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weyrwolfen · 1 year

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Eidola: Chapter 02 - CT-48-2866 Sling

Rating: T

Characters: Gen, Clone Trooper OCs, Captain Rex, Ahsoka Tano, and other canon members of the 501st/332nd

Warnings: canon-typical violence; references to self-harm, injuries, and substance abuse; PTSD; it’s post-Order 66 and nobody is having a good time (but they’re all working on it)

Summary: The mission was never to bring down the Empire. Not really. The mission was to save every single one of their chipped brothers. But if doing do helped break the Empire’s stranglehold on the galaxy? Well, that was just a bonus.

“You know, the red stuff is supposed to stay on the inside,” Sling said dryly, peeling back the blood-soaked towel from Angler’s arm to see how bad the injury really was.

In short, it wasn’t great, but it could have been a lot worse. At least the edges of the cut looked relatively clean.

“Yeah,” Angler said, grimacing as Sling carefully placed the towel back over his forearm. “I must have missed that flash training module.”

“Here. Keep pressure on that for just a minute,” Sling said, standing up and walking over to the small sink in the corner of the room. “I’m going to have to clean that out before cauterizing it.”

“Sounds like fun,” Angler grumbled.

No. It definitely wasn’t. There were times when Sling missed Ord Cestus. Oh, not the Kaminoans, or the Imperials, or the karking chip, but the stuff. The surgical equipment, the autoclaves, the sanitation droids, the decent lights.

The vats and vats of bacta.

Not that they were critically low on bacta. Not yet, at least, but that was only because the Captain had given all of the medics standing orders to act as if they were. And so Sling just scrubbed his hands under scalding water until they smarted and thanked the Force that he had been required to study survival medicine as part of his accelerated training regimen.

He then started pulling the equipment he’d need off of the shelving in the base’s makeshift infirmary: a laser cauterizer, a bottle of quintuply-distilled alcohol, a selection of small tweezers and forceps Zinc had knocked together in the machine shop, two ceramic cups, a handful of cloth bandages, a small tube of bacta.

He poured the alcohol into the two cups first, set one in front of Angler, and then started arranging everything else on a tray. “Drink that,” he ordered.

“What is it?” Angler asked, picking up the cup with his good hand and sniffing it dubiously.

It had used to annoy Sling, whenever his brothers had questioned his medical advice. Now, it was oddly comforting, whenever one of them didn’t just unquestioningly obey.

“You don’t recognize Apogee’s hooch?” Sling asked lightly. “Drink up. I’m pouring the other cup on your arm.”

Angler drank.

“Kark, that burns.”

“Uh huh, just wait.” Sling peeled the towel off of Angler’s arm and turned to throw it away. He hesitated for a moment between tossing the bloody towel in the bin marked for laundering and the one destined for the incinerator. Not having the full force of the Empire’s coffers at his back was still taking some getting used to, all these months later.

The towel went into the laundry bin.

“How’d you cut yourself, moving cots?” Sling asked, dialing up the magnification in his helmet’s HUD to get a better look at the inside of the wound. The whole thing was full of fibers from the towel. He reached for the second cup.

“The new bunks were integrated with the floor panels on that freighter Tempo’s team found,” Angler said. “He had to cut them ou– AAAH!”

Good, the liquor had washed away a fair amount of the debris inside the wound. Sling reached for his tweezers. “Hold still.”

The responding string of intermingled Huttese, Mando’a, and Galactic Basic profanities was impressive in its complexity, but Angler held still.

Some time and several more outbursts later, Sling placed his helmet on the end of the infirmary’s table and poured a third glass of alcohol for Angler. It was the one supply they could count on having in abundance, so he could afford to be generous with it. “So a little redness is–”

“Normal,” Angler interrupted, snatching the cup with a glower. His newly cauterized arm was wrapped in fabric bandages with the barest strip of bacta painted down the length of the sealed cut. It should be fine, not that the process of getting there had been pleasant. “But if it feels hot or swells up, or gets dark or veiny –“

“Come back here, yes,” Sling finished.

Angler downed the glass of high-proof liquor in one go. “Tell Apogee his latest recipe’s awful.”

Sling snorted. “I think he’s infusing the non-medical stuff with herbs or something to improve the flavor.”

His wrist comm beeped, indicating an incoming call request. Sling looked down and saw Kix’s designation, CT-6116, flash under the blinking light. He lifted his wrist and said, “Sling here.”

“You have any patients right now?” Kix asked, voice unusually tense. “I need you on the landing platform.”

Sling looked sideways at Angler, who was watching him with an air of slightly buzzed curiosity. “I’m just finishing up with one now, but Panz should be spelling me in five.”

“Panz is headed to me,” Kix said. “Everybody is headed to me. Hang up a sign or something, we need all hands on deck.”

That… wasn’t good. Something must have happened. “On my way. Should I grab my triage kit?”

“Just pack sedatives,” Kix said, and while he still sounded tense, there was something else in his tone. Excitement? It was hard to tell. “Ridge is inbound with eight chipped brothers.”

That didn’t register for a moment, and Sling shook his head to clear it. “Eight?” he finally asked hoarsely.

“Eight,” Kix confirmed. “Get up here.”

The line went dead.

“I’ll hold down the fort,” Angler said, his voice just the slightest bit slurred.

“You’re drunk,” Sling said, but he was already moving to the supply shelves, grabbing hypospray cartridges of sedatives.

“Yeah, and who’s fault is that?” Angler asked, sounding a little indignant. “I’ll call Kipp. He’s off duty right now.”

That… actually wasn’t a terrible plan. Kipp had at least some field medic training. “Okay,” Sling said, stuffing the sedatives into one of his belt pouches. “Okay, you do that.”

“Eight’s some kind of record, right?” Angler asked.

It actually wasn’t, but nobody counted that troop transport Hunter and his team had somehow managed to hijack. They’d brought thirty chipped brothers in that day, but given that all of them had been wide awake and shooting upon arrival, most everyone had agreed to chalk that one up to a team effort.

“Something like that,” Sling said, grabbing his helmet.

“Go on,” Angler insisted, reaching for the bottle of liquor. “Kix is going to have his hands full.”

Sling pulled his helmet on and hit the door at a dead run.

Fuse was powering down their surgical pod when Sling walked through the door with two cups of caf in hand. “Aughts and Kipp just finished up with the last of the Reapers,” he said, handing a cup to his fellow medic. “I don’t think they found a scratch worth treating among the lot of them.”

Fuse accepted the cup with a grateful nod and took a long sip of the hot, sweet stimulant before answering. “That’s good news,” he said, then he eyed Sling questioningly. “What’s going on with Kix?”

It was a fair question.

“Well, he is supposed to be three hours into his sleep cycle right about now,” Sling said evasively, taking a sip from his own cup. “We’ll probably find him on a cot tomorrow, still in his armor.”

Fuse gave Sling an unimpressed look. “That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it.”

Sling did know it. As medics, they were all trained to keep an eye on the health of their brothers, which included their mental as well as physical wellbeing. Anybody with eyes and a semi-functioning brain under their buckets had picked up on the fact that Kix actually knew this latest batch of rescued brothers. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume that was the reason why their unofficial leader was acting a bit off. But Fuse was also the shiniest medic on the team, and this was his first experience removing active chips. He obviously didn’t know the score.

“Look, he always takes this personally,” Sling finally said, running a hand over the fine, bristly fuzz on his scalp. He’d hoped that one of the others had already had this conversation with Fuse, but it looked like it was just his turn. “I’m going to tell you this, just like Taq told me when I was in your boots. One of our brothers in the 501st apparently learned something about our chips before the war ended and got killed for his troubles, but not before he’d talked to a couple guys. Kix, the Captain, I don’t know who else. Point is, they had the pieces of the puzzle, but they didn’t quite put it all together before everything went in the incinerator. So yeah, maybe Kix blames himself a little more than is strictly reasonable. And no, he isn’t doing so hot right now, but he never is when we get a new batch of brothers to de-chip. He’ll be okay, and in the meantime, if he takes the self-flagellation too far, Panz will stick him with a sedative.”

The expression on Fuse’s face would have been comical, if the cause for it hadn’t been so serious. He looked like Sling had just slapped him with a slime eel.

Sling just took another sip of caf, watching the gears spin behind Fuse’s eyes.

“Stang,” Fuse finally said hoarsely, which wasn’t exactly what Sling had said when Taq had read him in on the story, but it was close enough.

Sling nodded. “So now you know.”

Fuse stared into his cup for a second before downing it like it contained something a lot stronger than slightly stale, instant caf. “I don’t know what to do with that information,” he finally said.

“You don’t do anything, other than get yourself a refill on your caf,” Sling said. “It’s going to be a long night, and I don’t need Kix taking a swing at you if you try to commiserate. If that happens, Panz will stick you both, and I’ll end up having to take up the slack.”

Fuse opened his mouth like he was going to argue for a moment, but he swallowed whatever half-formed complaint he’d been considering and instead gestured for Sling to proceed him out of the door.

They didn’t have far to go. By necessity, the salvaged surgical pod was situated very near the hanger bay. Getting the bulky piece of equipment out of the Tribunal in one piece had been a top down fiasco, but dragging it any further into the Draboon VIII moon base without access to heavy tunneling equipment had been a complete impossibility. It was inconveniently far from the main infirmary, but it also meant that the surgical room and the recovery areas the medics had commandeered had ended up largely removed from the chaotic comings and goings in the base’s more populated areas.

Sling waved Fuse towards the caf station, which was set up on a desk with monitoring screens, already glowing with a direct feed from the neighboring room, and continued on to the recovery area alone.

The room was quiet. Kix was tapping something into a datapad at the foot of one of the occupied cots. Ten had seemed like an ambitious number of beds, back when Sling had first joined the base’s medical team. Now, the space looked a little crowded. If they really were about to deploy a fourth Reaper team, and if Kryze and her people kept delivering the odd, battered clone to their doorstep at their current, accelerating rate, they’d have to expand soon.

It was a heartening thought.

“Please tell me you sent Aughts back to bed,” he asked lightly, walking over to stand next to Kix.

Kix looked at him briefly out of the corner of his eye. “Him and Taq both,” he admitted.

Good. Someone was going to need to be well-rested for the morning shift.

Sling looked down the row of unconscious clones. Their vital signs were all beeping softly from the datapads hanging at the foot of each bed. All but the one in Kix’s hand. “Anything wrong with this batch, other than the obvious?” he asked.

Kix nodded towards the man in front of him. “Delta here has shrapnel in his thigh,” he said with a dark scowl. “Looks like some moron slapped a bacta patch over the injury without cleaning it out first.”

It was something they’d all noticed. As best as they could tell from their admittedly small sample, the quality of medical care given to any clone still under Imperial control seemed to be deteriorating. It set Sling’s teeth on edge. “You planning on digging it out before he wakes up?”

Kix jerked his chin down in a sharp nod, scrolling back to the main screen and glancing over the readings there. “As soon as he stabilizes.”

That didn’t exactly narrow things down much. That could be in five minutes or five hours.

Or never.

They’d gotten so much better at the process, especially with the addition of Tech’s tinkering and gadgets, but they were still performing delicate brain surgery with a device that had been ripped from its previous housing with the liberal application of several laser cutters, a few explosives, and the Force. Things could and did go wrong, albeit very infrequently nowadays.

“What about him?” Sling gestured to a clone two beds over who had a long, knotted scar down the side of his face and across one ear. He looked down at the datapad to read the name there. “Hat Trick?” It was unusual to have all of their names this early. Sometimes they figured them out from searching through old Republic records. Every once in a while, someone would recognize a painted helmet or tattoo. Most of the time, the medics just ended up having to ask, once the dust had settled.

“Light saber,” Kix said, tone flat enough to earn him a sideways look. “He’s lucky he only lost an earlobe. It’s too old for us to do much with it though.”

An old light saber injury. That could mean any number of things, and none of them good. Order 66, or a run in with the sithspawned Inquisitors, or even the incident on Umbara no one was technically supposed to know about, even if they all did.

“Is the shrapnel ferrous?” Sling asked, setting aside pointless speculation for something a little more useful, such as figuring out which instruments they were going to need in the hours ahead.

Kix snorted. “Panz is already on his way with the magnetized kit.”

Well, at least this one, small thing wouldn’t have to be done the absolute hardest way.

Beyond the magnetic field containing the hanger bay, the rings of Draboon VIII stretched out of sight, a glittering pathway of ice and rock. Their little moon carved a narrow path through the debris, its gravitational pull sending its closest neighbors dancing in treacherous and unexpected trajectories in their wake. The pilots hated navigating through it, and not without cause, but hardly anyone complained about the view from the hanger bay. It was objectively beautiful.

Sling often came out here, when he needed a moment to himself.

Waking their eight brothers from the Hadros mission was going about as expected. Fuse was going to have a real shiner tomorrow, where Link had managed to twist loose just long enough to land a solid punch before the repeated litany of “We’ve got you, you’re safe, you’re among brothers, we’ve got you,” had finally penetrated his panicked disorientation enough to convince him to stop fighting.

But then, of course, the wave of rising memories had crested almost immediately after that, dissolving the situation into another kind of chaos.

Kix had kicked Fuse out first, for a fifteen-minute breather. After that, Panz, and then it had been Sling’s turn. Just his turn, and certainly not because anyone else had noticed the way acid was starting to bite at the back of his throat.

Sling remembered his time under the control of the inhibitor chip in fragments. The first few days were painfully clear in his memory: standing placidly by, screaming inside, as his brothers carried away the body of a padawan he had treated not an hour before for minor plasma burns, shipping back to Kamino, cheering mindlessly at the Emperor’s recorded address.

After that though, his memories became fuzzy and disjointed, as if his consciousness had wrapped itself in a fog to protect itself from what he was seeing, what his body was doing just outside the limits of his immediate control. He’d surface for a time and submerge again, losing days, weeks, maybe even months in between.

There seemed to be no pattern to the memories he did retain. Some were thoroughly mundane: inventorying medical supplies being loaded into a ship, standing at attention in a town square while an officer whose name he could not recall addressed a gathered crowd of diverse sentients, going through the motions of enjoying a drink and a game of dice with his brothers, even though something was missing. Something was always missing.

Other times, they weren’t quite so innocuous.

The old man had reached out with a gnarled hand, begging to be allowed into the base Sling was guarding. Sling had broken the man’s cheekbone with the butt of his blaster rifle without a second thought. Beyond them, a small town he did not recognize had burned.

Verd had come to the infirmary because he had been experiencing persistent headaches, but when he’d admitted that he was also having doubts about their mission, about the Emperor, about everything, Sling had sent the prescribed, coded message to the ship’s security team. They had taken care of discreetly removing their traitorous brother, but it had been Sling who had signed off on the death certificate.

The binders around the girl’s wrists were supposed to suppress her access the Force. Sling was bad at estimating ages in non-cloned humanoids, but he’d place this child at perhaps four or five years in age. She had stumbled when the two Inquisitors had walked down the ramp of their ship to retrieve her. Brill had shoved her, to keep her moving. The transfer of the prisoner had been quick and efficient. No one had even spoken during the entire exchange.

Sling shut his eyes and took several deep breaths, in through his nose and out through his mouth. The chronometer in his helmet told him he had precisely two and a half minutes to get his head on straight enough to go back to work.

The Berg was just emerging from the shadow of Draboon VIII, catching and scattering light like a gemstone. It was funny, they were starting to name the chunks of water ice and planetary debris in their immediate orbit, but no one could agree on what to actually call the base they were all calling home.

To the best of anyone’s knowledge, the tiny moon Death Watch had hollowed out for a base had no name, or if it did, Kryze hadn’t seen fit to share it when she’d aimed the survivors of the Tribunal at it. Once they’d cleared out the small band of Maul loyalists who’d held it previously, Kryze had kept up her part of the deal and had expunged any mention of it from the official Mandalorian records. Whatever name it might have once held had died with those files, unless the remnants of Maul’s faction, who were now allied with the Empire, decided to go out of their way to investigate what had happened to an unusually small, technologically outdated, strategically unnoteworthy base situated nowhere near the star system’s only economically important planet.

What were the chances, given everything else that was currently happening back on Mandalore?

Honestly, better than any of them were comfortable considering in much detail.

They really should name it something.

The timer Sling had set for himself started to flash in his HUD. He pulled his helmet off to stop the alert, tucked it under one arm, and started walking back towards the hanger’s side door.

The light was on in the caf room, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise when a soft voice called out to Sling as he passed. “How are they?”

Sling felt himself instinctively stiffen, squaring his shoulders in some semblance of attention. Not that their Commander ever requested or required such a thing. Old habits died hard, and besides, she had more than earned his respect. “As well as can be expected, sir,” he answered.

