#its not a stretch to feel like richter would be familiar with the feeling of adrenaline and making use of it

[footsteps-of-the-furies]

Sleep (by Max Richter) - part 1

This is a masterpiece that paradoxically cannot be enjoyed as a whole. My judgment is based on only fragments I listened to over the last few days and no matter the partiality of the experience my high verdict comes easy. This album cannot be enjoyed as a whole by the design of its creator — it lasts for eight and a half hours and as it mimics the sleep pattern so — if we stay awake listening to it in its entirety that would defeat the purpose of its creation, and if we fall asleep listening to it as intended by the artist then our judgment will not cover the whole scope of this work of art.

And this is the ART of the highest level achievable for human creativity and talent as I see it or rather hear it — and experience it. This album captivates and tranquilizes at the same time. It transforms a slow rhythm of single-spaced sounds into the understanding of the wholeness of one’s body when the said body (and mind for that matter) are at rest. There are a few crescendos that resemble sleepy stretches and yawns within the relaxed body that fade back into gentle surrender into a deep slumber. Music (is music a proper word to describe it? What I hear in this album I hear singular sounds woven in a tapestry of feeling and that might be more than just music) is minimalistic but not ambient — it is not just there on the periphery of consciousness but becomes intertwined with the experience of sleep. And the experience is ethereal — on one hand, familiar for everyone as one-third of our lives we experience every night (or day), on the other — it brings unfolding of a mirror view of sleep as experienced from the side. Like feeling ourselves falling asleep and seeing it as well as it happens in real-time.

[cursezone]

whenever a character i like has big trauma i always gotta slap some kind of chronic pain hc on there. whether through some metaphor or good old fashioned psychophysical c/ptsd symptoms

[gloryofluv]

Traditionally Obscure Chapter 33

Arteeeem!!!

Previous Chapter

Rosa and Artem were walking out the door after work. It was unusual to have an NXX meeting in the late afternoon after work. However, after the two-week span of two being absent, there was a need to review new information.

The fact that new information was going to be another great leg up in the direction they needed to take. Since her last trial in regards to NXX, it seems things grew quiet. A new lead was an excellent charge forward.

Artem seemed to be in decent spirits, even before they left the office. He even laughed at one of Celestine’s jokes, which Rosa had never seen. Celestine was acting a bit odd. Well, Rosa asking her questions earlier might have crossed a line, but she didn’t think so. In short, her first day back at work wasn’t half bad. That was the synopsis, and Artem’s subtle smile declared it was similar for him… until they walked toward the parking lot.

A familiar smile greeted them when they rounded the corner. “Good afternoon, Artem, Rosa,” Vyn declared.

Rosa beamed and skipped over to him. “Good afternoon! How was your day?”

He rocked his head and ran his fingers over his vest. “Yes, far better after we spoke on the phone. I hope your day was excellent.”

Artem approached and ran his fingers over his tie. “What are you doing here, Vyn?”

“I felt that I could stop here on the way and take Rosa over myself,” Vyn smiled.

Artem inhaled, and his expression read mild annoyance. “I don’t see the point.”

Rosa pinched the bridge of her nose. “Artem, please. We talked about this,” she sighed.

Vyn arched an eyebrow in the slightest. “Shall we head out?” he asked Rosa.

“How about we meet you over there?” Artem suggested. “We haven’t gone over anything in regards to NXX.”

“That’s quite alright. We are going to do a review. Besides, I’ve been waiting to see her all day,” Vyn smiled and took Rosa’s hand before bending to kiss it.

She beamed and ran her thumb against his hand before glancing at Artem. His face was vacant of emotion, but his eyes were sharp, and his cheeks dusted with color. “I will see you both there,” he nodded.

Vyn straightened his form and watched as Artem walked toward his car. Rosa noted the tension clearly, but there wasn’t an obvious reason, well, aside from Artem’s clear disapproval. However, he hadn’t voiced it to Vyn, so it was a conundrum.

His eyes found her, and he nodded. “Shall we go? I’d love to hear about your first day back in the office.”

Rosa rocked her head, and Vyn led her with gentle encouragement toward his own car. He opened the passenger door and assisted, though unnecessary, with her sitting down. The monotony of the day melted with his easy smile.

Soon, he was in the driver’s seat and buckled before turning to her and sighing. “I’ve missed you today. I know that seems quite odd considering we’ve seen each other every day for two weeks.”

“It was difficult to return to our old normal,” Rosa agreed and removed the hair from her face.

Vyn tilted his head and reached over, caressing her cheek. “Those are interesting. I haven’t seen you wear those earrings before.”

Her face warmed, and she smiled. “Oh, yes, Artem gave them to me today as a welcome home gift. I know he was worried, and he was sincere about my efforts.”

Vyn dropped his hand and rocked his head. “I’m positive he was,” Vyn sighed and shook his head. “Let’s go.”

Rosa felt the sting of some sort of recoil, but she wasn’t positive why. Vyn pulled the car out of the parking space, and she shifted in her seat. “You seem displeased.”

“Not with you,” Vyn took a chance and smiled over at her. “He shouldn’t have given you such an extravagant gift. It sends the wrong message.”

“Wrong message?” Rosa inquired with a scowl.

Vyn was silent for a moment and ran his thumbs traced the wheel. There was the appearance of a debate that entered his expression, and he nodded. “Did your mother ever talk to you about dating, Rosa? Maybe a conversation about boys and the premise of courting?”

Rosa winced and shook her head. “No, she really never did. She told me that what matters is how you feel about a person and be the best version of myself before I thought about dating anyone. Beauty is fleeting, but intelligence and kindness are the foundation for a fulfilling marriage.”

“So, you’ve never had a conversation about expectations with your mother or possibly another female figure?” He questioned.

“Well, unless you count Kiki, but she has an interesting take on dating,” Rosa giggled and shook her head. “However, she is the closest thing I have to be able to ask questions in regards to dating.”

Vyn smiled and tilted his head. “Well, that is different, to be sure. I don’t mind clarifying questions. I don’t expect you to be perfect. I, myself, have never taken steps in courting before, so I am learning too,” he voiced.

Rosa beamed and ran her fingers through her hair. “You do have far more knowledge than I do, Vyn. I feel silly asking you if I’m doing things incorrectly. I even asked Celestine today if she had any advice. That didn’t go over very well. She was nearly writing my vows for me. I don’t even know why she was so excited about me asking her.”

“I see,” Vyn hummed. “I want to tell you a story.”

“Okay,” Rosa nodded.

Vyn stopped at a light and breathed. “In Svart, it was a large lesson that young men and women receive from their parents and instructors. The concept of courting is a huge commitment and respected as such. We were taught what types of gifts have certain symbolism. A flower with its own symbolism is a given, but jewelry is a large statement. It usually is given after courting for some time and celebrated for a milestone, such as a birthday together, a holiday, or in plenty of cases, pre-engagement.”

Her lips thinned as she glanced over. “That is quite interesting.”

“Yes, so my friend, one of which I do intend for you to meet eventually, he was close with this young baroness. He had decided to give her a beautiful set of earrings for her birthday. They were silver horns on account of them being music majors together. Her parents were rather upset due to her courting a viscount in the neighboring province.”

“They were upset at the earrings because of the symbolism?” Rosa questioned.

“Yes, quite. Enough for my musician friend to write an apology to her parents and announce that his intentions were only of a platonic manner and he was sorry to offend, you see, the traditions in Stellis aren’t as rigid or formed. However, it still is a manner I believe most upper-class society goes by out here as well.”

Rosa tucked her chin as her cheeks bloomed with bright color. “So, Artem’s gift, is it offensive to you?”

“It is, and even more so that he had given it to you after knowing about our courtship. However, I’m not displeased with you accepting it. I want that to be clear. It isn’t you who offended me. Artem may not even know he has crossed a line either. However, any man willing to give a lady jewelry after finding out about her seeing someone exclusively best have a better reason than a simple gift of gratitude or appreciation,” Vyn finished, and his expression tightened as his hands on the wheel gripped.

Rosa removed her hair from around her ears and took the golden wings off. It was that simple. If it was offensive to him, then she shouldn’t be wearing it. “I’m sorry I didn’t know, Vyn. I wouldn’t have accepted the gift had I known.”

His tension lessened, and he smiled as he parked the car. “I know, Rosa. You don’t need to apologize for it. I don’t mind that you accepted the gift. I would most certainly tell you if I thought it was a slight against me.”

Rosa placed the earrings back into the box in her purse and turned to smile at him. “I hope so. I’m sorry I’m not educated on this. I know I have plenty to catch up on, but I will put in my best effort.”

He chuckled and reached over, caressing her cheek. “Just be you. I adore you for who you are, not for your achievements, though stellar and wonderful, nor your experience.”

She pressed her hand over his and inhaled. “I adore you as well.”

Vyn leaned closer to her, and his lips stretched. “You are a magnificent woman. I’m enamored by your very existence. I could never deceive my own heart,” he murmured.

Rosa bent toward him and tilted her head. “Your own heart?”

“Yes, for you have it,” he nodded.

Rosa coiled her arm around his shoulder and sighed. “Vyn.”

He closed the distance and kissed her. It wasn’t like in his garden on Saturday. This kiss was delicate with a hint of something more. The softness of his fingers sliding into her locks as his heartbeat in a swift rhythm under her hand that traced his vest.

Vyn’s tongue had playfully touched her lips before pulling away. Rosa covered her giant grin and giggled with her hand. That likely wasn’t a positive reaction, but Vyn’s smile didn’t fade as he observed her.

“I’m sorry, I was a bit zealous,” he said.

“No, please, don’t. I just,” Rosa sputtered as she pulled her hand away. “Can we try that again?”

Vyn inhaled, and his fingers tangled in her hair. They met in the middle, and Rosa sighed as their lips touched. It was this beautiful flutter that developed in her chest as he cradled her head. Her fingers felt jittery on his chest as she caressed his vest button and tie.

Soft movements of lips. Coaxing her from her anxiety. Vyn Richter was the equivalent of an adrenaline rush. His tongue slid along her lower lip, and her natural reaction to return the favor was greeted with a thrumming sigh that rumbled in his chest. Her heart sped up at the sound, and she could feel the heat she was radiating getting caught between her neck and hair.

The knock at the window interrupted them as Vyn pulled away. “If you two are done playing tongue football, we have a meeting,” Marius declared from the sidewalk.

“Enough, Marius,” Vyn voiced.

Marius grinned and waved at Rosa, who ducked her chin. “Hello, Missy. You look rather cute with a deep blush and red lips. I think I painted similarly recently.”

“Stop it,” Rosa retorted and unbuckled her seat belt.

“I would love to have a live model one of these days,” he teased and pulled away from the car.

Rosa puffed and dug in her bag for a hair tie. “He’s incorrigible,” she grumbled with reddened cheeks.

Vyn adjusted his tie and straightened his vest. “Unfortunately, he’s correct as well in regards to the meeting. We should get going.”

“Yes,” she breathed and pulled her hair up and away from her neck.

Vyn touched her arm before climbing from the car. He walked around, opening her car door, and sighed. “Marius, did you have to wait for us?”

“I did it because someone needs to chaperone you, obviously. That wasn’t innocent once so ever. I’d say I’m impressed, Vyn, but I believe that’s all Rosa. She’s the one with the natural talent.”

“Green is a poor color on you,” Vyn declared as Rosa gripped his hand.

Marius glared. “Same could be said for you.”

“I haven’t a stitch of it on me,” Vyn smiled and gestured with his free hand to the door. “Let’s go have our meeting.”

Marius rolled his eyes and opened the door. “We’ll have to agree on a no PDA in the headquarters rule.”

“Marius, please,” Rosa groaned and shook her head. “Let’s just go have our meeting.”

“I agree,” Vyn said, and the three of them walked inside.

[euphemere]

@hxdrostorm | starter for Richter | I apologize for the size of this thing in advance, please do not feel pressured to match this ridiculous length

D fell along with his horse. He slipped, where the edges of the cliffs and the edges of reality escaped from under the thundering galop of DLX04 limbs, the vortex of thick fog swallowed him, hurled him forward with a force too strong to resist.

The afterimages of his target spilled as if dust catching in his eyes. He no longer could keep track of the monstrosity he pursued or confirm the direction he headed. Pale hands only wrapped tighter around leather reins, body leaned against the creaking mechanic horseback. He let the storm push him forward.

"D! This is-!!"

He fell into the cold waters of an ocean - its waves flowing against any understanding of gravity, and then the sky split open under him as if another deeper ocean swallowed him, a burning dance of stars welcomed his silhouette, then disappeared behind glistening images. Familiar and foreign alike, and some as ancient as the ancient ancestor. Each breath another vision of another place, another skull splitting roar.

D unsheathed his sword off his back.. The silver-white blade clattered against the gusts of wind in his steel grip. Fingertips even whiter, trapping the hilt in a steady hold.

A creak of thunder collapsed onto him. Sizzling lightning bolt kissed the sharp steel. D readied himself. The whirling rippling space was cut with a hot blinding swing

He could no longer see where.

He fell.

---

The horizon was that of a night slowly easing into a morning. A light breeze unraveled in the distance, uncharacteristically hot and carrying a noise of something that should not sound as alive as it did. It broke branches off the trees and frightened birds from the thick crowns of leaves.

And something flashed there on the horizon. Like a maw of the heavens presenting a row of teeth, clouds ruffled and circled around it, becoming stained an unnatural hue of violet.

---

At last D collapsed into the earth.

The ground dented under his weight. His face smeared against sand and dirt and wet grass and silence rang in his ears until the machinery of his horse creaked behind him.

“Get a grip D, you have lost them”

He could no longer feel the presence of his target. A curse hissed between his teeth, and he forced himself up near instantly. What met his adjusting gaze was a thick expanse of meadows that would not be able to thrive on the Central Frontier where his chase began. Yet how far off-course was he thrown eluded him.

“I need directions…” He admitted, bending down to the tall grasses to fish out his sword (it took longer than expected, and he could not find his hat nor his scarf anywhere anymore.)

“You are in the North now it seems. Look at you! Getting hurled like a bag of-”

D stopped listening. He turned his attention to what was left of his horse. To his surprise the central computer replacing the animal’s brain operated without issue. It were the hinges and mechanisms of the metallic legs that suffered most from the fall. They would not sustain his weight, but they could be fixed. The new models were built like tanks, he concluded.

“Oi, don’t ignore me, there is a farming community not far from here.”

“Which way?”

He watched his hand turn to the side, pointing out a direction. From the distance he could make out inviting shapes of a trodden path, a promise of easy travels. ( D himself had no need to shelter himself, ideally he would continue his hunt, but he did need to fix his horse or purchase a new one) He collected his scattered things, secured the reins against his belt and walked.

By the time a property appeared in sight, the sun was already climbing atop the lightblue sky. The light warmed D’s back beyond what he would call comfortable. No traces of the earlier swarm of clouds could be found. Alas, D paused only when he found himself in front of the borders of the farmland that barred the path.

A Solid wall of rock stretched in both directions, interrupted only by a simple wooden gate at the center. Both the height of the walls and the structure of the gate struck D as a peculiar choice. It would not stop anything from entering.

He observed the enclosure for a while longer, looking for traps, laser devices or hidden gunmen - of which he found none. He touched the cold rock, and then swung the gate open. (It was not an illusion either)

It was nothing more but a clean, rich land. None of the Frontier’s calamities must have reached the place in a very long time.

With those thoughts, D headed inside - straight towards the farmhouse.

[aion-rsa]

Why Manifest Season 4 Wasn’t Rescued

https://ift.tt/3d5fJtV

A few years ago, Manifest Season 4 would have been a promising proposition for the array of insatiable streaming platforms that saw the act of rescuing a beloved canceled network series as a proverbial feather in the cap. However, for obvious reasons, times have clearly changed for the industry in the past year. Consequently, NBC’s recent cancelation of the sci-fi leaning mystery drama after three seasons proved potent, since ensuing attempts by its producers to land the series elsewhere are now confirmed to have failed. It begs the question of how a formerly buzz-worthy series like this manage to crash this quickly?

While NBC officially canceled Manifest back on June 14, the notion of the series ending was widely taken with an auspicious grain of salt for multiple reasons. After all, the story of a television series being canceled by a network for sinking ratings only to be rescued by another platform on the back of hashtag-heavy social media campaigns from a passionate fanbase is one that has become familiar. While, predictably, #SaveManifest, was gaining momentum, the real kicker here was that fate had seemingly delivered a boon, since the first two seasons of Manifest had just arrived on the biggest streaming platform of them all, Netflix, where, according to the platform’s public ranking system, it became its most popular series—that very week, no less! Thusly, fans had to feel as if a Netflix pickup—prospectively yielding similar success as rescued shows like Cobra Kai and Lucifer—was inevitable. However, a report from Deadline confirmed the failure of those efforts, which has resulted in bittersweet acceptance from creator Jeff Rake and cast members such as Josh Dallas and Melissa Roxburgh.

Manifest Gratitude, Final Edition Thank YOU, our fans. You became the Manifesters at Comic-Con 2018. Ever since, you’ve watched religiously, parsed every word, cried a lot, laughed a little, puzzle-solved, and never, ever, wavered in your support. I’ll never forget it. 🙏❤️

— Jeff Rake (@jeff_rake) June 22, 2021

Well, my #manifesters, I’m sorry to say that it’s the end of the line for now. We are so proud to have brought you this story over 3 seasons. We so wished we could’ve finished the journey with you. But it wasn’t in the cards. Thanks to our incredible EP’s, producers, writers… pic.twitter.com/jPnnqndQQ5

— joshdallas (@JoshDallas) June 22, 2021

Oh, to put into words the last three years…. Thanks for everyone who joined on with us. I’m forever grateful for the family of misfits and creators that wound up at Silvercup studios. When you film a show, you spend all day every day with these people… pic.twitter.com/4O0jE5LLj2

— Melissa Roxburgh (@melissaroxburgh) June 22, 2021

So, how did this happen? To answer this, let’s backtrack to Manifest’s NBC primetime debut, on Monday, Sept. 24, 2018, which yielded over 10 million viewers according to Nielsen’s numbers, with the show having been heralded by Comic-Con panel hype and even the strategic preemptive posting of its pilot episode on YouTube. While the show, the creation of executive producer Jeff Rake (The Tomorrow People, The Mysteries of Laura), wore its story-stretching genre inspiration from shows like Lost and The 4400 like a badge of honor, the premiere was nevertheless impactful, thanks to a compelling sci-fi-leaning premise, in which passengers of the 2013-era flight of Montego Air 828 from Jamaica to New York City were lost for five years after the plane vanished, only to land in 2018, completely oblivious of any anomaly. Indeed, Manifest may have been a sci-fi series, but its focus on the implications of the passengers’ disappearance on their families resonated with audiences, making the series a surging hit that quickly landed a renewal, despite its 16-episode inaugural season settling down to a 6.482 million viewer average.  

Come Season 2, which premiered on Jan. 6, 2020, the series would, naturally, evolve from its initial premise, slowly attributing the plane’s disappearance—and the dubious celebrity status experienced by the passengers—to ambiguous notions of time and/or dimensional phenomenon and the seemingly clairvoyant visions they experience, called “callings,” which tend to lead them to where fate dictates. However, despite remaining on Mondays, Manifest returned to a major low of 4.728 million viewers for that season premiere, although it managed to hold steady for an average of 3.899 million viewers across the reduced 13-episode season. This could be considered an accomplishment when considering how the year 2020 would play out with the pandemic, especially in the immediately ensuing months. Thus, NBC ended up rewarding that consistency with a Season 3 renewal, although the three months that passed from the Apr. 6, 2020 airing of the Season 2 finale to the Jun. 15 renewal announcement spoke volumes about the show’s increasingly tenuous place with the network.

Read more

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By Joseph Baxter

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By John Saavedra

Tellingly, Manifest’s third—and, as it turns out, final—season premiered on Thursday, Apr. 1, 2021 to little fanfare compared to previous seasons, and its 13-episode run saw a small-but-steady decline in viewership, leaving an average of 3.087 million viewers upon the Jun. 10 season finale, which—also tellingly—was a conventional network “let’s get this over with” strategy of airing of double episodes. Unsurprisingly, NBC only needed only four days to confirm its cancelation of the series from the airing of the finale. While it remains arguable regarding why the series experienced this downfall, many cite its increasingly convoluted quasi-religious sci-fi leanings, which protracted the plight of the 815ers to an impersonal, global level, leaving little room for the family story that was so powerfully established in the pilot episode. Nevertheless, Manifest maintained a general stability and fanbase that would have made it ripe for rescue by Netflix or another major streamer—only at a time before 2020.

Paradoxically, the pandemic cemented streaming’s status as an essential entertainment source, but left companies with a significantly altered bottom line, and Netflix is the most notable example of this phenomenon; an inopportune state for Manifest and its fans, since Netflix represented the show’s most realistic shot for a rescue. Once a spendthrift monopoly with a hair-trigger for greenlighting just about any project, Netflix is in the midst of an unprecedented era of belt-tightening that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, as recently exemplified by the cancelation of its once-lavish lineup of shows like Jupiter’s Legacy, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Ozark, GLOW, I Am Not Okay with This and The Society, as veteran series also finish out their runs.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Thus, despite the current success of Manifest’s catalogue episodes on Netflix, the streaming giant—like its industry peers—is not exactly in the mood to rescue niche network castaways, leaving the series with no viable option to maintain creator Rake’s purported six-season story arc. As a result, the only streaming premiere that fans of the series can look forward to will be when the final season joins its two predecessors.

The post Why Manifest Season 4 Wasn’t Rescued appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3j0ayPX

[shattcrs]

WHO: Julio Richter ( @rictorscales )

WHAT: Julio decides to come see Shatterstar after they haven’t seen each other for two weeks. They talk about what happened at the park, and something amazing happens.

WORD COUNT: 9,333

TRIGGERS: depression, slavery ( past only ), trauma

JULIO: Tell me whose ribs you want to crawl around in. Tell me who you want to fuck you up. Jess’s words had been echoing in Rictor’s mind ever since she said them, but not because the answer eluded him. The question stuck with him because he knew the answer. And maybe --- maybe he always had. Rictor thought back to being sixteen, to going wherever Star needed him to go and being whoever Star needed him to be. He thought about that fire that burned in his gut when Star spoke to someone else in a voice that was a little too soft or touched them in a way that was too familiar. Jealousy, he’d realized when Star called Jon his brother and the feeling faded. I’ve seen the way you look at him, Tabby had said, and maybe that was when he really should’ve known. Tabby had always known him better than anyone.

Tell me who you want to fuck you up, Jess had said, and Rictor’s mind had answered the question immediately and without doubt. The words were echoed with every beat of his heart, over and over and over. Him, him, him, only ever him. How had he missed it until now? 

There were complications, of course. There were always complications where Julio Richter was concerned. Natural disasters rarely occurred without leaving damage in their wake, and he’d caused one hell of an earthquake when he’d walked through that portal and left Star alone in the dirt. He’d probably caused a thousand more with his resulting crisis, and he’d definitely cause a few more before this was over, but… Maybe this story could have something resembling a happy ending. Maybe Rictor didn’t come to his realization too late, maybe there was still time to fix things.

He’d sent a text. A brief courtesy, a i’m coming over. let’s talk? that he’d known Star would respond to because Shatterstar was the most dependable thing in Rictor’s life, the only ground that had never once trembled beneath his feet. He changed his shirt three times, going through Logan’s closet in its entirety before deciding plaid wasn’t for him, then changing his mind and changing it back again. Rictor had never felt like this before… or maybe he had. Maybe he’d always felt like this with Shatterstar. Maybe he’d just never realized it until now.

