia said. "What happened to Uncle Danny?"

Her dad's eyes clouded. "Sorry, sweetie. What did you say? I thought I heard you say—"

"Uncle Danny. What happened to him anyway?"

Her dad swore under his breath. "Emelia, we don't talk about Danny."

She scoffed. "Why does everyone keep saying that? I mean, how am I supposed to understand unless you tell me why we can't talk about him."

Her dad pulled a strand of hair from Emelia's face. It wasn't like either of her parents' respective red and brown hair, but straight black. Mom used to have a wistful look when brushing it, doting on her for inheriting Grandpa Fenton's hair. Mom didn't look wistful much anymore.

"Emelia." He glanced around them. Her younger cousin Brynn was holding her tablet inches from her face. "This isn't the time. Everyone's still… still shaken up about it. Jazz—your mother especially. Don't turn this into another fight."

Most family reunions ended with a falling out. Usually, everything was fine until her grandparents got defensive about their ghost hunting methods. Everyone came around again after a few weeks, the same old arguments. Emelia tuned most of it out.

"When is the time? I'm fifteen! I can handle the truth."

"No. No, Emelia. Let this go for your own good—for the family's own good."

"No! I want to know about Uncle Danny!"

On the couch, Brynn looked up from her tablet. "Mom says that Cousin Danny was a sad thing. Won't tell me more. Just that he's sad."

Her dad grit his teeth. "Drop this, Emelia."

His eyes were pleading. She could hear chatter from the other adults in the next room over.

"Fine," she relented. "I get it."

If her parents wouldn't tell her the truth about what happened to Uncle Danny, she'd find someone who would.

"Sebastian." Her Grandpa's great-nephew, Emelia's second cousin, and Brynn's eldest brother. She hadn't seen him since before he left for college. "Do you know what happened to Uncle Danny?"

His eyebrows scrunched up. "Danny? I uh, know they tell us not to talk about him. Something bad happened, but no one will tell me what."

"But something bad did happen?"

"Oh, for sure. I was about eight or so when he went missing."

"Wait, went missing?" This was the first piece of new information she'd managed to uncover all night. "I thought he died?"

"Well, we didn't know that until later. Or maybe the adults didn't want to tell me… they were all weird about it."

"So what? He goes missing and later they find out he died? You think he was murdered?"

"That would make sense, but it doesn't explain why the family tries so hard to cover it up. Personally, I've always thought he died doing something super illegal. Like, why else wouldn't they tell us? Oh, or maybe he's in witness protection."

"So, he may not even be dead at all?"

"Never had a funeral for him. No way to tell."

"Who was he to you? What sort of person was he?"

Sebastian had a faraway look in his eyes. "He babysat me a few times. He'd let me get away with stuff none of my other cousins would. Like, there was this one time I wanted to play in the washing machine. He let me crawl in there for a few minutes. When he pulled me out, it was like he pulled me through the machine. Never figured out how he did that."

"What do you mean?"

"It was like his arms went through the top of the machine. It—it opened from the side. Otherwise, I couldn't climb in." He shut his eyes. "Huh. Kid memories."

Emelia's hair stood on end. "That doesn't—it sounds like you remember it well."

"I mean, it had to have been in my head, right? I was five."

He didn't look entirely convinced himself.

"Right," she said. "Of course."

She didn't sleep well the first night of the reunion, haunted by thoughts of Grandma tearing apart her photo album page-by-page. That, and her air mattress didn't feel quite as nice as she remembered it as a kid. Emelia was almost tempted to climb in bed with her parents like she'd done as a child but thought better of herself. She was grown.

Maybe her grandparents kept melatonin in the medicine cabinet. That'd put her well to sleep—stiff air mattress and intrusive thoughts be damned.

Emelia slipped downstairs, careful not to wake her cousins on the pull-out couch. It was a challenge sifting through the cabinet in low light, but she eventually found the sleep aids. She struggled with the bottle's child-lock and then dropped one of the capsules. It slid across the kitchen floor, disappearing somewhere under the fridge. Dammit.

Hoping that her phone's light wouldn't wake her cousins in the next room over, she dropped to the floor and scanned the tile with her flashlight. It took her five minutes too long to find the capsule, but at least she'd found it. Though, she discovered something even more peculiar. There was a door behind the fridge. She could see the bottom of the door through the space beneath the fridge—it was some sort of steel and had obvious hinges. Standing opposite the fridge, the door was hidden behind the room's yellow-green floral wallpaper.

"… what?"

Her grandparents' house had a secret door.

What was hidden behind the fridge?

Something just didn't add up about it. Why go to the trouble to put wallpaper over the door if you didn't plan to use it again? Was there something they wanted to close off but keep access to? Was it something they didn't want prying eyes to notice? It couldn't be anything good, could it?

Despite the sleep aid, Emelia slept little that night.

With all her cousins under one roof, Emelia didn't have much opportunity to investigate the hidden door in the kitchen. That, and she wasn't strong enough to move a refrigerator unit alone. She needed help. Sebastian, maybe? Between the two of them they should be able to move the fridge enough to see what was behind it.

"First you're asking me about Cousin Danny and now you're worried there's a secret door in the kitchen," he said. "You sure you haven't been cracking up, Em?"

She hit him. "I know what I saw! I'm not crazy. I just—I just have a gut feeling. All of this ties together somehow."

"That's a hell of an intuition."

"Maybe it is, but you can't just ignore that there's something suspicious going on."

"No, you're right. For a family of ghost hunters it'd be weird if there wasn't some kinda conspiracy. I asked my Mom about Danny last night, and she gave me the same spiel. 'We don't talk about Danny.' I'm down to figure this out."

She felt a rush of relief.

"You trust me?"

"Given that you know less than anyone here, yeah. Let's unravel this thing."

"You don't have to rub it in that I'm younger—"

"Mm, yeah. It's all I've got going for me. Not everyone's the daughter of bigwig psychologists. I'm just a humble son of ghost hunters…"

"Yeah, yeah," she brushed him off. "Anyway, for tonight here's what I'm thinking…"

They waited for the rest of the house to settle in for the night. Some of the adults didn't head to bed until two, but she and Sebastian kept each other awake texting. Given the reunion was over tomorrow, they couldn't compromise this shot to see what her grandparents were hiding.

Finally, they met in the kitchen. Moving the fridge without waking up the house would be a challenge, but Emelia had faith in herself. She thought they did a solid job. They took out most of the food that would fall off the shelves and slid the appliance just far enough to squeeze behind. Everything was going great until Brynn appeared in her pale, blue nightgown. She wasn't taller than four feet tall and shrunk into her faded slippers. Hair mussed in all directions, she stared at them with unseeing eyes from the kitchen's entryway.

"I can hear him now," she whispered. "I can hear him…"

"Sis?" Sebastian paled. "Brynn, you've gotta hush. You can't—you can wake the others."

"Cousin Danny." Brynn's hair fell over her eyes, somehow making her stature appear even frailer. She pointed to the now exposed door. "He's there. I can hear him now."

Emelia's blood ran cold. "You can hear Danny?"

She nodded. "He calls himself Danny. He says 'he's their son, he's their son.'"

Danny was a ghost. His ghost was bound to whatever was behind the door. There's no way her ghost hunting family didn't know about him—and yet they'd just sealed him away? Their own son?

If she died, would they do the same? Keep her as a skeleton in the closet?

She needed to know. She needed to know what her family had done.

"Sebastian," she said. "Can you keep watch and make sure Brynn doesn't follow me?"

He frowned. "I thought we were going to—"

"It's changed. I don't… I don't want her near whatever's behind that door."

"But you still want to go?" He raised a brow. "What if it's dangerous?"

She grabbed a stray ectogun left on the counter. With a flick of a switch, it whirred to life. "I think I can handle myself. If it's… something you should see I'll let you know."

It took some persuading, but Emelia eventually managed to convince Sebastian to let her go. When she pulled open the door, she almost fell down a set of stairs. A hidden basement?

Holding her phone flashlight in one hand and her ectogun in the other, she descended into the hidden depths of FentonWorks. There was a hint of something foul in the air—battery acid or lemons? She realized after a moment that it was the telltale stench of ectoplasm. Of course.

The stairs opened to a wide room. She couldn't make out much in the dark, but it wasn't hard to imagine that this could have been a private ghost lab. Her mom had mentioned her grandparents' old lab in passing, but Emelia had never once imagined that it was beneath their house. Who built a dangerous lab in their house!

There were shelves lining the walls with dilapidated weapons, others housing jars of ectoplasm illuminating the dim room. There were workbenches and counters and what looked to be one of those old box computers. Though, what threw off Emelia the most though was the octagonal frame at the front of the room. It was barricaded with hazard-striped double doors and Emelia knew.

This is what they'd been hiding.

This was where she'd find her answers.

She wasn't sure how she knew how to do it. There was something—someone—nudging her along. Maybe it was the same voice that Brynn had heard, maybe it was something far more sinister. There was a genetic lock panel not far from the portal. Portal? Yes, it was a portal.

When Emelia pressed her thumb against the scanner, the doors groaned with life. They pulled apart to reveal an abyss of brilliant green. It looked like the surface of a planet, swirling and forever mesmerizing.

The Ghost Zone.

She wasn't sure how she knew that either.

A shadow fell upon her as a figure glided through the portal. He didn't move far, suspended in front of the doorway—frozen. Danny appeared similar to how he looked in the photo she'd glimpsed, but like someone had tried to draw him from memory. His dimples were less pronounced, and he was paler, more stretched out, and lacking rigid structure. His eyes were an otherworldly green, not blue, and there was a faint hint of green to his skin.

Uncle Danny nonetheless.

"It's you," she breathed.

"Emelia." His voice echoed, sounding as if he was speaking behind her instead. "You've found me."

"You know me?"

"Yes. I remember. I remember you so small. Jazz let me—Jazz let me fly you around the room. You loved it. I—I was so happy to be your uncle." His expression fell, dark shadow cast across his face. "And then my mom saw us. My mom ruined everything. My dad and my mom took everything from me. Everything we could have had if they hadn't—if they hadn't just listened. They didn't listen. They thought I was lying. They—they—"

She wasn't following.

"What did they see?"

"I flew. It was fun. He held you above me and we—we just went around the nursery. Mom didn't like that." He growled, an inhuman noise ripping from his throat. Emelia did her best not to falter. Show no fear—the first rule with ghosts. "They never liked anything I did. They hated who I was, which is why I didn't tell and then they found out. They found out."

He was talking in circles. Typical for a ghost, but not at all helpful.

"What did they find out? What didn't you tell?"

"That I was their son! They knew who I was. Except they didn't think that it was true, so they—so they hid me away. Their specimen—they kept me. Until they didn't. Until they—until they decided they'd played enough games with Danny!" He clenched his fists. "It hurt so much. Pulling me apart from the inside out, sawing my bones down into nothing. Nothing, nothing…" He laughed. "After dying the first time, I never thought anything could hurt that much."

She wasn't making sense of most of his words, but that damn sure sounded like her grandparents murdered their son in cold blood if she ever heard it. Sawing down his bones? Pulling him apart?

"Once they realized I came back again they shut the portal for good. They were too stubborn to shut it when ghosts attacked the townsfolk, but when I died suddenly now they care about which ghosts slip into the human world? Give me a fucking break," he spat. "They only care about themselves. I thought they loved me, I thought—thought so."

"That's—" she swallowed "—that's awful."

He looked at her carefully. "Why'd you find me, Emelia?"

"I—I was curious. No one will talk about you and I realized that there was something hidden."

He scoffed. "Don't even talk about me? They kill me and think they can just walk away from me forever because I'm trapped behind some stupid portal? Well, I'm out now. I might not have enough strength to put a foot out on my own into the human world, but you do." Danny floated lower to meet her at eye level. His green eyes swirled in tandem with the portal behind him. "Will you help me, Emelia? Will you help?"

He appeared sincere. Hurt, no doubt, but she couldn't refuse after getting this far.

"Yes, of course. What with?"

Danny smiled. "Oh, nothing much. You won't have to do much at all."

He held out his hand and Emelia accepted.

"So, what am I—"

Danny flew forward and the next thing she knew her world went still. There were flashes of moments, familiar faces warped—younger faces. Her grandparents gazed down at her drawing something hot against her skin; a wasteland of endless green, thrashing against the portal from the other side desperate to return; feet lifted from the ground and slipped into a spectral tail, carefully hoisting a giggling child into the air while a red-headed woman watched carefully from afar; there was a needle in her arm now, everything was becoming numb and hot and she didn't like this feeling no no no make it stop; a black-haired girl with a camera pressing something into her hands, some clothing, gazing into the vacant chasm that was once the ghost portal.

She was standing opposite the ghost portal.

She couldn't move. Her legs shifted without her consent, and it dawned on Emelia that she'd been fooled. No, no. This couldn't be happening. No!

Her own voice filled her ears. "I'm sorry it had to be this way, Emelia. My parents removed my ectoplasmic essence when they killed me, so I'm no longer strong enough to exist in this world alone." Her eyes flitted to the many jars of ectoplasm lining the walls. That was Danny, once. "It took a decade just to get a grasp on overshadowing. I figured I might as well become the ghost that they fear me to be. The one that deserves to be locked away, right? The one they created?"

No, this was wrong. Please, let her go. Please! She doesn't want to hurt anyone. She doesn't want to. Please, Uncle Danny, listen to reason!

"I know, I understand. If that's what you want then I won't make you watch."

Wait, stop—!

Her mother's arms were around her. Emelia startled at the sudden embrace, unsure how she'd gotten herself here. Last thing she knew, Danny had tricked her. And now? Her mouth tasted like iron. Blood. Everything smelled like it too. There were tears rolling down her mom's now red face and Emelia knew that she'd done something terrible. There was something hard pressed against her back. She realized after a moment it was an ectogun. Her mom was holding a weapon to her back. What had—?

Behind her mom was Danny, or at least what she thought was Danny, sprawled across the carpet with a smoking hole on his chest. Rather than how she'd seen him before, he had glowing white hair and donned a fitted hazmat suit with silver accents. He clutched at the wound, mouth opening and closing—wailing in ghostly tones.

Her mom released her embrace, expression cold. She stood over the ghost of Emelia's uncle.

"I'm sorry I couldn't help you, Danny. I did all I could to protect you from our parents. I did everything in my power and it still wasn't enough. They hurt you in a way no one should. I still have nightmares, you know? Coming home to find my brother in—in pieces! They hurt all of us!" Her mom raised the ectogun. "I understand hurting our parents, I do. They deserved it. But now? I draw the line at hurting my daughter. For what it's worth, I'm sorry I couldn't be a better sister."

Emelia scrunched her eyes shut.

Not that it helped lessen the sound of her mom pulling the trigger.

[sleepy-belphie]

Hello! I don’t know if you’re doing headcannon requests but if you don’t mind could you do something along the lines of “the brothers find out mc likes to draw and drew the brothers”

Hi! I am doing hc requests so thank you for sending this in! It was actually really fun to write, I really hope you enjoy it <3 Got a little carried away with this one too lol