The Commander nodded, looking back at the screens. Her headband was blinking at her temples, a solid visual cue that she was listening in on the feed as well. Letting a small number of brothers into the recovery room was one thing, but a visit from a Jedi, even a former one, was a bit much for many of the freshly de-chipped clones. That meant Sling and the other medics often found their Commander in here when they had new arrivals, cradling a half-drunk and mostly forgotten cup of caf, haunting the observation room until she was actually able to meet them properly.

Their brothers from the 501st told stories about her from before, about this cocky, snippy child who had shown up on Christophsis, ready to take on the galaxy. There were times when Sling could almost see it, the spark of that girl from their stories, but not right now. Right now, she just looked sad and tired and far too old for her biological age.

“Is there anything else you need, sir?” he asked, needing to get back to his patients, but hesitant to just leave her alone with only the screens for company.

“No, don’t let me keep you,” she said with a shake of her head that sent her lekku swaying. They were too thin. She was too thin, but even Kix’s penchant for steamrolling superior officers regarding medical matters seemed to have run into a wall when it came to convincing the Commander to eat more than their rationing protocols set aside for off duty troopers. Arguments related to differences in Togrutan physiology and metabolic requirements of Force users seemed to bounce right off of her. Kix had tried subterfuge, petty blackmail, even recruiting the Captain into his schemes, with nothing to show for his efforts. Her response was always the same. They were working on ways to improve supply lines for everyone, and until that panned out, she’d eat her fair share, just like everyone else.

There was speculation among the medics that the reason Kix had started growing his hair longer was so he could get enough of a handhold to start pulling it out over the entire situation.

Sling knew from prior experience that she’d be just as stubborn if he continued to press her now, so he just nodded in lieu of a more formal salute and excused himself, a half-formed scheme starting to take shape in the back of his mind.

The Captain was inside the recovery room, sitting on the edge of Pike’s bed on the far left end of the line of cots. That wasn’t entirely unexpected either. Wherever the Commander was, the Captain was typically nearby. Right now, he was in full kit, except for his helmet, which was sitting on the floor at his feet. His twin blasters were also missing, which was only sensible until they figured out how their brothers were going to react to coming out from under their chips’ control. It was a lesson they’d apparently learned the hard way, back before Sling himself had been rescued.

Pike and the Captain had clearly been talking.

Pike looked a little improved. He was still deathly pale, and everything about his posture and expression conveyed painfully familiar self-loathing and horror, but at least he was sitting up and talking. He wasn’t screaming or dry heaving into one of the several, strategically-placed bins around the room. He wasn’t trying to injure himself or anyone else. Given the suite of reactions they’d learned to expect during this process, he was actually doing pretty well.

“Why now?” Pike was asking, hands fisted so tightly at his sides that his knuckles had turned bone white. “Why us?”

“You might not like my answer,” was the quiet response, but the Captain only paused a moment before continuing. “We don’t have many ways to safely gather actionable intelligence from inside the Imperial military, so most of the time, the teams pick their targets more or less at random.”

Pike’s strangled bark of laughter sounded anything but happy.

“We’re working on it,” the Captain said, and Sling couldn’t help but notice the way his left hand unthinkingly brushed the empty holster at his side, froze when it didn’t encounter the comforting presence of a blaster grip, and then returned to resting on his cuisse. It was a humanizing little tic, from a brother they were all guilty of holding in something akin to awe. The first clone saved from the control of his chip, who’d come back for the rest of them.

Sling slipped his helmet back on and helped himself to a heavy dollop of hand sanitizer, alcohol-based and primitive as everything else they’d been managing to stockpile. Then he headed over to the cots where Kix, Panz, and Fuse were all clustered, partially to get an update on their patients and partially to give Pike and the Captain a little space. The gesture was more symbolic than anything. Medics tended to overhear things. It wasn’t like they were trying to listen in, but it was also hard to completely shut out others’ conversations in the quiet, confined space.

Panz seemed to be attempting to browbeat Link into eating something. As for Kix and Fuse, apparently Delta had finally stabilized enough to allow them to start working on his leg. There was already a small pile of shrapnel fragments in a metal bowl on a tray at the foot on Delta’s cot. Some of the shards were large enough that Sling had to consciously refrain from wincing.

“Let me sub in,” he said as Kix dropped another shard in the growing pile. It wasn’t an entirely altruistic offer. What it was, was Kix’s kriffing turn, but putting it that way would probably set off a chain of events that would end with Panz sticking a needle full of sedatives into Sling’s neck.

Which, in retrospect, might not be such a terrible fate. It was certainly one way to guarantee himself eight hours of nightmare-free sleep.

As expected, Kix just flicked the tiny electromagnetic probe back on and leaned forward to delve back into the incision. “I’m just finishing up,” he said flatly, without turning his head.

Sling has seen the scans. There was no karking way Kix was ‘just finishing up.’

“Commander Tano asked me for an update,” Sling said evenly, knowing perfectly well that said Commander could hear his every word. “I don’t think I was able to provide the level of detail she would have liked.”

Invoking the Commander’s name like that was below the belt fighting among the clones. Sling knew it, they all knew it, but that didn’t make it any less effective.

Sure enough, Kix paused in his work and looked up. Sling could feel the hard glare he was receiving, even through Kix’s faceplate.

Sling just waited expectantly, trying to exude casual neutrality through his armor. He wasn’t lying to the base’s top medical officer. He wasn’t even bending the truth.

Much.

Finally, Kix reached over to let the most recent shard of metal drop into the bowl and set both the probe and his scalpel down on the tray next to it. Then he stood up from his stool, grabbed Sling’s wrist, and punched a data transfer code into it with more force than was strictly necessary.

The file containing Delta’s scans appeared in the lower corner of Sling’s HUD.

He was absolutely going to pay for this later.

Sling did not let himself react, even when Kix pulled off his helmet and gave him a look that could have melted transparisteel. He wasn’t about to sabotage his own victory by relaxing prematurely though.

Sling caught the Captain’s eye as the door slid closed behind Kix’s stiff-backed retreat. His brief, pointed look at the small camera, mounted above the door, said at least as much as his incongruously dark, raised eyebrow. He wasn’t about to reprove Sling for maneuvering Kix like that, but she might.

Sling nodded in acceptance, but he wasn’t too concerned. The Commander knew Kix’s quirks better than most, and she wasn’t above a little subterfuge of her own, if it meant taking care of her men. And Kix, much as they all respected him, did require a little maneuvering from time to time. Sling turned his attention back to Delta without a drop of remorse.

Fuse, who’d apparently been tasked with holding Delta’s incision open with manual retractors and catching any bleeds the bacta gel hadn’t handled with a small cauterizer, gave Sling a questioning look, but didn’t say a word.

Panz wasn’t quite so restrained. “I’m going to have to tranq him tonight, aren’t I?” he asked.

Sling shrugged, dialed up the magnification of his visor, and opened the file of Delta’s scans. “Or we could try a little subtlety, for once,” he said dryly, sitting down on the stool Kix had vacated.

A three-dimensional representation of the remaining shrapnel overlaid the trooper’s thigh in Sling’s HUD.

Kark, it was a mess in there.

There wasn’t anything else for it. Sling picked up the probe and scalpel, selected a shard to extract at random, and went to work.

AN: Other chapters are available here

Dividers by freesia-writes using helmets by lornaka. More designs available here.

#eidola tcw fanfic #star wars #tcw #clone wars #clones #fanfic #fanfiction #the clones deserved better #the clone wars #star wars fanfiction #star wars the clone wars #clone wars fanfiction #the clone wars fanfiction

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ennaku-sirri-da · 1 year

Text

EDIT: I removed the "W"'s because it felt too unnecessary

K IM DROPPING ONE MORE HC AND NAPPING MY GOD FASTING( FOR RAMZAN) IS MAKING ME SO GODDAMN HUNGY

Plain text: K I'm dropping one more HC AND napping my god fasting( for ramzan) is making me so goddamn hungry

CONSIDER: Putunia also picking up Habit's speech patterns.

I wrote a little something like this a while back actually. I don't want to post the whole thing but here's excerpts. For some context here- Buddy and Rose( me and my friends OCs, a Habitician and a Flower Kid, a dubiously humanlike cat person and a rose-flower nymph. ) can't figure out what Habit is( cryptid, cartoon, evil, misguided, vampire, human?) so they go around asking every Habitican about him. Keep in mind this is an AU so it has NON- CANON elements.

Also TBH everything I've written here doesn't necessarily have to be AU canon because I'm putting it on indefinite pause...so IDK, man. But I still thought it's neat enough to share.

Here's Putunia's take...(not the whole thing, which I won't be posting ) I'll provide plaintext under the cut!

Setting: We've just questioned the punchiest kid around, who is now officially Regaling us around a campfire, her midnight cape blowing as the fire lights her acting-out up in brush strokes of orange, red and yellow against the dark sky.

THE MENACE!!!!

SHHH.

SHOOSH SHUSH. BE VARY QUIET NOW BIG KID AND BIG KITTY WITTY

HE HEARS

ALL

BEEG COTTON FLUFFY EARS

LIKE THE EVIL DRAGON!

IN LEETLE RED RIDING HOOD

"ALLLL THE BETTERRRR TO HEARR YOU WITH MY DEARRRR-IEEE!!!"

GOODNESS GOODERESTNESS!!! WHAT BEEGBEEG HANDS YOU HAVE!

"THE BEEEETTERRRR TO HUGGGG YOU WITHHH MY DEARRR-IEEE!!~~~"

AND

AND!!!

DONT JUMP SCAREDY KITTY!! HEE HEEE!! ITS JUST A STORY!

FLOWER POWER HERO #2 ROSE IS A WEAK LITTLE BABY. MORE BABIE THAN ME. HE CAN'T CARRY YOU!

ANYWAY

*clears throat* HURRUFF-HUR-AHEH-AHEH

OHKAY! SO!

THE MOST SPINE-BURNING, AFFRIGHTENING, CHICKENS WILL EXPLODED, HERRORIZING PART!

AT THE MOMENT

YOU ARE LEAST EXPECTATING

"GRANDMAMMMAAA DEAR!! WHAT SHARRRPPP TEEFS YOU HAVE!"

HE!

JUMPS!!!!

BEEG

BEEG MOUTH OPEN AT YOU

LAUGHING! SNORTING! BWA HA HA HA! SO BRIGHT!

FIRE BALL

BEEG ONE!! WOWWWWW

[ skip excerpt..]

RUN!

HEE HEE. SILL-EE BUTTI. BUDY. BUDDEDY. DONT BE A PUSSYILANIMOUS NOW.

YOU NEED TO BE BRAVE! [...] DONT CRY! NEVER CRY! BE STRONG! GOOD GIRL! GOOD GIRL! COME HERE TO ME! I WIN!!!!!

[ skip excerpt..]

YOU TWO FLOWER HEROES WILL ALSO WIN

WHEN HE SAYING

"ALLLL THE BETTER TO EATTTTT YOU WITH!!!!!!!" SCREAM!!!!! SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

PUTUNIA THE MIDNIGHT PETUNIA KNIGHT ALSO KNOWS ALL! LIKE THE MENACE. BUT SHE IS GOOD. A VERY GOOD LITTLE GIRLIE.

THATS WHAT MAMA MENACE HABIT TOLDEN ME!

HES ALWAYS ALWAYS TELLING ME THAT SOMETIMES I GET BORED AND HIT HIM SOFT THUMP ON HIS SILLY HEAD SO HE STOPS SAY-SAY

SOOOO LONG TIME! ITS HORRIBLE! I LUVER MY MUMMY SO MUCH! BAD! VERY BAD! HES HURTING ALL! YOU! ME! BUDDY!

TALKING YAKKING PUPPET PAPPING BLAPALAPPING SINCE HE STEALED ME AWAY FROM THE BAD PARENTS IN MY SEVENTH FOSTER HOME AT SCARY DARK NIGHT WHEN HE SINGY-SINGY BEAUTIFUL SONG AND I WAS SLEEPY SEEPY ME ZZZZZ......

ZZZZ...

SNORT

HES...A ....MAMA...DRAGON...EVIL.....WARM...WINGS....BEG...BEEG.....

ZZZ

BLOOP.

( She's asleep. )

❤️❤️❤️

( three red hearts divider )

I have a WHOLE THING about Habit and dragons hopefully I'll have the energy later to provide more HSSJK

On a lighter note than this what aboutttt:

:- ) [ Smile emote with straight nose showing Habit ] ----> to :O ) ( Smile emote with big O nose showing Putunia )

Plaintext under the cut!

The Menace!!!!

Shhh.

Shoosh shush. Be vary quiet now big kid and big kitty witty

He hears

All

Beeg cotton fluffy ears

Like the evil dragon!

In leetle red riding hwood

"Allll the betterrrr to hearr you with my dearrrr-ieee!!!"

Goodness gooderestness!!! What beegbeeg hands you have!

"The beeeetterrrr to hugggg you withhh my dearrr-ieee!!~~~"

And

And!!!

Dont jump scaredy kitty!! Hee heee!! Its just a story!

Flower power hero #2 rose is a weak little baby. More babie than me. He can't carry you!

Anyway

*clears throat* hurruff-hur-aheh-aheh

Ohkay! So!

The most spine-burning, affrightening, chickens will exploded, herrorizing part!

At the moment

You are least expectating

"Grandmammmaaa dear!! What sharrrppp teefs you have!"

He!

Jumps!!!!

Beeg

Beeg mouth open at you

Laughing! Snorting! Bwa ha ha ha! So bright!

Fire ball

Beeg one!! Wowwwww

[ skip excerpt..]

Run!

Hee hee. Sill-ee butti. Budy. Buddedy. Dont be a pussyilanimous now.

You need to be brave! [...] dont cry! Never cry! Be strong! Good girl! Good girl! Come here to me! I win!!!!!

[ skip excerpt..]

You two flower heroes will also win

When he saying

"Allll the better to eattttt you with!!!!!!!" scream!!!!! Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

Putunia the midnight petunia knight also knows all! Like the menace. But she is good. A very good little girlie.

Thats what mama menace habit tolden me!

Hes always always telling me that sometimes I get bored and hit him soft thump on his silly head so he stops say-say

Soooo long time! Its horrible! I luver my mummy so much! Bad! Very bad! Hes hurting all! You! Me! Buddy!

Talking yakking puppet papping blapalapping since he stealed me away from the bad parents in my seventh foster home at scary dark night when he singy-singy beautiful song and I was sleepy seepy me zzzzz......

Zzzz...

Snort

Hes...A ....Mama...Dragon...Evil.....Warm...Wings....Beg...Beeg.....

Zzz

Bloop.

( She's asleep.)

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sparklingchim · 2 years

Text

long way home 20 | jjk

pairing: jungkook x reader

word count: 1.5k

genre: dilf!jungkook, friends to lovers, angst

rating: pg 15

warnings: jimin's is very determined to make oc squirt one day💪🏼, jungoo being a sad dilf and questioning his life choices 😔, brief glimpse of jelly jaykay but more sad than angy

summary: the one where you realise that talking to jimin helps you to mend the broken pieces of your heart.

a/n: enjoy some jimin x oc time <3

chapters: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08|09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |

masterlist | long way home masterlist

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

"Y/n."

Jimin's gentle timbre engulfs your whole body in comfort.

"Hmm?"

You pull the duvet closer to your bare figure and snuggle up to Jimin.

"Have you ever squirted before?"

You halt mid-motion, sending his curious gaze a questioning look. "No?" you answer dubiously. The grin that sets across his face makes you knit your eyebrows. A short, confused laughter bubbles from your lips. "What are you on?"

"Just -" Jimin's tongue sweeps across his puffy bottom lip. He already has beautiful plump lips and you adore how they look like after you make out with him. "I'd really like to see you squirt. On my face."

Heat rushes into your cheeks. You sink your teeth into your lip to stop you from smiling at his vulgarity.

"What?" Though you can clearly hear the offended undertone that resonates the word, there's only a fond gleam in his eyes when you stare at them. "You don't think I'd be able to do it?"

"No, I'm just wondering how you're still getting indecent thoughts after what we just did. This," - You flick his forehead - "should be all empty."

Jimin grabs your wrist and presses a light kiss on it. "Oh, no no," he says. "That could never happen. The more you give me of yourself, the more my mind is filled with you."

You scrunch your nose. "Stop it."

Jimin laughs at your reaction, trailing a finger along your collar bone.

You both fall into a comfortable silence. When Jimin invited you over you didn't come here with the intention to hook up with him. But it was inevitable. You were watching a movie in his living room and you both couldn't keep your hands off each other. Jimin carried you into his bedroom, and from there, well...You didn't have sex, just...third base.

"I think I should go before it gets too late," you say.

"Or," - Jimin pushes himself up on his elbow, his intense gaze prickling your skin. - "you could stay." His offer hovers in the air like an unspoken question.

"Jimin."

