#the haunted showboat

[scoobydoobaday]

The New Scooby-Doo Movies S02E02 - The Haunted Showboat (1973) Hanna Barbera Productions

[elijones94]

🐾 Alexander Cabot III & Scooby-Doo! 🎶🎵🔍

[mysteria157]

Unsteady Ground

Pairing: Nanami Kento x Black Fem Reader

CW: Light angst, just fluffy but scarred Post-Shibuya Nanami

WC: ~2.1k

Summary: 

Nanami gets more than what he bargained for with the kind receptionist who checks him in for his weekly appointments.

Notes: Hello! Been thinking about Nanami if he was still injured but survived the Shibuya Incident and this is just one of many little thoughts I've had. Hoping to write more soon!

Reblogs, likes, or comments are always appreciated! Happy reading!

Dividers: @cafekitsune @awenise

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©mysteria157, all rights reserved. DO NOT copy, plagiarize, reupload, modify, or translate (without permission) my work to other accounts and platforms.

What was he thinking?

Nanami Kento prides himself on his self-awareness—a man who can map out his strengths and weaknesses like well-worn territories on a battle-scarred map. He’s the epitome of controlled courage, a figure who could march into dank, shadow-filled alleys and pungent sewage tunnels, his fear compressed into a hard knot beneath his ribs, as he methodically tracked and exorcised curses with cold efficiency. 

So this is new. It has to be.

What was he thinking?

He was thinking about you.

You, who he first saw through a haze of discomfort at the reception desk during his initial therapy appointment. His eye patch itched against his brow, a constant reminder of Dagon’s domain and the razor-sharp fish-like teeth that sunk into his flesh. The burns on his left side stretched tight beneath layers of Mederma a constant, throbbing presence. He felt raw, exposed, his mind a blender of pain and misery, haunted by the taunting echoes of a patchwork curse that still clawed at the edges of his dreams.

But then, there was you.

You, whose voice flowed like silk when you asked for his name and date of birth to check him in. Your words, a gentle current, seemed to wash away the stark clinical atmosphere. With each subtle movement, a hint of vanilla across your desk, wrapping him in its warmth, coaxing his tense shoulders away from his ears.

You, who lingered in his mind long after each encounter. Your daily ask about how he was doing, though met with the same stoic response, became a small ritual he found himself anticipating. Your presence had become a soothing balm to his frayed nerves, somehow making the hard recovery of his life a little more bearable.

You, whose eyes lit up many weeks later as you spoke of the Christmas market in town, your voice brimming with excitement about the newly opened rink.

In that moment, driven by an unfamiliar, overwhelming desire—no, need—to simply fan the flames of whatever was licking to life in his chest, he spoke without thinking. The words tumbled out, clumsy and hopeful. His face flushed, his usually composed demeanor cracking.

“We could go together this weekend if you would like?”

Stupid. Absolutely, unequivocally stupid. 

Nanami Kento, what were you thinking?

A soft smile played at the corners of your mouth, your head tilted ever so slightly, curls dancing in a nonexistent wind as you regarded him with warmth and a lifted brow that made his breath catch.

“Are you asking me on a date, Nanami Kento?” Playful and tinged with an essence of hope that made his heart race even faster.

“I—“ He was thinking of you. Only you. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

The cool air of the ice rink slaps Nanami’s face with every person that skates past him, his heart racing with a mix of dread and shame that pulses through his veins. A group of teenagers glides by effortlessly, their showboating twirls and spins threatening to pull his mouth into a sneer. They’re no doubt mocking him as he stands stock still against the glass wall, gloved hands pressed flat as if he could suction himself in place.

He’s endured years of Gojo's incessant, annoying taunts and needless provocations. He’s faced cursed spirits without flinching, coolly efficient even as his watch ticked down the final minutes before six. But now, the prospect of revealing his complete and utter lack of skating ability to you terrifies him more than any supernatural threat.

He had every opportunity to reveal his incompetence. He did nothing as you both laced up your skates. Smiled softly as he listened to you chat animatedly about your favorite winter activities. Kept his spine taut as you adjusted his eye patch, fingers trailing feather light along his jaw. Even as you pulled him by the hand towards the rink, his legs wobbling like a newly born doe on the thin blades, he could only clench his jaw and follow.

He encouraged you to go without him, to warm up while he adjusted to the weight of strangers’ gaze when they saw him for the first time. Even with so much practice, the discomfort, even after all this time, burns more fiercely than Jogo's searing touch ever did. 

But he knows he can’t delay the inevitable. Soon, you’ll return, expectant and eager, and he’ll be exposed. The memory of asking you on this date flashes through his mind—a moment of uncharacteristic impulsivity born from longing and evolutionary competition. He’d watched the parade of men filing in for their appointments, each one a potential rival. The brunette who shows up at 3 PM, with his easy smile and effortless charm, was particularly concerning. So Nanami can’t fail now.

Steeling himself, he takes a tentative step. The blades slide across the ice, taking him further than what he intended. His knees lock, his back sways unsteadily, and his arms flail as he tries to find balance.

Somehow, he can hear Haibara laughing from the grave. He can almost see his old friend, red-faced and doubled over, teasing him without shame for never accepting that impromptu hockey game invitation their first year.

“I can do this,” he whispers to himself, desperately praying to whoever will listen for sudden knowledge. He takes another step, a short glide up with his left foot and it’s no good. His legs wobble dangerously, arms windmilling as he grasps for the wall and throws every curse known to heaven and hell, fogging the glass with his acidic words.

The teenagers zoom by again, and he swears one of them snickers, skating backward with infuriating ease as they disappear from view.

“Kento?” Your voice, honeyed with concern, reaches him from behind. It’s too sweet, too kind to quell the embarrassment that runs in rivulets down his back. You appear in the peripheral of his right eye, your lips pinched behind your teeth as you stop in front to take him in. “You’ve never skated before, have you?”

For a fleeting moment, Nanami considers trying again, hoping to slip and knock himself unconscious to escape this mortifying situation.

He feels heat rise to his cheeks. “I may have overestimated my abilities,” he admits, his dry tone a thin cover over his embarrassment as he clings to the rink’s walls like a lifeline.

To his relief, your face softens with understanding rather than judgment. You skate backward with effortless grace, hands outstretched towards him. “Trust me?”

He hesitates, eyeing your hands. Part of him wants to refuse, to flail his way off the rink so he can take off these atrocious skates and maintain some semblance of dignity. But a larger part, the part that has been drawn to you from the start, longs to brush his hands against yours.

Your cream-colored gloves intertwine with his. “Just glide. Follow my feet,” you encourage, slowly skating backward and guiding him forward.

You flow like water on the ice, fluid and sure as if you’re a professional, without a hint of hesitation. He’s mildly green with envy because he’s a stark contrast. Legs stubbornly locked, feet shuffling rather than gliding. He tries to focus on the mechanics of skating, on keeping his balance, but he finds his attention irresistibly drawn to you. 

You’ve taken off your winter coat, and a soft navy sweater hugs your curves, accentuating your form. He’s seen it beneath crisp blouses and pencil skirts. Your leggings outline powerful thighs that bunch with your movements, yielding strength and practice. The overhead lights catch the small puffs of air that ghost from your mouth as you guide him patiently across the ice, no sound reaching his ears because he’s not paying attention.

Your hair, a glorious bundle of curls, cascades from beneath a navy beanie, framing your warm face and kissing your cheeks. Small gold hoops in your ears catch the light with each graceful motion, their gentle swaying hypnotizing Nanami, drawing him further into your orbit and away from reality.

He’s lost in admiring you—the kindness in your eyes, the way your presence makes him feel both vulnerable and safe even as his life has been so tragically altered.

It’s in this moment of distraction, his heart full and unguarded, that his skates and your teachings betray him. As you attempt a gentle turn, his feet slip, zipping awkwardly to the side.

“Kento!”

You grip his hands tightly, urging him to regain his footing, but he’s caught in a comical dance, legs churning in place as he fights to stay upright.

“Wait! Kento just—okay, just try to come to a stop. A stop, Kento, don’t—” He attempts to halt, overcompensating with force. 

“For fucks sake—!” He grunts, feet flying out from under him, launching up as if he’s a cartoon villain slipping on a banana peel, bucking him off the ice and taking you with him as you both come crashing down onto the unforgiving cold ground.

Somehow, he doesn’t hit his head, but his back and ass scream from the impact. At least you were able to use him to cushion your blow, and you lay across his chest, face buried in his wool coat.

Seconds stretch into eternity as you both lie there, panting. Nanami fixes his gaze on the ceiling, half-hoping the harsh glare of the overhead lights will burn the cornea of his remaining eye and blind him completely from this whole ordeal.

“Well,” you murmur, voice muffled against his coat, “should we get up?”

“No…no, I quite like it down here,” Nanami responds, deadpan delivery masking the absolute sincerity of his words.

You pull your head from his chest to look down at him. Nanami’s eyes meet yours, staring, unblinking, mortified, and wishing the ground could liquefy and then freeze over, trapping him underneath.

With impeccable timing and bone-dry delivery, you quip, “I guess for a first date, this was a good way to break the ice.”

Nanami blinks, processing your words. The absurdity of the situation—the terrible pun, your matter-of-fact delivery, the undignified sprawl of limbs—hits Nanami all at once. A laugh bubbles from deep in his chest, croaking through years of cobwebs as it grows into a full-bodied guffaw.

The sound of his laughter surprises him as much as it does you. Your eyes and his one widen in delight at this rare display of uninhibited joy and soon you’re both laughing, the sound echoing across the rink.

The scarred side of his mouth twinges uncomfortably, but he doesn’t care, he can’t. His laughter, rich and unbridled, hiccups from slightly chapped and upturned lips.

As your laughter subsides, Nanami realizes he can’t remember the last time he laughed like this—free, unguarded, genuinely happy. He takes in the sight of you: your beanie askew, a cascade of messy curls tumbling over one shoulder; ice shavings glistening as they melt on your cheek; your lip gloss slightly smeared, yet still inviting. 

Your eyes meet his, and for the millionth time in only a few short weeks of knowing you, his heart skips a beat. With a gentleness, you reach up to adjust his eye patch—a gesture so intimate, so accepting of all that he is, that Nanami hopes it becomes a habit. 

He watches, breath hitching, as you shift, sliding yourself up his chest with a soft grunt of effort. For a moment, you hover there, your faces inches apart. Nanami can feel the warmth of your breath, senses the unasked question of what you want to do. And whatever his face conveys, must be enough for a smile that outshines the gleam of the ice around you to blossom on your face as you close the distance.

The press of your glossy lips against his still catches Nanami by surprise. For a heartbeat, he’s frozen, overwhelmed by the sensation. But only a second later, he melts and softens into you. One hand finds the small of your back, the other sliding against your cheek, drawing you closer as he returns the kiss and opens something within him that he knows you’ve found the key to.

For a second, it washes away the pain of his past, the destruction that he took part in, the friends he’s lost along the way, and he feels okay. If only for a moment, and maybe being with you can help the wounds in his chest and along his left side heal over time.

The ice is cold beneath him, his dignity is probably bruised along with his back and ass, but in this moment, given a second chance at life, hopefully with you, he feels wonderfully, perfectly alive.

Thanks for reading!!

[carolperkinsexgirlfriend]

Steddie Upside-Down AU Part 1

Eddie doesn’t even know why he’s at this stupid party. It’s full of jocks showboating for their girlfriends, their girlfriends clustering together and giggling like watching Tommy Hagan do a keg stand is somehow dreamy. He’d had an entire beer spilled on his shoes, been heckled out of the kitchen and into the backyard, and left to brood out by Harrington’s ostentatious, heated in-ground pool. And it’s barely been an hour.

Within that hour, he’s made enough money to buy two month’s worth of cigarettes. That’s the rub of it all, isn’t it? Counting his time with packs of cigarettes, and bald tires that need replacing. And stupid things like food for their barren fridge and heat in the trailer once fall fully bleeds into winter. Wayne can only do so much, with rolling blackouts hitting the plant, and rent increasing a little more every year.

So Eddie goes to parties full of people he hates, lunch box secured to his person with the chain at his hip, switchblade stuffed in his back pocket. Just in case.  

This party is only ramping up, people trickling out from the overstuffed house to loiter on the back porch, occasionally stopping by to procure his services. As the first hour dwindles into the second, Eddie’s supply is getting dangerously low. 

He’s just considering leaving when he notices the King himself trailing after two girls he vaguely recognizes as the two that have been haunting the edges of the jock table the past few weeks. 

The brunette is scowling, hand wrapped tightly enough around her redheaded friend’s wrist to make the skin turn unnaturally white as she yanks her along none too gently, her short legs making ferocious strides that have both her captive friend and Harrington stumbling to keep up. 

Harrington’s got his hands up like he’s placating a spooked horse, talking too quietly for Eddie to hear over the pounding beat of the music. The girl isn’t spooked though. Despite being the shortest of the group, she looks like a predator on the hunt, just waiting for a slip up to make her kill. 

Whatever Harrington is saying must not go well. The brunette shoves her friend behind her, stabbing her finger into his chest, voice rising in rage. “–know he meant it, Steve!” she yells, flatting her palm to push him back harshly. She spins on her heel, continuing her trek past Eddie’s spot by the pool and out toward the open gate to the driveway. “As long as he’s here, we’re not going to be!”

“Don’t be like that Nance,” Harrington placates, following in her wake. “Tommy’s just drunk.”

“I don’t care about Tommy!” Nancy snaps. “I care that you’re friends with such a despicable person.”

“Nance–”

“I thought you were better than this, Steve Harrington,” she says. 

Then they’re both through the gate and gone. Harrington doesn’t follow. He stands there, staring where the girls had been, back to Eddie. He’s still as a statue for a long, endless minute before growling, low and angry, pulling his fist back and punching the side of his house. 

The hit makes a meaty squelching sound of breakable skin striking an immovable object and parting under its pressure. It almost echoes through the yard in the silence between songs, the whispering from all the onlookers starting up just before the next top forty song begins blaring.

Harrington spins, glaring out at the clustered people on the porch, hands on his hips, blood dripping down onto the green of his sweater, the light blue of his jeans. It’s a little thrilling to see the King bloody, even at his own hands. Like a true royal, he snaps, “go inside,” voice demanding obedience. And they do obey, scuttling back into the house in small clusters, shutting the sliding glass door behind the last of them.

Harrington sighs, shoulders drooping as he lifts his injured hand up to look down at it. He still hasn’t noticed Eddie in his spot by the pool.

“Trouble in the kingdom, your majesty?” he asks, jumping up from his cross-legged position on the pavement to saunter up to the other boy. He leans into his space, smiling coyly as Harrington leans back like he carries an airborne disease. “Anything this lowly court jester can do to help?”

He looks shocked at Eddie’s presence, like he never even considered that his decree wouldn’t be obediently followed by everyone in his backyard. 

Eddie smirks, fishing in the pocket of his jean vest for his cigarettes. He taps one out, and holds it out–ever the consummate servant–to Harrington, who curls his lips up in disgust and takes a step back away from him. Eddie shrugs, stuffs the pack back into his pocket and fishes his lighter out of his jeans. 

“Munson?” Harrington asks, squinting like he’s never seen Eddie before, despite living in the same janky town, and going to the same schools for the past five years. “Who invited you?”

Eddie takes his time lighting his cigarette and taking a drag, marveling as the little divot between Harrington’s eyebrows grows deeper with every passing second. He holds the smoke in, feeling it settle his nerves as he stares daringly into Harrington’s eyes. He doesn’t look away as he exhales, smoke blowing into Harringotn’s face. He doesn’t cough, just gestures his hand in front of his face impatiently to clear the smoke, looking one more insolent move away from smacking Eddie in the face.

“Someone has to sell party favors to Hawkins’ elite,” Eddie replies, shaking the lunchbox where it’s resting just below his hip. 

Steve scoffs. “Well, the party’s just about over so why don’t you fuck off, man.”

He gestures behind him to the open gate. Eddie takes another drag, ashing his cigarette on the pristine concrete below him. Harrington balls up his fists before immediately releasing the tension with a wince, shaking out his injured hand.

“Looks like it’s in full swing to me.” Eddie gestures to the sliding glass door back into the dining room. The curtains are closed now, but Eddie can see the darkened silhouettes moving to the beat still pumping through the house.

“I’m kicking them out.”

Harrington crosses his arms, seemingly once again forgetting about the bloody state of his hand. He’s almost pouting now. Eddie has the insane urge to boop him on the nose. He takes another drag.

“Upset your little girlfriend wouldn’t put out?” he asks, jutting his bottom lip out, trailing a fake tear down his own cheek with his free hand. “Poor little rich boy.”

“What the fuck is your problem, man?” 

“Me?” Eddie asks, dropping the burning filter of his cigarette to the ground and using the heel of his boot to smear it into the pavement. “I’m dandy. Who wouldn’t want the undivided attention of the King?”

He smiles then, condescending and bright, planting his feet as Harrington’s gaze darkens further.

“I always knew you were a freak,” Harrington snarls, drawing out the F sound like he’d rather use a different word that begins with the letter F.

“And a startling comeback from the King!” Eddie calls, showboating like he’s DMing for Hellfire in the dingy drama room. “How many F words did your Daddy teach you?”

Eddie didn’t realize that Harrington wasn’t angry before until all the light leaves his eyes. They go blank, soulless, like there’s no real person behind them. He uncrosses his arms, fists once again clenched, not even seeming to realize that it further splits his knuckles as he takes a threatening step forward. It’s a little scary, the way one question seems to have flipped him into an entirely different person.

Note to self, do not mention the absentee Father. Eddie takes a step back on reflex as Harrington uses his bloody finger to jab into his chest, hard enough to sting. Eddie looks down as blood smears, idly grateful that he’s wearing black. 

“You have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about,” Harrington spits.