Tags: @kawaiiblack

~~~~~

Lucifer:

He’s doing room checks as usual

And you left your sketchpad/drawing tablet out on your desk

You catch sight of it a bit too late and can only watch as Lucifer moves from your dresser to your desk

He pauses as his eyes spot the sketchpad/tablet

He picks it up and looks at it before glancing at you

“May I?”

You nod and nervously watch him go through your work

His face is unreadable as he goes through drawing after drawing of him and his brothers

It feels like an eternity before he finishes

“Do you do commissions?”

It takes a moment for you to register what he’s said

“...what?”

“I’d like to commission you.”

If you do traditional art he asks for a 30x40 of him and his brothers

If you do digital art he asks for a colored, full-body piece of him and his brothers

He lets you decide how much you want to be paid

But he thinks it’s not enough so he pays you 55,000 Grimm

The 30x40 piece hangs in his study

The colored, full-body piece is printed, framed, and sitting on his desk

Mammon:

He bursts into your room one night when you’re finishing up a drawing of Satan and Asmo

You’re not fast enough to hide it from him

“Is that Satan and Asmo? Oi! Where’s my drawing!?”

Before you can show him anything else he’s speaking again

“N-not that I care! It’s hard to capture this perfection! I can see why you haven’t drawn me!”

He tries to act unbothered, but you can see past his tsundere ways

Once he’s done declaring how unbothered he is, you show him some pieces with him in it

He grabs the pad/tablet excitedly and snatches it from you to marvel over your work

“This is actually really good, ya know? I bet we could make some good Grimm off your little talent.”

You can practically see the dollar signs in his eyes

But you tell him that is not happening and take your pad/tablet back

He’s a bit mopey about it for a little but eventually lets it go when he sees you aren’t budging

When he does have a little bit of Grimm he does commission you for a small piece

The brothers’ eyes almost bulge out of their head when they hear that Mammon actually paid you for work

“What!? The Great Mammon can be nice sometimes! It doesn’t mean anything!”

It means a lot actually

But you’re a pro at reading between the lines with Mammon

Leviathan:

He’s on social media when he sees a drawing on his explore page that he’s absolutely in love with

The art style? Immaculate. He wanted to see so many of his favorite game and anime characters in this style

He imagines Ruri-chan in your art style and his brain just *internet dial-up noises* for about five minutes

He goes to the artist’s profile and starts scrolling through all their posted work

He pauses when he comes across a drawing that looked suspiciously like him in his demon form

The face was blacked out but the serpentine tail, the horns, the diamonds on the neck, the side zipped hoodie

It had to be him

In shock, he scrolls back to the top of the profile and checks out the bio and name of the artist

He is greeted by a very familiar face and name

He is in your room less than 2 minutes later

“You! Y-You did this!?”

You almost drop your pad/tablet thanks to his outburst and abrupt entrance

You look at the DDD that was shoved in your face and slowly nod

You thought he was gonna blow up at you for posting a drawing of him, even though his face wasn’t in it

You are very wrong

Levi becomes your #1 source of income

The moment you finish a piece, he is commissioning you again

You worry that he’s draining his bank account because he tips you very well

But he isn’t bothered at all by it

All of your pieces are on display in his room

He also posts all of your art on his social media and tags you

Your page explodes in popularity and the commissions are rolling in from his online friends

You had no idea otakus pay so well

Mammon is very jealous of the amount of Grimm you have piling up

Satan:

One day he asks you about your hobbies and you tell him you draw

“What do you draw?”

Cue internal conflict on if it’s weird to tell someone you’ve been drawing them and their brothers since you’re always around each other

He senses your hesitation and like the smart ass he is, he’s able to guess exactly why 

“Would your hesitance be because of the subject of your art?”

He knows too much for his own good

You decide it’s best for him to see it instead of telling him

Being a fan of literary art, you were worried he may be overly critical of your fine art

He was not the type to sugarcoat anything

However, he simply smiles and hands your pad/tablet back

“You’re incredibly talented, MC.”

A few days later he asks you to tag along with him while he handles something

That ‘something’ is going to feed some stray cats he’s come across

“MC, I’d like to commission you. I’ve found homes for these cats but I want something to remember them by. Will you help me?”

How can you say no to a man holding four cats in his arms?

You take some photos for reference and make four different pieces for him

When you give them to Satan, you swear you’ve never seen a bigger smile on his face

He framed them all and keeps them on top of his bookshelves

Asmodeus:

He found out through Levi’s social media

He commissioned you for a piece of him and the protagonist of a game he recently started playing

This piques Asmo’s interest and he wonders if you’ve ever drawn him before

He approaches you when you’re in the kitchen grabbing a drink

“Hi, darling. I saw the piece you did for Levi and naturally if you’ve done one of him you’ve probably drawn my beauty as well, right?”

You decide to show him since he brought it up

He’s gushing over all of your art

No, seriously, he is praising you so much even the tip of your ears start burning from your blush

He commissions you to draw him in many different ways 

Him in his bedroom, him in the bath, him as a mermaid, him as an exotic dancer

He comes to you with so many different ideas

He tests your limits but you actually like that

Beelzebub:

Beel is rather stoic, but he doesn’t mean to be

It was his resting face and smiling was usually reserved for eating yummy food

But you wanted to practice drawing him with different expressions

Beel’s welcoming manner gave you the courage to approach him and ask if you can take some pictures of him to use for a reference

He’s shocked you wanna draw him but agrees with the condition that he gets to see some of your other work

You show him different pieces of him and his brothers and he’s smiling the entire time

“These are all so good. I didn’t know you could draw.”

He commissions a piece of him and Belphegor and one of all seven brothers

But he also asks if he can watch you draw them

You both spend quite a few nights together

You drawing and him munching on snacks and feeding you some every once in a while

His presence is actually pretty calming so you ask him if he minds staying around while you work even after you finish his commission

Beel being Beel, agrees to keep you company

The night usually ends with him carrying you to bed

Sometimes, he takes you to his bed to cuddle

Belphegor:

Belphie was actually the first brother you drew

You came across him asleep in the attic once and he looked so perfect

Your fingers were itching to draw him, so you did

It became a routine for you to head to the attic and draw him while he slept

You always crept out before he woke up

You thought he had no idea of your little practice sessions

But one day you looked down to fix a mistake you made on his nose

When you looked back up you saw Belphie staring right at you

“You know, if you’re gonna draw me the least you can do is show me.”

You try to stammer out an apology as he sits up

“Oh, I don’t care. You don’t make noise or anything, I’m just very hyperaware of my surroundings. So I know when someone is in the same room as me when I sleep.”

He moves over to you and looks at your pad/tablet

“Hm, not bad MC. Show me your other work some time.”

Then he goes back to his sleeping spot, curls up, and falls back asleep

You sit there with your pencil/stylus in your hand, trying to wrap your head around what just happened

But he didn’t seem disturbed so you continue drawing

When he wakes up you show him more of your work featuring his brothers

He asks if he can have a quick sketch you did of him and Beel 

You jokingly say he has to pay for it

He actually pays you for it

He puts it up in his room

It’s nice to see when you visit him and Beel

[cheyla-v]

Domaystic 2022 - Day 5 - The Pet from Next Door Fandom: Harry Potter Series/AU: Soul’s Scream

“The neighbors next door were telling Fred and George yesterday that they found a nest of nifflers living in their attic, including a mother with babies.”

Theo looked up from his morning coffee as Charlie spoke. When he got a good look at the expression in the Beta’s blue eyes, the Slytherin already knew where this was heading. Reluctantly, he arched a brow, silently prompting the other dragel to continue. 

“Little ears may have been present.” Charlie tried—and failed—to hide his smile behind his cup of tea. 

“Of course they were,” Theo commented blandly, starting to pick at the food on his plate. A well-balanced breakfast naturally, thanks to Quinn. 

“Ethan asked this morning if someone had a school presentation, because he was getting questions about how to make strong arguments and the best ways to go about asking for something specific.”

Theo blew out a slow, measured breath. 

“Technically, you only told Harry that live animals weren’t allowed as courting gifts and that was years ago already.”

“I know what I said.” At the time, Theo’s only goal had been to ensure that their Circle didn’t end up with a menagerie—and yet, they still had the equivalent of a small one anyways. Shadow, Fawkes, Hedwig, Ava, Soren, the occasional hellhound puppy when Hermione was visiting or a certain Gheyo got roped into baby-sitting duty—even Goonter, as much as Alec denied that the Harron’s Sea Dragon was anyone’s pet besides Alcandor’s. 

“And?”

“Do I really need to expound on the many reasons why a niffler would be a bad idea?” Theo drawled. “Given their gravitation to anything shiny? A tendency that’s already shared by several in this household?”

“Several? Or just Harry?”

“Harry. A certain Merrow. Riven and Quinn, even if they’ll deny it. Four of the six Gheyos.” Theo suppressed a grimace as he pictured how the Gheyo Suite would react to something like a niffler in the house, stealing away their armor and weapons and various adornments.

It would be absolute chaos, most likely. 

Charlie laughed. 

“So that’s a hard ‘no’ then,” he said, sitting down and reaching for the tablet Theo had set aside a few minutes earlier to scroll through the news. 

“No to a niffler; Harry can have the last say on a pet in general.”

[whimsicallyreading]

Eight Second Ride

Part Three-

(Part Two)

“So you are telling me-“ Aedion scowls from the other side of her bed, “you ditched me for a sweaty bull rider and didn’t even last an hour into the date?”

Aelin shoves a spoonful of cookies and cream ice cream into her mouth and sniffles. “That’s all you got from my story?”

He slings an arm over Aelin’s shoulders and she lays her head on his chest gratefully. She’d caught an Uber back to her apartment where Aedion was already camped out waiting for her.

One look at her mascara smeared face, and he’d made a pillow fort on her bed. Complete with ice cream and “Little Women” playing on his phone.

“No, I got the whole chauvinistic asshole, bit.” Aedion stabs his spoon into the container and breaks up a particularly large piece of Oreo. “I just decided to focus on the part that doesn’t make me want to leave you hear and go and kill him right now.”

“I thought cowboys were supposed to be classy.” Aelin watched Jo play with her sisters in their attic on Aedion’s tiny screen. “Take city girls into the country to ride a horse and show them a bigger purpose in life, kind of shit.”

“Hallmark is such a liar.” Aedion huffs and squeezes her shoulder a little tighter. “I’m sorry, Lin. I know going out tonight was a big step for you. It’s a shame he acted the way he did.”

It was rare Aelin acted on a whim these days. Not like she used to do when she was in high school. She felt a pull to go with Rowan, but her gut had led her into a situation that could have gone south very quickly.

It’s a hard thing when you can’t trust yourself.

“No. I shouldn’t have gone. Especially not alone.” Aelin’s feels her thoughts drifting. Creeping towards that iron box of memories she keeps locked tight. “It’s my mistake.”

“No.”

The fervor in Aedion’s voice draws her attention up to his face, and Aelin is jarred by the intensity of his expression. “Aedion-“

“It’s not your fault.” His voice is gravely, and his blue eyes flicker like the heart of a flame. “I don’t give a shit what that bastard thought you accepting his invitation meant. You don’t owe him sex because he buys you a drink.”

“Aedion-“ Aelin tries to interrupt again. A new wave of tears burns her eyes, but Aedion is on a roll and he isn’t going to quite down until he gets out what’s on his mind.

“You don’t deserve to be treated like an object that can be bought.” Aelin can’t look him in the eyes any longer, but a calloused hand guides her face to the crook of his neck.

“His friends are shitty. He should have made them shut up. Ogling you, and making you feel unsafe and uncomfortable aren’t funny jokes.” Aedion goes on as Aelin sniffles into his shirt.

“You deserve respect. It doesn’t matter what you are wearing, what he buys you, or what his expectations are. His behavior isn’t your fault.” Aedion whispers against the top of her head.

Aelin wraps the arm that isn’t squished under her, around his waist. “I love you, Brother Wolf.”

“I love you too, Fireheart.” Aedion kisses her forehead and tugs her closer, the old terms of endearment are exchanged between them with ease.

“I know you are still dealing with everything that happened a couple years ago. I’m happy to remind you how worth it you are whenever you need.”

Aedion was an island of safety in the turbulent ocean of her life. Even when Aelin was small, she’d often go to him before her own parents with her problems. He was steady, and calm. The exact opposite of her own personality.

After the incident, he hadn’t rested until she was safely at his side again. Aedion stood by her faithfully as she picked up the broken pieces of her life and held her hand as she tried to make something new from them.

“How come you already had this movie downloaded onto your phone?” Aelin teased lightly, trying to lighten the mood. “Did you suddenly develop a sense of taste?”

Aedion purses his lips. “Lysandra said this movie is, and I quote, the most accurate depiction of the female experience.” He shakes his head. “I’ve tried to watch it three times, and I still can’t figure out what it’s even about.”

“You are a simple minded creature, cousin.” Aelin grabs her spoon and scoops a melty bite of ice cream into her mouth. “Thank you for coming over.”

“Anytime, Lin.” He leans his cheek on her head as the scene on his phone shifts from the cooler grey tones of the present, back to the warm colors that represented better days. “Anytime.”

~~~

The day started off better than she expected.

Aedion was gone when she woke up- he had to rise at an ungodly hour to make it to the fire station on time.

Yet, he set her alarm clock for her so Aelin woke up in time to get ready for work. He’d also set a glass of water and an Advil tablet on her bedside table to curb the headache she was sure to have from crying.

Aelin made it out the door with enough time to stop and get coffee on the way. She even splurged and got a chocolate hazelnut Frappuccino with enough sugar to smooth her wounded feelings.

It was going so well, Aelin should have known it was the universe winding up to screw her.

It was only a couple hours before she closed shop when Lorcan Salvaterre stepped through her front door.

“Holy shit, it’s you.” Were the first words from his mouth. His dark eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Rowan is going to flip when I tell him I actually found you.”

“What are you doing here?” Aelin’s slammed a stack of books on the counter.

Lorcan looked pensive. “Rowan said you mentioned owning a book store-“ he drags a hand through his dark hair. “I felt like I ruined his chance with you, so I thought I maybe if I apologized-“

“Let me stop you there,” Aelin didn’t bother looking at him as she labeled books and organized them into stacks. “You didn’t ruin anything, you didn’t help, but he screwed up all by himself.”’

“He realizes that,” Lorcan quickly defends, his voice gruff with irritation. “If I can give him your number I’m sure he will grovel for himself.”

Aelin rolls her eyes and slides another stack to the end of the counter. “You don’t get it.”

“Get what?” She can tell he’s losing his patience with her. Lorcan’s remorse only went so far, apparently.

Aedion’s words from earlier rang in her ears as she repeated them back to the man. “He was overbearing the entire time. Had double standard opinions about my life, and disrespected my boundaries.”

Aelin watched as Lorcan shifted on his feet, itching to say something but obviously refraining. Measuring his words carefully he looked her dead in the eye. “Look. He was just trying to impress you. Rowan doesn’t go out often. Don’t you think you are blowing this a little out of proportion?”

Red. Aelin saw red. Tasted it. Like iron in her mouth. Or maybe that was just the blood from biting her tongue so hard. “I’m working right now. You don’t strike me as extremely literate, but I have to ask for you to either buy something or leave.”

Lorcan glowered at her. “Fine.” He turns to walk out, but Aelin hears him call her a bitch under his breath.

Just then, Elide walks inside the shop doors. A backpack slung over her shoulder, finished with her classes at Rifthold U and prepared to work the evening shift with her.

Aelin is relieved for the interruption and about to take full advantage of it, when the small, brown-haired girl catches sight of Lorcan and beams like a rutting lighthouse.

“Lorcan! I didn’t know you were coming into my work, what a surprise.”

Elide. One of her best friends, runs up to the six-two tower of misogynistic cow boys and flings her arms around him. Hugs him.

Ellie she recalls the name being thrown out last night. She hadn’t put two and two together. Ellie was a common name. Of all the people in this city it had to be Elide, Aelin mentally bemoans.

She wonders if Elide knew how her cowboy behaved when she wasn’t around.

It doesn’t matter. Lorcan is all too aware of Aelin’s eyes boring into his skin, and knows he needs to make a quick get away.

“Ellie,” Lorcan pulls away from her. “I just had to see this book shop you are always talking about.”

He kisses her head, and looks at her with feigned remorsefulness. “I must have gotten your shifts mixed up in my head, though. I’m afraid I have to go. We booked a training time for six and I need to brush down Nettie before we start.”

“Oh,” Elide says, a look of genuine disappointment on her face. “That’s fine. Are we still on for a movie tomorrow?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he promises. He pecks her one more time on the lips and tips his chin towards Aelin. Anger still bubbling in his eyes. “Good day, ma’am.”

Aelin releases a breath when the doors close behind him.

“I’m so sad I missed him.” Elide frowns, tossing her back pack behind the counter. “At least you got to meet him. What did you think? He’s absolutely dreamy, right?”

Aelin chokes back a gag. “Yeah. He was really charming.”

“And get this,” Elide smiles. “He’s a cowboy. Like an actual, real life cowboy. He rides pulls and does team roping. It’s sexy.”

Aelin can’t hide the grimace this time. “You are like my baby sister. I never want to hear the words sexy from your mouth again.”

At least, never in the context of Lorcan. They’d had plenty of boy talk before.

“He even carries a rope.” Elide wags an eyebrow. “Better to tie me up when we-“

Aelin holds a book over her face. “I’m not listening to this! I will file a report with HR.”

Elide laughs. “You are the boss, Lin. You know we don’t have an HR.”

“I need to get one now,” Aelin grumbles. “I don’t need an image of yours and Lorcan’s naked asses in my head.”

She wanted Lorcan out of her head entirely. Along with Rowan and the rest of their cadre.

“Fine,” Elide sighs wistfully. “One day you will be in love and I won’t hold it against you when you want to talk about whatever babe you wind up with.”

Her eyes get a mischievous glint. “Actually- Lorcan has some really cute friends. I could set you up with?”

Aelin’s brain banks. “No. No thank you. I like being alone. I’m more than enough company for myself.”

“Come on, a double date would be fun!” Elide whines and tugs on her arm. “You never go out any more. We could have a great night out.”

An image of the twins cutting lines on the bar flash across her mind and make her shudder.

“I said no, Elide.” Aelin says a bit more harshly then she intends, but Elide gets the point and backs off.

“Sorry. I won’t mention it again.” Instead of anger she looks at Aelin worriedly.

She kind of hates that more.

“Thanks.” She shakes her head and tries to clear the residual stress from her head. “I have to set up a new shelf display. Want to help?”

Elide lights back up at the prospect. She loved designing and organizing. They have a great time setting displays up together and Aelin knew it would take her mind away from the tension she’d created.

She just really hoped that Elide dating Lorcan wouldn’t drag any drama into her own life. Aelin didn’t care what half asses excuses Lorcan made, she wasn’t interested in seeing Rowan again.

Hello! I’m so glad I got this posted today. 😂 I’m hoping to get the next chapter of DRNS out tomorrow. After that, my birthday is next Tuesday and I reaaallly want to do a mass update of all my fics then as a hooray to 21. (Yes. That is what I’m doing for my 21st 🤣) Hope you enjoyed it!

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[five-rivers]

Adoption

Based on a prompt by @fabnamessuggestedbytumbler for the Phic Phight! An excuse for Lost Time fluff? Don't mind if I do...

.

.

.

The Ghost Zone had a legal system. A court system. A prison system. A police system. A set of established rules. There were even lawyers.

In theory.

In reality the courts (Observants) refused to look at anything that wasn't world ending. Every group had their own, private prison. The police made up their own rules and, even then, broke them regularly. The actual rules had gone several hundred years without an update and referred to places, organizations, and customs that no longer existed. The lawyers were all clinically depressed. That's what happens when there's no active, unifying head of state for hundreds of years.

Still. Every so often a sufficiently foolish ghost, possessed of a brave purpose, would attempt to navigate the ruins of the legal system. Few made it out alive.

(True, being ghosts, they didn't necessarily go into it alive, but it's the thought that counts.)

But those who did make it out (metaphorically) alive, did so with prizes... well, not great enough, but something enough to convince others to make the attempt. Hence Clockwork's current location and headache.

"Sign the paper, Walker," snapped Clockwork.

"That would be against the rules," said Walker, leaning back in his stupid chair. Clockwork's nonexistent spine hurt just from looking at it.

Maybe he should give himself a spine, just so he'd have a reason to feel this way.

"How," he began, "would it be against the rules? This form needs to be signed by a law enforcement official that has seen or witnessed conclusive evidence the child in question being abused by their natural parents. That is you."

"Yes, but the law enforcement officer must first get a warrant approved by an appropriate court in order to collect such evidence," countered Walker.

"Not if the official came across the evidence or act of abuse while pursuing a different case or simply following standard operating procedure. You saw them shoot at him. His mother put a gun to his head. Have mercy, Walker. I know you don't like him, but he is a child who needs guidance. Not a criminal."

"He's a criminal in my books," said Walker.

"What he did was hardly a crime."

"Jailbreak is a crime!"

"Not if one is unjustly imprisoned," said Clockwork. "He was attempting to remove the foreign object." No matter that possessing material-plane items wasn't an actual crime.

"He let others escape!"

"And what were they imprisoned for?"

Walker grumbled. "Some of them are dangerous, and even he knew that," said Walker, nodding at the file spread over his desk.

"Consider it a cry for help. While you were watching him," stalking him, Clockwork did not say, "on the material plane, did he really strike you as criminally inclined? Or perhaps he was simply confused and scared? One thousand years is a very long time in human terms. The targets of his Obsession would have died. Even if he did commit a misdemeanor, he would have rightly been granted clemency, or at least had his sentence deferred."

Walker frowned.

"That's not what this is about, is it? You covering up a mistake?"

"No," said Walker.

Clockwork blinked, quickly running through potential futures. "No one will care that you crossed the veil without authorization. No one who can do anything about it, in any case."

"There'll be an investigation if I sign that there piece of paper. What's the big deal, anyway? Like you said, humans don't live that long. Just wait fifty years."

"They almost ended him," said Clockwork. "He's a child. Do you really want that on your conscience? With the knowledge that you could have stopped it?"

Sighing, Walker picked up his pen.

.

Danny went to school. Mainly, he went because he didn't know what else to do. He needed the routine, even if the routine was a lie and he felt like trash.

"You could have stayed," whispered Sam, as his hand inched towards the bandages on his chest for the fifth time that morning. "They wouldn't have noticed you."

Danny shook his head. His hand shook more. He put it back in his lap. "It wouldn't have been right. Besides, I need a passing grade in this class, right?" He couldn't get another F, or his parents would kill him, except- except- except-

They had already tried to kill him.

Everything had gone so much worse than he had ever imagined- No. That wasn't quite right. It had gone- It had...

At least he hadn't been cut open.

(Much.)

"Mr. Fenton?"

Danny jumped, banging his knees painfully on the underside of his desk. He looked up, wildly, tensing himself to flee, only the fact that he was currently human keeping his powers from activating.