"Yeah?" He pushes a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

"We agreed not to do anything that might make this," - you point a finger at him and you - "look more than just friends."

"That rule is stupid," Jimin utters under his breath. "We are clearly doing things that make us look more than friends."

"Well, then..." You think for a second. "Fuck buddies? Does that sound better?" You grimace at the crude word and Jimin chuckles, his thumb brushing over your cheek.

"I guess it's better than just friends," he answers. "But we also agreed to just do whatever makes us happy, remember?"

You nod. "I know." You lie on your side, looking into his shiny brown orbs as you say, "Don't wanna lead you on."

You don't want this thing - whatever the weird relationship dynamic in your friendship is called - between Jimin and you to develop into something you're not ready for.

Especially because he's your work colleague. You don't want the working climate to get weird because of the two of you.

Jimin frowns when he notices the doubt in your eyes. "I'm not expecting anything from you, princess."

"Just...wanna make sure."

Jimin's voice is a tiny whisper when he asks, "What are you scared of?"

"I'm not ready for a relationship," you confess.

"And why's that?" he asks, careful not to go too far with his questions.

Because my heart belongs to someone who doesn't want me.

You sigh, gaze drifting over Jimin's barely lit bedroom. How are you gonna tell him without mentioning Jungkook?

"It's because of Jungkook, isn't it?"

Your head turns to him. Your eyes are wide at the mention of Jungkook.

"Oh, come on," Jimin chides you. "I'm not a fool, y/n. I've noticed the way you look at him."

You get shy. "I didn't know you knew."

"How could I not? You guys flirted in front of me every morning in the café."

"We didn't flirt," you correct him.

"If there's one things you and Jungkook are, it's definitely acting like you two are more than friends."

"That's not true," you deny, a pout forming on your lips as you think of how Jungkook and you used to be like. You didn't act like a couple. You were just close. Best friends. Nothing more.

"I mean, with the shit he's done, his love for you is kinda questionable, but I think he loves you. A lot."

You shake your hand. "He doesn't love me. Not like that." Not the way you want him to love you.

"Did you ever ask him?"

"Uh, no. Not really."

Jimin sighs dramatically. "You two are beyond hope."

"Don't wanna be with him now anyway," you mumble, nuzzling into the crook of Jimin's neck.

"You should talk to him though." He gently strokes your shoulder. "You can't avoid him forever."

"Just need a little distance from him now." Even though your heart aches every day because you can't see Nabi.

Jimin nods. You can't fathom how utterly warm-hearted he is. Here you are, lying in his bed with him and yet he listens to you talking about Jungkook and your feelings and problems and he's so patient with you. Just listens and gives advice. And it kills you because you don't deserve him. Jimin is selfless and only wants you to he happy and you love him for that. You love him for so many other things.

"Thank you for being so understanding, Jimin. I really don't deserve you." You plant a soft peck on his neck.

"As long as you're happy and comfortable with our arrangement, I am too."

"You're amazing." Placing your hand on his chest you draw little figures on his skin with the pad of your fingertip.

"Oh stop it, or I'll fall in love with you."

You spend the next hour joking and giggling and kissing and cuddling with Jimin.

You end up taking a cute selfie with you lying on his chest, the duvet covering your naked bodies and Jimin's arm around you. And because you love the photo so much you upload it to your Instagram story.

"Y/n?" Jimin whispers into you hair.

"Yes?" you answer absent-mindedly, scrolling through Instagram.

"Do you think you'd allow me to take a picture of your boobs? Y'know, since I'm all amazing and all."

"God, you seriously need to get these horny thoughts out of your head."

Jungkook's receives the notification when he's standing in the kitchen.

He had been watching Sora feeding Nabi while he's cleaning the kitchen. Observing attentively as Nabi tries mushroom rice porridge for the first time. The apples of her cheeks high on her face as a smile tugs her little mouth upwards must be proof enough that she likes the taste.

Jungkook clicks on the notification on his phone.

You had added something to your Instagram story. Jungkook doesn't remember when he turned on your notification, but it's been years. He loves seeing your little updates on social media.

His fingers are quick to press on it immediately. You hadn't posted something in a week and Jungkook is desperate to see what you're up to.

Oh wow.

Jungkook blinks several times, not trusting his eyes. Are you ... naked?

He closes the app, still in disbelieve. But then he opens it again and stares at his phone.

Jungkook scoffs.

He feels Sora's eyes on him. "What's wrong?" she asks.

"Nothing," he says, shoving his phone into the pocket of his sweatpants.

Of course you're with Jimin.

He doesn't know why he's so surprised.

Doesn't know why his hands want to punch something and his heart aching for something he never had.

"Jungkook." Sora stands in front of him, Nabi in her arms.

Right. She wanted to take a shower after feeding Nabi. Jungkook hugs Nabi to his chest, her eyes falling shut every few seconds telling him that she's close to doze off.

His anger is momentary forgotten as he takes Nabi to her nursery. He cradles her in his arms, humming a soft melody to sing Nabi into dreamland.

When Jungkook's sure Nabi has fallen asleep he bends down to gently put her in the crib. But then he sees one of your t-shirts lying there and he has to think about the selfie again.

It's okay he tells himself.

You should be happy. And you looked really happy. Incredibly happy. It stings the most, but it's also what matters the most.

Jungkook pulls your t-shirt over Nabi's tiny body. Drops a kiss to her temple and leaves the room.

He runs his hands over his face when he stands in the dark hallway. The muffled noises of the shower make him crave for a long, hot shower.

Getting you to distance yourself from him because of his lies ultimately meant driving you into the arms of another man.

It was inevitable.

He shouldn't feel too miserable about this.

Because Jungkook had never believed he could have you that way anyway.

#jeon jungkook #jungkook #dilf jungkook #jungkook fanfic #jungkook scenario #jungkook x reader #bts #bts fanfic #bts x reader #jungkook angst

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cayenne-twilight · 4 years

Text

Professor Layton Iceberg Explanation

As I said in the tags of the original, the iceberg I made was a meme consisting of both real theories and satire/parodies/fandom memes. If anyone is interested, I can work on an unironic version that only has real theories.

Buckle in because this post is LONG and heavily saturated with lore and information.

Actual theories

Parallel universe 1960s where the world wars didn’t happen. There’s an unused file in Curious Village that shows the year as 1960 and the time machine from UF is set to 1973, ten years into the future. The series canonically takes place in an undefined time period (hence the technological inaccuracies and fantasy elements), but it’s based off the 60s. There’s more evidence but we don’t have time to go over every little thing. I linked my “no wars” theory below but TL;DR the outdated airplanes and underdeveloped medicine in the Layton series imply that the world wars may never have happened. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632205992162099200/outofcontextdiscord-timegearremix-zonosils-war

The real meaning behind the statue in Future London. In UF, the purpose of the statue is to spark Layton and Luke’s conversation about their friendship. Luke is stressing out about moving overseas and sees himself and the professor in the story behind the statue, but in the bigger picture, Clive must have been the one to commission it. Some theorize that the little boy is Clive and the man is either his father or the professor. One idea I’ve seen is that Clive wishes he could be Luke for real, while another is that he wishes he died ten years ago, and another is that he’s literally terminally ill explaining why he doesn’t care about consequence. Personally, I think “the boy succumbed to his illness” refers to his mental illness seeing as he wanted the professor to save him from his madness as he saved him all those years ago.

True location of Monte D’Or. there are no deserts on the British isles to my knowledge, so it makes the most sense for Monte D’Or to be in Southwest USA where English is the default language, they have a desert, and there exists a city famous for flashy hotels, casinos, and entertainment. What makes it odd is that nobody ever mentions overseas travel, and all the major characters are from England.

Loosha’s origins are not explicitly explained if I remember correctly, but the implication was that her prehistoric (supposedly) species was sealed away along with the garden, allowing them to survive all the way to the time of LS until Loosha was the only one left. The garden provided a good habitat and protection from predators, and it’s logical that they’d slowly die out anyways, but there’s no explanation of any specific factors that led to Loosha being the last.

Beasley is not a bee I wrote a post about this one as well, but TL;DR Beasly lacks several defining bee traits whilst having several human ones. He is not human, yet, by definition, not a bee. It’s possible that he is the result of Dimitri’s testing, but whatever his untold story is, he remains an enigma of nature. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632381715250282496/theory-beasly-isnt-a-bee

Subject 2’s identity is currently unknown. There is a subject one (parrot) and subject 3 (rabbit) so there has to be a second. For a long time, people suspected Beasly to be him seeing as he’s a bit of an amalgamation and definitely not a regular bee (see above). After the release of LMJ, though, people began to suspect Sherl, the intelligent hound who could speak to certain people but not others. That being said, it’s possible for one to be subject 4. Sherl’s memory of a bright flash matches up with subject 3’s memory of being electrocuted. They never explain why the animals were being experimented on, but it was probably Dimitri making sure the conditions of his machine were safe for humans before reliving the incident from ten years ago.

Lady Violet died from the plague from DB. There’s no evidence for this or anything, it’s just an idea. People say she died from the flu but I don’t remember them saying that in the game, at least the US version. Extending off my “no war” theory: it’s theorized that the Spanish Flu was spread by the travlelling soldiers, so if that’s true, it’s possible for the epidemic to have been averted for some decades. Maybe the Spanish Flu reached England later than in real life. The hole in this is that DB’s plague must’ve been close in time to 1918 while Violet’s death was much later, so it would’ve had to stick around.

Bill Hawks is working with Targent and Arthur Cantabella. There was a force in the shadows buying the time machine technology from Bill. Someone with a ton of money who helped him cover up a freak accident and get away with it completely, a feat that involved shady means like violence by hired thugs. Some theorize that it was Targent, seeking power over time in exchange for a little mafia magic. The Labarynthia project was sponsored by the UK government, so as the PM, Bill must’ve known about it. He probably supported dubiously ethical, high stakes (witch pun) psychological experiments like Cantabella’s and helped him stay in the shadows.

All the NPCs in St. Mystere and Folsense are dead. I make fun of this type of theory later, but they’re admittedly captivating. I’m pretty sure the canon in CV is that the villagers are Bruno and Augustus’s OCs that they made robots of and built a town around, but it’s more interesting to think that the village was there before, and the townspeople died of a plague and were replaced like Lady Violet. In Folsense, there really was a plague and they never explain the NPCs there. They’re either real people who appear way younger than they are due to hallucinations (even the ones who already look old ?), or they don’t exist at all, which is pretty spooky. This part of the story is a gaping plot hole. In a similar vein to CV, the edgy yet plausible theory is that they used to live in Folsense but died of the plague and now live on as hallucinations.

Hershel seeing everything as a puzzle is a coping mechanism for all his trauma. This was a joke but I thought about it for more than five seconds and it makes way too much sense.

Plot holes and unexplained questions that we like to overthink because it’s fun

The downfall of the Azran was vaguely explained in canon by people being so greedy that it lead to the civilization collapsing. It’s not a stretch to imagine that happening, but it would’ve been more interesting with a little more detail.

Layton and Luke are programmed to routinely forget how to walk. I didn’t know whether to list this in the joke section or not, but it’s odd that the characters actively participate in the walking tutorial (as opposed to showing a little memo to the player) as if they didn’t know how to before, especially when they go through this several times a year.

The truth behind Pavel. He’s simply a joke character who teleports, is a polyglot (sort of, at least he wants us to think he is) and is mega confused all the time. He’s a fun character to make crack theories about because of his cryptic nature that even he doesn’t seem to understand.

Miracle Mask deleted scenes. The first trailer for MM featured animations that were not in the final game. One was the Randall falling scene, except in a slightly different style than the one we know. Others were completely foreign, like Layton and Luke pacing across a theatre stage as if Layton’s about to expose someone with a dramatic point. Cut content and “could’ve beens” are always curious to think about.

Evan Barde: secret mastermind. Arianna and Tony’s dad is a mysterious character who died under mysterious circumstances. I think the canon is that his death was a genuine accident, but concept art of him making a creepy evil face suggests that maybe he originally had a larger role in the first drafts of LS than the finished game.

The secret to how Paul and Des pull off their disguises is unclear and will remain unclear. There is no plausible explanation for their shape shifting. Unless Paul is just a little dude wearing a human suit like that one Wizard of Oz species and Des is the best quick-changer ever and hides his naturally feminine legs under his cloak.

Alfendi’s mom. When LBMR came out people scrambled to piece together who Hershel had a kid with, but there’s no way alfendi is his biological son. This happened with Kat as well and her biological parents turned out to be brand new characters, so I’m sure Al will get an adoption backstory if his arc continues, be his parents old major characters or nameless, faceless NPCs.

Granny Riddleton and Stachenscarfen are omnipotent deities. Idk which section this fits best under, but these two characters have some serious power. At first introduction, they’re implied to be robots, but they appear everywhere in later games. They follow the Professor wherever he goes and assist him on his adventures, GR collecting puzzles and housing them by some odd magic, and Stachen teaches you how to walk. They both introduce and supervise the gameplay. By extension, I guess this idea could apply to Albus as well in the prequels. GR and Stachen even had the power to appear in LMJ, something no major character could do. I consider them akin to the velvet room attendants from the Persona games.

Clive’s kill count is a vague subject in the game for the sake of keeping it PG. I don’t know if anyone’s ever mathematically estimated the damage he caused, and I sure don’t want to try, but the game appears to push the idea that he didn’t kill anyone at all, saying they stopped him in the nick of time and things like that, even though we watch him raze the city. If they ever want to bring him back post-time skip, I can see them twisting it so that the mobile fortress cutscene wasn’t a linear sequence of events, but instead a compilation of scenes over the course of hours so that London neighborhoods around him could be evacuated and have it make sense. Knowing Level-5, it’s more likely that they wouldn’t think this deep and do something more lazy, though.

Memes and references

Post-time skip Flora is real references the famous L is real theory from Super Mario 64. Like Luigi in SM64, Flora was also a highly anticipated character who didn’t appear in a new game, in this case LMJ or LMDA. In the end, Luigi did become real in the DS port so hopefully Flora is real will be realized as well.

Hershel can’t read is a veteran fandom meme referring to how in the first few games, especially Curious Village, Layton asks Luke to read every document out loud for him. Perhaps this was an exercise to improve Luke’s reading skills and independent thinking, or perhaps he was just too lazy or preoccupied to do it himself, but this grew into the joke that our genius Professor was actually illiterate this whole time.

Layton’s smash invitation is hidden in PLvsAA. It’s no secret that the fandom would kill a man to get the Professor into the smash brothers franchise. In PLvsAA one of the puzzle artworks features a goat eating a familiar white envelope with a red stamp, sparking the joke that either Layton or Wright got the invitation their respective fans desired, but it got lost along the way.

The science board is the mysteriously vague organization Don Paolo got kicked out of for the crime of being evil. It’s the epitome of liberal arts majors and art school graduates trying to bs their way around not knowing any science and failing miserably. “He was very good at all the sciences, but then the CEO of science told him to stop because he was using the power of science for evil science”. They do this again when “Dr. Stahngun” describes his time machine what with the soolha coils and whatnot.

Hoogland is death cult initiation is a parody of “Mario 64 is Freemason initiation” which is ridiculous, just like the creepy human sacrifice subplot of AL.

You can see the reflection of someone watching you in Aurora’s eye references the famous, creepy Talking Angela theory. In retrospect it would’ve been funnier if I said Angela instead of Aurora.

Every copy of Professor Layton is personalized references the famous “every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized”

Clive’s fat ass in HD is a meme that originated from the announcement of UFHD, saying that half of the excited fans wanted to cry again while the other half were simply attracted to Clive. If we want to enter real bottom-section-of-the-iceberg-chart territory then let’s say Clive’s character has some sort of psychological siren properties that draw people to him like a magnet and/or Harry Styles.

Things I pulled out of my ass for shits and giggles

Infinite hint coin hack: I’m sure a tech savvy cheater could hack the game for infinite hint coins, but there’s no easy or interesting way. I don’t know why someone would do that though, considering a lot of the hints suck and there are puzzle guides on the internet.

Cringy, unused Randall villain monologue. This joke is derived from the actual scrapped MM content as well as deleted content being a popular element of iceberg charts, but it’s sadly not real. Would’ve been hilarious, though.

Last Specter Puzzle 031: Light Height tracks and records children’s intelligence level. It doesn’t, but it’s always fun to make fun of arguably THE most ridiculously difficult puzzle in the franchise. (Seriously, do they expect 7+ year olds to know trigonometry???)

Hershel struggles with tea addiction. Hershel from the games drinks tea in moderation, but the manga begs to differ. He has a tea set in the Laytonmobile, and an attempt at teatime while driving causes him to crash.

Folsense is a metaphor for Alzheimer’s. This is inspired by those edgy kids’ show theories where everyone’s in hell or something, but nobody has ever said this.