Eddie, having never learned to bite his tongue, opens his mouth to crow about this new F word in Harrington’s repertoire, when he hears a sound behind him. 

It sounds almost like the foxes that sometimes chitter in the woods surrounding the trailer park. But there’s something wrong with it. It’s high pitched and cutting in and out, like a record skipping again and again. It’s staticy, reverberating behind him like the static of the television between channels but worse. A recording of television static sped up too fast and fed through three long distance phone calls. 

Eddie’s hands tremble, something animalistic coursing through him at the sound–fight or flight kicking in with only one option left. In front of him, Harrington’s gone quiet, eyes wide and unblinking as he looks fixedly past Eddie’s left shoulder. 

Then, abruptly, the sound cuts out, replaced with a guttural growling so deep he can feel it pulsing through his muscles, urging him to run. It unsticks his feet, but before he can dart through the open gate, or maybe to the shut sliding glass door to hunker down with the other party-goers, Harrington shoves him backward. Hard.

He loses his feet, loses his breath, until he’s choking on chlorinated water. He comes out of the water spluttering, coughing up water until it burns, his layers of clothing doing their best to drag him down into the bottom of the pool to drown. 

His eyes are closed against their stinging, ears clogged with water where he’s struggling to tread in the deep end of Harrington’s stupid heated pool that the King himself just shoved him in.

It’s a low enough moment that Eddie can feel his mind covering up the impossibilities of the night, paving over the impossibilities to rewrite the story to make sense: King Steve saw him, set up some speakers to spook him, and then shoved him in the pool. Nothing unexpected there.

But then Eddie opens his eyes. 

Harrington’s on the ground. Harrington’s on the ground fighting against the grip around his wrist, pulling him toward the water Eddie’s struggling to stay afloat in. 

It’s not a person dragging him, not a practical joker wearing a suit. It can’t be. The thing is standing upright, sure, but it’s too tall, too thin, too featureless. Its forearms are uncannily long, fingers twisting and look as if they have too many joints facing the wrong directions where they curl around Harrington’s wrist, claws sharp enough to make him bleed. Its ribs are showing. And there’s no face at all, just creased flesh puckered together where a mouth ought to be.

At least, that’s what Eddie thinks until Harrington struggles harder, fingers of his free hand digging into the crack in the pavement, momentarily stalling their forward momentum. Then, the seams where its head connects open, like a flower toward the sun, if each petal was fleshy and covered in dozens of sharp looking teeth. And it screeches, ear-splitting and horrible, as if reprimanding Harrington for not laying imobile like a good little live meal.

It tosses Harington into the pool. He hits with a splash, immediately flailing out, smacking Eddie on the side of his face. Eddie reaches out on instinct to pull the guy toward him, trying to keep the both of them above the water line while Harrington reorients himself. 

It shouldn’t have taken long. Harrington is the captain of the swim team. He should have been able to kick his feet under him and been off to the other end of the pool within seconds. 

It wasn’t fast enough.

Eddie doesn’t even see it move, it’s so fast. He’s holding onto Harrington, arm slung around the other guy’s waist, clutching tightly at the front of his sweater. Then, Harrington’s being pulled forcefully to the bottom of the pool, Eddie along with him. 

All of his orifices are burning from the chlorine–throat, nose, eyes, ears. He feels blind, deaf, lost, anchorless, except for the feel of Harrington’s skin beneath his hand, so he clutches, hooks his hand through the guy’s belt to keep his hold.

There’s a sensation, like meat parting around him. Then he’s breathing, sucking in oxygen, eyes still closed, head spinning. Harrington’s ribs are rising and falling rapidly. It lasts only a moment, the pair of them breathing and touching and panicking in tandem.

Until there’s that sound. Foxes chittering strangely, but it’s echoing now, weirdly like they’re in a cave forty feet underground. 

Eddie opens his eyes. The sky looks wrong–darker than it should be, and it almost looks like it’s snowing. One of the flakes hits Eddie in the cheek and he rubs at the spot, feeling it flake apart and smear across his face. Not snow. Dust? Ash?

They’re in some sort of pit made of concrete, cracked under the force of the sickly vines crawling across its surface. It’s deep enough that Eddie’s not sure how they’re going to get out. 

It’s not until he sees the ladder at the edge of the hole that he realizes where they are: impossibly, in the bottom of Harrington’s pool, somehow drained of water and decayed and made wrong, in a matter of seconds. 

The chittering turns to a growl. Harrington jumps up. Eddie’s hand, where it’s still tucked into his belt, jerks violently up with him, pinky getting stuck between belt and pants as he hastily tries to extract it. Harrington darts away, and Eddie’s pinky pops. It’s barely audible beyond the growling, but he feels it as a release of pressure and then sharp pain.

Eddie looks down at his now free hand. There’s chaffing on his palms, and his pinky sits at an awkward angle, already swelling around the knuckle where it connects to his hand. 

Nausea rolls through him–shock, maybe–at the sight. More than the pain, it looks like another wrong thing in a long line of wrongness that makes up his night, this time, attached to his own body. He heaves, water spilling out of his mouth, burning with chlorine as Eddie forces his eyes away from his hand.

Harrington’s across the pool, holding some sort of pole with a torn net at one end, thrusting it into the creature’s mouth, farther and farther. But the metal’s warping, almost decaying under the saliva in the thing's face, pole becoming shorter and shorter until It’s almost upon Harrington.

Without thought, Eddie jumps to his feet, stumbling behind the thing and bashing his lunchbox into its head. 

It’s probably the surprise of the hit that makes the thing stumble. Harrington wastes no time, jabbing the rest of his pole, fast and deep into its maw. It wails, the strike fast enough to get through whatever was melting the metal, piercing something deep inside the thing.

Eddie’s not stupid enough to think it’ll stay down. He skirts around the thing, latching onto Harrington’s wrist and pulling him along in his wake. He doesn’t hear the pole clatter to the cement of the bottom of the pool, hoping that means they have a little more time, doesn’t dare turn around to look as Eddie drops Harrington’s wrist to climb, hand over aching hand, up the ladder and out of the pool. 

Nothing looks better once he’s topside. The sky is still wrong, filled with ash and discolored light. There’s vines up here, too. And it’s quiet, so quiet he can hear every sound Harrington makes as he scrambles up the ladder behind him. 

Eddie doesn’t wait for him. He runs, fast as he can to the sliding door to the house, wrenching it open and falling past the curtain into the house. He hopes, hysterically, that no one sees him making such a fool of himself, hopes somewhere deeper that someone does and will put themselves between his fleshy body and whatever comes through the door behind him.

But no one’s there. Harrington’s kitchen is dark, the living room past it dark as well, a disturbing red glowing faintly through closed curtains like he’s landing himself in a scene straight from Evil Dead. There’s no shadows of partygoers moving, no top forty, no drunk teenagers to spill beer on his shoes.

He stands, frozen, something horrific building in his throat, like a scream or a sob as he stares, unmoving, curtains moving against the small of his back until something slams through them, pushing him to the cold linoleum. 

He pictures teeth, swears he hears a growl, but when he twists wildly from his prone position to scoot backwards on his ass, arms preemptively raised, he sees Harrington sliding the door closed and clicking the shitty plastic lock into place. 

It's hilarious, like the thing they’d both seen back there would be stopped by a little piece of plastic, or doors, or the safety of his house. Eddie bites back a laugh that’s fighting its way up his throat like chlorine, burning and not where it’s supposed to be.

Harrington’s back is shaking with the force of his pants as he yanks the curtains closed. He pivots, face devoid of anything as he bends down and yanks Eddie up by his wrist hard enough to sting.

“Harrington, the people–” he starts, but his wrist is yanked harder as he’s led up carpeted stairs and into a bedroom.

Eddie gets only a sense of plaid and emptiness before he’s being shoved into a closet, Harrington stumbling in behind him and closing the doors quietly and squatting down next to where Eddie had fallen. The outside of their thighs are pressed together. Something hysterical bubbles up his throat again at the irony of the moment. He bites his lip against it.

Harrington’s feet are beneath him, ready to jump and fight anything that might follow them up here. Eddie can’t seem to get his ass on the floor, the lethargy of shock making him complacent, the knowledge that he’d never stand a chance if that thing makes it into the house making the effort of vigilance not seem worth it.

Harrington looks fierce, like he really is in a scary movie, an action hero, the final girl, the one who’ll get to the end of the movie by any means necessary. But Eddie can feel his body shaking where their legs are pressed together. Eddie gets the insane urge to hold his hand.

It feels like hours pass like this, Harrington at the ready, Eddie succumbing to his sleepy shock, before Harrington slowly lowers himself to sit on the ground beside Eddie, knee overlapping his as he sits crisscross, still looking at the door.

“Harrington, what–” 

“I don’t know, Munson.” His voice is a sharp whisper, biting in its carelessness. He doesn’t even look away from the closet door.

“Your house is just empty, man.”

That gets him a scoff and a loosening roll of his shoulders as Harrington finally turns his head to the side and meets his eyes. Eddie tries not to notice the way it slides his thigh more firmly atop his own.

“That’s what you’re worried about?” Harrington demands, and for a moment, Eddie’s afraid he somehow heard his thoughts, another in a long line of indignities in this new world they’ve found themselves in, but he continues, “–the people? Not the flower monster that tried to eat us, or the red sky, or the shitty vines all over my house?”

“People means help! Who’s going to help us now?” Eddie demands, voice rising higher than it should. He swings his hand wildly, less of a gesture and more of a limb seizing with panic until it hits the closet’s wall with a hollow thwack, sending a bolt of pain from his pinkie finger down his wrist. 

Harrington turns violently, almost climbing in Eddie’s lap in his bid to both cover his mouth and wrench his hand away from the wall and clutch it tightly in the space between their chests. Eddie bites his own lip at the pain of the squeeze. It’s dark, but he can see the way Harrington’s eyes are widened with fear, the whites too visible.

“Shut up,” he hisses, hand squeezing a little tighter around his cheeks. 

They sit in the silence of the moment, staring at each other, ears straining for the sound of anything coming for them.

All is silent. Harrington’s hands ease away and he slowly shuffles out of Eddie’s space. 

“Sorry,” Eddie says, almost reflexive. 

Steve doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t turn away either. They’re still both staring at each other. Eddie’s too tense to feel awkward about it.

He sits in the silence. He’s never been good at it—the quiet. It eats at him, picks away at his skin until he’s back in a run-down apartment with a Father in jail and Mom gone from the room even as she rots away on the couch. The silence eats and eats and eats, until he can almost smell the mildew of the always-closed windows, can feel the springs of his old mattress digging uncomfortably into his back.

The springs prod him, and he blinks into the closet, Harrington’s finger jabbing into his side.

“Don’t crack on me now, Munson.” He’s not smiling.

“Aww,” he replies, trying to make his tone its usual cloying flirtation, “didn’t think you cared, your highness.”

He twists his mouth up at the side. It doesn’t quite land on a smirk—he can feel the way it wobbles. If Harrington notices, he doesn’t call him on it.

With a roll of his eyes, Harrington responds, “like you said, no people means no help, means you’re all I’ve got.”

“Don’t sound too happy about it,” Eddie mutters, but the house is too quiet and they’re sitting too close together.

Harrington scoffs, but he leans back further, settling fully on his ass for the first time since he’d dragged Eddie into the closet with him, like all he needs to feel at ease is Eddie being a dick to him. He’s not sure whether or not that’s infuriating or charming, but the knot in his throat that feels suspiciously like tears breaks loose when Harrington leans back on the heels of his hands.

There’s something to the ease of Harrington in this moment that makes Eddie wonder if he’s ever actually seen him at ease before. When Eddie had watched him across the lunch room, eyes unwillingly drawn to the jocks table, his shoulders were always relaxed, mouth always turn up at the corners, but there was still something so stiff about him. Eddie’s not sure he’s ever seen him lean back like this.

It's almost like, without eyes on him—or with only Eddie’s—his body has gone ragamuffin. A marionette with all it’s strings cut. It’s like. Like—

It’s like hiding from a horrific Lovecraftian monster in the alternative dimension version of his own closet with Eddie Fucking Munson is the first time Steve Harrington has felt comfortable in his own skin. Either that, or Eddie’s spiraling.

“Stop staring at me, man,” Harrington says, draping a hand over his eyes to block out the nonexistent light.

It’s only then that Eddie realizes he has been staring. He snaps his gaze to the floor, running his fingers through the soft shag of Harrington’s fancy carpet. It’s things like this that got him marked as queer within weeks of moving here.

“What’re we gonna do, man?” Eddie asks, like a broken record.

Harrington sighs, drooping further into the carpet. “I vote we go to sleep and hope this was all a bad dream.”

And as if his word had been decreed, Harrington stretches out as much as he can in the confined space, using a pile of dirty clothes as a pillow, and closes his eyes. The side of his leg ended up pressed across the entire side of Eddie’s thigh.

Eddie stares, struck dumb by the audacity of Harrington checking out in a moment like this. When his silence gets no reaction, he slumps down, dragging his cheek into the soft carpet as Harrington slumbers beside him. It feels like hours until he falls asleep.

Part 2

[daboyau]

the potential start to a crossover i’ve been kicking around in my head. Here, have it. @boots-with-the-fur-club

Leo, for all of his bluster and showboating, has always been smart. The kind of smart that’s a little bit scary at times, because he’s so good at hiding it behind big grins and bad puns and silly shenanigans. He’s already calculated the outcome of this fight. It’s obvious in the way he smiles at them, body going lax, expression softening even as he begins to curl into himself more, already anticipating the pain that is coming. 

The Krang’s massive metal talon wraps around his leg, engulfing it easily. Mikey sees Leo’s face go pale with the pain, but somehow he still keeps that smile in place, gazing at them like he’s hoping for one final memory to hold tight inside the prison dimension. The portal wavers, sparking gold as the pain of his brother’s resignation to his own torment makes Mikey’s heart clench and ache inside his chest. Raph’s hand tightens even as Leo tries to withdraw. The red of his construct is beginning to waver, but he still holds on. Mikey can hear his teeth grinding with the effort.

The sounds that Leo makes, soft and scared and hurting, as Krang tries to pull him deeper into the prison dimension will haunt Mikey’s nightmares. Blood is pooling around Leo’s leg where those metal claws dig in deep, hanging suspended around them, only disturbed when Krang yanks again. 

Leo’s shoulder dislocates, and he swallows down a cry. Raph sobs, and his construct wavers again even as its giant fist tightens its hold enough to bruise Leo’s already battered body. Krang is laughing, the sound like metal curling beneath desperately grasping fingernails. He thinks he’s already won. 

“It’s okay,” Leo mouths, eyes tracing their features. Blood has been kicked up, floating like wings behind him. “Just let go.” 

The gold sparks again, waves of burning fire up and down his arms, tiny tendrils of mystic energy creeping past his brothers’ hands to sink its way into his shoulders and neck. He sees the blood shine ruby red as it reflects the glow. Mikey grits his teeth. He sees Krang smile, and he feels the burning begin to creep up his cheeks. He wants Krang to burn, too. 

“You! Can’t! Have him!” he screams, voice raw and aching. He tastes blood as it bubbles up from his throat, dancing at the back of his tongue. Raph’s hand tightens on his shoulder. Donnie leans a little further into his side. 

Leo stares back at them, wide eyed. He’s not smiling anymore. 

They push forward, together, in one final desperate reach for Leo. Krang howls as Donnie’s drill nails him in his stupid, chewed bubblegum face. His grip loosens, just enough to pull Leo further towards them. He leaves a trail of blood in his wake.

It no longer reflects the sparks of gold. 

Gravity isn’t working anymore.

Mikey’s blood runs cold when he realizes what he’s allowed to happen. 

They float together in the nether, Leo clutched tightly between them. His mask tails tickle Mikey’s nose as they float lazily above his head. 

“The portal,” he breathes, eyes wide as he pushes himself a little further from their huddle. He doesn’t let go of Leo’s hand as he searches, eyes desperately scanning the dark void that surrounds them for a glimpse of golden light.

Krang is screaming, rage and exhaustion from the long fight the only thing keeping him from simply swatting aside the barrage that Donnie is manifesting to keep him at bay for just a little longer. Donnie’s face is shadowed and his teeth bared, silent rage giving him the strength he needs to hold Krang back despite the exhaustion that Mikey knows they all feel deep down in every torn muscle and broken bone. That won’t last forever, though. Already, he can see the purple of his mask darkening with sweat. His scales are beginning to look washed out. Blood from those sharp, jagged lines that are all Mikey’s faultcutting their way up his right arm has begun to leak slowly into the still air around them. The purple glow is beginning to dim. 

“We have to go,” Mikey squeaks, trembling fingers clutching at Raph’s arm. His voice is hoarse, hardly able to push the words past the blood in his throat. 

“We need to fight,” Raph snarls, watching Krang howl and slash at Donnie’s creations with a fury that makes Mikey’s breath catch in his throat. He recognizes this rage. He’d seen it reflected on Leo’s face just hours before. “We have to make him pay.” 

Mikey shakes his head, wide eyed, frantic. He squeezes harder, silently pleading. Donnie watches them from the corner of his eye. A bead of sweat traces its slow way down his cheek. It doesn’t fall as it reaches his jaw and breaks away, instead floating upwards to join the blood pooling slowly above their heads. 

“We can’t!” Mikey rasps, the words hardly audible above the sounds of metal grinding against mystic metal. Raph snarls, and for one horrible second all he can see is pink tendrils and murderous intent instead of his big brother, and Mikey can’t help but flinch back. 

“No.” They all startle and watch, wide eyed, as Leo struggle to twist himself enough to almost sit up in Raph’s arms. Mikey whimpers as the motion reveals the extent of the damage Krang has dealt in such a short amount of time. “We need to go. Hide. Heal enough…and then get out of here. Go home.” 