(Well, that and... what had been done to him.)

When had Mr. Lancer gotten there?

"What?" he asked, breathlessly.

"Are- Are you alright, Mr. Fenton?"

"I'm fine," Danny said. He wasn't. His ghost half was urging him to go find a nice, dark, quiet, safe corner to hide in, preferably one in the Ghost Zone, his heart was hammering out of his chest, he'd spent the night not-sleeping in one of the guestrooms in Sam's house, and that was before even touching on his injuries.

He forced a smile. Mr. Lancer was one of the few teachers who hadn't given up on him, which was alternately touching and frustrating.

"You look sick," said Mr. Lancer. "Are you sure you don't want to call home?"

Danny's heart stuttered, his core painfully cold. "I'm sure," he said.

"Today is a project day," said Mr. Lancer. "You wouldn't be missing anything in this class, and I can talk to your other teachers."

"No, I'm fine."

.

The legal clerk for the family court was the kind of ghost who seemed to have fused with her role. The sleeves and collar of her shirt melded seamlessly with her skin. Her nails were brass pen nibs. The lenses of her glasses were part of her face.

She lived in either the basement or the attic of this particular building, depending on how one oriented themselves, among barely-organized stacks of books and papers. There were parchment scrolls and stone tablets, too, the later often re-purposed as elements of the room's furniture. Green-marbled filing cabinets grew out of the walls, and electronic somethings glittered out of the shadows.

The clerk had been reviewing Clockwork's paperwork for literal days. Rather, she would have been, if Clockwork hadn't surreptitiously dropped a time medallion around her neck and stopped time.

She hummed, thoughtfully. "In this document, you are using the pronoun tsai to refer to the adoptee. Are you certain you don't mean tusui? Or perhaps chahe?"

"Absolutely," said Clockwork. The intimation that he wasn't fluent in nchabhatsi was insulting. On the other hand, the requirement for that particular piece of paperwork to be in the language was also, in his opinion, rather ridiculous. Many ghosts, especially the recently dead, did not know nchabhatsi.

"The adoptee is liminal?"

"Yes," said Clockwork.

"Hmm." She stood up and flew from her desk to an inverted bookshelf anchored to the ceiling. From a box she took a huge sheaf of papers, and blew an amount of dust from them that was unhealthy even to a ghost. "It has been a while since we used these," she said, giving Clockwork a faded-ivory smile. "You'll need to fill these out and have them notarized by the proper officials before you can proceed. Liminal spirits are so rare, after all! They require special care. Oh!" Her hands fluttered. "And I'll have to get in contact with our liminality expert. That may take some time."

"If you can give me their name," said Clockwork, "I will take care of it." He gingerly took the stack of slightly-decayed paper. Had it really been so long since a partly-human child had been adopted? Probably.

"Oh, you're such a dear," said the clerk, not noticing the sudden absence of the medallion around her neck. "But that paperwork won't do itself, and-"

"It's done," said Clockwork. Fulfilling some of the new requirements had been more challenging than others and avoiding a paradox had taken considerable self-control, but what good were his temporal abilities if he couldn't use them for personal gain now and again? None at all.

"Ah," said the clerk.

.

Familiar, and very loud, voices spilled from the hallway near the office. Danny, one hand on his locker, trying to remember his combination, froze like a deer in headlights. His heartbeat picked up, his core buzzed frantically. He couldn't move. Grey crept in along the edges of his vision.

"... not him. It was never him! He's dead-"

"Mrs. Fenton, Mr. Fenton, I'm not sure what you're getting at, here, but your son has been at school all day, and we-"

"A ghost killed him and took his place! It's been playing a sick game with us this whole time!"

"Danny would never have gotten grades like this. We should have noticed the lower intellect right away, if nothing else."

"That's-" spluttered Mr. Lancer. "You- Daniel's work is exemplary, what little of it he turns in. I'm going to have to ask you to go back to the office-"

"No! Not until that piece of ectoplasmic scum is wiped from the face of the Earth!"

"Danny," said Tucker, much closer. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

Right. Ghostly super hearing. Tucker and Sam, staring at him with concern, couldn't know.

"They're here," he managed, the words like sandpaper in his throat.

Sam uttered a word that would have sent her mother into a screeching fit. "We need to get you out of here," she said putting a hand on his back and pushing him down the hall.

"I'll run interference," said Tucker. "Make sure they can't follow you in the GAV."

"Good thinking," said Sam.

"Call me when you're safe," said Tucker, peeling off, presumably to hack the GAV.

"Danny, breathe," ordered Sam, as she propelled him through the double doors at the back of the school. "We're going to get you through this."

.

Clockwork had resorted to trapping the legal complex in a massive temporal bubble. Not the neatest solution, true, and it seemed to encourage the various functionaries, regulators, and bureaucrats to take even more time to process even the simplest request, but at least it would keep Daniel's suffering in the meantime to a minimum.

However, that didn't change the fact that he had been bouncing back and forth between the various floors of the building like a ping-pong ball, never getting closer to the solitary family court judge, for well over a subjective year. He was exhausted, frustrated, and he missed Daniel.

"You will be able to provide steady, stable access to the adoptee's preferred haunt?" asked his present interviewer.

"Yes," said Clockwork, dully. The room was ringed with runes that prevented deception of any kind.

"You will be able to provide shelter adequate for both his ghostly and human form?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. He had answered these questions so many times before.

"You have taken the mandated class on liminality?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. He was beginning to understand why other ghosts just gave up and sought extralegal solutions.

"You are aware of a liminal spirit's developmental and emotional needs?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. This was just so boring.

"And are you able to satisfy those needs?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. If only it would end.

The interviewer nodded. "Then we're done here," he said.

"Ye- What? Does that mean I can see the judge?" asked Clockwork, hopefully.

"No. That means that your adoption motion can move on to the next stage," said the interviewer. "Our liminality expert will examine your arrangements and determine whether or not they are sufficient, and we will contact law enforcement to follow up on your claim that the adoptee is being abused."

Clockwork bit back a groan. At least he was making progress.

.

They cut through the empty field behind the school, angling back toward the surrounding neighborhood. The grass came up to their chests, except where there were holes, mounds, and gouges from ghost fights. When there was one in the school, Danny tried to bring it out here, so people wouldn't get hurt.

He wasn't often successful.

Sam led the way. Danny felt- He felt ashamed. If his powers were working, he would be able to fly them away, or at least turn them invisible. This would all be so much easier. He could have taken care of himself, and Sam and Tucker wouldn't get in trouble, because they would definitely get in trouble for this. But he couldn't.

He couldn't even convince his parents that he was himself. He had to screw that up, too.

Before, he had thought, worse case scenario would be that they'd try to 'fix' him, to remove his ghost half, or maybe they'd think he was overshadowed. At least, he'd convinced himself of that, convinced himself that dissection would be off the table if he ever told them, that they would still love him. Maybe they might still want to do tests, but they'd love him. They wouldn't want to hurt him.

But he had been so, so wrong. They didn't believe him. They thought he had killed himself, replaced himself.

They had tried to cut him open.

(They succeeded.)

His core shuddered at the memory.

At least, though, there hadn't been any ghost attacks today. He wouldn't have been able to fight anything stronger than the Box Ghost. Heck, he might have lost to the Box Ghost. Like this, he would have to leave the ghosts to his parents, Valerie, or the GIW, none of which were particularly good options for the hunters, the ghosts, or the innocent bystanders of Amity Park.

His core pulsed uncomfortably at the thought of any of them getting hurt, including his parents.

He flinched. His core had been very jumpy, very active ever since... it... happened. Usually it only did this while he was in ghost form, and was otherwise almost dormant.

"Are you okay?" asked Sam. "Is it hurting?" She was the one who had bandaged him up last night.

"We can't stop now," said Danny.

Sam flattened her lips. "That isn't an answer. As soon as we get somewhere quiet, I'm checking you out, okay?"

"Yeah," said Danny.

When they reached the short fence, Sam gave him a boost to get over and they made their way into the suburb. There was a small library branch down the road a ways. It had a small family bathroom that Sam and Tucker had patched Danny up in before. It would be a good place to regroup before trying to put as much distance between them and Danny's parents as possible.

"We could take the city bus, I think," said Sam. "There's a stop outside the library. Maybe we could go to Elmerton?"

"Maybe," said Danny.

"Any ETA on Jazz since last night?"

Danny shook his head. "She couldn't get a flight. She's taking a Greyhound. Won't be here 'til-"

There was a beep. Danny stopped breathing. That could have been anything, a phone, a watch, a car, something from a building, but something about it tickled at Danny's brain as wrong.

"There is a ghost twenty feet in front of you."

The whine of a charging ectogun-

Sam slammed into his side, and they both fell. Danny felt the cut on his chest begin to bleed again, and he curled around it protectively. It hurt so much more than it should, and Danny wondered if that was because ghosts were ultimately shaped by their minds and his was in so much pain right now.

His parents had just shot at him. From behind. Not ghost him, Phantom him, either. Human him.

They hated him. All of him. Not just half of him.

His ghost sense went off. Because things could always get worse for Danny and the universe apparently hated him.

He struggled into a sitting position and blinked, confused. There were people surrounding him, protecting him, standing between him and his parents. Sam was shouting. Danny couldn't make out what she was saying, what anyone was saying, not with his heart pounding in his ears.

"Kid," said one man, shaking his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Danny considered that. "No," he said, finally.

The man pulled a phone from his pocket and began saying something about calling the hospital. Normally, Danny would be worried about that, but he was looking for the ghosts. It was possible one of the more benevolent spirits that haunted Amity Park had happened across the scene, but, somehow, Danny doubted it.

His ghost sense went off again. He whimpered.

His people were in danger.

Ghosts usually came for him (he was leading them here, an evil ghost, causing all this trouble, murderer), or at least attacked him first, to get rid of him as a threat. He staggered to his feet. He had to get away. Still clutching his chest, he turned and bolted.

Almost at once, he was surrounded by ghosts in police gear. Walker's goons. Definitely stronger than the Box Ghost. Still, he was going to at least try to fight. He put his fists up. Maybe some of them would be dumb enough not to phase out of the way of his stupid human punches.

Then Walker himself descended from the sky.

"Daniel," he said, stiffly.

"Walker," returned Danny. A small part of him was grateful that Walker hadn't called him Phantom and spilled his secret. It was strange, but no ghost had ever seemed particularly inclined to do that, despite how easy it would have been.

"We have a court order to take you into custody," said Walker. "Someone wants to ask you a few questions."

Danny decided today's mood was 'pointless bravado and defiance.' "And why would I want to come with- whoa."

As Danny talked, Walker had taken a piece of paper with strange symbols written on it in green ink out from the inside pocket of his jacket. The symbols made his head spin... Or maybe that was just his injuries catching up with him. His left leg was trembling, and he wasn't sure how much longer it would hold out.

He shook his head, trying to clear it, and focused on Walker. "I have no idea what that says."

Walker sighed. "Just come quietly, son. Make it easier on yourself."

Danny swallowed his discomfort at being called 'son.' "You won't hurt anyone else?" he asked.

"I'm just here for you."

There really wasn't much of a choice. Whether he went quietly or got himself beaten up even more, Walker would win and carry him off. Anyone could see that. Besides, ghost prison might be a better alternative than getting dissected by his parents.

He raised his hands in front of him, wrists together. "Go ahead, then," said Danny, flatly.

Walker nodded, and the goons converged on him. The cuffs they put around his wrists glowed green, but they had weight in a way most purely ghostly things didn't. Danny doubted that he'd be able to phase his way out of them, human or ghost. Then they picked him up and the whole swarm started to fly away.

.

"Yes, this is my lair," said Clockwork. "I can, however, duplicate and be both here and at the secondary residence I acquired expressly for the purpose of ensuring continuity of Daniel's human life."

The 'liminality expert' grunted. "He's still been here, though, hasn't he?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. "He has."

"And he might be here again in the future."

"Yes. I do plan to have him here, for short periods of time."

"And later, when he sheds his human life?"

"Perhaps."

"Then I need to know, are these up to OSHA standards? Your entire lair needs to be up to OSHA standards."

"They're time viewers and tools for unraveling paradoxes. OSHA, even the OSHA of the far future, does not regulate these items," said Clockwork. "Why, in the name of time, do you even need to know? Surely, OSHA didn't even exist the last time a liminal child was adopted."

"Well," said the expert, slightly sheepish. "No. But regulations state that all residences must be safe for children by both human and ghost standards."

"Then OSHA is not what you should be using," said Clockwork. "OSHA is the set of rules for occupational health and safety."

"Ah," said the expert. "Then we can move right along to the next check mark, shall we?"

.

"Hi," said a cheerful voice.

Danny looked up from his contemplation of the examination room table and glared balefully at the ghost who had just entered the door. They didn't seem to be affected. But then, why would they be? Danny was handcuffed to the table and clearly not a threat.

"I'm the interviewer," said the featureless ghost. "Do you know why you're here?"

"No," said Danny.

"Well," said the interviewer, "I work for the eighth authorized family court of the Infinite Realms, we're actually the only one right now, but there used to be more, and a little while ago, an adoption request was filed on your behalf."

Danny blinked and made a face. "You mean, someone stole my identity in ghost court?"

"No, no," said the interviewer, waving one amorphous hand. "Not at all. I mean to say, I ghost filed a request to legally adopt you."

"Who?" asked Danny. "Not Vlad?" Vlad was the only ghost he could think of who had demonstrated any interest in adopting him.

"No, that's not the name listed here."

"Plasmius?" asked Danny, still cringing internally.

"No."

"Then who?"

"Clockwork."

"What, seriously?" Danny liked Clockwork, and he liked to think that Clockwork liked him back, that they were friends, but the older ghost always seemed somewhat aloof.

"Yes, he was very serious. Now. I have a number of questions I need to ask you." They took out a small, glowing crystal, and set it on the table. "Do you know what this is?"

"No?" said Danny.

"It's a record crystal," said the ghost. "But one of its other functions is that it can sense deception, and record when in an interview it is being used. Go ahead, say something you know is false."

"I... like toast?"

The crystal's glow dimmed slightly before returning to its previous level.

"There, see? Very useful, don't you think?"

"I guess," said Danny. He didn't know how to feel about this. Any of this. What would ghost adoption even mean? He trusted Clockwork, but this felt like too much, too fast. He hadn't even properly processed what had happened with his parents a few hours ago.

"Right. So. We'll start with an easy one, then. Is your name Daniel Janus James Fenton-Phantom, also known as Danny Phantom, or simply Danny or Phantom?"

"Yes," said Danny, eyeing the crystal warily.

"And what would you prefer to go by, for the purposes of this interview?"

"Phantom," said Danny.

"Alright then, Phantom," said the interviewer, "could you please tell me where you primarily reside?"

"Fentonworks," said Danny, "in Amity Park." So far, he hadn't really had a reason to lie. All of this was common knowledge for both his human and ghostly acquaintances.

"And what would you consider to be your haunt?"

"My what?"

"Your haunt. The territory that you have metaphysically claimed."

"I- I don't really understand."

"Is there an area that you feel compelled to defend against hostile persons? An area in which non-hostile ghosts defer to you?"

"I- Yeah. I guess. Amity Park. And some of the bits around it, too."

"The entire city?"

"I guess? I don't know," said Danny. "Is that weird?"

"It would be unusual," said the interviewer.

Danny really wished the interviewer had an expression he could read. Or even just something approximating a face.

"Now, do you feel safe in your home? In 'Fentonworks?'"

The correct answer to that question would be no, but he wasn't sure he should answer. What if this was some kind of elaborate trick?

"We can come back to that," said the interviewer. "Are there any other places where you do feel safe?"

"I mean, sure?" said Danny. He fidgeted.

"Would you please share some of those places?"

"School, I guess?" Except that he got beaten up there all the time and his parents had hunted him down there and he had to escape and... Yeah.

The crystal dimmed. Danny grimaced.

"Ah," said the interviewer. "Anywhere else?"

"My friends houses," said Danny. "And the Far Frozen." To his relief, this time, the crystal stayed bright.

"Have you ever been to Clockwork's lair?"

"Yeah," said Danny. He slouched in the chair as much as possible. He wasn't sure he should be answering these questions, but he was. Maybe he should stop.

"Do you feel safe there?"

"Not at first, but now I do."

"I see. Why not at first?"

"Clockwork and I didn't meet on great terms and we sort of got into a fight." Maybe that would get the interviewer to stop. They'd decide Clockwork couldn't adopt him and leave. Did Danny want that? He wasn't sure.

"That's more common than one might expect. But you feel safe with him now?"

"Yes."

"Alright, moving on. How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

There was a long, drawn out silence that managed to be skeptical despite the interviewer's lack of a face.

"I know I'm small," said Danny, insulted, "but I am sixteen."

"Excuse my indelicacy, but... how old were you when you died?"

Danny flushed. "Fourteen," he bit out.

"Then you're fourteen."

"It was two years ago. I'm sixteen."

"Fourteen is your natural age," said the ghost. "A ghost's natural age is the age they died at."

"Yeah, but I'm still half human. I'm still aging. So I'm sixteen."

The interviewer shook their head. "As a liminal spirit, your apparant age range is likely larger than a normal child's would be, but your natural age, your true age, is still fourteen. Based on records of liminals, the highest extent of your age range is most likely to be either twenty-one or twenty-eight. That's part of the reason we investigate official adoption request so thoroughly. The relationship may very well last for thousands of years, if not forever."

"Wait, are you saying I could live forever?" asked Danny, incredulous. This was not how he wanted to find out he was immortal. Heck, he didn't want to be immortal.

"I'll admit, my understanding of liminality isn't perfect, but I believe that is the case. Why? Is that problematic?"

.

"The results of the law enforcement investigation have come back," said the bureaucrat to whom Clockwork was currently assigned. "As well as an inquiry as to the opinion of the mortal law enforcement arm."

"And?" asked Clockwork. "Their findings?"

The bureaucrat, who had up until that point not displayed evidence that xe possessed any emotions whatsoever, made a face of extreme disgust. "When the officers found the child, the human parents were openly shooting at him. Other humans intervened for long enough for law enforcement to pick him up. Of course, they then felt the need to arrest him and carry him away in handcuffs... I have no idea why I keep at this job, really I don't."

Clockwork's core shifted in worry. His first impulse was to leap up and go comfort Daniel, but he suppressed it. If he left now, he would lose his place in line and have to start over.

"The public nature of the event means that the human police are now investigating the child's circumstances and may recommend that the child be removed from his human parents' custody. If you have a human identity and you are able to gain custody of him there, it will aid your case here."

"I am aware," said Clockwork.

"Well, then," xe said. "I believe this is all in order. Here is your ticket to see the judge. Just show it to the door. You know where it is?"

"I do," said Clockwork, rising.

He had walked by the door several times in his dealings with the various clerks and notaries. The room behind it lay directly in the heart of the family court building, all the other rooms and residents armor for this one.

The door itself was made of dark wood full of eye-shaped knots. As Clockwork approached the door, the eyes opened, watching him. He held up the ticket and the doors swung inward.