Finally, he’d settled on a shirt he’d worn a thousand times before, fingers twisting in the hem like a security blanket as he stood outside the XFI building. He had a key in his hand, and he debated the idea of using it versus the idea of knocking, stared at the wooden barrier with narrowed eyes. “This is stupid,” he muttered to himself. “You’re being stupid. Open the fucking door, Julio, you ass.” His hands remained glued to his sides despite the pep talk. 

He’d almost worked up the courage to lift the key when the door opened on its own, and Ric’s eyes widened. Familiar red hair greeted him, and for a moment, he was silent. For a moment, all he could do was stare. His heart was racing in his chest, and Ric wondered how he’d never seen it for what it was before. Finally, after realizing the silence had stretched on a beat too long, Rictor cleared his throat. “Uh,” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I didn’t know if I should knock or just come in. I mean, I’ve got my key, but… I don’t know. Hi. Hey, Star. Hi.” Great speech, Ric. You’re nailing this.

STAR: This was the longest Shatterstar has ever gone without seeing his best friend. It wasn’t like they spent every minute together, but so many of their routines involved each other being part of it. After the sun would come up, Star would make pancakes for both of them. It’s one of the few recipes that he genuinely knew how to make without any flaws in the final product. He only ever did this for Julio, having them kitchen to themselves before anyone else was awake. The redhead always loved the silence in the building, only able to hear the sound of fans in the distance being used during the summer, and just the able to focus on the sound of Rictor’s tired voice. They were cherished moments before they went their spectate ways for the day or had to do some work together. After what happened in the park? Star realized quick how much  of his life was centered around Julio being there, from movie nights down to just the small things. 

They haven’t seen each other for over two weeks, which is longer than Julio said, but Shatterstar expected this. He still doesn’t know what to do with his broken heart, especially when all the love he feels for Julio is still there aching to be returned. He might have ruined everything between them by admitting his feelings while knowing that Julio has only dated women. Although they have been talking recently a little in the group chat they have for the team — which gives him some hope. Could they fix things?

There was some hope after receiving the text message that Julio was coming over to talk. When should he expect him to arrive? Star was suddenly nervous, but did he really have any reason to be? This was his the man he’s in love with, but Julio is also his best friend.

Shatterstar was home alone with Noodle, deciding to sit out the case everyone was working on today. Jamie said someone needed to stick around to make sure the puppy doesn’t eat another pair of his boots. Which was fine by the Mutant since they meant more time with his pet. He changed into a pair of his short shorts and a white crop top while sitting around watching some reruns of The Office. Noodle lost interest, falling asleep  in her owner’s lap. He had a package coming today, and forgot to check to see if it arrived yet. He stands up, carefully holding the puppy in his arms who wakes up as she realizes they’re moving across the room toward the door. 

His free hand opens the door, the wind from outside blowing his red hair into his face. It grew longer since they’ve seen each other — now a little over seven inches past his shoulders now. Shatterstar wasn’t really interested in putting it up in a ponytail ever again, not unless it was required for a mission. He doesn’t even look for the mail because Julio was standing on the other side of the door. He was speechless, feeling like his heart could best right out of his chest. Star still thinks that Julio is the most beautiful person in this universe. He doesn’t know what to expect from this conversation.

“You can come in, this will always be your home too even if you moved out.” Shatterstar frowns for a moment, and looks away to disguise that to search for the mail. The package is on the ground by the door, so he kneels down to grab the large bag, which is full of new outfits for Noodle. He tosses it inside on the floor for now, turning his attention back to his best friend with a smile again. Star was overwhelmed with emotion because it was hitting him all at once how much he missed the other Mutant. “Hello, Julio. I must confess that I have missed you very much. This is my dog, Noodle. We are very happy that you could come by to visit. Come in!” He turns around to step aside so Rictor could get comfortable, and once the door was closed behind them the puppy was set down to run around the rooms again. Star moves to the living room — turning off the television and sitting on the couch. His eyes looking over at his best friend hoping that he would join him.

JULIO: It took a moment for his eyes to catch up to his mind. His heart was beating so quickly that he couldn’t focus on anything but the pounding in his chest, couldn’t concentrate on anything but drawing the next breath of air into his lungs. For a moment, the world outside of his eyes locked onto Shatterstar’s didn’t exist at all. 

And then the moment ended, and Rictor looked away. More specifically, he looked down. Star often wore very little when relaxing at home, Ric knew. For a while, when they were with X-Force, Ric wondered if the other mutant owned a shirt. It had never really bothered him before but, today, his face felt hot and his throat went dry, and fuck, how had he never realized this before? His palms were sweaty and his chest ached, and this was what it felt like, wasn’t it? This was what it was supposed to feel like. 

Ric closed his eyes for a moment, trying to center himself with the feeling of the earth beneath his feet, the feel of its ever-present vibrations climbing up through the soles of his shoes and settling into his bones. No matter what he’d realized about himself, Shatterstar was still Shatterstar. This was still his best friend in the world, the one who’d held his hand when he recalled how he’d felt on that roof, the one he’d taught how to read a clock when they were teenagers, the one who’d jumped in front of danger for him no matter how many times Ric begged him not to. Even when nothing else in the world made sense, Shatterstar always did. Rictor might not know who he was anymore, but he still knew Shatterstar. He knew Shatterstar even when he knew no one else.

It was how he knew that, right now, Shatterstar was struggling just as much as he was. Not for the same reasons, of course. For someone who’d been raised in an oppressive battle dome, Shatterstar had always seemed so much more certain about who he was than Rictor ever had. There were days where Ric looked into the mirror to find a stranger staring back, days when that therapist’s words echoed in his mind over and over and over again like a mantra he couldn’t escape. Don’t you think you deserve a name? Don’t you think you deserve a name? Don’t you think you deserve a name? Some days, the answer to that question was a vague shrug. Others, it was a firm no, playing on repeat every time the question arose. 

(There was only one person who’d ever made him feel like the answer was yes, only one person who could call him Julio without anger burning in his chest. And maybe that should have told him who he was a long time ago. Maybe the secret to knowing Julio Richter had always been knowing Shatterstar.)

“So, uh, this is Noodle,” Rictor said, mostly to break the silence. He didn’t reach a hand out to pet the dog, didn’t know if it would be welcome or not. Perhaps he’d given up the privilege of reaching towards Star when he’d walked away from him through that portal. It didn’t seem fair to assume otherwise. “She’s cute. I mean, she is in the pictures, too. Just… I don’t know. It’s different in person.” Wasn’t everything? His heart didn’t beat this hard when he was messaging Star in a group chat, didn’t threaten to burst through his ribcage when he was teasing Jon and soaking up every shred of attention Star threw his way in the process. But now? Rictor felt like his heart was bursting at the seams, like there was an earthquake in his chest and he couldn’t control it. Shatterstar must have heard the way his heart was pounding, right? It felt like the loudest thing in the world, like a boombox pounding so loudly you could feel it shaking your bones.

He shifted when Star spoke, shrugging a shoulder. “Home’s more complicated than that.” His home wasn’t the crappy building Jamie had moved them all into, the one whose roof he’d let his toes hang off of for hours as he’d worked up the courage to take that step. It wasn’t the ranch he’d grown up on in Mexico, either. Rictor’s home had always been with Shatterstar. He understood that now, better than he ever had before.

The real issue came with saying it. Talking wasn’t Rictor’s strong suit. (Rictor wasn’t sure he had a strong suit.)

“I missed you, too, Star,” Ric admitted, following his friend passed the familiar threshold and into the building. Everything looked the same, and nothing was. The whole world had changed, and no one bothered to tell the foyer. There was something funny about that. Rictor trailed along behind Shatterstar as he made his way to the living room, settled beside him on the couch, and shut his eyes for a moment. He let himself feel the familiar vibrations that made Star who he was, let himself take comfort in the heartbeat he knew better than his own. “I’m sorry I ditched you before,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry I stayed away as long as I did. I’m not good at this. You know that, right? I’ve never been…” He trailed off, shaking his head. He’d never been particularly good at being a person. Maybe he’d never been meant to be one at all. The Richter family was known for their weapons, after all. “You deserved better than that. You still do.”

STAR: The two of them have been through a lot over the years, always standing by each other’s side no matter what hardship comes their way. Shatterstar never expected someone to take him under their wing after his arrival to Earth.  He remembers being fifteen years old and surrounded by so much that was unknown. There was so much green around him that Star didn’t know that trees could be so beautiful. He saw them on the television programs back on Mojoworld, but that wasn’t the same as getting to actually see it. So when Shatterstar was fifteen years old surrounded by these tall trees and flowers poking out of the grass? He felt an emotion for the first time in his life. It wasn’t something that the redhead understood at the time, but the feeling was happiness. He never experienced it before like this, nothing expected out of him except being able to enjoy nature. Star just stood there admiring it before continuing on his journey. 

His quest to find the X-Men ended with finding a different group of Mutants first. X-Force took him in the day Shatterstar turned sixteen. This is when his life changed again — meeting a boy who would become his very best friend. His life became better just by Julio being in it. 

Here they are standing in front of each other, after spending over two weeks apart. Seeing the other Mutant again was like remembering how to breathe.  Shatterstar never cared about romantic or sexual attraction, didn’t understand it for so long until one day realizing that he has felt both of those things, but for only one man. Julio Richter was the only person Star has ever felt attracted to in every sense of the word. He loves this man so much, but doesn’t really know what to do with these feelings.

Shatterstar looks at the puppy, so content in the his arms while they’re looking at each other. “This is Noodle. She followed me home one night, and I couldn’t let her stay out in the streets by herself. I don’t know how I convinced Jamie to allow me to keep her, but long as I’m the one taking Noodle on walks and feeding her he doesn’t mind having her living with the team.” Star says happily, such a sign of joy in his words because it was always so easy to talk with Rictor. Once they moved inside of the building, it amuses him by seeing how quick the small dog was to run away — perhaps it was to find some toys to bring back to the two Mutants so they could play together. It was unsure, but Star admires the energy such a little creature has. This was their home, but the truth? Shatterstar feels like anywhere they end up would be home if Julio was there with him.

“I know that such statements are complicated.  I never knew what behaving a home felt like until I met you. Remember when we would share rooms together? Sometimes there was only one bed, but it never bothered us. We just wanted to be together. I would wake up early to work out while you would sleep in. We could do that anywhere, I just didn’t want us to be apart.” Shatterstar didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back on it? Those kind of moments are the ones that made him fall in love with his best friend that much more.

They were sitting together on the couch, and Star wonders if Julio can hear how quick his heart was beating while they’re sitting so close. His hand pushes some of his hair behind an ear, not taking his eyes off of the other Mutant. “I missed you more, Julio. It’s alright if you needed more time to think about my confession. I will admit that despite us spending those two weeks apart, those feelings of mine are still here. I hope that is alright with you if you wish to spend time together again.” Shatterstar admits, reaching out to grab Julio’s hand — hoping this was okay. “I know you are not the best at talking about how you feel, but you can tell me anything. I will always be here for you, Julio. Do not worry about me, I promise that I was okay. I just spend some time with the trees before walking home that night.” His hand squeezing at the other one that he was holding. “You’re here now.”

JULIO: Even before his powers developed, Rictor had always found comfort in nature. There was something relaxing about being out among the trees, something comforting about dirt beneath his feet and wind in his hair. He didn’t know how the genetics of mutation worked. He didn’t know if, maybe, the part of him that would one day make the ground tremble had always been inside of him and only came out when he was a teenager, didn’t know if his body had always known it belonged to the Earth or if his powers shaped based on the love he carried for her. He didn’t think it made a difference. The important thing, he thought, was that that love had always been within him. He had always loved the Earth, even before he understood her. 

He was beginning to realize it was the same with Shatterstar.

When he’d looked back on his feelings for Shatterstar after his conversations with people like Tabby and Jess, he realized that he couldn’t pinpoint any kind of change surrounding them. The feelings he had for his best friend, the ones he’d mistaken for platonic affection, they’d been there all along. Rictor hadn’t recognized them, hadn’t understood them, but they were still there. They’d been there since he was sixteen, since he joined X-Force and met the strange boy with the red hair and the sword, the one who hung off every word Cable said and flipped through the channels on the television so quickly that Rictor was tempted to quake the remote apart to stop it. There was no one moment that shifted his feelings. His feelings were always there. He had always been who he was, even when he didn’t know it. There was something comforting in that. It was like the breeze ruffling his hair, like the dirt beneath his feet. It was there. It was always there.

“Hi Noodle,” Rictor said, smiling at the dog. His voice was thick, and he didn’t know why. His emotions had never been something he understood easily. That was part of what bonded him to Star in the beginning, part of what made him latch onto the other boy so readily. Rictor was bad with feelings but, back then, Star had been worse. Star had needed Rictor to point him in the right direction, to explain the way things were meant to be. Things had shifted now. That certainty Star had when he spoke, that raw honesty in his voice with his confession in the park, Rictor didn’t know if he’d ever had that before. His emotions had always been a whirlwind of things he didn’t understand, a mixture so convoluted that he often only knew how to express it through anger. Rictor couldn’t remember a time he’d been completely certain about how he felt.

Until now. It took some exploring, took a lot of conversations with a lot of people, but Rictor knew how he felt now. He knew how he’d felt since he was sixteen, knew he’d been lying to himself for the better part of a decade now, understood that every single woman he’d climbed into bed with had been a desperate attempt to convince himself that he was who the world told him he was supposed to be. Jon’s words repeated in his head. There wasn’t something wrong with me. Terry’s words followed them. You’re exactly the way you should be. There was nothing wrong with the way Rictor felt about Shatterstar. There never had been.

There might, however, have been something wrong with the way he’d gone about it. Leaving Star alone in that park after his confession, abandoning him when he was emotionally vulnerable, that had been a dick move, even by Rictor’s standards. Star deserved better than that, had always deserved better than that. (He deserved better than Rictor too. Rictor reminded himself of that a thousand times on his way over, repeated it over and over until it stuck. Star deserved better, and if he chose to pursue better, Ric would be okay with that. He would make himself okay with that.)

Rictor looked down at his hands as Star spoke, smiling faintly at the memories. “I used to think you were nuts,” he offered, “waking up at the crack of dawn like that. I always kind of liked it, though. You were consistent. Nothing else ever was.” He’d been able to count on Star back then, better than anyone. He and Tabby bickered constantly, Terry always felt a mite too close to the X-Men to be long for their team, Sam was a leader too good to be stuck with the rejects, Bobby was a frickin’ billionaire who probably only ever hung out with them because Sam was there… Everyone on the team had seemed on a different level than Rictor except for Star. Star was the weird kid who didn’t know how clocks worked, the guy who got every metaphor wrong, the one who needed Rictor in a way no one else ever had. It had been selfish, the way Ric clung to that. It had been greedy, the way he made sure to love the only person he was sure would never leave him. 

He clung to Star because Star was his safe space, the most constant thing he had outside the ground beneath his feet. And Shatterstar’s confession had been an earthquake that knocked him off balance, but it wasn’t a bad thing. He understood that now. 

Those feelings of mine are still here. I hope that is alright with you. Ric’s heart was pounding now, beating so fast he thought the ground might shake with the force of it, but it didn’t. Everything stood still, just as it had when Shatterstar said the words in the park. There was no quaking, no trembling. There was, for perhaps the first time in Rictor’s life, peace. Like a meadow in the springtime, with new things blooming beneath the dirt.

“That’s okay with me,” he said quietly. “It’s --- It’s more than okay, actually.” Rictor closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “There was… You know, there was this researcher in Germany, who devoted his whole life to studying trees? I used to read his stuff when I was a kid. When my dad would take me to…” He trailed off, shaking his head. He didn’t want to recall his father dragging him along to arms deals, the way Rictor would sneak out of sight to sit in the dirt with a book and wait for it all to be over. “His stuff was always my favorite. He did a lot of study into what they felt, and nobody else ever really did that. Nobody else really thought about it. They feel fear, pain.” He looked down to where their hands were clasped together, throat tight as the next word came out in barely a whisper. “Love.” He shut his eyes again, heart still pounding. Could Star feel the pulse racing in his wrist? Did he know what Rictor was thinking? “I’ve been thinking a lot about… who I am. I keep waiting for somebody else to tell me, keep waiting for someone to give me the answer like when I was a kid, but I don’t think that’s happening. I think maybe I’ve known the answer for a long time now, and I just… Didn’t want to hear it. I know I don’t have to tell you how stubborn I am. You know me better than anybody, Star, and you always have. You know me better than I know me.”

Absently, Rictor rubbed his thumb against Star’s hand, taking a deep, uncertain breath. “I dated a lot of girls, you know? I had moments with just about everybody on our old teams, I told myself I loved them, but I never felt the way I was supposed to feel. The way I’d felt with other people.” He paused, swallowing before opening his eyes and bringing them up to meet Star’s. “The way I feel with you. It took me… I mean, I didn’t understand it. I still don’t know if I understand it. And I’m not --- It’s not fair for me to ask you to help me understand it, it’s not fair for me to do what I did in that park and come to you with this now, but I don’t… I’m not really sure what else to do. I love you, Star. I’m pretty sure I always have.”

STAR: There was nobody else that would capture Shatterstar’s attention in the same way that Julio has since they were teenagers. He has always been convinced that his best friend was better than anyone else who came into his life after that. It wasn’t difficult for Star to make connections with other Mutants or anyone for that matter — discovering rather quickly over his life that he has an outgoing personality. He radiates charisma, seeking to make more friends with anyone who wished to listen to his stories. Shatterstar wasn’t always easy to have a conversation with since he could get easily confused by the culture surrounding Earth, and gets his idioms mixed up. Although, somehow this didn’t seem to matter to most as they would seek out friendship with the redhead anyway. No matter how many of these bonds were created, none of them would be a greater friend than Julio is to him. He was a constant for him, always there to help him through difficult situations or just introduce him to concepts that have been missed out on — such as when Star was taught him how to read clocks. 

Of course there was aspects to the aftermath of his confession that were unfortunate, but Shatterstar didn’t want to put Julio in such an awkward position by sticking by his side. He knows that they needed that time away from  each other so the feelings could be thought about. He doesn’t think badly of his best friend for needing to take a step back, and hopes that Julio isn’t upset with himself over what happened — in his own eyes, the Mutant thinks of the other as a good man still. His heart still racing at the thought of him, but having him so close? Makes his heart want to burst through his chest and give itself to Julio properly because there could never be someone else that makes him feel so strongly.

“I feel like most thought of me that way, but I might have been taking my work out routines too far. Remember how I used to set aside three separate times during the day for my fitness? I was a little obsessed, but then I discovered so much else about this world that also deserved my attention.” Shatterstar still goes to the gym, but not nearly as often as the younger version of himself used to do. “I’m glad you liked having me around even if I annoyed you with my clicks of the remote. We were lucky Cable reprogrammed our television to stop my use of the devise that turned the channel.” Shatterstar laughs, a soft sound filling the room as he found some humor in the memory looking back on it — remembering Julio being so annoyed with him back then, but it was a fond memory now looking back on it. “We have come a long way together.” He was proud of their journey, not wanting it to have ever gone another way. 

There was still some uncertainty about what this conversation was really about, feeling as if  Julio has a point behind reflecting on their time growing up together. His hand wasn’t pushed away, which Star was going to take as a good thing, making a soft smile appear on his face while his eyes turned from looking at their hands, and back to that handsome face. What does it mean? It’s more than okay, actually.

His palm squeezes gently at the one intertwined with his own, listening with each word. Shatterstar believes in that, thinking it would be foolish of anyone to be against believing trees and plants didn’t have feelings of their own. All of the living beings on this planet do in their own way, just expressing it differently. Star does think that is quite fascinating — knowing plant life class capable of feeling love, and hoping that he doesn’t ever bring them pain. “If you ask me society should try understanding nature more. The trees and wildlife has been here long before we were born, and often get taken for granted. I do hope any trees I’ve come across only feel good emotions when I’m involved. Nature is quite beautiful. We didn’t have anything like it on Mojoworld.” Shatterstar goes silent for a moment while listening to what Julio says next, not thinking that he came here to talk about trees, but doesn’t mind if that ever was the point. Any conversation with this man makes him happy — just getting to hear his favorite voice again. “I don’t think anyone can tell you how to feel. They can help you in finding your own answer, but ultimately has to be your own voice. I know you better than anyone else, Julio. We have been friends for the longest time, and while you may be stubborn, yes, that is not all you are. I have seen you show compassion too, a whole range of emotions, and whole not everyone sees them — I have. You are extraordinary, and I will also cherish any new part of yourself that has been discovered if that’s what you’re hinting at. I have learned once that we all grow over time. You have always supported me, and I will always do that for you as well.” He smiles reassuringly, taking a deep breath while thinking about what could possibly be coming. 

 His heart continues to race.

Shatterstar feels like the world stopped turning after hearing those words. He didn’t expect this, a whirlwind of happy emotions beginning to fill his heart. Perhaps Rictor knew this since he gave his hand another squeeze before speaking up. “Y—You love me? I love you too, Julio. I mean it with all of my heart that I believe I have always felt this way about you, ever since we were those teenagers getting into all sorts of trouble. This will be new for both of us. I know you have never been with a man, but I have never been with anyone. We could take it at our own pace, learning how to do this together.  I just want to be with you if you would be comfortable to be my boyfriend.” Shatterstar is blushing now, feeling vulnerable in the best of ways. 

Does Star choose to be bold? 

The Mutant leans in to close the distance between them, pressing their lips together for his very first kiss. Which Shatterstar feels lucky that it was with someone he loves, and who loves him in return. This was a truly surprising turn of events, but kissing Julio ignited a flame in him. Nothing ever felt so right than this right here, his free hand lifting to cup the other Mutant’s cheek for a moment before pulling back for some air knowing his cheeks were a darker shade of red now. “I hope that was okay —“ It felt like his life was finally more complete, and hopes Julio felt the same way.

JULIO: What is so wrong with you, Rictor’s uncle had asked him once, that you are utterly incapable of committing to anything for more than an instant? It had felt unbelievably harsh at the time, and Rictor knew it hadn’t truly come from a place of love. Gonzalo had been one of the most committed to the Richter family business, second only to Rictor’s father in the intensity of his obsession. We’re making a name for ourselves, Julio, he’d snapped, angry and bitter in a way Rictor had seen in the mirror far too many times. Why don’t you want to be a part of this? And Rictor hadn’t had an answer for him. He hadn’t known what it was about him that he found it impossible to commit, but it hadn’t ended with his family’s business. It followed him, everywhere he went.

It was why he’d had such a hard time with teams in the past, why he’d left X-Force for Mexico and left Mexico for X-Force in an endless pattern of inability to stick to one or the other. It was why his time with the New Mutants was so short, why he bounced from team to team for most of his teenage years without ever sticking to anything. It was why he climbed up on the roof of X-Factor Investigations with every intention of shrugging the commitment of his own life. It was also why he pushed people away with everything he had, why he used bitter sarcasm like a vibe blast designed to distance himself from anyone who might want to get in close. Rictor wasn’t the type to commit, and he wasn’t the type to make friends, and Shatterstar was both. 

It had always amazed him, how easily Star got people to like him. Ric joked more than once that Star could befriend the pigeons in the park if he tried hard enough, and he knew that was something he would never be capable of. Star was an easy person to like. He was charming, he was bright-eyed, he was charismatic. Rictor was an acquired taste. More than once, he knew, people had put up with him only because he and Shatterstar often came as a package deal. You suffered one to have the other. Perhaps he should have been bothered by that, but he never was. It was understandable, after all --- Rictor would suffer his own company to enjoy Shatterstar’s, too. 