His voice is wheezy and weak. Blood leaks from his lips as he speaks, clinging to his teeth and lips like teardrops to lashes. Mikey’s seen enough medical dramas that he’s pretty sure that’s a really bad sign.

Raph’s eyes flicker back towards Krang. Furious. Murderous. But then they shift to look at Donnie’s gritted teeth as he struggles to continue his attack. Towards Mikey’s wild eyed terror and trembling hands. At Leo’s desperate expression, mostly hidden by blood and a bruise swollen face. He hadn’t looked that scared when he was facing a reality where it was just him in the prison dimension alone. Raph’s gaze softens. He nods. 

Donnie nods back, one hand thrown out towards Krang, the other still resting on Leo’s bloodied shoulder like he’s afraid that his brother will disappear if he lets go for even an instant. Mikey feels the same way, and if he wasn’t scared of hurting Leo worse, he would tighten his grip on his hand. 

“Fireworks show?” Raph asks, meeting Mikey’s eye with a grin that is fighting to be reassuring. He swallows hard, and he reaches deep, searching his core for the final tiny drops of ninpo he has left after creating the portal and holding it open for so long. He smiles back, wobbly and painful as it stretches the open wounds that same ninpo had left on his cheeks. 

“Let’s light it up!” 

For one glorious minute, the grey of the prison dimension is overtaken by an explosion of color and light, orange and purple and red all dancing together in a display that only has one purpose.

Distraction. 

They flee as Krang howls and thrashes, trying to find them through the blinding light and disorienting swirl of color and patterns. Leo’s watching the sky light up with a small smile, eyes glazed and distant. Mikey’s pretty sure he’s seconds away from passing out. He probably has no idea where he even is right now. 

Probably all he knows is that he’s curled in Raph’s arms, with Mikey and Donnie each holding onto him tightly. He’s surrounded by their colors, their warmth, the subtle whisper of their depleted ninpo. All he knows right now is that he’s safe. 

Mikey intends to make sure he stays that way. He knows that Raph and Donnie feel the same way. 

As they slip deeper into the maze of floating debris, Mikey closes his eyes. He focuses on his breathing, trying to feel for the tiny spark inside his soul. He can almost sense it, and he does his best to fan it back to life. 

His arms are throbbing. The feeling of congealing blood itches against his skin, and he can taste it in his mouth with every breath he frees into the still air of the prison dimension. The empty ache inside his chest, the fullness inside his soul that he’s come to associate with his ninpo, hurts in a way he’s never known before. Not even Krang had been able to hollow him out like this, even when he’d managed to lock that part of them away.

Still, when he opens his eyes again, they spark with a furious, burning light. He is going to get them out of here. No matter what it takes. 

[alpineshift]

I love love love ruthless Jack! If you wanna write more of him maybe prompt 31 “I’ll be there as soon as possible” ? Thanks for all the awesome shorts so far!

I'm the elmo on fire gif right now YES

thank you for this one!

31. “I’ll be there as soon as possible.” 

Let's say they're at a charity event. One of those big, showboat-y types, that feels more like a who's who of faces rather than really focusing on the causes. But Jack goes anyway, because there are people he likes there, and because by virtue of showing up people usually pony up some more $$$, on the off chance they might get to speak with him.

It's the first time he's bringing Nico as an official plus one, though.

They'd done plenty of schmoozing and black tie events in the past, with the Devils or otherwise. But it's different now, even if their relationship is locked down from public knowledge. People will just assume they're going together as friends. But they know what's changed.

And it thrills Jack to his core, to show up with Nico by his side, all smiles and dimples and boyish charms, knowing Nico is his. That's his Nico, in a suit Jack picked out for him (in spite of Nico's many protests.) And nobody has a clue.

Food is average. The bar is kind of fun, with themed drinks and good top shelf liquor. They run into one of Quinn's old classmates and ends up chatting for a solid hour; decent guy, seemed genuinely pleased to see Jack, and polite to Nico.

Jack basks in the easy pass of the evening, an arm slung behind Nico's chair, and delights in the occasional feel of Nico's back resting against his arm whenever he leans towards Jack.

They hang around until they've just about filled their socially polite appearance quota, and Nico goes down to the valet while Jack goes to get their coats. They're barely a hallway away from each other, which is why Jack immediately goes on high alert when his phone screen lights up with Nico's call.

"Can you come over here, please?" Nico says, without a greeting. His voice sounds strained and he's slightly short of breath. "I--I can see Stefan outside, and I just--"

"Stay where you are. I'll be there as soon as possible."

He refuses to show any emotion other than caring and protective when he approaches Nico, who's waiting for him by an alcove in the lobby. His expression is faintly pinched, a shade haunted, and that is simply unacceptable in Jack's books.

He holds Nico's coat open for him, gently slides it up his boyfriend's broad shoulders, and tucked their linked hands out of sight between their bodies. The valet is already pulling up with their car. Jack leads them outside, squeezing Nico's hand in is, and feels a squeeze back.

He clocks when Stefan sees Nico first, then Jack, and then the way they're standing together. Jack knows he can't tell whether or not they're holding hands. He can see the outrage and the hesitation and the hatred. But better yet, he can see the base layer of fear. Good. Stay the fuck away.

Nico climbs into the passenger's side without so much of a glance in Stefan's way. Jack closes the door after him, and makes a split second's worth of eye contact as he walks to the driver's side.

Mouths the word pathetic before he gets in the car and pulls out of the fancy roundabout, down the drive, and onto the highway. Doesn't exhale fully until he feels Nico's hand rest on his thigh, palm turned up invitingly, and hears Nico's quiet "Thank you, Jack" as they head on home.

[warningsine]

Exquisitely twisted and perversely romantic, Interview with the Vampire returns with another feast of juicy melodrama.

Once again the story unfolds over multiple timeframes, structured around the titular interview with 145-year-old vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson). Speaking to journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), he narrates a gothic memoir of love, betrayal, self-loathing, and inhuman morality. Part interrogation, part therapy, these interview scenes see Daniel attempt to dissect Louis' curated recollections of the past.

It's not surprising to learn that several of IWTV's writers are playwrights. Anchored by Jacob Anderson's multifaceted performance, the show switches back and forth between maximalist emotion and tense psychodrama, backed by a sumptuous orchestral score by Daniel Hart. The characters often seem to be performing for an audience, whether it's literally on stage, or in a persona crafted for someone else's benefit. These self-absorbed monsters simply love to create drama.

Season 1 ended with a one-two punch of plot twists, as Louis recounted the bloody end of his relationship with Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) and revealed that his human assistant "Rashid" is actually his 514-year-old vampire lover, Armand (Assad Zaman). No wonder Daniel snidely compares Louis' life to a telenovela.

Keeping Armand on the backburner for an entire season was a thrillingly bold move, upending the power dynamics of the interview and giving Daniel a second source as we delve into Louis and Armand's first meeting in 1940s Paris.

After disposing of Lestat, Louis and Claudia (Delainey Hayles) travel through war-torn Europe in search of other vampires. Previously acting as father and daughter, they're now more like siblings, with Claudia dragging Louis along in her search for a vampiric family. Her quest leads them to the Théâtre des Vampires, a theater troupe who use gory cabaret to attract their human prey. Armand is their director, a subdued figure compared to showboating performers like the Théâtre's lead actor Santiago, a sexy egomaniac played to the hilt by the marvelous Ben Daniels. 

Replacing Claudia's original actor, Bailey Bass, Delainey Hayles reintroduces Claudia in a more mature role. Fearless but still yearning for recognition, she forges a new life while grappling with old, unsolvable problems. Immortality has trapped her in perpetual adolescence, a taboo in vampire culture. Intriguingly, her most interesting new relationship this season is with a human woman (Roxane Duran).

Louis, meanwhile, still struggles with his identity as a vampire. Wandering on the outskirts of human society, he becomes a compulsive photographer, trying to figure out his place in a world without Lestat. 

This season's biggest challenge is retaining the show's momentum without Sam Reid at center stage. His Lestat is the role of a lifetime: a magnetic tyrant whose powerhouse emotions balance out Jacob Anderson's more naturalistic performance. Their chemistry cemented IWTV as must-watch television, and you can't just throw that away. With Lestat unavoidably absent for this chunk of Louis' memories, the solution is to bring him back as a hallucinatory ghost, haunting Louis' blossoming romance with Armand. 

In yet another miraculous piece of casting, Assad Zaman is equally convincing as a steely vampiric leader and as a doe-eyed Renaissance muse. Surveying the world with a mournful, heavy-lidded gaze, his resting expression is haughty and serene. It's a serenity born of meticulous control, which Daniel Molloy threatens to disrupt.

Scorning Louis and Armand's cutesy displays as a happy couple, Daniel is now doubly motivated to find discrepancies in their story. His vampire hosts may hold all the physical power, but perhaps they made a mistake by inviting an investigative journalist over the threshold. 

Interview with the Vampire revels in the idea of subjective, unreliable narrators: redacted journals, emotional bias, supernatural hypnosis. Louis wants to take charge of his own story, narrating the historical flashbacks in a poetic, practiced monologue. He's probably been rehearsing this conversation for decades, keen to revise his first interview with Daniel in 1973 — a meeting that Daniel recalls with a suspicious lack of clarity. Behind this floats the specter of Armand-as-Rashid, sitting quietly in the corner of Louis' "solo" interview scenes last season. Armand wants to shape the narrative too.

In Season 1, Armand's ever-present iPad felt like an affectation of his secretarial persona. Now we recognize it as a facet of his controlling personality, constantly taking notes and managing his business at a distance. Back in the 1940s, this trait made itself known in his role as a theater director, watching from the rafters and scribbling in the margins of the company's scripts. Armand even takes his iPad to bed, a location that noticeably lacks the carnality of Louis' relationship with Lestat. 

Contrasting with Lestat's volatile passions, Armand presents himself as a civilized and caring partner. He's diligent and soft-spoken. He and Louis finish each other's sentences, mirroring their body language in coordinated outfits. Yet the absent Lestat still has immense gravitational pull in Louis' psyche. Driven by feverish desires and snarling fits of rage, his love was possessive, all-encompassing, and addictive. 

In a gothic romance, there's no escape and no happily-ever-after. Louis can't let go of Lestat, and Armand can't ignore Lestat's lingering presence in his lover's memories. Every permutation of this love triangle is toxic in its own way. Louis claims that Armand is the love of his life, but really he just exchanged one unhealthy relationship for another. You get the impression that Armand has spent decades troubleshooting the best way to keep Louis by his side, resulting in a soft, solicitous attitude with an undertone of Munchausen's by proxy. 

Armand's controlling influence extends to the architecture of their minimalist Dubai penthouse, a sort of luxury terrarium built to keep Louis contained. Once upon a time he visited jazz bars and rubbed shoulders with humanity. Now he's completely isolated from the outside world, cloistered away in a tax haven for business tycoons.

A set of decorative bars frame their bedroom like a cage, and the apartment's floor-to-ceiling windows represent a potential death trap for Louis. Unlike Armand, he's still young enough to be vulnerable to sunlight. Their household library is similarly tailored to Armand's superhuman powers, shelved in midair where Armand can fly up and peruse their collection but Louis — still stuck on the ground with the humans — faces a physical barrier to entry. 

Amid all this, you may find yourself hoping that this purse-mouthed little control freak gets what's coming to him. And that's the magic of Interview with the Vampire, because really, who are we kidding? Is Armand really the bad guy here? No! Everyone's the bad guy!

By any reasonable metric, all of the vampire characters are serial killers. At one point Armand and Louis have a flirty little chat while their pals massacre an entire mansion of partygoers in the background. It's absurd to analyze their story from a moralizing perspective. Claudia is probably the most sympathetic character of all, and she'd happily tear out throats from dusk till dawn. As for Lestat, we want him to return because he makes for good television, not because he's good for Louis.

This embrace of emotion over logic and ethics is what makes IWTV so compelling. Current pop culture isn't comfortable with melodrama, keeping it at arm's length with uncomfortable laughter and derogatory comparisons to soap opera. But Interview with the Vampire has no interest in irony or restraint. Its humor lies in the overlap between comedy and horror, and its central performances hinge on total commitment. Rarely do we see such a clever, creative work of adaptation, mining classic vampire tropes for a deliciously energizing take on the genre.

[folk-enjoyer]

Song of the day

"Ol' Man River" Paul Robeson, 1936

originally written in 1925 by Oscar Hammerstein II, featured in the 1927 musical "Showboat" here

later, the musical was turned into a musical film in 1936 with Paul Robeson playing the character Joe

Old Man River always sends chills down my spine; the depiction of the exploitation of black people and the toiling of black workers, and the contrast between the uncaring and unfeeling river, lead to a haunting song.

[jeepers-scoob]

The New Scooby Doo Movies- S2 E02: The Haunted Showboat

This is a good one! So many good Shaggy lines like Plan 33 B "Man The Lifeboats! Man Overboard!" *Shaggy proceeds to fling himself over the boat multiple times*, "Now you went and did it Scoob, you broke the mountain", "I see you really got to the bottom of our mystery" *looking down at everybody in a pit*

Also love how Fred looks so funky when they get caught in the net and how he suddenly becomes a cowboy while riding a log, Velma blowing the ghost a kiss, and my fave bit: fake ghost gets spooked by Shaggy and Scooby thinking they are real monsters/ghosts 👻

[lesserknowncryptids]

Today's lesser known cryptid is: The Haunted Showboat

[ticklish-touch]

Trapped in the Backrooms - Ch 8: Power Trip

(Ragaeli x lee!Y/N (non-romance): Tickling, group tickling, clowns, coulrophilia, hypnosis)

Finally, you and Ragaeli have the chance to face one of the deities of the Backrooms head-on. Rags is ready to put on the performance of the century, and you're not about to let yourself get left out of the circus shenanigans. The Nightmare once again proves that his laughter-fueled megalomania is a force to be reckoned with... But can you hold your own?

(Chapter themes: “Something Wicked (That Way Went)” - Vernian process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsRh83BXvOE “Entry of the Gladiators” - Ken Mukai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y8Of6FNuLQ “The World Revolving” - RichaadEB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWNKFBeYVxw )

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

         Aside from the sounds of rides, coasters and stereotypical circus melodies playing from some of the game booths, there were no clear signs of anyone else in the amusement park. It had very eerie vibes, making you feel as if you were being watched from the shadows of the various tents, booths and train cars that decorated the fairgrounds. A rollercoaster, ferris wheel and huge main tent stood high above all the other attractions in the distance.

         Rags whistled, hands folded behind his head. "Man, Ross-boss would love performin' at a place like this. If, y'know, there were actually people around."

         “Heh, yeah.” You knew he was referring to his robot-clown apprentice. You’d only met him once, but it was an unforgettable night of spectating the showboater’s scares and acrobatics - and of course, a night filled with plenty of laughs.          “So, where d’you wanna head first? If we cause a ruckus here I bet it’ll draw out this so-called Jester sooner~”          “Hmmm…” Your gaze wandered around. Your first instinct was to go for one of the big rides or coasters, buuut you also kind of wanted to start with something more mellow after the nonstop pandemonium from the jungle gyms. You eyed over a nearby building, which very much appeared to be a haunted house attraction. It was painted with generic scary imagery, the entry door cloaked with pitch-black curtains. There were dingy old cutouts on either side of the entrance depicting monstrous-looking humanoid creatures: One looked as if it was wearing the stolen face of a human over its zombified body; the other had an amorphous body without visible hands or feet, holding a single balloon. Its eyes and mouth dripped with blood. Creepy.

         Rags snickered. "Of course you wanna go for the one that'll spook you the most~" He gave you a nudge.          "Oh shush," you shoved him back. "It caught my attention because it's close by, that's all."          "Mmhmm, suuure. Well if you wanna take a look around, go for it! I’m gonna keep an eye out for our jolly ol’ Jester." He poofed out of sight.

         Peering behind the black curtain, you saw a hallway filled with fog, dimly illuminated by ambient red and teal spotlights from somewhere overhead. Slowly, you started stepping forward, the dilapidated wood floor creaking below your feet. The hallway went on and on, for almost a full minute...

         Before the floor completely fell out from below you, slanting downward into a steep ramp. "WhaaAAA-!!"

         The ramp brought you down to another dark area that was clear of fog, with concrete floors. It was lit by little more than a few coils of neon blacklights here and there. As far as the eye could see, the walls displayed mirrors: warped, wavy mirrors. You were in a funhouse! Walking past them, they warped your image in comical ways: Stretching out your neck like a giraffe, making your legs way too short or long, turning your body wavy or spirally. But you were more concerned about whether an entity was waiting to pounce from behind one of them.

         As if answering your thoughts, a sinister, jolly laugh soon permeated the darkness, followed by a voice with a hammy British cadence. "Well well well, my dear, you've wound up in quite the predicament, haven't you~?"

         That voice...! It couldn't be??

         The floating head of a clown popped out from the corner of a wall. And not just any clown; it was metal, with curly indigo hair and LED eyes, a golden smirk below a large purple nose.

         "ROSCOE?!"

         The clown’s body strolled into the room close behind him, giving you an exaggerated bow and taking his head out of the air to tip it like a hat. "The one and only~!"

         You beamed, running up to him. …Stopping short a couple feet away. As much as you enjoyed his personality, he still unnerved you a bit; he was almost as intimidating as Ragdoll. At least he didn't tend to immediately go in for the kill. His gaze narrowed and he eyed you over slyly, swinging out his arms and pulling you into a hug. "No need to be shy, dear! I won't let my hands wander too much~" His large claws flurried up and down your back and hips. You squealed and laughed and pushed at his warm metal chest, to which he responded with a deep amused chuckle. "You have fun meandering about, I'll be keeping my eye on you~" He winked, stepping inside one of the mirrors before disappearing behind the frame.