Inside was a courtroom, complete with benches, tables, a witness stand, a courtroom recorder, a judge's box, and a judge.

The judge was a one-eyed ghost in pale purple robes. She examined Clockwork.

"We had not foreseen this," she said. "Not until you filed the first motion."

"You were never able to see me clearly," said Clockwork, hoping this would not turn into a power play between himself and the Observants. "Did you receive the relevant paper work, your honor?"

"Yes," she said. "Take a seat, Lord Clockwork."

Clockwork flew to the front of the courtroom and settled himself in the applicant's chair.

The judge leaned forward. "Why are you doing this?" she asked.

"Because I love Daniel, and I believe he deserves more care and protection than he is currently receiving from his biological parents."

The judge waved a clawed hand. "Yes, yes. But you didn't have to go through all of this and get to me in order to do that. You could have just taken him. That's what most people do, nowadays. Ever since the King was sealed and our systems of governance began to decay."

"I believe it is the only way Daniel will truly be safe," said Clockwork, meeting her one eye calmly.

"You want to prevent us from 'interfering.'"

"That would be nice, yes," agreed Clockwork.

"You want this to be binding," accused the judge.

"You say that like it is a bad thing," said Clockwork. "But what else could induce him to fully remove himself from that situation? You see how they treat him. Have you looked at the medical report, yet?"

"I have," said the judge, looking at her desk. "Very well. All the paperwork is in order. I am approving you for a one-month trial period. At the end of the trial period, the status of the child will be assessed. If his state is found to be acceptable, the adoption will be approved and bound. If it is not, this court will take custody of him until such a time as an appropriate guardian can be found." She scribbled something on a piece of paper and then hit it with a stamp. "The probationary bond should be active. You may go."

"Thank you, your honor."

.

After the end of the interview, which had become much more distressing than Danny wanted to admit, one of Walker's goons showed up and took him away, to another room.

This room was different than any of the other rooms he had seen in Walker's prison. For one, the walls were a soft, pastel green with purple accents, not the harsh, neon pink of elsewhere in the facility. The chairs looked soft, and were arranged almost randomly, clustered in little groups, or around tables. There were colored pencils and crayons on and occasionally floating over the tables. A large basket sat in one corner, overflowing with toys of various sizes.

Alright. Danny was confused.

He let the goon- the... officer?- guide him into one of the chairs and put a stuffed rabbit on his lap.

"I- I don't understand," said Danny. "What's going on?"

"Didn't that interviewer guy tell you?"

"He said I was being adopted," said Danny, who still hadn't wrapped his head around that particular tidbit of information. "But I thought- I was under arrest?" He raised his cuffed hands. "You arrested me?"

"Those're just so you don't run away," said the ghost. He ruffled Danny's hair. "You're not under arrest. We're just waiting for the court to decide what to do with you."

"And what if they don't do anything with me?"

"Then it's up to the boss."

"Oh," said Danny, not liking the sound of that at all.

"But, if it helps, I think that the court probably will decide to do something with you."

It didn't really help, no.

"Do you want a lollipop?"

"Sure," said Danny. It wasn't like this day could get much weirder.

The ghost handed him a lime dumdum. Yeah. That was about what he expected there, honestly.

The sensation of a thick, weighted blanket being draped over his mind hit him with such intensity that he looked around, trying to see if someone had just wrapped him up in a blanket without him noticing. Tension bled out of his muscles, and his core finally stopped the angry/depressed/frightened/pained dance it was doing in his chest.

He felt... protected. Which was wrong, because he was in Walker's prison, and Walker would use any excuse he had to keep Danny imprisoned for a thousand years. Danny was not safe here. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

And yet, that feeling remained.

He brushed his fingers over the bandages over his chest. What was wrong with him? His parents hadn't even cut all the way through, but he was so messed up. He didn't understand.

This feeling... This 'safety'... It felt like a cruel joke more than anything else, only it was one he couldn't escape from because it was coming from inside him and he was calm but he was also crying.

"Oh, heck, do you not like lime? I think I have some green apples-?"

The door to the room opened, and Danny looked up. Before he could register who had come in, he was swept up into a hug.

He blinked into silky purple cloth. "Clockwork?" he croaked.

"I'm here," said Clockwork. "It's fine. You're safe now, Daniel."

Danny pushed away. Clockwork let him. "You're adopting me?" asked Danny.

"Yes," said Clockwork. "Unless you don't want me to."

"Why?" asked Danny. "I don't understand. I didn't think you liked me that much."

"I like you very much," reassured Clockwork. "I want you to be my family."

Danny sniffed. "Okay," he said. It wasn't as if he really had anywhere else to go. "Okay. But what about," he made an awkward gesture with his cuffed hands, "Amity Park?" The idea of leaving hurt, even worse than the cut on his chest.

"You won't have to leave," said Clockwork, soothingly. "You can still have your life there."

"I'll have to go back?" asked Danny, in alarm. Back to Fentonworks, where even the walls had it out for him with how much anti-ghost weaponry they had packed into them? He couldn't. Not after what his parents had done.

(A small part of him knew that wasn't what Clockwork had said, and that he was being irrational. That part of him was ignored.)

"No, no," said Clockwork. "I have a new place, just for you. If you'll let me show you?"

Very hesitantly, Danny nodded.

"Alright, good," said Clockwork. He turned to the police ghost. "Do you have the key for these? We really must be going."

"Yeah," said the ghost, producing the item. "The boss says that he expects you to teach the kid how to respect the law."

"Appropriately," said Clockwork, neutrally, unlocking the cuffs.

Danny felt an urge to hug Clockwork. So he did. Clockwork hugged him back, and rocked him back and forth, gently.

"Are you ready to go?" asked Clockwork.

"Yeah," said Danny.

With a gesture of his staff, Clockwork opened a portal.

.

Clockwork wanted custody of Danny. He wanted full custody of Danny. Legally. In both worlds.

This posed a bit of a challenge, as he did not legally exist on one of those two worlds. Thus, Clockwork had to establish a legal presence in the human world.

On the surface of it, this did not seem too difficult. Between his temporal powers, his minor shapeshifting abilities, and overshadowing, simply creating an identity was easy. The hard part was creating an identity that Daniel would not have encountered before, in order to avoid a paradox, while making it plausible that Daniel had encountered the identity before, for the purposes of dealing with mortal law.

In one timeline, the hill to the west of town stood empty of habitation, owned by the county but rendered unusable due to a dangerous failed mine on the site. In this timeline, however, the mine had never been built, and the property was instead owned by a reclusive hermit who went by the name of Charles Worth. The property had passed through many hands in the years before Mr. Worth had purchased it in his youth, and a stately, if somewhat faded, mansion sat at the hill's crest, overlooking Amity Park.

Charles Worth went to Amity Park only rarely, and for good reason. He was an albino, with red eyes, white hair, and even whiter skin, and superstitious people often thought the worst of him. In recent days, he had even been mistaken for a ghost.

'Mistaken.'

He rubbed Daniel's shoulders, and the child startled, pulling away from him again. Daniel had missed Clockwork's, admittedly minor, transformation, and now blinked up at his newly pale face, confused.

"Do you like my disguise?" asked Clockwork.

Daniel's eyes flicked up and down Clockwork, assessing, processing. He gave a tiny nod, and reattached himself. "Where are we?" he asked.

"Hickory Hill," said Clockwork.

Danny frowned, mouthing the words. "Isn't that owned by... Charles Worth. Charles- Oh. I get it."

Clockwork gave Danny a little squeeze. "Would you like to see inside?"

"Okay," said Danny.

.

The house, Danny had to acknowledge, as they approached the front door, looked haunted. As if some pale, frail, spirit might look out one of the lace-draped windows on the upper floor at any moment. As if there was a Gothic mystery just waiting to unfold. A murder mystery, maybe, full of forbid love and jealous lovers. Or the tale of a sickly heir to a great fortune.

Or that of an ancient ghost and his adopted half-living son.

Even before they stepped inside, Danny's ghost half had decided it loved the building.

The door, as Clockwork opened it, creaked in a loving sort of way, the tone low enough to be comforting instead of annoying. The entrance hall's floorboards did not creak under the weight of the ghosts, but Danny could tell that if a human tried to cross them, they would. He hoped the rest of the floors were like that.

He padded forward, daringly leaving the protection of Clockwork's cloak, examining all the dark nooks and crannies, the odd architectural choices arising from generations of additions, smiling at cold spots. Clockwork shut the door. Even then, there was a draft, curling around his ankles, cool and refreshing.

Danny smiled. It was small and strained, but it was a smile. "It's perfect," he said.

"Don't you want to see your room before you say that?" teased Clockwork.

"Yes," said Danny.

Clockwork led Danny to a staircase with an elaborately carved banister and began to climb. Danny followed eagerly. He had never thought his core would be so happy simply to have somewhere safe to exist.

It almost was enough to let him forget what his parents had done to him. He stopped, hand on his chest.

"Daniel?" said Clockwork. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," said Danny, automatically.

Clockwork frowned, the expression both familiar and foreign on Clockwork's falsely-human face. "Why don't we take a look at that, once we get to your room, alright?"

Danny nodded, swallowing back his irrational fear.

They went up, and Clockwork opened the door to a large room, much larger than the one he had back at Fentonworks. The bed was similarly large and equipped with curtains and enough blankets and pillows to turn it into a nest at a moment's notice. The walls and ceiling were painted a deep blue, with tiny green-white dots picking out a star map. The room also contained a number of carefully curated hiding places, areas where the dressers wardrobe or desk created blind spots and deep shadows. The floor was carpeted, but still icy.

It was an excellent room for a ghost (or half-ghost) like Danny.

He was too nervous to enjoy it.

Clockwork pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down. It was a little strange to see Clockwork actually sitting and not floating or coiling. Actually-

"Can you have legs in ghost form?" asked Danny.

"I can," said Clockwork. "But typically I don't bother." He patted the bed. "Let's take a look at you."

Danny hesitated, holding his hands clasped in front of his chest. Clockwork's face went soft.

"I just want to make sure you are healing. I know this is difficult, but neither you nor I want things to get worse."

"I'm fine," said Danny. "I heal fast. It was just- It should be gone now. I've gotten worse."

"Is it?" asked Clockwork.

Danny could still feel it. "I don't know," said Danny.

Clockwork patted the bed again. Danny sat down and started fumbling with the hem of his shirt.

"Would you like help?" asked Clockwork.

"No," said Danny. He pulled his sweater off. Taking off his t-shirt was harder. Then there were just Sam's bandages. He bit his lip a the red and brown blotches staining them.

"Would you like to talk about it?" asked Clockwork, taking one end of the bandage and starting to unwind it.

"I don't know," said Danny. "I just- It's so stupid. I shouldn't have- They saw me walk through a door and- They don't even know I'm Phantom. They just-" Danny hiccuped. "They tried to cut me open. They pretended."

Clockwork pulled free the last layer of bandages. The long, shallow cut was still there, straight along his breast bone until the end, where it curved sharply right and tapered off. That was when Danny had jerked free of the restraints and ran.

"Why isn't it healing?" asked Danny.

"It isn't just a physical wound, Daniel. Ghosts are spiritual creatures."

"Oh," said Danny. It made a sick kind of sense. "So my core is really hurt? I thought I was just... That it was in my head."

Clockwork raised a hand to touch the bottom of the cut. "Your parents are important to you, and to your Obsession, your existence as a ghost. Of course their rejection would affect you." The cut began to knit itself together underneath Clockwork's fingers. Danny's core thrummed strangely at the touch. "I can heal your physical injuries."

"But not the mental ones, huh?" said Danny.

"You need time for that," said Clockwork, reaching the top of the cut.

"Good thing I have you, then."

"It is," said Clockwork. He leaned forward and kissed Danny on top of his head.

Danny ran his fingers up and down the newly healed cut. "So my powers aren't going to work until, what, I get over this?"

"That is one possibility," said Clockwork. "But everyone heals differently."

"Can't you tell?" asked Danny, reaching for his shirt.

"The more involved I am in an event, the more difficult it becomes for me to see its future," said Clockwork. "The timeline branches and splinters as I look at it. Also, it may surprise you, but you are fairly difficult to predict on your own."

"Oh," said Danny. He pulled his shirt on, ignoring how it caught on the dried blood on his skin. "So, what now? Should I just, I don't know, hide out here? I mean," he shifted, uncomfortably, "It's fine if I can't let anyone know I'm here, I get that, but I'd like to, um..."

"Live your life?"

Danny flinched. "As much as I can, yeah." He licked his lips. "Sam and Tucker didn't get in trouble, did they? They're fine?" He'd been so wrapped up in how miserable he was, he'd barely spared his friends a second thought, and now that guilt from that rained down on his head.

"They're fine. Due to the circumstances, they haven't gotten in any trouble at all, so stop that."

"What?"

"Feeling guilty. I know for a fact that the safety of others was your first consideration." Clockwork patted his shoulder. "As for your continued presence here on the mortal plane," Clockwork smiled, "would it surprise you to learn that I am in fact registered as a foster parent? I have even had a few children here, although not many stay for long."

"Really?" said Danny. "But... Wait, um. What about- What about Mom and Dad?"

"They were seen shooting at you in public after insisting that you were a ghost. They've been arrested."

Danny swallowed. "Are they going to be alright?"

Clockwork sighed and shifted so that he was sitting on the bed next to Danny. He put an arm around Danny's shoulders. "They'll be fine," he said. "But we should come up with a story about how you wound up here, hm? For the social workers."

.

During Daniel's periodic visits to Clockwork's lair, Clockwork had noted how tactile he was, how much he enjoyed hugs and other physical expressions of affection. After Daniel got past his initial hesitation concerning his new situation, that particular personality trait multiplied.

Clockwork suspected the Fentons were ultimately to blame. Their hostility towards Daniel's ghostly identity and their tendency to carry objects that could hurt Daniel precluded him from seeking comfort from them, and his friends and sister, while very remarkable, were children themselves. Their relationship with Daniel was different.

This meant that Daniel could and would spend long periods of time laying against Clockwork. Usually, he would be doing homework during those moments or talking to Clockwork about various ghostly things that he had never had a chance to learn about before.

Today, however, he was just sitting there, quietly, almost dozing.

"I'm not keeping you from doing things?" asked Daniel, abruptly. "Am I?"

"No," said Clockwork.

"You don't have to do time stuff?"

"I can make duplicates and also time travel. I can be wherever I need to be. But if you want space-"

"No," said Daniel. "This is good." He snuggled closer and startled as a ring of light flashed around his waist. He was, for the first time since before his parents had attacked him, a ghost. Clockwork, in turn, shed his human guise.

Daniel was blinking down at his gloved hands.

"What?" he asked.

"I think you finally relaxed," said Clockwork, ruffling Daniel's hair. The smaller ghost leaned into the touch, purring. "Your transformations might be a bit unpredictable for the next few days."

"Good thing it's a weekend, then, huh?"

.

Danny jittered nervously as he and Clockwork passed through the large, eye-covered doors. This time last week, strange ghosts had been in and out of Clockwork's house, asking questions, poking things, and staring. Clockwork said they were checking to see if everything was in order, if the adoption could become official.

Danny didn't really see why it being official mattered. The Ghost Zone didn't really have a government to speak of. Families that Danny had seen just sort of decided that they were families, and that was that. It seemed important to Clockwork, though, and Clockwork claimed that there were certain benefits, like strengthening connections... Danny didn't get it. Wouldn't their connections be strengthened anyway?

Clockwork guided Danny with small nudges, directing him to a seat in front of the judge, who stared down at them with her one enormous eye.

"I have decided to approve the adoption request regarding Daniel Janus James Fenton-Phantom," she said.

Danny felt Clockwork relax incrementally beside him. He smiled. The judge's pronouncement felt a little anticlimactic to him, but, well, whatever.

But the judge wasn't done speaking. "The child's familial bond with his biological parents will be severed. The familial bond will be established with his current guardian, known as Clockwork. On all levels legal, physical, metaphysical, metaphorical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, Clockwork will be the sole parent of Daniel Janus James Fenton-Phantom. Due to the child's status as a liminal spirit, the memories and associations stored in his human brain will not be altered, and he may still experience feelings, especially those of nostalgia, towards his former parents, however, this is expected to fade with time. Questions?"

Danny had rather a lot, actually. Clockwork hadn't quite explained it like this. "Wait, are you saying I'll forget my parents?"

"No," said the judge, in a rather condescending tone.

"You won't forget them," said Clockwork. "But your core won't recognize them as your parents anymore. It's so you'll be able to defend yourself." His tone was almost pleading. "Your relationship with your sister will, of course, be unaffected."

"Okay," said Danny. They clearly didn't see him as their son anymore, so... It wouldn't really change anything. He didn't like the idea of ghosts he didn't know messing around with his core, but he trusted Clockwork. Even if he was apparently really bad at explaining ghost adoption. "What about the other stuff? The physical, metaphysical part?"

"The severed bonds in your core are replaced with ones to your new parent. Similarly, new bonds will be established in your parent's core," explained the judge. "Are you satisfied?"

Clockwork gave Danny an encouraging smile.

"I- Yes. I'm satisfied," said Danny.

"Very well." The judge waved forward a seven armed bailiff who had been waiting in the corner of the room.

The bailiff carried two tall glasses and a large, covered pitcher. He set one glass each in front of Clockwork and Danny and poured a thick, white, faintly glowing liquid into each of them.

"What is it?" asked Danny.

"It is a potion designed to stop our cores from fighting the changes that are about to happen," said Clockwork.

Danny looked at the potion dubiously. "Like an anesthetic?"

"Like an anesthetic," agreed Clockwork. He had already picked up his cup. "Together?"

"Okay," said Danny, still doubtful.

He picked up the cup and brought it to his lips, watching Clockwork carefully over the rim. Clockwork tipped his cup back, and so did Danny.

The potion reminded him a lot of eggnog, except that it was thicker, heavier, sweeter, like it had been mixed with honey. Almost at once, that heaviness settled into Danny's bones, weighing him down, a sensation just to the left of sleep settled over him. He lowered the cup from his face, his grip on it going gentle. The bailiff caught it as it tipped over.

Clockwork reached over and gently, slowly, pulled him close. Then he went as limp as Danny.

Inside, Danny's core became open. Not open, as in vulnerable, but as in receptive. Listening. He felt soft. Malleable. Like someone could press their thumb into him, and it would leave an impression when he hardened again. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation.

The judge sighed with something like disapproval. "So mote it be." She raised a stamp up off her desk, brought it down, and things changed.

Or, at least, Danny did.

.

Clockwork, being the elder ghost, recovered faster from the potion than Daniel. There was no reason to stay at the court, so, after bidding a goodbye to the judge, he picked Daniel up and left, flying a polite distance before opening a portal back to their home outside Amity Park.

He settled Daniel down in his bed, phasing him beneath his covers and tucking him in. Daniel would need to sleep off the potion, as well as take time to adjust to the changes to his psyche, however minor they might be.

