the black sky and all those lights
a silly little something i wrote for jalentines!!
When Mal opens the dormitory door, Jay is standing in the hallway in his workout gear, hair tied up in a bun. He’s already grinning in that way he does when he wins a fight. Mal rolls her eyes at him. Grabbing her bag, she says bye to Evie, and joins Jay in the corridor.
She scowls as they walk, her workout clothes tight on her skin. Jay had insisted they’d do things properly, and not in their usual leather.
The hallways are decorated for Valentine’s Day, making Auradon Prep even more gaudy and colourful as usual. Pink and red hearts plastered across the walls, boasting the abundance of love here in Auradon. Jay’s had a thousand notes in his locker. Mal’s had none. Every morning, she watches Jay approach his locker like he would a target on the Isle. Weight forward, shoulders squared; ready to fight if needs be. And the paper falls to the floor like blood, only sickly pastel. Scrawled glittery gel pen. Words confessing passionate love, or asking him on dates, or doodles of hearts. Jay smiles the whole time. Greets and winks at girls. Scrunches those notes up in a fist.
“Everywhere looks disgusting,” Mal says as they approach the sports hall. Heart-shaped bunting crests the doors.
Jay holds the door open for her. “It’s fun.”
“You would think that.”
The sports hall is mercifully free of décor. They drop their bags in the corner and begin to warm up, another stupid practice Jay insists on. His top rides up as he side-stretches. Isle rule: never show skin, especially to the enemy. Except, Jay loved to parade around in those stupid sleeveless vests. She’s yelled at him plenty of times about it—Are you insane? You’re a walking target. He would just grin and say, they’ll have to catch me first.
Jay laughs as he grabs the practice swords from their stands. “Here.”
He throws it, and Mal catches. The weight in her hand is familiar. Already, her pulse is thrumming faster, and maybe if she closes her eyes she’ll be back on the docks, with the wind ripping at her hair, and the salt stinging her nose, and half a dozen of Uma’s crew jeering over the clanging of swords.
Jay chucks her a mask too, before attaching one to his own face. The mesh turns her vision slightly hazy.
“Ready?” Jay asks.
Mal’s watched fencing practise a few times, mostly as an excuse not to do homework and instead watch her boys wipe the floor with all those prissy Auradon princes. Coach Jenkins appointed Jay captain of the team a few months ago, a role he takes more seriously than she’s ever seen him take anything.
“Rassembler! Salute! Lower the point. Masks down. En guarde!”
Mal lunges first, which Jay clearly anticipates, parrying her blow. He circles. Strikes. Mal blocks it. He’s quick. Reflexes honed to a sword’s point; learned by practise and theory. Mal lashes out again, just catching his free arm before he jerks away. She grins underneath her mask. Her breath comes quicker. Jay’s blade arcs down, hitting her chest. Mal swats his blade away. She hears him laugh. She growls. Strike. Parry. Strike. Block. Strike. Jay lands another hit. Their shoes squeak against the linoleum floor.
“Come on, Mal,” Jay teases.
Mal lunges like a cat on its prey. Jay’s blade grates against hers like steel against flint. Jay may be quick but Mal’s smaller, and she weaves her way through Jay’s blade until they both have the sword’s point angled at each other’s chests.
They’re both panting. Jay lowers his sword first. Takes off his mask.
“You came in clutch at the end,” he says.
Mal huffs, wiggling the mask off her face and wiping her forehead with a sleeve. “You actually get training.”
“And now I’m training you!”
His hair has loosened during the sparring, spilling out at the seams. He unties the bun; flips his hair down and shakes it out. In this late-afternoon light, his hair could be made of gold. Hair longer than Mal’s ever had.
He pulls his hair back into its bun, deft fingers making quick work. When he straightens back up again, his face is slightly flushed from the match.
And Mal looks at this boy she’s known most of her life; this face and these hands; a boy that has held her at the end of the world and the start of a new one. And she snatches back down her mask.