London Life is reality and the plot of the games is all in Luke’s head. That’s one way to fill every plot hole. How funny would it be if Luke made up crazy characters and stories based off his fellow townspeople Sharkboy and Lavagirl style. “This dude who lives in a castle and asks people to give him all their money for nothing in return is a vampire from 50 years ago involved in a tragic love story”.

Secret ending encoded into Tago’s Head Gymnastics. It’d be crazy if there was, and Dimitri would hound Tago for the secret to time travel. If you didn’t know, the Layton games started as an adaption of Akira Tago’s puzzle series, except they decided to add a story to make it more interesting and marketable.

Daily puzzles datamine your DS. I’m bad with technology but is it even possible to datamine a DS??? Idk, but I think my DS lite from 2008 is safe.

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expended-sleeper · 2 years

Note

Okay babble so you know I am officially obsessed with Sassafras, and I would like everyone else to be obsessed with him too so please, tell us all about him! What does he look like? What is his Deal? How will he and Nelkir take over Skyrim with their CMOT Dibbler-style dubiously legal enterprises?

Thanking you in advance for Very Important Content about my favourite ever OC <3

I'm so happy to have the energy to finally respond to this lovely ask! I have summoned the elf himself to answer for his crimes.

So many questions! Will I be reading the answers in the local publication, next Sundas? More likely I'll hear them read out at my sentencing. My mother always said you younger races were too curious for your own good...but then again, so am I. Go on, have a seat. Do you like our backroom? This is where we keep the special stock.

What do I look like? Well, that depends on the job—and the mark. Sometimes I'm the stereotypical Green Pact devotee straight from those dreadful novels of the Gold Coast, brimming with feathers and ready to frighten Bretons and Imperials.

Heartlanders are always quick to surrender their coin at the mere suggestion of cannibalism. But take my advice: this old cracker works on some of Skyrim's natives, too, but never on Redguard, elves, or beastfolk. Half of them will laugh at you, and the other half will just start swinging the nearest sharp object. I never met an orc that could take a joke.

I also occasionally don the guise of the Thalmor toady my mother hoped I would grow up to be. My least favorite costume, honestly. A fresh pair of Thalmor robes take a few very stiff weeks to break in. You haven't lived until you've had to cram yourself underneath a wealthy nobleman's bed while wearing the starchiest outfit this side of High Rock.

Strangely enough, Nelkir here loves when I dress as a Thalmor. I was taken aback by this, at first—I'm no friend to the Dominion, myself, and his father was bloody poisoned by them—but the heart wants what the heart wants. So after one of my Thalmor jobs is done, we really break the robes in for a few days before burning them with the rest of the evidence.

Oh, you meant what do I look like? Huh.

Like any other Bosmer in a crowd, I suppose. Sneaky fellows with distinct faces ought not become thieves, I reckon. It baffles me how the Gray Fox was able to operate so long wearing that silly diaper on his face. Surely they saw him coming from leagues away.

Let's see...I have two blue eyes. A nose. One mouth. Two ears. Long chestnut hair, when it's not some other color. Actually, let me just ask Nelkir.

He says my eyebrows are so pale that he can't see them most of the time. He also says my mouth is shaped funny so that it always looks like I'm smiling, even when I'm not. He says when I do smile, my eyes crinkle up like I'm an old woman.

Proper poetic, this Nord of mine.

Where did I come from? The same place as everyone else—from between the legs of some poor mother. Well, everyone except Argonians, maybe. I'm still a little foggy on how all of that works. I wish I could have been there, when it all happened. It would have been quite something to see my mother's composure upset for once. And what could be more upsetting than bringing an elf like me into the world?

Ugh, you want to hear about Valenwood? Wonderful. One of my least favorite subjects.

Here's the story: as soon as I was born, I rolled off a wooden platform and hit about a thousand branches on my way to the loamy ground. In those first minutes of my life, my hatred for tall woody things was born. I got out of that terrible forest as soon as I could, and ever since then I've endeavored to chop down every tree I meet.

Okay, you got me. That was a lie. The truth, if you care to believe it, is far more mundane. I was born more fortunate than most. In Fourth Era Valenwood under the Dominion, that means my lot in life was to marry some airheaded dimwit when I came of age.

By then I was truly sick of trees. Not yanking your toe, this time. I feel a deep kinship with any mountain-disinclined Nord, sand-hating Redguard, or mushroom-loathing Dunmer. We are a class predisposed towards misery, and so our happiness is a miracle.

Yes, I know Sassafras is a type of tree. There are exceptions to every rule. In my vagabond years I went by a series of terrible names: Swiper, Long-Fingered John, Leaf, Biter, the Elf (yes, I was the sole Elf in that gang), Man Eater, and Minksy Slytongue.

Nelkir only knows one type of tree, because its leaves make his favorite beverage, and all he knew about my kind when we met is that we love trees. He turned out to be wrong about that one, but the name Sassafras stuck. I'd like to believe that one day my widespread fame will mean more people know about Sassafras the thief than Sassafras the tree. On that day, I will retire in triumph. Until then, I think I will wear this name—when my darling Nord here speaks, even the names of trees sound like sweet honey to my ears.

But that's getting ahead of ourselves. Yes, I was sick of trees. I was even more sick of Thalmor. Living in the Dominion with those rotters, even as a privileged elf, is like sharing a room with a fellow nursing a nasty case of the rattles. It's not you that's coughing, and you're vaguely grateful for that fact, but it's still bloody annoying to listen to.

On the night I was meant to form a permanent partnership with an affluent noblelady, I instead grew friendly with one of the Khajiit servants. The drinks at my ceremony acquired a little extra sleepy seasoning. Khajru-Ra and I fled Valenwood with chests full of all the valuables of my esteemed guests. Leave rebellion to braver elves. All I wanted was escape.

Naturally, my family disowned me for my crimes. It was quite the scandal in the social circles of the Dominion around five years back. If you ask me, my mother committed a far greater crime in naming me Rinast. Honestly, what other choice did I have but to leave and change my identity? Always burn your bridges behind you, I say, so no one can follow to chop your head off.

Khajru-ra betrayed me and stole all the loot once we reached Cyrodiil. Of course, I was far too entertained by the whole situation to harbor any real hurt over it. There I was, a genuine thief, being swindled by my partner! I was living out the thrilling stories of larceny that had been smuggled past the censors of my childhood. Ever since leaving Valenwood, my goal in life has been to act in ways that would delight my bored younger self.

Listen to me go on and on. I'm parched—would you like a drink? Here you are, from my favorite bottle...oh, come now, I know you're thirsty. What's that suspicious look for?

By the Eight! You really think we'd poison you? I don't mind telling you that's a pretty rude accusation, considering the fate of Nelkir's dear old dad. Look, I'm drinking too.

Listen to them, Nelkir! Prattling on about the poison resistance of the Bosmer. Those are all just rumors. Do you believe everything you hear?

Now Nelkir is drinking too, even though he hates this spirit. He's making such a sacrifice just to ease your mind. And after you offended him with that talk of poison and dead fathers. I'm tempted to end this interview right now.

Hah! I knew you'd come around. Tastes good, doesn't it? Well, Back to the story, now that we've wet our whistles.

So there I was, in Cyrodiil, with no home to return to and no gold in my pockets. A crumbling Empire presents far more opportunity for profit than an ascendant Dominion, though there were still too many trees around for my liking. My feet ached for the feel of strange soil and open skies.

Hammerfell sounded too hot, High Rock too stuffy, Black Marsh too alien, and have you heard what they do to thieves in Morrowind? Maybe in the days of Gentleman Jim Stacey, I might have risked a Dunmer excursion—but really, Skyrim was the only true choice.

Most of the trees are delightfully dead for half the year. There are hardly any at all in Whiterun's tundra, excepting those that are rolled in from Riverwood to be burned to keep us warm. I smile gloatingly at every crackling log, and hope those rotten sentinels in Valenwood are watching.

If they're content to hold up platforms of strutting nobles content to waste their lives doing nothing, then what respect do they deserve from me?

But let's not fall into bitterness, mate. I'm not one to linger on the past. Here's a happy part of the tale.

Was about two years ago that I found myself running with a bandit crew out of Granite Hill. Nasty bunch. This was when I was Minksy Slytongue. What started out as a mild gentleperson's gang quickly became the dull sort of operation in which one skewers a common traveller and loots their belongings.

That's not thievery, it's grave robbing. No art to it! No finesse! Any brute with a sword can do that sort of work. Many criminal groups that start out with a code inevitably devolve into this sort of barbarity. Likely because it's so simple.

My role in the gang was to act as a witless decoy, in order to lure our victims into a false sense of security.

Yes, Nelkir, I did play the witless part very well. Laugh at your own joke, go ahead. Can you believe this? In front of our guest, too. I think he's had too much to drink. That's Nords for you.

Anyway—following the example of my late and great mentor Khajru-ra, I betrayed my bloodthirsty companions by leading them into the camp of a rival operation.

I was barely able to extract myself from the bloodbath when a contubernium of Legion soldiers came across the scene. Suffice it to say, I spent the next few months in the Dragonsreach dungeon, where I met this lovely face right beside me now.

Just picture it! Two disillusioned sons of nobility, eager to shirk their responsibilities and spit on their birthrights. Two of us, in the same palace! Whiterun never stood a chance.

Though like all thieves, I owe a fair portion of my success to good fortune. Raise a cup to Nocturnal and all that merry noise. It was just my luck that the Jarl of Whiterun is bloody terrified of the Thalmor. At the barest suggestion I might be connected to them, he tossed me from his dungeons like a bad egg at Saturalia.

The wise and benevolent Kishla, proprietor of this very tailoring shop in which you sit, scouted us for her chapter of the Thieves Guild soon afterward.

Have I ever met Eats-Spiders? Why, of course. Our esteemed Alfiq guildmaster does visit his twin Kishla from time to time, and I've come to much admire his skills at disguise. Though it is a bit easier to escape attention if you can look like any alley cat, I grant you.

It also means you're a lot more easily mistaken for a stray searching for scraps—my life truly flashed before my eyes, the time I accidently whacked the guildmaster with a broom. I thank Nocturnal every day for his sense of humor.

What's wrong, mate? You're looking a bit sleepy.

Oh. Yes. Maybe there was something in that drink, after all.

Don't give me that hurt look. It's just business. You could do quite a bit of damage, with all I've told you. You look like a blabberer, if not a squeaker.

Ahhh...there's no easy way to tell you this. We've had this talk two or three times, before. Something keeps bringing you back to us to get fooled again. I really admire that about man-folk. That stubborn, stupid determination. You're like an ant that keeps crawling to the top of the stump only to fall back down, again and again. I reckon this won't be our last meeting.

Isn't Nelkir just adorable, when he's asleep? All the worry lines in his face smooth out. All the tension leaves his shoulders. It's a shame you won't remember this. Neither will he, though I will delight in telling him the story.

Don't be scared, now. We're not going to hurt you. My covetous glances are reserved solely for that coin purse at your waist.

Try to lean towards that pile of clothes behind your stool. Wouldn't want to leave a nasty bump on your head. Thievery without violence, that's our creed. We're an honest outfit.

That's the name of the shop, too. Do you remember the sign, when you came in? An Honest Outfit.

Honestly dishonest, that is. You can always rely on us to do the wrong thing. Eats-Spiders has these rules of dishonesty for all his chapters across Skyrim. Long gone are the days of battering poor merchants for protection money. Kishla often curses Mercer Frey under her breath. Who do you take us for? The Dark Brotherhood?

We're not saints, now, but we don't kill people, and we give good jobs to the pathetic little orphans of the city. That's proper generous, considering how shite some of them are at thieving. Even this is an investment. Some of them might grow up to be halfway competent.

Your fluttering eyelids tell me this conversation is over. At least one of us had fun, yes?

Actually, I'd like to thank you. When you spend your life pretending to be different fellows, sometimes you forget who you really are. Always nice to have a refresher.

Sweet dreams, mate!

#elder scrolls #skyrim #sassafras #bosmer #thieves guild

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badger-writes · 3 years

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Star Wars OC Ship Week 2021 - “for light and love”

Day 5 - Meeting the Family

Kelto stared up at the Temple ziggurat from the ground of Processional Way. From bas-relief faces chiseled into massive monoliths, the Four Masters stared back.

It was humbling, to be standing in the shadow of history like this, in the very gaze of the Jedi. Humbling, and more than a little intimidating. He wouldn’t mind it so much, if he could simply follow the stairs back into the temple, but Sskeer had asked him to be here - to wait for him, out in the middle of the boulevard. Here, when all of Coruscant sprawled around them, gleaming marble and aurodium.

Couldn’t we have just met somewhere else?, he wondered to himself, shifting on feet that were rapidly becoming sore. Somewhere nicer? I hear Monument Plaza is lovely this time of day - or there’s this one diner in CoCo Town we could have stopped at, Master Jora says they make the best galma fruit cobbler--

There he is, he thought, spying Sskeer coming down the Temple steps. He set off at a trot to meet him at their base, robes flapping in the breeze behind him. At about the halfway point between them he realized Sskeer was being trailed by another humanoid. This didn’t strike him as particularly odd - sure, Sskeer was a bit of a sourpuss and a loner, but he’d put up with him for this long, hadn’t he? - but it made him wonder, just for a moment.

“Sskeer!”, he called, slowing to a stop at the foot of the stairs. “Good morning.”

Sskeer returned him with a curt nod as he finished descending. “Healer Lem. I see you received my transmission.”

“Yes,” Kelto replied, panting only a little. “What took you so long? I thought you wanted to meet at mid-morning - it’s almost noon by now.”

“I had to collect someone.” By now, the humanoid - an actual human - following in Sskeer’s wake had reached the foot of Processional Way as well; he gestured between her and Kelto. “Keeve Trennis, may I present Kelto Lem, Jedi Knight and healer.”

The youngling - Keeve - stood at attention, hands clasped behind her back, bowing at the hip. She couldn’t have been more than the older side of teenaged, Kelto guessed, and she was seemingly built for action - compact, lean, and wiry. Her dark skin glowed under the light of the sun, and the curtain of thick, dark curls from her half-shave spilled off to frame the right side of her face. The long hilt of a double-bladed lightsaber hung from where she’d clipped it to her hip.

She smiled at him. Politely, Kelto smiled back.

“And Kelto Lem,” Ssker continued, gesturing again, “may I present Padawan Trennis.”

“Hello,” he said, bowing.

“Hello, Mast-- wait.” Keeve froze mid-bow and gawked up at Sskeer. “‘Padawan’?”

The Trandoshan looked down at her expectantly. “Did I misspeak, apprentice?”

As Keeve all but combusted with joy and gratitude, Kelto grinned at Sskeer. In doing so, he noticed something in his eye, something in the way he set his face - the way the corners of his eyes crinkled, and the corner of his mouth tugged to one side just so. The warmth they carried.

“Well, look at you now, ‘Master’ Sskeer,” he chortled, crossing his arms. “The big, cranky lizard finally mellows out and takes a student! Jora and I must finally have gotten through to you,” he added, and leaned over to nudge him with an elbow.

“If my social manners have appeared to improve, Healer,” Sskeer rejoined coolly, “it is no doubt because I have spent time becoming accustomed to smaller, more annoying lifeforms.”

“You wound me, sir. I’ll tell Jora you said that about us. ‘Small and annoying’ - the truth finally comes out.”

Before them, Padawan Trennis had finally reached the end of a furious stream of thank-yous, and now stood with a flush on her face and a stray curl dangling in front of her forehead, beaming. It was no secret why Sskeer had chosen her, Kelto thought. The way she carried herself, the glint in her eye - she was spunky. More than that, she was ready.

“So,” he said grandly. “The big lizard finally deigns we should meet. I’m glad to finally meet you, Padawan.”

“Likewise, Master Lem,” she said, bowing again. “Only--”

“Bah! I’m no master, not yet. Just call me Kelto. Or ‘Kolto’. Either’s fine.”

“Er- Yes, Master Kelto.”

“Close enough. What were you going to say?”

“Oh, just - I’ve heard about you before, from Master Malli.”

The Rodian shot the Trandoshan a faux-scandalized look. “You really introduced her to Jora before me?”

For once, Sskeer looked like he was caught on the backfoot. “I really didn’t think it would matter,” he shrugged.

“Typical. I’m always the last to know anything.”

Keeve giggled into a hand. Sskeer shot Kelto a look that said, you’re making me look foolish in front of my new apprentice. Kelto flashed him a grin that said, try and stop me.

“So anyway, Keeve,” he said breezily before Sskeer could get a word in edgewise, “what’s Master Malli been saying about me? Nothing but good things, I hope.”

“Yes, sir. Only…” And here Keeve’s eyes screwed up towards the sky, feigning the impression of innocence, like a child trial-ballooning a potentially revealing question to their parents. “I don’t really know if it’s okay to say this, but she did mention once or twice that you were kind of… more than just friends? Sort of? That you were figuring it out?”

