The thing about the void is, it's empty. People forget just how distant the distance between stars is, even Joel, who seems convinced at all times that he knows all things. Seems. People contain nearly as many multitudes as the void. That's what Etho finds so thrilling about this whole soulmate thing, really. The fullness. The intensity.
Etho is only skin deep, not because he's shallow, but because he's empty. That's the thing about the void. The distance between stars is nearly unfathomable. It can be calculated, but it cannot be filled. Etho spends a lot of time feeling empty, like the distance between his heart and his lungs in measured in light years. Feelings come to him as distant impressions, constantly traveling, brushing by his edges so small they're less than ripples on water.
This probably makes no sense.
See, the thing about being made of void, born from void, called to void, is you resemble it a great deal, and resembling nothing is very hard to describe. He's alive, obviously, and something resembling a human shape, but the depth of him is different. Etho feels like the void feels - soft and muffled by distance. When emotions finally collide with something, the explosion is brilliant enough to create light, noise, cacophony, and it burns and it fades, and in a million years it might happen again.
He had expected to drown Joel in his emptiness, when their souls tethered. And maybe at first he did. But Joel was so much it was intoxicating.
The Relationship is burning. Etho on his own might not be too bothered by this. Sure, there's the chance that anger and dismay might collide somewhere in the distance between his desperate pieces and create some super nova emotion, but he doesn't expect it to. Joel, however - human and small and contained and a multitude in the space between skin instead of the space between stars - feels almost everything at once and Etho basks in it like it's the sun. Joel is anger and dismay and the inevitability of it all and he's running, and Etho has to focus on that light that is Joel just to follow. They run to their home, up in flames, and Joel is shouting and Etho is shouting, and he's feeling everything Joel is feeling and it's intense. It leaves Etho breathless. He feels tears in his eyes. And then Etho is filled with the greatest concern, a mournful feeling like a canary caged in his ribs, and Joel circles back from their home to hold his hand.
"We knew this would happen," Joel tells him, trying to be reassuring, and all Etho can do is nod. The concern is baffling. It stuns him just as surely as any punch could. It wants to cup him in its hands and keep him safe, it wants to remind him this is all just a game and really it's no big loss. It's only five words. We knew this would happen. Joel might as well have told him he would never feel pain again. Concern. Concern is the color of a white dwarf, bright and small and tenacious.
They dig through the remains, they recover, and Etho feels it. Soft like the vibration between planets, like a solar storm invisible and deadly scattered into the atmospheres of a thousand foundling gas giants. Joel is angry. It bubbles up from the depths of him, prickles beneath Etho's skin like the acid rain on Venus trying to crawl out of his pores.
"If the Relationship burns," Joel repeats, vicious and red, red, angry, red, "everything burns."
There's a flint and steel in Joel's hands, a grin on his face, and his anger is giddy in a way that flutters in Etho's chest like laughter. Joel feels so much, so much, all the time. Is this what it means to be human?
Etho has never felt more human in his life, and he wants to feel it all. He wants Joel to get angrier. He wants to taste rage and ambition, hopelessness and despair. He wants to chart their colors, the frequencies they make, the way their atoms collide. He wants the space between stars to be full and teeming, he wants every solar system to boil.
Etho follows Joel like the rings around Saturn. They're chanting together. If the Relationship burns, everything burns. Etho feels giddy. Joel sounds manic. Mania. That's a good word for it, this feeling like the very stars are rioting beneath his skin. If Etho is made from the stuff of the End, maybe this is what the Beginning felt like. They set fire to the server one home at a time. Flint and steel crack together like colliding asteroids, they light like solar fire.
"Not the box!" Ren howls at him, and Etho laughs as he passes him, chanting under his breath every word Joel says. "Etho! Control your wife!"
Etho laughs. It's funny. It's hilarious. It's unthinkable. Control Joel? Control Joel? He might as well try to capture the universe in the palm of his hand. Joel is a multitude, an endless ocean that washes over him in waves. Etho wants more of him. He wants to feel everything in that same ravenous way a quasar devours space and time. He wants to wrap these moments around him into a singularity so intense it settles in his chest like a second soul.
The Box burns.
Etho has never felt so out of control in his life. He follows Joel like chaos does, his closest companion, the haunt to his steps. He doesn't care if they win. All he cares is that Joel contain his multitudes, and those multitudes spill.
The laws of gravity dictate a great many things. An apple will always fall from a tree to the earth. So will a person slipping from a height, or a piece of dripstone thrust from its mooring. The planets will always turn around their stars, the moons around their planets, their satellites. A solar system will always fly, careening through the universe so quickly you cannot even fathom its movement.
An area of high pressure will always diffuse into an area of nothing, until at long last they reach perfect equilibrium.
On your doorstep, you find a package addressed to you.
You bring it inside and open it.
6 men in ski masks crawl out.
You try running to the phone, but 2 of them intercept you.
There are two jump ropes in their hands.
Your eyes widen.
Before you can respond, they start swinging.
You jump, becoming trapped within the strings, compelled to jump along as they start to sing:
"Apple's on a stick just make me sick
Make my tummy go 246
Not because they're dirty
Not because they're clean
Not because I kissed a boy behind a magazine.