“Again,” she says, lifting up her sword.
She’s swinging before Jay’s even had the chance to pull his own mask back down. Her blade slices against his chest, and she hears the breath escape from his lungs.
“Fuck!’
Jay’s blocking her hits in no time. Mal grits her teeth. A boy who’s inhabited every place she’s ever been. The shadow along the street; a fixed point on the rooftops. Those long, quick fingers that know their way around bandage; around open flesh; around her own hands. Like a comet to Earth. Like an eclipse. Totally consuming.
And here, where the sun shines brighter than they could have ever dreamed, she is left blistering. Those girls that fawn over Jay, professing their love with the same ease that Mal can hold a dagger to a throat. Jay’s clicking tongue, and that low fry to his voice when he’s chatting someone up. Everything is always so easy to him. He can wrap anyone around his finger with a wink.
His blade slams into her stomach. Mal pants, the budding pain in her side clearing her head. Jay’s standing above her like some heavenly deity.
“Best of four?” he offers.
“Yeah, whatever.”
“C’mon. Let’s take a break.”
Jay drops his sword and grabs his water bottle from his bag. Mal joins him, still gripping her sword, gulping down her water like a man in a desert.
“We should do this again soon,” Jay says.
“Tomorrow?”
“It’s the Valentine’s Ball tomorrow.”
Mal snorts. “Yeah, and?”
“I was gonna go.”
His words are coming too slow; too considered. Like when he used to talk about his dad, or a particularly bad Barge Day. Rehearsed. A guard dog who’s smelled danger, prowling at the sidelines.
Mal presents her blade. “En guarde!” she shouts, and Jay ducks her swing before scrambling over to his own sword.
“Really, Mal? Another sneak attack?”
“I’m keeping you on your toes.”
They waltz around the sports hall, the blades clashing and slicing and singing.
“We all agreed we weren’t going to go to the Ball,” Mal says, jabbing at Jay.
“We never agreed anything.”
Jay lands a blow. They are at the dockyard, with its rotting wooden pier and dead fish stench. The screeching of metal; the shouting; Mal’s heart hammering like the tide. Blood, and life. The roar in her ears. A dragon’s call. Body moving without a thought, as quick as a lightning strike. Not having to look behind her because she knows Jay is there.
“Exactly!” she says. “Why would we want to go to some stuffy Auradon ball?” Jay tries to say something but she ignores him. “Why would we care about Valentine’s Day? It’s corny, and over-commercialised, and a stupid excuse to make everything about love.”
Jay has her backed up against a wall. With no time to mount his mask, his lips are slightly parted, and his hair is escaping from his bun again. He looks just like he did on the Isle; none of his perfect prince act that fools Auradon. His sword hovers above her throat.
“Do you yield?” His voice is low.
Mal stares at him. Those eyes that have seen every part of her. All the blood; every smile; her pale skin in the dark Isle nights. The boy that has beheld her every action; weighed it all against his own understanding of the world, and decided that they slot together as easily as a bullet in a pistol.
“Who are you going with to the Ball?” Mal asks. She’s still clutching her sword. She could claim the upper hand, if she really wanted.
A grin creeps across Jay’s face. All those notes and heart-shaped lollipops. The giggling girls at his locker. He could pick any one of them. All of them so beautiful, in their sunset-coloured dresses. He could have anything he wanted.
“Well,” Jay says. “I was going to ask you.”
The sword’s point makes sure they keep their distance. Never too close. All touches so light; so fleeting, as if you could’ve mistaken them for a dream. As if you could’ve imagined the whole thing. All those nights in the hideout where the barrier of the body seemed thin, and the world became so small: just two kids who wouldn’t even dare knock knees.
So Mal shakes it all away with a laugh. “I’m not going to the Valentine’s Ball.”
Jay lowers his blade. Neither of them move. “Not even with me?”