“You were committed,” he said quietly. “I always liked that.” Star had always balanced Rictor’s worst qualities with complementary opposites. Rictor couldn’t commit to anything, and Star committed to everything. Rictor couldn’t make his own family like him, and Star could befriend strangers on the street. Rictor scarcely wanted to live some days, and Star viewed the world with a bright joy that should have been impossible given his history. An optimist and a pessimist, they were. “I was probably a little too dramatic about that, anyways,” he admitted with a quiet huff, remembering the ordeal. “I shouldn’t have threatened to kill you over a remote control, probably.” It hadn’t been a real threat, of course. Rictor was just… kind of an ass, even back then. (Especially back then, maybe.) “We have, haven’t we?” His voice was quiet, and he didn’t say what he was thinking. He didn’t say that he’d never expected to make it this long, didn’t say that there was no part of him that had ever anticipated living past twenty. He thought Star might understand it, anyways. Even an optimist could have seen the unlikelihood of their survival. 

Maybe, in the end, all of that made this moment inevitable. There was that old cliche, wasn’t there, about opposites attracting? That which we lack attracts us, someone once said, and it was true. Rictor had been drawn to Shatterstar from the beginning, and maybe Star had been drawn to him too. Maybe this was always going to happen. Wasn’t it pretty to think so? 

Rictor laughed, a quiet breath of air when Shatterstar spoke. Anyone else, he thought, might have questioned his ramblings, but not Star. Star would listen to Ric talk about trees for hours and stay intrigued all the while, would let Rictor go on and on and on for as long as he needed to. He’d let him talk circles around a point before getting to it, let him ramble in metaphors and mutter in excuses. He’d never once asked Rictor for more than he could give, never once expected him to break away parts of himself. There weren’t many people he could say that about. “They were here before us,” he agreed. “It’s their world, not ours. And most people don’t even… I mean, they don’t even try to get it.” He paused, quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “that you didn’t have trees on Mojoworld. You deserved trees. You deserved trees and plants and animals and bugs and ---” And love. Star had deserved so much love. Rictor knew he wasn’t the right person to give it to him, knew that Star deserved someone better, but god, he wanted to give it all he had. He wanted to try to love something without quaking it to pieces, wanted to try committing to something without running away. He wanted to be better. Shatterstar made him want to get better. 

His throat tightened as Star spoke, as the best man he’d ever known said a multitude of kind things about him that he’d done nothing to deserve. Rictor broke Star’s heart, he did that. And still, Star was here. He was always here. He loved Rictor even on the days when it felt like there was no Rictor to love, loved him when he disappeared into his mattress and didn’t move for hours and hours. “I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who thinks that,” he said quietly. “I’m… Thank you. For thinking that. Thanks for believing in me.” I’ll try to deserve it.

When Star repeated the words, disbelief clouding his tone, Rictor let out a nervous, watery laugh. “Yeah,” he said quickly, lest Star get the wrong idea. “Yeah, I do. I really fucking do.” The world was standing still, and it was a good thing. He could breathe again, for what felt like the first time since he’d walked through that portal and left Star behind in the park. He could breathe again, for what was maybe the first time ever. He nodded quickly, his heart racing in his chest, face feeling warm. “I’m definitely comfortable with that. If it’s --- If you want me.” 

And then they were kissing, and the world felt right. There was no nagging discomfort clouding the back of his mind. There was no quiet unease gnawing at his gut. There was no impatience begging the moment to end. There was only Shatterstar, and his lips on Rictor’s. There was only a world that made sense for the first time in his entire life.

When it ended, he wasn’t relieved the way he always had been with the women he’d dated. He wasn’t dreading the next moment of intimacy, wasn’t craving distance. Instead, there was something more akin to disappointment in his chest, but it was outweighed by the euphoria of the moment. “That was definitely okay,” he said quietly. “Actually, that was --- That was kind of perfect.”

STAR: When did Shatterstar learn to be so charismatic? It wasn’t as if holding a conversation ever mattered growing up on Mojoworld. All that mattered was having the ability to speak at all to carry out a battle cry. He wonders sometimes how different his life would have been if anyone had taught him how to process emotions as a child. It wouldn’t have made for exciting fights in the arena if Star was putting his feelings into it. They couldn’t risk him providing them with bad ratings — no, that just wouldn’t do. Although maybe deep down there was always the ache for wanting to connect with others. Shatterstar never got to form relationships of any kind before, so coming to Earth was an opportunity to be who he should have always been.  Star never had friends before — so maybe this is all the reasoning behind wanting to befriend everyone that he meets. Which doesn’t always work, but the redhead does have the ability to make it happen most of the time. He could probably hold a conversation with just about anyone, which is sweet, but not if your friends are trying to pull you away from conversing with a stranger. 

Star wouldn’t want to trade this life for anything, being able to feel everything has made his life worth living. He could express when he was happy, upset, or angry. This wasn’t always the case, and Julio has a lot to do with making sure Shatterstar was able to express how he felt.  There was many sides to his personality, and this is when Star realized he doesn’t have to be that violent warrior all of the time.  He was allowed to be more than that — create a whole life for himself. His first decision has always been to keep his best friend close after they started getting close. Star has met many people since coming to Earth when he was fifteen, and none of them had been quite as amazing as Julio is.

“I was quite committed. I felt like working out was the most important part of the day. I still view it as being important, but not something I have to do for five hours of each day.” Shatterstar remembers doing over a thousand push ups before Rictor even woke up, able to do them with just a few of his fingers. He doesn’t mean to show off, but maybe fitness filled the void he didn’t know existed. While Star learned more about himself, he realizes there was so many other activities that could help fill his time too. He liked the way they sort of balanced each other out — like two puzzle pieces fitting together perfectly. “I didn’t understand at the time that the sound of a remote clicking could be considered irritating. You know I didn’t quite understand how anyone’s emotions worked at the time, so you were right to find that frustrating. I just wanted to watch everything all at once. I’m glad they’ve made remotes silent since we were younger. I can flip much as I want and not make a sound.” Which makes a smile appear on Shatterstar’s face like that was a solution to any future problems with it. “I continue to enjoy our journey through life together. I like that we play off of each other’s fighting styles so well, nobody else understands my techniques the same way you do. It has only ever been you.” 

Shatterstar means it, thinking the fact they know the other in such a deep level is extraordinary.

There was a habit of talking a lot, sometimes it took Star some time getting to a point if there even was one. The best part of their friendship was just letting each other talk for hours if they needed to about anything. It was important since Shatterstar never once felt judged by Julio for saying what was on his mind — in return he always listened with interest for every word his best friend says to him. He always looks forward to seeing him after a long day or in the morning when Rictor wales up. This must be love, since nobody else made his heart beat faster then they walk in the room smiling at him like that. “It is not right that others don’t try to understand. I may never completely get it, but I try my best. I’m sure you are aware. You don’t need to apologize, but thank you. When I first came to Earth I ended up in this field with flowers and many trees. It was overwhelming because I’ve never seen anything so breathtaking before. I find that it’s more enjoyable to get out and enjoy nature than stay indoors all the time. Mojoworld didn’t have much except for doing what pleases Mojo. I’m not so much fan of bugs, but it is nice to have the opportunity to avoid them. I’m just happy not to be missing out on any of it anymore.” Shatterstar smiles at that, not sure if anyone deserves these things, something so simple, but you don’t know how much you would miss it until it’s gone. 

“Maybe we can go on that road trip sometime and go visit the Grand Canyon. I would very much enjoy that trip.” Would they be able to get the time off? Would Jamie just be happy to be understanding one less Mojoworlder for a few weeks? He thinks the trip sounds fun, and if Julio was still interested in the idea that they should go. It would be just the two of them, no worries except what the road ahead has prepared for them. Everything has been so serious lately, and they deserve some fun too, don’t they?

Shatterstar feels like his heart was ready to fly right out of his chest with how quick it was beating.  After what happened in the park the love felt for Julio never left, still making a home in his chest refusing to leave. Star is glad for not letting go. This was the best surprise, so unexpected, and maybe this is why  Rictor took much longer than expected to come see him again. 

He loves him too.

It was easy to get emotional, feeling the happiest that the redhead has ever been. “I love you very much, Julio. This is the best moment of my life having you love me too.” The smile on his face doesn’t go anywhere, having a feeling that this was going to be an expression shown quite often from now on. This would be new for both of them, but nothing feels more right than being able to call Rictor his. “Of course I want you. My feelings have not changed. It is official now. You’re my boyfriend. Does this mean I can hold your hand all the time? I would like to be able to hold your hand.” Shatterstar has never done this before, but there was nobody else that he would want to date.

There was some nerves since Star has never kissed someone before, but if that felt perfect for Rictor then that was enough to keep Star smiling about it. They were kind of perfect for each other weren’t they? Maybe they were destined to meet, be part of the other’s life ever since they were born, or maybe in all universes find their way to the other Mutant. “It was more then perfect. I could get used to doing that. I must confess that was my first kiss, and I’m glad that it was with you.” Star leans in again to kiss his boyfriend again, but wanting this one to last longer than the previous kiss. He loves this man, and can’t get enough of him now that they’re together.

JULIO: Was there a world, Rictor wondered, where they were different? Was there a universe out there somewhere in the vastness of the multiverse where their lives were peaceful, where they were better off? Maybe there was a place where Shatterstar had been raised by his biological parents, where he never stepped foot on Mojoworld at all. Maybe there was a universe where Rictor’s father didn’t die with a slug in his chest, where the world didn’t shake and groan with his grief. A place where Shatterstar found the X-Men instead of X-Force, a place where Cameron Hodge didn’t pick Rictor apart and break him into pieces. A place where Shatterstar learned from an early age how to express his emotions and talk about them, a place where Rictor had emotions that were more than just empty or sad. There was a multitude of possibilities, Rictor knew. There were worlds where they were better off. There had to be. 

But were they still like this?

In those worlds where Shatterstar never stepped foot on Mojoworld, in the ones where Rictor never left Mexico, did they find one another all the same? In the universes where Star was an X-Man, where Rictor never suffered Hodge, did they still watch movies once a week and share a bowl of popcorn? Was it selfish, Rictor wondered, to be glad for all the things Star had suffered in order to bring them together on Cable’s team, in order to give them the bond that helped shape him into the man he was now? Was it still selfish if he was glad for his own suffering, too? There must have been worlds where they were happy. There had to be. But this was the world where Shatterstar woke him up at four in the goddamn morning doing pushups next to his bed. This was the world where they had movie nights and stakeouts. This was the world where Star was his best friend. And that made it the best world Ric could imagine.

“You know,” Ric said, a little quieter now, “I used to be kind of jealous of you. I mean, you didn’t --- You didn’t know what was going on half the time, but you were… You’ve always had this way about you, dude. You make everything look so easy. You can be committed to waking up at the ass crack of dawn and working out for five hours a day like it’s nothing. You can make people like you without trying. You’ve got all this --- all this shit that’s happened to you, all this awful fucking shit, and you still know how to be happy. And I’m glad for that, I am, because you deserve to be happy, but I was still jealous. I was never good at any of that. I’m still not. I don’t know how to commit to shit. I sure as hell don’t know how to make people like me. And I can’t…” I can’t be happy. He knew the statement wasn’t entirely true, but there were days when it felt like it was. Rictor had been happy before, even without realizing it. He’d had moments with the X-Force where he was on top of the goddamn world. He’d had movie nights with Star where he laughed so much tears stung his eyes. He’d loved and been loved by people who always deserved better, and he still wound up on the roof of X-Factor looking for an out. “I’m really lucky you decided to be my best friend,” he said suddenly. “I think about that a lot.” Star could’ve had his pick, on X-Force, of who to follow him around. Sam never would’ve told him no. Terry would’ve loved it. Tabby always found him hilarious. Any of them would’ve been happy to let Star hang around them, but it was Ric he chose to latch on to. Ric, who was an ass even back then, who shook the world apart at the slightest irritation, who never made excuses for the shit he did because he never cared enough to try it. He’d lucked out. He still didn’t know how. “Me, too,” he said quietly, Star’s words echoing in his ears. It has only ever been you. What had he ever done to deserve that?

Ric smiled faintly as Shatterstar spoke, nodding along with it. “I always liked it,” he admitted quietly, eyes darting over to the window. “Nature, I mean. It’s… I didn’t like the quiet much, you know? Growing up, nothing was ever quiet. So many people around all the time, always yelling and fighting and talking over each other. I get uncomfortable when it’s quiet. But nature’s never quiet. It’s peaceful, but it’s loud. If you listen close enough, you can hear it. The birds, the bugs, the dirt… It’s never quiet.” Star was never quiet, either. He was always a flurry of conversation, always a rambling speech about something only Ric could pick up on. Even in fights, there was nothing silent about him. There were battle cries, there was the metal clanging of swords, there were feet against the ground. Rictor had always hated the quiet, and Shatterstar had always found ways to fill it without trying. He was good at that, good at giving Ric exactly what he needed. And right now…

Right now, all Rictor needed was this. All he wanted was the two of them on a ratty couch he’d found in a dumpster and dragged back to XFI without a word. “A road trip would be fun,” he agreed. “There’s a lot of this country I haven’t seen.” He’d never had the time, moving from one superhero team to another since he was a teenager. As a mutant, your life became about surviving. Just once, Ric wanted to see what it was like to make his about living. And this… This was what living felt like.

Living, he decided, was Shatterstar’s hand in his. It was those words that had stopped the world in its tracks kicking it off into motion again, it was the way things felt right when their lips met, it was the way he thought he must have been holding his breath his entire goddamn life because breathing never felt quite like this before. He let out a quiet, breathless laugh at Shatterstar’s question, nodding his head empathetically. “I’m definitely your boyfriend now, dude. You can hold my hand as much as you want.”

Ric was grinning when they pulled away from the kiss, happier than he’d been in a long time. And you couldn’t hang your happiness on other people, you couldn’t live for someone else and not for yourself, you couldn’t stop feeling all the awful things you felt just because someone you loved loved you back, but god, it made it easier. It made it all okay, even if only for a moment. “I could definitely get used to it, too,” Ric agreed. “Wanna take a shot at getting used to it now?” And he leaned in and pressed their lips together again. Star was right --- it was more than perfect.

[alphacygni]

The one with the interdimensional snogging.

****************

Crowley’s Flat

The Night of the (Not) End of the World

 Evil, it had been established, never sleeps. Crowley himself indulged, of course, but otherwise, on the whole, the maxim stood.

The question occupying Crowley at the moment, however, as he watched Aziraphale circle his flat like a jumpy mouse dropped into a maze, was the inverse proposition: does Good sleep?

Given that Evil is boundless and ever abroad, Good would have to keep up, wouldn’t it? Good couldn’t be seen slacking. There was a whole deadly sin for that: one of Crowley’s favorites, in fact[1].

Metaphysics aside, however, Aziraphale did look tired. The first yawn had been understandable enough, coming as it did while Crowley tried to explain, with little success, the purpose of a wireless router.

The second yawn had burst through the angel’s admiration of Crowley’s tropical orchids[2].

The third came just as Aziraphale’s circuit brought him to the statue, where it battled a puzzled smile and a lean in for a closer look. “What the deuces are they—“

“Fancy a lie down?” Crowley interrupted, directing the angel away. “The bed’s through there if—”

The look on Aziraphale’s face told him he’d been dangerously misunderstood.

“If you want to rest.” As if to illustrate, Crowley stretched his arms theatrically. “I’m knackered myself. Could do with another century-long kip, probably.”

The mouse in the maze appeared to have gotten an electric shock. “Oh…well. Yes. I suppose I wouldn’t say no to a rest. Tiring business, the Apocalypse. I’ll, uh…I’ll take the sofa.”

They both looked at the black sofa skulking in the center of the room. Corners glinted and pristine leather menaced. It looked as inviting as a metal bench in a heatwave. When Aziraphale finally worked up the courage to sit, the cushions growled resentfully.

“Modern furniture,” Crowley explained. “Not really about comfort.”

“I should have known modern design was one of yours.” The angel gave him a small smile.

It bolstered him. “We could…I mean, if we’re both going to lie down, I don’t see why we couldn’t…?”

A swallow. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“Your virtue’s safe, angel. Besides, we’re about to spend Devil knows how long wearing each other’s faces and bodies around. I think we’re past the point of blushing about lying in the same bed.”

As it turned out, however, they weren’t.

The moment they were lying beside one another, the angel blushed furiously. It was uncomfortably charming[3].

They stared at each other, as far from sleep as two beings—celestial, infernal, or otherwise—could possibly be. Neither suggested sobering up. Alcohol, at the moment, was a marvelous ally.

“Well,” Crowley said unhelpfully.

“Yes.” Aziraphale agreed. “Rather.”

Sheets whispered as they turned away from each other, back to back, Crowley on his side, the angel on his—a miniature cosmos on thousand thread-count silk.

“G’night, angel.”

“Um…yes. Good night.”

Silence.

The first few minutes eked past, and Crowley was sure he’d never been less relaxed in his life. Each shift registered Richter-like; each sound poured through a funnel into his ear.

One of the nice[4] things about linear time, however, is that it just…moves on, continues, end over end, until a person can grow accustomed to even the most unnerving events. And so, eventually, as time ticked forward, the strangulated muscles in Crowley’s back loosened, the whites of his eyes faded. Shoulders rounded forward, and he let himself stretch: all of him, corporeal and non-corporeal bits alike. It was a hellishly good feeling. Manifesting in a physical body wasn’t terrible, but it was irritating: something like walking around with a pebble in your shoe except, in this case, his body was the pebble and the shoe was a radiant form of demonic energy that permeated all that had been or would be from the beginning of creation to the end of time.

Beside him, the angel’s breathing stopped, which Crowley took for a good sign.  He’d relaxed enough to give up the illusion of oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange and had even begun to release his corporeal hold a bit. In the space at their backs, reality slackened, fluttering between this world and beyond.

It was in this way that Crowley got a peek.

It wasn’t the sort of peek one got, say, through a lit window from behind bushes. This was in a mirror, darkly, and had nothing to do with eyes. Crowley stayed turned away, but he saw it nevertheless: the angel, Aziraphale—all of him, dazzling as a beam of sunlight might be if it could multiply itself infinitely and blaze across every wavelength and color at once.

Had Crowley been pretending to breathe, the sight would have taken his breath away.

So rapt was he, in fact, that he startled stupidly when the angel spoke.

Spoke is, perhaps, an inaccurate term. What Aziraphale said was not aloud nor in any language that has ever sounded on the Earth. It was a celestial tongue—one Crowley had not heard in more than six-thousand years and one no human could ever hope to comprehend. To human ears it would sound like nothing so much as Beauty shaped around Truth: the cool whisper of wind on a spring morning. The ache of bowed strings. The ecstatic crash of waves on a still and empty shore.

The closest translation into human English, however, would be in the decidedly less transcendental vicinity of: I’ll show you mine…

Crowley forced a useless breath. And another.

He was vaguely aware of the spot where he gripped the sheets.

He wanted to throw open the curtain and let the angel look—yearned for it in a way that had 6000 years at its back. He longed to show and to be seen as he hadn’t been seen since Before. Since his wings had burned black.

But he knew better. He had to measure it. Tread lightly.

He didn’t want to go too fast.

A fraction—as titillating a fraction as he could manage—Crowley released his hold on reality, too. Between their backs, matter bucked and waved as if caught in a breeze. For the first time in his corporeal existence, Crowley felt the prickle of hair on the back of his neck. The uncanny thrill of being watched by a hundred eyes.

When the angel’s wing touched his in that space between it was soft and almost. Feathers and light slid for no more than a held breath. Nothing to see.

But to feel…

Crowley still remembered—still relived often in the pit of his stomach—the sensation of his Fall. The pull and the terror, the blistering heat that that gave way to creeping cold and to the gleam of amputation.

This was the opposite—not a Fall but an Ascent, electricity pinging to both poles at once. It worked down his spine like a teasing finger, stroked up his leg like a wanton hand. It grabbed him, firm, about the middle and filled him until there was nothing left but surrender and a hunger too hot and immediate to name.

It was warmth. That warmth of the Beginning, before everything else.

Around them ions rattled, every atom singing, echoing in those hollows between electrons.

He was panting (uselessly), he was sweating (uselessly), and he’d cried out, he was sure, whether in this reality or the one beyond he didn’t know. A moan, a prayer or both at once.

How does a demon say hallelujah?

At the sound, the angel startled, and the curtain drew taut once more.

Another fall.

A diz z y pop and

a lack.

“I…I don’t know if this is a good time to…”

Everything settled back into the mold of reality, sliding around the angel’s tiny, earthly voice. Crowley became aware of his eyes again, sight and color returning in patches as if he’d stared too long at the sun. When he touched them, he found them damp.

“There…there’ll be a lot happening tomorrow.” The angel’s voice juddered as he stood, renewed breaths uneven. “I’ll, um, I’ll keep a watch.”

But Crowley heard the words behind—a different sort of unspoken language.

It was that same question again.

What if I did the wrong thing?

And Crowley wondered, as always, if there was ever a right one.

Alone again, he rolled over until he was on the other side. It was still warm.

He breathed in that familiar scent and tried, desperately, to rest.

**************

[1] In the same way waiters at posh restaurants are asked to try dishes so as to make recommendations, demons are required to indulge in each of the deadly sins in order to more effectively tempt humanity. Crowley had spent much of the doldrums of prehistory trying them out one by one. For his money, sloth had the others beat by a country mile, though lust could come a close second when the timing was right. He’d never quite got the hang of acedia, so he was glad when they knocked that one off and replaced it with a proper, respectable sin like envy.

[2] Tropical orchids did not typically thrive in London, but Crowley’s orchids knew what was good for them.

[3] Crowley was, in fact, briefly tempted to rearrange his rank ordering of the deadly sins.

[4] And terrible.

[rainsonata]

Doppelgänger 2/15

Chapter 02: The Search

Fandom/Pairing: Elsword; none Rating: K+ Word Count: 6,960

Summary: It was like looking into a mirror. What happens when one’s reflection talks back and throws uncomfortable questions? El Search Party struggles to find entrance into the Demon Realm, but Dominator has a plan.

Alternative Title: Dominator fucked up and now everyone meets their alternative selves  

AO3 Link / FF.NET Link

— [Chapter 01] [Chapter 02] [Chapter 03] [Chapter 04] [Chapter 05] [Chapter 06] [Chapter 07] [Chapter 08] [Chapter 09] [Chapter 10] [Chapter 11] [Chapter 12] [Chapter 13] [Chapter 14] [Chapter 15] —  

Class Notes:

Canon Path: Knight Emperor, Aether Sage, Daybreaker, Rage Hearts, Code: Esencia, Comet Crusader, Apsara, Empire Sword, Doom Bringer, Ishtar and Chevalier (Innocent), Bluhen   

Alternate Path: Rune Slayer, Oz Sorcerer, Anemos, Furious Blade, Code: Ultimate, Fatal Phantom, Devi, Flame Lord, Dominator, Timoria and Abysser (Catastrophe), Richter

Knight Emperor

Starlight lit up the darkened sky. Their brilliance was as blinding as the El, a meteor shower pouring overhead.  