"I love you so much," said Clockwork, brushing Daniel's hair out of his face. Getting here had taken subjective years of work and planning but it was worth it, because now Daniel was his child, in every way that mattered.

Forever.

.

.

.

Yes, that ending line was a little bit ominous, but they're ghosts. They wouldn't be happy if it wasn't ominous!

[officialleehadan]

Yelp Rating

Hello darlings! I hope your week is going well. Right now I'm admiring a lovely sunset out my window and thinking how lovely this October has been so far.

Today's story was brought to you by Mae! Thank you for all your support, darling. Here are some spooky October ghosts for you!

Prompt: This Old House, historians come to the house and love the ghosts.

+++

“I don’t know what everyone is talking about,” Kevin read aloud to his living room full of eager ghosts. “While the beds were great, the showers were frankly decadent, and the breakfast was delicious, we didn’t see a single ghost during our whole visit. 10/10 for comfort and service, but 0/10 for ghosts.”

“Oh, I remember her,” Henry spoke up when Kevin finished reading the review. “She was rude. Kept saying how trashy she thought the decorations were.”

“We agreed it would be the best for her not to see any of us,” Franklin agreed cheerfully. “You always tell us that supply and demand makes for a better marketing scheme.”

So far, renting out a room here and there in Mallory House had been shockingly lucrative, and surprisingly satisfying. Kevin had been dubious about letting the ghost hunting team into his house, but it turned out to be more than worth the trouble. With a cook, one who specialized in interesting historic food, hired on full-time, the house had a guest almost every weekend. Kevin worried that he and his ghosts would get tired of the constant company, but so far, all of their guests had either been easily scared off after a single night, or thrilled to get to chat with the ghosts.

There had been no less than four historians come to talk to the ghosts. Mostly to Elizabeth and William, but also to Franklin, and even shy Prudence, who rarely came out of the attic where her spinning wheel still sat.

Speaking of Pru…

“Prudence, this is one from that lady who wanted to talk fibers with you. The one with all the questions about historical wool suppyand handling,” Kevin told the shy young woman, no older than twenty, who fell victim to the Spanish Flue only a few short years after Franklin’s suicide. “I was nervous about meeting with a ghost of all people, but Miss Prudence Connal was one of the sweetest young ladies I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting. Her spinning wheel, lovingly restored by the house’s owner and only living resident, is a work of art. Wonderful service! If I could give more than five stars, I would. My next visit is already booked!”

“She was nice,” prudence murmured. She couldn’t embroider, not anymore, but her spinning wheel still had enough of her essence and love in it to function for her, provided that someone else assured a good supply of wool, carded and ready for her. If Kevin had to guess, that job wouldn’t be his for very much longer. Not if Pru made friends with the local fiber-crafts people. “I’m glad she’s coming back for a visit. She promised to bring me some of that lovely alpaca wool she was working when she was here.”

“Sounds like she liked you as much as you liked her,” Kevin assured Prudence. She still needed some encouragement now and again. “Okay, next review- ah crap. Elizabeth, it’s that guy from last week. Told you we hadn’t heard the last of him.”

“I didn’t touch a hair on his head,” Elizabeth protested, although they both knew exactly who the guest in question was. “And I caught him trying to steal three of the silver forks.”

Elizabeth might be willing to have guests, but she would never tolerate thieves.

“I don’t’ know if it’s good special effects or drugged coffee,” Kevin read the review for Elizabeth, who was smiling and not at al repentant. “But the walls of my room started bleeding. When I got up for the bathroom around two-am, I looked in the mirror, there was someone behind me. When I turned around, there was nobody there. That’s when the lightbulb in my bathroom exploded- is that why there was glass everywhere when I went in to check on him?”

“The lightbulb was me,” Franklin admitted with an also-not-very-repentant smile of apology. “We saw it in that ghost movie we watched two weeks ago.”

“Seems to have worked. Anyway, ‘about that time I realized that there’s a reason why kids hide under the bed when they’re scared. Went back to bed, but kept waking up as blood dripped onto my face from the ceiling. When I woke up the next morning, the sheets were pristine. Guess I believe in ghosts now, but there’s not enough money in the world to make me go back to Mallory House ever again.”

“Oh good,” William said, no doubt the one the man saw in the mirror. He was usually the one who did for the male visitors that Elizabeth wanted to scare off. “Even if he did try to come back, we would have to decline. It’s no good when the guests try to pocket the silver.”

“I’ll make sure to put it in the disclaimer,” Kevin sighed. The disclaimer about the house, which now included waving the right to sue for ‘nightmares, mental trauma, or injury sustained in fleeing the premises’ was growing longer for every objectional visitor who came through looking to prove that the ghosts weren’t real.

They were real.

They didn’t like being doubted.

Kevin was making a fortune.

So really, pretty much everyone was happy. Okay, the skeptics weren’t so happy, but they all paid the nonrefundable fee for their stay and breakfast, so Kevin really didn’t care what else they did. The bad reviews were almost as good as the good ones. At least most of them screamed about the ghosts, which were Mallory House’s big draw.

“That’s all the new ones,” Kevin said and set his tablet aside. “Now, who has ideas for what to do for Halloween?”

+++

This Old House:

A haunted house isn’t the usual first choice for a fixer-upper, but Keven likes horror movies, and doesn’t mind when his ghost throw things, as long as they don’t damage the new paint.

Experienced Home-Buying

Living Negotiation (Subscriber-Only!)

White Roses and Deck Railings

Bats at Twilight

Difference of Opinion

Art Treasures of Old

Malicious Smile (Subscriber-Only!)

Family Night (Free on Patreon!)

Stay Creepy

+++

More Stories!

+++

[one-shot-plus-size]

From Sons of Anarchy to Mayans MC

Jax's sister must hide from the revenge of SAMCRO enemies, goes to Mayans MC Santo Padre. And he catches the eye of a la presidente.

Chapters 8/20

Sorry for any mistakes, English is not my first language. They will accept any attention and criticism :)

Part 7

6 months later

- You can't get them out of Templo - Ez was shaking his head.

- How much do you bet? - I looked at the oven.

- 50 bucks that they won't come out sooner than after 25 minutes - Ezekiel stretched out his hand to me.

- Agreed - I hugged her - they will come out within 5 minutes of getting her out of the oven.

- There is no option - he twisted his head.

- You don't know the power of my apple pie.

When the oven was written down, I slowly opened the door and pulled out the hot plate. I put it on the bar, Ezekiel turned on the stopwatch and we both stared at the door from Templo. Not two minutes passed and the Templo door opened. Angel came out first, obviously following the smell.

- I did not say - I smiled from ear to ear.

- Did you have to? - Ez was yawning at his brother.

- What smells so good? - Gilli showed up next, followed by the rest.

- Well, look - I reached out my hand to him - jump out of $50.

Ezekiel squinted under his nose, took out his wallet from his pocket and gave me a bill. I slipped it into my bra and smiled widely.

- Querida, why did you pluck the prospect today?

- I don't bet on it anymore," he twisted his head. "I lost $120 this week alone.

- I bet with Ezekiel that I will get you out of Templo in less than 5 minutes. Well, Angel helped me win.

- We should share the prize - Angel was staring at the apple pie.

I twisted my head, unfolded the plates and Ezekiel brought ice cream from the freezer and whipped cream.

- Is it Christmas? - Coco was almost drooling.

- Maybe not holy, but you deserve a bit of sweetness in this bitter life - I sliced the cake.

I put it on plates, Ez added ice cream and I decorated it with whipped cream. The guys grabbed the plates very quickly and settled down at the club. I handed the last plate to Bishop and smiled slightly. He thanked, smiled and sat down at the bar.

- Fuck, that's good - Angel was moaning on the couch.

- You have talent - Taza smiled.

- I am glad you like it - I felt my cheeks warming up.

- Everything that comes out of your hand is tasty - Bishop smiled.

- Thank you - I looked at him.

- Enjoying it is not a big deal - Hank rose up - it is great.

He went up to the bar, put the plate away and smiled.

- You've been here six months and you keep surprising me with what you can cook. You would be a perfect wife - he nudged Bishop's elbow.

- No - I twisted my head - I can't imagine sitting at home waiting for my husband. I can't imagine myself as a wife who takes care of the children and the house.

- What do you mean, "I can't imagine myself as a wife who takes care of the children and the house. - Bishop wrinkled his eyebrows.

I shrug my shoulders and smile poorly.

- I will go to my place, I have a project to complete. Don't leave the brothel here, I don't feel like cleaning.

I left the bar and went to the attic. I closed the door behind me and sat on the bed. Hank came on a sensitive subject for me.

Pov Bishop

I looked towards the corridor where he disappeared, I took a look at Hank.

- Don't look at me like that - he raised his hands - I have no idea what I said wrong.

- You are ignorant - Angel took a breath.

I looked in his direction surprised.

- Don't look at me like that," he growled, "each of you praises her food, her work, her behavior. He praises what he does, but none of you have time to sit down with her and talk.

- And you talk to her like that? - Coco has been growling.

- Just so you know, he picked up, I have time to take a beer from the bar and sit with her before he goes home. What, Brother, surprised ?

He came up to the bar, grabbed two beers.

- Did either of you notice that he was cooking for us but he wasn't eating it himself? - He was looking at us, the ignorant ones.

He turned his head and went to her apartment. I looked at Ezekiel, who frowned his eyebrows.

- He is right.

Pov Angel

I knocked gently on her door.

- I entered - I heard her silent voice.

I pressed the handle and went inside, I noticed her sitting at the bedside. She leaned back against the bed, had a tablet on her knees and stared at it.

- Hey Querida - I sat next to her.

She looked at me and smiled lightly while taking a beer.

- Don't get angry with them, they don't know, Hank didn't want to talk about it.

- I know - she breathed - I just don't like talking about it.

- I know - I nudged her shoulder.

I smiled wide, we drank beer together in silence. She told me everything she feels and how she was raised in Charming. Before 9 pm we entered the main room.

- Sorry - Hank approached her.

- Nothing happened - she smiled - I reacted badly, it is ok.

Hank came up to her and wet her hair.

Pov Olivia

- You'll be able to get over us while we're gone ? - Taza was smiling.

- Yes, I nodded my head - I will blow up the club at most.

- I would rather not - Bishop moaned.

I looked at him and smiled from ear to ear.

- I will take care of the club to the best of my ability, I will clean up a little bit here and get over this brothel.

- Great - Hank clapped his hands.

Each of them kissed me on the head before leaving. I felt like I was surrounded by my fathers.

- How many of you will be gone?

- Three or four days. I went out with Bishop.

- Ok - I confirmed with my head.

- If anything happens, write or call me.

- Bish, I moaned, relax and focus on the task. Come back in one piece and let me know how you're gonna come back, let me know. I'll make you something to eat.

- Thanks to Querida - he's got me on the cheek - we really appreciate your commitment.

- All right, I'm blushing.

Soon after they left, I started to clean up

Part 9

[antoinesylvia]

My Homelab/Office 2020 - DFW Quarantine Edition

Moved into our first home almost a year ago (October 2019), I picked out a room that had 2 closets for my media/game/office area. Since the room isn't massive, I decided to build a desk into closet #1 to save on space. Here 1 of 2 shelves was ripped off, the back area was repainted gray. A piece of card board was hung to represent my 49 inch monitor and this setup also gave an idea how high I needed the desk. 

On my top shelf this was the initial drop for all my Cat6 cabling in the house, I did 5 more runs after this (WAN is dropped here as well).

I measured the closet and then went to Home Depot to grab a countertop. Based on the dimensions, it needed to be cut into an object shape you would see on Tetris. 

Getting to work, cutting the countertop.

My father-in-law helped me cut it to size in the driveway and then we framed the closet, added in kitchen cabinets to the bottom (used for storage and to hide a UPS). We ran electrical sockets inside the closet. I bought and painted 2 kitchen cabinets which I use for storage under my desk as well.

The holes allowed me to run cables under my desk much easier, I learned many of these techniques on Battlestations subreddit and Setup Wars on Youtube. My daughter was a good helper when it came to finding studs.

Some of my cousins are networking engineers, they advised me to go with Unifi devices. Here I mounted my Unifi 16 port switch, my Unifi Security Gateway (I'll try out pfSense sometime down the line), and my HD Homerun (big antenna is in the attic). I have Cat6 drops in each room in the house, so everything runs here. On my USG, I have both a LAN #2 and a LAN #1 line running to the 2nd closet in this room (server room). This shot is before the cable management. 

Cable management completed in closet #1. Added an access point and connected 3 old Raspberry Pi devices I had laying around (1 for PiHole - Adblocker, 1 for Unbound - Recursive DNS server, and 1 for Privoxy - Non Caching web proxy). 

Rats nest of wires under my desk. I mounted an amplifier, optical DVD ROM drive, a USB hub that takes input from up to 4 computers (allows me to switch between servers in closet #2 with my USB mic, camera, keyboard, headset always functioning), and a small pull out drawer. 

Cable management complete, night shot with with Nanoleaf wall lights. Unifi controller is mounted under the bookshelf, allows me to keep tabs on the network. I have a tablet on each side of the door frame (apps run on there that monitor my self hosted web services). I drilled a 3 inch hole on my desk to fit a grommet wireless phone charger. All my smart lights are either running on a schedule or turn on/off via an Alexa command. All of our smart devices across the house and outside, run on its on VLAN for segmentation purposes. 

Quick shot with desk light off. I'm thinking in the future of doing a build that will mount to the wall (where "game over" is shown). 

Wooting One keyboard with custom keycaps and Swiftpoint Z mouse, plus Stream Deck (I'm going to make a gaming comeback one day!). 

Good wallpapers are hard to find with this resolution so pieced together my own. 

Speakers and books at inside corner of desk. 

Speakers and books at inside corner of desk. 

Closet #2, first look (this is in the same room but off to the other side). Ran a few CAT6 cables from closet #1, into the attic and dropped here (one on LAN #1, the other on LAN #2 for USG). Had to add electrical sockets as well. 

I have owned a ton of Thinkpads since my IBM days, I figured I could test hooking them all up and having them all specialize in different functions (yes, I have a Proxmox box but it's a decommissioned HP Microserver on the top shelf which is getting repurposed with TrueNAS_core). If you're wondering what OSes run on these laptops: Windows 10, Ubuntu, CentOS, AntiX. All of these units are hardwired into my managed Netgear 10gigabit switch (only my servers on the floor have 10 gigabit NICs useful to pass data between the two). Power strip is also mounted on the right side, next to another tablet used for monitoring. These laptop screens are usually turned off.

Computing inventory in image:

Lenovo Yoga Y500, Lenovo Thinkpad T420, Lenovo Thinkpad T430s, Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 12, Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 14, Lenovo Thinkpad W541 (used to self host my webservices), Lenovo S10-3T, and HP Microserver N54L 

Left side of closet #2 

**moved these Pis and unmanaged switch to outside part of closet** 

Since I have a bunch of Raspberry Pi 3s, I decided recently to get started with Kubernetes clusters (my time is limited but hoping to have everything going by the holidays 2020) via Rancher, headless. The next image will show the rest of the Pis but in total:

9x Raspberry Pi 3  and 2x Raspberry Pi 4 

2nd shot with cable management. The idea is to get K3s going, there's Blinkt installed on each Pi, lights will indicate how many pods per node. The Pis are hardwired into a switch which is on LAN #2 (USG). I might also try out Docker Swarm simultaneously on my x86/x64 laptops. Here's my compose generic template (have to re-do the configs at a later data) but gives you an idea of the type of web services I am looking to run: https://gist.github.com/antoinesylvia/3af241cbfa1179ed7806d2cc1c67bd31

20 percent of my web services today run on Docker, the other 80 percent are native installs on Linux and or Windows. Looking to get that up to 90 percent by the summer of 2021.

Basic flow to call web services:

User <--> my.domain (Cloudflare 1st level) <--> (NGINX on-prem, using Auth_Request module with 2FA to unlock backend services) <--> App <-->  DB.

If you ever need ideas for what apps to self-host: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted 

Homelabs get hot, so I had the HVAC folks to come out and install an exhaust in the ceiling and dampers in the attic. 

I built my servers in the garage this past winter/spring, a little each night when my daughter allowed me to. The SLI build is actually for Parsec (think of it as a self hosted Stadia but authentication servers are still controlled by a 3rd party), I had the GPUs for years and never really used them until now.

Completed image of my 2 recent builds and old build from 2011.

Retroplex (left machine) - Intel 6850 i7 (6 core, 12 thread), GTX 1080, and 96GB DDR4 RAM. Powers the gaming experience.

Metroplex (middle machine) - AMD Threadripper 1950x (16 core, 32 thread), p2000 GPU, 128GB DDR4 RAM.

HQ 2011 (right machine) - AMD Bulldozer 8150 (8 cores), generic GPU (just so it can boot), 32GB DDR3 RAM. 

I've been working and labbing so much, I haven't even connected my projector or installed a TV since moving in here 11 months ago. I'm also looking to get some VR going, headset and sensors are connected to my gaming server in closet #2. Anyhow, you see all my PS4 and retro consoles I had growing up such as Atari 2600, NES, Sega Genesis/32X, PS1, Dreamcast, PS2, PS3 and Game Gear. The joysticks are for emulation projects, I use a Front End called AttractMode and script out my own themes (building out a digital history gaming museum).

My longest CAT6 drop, from closet #1 to the opposite side of the room. Had to get in a very tight space in my attic to make this happen, I'm 6'8" for context. This allows me to connect this cord to my Unifi Flex Mini, so I can hardware my consoles (PS4, PS5 soon)

Homelab area includes a space for my daughter. She loves pressing power buttons on my servers on the floor, so I had to install decoy buttons and move the real buttons to the backside. 

Next project, a bartop with a Raspberry Pi (Retropie project) which will be housed in an iCade shell, swapping out all the buttons. Always have tech projects going on. Small steps each day with limited time.

[willow-salix]

Random bit of fun because it's been the kind of day where I needed to make myself laugh.

Everyone knew that Selene had a love of classic horror films, the ones that Alan said were boring and not in the least scary. The same ones that John always turned his nose up at because the special effects were non existent. Virgil liked them because they always had great music to them and Scott and Gordon just found them hilariously funny. 

But this one was different, while her favourites were made in the 1960s, she had stumbled across one that was positively modern in comparison from the 2010s. She'd put it off over and over again but if there was one thing that hanging out in a floating space station gave you an opportunity to watch all the movies you had previously never had time for. She had quickly run through almost all the movies on her watch list and was down to two, it was scary or the prank show Gordon had insisted she watch, so it was time to watch the scary even if that time was 3am and she couldn't sleep (not that she expected the movie to help). So there she was, camped out on one of the couches in the sunken lounge of the villa, blanket over her legs, tablet balanced on her knees, watching the movie. 

It started with three young girls happily playing tea parties in their attic play room when all of a sudden they dropped their dolls and little tea cups and as one, moved to the windows, opened them, and jumped the fuck out. 