Hey boys look over there,here comes your wife in her underware!"
You look behind you to find your wife also trapped in this careful game.
"She can wobble she can wobble she can do the splitsI bet you 5 dollars that you can't do thisClose your eyes and count to 10"
Entranced, you follow their instruction.
" 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10! "
You open your eyes after the last count. Their voices fading from your ears. To your horror, you find yourself in an empty house, like the day you first moved in. Even your clothes are gone!!!
The Double Dutch Bandits strike again.
Only the Playground champion (the ones who can jump in and out of the game at will) can save the day:
Playground champion: *tip cowboy hat to cover face like an old man remembering the war* It's been a long time since I've heard this old song and dance.
fucking lol at the stealth terf who accused me of Not All Men-ing her for simply pointing out that women can (and must certainly do) be as abusive and gross as men can be and that casting all women as "not behaving like that" will only serve to create more abusive evil women by absolving them of responsibility for their actions by virtue of gender.
she then assumed my gender based on my appearance by claiming im "going against my own", so i pointed out her terf rhetoric and nb erasure and thanked her for the gender euphoria, and she reacted by calling me a lunatic and a pick-me-girl
So you know how there’s the thing with phones (might just be apple i dunno) where they can scan pictures for words? and then you can copy-paste them?
I wrote a thing at like midnight in a notebook with the most horrendous handwriting, and this is what the scanner picked up on:
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F an editor lawny one that shoulder)
END
I absolutely love/hate the fact that you could have shown my past self from 2-3 years ago this picture, without giving me any context at all, and I'd automatically know precisely what I was talking about.
Pairing: I call shotgun! (Jason x Alyssa)
Word Count: 1487
a/n: This is based on a conversation with @i-love-you-by-thunder and this vine, enjoy XD
Summary: Sometimes, to fix a problem, all you need is a good wrench. In which Alyssa has really good aim.
+++++
The day was against her from the moment she woke up. The wrong side of the bed would have been a good, convenient excuse to shove her crabbiness onto, except, Alyssa hadn’t woken up in her bed at all. Instead she had found herself at her desk, a crick in her neck, several complaints in her shoulders and back, and half of the schematics she had been working on the previous night stuck to her face.
That wasn’t an unusual occurrence, really. As it was, her bed went unused half the time anyway; living with a family of vigilantes made for more than was considered a reasonable amount of late nights. If she wasn’t busy revamping someone’s gear, she was either helping Oracle and her uncle manage communications or else she was left with her own thoughts to fret. The batcave practically constituted as her second bedroom at this point.
If anything, maybe it was a miracle that she hadn’t woken up in the batcave this time. A consolation that paled when confronted with sore muscles and sharp twinges that lanced through her every time she moved.
Alyssa could have rolled with the punch though.
Could have, if the next inconvenience to strike hadn’t been such a personal attack.
Coffee was an absolute must in the morning. The heavenly aroma of freshly ground beans simmering away was the lifeline that tethered her to reality. No morning was complete unless she had her hands wrapped around a full, steaming mug of delicious caffeine.
Except there was no warm nutty scent to greet her when she entered the kitchen. It was possible that Alfred simply hadn’t gotten around to making any yet, although if he hadn’t then Tim most definitely would have; he lived off the stuff far more than she did, and at this point Alyssa suspected the only thing running in his veins was coffee.
So if Alfred hadn’t made any coffee, that was fine. And if Tim hadn’t made any, that was mildly concerning at best, but also fine. It was absolutely fine. She could make her own coffee, no biggie.
Or she would have, if the machine hadn’t made such an unsettling sound the second she turned it on.
Guess that explained why no one had made anything yet.
Okay. This was. Okay. All she needed to do was put an Out of Order note on it and she’d fix it later. She could handle being half dead for awhile. Maybe. Sort of.
Alyssa shuffled towards one of the drawers she kept sticky notes in. She opened it and promptly wondered what she did to have the universe mocking her like so. Steepling her fingers and pressing them against her mouth, Alyssa took in one finely controlled breath.
No bed. No coffee. No sticky notes.
Today was going to be a long day.
+++++
There were no more sticky notes in the batcave either. In a family with one butler, one inventor, and nine vigilantes, somehow not a single one of them had a spare pad of sticky notes between them. Amazing.
Alyssa proceeded cautiously from there.
The universe continued laughing and racking up more points against her.
First was that someone had cleaned her work station. Which, first of all, it had already been cleaned. By her. If it still looked like a mess to others that wasn’t her fault; she knew where everything was and that was all that mattered. But now? Now she couldn’t find anything! She was going to have words with whoever had last been in the cave.
Chances were it had either been Tim or Bruce. When they were waiting for results on something and had nothing else to work on they got bored. And when they got bored they got... Organizational.
An hour later saw most of her stuff returned to their rightful place. Some of her notes and schematics were still missing― And on god if they had been confiscated and were going to show up later with suggestions on them she was going to bite someone.
The next straw to settle on the proverbial camel’s back was the unmistakable sound of tearing as she set up materials for her latest project.