The reptilians blinked, then glanced at each other. Then they looked back at Keeve.

“I don’t know,” she continued, shrugging. “It’s just, I’ve heard that that stuff’s technically not allowed under the Code, but Master Jora said it was okay if you thought about it like this and not like that, but it’s all a little… you know, confusing.”

Sskeer rumbled thoughtfully. “And what do you think about such matters, Padawan?”

“I dunno, Master,” she said, shrugging again. “I’m still just a learner, I’m not sure it’s any of my business. Orrr - anybody else’s, really. But if she’s right and it ends up working out, or whatever - I guess I’m happy for you two?”

“So you’re not gonna snitch?” Kelto asked suddenly.

“What? Pfft, kriff no.”

Sskeer’s scaly brows shot up his forehead. “Padawan,” he hissed, as Kelto cackled.

“Sorry!”, she yelped, blushing furiously. “Sorry, master!”

Kelto sighed, and wiped a tear from his eye. “Ohhh, I like her,” he decided, and reached up to pat Sskeer on his broad shoulder. “You’re really going to have your hands full with this one, Master.”

Sskeer hmmphed. “Regardless - Padawan Trennis, your first duty as apprentice shall be to accompany me on a patrol of Level 5053, so I can appraise your performance in the field. I will signal a speeder - you wait here with Healer Lem.” He gave the Rodian a sidelong glance as he fished out a comlink.

“Try not to rub off on her,” he grumbled as he turned away.

“No promises,” Kelto whispered back.

As the Trandoshan spoke into the comm unit a few paces away, Keeve and Kelto were left standing next to each other.

“So what do you think of your new Master and his little healer friend, Padawan?”, he asked her.

“No offense,” Keeve began slowly, “But… you two don’t really act like what I thought Jedi Masters would act like.”

“Clearly you haven’t met many Jedi Masters,” he replied. “We’re pretty much all like this. The ‘wise and venerable’ thing is just an act the old timers put on. It’s mostly sass and bickering.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him. “I thought you were just a Knight?”

“Well - you know,” he said, scratching his head so the pom of his topknot bobbled, “Not yet. But I’m getting there!”

Keeve grinned, shooting a puff of air out through her nostrils. This was a thing humanoids with noses did when they were amused, Kelto had observed - or irritated. With Sskeer, it was mostly irritation. She turned to look at him, still talking into his comm.

After a moment she said, “I like him. He’s kind of rough around the edges, but… he’s good to people. A protector, I guess. I have a good feeling about him.”

Kelto nodded in agreement. He turned to look at Sskeer, silhouetted against the sky beyond the far edge of the boulevard. “So do I.”

If Keeve noticed the pride in his voice or in his smile, he didn’t care. He’d seen that pride in Sskeer’s eyes already, looking at her. And it made him proud, too.

It was an honor to know this man, and to love him. And the Code, whatever it had to say about it, could clam up.

“I think you’re the fun one,” Keeve decided.

Kelto shook himself out of reverie. “Hm?”

“I think you’re the one who’s going to tell me how to push all his buttons if I ask nicely,” she said, grinning.

“Hah - I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, a little bashfully. “I sure didn’t start out as the ‘fun’ one, I’ll tell you that much.”

“So was I wrong?”

“Well, we can give each other grief, but he’s your master now. And you ought to treat him with a certain amount of respect at all times. No matter how much grief I, or Jora, or any other masters might be giving him.”

“Oh, so it’s different with you,” she observed. “Because you’re friends, or because you’re… ‘friends’?”

He tilted his shoulders to one side, then the other, then again in a little sort-of dance, humming thoughtfully. “I prefer to think of it as because we’re family,” he said finally. “One great big Jedi family.”

She frowned dubiously at him. Which was fair - it was a total cop-out.

“And now so are you,” Kelto finished. He squeezed her shoulder with a smile, and at that, she seemed to perk up. “So make sure you listen to him out there, okay? And trust him. He’ll be good to you, Keeve Trennis. So you make sure to be good in turn.”

“I will, Master Kelto.” Keeve set her jaw and nodded. “I promise.”

“Good.” He glanced to the side; Sskeer was still stuck on the comm line. “Now, do you want to hear a secret?”

“Uhhh… sure?”

He leaned in close, talking behind the back of his hand. “He might look really grumpy,” he told her in a stage whisper, “but deep down, Sskeer loves giving puffer-piggyback rides.”

“I’m… not so sure about that,” Keeve replied doubtfully.

“Hey, you wanted to know how to push his buttons, didn’t you? So you better do it while you’re still small enough for him to carry around.”

Her eyebrows raised mischievously. He gave her a wink.

“Padawan!”, called Sskeer. “Our speeder will arrive at the foot of the temple. We should be off.”

“Coming, Master!” She started, stopped, bowed to Kelto one last time, then resumed jogging over to her teacher.

Kelto waited patiently. He watched Keeve catch up to Sskeer’s retreating form and then, with just a touch of the Force, jump straight up and latch onto his shoulders. He cried out in alarm, and staggered a step - but he caught her, and didn’t fall over.

The Trandoshan half-turned on his heel to give Kelto an impotent glare; he wiggled his fingers in an innocent wave back at him. He was going to get a stern talking-to later tonight for that little stunt, he was sure - and probably a little more besides - but the toothy grin Sskeer probably thought Kelto wouldn’t see him crack was worth whatever reprisal he had in store.

Those two would go far together. Kelto just knew it.

#StarWarsOCShipWeek2021 #star wars #high republic #sskeer #keeve trennis #original character #oc x canon #fanfic

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aethernoise · 4 years

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some stories i want to write

but haven’t (yet)

@autumnslance @anomaliewrites and @to-the-voiceless all tagged me for this, so after a third tag I decided to finally Perceive the question and attempt an answer. I have tons of ill-defined ideas floating around the uplander braincase at any given time so I tried to narrow down a list of concepts I hope you find interesting. Some highlights are:

- THE OTP IS GETTING MARRIED exactly what it says on the tin. they’re getting really impatient so I have to do something soon.

- The Fuck-You-Werlyt-Quest Fix-It Fic more of a "save Raubahn and Cid from character assassination while also giving Alyx a chance to say what we're all thinking" type of fix-it, the plot is largely staying the same. Established key points: Alyx confronts Raubahn about Gaius, Alyx punches Gaius (with magic), Cid punches Gaius, Cid calls Nero, ?????, profit.

- Whomst the Fuck is Wolfram Taris & Why Should I Care In just want to write some stories, even just one, about ARR Alyx and my laughably underdeveloped Scion-adjacent scoundrel OC. It may very likely require a replay of ARR to get into that headspace.

- Black Magic, Grief, and You I want to combine and flesh out my previous prompt responses spanning the Heavensward Black Mage quests to create a single narrative... BUT ALSO include bits and pieces from The Shadow of Mhach raid storyline--and if I’m really feeling spicy--culminate in the big arrogant disaster Alyx cooks up in Azys Lla (yes, the one Alphinaud yells at her about). Just one long dramatic pain train.

- The NSFW Ardbert/WoL/Fray Self-Care Sandwich Listen...this is a challenging thought, but I want to write it so badly. I’ve never written smut involving more than two bodies at once? but what if 2/3 are dubiously corporeal anyway?? Aether makes all things possible. Logistics be damned, the WoL deserves this. I deserve this.

- A “Beholden” Epilogue I CAN’T BELIEVE EMET SAVED RHODRY’S LIFE A SECOND TIME..... I have yet to play 5.3 MSQ for him but part of the reason I’ve been saving it is to really savor how amazing that moment is going to be with him. I’m definitely writing something, not sure if it will just be a drabble or a whole-ass fic.

- Speaking of Emet-Selch (There’s That Entire Other AU) So there’s this other story I’ve dabbled in with those Emet-POV prompt responses about dancing and drinking and angry kissing against a doorframe (and a bit of unpublished filth).... it feels like something that wants to be a longfic I don’t have energy for. Hopefully, I can strike a compromise with myself somewhere, and tell a whole story without agonizing over not telling enough.

UM I’LL STOP THERE wheezes I don’t know if I should tag anybody, but if it would help your creative process, go ahead and use me as an excuse to blab about your ideas!

#this is such a paralyzing question I literally want to #WRITE ALL THE THINGS!!!#limited myself to just one (1) alyx/aymeric fic idea bc #let's be real here #i have A Lot #throws confetti #emily blabs about writing #tag memes #stories i want to write

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jackalgirl · 4 years

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Exerpt

@damejudyhench tagged me for WIP Wednesday (thank you!), and now it's Thursday, whatever, I've been fairly* busy helping out the SCA with heraldic art and it's crunch time for this event, which is why I've been absent.

* Speaking of "fairly', I still have a couple of asks in from the @random-oc-questions-fairy which I will get to, I swear, they're just really good questions for which I don't have any quick responses.

Anyway, though, here's a bit from my ever-languishing draft of "the Journeyman". I think just about everyone I know has already been tagged, so if you see this and would like to consider it a ping, please do so -- I always love to see people's work in my feed!

----------------- Maximillian ------------------

“What does your corporation do?” Parvati asked. “What does it make? Weapons? Medicine? Food?”

“People,” the Captain said. “We make good people.” Max glanced at Parvati and Felix and saw that they were as nonplussed as he was. The Captain must have seen it, too, because she quickly explained further. “Perhaps it’s more accurate to say ‘education.’ We specialize in different ways to teach, to learn. We want to maximize everyone’s potential as a fully realized human being, but for that most part what we end up doing, usually, is take on contracts to train other corporations’ employees, that sort of thing.”

“You’re a teacher,” Parvati said, and Max noted the dubiousness in her voice. I have my doubts as well.

“Me? No,” said the Captain. “Not yet. I’m a bodyguard for the teachers. Or I was supposed to be, coming here.”

Parvati nodded. “That makes more sense. I never knew any teachers that shoot like you do.” Her brows knit. “Why do teachers need bodyguards?”

“Why indeed?” Max murmured.

The Captain tilted her head. “SEPA is dedicated to improvement through education, and we take particular care to be honest in our assessments of corporations’ training, capabilities, and limitations. Sometimes people, and especially corporations, don’t appreciate that honesty. Sometimes they attempt to disagree violently, or they think that removing or installing a particular executive or assessor will somehow change the assessment. Thus, bodyguards.”

“Why the need to be violent?” Max asked. “Why don’t they just…fire you?”

“The corporation has…well, had, I suppose…a considerable reputation for excellence and impartiality. It meant something, to be SEPA-certified in your training. Certification through an outside agency with a reputation for impartiality is hard, you see. The Earth Directorate required it for some contracts, as a kind of guarantee. When I think about it, our real product was the impartiality.”

“Big contracts?” Asked Parvati.

“Huge contracts,” said the Captain. “Systems-wide.”

“It sounds like a lot of money would be involved,” said Max. “And power.” That explains the bodyguards. And her skill.

“Do Halcyon corporations have any kind of certification process?” The Captain asked them.

“Uh,” said Parvati. “All my engineering certifications I ever got are Spacer’s Choice. I never heard of a corporation having to answer to any other corporation, just to the Board.”

“And the Board is made up of the corporations themselves,” said Max.

“Ah,” said the Captain. “That would certainly make things easier for them here.”

“How can your corporation maintain this impartiality over time?” Max asked. “With that much power and money, something has to give. The incentives to sell your impartiality…it would be immense.”

“I’d be naive to say it never happened,” the Captain said. “But our corporate culture is…” She stopped, looked up, looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure how to say this without it coming out completely crazy,” she said, looking between them. “Virtue is our core mission. It’s the backbone of the culture. It tends to suppress that kind of corruption.” She held up her hands in surrender. “Not prevent it entirely, I grant you. No one can be perfectly virtuous all the time. But the constant striving tends to suppress the temptation.”

“What do you mean by virtue?” Max asked.

“To do the right thing when no one is looking,” said Aethel. “I grant you that we could spend a year discussing what ‘the right thing’ means, but for the moment, that is essentially what it is.”

“Everyone in the corporation does this?” Again, Parvati sounded doubtful.

“Probably not,” said Aethel. “But people who don’t hold the same values tend to get weeded out.”

“Weeded out? You mean they’re killed?”

“What? No!” Aethel looked startled. “They find some other corporation to work for. The company helps them find a better fit elsewhere.”

“In the ground?” Evidently, Parvati was still skeptical.

Aethel’s eyes widened and she leaned back. “What kind of a place is this?”

Max held up his hands. “Parvati is exaggerating,” he said. A little. “I’m assuming you weren’t the only employee of your corporation to embark in the Hope. How many?”

“Twenty-two thousand.”

Parvati swallowed. “Gosh, that’s a lot.”

Aethel gave the smallest of shrugs. “We were meant to be first wave. To establish SEPA in-system.”

“Your parents?” Parvati wanted to know.

Aethel shook her head. “Of my biological family, only I embarked.”

Parvati’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, wow. I’m so sorry. The rest of your corporation…they’re all still in the colony ship?”

“Yes, among the rest of the colonists. They’re my family.” Aethel laced her fingers together. “So you understand why I am inclined to help out Dr. Welles.”

#the outer worlds #fanfic #the journeyman #SEPA

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lifeisdabubbles-undersalmondean · 3 years

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La Pomme ~ Chapter Seven

Pairing: Sam x OC (eventual Dean x OC and Dean x Castiel. And I mean eventual.)

Series summary: George is a casual French-Mistake-universe Supernatural fan living in no-COVID 2020, who's life is upended when she's suddenly launched between realities, two years into the boys' past (S13E22). What begins as an insane, immersive fan experience turns into more when Jack goes missing and George offers up her AU information to help track him down. Soon it's discovered that she and Sam may actually have history. But that's impossible, right?

Word Count: 11,800

Warnings: {smut, fluff, angst, show level violence, swearing, mentions of suicide} ***Detailed warnings will be tagged for specific chapters.

A/N: Following the events of my prequel Paradise and second story From My Eyes Off. Reading those first gives context but isn’t necessary to start this one.

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Sam, Dean, and Castiel had been stomping around the bunker determinedly for the past hour looking for Jack.

After getting back from being Michael's pack mule the evening prior, Dean had gone to talk to him, but he wasn't in his room. He searched a few other places and when he came up empty, he went to Sam and Cas. When they joined the search and all three came up empty, they began to worry.

"Anything?" Sam asked as Dean and Castiel both returned to the map table room from opposite sides of the bunker.

"Nothing," Castiel admitted with a defeated tone.

"No one's seen him since yesterday. The few people I saw either saw him in his room playing video games or getting food from the kitchen," Dean added, his tone was worried-angry. He couldn't help but mutter in annoyance, "Can't believe you let him get video games."

"So, no one saw him leave?" Sam asked for confirmation, ignoring his grump brother, and the two other men shrugged in hesitant affirmation.

"Alright, well let's regroup. We'll do a quick full sweep together, talk to everyone we see, and look for any sign of him or an explanation," Sam decided. "If that comes up empty-"

"We'll hit the streets. Let's start in his room; if he did leave on his own, maybe he left a note and I missed it." Dean reasoned before the three of them went to search together.

They spent the better part of 15 minutes tearing the room apart and had yet to find anything useful.

"There's nothing here, guys," Sam shook his head frustratedly, setting the mattress back down on the bed.

"Certainly no explanation for where he went," Castiel added dejectedly, closing the dresser drawer he'd been searching through.

"The problem is, there is something here." Dean gestured to the room and said, "all of Jack's stuff. It doesn't even seem like so much as a pair of shoes is missing."

"Haven't found his phone yet," Sam pointed out frustratedly as he tried calling him once more, "not that he's answering it."

As the three stood there watching him call again, the door started to open and they all turned hopefully. When they saw Tim-one of the camp refugees-stick his head in instead of Jack, there was a collective shoulder slump.

Tim was in his late 40s but looked much older. He had a 80s punk style, with torn up, oversized dark pants, a black and white ragdoll band shirt, and huge black boots. Tim completed the look with a short green mohawk attop his head, long ZZ Top, salt-and-pepper beard, a spiked collar and matching spike through his nose.

Dean didn't like him.

"Tim?" Sam acknowledged the man when he spotted the group.

Dean watched Tim's surprised expression closely as he addressed Sam, "Oh, hey, Chief! What's shakin'?" He looked at the other two men and Dean noted a slight sweat begin to form on his forehead. He gulped and asked, "Jack here?"

Sam frowned, "No. Have you seen him?"

Tim seemed nervous, "Uhh, not since yesterday. He let me borrow his headphones," he reached into his pocket and held up the pair of headphones, "so I was just returning them."

"When exactly did you last see him?" Came the gruff follow up from Dean as Sam reached out and took the offered headphones.

"Late last night? He was playing video games with that dumpy, frigid gal."