Selene jumped in shock. "Da fuq was that about?" she yelped, eyes glued to the action which had cut to a young single father having one last chance to impress his bosses at the solicitors where he worked. He was a widow, his wife having died in childbirth and he was fast running out of money,  debts mounting, he needed this job.  

The owner of a big old house had died and the young father was the one sent to go through all her papers and check the house over,  looking for her most recent will, before they could sell. Seemed simple enough, but this was a spooky movie so obviously that wasn't going to go well.

He said goodbye to his son, planning on being done by the weekend when his son and the nanny would join in for a weekend in the country, all very pleasant... Selene was now quite bored after the dramatics at the start. She reached for her cup of cocoa and sipped as she watched the young father, Arthur Kipps,  board the train and promptly fall asleep. Cue a dream of his late wife which shocked him enough to wake with a start. A helpful man by the name of Sam offered him a ride from the station to the guest house. 

At the guest house Arthur (whom she could see as non other than Harry Potter no matter how hard she tried) was told he didn't in fact have a room booked and must go away. Strange. But the wife of the landlord took pity on him and let him stay in the attic... The same creepy ass attic the girls had jumped from.

"No Harry! Don't sleep there!" Selene warned but of course the twat didn't listen. Though he appeared to get through the night unscathed and proceed to make his way to the creepy ass house he was looking through. 

Selene jumped and squeaked her way through his first visit when the bitch in black decided to pop her ugly ass face up now and then and waft around in the background when she shouldn't be. 

She got a major case of the sads when a kiddie died due to the black bitch and got rather indignant on Harry/Arthurs behalf when the villagers all seemed to blame him. But by the time he went back again and began to uncover some clues as to the woman in blacks identity and why she might be creeping around like a dick and scaring the shit out of people, Selene was on the edge of her seat and not in a good way. The ghost popped up, eyeballs being all weird and dodgy and it all got a bit much for Selene, though she would blame sleep deprivation from back to back rescues. 

"Expelliarmus! " she yelled, waving her wandless hand at the screen in an attempt to make the spook go away.

She might be a super tough witchy but even she wasn't good with jump scares, it was the dodgy plinky plonky music they used to fuck with your head that always got to her and after she had shrieked and almost dropped the tablet for the fourth time she paused the film and, grabbing laptop and blanket, decided her spaceman would so appreciate a late night visit from his witch. 

She padded her way down the hallway from the lounge on a hunt for her elusive man. She checked Scott's office where he was known to sometimes hang out but found it empty. The kitchen was just as deserted so she let herself outside, taking a deep breath of the cooler night air. Ahh, target spotted and locked on! He was stretched out on one of the loungers arranged around the pool, which to some would seem strange in the middle of the night, but she knew he enjoyed the quiet. Such a shame she was there to fuck that up for him. Sucked to be him right now. 

She tugged his book out of his hands without asking - he didn't need it now- put down the tablet and scooped up the cat that was curled up on his lap, dropping him unceremoniously on the floor.

"My space man." Armstrong gave an outraged meow but she nudged him aside with her foot. "Go find Alan and sleep on his face."

There went his peace and quiet. Much as he loved her she had the subtlety of a cyclone sometimes, even at half past three in the morning. How was it even possible that she was still this bouncy? He tried to catch his book as it was whipped out of his hands but missed.

"I was reading that."

The cat went next and, although he had actually been enjoying the warm weight of the purring creature on his lap, he would never admit it and therefore didn't raise a protest. 

Selene pushed his legs apart, ignoring his questioning eyebrow and settled between them. He let his feet fall to the floor, making room, allowing her to wrap his arms around her middle and lean back against his chest. 

She picked up her tablet and propped it up on her knees. This wasn't going to be pleasant, he had very little faith in her viewing choices. 

"Selene, " he sighed. 

There was that tone that they all heard at least once a day, the one that said he was already done with your shit. Good job she was immune to such things. 

She wiggled to get comfy and smiled to herself. This was much better, her man would protect her from evil jumping ghost ladies that desperately needed to cleanse, tone and moisturise once in a while, he was awesome and could like…shoot it with a laser or some shit, what more could she want in a movie buddy? 

"You know I have no interest in watching this, " he protested weakly as he caught sight of the screen. 

She ignored that too, he'd like it once it got going, she was sure of it, and hit play. 

The dumbass formerly known as Harry had balls, she'd give him that, he hadn't given up and was yet again back in the house of oogie boogies with nothing but a dog for company. The story was unfolding and Selene was actually beginning to feel kind of sorry for the emo ghost, but she still didn't trust her and said as much, very vocally and frequently. 

"Don't go in there…. Shit shit shit creepy rocking chair… ahhh I fucking hate those little wind up monkeys, this, this is why kids were disturbed in the victorian times, look at the fucking toys they give them, what's wrong with the parents…" she paused her mini rant by yelping and hiding her face in John's neck when the ghost popped up again, "not cool, so not cool dude. " 

John but his lip, refusing to laugh at her comments, it would just encourage her and honestly, she was bad enough as it was. She was so animated in everything she did, so open, honest and just full on. 

He much preferred to sit and watch in silence, but Selene was never quiet for long and with four brothers he was used to never getting his own way.  It had been a busy few days and while the others had passed out early, they were both too keyed up to rest. He'd chosen the sensible option of quiet relaxation, obviously she'd had other ideas.

He made an attempt to watch the film but it was almost impossible, having missed the start and with her near constant distractions. He gave up all pretence of paying attention and simply enjoyed having her so close, tightening his arms around her middle.

Once she deemed it safe she looked up again,  uncurling a little from the protective shelter of his arms and managed to sit through another five minutes without freaking out, that was until there was a massive ass house fire and Harry/Arthur's friend Sam told him a bit more about his own story, that's when she started to get defensive and head more into pissed off territory.  

"Why do you keep calling him Harry?" he asked but received no answer as she launched into another tirade. 

"What is wrong with you? Oi, ghost bitch, stop that shit! Don't make me come down there! You might be able to mess with the now non wizard but try a real witch for size."

She cheered and got a little excited when the heroes tried to help the ghost, though the bitch wasn't very appreciative and just did her banshee impression, which lead to Selene screaming back at her, as if that would actually help, making John jump in shock. How was she so loud? 

She relaxed when she thought it was all over, only to bounce back up in the last few seconds in complete outrage. "They should have called me, I'd have kicked that bitches arse in less than a day and been home in time for dinner, now look! Look at that! What the fuck was that? Fucking vengeful ghost, what's wrong with you!"  She pushed the tablet aside in a huff, crossing her arms, sulk mode activated.

The chest she was leaning against was vibrating against her back as he shook in silent laughter. She turned to glare at him, which just made things worse as he lost control. 

John was laughing at her, this was unacceptable.  She nipped his chin in retaliation, trying to hold in a laugh and not admit that she had been a massive wimp. 

He continued to laugh, the lines of stress and worry that had formed over the past few days vanishing smoothing out as he relaxed and let go. She smiled, glad to have helped. Even if her way had been unconventional, it had done the job. 

John hugged her tighter, his amusement fading away to leave him with quiet contentment as she placed the tablet on the ground and rested her head back onto his shoulder. High above them, a bright spot in the dark sky he could just make out his beloved craft, awaiting him, but, as was becoming more and more frequent, he didn't feel the immediate urge to return. They lay in silence for a while, watching the stars, relaxed and at peace. 

"Want to take your witchy to bed so we can get some sleep?"

He smiled, turning his head for a quick kiss. "That's an offer I would be a fool to refuse."

They gathered their things, turned off the lights and returned to the silent villa, bed calling. 

[ghost-train-hunters]

Nerves

After a close call on her first run in Seattle, Scratch has second thoughts about her new crew. She decides to take it up with the fixer who made the introductions…

An Orichalcum and Silicon short story by BrossUno

——

Scratch still had a headache as she rode the elevator to the 30th floor of a bustling skyscraper. She had woken up before the sun had made it over the horizon. It was miserably early and it made her more irritated than usual. Thankfully she didn’t have any jobs lined up right that moment. She found it hard to work when she was a hair trigger from snapping at someone. 

Her early morning excursion only left her just enough time to wash the stink of the Seattle underground out of her hair from last night’s run. She hastily put on the only business suit she owned and covered her face with a medical mask and sunglasses. The corp look didn’t help her mood at all. The skirt made it especially awkward to pull anything out of the smuggling compartment nestled in her left cyberleg. Unfortunately the contact she wanted to meet didn’t hang out in places where street clothes could get you past the front door. 

Routinely they were areas where the cops showed up in a few minutes and security could be trusted to do their job. Much as Scratch didn’t like it, the chaos of last night’s festivities gave her the motivation to power through.

The details of what happened sloshed around in her skull to the point where she couldn’t make much sense of it if she tried. It had been a few weeks of running her automotive garage for less savory customers looking to ditch junkers or disappear hot cars. Establishing herself in Seattle had been more challenging than originally anticipated. Chip truth, she was looking forward to making real money. Her long term plans demanded it. Now she regretted being so hasty. A crew of five needed a driver. 

The job itself called for the acquisition of a package from an Evo facility. She sure as hell couldn’t remember how it started out, but the ending had been a wreck from the minute they got their hands on the objective. The getaway took them on a grand tour of a drug den, subway tunnels with a ghost train, and a rooftop shootout with the Knight Errant and a fraggin’ Gargoyle. The order events felt scrambled in her mind but she knew things went downhill after a crash. A crash with a stolen truck.

The mere thought made Scratch take a detour to the nearest bathroom. She stood in front of the sink and made fists as she fought back tremors in her hands. After some cold water and some concentration she felt the sensation pass. She didn’t have time to look like she was fighting off dumpshock. She had a meeting to attend with the fixer who had set her up with the Evo job. Building security made sure she didn’t have the luxury of bringing her drones or much weaponry. The only form of defense she had on her was an Ingram Smartgun X she learned to hide in her leg for emergencies. She hadn’t had to make use of it yet, but last night had been full of unwelcome surprises.

The meet up was a fancy restaurant known as The Perennial. Scratch had never heard of it before but she didn’t run in these circles. The place mostly serviced wageslaves and anyone chained to the corporate life. Her contact had always found the nicest places for a conversation even in the shadiest parts of town. When she made it to the entrance the balding head waiter that greeted her had his nose turned up to the ceiling. He seemed to make note of her cyberleg but didn’t give her any trouble when she mentioned the party she belonged to.

“Party of Rosselott,” Scratch said.

“Right this way, madam.”

Scratch was always thankful for a mask. She couldn’t help but roll her eyes and scoff as she followed the head waiter inside. He didn’t see any of that behind her sunglasses. The Perennial leaned on fake plants and flowers to imply a lush atmosphere. There were more people around than she expected for breakfast hours. A lot of drones in suits and oozing self-importance. One ork busied himself with AR screens. A table of four looked to be double tasking while eating and holding a business meeting at the same time. No one looked like trouble from first glance. She doubted any of them even noticed her enter the room. Sometimes she found it amazing how easy it was to disappear into a crowd of suits. That wasn’t an excuse to drop her guard though. She wasn’t expecting trouble but old memories from a life out east wouldn’t let her relax.

The head waiter brought her to a table in the corner up against a window overlooking downtown. It was a secluded space with fake hedges acting as a barrier between tables. They wouldn’t stop any bullets but it would be enough to keep prying eyes away for a little while. A single elf sat at the table. Scratch only knew her as Rosselott. 

The name didn’t really go with the face but that was the nature of the business. Rosselott had signs of old age and still looked impossibly good, which made Scratch feel she was probably ancient by elf standards. They never had a meeting where she wasn’t wearing a crisp business suit and nursing a cigarette or cigar. She had jet black hair and emerald eyes that felt armor piercing. The safe bet is she had been wrapped up in the corp life longer than Scratch had been alive. The way she supplemented her words with constant hand motions gave off the impression she had done boardroom meetings for a few decades at least.

Despite the clean exterior and expensive taste, word on the street had made it clear Rosselott was a fixer with connections. All the rumors pointed to the idea she liked to collect old things. And it went double for classic automobiles. Scratch felt it was a stroke of luck meeting someone like her over a single night of stealing cars for a bartender troll named Lefty. As a relative newcomer to Seattle she couldn’t afford to pass up the connections on offer. Or that’s how she felt at first. After last night she wasn’t so sure anymore.

Rosselott looked up and gave a thin smile through a trail of smoke escaping her cigarette. That was enough to satisfy the head waiter as he excused himself. Scratch took a seat at the table and made sure she could reach the thigh of her cyberleg where her Ingram was hidden. A matter of precaution.

“Ah, you made it. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble finding the place. They opened a few weeks ago. I hear they serve real eggs here.”

“I’d prefer if I didn’t have to dress up every time we have a conversation.” Scratch grumbled.

Rosselott gave a sardonic smile. “But I love when people are presentable. Besides, it’s not unusual for two strangers to talk business over breakfast in a place like this. Especially if you look the part.”

“You could have just called instead of having me come down here before the sun was up.”

The idea of talking over comms only got a finger wag from Rosselott. “You should know by now that I prefer a good face to face. And let us not forget, you were the one who wanted to meet right away.”

“I want another crew,” Scratch said without wasting time.

The request bounced off Rosselott without leaving a dent. She turned her attention to the menu. Scratch had been too focused to notice the tablet in front of her. Chip truth, she couldn’t afford most of the menu even if it sounded good. And she definitely didn’t want to be in Rosselott’s debt over some fancy dining. This meeting was strictly business.

“You don’t want to chat over a nice meal?” Rosselott asked.

Scratch leaned forward to emphasize the point. “I didn’t come here for a seven course meal. I need another crew.”

Rosselott put down the menu and folded her hands together. Her cigarette perched between her fingers.

“And what? You think I whisk them out of the air? Like magic? I already introduced you to a team. A rather sizable one. During your last job.”

“That job was a shitshow.”

“What a shame. At the very least I hear that things went well enough for you to get paid.”

“Not enough for the trouble.”

Rosselott shrugged.

“Perhaps you should brush up on your negotiating skills? I just make the introductions and arrange that things are… taken care of.”

“Then ‘introduce’ me to another crew.”

Scratch didn’t realize she had raised her voice until Rosselott lost her smile. Slowly she sat back in her chair and looked around. They were too secluded to attract attention even if someone had heard the commotion. Rosselott took a long drag on her cigarette and ejected the smoke out of her nose. The one other time Scratch had seen her do that, it didn’t mean good things. She tried not to look away with Rosselott’s eyes bearing down on her.

“If I recall correctly, and my memory is very good, the deal went like this: You were looking for a team who need a driver and a drone rigger. A way to establish yourself in Seattle, as you put it. I knew of a job someone needed taken care of that suit both our purposes. I came through for you, and you came through for me. A prime example of any good business relationship. You’re still alive, so I trust the team had some amount of skill?”

The crew wasn’t exactly what Scratch had in mind. Even from her time doing work for the mafia it was a motley crew to say the least. During the Evo run they had an ork the size of a fridge known as Merc who preferred to take his targets apart up close and personal. They had a cat burglar, Bast, who had embraced the namesake whole cloth with body mods and everything. Scratch had never seen someone move so fast. Even with a head start she passed her up on the stairs to the roof. They had two elves. Mantis, despite the glowing personality and the multicolored tattoo, had little trouble frying a Knights Errant with magic. The other elf went by Oz and preferred to do his work in the Matrix. Some ganger in the drug den had his magazine ejected from his gun in midfight. Deckers always made Scratch nervous.

The last runner caught her by surprise. The triggerman of their little group went by the name of Hollowpoint. She recognized him right away as the private detective named Seth Barber living in the cramped attic of her garage. The coat and the tired eyes were a dead giveaway. Naturally he wasn’t all that surprised to meet on a run. He had probably figured her out the second they met to talk terms for their current arrangement. But she didn’t figure he was such a dead eye when it came to shooting. 

Hollowpoint was an anomaly. Scratch figured if you were good enough to shoot the gun out of the hands of a surprised thug, you’d be good enough to shoot them in the head and be done with it. But she wasn’t going to scoff at someone who could clip a Gargoyle’s wing at night when it’s darting around in the air. Two crack shots meant it was more than dumb luck.

“Am I wrong?” Rosselott asked with a smarmy grin.

Scratch hesitated.

“I’m not working with them again.” She declared. “They’re… they’re bad luck.”

Rosselott laughed. Scratch had never seen her laugh before. It struck her motionless as she waited for her contact to regain her composure.

“Bad luck.” Rosselott repeated even more amused than before. “Oh whatever could have happened that night? What kind of problems did you run into, Miss Sheckler? Or maybe you were the problem? Maybe you hit a bump in the road somewhere? Left you shaken.”

Their corner of the restaurant felt hot. A sense of dread began to well up in Scratch’s stomach as her fledgling Seattle reputation felt at risk. She regretted coming. She regretted pushing her luck with Rosselott. The moment she came to town, she knew the only thing that would bring in work was an ironclad reputation. 

The last thing she needed was word getting out that she couldn’t drive for shit. It would be a nightmare if the only thing associated with her name was totalling a truck that should have danced on the tips of her fingers. But she couldn’t even remember what happened to defend herself. Was she jacked in? Did the dumpshock fry her memory on impact? It hadn’t been the first time she had been in a wreck that felt beyond her control. She made fists under the table as bad memories came to the surface.

“I shouldn’t have to remind you, but my interest is in people who can get things done. The other details are your concern. And if you can’t play nicely with others, then what good are you to anyone? Unless you fashion yourself as a one man army? Those are so rare these days.”

Scratch was thankful for the mask. She would have been glaring daggers at Rosselott and she knew that wasn’t the right move. Much as she didn’t like it in her current state of mind, she got the point. All she had to do is keep it professional. Get the job done. Somewhere in the wreck last night she had lost sight of it.

“Maybe I made a mistake recommending you. Maybe that stellar work that got my attention was beginner’s luck. What do you think?”

Scratch felt her confidence return. “It wasn’t luck. You know what I can do. The only one who brought you that car you love so much is sitting right across from you.”

Things got quiet at the table. Scratch tried to relax. Rosselott looked her over and finished off her cigarette.

“You know what I think?” Rosselott asked. “I think it’s just nerves. This was your first run after all. It’s a very different line of work compared to… what you’ve done in the past.”

“How do you know that?” Scratch crossed her arms.

“I don’t pick people off the street and hand them a gun. I like to do my homework.”

The smile on Rosselott’s face wasn’t very comforting but Scratch wasn’t surprised. Background checks sounded like the standard arsenal of someone who did time working for a corp. She just hoped it didn’t go too deep.

“I’m not some mobster on the corner, either. You have a lot of potential. But you also have to keep the long game in mind. Things work differently out here. I hope you understand that.”

Scratch took a deep breath. “Yeah. I understand.”

Rosselott clapped her hands. “Good. So if we’re finished here, I can’t introduce you to another team. Because I don’t have one for you. But the moment I hear something that needs your personal touch, we’ll talk.”

At the bare minimum Scratch was hoping for another job. The Evo run wasn’t the payday she was hoping for. Not to mention she didn’t have the luxury waiting around for something to happen. It might as well have been acid on her ears.