Knight raced to where he thought the source of light was coming from. They burst like fireworks and rocked the earth when they came falling through the atmosphere. It was difficult to find the right word to describe the moment in which his mind zoned out and everything zoomed into focus. All his senses intensified, not unlike the surreal sensation he had in Elrianode. There was a strong energy coming from those falling stars. Could they be El shard fragments?   

Heavy boots crushed the worn down road. Knight was sure he would lose his footing and sink into the muddy floor flooded from last night’s rain shower - or was that last morning? He watched the moons rotate through their cycles before he made the decision to leave camp. Periods of sunlight were rare and lasted for a few hours at most according to the elder of the dark elves.   

“Elsword, slow down!”

He waited for Bluhen to catch up. A friend for as long as he could remember, Knight couldn’t say no when the priest insisted on coming with him to investigate the sudden recurring earthquakes arriving in waves. Sometimes the aftershocks came one after another. Bluhen caught the knight leaving camp after restless hours tossing and turning in his sleep.

“It’s not safe to put yourself in danger’s path again,” Bluhen rolled his shoulders up to prevent his fur coat from slipping past off. Rather than running, he hovered midair with his feet sliding over the ground. He placed his hand over Knight’s shoulder for support with worry reflecting in his face.

“You didn’t have to come with me,” Knight said despite wanting his friend to stay. Was it naive or stupid or him to wish that? His intuition told him something was off, but everyone was still recovering from the fight with Nephilim Lord and there wasn’t enough evidence to bring the rest of the El Search Party with him to validate a haunch. He didn’t want to worry everyone again.   

“I said I would come,” he said. “Besides, it’s not safe venturing in the Demon Realm by yourself.”

His last words forced Knight to bite back his tongue. It didn’t take effort for him to understand it was because he made his friends feel guilty again. After he woke up in Elrianode, his teammates all had worn down dispositions and treated him like a child, insisting that Knight stayed closer to the middle of the group rather than the front. Extra precautions, Rage Hearts explained in a short crisp manner with a smile as if that could alleviate the insult to injury.  

“And you’re okay following me?” Knight asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Bluhen slowed his pace. He had his hand over his temples with a thoughtful expression. His gaze fixed into Knight’s, an awkward silence where the priest stared at him longer than necessary. Knight could somewhat feel the El’s influence radiating from Bluhen, although being in demon territory had dimmed it until all he could feel was a flicker of what it once was.         

“Demonic energy doesn’t bother you?” Knight placed care in his words.

Not that Bluhen ever shown anger to him, but Knight knew it wasn’t a light topic for either of them. It was no secret that Bluhen had distaste for demons and being in their territory left him in a constant state of wariness past the cheery facade. After Bluhen almost fainted in Elrianode because of the Dark El’s influence, Knight was hesitant to push his friend and relied on other team members for demon related tasks. If it wasn’t for Ishtar, what would have become of the priest?  

Bluhen paused before shaking his head, “No. I’m still adjusting, but I can carry my weight.”

It smelled of ash and sulfuric gas. Much of the fire was diminished by the downpour and reduced to ashes, but smoke and flames singed the tree branches. He could still feel the warmth from the remnants of a fire. Orange lines glowed through the cracked tree bark and whispered harsh sounds to the wind.

Uneven lines gashed over tree trunks, deep cuts left behind by a sword or a spear. Silver light flickered drew Knight’s attention. Silver bullets scattered and seeped in demon blood, their metallic surfaces shining under jet black ink. This wasn’t a meteor shower. It was the aftermath of a battle.

Bluhen saw the bullets and frowned, “Do you recognize them?”

“No.”

Crafted with elegance of an experienced blacksmith, the silver bullets held familiarity and reminded Knight of the white pristine palaces in Hamel. He didn’t know many that relied on pistols or handguns for fighting. Comet Crusader’s destroyer was the closest thing he had to compare, but the difference in size was significant and made it a stretch to say they were similar.           

“Can humans coexist with demons?” Knight’s words held weight and consideration. How could humans be here before they were? It took little imagination to imagine how the fight ended. Kicked up dirt and debris left a beaten path of a body dragged across the ground, likely in a struggle.   

“What makes you ask such a question?” Bluhen asked with amusement, “I don’t think so. If it occurs, I doubt it lasts long-”

Bluhen stumbled over his words and placed his hands over his mouth, all the more puzzling with the sheepish smile after and coughing. His former confidence was replaced by a new emotion of furrowed brows followed by a curt answer in an attempt to repair his embarrassment.    

“Well, it’s. It’s unlikely, but it’s a possibility, I suppose.” Bluhen muttered. “It isn’t something we can rule out yet...”

Knight covered his laugh with a cough. He went on his knees to gather the silver bullets and pocketed for later. Crusader would be interested utilizing them for battle use. Maybe they could determine the story behind the battlefield.

Pain panged at the nape of his neck for Knight to snap his head forward. That strong energy source. Something with strong El Resonance was here. Adrenaline rushed through his blood veins and Knight turned to shout.   

“Did you feel that?”

Bluhen was already one step ahead and pulled out his pendulum. Green light enclaved the priest as he and Knight charged into the forest. Deep within the mass of trees, dark bulky shapes were revealed in the light as deformed monsters they haven’t seen since Elrianode. Did Henir’s followers find their way into the Demon Realm before they did?

Soil eroded under Knight’s feet. He slid under a Mutated Ent’s swinging arms and pulled his sword out to block its attacks. Metal clashed against its bark exterior, leaving angry gashes across its belly and the corrupted beast howling. Black tar pooled at his feet.

One of the bigger monsters walked with a limp and had burnt marks over its blue armor, rusty edges on the metallic part of its body. Gashes and scars decorated the rest of its exoskeleton. Wait, that’s the Spatio Reaper. Those injuries, they’re the same as the damage from the forest! It was walking slower than usual with something in its grasp. One of its appendages was wrapped around…             

“A civilian!” Knight hollered in hopes that Bluhen could hear him, “I’m going after them! Get backup if I don’t come back!”

Knight threw himself onto the Spatio Reaper and dug his nails into the monster’s cracks as it tried to shake him off with no success. He hauled himself and climbed over its arms and legs. Placing his hand over the other, he breathed on a realization. A human in Demon Realm… was that possible? Knight was frantic on moving an unconscious person and scrambled to get them to safety first.

He struggled to pull them out. Gripping his right hand wrist, Knight forced sparks to emit from his palms. Heat buildup at his fingertips and flared out into miniscule fireballs. They were weak flames, but enough for the Spatio Reaper to jolt from its feet and loosen its grip.

Knight used both arms to pull the civilian out, bringing their right arm behind his neck. Knees bent to lift their legs for their upper body to lean over his shoulder for support. Now he had to get them back to the ground. He turned his head to face the corrupted monster glaring at them. How a creature with no facial expression could come off as angry was a mystery and something he didn’t want to stick around to find out. Glowing blue didn’t look good.   

Oh, no.  

He and the unconscious person slid off the creature’s back for Knight to land on his butt. The other landed on his back with arms stretched out and loud snores coming out?! Knight tugged their arms and threw them over his shoulders with their legs over his waist. They tucked their head into his shoulder with a sleepy smile. How could anyone sleep through a battle?

Knight groaned and covered his face with his free hand.

A screeching noise ached his eardrums. Peeking behind his hands, a dark shadow approached them. Long blue appendages stretched out in reach of them with tiny claws extended. Knight emptied his bag and grabbed a water orb, blue crystals forming at his fingertips as he tossed it to his opponent. Mist formed and ice crystals flowered the ground, frosting blackened trees and hopefully the Spatio Reaper.   

His heartbeat was thumping in his ears, the wind urging Knight to keep moving. Blood and sweat clung to his clothes. He was out of breath, his legs felt like jelly, and his arms were getting tired from carrying the extra weight.

Beneath a tree with lowered branches was a dense overgrowth of bushes and shrubs. They were green and purple, but Knight recognized them for growing edible berries that had no effect on humans besides having a purple tongue. Turning his head to confirm that no one was following them, he lowered the civilian and laid down to gasp for air. Each painful breath had his lungs protesting in pain. He had ignored his body again and Bluhen was going to chide him later about it.  

Knight chuckled. They were pursued by corrupted monsters and his worst fear was the wrath of his friends. It was hardly a laughable matter, but he found comfort in remembering that his friends cared about him.  

At least the civilian was safe. Now that they were out of danger’s reach, Knight had a better look at them. Muscles carved into their calves suggesting an active life with burn marks and scars caked over tanned skin. Their clothes were more appropriate for the beach than for the Demon Realm. Hair the color of fire tangled past their shoulders and tied into a low ponytail.  

Knight stopped breathing. It was like looking into a mirror. Their faces were identical.  

Abysser

Static broke out, quiet buzzes filling his ears and giving Abysser a headache. No signal. A deafening sound broke out from the mouthpiece when he tapped a communication device clipped to his jacket collar. Communication became difficult over time as the El Search Party expanded in number overtime until Dominator, although he was known as Mastermind at the time, produced a set of communicators for them. He didn’t understand the in-depth mechanics of it, but he knew it had a limit in distance. How far could their friends be for communication to be broken?

Fighting Spatio Reaper caught the attention of demons and left little else for them to do but run. Until they caught connection with the rest of the party again, they took refuge between dense trees and bushes. Logs reduced to ashes and worn down paths were clear signs it was an abandoned camp site. With their numbers dwindled, it was a risk to rest in a place that may belong to demons.

Herbs and ointment filled the air with fresh minty aromas. Injuries were minimal and required cleaning cuts and bandaging burning scars and cuts. Flame Lord was conscious and laid on her back, curled up against a fire lit up by Phantom and soaking in its tender warmth. Leaves were used as a makeshift bed for the redhead, fire flickering and its light forming shadows over her exposed skin.

“Corrupted monsters must have followed us into Demon Realm,” Phantom was hard pressed to sugar coat himself. It was what it was. The constant battle against demons had taken a toll on the young man, where his cheery disposition was replaced with wariness. A solemn smile was all he had to offer.  

“It was an ambush,” Devi curved her hands into tight fists and formed creases on her dress. “They attacked when we let our guards down.”

It wasn’t an accusation, but a statement. They placed too much faith in the belief that entering Demon Realm would be their biggest obstruction. It never occurred to Abysser that other beings may follow them and take advantage of their resources.

Despite the corrupted monsters running rampant, it was apparent they were in a new dimension untouched by sunlight. Fluorescent plants dominated the fauna, neon particles outlining shapes unheard of in Elrios that would have fascinated Abysser if it wasn’t for their dire situation. Their intention was to visit Demon Realm to investigate the territory, but they were already ambushed within minutes of arrival.  

“Have you noticed something is off?” Timoria asked. It was something that has been bothering her since they left battle. She looked at Phantom and Devi before she uttered, “It feels like my power is a fraction of what it once was.”

Devi gave her a curt nod, “You feel it too? Eun’s been complaining.”

Abysser once wondered if weakness in the El’s influence would affect Eun’s presence, but that didn’t seem to be the case. At least they could rely on Eun and Devi for fire power if opportunities required them to, for better or worse.  

“The El Masters said Demon Realm lacks the resources we have,” Phantom thought out loud. “Maybe the El’s influence is weaker the further we are away from Elrios.”   

“Add said these were powered by the El,” Abysser remembered. “So our friends may be closer than we thought.”

“That’s optimistic of you to think so. How cute,” Devi laughed. A faint smile appeared on her otherwise flawless features, “Things will be harder without our dear leader.”

“Where’s Elsword?”

Flame sat up. The fire user had her legs tucked in and her hair swept to the side. Her hands twitched in anticipation to pull out the Claymore mounted to her back to fight nonexistent corrupted monsters.

“Don’t stand!” Timoria tugged the knight’s arm down. Her small figure did little to help, waving her arms and flapping her bat-like wings in a flimsy effort to stop the red knight from moving. “You’ll open your wounds.”

“But what about Elsword?” Flame did mental headcount: Abysser, Timoria, Phantom, and Devi. “Is he safe?”

“He’s gone. The monster left with him,” Abysser said. “You need to heal first.”

Physical contact snapped Flame out of a trance, kneeling on one knee for support and hissing from the pain. Clean bandages wrapped around her forearm and around her forehead, sweat accumulating inside her palms. Red sparks crackled from her fingertips and her hair faded back to a dull shade of red.     

“Let us find him.” Devi smirked, “We’ll take care of the culprit.”

“It’s my fault that thing got away,” Flame gritted her teeth. “If I had been faster-”

“You would be dead and snapped your spine,” Devi said with curtness. “Five of us fought and it still walked. Do you really think you can take it on by yourself?”

“If that will save my brother, so be it.” Flame was stubborn, “I’m his older sister.”

Devi snapped, “Does he need a dead sister?”  

The piercing question silenced Flame, trembling hands and the redhead biting the side of her cheeks from retaliating. She blinked, but there were tears, dampening one side of her face. It was painful to see the red knight losing confidence after the El Search Party narrowly rescued Elsword and brought him back to Elrianode.

Devi placed her hands Flame’s, fingers intertwined and clasped together. In closing the distance between them, she pulled the fire user up. They stood inches apart with Devi placing one hand over the other’s shoulder and leaning towards Flame.      

“Elsword can take care of himself. Have some faith in him, he’ll be safe,” Devi reassured her. Her voice was light and chirpy, but her eyes narrowed and glistened at the next words. “Because if he isn’t, I’ll make sure the kidnapper knows that.”

Flame laughed weakly, “I’ll make sure to remember that.”

“Let’s think of a plan first.” Abysser interrupted the two, “Our chance of survival will be better if there’s more of us.”

Devi and Flame glanced at each other and let go, hands and arms falling to the side. Flame wiped her sore face and fixed her eyes on the ground with newfound interest, using her Claymore encased in its sword sash as a base to support her weight. Lips fell back into a small frown as Devi lowered her head, deep in thought and seriousness traced over her features.  

“You can’t reach them?” Flame played with the microphone’s mouthpiece.

“No,” Phantom shook his head. “But they can’t be far. I heard voices on the other side of the river. That might be them.”

“Let’s find the others,” Flame said. “We can’t afford to lose another member.”  

“Is finding everyone so important that we need to do it now?” Timoria asked, “It’s getting late and demons are more active at night.”

Devi glared at Flame. “You’re not moving anywhere after I bandaged you.”

Abysser sighed. Not that he had didn’t trust his teammates, but they were above all still children, especially Devi with her hard headedness. Emotions ruled over her heart and too often lead to unnecessary conflicts.

He understood Flame’s frustration in wanting to regroup after Rune was taken by the monsters, but was it wise to reunite into a bigger group and attract more attention? They defeated the corrupted beings, but not all of them. He had a feeling they would meet those monsters again if they were still lurking in the shadows. It was a close call to survive and they almost burned down the forest if not for the downpour that came after.

Where was Blade to tell them off on starting foolish fights? No wonder the old man was always tired.

“Hey, we don’t need any more broken bones.” Abysser scratched the back of his neck with exasperation. “We can always decide tomorrow on what to do next. Let’s sleep over this before making rash decisions.”    

Night was quickly approaching, or at least that’s what Timoria claimed anyway. As it was his first time in the Demon Realm like all of his teammates, he could only rely on what the smaller demon knew for information on enemy territory.

Threading into enemy territory was a commonality. Today would be the first time Abysser had to care for those besides himself. His former occupation gave him the luxury to fend for himself, although having teammates helped ease his mind from the implications of being in foreign realm.

“Fine,” Flame crossed her arms and fought to keep her lips pursed.

Silver shooter in hand, Phantom played with the pistol, relaxing his fingers before toying over the trigger again. Resting his hand over Flame’s shoulder, the blonde gave her an encouraging smile.

“I’ll keep watch for the first two hours,” Phantom volunteered. “You don’t need to do that tonight. Go ahead and sleep.”

Flame blinked at the offer, but accepted with a grateful smile.

Timoria grinned, placing her hand over her hips, “Wake me up so I can take over when you’re done. I don’t think any monsters will go after someone as strong as me, but you never know~”

Abysser snorted at Timoria’s cheeky comment, but chuckled. Energetic as always. Things certainly didn’t stay boring after he met Timoria and the others. For them to be excited over something as simple as keeping night patrol was endearing, if not childish. Years of traveling didn’t dull their enthusiasm. It was good for his teammates to make decisions for themselves rather than wait for others.  

“I’ll go last,” Devi looked at Abysser. “Is that a problem?”

“Not at all,” Abysser replied.   

They have known each other for at least two to three years, but her disdainful gaze hasn’t dulled. How Devi viewed demons was poorly disguised, not that she made effort to hide it. Meeting a demon that maintained his reason was enough to make her snarl on command. And yet, she never raised her blade on him and willingly followed the group into Demon Realm. Abysser couldn’t pretend to act like he understood her, but her loyalty over the few that did win her heart gave him rare insight into the spear user’s mind.

Going before Devi means having Timoria will have to wake him up once her shift was done, Abysser mused. He would have roughly four to five hours of sleep before Timoria invaded his consciousness with some stupid meme joke Rune told her. Maybe he could make coffee and breakfast for everyone while Devi kept watch.

“Sleep well,” Abysser said, but he knew Devi wasn’t listening. Her eyes were only on a redhead, who was already asleep.      

Bluhen

Knight didn’t come back.

The presence of his El slipped away from Bluhen’s subconscious like flickering flames. How could he allow this to happen? Monster blood dripped over his gloves, staining them with dark blue metallic grime. It wasn’t until every last corrupted monster he could find was taken down did he notice Knight’s disappearance. Waves of El washed over him, sending the priest over false trails to where he thought his friend was. He should have known better than to believe that his senses wouldn’t be affected by the Dark El.

Night fell when he returned to a scattered campsite. Tents were still perched up, but there was a discernible sense of urgency among the chaos. Firewood piled over a pit with smoke and flames fanning over, ashes dusted over twigs and fallen logs feeding off of it. With a party as big as theirs, it was getting difficult for Bluhen to see who was present.   

“He’s not with you,” a voice came from behind.   

For the first time, Bluhen experienced a dry mouth in seeing the familiar red colored hair. It wasn’t Knight’s hair, but Empire Sword’s. Long hair tied into a flowing ponytail with braids, she was Knight’s sister. Empire was the youngest person to become a captain and led the Velder army. Apparently impressive according to humans, but it meant little to the priest. Ms. Wizard was a prodigy in magic and Mr. Ancient could wield nasod technology with ease. Was it unusual to say a woman could lead an army at a young age as well?  

Bluhen made eye contact with the red knight with reluctance before lowering his head with shame. There was no way around it. He couldn’t lie, especially to someone Knight held to in high regards. Knight would never forgive him. The priest shook his head, his eyes wandered anywhere but where Empire was.  

“What happened?” Empire asked. “Aisha and Chung were gone all day and Rena was thinking of asking the dark elves tomorrow about Elsword. Was he with you?”  

Mr. Guardian was supposed to be resting! Bluhen pressed a finger over his lips. Did everyone spend all day looking for Knight? He should have known that their group would go into a frenzy should their leader have gone missing. Envy bloomed in the depths of his heart, gnawing at his insides. Knight was fortunate to be cared for by so many people. Crude thoughts sat on the edge of Bluhen’s tongue, who fought the urge to chide at their trite efforts when they should be conserving their energy. It was his fault Knight went missing, not them…     

What happened, Bluhen mouthed in mimicry. Ambush. In the forest. They were outnumbered and outpowered. Knight urged him to head the opposite direction to cut down on their opponents’ forces against them. It worked, but where was Knight? Bluhen laughed without humor.

“Corrupted monsters,” was all Bluhen could muster, afraid to talk more in betraying his voice. “He’s gone.”    

“Here?” Empire was alarmed, “But we left them behind in Elrianode.”

“Well someone or something must have let them in,” Bluhen was relieved to find his words again.

“You, Red.” A man with a fringe over one his eyes appeared to the sound of their voices. Doom Bringer glanced over to Bluhen.

“Is there something you need?” Empire ignored the nickname gifted by the brawler. For someone who had received news of her brother gone missing, she remained composed with her lips sealed into a straight line and an even voice. Many in her position would have burst into tears, but Empire left little vulnerabilities in her exterior.

“Nasod Arm wanted to show you something.” Bringer said. There was no jeering from the tracer, all business in his tone. What did Mr. Half-Nasod see in making Mr. Ancient the messenger boy?

“Raven found something?” The red knight’s attention turned to Bringer. “What is it?”

“You don’t have it with you?” Bluhen asked.

For once, Bringer was uncertain on his choice of words, scrutinizing them with an unreadable expression. Was that pity he sensed from the brawler? He mumbled, “Nasod Arm wanted you to see it first before anyone else.”

It was as if Bluhen wasn’t there, although it was far from the first thing that made him dislike the brawler. Two sharp tongued individuals holding a conversation could only erupt into a full spar. The strange clothes and the way Bringer talked made him an easy target for Bluhen to pick on. With Knight gone, there was little else to obscure them from having more disagreements.    

Looking at Bluhen, the tracer shrugged. “Guess you can come too since Elbrat liked you.”

Bluhen didn’t like the use of the past tense. The short gasp from Empire told him the same, the red haired woman gritting her teeth before forcing a smile. Did she always do that? Ms. Knight Captain may not have it all together as he initially thought.  

A man with impressive armor was waiting for them inside a pitched up tent. Black armor outlined with orange highlights plated around his arms, shoulders, and over his back with chest exposed. Bluhen made out something black and metallic case gleaming from under Rage’s arm.

A black scabbard. Clutching it in hand, Rage handed it to the red knight, “I found it lying in the forest. I’m sorry.”

She grasped the case with clenched teeth, breathing light shallow breaths. Silent tears streaked down her cheeks as Empire mourned. Her body visibly shook, dropping her defense and cradling the greatsword with care.

Bringer and Bluhen exchanged glances at one another before the brawler approached the red-haired woman. Arm extended out, Bringer placed his hand over her head - what was he doing? It took Bluhen a split second to realize that he was patting her back, an awkward gesture, but not one with bad intent. Bringer wore a scowl not directed at her.  

Seeing Empire cry struck something deep within Bluhen, who held no reaction even as he witnessed the once prideful knight fall into despair. Even Mr. Ancient had enough sense to comfort a crying woman when the priest struggled to speak more than two sentences at a time. He was supposed to have more self-awareness of his emotions, wasn’t he?  

“You look pale,” Rage’s voice brought Bluhen back to the present. “Are you okay?”

Bluhen shrugged it off with a laugh, “It’s nothing. You should be more worried for Ms. Knight Captain.”

The older male gave him with a serious expression (Did he ever smile?), “I can be worried for all of you.”

He couldn’t fathom that kind of response, but Bluhen nodded as if he understood. Maybe once he gets some rest, he’ll have more time to process and sort out his emotions. His head spun as one thing after another was said to him.

“Excuse me, am I interrupting something?” Daybreaker entered the tent with urgency.

Perched over her glove was an entity that vaguely resembled a bird. White wings branched out with lime green ends matching its tail feathers and a single gem carved into its pale chest. Big enough to put up a fight with the eagles inhabiting Lanox, it flapped its wings a few times before settling on top of Daybreaker’s shoulder with content, cooing as the elf stroked its feathers. Despite having no eyes, Bluhen felt its gaze if it could have one because its head turned to him with scrutiny in its gestures.

“I just talked to Aisha,” Between the elf’s index finger was a green notepad with simplistic flowers bordering the edges. It was the first time Bluhen had seen it, but he caught a glimpse of neat handwriting in emerald ink, letters curled and intertwined at the ends to one another.  

“Aisha’s here?” Empire wiped her tears away, fixed her posture, and was quick to get back on her feet. No matter how long he had known them, Knight’s friends never failed to impress Bluhen. It was hard to believe she was crying just moments ago.   