“I’m sure there’ll be plenty of other girls who actually want to go with you.”
“I want to go with you.”
His words echo through the empty hall. His word is as steadfast as ever, the only opinion Mal will ever trust. Compass, anchor: Jay does it all.
Heralded here, Mal as real as the vast sky outside. Here, in his gaze, held aloft by trust where there shouldn’t be and compassion where there shouldn’t be and understanding where there shouldn’t be. A home for all her broken bones.
Mal’s lips unfurl into a smile. This ache in her chest. In her throat. Jay always being able to disarm her. Jay in every place she’s ever been. Jay as her shadow; her skin; her second self. A reflection in the mirror. The line of separation is nonexistent. Like the sun, like the moon: one cannot exist without the other.
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Me if I see someone portraying Mike as "dumb" once again today:
No but in all seriousness, I really can't with that anymore. Yes I know it's canon that he has bad to awful grades (in season 4 at least), but y'all. He had more important things to deal with.
Like, maybe, his literal best friend since he's 5 years old and his first girlfriend moving out of town to fucking California. (I'm not even going to talk about everything he has going on about his sexuality and figuring out who he is, and also, by the way , if you forgot about it, his fucking depression--)
Do you guys not remember ST1? Or ST2?? Did y'all forget how much of a science and english nerd he his, how fucking incredibly smart all of the party is??? That's literally one of the main reasons why they were bullied in the first place???? Hello??
Mike's smart as fuck. Stop treating him like a literal idiot who can't even count to ten just because he's oblivious to Will's feelings for him (which, oh how surprising, is probably because he has no idea that Will is gay and most likely doesn't believe himself worthy of his love) and because of that stupid C in Spanish. C isn't even such a bad grad, especially for a teenager who's dealing with fucking supernatural shit, and confusing feeling, AND depression. Because YES, Mike is depressed, and NO, I will not argue with anyone about it because if you can't see it then we're clearly not watching the same show.
Anyway.
All of this to say, please, for the love of the universe, stop making Mike an idiot. I might actually cry if I see more of this bullshit.
Thank you for reading my rant, hope you're having a fucking nice time.
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Woah!!! Ec-4o.Verse reference?? Bringing you Geno! (With a bunch of notes that are intelligible off to the sides-)
Cropped versions for easier reading/zooming! But to be more fun about it, here's a Lore Recap for each design! (I'd say these designs are from... hmm, a hundred years or so? He's a Boss Monster so he lives a lot longer.)
(Tw: Mentions of Death, Self-Loathing, Mental Illness, and I feel a few other things)
Pre-War:
Geno was a normal guy, had a dayjob, but was beloved by his friends for being a Programmer. He was lazy, had awful work ethic, but would pump out amazing quality work for cheap as long as he was given the time to do things at his own pace. He has a passion for Psychology, but was awful socially, so he designed programs that mimicked mental illnesses in Test Ectos (ectos not embedded with personalities or magic) so people could research mental health without risking patient wellness. He made A.Z. too, the first real mimicry of mental illnesses in children. Geno got attached and kept A.Z. himself, the last prototype of the code. The finalized ones can be found anywhere, but he kept A.Z. around, and even though A.Z. wasn't sentient it was such a good mimicry, Geno practically treated him like a son.
Geno was known for his work, and was contacted by the government of his country to come and work on a big nation-wide upgrade they were planning to improve ecto functionality. Again and again Geno simply ignored their letters, emails, chats, and attempts to call. It wasn't his field of study, so he could care less. So, all that led to the government sending people to confiscate A.Z. from Geno and shut down his workshop under the pretenses of 'unethical programming methods'. He was forced to relocate, and A.Z. was basically held as blackmail to force Geno into working. (Since A.Z. wasn't sentient, he was simply property, and therefore there was no legal issues with the government taking him.)