"'Frigid'?" Castiel questioned. He thought it was an odd choice of descriptor. Sam wasn't pleased with Tim's choice of words either, but for different reasons.

Tim nodded, "Yea, ya know, tall, blonde, cute face but real icy, like she's better than you even though she's got a little too much junk in the trunk."

Dean and Sam shared a disgusted expression before Dean asked, "Full of opinions about her body but don't know her name, huh? Stay classy, Timmy."

"I assume he's referring to George," Sam offered with an annoyed tone.

"There's a woman named George?" Dean wondered.

"She's new, from the camps. She's been... connecting with Jack," Sam explained vaguely to his skeptical brother, though it came out a bit wrong.

Tim shrugged nonplussed, "Never caught her name, but she's always hanging around the kid. A little too much if you ask me," Tim gave them 'the eyes' and Sam narrowed his in disbelief at what the guy was insinuating.

"Wait, so first this girl is frigid and now you're saying she's… what? Lusting after Jack?" Dean asked dubiously.

"She's not a girl, she's our age," Sam corrected and then added, "Also, I doubt she was doing anything inappropriate." He didn't want to say why he doubted it, because it was none of Dean's damn business.

Tim hesitated and then said, "Look, all I know is I came by last night to borrow his headphones and the two of them were on the bed playing video games. They looked awful close to me. And she seemed pissed when I showed up, like I was interrupting something."

Of course Sam was not inclined to believe this story. Based on his own personal experiences with her, he was almost positive it wasn't Jack she was interested in. That was even more true if she was the woman he'd dreamt about so long ago. Which she obviously wasn't considering she was from an alternate reality. And she was real, whereas the dream, of course, hadn't been. So, it made no sense and he hadn't really allowed himself to entertain those thoughts since he first thought about it.

And, to be fair, he had been very wrong about women in the past.

"Interrupting what, exactly?" Sam demanded to know.

"I don't know, Chief. But when I left, I heard her asking him if he was 'ready to go'," His eyes were wide for emphasis and there was a creepy smirk on his face.

"Go where?" Castiel asked quickly, missing the innuendo. Tim just bounced his eyebrows in response and the three men frowned and shared curious expressions. Sam's expression was more doubtful than the others.

After a long pause Dean asked dubiously, "Jack doesn't even know how to do that… right?" None of them knew, and there was an awkwardly long silence before they realized Tim was giving them all a strange expression.

"Need anything else?" Tim asked, inching away from the doorway, "I'm supposed to meet up with Jules for a hunt."

"Tell Jules you need to sit this one out and don't leave the bunker," Dean demanded. "We might have more questions for you later."

Tim nodded in understanding, starting to back out of the room again, "And just, by the way, she isn't from the camps."

"Sorry?" Sam asked in confusion. "She's not?"

Tim shook his head, "No, sir. As second in command of third-shift security detail, it was my job to know everyone. I'd never seen her until I came here. Figured she was one of yours," with a shrug, he left.

"Alright, well we need to find whoever George is. Now!" Dean started to leave and Sam stopped him.

"Hold on, you believe his story?" He asked with a frown. He realized he barely knew her but… he felt connected to her. Dean and Castiel looked at him for a reason not to and he explained, "Listen, I know her-kind of. I-I've seen her with Jack and there's nothing that-"

"So, maybe Punk Rock Douche is wrong about things being inappropriate, but he says he heard her ask Jack if he was ready to go, and now Jack's not here, so..." Dean shrugged and Sam nodded begrudgingly. He couldn't disagree with that logic, so off they went.

As the three of them searched for George they became increasingly concerned. Just as Tim said, none of the camp refugees knew her, other than to say that they'd seen someone matching her description 'lurking' or 'sneaking' around the bunker after they showed up. They didn't know her name, they all swore she didn't come from Apocalypse World, and they had no idea where she was staying.

Sam became more and more deflated the more people they spoke to. On one hand, he didn't want to believe a word Tim had said about her, because most of them were awful. And in the admittedly limited amount of time he'd spent with her, he found her to be nothing but pleasant. And charming... Adorable. Incredibly kind hearted, but intensely competitive in a way that amused him. Had his instincts about her really been this off? Was she that good at duping him? Or, he worried, was he that good at being duped?

On the other hand, if she really was from this reality and just snuck into their bunker and lied to them about it, why? Certainly dreaming about her made a bit more sense now that she was of his reality, but was that a good thing or a bad thing? A happy coincidence or Gabriel's weird attempt at a long con? Or had the dream been real after all?

Why was he so bad with women?

Jack's phone had been blowing up with calls from Sam for the last two hours, so George figured it was time to return it. He had let her borrow it the night before when she'd mentioned wanting to listen to music. Really, though, she was trying to get in contact with Rowena regarding her trip home. She'd heard hide nor hair of the crazy redheaded witch since she'd left her there weeks ago, promising to find a way to get George home "in no time." She'd been here so long now that she'd DONE LAUNDRY. More than once! And-fun fact-the 70+ year old bunker didn't have an electric dryer! She'd have to remember to add that little factoid to Wikipedia when she got back.

Truthfully, though, being there had been like the world's best vacation from her normal life. Other than missing her friends and inexplicably worrying about the wellbeing of her students, she felt amazing. The meds she typically took to regulate her anxiety and depression had been left back at home but surprisingly she hadn't needed them. Maybe because the situation was so crazy exciting she didn't have time to be anxious or depressed? Whatever the reason, her new environment was strangely comfortable.

However, she knew the longer she was there the more dangerous the situation became. So, when Jack and her started to become friendly, she spotted an opportunity to try and get in contact with Rowena. Using the ruse of wanting to listen to music, he let her borrow the phone and made sure to give her the headphones. Which, she now couldn't find. Considering she had no way to replace them, she was kicking herself for losing them.

She checked the nooks and crannies of her tiny room one more time before giving up. Hoping Jack would take pity on her, she grabbed his phone and headed for his room. As she walked the now familiar path, her attention was on the phone, checking the messages again. She let out a frustrated growl when she saw that there were still no replies.

Texting Rowena once more to let her know that she was giving the phone back to Jack and not to respond, she added, "But DO get back here and get me home. NOW! Please?" before deleting all the texts she'd sent.

As George huffed frustratedly, she turned the phone off and looked up finally. The second her attention wasn't on the phone, all the hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she got a sick feeling in her stomach. She was being followed. As she took a sharp turn toward the kitchen, she caught a glimpse of Dean-turned-Michael skulking behind her. Her heart started beating faster, all the blood felt like it drained from her body and a cold sweat broke out on her forehead. The thought that this must be what true terror felt like briefly popped into her head. Just as her vision began tunneling, she found the strength to move her wobbly legs and dart into the kitchen.

Unfortunately for her, there had been a small bunker party the night before; beer bottles littered the floor. She just happened to kick right into a small pile, sending three bottles crashing across the room. The echoing clangs made her feel nauseous and dread began spreading through her chest.

Nice and stealthy.

A large cleaver sitting atop a cutting board on the prep table caught her attention. Thinking quickly, she lunged for it and then flung herself back across the room to the entryway. She slammed clumsily against the wall with a clear, obvious thud. The cleaver was clutched against her heaving chest. Doing her best to catch her breath quietly, she tried to listen for his approach. Unfortunately, the loud, obnoxious sound of her own blood rushing was muting her surroundings.

Aftering standing poised and ready for attack for what felt like a crazy long time, George finally-slowly-peaked her head around to check the hallway. From her vantage point she could see very clearly down the left hall and hadn't seen anyone moving since she got there. Her breath was held almost unconsciously as more and more of the right hall came into view. Her grip tightened on the cleaver and she slowly raised it on instinct, but it didn't take her long to see that Dean-Michael wasn't there.

Maybe he passed me while I was panicking? It didn't make much sense to her but she hesitated to put too much thought into it. Every molecule of her body was screaming for her to run back and hide, but she knew she had to find Sam and warn him.

Lowering the cleaver quickly, she shoved her hand in her pocket and ripped out Jack's phone. She'd planned to text Sam a 911. Just happened to turn her head half an inch at the right time when she saw a flash of plaid and scruff flying at her from inside the kitchen behind her. The phone dropped from her hand in surprise and she swiped the cleaver on instinct.

Her reaction was surprisingly effective as the blade connected and sliced the underside of Dean's arm. Unfortunately, it also came too late; he was too close. He grabbed her hand with his good arm and twisted the weapon out of her fingers painfully. Using his grip on her hand, he easily flipped her around, wrapped his-now bleeding-arm around her neck and locked both arms together.

As she struggled against the tight chokehold, she tried to fight the panic that was building. Scratching and clawing as his arm and struggling to breathe, she tried to drop her weight. When he followed her down without loosening his grip, she tried lifting her legs up off the ground in desperation. To her shock, he easily lifted her back upright. Almost without thinking, George kicked her legs out. When they connected with the opposite wall, she pushed with all her might.

Dean stumbled backward. When he made contact with the wall behind him, she felt more than heard a deep, rumbly-perhaps annoyed-groan escape him. Unfortunately, however, his grip around her neck didn't loosen and her vision was starting to tunnel. Digging her nails hard into his arm, she felt him grunt in pain again but there was nothing more she could do. With the lack of oxygen, George's body started going limp as she quickly began passing out.

He finally let go, just before she was totally out, laying her down on the floor. She was vaguely aware of some shuffling noises, a long stretch of silence, and then her limp body was lifted up and tossed over his shoulder like a bag of rice. Mercifully, air was flowing into her lungs again but she couldn't focus on much. He was carrying her through the hallways, at a determined pace, for a while. Turning into a room finally, she was aware of lights being turned on and metal scraping against the floor.

The next thing she knew she was being set down unceremoniously in a chair. It was an ancient, mostly metal chair with an old, worn leather seat. Her head flopped forward limply. As she struggled to regain her senses, Dean used her weakened state to affix her arms and legs to the chair with handcuffs. Then he stuffed a folded bandana into her mouth and tied it around the back of her head.

Suddenly, she felt him sprinkling her with something wet. Slowly lifting her head up, she saw him approaching her with a small, shiny blade. Normally, she'd freak out but she was still recovering from the lack of oxygen. Mercifully, all he did was press the blunt side of the blade against the skin of her arm. When she noticed the curious expression on his face, she realized what he was doing. Assuming the blade was silver, she realized the earlier liquid had probably been holy water.

The stars dancing in George's vision had finally cleared when Sam appeared in the doorway. As he walked in, her eyes went wide and her heart stopped. She started shouting incoherently behind the gag and there was a loud clanking sound as she tried to lift her hands and wave him out. Sam froze, looking at her in concern, then looking at Dean questioningly, then back to her.

The sight of George tied to a chair with a gag in her mouth registered slowly for him. He recognized her sitting there, dressed in a long sleeve black ribbed Henley t-shirt and khaki shorts. It took a moment of looking at her-perhaps distracted again by the bright artwork on the pale skin of her thick thigh-to notice the handcuffs and gag.

He jerked his head angrily toward his brother, "Really, Dean?! I told you to go easy! What the hell is this?!"

George stopped screaming in surprise when she heard Sam call him Dean, "'Ah'ss-eeennnn?!"

Dean raised an eyebrow, glancing over at George, and shrugged indifferently, "She had Jack's phone. And she has a secret hideout in our bunker that we didn't know existed." Sam looked shocked and turned to look at her quickly, then back at Dean when he lifted his arm to show off a bandage and added, "And she attacked me with a cleaver!"

"I-'hawt-ooo-err-'IKE-UHL!"

Sam listened carefully and then gave Dean an exasperated expression, "She thought you were Michael, you idiot. Of course, she attacked you! She probably thought you were going to kill her." Still, Sam hesitated to let her out of the cuffs immediately. He had to be sure.

Just then, Cas walked in with a piece of paper in his hand, "Other than a few clothes and food wrappers, her room was pretty bare. Like, Sam's room but with slightly more warmth. I did find this though. It appears to be a spell of some kind." George raised a confused eyebrow, watching them closely.

"A spell?" Sam was starting to get concerned. He definitely hadn't expected her to be a witch. A witch working with Gabriel would explain the dream situation though, he thought a bit disappointedly. He ignored that for that time being though. If the dream had been real, it wasn't a can of worms he wanted to open just yet.

Cas nodded, "I'm having trouble figuring out what it means, I think it's written in code. From what I can tell, the intended effect is to debilitate something called a 'pull out game?'" There was a muffled groan from behind the gag, as all the color drained from George's face.

"What?" Sam asked, confused. Castiel passed the paper to Sam to inspect.

"Some kind of a sports term?" Dean muttered with a frown, trying to read it over Sam's shoulder. "What's W-A-P?" Another loud groan escaped her lips.

Cas shrugged, "It's hard to follow because the context jumps around. I'm still trying to decipher it. I think it mentions some ingredients: weed-which I believe to be a colloquial reference to the plant cannabis, a king cobra-doesn't specify alive or dead-and something called 'punani Dasani'." As Sam scanned the page his eyes got wider and wider, then he quickly looked away from it.

George was struggling against her bindings even harder now, "Iss 'ought a ss'ell, iss a soo'g!"

Sam set the paper down on the table and walked over to her, taking the gag off. Dean quickly swooped up the paper and started reading.

As soon as her mouth was free, George shouted, "It's not a spell! It-"

"What's a 'Kegel'?" Sam, Cas, and George all turned to look at Dean's confused expression with a concerned look of their own.

Cas answered, "It's a type of exercise for strengthening pelvic muscles." Dean still looked confused. Sam and George looked surprised that Cas knew that and he added, "I assume it's used as part of the ritual for the spell?"

"Oh my god, it's NOT a spell!" George cried, blushing from head to toe.

Cas narrowed his eyes, "If it's not a spell then-"

"It's lyrics!"

"Lyrics?" Sam asked.

"Yes! Lyrics; for a song!" All three of them looked skeptical.

"A song by who, Chris Brown?!" Dean asked doubtfully.

George suddenly looked offended, "What?! No! It was written by women!"

"Written by women?!" Dean's head tilted questioningly and he stuttered, "'Beat it up, catch a charge?' 'Not looking for a fight, but I'm looking for a beating?' 'I want to gag, I want to choke, I-'" Sam rolled his eyes and reached out, snatching the paper away from him.

George struggled against her bindings more, waving her hands in surrender, "Dude, I refuse to sit here and explain or defend consensual rough sex for you…" She paused and looked in deep thought for a moment before muttering, "though I may have written fanfiction about doing that exact thing, actually…"

Dean and Sam shared a strange look and she said quickly, "The point is: that," she indicated toward the paper Dean was trying to annoy Sam into letting him read again, "is just a rap song, by Cardi B. I've had it stuck in my head since I got here but I can't listen to it because it doesn't exist. One night it was driving me nuts, so I finally just started writing out the lyrics hoping it would help somehow. I'm not a witch," She assured, and then looked at Dean, "and I'm not a demon! Or anything that's bothered by silver. I'm not anything! I'm just human!"

"With interesting taste in 'music'," Dean mumbled with some air quotes.

"And by the way, yes, I one hundred percent thought you were Michael! I saw you coming down the hall and nearly had a heart attack. If I'd known it was-" she looked him up and down with a strange mix of appreciation, awe, and terror, "really you… Dean Winchester." She thought for a minute and then shrugged, "Well, I probably still would have hid, but I definitely wouldn't have tried to stab you."

The guys were quiet for a moment before Cas asked them, "What do you think?"

"I believe her," Sam said definitively and George's stomach fluttered nauseatingly. "I know she thought you were Michael. We've been talking about it around here for weeks and you've not been back that long."

"Well, it's still feasible she heard about it…" Dean said but his tone indicated that wasn't what he really thought. "I've still got a lot of questions, but I'm inclined to believe her on these so called 'lyrics' at least," Dean said, begrudgingly, "I mean, what spell have you ever heard of that says 'if he ate my ass, he's a bottom feeder'?"

"Christ," George closed her eyes tight. If she weren't so terrified she would laugh. When she opened her eyes again finally, the smirk on Sam's face made her stomach do flip flops, so she closed them again.

"Alright," Dean addressed her again, "So, where's Jack?"

George's eyes flew back open and she frowned, "Jack?" She looked at Sam confused and then asked, "What do you mean 'where' is he?"

Sam was studying her, reading her reaction, before answering, "We can't find him in the bunker. He's gone, but nothing else seems to be missing."

"Except his cell phone, which was missing until I found you," Dean added accusatively, picking Jack's phone up off the table and holding it up. "So, when did you see him last?"

George frowned deeper, a concerned expression on her face, "Yesterday, but not for long." She looked over at Sam and explained, "As he's been getting better at the games, he's been more interested in single player. And seeing as how I'd rather gouge my own eyes out with a melon baller than watch a teenageish boy struggle to play video games that I could beat in my sleep, we've been hanging out less. He usually only comes to see me if he's really stuck or when he wants to talk about something that's bothering him."