“How long will that be?” Scratch asked.

“Tisk tisk. So impatient.” The accompanying shrug made it clear Rosselott was indifferent to the issue. “You have all these new friends with problems of their own. I’m not the only one in town that needs a few things taken care of. Who knows? Maybe it will bring us new opportunities in the future? I’m sure you can occupy yourself until then.”

The end of their conversation came with a fake, business-like smile from Rosselott that must have disarmed thousands of arguments in the past. Scratch gave a nod and stood to leave. On the way out, she tried to ignore the smell of food coming from the kitchen. Real food. She had a long list of things to take care of before that ever made it onto her budget. At the very top she remembered the stolen van from last night. She had to get rid of it. Nothing could trace back to her. Things were safer that way. 

Upon reaching the street level she walked a few blocks to find her black Americar parked nearby. She didn’t want to pay for parking or mess with valets. When she got back to the garage it was still early in the morning. Among the tools and workbenches the stolen van awaited. A GMC Bulldog. Oz said he gave it a clean slate on the Matrix side, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

Scratch traded out her business suit and medical mask for a jumpsuit and a welding mask. She started taking the van apart piece by piece. The others couldn’t drive for shit anyway so she didn’t leave it up for debate. Some of it would work well for spare parts. Especially since she had a Bulldog of her own. She had a feeling she’d be getting a lot of use out of it with their six person crew. The idea of playing taxi pissed her off so she hoped the others didn’t expect her to run them down to the store to pick up soymilk.

A couple of hours passed. The stolen bulldog had been reduced to a skeleton frame. That’s when Scratch finally heard knocking coming from the side entrance. Sometimes customers used that door when they didn’t want to be seen. She still had her Ingram hidden in her cyberleg so she cracked the door open. Seth Barber or Hollowpoint or whatever his name was stood outside. It was almost noon and he looked as tired as ever. They didn’t interact much as tenant and landlord. Seth Barber the private detective kept things guarded and didn’t bring people around. He had soyfood groceries delivered and sometimes smoked on the roof. 

Really Scratch couldn’t have asked for a more perfect arrangement. They stayed out of each other’s way and that worked just fine. But now things were different. Now she knew he was a crack shot and carried a small armory hidden under the unfashionable coat. She opened the door and they looked at each other for a brief moment.

“Hey.” Hollowpoint greeted.

Scratch said nothing. She waited for him to get on with it.

“Uh, there’s a special going on right now where if you refer someone to my food delivery app you get some credit on your account-”

This same man had sniped a Gargoyle out of the air at night with an assault rifle. It stuck in the back of her mind.

“-and I was thinking, maybe I could refer you and then we use the coupon to get something to eat, split the delivery charge?”

Scratch closed the door without a second thought. She had work to do.

[madscientistjournal]

Fiction: The Prototype

An essay by Claire Lev, as provided by Judith Field Art by Luke Spooner

When they let me out of hospital, I decided to rent somewhere with space to write. Jo, the social worker, helped me find a terraced house in the old part of town, the only one in the row not converted into flats. Gentrification had leapfrogged the area. There were no skips outside the tumbledown houses, no four-by-fours blocking the narrow streets. The shades of my immigrant ancestors spoke to me in the place they’d once made a crowded, warm world of their own.

“Bit big for a youngster like you, on your own,” the landlord said, “Miss … er …”

“Claire Lev,” Jo said.

“Claire … Lev. Millwall … two!” I chanted, using the rising and falling cadence of a football commentator. Okay name for a house, Millwall. Bucolic. Strong.

Jo pursed her lips and shook her head at my display of what the shrink dubbed “knight’s move thinking.”

“Miss Lev.” The landlord leaned away from me, as though I was contagious. He told me a rabbi had lived in the house, which meant that he’d labeled me as Jewish. Once people slot you in like that, the label is like a flashing light in their heads, steering everything they say. I waited for him to ask “if I knew the Cohens.”

“It was about 80 years ago. There were a lot of you people ’round here then.” You people.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

~

No one since the rabbi had smartened the house up. The faded, peeling wallpaper looked as if it had been there since the thirties. It was patterned with overblown tea roses that I saw faces in. The bathroom looked even older, with its rust-streaked basin. The bathtub stood on little bunched feet, poised to run.

The attic became my writing room. I scattered rag rugs and beanbags over the floorboards. The light poured in through two huge skylights and blasted the frozen shadows off my brain. Sometimes I’d be writing a poem and in mid-sentence I’d have to stop, as though someone had plucked the thoughts right out of my head.

It didn’t help that the house was full of noise–pipes clanging, stairs squeaking, floors groaning. The cat flap in the back door banged, even on windless days. I rang the landlord and asked him to get rid of it. I heard soldiers marching in one of the bedrooms, but when I went in, there was nothing to see, even though I could still hear them. And always the smell of wet mud, the sound of water dripping.

Outside the kitchen was a tiny garden, grass with a couple of anonymous scrawny trees. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen. The tablets made me constantly hungry. I decided to go cold turkey, to stop the medication and to try to lose weight.

I never seemed to be able to keep the cracked, dull linoleum on the kitchen floor clean. I washed it every morning, but a few hours later, there would be another line of muddy blobs leading from the back door, like animal tracks.

In bed I squirmed, trying to sleep. A mob of problems whirled ’round my mind. When I had worried about each one, they all took another turn. I stood in the middle as they danced around me, pulling at me, demanding a piece of me in higher- and higher-pitched voices. Bills. Poetry. Weight. Leaky roof. Benefit. Noise in the house. Food.

One night, a hand stroked my hair.

“Claire, poor Claire,” the female voice said.

“That’s all you ever say,” I replied. Two old women’s voices discussed a cake recipe. It made my stomach rumble.

~

It didn’t help that the house was full of noise–pipes clanging, stairs squeaking, floors groaning. The cat flap in the back door banged, even on windless days.

I had to have a peanut butter and banana sandwich for lunch, cut diagonally, set on the plate with the red line ’round the edge, otherwise my nerves would jangle and a band would tighten around my ribs as I forced myself to breathe. The sandwich had to be sliced with one of the blue-handled knives that made me feel safe when I held them. I rummaged about in the drawer, but my fingers met one of the solid metal ones. It weighed my hand down, and the edges of the handle felt alien. My heart pounded faster as I poked and prodded in the drawer. My mouth dried. I felt sick and the room became fuzzy ’round the edges.

“Claire, poor Claire,” said the woman.

“She’s useless and you know it,” a new, male voice said. “Can’t even find the right knife.”

I smelled that muddy, earthy odour even though it wasn’t raining. The cat flap banged and movement flickered in the corner of my eye. I grabbed a carving knife and whipped around, jerking the blade forward.

“Get out!” My voice caught on the lump in my throat as tears rose behind my eyes.

A tiny, human-shaped pile of mud stood by the back door, in front of the cat flap. I dropped the knife, with a clatter that seemed to go on and on. I rubbed the back of my hand across my nose.

The man’s voice started again. “You clumsy, filthy whore. Give up. You’re worthless. Take that knife and slit your–”

“Shut it!” the mud man-thing shouted. “My voice is the only one she needs to hear!”

Silence. I reached down.

“No,” said the mud-thing, “I’ll deal with that.” It kicked the knife under the fridge.

I backed away, my fists clenched, until I was pressed against the wall. The thing walked toward me.

“Look at me,” it commanded. Its eyes glowed red. Warmth ran through my veins. I breathed out and my heartbeat slowed.

“Don’t be scared. Forget the others; they’re gone. I’m your helper. Better let you see my job description. Here are my personal specifications and objectives.”

The top of its head opened. It reached inside, pulled out a roll of parchment, and handed it to me.

“Careful. It’s written in a special ink made out of oak galls, copperas, and gum arabic. You won’t find them down in the shops.” The orange-tinted parchment was peppered with the hair follicles of the animal from which it came, as if hit by a tiny shotgun. The black, square letters were written with a sweeping hand: broad upstrokes and narrow downstrokes. Some were embellished with crown shapes at the top. Others stretched, giving a solid edge to each column of text.

My Hebrew was as rusty as the taps in the bathroom and my shaking hands made it hard to read, but I made out the letters: gimel, lamed, mem …

“You’re a golem?”

It nodded. “Call me Rishon. Don’t you know who lived here? Rabbi Yossi, one of the greatest twentieth-century mystics. He made me. I’m a servant made out of non-living stuff by magic.”

Okay. What would I have to say to get rid of it? I tried to dredge some Hebrew from my memory.

“Gleeda!” I shouted.

“Ice cream? You’ll have to get your own. But I’ll protect you, if you let me stay.” It spoke as if it was reading my mind.

“You? How? Jump up and bite attackers on the kneecap?”

“Now you’re being size-ist. I can’t help it if I’m only twelve inches high. I’m a mock-up, a prototype. Rabbi Yossi wanted to make the perfect golem. That’s why I can speak. The others couldn’t. He died before he could make the full-sized version. I’ll protect you from Cossacks, expulsion, blood libel, and the voices in your head. I can help ’round the house.” It ran its hand across a cupboard door and stared at the place where its fingertips would be. It tutted. “I do cleaning as well.”

“Those your footprints all over the kitchen floor?”

“Sorry about that, but I had to get in quickly. Couldn’t stop to wipe my feet.”

“Why were you in the garden?”

“Where else could I go? I was minding my own business in the attic, for eighty years I’ve been up there, but then you had to go and use it as a study. Couldn’t stay up there with you tapping at your keyboard all day. It’s like being inside a ticking clock.” It put its hands up to where its ears would have been. “I’ve been hiding in the garden, but it keeps raining. I’m made of clay. The rabbi never got ’round to firing me in the kiln, so I have to come in out of the wet. I’m a priceless ethnic artefact, you know. And I’m not an it, I’m a he.”

“If you stay, do I have to tie a bit of red string ’round my wrist? Kabbalah, and all that?”

“Kabbollocks. Made-up nonsense. Anyway, I’ve got work to do. Now that I’ve shut up that lot of voices in your head, I’ll go get rid of the barmy army in the bedroom.” He reached out an upturned hand and twitched the curled fingers toward himself. “Scroll. Give.”

I passed it to him, and he put it back inside his head. It clicked shut. The stairs creaked as he made his way upstairs.

~

I listened for Rishon, coming up and down, in and out through the cat flap, while I worked. And the poetry flowed. Now that there was silence in my head, instead of the crushing band around my ribs, I felt a painless silver belt around my brain, squeezing ideas out, yet at the same time holding them back so that they didn’t all erupt at once. Everything in sight glowed, sunshine dancing on glass.

Rishon reappeared one morning as I was looking out the kitchen window at the gnarled, pallid leaves sprouting on the stunted trees. The doorbell rang. He ran out through the cat flap.

I opened the front door a few inches. The community nurse put her hand through, showing her ID. I peered around.

“I’m Vikki,” said the woman by the nurse’s side. “I’m your befriender.”

I let them in. I didn’t look at the woman. If she spoke, I didn’t hear it.

“Let’s talk about your treatment plan.”

The nurse started some spiel about empowerment. About concordance between service user and care-giver. She gave me new tablets. I had to take one a day.

“You’re a bit isolated here. Pop into the Day Centre, it’ll do you good. They’ll send transport for you. Get to know people, learn new skills.”

~

When the bus came, I wouldn’t open the door. “You should go,” Rishon said. “Make friends. Maybe meet a nice young man.”

“I don’t want to meet someone like me. I’m fine here. I’ve got my poetry. And you. It’s perfectly okay.”

Rishon clambered onto the kitchen worktop and shuffled forward till his face was up against mine.

“Now look,” he shouted. I could see inside his mouth. “You have to do more with your life than skulk around here all day. When you do creep outside it’s only to scuttle to those pokey little shops. Get out! Look at nature! You might pick up some ideas for poems!”

“No, you look, Mister Perfect Golem. I do have a choice about all this, and I’m not going. I don’t want to write about how it feels to sit in one of those care-in-the-community buses with people gawping at me.”

“Why don’t you learn to drive, then?”

“I can drive. Used to have a car.”

“Stolen, was it? I’m not surprised, around here.”

“Sort of, but it happened where I used to live, before I went into hospital. One night the police took my car away. By the next morning, before I got up, they’d replaced it with one that looked exactly the same, only, they could control it. So I had to get rid of it.”

“That’s clever of them, considering they couldn’t catch a one-legged burglar with his arms tied behind his back.” Rishon picked up my tablet box and looked inside. “You’re meant to take these every day, you know. Get yourself a glass of water.” He pushed the box toward me.

~

A week later, the Vikki woman came back. I shouted at her to go away, but she said she couldn’t hear me. I opened the door. A shove at the back of my knees ejected me, staggering and stumbling, onto the path. The door slammed shut.

“Let me in!” I shouted through the letterbox. “Please! I haven’t got my key!”

“Go on, now! Get some fresh air,” Rishon called, from inside the house. “It’s a sunny day, I’m off into the garden. I’ll open the door–later.”

I stood up. Breathed in. Breathed out. Turned around.

Vikki looked to be in her mid-thirties, slim, with blonde hair tucked into a knitted teacosy hat. Her woolly tights were zigzagged with colour, like the patterns you see when you press on your eyelids.

“Hello, again. Walk with me?”

“Is your name short for Victoria?”

“Not short for anything. I’m just Vikki.”

“Just Vikki’s an okay name.”

She smiled. “Does this mean you’ll come for a walk?”

I nodded. “I’m on a drug called aripiprazole. Okay name for a man, that. Sounds Greek.”

“Nah, nobody’d be able to spell it.”

We walked up the street, the wind scudding cans and empty crisp packets across the pavement in front of us. Our path lit up, then dimmed, as clouds tore across the sun.

I’d never noticed the park entrance at the end of the street before. The park was deserted, except for old men sitting on benches and people with nowhere else to go. Vikki pointed to a seat outside.

“We won’t go in this time. Let’s sit here. Recovery is like climbing a flight of stairs. You have to take one step at a time.”

I turned my face upward and closed my eyes. The sun shone red through my eyelids. Vikki told me about her ceramics studio and the class she ran.

“I write poetry,” I said. “Here’s one about the shrink at the loony bin:

“Take head off, bin man,

A catamaran”

“They call that a clang association.”

“Don’t you start. That’s bin man talk. But Clang Association would make a good name for a band.”

We talked about music. The sunlight drained away. Coatless, I shivered in the wind.

It began to rain, and we ran back down the street.

I hammered on my door. No reply.

Vikki made up for saying that naff thing about climbing stairs by riffling in her bag, taking out some pottery tool, sliding it between the frame and the door, and opening it. If that was a skill they taught at the Day Centre, I might just go. I didn’t ask her in. I stepped into the house and slammed the door.

A note lay on the kitchen table. The landlord had nailed the cat flap in the back door shut.

I hurled the door open and rushed into the garden. A puddle of wet clay lay on the ground. A bit of yellowing paper, washed clear, lay to one side. I stood, water running down my face.

I scooped up the mud and the paper and stashed them in a plastic bag at the back of the cupboard under the eaves. Alone in the silent house for the first time.

~

Vikki’s guiding me back into the world. We’ve been out for coffee. We’ve been shopping at Tesco’s. I entered a poem about her in a competition; I’m still waiting to hear if I’ve won. She’s a shoulder to lean on, someone to trust. She believes in me as a whole person, with true abilities.

As I believed in Rishon the golem, who showed me the way.

I’ve started Hebrew lessons. I’ve been copying the bit of Genesis (Chapter 17, verse 1, actually) that says “walk before me and be perfect.” I’ve nearly got it right. Between that and Vikki’s pottery class, I’m hardly in the house these days. I’ve made friends at Hebrew class, but the potters won’t sit with me. “She’s weird,” they say. “All she makes is little clay men.”

I’m practising. Until I can make perfect.

Claire Lev also lives in London, UK. She’s a ceramicist, and she and Judith met at Claire’s art installation “Living Clay”, consisting entirely of golems of different sizes. Blink, and they seemed to have moved. But that can’t be so…can it?

Judith Field lives in London, UK. She writes because it’s in her DNA. She’s the daughter of writers and learned how to agonise over fiction submissions at her mother’s (and father’s) knee. She speaks 5 languages and can say “please publish this story” in all of them. Her short stories, mainly speculative, have appeared in a variety of publications in the USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Luke Spooner, a.k.a. ‘Carrion House,’ currently lives and works in the South of England. Having recently graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a first class degree, he is now a full time illustrator for just about any project that piques his interest. Despite regular forays into children’s books and fairy tales, his true love lies in anything macabre, melancholy, or dark in nature and essence. He believes that the job of putting someone else’s words into a visual form, to accompany and support their text, is a massive responsibility, as well as being something he truly treasures. You can visit his web site at www.carrionhouse.com.

This story first appeared in Stupefying Stories, August 2012.

“The Prototype” is © 2012 Judith Field Art accompanying story is © 2019 Luke Spooner

Fiction: The Prototype was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

[girls-scenarios]

Hiya!! Are requests still open for the holiday prompts?? If so, can u please do #9. Persons A and B must convince their child that yes, Santa is real. Where the parents are sana and tzuyu from twice and their daughter is minjoo from iz*one becuase the resemblance is uncanny!

Holiday Prompts

9. Persons A and B must convince their child that yes, Santa is real.

Idols: Sana and Tzuyu (Twice)

Admin Kiwi

A/N: Sorry for taking so long with this one, I hope it turned out how you wanted it!

It was the first week of December when Sana came to Tzuyu with a problem. 

“Honey, I think Minjoo is beginning to realize that Santa isn’t real.”

Tzuyu stared at her wife for a few seconds, processing what she’d just said. “Really? But she’s only six!” Minjoo was currently at school, so there was no chance of her overhearing them, but Tzuyu still kept her voice low. “How would she already know?”

“We must have slipped up somehow last Christmas. Maybe she found the present stash?” Tzuyu shook her head.

“Impossible. We would have known had she gotten into our closet.” She paused, pressing her lips together. “Why do you think she’s beginning to doubt Santa?”

“I overheard her talking to some of her friends at school talking about Christmas. One of the girls said that they had to be good, and Minjoo says ‘do you really think Santa can see all of us?’ Thankfully the other little girl’s parents answered that question before because she had an answer, but Minjoo didn’t look convinced.”

“Maybe she’s just growing up,” Tzuyu said, and Sana let out an offended gasp.

“She’s only six! She should believe for at least another few years!” Sana crossed her arms, and Tzuyu felt a smile make its way onto her lips. Her wife was so cute when she was determined. “I say that we need to do our best to keep the magic alive this year.”

“Do you have any ideas?” At her words, a grin spread across Sana’s face.

“Yes. I call it Operation: Make Minjoo Believe in Santa Claus Again.”

-

The only problem was that Minjoo, as shy and gullible as she looked, was pretty sharp. Early on, she’d caught Sana putting money under her pillow and stopped believing in the tooth fairy, and ever since, she’d been on to her parents. She knew that movies were fake and rarely ever had nightmares, even after the time she had snuck out of bed and went downstairs to secretly watch the horror movie Sana and Tzuyu were watching. So it was really no surprise that she had started doubting Santa. But still, Tzuyu wasn’t going to give up this easily, and neither was Sana.