Daybreaker shook her head, tapping her finger over a communicator identical to the set the rest of the party had, a black device with deep purple lines marked on the sides. After losing Apsara in Hamel ten times too many, Bringer pulled an all-nighter to build a set so they could keep tabs on each other for long distances.    

“She said Chung was with her,” Daybreaker said. “They’ve at the edge of the forest where the dark elves are.”

“What are they doing there?” Bringer asked. “Unless they’re suggesting the brat pissed them off-”

“I would watch your mouth when talking about someone who was recently declared deceased, Mr. Ancient.” Bluhen set his tone to what he thought was a friendly one, but the brawler’s reaction told him an opposing story. Arms slumped over the side, a sheepish expression over pale features and artificial eyes that made him unearthly to look at. The priest shared no guilt in making Bringer uncomfortable for the unruly comment.

“Guys,” Empire glared at the bickering men. “Ain, I know you’re upset, but now is not the time. Add, please refrain yourself from talking about my brother like that.”

“I was going to say it’s unlikely because the idiot spent too much time making friends with the dark elves,” Bringer grumbled.

That didn’t change his view of Bringer for the better, but the answer wasn’t one Bluhen expected. With the amount of complaining and snide commentaries, he thought the tracer loathed Knight for petty reasons he still didn’t understand. “Nasod King,” was all Bringer would offer for an explanation when asked. Just when he thought he had stayed long enough with the El Search Party, humans continued to surpass his expectations for them. How peculiar.         

Sensing the tension between the party, Rage coughed. “There’s valuable information she can’t disclose,” he read off the notepad from his angle. “They want us to meet up with them first thing tomorrow morning.”

“That’s right,” Daybreaker breathed in relief for an excuse to change the topic. “It sounds like Aisha and Chung found something big because they want all of us to be present.”

“What do you think, Add?” Empire asked, “does it look like a trap?”

“Now you ask me for my opinion?” The brawler cackled, “Bring us all together and we’ll be a neatly wrapped gift for someone to ambush us. But you’re going to ignore me, aren’t you?”

“It’s true that our big number has made us easy targets,” Empire rubbed her forehead, “However, I think our chances of survival are higher if we stay as a group if we see those corrupted beasts from Elrianode.”

“I’ll tell everyone else in camp to pack for tomorrow,” Rage offered. “Is there anything else we should know?”

Daybringer rescanned her notes and paused, scrunching up her brows in confusion. Placing her finger over the last line, she was hesitant.

“They said to bring extra potions and to have Ain close by.”

“Did they forget to bring medicine with them?” Empire pondered out loud. “That’s unlike them. What’s going on?”

Bluhen couldn’t begin to guess what the answer could be.

Anemos

Hair tied back into a ponytail, wind picked up beneath Anemos’ feet. Leaves scattered into the gusting winds around her. The sky painted a vibrant contrast of blues and reds as she observed Furious Blade cleaning his blade for the umpteenth time that evening. Fire crackled in a pitch for Anemos to curl up closer for warmth, closing her hands tight before opening them to feel the night air.

Not unlike some parts of Elrios, the Demon Realm held many species of flora and fauna she had never heard or seen before her journey with her teammates. Uneasiness settled after dinner when Anemos finally had the time to assess their situation.

They have spent almost a full day in a new world where night and day held no distinction unless they checked for time from Dominator, who was more than happy to tell them down to the last second. Half of their friends have gone missing despite having spent much of the day searching for them. Anemos prayed that they didn’t suffer a similar fate as Rune, who was snatched away by the monsters from Elrianode that showed up out of nowhere. By the time she and the others arrived at the scene, their friends were nowhere to be found. Were Henir cultists waiting for them?

“I take it that your arm is healing well?” A perky voice asked. Arms crossed, Oz elaborated when Anemos raised a brow. “Those demon thorns were pretty nasty.”

“Works perfect like a charm,” Anemos beamed. “You really are something for coming up with something on the spot.”

Oz smirked, “What can I say? I’m a natural, but I have to say your knowledge on those herbs were spot on.”

None of the elixirs could heal the burn. Anemos was an alchemist, but she had more faith the dark mage, who specialized in antidotes and curse remedies. Finding ingredients that wouldn’t harm elves and humans wasn’t difficult when combining Anemos’ knowledge on plants with Dominator’s technology. The fauna here weren’t too alien to the ones she knew as a child when she lived with elves. Even if half of the plants were fluorescent, the similarities were enough for Anemos to question if Demon Realm was a mirror world to what Elrios was. It fit the theory they learned in Elrianode.       

Beside her was Dominator, who had Dynamo rearranged into a seat for the scientist to sit on. Anemos couldn’t imagine how anyone could be comfortable sitting on blocks of cubes for support, but Dominator didn’t seem to notice or care. Mumbling to himself, he leaned over, scrutinizing his codes over an impressive array of holographic screens. Light from the screens lit up his face, an eerie glow in the dark.         

“Is that the communicator?” Anemos saw the device sitting in the scientist’s hand. At a glance, it was unimpressive and could fit inside one’s palm, white with lilac highlights. It had a magnetic clip to pin on their clothes and could communicate long distance for days at a time.   

“And now a piece of trash,” Dominator snorted. “The Dark El is making it hard for it to connect to the others.”

“So you’re throwing it away?” Oz asked.

“I never said that,” the scientist was offended by the suggestion. “It just needs recoding and adjustments.”  

Anemos laughed, “Thank you. That’s more than enough.”

Even if Anemos was old enough to remember the Nasod War, her knowledge in Nasods and human technology was limited. She more often than not relied on Dominator and Code: Ultimate to explain the technicalities. Elves had their own branch of science and technology, but the progress humans made was admirable, even if the outcomes weren’t always benign.

The coy expression off Dominator’s face evaporated into nervousness when he heard the sound of steel boots quickly approaching. He stood up and laugh. “Ah, Eve. Did you finally decide to join us? How-”

“I have a question,” Ultimate cut him off. “Did you set the correct coordinates?” Her wings were hidden from lack of use, but her helmet remained in place. Moby and Remy floated beside the Nasod queen.   

“Of course I did!” Dominator protested, “Are you saying I miscalculated?”

“I’m asking if you are aware that we are weeks ahead than yesterday,” she said with more iciness than should be possible for a Nasod. Pointing at Oz, the Nasod queen narrowed her eyes. “Moby and Remy are detecting your El resonance in two places.”

“Weeks ahead?” That caught Blade’s attention.

“What do you mean there’s someone with my El resonance?” Oz demanded to know and turned to Dominator, “Explain.”

“Hey, this is all new to me too!” Dominator sweated and chose to address Ultimate’s questions first, “Maybe there was a time jump, but as long as it’s the right dimension…”

“Demon Realm is indeed a dimension of its own, but Ms. Queen is correct. There is someone else with El resonance like Ms. Wizard. I sense someone with Mr. Guardian’s El as well, but I don’t think it’s him.” Richter contributed his opinion on the matter.

“Aren’t you the chatty one today,” Dominator mused.

Richter ignored the scientist.

Chung and Aisha? Anemos shook her head. Phantom’s status was unknown with their means of communication being down, but Oz has been with them the whole time since they have crash landed into Demon Realm. It reminded her of the shadows plaguing the Hall of El. Could this be the enemy luring them out? This was strange.

“But this is Demon Realm, is it not?” Blade asked, “Does it matter if it’s not the exact one we had in mind?”

Dominator checked his screens for a detail he may have missed with furrowed brows. Panels ran a multitude of programs all at once, an overwhelming maze of colors blinking numbers and letters too rapidly for one to process.

“The Queen and priest are right about the El resonance,” Dominator said. “Time differences aside, there’s a possibility that the Demon Realm is occupied by us from another dimension. We might run into them.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” Oz grumbled. Looking at her teammates for a reaction, the dark mage backed away when no one rejected Dominator’s explanation. “Seriously? Really?” She groaned, “Nothing is ever simple when Elsword is involved!”

“Add brought us here,” Ultimate corrected her.

“Who joined us because of Elsword!” The purple haired woman threw her arms in the air, “I swear, when I find that idiot, I’m gonna... Who thought it was a good idea to come here?”

“It’s already done,” Blade shrugged. “It can’t be helped.”   

Another version of themselves. Anemos wasn’t sure what to think about that. They have encountered Henir’s dimension because of Glave, but knowing that there were others like themselves was a harder concept to wrap one’s mind around. What should happen if they were to meet themselves?

“Hello?” Dominator’s voice was soft, “Ah, lab rat. Still alive I see. Huh? No, everyone’s here.”

“Is that Chung?” Oz twisted her body in seeing the scientist talking into the communicator. “You got it to work?” She fumed when her question was left unanswered.

“The brat isn’t with you? I see… You’re close to the riverbed, okay.” Dominator seemed aware of the sudden attention he had earned from his teammates, grinning when he caught them looking at him for information. “Tomorrow morning? Got it. Demons active at night… that will be valuable information to know for the future.”

When Dominator hung up the call, the campsite broke into chaos.

“You sure enjoy hearing yourself talk,” Oz had her arms behind her head.

“You’re one to talk, witch!” Dominator quipped back and turned red at her comment.

“Everyone must be well rested,” Blade raised his voice. “Go straight to bed after this!”

“I’ll have Remy and Moby scan for the safest route tomorrow,” Ultimate said.

Anemos sighed, “At least we can sleep tonight knowing where everyone is.”

Richter closed his eyes, “we still need to find Elsword.”

Anemos’ expression softened, “I know. Please be patient. We’ll find him.”

Richter didn’t respond.

The elf raised her hand to touch his shoulder with kindness. She wanted him to know he wasn’t alone in worrying for their friend. Rune would have chuckled and called them mother hens for fussing over him. His cheery and optimistic personality was naive, foolish, but it was something that beckoned Anemos to keep an eye on him, ever curious to see what his decision would be when confronted with troubled waters. She wondered if that was what made so many join him on a never ending journey most humans would have grown tired to after weeks.

Finding a place to rest, Anemos laid out her sleeping bag when she heard sparks. It didn’t sound like it was coming from their campfire. A demon or a small animal? She thought she saw something in the forest. Four thin black tails poked out from a bush in a distance, but when Anemos went to check, there was nothing.

What was that?    

[amemixfan]

The "I won't let anyone hurt you, you're safe with me."

Still within my Lennox series.Name used here is Hannah. ——It’s a nice day outside. The sun streams through puffy clouds and a nice breeze rustles our clothing. Small butterflies flutter past our little clearing and birds sing nearby. Truly, we couldn’t have picked a better outing. I spread out the blanket for the picnic for us and smile up at Lennox. “Today is a great day for a picnic, yeah?”I hold out my arm to embrace him, but Lennox makes a face and sidesteps me. He grumbles something under his breath about the pollen in the air and his sinuses before taking the basket from me. “I can’t believe you talked me into this,” he mutters. He rips open the picnic basket and fishes around until he finds the bottle of wine he had stashed inside it. I plop down on the picnic blanket and press my hands to my knees. The breeze feels truly great. After being locked up in a castle for months on end, I enjoy every little outing we can get. “The sun is good for you, Len, you need Vitamin D every once in a while.” I reach out my fingers and stroke at his jawline. He moves his head back, sends me a glare capable of freezing over deserts, and uncorks the wine bottle. “This is ridiculous. One hour, one, and then we go back. I have a meeting with General Richter this afternoon about troop movements,” Lennox mutters. He puts the bottle to his lips and tilts his head back. I hum and stare up at the sunny sky. There hasn’t been a day this beautiful since the day I was taken. That day had been as lovely as this one. I smile to myself. It had been a terrible chore to convince Lennox to come with me on this day out. Every time I insisted on us going somewhere that wasn’t his church or his room, he shot me down. For weeks I had insisted on a simple outing to either the town adjacent to the palace or the fields by the river, and for weeks he had threatened to tear out my vocal chords if I didn’t leave him be. Finally, I had wore him out. He had agreed to ‘go through with my stupid idea’ if only I promised to keep my mouth shut from now on and leave him be. “You have to admit you enjoy this, Len. It’s a beautiful day,” I grin. I reach out my finger to a passing butterfly. It lands on it briefly before flying away. I giggle. Lennox scoffs into the wine bottle and says nothing. He looks away from me and adamantly refuses to acknowledge my presence. Typical. I don’t let this bother me. Instead, I move myself so that I am settled up next to him and put my head on his shoulder. The familiar scent of expensive cologne and blood greets me. I smile softly and let it envelop me. After so long, it smells like home. “Do you know why I wanted to come here?” I murmur. My fingers reach out for his hand on the wine bottle. He lets me take his hand and passes the beverage to his other one. “Because you are immature and enjoy annoying me?” Lennox guesses. I stick my tongue out at him playfully. He makes a face and mumbles ‘such a child’ underneath his breath. “No,” I hum, “because today it’s been three years.”Silence. Lennox glances at me out of the corner of his eye before doing the mental calculation. I can practically see him running through the numbers in his head. I trace a pattern on his knuckle. Today has marked three years of being together. Three years ago, he snatched me from my old life and made me a new one. For three years, I’ve been at his side and have served him as lover and servant. “I lost count,” Lennox admits after a lasting quiet, “So I have suffered through your idiocy for three summers.”I make a sound at the back of my throat at his words and move my head. From my place, I can see something in his eyes. For all his cold words, his gaze on me is somehow softer. It seems like he has realized the importance of today. I lean close and press a featherlight kiss to his cheek. As always, he tenses before making a sound of disgust and moving away. I don’t let this bother me. Instead, I move and press another one to his jaw. “I’m glad for these three years, you know, I enjoy being at your side,” I whisper. Lennox grunts underneath his breath but doesn’t comment on it. I move my head and nod at the landscape before us. The clearing has several wildflowers up ahead and I can hear a rushing stream from nearby. It is a truly romantic setting. “Don’t tell me you don’t enjoy being with me,” I tease. I grin at him and watch a passing yellow butterfly. It floats around us almost as if framing us for a beautiful portrait. I trace its path with my finger but it refuses to land there. Instead, it stretches its beautiful wings and enjoys its freedom. The little insect flies around with joy and hope and brilliance. I’m almost envious of It’s carefree nature. “See? The butterflies are out,” I chirp. My fingers reach out for the yellow one and I almost manage to trap it in my hands but it flits past my grip. “When I was a kid,” Lennox begins, “My mother had a plant in her garden. The butterflies loved gathering there. I used to play there and catch them. I liked snagging them by their wings and letting them fly in my hands. My mother would get angry at me. She said I was hurting them.”The confession is so surprising that I abandon trying to catch my winged companion. My eyebrow raises up and I press my hand to my chin. Lennox doesn’t often comment about his childhood. His past is locked with a thick key and padlock, so any little comment he throws my way is greatly appreciated. I edge closer. “Did you know it hurt them?”Lennox observes the butterfly fluttering past him. “No. I just wanted to see their beauty. I did not own much growing up, no toys, no friends, nothing. What little I could call mine was treasured. Butterflies were lovely and they swarmed my home. I often trapped them because I wanted to observe them. I never meant to hurt them. They are fragile things.”I feel a smidge of sympathy at his words. I reach out and hold his hand in mine. “Did you stop afterwords then? If you knew you were hurting them?”I move my head to his shoulder again. Sensing my plan, Lennox moves his arm before I can. He sends me a warning look before scoffing. “No. I thought it was annoying that they could not take something as simple as me catching them. They were weak and just another thing to reject me. I stopped catching them because I grew disgusted with them.”His voice is venomous and harsh. I wince and bite my lip. He has so much pain in him. His loneliness buzzes underneath his skin and torments him. I’ve tried to take some of the burden off his shoulders but have only partly succeeded. While I have noticed a change in him, his gaze has softened when he looks at me and he’s grown less cruel with his cult when I’m around, he still carries a lot of torment. I only wish I was enough to fully liberate him. I kiss his jaw and nod at the yellow butterfly from before. It twirls around in the air before moving for us. I reach out to catch it again but it averts my grasp and settles for Lennox instead. It lands on his nose and perches there. I laugh and wish I had brought a camera from Chicago. It’s such a cute sight to see Lennox’s startled face and blush as the butterfly stares up at him that I would have loved to capture it. “It looks like they weren’t all rejecting you, Len. Maybe you just needed to hold out for a butterfly that wanted to be at your side.”I reach out my finger to stroke the butterfly-But Lennox moves in a flash. Before I can register what is happening, his hand closes around the butterfly and he crushes it in his fingers. I gasp as he lets the tiny corpse fall away from us. He makes a sound of disgust and wipes his fingers against the picnic blanket. “Disgusting insect,” he grumbles. I stare at him in utter shock. When what he has done finally dawns on me, I shudder. A tiny part of me is scared by his actions although I do not know why. I swallow. “You killed it.”“Brilliant observation, Hannah, you are truly a great scholar,” Lennox’s voice drips with sarcasm. He glares at me and takes another swig of the wine bottle. I blink, bite my cheek, and reel in my emotions. Once I’ve gotten them under control, I shake my head and push the thoughts of the tiny mangled corpse away. Instead, I reach out and pull out a small sandwich from the picnic basket. I unwrap it slowly and break it in half. Passing over a half to Lennox, I hum. “You like these don’t you?”“They are edible,” Lennox answers back. He takes a bite out of his and chews slowly. His gaze scans around the clearing in thought. I stare at my half and pull out the lettuce and tomatoes. “I tried to make your favorites today. A thank you for this,” I raise up my right ring finger. A tiny gold ring with a salt water pearl rests there. It had been Lennox’s gift last week. He had surprised me with it after he had left a particularly bad bruise on the corner of my mouth in a fit of rage. Lennox glances at the band and makes a sound at the back of his throat to feign listening. I press on and reach out for his own right hand. A gold band rests there too with my initial engraved in it. He had purchased it with my ring. They weren’t wedding rings, Lennox didn’t believe in marriage and often called it a sham devised by merchants to sell foolish couples wedding dresses, but they might as well be. We had already been together for three years and I was at his side constantly-the only woman to have that honor. I was his and he was mine. In the eyes of his congregation, we were already wed. I trace the band on his finger and smile at him. “Really, Len, thank you. You didn’t have to.”He shrugs but says nothing. Perhaps it is my imagination but I see a flush of color to his cheeks. I laugh lightly to myself and wrap an arm around his frame. My lips move forward and I kiss the corner of his mouth. He tenses, hands move to push me off, but changes his mind at the last moment. His face moves closer and he kisses me in turn. I can taste the wine and sandwich on his breath. My hand goes for his hair and I twirl the strands in between my fingertips. After a few moments, he withdraws but doesn’t move entirely out of my grasp. Instead, his hands move to my waist and his forehead presses against mine. Amber eyes close shut and he shudders against me. I can feel the war of emotions simmering in him. He is no longer the terrifying and cruel General he once was. Now, his rage is manageable, his actions are more calculated, and, most importantly, his loneliness is subsiding with every second I am at his side. I have been a positive influence in him and might just be able to change him. Perhaps in due time I will be able to fully erase the emotional burden he carries with him. I press a kiss to his nose and nip the skin there. He makes a sound at the back of his throat, something akin to an annoyed grunt, but doesn’t move. I move for his mouth again and kiss him. This kiss is brief and light. He leans into it and moves one hand to my hair while the other pushes my waist closer to him. I close my eyes and feel his breath at my lips. One of my hands knot into his hair while the other moves to his coat. Today he has abandoned his usual coat and dons a different one, a simple, teal overcoat worth more than anything in the Capital’s treasury. I work at undoing the pearl buttons on it and he moves his hand to my dress. My breath hitches as he goes to the lace at the back of it. When his fingers begin to work at its ties, entirely practiced from all the times he has done it before, I shiver. “I love you.” The words leave my lips in a tiny pant enriched with emotion and desire. Lennox flinches and stills. He keeps his eyes closed but a crease appears on his brow. “Love is a fable,” he replies. I shake my head and manage to undo his jacket. It slips from his shoulders to reveal a silk cravat and thin blue shirt. “It’s not. I really do love you,” I whisper. I stroke his cheek with one hand and brush another kiss against his lips. He kisses back before withdrawing. His eyes open and he stares at me. There’s ice in his eyes, cruelty that shines through in every gaze, but there’s also something impossibly soft there. An emotion I haven’t seen before is appearing in his gaze. It mirrors my own and sends waves of warmth through me. Perhaps it is just my imagination, perhaps it is just my hope, but it seems like love. My breath hitches as Lennox moves to my jaw. He bites at the skin there, sharp enough to hurt, then soothes the area with his tongue. I close my eyes and dig my nails into the expensive fabric of his shirt. “How many times have you said that before? To how many men have you said those same words?” Lennox asks. His voice cuts me out of my thoughts and I blink up at him. His fingers have stilled on my dress and his face is flushed. There’s desire emanating off of him along with something much more personal and kind. Affection. I reach out my hand and place it at his cheek. He tenses at the touch but doesn’t shove me away. That is a good sign. “Once. Once before,” I reply. I close my eyes and lean forward. A flash of something tickles at my memory. I remember a man with mismatched eyes who had repeated that same phrase to me eons ago, a man who had promised to make me happy, someone who had meant the world to me. His memory shines in my mind for half a second before it disappears like a wisp of smoke. I shake my head to clear it and return to Lennox. “But you’re the only time I’ve meant it.”He digests this information, takes it in stride, and moves forward. His hand goes for my hair and he rips the hairpin in it out. He tosses it somewhere and crashes my mouth against his. I let out a squeak as I am pressed to him. He kisses me like he needs it to survive and leans over me. His hands pull at my dress and my shoulder is bared. I feel the warm breeze at my skin. A flush spreads across my face and I make a sound as his mouth moves to the exposed skin. While it isn’t the first time he has taken me outdoors, this time feels different. His movements aren’t simply carnal and fraught with possession like so many other times. This time, there is something much more caring about it-more personal. Even the harsh bites he levies against my skin have an undercurrent of something more precious. He lifts his head and kisses me again. It’s a soft kiss unlike anything he has ever given me before. His eyes drift closed and he takes a deep breath. “If you ever tell anyone I said this, I will rip your tongue out and make you eat it,” he warns. My breath hitches yet he presses on, “but I enjoy having you at my side.”He goes to kiss me again and I meet him halfway. Excitement goes through me and I wrap my arms around his neck. “Does that mean…?” I drift off unable to finish my sentence. Lennox blushes, dark red painting his skin, and moves out of my embrace. His fingers go for my arm and he twirls the ring around my finger idly. “Yeah, yeah, it means I love you,” he grumbles. When a smile spreads across my face, his jaw clenches. “If you ever tell anyone I said that, I will rip your throat out.”I shake my head, ignore the bite in his words, and lean forward. He closes his eyes to kiss me again-And then something flies between us. A scream leaves my throat and Lennox jolts back. His hands are at his pockets in a flash and he pulls out his knives. I stand up, fix the strings of my dress, and cower at his side. A mixture of voices surrounds us. People who I don’t know yet somehow recognize emerge from the clearing. There’s three of them. A woman with light pink hair and a staff at her side, an elf with flowing hair and a bow poised towards us-And a man with mismatched eyes who sends a powerful emotion careening towards me. Our gazes meet and my knees almost buckle underneath me. I don’t remember him, not really, but something powerful in me lights up at his gaze. I open my mouth to ask him his name, needing to know it just to understand why he has an effect on me, when Lennox seizes me. His hand grabs my wrist and he yanks me behind him. A murderous glint is in his eyes and he sends a knife flying in the stranger’s direction. A flash of magic sends the knife flying away from its target and the girl slams her staff on the ground. Her eyes meet mine and there is utter relief in her gaze. “Hannah!” My name spills from her lips and she almost runs at me but holds herself back. The elf at her side sees me and similar relief floods his features as well. I see my own name slip past his lips in something akin to a prayer. I cower and press against Lennox’s back. Confusion overwhelms me and I shiver. “What’s happening?”Lennox opens his mouth to say something but never gets a chance to finish. The stranger with the mismatched eyes dives for him and he is ripped from my side. The man’s hands lock against his throat and Lennox is unable to fight him off. I scream and make a move to run towards him. I have no strength but maybe I can pull the stranger off and give Lennox time to run-Something flies past blocking my view. An arrow, similar to the one that had interrupted us before, flits past me and is lost somewhere in the clearing. I freeze. The girl from before moves towards me. Her hand reached out as if to touch me. “Hannah! It is you! It’s been three years,” she pants it out. Her eyes are wide with relief and guilt and something caring. I flinch from her and back away. “Who are you?!”My scream sounds unhinged and I dive for Lennox’s discarded coat. I yank out one of his knives and hold it aloft in front of me as a feeble attempt to ward her off. The girl skids to a stop as her elven companion knocks an arrow and aims at it me. He looks similarly startled. “Hannah? It’s us,” he replies. The girl moves forward another step and I back away. The knife in my hand shakes. I’m scared, I don’t know them-And yet I feel something. There’s something in me that is screaming. Red alarms flash in my mind and I feel lightheaded. I don’t know these assailants, yet I do know them. The girl reaches out her hand towards the knife. “What did he do to you, Hannah?” Her voice sounds tiny, shocked, and her eyes scan me quickly. I wonder what she sees. Does she see the confusion and panic on my face, or does she see the scars and bruises across my body?I take a step back and a scream makes me turn. The fight between Lennox and the third stranger is still raging. The other two distracted me from it. Lennox has been able to free himself and there is a bad bruise forming on his neck. He gasps for air, coughs, and coils his body for an attack. His blades are clenched in his hands tightly. He glares at his enemy with extreme rage and hatred. His opponent meets his gaze with his own hard stare. His mismatched eyes blaze with fury, something much more terrifying than Lennox’s own anger, and his hands are almost surrounded by flame. He’s screaming something at Lennox, biting it through clenched teeth, but I can only make out brief snippets of it. “…took her from me…kill you…you hurt her…I loved her…”His voice sends a powerful pain in my skull and I cry out. My hand presses to my temple and the knife shakes in my grasp. The girl’s voice brings me back. She is close to me now, almost at me, and her elven companion is inching forward behind her. Her hands are in front of her to show me that she is unarmed and her gaze is soft and almost frightened. Not of me, I realize, but for me. “Hannah, it’s okay. I’m Altea. We were friends before. Please tell me you remember me.” She reaches out for me and I move back. “I don’t know you! Stay away!” I swipe at her with the knife and she steps back. Her companion lifts his bow in warning. Still, I don’t miss the way his gaze is pitying and pleading when he regards me. I risk a glance at the fight next to us and see that Lennox is losing. He throws blades at a mad speed, but his opponent somehow dodges each one. He rushes at Lennox in turn and lands good blows on his face. I wince at a particular bad one on his jaw. I move to help him when I see Lennox grope blindly at his vest. His daggers are gone and none are within reach. He turns pale and realizes he won’t win this fight. I whisper his name underneath my breath, shake in fear for him, and grit my teeth. The stranger moves forward and wraps his hands around Lennox’s throat. Lennox resists weakly but his grip won’t budge. He gropes at the stranger’s hand in panic. I see the way his lips turn blue, skin goes white-And I panic. “Let him go!” My scream cuts through the clearing. I raise the knife in my hand and press it to my own throat. Either the stranger lets Lennox go or I die with him. Either way, I refuse to leave him. The girl screams and the elf turns pale. I press the blade deeper into my throat until I feel something warm trickle down. The elf moves forward, hands shaking. “Hannah! Don’t!”His friend turns white and screams. Her own hands are shaking. She looks at her third companion who continues to strangle Lennox all the while staring at me in shock. “Saerys! She doesn’t remember us. Let him go, she’s going to hurt herself!”The stranger, Saerys?, refuses to budge. I refuse to back down too. I press the blade in deeper so that the tiny trickle turns into a gush. The blood nearly makes me black out. I feel lightheaded. I raise my eyes and my gaze meets Lennox. He’s given up on resisting and is instead glaring at me. He mouths ‘put it down’ over and over again and gives me a stare with something akin to panic. The thought that he worries about me gives me greater strength. I move to slit my throat-And the stranger panics. He tosses Lennox aside and dives for me. His speed is quicker than any human as he arrives at me and rips the blade from my grasp. I scream as he wraps his arms around me and crushes me against his frame. He’s shaking as he holds me, lips moving in tangent with panicked phrases, yet I tune him out. My gaze meets Lennox who is on the ground and wheezing for breath. He recovers just as an arrow narrowly misses him. He staggers to his feet and begins to skirt for the edge of the clearing. The stranger holding me presses a hand to my bleeding neck and regards him with scorching hatred. “I will kill you, Lennox Arnold! You did something to her and I will undo it. She is finally free from you!”I open my mouth to beg him to let me and Lennox go, but Lennox beats me to it. He ignores the stranger’s taunts and simply meets my gaze. He raises his hand so that his gold band shines in the sunlight. “It is alright, love, I will come back for you. You are mine.” He gives me a gaze full of meaning and then spins around and disappears into the tall grass. The elf gives chase and the girl sends flying spells at his wake but I know they won’t find him. Lennox’s promise rings in my ear and I struggle against the stranger holding me. Tears stream down my face and I beat against his chest. The stranger is shaking as he holds me and he makes no move to stop my assault. His eyes are scanning me with powerful emotions I can’t comprehend. “Who are you?”I beat against his chest and the tears come faster. His gaze, his scent, his voice, there’s something incredibly familiar about him. Something tells me that I know him, yet I can’t remember. It’s confusing and overwhelming. I feel like throwing up. The stranger takes me into his arms and kisses me. I make a startled sound and try to fight him off. The kiss isn’t like the ones I’ve shared with Lennox. There’s no possession or hint of a bite. Instead, this kiss is much more powerful and emotional. I can feel the stranger’s love in it as well as his immense relief. It makes my head spin and I go slack in his arms. My tears come faster now and I give up my fight. I let the stranger embrace me and press his mouth to my ear. He’s rambling something under his breath in an attempt to soothe me. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. You’re safe with me.I finally found you. He can’t hurt you anymore.”His rambling delves into another language and I block him out. I shake in his arms and peer over his shoulder at where Lennox ran off and the other two followed. My fingers twirl the ring on my hand and I begin to cry again. I have no idea what is happening, have no idea who this stranger is, but something in me is awakening from a three year long slumber. It washes over me like a tsunami and almost drowns me. For the first time in three years, I feel something akin to freedom. It is such an intoxicating emotion that I freeze in place and say nothing as the stranger goes to kiss me again. Instead, I stand there and simmer under my growing inner war. The fight between wanting to follow Lennox and retake his side-And finally freeing myself from his grasp.