         The funhouse was dizzying. An endless expanse of mirrors, reflecting in on each other to make the twisted hallways seem even more infinite. You eventually smacked right into one of them, thinking you had found an opening in the wall. "OOF-"

         Roscoe let out his signature guffaw before re-appearing around a corner. "Well you can't very well walk through them, now can you?" He extended an arm and his hand floated over to you, ruffling your hair. "Don't try so hard to find a linear path. Open your mind, trust your gut, and follow my lead~" He poofed out of sight, his image re-appearing inside one of the nearby mirrors. His body looked warped and twisted in comical proportions and he waved Jazz-hands at you.

         You followed the robot's humming, clunking of his huge boots, and bursts of confetti released by his hands shapeshifting into small projectile guns. Occasionally the brat snuck out from behind or inside mirrors to give pokes to your sides. Catching a glimpse of him a few times, you noticed that he had a red aura instead of his typical purple one, and his form seemed to flicker a bit like a mirage. A lot like Rags' tickle machines back at the laboratory. Was this really Roscoe...? You shrugged it off. Even if he was an illusion, it was nice to have another familiar face keeping watch over you.

         The further you traveled, the less mirrors you started to see, replaced by dark corridors and open walls. The few mirrors that were left started to only reflect silhouettes of Roscoe and other entities, outlined in bright neon lights. The infinite ceiling had soon shrunk down until it was just a few feet above your head, letting in a minimal amount of light and fog through holes and slats.

         A loud guttural hiss and a dark figure popped out at you, with a bloodied mouth and zombified skin. You shrieked and sprinted forward to hide behind a corner. But it didn't chase you; it simply snickered meanly to itself and disappeared from sight. You warily made your way through pitch-black hallways with dangling chains, and traversed warped floors that passed by prison cells which housed entities like hounds, smilers, dullers, and that thing from the cutout with a bloody face and single balloon. All of which leapt at you, snarling and clawing at you from behind bars. This thoroughly felt like a haunted house back on Earth, complete with scare-"actors". Were they playing? Were they actually plotting to kill you? It was hard to say for sure. But the thrill of the uncertainty, the reminiscing of some scare attractions you'd visited with some of your friends, still made it pretty fun.

         You continued getting startled by the sounds of eerie whispering, animalistic growls, scuttling and scratching bounced off the walls. You passed through large open sections modeled after different types of creepy environments: A crimson hotel, a spooky castle hallway, an abandoned school, and... A replication of Level Zero. Your stomach sank, at first worrying that you'd been redirected back to the very start of your journey. Thank the heavens there was a clearly-marked path out.

         You soon started to hear music playing ahead: A very distorted carnival melody. Peeking into the doorframe, your eyes were met with blinding UV paintings of monstrous clowns with neon-colored eyes and overly-exaggerated body proportions, with crooked or razor-sharp teeth. The music was now partially drowned out by taunting, distorted laughter, making your adrenaline skyrocket and scramble to get out of the maze faster. Especially when the bastard robot added to the creepy ambience with his own exaggerated villainous laughter, his head gliding in, sticking out his colorful striped tongue. He chased you clear to the end of the maze, where you leapt out of a curtain and back into the amusement park. Roscoe had stopped his pursuit, disappearing again.

         Exiting the haunted house, you felt all pumped up to look around for your next attraction. …And also try to find some food. Your stomach was growling pretty loudly. The bigger rides were further in the distance anyways; you'd have to make your way around several game booths and concession stands first. A lot of them looked similar to games you'd see back on Earth, with very... unusual prize choices. Most of them looked like junk scrounged up from old thrift stores. The plushies looked like strange amalgamations of animals that didn't quite have full faces or limbs.

         Your gaze soon wandered from the top of a nearby carousel up to the nighttime sky. Weirdly, the only stars visible all aligned vertically with each other, traveling clear up to the center of the sky. There were several columns of lights like this, all meeting at a central point. "What the…?" You squinted. You started to realize that the ‘sky’ appeared segmented in different bands of color. The stars weren’t stars at all: They were lights. The entire park was enclosed by an impossibly huge circus tent. Whoa.

         "Ayyy, welcome, welcome!" A gruff, but enthusiastic voice nearby snapped you out of your thoughts, making you jump. Up walked a very short, chubby clown with suspenders, bright facepaint, and a small bowler hat, putting his hands on his hips. After glancing him over, your attention was drawn to his eyes: Striking, neon yellow irises with ringlets around his pupils. He had a friendly smile with slightly crooked teeth. "Nice to see another patron around here! Name's Zeppy," he shook your hand with enough force to bounce your arm up and down. "Step on up, I got just the game for ya!" He came up to reach a hand around to your back, pushing you forward to a nearby game booth with a crossbow aimed at cardboard cutouts of various Backroom entities.

         "O-Oh, okay!! I don't have any money on me though..."

         He shook his head and pushed a button on the booth counter. The game started itself up. "Don't worry 'bout it, you just gotta pay in interest. Literally! Curiosity is what fuels our theme park here. You don't show any interest in what we got, then the rides and games don't work. And it looks like ya got curiosity to spare. Good on ya!"         You humored him and played a round, taking aim with the crossbow and racking up a good amount of points; all while he cheered you on like a corny announcer. After a few minutes, the booth played fanfare and reset itself. "Wanna go for another round?"

         You shrugged, putting the crossbow down. “Truthfully I’m more hungry than anything.”

         “Ohhh gotcha!! Here then, lemme get ya fixed right up!” He tugged at your arm again, pulling you over to sit on a barstool at a concession stand. It was stocked with almond water, brightly-colored mushrooms, packaged bagels and what looked like glowing…jelly? Jam?          He handed you a bagel and almond water, and popped open the jar of jelly. “Moth jelly’s the good shit. It’ll keep ya fueled for most of the day. Thankfully the Death moths they come from are never really seen around here.”          Moth jelly? Huh… Must be like their version of bee honey. You spread it over the bagel and took a bite… Your mouth instantly watering from the taste. “MMmmm!!” It was honey-flavored! Honey with a hint of blueberry.          The clown, in the meantime, plucked some of the mushrooms right out of their planters to snack on them. “Mmm– So, what Level’d you visit from? Betcha you’re from a long ways away, huh?”

         You gave a long sigh. “You have no idea.”

         You started to hear loud footsteps behind you. "Oh hey Pogo, c'mere!!" He started to wave someone over.

         You turned around and gasped. "Whoa-" You were met with the sight of a shockingly tall female clown, standing over eight feet. She had disproportionately long legs and huge shoes, wearing polka-dotted pants. She had rosy red cheeks, red curly pigtails, heavy eyeshadow and exaggerated freckles. And again, her eyes were striking, practically glow-in-the-dark, neon green irises with ringlets.

         She leaned way down close to you, inches from your face, greeting you with a big gap-toothed smile. "Well hiya!! Nice to see a new face around here," she gave you a boop on the forehead. "Enjoying yourself?"         You were unnerved at first by her size, but it was hard not to warm up to her cheery disposition. You smiled softly. "Yeah, I am! All things considered."         "Good, good!! Have ya been on any of the rides yet? Might not wanna eat too much beforehand," she giggled.         "Heh, nah, not yet. Today has been... a very long day, and I kinda want to work my way up to it first."         "Fair 'nuff!" Zeppy walked out of the booth and patted you on the shoulder. "Well if ya wanna hang out on ground level for a while first, lemme introduce ya to the rest of the Rowdy Gang." He took a big, long breath, placed a couple fingers to his lips and blew a very loud whistle; almost as loud as a train whistle.

         Pogo took a seat on the barstool next to you, splaying out her mile-long legs. After a few moments you heard some commotion and talking; Two more clowns strolled on up to you. One of them was huge. A solid brick wall of fat and muscle, standing at seven feet, but he had a friendly face with soft facepaint and neon pink eyes. The other, at a first glance, looked absolutely forlorn; slumping forward, teardrop paint under their electric blue eyes, disproportionately long arms nearly dragging on the ground. But you noticed that their frown and upturned eyebrows was just facepaint. They flashed you a soft smile and waved one of their arms like a limp noodle. For a moment you chatted and introduced yourself; The big guy was named Beebee, the “sad” clown went by Mortimer.

         "Well well well!! It looks like we have quite the motley crew here, don't we~!" Roscoe's voice called out from behind you. He walked up to take a bow in front of the others. Their eyes lit up and they collectively exclaimed in interest, hurrying over to him.          "Whoaaa, take a look at this guy!" Beebee eyed him over. "A robot? Well that's a new one! The Higher-ups are trying new things, I see," he chuckled.          "Oooh, you're a spooky lookin fella," Pogo giggled. "Lookit those chompers! You seem like a nice guy though!"

         "Heheh, of course~! Nothing wrong with a good scare every now and then," he lurched forward with grabby claws, making the others jump. "But it's no fun if your audience is in real danger." he chuckled, then tapped on his gold metal teeth, glancing away in thought. "Say, I don't suppose you lovely bunch have seen the Jester around?"          Their eyes went wide and they exchanged glances. "The Court Jester...?" Mortimer spoke up. They had a soft voice, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. "Well uhh... we're not really... supposed to talk about him to new folks..."          "Not unless you have official business with him," Beebee shrugged. "He's a very busy guy, overseeing the carnival and the multiverse–" He was quickly jabbed in the gut by Zeppy, his belly letting out an audible honk.          "The multiverse, you say?" Roscoe tilted his head. "That could come quite in handy for what my friend and I need..." He tapped his chin, narrowing his gaze.

         Zeppy narrowed his gaze right back. "Hey now, don't be gettin' any sneaky ideas."          "What exactly are you after?" Pogo eyed him over suspiciously and leaned down close. "Messin' with timey-wimey spacey mambo-jumbo is a dangerous game," she flicked Roscoe's metal chest.          He just took a step back and held his hands up, chuckling. "Now now, no need to worry! I'm simply trying to help this one," his hand floated over to pat your head. "Get back to their own world."

        Zeppy blinked. "Wow, you are from far away!"         Roscoe nodded. "A little birdie told us that the Jester might be able to help. A very tall, stretchy, excitable and well-dressed birdie."

        Their eyes went wide again. "Shiro?? Mr. Shiro led you here?” Pogo asked in disbelief.          “Well shoot, must be pretty important business if he told ya to come here!" Zeppy laughed and patted you both on the back. "Well, unfortunately he's still not the easiest to come by. But hang around here long enough and he's bound to show up. He likes it when we make a ruckus together, ‘specially in the Big Top,” he pointed off to the distance, to a tent that stood high above the rest. “Just follow our lead!”

         You spent a decent amount of time being led in the direction of the big top, while also being pulled every which way by the clowns; Carnies, as they referred to themselves. Playing games, snacking on some mushrooms - the safe ones that wouldn’t make you trip balls - asking twenty questions with you and Roscoe, latching onto every word. Occasionally you saw other Carnies in the distance that were working maintenance on rides and stocking booths with supplies, giving a wave. They weren't as unhinged as the toons from the jungle gyms, but their ridiculousness was still contagious. They kept yanking at each other's suspenders, giving one another a good kick that released loud honks from their bodies, or honked out a song with their noses to entertain you.

         Being in close proximity to them made you a little bit anxious. Clowns were typically unnerving at best to most people, which is exactly what the nightmare clown Roscoe counted on; but also because their antics and desire to make you laugh would undoubtedly lead to the inevitable. You’re surprised they hadn’t already tried it.          Roscoe seemed to pick up on that thought. You caught a glimpse of him narrowing his gaze at you, eyebrow cocked. "Is something making you nervous, my good friend?"

         "Nervous??" Zeppy frowned. "Whatcha nervous for? You ain't got anything to worry about!"          "I meeean, some of the other guys aren't too keen on Wanderers being here," Beebee shrugged. "Remember the last sorry sap, blasted into smithereens by Dazzle's confetti bombs."

         "HEY, don't make ‘em more nervous!!" Pogo hissed, gently kicking his side. "Those jerks might be killjoys but you hang with the Rowdy Gang, you're always in for a good time!" She ruffled your hair.          Roscoe chuckled. "I've no doubts that we're safe in your hands, right?" He gave you a poke. A very deliberate poke right on the sweet spot on your torso that always made you squeak loudly.

         Every one of them took immediate notice. Slowly, wide smiles spread across their faces; even Mortimer’s melancholy expression softened into a subtle, playful grin. You gulped and stepped back. "N-Now hang on, guys..." You couldn't hide the shaky smile creeping onto your face.           “Well that was cute~!” Pogo giggled, following suit with a quick tickle to your ribs.          “You didn’t tell us you’re ticklish…” Mortimer leaned in close, squeezing and poking at your belly experimentally. You doubled over on yourself, gently swatting their hands away.          Zeppy smirked smugly. “Beebee, do the honors?”          You felt your arms lifted up by the huge clown’s strong arms, his big belly pressing up against your back.          Zeppy rubbed his hands together like a cartoon villain and made grabby hands. “Weeell now, it’d be remiss of us not to make ya laugh, don’tcha think? You sound like you’ve been through the ringer, so how ‘bout we help you loosen up~?”          You swallowed hard, feeling your face heat up. You glared over at Roscoe, who had his hands on his hips, smirking smugly. “R-Roscoe you aaaAASSHOHOHOLE!!” You were thrown off by the feeling of six pairs of hands going in for the attack.          “Aawwww, lookit that cute smile!!” Pogo cooed. “Your cheeks are almost as red as mine~!” Her long gloved fingers wiggled and scritched under your armpits, swirling in circles.          “Your laugh is really sweet…” Mortimer cooed softly, slipping their hands under your shirt to continue gently squishing and tickling your belly.          “Heheheh, quite the little wiggly-worm, ain’t ya~?” Zeppy smirked mischievously. He went to work skillfully and rapidly dancing his fingers over your hips, and down over your kneecaps and behind your legs. “Tickletickletickletickle!! Hehehe, you squeal even louder when I do that! Tiiickletickletickle~!”                  You kept getting bombarded by nonstop playful cooing, teasing, silly faces and contagious laughter, getting you all the more flustered and giggle-drunk. It was even worse when Pogo decided to lift your legs up, so Mortimer could proceed to take off your shoes. Roscoe finally joined Zeppy in peeling off your socks and going to town fluttering their fingers over your soles. The short clown shuffled in one of his pockets, pulling out a large comb - definitely too large for his own short hair - with thick, blunt teeth. With a wide, evil smile, he started tracing its edge up and down and around your sole, heel and balls of your feet. “Man, you’re a hell of a squirmer~ You’d be in trouble if we didn’t hold back, heheh!”          “There’s no need to hold back~” Roscoe narrowed his gaze at you deviously. “They’re thoroughly a glutton for punishment, isn’t that right~?” He winked.          Beebee eventually put you down. “I don’t wanna be left out!” he pouted. He kneeled down behind your head, starting to gently trace along your arms, biceps, and hollows with his fingers. “So cuuute~!”          Zeppy started to saw between your toes with his comb while Roscoe pinned your ankles down and shifted his other hand into a whirring brush. The combination of the two made you shriek and kick and laugh frantically. This just encouraged Pogo to tickle your writhing torso even faster. “Heeheehee, that’s the spirit!! If you’re gonna be goin’ on any rides you gotta show us you can handle the excitement~!”          Mortimer snuck into the fray to flop down and lay their head down on your belly, peeking up at you. They gave a content sigh. “This is a nice view~” They chuckled. “Might even be able to doze off listenin’ to this…” They turned their head to plant their face against your belly… Suddenly taking a deep breath and blowing a huge raspberry.          “NnnaaAAA-HAHAHAHA!! STAAAHAHAHA…!”          You had no doubts the lot of them would’ve kept tickling you as long as you could possibly handle it. But, the fun was eventually interrupted.          A loud BANG in the air nearby made all of you jump and look over to see a burst of fireworks and confetti. They all let you go, and Zeppy and Pogo hopped up to take a defensive stance. "Aw crap-"

         A short blonde clown with buck teeth and neon purple irises floated into view; literally, floating in the air, carried by a round colorful jumpsuit with inflated rims of their sleeves and bellbottoms, as if they were anti-gravity devices. You snorted back snickering at the sight, sitting up to brush yourself off.          "I thought I heard a laugh I didn't recognize!" Their voice was very high-pitched, to the point where your snorting turned into full-on laughter. But you were quickly snapped out of your moment of amusement when they casually tossed a cherry bomb in your direction, which promptly burst into confetti at a dangerously close proximity. You yelped and jumped back. "WHOA– Watch it!!"         “Fraternizing with miscreants again, eh Zippidy-Doo-Dah??” They growled and put their hands on their hips. “HEY CHARLIE!!” They shouted off to the side. “WE GOT ANOTHER ONE!”

         After some loud stomping, a clown with the same body type as Pogo came into view; except this one was almost twice as tall, towering over some of the boxcars. He had runny-mascara makeup, a mop of messy purple curls, suspenders, neon orange eyes, and a dress shirt with tacky arcade-like triangle patterns. Your neck craned upward, your jaw dropping.         He lifted his foot, reeling back his leg. You realized just in time that he intended to try kicking you. “WhoawhoaWHOA!!” The others pulled you out of the way just in time for the gargantuan boot to smash into a small tent just behind you.

         Mortimer whined and hid behind Beebee. Zeppy let out an exasperated growl, shouting up to both of them. “I keep tellin’ ya, Dazzle, you gotta STOP trynna kill off our customers!!”          The blonde let out a grating single bark of a laugh. “And THEY needa stop trying to kill US!!" They pointed an accusatory finger at you. “Them Wanderers come in here in those bright yellow trash-bags, bringin’ weapons and plans to sabotage our park! They think we’re nothin’ but MONSTERS!” They put their hands on their hips.          “They shoot my legs,” Charlie droned, moving his other leg out from behind one of the tents. His pant leg was tattered and torn from the knee down, revealing his skin covered in nasty burn scars. You gasped and covered your mouth, feeling a pang of sympathy.          Pogo also frowned sympathetically, but let out a loud huff. "Well this one ain't like those losers!!"          Beebee stomped up closer to Charlie. "Yeah!! They're nice! They're not here to cause problems or hurt any of us!"