Before/During the War:
In this time, Geno was among hundreds of other talented people from all across the country who were 'recruited' to work on this project. People who didn't comply with orders went missing, loved ones were "lost" and life projects destroyed. Geno was part of the Programming team (there were also Medical, Bio-Enhineering, and Engineering teams) and he was initially supposed to just shut off the programs within an Ecto that gave them emotion protocols, even the ones infused with magic.
But, as things went on, he was told to do more and more. He was involved in more marketing and branding and announcements. He was made to be on screen, be the face of the change. His background was good for publicity (man who studied ways to harmlessly study mental health) and he was supposedly trustworthy. By day he'd stand up beside someone and listen to them implore people to bring their ectos in for this quality of life upgrade to their nearest government office. By night he'd be slaving away infront of code, being forced to find a way to make these robots kill people. Just enough people. To nullify themselves when it was all over. I'm his despair he tried to make it so that their emotion drives would at least register these events as something positive, so they felt no distress if they were sentient. He tried so hard to stop but any backlash did nothing. So he kept his head down and worked quietly.
And then he was transferred locations. Somewhere closer to the heart of the operation. He met Sci, a man unaware of the Culling Orders or the heartache, because they government had been treating him well. He was a bio-engineer, and his project (nicknamed Fresh) was like if a self-healing code was a living thing and could slow, or even heal, wounds. The government wanted it, in the case that it could unlock immortality. Sci was getting funding and a cushy life. Geno realized Fresh was the best way he coukd possibly end all of this war that was in the works. For good.
So he poured hid heart and soul into finishing that code. "A change of heart prompted by wanting so desperately for his prized project, AZ, to be saved" He claimed. There were a few useful bots that filled through the office. He offered to install code that would prevent the Culling Order from activating inside them since they were going to be preserved. While adding code he added failsafes and kill codes and important information from his and others work he wanted saved. He added the names of every researcher he knew had been drafted into this unwillingly. He did it in secret, so entrenched in code only another programmer would notice.
And then the war started, and Sci learned the truth, and people started dying. Geno had to convince Sci to help him after that. Sci feared being killed. He feared not being able to finish his work. He feared not being protected from the pain and destruction outside. It was a long plenty of *years* that Geno had to configure just the right plan, just the right way to ensure that Sci abd Fresh would survive it. That the rest of the base would be no threat and that it'd stop the Ectos and the Culling Code.
And then he did it. He put an end to the war, at the price of all the power on the continent running to every piece of tech, and at the price of his own arm and eye.
Post-War:
Geno was disfigured. He knew that to make an EMP large enough to cut off all electricity, he would need to overload his own master consol to the point of battery meltdown. An explosion. He didn't tell Sci. Only mentioned he'd need Fresh on-hand. So when it exploded, his left arm (non-dominent just like he planned), his chest, and the right side of his skull (his left eye was better) were demolished in the blast and dusted near instantly. Sci and Fresh managed to save his life, and Sci, resident Bio-Engineer, was able to replace his missing limbs and his wounds with spare ecto parts over the course of a few weeks.
Geno was slow to recover, nearly on the verge of falling down during recovery (He didn't know where they'd stored A.Z. if he was even still in-tact, he had been the reason so many humans and monsters had died, and now to reverse his mistake he'd taken out the electricity the country had been relying on for the past thousands of years.) But he pushed through. He was Determined. He needed to get to the four robots he embedded information and failsafes into. But they were scattered across the country for aafe-keeping. Incase he'd failed. So he has to hunt them down.
As soon as he can he leaves. Sci stays. Geno promises he'll come back (he doesn't). Geno takes a medical uniform, packs the supply belt with programming tools, and moves out. He enters the main story while on this trek to hunt down his Ectos. Not a single one is where they should've been, and he can't help but be furious, praying to a non-existant God that they weren't scrapped by heathens out for parts or destroyed in a rage by scared survivors.
Looking for the four? One day their trackers finally Light up again. One by one. All in the same location. And Geno follows it like a moth to the flame.
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