[mrmichaelchadler]

Home Entertainment Consumer Guide: May 24, 2018

8 NEW TO NETFLIX

"The 40-Year-Old Virgin" "Bridge to Terabithia" "The Kingdom" "Mamma Mia!" "Only God Forgives" "The Phantom of the Opera" "Small Town Crime" "Wanted"

11 NEW TO BLU-RAY/DVD

"The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai" "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure"

The steelbook phenomenon has been an interesting one to watch, as films that diehard fans already own are re-released in collectible, exclusive, limited edition packaging. Personally, I'm a big fan of keeping physical media in existence and so anything that helps is good by me, especially when they're a pair of movies this fun. I'm a huge fan of Bill and Ted, and the news of a potential third movie should hopefully rekindle interest in the first two, especially the timeless original. The steelbook packaging (right) is gorgeous, and all of the previous special features have been imported. You should watch "Excellent Adventure" again. It's funnier than you remember. And let's go collect steelbooks if it keeps physical media alive!

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Special Features - Buckaroo "Into The 8th Dimension" – A Two-Hour Retrospective Documentary Including Interviews With The Cast And Crew Audio Commentary With Michael And Denise Okuda Audio Commentary With Director W.D. Richter And Writer Earl Mac Rauch "Buckaroo Banzai Declassified" Featurette Alternate Opening Sequence (With Jamie Lee Curtis) Deleted Scenes Jet Car Trailer Theatrical Trailer

Special Features - Bill & Ted's Audio Commentary With Star Alex Winter And Producer Scott Kroopf Audio Commentary With Writers Chris Matheson And Ed Solomon Time Flies When You Are Having Fun! – A Look Back At A Most “Excellent Adventure,”Featuring Interviews With Actors Alex Winter And Keanu Reeves, Producer Scott Kroopf, Composer David Newman, Supporting Cast Members, And More Theatrical Trailer

"Beyond the Hills" (Criterion) "Graduation" (Criterion)

Criterion's timing of new releases is always interesting. They don't pay attention to the theatrical market as much as some other studios, who commonly release special editions timed to new sequels or major projects from the same stars. But it does feel like May's releases have been slightly timed to something with which Criterion collectors are probably familiar, the Cannes Film Festival. Take for example, this pair of Cristian Mungiu films that premiered at the most famous film event in the world. Mungiu has been a darling of Cannes for the new century, winning the Palme in 2007 for "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," Best Screenplay for "Beyond the Hills" in 2012, and Best Director for "Graduation" in 2016. The latter two are now available in sturdy Criterion editions, including special features and fantastic critical essays. Mungiu is one of the more essential filmmakers of his era, and it's nice to see Criterion keeping up with his work as it's released, creating essential editions for any Blu-ray library.

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Special Features - Beyond 2K digital transfer, approved by director Cristian Mungiu, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray New interview with Mungiu The Making of “Beyond the Hills,” a documentary from 2013, produced by Mungiu Press conference from the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, featuring Mungiu and actors Cosmina Stratan, Cristina Flutur, Valeriu Andriuta, and Dana Tapalaga? Deleted scenes Trailer New English subtitle translation PLUS: An essay by film scholar Doru Pop

Special Features - Graduation 2K digital master, approved by director Cristian Mungiu, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray New interview with Mungiu Press conference from the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, featuring Mungiu and actors Adrian Titieni, Maria Dragu?, Malina Manovici, and Rare? Andrici Deleted scenes Trailer New English subtitle translation PLUS: An essay by film critic Bilge Ebiri

"Black Panther"

Will "Black Panther" be the first Marvel movie nominated for Best Picture? It's very possible, but whether it is or isn't, it has already become one of the most important films of 2018. Not only did critics fall head over heels for what is aruably the best MCU movie, but it also made a fortune, captivating audiences around the world to the tune of over $1.3 billion worldwide, top ten all time. To call "Black Panther" a smash hit seems inadequate. It's a movement. It's a phenomenon. And it's a great film. And Disney/Marvel has granted one of their biggest film an expectedly lavish Blu-ray treatment, complete with deleted scenes and hours of details on the making of the film. It's one of the biggest films of 2018, and it's been given a matching Blu-ray treatment.

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Special Features Director's Intro From Page to Screen: A Roundtable Discussion – Delve into the film's making Crowning of a New King – Explore the world of "Black Panther" in all its color and complexity The Warriors Within – Get to know Wakanda's women and the actors who portray them The Hidden Kingdom Revealed – Wakanda's diverse people Wakanda Revealed: Exploring the Technology Deleted Scenes U.N. Meet and Greet Okoye And W'Kabi Discuss the Future of Wakanda T'Challa Remembers His Father Voices from the Past Gag Reel Exclusive Sneak Peek at "Ant-Man and The Wasp" Marvel Studios the First Ten Years: Connecting the Universe Director's Commentary

"Early Man"

There are few film critics on Earth who love Aardman Animation as much as this one, but I was pretty mixed on their latest offering, a comedy about the collision between the Stone and Bronze Age. I don't just love the classics like "Wallace and Gromit" and "Chicken Run," but I'll go to bat for "Flushed Away" and "Pirates!" But the new one, while having its moments of inspired Aardman physical humor, feels shockingly thin and less ambitious than the humor that made them famous. It's more of a short film stretched to barely feature running time. Having said that, it's a perfectly serviceable family flick and certainly a better way to keep your kids occupied than a lot of garbage in the animated genre. You could do a lot worse. But most Aardman is usually better.

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Special Features Before the Beginning of Time: Creating Early Man Nick Park: Massaging the Funny The Valley Meets the Bronze Hanging at Aardman Studios: A Workshop Exploration

"A Fantastic Woman"

The ascendancy of Sebastian Lelio's "A Fantastic Woman" to such a place of critical prominence that it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film was somewhat shocking. Sony Pictures Classics has always been a major player in that category, but I didn't see voters connecting with this story as much as they did (I expected "Loveless" or "Foxtrot" to win the prize). I think history will note the success of this film, the story of a trans woman's journey after the death of her lover, spurned by his family in her attempts to mourn. It's a powerful drama, anchored by Lelio's sensitive direction and a truly breakthrough performance by Daniela Vega, who should have been in the acting races for the Academy more than she was. One step at a time, I suppose. 

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Special Features "The Making of A Fantastic Woman" Featurette Audio Commentary with director Sebastián Lelio

"Game Night"

There are so many things to like about "Game Night," the clever comedy starring a perfectly-cast Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams as that couple you know that always takes game night with friends a little too competitively. When Bateman's brother, played by Kyle Chandler, initiates a murder mystery game to one-up his bro, it starts to get hazy as to what's a game and what's not. There are so many little things this comedy does right. It doesn't fall back on gross-out humor. It lets its couple act like actual couples. A lesser film would split up Bateman and McAdams instead of allowing them to work together. And it's perfectly cast down to even its minor roles. Although McAdams walks away with the movie, reminding us she has killer comic timing too.

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Special Features An Unforgettable Evening: Making Game Night - Featurette Gag Reel

"Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters" (Criterion)

As Paul Schrader's brilliant "First Reformed" is getting rapturous praise in theaters, Criterion digs into the vault and gives the 4k HD upgrade to what was arguably his best film as a director before his latest, "Mishima," presented with some spectacular special features. It's interesting to watch this unconventional biopic (which Roger included in his Great Movies) in light of "Reformed" as they share some similar themes and structure. Sure, "First" isn't as fragmented as this brilliant film but it's also a piece that relies heavily on narration, often over a man alone in a room (as Roger pointed out, a Schrader motif). The Criterion release is packed with great supplemental material, especially a fantastic commentary with Schrader himself and producer Alan Poul. Most of all, the movie itself looks GORGEOUS.

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Special Features New, restored 4K digital transfer of the director’s cut, supervised and approved by director Paul Schrader and cinematographer John Bailey, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray Two alternate English narrations, including one by actor Roy Scheider Audio commentary from 2006 featuring Schrader and producer Alan Poul Interviews from 2007 and 2008 with Bailey, producers Tom Luddy and Mata Yamamoto, composer Philip Glass, and production designer Eiko Ishioka Interviews from 2008 with Yukio Mishima biographer John Nathan and friend Donald Richie Audio interview from 2008 with coscreenwriter Chieko Schrader Interview excerpt from 1966 featuring Mishima talking about writing The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima, a documentary from 1985 about the author Trailer PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Kevin Jackson, a piece on the film’s censorship in Japan, and photographs of Ishioka’s sets

"The Other Side of Hope" (Criterion)

The thematicaly tied month for Criterion continues with another major fest premiere (this one from Berlin), the latest from the fantastic Aki Kaurismaki, whose dry sense of humor and deep humanism blend perfectly in this tale of an immigrant who finds sanctuary with a restaurant owner and his staff. This is a gentle, sweet little film that builds a surprisingly strong degree of emotional power and political statement by its final act. Criterion has a pattern of releasing more current foreign art house hits, often from IFC or Sundance Selects, and have sometimes taken criticism over some of the choices made in that department. No such criticism could be levied here. This is an excellent film that not nearly enough people saw when it was released. Make up for that now.

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Special Features New 2K digital transfer, approved by director Aki Kaurismäki, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray New interview with actor Sherwan Haji Footage from the press conference for the film’s premiere at the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival, featuring Kaurismäki, Haji, and actor Sakari Kuosmanen Aki and Peter, a new video essay by filmmaker Daniel Raim, based on a 1997 essay by critic Peter von Bagh, to whom The Other Side of Hope is dedicated Music videos Trailer PLUS: An essay by critic Girish Shambu

"Red Sparrow"

The latest Jennifer Lawrence spy drama is such an unusual film in that it's MUCH darker than your average multiplex blockbuster fare and yet also has that sheen of Hollywood product that sometimes holds it back from greatness. You should be warned though that this is a violent, brutal film, featuring more than one sequence of rape and torture, and that it runs over 140 minutes. Those are not the kind of elements that Hollywood studios usually allow into their blockbuster star vehicles. And so I'm tempted to give "Red Sparrow" a bit more of a pass than some other critics just because of the risks it takes. Still, it's an often unpleasant experience. You've been warned.

Buy it here 

Special Features A New Cold War: Origination and Adaptation Agents Provocateurs: The Ensemble Cast Tradecraft: Visual Authenticity Heart of the Tempest: On Location Welcome to Sparrow School: Ballet and Stunts A Puzzle of Need: Post-Production Director Commentary by Francis Lawrence 10 Deleted Scenes (With Optional Commentary by Francis Lawrence) Movies Anywhere Digital Code

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[writesandramblings]

The Captain’s Secret - p.50

"Time Space Stumble”

A/N: In the spirit of continuing occasional classic Trek escapades, I give you "Time Space Stumble."

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << 49 - Going Nowhere Fast 51 - Two Truths and a Lie >>

The tests continued. They achieved distance jumps. First small distances, differences barely visible to the naked eye, but then bigger jumps, bigger distances, measurable not in meters but kilometers. Always, though, they seemed to be trailing the Glenn just a smidgen. If they went fifty kilometers, the Glenn went sixty.

"He refuses to push us past the Glenn," said Lorca. He was standing at the window of his quarters, a hologram of Lalana beside him. The two rooms had been carefully mapped in such a way that Lalana appeared to be standing on the same plane as him, and his bed equaled her couch.

"You really have terrible luck with engineers," she informed him. "Billingsley was a 'piece of work,' Sural had no sense of humor, and now Stamets is... well, it's clear you like him, at least."

"He's a headache!" exclaimed Lorca. "The most frustrating man I've ever met."

"Yes, but how much fun do you have watching him squirm? There is a certain degree of delight in your face."

Lorca exhaled in a long chhhhh through his teeth. "No," he concluded. "I don't like Stamets. I hate him!"

Lalana clicked her tongue. "You only protest this hard when I'm onto the truth."

Lorca started to laugh. "My god, you're ridiculous."

"Yes, but would you have me any other way?"

That made him laugh so genuinely, he felt a little guilty about it. "What about your day."

"Saru came by, to check on Emellia's progress, and then they ended up spending a long time drinking tea. Apparently, Saru's old captain also drank tea."

Lorca had noted as much in a personal log many years back. "That she did," he said, with a degree of somber reverence for the departed captain. Even if Georgiou's grave miscalculation at the Binaries had potentially kicked off this war. "So Saru and Emellia get along?"

"I think she might like him even more than you like Stamets."

"Get it through that thick, blue skull of yours. I don't like Stamets!"

And yet, as they readied for the latest test of the spore displacement drive, Lorca had to admit Lalana was sort of right. Making Stamets squirm was absolutely delightful. "Stamets!" Lorca shouted, his voice filling the entirety of the bridge. "Where is my spore drive!"

Stamets, for his part, always rose to meet Lorca's level of ire. "We're not ready yet, captain! We need fifteen minutes!"

"Why!"

"Maybe I don't feel like telling you!" This was a sure sign something was going very wrong in engineering.

Lorca balled his hands into fists and took a deep breath, deliberately forcing his anger away. It half-worked. He didn't scream, but he remained firmly angry as he warned, "Don't make me come down there to engineering, lieutenant. When am I getting my drive back?"

"My spore drive up will be up and running in fifteen minutes. Not ten, not five, fifteen."

"You have five minutes!" yelled Lorca. "Bridge out!"

Everyone on the bridge was holding their breath. None of them could see Lorca's face, standing as he was at the very front of the bridge by the viewscreen. Lorca clenched his teeth and shook his head as he stared out at the stars. Then he relaxed somewhat. There was a rather nice red-orange nebula visible. Probably Lalana was staring at it right now. He'd had the main viewscreen routed through to her quarters so she could look at the same stars he did.

When Lorca turned away from the viewscreen and faced the bridge crew, he looked perfectly calm and even mildly amused. "It anyone wants a coffee, you've got ten minutes," he advised them, smiling. At the operations console, Lieutenant Owosekun smiled and tried not to laugh. She was awfully cute, but Commander Landry was over at the tactical console on the other side of the bridge, and Landry was not a woman you stepped out on unless you had a death wish. Besides, of the two, Lorca guessed Owosekun was the less experienced in bed. Pretty only went so far.

Lorca paced the bridge, walking past the stations and stretching his legs. He paused and exchanged a quick word with Saru at the science station on a briefing scheduled for later that afternoon. After seven minutes, Stamets reported to the bridge that the spore drive was ready.

"Thank you, lieutenant," said Lorca, sounding perfectly amicable.

"So, are we going to go now?" asked Stamets expectantly.

"Not just yet," said Lorca. He could picture the frustration on Stamets' face.

After a minute, Stamets asked, "Are we waiting for something?"

"You're waiting for my command," said Lorca, in the same vaguely derisive tone that had once flummoxed Sarah Billingsley on the Triton. Poor Stamets, but really, the man brought it on himself. Lorca waited just long enough that he began to get impatient himself, then declared, "Black alert! Lieutenant Stamets, do you have our destination keyed in?"

"As good as it's gonna get," said Stamets, probably rolling his eyes as he said it.

"Yes or no, Stamets."

"Yes!"

"Prepare to jump." The traditional pause. "Go."

Discovery jumped. There was the familiar sensation of clammy humidity on the skin.

Everything went sideways. The ship lurched, sending Lorca sliding across the bridge as the force of an impact overwhelmed the gravity generators. Lieutenant Detmer half-fell out of her chair at the helm. Alarms blared. At the ops panel, Owosekun managed to keep a firm grasp on her console and reported, "All systems stop!"

"Stamets!" bellowed Lorca, climbing back to his feet.

"I don't know what happened!" said Stamets, sounding genuinely panicked. "We jumped, we just..."

Lorca looked at the viewscreen. The red-orange nebula had been replaced by a faintly starry void. "Astrometrics! Where are we?"

"Not where intended, sir. It looks like we've traveled... six light years!"

Even if something had gone wrong, Lorca was impressed. This was more than triple their previous record. It was also farther than the Glenn had gone and meant the ship was potentially approaching viability over long distances. But the best part was they had finally surpassed their rival. Discovery was in the lead.

"All right. Systems check."

The alarms quieted. They ran through the systems one by one. Everything seemed fine, until the lieutenant at the communications panel, Richter, reported: "Sir, I'm not receiving any subspace communications."

"Comms down?"

"They seem to be operating, it's just, no signals, and no response to our communications." Wait..." Richter's brow furrowed. "I am receiving something, but it's... I don't understand. I'm sorry, sir, I don't know how to explain it."