         Dazzle scoffed. "Yeah?? The last chick that came through here was nice too! Til she thought she had to get violent for no reason! Damn lizard-skinned savage!!"          Lizard-skinned...?         "You're the one who thought it'd be a grand idea to paint a buncha freaky versions of us Carnies in the Scare-House!!" Zeppy pointed accusingly. "No wonder they think we're monsters!!"          Dazzle just shrugged. "It ain't MY fault if those losers can't tell the difference between a paintin' and us hard-working folks that just wanna entertain!!" They did a midair cartwheel closer to you. “I think it’s your turn to entertain us!! You lot make for some great target practice!!” An unnaturally wide smirk stretched across their face and a cherry bomb popped out of their puffed-up sleeve, ready to toss at you.

       "AAAND TIME TO GET OUTTA HERE!!" Zeppy tugged you by the arm, then started running ahead, waving frantically for you to follow. Beebee scooped you up and held you close, starting to head after Zeppy. He could run surprisingly fast for his size. Pogo scooped up the terrified Mortimer, who covered their eyes.

       The two easily kept up their pace, Dazzle’s maniacal squeaky cackling and Charlie’s loud stomping ringing out in the sky. The only thing even remotely slowing them down were the smaller tents and boxcars, but they disregarded any of the empty concession booths, stomping them flat or confetti-bombing them. “HYEHEHEHAHAHA, Time to give ya the ol’ RAZZLE-DAZZLE!!” The blonde cackled at their own pun, their puffed-up sleeves lighting up brightly, before releasing a torrent of confetti and firework sparks in your direction.           Pogo and Zeppy expertly dodged the confetti blasts and cherry bombs, and Beebee smacked them away before they detonated. Finally, the gang had enough, and retaliated.        Zeppy growled loudly and spun around. "ARRIGHT, ya loose cannons!!" He ran forward a few steps, then bounded into the air, his boots making an audible springy sound-effect. He aimed his chest flower at Dazzle, giving it a squeeze, firing a blast of silly-string as intense as a firefighter hose. It struck Dazzle and sent them flying backwards, screeching loudly.        It was Pogo's turn next. "Hang on tight!!" She told Mortimer, directing them to climb onto her back and wrap their long arms and legs around her. She also took a flying leap, springing even higher than Zeppy, clamping onto Charlie from behind... And promptly burying her fingertips into his armpits. Mortimer followed her lead, sneaking their hands down to tickle up and down his sides.          The massive clown yowled and burst into deep rumbling laughter, shaking his head and trying to clamp his arms over himself.

       Beebee hurriedly brought you over to a nearby game booth, ushering you to hide inside. "Wait here for now, stay out of sight," he directed gently. Then turned around and let out a guttural roar, stomping over to a nearby booth that had an enormous chimera plushie the size of his body, slinging it into the air like a discus throw. It stuck to Dazzle, who was still covered in silly-string, making them shriek and frantically start trying to spin around to get it dislodged. “YIEEEE I SWEAR WHEN I GET THIS OFFA ME-!!”        The two eventually managed to fight back. Charlie was able to grab Pogo’s arms and yank her off. While she kicked and twisted in the air, he grabbed the canopy of a nearby game booth and used the fabric to wrap her and Mortimer like a burrito. He gave an evil smirk down at the two, who looked nervously back at him. “H-Heyy now, can’t we talk about thiiIIIHIHIS!!” Pogo squealed and started frantically wiggling as Charlie tickled up and down her legs.        After Dazzle flailed around a little longer, they managed to grab the huge plushie; their sleeve lit up like a bomb about to detonate and they blasted the plush away with a firework burst. Then, they hastily threw a cherry-bomb near Beebee, and propelled themself forward like they were using a jetpack, headbutting Zeppy into the ground.

         Finally, it was Mortimer's turn. Letting go of Pogo and snaking their way out of the canopy trap, they shuffled closer toward the two opponents, took a HUGE deep breath that puffed out their chest... And released a deafening, percussive wail that sent Dazzle flying and spinning back and forced Charlie and the others - including you - to cover their ears.          Using the chance to take you away from the commotion, Pogo freed herself and hopped over to you, helping you out of the game booth to carry you. Beebee picked up Mortimer, and Zeppy shot at the ground with his flower, releasing a huge blast of water that propelled himself to catch up to the rest of you.

         You heard Roscoe’s signature guffaw rise up over the commotion. “Heavens, you lot are quite the force to be reckoned with~! How about we take this performance to the Big Top where we can really make them laugh?” He flew up closer to Dazzle, letting his hands glide out closer toward them. His claws lit up with a bright red glow, crackling with the same tickly magic as Rags, launching forward to firmly grasp onto one of the blonde’s feet and onto Charlie's stomach, promptly giving off intense ticklish bursts, emanating with Laughing Hand runes.          “YYyyEEEEAAHHAHAHA!!” Dazzle flailed and sun in the air trying to free themselves from the tickly magic, their face flushing as brightly as a stoplight.        “Heheh, sounds like a good plan to me~!” Zeppy smiled wide at the sight of the blonde getting their comeuppance.

         On the way to the big top, another Carnie stepped out of the shadows of the tent to join the fray. He was black-and-white monochrome, with striped stockings and sleeves, tattered grey pants, piercing ice-blue eyes, large feather protrusions on his shoulders, and a cone-shaped striped nose. Nonstop, off-kilter, stereotypical-creepy-clown chuckling bubbled up from his chest as he waved slowly in your direction. Something about his laughter was almost as contagious as Ragdoll’s, making giggles bubble up in your chest in spite of your predicament.          "DON'T listen to him!!" Pogo covered your ears. “GET BACK IN YOUR BOX, JACK!” she yelled at the monochrome clown, flipping him off.

         Once you were all close to the tent entrance, Roscoe hurriedly ushered everyone inside. He gave you a wink… And then vanished right before your pursuers ran in after you.

        The tent was half the size of a football stadium, with a thirty-foot arched ceiling. It was very dark, with little more than strings of lights illuminating the inner framing - a bit like the supermassive tent enclosing the amusement park. Pogo put you down to allow you to duck and weave your way through the bleachers in an attempt to throw off your pursuers. "To the stage!!" Pogo called out to the others. "We'll have some room to stretch our legs and show 'em who's boss!!"          But, when you all started getting closer to the stage, the lights all powered on, and “Entry of the Gladiators” started blasting at full volume, making all of you jump and exclaim.

         Standing center stage, illuminated by spotlights, was Ragaeli. He'd traded out his half-jester garb for a flashy Ringleader suit, holding a striped scepter tipped with a glowing red orb. He struck a dramatic pose, top hat tilted forward to hide all but his wide smile.          Even your hostile pursuers stopped in place and blinked in confusion. "Who the hell–"

          Rags enthusiastically tossed his top hat into the air, pointing his scepter at it and sending forth a bolt of magic to make it explode into red confetti. He then banged the scepter on the stage floor; more lightning-bursts of magic leapt outward, targeting the three clowns attacking you. One bolt snuck inside the air-tight rims of Dazzle's inflated jumpsuit, lighting it up like a plasma ball and making them scream and burst into frantic cackling, collapsing onto a nearby bleacher. Another bolt split off and slipped into Charlie's gigantic shoes, making them let loose a surprised bellow, staggering and sitting down before they collapsed, kicking their legs and letting out loud guffaws. The last bolt struck the black-and-white clown square in the belly, slithering up to his armpits, making his already contagious laughter even louder and more hysterical, doubling over and rolling on the floor.

        "Holy..." Zeppy muttered, all of them watching dumbfounded.          “PFfff–!!” Pogo snorted and covered her mouth, smiling wide at the sight of the other three being reduced to laughing disasters.

        Rags' attention soon turned toward the rest of the group. "Weeeell now, I'd say that's a fine way to kick off our spec-tickle of the evening~!" His voice boomed out, as if amplified by a mic. "Looks like we got quite the assortment of silly lil' guys tonight! Let's have a little fun clowning around~! Making our lovely audience laugh is all well and good, but how ‘bout we get all of you laughing~?" He grinned evilly as he eyed everyone over, pointing his scepter into the air, creating huge projections of the Laughing Hand.        Mortimer came up to hide behind you. “Is he with you…?” They whispered.        “He uh... H-He means the other guys, right?” Beebee laughed nervously.        “Yes, he is with me, and… No, he doesn’t.” You felt an impish grin cross your face. “You guys should definitely make a run for it, he’s all talk and will never catch you.”        Beebee and Zeppy immediately bought into your blatant lie. Beebee turned heel and tried to football-charge towards the tent entrance again, and Zeppy bounced in the opposite direction.        A wide-eyed, gleeful smile crossed the Nightmare’s face; his chase instincts kicked in the moment the other clowns started making a run for it. With a maniacal cackle, he leapt into the air and started teleporting around to his various targets.          First, he poofed over to tackle Beebee to the ground, his large hands squishing the clown’s huge stomach and skittering his claws up under his shirt. The clown squawked and burst into belly-laughter and whines. He didn’t even try to push the Nightmare’s arms away, instead just covering his face. “GAHH-HHAHAHAHA P-PLEHEHEHEASE N-NUUUHAHAHA!”          The stage spotlights shone over the two of them, and Rags’ voice boomed out again. “Lookit this big ol’ lug!! The body of a pro wrestler, the laugh of a teddy bear! He’s a real keeper~!!” The comments just made the ‘poor’ clown blush brighter.          Zeppy and Pogo couldn’t help but spin around to watch, and Charlie took a seat on one of the barrels on stage, legs jutting out. Before they could get too comfortable though, Rags’ head spun around 180 degrees, locking on Pogo. “AW CRAP-!” She gasped and bounded into the air, scrambling across stage - tripping over one of her own feet. “YEEK-!!”          He swiftly teleported over to her, the spotlight following again, snapping his fingers and hoisting her into the air with his magic, her shoes popping off to show off her huge feet. He whistled. “WHOO, these dogs are barking!! They’re almost as hefty as my big ol’ stompers~! And talk about good nail polish game~!”           The tall clown blushed from the callout, wild giggles bubbling up uncontrollably. “Nyeehehehee ohh s-stop, you charmer you~!” She instantly squealed and started kicking in delight when the “ringmaster”’s nails went to work scritching and raking up and down her soles and under her toes. “GYEEE-HEEHEEHEEE!! AAH-HAHAHAHA!!”

         He continued this ‘performance’, zipping around to Charlie next, immobilizing them, targeting the weak spots that he… no, that Roscoe, had seen get exploited by Pogo, rendering the house-sized clown a bellowing mess, crumpled on the stage. His own shoes were also gone soon, and Rags placed himself next to one, gawking upwards. “Daaaamn, now THAT’S a pair of shit-kickers!!” He sent tickly zaps all through the giant clown’s soles; most everyone had to cover their ears from the force of his guffaws. Even Zeppy had joined in the fun by now, running over and shouting encouragement and playful taunts. “YEA, YOU SHOW ‘EM!! You really oughta laugh more, ya oversized asparagus!!”          You glanced over at Mortimer, who was watching the commotion with a small amused grin; and a noticeable blush across their cheeks. “Heh… This friend of yours is pretty fun… What is he…? Some kind of real-life tickle monster?”          “Exactly,” you smiled a little mischievously, sneaking your hands down to squeeze the melancholy clown’s hips and belly. They gasped and clamped their arms around their midsection, instantly trying to choke back deep chuckling. “M-MMfff-hmhmh heheheyyy!!” They laid their head down against your shoulder to hide their face, squirming back and forth.          You didn’t see Dazzle, who up until now had kept themselves hidden from the tickle-fest, floating up behind you. You just noticed the sound of a fizzling bomb fuse… before Rags re-appeared above you and tackled the blonde out of the air. “YEEEE-!!”         “Maaan, this one just can’t let grudges GO, can they??” Rags shouted out to his ‘audience’. “Guess I gotta show ‘em the fun way that we’re only here for some laughs~” His cracked his knuckles.          Dazzle’s eyes went wide as saucers, and for once, the cocky little gremlin’s expression shifted to nervousness. “H-Heheheh hey now!! I-I was just kiddin’ around! I won’t mess with ‘em anymore, promise!!”          Rags just smirked smugly. His hair tendrils leapt out and grabbed the elastic rims of the blonde’s sleeves, pant legs, and jumpsuit underneath their neck ruffles. “WhoawhOAWHOA DON’T DO THAT–” All of the air rushed out, leaving the clown in a deflated silk bag, showing their pear-shaped body underneath. The Nightmare instantly went in for the kill, tickling in rapid-fire pokes and fluttering his fingers into their hips and knees. “YIIEEEAAHAHAHAHA NONONONOOOAA-HAHAHAHA!!” They flailed, shoved at Rags’ arms, and tried in vain to shuffle into their baggy sleeve for one of their bombs.          Mortimer clambered up onto the stage, scooting closer. “Heh, wow…you’re actually pretty cute when you’re not acting like a rabid squirrel~” They poked and squeezed experimentally against Dazzle’s hip and sides, causing the flustered, pissy blonde to shriek more and whine. All the while, the other clowns cheered and threw out playful taunts. Jack’s consistent unending giggles just added to the unbridled silliness of the situation, making everyone, even Charlie, laugh right along with each other.            “And YOU...!” Rags snapped his attention over to the monochrome clown, gliding over to him. “You remind me of someone I don’t like,” he seethed, lips upturning into a sneer. “Let’s hope it’s a coincidence, yeah?” He cracked the knuckles on his hair-hands, rolling up his sleeves.           Jack gulped back a lump in his throat, his unhinged giggles turning nervous. “Nnhhehehehe...” He put up his hands defensively and tried to hastily step back... but he was hoisted into the air, the Nightmare blowing a huge loud raspberry on his belly. “GYYEEEAAHAHAHAHAHA!!” He thrashed about, smacking and shoving at Rags with his large clawed hands, a faint blush appearing in his ghost-white cheeks.          After his first round of tickle-attacks, Ragaeli backflipped onto the stage. “And now, ladies and blokes and nonbinary folks!! With our warm-up round out of the way, let’s really bring the house down!! Let’s give a performance that the Court Jester himself won’t be able to ignore~!!” He smirked, outstretching his arms and growing to his full height. Everyone exclaimed and gawked up at him; even Charlie seemed nervous that there was someone actually taller than him. He gave a wave of his hands, and more corny carnival music started to kick in, the spotlights going wild as he let his magic loose on everyone. Including you. You and all seven clowns were soon suspended in the air, shrieking with excited laughter and guffaws and cusses.          The Nightmare visibly shuddered at the bombardment of laughter, licking his lips, his aura glowing bright and crackling. His own laughter became more unhinged. “C’MONNNN OL’ JINGLE BELLS!! YOU TOO NERVOUS TO FACE ME YOURSELF?!” he bellowed, cackling. With another snap of his fingers, three more figures joined the fray: Roscoe re-emerged in the air, giving a villainous guffaw before gunning it over to Jack and Beebee, attacking with shapeshifted hands… And this time, two other clowns phased into view.          In a flurry of colorful lights, a bottom-heavy clown clad in a purple jumpsuit with a curly sunset-tinted afro and opalescent rainbow eyes glided around to Zeppy and Mortimer, setting off colorful bursts targeting their most ticklish spots. “Lovely to meet ya, darlin~!” They greeted in a heavy Jersey accent.          The other clown spun into the tent like a tornado. This redheaded, ghost-white clown was top-heavy, wearing a jumpsuit with clashing colors and arcade-floor patterns…And roller skates? They gave goofy cackling and skated in circles around Dazzle, Pogo and Charlie, disorienting them and tickling them unpredictably.          “Introduciiiiing Roscoe the Rabblerouser, and our two rambunctious buddies; Willie, Nillie, Topsy-Turvy, the legendary lads straight from the Surreal Realm!!”          Fanfare played and confetti rained down as the three took a playful bow. You took notice that these two others had the same red glow as Roscoe… the same glow as Rags.          These added allies made swift work of drawing out more laughter, making the Nightmare more charged up, an expression similar to his sadistic mania back in the laboratory starting to creep onto his face.          Raaaags, don’t you get carried away again!! You tried shouting to him in your mind. We need to make sure the Jester-          “ –Doesn’t see us as a threat?” He finished your thought out loud before bursting into mad laughter. “I AM A THREAT!! And if he wants to STOP me, he’d better make it snappy!! You’d better believe I’m giving him my all, baby!!”          But he didn’t keep up the onslaught for too long. He brought everyone together in the center of the stage, plopping you all down in a circle. Willie, Nillie and Roscoe all took one last bow before vanishing. Rags took a deep breath, putting his palm to his face, still giggling wildly. “Hehhheheh, sorry, sorry, gettin’ a little carried away~! You’re the performers here, so how ‘bout you entertain each other~?”          After everyone had caught their breath, they all exchanged glances and playful smiles. It seemed they had all but forgotten their original quarrel. They leapt at each other, fingers flying, honks and cartoony sound-effects occasionally interrupting their goofy laughter and squeals. Not a single torso or oversized foot was spared.          At one point, you found yourself pinned by Dazzle, the one who had disliked you the most. And then, Charlie loomed over both of you, planting his arms and legs on all sides of you. You swallowed hard and shrunk down at the sight. “H-Heyyy, guys…” You smiled nervously.          The blonde’s big playful buck-toothed smile was a far cry different than the malicious sneer that had stayed plastered on their face the whole time they’d chased you. “Okaaay, maybe I don’t wanna see ya blasted to smithereens anymore… But you’d better explode with laughter for me!!” They cracked their knuckles and plunged their hands into your armpits, tickling expertly with their small hands, responding to your laughter with gremlin snickering. “Coochiecoochiecoochieee-heehee~!!” They got a playful twinkle in their eye. “How ‘bout I give ya the ol’ razzle-Dazzle~” They took a comically huge breath, quickly lifted your shirt, and blew a raspberry into your navel.              “A-AAHHH-Hahahaha!!” You exclaimed in delight, pushing at their soft hair and shoulders, blushing and giggling and wriggling back and forth.          Finally, once everyone had exhausted themselves, Rags gave a wave of his hand, playing finale fanfare, confetti and glitter showering down from the ‘ceiling’. “Aaaand that’s a wrap, folks!! Thank you all for being an amazing part of this laugh-tacular performance~!!” He took a bow above all of you, laughing and shrinking down. He, much like Jack, could not stop giggling. He looked… a little cracked-out, frankly; lips twitching, foot tapping in place, and hair tendrils clawing impatiently at the air, his body glowing and sparking, over-charged with magic again.