Most likely, one of them had slipped up with something last Christmas. Maybe Minjoo had heard them talking about gifts for her, or maybe she’d seen the wrapping paper in the storage room. So the first order of business was to be extra careful. The second was to go above and beyond.

“I found a device that plays the sound of hooves on the roof,” Sana said one day during breakfast after dropping Minjoo off at school, showing Tzuyu the Amazon page. “Do you think that would work?”

“That would probably convince me,” Tzuyu said, eyes wide as she looked over the page. “We should definitely get that.” Sana looked triumphant as she turned off her phone and took a sip of her coffee.

“Did you find anything?”

“Actually, yes,” Tzuyu said pulling out her own phone. “I looked up ideas on how to help your kid believe I Christmas and got some great ideas. Like feeding the reindeer, and making sure to leave something of Santa’s around like he left it. And making better hiding spaces. Or even better, setting up a camera and having ‘Santa’ caught on tape.” Sana raised her eyebrows at the last point, obviously intrigued.

“How would we do that?”

“Basically we set up a camera, and then one if us dresses up like Santa and puts the gifts under the tree after Minjoo is asleep. When Minjoo wakes up, we suggest we check the video and boom, there’s proof of Santa.”

“That. Is an incredible idea.” Tzuyu grinned at her wife, who grinned back, eyes sparkling.

“We’ve totally got this! Minjoo isn’t going to give up on Santa just yet!”

-

Everything was in place. All of the presents had been wrapped and stashed away in a new hiding place (the attic in Tzuyu and Sana’s closet), the noise device has been hidden in Minjoo’s room near the window, and the camera had been bought, explained to Minjoo, and then placed at the perfect angle. All that had to happen now was for Sana and Tzuyu to pull this off.

“I can’t believe I have to be Santa,” Tzuyu grumbled under her breath as Sana helped her get into the padded suit. Her wife couldn’t hold in her giggle.

“Come on, honey, you’re the taller one. It just makes sense.”

“You’re being Santa next year .”

“Shhh, it’s all over the moment we wake up Minjoo.” Tzuyu quieted down and glanced towards the door.

“You’re sure she’s asleep?”

“She was when I checked on her. I can tell when she’s faking it. When she’s really asleep, her mouth falls open and it’s so cute, but when she fakes being asleep, her mouth is closed.” Tzuyu smiled, knowing exactly what Sana was talking about. At least Minjoo hadn’t learned how to properly fake being asleep yet.

“Okay, help me with this beard and get the bag with the presents and then we’ll be all set.”

The camera was rolling. Tzuyu wasn’t sure how Santa was supposed to act, and she’d never pretended to be a man before, but she did her best, walking slow and taking big steps. Once she’d laid out the presents in a way that looked right, she turned her gaze to the cookies. Damn, the fake beard. How was she going to do this?

Making sure to keep her face away from the camera, she moved over to the table and picked up one of the cookies, eyeing it warily. She was really glad Minjoo had chosen to put out small cookies this year. The fake hair ended up in her mouth along with the cookie, and she really wanted to spit it out, but the camera…. She just dealt with it, choking it down and hoping that the milk would wash down the stray hairs in her mouth.

Finally, the cookies and milk were done, and the note from “Santa” (actually written by Jihyo) was planted, and Tzuyu walked away with hair still in her mouth but feeling accomplished. Sana was waiting for her at the door to their bedroom, and she quickly and quietly shut the door behind her as Tzuyu pulled off the fake beard and stuck out her tongue to pick off the stray pieces of hair.

“You did great, babe,” Sana said, giving her a bright smile and locking the door before walking over to help her take off the suit. Tzuyu grimaced.

“I could have done without the beard getting in my mouth,” she replied, but a smile was making its way onto her face as she thought about what Minjoo’s reaction would be. “All that’s left is to set off the sound.” Sana held up her phone with a Bluetooth link to the device and grinned.

“Finish changing. Once we’re in bed I’ll start it. Since she might hear it and come over here.”

Later, once Tzuyu was in bed and Sana had pressed the button, Tzuyu listened to the faint sound of hooves and let her eyes close, happy with their effort. She’d swallow all kinds of hair if it meant that Minjoo was happy.

-

The next morning, they were woken up bright and early by a wide-eyed Minjoo clambering onto their bed.

“Wake up, Santa was here! Mommy, I want to watch the camera!” Usually, this would be much to early for Tzuyu, especially after being up so late. But hearing the excitement in her daughter’s voice woke her right up.

“Let’s go downstairs, then,” Sana said, sleepiness in her voice as she sat up and stretched her arms overhead. “Come on, honey.”

“Right behind you guys.” With a little yawn, Tzuyu threw her legs over the side of the bed and slipped into her slippers before following her wife and daughter downstairs. Minjoo went immediately to the note beside the cookies and held it up, eyes still wide.

“Look! Santa heard what I said about him!” Sana gasped and got down on the six-year-old’s level to look at the letter, and Tzuyu smiled as she sat down on the couch beside them. Sana was so good with kids. 

“What did you say about Santa?” Minjoo seemed to think for a second before pulling the note close to her chest.

“Can we watch the camera first?” She was still a little skeptical, but Tzuyu understood that. She’d been counting on the camera to know for sure. With a smile, Sana stood up and grabbed the tablet and joined Tzuyu on the couch to show the video to their daughter.

Sure enough, there was Santa Tzuyu on the screen. However, with the suit, beard, and her face turned away from the camera, she looked like the real Santa. Minjoo’s mouth dropped open as she watched Santa Tzuyu put the presents under the tree and then move over to the cookies, then place down the note before leaving.

“My friends are not going to believe this. We caught Santa on camera!” Sana and Tzuyu shared a secret smile over her head. Everything had been worth it. “I even heard reindeer on the roof last night . So I wasn’t dreaming!” She jumped up, excited, and Sana laughed, putting away the tablet.

“Should we see what Santa brought you now?”

“Yes!”

Later, after presents had been opened and Minjoo was happily playing with the new toys she’d gotten, Tzuyu sat down beside her wife and held up her mug of coffee.

“How about a toast?” Sana giggled and brought up her own mug.

“To us?”

“To us. And to Christmas magic.” They clinked their mugs together, and turned to look over at their daughter, who was blissfully unaware of everything they’d done the night before. Again, Tzuyu found herself smiling. This was definitely a Christmas they would never forget.

[imaginecoderealize]

Hi everyone 😊 have you any headcanons or stories about boy's childhood?(with Hansel and Nemo )

We hope you enjoy this small glimpse into the kids’ lives before they became the heroes we love!

- Mod Apostle and Mod Nautilus

LUPIN:

- Lupin started out smaller and weaker than most of the otherstreet kids, but he proved to also be the cleverest. The other kids began tolook up to him and treat him as a leader, despite his youth and small size.They were so skilled at their work using Lupin’s methods that people began toavoid the popular markets they haunted. The police took notice and the kidsonly grew more talented at playing hide and seek with the police and makingthem look like fools. 

- Lupin’s first brush with being a ‘thief with a heart ofjustice’ was when he saw a frail old woman robbed and thrown down into analley. He always picked the pockets of the rich and considered it poor form topick on ‘easy targets’. He stole back the woman’s purse, only to find it veryheavy with gold. He was tempted to keep it, but recalling the woman’s frailty,he dutifully brought the purse back to its owner. The old woman exulted overhow honorable he was and gave him his first ‘finders fee.’ Which turned out tobe more money than he could steal in a month.

- Lupin was intelligent, but he preferred practical studies tobook learning. (His teacher did make sure he knew how to read and write, etc.Even though he balked about it being boring.)

- He and his fellow urchins often made up their own gameswhich helped them with their thieving.

- Lupin usually had to sleep outdoors, so thefirst time he had a bed of his own he was so happy that he didn’t even want tomess the sheets up. … Of course, about twenty seconds later he jumped right onin and rolled the sheets around himself like a cocoon.

- Lupin was surprisingly nervous the first time he left France, though he would never admit it. He loved the adventure, of course, but there was something a little anxiety-inducing about taking those first steps.

VAN:

- Van was always a dutiful brother and son. His father passedaway when he was still quite young, so he felt it was his duty to care for hismother and little brother. They didn’t have a lot of money, so he learned tomake the things they needed and repair clothing and other things to extend their life. He became quite skilledat woodworking and made his mother a beautiful vase that she kept on herdresser that held three flowers, one for each of his family.

- Van and his brother always went berry picking in the summer.It was the brothers’s favorite time of year when their mothers would make themmagnificent pies. One time Van decided to make a pie for his family… withpredictable results. The mess in the kitchen was extraordinary, but his mothercouldn’t scold him because he tried so hard, and pretended to enjoy hiscreation. It may have been better for his future friends if she had told himthe truth.

-  Van was a smart, serious student. His favorite subject inschool was mathematics. He taught his little brother to read. 

- Vanwas always athletic and participated in many different sports.

- Would always help his mother with the sewing andclothing repair. He learned how to knit when he was eight years old, and becamequite skilled. His family could never leave the house in winter without ascarf. And gloves. And a hat. 

- He was always very open about how he doted over his family. He once had his heart on his sleeve….

FRAN:

- Fran grew up surrounded by beautiful natural wonders. Of ascientific bent since childhood, he found it soothing to walk in the woods andstudy nature. He could often be found reading in the shadow of his favoriterock, or collecting various specimens to study in his little attic laboratoryunder the eaves of his home. 

- Fran had a cute spaniel that always stayed at his side whenhe was a kid. They went on many adventures together. Fran even taught her tosniff out certain plants or other things to use in his experiments.

- Fran helped keep his parents’ gardens. He had his own littlepatch where he grew his own medicinal herbs. 

- Fran’s favorite subject was obviously science, especiallyalchemy and biology. He was equally good at all subjects and was recommended togo to college in the U.K.

- Knew he wanted to be a doctor for as long as hecould remember. He was the greatest teddy bear doctor in all of Switzerland,always performing regular check-ups. Of course, if someone came to him with adoll that needed repairs, he’d have to go to his mother… but he would alwayssupervise the procedure!

IMPEY:

- Impey was alone much of the time as a young child. He neverreally fit in with his peers and always dreamed of leaving his little villageand seeing what the world beyond held. Many vampires hated the cities, but Impeyknew that his future would lie in the cities beyond his claustrophobic littletown even before he saw the train. 

- Impey was an eager student once his imagination was ignited.The Old Man was delighted with how smart he was. He read voraciously once hehad the opportunity, though he found history boring. He hated stories about waror weapons, but he loved the romances. (He cried easily over tragedies.) 

- Impey’s first device was a telescope to look at the moon,made from a cardboard tube, a piece of glass and a broken mirror. He was veryexcited and proud of his creation. 

- Impey never had any sense of a bedtime, and often tinkeredand experimented with machines all night. The old man would often find himslumped over his work bench fast asleep. In that way, not much has changed.

- Impey didn’t change too much from when he was akid, so he would always be running on fumes. All too often, his old man wouldfind him passed out with a wrench in hand and grease stains on his cheeks. Heonly put a stop to it one time after Impey caught a bad cold. “That’ll teachyou to not get proper rest, now you have no choice.” (I think it’s cute we both had the same idea about Impey sleeping on his work bench - Mod Nautilus)

(Because there is so little information about Saint’s youth,this is longer and more… dramatized… than the others… – Mod Apostle)

SAINT:

- Saint doesn’t remember his childhood before he was a slave,erroneously believing he was born into slavery. The trauma of the sack of hisvillage made him block it from his memory. He was born in an ancient isolatedvillage in the eastern foothills of Mesopotamia. Its isolation meant that theever-changing political situations and the rise and fall of cultures passedthem by harmlessly, until an avalanche caused the king’s military to divertcourse and they raided the peaceful village. 

- Saint was a priestess’ son. He was a gentle, fragile child.His task was to read and memorize the holy books, study their rituals, andlearn from his mother how to lead their people. He was a dreamer who loved thestars, the quiet hills at night, and the sound of his mother’s voice singingthe sacred songs. 

- Despite being two years younger, his brother always lookedafter him. They played games, told stories, read every book in the village,especially the tales about a time when they lived in a city overlooking thesea. Neither of them had ever seen a body of water larger than small lakes andrivers. They had never even seen the great Euphrates or Tigris. They promisedeach other to go to the sea someday. To sail away and find their lost city andbecome kings. Saint said he would be the high priest and talk to the gods,while his brother could be king and govern the people. The village elder’sfortune said Saint would suffer much and travel far before he found hisdestiny, but then such things seemed incomprehensible to the children who builtstone forts for castles and tended their goats. 

- Later, after he forgot his past, he still sought out tabletsand and stories of the gods and sacred texts, never wondering how a slavelearned to read. Despite the differences in language, he was able to teachhimself the new alphabets and lettering. He kept a horde of discarded tabletsand broken styluses buried in a hole with his few belongings, including a stonenecklace given him by his only friend, the boy who he no longer recognized ashis brother. 

- Saint sang to himself at night sometimes when he could getaway with it. They soothed him and helped him to sleep. He still remembers thesongs, though the source is lost to him.

- In a life usually filled with misery, Sainttreasured every bit of ‘ordinary happiness’ he could find. Usually, this was inthe form of watching the sun rise. It was such a little thing, but he lovedwatching the light slowly paint the sky different colors. The sun looked like abig bright ball that he wanted to play with, but he was content just to feelits warmth.- Out of all his duties, Saint enjoyed fishing themost. He wasn’t able to do it often, but being near the water always made himfeel at peace. He enjoyed the fact that what he was doing allowed people to befed. He wanted to be a gracious host for many people from a very young age.

HANSEL (AND GRETEL):

- Hansel’s favorite memories are of the summers before the warstarted. His mother would bake cookies and make a picnic lunch and Hansel wouldtake Gretel on forest adventures. Hansel would gather wildflowers and makeflower crowns for Gretel and the siblings would splash around in the brook andlaugh and play until nightfall. 

- Gretel occasionally had trouble sleeping and would visit herbrother’s room. He would let her cuddle with him and told her fairytales untilshe fell asleep. 

- Hansel made friends with the deer of the forest and lovedtaking Gretel out to feed them sometimes.

- Hansel became Omnibus’ precious son, and she knew that treating him as such would tie himfurther to her. She taught him personally about the duties of Idea, somethingthat was usually reserved for a fellow Apostle. Saint would often joke withOmnibus about how he was being spoiled. 

- Omnibus would teach him in the garden, and he wouldoften occupy his hands by tending to her garden. It shone even brighterafter receiving attention from him, and afterwards Omnibus would reward hisobedience with a cookie shaped like a daisy. Those were always his favorites…

NEMO…?:

(FUN TRIVIA! According to Jules Verne, Captain Nemo’s birthname was Dakkar. Mod Nautilus has adopted this into her Code: Realizeheadcanons, so if you see the name “Dakkar” floating around—it’s pre-RevolutionNemo.)

- Dakkarwas a polyglot from a very young age. Languages always came easily to him,among them English, German, and French. (And back then he actually spoke… um…he didn’t sound like… HE DIIIIIDN’T TAAAAAAAAAALK LIKE THIIIIIIIIIIIIS.)

- Dakkar had two little sisters that meant theabsolute world to him. Oftentimes, late at night, he would sneak out of hisquarters to spend time with them. Once he started getting caught, he would slippast by dressing up as a beautiful woman. As long as he kept his mouth shut,nobody noticed.

- … He was always very, very proud of being called “brotherdearest”.

- Dakkar was an accomplished pianist, but he much preferred playing the pipe organ, saying that it stimulated his mind more.

-  He was sixteen years old when he became a lead strategist in the uprising against Britain, though he participated in any way he could long before then. He has always been passionate about the things important to him, and the freedom of his country was the most important thing to him growing up.

*BONUS* SHOLMES:

- Herlock —er, Sherlock as he was known backthen—has an elder brother named Mycroft. Though Mycroft is just as much of agenius as his little brother, the two of them often clashed on a moreclandestine subject: housework. See, much like Sherlock, Mycroft was also arather deplorable housekeeper and they would often compete to see who could getout of the most chores. It became a game for them, one which Sherlockultimately won by devoting his time to a new hobby: the violin.

[thewrittenpost]

envelope - describe someone that you loveattic - what is something about yourself that you try to hide from others?basket - what items do you always carry with you?bookshelf - which books and movies have influenced your life the most?pillow - do you have any recurring dreams?record player - name a song that reminds you of a fond memorycursive - do you keep a journal?honey - what do you love most about yourself? GWEN!

Okay, so I waited to hop on desktop so I could fit this under a Read More (and it’s way easier this way than tablet!) Gwen will be answering these under that cut! 

envelope - describe someone that you love

“Um… well. Without names? Impulsive, doesn’t always think through their actions, goes all the way for someone they care about? Oh… uh… wait, that could be Scarlet or Theodore. Um… they always know the right thing to say, and they sometimes get distracted thinking about some really obscure fact from two hundred years ago, but it’s… kind of sweet, how much they try to learn from history. And he is always trying to learn new things, and talk to people, and understand things he ignored before, and… the way he smiles makes you want to smile with him. Uh… that’s enough, right?”

attic - what is something about yourself that you try to hide from others?

“Normally I’d say the magic, but since it’s kind of an open secret that I turned Theodore into a frog? I guess it’s how uncomfortable I am with crowds? I’m not sure how well I’m succeeding, but it’s getting easier!”

basket - what items do you always carry with you?

“I don’t carry a lot, actually! I keep a little bag of herbs on me; it just smells nice, and I like them better than the salts Theodore’s mom and sister use!”

bookshelf - which books and movies have influenced your life the most?

“…Grandmother’s spellbook. I… kind of stole it from home, when I went to break the curse on Theodore. I mean, it was technically half mine, so it’s not stealing, but I didn’t tell anyone I took it. But before he found me again, I started reading it and practicing, and she left all these notes inside for us to read when we got older. Also, I don’t read much, so that’s really the only one I’ve actually looked at closely.

pillow - do you have any recurring dreams?

“No; I don’t remember my dreams. I’m not sure if I’m happy or upset about it… but I get a full night’s sleep regardless, so I can’t really complain!”

record player - name a song that reminds you of a fond memory

“I don’t listen to music much. My sister does, but none of those are really memories I’m fond of… my grandmother used to sing though. Little things she made up, that in hindsight, were probably spells of some kind. I don’t remember words, but I remember the melodies.”

cursive - do you keep a journal?

“I don’t! Not in the writing sense at least. I have a book I sketch in, which pretty much serves the same purpose of remembering things and relaxing.”

honey - what do you love most about yourself?

“Mmm. Hmm. Umm. That’s… kind of hard actually, without sounding… not-humble? I guess… I think I’m pretty friendly, and easy to get along with -if you forget people hate magic and I can have a temper, but still! Does that count? Well, in case not, um… something physical? My hair is nice. Long. It’s pretty easy to control and mess with styles. Theodore’s sister really likes playing with my hair.”