"Sir, I believe I have an answer," said Saru. Lorca turned his attention to his first officer. "We are receiving communications signals, but at a rate so gradual it is almost undetectable."

A faulty communications relay? Lorca crossed over to Saru's station to see for himself.

"Since we dropped out of the mycelial network, we have received one piece of a transmission, and we are still receiving it."

"Meaning what exactly?" asked Lorca, trying to make sense of Saru's display. He was no slouch when it came to the science aboard the ship, but the data he was looking at was entirely unfamiliar.

Saru considered how to explain. "If you'll forgive me for 'dumbing this down,' captain, imagine if someone were sending us the message 'hello.' In the five minutes since our arrival at this position, we are still in the process of receiving the letter h."

"Oh my god," said Stamets over the comms. "We're stuck in time."

They called a meeting of senior science staff in astrometrics. Saru, Stamets, Mischkelovitz, and two scientists in charge of other projects aboard the ship: Egorova and Kumar, an astrophysicist and systems engineer respectively. For some reason, Groves had come, too.

Stuck in time was not completely accurate. It was more that they were out of sync with time in the rest of the universe. Events on the Discovery were unfolding at what seemed like normal speed for them, but outside of the ship, everything was moving so slowly it appeared almost completely still. In fact, they were still in visual range of the pretty red-orange nebula, but because they were receiving fewer photons, everything looked dimmer.

Furthermore, the mycelial field they used to delineate the ship and its contents for transport through the mycelial network had not dispersed. The spores were similarly frozen, unmoving.

The fact that they were receiving photons and an ongoing bit of a transmission indicated they had not somehow fallen out of time completely. They were simply operating at such a speed that time outside had become meaningless.

"It's like the spore field has become a temporal stasis field," concluded Stamets. "Or maybe not stasis, more like..."

Groves spoke. "Technically-speaking, the most accurate term would be 'temporal retardation,' but good luck getting that past a jury. 'Temporal reduction' works."

"A jury?" echoed Stamets. "I'm sorry, who are you again?"

"Impediment?" wondered Mischkelovitz aloud.

"Deceleration," offered Saru.

"I've got it. You know null space? This is null time," said Groves.

"What?" went Stamets, shaking his head rapidly as if to knock that idea loose from his brain. "That's a math concept! It doesn't mean space as in"—he waved his hands towards the window—"space!"

"No, but it's catchy," countered Groves. Between that and "radical recyclers," Lorca rather got the impression Groves fancied himself a wordsmith. That instinct probably served him well in courtrooms. Slightly less so in this context.

"I like it," said Egorova.

They were getting distracted, as scientists and civilians so often did. "Terminology aside, analysis?" prompted Lorca.

"We cannot leave the field," said Saru. "If we attempt to, I believe we will incur another collision as we did upon exiting the mycelial plane, and we may damage the ship irreparably."

"Do we have to leave?" asked Mischkelovitz. "I mean, if time's passing super-slow on the outside, think how much work we could get done in here."

"Your work, you mean," said Stamets. "Mine would be stuck. Literally. In time."

Egorova touched a finger to her lips. "The spores aren't entirely frozen themselves, are they? They're moving at the same rate as we're receiving information from the outside world. Meaning, eventually, we might just drop out of whatever it is we're experiencing naturally when the field collapses."

"Then it's a question of the rate," said Groves. "How fast is data entering? And is the rate constant, or is it decaying or accelerating?" He looked at Saru for the answer.

"I have detected no discernible change in the rate as far. Computer, based on the time it takes the mycelial field to dissipate and the current rate time is passing aboard the ship, how long until the field naturally decays?"

"Insufficient data," said the computer.

"We don't know exactly how long the mycelial field persists after a jump," said Stamets. It was something they were still crunching numbers on from the various drive tests. "Individual spores can survive anywhere between a fraction of a second to several seconds, and that's just the ones that actually do get expended by the process. Some persist and have to be flushed out manually before the next jump. Then there's also the question of the threshold at which the field itself collapses. So far, we've seen fields persisting post-displacement even at a density of thirty-five percent."

Saru rephrased. "Computer, using the averages observed so far for post-displacement spore persistence, what is the minimum amount of time required for field density to reach forty percent?"

"Six hundred and forty-five years," said the computer.

That was the optimistic estimate. There was one person on the ship who could live long enough to survive that. She was not in the room.

"Well our ship won't last even half that long," said Kumar. "Our systems will decay well before then and we'll run out of power, not to mention food and everything else we need to survive."

"So we need to find a way out," said Groves.

Stamets had been thinking about the passage of time. "Actually, this could be a good thing. If we're not going anywhere, I could fill that cultivation bay with mushrooms. We could get a whole forest growing, ensure a steady supply of spores at a quantity that would let us make multiple test jumps in a day. We would have way more left over for ourselves after supplying the Glenn." It was no secret that, between Straal and Stamets, Stamets was the better gardener, but because Straal's drive jumps were going more successfully, they were getting the lion's share of the spore supply Discovery produced.

"I want us out of here sooner rather than later," said Lorca. As appealing as Stamets and Mischkelovitz might find the idea of unlimited time for various reasons, Lorca had no interest in aging while the rest of the universe passed them by. "Everyone, get your teams together and start working on potential solutions. I want proposals in three hours. Give me everything, no matter how out there, using the resources we have on Discovery."

Three hours later, they were back, along with the addition of Cadet Tilly.

"'Null time' got me thinking," said Tilly. Stamets had disliked the term and repeated it to his engineering crew derisively, but Tilly had turned it into a positive. "This is really a math problem, and it's a spore field problem. Now, when we're talking about the universe on the scale of the mycelial spore network, we lose the distinction between physics and biology. So, my idea..."

Stamets looked genuinely proud of Tilly for a change as she outlined her proposal to counterbalance the spores with spores modified to be something akin to an anti-spore.

"And we can do this?" asked Lorca. "An anti-spore?"

"Theoretically," stressed Stamets, "but maybe? I mean, it's within the realm of possibility, sir. And having run the math, it looks like it would be perfectly safe to try, so I think Tilly's proposal is worth exploring. It doesn't put the ship in danger."

The same could not be said of every suggestion. Kumar's proposal involved hitting the temporal field with a charged tachyon pulse which would potentially create new, temporally-charged particles sufficient to disrupt the field or cut a hole in it.

As Kumar relayed this, Mischkelovitz began to tug at Groves' arm. Lorca noticed the motion. "Something you want to share, doctor?"

"We're in a chroniton field."

"Chroniton?" repeated Egorova.

"I think the mycelial spores developed a charge that attracted chronitons, coating them in the particles, and the chronitons are holding them suspended in time. In essence, they can't move because they're bogged down by the excess chroniton weight. Not weight or mass in the way we understand it in this physical realm, but in a similar way all the same."

"Chronitons are only theoretical, doctor," said Saru, "but I think the idea has merit, captain. I would trust Dr. Mischkelovitz's expertise in this area. It was her husband's primary field of interest."

"I thought he was a weapons engineer," said Kumar, sounding dismissive. He had always felt the Mischkelovitz name overrated. Hearing Kumar's assessment of the deceased scientist, the surviving Mischkelovitz shrank back behind Groves.

Egorova said, "He rarely published in physics, but what he did was remarkable. I didn't know he was involved in temporal research but I wouldn't be surprised."

"And what do you think we should do, Mischka?" said Lorca, drawing her back in.

"The cadet's plan," she said. "If we negate the spores, the chronitons should disperse because they'll have nothing to adhere to. That would release the field. But if we charge the field with tachyons, as the lieutenant commander suggests, we risk causing a casmaclysic cascanade... No. Casme—no. Casmaclysic... No. Casma—no."

"Cataclys—" both Lorca and Groves began.

"—mic cascade," finished Groves, narrowing his eyes at Lorca. Lorca shrugged in response and made a face as if to say, "It was obvious, you think you're the only one can do that?" If the look in Groves' eyes meant anything, it was probably that he felt he was indeed the only person allowed to do that, and Lorca had just violated some sort of unspoken boundary.

"What would make the spores develop a temporal charge in the first place?" asked Stamets, disliking the implication his spores were to blame.

"Residual temporal radiation!" exclaimed Tilly. "We cleared the spores from the chamber when the first module wasn't working, but radiation could have lingered in the chamber. Then, when we put in the next batch of spores, they were contaminated. And because the spores act in concert with one another, it caused a chain reaction! Like a virus!"

Stamets' eyes widened. "Physics as biology!" he exclaimed. "Of course! It wasn't the spores, it was the chamber! As we went through the mycelial plane, the infection spread across the ship, until it dropped us out because we were too heavy with—chronitons!"

Tilly was over the moon. "Yes!"

"How were the spores exposed to temporal radiation in the first place?" said Groves. He seemed to have no trouble following any of the science. Mischkelovitz stood deep in thought, saying nothing in response to this question.

"Perhaps Dr. Mischkelovitz and I could investigate this question while Lieutenant Stamets and the cadet devise a way to create an 'anti-spore,'" said Saru.

"If we're right about this, we could prove chronitons exist!" exclaimed Tilly.

"That's already proven," said Mischkelovitz.

Egorova shook her head. "I'd have heard if chronitons were proven. If anything, we're just gonna prove that mushroom spores are unpredictable, or we got a bad batch, or the mycelial plane we've been traveling through has some temporal mechanics we haven't properly accounted for yet."

"My spores are not the issue," said Stamets defensively.

"Are we all on board with Tilly's plan?" asked Lorca, looking to head off a fight between the scientists.

"I'd like my team to continue research into the field mechanics area," said Egorova.

"Granted," said Lorca. "And Kumar, as a backup, draw up schematics for as many devices as you like, but focus on resource rationing. Just in case our plan A is no good. Everyone know what they're doing?" The assembled scientists responded with nods and words of assent. Lorca clapped his hands and then spread them, palms up. "Then go."

Part 51

[how2to18]

1.

DURING MY JUNIOR YEAR of high school, I took piano lessons from a woman named Frances Thompson, who lived in a well-kept but fading ranch house on Grand Avenue, alone with her dying father. My lessons took place at night. I don’t remember why that was — possibly I’d asked for a late hour, to keep from cutting into my all-important regimen of time-wasting after school — but I remember the slight feeling of eeriness it created, the oddness of being in a place long familiar in the daytime but subtly transformed in the dark. Mrs. Thompson sat beside the bench, in her spindle-backed chair, wearing the big hexagonal glasses with their slender, drooping chain, and I sat on the bench, trying to coax my fingers into decoding the music I had once again failed to practice, and the brass lamp shone under its green shade on the upright, and in the windows stood a darkness that seemed to cut us off from the rest of creation, as if the studio were a kind of spaceship in which we were traveling.

That fall we worked on Bach — the French Suites, because they would teach me to play gracefully, she said. Playing gracefully wasn’t my strong suit. What I liked was to improvise, preferably at ear-bursting volume, in a mode inspired by the exquisite but agonizing passions of the tragic lovers in Merchant-Ivory movies I’d seen, and also in Merchant-Ivory movies I hadn’t seen, Merchant-Ivory movies that existed only in my imagination, where trembling hands were forever pouring glasses of brandy from cut-crystal decanters in front of hotel windows looking out across Constantinople, while the curtains blew in, filmily. I thought of this mode as “romantic.” I was good at dreaming up melodies Helena Bonham Carter might freeze to death in Australia to, somewhat less good at scales. Certainly Mrs. Thompson deserved better. She herself had studied with famous musicians, had lived in Chicago, had known something of the world beyond our barren patch of north-central Oklahoma. Probably every dried-up oil town in the United States has one music teacher whose pedagogical lineage traces back to Liszt; she was ours. She was elderly now, but there were moments when she talked about music with an expression at once so hard and so far away that even I understood she was looking into a realm I had never conceived of, much less visited.

She had standards, in other words. She wasn’t someone you could impress with little virtuosic tricks. Yet with me she was patient. She frowned but never criticized. She’d raise a hand to stop my sight-reading, give me small lectures on fingerings and voicings. We slide the thumb under the palm to keep the slurred passage even. We bring out the dissonances — see? — to register a harmonic shift. In Mozart we play allegretto lightly, lightly; and there were her hands on the keyboard, knobbed and spotted as if they’d spent a century or so under the sea, playing allegretto with a lightness that seemed simple, seemed like nothing at all, except that I couldn’t mimic it.

I wasn’t too thrilled about the French Suites. Not because I had anything against Bach. In fact it had been while playing Bach that I realized I loved classical music, one day when our seventh-grade orchestra was rehearsing the Little Fugue in G minor and I suddenly felt (I think the trombones had just come in) as though my brain were a cloud of fine golden particles through which sunlight was streaming. It was just that the pieces were so measured. To play them well took poise I hadn’t begun to develop. You had to be able to sustain multiple ideas, multiple processes, and develop them simultaneously, in all their complexity. Which meant you had to be able to get above yourself, to listen not just in the emotional thrall of the moment but with a kind of cosmic detachment. That was what Mrs. Thompson meant by grace; she meant you had to be the astronomer, and not, or not only, the supernova. I was 17. My ideal of pianism was that when you finished playing, your hair should be sticking up, because of passion. I had no frame of reference for Bach’s superb contemplativeness. Mrs. Thompson might as well have asked me to learn a different instrument. In a way, that is what she was doing.

“I figured it out,” I announced. “It just has to sound logical. Everything builds toward this weird major chord at the end.”

“Well,” she said. “Yes, but also no. Remember that an allemande is a dance. This is a suite of dances. So we’re thinking, but the thinking is dancing — dan-cing, dan-cing, dan-cing. Dancing, not banging, please.”

It was confounding to think she had a living father. Students never saw him. We entered the studio through a separate door, around back, and were never invited beyond, into the mysterious interior, where he was understood to dwell. Mrs. Thompson herself rarely mentioned him. Yet in a way his very implicitness intensified the weirdness of his being there. Coming into the studio already felt like stepping out of time. You had the little bust of Brahms, the rounds of lace. The antique metronome, like something that might have fallen back to Earth after Sputnik launched. Mrs. Thompson and I were from the same small town, but I knew it only in its current form, with its miles of strip malls on 14th Street and its three Sonic drive-ins and the constant quiet stress over how many jobs the refinery would shed next year. When she was a girl, the oil mansions were still being built. Where did her experience open onto mine? I had heard stories about our great tycoon, the scion of an ancient English family from the village of Ashton-under-Lyne, near Manchester; he had built a vast oil empire in the early 20th century, when Oklahoma was practically the Wild West. Mrs. Thompson remembered him from life. To me, she was ancient.

So the idea that, invisibly near, there was someone so much older; and that he was on the threshold between life and death, frozen there, somehow, for the old man had lain dying for years … It struck a note not at all like a Mozart allegretto. Now, from a distance of time, I think of what the duty of caring for him must have meant for Mrs. Thompson — the challenge of it, at her age, the expense, the waiting, possibly the grief. How it must have reordered her life. None of that occurred to me then. Or it did, but as something not wholly real, like the weather in another city. What was real was the feeling of being in a ghost story. I thought of the word “macabre,” which made me think of Poe, and the word “eldritch,” which I knew from Lovecraft (“the eldritch scurrying of those fiend-born rats”), and also from Dungeons & Dragons.

Once, only, I saw him. Mrs. Thompson collected sheet music. She’d been stockpiling it for decades. It overfilled her filing cabinets; stacks of it slouched on chairs and in the spaces under end tables. She needed this private library, she said, because she liked to consult alternate fingerings. In fact the impulse went deeper. I never had a music teacher who was more distrustful of memory. I, who memorized pieces faster than I could learn to play them, who couldn’t properly practice a measure until I knew it by heart, found this baffling. But to her way of thinking, it was dangerous to spend too much time away from the objective record of the printed page. Things slip. It was better to have a lot of music, even too much music, even an absurd amount of music, than too little. Too little and you risked becoming like Sviatoslav Richter, the great Russian pianist, who discovered near the end of his career that he’d spent 40 years playing a single wrong note in Bach’s Italian Concerto. He’d memorized the piece in his youth, but one tiny error had crept in, an f-sharp instead of an f-natural in the 47th measure of the second movement, the andante. And then, because his memory was prodigious, he’d replicated the mistake for decades, including on at least two recordings, without ever going back to check the score.

Mrs. Thompson wanted to look, that night, at a different edition of the French Suites, specifically the allemande that opens the second, in C minor. There was some question about what finger to use for the pivotal note in a run. I’d been playing it with my ring finger, as my yellow Schirmer’s Classics Library edition recommended, but she thought the pinkie might make more sense. We couldn’t find the book she wanted in the studio, and Mrs. Thompson didn’t quite feel like getting up from her chair, so she sent me into the house to continue the search.

I’d never been beyond the studio before. I walked down a dark hallway, toward what I supposed was the dining room, where the file cabinet she’d told me about was kept. The air was warm and had a stale-apricot, old-potpourri smell. Every so often thin lights would stretch along the wall and I’d hear the long sigh of a car sliding past on Grand; otherwise it was ticking-clock quiet.

Here was the file cabinet. I found the book, turned around to go back, and stopped, because the old man was in the room with me.

He was lying in a hospital bed. He’d been there all along; I hadn’t seen him because his bed was angled to face into the room, and so was partly hidden from the doorway. Now he was facing me. This was his sickroom, evidently. A metal stand with some sort of dangling clear sack stood beside the bed and was connected to it — to him — by tubes. The bed was raised so that he could partly sit up. A white sheet covered him to the chest. Over the foot of the bed someone had folded a patchwork quilt. His face was so thin it was as if it had been whittled down from a different person’s face.

I wondered if he was dead. I wasn’t sure how to tell. The summer before, I had gone with my father to the funeral of a distant relation, a huge man who lay in an open casket in a pair of dark blue farmer’s overalls, and I remembered how fragile he had looked, how strangely chastised, with his big hands folded over his work shirt, nose pointing up toward the lights. Maybe you can tell when someone is dead, I thought, because of the peculiar way in which they look alive.

After a hesitation, I said hello and gave him an awkward little wave. I heard him rustle in bed. He lifted his thin arm above his face, the elbow bent as if he were warding off a bright light. Then he straightened his elbow and I realized what he was doing. He was waving back at me. Arm raised above his head, he gave me a slow, exaggerated salute, as if he were hailing shore from a ship that was about to depart.

  2.

A few months ago, in a friend’s back garden in Los Angeles, I found myself paging through a book about the English Catholic poet Francis Thompson, who lived from 1859 to 1907. Thompson isn’t much talked about these days, but he wrote some of the most beloved religious poetry of the late Victorian era, work that for decades featured on Catholic-school reading lists, that was anthologized and memorized and admired by critics. (G. K. Chesterton called him “the greatest poetic energy since Browning.”) He also — this was the thesis of the book I was reading — might have been Jack the Ripper.

I know how that sounds, and you’re right to be skeptical. The case against Thompson is purely circumstantial. There’s no hard evidence. And at first glance Thompson is one of the least likely suspects imaginable. In photos, he looks like a fragile mystic. He stares out of a gaunt face with large, haunted eyes. He’s serious and celestial. At 47 he wasted away from tuberculosis. Before that he spent years semi-sequestered in monasteries, writing verses about God’s love. One of his poems, “The Kingdom of God,” contains the first use of the expression “a many-splendoured thing.” A person of strange intensities, clearly; an unsettling, even otherworldly person, but not someone you’d peg as a murderer.

Yet that very celestial quality, the sense, which Thompson strongly conveyed, that he could see into the world beyond our own, concealed a darkness — perhaps better to say it was a darkness, transmuted in his poems only through a keen effort of spirit. There’s a line Chesterton singles out in his essay on Thompson. Thompson is talking about the gulf between our world and what’s beyond it, and he says this gulf — he calls it a “crevasse” — is spanned by “Pontifical Death.” In two words, Thompson imagines death both as a bridge (a pont is a bridge, a pontifex is a bridge-builder) and as a high priest supervising the crossing over it. Which is a beautiful notion, until you look at it from a certain angle, at which point it becomes completely terrifying.

I didn’t know much about Thompson’s life, and I had to admit, as I slowly turned the pages, that some strange synchronicities emerged when you laid his biography over the timeline of the Ripper murders. Nothing definitive; just uncanny parallels, in a Dark Side of the Moon-played-over­-The Wizard of Oz sort of way. Not that I believed everything in the book, exactly. The author, an Australian schoolteacher named Richard Patterson, was an amateur sleuth who was pretty clearly excited by the thought of solving one of history’s greatest mysteries, and he was willing to indulge in a lot of irresponsible speculation to make his case. On the question of Thompson’s fire-starting and doll-mutilation, for example. Patterson had some evidence to suggest that during childhood, Thompson demonstrated a pattern of lighting fires and cutting open dolls, behavior that could be taken as an early indicator of psychopathic tendencies. However, most of this evidence was ambiguous — Thompson made a joke, say, about how cutting open a doll as a child had taught him never to look for a beautiful woman’s brains. Which is ugly and misogynistic, but not necessarily serial-killer talk. But instead of treating it as suggestive but ultimately uncertain, Patterson charged ahead with the intensity of a prosecuting attorney, brushing aside all doubt.

Before long I was reading the book on two levels. On the first level, I responded only to the facts about Thompson’s life. This had the effect of awakening in me an intense pity toward the poet, who suffered terribly in his time. On the second level, I responded to the alternate reality conjured up by Patterson, in which Thompson was in fact Jack the Ripper. This had the effect of completely freaking me out. Often this split consciousness meant that a single piece of information registered with me in two directly opposed ways. That was the case, for instance, with the issue of Thompson’s education. He grew up near Manchester, in the village of Ashton-under-Lyne, where he was known as a frail, taciturn, bookish boy, unpopular with other children. In his youth he trained to enter the priesthood. Then one day he returned home with a letter from the seminary college informing his father that it was God’s will that he should look for a different career. He entered a medical college and studied to be a surgeon, but he failed his exams repeatedly, again disappointing his family.

And here’s what I mean about my two levels of reading. On the first level, the level of fact, I found this story sad. It was clear that Thompson had been under extreme pressure to pursue a career for which he was temperamentally unsuited, and I could easily imagine the anxiety, the lying to his father, the rising panic as he realized he was again bound to come up short, would again be revealed as inadequate. (In fact he seems to have had a nervous breakdown at around the time he left medical school.) On the second level, though, the story helped build the case that Thompson was a murderer. Dr. Phillips, the police surgeon who attended three of the Ripper’s murder scenes and four of the subsequent autopsies, thought the killer must have had medical training, due to the precision with which the victims’ organs were removed. Thompson, who could be placed in the vicinity of the murders at the time of the murders, had had such training. He had spent hours in the college basement cutting up corpses. He had in fact, according to Patterson, begged his father for more money so he could afford more bodies to dissect. He was known to carry a surgical scalpel on his person. He said he used it to shave.

This weird doubling of response continued, in fact compounded, as I read, so that before I was halfway through the book I almost seemed to be reading two stories, two parallel but unconnected narratives, at the same time. The outward action was the same in each, but the meanings were different. You can guess, then, how disorienting it was to read about Thompson’s time in Whitechapel at the time of the five Ripper murders, in the late summer and fall of 1888.

Whitechapel, in London’s East End, was then one of the city’s poorest districts. Thompson was in his late 20s. He’d had little success as a poet. In medical school he’d gotten addicted to opium, and he was now living as a homeless vagrant in Whitechapel’s warren of narrow streets. He slept in shelters within walking distance of where the murders took place. Many nights he spent walking up and down Mile End Road, often in the grip of delirium. Some time before, he had fallen in love with a young prostitute, whom he credited with saving his life. She left him shortly before the Ripper began murdering prostitutes.