Dean's brows furrowed curiously as he wondered who this woman was that seemed to be getting so close to his brother and his kid. "Why did he come to you yesterday?" He asked gruffly.

"I, uh… went to him, to ask if I could borrow his phone and listen to some music. I ended up staying to chat for a minute because he was pissed when I found him."

"Why?" Castiel asked with concern.

George smirked a bit, "Because he couldn't get a good picture of Gyrados in Pokemon Snap?" Dean looked confused and highly annoyed about it; Sam couldn't help but chuckle.

"Is that… another ambiguous song lyric?" Castiel looked confused.

"No, it's just a challenging video game," George explained. "So, hang on, are you sure he's gone-gone? Maybe-"

With a frustrated sigh, Sam nodded and cut her off, "We're sure, unfortunately. Can you just walk us through yesterday, when you saw him?"

George was getting worried; was Jack really in trouble? Was this another Big Bad trying to kill them? Was she going to have to hide in a small space again?! Did she have time to pee first? Where the hell was Rowena? Half of her was ready to go home, now, even if it had to hogtie and yank the other half with it.

After collecting her thoughts for a minute she said, "Sure. It was late evening. I went to his room to ask for the phone and found him chucking a controller at the wall," She and Sam shared a smirk and Dean narrowed his eyes curiously. "We talked about him being pissed at the game and I told him no one can get a picture of that fucking impossible pokemon, so not to beat himself up about it. Then I offered to play something multiplayer with him to get his mind off it. We played for a bit but the zombies were overwhelming him." Sam had to hold back a chuckle at the fact that she didn't seem very sympathetic. "I could tell he was just getting pissed all over, so I pretended I was tired of playing and we turned it off. He didn't feel like talking, so I made an excuse about being tired and told him I'd bring the phone back today."

"Where were you sitting?" Dean asked matter-of-factly and Sam flinched at the question.

"Scusi?" George didn't understand.

"When you were playing together, in Jack's room. Where were you sitting?" He asked again.

She looked at him like he had two heads, "What?! Why does it matter where I was sitt-" Her breath caught in her throat a little when she realized why he might be asking the question. All the blood drained from her face save for the deep, angry flush in her cheeks. She could see Sam fidgeting uncomfortably out of the corner of her eye.

The question offended her deeply and made her feel shame she didn't deserve to feel. She'd been sitting on the floor, per usual, and even so there was nothing going on between her and Jack. She doubted he'd even call her a friend; she'd helped him out with the games and listened when he needed someone to talk to a few times. That was it. Period. But the mere fact that Dean had asked the question had now planted the seed in everyone's mind. Even though she's innocent, and even after they find that out, she feared the question would always be there. She'd never be able to have a normal friendship with Jack, now.

You moron! You aren't going to be staying long enough to have any kind of friendship with any one of them, what. are. you. doing?! Just answer his moronic, misogynistic question and get this over with already.

She took a deep breath and unclenched her jaw to answer him, "I wa-" but then stopped and thought, although, when are you ever going to get the opportunity to put Dean Winchester in his place again?

Then she shook her head emphatically and, hands gesturing noisily, said, "No, ya know what? Fuck that. I honestly don't think it's any of your fucking business what square footage of space my ass was taking up inside of a room you weren't in. And I know for a fact that if I had a penis you would not be asking me this question at all, which is both ergregiously misogynistic and heteronormative. Unfortunately for you, I have a strict rule against answering such questions, sooooo thanks and g'fuck ya'self." She just told Dean Winchester to go fuck himself. She was proud but also felt like she might vomit.

Dean's eyebrows raised high. His expression slowly went from shocked, to pensive, to mildly agreeable. With an amused smirk, he gave a quick nod, "OK, you might have a point. But, I wouldn't be asking the question at all if certain people hadn't expressed concerns about the location of your ass inside the room."

"Dean," Sam was really uncomfortable with this line of questioning; though certainly not as uncomfortable as she deserved to be. He felt sure that Tim's accusations were baseless, but Jack's life could be on the line and there were definitely things she hadn't been honest about. He couldn't let his desire to believe her negatively affect Jack or their ability to find him. Still, he didn't think it was necessary to humiliate her, so he interjected gently, "George, while you were hanging out, did you talk about anything that stood out? What was his mood like?"

George swallowed hard and blinked back the shameful tears, before answering quietly, "We didn't really talk about anything special. Game shit-talk, mostly." Purposefully omitting the fact that she spent most of the time peppering Jack with questions about Sam. It seemed unnecessary to mention it now anyway, since obviously Sam felt she was being inappropriate with Jack.

"Did he say he was going somewhere? Or ask you to take him out again like with Gamestop?" Sam followed up.

George shook her head, "No. The only place he talked about wanting to go was hunting with you all. He wanted to find Dean, of course. But he wasn't worked up, just normal complaining. It wasn't anything new or concerning."

Dean asked gruffly, "Did anyone else see you two together?"

She frowned at him, "What do you mean?"

"Can anyone corroborate that you were with Jack or that you left him, alone? And yes, I would ask that question even if you had a penis," He finished with a smirk.

"Dean," Sam growled, shaking his head in frustration.

George stared daggers at him before swallowing back her snarky reply and smiling politely. At this point, no hogties were necessary; she was ready to go home. She felt mortified and ashamed, so she'd play the game if it meant being done with this. After a moment of thought she said, "Uhm… no, I don't think so. Well, maybe Tim?"

All three men shared an intrigued glance. "Blink-18Tim?" Dean clarified.

George couldn't help a wry chuckle, nodding affirmatively, "After I left Jack's room, he bumped into me in the hall. He didn't see me with Jack but he saw me alone after I left him."

"Did he know you'd come from Jack's room?" Castiel asked.

"I don't know, maybe? After I left I turned the corner, bumped into Tim-dropped the damn phone like a clumsy idiot. He picked it up and handed it back to me and then…" Pausing, she rolled her eyes to the ceiling and let out a begrudging sigh, "Well, lets just say, he wasn't respecting my personal space despite repeated attempts to create distance. So, I didn't stay long enough to explain my comings and goings to him."

"I'm sorry," Sam apologized with another deep frown. He was starting to feel like a massive tool. And he made a mental note to have a chat with everyone in the bunker about sexual harassment in the hunt space.

She clenched her jaw and looked back at Dean, shrugging, "I'm used to it." That only made Sam feel worse but George continued on, "Anyway, Tim probably can't corroborate that I was with Jack but he saw me alone in the hallway around midnight… with Jack's phone. I don't know if that helps me here, or not, actually," She finished with a deep sigh. Unconsciously, she tried to lift a hand to run through her hair, only to be reminded it was handcuffed to the chair. She huffed and gripped the arms tightly instead before adding, "Listen, I don't know what kind of information you're trying to get from me, but I can tell you with complete and total honesty: I do not know where Jack is. And my vagina and I have nothing to do with why he's gone missing," That was directed at Dean, to whom she gave a pointed stare.

Ignoring her snarky decree of innocence, Dean asked slightly more nicely, "Did you see where Tim was going when you left him?"

"I didn't. He turned down the hallway toward Jack's room…" She trailed off, thinking back to that night, "but I can't say for sure where he went. Like I said, the guy was giving me the creeps, so I left quickly."

There was a dense silence in the room as the three men digested her story. They huddled together and murmured to each other for a moment.

"So, do we believe Creepy Tim or Lil Kim?" Dean asked sarcastically motioning to George with a slight nod.

Castiel was unsure, "I don't know…" He looked the woman over with a skeptical eye, feeling inexplicably uneasy in her presence but he couldn't figure out why. "Something about her is… unsettling me."

Sam frowned, "What? You think she's lying?"

"No, no, it's more… Well, truthfully, I can't explain it. I don't think she's lying necessarily, but I think there's more than meets the eye."

"Is that just a fancy way of saying she's hiding something? Because, she's definitely hiding something," Dean said definitively, glancing back at the paper with the lyrics again.

"She's answered all our questions so far," Sam defended. "Even the ones that some could construe as offensive."

"Jack's missing and she was the last one seen with him. Just because you're sweet on her, doesn't mean she's not evil," Dean sneered.

"Historically speaking, it would make her more likely to be evil," Castiel added helpfully and Sam looked deeply offended.

With an annoyed huff, Sam grumbled, "She's the last one to be seen with him according to Tim. Obviously, their stories don't match up. Look, I'm not saying there isn't something strange about her," with a glance back at her he lowered his voice, "and obviously she wasn't honest about where she came from, but I really don't think we know enough yet to say she's responsible for Jack going missing. And Tim is definitely on my radar now."

Castiel seemed doubtful, "I don't know. Do we now believe her over Tim? The people of the camp fought beside us against Michael. Against Lucifer! He's our ally, isn't he?"

Neither was sure how to answer that. Sam thought for a minute, remembering something. With a brow furrow, he looked back at George suddenly, asking, "What music did you listen to?"

George looked confused, "What?"

"You said you borrowed the phone to listen to music?"

George's eyes went a little wide and she sputtered, "Oh… right, yea, the phone. Music." With what she hoped looked like a calm shrug she explained, "I didn't actually get to. Jack broke the speakers on the phone and…" she paused guiltily, "I might have... misplaced the headphones."

"Misplaced?" Castiel asked curiously as the three of them shared another look.

George rolled her eyes in annoyance at herself and said, "OK, yes, I lost them! They were attached to the phone when Jack gave it to me but when I got back to my room, I couldn't find them..." She trailed off guiltily.

Sam, Dean, and Castiel looked at each other with urgency and Castiel nodded before turning to leave quickly, "Tim. On it."

George looked confused but remained silent, watching them carefully. Dean and Sam spoke quietly to each other.

"Tim brought those headphones back when we first saw him at Jack's room, right?" Sam asked, even though he knew he was right.

Dean nodded and said, "And she said when she dropped the phone he handed it back to her. Probably swiped them then."

"You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I'm thinking Tim is at the top of my suspect list now and I'm pretty close to pounding on his face, yea," Dean and Sam nodded in agreement and then glanced over George again.

"What about-"

Dean shook his head, unsure, "I don't know, man. You seem to be pretty sure she's innocent and based on what we know right now, I'm inclined to agree with you… but there's still something odd about her. And Tim was right about one thing: she obviously lied about coming from Apocalypse World. No one knew her. And she was hiding out in that room we didn't know existed until today, which is honestly kinda creepy. So, where did your little stalker come from and what is she doing here?"

Sam rolled his eyes and said, "Why don't we just ask her?"

Dean thought about it for a minute and then shrugged, "Alright, I will." He turned away from Sam and back to George, looking at her curiously, "So, George." The look she gave him was very done and he smiled, "Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot-"

"Oh? To which foot are you referring? The one where you strangled me or the one where you all but accused me of sexually assaulting a teenager?"

Dean smirked and gave her an apologetic expression, "Both. Mostly the first. I wasn't trying to hurt you, exactly-"

"Yea, I get it. You were just doing your job," George sighed, still annoyed about the sexist insinuation about her relationship with Jack, but understanding about the interrogation. If Jack really was missing, she knew they had to 'work the case.' It's just, so far as she knew, Sam was the only one who had ever seen her and Jack together and to hear Dean tell it, there were some concerns about their friendship. It hurt her more than she wanted to admit to think Sam was the one with those concerns.

"Right," Dean nodded slowly and then asked, "So, how did you end up here? At the bunker."

George's expression went from annoyed to surprised and then nervous, "Uhh, what… what do you mean?"

Dean shrugged, "I mean, Sam said you told him you came from Apocalypse World?"

George glanced at Sam and then darted her eyes around the room nervously, "I don't know if I said it so much as he guessed and I didn't correct him, but..."

When George didn't offer any further explanation, Dean and Sam exchanged a glance and Dean said, "Yea, and uh… Jules said the two of you were close."

"She did?" That was interesting.

Dean nodded emphatically, "Oh yea! Said the two of you fought together in Apocalypse World. Said you killed a lot of those giant squid aliens together?" Sam had to force himself to not roll his eyes at his brother's ruse.

"G-giant squ-?" George's eyes went wide and she muttered, "Holy-I really need to pay better attention to this show..."

"What?" Sam's brow raised.

George cleared her throat and said, "Nothing! Uh, just… yeah, I-I guess if that's what Jules said then… yup, I-I… I did that?"

"That sounds like a question?" Dean asked with an eyebrow raise. "Did you fight and kill giant squid aliens or not?"

George paused and then said slowly, "Whatever Jules said is exactly, uh-what happened."

Dean had to fight to keep his face expressionless, so he paused before saying, "Right. Well, hey, in that case I want to extend my condolences." Dean looked down and Sam tried not to react to whatever his brother was doing. "She told us how you lost your half human-half giant squid alien husband to the fight."

Her jaw dropped in surprise and a quiet chuckle of absurdity escaped her lips before she could stop it. As she struggled to keep her expression from showing the immense confusion she felt, her mind was drawing a complete blank at how to respond to this information. Was this in the show?!

Sam also struggled to keep his composure, lifting a hand up to rub his nose oh-so-casually, hiding a smirk.

When she couldn't respond Dean encouraged-slowly, as he was also struggling, "That must have been difficult? Losing Flurbert like that."

George grimaced and started nodding slowly, still looking very uncertain. She wasn't exactly sure how to feel about losing her imaginary human-squid alien hybrid husband. "Ye-eah… always hard to lose someone…" Finally sputtered out of her mouth.

Dean's eyes widened quickly in disbelief that she hadn't cracked at 'Flurbert'. With determination, he pushed forward, "Jules said it was real recent, too." George made an exaggerated noise of sad agreement, trying desperately to control the I-think-I'm-going-nuts laughter that was bubbling up. She was kind of nervous that the struggle might make her vomit.

With a sad shake of his head Dean continued, "I can't imagine what you're going through. I mean, I just don't know how you're going to do it all alone."

George narrowed her eyes a bit and managed a confused, "Do… what?"

Sam quickly turned away as Dean explained, "Raise all the babies." Luckily, he'd realized what was about to happen a split second before Dean said it, otherwise his face would have given them away.

"The fuck?" George blurted.

Dean's expression was innocent and he explained, "Yeah, Jules told us about the pregnancy, too." Sam couldn't turn back around, he was biting his fist to keep from laughing.

George's face twisted into a nearly crazed look of disbelief and asked, "Sorry-Jules... told you... that I was an ex soldier in a war against, er-giant squid aliens... who is also pregnant by her dead... human-squid... alien hybrid husband?"

Dean gave her a little 'oops' face and asked earnestly, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry. Were you not announcing yet?"

George was silent for a long time before finally, unable to stop it, she burst into the most insane laughter she's ever experienced. Between gasps she managed to get out, "What-the-fuck-is-happening?!"

Sam and Dean shared an amused look. Dean looked proud of himself and Sam rolled his eyes at his dumb brother. He could have easily just told her they knew she wasn't from Apocalypse World, but Dean loved the drama.

"Did you guys get new writers or something, what the hell!?" George managed to squeak out before another round of laughter. The look the brothers shared next was one of confusion. As she calmed down, tears streaming down her face, she said, "Oh my lord, I've gone beyond Oz at this point. Giant Squid Aliens?! That's Star Trek, not Supernatural!"

"Supernatural?" Dean asked and Sam whipped around to her, suddenly serious again. George saw them looking at her suspiciously and her laughter died away. She knew she had no choice but to tell them the truth now.

"Wha-" Sam furrowed his brow at her and asked dubiously, "Are you a fan of Supernatural?" His face fell suddenly and he swallowed nervously, "Did Becky send you?"

"Ha!" Came barking out before she could help it. With a pensive expression, trying not to laugh again, she said, "Um… Well, yes to the first question; hard no to the second."

Dean was getting angry and growled, "Explain."

George took a nervous breath and said, "OK… well, here's the thing: I wasn't lying about being from an alternate reality, I just was lying about which one I came from. When you ask if I'm a fan of Supernatural, I assume you're talking about the books. By Carver Edlund, right?" Dean and Sam both nodded affirmatively with a slight frown. "OK, so, I'm not a fan of the books. I've actually never read them because they don't exist in my reality," George looked guilty and paused again.

The brothers exchanged another confused look and Dean asked more than stated, "OK?"

"I'm confused," Sam took a step closer. "You're a fan of Supernatural but you come from an alternate reality where Supernatural doesn't exist?"

"I said the books don't exist…" George gave them a nervous smile, waiting for them to come to the conclusion on their own. They weren't, so she said, "Think back about six-ish years ago?"

Following her directions, Sam's face slowly went from confusion to disbelief and then shock. Dean's face did the same, on about a five second delay. George squeezed her lips shut to keep from laughing.

"Wait… Are you saying you're from that-that alternate reality where this is all a TV show?" Sam asked, extremely skeptical. Then again it certainly explained a lot of her little idiosyncrasies.