         "Yaknow..." Zeppy glanced over to Dazzle. "Once upon a time, we were all thick as thieves. Do we really gotta keep dukin' it out?"          "It felt pretty nice, laughing together again," Beebee flashed them a warm smile.          “They’re right, you know…” Charlie petted the blonde with a finger. Jack nodded his head energetically, clapping his hands together, still communicating purely in giggles.          Dazzle huffed and looked away. "Yeah yeahh… This damn nutcase,” they gestured to Rags, “reminded me how much I missed that lettin’ loose and laughing with you guys.” Their expression softened, and they glanced over to you. “You’re pretty harmless, so I’ll let you off easy,” they stuck out their tongue.         “You’d make a pretty good Carnie~!” Pogo reached over to ruffle your hair. “You’re just as mischievous and fun-loving as the rest of us~”          “You’re uhh… p-pretty scary,” Mortimer smiled feebly up at Rags. “But… You’re still a good guy… I can tell.”

         As everyone wound down from the fun, a faint sound could be heard outside in the distance: A beautiful melody, played on what sounded like a lyre. It instantly caught your attention, making you sit up.

         The others noticed too. Beebee slowly looked over to the tent entrance. "That sounds like…"          "The Court Jester!!" Dazzle's eyes went wide. "You were trynna lead him here!" They glared up at Rags.          "If he's playing out there, then it means he wants to meet you out in the open…" Zeppy scratched his head. "For what reason though, I couldn't say."

          Looking over to Ragamuffin, you saw that he was gripping his head. “N-Nnghhh…!!” His hair calmed down, his aura stopped crackling. “Hghhh… Something about that music is… suppressing me…” He grumbled. “All this energy ‘bout to boil over like a soda-Mento explosion is… settling back down like the foam going flat…” He sulked. “Don’t tell me we got another killjoy… I WANNA go all-out with him, dammit!!” He stomped.          “You…miiight have pissed him off with that power display,” Pogo looked over to him cautiously. “I think he wants to meet you mano-a-mano.” She stood up and leaned down to help you to your feet. “You two had better stay close together.”          “You sure you still want to meet him?” Charlie spoke up, leaning down over you and Rags. “He might go easy on you, but the Order doesn’t take kindly to other powerful forces they don’t recognize…”          You sighed, nodding. “Yes. I feel like we don’t have a choice at this point. If anyone can convince him to give him answers, it’s this lunatic,” you nudged Rags.          “Heh, very well then,” Zeppy patted you on the back. “Good luck then, bucko!” He glanced over at the others. "C'mon, guys, whaddya say we go for some rounds of almond whiskey? On the house!"

         The Carnies all said their goodbyes to you, interlocking arms and holding hands and strolling out of the tent, all laughing it up together like buddies reconnecting at a school reunion.

         You followed them out of the tent, watching them go their separate ways. The music soon stopped, but Rags still looked very pent-up, fists clenching and unclenching, annoyed sneer on his face, chomping at the bit.

         “Hey, don’t worry, I bet we’ll meet him soon,” you tried to offer a smile. You decided to diffuse the tension with a question you kind of already knew the answer to. "That... Wasn't really Roscoe, was it? Or your other clown friends?”

         He shook his head, sighing and calming down. "Just a projection. I figured it'd make it more fun to see another familiar face. Plus they’d all fit right in here~ But… nah, it's pretty damn hard for other Nightmares or Surrealists to contact each other across other dimensions. Not unless they know exactly how to get there. And frankly, I don't want them comin' here. they’d be trapped, just like us."

         "Yeah, makes sense.."

         "I can feel metal-head tryin' to contact me, though. It pops up in my mind every now and then, like a bad TV signal. But… I can't signal him back." He held up a hand to show what he meant: A very hazy, staticky image of Roscoe seemingly tapping at an invisible window, looking around. One pair of his eye rings was white; an indication of his growing worry.          "Kendoll is...doing the same thing." he sighed, and the image changed to a very worried-looking Kenni, calling out into the Astral plane before the image faded in a haze. Rags frowned. He looked very pained, seeing Kenni worrying like that. "We've got to get back."

         You nodded firmly.

         "There's something powerful lingerin' around here. First time I've been able to sense something this strong since getting here. Our man of the hour must be just around the corner. I'm gonna get a better look from the top of the coaster!"

         Not even a minute after Rags blipped out of sight again, you spotted a man looking in your direction, with sharp facial features, glowing teal eyes, a high-collared leather trenchcoat, light tan pants tucked into knee-high leather boots, and a large key ring at his waist.          The same man from the TV in the research lab.

         But, as soon as you made eye contact with him, he turned away, heading behind the nearest booth.          "Hey, wait-!!" You started speedwalking in his direction, but he totally vanished in a golden flash.

         It was much quieter without all your new clown buddies around. The fun dissipated, and the eeriness of the environment started creeping back in; you felt more strongly than ever now that you were being watched, thanks to that mystery man and the ominous warning that the Carnies gave you. Soon, though, that hauntingly beautiful, upbeat melody started to permeate the silence. You started following it for a couple minutes, dancing along to the tune. You couldn't tell if it was due to curiosity or hypnotic inclination again. Maybe both.

         The music grew louder and louder, seeming to come from an invisible source out in the open, nearby a spinning teacup ride.          It suddenly stopped.

         A burst of sparkling silver light flashed in the air just ahead of you, giving off shimmering symbols of spades, diamonds, hearts and clubs. A jester-like figure lunged forth from the light, charging right toward you with his arm thrusting outward. You only had a moment to glimpse at the figure's elaborate red-and-gold outfit and silver smiling mask before you realized what he had in his hand: A dagger.

         "WHOA–!" You leapt out of the way just in time. "HEY!!" Your talisman lit up and gave off warning sparks.          He quickly spun around and tried to take another stab at you, aiming at your ribcage.          "AGH-!!" You dodged again and instinctively punched his arm away. "Oh COME ON I thought we were done with the whole 'everything trying to kill me'?!"          The jester responded to your exasperation with a wild, amused laugh, not unlike Ragdoll's laugh. He held out his arm to the side, and in a red flash, the dagger transformed into a scythe.          Your eyes went wide. "H-heyy, buddy, let's just talk things out," you held your hands up.          But clearly, he wasn't interested in talking. With another unhinged little giggle, he raised his scythe to take a swing at you.

         Ragaeli appeared, catching the blade of the scythe with his bare hands. "HEY, watch where you're swingin' that thing!!" He snarled.

         The jester gave out a single barking laugh. "HA!! Like a moth to a flame~" He backflipped gracefully, hovering in the air.          "Finally decided to show yourself, did ya??" Rags smirked. "About time, I was about to start lighting fireworks inside all the tents if I couldn't track you down~"

         The jester just chuckled, putting his hand on his hip. "Look at you," he gestured up and down Rags' body with his scythe, "You fancy yourself a Ringleader, do you? Taking command of my circus??" He bubbled with giddy laughter. "What a card! A rebel! A mischief-monger! A threat to the Grand Order," His voice deepened in a double-layered snarl, and two bright red orbs lit up from under the eyeholes of his mask. "Not that I care about those stuffy gods or those silly rules! But if I don't subdue you, then he certainly will~! Now, STAND DOWN!" he snarled again, brandishing his scythe in Rags' direction.

         Ragdoll snorted. "Pff- Well someone's a little bipolar," He folded his arms. "Look, it's your problem if you really think me havin' a little fun while trying to figure out all those shitty puzzles is a threat to any– OOF–!" he was suddenly jabbed in the sternum by the hilt of the jester's scythe, then swiftly knocked back by the blade, sent crashing into one of the empty prize booths, his legs flopped over the edge of the counter.

         "Rags!!" You started to run over to him.          But he burst into laughter, rolling out from behind the booth. "Hehehe!! Damn, not bad~! Pretty violent for someone who wanted to throw us a party in Wacky Wonderland, don’tcha think?”

         The jester snickered impishly. “Oh please, that wasn’t for your sake! Mr. Shiro simply needed company~" He gripped both ends of his scythe handle; it lit up with silver light and split into two, transforming into smaller sickles, which he casually started to juggle. "And I decided to confine you, keep you miscreants in your little playpen, happy and stupid and blissfully unaware! Time-out until the grown-ups come by to deal the proper punishment,” his eyes flashed red and he caught the sickles, resting them on his shoulders. “And yet you still continue to defy even the most carefully-crafted of mental traps … How fascinating! How irritating!”          “Punish him for what!?” You decided to speak up, throwing your arms up. “He might be a pranking lunatic, but he’s just trying to get us both home!! He’s not going to be a threat unless you treat him like one!!”

         The jester giggled again. "Such a simpleton! Not a threat, you say? HA!! I can taste his greed from here; his power-lust, his egoism, the laughter-hunger that gnaws at him moment after moment and can only be satiated by driving weaker beings into hysteria!" He projected images of your past experiences into the air: Rags darting around the warehouse Level to tickle-attack and mind-zap the entities, sending his immense burst of red lightning through the poolrooms’ ocean, his announcement on the megaphone, the feral madness he devolved into upon getting fueled by the gauntlet of enemies that went after you in the Lab… and almost gave into just a little while ago in the Big Top.          The Nightmare didn't even try to deny the accusations, folding his arms with a smug smirk. "Yeahhh? And what of it? What's wrong with a little laughter~? This world could do with a little makeover from yours truly~ I could make every Level a total riot for everyone!! With juuust the right touch of fear to keep 'em on their toes." He narrowed his gaze, holding out his hands to the side, his aura becoming brighter. "Are you gonna be afraid? Or are you gonna laugh for me like the giggly little bitch you are? I guess we'll find out!!" He shot off a lightning-crack of magic, filling the air with a cacophony of laughter and runic hand symbols.         The jester barely flinched, instead letting out a giddy laugh. "Such confidence!! This is going to be fun~!" He brandished his sickles, which emanated a bright silver glow. And then held out a hand towards you, snapping his fingers.

         You were instantly warped into one of the nearby teacups. "AH–!"

         "You enjoy being entertained, don't you? Then sit back, enjoy the show! You'd be wise to stay out of my way~!" He gave a flick of his finger, and the teacups detached themselves from the ride to start floating in the air, a few yards away from the ‘arena’, just in time for the battle to begin.          The Jester started by hurling one of his sickles towards Rags in an attempt to distract him and re-appear behind him, swinging the other sickle at his throat. But the Nightmare swiftly dodged both attacks. The Jester caught his weapons and in a flash of light, they turned into a scepter tipped with magically-charged silver spheres at both ends. Twirling it like a baton, he made attempts to land a strike on Rags’ legs, arms and neck, which he avoided with high jumps and backflips.          You’d never actually seen Ragaeli fight before. It was impressive. He lived up to his nickname Ragdoll, effortlessly ducking and swaying his long gangly limbs and lumbering form in a Drunken-Fist series of movements, deflecting the Jester’s arms or outright blocking the blades with his forearms and trying to land his own magically-charged palm-strikes. He countered the Jester's superb agility with his own kung-fu jumps and duck-and-roll dodges. He deflected weapon strikes by lunging his hair tendrils out, shapeshifting into sickles and scimitars. All the while, his smug smile never left his face.          Of course, the Jester was equally as skilled. His ‘attacks’ appeared more as a choreographed dance, his lithe, well-practiced acrobatics a stark contrast from Rags’ shambling movements.          After a few more moments, the Jester jumped back to survey Rags up and down. “So it’s true, you can’t be injured! Not by blade nor gun, nor flesh-rending Hound; yet a single ray of sunshine can sear your skin right off, isn’t that so? Fortunately for you I've no bottled sunlight; I'll just have to make do~!" He clapped his hands together, letting off a dazzling flash of crystalline light.          “AGH-!” Rags hissed and shielded his eyes; it was the opportunity the Jester needed to swoop in and knock him clean up into the air with the hilt of his scythe. “WHOOF- Aw come on, that was cheap!!” He stayed floating in the air, flipping off his adversary and starting to go a bit more on the offensive now, attempting to snatch the Jester up in his tendrils or tail-hand. His red sparks kept getting very close to zapping their target, but every time, they were deflected by bursts of silver card-suit symbols.          “OH, shit–!” Rags suddenly stopped in place. “TIME OUT!! I can’t forget the deal I made~!” He snapped his fingers. “Let’s show Mr. Shiro a battle he’ll never forget!” he shouted. In the near distance, a portal window appeared, looking in on the silhouetted rubberhose man. You faintly saw the man perk up in interest, not phasing through but pressing himself flat against it as if spectating through the window, wide sharp smile lighting up under his hat.          “Ohhh?” The Jester’s head slowly turned to the window. “Someone wanted to watch me quarrel? Someone betted against me? After all the effort I made to give him his own plaything?” He tsk’ed and shook his head. “How sneaky~ Very well, then, you can watch me tame this feral beast… But don’t expect to get out of it without punishment~”         Shiro shrunk back. “Eeheehhehe, y-yes sir~” he scratched behind his head. The battle soon continued.

         In the meantime, it seemed the Jester’s control over your teacups was still in effect; When he pirouetted, the cup spun faster. When he was deflected, it jolted slightly. At one point it even tilted over to ‘pour’ you into another cup. “WhooaAAA-!” You gripped the edge tightly, trying to keep a firm footing while also keeping your eye on the battle.          Their conflict started to take them around other areas of the circus, ducking and weaving above and around game booths and thrill rides. You spotted your Carnie buddies who narrowly avoided being in the path of the Jester’s dazzling magic blasts, exclaiming and dropping down to the ground.          With a flick of his wrist, the deity flung Rags into the tower of a nearby High-striker game, picking up the mallet with one hand and swinging it down onto the target with enough force to cause the ground to shake below him. The weight caught under Rags’ huge feet and sent him shooting off like a rocket into the sky, letting out a comical howling cry. The sight sent you and the Jester into a laughing fit.          But, the Nightmare swiftly teleported back down, using his huge hands to shove against his opponent’s shoulders and beeline into another nearby game: Basketball hoops. He started trying to chuck the basketballs at the Jester in rapid succession; to which he speedily dodged, or knocked away.

         It wasn't long before they both took their fight up into the skies, your teacup following them upward. Soaring far above the circus tents and rides, they allowed themselves more leg room to teleport around. Ragaeli re-summoned his scepter, sending off blast after blast of his magic, using it to block every blow of his opponent’s scythe. The Jester laughed. “Not bad! Not bad at all~! I do wish you would stop holding back, I want to see the strength you’re so proud of!! Show me the power, the mania, the hysteria that has the very fabric of our world all in a tizzy!!”          Ragaei laughed right back. “Well someone’s eager to get their ass kicked~! Or rather, laugh their ass right off~” He snapped his fingers. A bright red Laughing hand rune manifested right on top of the Jester, giving off a ticklish burst before disappearing into a chorus of incorporeal laughter.          “YYIEEEEHAHAHAHA!!” The Jester screeched and flew backwards, clamping his hands over his midsection and kicking his legs in the air. Forced to let go of his scythe, it fell and disappeared in a flash.          A wicked grin lit up Rags’ face. “Ooohohoho, you are ticklish!! That’s bad news for you~” He hastily glided closer, holding out his palms on either side of the Jester, letting off more arcs of magic that jumped right into his armpits, flurrying down his sides and even trying to sneak into his neck frills.          His hysterical shrieks just spiked louder and higher in octave and he flailed back and forth, trying to smack the large red Nightmare’s hands away. “NNNYEE-HEEE-HEHEHEHEHE!!”          Before Rags could continue, a blast of silver light forced him to exclaim and recoil, shielding his eyes again. “Would you QUIT DOING that?!” he seethed, flicking his wrist to summon and don a pair of extravagant sunglasses that matched his flashy outfit, his glowing jack-o-lantern eyes visible from behind the tinted glass. “Try me now, bitch!!”          The jester sputtered back laughter. “Cheeky bastard~!” Holding up his hand, he summoned his double-tipped staff again. He twirled it like a baton, shooting off ray-beams of magic that Rags narrowly dodged or deflected with his trident-like tail.          Though your orbit around the two deities stayed fairly steady, you discovered that you could, to some extent, control the direction of your teacup by pushing forward on the edges. You used this to your advantage in order to duck flying sparks and shimmering card symbols. Not that you’d mind getting hit by Rags’ magic. But you didn’t know what the other one’s magic was capable of.

         “Are you the one keeping us here??” Rags eventually shouted over to his opponent. “Are YOU the one blocking everything from my senses?!”          Another giddy laugh. “Tis not I obstructing your path! I’m infinitely entertained by your shambling about!!” He did a few graceful loop-de-loops and aerial cartwheels to continue avoiding Rags’ grabby hands and stretchy hair. "Our world - the 'Backrooms,' ” he air-quoted, “as you plebeians call it - collectively felt your presence, and acted upon it! You're already intruding upon a universe that you don't belong to; Why would they show a gluttonous maniac the paths that could lead to unlocking the very fabric of our dimension??”          Rags snorted. “We told ya, that’s NOT what I’m here for!! Keep talkin’ like that, though, and you might just tempt me~!”