Thompson wrote poems on dirty scraps of paper and kept them in his pockets. Those that survive show a mind not exactly planted on firm rock. The hallucinatory violence and barely controlled mania of some of his drafts from this period are startling:

And its paunch was rent Like a brasten drum; And the blubbered fat From its belly doth come With a sickening ooze — Hell made it so! Two witch-babies, ho! ho! ho!

Even in the Christian masterworks, you find disturbing overtones. “The Hound of Heaven,” Thompson’s most celebrated poem, depicts a wayward sinner’s flight from, and eventual surrender to, God’s love. Read in a certain light, its monomaniacal focus on God’s relentless pursuit of the speaker might even seem to frame the relationship between deity and human as that between a murderer and his prey:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days, I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears […]

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

It was a sunny afternoon in Los Angeles. Clusters of red and purple flowers swayed in the breeze as I turned the pages of Patterson’s book, drinking endless cans of the lime-flavored seltzer that Holly brought out from her kitchen. Without quite knowing why, I’d been listening for days to Bach’s Italian Concerto, repeating again and again the slow second movement, with the dirge of its left-hand part and the clear, cold aria of the right hand. I’d become mildly obsessed with Sviatoslav Richter’s recordings, as many people do with Sviatoslav Richter’s recordings, finding in them an intensity of focus that sets them apart from other musicians’. You feel, when Richter is playing, as if this music will be heard once, and then dissolve forever. In the garden, I played through my headphones a file I’d dug up online. It was a recording from the 1950s that preserved the mistake Richter had made when he memorized the piece — that one wrong note, almost unnoticeable, a 20th of a second where he’d shown a rare fallibility.

He’d have hated me for it. Richter was a perfectionist, not inclined to self-forgiveness, and he believed that the purpose of his playing was to serve the composer’s intention absolutely. That self-annihilating quality, never quite at ease with the obvious immensity of his talent, is part of what makes his playing so riveting. When Richter realized what he’d done, he didn’t find it “humanizing”; he was devastated. The very littleness of the imperfection galled. It was nothing, but at the same time it was everything, and it was irreversible. He issued an apology in the liner notes of a CD he released on the Italian label Stradivarius in 1991 — an astonishing thing for a pianist of his stature to do, to flagellate himself publicly over a slip Bach himself might not have worried about. From then on he played the piece as it was written.

To me, though, there was something irresistible in that false note sustained over decades, the f-sharp played instead of f-natural, the tiny broken stitch between Bach’s unchanging reality and the fluid world of an artist’s mind in performance. “Perfect” recordings of the Italian Concerto existed by the dozens, I reasoned; only this one offered that strange, fleeting glimpse into Richter’s mental experience. Where else could you hear a literal act of forgetting? It was magical.

That afternoon, as I sat reading and listening in Holly’s backyard, the music and the images from the Thompson story seemed to blend together, so that in my mind’s theater, Richter’s playing became a soundtrack for the perverse costume drama of Patterson’s book. I saw Thompson as a boy, swinging from a golden chain the thurible he used (so Patterson said) to start a fire in the seminary. I saw him slicing into the pale abdomen of a corpse at the medical college. I saw his eyes go out of focus as the first dose of laudanum kicked in. I saw him praying till his hands shook. In London, where he fled after his mother died and he could no longer hide his failure at school, he read De Quincey and the encyclopedia. He took opium to sleep. Poverty ground him hard: soon he was sleeping on sidewalks. At the British Museum Library he was turned away for being unclean. Cold, dark London: fog and gas lamps, horses’ breath, shadows on stone. Verses beating in his head. He submitted a crushed and barely legible manuscript to a Catholic magazine, Merry England, edited by Wilfrid and Alice Meynell, but he had no return address; he asked the editors to send his rejection to the post office. They accepted his poems, came to Whitechapel to find him, tried to get him off the streets. He refused to go. On the night of August 30, 1888, a warehouse fire went up in the West India docks along the Thames. Massive buildings burned. Flames visible for miles. The horizon a red glow. In Whitechapel the atmosphere was festive. Such a spectacle! Look what a jolly new bonnet I’ve got, Mary Ann Nichols sang when she was kicked out of her lodging house. She didn’t have fourpence for the bed. Alright, but there were plenty of men around after the fire — she’d earn it on the street.

She went by Polly. She was 43 years old. She’d been married and had five children, but that had all fallen apart. She was an alcoholic, herself intermittently homeless; she’d lived in and out of workhouses. A few months earlier she’d found a job as a servant in Wandsworth, but she hated the work and fled to Spitalfields with a bundle of stolen clothing. It was after one o’clock when she left the boarding house. Thompson was somewhere in the area. It’s not known precisely where, though he surely would have seen the fire. At 32, Polly Nichols’s roommate, Ellen Holland, ran into her at the corner of Whitechapel Road and Osborne Street. Polly laughed that she’d earned the money she needed three times over but kept drinking it away. (And there it was, in the recording — the misplaced note, the false f.) That was the last time a witness saw her alive, though strangely, when her body was discovered an hour later, at 3:40 a.m., in the doorway of a stable, the carters who found her were unsure whether she was dead. I felt something move in her chest, one of them said. What happened during the previous hour no one knows, except that her throat was cut.

The threshold between life and death was a place Thompson visited again and again in his poems. “We unwinking see / Through the smoked glass of Death,” he wrote in one, and in another:

O world invisible, we view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, O world unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

It’s when I think about this threshold that I’m most strongly reminded of a passage written about Thompson many years later. By then he’d long since been rescued from poverty. Wilfrid and Alice Meynell eventually succeeded in getting him out of Whitechapel. They sent him to a priory in Sussex to recover from his laudanum dependency. (It was at this time, Patterson notes, that the Ripper murders ceased.) Soon, with the Meynells’ help, he began to win fame as a poet. The editors’ son, Everard Meynell, wrote a book about him. It’s somewhere between a biography and a memoir. The passage I’m thinking of is one where Meynell describes the poet’s love of music, which expressed itself particularly in an adoration of the piano. Standing at the piano, Meynell says, “he would gaze at the performer, his body waving to and fro in tremulous pleasure.” As a young man, he had shirked his studies at the medical college to attend musical performances. He would tell his father that a professor had kept him back to offer him extra instruction when in fact he had gone to the home of a pianist to hear music. When he was supposed to be studying anatomy, he listened to piano music. He could not play himself, but he knew a sequence of chords, and “he struck them,” Meynell says, “with such earnestness that I, as a child, was impressed by his performance.” He held down the keys as the notes, briefly suspended, decayed, crossing as they did so the uncertain bridge between what exists and what is gone forever.

¤

Brian Phillips is the author of the essay collection Impossible Owls, forthcoming in 2018 from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He lives in Los Angeles.

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[domain-of-friendship-blog]

02: Seeing Stars

The first thing Sunset Shimmer noticed as she awoke was the dull ache that seemed to permeate every muscle in her body. Flat on her back and eyes still closed, she wrestled with her frazzled brain to take stock of the situation.

A cool breeze blowing by and the texture of earth beneath her suggested she was very likely outside. With a grunt of effort, Sunset propped herself up on her elbows and opened her eyes, which spent several seconds focusing in the dim light. A cursory glance around revealed that it was night, briefly giving her pause to wonder how long she had been unconscious after getting dragged into the portal.

The portal...

She shuddered as the memories came flooding back all at once. It happened so quickly, too quickly for her to process, and thinking about it was making her already aching head hurt even more. What made it go berserk like that? Why didn't it send her to Equestria like usual? Where were -

"Twilight!" Sunset scrambled to her feet, blood going cold as the realization hit her. "Rarity! Pinkie! Applejack!"

Her cries were met with silence.

Sunset's mind raced. If she was alive, the rest of them must be too, right? Granted, that was assuming this wasn't some sort of afterlife, but she certainly felt alive if the soreness was anything to go by; it felt like she had run a marathon right after bench-pressing twice her weight.

In an effort to stay calm, she distracted herself with taking a moment to properly examine her surroundings. She had awoken in what looked like a small impact crater several feet wide, loose dirt scattered about its edge. Beyond it was a field of tall grasses stretching as far as the dim light let her see, interspersed with the occasional cluster of trees. High above, set in a sky dotted with stars, an object that looked something like a glowing white ring cast a gentle light over the landscape. In one direction, she could just barely make out the outline of a jagged mountain range on the horizon; in the other sat a plain dirt road on which tire tracks were visible.

A road! Her heart leapt - that meant this place was inhabited! With any luck, she could find a way to get the locals to help her find her friends, assuming they had a way to communicate; it seemed unlikely she would be able to just talk to them. Perhaps Fluttershy's ability would help? Assuming Sunset could find her, that is...

She shivered suddenly, her train of thought derailed as the strangest sensation struck her. It was subtle but still distracting, like the fusion of a pinched nerve and a spine chill, causing her mind to concoct the image of a bug carrying an ice cube up her back.

Before she could deduce the origin of the sensation, however, it faded just in time for her to catch a glimpse of headlights from an oncoming car somewhere down the road. Her heart skipped a beat - should she hide? Wave to get the driver's attention? Hold her ground and wait to see what happens?

The car slowed to a stop on the far side of the road, giving her a better look at it - it reminded her of military vehicles she had seen in documentaries of an old war from over half a century ago, but it bore no obvious insignia. A moment passed before the door opened, a humanoid figure barely visible within.

Sunset stood still, watching the figure suspiciously. Even as they leaned out of the door, only their outline was visible in the shadow of the car; despite this, she could easily tell they were paying her rapt attention. The figure hesitated for several seconds before fiddling with a small object in their hands: a flashlight, judging by the audible click and the beam of light now aimed directly at her.

Sunset squinted at the sudden brightness, shielding her eyes with her hand. "You want to point that somewhere else, maybe?"

The figure lowered the flashlight beam... and spoke.

"Well, I dunno what I expected, but I don't think this was it."

The figure climbed the rest of the way out of the car and approached slowly, finally giving Sunset a better look at him. He stood marginally taller than her, with dark hair, light skin, and a strange-looking scar covering his cheek, but what stood out the most was his outfit: a tunic of medieval-looking armor covered in metal scales, with accompanying gloves, boots, and even a cape. It contrasted rather bizarrely with the car behind him, giving her the impression that he had just left some sort of Middle Ages reenactment.

Sunset shook her head to get her thoughts back on track. "Expected from what?"

"A red light visible from the next town over just shot out of the mountains and landed... well, probably about here," the man explained, gesturing at the shallow crater in which Sunset now stood. "Wouldn't have guessed it was gonna turn out to be a teenage girl with furry ears and weird clothes. That's a new one on me," he added with a smirk.

"Furry - ? Wait..."

Sunset reflexively reached atop her head, where sure enough, her pony ears sat proud and true. A quick check over her shoulder confirmed that her hair was now past knee-length, tied at the end in a cute little ponytail. "But... how did I pony up while I was out cold? I didn't know that was possible... and how has it not worn off yet...?"

"Uh. 'Pony up'?" the man echoed. "Yeah, I feel like I'm missing some context here."

Sunset gave an impatient huff. "Sorry, I don't have time to explain. My name is Sunset Shimmer, and I need to find my friends as quickly as possible. Have you seen anyone else around here?"

"Uh... right." The man stared a moment longer as if to process this. "Alexander Abrams. Call me 'Tank' though; it's easier." He put a hand on his hip and leaned slightly. "As for your question, there's no one out here at the moment but us as far as I'm aware. Are there supposed to be more of you?"

Sunset sighed. "Yeah... yeah, there are. I guess I should've figured the portal would separate us just to make things more difficult..."

"Wait, so you did come through the portal?" Tank's eyes widened as he glanced backward. "You know, if that's true..."

"I mean, more accurately we got pulled through it against our will, but yeah." Sunset leaned to one side, looking over Tank's shoulder suspiciously. "Does that mean something to you?"

Tank turned back to face her and jerked his thumb at the car. "It means I know someone who just might be able to help you, if you'll trust me."

Sunset hesitated. Could she trust him? It didn't take long for her to recall a way to know for sure. "Take off your glove and give me your hand for a minute."

Tank looked perplexed for several seconds, but shrugged as he pulled off one of his gloves and held out his hand toward Sunset, who stepped forward to take it in hers with no particular ceremony. As she did, her eyes took on a magical white glow.

"..."

The spell lasted for only a moment, but it was all Sunset needed. Satisfied, she let go of Tank's hand. "Well, it doesn't seem like you have any ulterior motives, so I guess it's safe enough to believe you."

"Uh." Tank scratched at his scarred cheek with his ungloved hand. "So was that a spell just now, or what? What did it even do?"

"Oh, not much." Sunset crossed her arms. "Although now I know that you're talking about a girl named Penny Richter and her uncle Darian Mobius who work at a research facility called Event Horizon specializing in portal study and extradimensional theory that's about an eight-hour drive from here, but you don't really mind because you were on your way back to your home town anyway to visit your folks and say hi to an old friend, and this place is only a short detour."

For several seconds, all Tank could do was stare incredulously at the bizarre girl before him. "...Uhh?"

"My magic lets me read people's memories," Sunset explained. "It's pretty handy for knowing when they're telling the truth."

"...Huh." Tank continued looking entirely unsure of how to react. "Okay, so. 'Sunset,' was it?"

"Yeah?"

"Let me be real with you for a minute here. This whole thing is pretty compelling so far, but I'm still not totally convinced it's not some kind of prank." He scratched at his scar again. "That said? Whether this 'mind reading' thing of yours..." He wiggled his fingers to emphasize the point. "...is real or fake? It was pretty impressive either way. Like, credit where it's due and all."

Sunset smirked, chuckling to herself. "Well, the honesty's nice, at least. Reminds me of - !"

Stopping mid-sentence, Sunset's heart tripped on a beat as a familiar tingling-chilling sensation struck her... and this time, she knew instinctively what it meant.

"Uh. You feeling alright there?" Tank quirked an eyebrow. "I'm no expert on alien teenager biology, so..."

Sunset's voice was barely above a whisper. "We're being watched."

Previous Chapter

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[rainsonata]

Change

Fandom/Pairing: Elsword; DBrDoM (Doom Bringer x Dominator) Rating: K+ Word Count: 1,865

Summary: It’s not easy going through yet another job advancement when it means getting bloodied knuckles and having your counterpart judge you. Doom Bringer’s first impression of Dominator leaves a lot of questions for the brawler and few answers to satisfy him.

Doom Bringer’s job change fic: [LINK] Mad Paradox’s job change fic: [LINK]

His skin stung, an icy sensation burned through his pores when Bringer dabbed with a cotton swab to soak in the blood. Mastermind was back in the apartment he shared with his counterparts, propped on a chair in the living room and his drenched clothes in the washing machine. The warm mahogany floor contrasted against the pale white carpet at his feet when he stretched.    

The familiar stinging smell of rubbing alcohol filled his nostrils and had Mastermind pinch his nose. Stripped down to his shirt and shorts, he wrapped his arms around his stomach in feeling exposed. He could feel his counterpart’s eyes leering at the cuts and bruises decorating his bare skin. They’ve known each other for years, but the weight inside his chest never went away when the brawler gave him that look, an expression that spoke for itself.

“I can’t believe you’re stupid enough to go face that...thing. By yourself.”

Days in Elrianode couldn’t tell them enough on the true nature of those beings occupying the foreign dimension. They held a nasod like appearance with inhuman features, mutations taken from twisting the properties of its original form. All of this would have been fascinating for research material, if not for time pressuring them to take care of them before the El threatened to split itself again.

“I wasn’t alone,” Mastermind’s eyes averted to the cat bandages on his knees.

Where did Esper buy these? The scientist frowned when he realized he hasn’t seen the time traveler for weeks. His disappearances were sporadic, but his absence was apparent when he has been spending more time with him and Bringer as of late. Not even random visits to drop the occasional ‘souvenirs’ he was so kind to call them.   

He fought those Elrianode monsters before, sometimes with Bringer, so why was his counterpart making a fuss about it? The scientist threw a half-lidded gaze, annoyance at the brawler for treating him like a child. Bringer was worried on his wellbeing, a natural reaction because of grown attachment from being together, but it hurt his high-strung pride like he couldn’t take care of himself. Yes, he didn’t go alone this time. He wasn’t stupid enough to make the same mistake twice.

Bringer scowled. “With fire Elbrat, the dark mage, and pineapple.”    

“He and his sister offered help,” Mastermind said.

And the Void Princess insisted on coming along - not because she was worried about the redhead or anything! The Blazing Heart’s all-knowing smirk and wag of her eyebrows had the scientist snort at the flimsy excuse. The dark mage’s infatuation for the Rune Slayer was as clear as day.

Mastermind was never one for small talk or the bantering between his teammates, but seeing the Rune’s look of bewilderment when his sister teased him for growing out his hair made the scientist chuckle. The people he once saw as hindrance to his journey became something more of a team, maybe more than that.

“You could have asked me to come along.”

Guilt panged when he recognized the hurt tone in Bringer’s voice. It wasn’t just concern the brawler had for him, but sadness in forgetting about him. Mastermind tugged on his bangs in frustration at the miscommunication.

“You don’t need to be with me all the time,” Mastermind said. “Both of us are adults. We don’t need to hold hands all the time.”  

“No, but I would appreciate it if you told me when you were coming and going at least,” he shook his head. “Those monsters are stronger than those sad excuse of nasods in Elysion. They can grate you like cheese.”

His lips were closed, but Mastermind could tell the other was restraining himself showing his canines in a clenched grit from losing his temper or crying. Probably both. Bringer had the face of a thug, but his heart was the same, always worrying for others, even if he was reluctant to show it. He pulled Bringer into a hug, wrapping his arms around the waist and resting his head on the brawler’s shoulder.

“You were gone for days,” Bringer’s voice was hollow with no depth, as if he had given up on his emotions and only had enough energy to speak. “It wasn’t until I talked to the priest did I learn you left with them.”

He talked to Richter? The asshole with toothpaste for hair? Well, it looked more like a waterfall if it swallowed the El and glowed in the dark, but that wasn’t the point.     

Mastermind held on to his counterpart and closed his eyes, unsure on how to feel. The lilac cushion he was resting on wasn’t doing him service on keeping him comfortable when Bringer chided him for his foolhardiness. Bringer must be upset if he went up to the priest to learn on his whereabouts. The brawler hated him.  

“I didn’t want to trouble you,” Mastermind admitted. “You and your friends already finished your business with those monsters. I didn’t want to make you go through that again and…”

His voice grew soft, almost inaudible if he wasn’t leaning close for Bringer to hear. The scientist’s face glowed with warmth from the blood traveling to his cheeks. Pride be damned, Mastermind could never get used to being honest about himself. There was no point in feeling shame for something that was true, but it still made his hands shake.  

His voice dropped to a murmur, “I didn’t want to see you get hurt either.”

It was irrational to hold fear on a brawler getting hurt when that was the kind of lifestyle Bringer upheld. Even so, the thought of his counterpart’s blood smeared on the white pristine marble of Elrianode formed a knot in his stomach in the worst way possible.   

Mastermind forced himself to look up to see Bringer’s eyes getting damp, blinking them away, but the scientist saw them. The other’s lips quivered, biting them down to hide the shock, but the wide eyes gave it away.   

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Bringer wiped the stray blood off Mastermind’s arm as he pulled away from the embrace. “But you don’t need to hide stuff from me if you rather do it with someone else.”  

He tucked in the end of the bandage wrap in and scanned the rest of his body for any further wounds he may have missed. His eyes were careful not to meet the scientist, but Mastermind didn’t miss the stares when Bringer thought he wasn’t looking. The brawler picked out a chunk of dry blood from his bangs and pulled it out with a tissue.

“Your hair,” Bringer uttered. “What happened to it?”

There it was, Mastermind closed his eyes. He was surprised it wasn’t brought up earlier, but with blood spill, there was no time for Bringer to notice the change until now.

“Do you like it?” Mastermind was absent minded and pulled his hair behind his ear, before remembering his side bangs were gone.   

Mastermind ran his fingers through his hair, long curls gone and now went down to his ear rather than to his back. His bangs split in the middle, covering the eye with the scar imprinted by Dynamo. The awkward silence between them when Bringer found him injured carried weight from shock, but he had a feeling it wasn’t only because of his state.   

“It’s...different.” Bringer stated the obvious, but paused, “When did you get it cut?”

“When you were busy getting new tattoos,” Mastermind said dryly.  

He knew Bringer liked his hair and used to play with it when he did his research, but it was a hassle to maintain. It curled on rainy days and took time to straighten when interacting with Bringer’s inventions or when the brawler messed with him by static shocking his hair ‘for fun’. Asshole.

Rena offered to cut his hair when he expressed the idea, before he left to join the rest of his teammates to the excursion of Elrianode. He enjoyed talking to the Grand Archer because she kept the conversation direct, but she didn’t probe into why he wanted a sudden change. With shorter hair, his head felt lighter and morning routines were going to become easier, but he was certainly going to miss having something to tug on when he needed to ponder over his research.

“Are those the new Dynamo model?” Bringer picked up one of the deactivated weapons from the coffee table, perplexed by its simple design. There were purple cubes, each split into four squares on each surface, pink lines running across with buttons at the center. “They look like Apocalypse!”

“They were based off it,” Mastermind said with pride.

Not as destructive as Apocalypse of course, but they held more battery power than before and could inflict more damage with precise timing. Every update was meant to be an improvement from the last, sometimes counterproductive with glitches that worked against his favor, but he could say with confidence that this model was the best.

“No cat ears?” Bringer teased. “Didn’t your old coat have them too?”  

Heat reached his face again with Mastermind blushing, “What’s the point in giving them ears?” H-he may have considered giving them ears in the early stages of designing them, but that would have made certain tasks uncomfortable, like standing or sitting on them.  

“That didn’t stop you from giving them to Apochan~”

This guy… Mastermind grabbed the cube from Bringer to check for any cracks sustained from the excursion. Not a single crack to be seen. At least that confirmed the experiment on how much damage it could withstand.    

Bringer sighed, “I’m glad your teammates have enough sense to come with you. It’s already bad enough having Esper run off again.”

“He’ll come back like he always does,” Mastermind said, but didn’t voice his opinion that Esper’s stay away was longer than the usual. Was he able to talk about people running off when he just did it himself?

Despite the protests from Bringer, he helped the other clean the living room. He was injured, not paralyzed from the waist down. He wiped the coffee table clean and threw the dirty bandages into the trash bin when there was a loud crack. It came from upstairs, a sound he hasn’t heard in weeks that it shook him up when he heard it.

Esper?

Omake

“If you have new powers,” Bringer thought out loud. “That means you’re like me, right? Did you come up with a title for yourself yet?”

After getting his new title poked at (Hey, Doom Bringer is a cool name!), the brawler was curious to see what kind of name his counterpart had in mind. Their old titles were determined by reputation, what they were remembered for by locals at the time they made their presence known. Knowing Mastermind, the scientist probably had been thinking about this for some time.

“I have,” a sly smile formed on his lips. Oh no… it was that all knowing smirk, like he found something amusing in his question. Mastermind covered his mouth and chuckled, “You can call me Dominator.”

Bringer’s face was as red as Rune’s hair.

“...Get away from me, you kinky bastard!”

Author Notes: Am I too late for the hype train? I’m still getting used to Dominator’s design, but I can at least start writing him to get a grasp of his personality. Since I wrote a fic for Doom Bringer and Dominator, I guess I’ll write one for Esper too when his third job is out.