Alyssa took another deep breath and held it as she raised her arm. From cuff to about mid forearm was mess of gnarled, torn fabric. She slowly exhaled and shrugged out of the jacket. She paused just before draping it over the back of her chair. At the rate she was going, if she left it this close to her workstation the universe might just be tempted to set it on fire, just to spite her. So, to be on the safe side, Alyssa hid her jacket in the changing room.
For a little while she was able to get on with her work. There was a rhythm to be absorbed into, stilted as it was.
It began with a broken Bat Claw. There was no question on whether the grappling gun could fire, as was evidenced by the released hook resting in the middle of the table. The problem was that something in the device was preventing it from retracting. She mounted the Bat Claw onto a stand, pulled out a screwdriver and a wrench, and contemplated her next move.
If the line wasn’t retracting then she could start by trying to recalibrate it externally. Alyssa gave an experimental flip of the hammer; it glided downward with no resistance whatsoever. Which meant manually reeling the line back in wouldn’t work. She’d have to take the plating off to find out what broke.
Time was a blur in which the speed it moved at was indecipherable. Only two things were certain to her: One, whatever Bruce had done to this grappling hook was a crime in and of itself, and two, the universe also had a biting sense of humor.
After getting her fingers caught and pinched on another inner mechanism for the thousandth time, Alyssa was on the verge of.... something. Whether it be committing a great act of violence or an act of genius remained to be seen.
She replaced the outer plating and began tightening it into place.
‘Come on, come on. Please work.’
Somewhere at the edge of her peripheral she clocked someone approaching. A small part of her registered the heavy tread of steel toed boots, the tempo of long strides and a leisurely gait; familiarity lit like a light bulb and that traitorous part of her whispered his name in her ears with unabashed glee.
A muscle feathered in her clenched jaw. Normally she didn’t mind Jason’s presence while she worked. As long as he didn’t get too nitpicky and snarky with how she went about things then even his commentary was enjoyable. But given today’s track record she knew the second he opened his pretty little mouth she would not like whatever came out.
“Please, God, just give me one good thing,” she growled, twisting a bolt a little harsher than necessary.
One thing that never ceased to amaze her was how everyone in this family seemed to have exceptional hearing. She had always supposed it came with the job, being able to pick up the slightest sound was the ultimate difference between life and death in some situations for them. But Jason’s hearing was always just a little better than the rest. And god if that didn’t make him so extra sometimes.
Smarmy smugness warmed his voice as he called out in response, “Oh my god, you again? Give it a rest buddy!”
No bed. No coffee. No sticky notes. Her workspace had been organized by someone other than her. Schematics were missing. Her favorite jacket ripped. Her fingers were bruised and smarting all over. And now here was Jason fancying himself a comedian.
Her eye twitched, a corner of her mouth curled with a repressed snarl. If one listened carefully they could potentially hear glass shattering in the cosmic void that was her sanity.
She wasn’t sure when she had raised her arm, or even when the wrench had left her grasp, but one moment the skies were clear and Jason was laughing, and the next it was raining wrenches right into his face.
“OOMF.” Jason went sprawling backwards. The wrench slid off his face and clattered against the floor.
Alyssa leaned over the table, brow raised as she gave him an unimpressed look. When she’d asked for a good thing she’d been referring to the Bat Claw, but...“Huh. Well that works too.”
She turned back to the grappling hook and flipped the hammer again. This time it moved smoothly, the grasp of friction finally giving some resistance. Sometimes, to fix a problem, all she really needed was a good wrench. A smile spread across her face and she hit the button to make the line and hook retract; it was like music to her ears.
You're at home and you hear a knock at your door.
On your doorstep you find a package addressed to you.
You bring it inside and open it.
6 men in ski masks crawl out.
You try running to the phone, but 2 of them intercept you.
In their hands are 2 jump ropes.
Your eyes widen. Before you can respond, they start swinging.
You jump, becoming trapped within the strings, compelled to jump along as they start to sing:
"Apple's on a stick just make me sick.
Make my tummy go 246.
Not because they're dirty.
Not because they're clean.
Not because I kissed a boy behind a magazine.
Hey boys look over there,
here comes your wife in her underwear."
You look behind you to find your wife also trapped in this careful game.
"She can wibble, she can wobble, she can do the splits.
I bet you 5 dollars that you can't do this.
Close your eyes and count to 10..."
Entranced, you follow their instruction.
" 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10! "
You open your eyes after the last count, their voices fading from your ears. To your horror, you find yourself in an empty house, as if it's the day you first moved in. Even your clothes are gone!!!
The Double Dutch Bandits strike again.
Only the Playground Champion (the ones who can jump in and out of the game at will) can save the day
Playground Champion: *tips cowboy hat to cover face like an old man remembering the war* Its been a long time since I've heard this old song and dance.
Well shit i think nintendo has set it up to where I’ll totally upgrade my switch internet thing to the more expensive bundle. In 2023 at least.
Pokemon Stadium.
DUDE. POKEMON STADIUM. It’s no XD but oooh. I’d pay for a month of the upgrade to try it out.
EDIT: I just realized i was thinking of Pokemon Coliseum. I might pass. Nm. Post cancelled. :/