         “Ah, yes, you’re attached at the hip to THIS one,” the Jester scoffed and gestured over to you. “A fruitless quest to return the lost little lamb back to the pasture!!” he cackled. “What a waste of time!” He thrusted his hand out towards you; you were thrown from the teacup right towards a nearby carousel, and had to reach out to grab the pole of a seahorse, crash-landing into the saddle. It made a couple rotations before the animals totally detached from the base, soaring into the air, bouncing up and down as if still attached to the ride. “If one of us were to give answers freely,” the Jester continued, “Then there is no reason to guide them along!! Our dimension may be acting against you, but they’ve still made it this far! The Powers that Be have deemed them a worthy competitor!”          Ragman’s eyes seemed to light up at this tidbit, taking pause for a moment. “Wait– So if one of you tells someone where to go, they aren't gonna get targeted or erased??”          The Jester gave a nod. “Not by us, at least! What need is there for us to quell some rowdy little invasive species when Natural Selection will do the job for us~?”          Rags just seemed to light up all the more; a giddy expression on his face as if he’d been given the answer to a prize-winning trivia question. “Heheheh, thanks, I’ll keep that in mind~!”

         “Howeeverrr, this cheap little trick of yours might make them angry!” The Jester summoned his scepter again, jolting it upwards horizontally to reveal the red tether connecting you to him. His scepter then promptly changed into a scythe… And he effortlessly cut the tether in half, making it fade.          Rags gasped and snarled. “HEY!! Don’t be messing with that!!” He teleported to you and remade his tether to connect to your waist, before spinning around and sneering at the jester, gaze narrowed.          The deity just laughed in amusement. “I won’t, I won’t!! I’m merely saying to exercise caution~ A Wanderer connected to a wanted criminal is just as guilty in the eyes of the Order!”          The two of them continued trying to pull out new tricks to catch each other off-guard. Rags’ stretchy hair tendrils soon started lashing about like whips, shooting off lightning-bursts with every whip-crack. “Hehehe, it’s the Ringmaster’s job to tame the feral beasts, isn’t it~?”          The Jester laughed and summoned up a multitude of juggling balls, nonchalantly juggling them about while dodging the Nightmare’s hair-whips, starting to chuck them in Rags’ direction. “A Ringmaster and his clown lackeys entertain a tent full of commoners~! A Jester’s reach extends to the Royal Court and beyond!! Shaping the very ideals of society!!” With that, the balls started to explode in a flurry of silver fireworks, launching projectile card symbols right at the Nightmare. He tried to deflect them, but they phased through his arms and burst against his body. He yelped loudly; but clearly, they didn’t injure him, as he burst into giggles and recoiled from the feeling. “NNGHH-HEEHEE!!”          The confrontation began to shift more and more into an aerial performance. The Jester and the Nightmare soared around, letting off intense bursts of red and silver magic, like the burst of a sonic-boom created by fighter jets. They both showed off their flexibility and acrobatics, practically dancing with each other and complimenting each other’s movements. The less restraint they started to have with their magic, the more difficult it became for you to keep dodging the projectiles and shockwaves; at the very least, your seahorse was easier to steer than the teacup. You duck-and-weaved, trying to stay away from the ‘battlefield’ but still trying to get close enough to take in the spectacle. Until, finally, your seahorse was zapped from below, catching you off-guard and making you shriek with laughter, the ticklish zap coursing through you and making you shudder. “NAAAHAHAHA SHIIIHIHIITT!!” You clung onto the pole for dear life, the seahorse nearly turning upside-down.          The Jester stopped momentarily to literally point and laugh, before brushing you off with a wave of his hand and turning his attention back to his target.          You narrowed your gaze. “Alright, asshole…” As cool as it was to witness two gods duking it out, you didn't want to just sit by and watch… especially not with a deity that seemed to view you as little more than a pest. You wanted to keep helping Ragman however you could; the least you could do was create a diversion. More than that, though... You wanted to be a bit of a brat.

       You flew your way toward the booth with the crossbow game, snatching up one of the crossbows loaded with large plunger darts. Was firing a projectile at an unhinged, insanely-strong god a terrible idea? Yes. Were you going to do it anyways? Absolutely.        Rags seemed to pick up on your scheming, flashing a smirk in your direction and doing his best to keep the Jester distracted. You waited for the right moment for the Jester to have his back turned to you before taking aim…          FOOMP. The plunger dart stuck to the back of his hat. Rags snorted and instantly doubled over cackling. The Jester slowly turned his head toward you…        Then beelined right up to you, stopping on a dime inches from your face, letting off a shockwave and a loud droning like a Sci-Fi ship leaving hyperspace.

         You shrieked and nearly fell backwards off of your seahorse, managing to grab the pole at the last moment.          The Jester slowly tilted his head to the side. "Gutsy one, aren't you~?"  He reached down to one of his pockets, presumably to pull out a weapon.          You swallowed hard. “C-C’mon, I’m just playing around, like you said I’m barely a threat to you…”          Rags hunched forward, prepared to charge forward and stop him from attacking…

         But instead of a sickle or scythe, a giant peacock feather started to emerge from the silver light. It kept going, like a magician pulling out a series of scarves, circling around your body like a huge serpent. Your eyes went wide and butterflies arose in your stomach. He snapped his fingers, and the feather wrapped itself around you, starting to slither and shake and flurry. You could feel the tickly strands right through your clothes; the feeling of thousands of tiny hands prodding and tickling at your belly, each side of your ribs and sides. You squealed and thrashed and once again nearly fell off the carousel horse. “AAHH-HEEHEHEHE!!”          With a flick of his wrist, the seahorse flew away from you, leaving you suspended in the air as if gravity didn’t exist. The feather continued exploring, brushing under your jawline, swiping up against your palms, even sneaking down into the lip of your shoes. “NNnnNO-HAHAHA!! P-Pleehehehease!!” You whined and laughed and blushed brightly, not expecting this turn in the deity’s attitude. He simply stood in the air and observed you, arms folded behind his back.          And Rags, just like he’d done back in other Levels, also sat back and watched, crossing one leg over the other like he was on a sofa, seeming to appreciate the pause in their confrontation.          Finally, the Jester giggled. “I can see now why this one amuses you so~ Ticklishness isn’t usually a weakness that Wanderers embrace so readily. You’re not even trying to get away!” He added his own hands to the mix, flurrying his fingertips up and down your sides skillfully. “Tickle-tickle, giggle-giggle!! Laughter is such a lovely melody~” He cooed. You could hear the smile in his voice, matching the appearance of his mask’s permanent grin. Good to see that the egotistical bastard had a soft side. Even if it was totally flustering you.          You saw Ragman leave your field of view, soon looming over you from behind. “I knowww, riiiight~?” He giggled slyly. You felt his fingertips press against the worst spots on your torso. Before you could protest, an intense jolt of ticklishness suddenly coursed through you and you practically screamed. “Earthlings can handle more than you think~ They ain’t weak, they’re resilient. Fun-loving, thrill-seeking, risk-taking!” He narrowed his gaze. “They could prolly handle more tickle-torment than you could, in any case~”           The Jester was barely fazed by the taunt, snickering and shaking his head. "Resilient, you say? Your little pet here has fallen prey to every single lure they've come across! The Manager of the grand hotel, the Siren of the pools, the suffocating mania of the playrooms… You gave in with hardly a fight!" He laughed and gave you a flick on the nose. "You're a shameless, greedy little thing, walking into the jaws of danger with open arms if only to satiate your desire for excitement and attention! If the Order hadn’t deemed you worthy enough to progress through Levels of your own merit, then this brute’s protection would be the only reason you’ve got any wits left about you!” He laughed in snide amusement.

         You were about to smile coyly and make a playful remark…But his last comment stung a bit. You frowned and looked away.          Rags scoffed back. “What, you’re trynna kinkshame now?” He stood in the air behind you, putting his hands on his hips to loom over the Jester. “I’ve got news for you, Jingle-Bitch, I’m letting them face danger head-on! Just ‘cause they get a thrill out of it doesn’t mean they’re irresponsible or dumb!” He tried lashing out at the Jester with his grabby hair tendrils.           The deity quickly backflipped away, summoning up a golden lyre. "Well then, if you're so insistent on giving in to your base impulses, then do me the honors of letting me play for you both~ You clearly don't have the self-discipline needed to deny me~!"          “Stop looking down on me,” you growled, glowering up at him.

         The moment he began to play, the beautiful melody started to wash over you. It calmed your senses, relaxed your body. And soon, he chimed in with an astoundingly pleasant, operatic singing voice.

🎶“Awake ocean born

Behold this force Bring the outside in Explore the self to epiphany..”🎶 …Nightwish? How did he know Nightwish?? 

🎶“The very core of life Is soaring higher of truth and light!”🎶

         He pirouetted up higher into the air, giving off his dazzling bursts of spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs, silver light emanating from his lyre, forming into musical scales that snaked their way through the skies, the notes jumping right off of the lines.

🎶 “The music of this awe,

Deep silence between the notes,

Deafens me with endless love…

This vagrant island Earth,

A pilgrim shining bright,

We are shuddering

Before the beautiful

Before the plentiful

We're the voyagers!” 🎶

          The skill, the power behind the deity’s voice and stringed instrument, caused tears to well up in your eyes. Did… Did he know about Earth? Was this a proclamation of how he actually felt about you seemingly lowly Wanderers? Was he just using this song against you to try and win your favor? It was becoming more and more difficult to try and make sense of anything…          Even Ragaeli seemed affected. He’d tried covering his ears, whacking at any of the card suits or musical notes with his hair tendrils or sending sparks of magic after them, his hair visibly fluffing up. “NNNghhhh… Fuckin hell… givin’ Featherbutt a run for his money with those snake-charmer pipes…” He tried to rocket himself over to the Jester, quickly being repelled by the silver musical scales which acted as a shield. “It’s NOT gonna work!!” he shouted to the deity, who simply continued dancing about in the air as he played and sang. “They have no problem fighting it off when they actually TRY to!!”

         You almost didn’t hear the Nightmare’s encouragement. The melody filled the skies, filled your ears and your mind, swirling around in crystal spirals and fractals.

🎶 “Tales from the seas Cathedral of greed,”

The very core of life Is soaring higher of truth and light..!”🎶

          The Jester created a projection of Earth, emanating with imagery of famous artists, musicians, scientists, as well as scenes of nature, extravagant cities, your favorite fictional media. 🎶 “The music of this awe,

Deep silence between the notes,

Deafens me with endless love…

This vagrant island Earth,

A pilgrim shining bright,

We are shuddering

Before the beautiful

Before the plentiful

We're the voyagers!” 🎶

         You even found yourself humming and dancing along, in spite of the part of your mind telling you to resist. But…Maybe this wasn’t so bad. The Jester didn’t seem so bad either. Maybe he was only making playful jabs at you, and would continue duking it out with Rags afterwards… 

         …No.

         You couldn't let yourself give in again. Not this time. You couldn't just put the responsibility on your Nightmare friend to save you again.

         You fought it, with everything you had. It felt like trying to force yourself awake from a deep sleep; trying to free your body from a strong state of sleep paralysis. You thought of other music to try and drown out the heavenly melody. Favorite rock songs, rave and EDM, stupid internet songs that were made to be distracting and annoying. You recalled other memories with friends, family, loved ones, pets and animals… Anything. Ironically, the mention of Earth in the Jester's song was enough to allow you to reminisce and distract yourself mentally.          And you had to remember why you were fighting now.

         A loud, defiant scream tore from your lungs; with a few more twists of your body you were able to free your arms from the magic bonds and cover your ears. "SHUT UUUPP!!"

         The aura around the lyre suddenly crackled and burst, giving off the sound of shattering glass. The Jester recoiled and stopped playing, frozen on the spot.  All the imagery he'd conjured quickly faded away. "You… Broke free… I’ll be damned."

         Rags chuckled. "Told ya they could do it~" He sighed in relief, his own aura glowing brighter again as the enchanting song stopped suppressing him.

         You panted for breath. "Listen… Just because I gave in those other times doesn't mean I'm weak. If someone's in a shitty situation, they're still allowed to find ways to enjoy themselves. And I know Ragamuffin is here to look after me, so I'm not going to just, let myself stay afraid!" You took a deep breath to try and keep yourself calm. “...If it were any other time, any other place, I… wouldn't mind you trying to charm me or use your magic on me…" You blushed at your confession, clearing your throat. "But we NEED to get out of here!" You glared and forced yourself to glide forward with the use of his magic. "So either you help us, or both of us are going to MAKE you talk!!" Your heart hammered in your chest. It was nerve-racking, challenging another god face-to-face. Exciting, in a way, as he had a similar manner of mischief as the Nightmare. But you knew you had to stand your ground.

         The Jester remained still, tilting his head over to the side, placing a hand to his chin. "How fascinating…" He commented quietly. Then, that sly giggle bubbled up again. "Very well, very well then! IF your garish guardian here can best me, then maybe I'll humor your request. After all, my quarrel is with him, not with you! I merely wished to see for myself that adorable face of helplessness and bliss that all the others got to witness~"

         With that, he snapped his fingers. You plummeted straight down, exclaiming sharply, being plopped down into a roller-coaster cart.          Which, much to your excitement and dread, started to climb its way up a steep, long incline. The two deities soon resumed their half-battle, half-circus-performance in the sky above you. You were forced to tear your gaze away once you’d reached the top of the incline, your stomach doing somersalts at the sight of the steep drop below. The Jester appeared behind you. “Bombs away~” He gave the cart a shove with his foot, sending you plummeting downward. An involuntary scream left your lungs, feeling as if you would fly right off of the seat.

         After the initial drop, the coaster careened and weaved around, releasing more shrieks and yelps of your excitement and adrenaline. The spectacle of the two exchanging blows above you made the coaster ride all the more exhilarating. The Jester’s shimmering bursts, and the Nightmare’s red lightning-cracks, grew more and more intense, practically filling the sky. All the while, both of them just kept laughing away like lunatics, clearly having an absolute blast.           "What fun! What entertainment!!” The Jester’s voice boomed out, as if projecting through a megaphone. “What if we could keep this up forever?!"          Rags projected his voice as well. "Sounds fun! Too bad I ain't got the time for that!" he whipped out a lasso of red magic, catching and tightening around the Jester’s waist before sending a ticklish pulse through him. He shrieked and kicked his legs again, swiftly poofing himself away, higher up above the Nightmare.          "W-Wehehell what if you did?? What if I told you there is a way to keep yourself from fading away, and have the power to traverse the infinite realms without limitations??"          "I'd say that's a load of bull!” Rags barked back.

         The deity shook his head fast. "No no, it's true!! You’re already like me, after all! Traveling through realities, toying with whoever you please! You need only to break out of your prison here and resume your games! Our world may be trying to hide answers from you, but I know how to reach the Crown, the Greatest Treasure, the Hallowed Gate… ALL of it!" He conjured up imagery that filled the sky: Beautiful images of a heavenly throne room, a monumental obsidian gate, glorious shimmering treasures. "You could rule this world, and conquer your own!!"          The images soon shifted to a vision of Ragaeli. It depicted him in a disheveled, mismatched outfit of royal robes, jester motifs, and tattered, spiked Goth-Punk accessories, and a shimmering, stained-glass crown on his head. He was constantly giving off pulses and arcs of his crackling magic like a Tesla coil, combined with small runic symbols of the Laughing Hand. He was laughing uncontrollably, holding a distorted, glitching globe in one hand - the same globe he had shown you when you first arrived in the Backrooms - and a smokey, miasmic globe that represented the Nightmare Realm in his other hand.

         For a moment, you could see that the Nightmare actually considered the offer, pausing on the spot, his eyes lighting up in glee at the image of him portrayed as a Mad God. "A way to pass through both worlds, huh...?" He scratched his chin. "Heh, sounds fun... IF it's actually true," he narrowed his gaze. "What's the catch?"          "Catch? No catch!!” The Jester gave a comedic shrug. “I'll say, though, you'd make a fine catch!! The Order would LOVE to have a pawn such as you!!"         "Aaand there it is," Rags pointed. "I'm not interested in bein' anyone’s pawn! There's no such thing as controlled chaos!! And if that vision of yours comes true, you'd know damn well they wouldn't be able to have a hold on me. With that kind of power, I'll flatten every single one of them!!" he sneered wickedly.

         The Jester quickly phased over to the Nightmare's side. "That's what I'm saying,” he whispered - still projecting his voice loud enough for you to hear. "Win their favor, get close, wreak all the havoc you want," he giggled deviously. "Don't tell 'em I told you that, though~!"          "Ooooh, I like the way you think~" Rags giggled and backflipped away. " Don’t ‘spose this Ultimate Power can help me get my buddy home and back whenever we want?”          The deity shrugged. "You certainly could! Whether or not your little Wanderer would be incinerated by the Order for fraternizing with a threat to the multiverse isn't for me to say~!"

         Rags rolled his eyes to the heavens. “Well then OBVIOUSLY I’m not gonna risk it!!” He flung a beach-ball sized energy ball up at the vision in the sky, striking it and making it evaporate.          The jester laughed incredulously. "Really?? You're giving up an offer like that, all because of ONE little mortal??"

         “What did I TELL you??” Rags huffed, using his tail-hand to shove his opponent back. “This ‘little mortal’ is WORTH fighting for!! And I don’t need this Ultimate Power of yours to make you Order-of-the-Frauds KNEEL to me!!” He cackled wickedly, body crackling with arcs of magic before growing to his full height. He tossed his tacky sunglasses aside, then whipped out a thick cord of his magic, which split off at the ends to lasso itself around the Jester's waist, ankles and wrists. With a harsh tug downward, he forced the deity into a kneeling position in mid-air.