George winced guiltily and nodded, "Yeah."

No one knew what to say and they all felt equally as awkward suddenly.

"You think we're actors?" Dean asked finally.

George shook her head a little and shrugged, "I don't really know how to answer that question." A nervous laughter bubbled up and she looked queasy suddenly, "I'm in a new reality for fucks sake. When I first got here? I definitely thought you were all actors, yes. Which was incredibly embarrassing because I couldn't remember Rowena's real name-er, Rowena's actress' real name? You know what I mean. Anyway, it definitely took some convincing, to say the least, but I've been here a while now and I've kinda gotten used to it? I mean, I think I know that you're really Sam Winchester and you're really Dean Winchester and this is all really… real." With a pair of wide eyes, she let out a huff of apologetic frustration, "Still, it's not every day you're suddenly ON a television show. I still get embarrassingly nervous whenever I see another charac-person I recognize," she shook her head with a light blush. "Which is exactly why I was trying to avoid you all while I waited for Rowena to help me get back home. But then I kept fucking up and running into Sam and then I woke up in his room and then Jack found me there and-and-and then he found me in the kitchen and he looked so sad; I had to help! What was I supposed to do?! And then Gamestop and Sam had a beard and things just spiraled! I-I-I-" He near breathless rambling stopped short when she met Sam's sweet eyes and her blush darkened.

"She woke up in your room?" Dean asked with a curious look to Sam.

Ignoring him, Sam quickly interjected, "Er-Rowena? What does she have to do with all this? Does she have Jack?"

George shook her head vehemently, "Nono, no! I told you, my being here has nothing to do with Jack being missing. I'm not part of this story, I don't belong here; I'm just… like one of those little fish that stick to sharks. Just looking for a safe place to hang out, maybe mooch a little bit of food here and there, until I can get back home to my reality. I'm not here to mess with anything. In fact, I think it's best for everyone if you let me go back to my hovel and consider me not here! Just pretend I don't exist because I'm definitely not supposed to. Here, that is."

Sam frowned for a minute and asked, "How do you know?"

"Know what?" She asked in confusion.

"That you aren't supposed to be here?"

"Oh, well funny you should mention that. To add some glitter to the glue I've obviously been sniffing-if I may borrow a phrase," She shot a smirk to Sam. He furrowed his brow in shock, remembering having said something similar when he was without his soul some eight years prior. She then grimaced and finished apologetically, "I come from the year 2020."

Both the boys looked yet more stunned and exchanged dubious expressions. Even Sam was starting to feel worried about this woman's mental health.

"Those lyrics I wrote down? They're from a song that was just released a few months ago, which is why I can't listen to it here. All the shit you're going through right now-Michael, apocalypse world? Ya, all of that has already happened for me. On the show, I mean."

It hit Sam hard suddenly just how much she knew about them-him, and it felt like he'd swallowed cement. He was ashamed of all the horrible things he'd done, the pain he'd caused so many people. It wasn't reasonable to expect a partner to be understanding about any of it, which is partly why he'd been reluctant to pursue relationships more and more.

But he'd been really hoping that maybe she was meant to be part of h-the story, so he asked anyway, "But... how do you know this is supposed to happen? That you aren't supposed to be part of… the 'story?'"

George guffawed and said, "Look, I'm admittedly behind on watching these last few seasons-and maybe I wouldn't be considered the world's biggest Supernatural fan-but I'm pretty confident that I was never actually on it," She finished with a definitive nod. Was it her or did Sam seem strangely disappointed.

"OK, tell me something only a fan of Supernatural would know," Dean said dubiously.

She narrowed her eyes in doubt, "Like… something just about major events or something personal? I-I know you killed Hitler?"

The two men quickly looked at each other in shock and then Sam shook his head, "Wait, that does not count. He tells that story to anyone who'll listen."

"I know you can lift Thor's hammer!" She replied back to him, grinning at the memory. That was pretty hot.

Dean turned to his brother with a smug smirk, "You were saying?"

"Something more personal, then?" Sam asked sheepishly.

"Uuuuhhhh…" George was frozen, unsure how to answer until finally she blurted, "OK, how about I know 'Carver Edlund' is really 'Chuck Shurley' is really motherfucking GOD with a capital G! Huh? Or, ooh! How about Sam's imaginary friend person? I can't remember his name, but he was some kind of being called like Xanadu or Zanzibar or-"

"A zanna," Sam choked out, all the air missing from his lungs suddenly.

"Sure, right! A zanna! Honestly, I mostly remember that episode because of the mermaid. It was sad when she was killed; I love mermaids." Sam looked nauseous and Dean suspicious, but both their eyes were wide. The three of them were all staring at each other, unsure what to say.

Finally, Sam gulped, "Dean, no one knows about Sully."

"I don't know Sam, I'm just not convinced. A time traveling superfan? C'mon! She could have gotten this intell from... anyone…"

George thought for a minute and then said, "Well I know a few more personal things but it feels kind of… icky telling you about yourself like that." Dean and Sam exchanged nervous glances and then she said, "How about the fact that-in my reality-Castiel is played by a different actor because Misha Collins was murdered? And that, while the official word was robbery-gone-wrong, I think the three of us know the cause of death was a bit more Supernatural than that, hmm?" She looked at the two of them pointedly, with a small, sardonic smirk.

That one shook both of them and they looked very guilty, especially Sam. Then, looking at Dean, she kept going, "Like I said I'm not the biggest fan but if we're talking most recent seasons: I know you had the mark of Cain for a bit. I know you stabbed Death with his own scythe and released the darkness who started as baby Amara and then grew up real fast. And I also know you were kinda, sorta feelin' her for a while-no shame. She was hot," Dean gulped and George began listing off factoids like it was a grocery list, "I know she brought your mom back to life. I know that Sam got kidnapped and tortured by the British Men of Letters. I know they tried to kill you both but obviously they didn't know who they were fucking with and it didn't go well for them… I know that stuffy psychopath Ketch 'died'," she air quoted, "but then came back with some bullshit twin story which I don't really remember why because I was only half paying attention and I personally still think Ketch is a tool, but that's neither here nor there." She paused and Dean made a nod of agreement at her last comment, giving Sam a curious look. The young Winchester could do little else but blink rapidly and panic internally. Neither one could wrap their heads around this.

With a head shake and a frustrated eye roll, Dean asked, "So, let me get this straight, not only do you come from an alternate reality where Sam and I are just two douchey, Polish actor dweebs, but you're also from the future of that reality?"

"Well... I think only Jared's the only one who's Polish, but…" George shrugged helplessly, "essentially, yea." The deafening, dumbfounded silence returned.

Dean frowned and he asked slowly, "To do what? And how did you get here?"

George winced and deep sighed, "Yea, still working on all that. Honestly, I hadn't even thought about the 'why' of it; I was more focused on a general 'wtf' and 'how do I get out of here before I fuck it up and get the show canceled or something.' As for how I got here, I couldn't tell you. One minute I'm in my apartment, getting ready for a date, and-"

"Oh, a date?" Sam asked, a little too sharply, standing at attention. Dean snickered at Sam's doofy, fake innocent expression.

George nodded off handedly, "Yea, this guy I met online. We were supposed to meet up for the first time at Marin Headlands Park for a hike to watch the sunset." She finished wistfully, as though it was incredibly romantic. Sam and Dean looked at each other, eyebrows raised.

"Let me get this straight. You 'met' a guy online-so basically a stranger-and he asked you to go to a secluded, wooded area alone with him at dusk?" Sugar coating wasn't Dean's forte. "Can I get 'what is a thousand red flags' for $500 Alex?"

She narrowed her eyes defensively at him. "He's not a stranger, he's… he's… he's LuvsToHike79!"

"Oh my God," Dean's voice went high and Sam made an "oo, not good" face. Pulling his most smug 'told ya so' look, Dean held out his arms to an imaginary audience, "might as well be notaserialkiller19! No question that loser was going to club you over the head, drag you back to his basement, and chain you to the floor."

As George struggled to remember the guy's real name, she could feel her cheeks begin to burn. After a moment, she decided that she would not be accepting questions or comments regarding her barely-there love life from Jared Padalecki or Jensen Ackles…or Sam or Dean Winchester for that matter!

"Says the 'loser' who nearly suffocated me, carried me to the dungeon in his secret bunker, and handcuffed me to a chair?" Lifting her wrists demonstratively, the handcuffs clanged loudly against the metal armrests. Sam looked like he wished the floor would swallow him whole while Dean nodded his head in resignation at her point. "The point is, I was in my apartment and then… something strange happened, like loud music and a big shove, and then suddenly I was in the library with Rowena. After she dropped the alternate reality bombshell, she said she'd been casting some spells to help boost the power and keep the rift open for you guys to be able to get back. Somehow I came through the rift, too? When she left me in that hobbit hole-which by the way she conjured out of thin air. It was really cool-she promised to come back after she was able to ensure your safe return. That was nearly a month ago," She finished with an annoyed smile. "She certainly lives up to her reputation and I can't tell if that's comforting or incredibly annoying."

"Why not both?" Dean offered with a knowing smirk.

Before anything else could be said, they heard erratic footsteps approaching. All three of them turned to see Castiel leading a very reluctant and struggling Tim into the room. Tim started elbowing and slapping at him and, in frustration, Cas shoved him hard. George let out a yelp of surprise as the guy went crashing to the ground inside the dungeon. He landed at Sam and Dean's feet. Looking up at them slowly there was a panicked expression on his face.

He gulped when Dean grinned like a cat about to eat the canary, "Hiya, Tim."

Tim scrambled to his feet and tried to bolt but Dean tripped him. He stumbled and then turned around and swung at Dean hard. Dean dodged the punch and landed one of his own into the guy's gut. There was a loud clanging sound as George instinctively tried to bring her hands to her face in shock. When he started trying to get up again, Castiel elbowed him in the back and he crumpled to the ground with a disoriented groan.

Sam quickly picked up the keys to the handcuffs and walked over to her, "We're probably going to need that chair back now."

"Happy to oblige," George nodded enthusiastically and yanked on the handcuffs that were holding her down. Sam unlocked her hands and ankles in record time and she vacated the chair quickly.

"Sorry about that, we just have to be careful, you know?" He apologized, nervously watching her move away from the hot seat and toward the desk in the corner of the room. "Are you hurt?" Sam asked with some concern when she rubbed her wrists absentmindedly.

She shrugged and stopped, "Actually, no. Just habit."

"You get handcuffed a lot?" Sam joked, sounding relieved, while moving to help Dean haul the guy into the chair.

"Only when there's a safeword involved," She assured with a wink.

Sam let out an "Aheh!" and some silent chuckles followed as he locked the cuffs on Tim's wrists and ankles. George couldn't see his face but she pictured he was blushing and it made her smile.

Dean, who'd secured Tim on the other side, stood upright again. He gave both George and Sam a bemused once over, then said aloud to himself, "Yea, it's all starting to make sense now."

George's smile dropped and she asked curiously, "What?"

Dean chose not to answer. Sam finished snapping the cuffs and then stood upright, just as Dean tossed a flask of holy water at Tim. His skin sizzled and he was alert again suddenly. Growling in pain, he struggled against his bindings fiercely and his eyes flashed black. George shivered in shock, goosebumps covering her entire body.

Whoa, that's intense.

Sam turned toward George and warned, "So, this," He motioned toward Tim, "might get a little..."

"Intense?" She filled in the blanks, watching Dean set the flask down and pick a knife up off the table next to her. He gave the blade an appreciative once over that made her gulp. Nodding before Sam could even answer, she headed for the door, "Well, then, that's my cue."

Sam followed behind her a bit, walking her out. When they were almost to the door, they heard the demon formerly known as Tim comment, "Letting the chubby little slut go, hmm? Did she tell you where she's hiding Jack, yet? Someone do a thorough check between her legs?"

While Dean adjusted his grip on the blade and took a step forward, Sam unholstered his gun, cocked it, and aimed lazily, "Would you like to repeat that, Timmy? Didn't quite hear you."

The menacing timbre of his voice gave George goosebumps, yet she was barely paying attention, glaring at Tim with a white hot rage. After a beat, she forced herself to relax and cleared her throat.

Her finger raised in the air, as she took a step forward, looked at the demon with a polite smile, and began sweetly, "First of all, wow are you obsessed with my body. Sorry not sorry: even if you weren't a demon, hard pass. Second, you can aim all that tired slut shaming at someone who actually gives a shit, because it ain't me. Third," Sam lowered his gun, watching her take another step and gave Tim an expression of such pity that it made even Dean uncomfortable, "what kind of demon takes a shot at the Winchesters and misses? Hmm?" Dean, Sam, and Castiel watched, stunned and confused. They were poised to step in if she got too close as she took another step toward the suddenly confused demon and continued, "Oh wait, I know!" She placed her hands open on either side of her mouth and shouted, "EVERY OTHER FUCKING DEMON who's come before you, TIM! Far, far better demons than you. Meg? Dead. Abaddon? Dead. Alastair? Lilith? Ruby? You guessed it: dead. Well, OK, there was Yellow Eyes," she admitted, feigning resolve.

"Nope, actually, we got him too," Dean interjected helpfully, thoroughly enjoying this. Plus, as endearingly irritating as he found her, watching a confident woman verbal bitch slap a demon was hot. He could tell from the look on his brother's face, he felt the same.

George acted mock surprised, "Ope! You don't say! I have a hard time keeping track." She looked back at Tim and said, "You know, these guys have killed so many demons, that where I come from there's an entire wikipedia page just listing name after name of all the demons who came for them and died trying. I'm sure you realize that a lot of them were smarter than you. Yet for some reason, you, Tim-or Krampus or whatever the fuck your demon name is-"

"I-It-It's actually Cleetus…" Came a pathetic stutter.

George's neck snapped back and she shared a 'wow' face with Dean. After a moment she said sarcastically, "Catchy. Yet, I've already forgotten it. Tim, you actually thought you were going to be different, huh? Thought that you were going to be the one to finally get them, right? That your name wouldn't end up on that list? Yet, your cover story is some played out all-women-are-whores BS, accusing me of trying to seduce Jack and kidnap him or something? Really? Your big play was a poorly constructed red herring? That's it?" The look of pity was back and Dean was almost feeling bad for the guy. "You thought if you wanted it bad enough that you'd actually pull it off, hmm? Well, buddy, I've seen every episode of America's Next Top Model and I've got bad news: 'wanting it more' gets you squat."

"No kidding, otherwise Natasha would have won season 8 like she should have," Dean chimed in matter of factly.

George's adrenaline was pumping at this point, so she was unable to process the absurdity of that statement coming out of Dean Winchester's mouth-especially since he was wrong; Jaslene was far superior. The look on Sam's face alone nearly broke her, but she pushed forward and made a mental note to address it later.

With a shrug she continued, "Now, sure, you infiltrated their bunker, bravo! But, I'm looking around and seeing: you, special little demon snowflake you," Sam wondered if George had the urge to boop the man on the nose, as indicated by her tone in that moment, "helplessly tied to a chair. And I'm seeing both of them," She held her thumbs out at both brothers smugly, "decidedly not tied to chairs. Oh yea, and holding weapons." Then she pointed to Castiel and said, "Also, not only is that guy an angel but I think he's also kinda the dad of the kid they're looking for and boy does he look pissed." Castiel was quick enough to mask his confusion with the rage he was feeling and she continued, "Sure, he's not currently holding a weapon, but honestly I don't even think he's going to need one, do you?" She gave Tim an exaggerated grimace and motioned around to the room, advising, "Tim, look at your life. Look at your choices."

The demon, whose brow was suddenly damp, watched her with a confused, somewhat deflated expression and began to say, "Well, I-"

Cutting him off, she began to step backwards away from him slowly, "Anyway, I'm gonna go ahead and take off now. It's one thing to watch pretend torture on TV but another thing to see actual torture. So..." She let her words sink in before she turned around and started heading for the exit again. The demon looked nervously between the three men, who were all looking particularly puffed up and menacing by that point. Tossing up a peace sign as she left, she called out, "Better luck next time, Tim!"

The four of them remained in stunned silence for an incredibly long time before Dean finally said, "OK, if you insist, I'll say it: That was hot as shit."

Sam gave him a disapproving frown for his phrasing, then nodded begrudgingly in agreement.

“For the record, Natasha should not have won that season. Jaslene was the superior model," Castiel added, giving Dean a pointed look, almost unconsciously unsheathing his angel blade and stepping toward Tim.

Oddly, Tim nodded enthusiastically and agreed, "Yea, Jaslene was way bet-"

"Can we focus please?!" Sam said in exasperation. Dean and Castiel looked like scolded children with matching apologetic expressions.

When Sam turned away, Dean grumbled quietly to Cas, "We'll talk about it later."

"There's nothing to talk about. Jasle-"

"Guys!"

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