         "AGH–!" The deity exclaimed. Glowing red orbs lit up under his mask again, and he willed his arm to move and grab the magic thread around one of his wrists, sending an intense burst of shimmering light through it and causing it to disintegrate. He staggered back up to his feet. After re-orienting himself, he threw his head back and laughed. "Very well, very well~ I'll let you continue to think you have half of a chance of escaping your fate! I hope your last moments are spent lamenting in regret!!" he snarled in a demonic tone again. He summoned up a multitude of juggling balls again; this time, though, they all transformed into sickles mid-juggle. He also summoned up a very long whip, cracking it in the air as a warning.          You had made a full rotation around the roller-coaster by now. Coming in for the landing, you saw that another empty coaster cart was parked in front of yours.          “I’ll take that~!” Giant Rags suddenly landed on it from above. He ruffled your hair playfully before giving both carts a smack, sending both of you rocketing up the incline.          When you dropped down again, the huge Nightmare stayed standing on his cart, riding it down the track like a surfboard. The Jester hovered and teleported around him in unpredictable patterns, sending sickle after sickle shooting towards him, cracking his whip near Rags’ face to try and distract him. Rags’ hair went wild, snatching at the deity like snapping vipers, while he ducked and contorted his flexible body to dodge attacks and stay balanced. He would jump clean over any loop-de-loops before landing back on the cart like a pro skater.          “How unwise of you to make yourself such a huge target~!” The jester called out. “I wonder how loudly that laughter of yours can really get??” The sickles transformed again, stretching out into similar peacock feathers as the one he’d conjured before. They started to dive after the Nightmare’s striped arms, shins, belly, wrapping up the length of his torso under his armpits.          Rags exclaimed and tried to tug them off of him, but their tickly effect took hold right away. The huge deity shrieked and burst into hearty hysterics, his hair and tail thrashing about involuntarily. “YIEEEEE-HEEHEEE-HAHAHAHAH!!” He nearly lost his balance, but regained his footing each time; until, of course, the feathers targeted his colossal feet. They slithered between his toes and snuck underneath to stroke the balls of his feet. His manic laughter pierced the air even more and he promptly fell right off, plummeting to the ground far below with an earth-rumbling THUD.          The jester didn’t relent. He poofed down to his target, starting to teleport all around him to tickle at his ears, neck, sides, knees and feet, amplifying his bright aura again in an attempt to make his tickles more effective. The Nightmare was soon a crumpled, writhing heap of laughter, sending more rumbling tremors through the ground by pounding his fists, feet and tail-hand.          You eventually made another rotation and hopped off of the coaster cart - staggering on your feet a bit - before jogging over to him, smiling cheekily at the sight. And blushing a bit. You imagined this was exactly what it was like for him to be swept up in Kenni’s feathery grasp.          “YEEE-HEEHEEE-HAAHAAAHAHHAHA!!” Ragaeli howled and squirmed, face alight with giddy excitement.          “What was that about ‘not handling tickle torment??’” The Jester giggled. “You barely even tried to keep yourself composed~! It’s true, then, you enjoy this attention just as much as your shameless little pet!! How adorable!!”          The Nightmare was fully willing to take the ‘punishment’, not even protesting or denying the accusations. Up until he was called adorable. An annoyed growl interrupted his laughter and he let out an intense red shockwave, catching the Jester unawares. The magic hit you as well, instantly making you crumple from a full-body tickle-storm. “RAAAHAHAHAHGS YOU FUCKIHIHIING…!” You trailed off, catching your breath when the shockwave wore off.          The Jester, on the other hand, didn’t bounce back as quickly. The intense blast caused him to collapse right on top of Rags’ torso, going ballistic with laughter, his body practically glitching in and out of view. “GYYYEEAAAHH-HAHAHAHAHA!!” He curled up, tried to hide his face and flailed on top of the larger entity. For the first time during the entire fight, he was rendered utterly helpless.          And Ragman absolutely relished in it. He glared down at his target with a wide, evil smile. He propped himself up with one arm, using the other hand to shock the disoriented jester with another ticklish pulse.          And another. And another.          The ‘poor’ deity was beside himself with desperate, incomprehensible laughter, kicking and rolling and going back and forth between clutching his sides and tugging at the points of his hat. The feathers wrapped around the Nightmare fell limp.          Rags let out a menacing chuckle. “What was that about accepting my challenge? You sure you don’t wanna change your mind~? I dunno though, you look pretty adorable like this~”          The Jester struggled with every fiber of his being to counter the onslaught. He shakily lifted his hand up. The next time Rags prepared a ticklish burst, something happened. Instead of being deflected, the magic stopped. Hovering in the air encircling the Jester as if it had been frozen. He thrusted his hand down upon the Nightmare’s body; the energy redirected itself into his belly.          “WHAAGH-HAHAHAHA!!” Ragaeli bucked and let out startled laughter. Panting for breath, the Jester continued to attempt this method, teleporting over to his hair tendrils’ glowing red tips. He held out his shaking hands, which started to draw out Ragaeli’s stored magic. Just as the tendrils attempted to smack him away, he once again used the Nightmare's own magic against him, redirecting it as a projectile into his side.          “NAAAA-HAHAHAHA THAHAHAT’S NOHOHO FAAHAHAIRR!!” Rags howled out, crumpling on the ground again. He snarled and ‘flicked’ his finger in the jester’s direction, which sent a magic burst through him and sent him flying back again.          The two of them had soon abandoned their prior fight, turning it into the tickle-fight of the century. Both deities, still evenly-matched, trying to get the upper-hand on each other. Tendrils wrapped around the Jester to slither their red tips over his torso and down to his feet, causing him to scream and tug and laugh wildly before teleporting away. The Jester’s magic-redirection sending two huge bursts of Rags’ magic into his behemoth soles, clapping his hands in delight at the hysterics that met his ears.          And all you could do was watch, heading to a nearby concession stand to sit on the stool and munch on another bagel. You were enthralled by the sight, cheering on Rags every time he counter-’attacked’, yelling at the Jester to GET FUCKED.          Finally, both of them grew exhausted, tapping out. Rags shrunk back down to his regular height, laying in a heap right next to the Jester with a dopey smile on his face and his tongue hanging out, both of them gasping for breath. Visible puffs of air emerged from the mouth of the Jester's mask.          “Ahh…H-haahh… How exhilarating…!” the Jester let out giddy, drunken giggles, covering his face with his forearm. You wondered, if he didn’t have a mask, whether he’d be blushing by now. “I still feel like… We could keep up this delightful game for ages to come… But if you’re… hhahh… so insistent on guiding this one in the right direction,” he gestured to you, “Then… I concede.” He staggered to his feet, giving a theatrical bow. “I’ll simply have to tell the others that I just couldn’t best you, try as I might!”          “H-Heheh…That’s what I thought~” Rags also slowly raised to his feet, slouching forward. He made his top hat re-appear just for the sake of putting it on and tilting it to the Jester, before it vanished again. “That was a total blast! Maybe if I bump into you again out in the multiverse, we can really see who can last the longest~”          The Jester chuckled. “Indeed, indeed… You’d better not forget about me this time~!”          Rags blinked. “...Wait wha–”          “And YOU!!” He spun around to face you. “The spark that shines bright in the dark! The little rebel that can somehow keep a god of chaos on a leash,” he casually plucked the air between both of you, revealing the tether momentarily, “You’re really quite impressive. Intuitive. Stubborn. Keep proving that to the Order; keep pushing their buttons! It’s about time someone riled up all these lazy sleeping lions~” He giggled, spinning on his ankles again and throwing a portal in front of him. It looked out to a building in the near distance: A hotel covered in soft blue and pink neon lights, and a sign with a sunset over the entrance.          “Rest yourselves here; regroup, re-assess your next plan. I’ve a feeling you’re reaching your journey’s end.” He bowed in an ‘after-you’ gesture.          “You think so, huh?” Rags gave the jester a grin, gently starting to push you toward the portal. “Heh, that’s the best news we’ve gotten all day. Night. Whatever!”          You peeked back at the Jester, offering a soft, genuine smile. “Thank you for helping us.”                          The deity shook his head. “No need to thank me. You may very well see me in your dreams one of these days~ I'll eagerly take you up on your request and play my songs to you all night long! I’m curious if I can make you beg for my mercy the way he can~” He wiggled his fingers at you playfully, then disappeared, the echoes of his devious, unhinged giggle starting to fade.

         Nearing the end of your journey? It's about damn time. You felt a new spark of hope, now that one of the deities of the Grand Order had been willing to cooperate. Part of you wanted to hold onto hope that others would also offer you help. But even if they wouldn't, you knew now you had the strength to take a stand against them.          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Footnotes:

Carnies: http://backrooms-wiki.wikidot.com/entity-183 , https://sta.sh/0spj7o8s969

The Court Jester: https://backrooms.fandom.com/wiki/Jester , https://sta.sh/02f0r3t6q9mi

...Every time I think I can’t make a chapter longer than the last, I prove myself wrong, lmao But hey, this is The clownfucker chapter, I just had to go all out 👍 I briefly glimpsed a creepy carnival Level when browsing the Wikis - and tbh, even if I hadn’t, I still wanted to include one. Finding a literal clown entity just sealed the deal for me.

I wanted Rags to get into at least one intense battle with an antagonist before the penultimate chapter/ Final Boss. And what better opponent than one that is very much like himself? The Court Jester was such a fun character to write!

Also I had to include cameos of my own clown OCs. One is, of course, my robo-clown Roscoe.

But the other two are new OCs that I have yet to properly introduce to y’all. Willie and Nillie, the clowns from the Surreal realm that are a representation of all the childlike thrills that people get from amusement parks!

[scoobydoobaday]

The New Scooby-Doo Movies S02E02 - The Haunted Showboat (1973) Hanna Barbera Productions

[elijones94]

🐾 A cowardly and clumsy dog and sneaky snickering cat originally voiced by Don Messick 🐾🔍

[actuallyitsstar]

Maverick + 2, 21, and 22?

✨ send me a number and a character! ✨

2. favorite canon thing about this character?

i think that hands down i have to say that i actually really respect the writers/tc/whoever making the active choice to humanize maverick. in a lot of big Straight Man Macho Action Flex Movies (tm) i feel like this is hardcore frowned upon. but i gotta hand it to tc, because i feel like it's a through line for his films- my poor traumatized meow meow ethan hunt comes to mind- that his action hero characters are like. PEOPLE. with emotions. who behave in a way you can empathize with and unpack.

like even in the original movie, though they are obviously not explicit in discussing it, they do address the way a scare can shake you up, the way there's no shame in it. viper even says as much to maverick when he's thinking of quitting. there's no shame in it. that spin was hell, it would've shook me up. there's no shame in cougar quitting either- he still is a good man, as mav helpfully reminds the others. he disobeys orders to help cougar, (i'd like to get on my 'parallels to jake launching against orders to save mav and bradley' high horse here but its not relevant rn so i'm gonna refrain), and he defends cougar's honor to the others multiple times. of course there's the surprising (for an 80s movie full of cheese and needless romance subplots and sweaty men) amount of emotional intelligence in goose and mav's conversation at the housing, when mav apologizes for showboating and makes the ~promise~ to goose and goose gets to display his immense working knowledge of What Makes Mav Tick. for all of that famous ego we've seen in action, mav is perfectly capable of listening to what goose has to say and understanding his point and conceding without making it about himself. that right there is some surprising emotional intelligence (which never coping with losing goose will promptly destroy but i digress)

and then there's the post goose's death universe- they let it haunt him. as they should, but i feel a lot of films in a similar genre and style wouldn't be willing to dwell on it so. he gets to cry. a lot. he's literally in the jet in top gun '86 with just. tears running down his face. then there's tgm- there's the scene outside the hard deck and there's the scene with ice and there's the funeral and there's the fight with bradley on base and there's but you are here and the hug on the carrier. he gets to be genuinely emotional and heartfelt. he gets to express actual in the moment feelings that are not just anger and are not just with a ~love interest~. HE GETS TO BE HUMAN !!! HE GETS TO BE SOFT !!! THATS SO IMPORTANT TO ME. probably wouldn't be my number one blorbo man if it weren't for that.

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

aaaaaaa i think my favorite (evil) thing about writing mav is the unreliable narration. it's rly great (read: painful) to sit down and just say the craziest shit that is not true as if it is fact and then know he that he really thinks like that. hes just like 'of course he can't expect the most basic human decency known to man from his closest friends and family because it is unreasonable to imagine someone as horrible as himself could ever deserve it' and he's just talking about like. needing somebody to pick him up from the airport. and you're just like wow. this little guy is fucked up huh

least favorite tho....... it's a two sided coin. it can't be too on the nose and it can't be too over-the-top. mav is great at being/seeming functional, on a surface level. it's only when you get inside of the one bedroom apartment with a bedroom he is not allowed to use bc that's for just in case his long lost son ever comes home or whatever that you realize something is wrong. his pov can't be too down or too depressed. it's mostly objective, with just a direct little splash here and there, just enough so the reader can be like 'okay. yeah. makes sense. alright. still making sense. and....wildest most untrue thing you could possibly say about yourself. alright yeah he needs therapy' <3

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to this character? Something you don't like?

aaaaaa so many amazing authors in this fandom do so much that i adore i don't even know where to start, but i guess one of my favorite things has to be when he's just very *shrugs* about the flyboys and they've already decided that he's one of them now. it's really great to know we just all agreed somehow that this is a found family group of aviators who barely have any screen time with each other, and that we all just agreed that mav probably doesn't understand the invitation to be as direct as they mean it because he is frankly unused to receiving such direct invitations period. there is nothing like watching an idiot who needs loved get roped into a found family. like !! yeah !!! get loved !! do it !!! it can't be stopped !!

and hmm something i don't like. very much the reverse again, in a way, but i think one of my least favorite things has got to be either over-infantalizing him into like, way too much of the "baby brother" in the group (i am not denying that this is objectively probably his role, just that this does not mean he is going to be acting like he is 5). he knows how to do the basics. he's an adult man who is technically capable of taking care of himself (though whether he feels he deserves the effort is a different story). you have to be hella fucking smart to graduate with the kinds of degrees and experience you need to do what mav does. he's a fully capable adult. he's just also a little dumb about the self care sometimes. they're not mutually exclusive.

[imogenkol]

11, 15, 16 for the ask <3

I’ve been replaying Cyberpunk 2077 so ya know what? I’ll answer for Vaune!

11. Do they have empathy? For whom? For what?

Vaune has a ton of empathy, even before her perspective on the world got completely flipped. She acts like she doesn’t care about random people who are suffering, but after she’s done showboating and blabbing on about how none of that shit is her problem, she’ll step in and do what she can to help. Vaune somehow constantly finds herself standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. She thought that was gonna be the thing to get her killed.

15. How do they kill? Do they try to minimize suffering?

Once she’s in survival mode, she tries to kill as quickly and efficiently as possible. Head shots are her preferred method, but not really because she cares about who she’s killing. She just wants to get the dirty business out of the way.

16. What haunts them?

Johnny lmao The time she wasted trying to be a living legend instead of building connections. Sure she had Jackie, but once he was gone, Vaune realized just how truly alone she is. She longed for family. She longed for people to have a true, deep connection with — who would do anything for her the way she would do for them. Vaune wants someone to be by her side when she dies.

[onlylostphysics]

For the character meme: Ed! :D

:D!

favorite thing about them

oh god, everything. His theatricality, his natural brilliance, his showboating, his arms, his boredom, his playfulness, his legs in those breeches, his terrible coping mechanisms, his disney prince eyes, the way he has so many sides to him that flash depending on who he's with and what the situation needs, his love of fine food and clothes, his stupid frat boy schtick, the way he does his hair, the leather, his confidence, the way he doesn't like to try new things if he's not immediately great at them... he is a hot mess of contradictions and that makes him very compelling (also, he's hot).

least favorite thing about them

That time he made Fang put his dog down 😠 (I have thought about this A LOT because I don't like it!! and I want to reduce it!! and I think it is interesting that the policy Ed remembers is "no pets because they befoul the ship" but the rest of his crew give more weight to the "the love of a pet makes a man weak" thing, which Ed needs reminding of. Extrapolating from that, my headcanon is that someone tried to push back on the befouling thing once and Ed threw out ~love makes you weak~ because: a) he's Blackbeard and that's the sort of thing Blackbeard would say, and b) he's good at manipulating people and saying whatever needs to be said in the moment to get them to obey, and c) fuck you for arguing with me -- which doesn't make it better but it does make it less about the dog.)

favorite line

"Dickfuck, no it's not" lives rent free in my head, but shout out to "You wanted to be Blackbeard, this is what it's like" and "Science tells us all the useful organs are on the right side of the body, so I cleverly took the sword on the left."

brOTP

Ed & Lucius, especially when it's post-S1 fake-ghost Lucius who was enjoying haunting him but is now like, holy shit, you need help, let's get this bitch some therapy.

OTP

I am gone on Ed/Stede like I've never been gone on a pairing before.

nOTP

reciprocated Ed/Izzy (sorry)

random headcanon

It might be more word-of-god than headcanon, but I like the idea that Ed's got plenty of physical experience with sex but not much emotional experience. Which means every time with Stede, even when it's flaily and faily awkward too-many-knees sex, is still the best of his life because it's fun and safe and exciting all at once.

unpopular opinion

*kicks the hornets nest* There's a side of Ed that does enjoy cruelty and violence and making people scared of him (and part of his journey is going to be reconciling and balancing that with the equally real side of him that wants to be pampered and loved and treated gently.)

song i associate with them

always Grace Kelly by MIKA but a recent and very strong entry is Both by Todrick Hall

favorite picture of them

(he is SO PRETTY and I like wallowing in heartbreak)

✨️ character ask meme!